the main deposits of uncorrupt habits, if any yet remain among these degenerate Romans. Yet it is impossible to suppose any class undepraved, where the examples of the great are so evidently vicious. A want of employment, for which the rulers and the rich are mainly responsible, to man in a state of ignorance, necessarily must, I fear, be a fruitful source of vicious habits, and that want of employment evinces itself on every inch of the Papal territory.

We visited several places in the vicinity of Rome, as soon as a relief from the ceremonies of the Holy Week gave us an opportunity. Pamphilia is a villa two miles from the city, belonging to the Doria family, and stands like many others of the superb palaces in this neighbourhood, a monument of the emptiness and insufficiency of worldly grandeur. This seat, built and finished in a magnificent style, surrounded by extensive grounds of great natural beauty and variety, and laid out and ornamented with exquisite taste, seems at present totally neglected by the possessor, and generally stands empty. Such a spectacle in à country where the poor are well employed and maintained, is offensive; but here, where the aged, sick, and poor, daily starve in the streets, it appears too gross a misapplication of the Superabundance of wealth, not to draw down the deprecation of even the slightest observer. In another pedestrian excursion on the side of ancient Rome, we saw the Church of St. Paul, built by the emperor Constantine, one of the earliest Christian Churches that was built in Rome. Over a magnificent colonnade, it is decorated with the Papal portraits, from St. Peter to the present Pope. The body of St. Paul lies interred in this church. At some distance farther is a monastery founded, and two lesser churches on the precise spots, where Paul was beheaded and imprisoned. The friars here, who seem to believe them, show you and tell you of various miracles too absurd to be repeated. On returning, we passed the pyramidal monument of Caius Cestus, which seems likely to outlive any other of the Roman ruins. Near it, in a common field, without the walls of the city, is the ground appropriated to the burial of the heretics. The monuments are plain and few, of three or four English one recorded the memory of Mr. James Six, of Canterbury. It was thrown down, and a part of the epitaph was erased. We placed it in its proper posi tion, and copied the inscription, on each side, in Latin and English. It appeared to us, as if some pious Catholic had scratched out the words," good, and Christian."

On the following day, we engaged a vetturino to take us to Tivolo, a town nearly twenty miles from Rome, under the chain of mountains that forms the eastern horizon. We alighted to survey several ruins and curiosities on the road, the tomb of the Plausian family, Adrian's villa, a most superb and extensive ruin, and the stream of sky-blue sulphurous water, the strong exhalation from which constantly informs the traveller of his approach. Behind the town of Tivoli, on the declivity of the mountain, are the celebrated cascades of the Teverone, (ancient Ancena). The whole of the river is about equal to the Medway, at Maidstone, in the spring of the year, but it is divided in its falls.

Our conductor first led us to the temple of the Sybil, which bears marks of great antiquity, and stands on the point of a rock over the grotto, into which the Anciene pours its first torrent with tremendous roar, from an aperture in a most picturesque rock, about an hundred and fifty perpendicular feet.

Rushing with precipitate force from the mouth of the aperture, it falls in white flakes of inconceivable variety and beauty, descending into a rocky standing place in the grotto beneath; we found another branch of the river, gushing from amidst vast rocks on the side we stood, and falling into the same deep cavity with the other. Their clashing fall, spread as it were, a street of snow beneath, whilst the finer particles encircled the spectator with sparkling rainbows.

The whole mass of rock on the lofty side, rugged and unequal, is covered with verdure; on the summit with the rich foliage of Italian shrubs, flourishing in such a situation, with more than common luxuriance; on the sides, with pendant aquatic plants in graceful waving lines ever in motion, and blooming with many colours. On our left hand the course of the torrent is marked with peculiar beauties. It rushes headlong over opposing masses of rock, through a Gothic arch formed by nature from two overhanging pieces of rock adorned with verdant festoons. Indeed the hollow of the rock from which we contemplated this romantic picture, is the only point in view, that is not clothed with vegetation. So rich a scenery, with a cascade unequalled in Europe, gives to this little spot, an unimaginable interest. The Cicerone, impatieut of our delay, dragged us from these enchanting scenes, and conducted us by another fall into the town, which at any other place would have long detained the eye of curiosity, led us round the declivity of the mountain to the side opposite the Sybil's temple.

Winding thence with the amphitheatre of the hills, we were suddenly surprised with the view of another fall from the elbow of the hill on the other side. This cascade is formed by another portion of the river, and falls in two divisions of about eighty feet each, directly into the torrent below. Still veeriug farther round, without losing sight of the grand cascade, and nearly facing the last I have described, the eye embraces, what are here called the Cascatelle, or little cascades, issuing from under the elegant ruins of the palace of Mæcenas, and abruptly rolling over a rocky surface into the depths of the vale.

On this identical point Horace had his favorite villa. To elevate imagination by picturesque natural beauties, an elegant and poetical taste could not have selected a more inspiring situation. If one might be permitted to pronounce on the birth of his poetical effusions, I should say, that his cheerful, sweet and simple odes were composed in the delightful vale of the Ancene, and that his satires were engendered in the city. Catullus had a cottage not far distant, and many respectable ruins are in the neighbourhood. When we recollect, the hospitable table of Mæcenas,-all that was learned, lively, and polished under his roof,-what a contrast does it offer to the present state of society in Tivoli. Now, all is monastic lethargy, or starving poverty. One overgrown but empty palace, stands as it were, to insult the inhabitants, by its apparent superiority; for the rest, a few whining monks are seen creeping about the town, and persuading the unlettered natives that their misery and oppression are the meekness and contrition which heaven is pleased with.

(To be Continued.)

Printed and Published by RICHARD CARLILE, 62, Fleet-street, where all Communications, post-paid, or free of expense, are requested to be left.

The Lion.

No. 26. VOL. 2.] LONDON, Friday, Dec. 26, 1828. [PRICE 6d.

MORAL MISCHIEF OF OATH-TAKING.

DEAR MR. CARLILE,-I concluded my forty-second letter, under pledge to resume and finish the essay there commenced, on the moral mischief of oath-taking. It is your position, and a very magnificent one," Let us hear no more about Catholic Emancipation as a partial remedy, but about the removal of this vice of oath-making as the general remedy." On this position I laid down the grounds which then occurred, on which it should seem incumbent on all sincere Christians to co-operate with us in seeking, by a generous and united effort, to achieve the passing of an act for the abolition of all uses, forms, and manners of saring, and for subjecting false testimony, upon simple asseceration in law, to all the penalties attached to perjury. I showed how utterly and irreconcileably at variance with every thing that can be called characteristic of Christianity, this heathenish practice of oath-taking is; and how insuperable by any powers of sophistry, is the strength of the texts of the New Testament, in forbiddance of this practice, to all persons who have the least respect for the texts of the New Testament-(which however little that respect may be, is so much more than I have.) All I require from all men who care to be accounted rational, is, that they should be consistent, and not profess that they respect a law or rule of action, with which all their actions, their feelings, and their reasonings, are seen to be in conflict. From this ground I proceed. If it were possible (which I have shown that it is not) that the strong and emphatic prohibitions of swearing, put into the mouth of the twice-living demon of Galilee, admitted of an, understanding, in allowance" that a man mayear when the magistrate requireth, in a cause of faith and charity, so it be done Printed and Published by R. CARLILE, 62, Fleet Street. No. 26.-Vol. 2. 3 F

according to the prophet's teaching, in justice, judgment, and truth.*

Yet not a text or two, whether more or less explicit, nor a prohibition or two, more or less emphatic, is compromised by the practice; but the whole genius, character, spirit, and economy of Christianity altogether, is outraged and violated, and its distinction from heathenism (if indeed it ever was distinct) must be given up and surrendered. For, be it never out of sight, under all the forms and types of pagan piety, (of which I sincerely hold the worst that ever was in the world to have been better than Christianity,) there was a con-natural and characteristic propriety and fitness-that is, a logical homogeneity and suitability in the practice of oath-taking, which is entirely wanting to Christianity, as distinguishable from paganism: and not only so wanting, with all the additional stress of the practice being positively forbidden, but it is also abhorrent, incompatible, and a virtual negation of, and with all that is essentially characteristic of Christianity.

Under the elegant mythology of Greece and Rome, there was a specific and suitable apparatus of divine machinery, to give sanctity, obligation, and a morally binding force to oaths. There were gods, and very gentlemanly gods too, especially presiding over the administration of them, taking due care of their observance, and visiting their violation with a vengeance more formidable than Juno's wrath, or Jupiter's thunderbolt. The sacrifices that atoned for other crimes, had no virtue to extend to that of perjury. So that, though, no doubt, there were always some shrewder villains who were not so easily cajoled, the general body of the people had a horror of perjury, much exceeding their horror of any other crime. The bitterest enemies would keep faith upon oath. Robbers and conspirators would brave the most horrible deaths, rather than dishonour their " data dextra fidesque." Assassins and traitors recoiled with shuddering from the inexpiable guilt of perjury: and the daring temerity that would rush on the thick bosses of Omnipotence, shivered with fear of the avenging Nemesis and Hercules-Orkios, punisher of perjury; and not to be propitiated by sacrifices, conciliated by prayers, or appeased by penitence. Nor was it on vulgar minds alone that the terror of a peculiar guilt, and as peculiar consequences of perjury, possessed this mighty influence. It was this intole rable apprehension, that drove the bloody Constantine to the foot of the cross. When he had slain his wife, his son, his nephew, his friends, and outsinned all reckoning, his breach of oaths haunted his affrighted thoughts with a fear more terrible than all his other cries put together. The Greek historian, Zosimus, assures us, that it was this that was the specific ground of his quarrel against paganism, and determined him to embrace a reli

* 39th Article.

gion under which perjury, as well as all other crimes, might be forgiven. "The gods are not to be trifled with, there remaineth wrath, inexpiable wrath, for perjurers," was the doctrine of the Reverend Sopater. "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin," was the doctrine of the right reverend bishops of Christianity. There could be no doubt which of these systems would best suit the case of the royal child-killer. Constantine embraced the peaceful faith of the Cross, and with the zeal of a sincere convert, took care to cut the throat of his former too faithful spiritual adviser, Sopater, who, as the Christian defenders of Constantine take pains to assure us, "fell not so much by the hand of Constantine, as by the just judgment of God upon him, for having sought to prejudice the holy emperor's mind against the true faith."

My use of this historical fact, is to prove that the administration of oaths had a consistency and suitableness with the genius and character of paganism, and was an essential part of it; but is utterly absurd, preposterous, and incompatible, not merely with the express precepts, but with the whole doctrinal character and economy of Christianity.

Christianity threatens uo worse punishment for perjury, than for simple conversational lying: nor is false swearing, in any text whatever, exempted from its share in the benefit of that "free and gracious pardon, which the blood of Christ has purchased for all penitent sinners." No Sopater would be found among all our Christian hierarchy, who would have the consistency to withdraw his spiritual services from the convicted perjurer, or to suffer him for a moment to apprehend that the blood of Christ had, in his case, lost its atoning efficacy.

So that in a Christian court, and upon Christian premises, the administration of an oath is an hoax, a cheat, a downright lie; and, in itself, a perjury against God, as flagrant as perjury could possibly be, on the part of those who administer the oath, or cause and seek to have another bound or influenced by it. For, in the formality and essential purport of the process, the Christian causing another Christian to take an oath, does, in that very act himself, officiate in the office and character of the devil, to serve some selfish interest of his own,-(if he believe his own lie,)—buying a soul from Christ, and holding the eternal salvation of his fellow creature of less value than the gain or loss that may be at issue on his testimony. If the mind can conceive the idea of the frightful degree of guilt that must attach to the direct act of causing another to incur eternal damnation, (than which the devil himself can do nothing worse,) what less is the guilt of that human fiend, who, for a trifling advantage to himself, or for obtaining a security to some temporal interest, would cause his fellow creature to incur, at least the danger of incurring, eternal damnation; and