eval,
and modern Rome. It was the day when the church is illuminated, and the
visitors come with their Baedekers and Hares and Murrays to identify its
antiquities of architecture and fresco; it was full of people, and, if I
fancied an unusual proportion of English-speaking converts among them,
that might well have been, since the adjoining convent belongs to the
Irish Dominicans. But I carried with me through all the historic and
artistic interest of the place the sensation left by two inscriptions
daubed in black on the white convent wall next the church. One of these
read: _"VV. la Repubblica"_ (Long live the Republic), and the other:
_"M. ai Preti"_ (Death to the Priests). No attempt had been made to
efface them, and as they expressed an equal hatred for the monarchy and
the papacy, neither laity nor clergy may have felt obliged to interfere.
Perhaps, however, it was rightly inferred that the ferocity of one
inscription might be best left to counteract the influence of the other.
I know that with regard to the priests you experience some such effect
from the atrocious attacks in the chief satirical paper of Rome, The
name of this paper was given me, with a deprecation not unmixed with
recognition of its cleverness, by an Italian friend whom I was making my
creditor for some knowledge of Roman journalism; and the sole copy of it
which I bought was handed to me with a sort of smiling abhorrence by the
kindly old kiosk woman whom I liked best to buy my daily papers of. When
I came to look it through, I made more and more haste, for its satire of
the priests was of an indecency so rank that it seemed to offend the
nose as well as the eye. To turn from the paper was easy, but from the
fact of its popularity a painful impression remained. It was not a
question of whether the priests were so bad as all that, but whether its
many readers believed them so, or believed them bad short of it, in the
kind of wickedness they were accused of.

There can be no doubt of the constant rancor between the Clericals and
the Radicals in their different phases throughout Italy. There can be
almost no doubt that the Radicals will have their way increasingly, and
that if, for instance, the catechism is kept in the public schools this
year, it will be cast out some other year not far hence. Much, of
course, depends upon whether the status can maintain itself. It is, like
the status everywhere and always, very anomalous; but it is difficult to