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ITALY. 885
. and
Palace of the Vatican, from whence have gone edicts
shaking
kingdoms, and making crowned heads tremble.
The population of the Eternal City is about one hundred
eighty-five thousand. Of this number, nearly ten thousand
are ecclesiastics of some kind. Only think, — one to
every eighteen of the people ! The streets are thronged with
cardinals in scarlet, priests in shining black, and barefooted
monks in hideous brown.
On Christmas Day, 1869, there were seven hundred and
sixty-five church dignitaries in the city, connected with the
Ecumenical Council. Of these, there were fifty-five cardinals,
eleven patriarchs, six hundred and forty-seven primates,
archbishops, and bishops, six abbots, twenty-one
mitred abbots, and twenty-eight generals of monastic orders.
Never will the scene fade from our memory, of standing,
and seeing these seven or eight hundred fathers of the
Church reverently bow, and kiss the brazen toe of that uglyvisaged,
speechless statue of Jupiter, christened St. Peter.
Around Peter's tomb lamps are kept perpetually burning.
Devout visitors to the Vatican, from America even, frequently
kiss
the genuine, though elegantly slippered, toe of
the pope. The act is said to symbolize obedience and submission.
The kisses of the faithful have worn the cold foot
of the bronze statue of St. Peter to the thinness almost of a
knife's edge.
Praying and kissing continually abound in St.
Peter's, while without the templed walls beggars are pleading
for crusts of bread.
WANDERINGS IN THE ETERNAL CITY.
Rome must be judged by its own standard. It can not be
compared with other great cities. It has no commerce, no
manufactures, no enterprise, — nothing of what is considered
essential to life in London or New York. It is the home of
Popery, the center of a Judaized Christianity ; and hence
its very life is death, — the " second death," so difficult of
resurrection.
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