aroundworldortra00peebiala-1

ITALY. 381
hours of day and night ; the insolent importunities of carriage-drivers,
"with hordes of pitiable beggars combining the
most cringing manners with malicious attempts and devices
at extortion, — all present a life-picture any thing but
attractive.
GARIBALDI AND THE MONKS.
Standing in the Palace Square one day with Signor
Damiani, he pointed us to the balcony from which Garibaldi,
in 1860, uttered this stirring sentence to an immense multitude
—
:
" Brothers, believe me, the greatest foe to freedom, the greatest
enemy of Italy, is the Pope of Rome."
This
liberator of the people, Garibaldi, drove into Naples,
Sept. 6, in an open carriage, directly past the fortified
barracks of the Carmine, where soldiers were still holding
out for Francis II. Not a hair of his head was harmed.
Victor Emmanuel offered to make him a duke, and give him
a large pension. He declined the dukeship, declined all
honors, only caring to see Italy free, united, and happy.
Moping, brown-garbed, barefooted
monks, a class of men
that neither work nor wash, are as thick in Naples and the
adjoining countrj- as office-seekers in Washington. Italy
was a clover-field for gowned monks, and a veritable paradise
for priests, till Garibaldi, a few years since, partially
Thank
aroused the people from their dream of submission.
God ! say students and the young Italians of to-day, the
number of these churchal orders is lessening each year.
Many of these monks literally live by begging. Lifting
their greasy caps, and exposing their shaved heads, they
plead by the wayside for a penny. Beggars and priests are
the products of Roman Catholic Italy. Papal Rome is the
hub of this ecclesiastic wheel.
Out of between twenty and thirty millions of Italians,
hardly seven millions can read and write ! The bare state-