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them and demanded their names. They were well- | known aristocratic fanatics of various nations, whose names were reported in the papers at the time, but which we suppress in case of any of them being yet ashamed of themselves. One was an Englishwoman, the mother of a youth who last winter was mixed up in a disgraceful squabble at the Church of the Gesu, and who wished to make a martyr of himself in his representations of the subject to the English public. Besides these were Irish ladies of warm Celtic as well as popish blood.

The questor desired these ladies and their followers to withdraw, as their presence impeded the public works. He reminded them, as the reformed priest had done, that the Colosseum was no church, nor ever had been one; and that there were plenty of churches in Rome for them to visit and to worship in. But these ladies, on this, only became the more demonstrative, and were extremely lavish of their abuse of the Italian government and municipality for their profanation of the scene of the ancient martyrdoms. Soviolent, indeed, were they, that the questor marched a number of them off, noble ladies though they were, under guard of gens d'armes, to the head police office, when, their conduct still being violent, they were threatened with being carried to the frontiers under military guard. He then made them enter their names in the office book and dismissed them. This vigorous proceeding had its effect, and from that time the work of laying bare the curious walls, passages, and arches, before concealed under the earth accumulated in the arena of the Colosseum, has proceeded without interruption.

No such scenes have attended the closing of the different monasteries and convents of Rome. The quiet submission with which the monks and nuns have given up their old haunts and homes, and gone away to seck fresh ones, has been, in fact, wonderful. We may, while we feel the absolute propriety of the breaking-up of these retreats of age-long indolence and mistaken ideas of devotion, also feel certain that to numbers it must have been a fearful wrench to their habits and local attachments. We can well imagine the regrets of the friars-the Dominicans and the Capuchins, for instance-who were accustomed to cultivate, the former their extensive vineyards, the wine of which is some of the best drunk in Rome, and the latter their large old garden, lying on its pleasant sunny slopes, and bounded by the grand gardens of the Scidovisi Palace, in which they raised fruits and vegetables to that extent that crowds of poor people were daily supplied with soup of which this garden-produce was the chief staple. Well, therefore, can we believe that many an old frate must have turned away with intense regret to seek some new and uncertain home, where he would recall with some heartache the memory of earlier peaceful days. And with equal, or even more sorrow, must many a nun have left the scene of her quiet labours with the needle, where she had made perhaps exquisite lace or embroidery for the Church, her very cell grown dear to her by custom. Especially painful to the aged must this sudden sending forth into the world have been; painful beyond expression, wretchedly depressing, to turn out into a world which had no longer sympathy with them. But private individual feeling had to be disregarded in a work of public necessity, of public and private utility. The system had outlived its time; the very Catholic public no longer gave it their support, not even in the trying

moment of its end, when some tender feelings and regrets might have naturally arisen on behalf of its votaries. The system had risen, flourished, and decayed; the time of its fall was come, and it fell in silence and amidst indifference.

A curious fact at the same moment proclaimed the dying out of that once terrible institution, the Inquisition. This most odious and once powerful instrument of papal domination still stands gloomy and lowering in the immediate vicinity of the Vatican, but it stands the empty shell of the once diabolic stronghold of priestly torture. Father Grassi-of whose recent conversion from a dignitary of the Roman Church to a simple minister of Protestantism all the world has heard-being summoned by the grand inquisitor, Father Sallua, to give an account of his secession, went thither boldly with some of his friends, entered the once ominous portals where so many had entered formerly only to issue thence through the gates of some fiery and horrible death, and placing in the hands of the grand inquisitor his declaration of the reasons which had induced him to quit the Papal Church, walked calmly away. It was a signal demonstration of the utter extinction of that once gigantic despotism; a manifest exhibition of decay at the root and centre of the papacy, whilst it is putting forth a spurious life in its outer branches in foreign lands, like those trees which, though felled and prostrate on the ground, yet continue for awhile to put forth shoots and leaves, to perish soon, as all lifeless things must perish.

The law for the suppression of the monasteries and nunneries in Rome and the Roman State, which had escaped suppression by still remaining under the temporal rule of the Pope at the period of the suppression of the religious houses in the other parts of Italy, in July, 1866, was passed on the 9th of June, 1873. This Bill was to take effect in three months, that is, on the 19th of September of the same year.

The government, however, could not afford to wait so long. It was greatly pressed for room, for barracks and for schools, as well as for ministerial offices and residences. It therefore took possession of a considerable number of these monasteries, or parts of them-such, probably, as did not contain many inmates, and which few might be accommodated in the reserved parts of those buildings, or in some other houses, till the arrival of the legal time of ejectment.

In the city and province of Rome there were 476 convents, 311 of them inhabited by monks, and 165 by nuns. The monks and friars amounted to 4,326, the nuns to 3,825. These houses had a revenue, according to the return made by them, of 4,780,891 liri in gross, and of 4,218,265 liri net.

Besides these, there were attached to them certain churches and properties for the maintenance of public worship, called enti morale ecclesiastice, or, as we should term it, the religious property of the orders. As parts of this property, they had in the city of Rome 5 patriarchal basilicas, 9 minor basilicas, and 8 collegiate churches; they had, moreover, 181 benefices, chaplaincies, etc., of which 43 were called lay and 138 ecclesiastical patronages. The income, as returned, of these was, in gross, 1,748,398 liri; net, 1,441,651 liri.

In the suburban dioceses they had 4 cathedral churches and 19 collegiate ones; 299 benefices, with a gross income of 314,338 liri; net, 271,793. In other communes of the province they had 22 cathedral and

72 collegiate churches, besides 1,853 benefices and chaplaincies, the gross income of which was 1,322,805 liri; net, 1,260,921 liri.

Thus they possessed altogether 2,466 churches of one kind or other, and the whole of their united income amounted in gross to 8,217,428 liri-net, 7,192,634 liri; or in English money net, about £282,828 sterling, of annual income.

To give an idea of the uses made of the monasteries of Rome, here are two or three of the earliest appropriations:-Part of the convent of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, Dominican friars, was handed over to the minister of finance. Part of the convent of San Calextus, Cassenense monks, was occupied by the minister of war, together with the grounds belonging to the convent. The government entered also early in September upon the convent of the nuns of Se. Philip and Joseph, in the street Capo le Case, which they occupied as a normal school, with a boarding house and college.

Immediately after the term of disappropriation, viz., the 19th of September, the government commissioners went regularly to work.

The manner of taking possession was this. The delegates of the committee of suppression, accompanied by the delegates of the municipality, and notaries to hand in and witness the signing of the documents delivered on the occasion, presented themselves at the various monasteries. The commissioners announced the purport of their visit; the monks or nuns, as the case might be, were assembled with their superior at their head; he or she delivered to the commissioners, on their part, a written protest against the proceeding, declaring that they only gave way to force; the notaries received the protest, and made a record of it; and the commissioners, as their only answer, delivered to the superior the copy of the Act granting annuities to the monks or nuns, and expressing the individual amount as fixed by the new law of suppression.

The Pope had already launched his decree of excommunication, not only against the government, but against every one who should take any part in the process of alienating these houses, churches, and properties, also against all who should impiously dare to purchase any of them.

We of the present time little thought that we should see the days of Henry VIII reappear in Rome itself; that we should become the witnesses of the commissioners of the dissolution of monasteries going about in the very focus of the enormous system of papal superstition, under the very windows, as it were, of the Vatican itself, turning out the ancient proprietors of these medieval abodes, and taking possession of them in the quickest manner for public purposes or for sale. It is wonderful indeed with what perfect ease and apparent public indifference this remarkable revolution has been carried out in the capital of the papacy. Some particular abbots and priors made a faint show of resistance, but in no case of a very determined kind. Monasticism had long been dying out as a profession; the numbers had everywhere decreased, and they themselves knew that they were not in keeping with the spirit of the age. Resistance would, therefore, have found no support from the people, and the only result of determined defiance would have been the risk of losing the retiring annuities.

On the 26th of September the appointed delegates made their appearance at the convent of St. Peter in

Chains, San Pietro in Vincolo, the church of which is familiar to all Roman visitors from its containing the Moses of Michael Angelo. This convent was appropriated as a school for engineers.

At nine o'clock of the morning of the 20th of October, the commissioners presented themselves at the great Jesuit establishment of the Gesu. Here, if anywhere, opposition might have been expected, for the Jesuits had run defiantly in the face of the spirit of the times. They had, through their supple tool Pius IX, originated the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and of Infallibility, as well as the progress-denouncing Syllabus. They had put into the mouth of the pontiff the most fiery and seditious denunciations of the Italian government at his successive allocutions. But the redoubtable Father Beckx, the general of the order, did not appear on this occasion; he had left, not only Rome, but Italy, and in his stead Father Rossi presented himself, and delivered the following written protest :

"The superior of the House of Jesus declares that he gives way only to force, submitting to the Act by which possession is taken of this house, and intends, by so doing, not in any degree to prejudice the rights of the Company of Jesus and this house.

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Then, as to the library existing in this House of Jesus, he declares it not to be the property of the religious family which lives in it, since one part has devolved to the appointed general of the Company of Jesus by the will of Cardinal Valenti Gonzaga, as is stated in the inventory of the goods of the House of Jesus; and another is composed of the books sent to the general himself, according to the custom of authors of the Company.

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The commissioners themselves must have been astonished at the mildness of this procedure. The protest was entered on the Acts, and seals were placed on the library and on the archives.

It was found afterwards that these astute followers of Loyola had taken care to carry off in time great numbers of the most valuable books and documents.

Of the brethren, forty-four presented themselves to receive the warrants for their pensions; four were declared absent.

It was somewhat curious to see, on a visit to the Gesu soon after its evacuation, the traces of the systematic life of the fathers. On the doors of the different cells, or more properly chambers, still remained hanging the little boards or slates on which were written the last intimations as to where the men occupying them were to be found. The last little passage of life was here recorded, as, for instance, In the church," "In the garden, "The parlour," "Out walking," "Indisposed," "Will soon be back," etc.

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The furniture was old and of a somewhat meagre character. There were closets in the rooms of the secretary-general, the shelves of which were now empty, but said to have contained the history of this great order from its foundation to the present time. The apartments of the general and procurator-general were empty of furniture, as well as the audiencechamber, study, robing-room, and little chapel of the general. The chapels of St. Ignatius and St. Francië Borgia had not been touched, as belonging to the church, but the passage from the convent to the church was closed. The little private chapel of the

general was the only room in the house which was papered; this was in gold and purple, imitating brocade

and a splendid view is enjoyed from its windows; it has also a dilapidated tower, which belongs to the first circle of the Leonine City, adjoining the beautiful gardens of the Farnesina Palace.

The number of inmates in many of these immense aouses, to which were attached extensive gardens, in This community consisted only of a dozen friars, at parts of Rome most desirable for the erection of the head of whom was the Father Longuenzi, a prohouses, was found in most to be a mere handful. In vincial, who held the rule of all that order in the the convent of St. Andrea a Monte Cavallo, opposite Roman province, having the cure of a parish containto the Quirinale, were only seventeen frati, or ing seven thousand souls, served by friars. These brethren. In the Collegio Romano, one of the largest friars received their warrants of pension with an air of establishments of the Jesuits, were as many as sixty- the most perfect indifference, and whilst the superior nine, but in San Eusebio only ten. At the Collegio read his protest in a loud voice, the curate conversed the epigraphist Angelini showed himself much dis- with the municipal councillor in a cheerful and turbed; Father Secchi, the celebrated astronomer of familiar manner. the observatory of that house, which answers in Rome to our observatory at Greenwich, desired to read the certificate of his pension before he signed it, and so doing he found that he was left undisturbed at the observatory.

On the 21st the convent of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva was taken possession of for offices of public instruction; and on the same day the convent Sta. Ursula, as a normal school of a superior kind for girls; and that of Sta. Cecilia, very appropriately, as an academy of music.

In the monastery of the Capuchins, which is the mother-convent, so to speak, of this large popular order throughout the whole world, a number of aged monks are still left with fifteen rooms at their service; and as this convent may be considered one of the oldest soup-kitchens in the world, it is pleasant to see that these poor old men still continue the daily distribution of soup at one of the back gates of the convent, where, punctually at twelve o'clock, a large crowd of very poor objects, men, women, and children, congregate for this purpose.

The nearest approach to resistance was exhibited by the French monks of the Palazzi Poli, and those at the Dominican hospital at the corner of the Sopra Minerva. The French monks of the Poli kept a school, in which the singing of psalms and ultra

montane hymns was the principal part of their rastruction. These monks have been very marked in their contempt and defiance of the government. On the festivals, of the Madonna they made great illuminations, but preserved utter darkness on those which were national, French influence having hitherto protected them; though the English nuns in this city, when applying to the English government for protection, were told that as they had bought property for their own private purposes in Rome, they must be prepared to submit to the laws of the country.

The commissioners, on arriving at the general hospital of the Dominicans, found the Casanatense library, one of the richest in Rome, closed, and the keys, on being demanded, were refused; but on the delegate declaring that he would resort to the means allowed him by law, the doors were opened, and the library put in the custody of Cavaliere Gilberto Govi. The prior, also, of this same convent of Sopra Minerva gave in a protest so violent that the commissioners refused to receive it, and he was obliged to reduce it into more moderate terms.

On the same day the convent of Sta. Dorothea, at the Ponti Sisto, was taken possession of. It was inhabited by Franciscan minor conventuals, and was the ancient Palazzo Gualtieri, but had been allowed to fall into a deplorable condition. It had, however, an aspect medieval and very characteristic. Many of its halls are still adorned with profane figures,

Father Trullet, the canonist consultor of the French embassy, lived in this convent, but separately. The delegates were conducted by Father Trullet himself to his apartments, which were rich and elegant, forming a great contrast by their luxury to the meagre simplicity of the cells of the friars. He has lived here since 1857 by order of the Pope, and his pension, as prior, of 600 liri, has been paid in Bologna since 1862. It is singular that whilst all the beneficed clergy have been abolished for so many years in France, they should have maintained this canonist consultor for so many years in Rome.

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LOVE is the light of every night and day
Without us and within. It shines without,
For over us is God, and round about
With ever warming and enlightening ray
Of His dear grace He shines. By the sure Yea
Of Promise in the dismal shades of doubt
He holds a lamp of love that goes not out,
Though the night winds blow loud along our way.
So must it be within; within must burn,
Responsive-streaming from us far and near,
O'er all our brethren-making sweet return-
Love's sunshine, to illumine and to cheer.
This is God's will: the divine simple plan :
Man, whom God loves, must love his fellow-ma

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Man, but this title was relinquished by the second earl, who preferred "being a great lord to a petty king." The Stanleys continued under the Tudors what they had been under the Plantagenets-a powerful and valiant race, greatly beloved by their immediate followers, on whom in time of need they could always reckon for support.

Edward, the third carl, a favourite of Henry VIII, was famous for his magnificent hospitality and his benevolence to the poor. But the glory of the house of Stanley was James, the seventh and great Earl of Derby." In the course of his travels on the continent he met at the Hague the lady whom he afterwards married, the famous Charlotte de la Tremouille, daughter of Claude, Duke of Thouars, and related to the blood royal of France. When the great civil war broke out in England Lord Derby joined the standard of the king. His efforts on behalf of the royal cause, the distrust with which he was at first regarded, his unswerving loyalty notwithstanding, the celebrated defence of Lathom by his countess, his gallant holding of the Isle of Man, his joining Charles II at Worcester, together with his defeat and capture, and subsequent execution at Bolton, are part of the ordinary subject matter of English history. The intrepid Countess of Derby has been portrayed by Scott in his attractive story of "Peveril of the Peak." She died in 1652.

At the Restoration, the sovereignty of Man and their possessions in Lancashire wore restored to the Stanleys. William, the ninth earl, and James, the tenth earl, adhered to the House of Hanover. The tenth earl dying without male issue, the Isle of Man descended to James Murray, second Duke of Atholl, who was a grandson of a daughter of the great earl beheaded at Bolton; and thus passed away from the Stanleys of Knowsley the sovereignty of Man, after having been held by them for more than three hundred years. In 1829 the rights of the Duke of Atholl were finally bought up by the government, and the Isle of Man became a dependency of the British Crown. The eleventh Earl of Derby died in 1776, succeeded by his grandson, Edward Smith-Stanley, whose father had married the heiress of Hugh Smith, of Weald Hill, Essex, and had taken the name of Smith in addition to his own, whence has been derived the incorrect popular notion entertained by many that the Stanleys are not really ancient.

The thirteenth earl, son of the preceding, the grandfather of the subject of our notice, was in his political attachments a genuine Whig, and was besides remarkable for the interest he took in natural history. His collection of birds and mammalia at Knowsley was celebrated throughout Europe. He also formed an extensive museum, which he bequeathed to the town of Liverpool, and which now forms part of the collections at the Liverpool Free Library.

Of the late Earl of Derby, the father of the present earl, who figured so prominently in the political events of our time, slight notice is here necessary. More than a generation bypast he did good service in the cause of parliamentary reform, in slave omancipation, and in the establishment of unsectarian education in Ireland. Afterwards associated with the Conservatives, ho became the trusted leader of that party, and as such on three different occasions was Prime Minister of England. In literature the late Lord Derby will be known by

his faithful and spirited translation of "Homer;" and in political history more perhaps by his brilliant gifts and powerful eloquence than by his character of a statesman. Chivalrous and munificent, the part he acted in the relief of distress caused by the cotton famine will long be remembered, especially in his native county of Lancashire. The country at large, indeed, honours the memory of the fourteenth Earl of Derby as a noble specimen of the English aristocrat. The late earl married in 1825 the second daughter of the first Lord Skelmersdale, and from this union the present Earl of Derby, Edward Henry Smith-Stanley, so different from his father in temperament and other characteristics, was born at Knowsley Park, the principal seat of his family, on the 21st July, 1826. This princely residence is situate in the parish of Huyton, seven miles from Liverpool and two from Prescot. Close to the lastnamed town stand two lodges, between which a handsome iron gateway opens into the park, which is one of the largest in the country, being nine or ten miles in circumference, and abounding in fine scenery. The grandeur of the mansion is, however, derived more from its ample dimensions than from architectural style.

At the birth of the present Lord Derby his father was known as Mr. Stanley, and had already given evidence of his eloquence and ability in the House of Commons.

His great-grandfather, the twelfth earl, was then living, and, indeed, lived eight years longer. His grandfather, the ornithologist, as a peer of the realm was Lord Stanley, not by courtesy but by right, having been called to the Upper House in 1822. The heir of the Knowsley Stanleys was thus at his birth three removes from the earldom, which passed to his grandfather in 1834, to his father in 1851, and to himself in 1869.

Lord Derby, known prior to 1851 as the Hon. Edward Stanley, was educated at Rugby School under the late Dr. Arnold, and afterwards at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1848 he graduated as a first class in classics, and in addition to which he took high honours in mathematics, together with a declamation prize. In the early part of the year 1848 Mr. Stanley came forward as a candidate for Lancaster, but was defeated. A few months later he left England on a tour of observation, and with the object of qualifying himself for public life. He visited first the colonies of Jamaica, Trinidad, and Guiana, and afterwards Canada. Subsequently he went over a considerable portion of the United States. While in America he received the information that he had been elected for King's Lynn in place of the late Lord George Bentinck. The depressed state of our West Indian possessions at that time excited the keenest interest in the mind of the young traveller. He laboriously collected a mass of information bearing on the condition of the sugar estates, and on his return home published a pamphlet in the form of a letter to Mr. Gladstone, entitled, "The Claims and Resources of the West India Colonies." On the 31st of May, 1850, he delivered his maiden speech in the House of Commons, in support of a motion of Sir Edward Fowell Buxton, asking the House to affirm the injustice of admitting slave-grown sugar to compete with the free-grown sugar of our own colonies. Mr. Stanley had thus an opportunity of further enforcing the opinions maintained in his pamphlet. Mr. Gladstone and Lord Palmerston combined in commending the marked

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