only
the letter in which this theological fiction was announced by his
Holiness. The people cried for the bread of constitutional liberty,
and the holy father gave them the stone of a religious dogma to which
they were wholly indifferent; thus demonstrating the incompatibility
of the functions of a temporal and spiritual sovereign.

The pillar of the Immaculate Conception is embellished by statues of
Moses, David, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, with texts from Scripture, and very
inferior bronze bas-reliefs of the incidents connected with the
publication of the dogma. As a work of art, it is heavy and graceless,
with hard mechanical lines; and the figure of the Virgin at the top is
utterly destitute of merit. The whole monument is a characteristic
specimen of the modern Roman school of sculpture. For ages Rome has
been considered the foster mother of art, and residence in it
essential to the education of the art-faculty. But this is a delusion.
Its atmosphere has never been really favourable to the development of
genius. There is a moral malaria of the place as fatal to the
versatile life of the imagination as the physical miasma is to health.
Roman Catholicism has petrified the heart and the fancy; and a petty
round of ceremonies, feasts, and social parties dissipates energy and
distracts the powers of those who are not under the influence of the
Church. The decadence of art has kept pace with the growing corruption
of religion. Descending from the purer spiritual conceptions of former
times to grosser and more superstitious ideas, it has given outward
expression to these in baser forms. Even St. Peter's, though
extravagantly praised by so many visitors, is but the visible
embodiment of the vulgar splendour of later Catholicism. The pillar of
the Immaculate Conception is not only a monument of religious
superstition, but also of what must strike every thoughtful observer
in Rome--the decadence of art in modern times as compared with the
glorious earlier days of a purer Church. And the art of the sculptor
is only in keeping with that of the painter in connection with this
dogma. For the large frescoes of Podesti, which occupy a conspicuous
place in the great hall of the Vatican, preceding the stanze of
Raphael, and depict the persons and incidents connected with the
proclamation of the Immaculate Conception, are worthless as works of
art, and present a melancholy contrast to the works of the immortal
genius in the adjoining hal