considerations of timidity, and many effects of education, to temper their
hate. They may dislike the priests, but they revere the Church. The young
men of to-day are bred in a different school, and all their thoughts are
of opposition to the government and of war upon the Church, which they
detest and ridicule. The fact that their education is still in the hands
of the priests in some measure, does not render them more tractable. They
have no fears to be wrought upon by their clerical professors, who seldom
have sought to act upon their nobler qualities. The influence of the
priesthood is again limited by the fact that the teachers in the free
schools of the city, to which the poor send their children, are generally
not priests; and ecclesiastics are no longer so commonly the private
tutors of the children of the rich, as they once were when they lived with
the family, and exercised a direct and important influence on it. Express
permission from the pope is now necessary to the maintenance of a family
chaplain, and the office is nearly disused. [Footnote: In early days every
noble Venetian family had its chaplain, who, on the occasion of great
dinners and suppers, remained in the kitchen, and received as one of his
perquisites the fragments that came back from the table.]

The Republic was extremely jealous of the political power of the priests,
who could not hold secular office in its time. A curious punishment was
inflicted upon the priest who proved false to his own vows of chastity,
and there is a most amusing old ballad--by no means cleanly in its
language--purporting to be the lament of a priest suspended in the iron
cage, appointed for the purpose, from the belfry of the Campanile San
Marco, and enduring the jeers and insults of the mob below. We may suppose
that with advancing corruption (if corruption has indeed advanced from
remote to later times) this punishment was disused for want of room to
hang out the delinquents. In the last century, especially, the nuns and
monks led a pleasant life. You may see in the old pictures of Pietro