twenty-five different languages, all of which were wantonly destroyed during the revolution of 1798, by the representatives of those who now accuse the Church of being opposed to secular literature.

Every ingenious effort has been strained to the utmost tension, by the adversaries of the Papal Government in these countries, to prove its deficiency in educational requirements. All their attempts to establish the charge have proved abortive. All England rang with denunciations against the intolerance of the members of the Papal Government, because they refused to transfer the guardianship of a Christian child to its Jewish parents, who were determined to teach it to renounce Christianity, and to deny Christ, and thus deprive it of the glorious inheritances to which it became entitled on being numbered amongst the children of grace. If, however, England provoke a comparison between the moral and educational condition of the poor children of these realms and of Rome, it will prove not unfavourable to the Papal Government and its religious educational corporations.

To convey some idea of the number and efficiency of those corporations of religious men and women who labour gratuitously, and of the aid rendered to government education and religion by those disinterested and powerful auxiliaries, I shall enumerate some out of the very many of those establishments in Rome. "Scientific instruction for males is given in the Roman University, which in the present year counts 1,094 students; in the Lyceum of the Pontifical Roman Seminary, 703 students; in the Roman College, 1,249 students; in the Urban College de Propaganda Fide, 226 students; in the Roman Gymnasium of Philosophy at Santa Maria della Pace, 90 students; in the College of St. Thomas, at Santa Maria

sopra Minerva, 97 students; and in the Technical Institute for Surveying and Measurement, 68 students. Elementary instruction for males is given in two of the colleges of the Fathers of the Scuole Pie, in two of the Fathers of the Christian Doctrine, in six managed by the Christian Brothers, in the school of the Brothers of Mercy, in that of the Brothers of the Conception, in another of the Vatican Seminary, in seven parochial schools, in two Pontifical schools, in other two schools of the Subsidy Commission, in the school of St. Vincent de Paul, in that of the clerks of the Vatican Basilica, in one of Prince Massimi, in the night schools established in several parishes, and frequented by 2,000 youths; in four infant asylums, in other secular colleges, boarding schools, and institutes of charity, counting 691 pupils; and finally, in the regionary schools, which muster 3,806 of an attendance. The establishments for the education of females are no fewer. There are the ten schools of the pious workmistresses, the two of the pious mistresses of Venerini, four of the Sisters of Providence, five of the Daughters of Charity. Then the School of Brignoline, that of the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Apparition, two of the Sisters of St. Joseph, five of the Sisters of the Most Precious Blood, two of the Daughters of the Sacred Heart, two of the Daughters of Providence, of the Sisters of St. Dorothy, of the religious of the Sacred Heart, the School of the Sisters of Charity, of the Ursulines, of the Philippines, of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny, of the Daughters of Maria nill 'Orto, of the Daughters of St. Andrew's Cross, of the Augustinian Oblates, and the Marian Sisters; besides three Pontifical schools, two of the Subsidy Commission, the parochial regionary schools in all the parishes, frequented by 2,282 young girls, without speaking of those

that are educated in the different conservatories, boarding schools, and institutes of charity, in which the pupils amount to 2,494. So that in Rome we have the following total of public instruction: Scientific instruction imparted gratuitously to 3,527 males. Elementary education imparted to 6,105 males gratuitously, and 3,806 non-gratuitously, both together making a total of 9,911 boys receiving elementary instruction, and a total of 13,438 in course of education. With regard to females, 8,188 are educated gratuitously, and 2,765 otherwise, making a total of 10,953 young girls. To conclude, the population of the schools of Rome for the year 1867 is 24,391, of whom 17,820 are educated gratuitously, and but 6,571 pay for their education".

In the immense establishment of the Hospital of San Michele, a great number of poor children are entirely provided for, instructed in the knowledge of machinery, in all descriptions of manufactures, in the arts and sciences, in drawing, painting, architecture, music, and statuary, and all gratuitously. A cardinal resides in and presides over the institution. It was long presided over by the distinguished patron of every art and science, his Eminence Cardinal Tosti. The admirable system, internal organization, and general efficiency of those charitable institutions are mainly attributable to the staffs of religious monks and nuns who bind themselves by vow, and who gratuitously devote their lives to their service, and who, by thus working for God, for their neighbour, and their own eternal salvation, are prompted by supernatural motives which convert every irksome duty into a labour of love.

There are those who assert that this profuse liberality in charitably supplying every want of the destitute children, enervates the spirit of industry, promotes idleness and

140

PAUPER CHILD OF ENGLAND.

a supine indolence, and is vitally opposed to the philosophic principles of political economists. It requires, however no very peering eye, or microscopic scrutiny of the mind of the destitute child under the political economy of the Pope's states, to display to the students of humanity in the abstract, and to social types in the concrete, an analysis which will prove most favourable when contrasted with that phenomenon observable only in this country of inordinate wealth and abject destitution, the pauper child of Britain. There are "enfants trouves", "nobody's children", "beggar urchins", "castaway little ones", and "foundlings” in France, America, Spain, Russia, and other countries; but nowhere are they better provided for than in Rome, and though in those other realms, too, they are objects of state solicitude, in no region were they so recklessly abandoned, until very lately, as the pauper child of England. Though no person could tell the circumstances of the unknown parents, the little innocent parish child was necessarily branded with the mark of infamy and illegitimacy. He was often named after the dog that scented him out, or the rushes or hawthorn under which he was found. As he grew up, his person displayed more forcibly the most utter neglect. His face was squalid, his hair clotted with filth and grizzled with rust, and, like the land in the spring time under the plough, his brow was early furrowed by the plough-share of harrowing misery which penetrated the very sub-soil— the pointed iron seemed to have entered into his very soul! The little innocent shrank from the gaze of society, as the culprit shrinks from the glance of a stern judge. His glassy, sunken eyes stealthily peered from under his eyebrows like the eyes of a ferret glistening in the mouth of a burrow. His wizened countenance, his bloodless,

blanched cheek, like a bit of sodden cream cheese, as cold and as clammy too, too plainly indicated the want of nutrition, and that the crimson tide of life had stagnated in his veins, and seemed to have been frosted and grown white with gelidity. His coarse garments, supplied from the parish, though very scantily cut, were too large, hung loosely, and his emaciated figure was lost and seemed to have gone astray in the flowing folds of the drapery. He tottered rather than walked, for his spider legs were bending, being too weak to support even the lightness of his attenuated frame. The only conversation of which he ever formed the subject was the grumbling dissatisfaction of the tax payers on being required to subscribe for his cradle or his coffin. At being kicked or cuffed he felt no surprise; he regarded that as the portion of his inheritance, and never shed a tear but on the occasion of hearing some compassionate citizen, as he passed, expressing his sympathy by exclaiming, "poor child!" Knowing nothing more of his parentage than that he was the child of somebody, and belonged to nobody, destitute of a patron, and without a home; a species of excrescence to be cauterized, whose contact was avoided by every body, his opening reason was bewildered with hopeless amazement at who were his father and mother, at where he came from, where he belonged to, or how he came into this world, in which he felt he was a nuisance, an incubus, a vermin which every one wished to be rid of, but which they knew not how to exterminate. The resting-place he ambitioned was the little churchyard in the midst of the fields which seemed so retired: shaded by the cypress and gracefully pending branches of the willow, the child envied the quietude of those who reposed beneath the green surface of the graves browsed over by the gentle sheep and lambs.