of Rome, amongst other benefits resulting to the ecclesiastical state from his nomination, enumerated the extinction of that abuse of power in the popes, known by the name of nepotism. The late pope, Ganganelli, who had perhaps too large a portion of virtuous qualities for the station he filled, when his nephews were presented to him, told them, "that if they would labour for themselves, he would give them his protection; and that if they were idle, he would send them backto their parents;" and Pius the the sixth, at his accession, announced similar dispositions, when he refused the dignity of cardinal to his uncle, the respectable bishop of Imola, against whose nomination to that dignity no other obstacle presented itself but the delicacy of his nephew, the pontiff. This reserve, with respect to his family, was however but of short duration. His sister's children, for he had no nephews of the male line, became the objects of his particular affection. The youngest, who was raised by successive steps to the dignity of the purple, was first employed, after his academical education at Rome, in a dignified office with the cardinals Rohan and Rochefoucault, at Paris. Two years after (1780) he was created apostolical prothonotary, a place which, though without profit, conferred a title and further dignity. This was succeeded by the office of majordomo of the pope, a place which infallibly led to that to which he was at length prompted (1786).

If the cardinal has beenreproached for the sordid use which he sometimes made of his uncle's favour, and the influence of his situation, this reproach has fallen with tenfold justice on his brother, the duke of Braschi. His entrance into

public life, when he came to Rome from a distant province, where he had lived in comparative obscurity with his parents, was marked by numerous features of disgusting avarice. As he was not intended for the ecclesiastical state, he married the daughter of madame Fal conieri, who, it is pretended (but without any proof), had been formerly the mistress of his uncle. This marriage, which, on the side of fortune, was slightly advanta◄ geous to the nephew, was the occasion of no small accumulation of wealth from the excessive liberality of the pope, of the catholic and Roman princes, of cardinals, and from presents received from individuals of almost every rank in the state. These marks of private courtesy served only to awaken a disposition for more solid property, and the public indignation was excited at the purchase made of the Jesuits' possessions at Tivoli, which then belonged to the apostolical chamber, and which, it is said, were sold to the duke for a sum less than half of that which had been already offered, and for which payment was to be made in the middle of the succeeding century. In this sale the public were slightly interested; what belonged to the apostolical chamber served but little towards the alleviation of the burdens of state; but the monopoly which the duke of Braschi made of oil and corn throughout the ecclesiastical territory, in contempt of the laws which had been enacted against such public spoliations, made him an object of abhorrence to the people.

The process of the niece of Amanzió-Lepri against the pope, for his illegal acquisition and detention of the fortunes of her family, will ever remain a dark spot

on the character of the holy father, though he endeavoured to wash it out by many a bitter repentant tear. In addition to the Jesuits' estates at Tivoli, the duke of Braschi had purchased other possessions in its neighbourhood, from which he took the title of Nemi.

The draining of the Pontine marshes had been a new source of territorial wealth, and the riches of the nephew increased in nearly the same proportion as the miseries of the people. The revolution, whatever redress it might give to the latter, made a sudden and unrelenting sacrifice of the former. In a few days the duke of Braschi saw his honours reduced to the vain and empty decorations of his person, and his wealth to the contents of his purse, or port-folio. His estates were confiscated without remorse to the benefit of the public, and his magnificent and sumptuous furniture, his pictures, engravings, antiques, and his museum, underwent the humiliation of a public auction.

The public indignation, which was accumulated on the duke, struck but with a gentle hand the other branches of his household. His wife, the duchess of Nemi, produced her claims to the French commissaries, and obtained the half of the sum she demanded as her dowry, and also a third of the moveables for her daughter, with which she obtained the value of an equal sum for herself. She was permitted to retain possession of all her numerous and costly jewels, and from among the duke's twenty carriages was allowed to choose two of the most elegant. With the money she purchased national lands, and was enabled to retain her beautiful seat at Tivoli, where she continued to reside in peace.

The dethroned pontiff, fallen thus from his high state, became an object of interest and commiseration even to his enemies. Fancy can scarcely forbear painting him stalking throughthesplendid apartments of the Vatican, lately filled with a prostrate multitude, amidst whom he marched erect with proud and portly step, robed in his insignia of divinity, conscious still of his power in the invisible worlds, though his glory had been shorn of its beams; amidst these apartments, now deserted and silent, his mind perhaps meditated with astonished reflection on the chequered tissue of a long and eventful reign; and in those first moments of adverse fortune, when vanity drops her shield, searched, perhaps without indulgence, into the recesses of his heart, which in these trying moments could not but unveil itself before him. Yet united in history, as his name will possibly be with the extinction of the papal power (for even late events do not assure us of its re-establishment), and admitted as it must be that the errors of his reign, and the inconsistencies of his conduct, hastened that period, it must nevertheless be allowed, that had he possessedthe concentrated wisdom and firmness of the most enlightened of his predecessors, the papal authority could not have been of long duration. Before his accession to the pontifical dignity, the axe had been laid to its root; and if wonder be excited at its overthrow, a slight reflection will convince us that this astonishment is misplaced, and that we ought rather to be surprised at the length of its continuance than the readiness of its fall.

The primary cause is undoubtedly the progress of knowledge, the steady foe both of religious and

ing a symptom of radical error not to excite the most alarming apprehensions of the holy see. Hence the celebrated and fruitless journey of the pope to Vienna, and the vain and laborious efforts to correct that disposition to spiritual mutiny, whichnot only affected the emperor, but at that and succeeding periods, the sovereign princes of Italy. The misunderstanding which took place with the duke of Tuscany respecting the schismatical innovations of the bishop of Pistoja was changed, by a succession of ill offices, into a violent quarrel, in which the grandduke undertook to annihilate the spiritual power of the pope in his dominions, and counteract the supremacy in the hierarchy of the state. Still more serious were the discussions of the holy see with the court of Naples, when the restrictions put on the annual offering of the white palfrey, considered by the donor only as a devotional homage to the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, and by the holy father as a feudal tribute of a vassal for his crown to the holy see, was followed by a crowd of other innovations, such as the conversion of the revenues of suppressed monasteries into objects of public utility, the nomination to ecclesiastical dignities without the papal intervention, the entire abolition of the offering of the white horse, and other objects of civil and religious reform which reason might approve, whatever were the motives of the schism, but which were regarded at Rome as acts of heretical rebellion against the visible head of the church. The antifilial and uncomplying spirit of the Venetian aristocracy had, for a series of years, excited the alternate indulgence and resentment of the holy see. The immediate predecessors of the pope,

the wise Benedict, and the tolerant Ganganelli,could neither engage its affection nor conciliate its esteem. Imbued as it were habitually with a considerable portion of that schismatical spirit which infected most of the other catholic powers of Europe, the senate, in the opening of the reign of Pius the Sixth, secularised a number of abbeys, and other religious establishments, and incorporated them with those belonging to the nobility. The pope menaced them with his apostolical anger, so far even as to talk seriously of forcing them, by the use of temporal arms, into obedience.--Though the quarrel was appeased by the intervention of part of the sacred college, the Venetian senate continued to suppress and reform conventual houses in favour of hospitals and other establishments of public charity, notwithstanding the murmurs of the holy father; and the dispute which was renewed between the Bark of St. Peter and the Bucentaur might have continued indefinitely if the revolutionary tempest had not driven them to perish together on the same rock.

Amidst this almost general defection of reverence and filial duty towards the church, which it was the fate of Pius the Sixth to witness, he had yet to console himself, that though most had been perverted by heresy, yet some remained untainted, or at least but slightly infected by its contagion, and were still docile to the voice of the church. The perseverance of the court of Spain, in common with others against the Jesuits, and its obstinacy in claiming the canonisation of Palafox, to which the Jesuitical party had opposed the farce of the beatification of the French beggar Labre at Rome, and the free maxims of its ecclesiastical govern

ment, had been sources of disquietude to Pius; but the habitual and reverential respect with which he had been treated by this power had softened his displeasure at these contrarieties, and conciliated his affection and esteem. The duke of Parma, unlike his brother sovereigns of Italy, had shown a devotedness without bounds to the holy see; and whilst his neighbour, the duke of Modena, suppressed the inquisition in his state, and, in defence of certain territorial rights,was preparing to arm against the pope, the duke of Parma re-established the holy office which his predecessor had abolished, and engaged to support its decisions with the terror of the secular arm, as the most effective mode, according to the edict he published on the occasion, to preserve his subjects from the poison of heresy and infidelity. With zeal for the unity of the faith, but not with the entire devotedness of the Infant of Parma, the queen of Portugal, on the death of Joseph the First,avenged the holysee forthe daring innovations of the marquis de Pombal, by restoring the patriarchate of Lisbon to all its former splendorand profits,byre-establishing the religious houses which he had suppressed, and comforting thosewhose adherencetothe church had been the cause of ministerial prosecution. Thus, amidst the storms which gathered from almost every quarter around the holy see, whilst schisms with respect to ecclesiastical authority were increasing, and innovations, if not in matters of faith, in matters at least equally important to it, such as restraining the flow of devout offerings into the apostolical coffers, were multiplying with most alarming rapidity, Pius could turn aside from this turbulent ocean towards a

halcyon shore, and contemplate the horizon of Portugal decorated with the full glow of respectful beneficence towards him: whilst the fading attachment and calculating parsimony of the other catholic powers of Europe with respect to the court of Rome were evinced not only in the encroachments, made in its ecclesiastical authority, but also in the restraint which they put on the benevolence of their respective subjects, her majesty, "faithful found among the faithless,"re-established the inquisition, and, with pious precipitation, replenished the sacred chest of the Roman exchequer; sovereign and subjects vying with each other in acts of religious devotedness, and happy in bartering the perishable objects of earthly presents, against treasures unfading and incorruptible. This interchange of affectionate offices met now and then a temporary interruption. The royal assent was declared necessary for permission to take vows of monastic life. The regulation of 1799, compelling the nobility and clergy to support equally with the people the burdens of the state, was consecrated by a brief, though hostile to the privileges of the church; and the interposition of the holy see was disregarded, when the queen tore from the archbishop of Braga his seignorial rights, and stript the clergy of their temporal jurisdictions. These symptoms of disaffection were the effects of other symptoms more alarming, which the prince of Brasil at that time discovered, and which the reading of foreign books and journals had led him to cherish.

Under his pro

tection, learning, for the first time, half unveiled her face in the seat of education at Coimbra, and fanaticism shrunk with horror at the