Rome in 1860 | Page 8

am afraid the Papal system
can hardly be said to pay.
CHAPTER III.
THE MORALITY OF ROME.
We all know the story of "Boccaccio's" Jew, who went to Rome an
unbeliever, and came back a Christian. There is no need for alarm; it is
not my intention to repeat the story. Indeed the only reason for my
alluding to it, is to introduce the remark that, at the present day, the Jew
would have returned from Rome hardened in heart and unconverted.
The flagrant profligacy, the open immorality, which in the Hebrew's
judgment supplied the strongest testimony to the truth of a religion that
survived such scandals, exist no longer. Rome is, externally, the most
moral and decorous of European cities. In reality, she may be only a
whited sepulchre, but at any rate, the whitewash is laid on very thick,
and the plaster looks uncommonly like stone. From various motives,
this feature is, I think, but seldom brought prominently forward in
descriptions of the Papal city. Protestant and liberal writers slur over
the facts, because, however erroneously, they are deemed inconsistent
with the assumed iniquity of the Government and the corruptions of the
Papacy. Catholic narrators know perhaps too much of what goes on

behind the scenes to relish calling too close an attention to the apparent
proprieties of Rome. Be the cause what it may, the moral aspect of the
Papal city seems to me to be but little dwelt upon, and yet on many
accounts it is a very curious one.
As far as Sabbatarianism is concerned, Rome is the Glasgow of Italy.
All shops, except druggists', tobacconists', and places of refreshment,
are hermetically closed on Sundays. Even the barbers have to close at
half- past ten in the morning under a heavy fine, and during the
Sundays in Lent cafes and eating-houses are shut throughout the
afternoon, because the waiters are supposed to go to catechism. The
English reading-rooms are locked up; there is no delivery of letters, and
no mails go out. A French band plays on the Pincian at sunset, and the
Borghese gardens are thrown open; but these, till evening, are the only
public amusements. At night, it is true, the theatres are open, but then
in Roman Catholic countries, Sunday evening is universally accounted
a feast. To make up for this, the theatres are closed on every Friday in
the year, as they are too throughout Lent and Advent; and once a week
or more there is sure to be a Saint's day as well, on which shops and all
are closed, to the great trial of a traveller's patience. All the
amusements of the Papal subjects are regulated with the strictest regard
to their morals. Private or public gambling of any kind, excepting
always the Papal Lottery, is strictly suppressed. There are no public
dancing-places of any kind, no casinos or "cafes chantants." No public
masked balls are allowed, except one or two on the last nights of the
Carnival. The theatres themselves are kept under the most rigid
"surveillance." Every thing, from the titles of the plays to the petticoats
of the ballet-girls, undergoes clerical inspection. The censorship is as
unsparing of "double entendres" as of political allusions, and "Palais
Royal" farces are 'Bowdlerized' down till they emerge from the process
innocuous and dull; compared with one at the "Apollo," a ballet at the
Princess's was a wild and voluptuous orgy.
The same system of repression prevails in everything. In the
print-shops one never sees a picture which even verges on impropriety.
The few female portraits exhibited in their windows are robed with an
amount of drapery which would satisfy the most prudish "sensibilities."

All books, which have the slightest amorous tendency, are scrupulously
interdicted without reference to their political views. The number of
wine-shops seems to me small in proportion to the size of the city, and
in none of them, as far as I could learn, are spirits sold. There is another
subject, which will suggest itself at once to any one acquainted with the
life of towns, but on which it is obviously difficult to enter fully. It is
enough to say, that what the author of "Friends in Council" styles, with
more sentiment than truth, "the sin of great cities," does not
"apparently" exist in Rome. Not only is public vice kept out of sight, as
in some other Italian cities, but its private haunts and resorts are
absolutely and literally suppressed. In fact, if priest rule were deposed,
and our own Sabbatarians and total-abstinence men and societies for
the suppression of vice, reigned in its stead, I doubt if Rome could be
made more outwardly decorous than it is at present.
This then is the fair side of the picture. What is the aspect of the reverse?