may loiter day after day and still find his presence acceptable, and his hosts entertaining: in the humble convent he will meet with a hearty welcome, be introduced into the best apartment, and partake of their very best fare. If he stays, he confers an obligation; if he goes, he departs, votis et ominibus, with their blessing and their prayers. Such acts of kindness remind us that we are Christians and brothers, and in spite of religious animosity melt and delight the benevolent heart.

But these convents are supported by charity, and may be considered as an encouragement to idleness, and a tax upon the industrious poor; and their inhabitants are a lazy set of mendicants, mere drones in society, always ignorant, often debauched, and ever useless. Such is the language of many travellers, and of another class perhaps equally attached to truth and full as entertaining, of many novellists and many romance writers. But, with all due respect to such formidable authorities, I must state my opinion, not formed in the closet but founded upon local observation. These convents are supported by charity, it is true; but that charity is a voluntary gift, proportioned to the means and the inclination of the donor, and generally drawn from the stores of the rich, not scraped from the pittance of the poor. Their inhabitants are mendicants; but they refund the alms which they collect, with interest, into the common stock, by sharing them with the poor and the cripple, with the blind and the sick, with the houseless pilgrim and the benighted wanderer. Thus they spare their country the expence of workhouses, with all their prodigal appendages; and they render it a still more important service, in preserving it from the oppressive and ever accumulating burthen of poor rates. They instruct the ignorant,

they visit the sick, they nurse the dying, and they bury the dead; employments, silent and obscure indeed, but perhaps as useful to mankind and as acceptable to the Divinity, as the bustling exertions of many a traveller and the voluminous writings of many an author. Those who charge them with ignorance and debauchery, must have been very partial, or very inconsiderate observers, extending the defects or vices of a few, perhaps laybrothers, (that is, servants in the dress of the order,) to the whole body; a mode of reasoning which we very justly reject, when applied to our own country and to its corporations, but which we are very apt to adopt when speaking of other countries and of their institutions.

With regard to information, the truth is, that in the greater convents, such as exist in cities, a traveller is certain of discovering, if he chooses to inquire for them, some men of general erudition; and he will find the brotherhood at large, sometimes well versed in Latin and Italian literature, and always in Divinity, the peculiar science of their profession. In the rural convents, the case is different. Taste and learning would be an encumbrance to a friar, doomed for life to associate with rustics: piety, good nature, some Latin, and a thorough knowledge of his duty, are all that can be expected, and all that the traveller will find among these humble Fathers of the Desert.

As to the morality of convents, we must form our opinion of it with a due regard to their number, as in all aggregate bodies formed of human beings some instances must be found of the weakness of our common nature, and such irregularities,

if not beyond the ordinary proportion of frailty inseparable from the best establishments in similar circumstances, may claim indulgence.

Now, though instances of gross immorality are sometimes heard of, and occasional deviations are perhaps not unfrequent, yet, on the whole, it is but just to acknowledge, that piety and decorum generally prevail in convents, and that examples of devotion, of holiness, and of disinterestedness are frequent enough to edify the candid observer, whilst they obliterate all little incidental interruptions of religious regularity. Extremes of vice are rare, fortunately, in all ranks, and most certainly very unusual indeed in ecclesiastical corporations of every description. The friar, in fact, who becomes a slave to his passions, generally flies from the gloom and the discipline of his convent, and endeavours to lose the remembrance of his engagements and of his duties in the bustle and the dissipation of ordinary life. In fine, I may venture to assure the English traveller, that he may pass the night in any convent in Italy without the least chance of being alarmed by sounds of midnight revelry, and without the smallest danger from the daggers of a Schedoni, a Belloni, or of any such hooded ruffian; that the tolling of bells, and perhaps the swell of the organ, may chance to disturb his morning slumbers, and some benevolent Father Lorenzo may inquire, rather unseasonably, about his health and repose.

Before I quit this subject it will be necessary to give the reader a short account of the hierarchy of the Church of Italy, and the different orders that devotion or authority have superinduced in the course of ages into the clerical order. The Pope, as primate, presides over the Church of VOL. II.

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Italy, with the same rights and prerogatives as accompany the same title in other countries. There is one Patriarch who resides at Venice, but derives his title and honour from the ancient See of Aquileia, destroyed by the Huns under Attila, in the year 452, and ever since existing only as an insignificant town or rather village. All the great cities, and some of a secondary rate, have Archbishops, while almost every town, at least if ancient, is the See of a Bishop. To account for this extraordinary number of Bishops, it will be necessary to recollect, that the Christian Religion was planted in Italy by the Apostles themselves or by their immediate successors, who, according to the primitive practice were accustomed to appoint in every town a Bishop and Deacons. Besides the cathe

drals there are several collegiate churches which have their deans and chapters; but it must be recollected, that the deans and canons of every description are obliged to reside at least nine months in the year, and to attend regularly at the three public services of the day, viz. Morning Service, at four, five, or six; Solemn Communion Service or High Mass, about ten; and Evening Service, about three. The parochial clergy are numerous; pluralities never allowed, and constant residence strictly enforced. So far, the difference between the Italian and English Hierarchy, if we except the article of residence, is not material; in the following circumstances they differ totally, and on which side the advantage lies, the reader must determinc.

In Italy every Bishop has his diocesan seminary or college, consecrated solely to ecclesiastical education, under his own inspection and under the direction of a few clergymen of an advanced age and of high reputation for sanctity and learning. In this seminary the candidates for orders in the diocese are

obliged to pass three years, under rigorous discipline, in the study of divinity and in a state of preparation for the discharge of their ecclesiastical functions, before they are admitted to the priesthood. It may be asked, what course of studies is adopted in these establishments? The student is obliged to attend twice a day at lectures on the Scripture, on ethics, and on theology. The mode of treating these topics depends upon the taste and the talents of the lecturer; but the two latter are generally discussed in the scholastic manner, which has long since fallen into contempt and ridicule amongst us; though the zealous Protestant must know, that the Reformers, particularly Luther and Calvin, derived from it the weapons which they employed against their antagonists, and the skill with which they used them. The truth is, that notwithstanding the quibbles, the sophisms, the trivial distinctions, and the cobweb refinements introduced into it, a course of school divinity gives a very full and comprehensive view of theology taken in the widest sense of the word, and furnishes a man of judgment and of discrimination with the best proofs, the strongest objections, and the most satisfactory answers, upon almost every question that has occupied the thinking part of mankind on the subject of religion.

Such is the constitution of the regular and apostolic part of the Italian Church, of the clergy, simply and properly so called; a body of men as exemplary in their conduct and as active in the discharge of their duty, as any national clergy in the Christian world. The traveller must not confound with the clergy a set of men who wear the clerical habit merely as a convenient dress, that enables them to appear respectably in public places, to insinuate themselves into good company, and sometimes to cover principles