The comparison to which strangers were challenged by the Curia had the great advantage of being a comparison of good, not of evil. If the Papal States are to lay States as the oasis to the desert, proof actually lies before us of something more than human superiority—of something amounting to a higher dispensation. If the Papal States are but moderately superior to others, proof of any higher dispensation fails; but proof of human superiority remains. If they are only equal to lay States even proof of human superiority fails. If they are inferior, proof fails both of divine commission and of human superiority, and proof arises of the presence of greater human fault.
The only true book of Positive Philosophy yet (we do not say of Positive Science) is the blessed old Books of books. It brings everything to the test of fruits. It puts the extraordinary man to the test before ordinary men. He who refuses the ordained appeal to the Word, and to fruits, and to the verdict of every man's conscience, writes his own description as a false prophet.
We shall not, therefore, set out to compare evil, but good. We shall not inquire if there are more waste acres in the Papal States, more filthy huts, more wretched villages, more mean little towns called cities, more blighted prospects, talents thrown to waste, and families brought to decay, more liars, thieves, drunkards, blasphemers, and libertines, more depraved homes, more guilty conspiracies, more strikers, robbers, and assassins, more beggars in the streets, more idlers and extortioners in office, more wretches in prison, and more dead men in graves dug by the law, than, say, in our own far from immaculate or infallible England. We shall only look for the opposite of all these, and more of it—so much more as would furnish proof of a special dispensation of God's loving-kindness to men.
In one particular, such of the pilgrims as had heard of the desolation of the Roman Campagna would feel surprise, somewhat similar to that often felt by travellers in the Desert of Sinai. The latter, expecting to find extended plains of burning sand—a Sahara—find a country like another, only that it has no vegetation. So when pilgrims on the Campagna found green plains basking under a lovely sky, they would wonder how men could call it waste. Only by degrees would they realize the fact that there were no farm-houses, no labourers' cottages, no hamlets. In Arabia vegetation has failed, and with it animal existence. This region is a degree less desert: the herb enjoys life and supports the beast; only man has failed.
A trained observer seeing the plain forsaken and the villages in military positions on the heights, would at once say, as he would in Syria: The land has not learned what rest is! It has not yet experienced, for any continuance, that lot of conscious security in which the family suffices to itself, the lonely house is safe, and the village needs neither wall nor steep. The valleys of Tuscany or Piedmont tell a better tale of law and government.
When, at wide intervals, an inn or what is called a Tenuia occurs, perhaps it is announced by a few fine children, ill-clad and begging. The house has an expression of fear. The windows are few and small, and the yard, instead of a fence or low wall, is defended by a high one. There are no stack yards, no farm store and treasure spreading securely and ornamentally around as if conscious of strong, benign protectors. There is no grass-plot, no gravelled or flagged walk, no flower-bed before the door, no flower pot in the window, no garden. The house has never blossomed into the home. It is, after all these ages, but a shelter from weather and violence.
Entering, you find dirt to a degree neither easy to believe nor pleasant to describe, which grows worse and worse the longer and more minutely you observe. The furniture consists of a few stools, a rough table or bench, with a sack or two of straw for a bed. The few utensils, whether of earthenware or metal, are, like the stools and bench, poor in quality, rude in form, and ill-kept. Scarcely ever is there against the walls a print or photograph, an engraved sheet, a clock or plaster bust. You look in vain for book, periodical, or journal. The idea of children's picture-books, or of a cottage library, is out of the question; and the Bible is not to be seen. If there be a picture of the Madonna or the patron saint, it is, in point of art, far below the pictures which often light up the cottage of our humblest labourer. If there is a book, it is a wretched dream-book teaching how to succeed in the lottery. No polished chest of drawers, no white dresser, no fire range bearing witness of taste and "elbow-grease," no pretty crockery, no easy-chair. You may perhaps see a man asleep on the bare bench and another on the floor.
As you let the picture print itself, with all its inevitable comments, upon your mind, it calls up comparisons with what you have seen in the unlettered countries of the world—not with the homes that grow up around a family Bible. Here the arts which bring Art home to the multitude have found no entrance. Engraving, printing, carving, ornamental work in metal, wood, or pottery, gardening, or artistic husbandry, are graces that have not crossed this dirty threshold. The aesthetics, which have had some part in the government of the country have never developed the blessed aesthetic of home.
Physically, you find a race of great capacity. The frame, if wanting the compactness of the French and the solidity of the English, is large and shapely; such as after a few well-fed and well-housed generations would probably be one of the finest in the world. There is a certain sluggishness, which is generally called laziness. Perhaps it is not so much laziness as a lack of that physical elasticity which comes with successive generations of hopeful effort and good condition, but sinks away under hopelessness, or the effects of poor food and bad air. The natural intelligence is quick, and the manners generally polite, often winning. The pleasant word and the obliging act are both ready. But when did these carters and labourers wash? Was anything ever done to cleanse these garments, partly of goatskin with the hair attached and partly of heavy cloth? We do not call raids now and then to keep vermin under, an effort at really cleansing. And the heads of the women and children! Whatever the prevalent aesthetics have accomplished, they have never awakened the sacred aesthetic of the human person, which is not to be confounded with the lower aesthetic of dress.
Turning towards the villages, the observer is again reminded of Syria, where he may have been led on by the prospect of a beautiful city set on a hill, and found a squalid village. Self-defending construction, as in the case of the lone house on the plain, reappears here. No outlying cottages before the village, no detached ones within it, no gardens or orchards behind. The backs of the houses form a continuous high wall, pierced with small windows, constituting an irregular but not despicable work of defence. Again you find the absence of any bit of green, or of flower-beds before the house, or of flowers in the window. The gardens of Nottingham alone would put those of all the Papal States to shame, excepting such as are attached to palaces.