and Laplace, as their predecessors sat in judgment upon Guicciardini and
Galileo,--and, in the fervor of their undiscriminating zeal, condemn
Robertson and Gibbon, Reid and Hume, the skeptic Bolingbroke and the
pious Addison, to the same fiery purgation. That Italian literature was
not crushed by them long ago is, perhaps, the strongest proof of the
irrepressible vigor and marvellous vitality of the Italian mind. Not to
be on the "Index" would call a blush to the cheek of the most
unambitious of authors,--would carry a presumption of worthlessness with
it from which even the penny-a-liner would shrink with dismay,--and to
the poet and historian would sound like a sentence of perpetual
exclusion from all those cherished hopes which irradiate with heavenly
light the steep and thorny paths of intellectual renown.

Next to these in importance is the Congregation of the "Propaganda," or
of that celebrated institution for the propagation of the Roman Catholic
religion which, since the reign of Gregory XV., has governed, as from a
common centre, the immense network of missions that Christian Rome has
spread over the lands she hopes to conquer, as Pagan Rome spread her
network of military roads over the lands which she had already reduced
to subjection. Cardinals, with a cardinal for prefect and a prelate for
secretary, compose this congregation, which holds regular meetings twice
a month, and, not unfrequently, extraordinary meetings in the presence
of the Pope. In these the important questions of the missionary world
are discussed, reports examined, new missions proposed, new missionaries
appointed, new bishoprics founded "among the heathen," and all these
complicated interests taken into impartial consideration.

For here, at least, there is little room for heart-burnings and
jealousies. It is of equal importance to all that the conquests of the
Church should be extended to the utmost limits of the earth, the heathen