ria, the revenue from foreign countries, hitherto religiously reserved for the expenses of the pope and his court, was burthened with Luoghi di Monte. Still, however, the price of papal funds was high, and Alexander VII. obtained temporary relief by lowering the whole debt, first the unfunded, then the funded, from 10 to 6 per cent.: it seems subsequently to have been reduced to four, and Innocent XI. entertained the design of bringing it down to three. But on the accession of Innocent, the papal expenditure amounted to 2,578,106 sc. 91 baj.;-the income, including the dataria, only to 2,408,500. 71.-leaving an annual deficiency of 170,000 scudi, and threatening almost immediate bankruptcy. By prudent and rigid economy, by abstaining from nepotism, by the suppression of useless places, and the general investigation of abuses, Innocent brought the expenditure within the income. The firmness of Innocent was severely tried in his conflict with Louis XIV. We have no space to enter into the detail of the encroachments which Louis, in the overbearing consciousness of power, ventured against the see of Rome. Innocent resisted with decision and dignity. He received at his court with signal favour two Jansenist bishops who had been disgraced on account of their resistance to the ecclesiastical measures of Louis. He addressed three several admonitions to the king. When Louis, in the assembly of 1682, caused the four famous articles declaratory of the independence of the Gallican church, and almost amounting to the total abrogation of the papal authority, to be passed by the clergy of his kingdom, Innocent declared that he would endure every extremity rather than yield; he gloried only in the cross of Christ.' He resolutely refused the canonical institution of all those whom Louis, for their service in that assembly, hastened to promote to bishoprics. When the French ambassador, to defend the privilege of asylum which he claimed in Rome, not merely for the precincts of his own palace, but for the neighbouring streets, rode through Rome with a body-guard of two troops of horse-and thus armed, defied the pope in his own capital;- -Thou comest,' said Innocent, with horse and chariot, but I will go forth in the name of the Lord.' The pope's disapprobation of the persecutions against the Protestants at this time, when he was committed with Louis on other points, and might have been tempted to win the favour of the king by recognising him as the champion of Catholicism, is a still higher testimony to his noble courage. He has been suspected at least of secret connivance at these barbarous proceedings. Mr. Ranke entirely acquits him of this charge, and declares that he couched his protestation in the remarkable words,' It is right to draw men into the temple, not to drag them by force.' Innocent Innocent died before the termination of these disputes. The short papacy of Alexander VIII., and that of Innocent XII. (Pignatelli) occupy the few remaining years of the seventeenth century. In 1700 Clement XI. (Albani) ascended the papal throne. The close of this century was the proposed limit of Mr. Ranke's labours; but he has subjoined a chapter or two on the later history, which we could have wished had been more full and complete. The eighteenth century might have afforded ample matter for another volume. art. We conclude our article with some few remarks (chiefly from Mr. Ranke) on the state of the city and of the Roman territory during this period. In the seventeenth century the popes gradually became men of peace; the energies of foreign re-conquest had died away; the quiet maintenance of their power and dignity contented their subdued ambition; they had shrunk into the sovereigns of Rome, and their pride seemed now to be to embellish their capital, and to make Rome, as it had been the seat first of civil, then of spiritual government, now the centre of European Modern Rome is almost entirely the growth of this century. St. Peter's was finished under Paul V.; considerable additions were made to the older churches, the Lateran and Santa Maria Maggiore; and most of the other sacred edifices which at present attract the stranger by their interior splendour, and we must add, in general offend him by their deviations from the great principles of architecture, bear evident signs of this age; for with the impulse of reviving Catholicism, the creative powers, the grandeur of conception, and the boldness of execution, in Catholic art, either altogether failed, or gave place to the love of tasteless ornament and unharmonised extravagance. Even in St. Peter's, in Forsyth's bitter language, 'a wretched plasterer came down from Como to break the sacred unity of Michael Angelo's [or rather Bramante's] master idea.' The modern ecclesiastical architecture of Rome seems to indicate the residence of a wealthy hierarchy reposing in peaceful dignity and luxuriating in costly building, but having departed from the pure and simple nobleness of classical antiquity, the passion of the preceding age, without going back to the harmonious richness, the infinite variety, yet unity of impression, which is found in the genuine Catholic Christian art, the Gothic, or German style. The palaces of Rome, on the whole, are much finer than the modern churches. They indicate the residence of an opulent and splendid aristocracy;-and such, partly composed of the older houses, partly of the descendants of the Papal families, was the nobility of Rome. But, with the exception of the Colonnas, the names of the older Roman aristocracy are little connected with the palaces, libraries, and galle ries, still less with that which adds so much to the beauty of the modern city, the rich splendour of the numberless villas of Rome. In the middle of the seventeenth century,' says Mr. Ranke, 'there were reckoned to be in Rome about fifty families 300, thirty-five 200, sixteen 100 years old; all below this were considered of vulgar and low birth. Many of them were either settled or had possessions in the Campagna. Most of this old nobility, however, were tempted to become holders of Luoghi di Monte. The sudden reduction of the interest brought them into difficulties, and they were gradually obliged to alienate their estates to the wealthier papal families, who thus became the non-resident holders of vast landed property.' Mr. Ranke considers these large estates, held by a few proprietors (exactly the latifundia of old Rome), as one great cause of the deterioration of agriculture in the Campagna. From the peculiar nature of these lands, they required the constant and unremitting care of resident farmers, interested in their productiveness. The system of small farms, with, as far as might be, a proprietary interest in the soil, could alone successfully conduct the agriculture of the Roman territory. Mr. Ranke concurs with many writers in attributing the extension of the malaria to the destruction of the woods. Gregory XIII. destroyed those in the vallies with a view of promoting and extending agriculture; Sixtus V. those on the mountains, in order to lay open the haunts of the banditti. Since that period, however, the malaria has constantly encroached more and more, on districts before either partially visited, or not at all. Under these fatal influences the produce of the Campagna diminished yearly. The interference of the government, and the injudicious remedy applied to the growing evil, completed the work of desolation. Urban VIII. adopted the fatal measure of prohibiting the exportation of corn, cattle, and oil, not merely from the territory at large, but from one district to another; and he gave almost unlimited authority to the prefect. This magistrate was empowered to assess the price of corn according to the harvest, and in proportion to that price to compel the bakers to regulate the price and weight of bread. The prefect became immediately an enormous and uncontrolled monopolist; and it is from this time that the complaints of the ruin of the papal territories commence. In our former article we extracted a passage from the Venetian dispatches, expressive of the somewhat jealous admiration, with which the native of that state in elder days surveyed the unexampled richness and fertility of Romagna. In our journey to Rome and back,' (writes the Venetian ambassador in 1621,) we have remarked the great poverty 6 406 Popes of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. poverty of the peasantry, and the common people, the diminished prosperity, not to say the very limited means, of all other classes. This is the effect of the system of government, and the wretched state of commerce. Bologna and Ferrara maintain a certain degree of splendour in their palaces and their nobility. Ancona is not without commerce with Ragusa and Turkey. All the other cities are far gone to decay.' The cardinal Sacchetti, in a memorial to Alexander VII., described the sufferings of the Roman peasants and lower classes as worse than those of the Israelites in Egypt: People not conquered by the sword, but either bestowed on, or of their own free will subjected to the Roman see, are more inhumanly treated than slaves in Syria or Africa!" How singular the contrast between the Campagna of Rome and the haciendas of Rome's faithful servants in South America! Here, is Romanism subduing ferocious or indolent savages to the arts and the happiness of civilised life, changing the wild forest or unwholesome swamp into rich corn land; there, close at home, turning a paradise into a desert!-so completely does even the same form of Christianity differ in its effects, according to the circumstances of time and place, and the state of society. In one case, we see it devoting itself with single-mindedness to the welfare of the lowest of mankind; in the other, as blind to its interests as to higher obligations, in that very place, where, in many respects, it had concentrated its strongest zeal and profoundest piety, neglecting the most solemn, the most Christian duty, the happiness of the people committed to its charge. Even Roman Catholics could not but allow that what they conscientiously considered the best religion, produced the worst government in Europe. ART. IV. Les Après-Diners de S. A. S. Cambacères, Second Consul, &c. ou Revelations de plusieurs Grands Personages, sur l'Ancien Régime, le Directoire, l'Empire, et la Restauration. Recueillis et publiés par le Baron E. L. de Lamothe-Langon, Auditeur au Conseil d'Etat Imperial ;-Auteur de L'Histoire de l'Inquisition de France,'-des Mémoires de S. M. Louis XVIII.,' et de ceux de Madame du Barri, &c. 4 tomes. Paris, 1837. OUR UR readers are pretty well acquainted with the impudence of the French fabricators of Memoirs; but this work outdoes all their former outdoings,' and reaches a pitch of effrontery which-even with all our experience of those people-we had not thought possible. Here we have M. Lamothe-who calls himself on himself the Baron de Lamothe-Langon-one of the chief hands in this as we should think it-disgraceful traffic, who not only avows but glories in it, in a strain of audacity that looks almost like insanity. The truth is, that the detection and exposurein which we are proud of having led the way—of these forgeries, have been so complete and successful, that the trade is spoiledthe accomplices have quarrelled-and when rogues fall out, honest men come by their own. M. Lamothe is driven to confess his former impositions, and to attempt a continuation of his old trade under the more imposing--as he no doubt hopes-authority of his own name. It seems, to our English feelings, very surprising that any man who has a name should venture to affix it to such disclosures as the preface to these volumes contains, followed up by a new series of such clumsy fabrications as com, pose the volumes themselves. Our readers will recollect that, opening the first of his works which fell under our notice- The Memoirs of Louis XVIII., written by himself, collected and arranged by the Duke of D****—we exclaimed Mentiris impudentissime!'-Quart. Rev., vol. xlviii., p. 455.-And we well remember the surprise and doubt with which some persons affected to receive our discovery; so daring, indeed, were the fabrications, and so credulous was the public, that we believe not less than eight or nine volumes of that stupid hash were published in Paris subsequent to our article-though we believe that the sale in England was effectually stopped. The truth is now avowed-habemus confitentem reum-and M. Lamothe is now not ashamed to announce himself as 'AUTEUR des Mémoires de S. M. Louis XVIII.,' and appears to think that this avowal will recommend to public favor a still more flagrant hoax. It seems almost like wasting powder and shot to slay such vermin; but as the whole affair is of some importance to the history of our times, we condescend to notice this barefaced avowal of literary fraud. The opening sentence of this Baron's preface is really a curiosity: 'We live in such an age of selfishness, lies, and greediness, that it is no wonder that memoirs are in fashion; and certainly the market is well provided. We are deluged with them; but the greater part, instead of useful or instructive truth, are the produce of the vapid imaginations of men who have not even the talent of invention, and who overwhelm us with nonsense and falsehood.'-Preface, p. 1. We really think we are reading Tartuffe Oui, mon frère, je suis un méchant, un coupable, And |