The Neapolitan Seminaries Closed.

399

the sufficient reason that they were largely supported by donations of wealthy laymen for the express purpose that the schools attached to them might be for the instruction of children of the laity without restriction. In pursuance of this compact between the bishops and the people, even little children--not young laymen-were taught their alphabet in the schools from which it was now attempted to shut out inspection. The Government further remembered that the last King of Naples had exercised direct control over these very seminaries, and the Minister of Victor Emmanuel quotes a royal order of Ferdinand commanding the Bishop to watch over the morals of the students with redoubled pastoral diligence, and to be careful as to the morals, the books, the teaching, the masters, and the loyalty due to the reigning dynasty.

But, apart from the question of right, it became necessary to exert authority. The seminaries were known to be hotbeds of sedition. The professors led the way in open hostility to the Government. Riotous banquets were held, as, for example, at Sanseverino, where, on the feast of St. Catherine, masters and scholars, at the call of the archdeacon of the cathedral, broke out into cries of Pius the Ninth for ever, Pope and King! At Terarno the rector of the seminary preached openly against the King's Government, and some of the professors held frequent meetings of students in their houses, to indoctrinate and excite them against the institutions of the country. Added to this, some instances of unutterable immorality scandalized the public and hastened the crisis. Under date of 18th October, 1864, the Minister of Public Instruction issued a circular to the Prefects presiding at the Councils of Education in the Neapolitan Provinces, directing them to invite the heads. of the Episcopal seminaries to report with all convenient speed the state of the literary and scientific schools attached to them. This summons did little more than call forth formal refusals from the parties addressed, and assurances that the theological instruction should not be interfered with; earnest and courteous intreaties addressed personally to the bishops were not of the least avail. Therefore, after long patience, on the 1st September, 1865, advised by the Secretaries of State for Public Instruction, for Grace and Justice, and for Worship, the King signed a decree which closed all the seminaries in the Neapolitan provinces, confiscated the buildings, estates, and revenues; appropriated, for the future, one-third of the rents to the Bishops for

Promoting Theological Instruction, and two-thirds to the Minister for Promoting Public Instruction. All schools, clerical as well as lay, were then made subject to Government inspection.

The full effect of this measure has yet to be ascertained. In all other provinces of the kingdom, the seminaries have been inspected, and the reports of their condition are valuable, as exhibiting evidence of an almost incredible indifference on the part of the clergy to the professed objects of their own institutions, with uncontrollable disaffection to the Government. In the Lombard provinces the study of Latin is the one most diligently pursued by masters and students; but the Latin taught there is anything but Ciceronian; and the teaching consists in merely loading the memory with certain forms of language, which require to be known in reading ecclesiastical books, and performing religious rites. Italian they study, indeed, not for the education of the man, nor as a guide to the national classics, but as a mechanical introduction to a style of antiquated and tasteless composition. There is no teaching of natural science; extremely little time is given to mathematics and arithmetic, least of all to history and geography. Even the little they profess to teach is taught so badly as to lose any little value it might have if really acquired. As for merit, the standard is set according to the political attachments of the students, which determines the favour or disfavour to be shown them, At Crema, for example, where Latin is well taught, and Italian tolerably, but everything else passed over, geography and natural history, for example, being never mentioned; the political education may be judged of by the conclusion of an exercise written by one of the students on the Battle of Lepanto, in the form of an apostrophe to Pio IX.

"O my Pontiff, O my King, take courage! The Almighty will make prodigies arise for thee. The prayers of the Catholic world will attend thee. The prodigy is already begun with new facts of the Italian Government, which indicate a happier turn of political affairs, and the speedy triumph of the Church. Courage, O Pius! The libertines will fall, and God will send a legion of angels to disperse these enemies of the Church."

As to the Modenese and Parmese provinces, a report from Carpi by the Government Delegate conveys an account of one of their seminaries which may fairly be taken as an exact description of the whole.

The Middle and Northern Provinces.

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"I certainly always thought that the education supplied in this seminary was superstitious, and the instruction defective and not in keeping with the spirit of the times; but I have felt both surprise and pain at seeing these poor young men prostrate in spirit, and without the least of that glow of life which you see in boys of ten or twelve years; and at finding on questioning the teachers that little is taught, nothing learnt, and that the new systems of teaching are not only left aside altogether, but are objected to by these masters, and that the alumni are set to learn lessons by memory without the slightest exercise of intellect. I should not fail to report that not a word is ever said to the seminarists concerning country, or nationality, or constitution, or king; that themes are set them containing maxims contrary to the laws and rights of the State, and exciting to disobedience of their laws. Naturally unready as I am to give credit to the accusations which are sometimes laid against these institutions, because they are not always founded in truth, I should not have believed what I have now stated, if I had not heard it with my ears, and read it in the writings laid before me.

"If the youths that are shut up in this seminary were for the most part educated for the priesthood, and came out priests, we should have the misfortune of getting ignorant or retrograde priests, certainly not without injury to society and to this poor country. But the evil is very much greater-nay, we may say that it is incalculable, when we find that by far the greatest majority, no less than 98 of the 100, before they have well gone through their studies, quit the seminary, put off the ecclesiastical habit, and return to their families, most of whom are land-owners in the country, ignorant of everything, deeply prejudiced against the friends of liberty and progress, enamoured of the priests alone, with whom they soon make common cause for keeping the countryfolk in ignorance, and nourishing in those rude minds an affection for the past which they do not despise, because they do not know, and aversion for the present, and for all aspirations for the future aspirations which they are taught to regard as the cause of all the evils which befal citizens, families, and populations."

In short, the inmates of the seminaries turn out fit for nothing but priests,-priests of the sort desired by those who train them-slightly above the level of the flocks they are to lead. In the provinces formerly under the dominion of Rome, the seminaries were found full of students-if students they might be called-many still retaining attachment to the old government. The little time given to study, the notorious laxity of morals, and cheapness of living, used to draw crowds of young men to those ecclesiastical establishments. They were poor, lazy, ragged, and unclean. Not a ray of new light penetrated those dens of artificial ignorance. A young alumnus of the Seminary of Ravenna, on being required to state the grand divisions of Europe, political

and physical, at first omitted Italy, but on second thought gave the Italian territory as marked out by the Treaty of Vienna. At the Seminary of Saint Angelo di Vado, the scholars, on the close of the scholastic year, offered their prizes for Peter's pence. The Seminary of Pescina de' Marsi, in the second Abruzzo Ulteriore, closed spontaneously by the flight of masters and scholars, who decamped to escape the vengeance of the inhabitants whom their immoralities had scandalized.

Unless it were possible to reverse the wheels of time, no conceivable political reaction could annihilate the benefits which Italy has derived from the efforts to create a real system of public instruction during the last six years. Not with reckless innovation, but with studious research, and statesmanlike appreciation of all elements of calculation, the Italians have at one cast thrown away all the traditions of a corrupt antiquity; and yet they have sought, but sought in vain, for needful instruction in the times of Augustus, and Justinian, and Gregory. They cannot find any model for a new fabric in the structures of antiquity, but they learn wisdom from the experience of successive ages, and skill from a survey of the world around. Their present youth were children when Italy became a nation, and the enthusiasm they caught while yet in their mothers' arms, now becomes a guiding influence and principle. They crowd the technical schools to acquire practical knowledge of the arts of life. And if the spirit of Matteucci be permitted to breathe freely through a second lustrum, the gradual reformation of the universities and higher schools, the paralysis of priestly domination, and the healing influences of pure faith, will surely place Italy on a level with the happiest nations of the world.

ART. V.-The Guardian Newspaper. April 4th, 11th, 18th, and 25th, 1866.

VERY remarkable and very beautiful is the unanimity of affectionate admiration and regret with which the intelligence of Mr. Keble's decease has been responded to by Christian men of every denominational colour. The Nonconformist has vied with the Guardian in its tribute to his merits as a sacred poet and his goodness as a man. The most zealous antagonists of that Tractarian school, of which he was so distinguished an ornament, have, in presence of his tomb, not only forgotten all narrowness, but suppressed their antagonism. Even the mere critic, the literary critic, has seemed to forget his craft. The only exception to this last remark that we have been able to discover is the Spectator. This journal alone has so far preserved its calmness, and has been so sternly true to its vocation, as to criticise with rigid fidelity the poetry of the Christian Year, and to attempt to enforce discrimination in the praise which is accorded to that volume.

There must have been very special reasons to account for so universal an admiration and tenderness for a man of extreme opinions. Nothing could exceed the bitterness of his friend, pupil, and protégé, Froude, towards everything Protestant; he did not scruple to profess that he "hated the Reformation;" he poured contempt on its most illustrious names; he abominated Puritanism; he reserved his utmost scorn and antipathy for "irreverent Dissenters." Of such a man, Keble was the tutor, the patron, the friend, and finally, the posthumous editor of certain "Remains," which Dr. Arnold characterised as especially remarkable for their "extraordinary impudence," particularly as shown in the style in which he, "a young man" and an English clergyman, "reviled " all the men most highly honoured by the Church of England. And yet Protestants, Puritans, and Dissenters, have agreed to canonize Mr. Keble. Newman, again, as the most active leader of the Anglo-Catholic party at Oxford, and especially as the writer of certain tracts, of which Tract XC. was the last and the most thoroughly offensive to the Protestant feeling and the plain honesty of the English nation, brought upon himself the indignation of nearly all England; being