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away from him by violence; the priesthood, discontented and impoverished, were held in detestation by the enraged populace; the finances were so utterly ruined that subscriptions of "Peter's pence" were needed from all parts of the world; and all the old institutions of the city, including the foundling hospitals, were impoverished and crippled. This was a great change, and in many respects a very advantageous one for the Roman people.

Mr. Maguire, visiting Rome in her low estate and bankruptcy, gives an annual average of foundlings which is, as might have been expected, much lower than that in the Italian statistics of Mittermaier twenty-five years before; in his loose, vague way, he gives it as "about nine hundred." The Catholic World gets a statement from the records of Il Santo Spirito of the receipt of foundlings for three months of 1868, from which it estimates the annual receipt of that one institution at 952. It asserts flatly that there is no other place in the city where foundlings are received, besides this one, which receives nearly three a day; but we have a strong impression that it is mistaken. It gives hints of "a large proportion" coming from distant provinces, which is highly improbable, and authenticated by no figures whatever.

Taking the Catholic World's own figures, then, and assuming its estimate of the annual number of births in Rome, we come to the monstrous fact that about fifteen per cent., or nearly every sixth child in that city is abandoned by its parents!

But this only introduces us to a fact more astounding still, that of this number of nearly one thousand voluntarily deserted infants, considerably more than one-third are the children of lawful wedlock! This, understand, is claimed by the Catholic World as an item in its vindication of the moral purity of the city of Rome! About one-sixth of its infants are abandoned, and of these one-third are abandoned by their lawfully married parents!

Now the Catholic World goes gaily on, having deducted this third part from the 952 children received at one foundling hospital, to ask us to believe that the remaining 584, knocking off the odd 184, as being possibly legitimate, or else possibly from

the rural districts-the remaining 400, then-constitute the total illegitimacy of the city of Rome! As if there were not bastards who are not foundlings, as well as foundlings who are not bastards! The probability that the number of lawful children unnaturally deserted to the almost certain death of a foundling hospital, is not balanced by an equal number of illegitimates not deserted, seems very small. But if we assume the number of illegitimates in Rome to be no more than the number of foundlings dropped into the wheel of this one asylum of Santo Spirito, and assume the total number of births to be no less than the estimate of the Catholic World, it still leaves the proportion of illegitimate births, at the present day, in Rome, to be more than twice as great as in the very worst citics of Protestant England.

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"The Civiltà Cattolica says this proportion of 28.3 of legitimate births for every one thousand of the population speaks very well for a capital city.' And so it does; it shows, what we have always understood them to be, that the Romans are as virtuous and moral as any people of the world."

Thus the Catholic World; to which it might safely add, that it shows that the separation of an enormous mass of the most vigorous part of the people under vows of celibacy and continence, does not necessarily check the multiplication of the population.*

bull against the damnable heresies of Martin Luther), in which he proposes to * According to the statistics which the Catholic World itself puts in evidence, the birth-rate in the city of priests, monks, and nuns is considerably higher than in the wofully secularized kingdom of Italy; which "speaks very well" for the government-very well indeed-and ought to be counted as an offset to the fact that its murder-rate eclipses anything of the sort in the civilized world. If, in view of this awkward comparison, the defendant wishes to withdraw his worthless Italian statistics, we shall offer no objection.

We have said nothing of the wild boast of the Catholic World that "Rome, in respect to offenses against chastity, is probably the most orderly and decent city, of its size, in the world." In proof, it shows from Maguire, that prostitutes, instead of being tolerated or licensed, as in other Roman Catholic countries, are forbidden to walk the streets of Rome, and apparently infers from this that their business is wholly discountenanced by His Holiness. It may be so, and if so, we should be glad to know it. But our best authenticated indication of the mind of the Holy See on this subject is in a bull of that admirable Pope, Leo X., (Bullarium Romanum, vol. iii., part 3, p. 484—you will find it next before his

We confess that all this guessing and groping after a statistical fact which the Roman Government finds it desirable to conceal from the world, is unsatisfactory, and not worth the time we have spent on it. But there is one point in which the morality of this most Catholic people can be brought into exact comparison with other countries: it is that of

HOMICIDE IN THE PAPAL STATES.

Sixteen years ago, Mr. Seymour, in giving the comparative statistics of murder in different countries, was able to get no official returns from the Papal States, and was compelled to rely on proximate figures, derived from other sources. result of his comparison was as follows:

The

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A very frightful exhibit for an infallible ruler! But the Catholic World "passed by this branch of the subject for reasons which it assigned, and which prevents it from taking up the matter now." Fortunate reasons! for if it had taken up the matter, mark what it would have come to! It is one of the many incidental bad consequences attendant on that necessary evil, a French army in the Papal States to protect the Shepherd from his own lambs, that some things come out under official (French) authority which used to be kept quietly hushed up. The French report states the horrible fact that in the Papal States there was in 1867 one murder for each 5,358 of the

grant sundry privileges to keepers of houses of ill fame in the holy city, on con dition of their paying over, for a special use, from twenty to twenty-five per cent. of the profits. Probably this was one of the sort of bulls that are not infallible; if so, we are glad that, without undue reflection on the previous holiness and infallibility, the present holiness and infallibility has been able to inaugurate a more decent policy.

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population! That is, there were 186 murders to each million of the population! *

We have not attempted to take up all the statistical assertions in the Catholic World, and explain to that journal how it has been betrayed into its mistakes. We tried this in a previous number, and it was not kindly received at all. We do not wish, for obvious reasons of humanity and expediency, to press too closely an adversary who, when driven into a corner, turns at bay and spits out such unpleasant language. The task which the World has set itself is quite like that with which the advocates of slavery used to toil like the bad angels, tearing up mountains of solid statistics by the roots, and casting them into the sea; and after every demonstration that figures could give, of the wrongness of their cause, turning up unabashed with an ingenious explanation. Something ought to be conceded to the heroism with which so gigantic a task has been undertaken by the Catholic World. Without unnecessary remarks about its queer statistics, we have contented ourselves mainly with exhibiting authentic facts, from the most recent government returns.

The following table from Moreau de Jonnès, Statistique de la Grande Bretagne, Vol. ii., p. 257, is instructive and corroborative, though not recent:

ASSASSINATIONS AND ATTEMPTS TO ASSASSINATE IN EUrope.

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ARTICLE VI.-JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL AND ROBERT BROWNING.

The Cathedral. JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. Boston: Fields, Osgood, & Co. 1870. 16mo. pp. 53.

Christmas Eve.

Fields. 1864.

ROBERT BROWNING. Boston: Ticknor &

WE have been accustomed to account Mr. James Russell Lowell as among the foremost of American poets. Brightminded and cheerful, open-eyed and objective, in his diction fluent and clear, with a humor as bubbling and as changing as a mountain spring, and a sprightliness of fancy as light as the leap of a bounding fawn, he rarely fails fully to satisfy his expectant readers. The announcement of a new poem upon so fruitful a theme as "The Cathedral" raised our expectations more than ever. We could not repress the belief that, with a topic so elevating and suggestive, he would rise above his wonted excellence. We are sorry to confess our disappointment. Speculation and theology evidently do not suit his genius. They are "heavy as nightmare" to his generally cheerful and believing spirit. He had better leave such themes to Mr. Emerson. It is better that one poet should be spoiled than two, by the nebulous philosophy that resolves into “a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors" the ordinary world of poetry and of faith, with "its brave, o'erhanging firmament, its majestical roof fretted with golden fire." It is a thousand pities that even in the cathedral of Chartres, on that memorable day that never could be matched by another,

"Cloudless of care, down-shod to every sense,

And simply perfect from its own resource,"

Mr. Lowell could not forget

"the homelike sounds,

At Concord and by Bankside heard before;"

that, instead of giving himself up to the inspiring influences

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