I admit, too, that this blood-letting stopped for the time
the fashion of demonstrations. It is however at best a doubtful
compliment to a government that it has succeeded in crushing the spirit
and energy of a nation; but to this compliment, I fear, the Papal rule is
only too well entitled. "The lesson given on St Joseph's day," so wrote
the organ of the Papacy in Paris, "has profited;" how, and to whom, time
will show. Hardly, I think; at any rate, to the religion of love and
mercy, or to those who preach its doctrines, and enforce its teachings by
lessons such as this.
CHAPTER XIV. A COUNTRY FAIR.
Far away among the Sabine hills, right up the valley of the Teverone, as
the Romans now-a-days call the stream which once bore the name of Anio,
hard by the mountain frontier-land of Naples, lies the little town of
Subiaco. I am not aware that of itself this out-of-the-world nook
possesses much claim to notice. Antiquarians, indeed, visit it to search
after the traces of a palace, where Nero may or may not have dwelt.
Students of ecclesiastical lore make pilgrimages thereto, to behold the
famous convent of the Santo Speco, the home of the Benedictine order. In
summer-time the artists in Rome wander out here to take shelter from the
burning heat of the flat Campagna land, and to sketch the wild Salvator
Rosa scenery which hems in the town on every side.
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