tory, but perhaps in a less degree than in other countries under the influence of the same perverted system. The government is elective; promotion depends in a great degree upon talents and virtues, and consequently there is a stimulus to exertion, and a scope for honorable ambition; moreover many salutary regulations have been made by the present Pontiff, and some vague reports have been circulated, and have excited an hope that he intends to establish a senate, and govern his states by their advice and with their concurrence. Such a step, the result of an enlightened policy, would contribute more to the prosperity of Rome and the independence and union of Italy, than all the edifices he can erect at home, and all the alliances he can contract abroad. But this report is probably the effusion of patriotism, or perhaps the modest expression of the public wish and opinion. But be it as it may, Rome is now under the iron sceptre of the French ruler: no change can take place without his approbation, and the amelioration of its government, most undoubtedly, forms no part of his system.

As for the origin of the temporal sovereignty of the Popes it may, without any reference to imperial donations real or imaginary, be most honorably and firmly established on the free consent of a grateful and admiring people *. After the expulsion of the Goths, when the arms of the Eastern Emperors had reconquered but were incapable of protecting Italy, when the incursions and menaces of the Lombards kept the city in constant alarm, and pestilence and famine preyed upon it, the

* Gibbon.

Romans naturally turned their eyes to their bishops, and found in them the support which they had vainly solicited from their sovereigns. The Pontiffs had till that period been as eminent. for their virtues as for their station, and when forced by public distress to take a considerable share in the administration of the state, they displayed a prudence equal to their sanctity, and a benevolence as extensive as the possessions of the Roman church, even when augmented by their own private fortunes*. We see them in the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries protecting Rome on one side against the attacks of the Lombards, and securing it on the other from the rapacity and treachery of the Exarchs, repairing its walls, feeding its inhabitants, engaging distant princes in its interests, and finally restoring the majesty of its name in the new empire. In fact, Rome seems to owe her existence to her Pontiffs, and had not the chair of St. Peter replaced the throne of the Cæsars, and the seat of empire become the sanctuary of religion, Rome would probably have sunk into a heap of uninhabited ruins,, and left to posterity nothing more than the whistling of a mighty name.

From the re-establishment of the Western Empire to the tenth century the Popes employed their influence in opposing the growing power of the Saracens, and protecting the coasts of Italy and the Capital itself against the predatory incursions of those barbarians. Shortly after commenced their contests with the German Cæsars, contests which arose more perhaps from Roman pride and a rooted hatred to Transalpine, that is, in their

* If the reader wishes to know how great were the exertions, how extensive the charities, how active the patriotism of the Popes in the sixth and seventh centuries, he need only peruse the epistles of Gregory the Great.

eyes, barbarian domination, than from prelatical arrogance; the cause to which however they are very generally and very confidently attributed. That such arrogance existed is indeed sufficiently evident, and that it operated as a very active principle is equally clear; but it may be questioned whether the singular claims of universal dominion, advanced by Gregory VII. did not originate as much from the lofty spirit of the Roman as from the ambition of the Pontiff. Certain it is, that this extraordinary personage seemed better formed to fill the imperial throne than the pontifical chair, and that if he had been a prince only and not a bishop, he might, with such a daring and intrepid spirit, have restored the grandeur of the empire, and fixed its seat once more on the seven hills. But however we may censure the Popes as ecclesiastics in these bloody and destructive quarrels, as princes and as Romans they may perhaps challenge our indulgence if not approbation, as they struggled against foreign influence, and finally succeeded in freeing Italy from the yoke of a German, that is, a barbarian and absentee ruler. The disputes of the Popes with the barons and the Roman people were founded on the just opposition of a firm government, to the arrogance and tyranny of an aristocratic body on the one side, and to the licentiousness of a turbulent populace on the other; but Rome has just cause to deplore and condemn the folly and perversity of her pastors when they forsook her venerable walls, and instead of discharging in the Vatican the sublime duties of prince and pastor, submitted to while away their unprofitable days in voluntary exile, alternately the instruments and the victims of French intrigue and ambition.

Of all the disasters that befel Rome in the long series of

her eventful history, this, perhaps, was the most pernicious both in its immediate effects and distant consequences, and to it may be ascribed the degradation of some of the noblest monuments, the depopulation of the capital and its neighborhood, and the multiplicity of evils that anarchy and tyranny never fail to bring in their train. These evils continued to operate, as is natural in political as well as physical distempers, long after their efficient causes had ceased to exist; and the Popes, during many ages after their re-establishment in Rome, had to struggle with the restless and unbridled passions excited by the guilt or the folly of their absentee predecessors. Sixtus Quintus at length succeeded in the arduous undertaking, and after having broken the stubborn spirit of the barons, and tamed the people to submission, restored order, peace, and industry in the Roman states.

From this period Rome rapidly increased in prosperity, riches, and population, and became the seat of the arts and sciences, the centre of political negotiation, and not unfrequently, of courtly intrigue. Most of the succeeding Popes did not fail to take an active part in the public transaction of the times, sometimes indeed as mediators, a character well becoming the common Father of Christians, but too frequently as parties concerned, with a view to national interests or family aggrandizement. Their conduct in this respect, though little conformable to the principles of their profession, was however very advantageous to their territories, as it brought wealth to the inhabitants, and reflected lustre on a city, at the same time the metropolis of the christian world and the capital of an extensive and flourishing country.

The reformation produced at the time little or no diminution of the temporal greatness and consideration of the Popes; so little indeed that,in the century following that event, Rome seems to have enjoyed a splendor and prosperity not witnessed within her walls since the fall of the empire. In fact, a judicious historian has observed, that if Pyrrhus' ambassador could with propriety call the Roman senate in his time a congress of kings*, a similar appellation might with equal veracity be applied to the modern senate of Rome the college of cardinals, during the seventeenth century. That assembly was, strictly speaking, then composed of princes, the sons, nephews, brothers, or uncles of the first sovereigns in Europe; men who not unfrequently, as statesmen and ministers, had held the reins of empire at home, or as ambassadors, represented their royal relatives abroad. They either generally resided or frequently assembled at Rome, not only to discharge their duties about the person of the Pontiff, but to support the interests of their respective courts; and in order to attain this object the more effectually, they displayed a splendor and magnificence nearly royal. The officers of their household were often nobles of high rank; their secretaries and chaplains were men of talents, and business; a long train of guards, servants, and retainers attended their persons when they appeared in public, and the blaze of the purple in itself so dazzling, was heightened by all the adventitious circumstances of birth, power, and opulence. The union of so many illustrious personages, vying with each other in talents and magnificence, gave Rome the appearance of an universal court,

*Denina Rev. d'Ita. 1. xxIII. 12. or 4 vol. 317.