“We have no wish to draw any excessive or unjust inferences from this strange occurrence, which seems to belong, not only to another country, but to another age; but _it exhibits an awful picture of what the uncontrolled power of the Romish clergy may still dare to effect, and a humiliating example of a government, which has allowed the ties of private right and public law to be broken asunder_, because it is itself a victim to the worst form of bigotry, and the most servile subjection to spiritual oppression!” Rome must be regarded as the fountain of the papal Catholicism. In that metropolis is concentrated the wisdom, the authority, and the perfection of that system, which has been established by the pretended “Vicar of Christ.” We are bound, therefore, to examine the institutions of him who is entitled “His Holiness,” and worshipped under the designation of “Most Holy Father!” Nunneries abound in Rome; but they are, in reality, so many prisons, and most of them appear to be governed by the most intolerant rules, framed under the authority of the Inquisition, and administered in its spirit, as testified by the most respectable writers. Perhaps no one will be esteemed more worthy of credit than the Rev. M. Hobart Seymour, M.A., a clergyman of the highest reputation in the church of England. In his “Pilgrimage to Rome,” written after his visit to that city, at the close of 1844, and in the early part of 1845, he testifies concerning the condition and character of society among the Romans, as shall be quoted from his instructive volume. Regarding the city of Rome itself, he declares, “Although the hotels are admirable, the best of them being under the management of foreigners, every species of filth and every kind of odour greet the visitant on his entrance among the streets of this city of the church. For filth, for odours, for indecency, for all that is offensive to the eye, to the feelings, to the habits of a cleanly and orderly people, the city of Rome surpasses almost any city in the world!”--Pp. 139. In testifying concerning the Roman convents, he says, “The subject of monasteries, as nunneries are called in Italy, is beset with considerable difficulties. The conclusion at which we have arrived, after all the information we could obtain, is this:--that however unmixed the evils of such a system may seem--however inexcusable and unredeemable in France or England, in Germany or Switzerland,--the establishment of monasteries in Italy bears a different complexion; not, indeed, from anything in the nature or conduct of such establishments themselves, but from the state of society in Italy.