schooling in secular establishments, whither they go every day for study,
or where they sometimes live as in our boarding-schools, and where they
are taught the usual accomplishments, greater attention being paid to
French and music than to other things.] I need hardly repeat the well-
known fact that all the moral power of the Roman Church over the younger
men is gone; these seldom attend mass, and almost never go to confession,
and the priests are their scorn and by-word. Their example, in some
degree, must be much followed also by women; and though women must
everywhere make more public professions of religion than men, in order to
retain social standing, I doubt if the priests have a very firm hold upon
the fears or reverence of the sisters and wives of liberal Venetians.

If, however, they contribute in anywise to keep down the people, they are
themselves enslaved to their superiors and to each other. No priest can
leave the city of Venice without permission of the Patriarch. He is cut
off as much as possible from his own kinspeople, and subjected to the
constant surveillance of his class. Obliged to maintain a respectable
appearance on twenty cents a day,--hampered and hindered from all personal
liberty and private friendship, and hated by the great mass of the
people,--I hardly think the Venetian priest is to be envied in his life.
For my own part, knowing these things, I was not able to cherish toward
the priests those feelings of scornful severity which swell many
Protestant bosoms; and so far as I made their acquaintance, I found them
kind and amiable. One ecclesiastic, at least, I may describe as one of the
most agreeable and cultivated gentlemen I ever met.

Those who fare best among the priests are the Jesuits, who returned from
repeated banishment with the Austrians in this century. Their influence is
very extended, and the confessional is their forte. Venetians say that
with the old and the old-fashioned these crafty priests suggest remorse