Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 389, March 1848

"Oh how curious, – wonderfully curious,The laws of nature are indeedMost wonderfully curious!"

The geography is as good as the physics: —

"A channel is a passage wideThat flows from sea to sea;When narrow it is call'd a strait, —Thanks to Geography!"…"When wise and older I am grown,I'll try and tell you more,But Teacher says enough is knownAn infant's mind to store!"

No doubt of it! enough and to spare! This is a fine specimen of the class of truths called unquestionable. There is, moreover, a pleasing enjouement about this last line, which recommends it to our regard. The teacher seems to be expostulating with her young charge, and saying, "My dear little four-year-old, eager for instruction beyond your years, but fearful of learning up every thing at school, – don't be frightened; the world will always find science sufficient to employ all good little boys like you." But though this truth be unquestionable, we doubt whether the line which conveys it be genuine; and rather fancy, should the original manuscript turn up, it would be found to run —

"Enough's enough an infant's mind to store!"

which, though somewhat harsh to the ear, conveys an excellent meaning. Should this be thought to make the verse too rugged, we have yet a second various reading to propose, and that is simply to change the last word into bore, by which means the easy flow of the verse is preserved, and the significatio prœgnans of the original, though somewhat modified, is maintained.

Notwithstanding these blemishes – which, after our strictures on foreign classes, we felt bound to point out – our English schools are very far superior to the Italian for the same rank. With us, the attention of government and of the public is roused, and directed to their improvement; laymen join with the clergy in forwarding the same scheme; great part of the tuition devolves upon females – and who so fitted as woman to form the mind at an early age? It is no small advantage, too, that authoresses of talent and judgment should have devoted their time to the composition of exclusively moral and religious tales and histories for the young. Lastly, with us, there is none of that masquerading and display, which we reprobate as forming so prominent a part in all Italian tuition. In these schools, women are excluded from their natural office of teaching; there are no books adapted to infant minds; the whole business is vested in the hands of the priests; and they, in strict compliance with the spirit of their Church, train the pupils in passive obedience to authority, and teach them very little besides. We fear it will be long before any revolution can reach these seminaries. The sense of personal importance attaching – not only to the children themselves, but to their parents – from these contemptible yearly exhibitions, added to the interested motives which induce the Church to foster such vanity, would render any considerable alteration for the better extremely difficult, even were the evil more generally felt than we fear it is likely to be under the present system of things. We state this opinion with regret; for what is the tendency of such education? Can it inculcate that real humility, not abasement of mind, which should characterise the true disciples of our blessed Saviour? Nay, must it not rather, by holding out, as it does, a premium to natural quickness and a superficial acquaintance with the dogmas of theology, tend to foster pride and selfishness – those monster evils which it is the prime object of religion to eradicate – whilst the heart remains untouched and the moral sense unexercised? and will not the poor children, who are its victims, learn to prize a few dry leaves from the Tree of Knowledge, beyond the fair fruit of the Tree of Life?

LA CARA VITA"Mais où sont les vertus qui dementent les tiennes?Pour éclipser ton jour quel nouveau jour parait?Toi qui les remplaças,6 qui te remplacerait?"De Lamartine, Harmonies, Hymne au Christ.

The Cara Vita is a small church situated in the Corso, and not possessing within itself any thing to attract the stranger's particular attention. It is interesting, however, from the solemn services which take place there every Friday in Lent. On these occasions, after an exciting harangue from the officiating priest, the lights are extinguished, knotted scourges are handed round by the sacristan, and each individual of the congregation takes one and begins to flagellate himself. We have been told – for we were never present at these exhibitions – that the noise and excitement are terrible – every penitent seeking to ease his inner at the expense of his outer man, and proportioning the amount of his physical suffering to that of the moral evil which it is intended to counteract. But all the ceremonies in the Cara Vita are not of this character; and the same friend who described the above, informed us that the preaching there was often eloquent, and the music always fine; so, when we read in the Diario di Roma, that at twelve o'clock on Good Friday there was to be a solemn funzione, or Service in commemoration of our Saviour's Passion, and that in all probability the church would be crowded, we repaired thither on that day an hour before the time mentioned in the paper, in order to secure a place. Doubtful of the propriety of witnessing, as a pageant, a representation of the most awful and affecting scene that the mind of man can contemplate, yet fearing, from some experience in Roman ceremonies, that our visit might issue merely in that, we lingered some time about the porch; then, pushing aside the heavy curtain, irresolutely entered; and what a contrast presented itself between the two sides of that matted door! It seemed the portal between life and death: light, noise, confusion, reigned without; within, all was dark, solemn, still. The ear that had been stunned by the babel of the streets, was startled at the unwonted calm; and the eye, dazzled by the splendour of the meridian sun upon the pavement, experienced a temporary blindness, and required some time before it could accommodate its powers to the obscurity of the interior. By degrees, however, it was, apparent that the church, notwithstanding the voiceless quiet which prevailed, was full. The whole assembly sat as if spell-bound; not a whisper was to be heard; an awful curiosity tied every tongue. The business and pleasures of life were forgotten; the sexes exchanged no furtive glances; men and women, alike unobservant of their neighbours, counted their beads and bent their eyes upon the ground; while each new comer, awed by the deep silence, entered with cautious tread, and took his seat noiselessly. When our eyes had become somewhat familiarised with the artificial light, they were attracted to two elevated extempore side-boxes, brilliantly illuminated with wax, and filled with choristers in full costume. Between them was stretched a voluminous curtain, not so opaque but that a number of tapers might be seen faintly glimmering through it; and before this curtain a dark temporary stage was erected. The, religious calm that prevailed around was at length gently broken by some soft and plaintive notes, proceeding from the white-robed choir. In a few minutes these died away again upon the ear, and a figure, suddenly rising from the stage, exclaimed in a voice of strenuous emotion – "Once again, ye faithful ones! ye are assembled here to accompany me to Calvary! Yes! another Good Friday has come round, another anniversary of the day announced by God himself for man's deliverance from the wages of his sin; this is the great day when typical sacrifice was done away with, and our blessed Lord made of 'himself a full and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the' faithful. But in order to triumph, my brethren, we must conquer – to conquer we must contend; there is no warfare without wounds, and our Saviour, while in the flesh, must partake of our infirmities: he must be 'the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,' before he can 'lead captivity captive, and receive gifts' for his holy Church; the ransom of his faithful followers must be at the expense of his own blood. He bled, as you know, on Good Friday; and accordingly, we are met here – not to celebrate a triumph, but to learn humility, patience, and forgiveness of injuries at the foot of the cross, in order that we, like our great Head, may become perfect through suffering. Permit me, then, to ask you, with the Psalmist, 'Are your hearts set upon righteousness, O ye congregation?' and are your minds prepared to follow the Lord to Calvary? Have you, for instance, been studying lately his sufferings at the different stations of the cross? have you been thinking at all upon his passion? thinking what it must have been to be hooted at, spit upon, reviled, buffeted, and friendless upon earth? If not, ponder well these things now; now, at this moment; for are we not arrived at the most sacred hour of this most sacred but sad and solemn day? About this hour was the Saviour condemned by his unjust judge, delivered up to the rabble to be crucified. Go back in your minds to that moment; see him crowned with thorns, and bearing the cross upon his shoulder, till, lo! he faints under its weight, and his persecutors compel a stranger to carry it to the fatal spot. Then see him toiling onward, surrounded by his deadly enemies; his chosen friends have forsaken him and fled! a few women follow him afar off, bewailing his fate; he turns and speaks; listen to his words – 'Daughters of Jerusalem! weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children!' Well might the merciful Saviour speak thus, when he had just heard the mad shout of the multitude, 'his blood be upon us and upon our children.' The crowd approaches Golgotha! they halt to rear the fatal tree; methinks I hear the exulting outcries of his vindictive murderers as they fix it in the ground!" Here the curtain drawn between the preacher and the back of the stage fell, revealing three wooden crucifixes lit up by a lurid red light from above. The effect was startling, and produced a shudder of horror throughout the whole auditory. After a breathless pause, the preacher, turning towards the cross, exclaimed, "What! are we too late for the beginning of this tragedy! Is the Redeemer of mankind already nailed to the cross? Oh, cruel and fiendlike man, is this your triumph! surely he who came to save will reject you now! Such might be our feelings, but they were not Christ's. No, my brethren, far from it. Oh, let us contemplate, for our own future guidance, the behaviour of Jesus to his murderers, not after but at the moment of his extreme torture; and may the Holy Spirit give us grace to profit by the exercise. Look on your crucified Redeemer writhing and maddened with suffering; and listen to the first words uttered in the depth of his agony: he imprecates no curse upon these guilty men, but exclaims, 'Father, forgive them; they know not what they do!' Caro Jesu!" Here there was much emotion both in the preacher and in the congregation; when it had subsided, he added persuasively, "You have heard Christ pray that his murderers may be forgiven, and shall you hesitate to forgive one another?" Then, taking the words of our Saviour for a text, he delivered a short animated sermon upon the forgiveness of injuries; after which came a prayer for grace to perform this duty; the pause which succeeded being filled with music and chanting. Then again the dark form of the preacher rose up. "What, my brethren! did not Christ pass three hours in his agony, and shall we leave him in the midst? He has still more gracious words in store. My dear brethren and fellow sinners, now hear his dying address to the penitent thief, 'Verily I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise!' Ladro felice! but was he then predestinated to salvation, and his companion to be the victim of God's wrath? Niente, niente; believe, not a word of this false and heretical creed." Then followed a second discourse, with a diatribe against Calvin (who deserved it!) and all heretics (who might not deserve it), with an anathema against heresy in general, and a prayer for the pardon and acceptance of the true Catholic, id est Roman, Church. In like manner the preacher continued to set before his hearers all the circumstances of our Saviour's passion; pronouncing a short discourse upon every sentence uttered by him in his agony. Each sermonette was succeeded by prayer; and that by an interlude of music and chanting, which enabled him to recover himself, and proceed with undiminished energy during a three hours' service. We had listened attentively, not always agreeing with his doctrine, but without any great shock to our Protestant principles, when, in conclusion, he exclaimed, "Now, brethren, before we disperse, let us do homage to the blessed Virgin, and sympathise with the afflicted and inconsolable Mother of our Lord. Think of her sufferings to-day; think and weep over them; and forget not the worship due to her holy name; whom Christ honoured, shall not we honour too? Sons of the blessed Virgin! is not your brother Christ her son also? make her then your friend; propitiate her, in order to obtain pardon from him! Let us all, then, fall down upon our knees before the Indolorata." A long prayer to the Madonna followed, then a hymn in her honour; and after a last glorious outburst of the organ, accompanying the ardent and sustained Hallelujahs of both choir and congregation, the curtain falls, the doors are thrown open, daylight rushes in through the no longer darkened windows; and presently the thronged and noisy Corso has absorbed the last member of the much moved, slowly dispersing crowd.

A heartfelt and affecting ceremony was that we had just witnessed; every body had shed tears, and there had been evidently great attrition, and probably some contrition also. The strong appeals of the priest had told, though they were not legitimate; for what could be less so than, in the end, his misdirecting the thoughts from the true object of worship, to her, who was, after all, but a mere mortal like ourselves?

Yet devotional feelings had been called forth, and in this it was unlike, and surely better than, the ordinary cold, formal, glittering, shifting pantomimic service of Te-Deums, and high masses, which, instead of "filling the hungry with good things," send all "empty away;" or worse, satisfied with "that which is not bread." Could piety really be appealed to through the senses, then might the ceremonies of the Romish Church hope to reach it, captivating as they are to most of them. The ear is pleased with exquisite music; the eye is dazzled with pictures, processions, scenic representations, glittering colours, gorgeous robes, rich laces, and embroidery; and even the nostril is propitiated by the grateful odour of frankincense; but the only address to the heart and intellect is a barbarous Latin prayer, unintelligible (were it to be heard) to most of the congregation, and rendered so to all by the mode in which it is gone through. On returning from such exhibitions as these, we feel more forcibly than ever, how much reason we have to thank those pious compilers of our expurgated English prayer-book, who, renouncing an unknown tongue, and rejecting all unscriptural interpolations, drew from the rich stores of Rome herself, and from the primitive Church, an almost faultless Liturgy,7 where every desire of the human heart is anticipated, and every expression so carefully weighed, that not an unbecoming phrase can be found in it.

It is impossible for any one who has been much in Roman Catholic countries, to avoid drawing comparisons between the two services; and especially at this time, when many of our countrymen are halting between two opinions, and almost persuading themselves that there was no need of a Reformation, it behoves those not under the influence of

"That dark lanthorn of the SpiritWhich none see by but those that bear it;"

nor yet led away

"By crosses, relics, crucifixes,Beads, pictures, rosaries, and pyxes;Those tools for working out salvationBy mere mechanic operation,"

to protest against the return of Popery to this land, to the surrender of our consciences and our Bibles again into the hands of a fellow sinner.8 "Quis custodet custodem?" – who shall watch our watcher? – was a question that men had been asking themselves for many years in England, but hitherto without result; till our pious Reformers, addressing themselves to the study of the Scriptures, received the sword of the Spirit, with which they were enabled to wage successful war against that wily serpent, coiled now for centuries round the Church of Christ, and waiting but a little further development to crush her in his inextricable folds. Alike unallured by concessions and unterrified by threats, they boldly denounced the heretical usurpation of Rome; opposing an honest conscience, and Christ the only mediator, to the caprice of councils, and the false unity of a pseudo-infallible head;9 refusing to purchase their lives by rendering homage to any Phalaris of the Triple Crown.

Their perjured faith, though zealot Popes command,Point to their Bull, and raise the threatening hand:They deem'd those souls consummate guilt incurr'd,At conscience' fearful price, who life preferr'd:No length of days for bartered peace can pay,And what were life, take life's great end away?10THE BEATIFICATION"Sanctis Roma, suis jam tollere gestit ad astra,Et cupit ad superos evehere usque deos."Milton's Sonnets.

To receive Beatification, which is the first step towards Canonisation, and may in time lead to a fellowship with the saints, – to be pronounced "blessed" by him who arrogates to himself the title of Holy, and must therefore know the full value of the dignity he confers —sic laudari a laudato, and that too in the finest church in Christendom, before the eyes of a countless assembly of all the nations of Europe, – is an honour indeed! No wonder, then, that every promotion should be jealously canvassed, and that sometimes the rumour of "unfairness," or "favouritism," should be heard among the people, when each fresh brevet comes out. For example – "Who's this third St Anthony? Are not two enough in the Calendar? The great St Antonio, and he of the pig! – (del porco,) – another will only create confusion;" or else, "Surely the Beata Ernestina has not been long enough dead to have attained to such an 'odour of sanctity;'" or, "Though the good Pasquale might deserve the title, the pious Teodoro's miracles are as well attested, and much more numerous, and should therefore have been first recognised." Of such sort are the comments of the crowd. All this grumbling, however, is at an end, when once the Festa comes round; the Church, by the brilliancy of her exhibitions, wins over her discontented children, and the installation is sure to be well attended. Sometimes the saint expectant stops short of true canonisation; and, having gained one step, finds himself like a yellow admiral, placed on the shelf without chance of further promotion. (This by the way.) No one can say precisely what entitles the dead to these honours. Large bequests alone are not always sufficient; witness the rejection of a certain distinguished Begum, who left much of her enormous wealth to the Pope, with a well-known view to this distinction. Some imagine that eminent piety is a necessary condition; but no! there is very little talk of religion. It seems chiefly to be the attestation of a sufficient number of miracles at a tomb, which confers the title of Beatus on its tenant, and converts it into a shrine, sure ever after to be profusely hung with glass eyes, wax fœtuses, silver hearts, discarded crutches, votive shipwrecks, &c., &c.,11 in token of cures and deliverances which have emanated from it. Next to miracles, perhaps, we may reckon dates—seniores priores– first buried, first beatified, and no superannuation here: on the contrary, holiness, like many other good things, requires time to ripen its virtues and to bring it to perfection; and it is a rule of the Church that chemistry must disintegrate the mortal before she can build up the saint. Thus it happens of two candidates of equal merit; he whose dissolution took place half a century or so before his rival, obtains the preference. The first steps are taken by the lawyers; one being retained to advance the merits of the aspirant saint, another to asperse them if possible. Should the election be contested, much special pleading is then resorted to. Both sides are paid by the Church, but he who opposes the nomination is termed the devil's counsel. This title, however, is a legal or rather a theological fiction; the miracles alleged to have been performed by the defunct being only more triumphantly established and set off by the apparent disposition of the rival pleader to deny their reality; who, after a proper show of resistance and incredulity, allows himself to be foiled. This is indeed beating Satan with his own weapons; but the advocates of saints belong to that party who

"E'en to the Devil himself will go,If they have motive thereunto;And think, as there is war betweenThe Devil and them, it is no sinIf they by subtle stratagemMake use of him as he does them."

We had never witnessed a Beatification: so, when the Pope, in his character of umpire, had pronounced his fiat in favour of "good sister Frances," and all that remained to be done was the church ceremonial necessary to admit her to piety's peerage, we procured one of the many thousand tickets printed for the occasion, and followed the crowd to St Peter's. Here all was prepared to give due effect to the scene: the interior was studiously darkened, that the rich upholstery might be set off by a grove of countless wax lights, thick and tall as young pine trees. The workmen, after a whole fortnight of bustle and activity, had done their part well. Curtains had been hung and carpets spread; organs wheeled up towards the throne of St Peter; and a whole gallery of villanously painted historical pictures, blasphemous and absurd, were suspended round, representing the miracles for which the new "beatified" was to receive her first degree towards sainthood; and showing amongst other wonders, how in one case her blood, in another her image, restored a blind man to sight, and so completely cured the palsy of one Salvator di Sales, that he is dancing a hornpipe on his recovery, while a priest is looking on approvingly. We were too early for the ceremony; and after curiously scanning these preparations, our attention was attracted to a group near, eagerly listening to the recital of a bare-footed Capuchin. On approaching, we found that he was discoursing on the virtues of a picture of the Virgin, known by the name of Sta Maria del Pianto, a fresco daub, painted in a very dirty back street. He was affirming that it had lately taken to winking, and had also been seen to shed tears over the body of a man recently found murdered under the lamp. "Who saw her weep?" inquired one of his hearers. "Do you doubt the miracle, my son?" said the friar. "No indeed, father," returned he; "but why did she not call out to the assassin; and what is the use of weeping over a dead man?" "It was owing to the gentleness of her sex," said another, who appeared interested in proclaiming the notoriety of the shrine: he proceeded, therefore, to inform the attentive listeners, that he had the face newly painted some months back, since which operation there was no end to the miracles performed by it. Several persons round hereon testified to having heard repeatedly of these wonders. "Ah!" said a sceptical craftsman, "I dare say you live in another quarter of the city, for it is well known that those at a distance see these things more clearly than the neighbours, unless, like our friend here," nodding to the restorer of the shrine, "they hope to attract customers to the shop by drawing votaries to the shrine." "I don't believe a word of it," said we, taking part in the colloquy. "Caro lei– who can help that? we can only pity your unbelief," said the good-humoured Capuchin, offering us, however, a pinch out of his snuff-box. "You," continued he, "should call to mind 'in dubiis fides;' and we, in compassion to your being a heretic, will remember 'in omnibus caritas.'" We accepted the good man's courtesy, albeit no snuff-taker; and he was resuming the interrupted narrative, when a stir among the crowd outside announced the near approach of the procession, and every one hastened to secure a good seat. Presently the Swiss guards enter, the choristers take their places, in come priests, bishops, cardinals, all sumptuously arrayed; at length the Pope himself arrives and assumes his throne. Mass commences.