This basic condition is the propensity of indolent young men, sons of impoverished families of quality, sickly youths unfit for more strenuous pursuits, and designing and ambitious students, to turn to the priesthood as affording them the prospect of a lifelong “soft snap.” They do this, and are supported in it by their families, without the slightest regard, as a rule, to any truly religious considerations whatever. Italy is greatly overcrowded. Opportunities to rise in life are very few indeed. The man is fortunate who can hold what his father attained. England has suffered and is suffering from the incompetence of those younger sons of good families who have turned to the church, army, and similar professions. In Italy the diversity of pursuits is still smaller than in England, and the candidates far greater in number, while the examples of Italian priests who have risen to bishoprics, archbishoprics, the cardinal’s hat, and even the pontifical chair are so constantly before them, that men who are really fitted by nature and fibre for the priesthood are crowded out to make way for those who are unfit and never become fit. Rome, more than all other cities, sees them in the early stages of their evil progress, and they take on cant, hypocrisy, and prejudice there which, mingled with unscrupulousness, and often with vicious propensities, make them a cloaked harass indeed to the poor people of the parishes in which they are later established. In the villages of the provinces where the people are poorly educated, the priests have nearly an absolute control of local affairs. I do not mean in any way that pertains to the business of the commune or as to its officials, or the proceedings of law, but the deeper current of life. A newly established school will thrive or fail just as the village priests favor it or inveigh against it. The holidays are the feast days of the patron saints, and it depends upon the priests whether these days are mere occasions for bearing a painted and carved figure of a saint through the streets to be loaded with gifts of money and valuables by the populace, or whether they shall be made occasions of relaxation and communal development to the people. A very great deal of letter-writing is done by the priests for illiterate parishioners, so that much of the correspondence between emigrants in America and relatives at home passes through the priests’ hands. Not infrequently priests are money-lenders and take their usury just as might the veriest Shylock, only that their loan is a “charitable advance to an unfortunate parishioner.” An interesting incident of this sort of thing happened at Velletri. An old priest of one of the churches of the town had two brothers for parishioners who desired to emigrate to America. One was named Giuseppe and the other Giacomo. They had barely money enough for one passage, though Giuseppe had a tiny bit of property. Both had borrowed money of