"A traveller passing through Genoa, and visiting the churches, particularly on a feast-day, would fancy that the Genoese, or, indeed, the Catholics in Sardinia generally, are the most devoted Catholics in Italy. Many have gone away with that impression. The reason is this. All who attend the churches in Genoa do so from choice,--from religious motives; and even feel, in these days of heresy, that they are wearing the martyr's crown,--standing firmly for the true Church, while all without are scoffers; whereas in the Tuscan, Roman, and Neapolitan States, people attend church from compulsion. If they are not in church on certain days, and at mass, they are immediately suspected. I believe the male population of Italy is one moving mass of infidelity. Sardinia is professedly so. In Genoa not one young man in a hundred attends church. If you see him there, it is to select a pretty woman for his own purposes. Morality is at a very low ebb,--lower far than you can have any idea of. Every man is sighing after his neighbour's wife; and he confesses it, and talks as gallantly of his conquest as if he had fought on the heights of Alma. A stranger walking the streets in the evening would not suppose this, for he would not be attacked, as in a town in Britain; but they have their dens, and licensed ones too. Shocking as it may appear, these houses are regularly licensed by the Government; and medical men visit them once every week for sanitary purposes. The defilement of the marriage-bed is little or nothing thought of. Marriage here is generally a money speculation, and is very frequently brought about through means of regular brokers or agents, who receive a per centage on the bride's dowry. A woman without a pretty good dowry has very little chance of a husband, unless she is young and very pretty, and willing to accept an old man. There are very few women in Geymonat's congregation. The converts are nearly all men."