Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Pencil Sketches in Rome - 1. Ecclesiastical Rome, and Italian
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282 ROMAN DA YS,
and the pledge that his desire should be fulfilled. If he
now return to the seven hills, it will at his very entrance
within the old city walls, be made clear to him, if it have
not been so before, that a leaf has been turned in the
voluminous annals of Rome. The wretched station by
the Porta Portese, the woodshed where he sat under
arrest, while papal familiar spirits spelled through his
passport and smelled in his carpet-bag after the New
Testament and other revolutionary works, has gone the
way of all flesh. The traveller now gets out at an im-
posing station on the Piazza de’ Termini, close by the
baths of Diocletian ; and no objection will be made even
if he bring with him the whole collection of books that
the congregation has put on the black list, from Galileo’s
Dialogo to Gladstone’s pamphlet on papal infallibility,
and the impossibility of a good Englishman’s being a
good Catholic. The time when Vilhelm Bergsoe the
Danish naturalist was unable to flush a Cuvier in the
bookstores of Rome, seems as far back as the deluge,
although it was but a few years since. Now, the windows
of the bookshops on the Corso are crammed with new
works on philosophy and physical science. On the
Spanish stairs, where formerly Beppo king of the beggars
had his place, the New Testament is now sold. On the
Via della Scrofa, directly opposite a cardinal’s palace, a
small sign is to be seen, with the inscription " Evangeli-
cal Bookstore," and a window, among the books exhibited
in which is one that on its very title-page proclaims the
heretical assertion, " Peter never was bishop of Rome !’’’
and allows every passer-by to draw, if he will, the con-
clusion : so the pope is not Peter’s successor in office !
If the traveller have left his passport at home, it is ol
no consequence. New Rome receives without mistrust
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