ART. IX.-1. Della Riforma Cattolica della Chiesa. Frammenti di VINCENZO GIOBERTI pubblicati per Cura di Giuseppe Massari. Volume unico. Torino: 1856.

2. Delle cinque Piaghe della Santa Chiesa. Lugano: 1848. 3. La Costituzione secondo la Giustizia Sociale. Milano: 1848. 4. An Outline of the Life of the Very Rev. Antonio Rosmini, Founder of the Institute of Charity. Edited by the REV. FATHER LOCKHART. London : 1856:

5. Discours du Comte de Cavour, et Discussion à la Chambre des Députés sur la Question de Rome. Turin: 1861.

6. Deuxième Lettre à M. de Cavour, President du Conseil des Ministres à Turin. Par M. LE COMTE DE MONTALEMBERT. Paris: 1861.

7. La Questione Italiana nel Novembre 1860; al Sommo Pontefice, Papa Pio IX. Asisi: 1860.

8. Allocuzione detta dalla Santita di N. S. Papa Pio IX. nel Concistoro Segreto del 18 Marzo 1861. Rome.

9. Devotion to the Pope. By FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER, D.D., Priest of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri. London: 1860.

IT T may be a question whether the Italian people possess the qualities requisite for permanently maintaining the success which hitherto has attended their efforts at independence. There can be no question, however, that the existence of an effective Italian power must involve a material modification in the condition of the Court of Rome. A King of Italy and a Sovereign Pontiff, both ruling or laying claim to rule over any considerable portion of Italian territory, are a contradiction pregnant with irreconcilable opposition. Between authorities of such rival natures no peace can ever exist, beyond the hollow truce of mere temporary repose from the exertions of conflict. The King of Italy can never become the supreme head of a national government so long as the Pope continues as heretofore to claim temporal and sovereign dominion in the Peninsula; for the authority of the Crown would be exposed to perpetual antagonism within the pale of its own civil jurisdiction. On the other hand it is also certain that to obtain from the Court of Rome the necessary concessions for obviating such collisions with the royal authority involves what may well appear the hopeless task of modifying the most tenacious and unrelax

ing of human constitutions. Yet it must depend upon success in this attempt whether any satisfactory result can attend the effort of bringing Italy under the sway of one monarch. The violent ejection from the city of Rome of the Pope and his Court would amount to little more than a transfer of site. The Pope quitting Rome with indignant protests against the coercion which expelled him from the Vatican, might indeed be less able to thwart from his place of refuge the action of the Italian government, than from the traditional stronghold of the Holy See. But the difficulties would be diminished, not removed. The Pope would still take up the position of a Pretender, refusing to recognise the authority which had introduced itself in his stead, and the relations between him and the King of Italy would retain the inveterate acrimony which exists between those of a dispossessed owner and his despoiler. A triumphant assault, though it might easily bring about a defeat, would not involve the subjection or downfall of the Papacy; and the conflict thus brought to a close in one shape would be resumed in another. To bring about, therefore, any lasting settlement, and relieve the government from the presence of a hostile force in the priesthood extended throughout the country, it is not sufficient or even expedient to humble the Church. Every victory over the Court of Rome will prove barren that does not finally comprise its genuine acquiescence in a treaty with the Italian Government. Under such circumstances it is of moment to inquire whether any reasonable grounds exist for believing that at this conjuncture there are elements in the Roman Catholic Church to render feasible such a combination.

It may be well to say in this place a word in reference to an opinion that the influence of the clergy in Italy has been permanently impaired, and that the progress of the people in enlightened religious speculation must deprive that body of the chance of ever recovering its former weight. We have a strong conviction that this idea is founded on a hasty and incorrect appreciation of the true state of the case. In common with the rest of the world, Italian society has certainly contracted a habit of freethinking, which, under the irritation of perpetual contact with the priesthood in the shape of an obnoxious, absolute and annoying authority, has acquired in certain sections the peculiar sharpness natural to the Italian intellect. From its overgrown position, its vexatious assumption of inquisitorial powers and a harassing interference, the Italian priesthood, as an institution, has unfortunately made itself an object of very general detestation to all classes with any tincture of education. The single exception is a small host of devotees recruited especially

amongst an exclusive and courtly aristocracy. It is mainly from this offensive alliance with powers more akin to a jealous, prying, and despotic police than to its own spiritual ministra tions, that the priesthood has for the moment lost control over the intellectual movement of the country. But the pungent sarcasm which with passionate volubility is so mercilessly heaped upon the members of the ecclesiastical body in Italy, proceeds rarely from any clear and determined hostility to the essential articles or injunctions of the religion which they administer. The confirmed Italian freethinker is to be met with, but the Italian dissenter and congregationalist is a creature that has not yet arrived beyond the first barely perceptible germ of incubation. The Protestant view of spiritual matters and ecclesiastical institutions is still foreign to the Italian mind. With proper observation, in nine cases out of ten, the fierce and perfectly sincere denouncer of ecclesiastical abuses, in spite of his withering invective against the Pope and priests, will be found to remain not merely Catholic in instinct, but also a not irregular attendant at the services prescribed by the ritual. Although, therefore, public enthusiasm for the moment overpowers ecclesiastical opposition, it is not possible that in a country so disposed the influence of the clergy can be permanently disregarded with impunity.

To fancy the ecclesiastical body in Italy an inert sluggish mass, that has continued during generations utterly dead to the great intellectual impulses which have been gradually pervading Italian society until they have imbued it with a new spirit, would be a very incorrect conception of its condition. That it does comprise in its ranks an unfortunately large amount of ignorant and ignoble natures, is a fact which does not indeed admit of dispute. A convincing proof is sufficiently afforded by the very general discredit into which the clergy has contrived to fall. At the same time, however, illustrious members of the Italian priesthood have associated themselves in a highly remarkable manner with the tide of popular aspiration at various stages of its onward course, actuated by a profound conviction that the national movement is not necessarily incompatible with the principles of the Church. Amongst these we find individuals eminent alike for piety, fervour, and talent, who have devoted their energies with enthusiastic zeal to demonstrate the possibility of that genuine alliance between modern civilisation and the Roman hierarchy which it was the cherished aim of their lives to establish. Their pages afford us, as it were, an obverse impression of modern ideas. We here have the Church, in the high ecclesiastical sense of its institution, and not in any cur

tailed evangelical dimensions, instead of repelling the approach of what are commonly designated as modern notions of liberalism, advancing and extending a hand of welcome to them. It cannot admit of dispute but that the views embodied in these speculations, should they acquire favour within the Church, would materially modify the painful antagonism which now exists in Italy between it and the State. At this truly critical moment in the conflict, it is consequently well worth while to inquire into the practical worth of these views, and to consider their possible bearing upon the solution of that capital problem how to dispose of the Pope?

It was

This movement showed itself at first stealthily in the unobtrusive shape of speculative writings, calculated, however, to exercise lasting influence upon ingenuous natures. inevitable that when the impulse of regenerative aspiration began to pervade Italian society, it should in some degree touch the ecclesiastical section of the nation. No essential portion of a community can ever remain wholly free from the action of a sentiment that has attained genuine intensity. Accordingly many pious minds attached to the Roman Church, in many instances with fervent affection, were struck with alarm at beholding that Church in an attitude of hostility to the tendencies of modern civilisation, which they deprecated as inevitably injurious to its moral influence, and inconsistent with its claims to intellectual supremacy. Between the opinions which at the last stage of their career some of these contemporary thinkers came to maintain, there exists much diversity. But at the outset one type was in a marked manner common to them all, in striking contrast to all former generations of reformers. They were prompted in this speculation by a fanciful, but still a sincerely Conservative admiration for the Roman Church as compatible with liberal institutions. There is no ground for suspecting their good faith in this profession, though several of them ended far beyond all limits of ecclesiastical toleration. It is quite intelligible how this should have happened to particularly impulsive natures excited by contradiction and stimulated by opposition. These men flung themselves confidently into the mazes of metaphysical and political speculation with an unswerving conviction that its conclusions would tend to the exaltation of the Roman Catholic Church. They were disposed to impugn no doctrine, while so far from being inclined to undervalue the virtues of the hierarchy, they were actuated by an excessive and even eccentric veneration for the Papacy as the mystic keystone of that theocratic constitution upon which their imagination loved to dwell.

This enthusiastic confidence in the nature and capacities of the Roman Church was the common feature of all these con

temporary Catholic innovators. It impelled the triple league of Lamennais, Lacordaire, and Montalembert, to journey to Rome together on their celebrated pilgrimage for the Pope's conversion to modern ideas; and it was the starting-point whence Gioberti and Rosmini each entered upon their respective courses of speculation. The writings of these two men more especially supply us with the materials for arriving at an estimate of the scope of the intellectual movement, thus inaugurated, as far as it lies within what may be considered the limits of a theological range. Gioberti and Rosmini stand as complements to each other. Both were priests, and both retained in all their speculations, although in very different degrees and modifications, the peculiarly ecclesiastical stamp of conception. There is something in Gioberti's most advanced opinions which retains the indelible type of the seminarist in style of thought and form of exposition. Into those realms of metaphysics and political speculation which he did not flinch from scanning with such ardent boldness, Gioberti to the last advanced unconsciously with the gait and temper of a priest. This is very strikingly exemplified in the thoroughly dogmatical tone of his posthumous work La Riforma Cattolica," written at a period when its author already entertained his most advanced opinions, although under the influence of an intention that made his mind for a time revert deliberately to the channel of theological ideas. Canonists who with a view of investigating its orthodoxy examined in detail the views maintained in this book, have expressed an opinion that, whatever reason there might be to take exception to its tendency, it would not be possible on canonical grounds to impugn the soundness of the distinct propositions by themselves.

As compared with Rosmini, Gioberti was, however, an erratic spirit soaring in contemptuous disregard of timid restrictions with impassioned and fearless ardour into the attractive regions of boundless speculation; while the former never presumed further than to introduce an ingredient of metaphysical subtleness into a nature which by its sweetness and unaffected meekness was essentially that of a Christian divine. Rosmini was a genuine specimen of the virtues which adorned the primitive times of Christianity. Learning begot in him no pride, and his religious fervour remained ever that of charity and devotion. Of excellent family and considerable fortune, Rosmini entered the ecclesiastical profession, and remained an active member of it, while Gioberti virtually withdrew from its ranks after his banishment