The Press.
London, England, 1857-09-05 00:00:00

Sit traturt.

Rome: its Ruler awl its Institutions. By
John Francis Maguire, M.P. London:
Longmans.
THE present Popo of Romo has always
appeared to us to be one of the weakest
and vainest men ever elevated to the
Papacy. Deficient in policy, without firm-
ness, plastic and dangerously impressible,
Pius IX., with good intentions and erroneous
modsures, was the cause of bringing great
oubles on his Church, on Italy, and on
Europe. Why the Cardinals ever chose him
seems to us a mystery ; and the "Infallibility
of the Church" has not in the last three hun-
dred years received so severe a shock as in
the selection of Pius IX. He has all the
qualities which would make a good parish
priest, and but few of those which would
render him a great sovereign. He is bene-
volent and well disposed; he is without
cruelty, but he is also weak, uncertain, and
shallow. There is no depth in his mind;
consequently there is no able design in his
conduct. Superficial and sentimental, Pius
has always planned more than he could per-
form. Like Louis XVI., or Joseph Bonaparte
(King of Spain), Pius presents us with the
spectacle of an admirable private, but an
almost contemptible public, character. Such
aro the men who palsy mighty nations and
ruin grand institutions. Their virtues, being
allied with weakness, are as bad as the vices
of natures altogether inferior to them.
And this is the prelate whom Mr. Maguire
has chosen for the most fulsome panegyric
that we ever read. We have heard and
perused many hard and bitter words against
" Popery," but the adulatory spirit of this
volume is enough to raise the spleen of the
most moderate of polemics. The glorification
of Pius by Mr. Maguire approaches the ridicu-
lous. This zealous panegyrist has no eye for
the weakness, the credulity, the political insin-
cerity, the flimsy views of the Pope. Not a
word is said of the series of infatuated blunders
by which Pius allowed himself to be made a
tool by designing revolutionists who after-
wards imprisoned him. The mortifying results
to the Papacy, and to what Mr. Maguire calls
" the Church." by the Pope having been com-
pelled to fly in disguise from Rome, and ask
shelter from the King of Naples. and sue for
aid from the great powers, is lightly passed
over by the author. In Mr. Maguire's eyes, or
at least as the Pope is painted in this volume,
Pius IX. is all that is great, grand, and re•
splendeut; he is magnificent as Leo X.. and
shrewd as Gangunelli; be is illustrious by
talents, by virtues, by attainments, by achieve-
ments, and a list of other a eieteriu, for which
vide the panegyric of " St. Pius," for in this
volume he has been canonised in anticipation
by the ardent and able member for Dun-
garvon.
If Pius IX. were the glorious pontiff de-
scribed here, how comes it that his people
rose against him, and that a Ftench army was
necessary to re-seat him in his Papal chair?
If " the institutions of Rome " be so admirable
in character as they are represented here,
would Mr. Maguire be pleased to explain the
phenomenon of a pope running away from
Rome, and taking refuge at Gaeta? Mr.
Maguire, in a loose style (p. 317), talks of
" the 300 or 400 churches at Rome." The
number is certainly enormous, whatever its
exact limits may be. There are troops of
priests, and sacristans, and thurifers, and
acolytes, and students, in proportion to these
chum ches ; and the question arises how, in a
city whore the population is about 172,000,
has this enormous ecclesiastical ascendancy
worked? A more discontented population
does not exist in Europe; ever hovering be-
tween conspiracy on the one hand, and
slavery to the Church on the other—asking
alms today, and planning assassinations to-
morrow—now trembling before a monk eloquent
on the horns of the devil, and anon creeping
to Mazzini—ever fluctuating between super-
stition about holy water, and a plebeian thirst
for patrician blood. They are a priestridden
race ; yet they have the virtue to writhe in