These were certainly vigorous specimens of satiric art, and increase both our wonder and our regret at the mental degradation of the beautiful countries of Southern Europe. They increase our wonder, I say, because the ascendency of priests in a nation is more an effect than a cause of degeneracy. When the canker-worm takes possession of a New England orchard, and devours every germ and green leaf, covering all the trees with loathsome blight, it is not because the canker-worm there is more vigorous or deadly than on the next farm, but because the soil of the blasted orchard is wanting in some ingredient or condition needful for the vigorous life of fruit-trees. It is not priests, beggars, and banditti that _make_ Mexico, Peru, Italy, and Spain what we find them. Priests, beggars, and banditti are but the vermin whose natural prey is a low moral and mental life; and hence the wonder that Italy, so long a prey to such, should still produce originating minds. Other caricatures in _Il Don Pirlone_ were remarkable. The alliance between Austria and France in May, 1849, suggested a picture called "A Secret Marriage," which was also a church scene, the altar bearing the words "_Ad minorem Dei gloriam_" ("To the _lesser_ glory of God"), a parody of the words adopted by the Inquisition, "_Ad majorem Dei gloriam_." The Pope is marrying the bridal pair, who kneel at a desk--the groom, a French officer with a cock's head, and for a crest an imperial crown; the bride, a woman with long robes, and on her head the Austrian double eagle. Upon the desk are an axe, a whip, a skull, and crossbones. [Illustration: Bomba at Supper. Effect of Impressions. (From _Il Don Pirlone_, Rome, May, 1849.)] Mr. Norton describes another, called the "Wandering Jew." "Flying to the verge of Europe, where the Atlantic washes the shores of Portugal, is seen the tall figure of the unhappy Carlo Alberto, driven by skeleton ghosts, over whose heads shine stars with the dates 1821, 1831, 1848. In the midst of the sky, before the fugitive, are the flaming words '_A Carignano Maledizione Eterna!_' ('Cursed be Carignano forever!') to which a hand, issuing from the clouds, points with extended forefinger. The grim and threatening skeletons, the ghosts of those whom Carignano had betrayed, the tormented look of the flying king, the malediction in the heavens, the solitude of the earth and the sea, display a concentrated power of imagination rare in art."