Before entering the houses one feels as if it would be unfair to compare them with those of English villages in our more cultured and sunny counties. But we may take a Yorkshire manufacturing village, near collieries. There the ground is dirty with coal slack; the air dirty with coal smoke and heavy with damp vapours; the houses are of the colour of baked mud, called brick; the sky is low, and more brown than grey. Nature and art seem to have combined to make the house dirty. Here, on the contrary, the ground is as dry as a board, the air bright, the walls of warm-coloured stone, the sky lofty, luminous and blue. Nature has done everything to suggest cleanliness, and also to reward it with such brilliant effect as we can only see in the brightest moments which summer lights up within our English homes. And as to manufacture, its grimy fingers have never touched the place.
Yet under the unfavourable conditions you find tidy women, with tidy children, by tidy firesides. The floor, seats, tables, drawers, dresser, walls, all show that the domestic arts of ornament, in however humble a style, are represented. The cottage child sits with its book on its knee, and you are not afraid to look into the corners. The Bible and hymn-book are probably upon the shelf; and if you do not know that the scene of the cotter's Saturday night is actually enacted there, you feel that it might be.
Under the favourable circumstances, on the other hand, floor, stairs, wall, furniture, utensils, and the persons of the women and children are kept in such a style that one of the women from the Yorkshire cottage would not like to pass a night in the place. And you must not look into the corners. Any stray picture which may be on the walls, only serves to remind you, by contrast, of the wonderful development of illustrative art in England, Germany, and America, and of its penetrating influence in the homes of the remote and poor. Here, sometimes, you may find, even in the village church, prints and dolls, the former of which in England would be considered poor, and the latter tawdry in the village shop. Yet in the same church there may be some real work of art, which has for generations had every opportunity of forming the public taste.
The land in these Papal States, like the people, is nobly capable; but our present inquiries turn, not upon the future, but upon proof of immaculate and infallible government, for the last thousand years or more.
Fixing, then, our attention on the works of man, we find cause repeatedly to wish that we had some measure for exactly determining how much progress has been made, amid these lovely scenes, by the human mind since it passed from under the dominion of Pagan Romanism into that of Papal Romanism. At present we have not the means of accurately settling this question, and perhaps we never shall have, though honest research may yet sufficiently elucidate it for a practical judgment. So long as Christianity worked by its legitimate forces, those of the Spirit alone, with its legitimate instrument, the Word alone, it cast out the cruel and obscene spirits of paganism, silently, but not slowly. In individuals and in families real Christians were made. This continued so long as the ministers of Christ ministered like their Master, reading the Word of God, and preaching it, but no more thinking of performing "functions," like the heathen, than He did; so long as they had neither place nor name in the posts graded and rewarded by human powers; so long as they enjoyed no consideration but what was won through wisdom, goodness, and spiritual fruitfulness; so long as their whole inheritance was not a profession, but a calling, which renounced the world, not by cutting God's holiest human ties, but by abandoning, for life, every hope of title, pomp, or power. So long as this spirit reigned, and whenever it again reappeared, they could point to numbers, whom they found vile but left created anew in Christ Jesus unto good works.
But from the time when Christianity became a public power, the courtier, the priest, and the crowd began to flow into the Church, and carried part of their heathenism in with them. When the device of the Emperors was parodied—and as they had assumed the office of Pontiff to confirm the civil dictatorship, the Roman Bishop assumed the temporal supremacy to confirm the spiritual dictatorship—all the three paganizing forces of statecraft, priestcraft, and popular superstition came more vigorously into play; with the result stated by Gregorovius: "So that Church which arose out of the union of Christianity with the Roman Empire, drew from the latter the system of centralization, and the stores of ancient language and education; but the people utterly corrupted, could not yield her the living material for the development of the Christian ideal. On the contrary, it was just they who in early times defaced Christianity, and permeated the Church, scarcely yet established in the Empire, with the old heathenism."[70] It was, however, on the new system of conversion that the people could not yield the material for developing Christianity. On the old one they had done so. When the Church waits for converts till the Spirit of God brings her penitents, she will always find material (often raw and foul, but capable) for doing all her work.
But we find the first step in an inquiry as to the progress which has been accomplished challenged by the Vatican philosophy, which decries modern improvements like the railway, telegraph, steam engine, and so on, as "material progress." When we ordinary mortals say "mental progress" we mean a progress of mind; but when the Pope says "material progress," does he mean a progress of matter? No; then what does he mean? Perhaps to suggest some such idea as the progressive ascendancy of matter over mind; but if so, it is unfortunate for him, as a philosopher, that the inventions he despises represent the advancing ascendancy of mind over matter. And very unhappy is it for mankind that all his influence goes to employ matter in colour, form, and movement, to make man a creature of sensation, and to stay the operation of reason and of faith, exchanging reason for sentiment and faith for sight.
Suppose that an observer before passing from the valley of the Sacco into that of the Anio looks at a historical place like Palestrina, situated on one of the noblest heights of the land; a point whence Pyrrhus and Hannibal, in succession, looked with the longing of warriors across the Campagna to the distant Rome; and whence the Temple of Fortune, emulating Egyptian proportions, and overspreading a whole hillside, dominated the plain, and held forth its lights to the far off sea. This city has a Cardinal Bishop, and a palace of the great Papal-princely family of the Barberini, and yet is what a homely Englishman would call a nasty village. If such a one had to pick his steps up the alleys that serve for streets, in the afternoon, when the issue of the cow-houses is flowing down them, he would rather be at home. The people are civil and apparently industrious, but the energy of the children goes out in begging. The decay and dirt which conquer all, furnish to an English eye a plain instance of material progress—matter gaining upon mind. The palace is neither kept up nor abandoned as a ruin, but, as if to set the town an example of thriftless filth, it is used partly for an aesthetic exhibition, containing as it does one wonderful mosaic, with frescoes and portraits of the Pope and Cardinals of the family, and is partly given up to—matter. Just as confidently as a skilled observer would conclude that Middlesbrough or Cincinnati bore witness against any claim to great antiquity, would he conclude that Palestrina bore witness against any claim to supernaturally good government. How much lower was the place when it was heathen?
From the ridge between the two valleys, by Civitella, the stranger has one of those prospects of which no previous travel blunts the charm, and no subsequent travel blunts the memory. Here he finds well-made men ploughing, and women with busts worthy of Sabine mothers carrying stones. Looking at the plough, he finds it only a few degrees stronger and better than that used by the ordinary Hindu ryot. It is very far behind the improved ones to be seen in northern Italy, and would be a real curiosity to Bedfordshire or Lincolnshire ploughmen.
If the observation of implements is extended to those of the handicrafts, it confirms the impression of want of taste made by those of agriculture. But tools are not things to make a show, and the noble aesthetic of labour has not been fostered. Labour is not part of the supernatural order, only of the natural; it serves but temporal ends. And who made the natural? And who dares to teach man, created in the image of God, that the daily duty appointed to him—duty to himself, his family, his country, and his race—serves but temporal ends? If neglected, are only temporal ends frustrated? When our Father sends us what fills our hearts with food and gladness, is He working nought but temporal ends? For what is helpful to sanctification commend us even to the stones on the head of the female hodman, rather than to the beads at the waist of the novice nun! Albeit the former is a coarse toil not to be seen without a blush by man born of a woman, yet is it a real lift at the load of life—a load natural and therefore divine; whereas the other is neither work nor play, not tending either to lift the load of life or to cheer on the labour of lifting it, but tending only to weaken all the powers by rendering the mind a slave of charms. Least of all is it spiritual or supernatural. It is simply manipulation applied by the master with sensational skill, and in the subject suspending thought on sensational routine.