58 Contemporary Evolution. 



citizens are to accept, to whose guidance they are to 

 commit their consciences, and also to draw geographical 

 boundary lines, on one or the other side of which citizens 

 are or are not to be allowed to make use of each other's 

 religious ministrations. 



There can be little doubt but that this tyranny will in 

 time so arouse consciences in opposition to it, that a separ- 

 ation between Church and State will have to be ultimately 

 effected, and thus in Switzerland, as in France, England, 

 and Spain, the Christian theocracy, on its old basis, will 

 have ceased to exist. 



Descending the Alps and Apennines to Brindisi, we 

 traverse a country now undergoing changes peculiarly 

 interesting in reference to our present inquiry, since there 

 the Christian theocracy has its headquarters. 



It may at first be thought singular that Italy, which 

 was the fons et origo of the modern humanistic spirit, and 

 which in physical science (as especially in anatomy and 

 geology) was so far ahead of more northern nations, should 

 have continued, from Turin to Naples, subject to a system 

 of government which appeared so decidedly theocratic. 



But, in fact, it was much less so than it seemed. Thus 

 in Tuscany the revolution of 1869 caused a dukedom 

 to disappear which nominally, indeed, supported Christ- 

 ianity, but which did so much more in the interest of 

 the dukedom than of the Church. The profoundly anti- 

 theocratic Leopoldine laws were in full force, and now 



