f form.

The Congregation of the Index was founded by Pius V., in order to
relieve the Holy Office of that part of its duties which relates to
written and printed thought: censorship of the press would be the proper
term, if censorship, even in its most rigid form, did not fall short of
the attributes and functions of this odious tribunal. It is composed of
cardinals and ecclesiastics, many of them distinguished by their
learning, some, doubtless, by their piety,--but all leagued together,
and solemnly pledged to sleepless warfare against every form of
intellectual freedom. Without their approbation no manuscript can be
seat to the press, no new editions issued, no thought promulgated. Even
the stone-carver is not permitted to use his chisel until they have
decided how far love or pride may go in commemoration of the dead. They
mutilate, with equal sovereignty of will, the printed pages of a classic
and the manuscript of an unknown scribbler,--sit in judgment upon Botta
and Laplace, as their predecessors sat in judgment upon Guicciardini and
Galileo,--and, in the fervor of their undiscriminating zeal, condemn
Robertson and Gibbon, Reid and Hume, the skeptic Bolingbroke and the
pious Addison, to the same fiery purgation. That Italian literature was
not crushed by them long ago is, perhaps, the strongest proof of the
irrepressible vigor and marvellous vitality of the Italian mind. Not to
be on the "Index" would call a blush to the cheek of the most
unambitious of authors,--would carry a presumption of worthlessness with
it from which even the penny-a-liner would shrink with dismay,--and to
the poet and historian would sound like a sentence of perpetual
exclusion from all those cherished hopes which irradiate with heavenly
light the steep and thorny paths of intellectual renown.

Next to these in importance is the Congregation of the "Propaganda," or
of that celebrated institution for the propagation of the Roman Catholic
religion which, since the reign of Gregory XV., has governed, as from a
common centre, the immense network of missions that Christian Rome has
spread over the lands she hopes to conquer, as Pagan Rome spread her
network of military roads over the lands which she had already reduced
to subjection. Cardinals, with a cardinal for prefect and a prelate for
secretary, compose this congregation, which holds regular meetings twice
a month, and, not unfrequently, extraordinary meetings in the presence
of the Pop