Roman Mosaics | Page 7

of
the Paternoster in all the known languages; and my friend had an
opportunity of inspecting some theological works in the obscure
dialects of India. The productions of the Propaganda press are very
widely diffused. There is a bookseller's shop connected with the
establishment, where all the publications of the institution, including
the papal bulls, and the principal documents of the State, may be
procured. Altogether the college has taken a prominent part in the
education of the world. Its influence is specially felt in America, from
which a large number of its students come; the young priest who
conducted us through the library and the Borgian Museum being an
American, very intelligent and affable. The Roman Catholic religion

flourishes in that country because it keeps clear of all political
questions, and manifests itself, not as a government, in which character
it is peculiarly uncompromising and despotic, but as a religion, in
which aspect it has a wonderful power of adaptation to the habits and
tastes of the people. The Propaganda rules Roman Catholic America
very much in the spirit of its own institutions; and one of the most
remarkable social phenomena of that country is the absolute
subserviency which the political spirit of unbridled democracy yields to
its decrees. The bees of the Barberini carved upon its architectural
ornaments are no inapt symbol of the spirit and method of working of
this busy theological hive, which sends its annual swarms all over the
world to gather ecclesiastical honey from every flower of opportunity.
Passing beyond the Propaganda, we come to a lofty pillar of the
Corinthian order, situated at the commencement of the Piazza di
Spagna. It is composed of a kind of gray Carystian marble called
cipollino, distinguished by veins of pale green rippling through it, like
the layers of a vegetable bulb, on account of which it is popularly
known as the onion stone. It is one of the largest known monoliths,
being forty-two feet in height and nearly five feet in diameter. It looks
as fresh as though it were only yesterday carved out of the quarry; but it
must be nearly two thousand years old, having been found about a
hundred years ago when digging among the ruins of the amphitheatre
of Statilius Taurus, constructed in the reign of Cæsar Augustus on the
site now called, from a corruption of the old name, Monte Citorio, and
occupied by the Houses of Parliament. When discovered the pillar was
unfinished, a circumstance which would indicate that it had never been
erected. It was left to Pope Pius IX., after all these centuries of neglect
and obscurity, to find a use for it. Crowning its capital by a bronze
statue of the Virgin Mary, and disfiguring its shaft by a fantastic bronze
network extending up two-fifths of its height, he erected it where it
now stands in 1854, to commemorate the establishment by papal bull of
the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. It was during his exile at
Gaeta, at a time when Italy was torn with civil dissensions, and his own
dominions were afflicted with the most grievous calamities, which he
could have easily averted or remedied if he wished, that this dogma
engrossed the mind of the holy father and his ecclesiastical court. The

constitutionalists at Rome were anxiously expecting some conciliatory
manifesto which should precede the Pope's return and restore peace and
prosperity; and they were mortified beyond measure by receiving only
the letter in which this theological fiction was announced by his
Holiness. The people cried for the bread of constitutional liberty, and
the holy father gave them the stone of a religious dogma to which they
were wholly indifferent; thus demonstrating the incompatibility of the
functions of a temporal and spiritual sovereign.
The pillar of the Immaculate Conception is embellished by statues of
Moses, David, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, with texts from Scripture, and very
inferior bronze bas-reliefs of the incidents connected with the
publication of the dogma. As a work of art, it is heavy and graceless,
with hard mechanical lines; and the figure of the Virgin at the top is
utterly destitute of merit. The whole monument is a characteristic
specimen of the modern Roman school of sculpture. For ages Rome has
been considered the foster mother of art, and residence in it essential to
the education of the art-faculty. But this is a delusion. Its atmosphere
has never been really favourable to the development of genius. There is
a moral malaria of the place as fatal to the versatile life of the
imagination as the physical miasma is to health. Roman Catholicism
has petrified the heart and the fancy; and a petty round of ceremonies,
feasts, and social parties dissipates energy and distracts the powers of
those who are not under the influence