be found inside the churches.  In every church here, and there are 366 of them, some score or two of masses are said daily at the different altars.  The pay for performing a mass varies from a “Paul” to a “Scudo;” that is, in round numbers, from sixpence to a crown.  The “good” masses, those paid for by private persons for the souls of their relatives, are naturally reserved for the priests connected with the particular church; while the poor ones, which are paid for out of the funds of the church, are given to any priest who happens to apply for them.  So somehow or other, what with a mass or two a day, or by private tuition, or by charitable assistance, or in some cases by small handicrafts conducted secretly, the large floating population of unemployed priests rub on from day to day, in the hope of getting ultimately some piece of ecclesiastical patronage.  Yet the distress and want amongst them are often pitiable, and, in fact, amongst the many sufferers from the artificial preponderance given to the priesthood by the Papal system, the poorer class of priests are not among the least or lightest.

The nobility as a body are sure to be more or less supporters of the established order of things.  Their interests too are very much mixed up with those of the Papacy.  There is not a noble Roman family which has not one or more of its members among the higher ranks of the priesthood, and to a considerable degree their distinctions, such as they are, and their temporal prospects are bound up with the Popedom.  Moreover, in this rank of the social scale the private and personal influence of the priests, through the women of the family, is very powerful.  The more active, however, and ambitious amongst the aristocracy feel deeply the exclusion from public life, the absence of any opening for ambition, and the gradual impoverishment of their property, which are the necessary evils of an absolute ecclesiastical government.

The “Bourgeoisie” stand on a very different footing.  They have neither the moral influence of the priesthood nor the material wealth of the nobility to console them for the loss of liberty; they form indeed the “Pariahs” of Roman society.  “In other countries,” a Roman once said to me, “you have one man who lives in wealth and a thousand who live in comfort.  Here the one man lives in comfort, and the thousand live in misery.”  I believe this picture is only too true.  The middle classes, who live by trade or mental labour, must have a hard time of it.  The professions of Rome are overstocked and underpaid.  The large class of government officials or “impiegati,” to whom admirers of the Papacy point with such pride as evidence of the secular character of the administration, are paid on the most niggardly scale; while all the lucrative and influential posts are reserved for the priestly administrators.  The avowed venality of the courts of justice is a proof that lawyers are too poorly remunerated to find honesty their best