Santo Uffizio, its spies and helpers throughout the country, who are as privileged as in the days of Philip II. If another court gets hold of the "people" of the inquisitor-general, he claims them. The inquisition watches carefully whether the faithful go to mass and do not eat meat on fast-days. Any neglect is punished with imprisonment, even with the galleys. The general edict of the high inquisitor of Ancona, dated August 8, 1856, fulminates against magicians, witches, meat-eaters, and such-like criminals. The edict of the inquisition in 1843 especially affected the Jews, heightened the penal restrictions connected with the Ghetto, forced Israelites to sell their property, and forbade them all friendship with Christians. The history of young Mortara is world renowned, but we consider the following case far more odious: a Jew at Cento, of the name of Radova, had a very pretty wife, whom a Christian seduced, converted, and married. The Catholic Church declared the second marriage valid, the first concubinage: even more, the grand inquisitor compelled the unlucky Jew to pay alimony to the Christian couple. The Christian physicians are forced by the inquisition, when summoned to Jewish patients, first to try conversion, and then relieve them. If the patient repulses his clerical salvation, the doctor may let him go to the deuce his own road.

With such an administration and justice, we can easily form an idea of the financial condition of the country. The Roman finances are the most extraordinary hocus-pocus in the civilised world: all mandates, pastorals, great and lesser excommunications, avail them nothing. The Jew must be converted before he is cured; but the Papal States must be annually cured by Jews, because they will not be converted to a decent system of book-keeping. The Jew is secretly christened and abstracted from his father and mother, but the prelate creeps with equal secrecy to the Jew to pledge him a pound of Papal flesh. Usury is most strictly prohibited by the Catholic Church, yet the Holy Father at Rome pays the most exorbitant interest, just like the Pope of Islamism at Constantinople.

Pio Nono's short-lived enthusiasm had, at any rate, the advantage of raising the lid of the empty exchequer. In the Consulta of 1847, Morichini, the minister of finances, declared that since 1828 not a single year had passed without a deficit. Angelo Galli, his successor, explained this by saying that the accounts were never properly closed; but, in spite of a frightful augmentation of taxation, every new budget displays a deficit of at least 10,000,000 francs, to which we must add a running debt of 100,000,000 francs. The last Austrian occupation of the Legations alone cost 40,000,000 francs, while France takes her payment in influence and evvivas-when she can get them.

M. de Rayneval especially praised the small amount of the Papal civil list-"3,220,000 francs: this insignificant sum is all the Papacy demands from the revenues of the country for the maintenance of its dignity and the machinery of the supreme clerical government." Revenues of the country! this is surely an open acknowledgment that the Papal States belong body and soul to Catholic Christianity. Just as the slaves in the United States grow rice, tobacco, and cotton for the free republican planters, and set the English factories in motion, so the Roman subjects toil in the sweat of their brow to maintain the machinery of the supreme

government for the 139,000,000 Catholic Christians existing on the globe. But we must not forget that 27,000,000 more francs are derived annually from the benefices in the Papal States, and applied to the same purpose as the other 3,000,000 francs. The Pope's journey to Loretto, in 1856, may be reckoned at 300,000 scudi at least, or 1,300,000 francs, or more than one-third of the whole civil list for pope, cardinals, and nuncios. Whatever our opinion of the vacillating policy of the Tuileries as to Central Italy may be, we cannot refrain from considering the idea of a civil list for the Pope, paid by all the true believers, and thus relieving the inhabitants of the Papal States, very just: 30,000,000 francs divided among 140,000,000 Catholics would amount to about twopence per head. For this amount 3,000,000 Catholic citizens, who, after all, are human beings, would be enabled at length to breathe freely.

Any covering of the Roman deficit, which at the present time must be augmented by the smuggling in of Austrian soldiers, is hardly imaginable. Increased taxation is impossible; while an impost on those who possess the revenues of the country, and who ought to pay pro rata for the security afforded them, cannot be carried out. The Pope has nothing, while the rich clergy or religious communities, which have a great deal, protest most violently against anything that resembles an income tax: indeed, they claim exemption. If the Pope attempted to treat his people fairly, they would rebel against him and become Mazzinists to a man. "Le Pape règne mais ne gouverne pas ;" but the means of making the responsible persons really so have not yet been discovered. About tells us that Cardinal Antonelli comes from the robber-nest of Sonnino, and any number of editions have made the fact known to the world. But the citizen of Sonnino holds the Pope captive, and if it were not Antonelli, it would be another, for the principle of the temporal power of the popes also emanates from Sonnino.

Monseigneur Dupanloup, the academic Bishop of Orleans, exclaimed, in his Ultramontane zeal, "Leave his people to the Pope, and the Pope to his people." We do not answer him as most of the French do, "Very good; let us do that, and we shall see. Withdraw the French army of occupation from Rome, and leave the Pope to trust in the affection of his subjects." We say, on the contrary, the Pope does not belong to his people but to Catholic Christianity, and even if his people imagined for a moment that they belonged to the sovereign lord of the Papal States, they would be startled at the notion that they were also the property of one hundred and thirty-nine million true believers.

All over the world people are praying for the preservation of the Pope in his temporal power, and, in the mean while, faith is disappearing from Italy. The temporal power has produced more heretics than all the heresiarchs and reformers combined. Machiavelli told us that "in Rome the least belief exists;" Luther translated it into German, "Rome is a cesspool of sin;" while Goethe found the Eternal City utterly pagan. When, in 1849, the elections to the Roman Constituante were preparing, the Pope, then at Gaëta, threatened every participator with excommunication. The threat was made known through the press, and from the pulpit, and every Roman knew what he risked. The republicans did all in their power to propagate the bull, and of about half a million of voters

three hundred and forty-three thousand proceeded to the electoral urns, shouting, "Viva la scommunica!" The political victims, at a later date, obstinately refused the consolations of religion: as the official report tells us, “Tutti recusarono ostinamente i soccorsi della religione." In this fearful struggle between religion and liberty, many priests, desperately, but heroically, joined the cause of the latter. The excommunication was suspended over them, but they conspired against the Pope, and evidenced their deep convictions even on the gallows of Mantua, blessing in their dying moments their future fatherland.

Gioberti, who too long dreamed of the renovation of Italy through the papacy, recalled his error from his asylum in Paris, and brought forward three propositions, not one of which is based on the papacy: Restoration of intellect to its natural supremacy, reconstitution of nationalities, and emancipation of the masses. He even announced a religious regeneration, "by virtue of the return to primitive Christianity, as described in the sacred books."

It is not, however, our present object to discuss the future of Italy, but we think we have proved our position, that the Pope is the great obstacle to the settlement of the Italian question, and the sooner his temporal power is taken from him, the greater chance there is of the peace of Europe enduring. We have not touched on the social aspects of the temporal supremacy, as these were fully discussed in these pages a short time back in a notice of About's "Rome Contemporaine." Those, however, of our readers who desire to make themselves conversant with the present state of the Eternal City, we recommend to Dicey's "Rome in 1860," which, though not written with the pungency and vivacity of About, affords ample internal testimony of its authenticity.

Since this article was written, we have been pleased to see our views so fully confirmed by the remarkable debate in the House of Lords, in which all parties coalesced to condemn the temporal power of the Popes. The "brass band" are silent; they seem to accept the situation passively, and although the priest party in Paris are deluging the press with violent and slightly blasphemous pamphlets, it is easy to see that it is the last despairing effort of a faction which sees defeat hurrying on with rapid strides, and knows that the end is drawing nigh. The Pope, if he be wise, has still the opportunity of effecting a compromise and retiring with dignity; but he has no time to lose if he would save himself from a ridiculous downfal. If, however, he continue to defy public opinion, he may be left suddenly to his fate, and in that case not even the proffered Rome and a cabbage-garden will remain to him.

May-VOL. CXXII. NO. CCCCLXXXV.

Q

THE NIYAM-NAMS.*

DR. BEKE, the Abyssinian traveller, has remarked in his excellent work on the sources of the Nile, that ever since the time of the wellknown Alexandrian geographer, Claudius Ptolemy, the sources of the Nile in the Mountains of the Moon, with their snows, lakes, and cannibals, have been prominent and established features of African geography. The idea of those mountains seems, indeed, to be inseparable from that of the Niyam-Nam, and other monsters, with which fancy has peopled them. Every traveller in Africa who may inquire after the sources of the Nile, is sure to be told, in almost the same breath, of the Mountains of the Moon and their ferocious inhabitants.

A striking instance of this inveterate complex idea is given in M. Werne's account of the second Turco-Egyptian expedition to discover the source of the Nile. As the boats of the expedition rounded the point of Khartum, and slowly sailed into the White River, their crews heard the last shrill farewell cry of the women, many of whom with both hands swung their cloths backwards and forwards over their heads, as customary at funerals, thereby intimating their anticipation that their friends could never return, but would fall a prey to the man-eaters. "This," says M. Werne, "made most of our party laugh; especially my men, who flattered themselves they had just as good teeth as the NiyamNiyam, so much dreaded by many, and particularly by the well-fed Egyptians, but whose country no one is able to point out."

So also with Mr. Petherick when first advancing south from the great Lake of Gazelles, but which should rather be called that of the Hippopotami, and in the country of the ill-disposed and brutal Wadj-kuing. In reply to his inquiries with reference to the distance and habits of the next tribe, he says he could glean nothing but the most absurd accounts. "An old negro, stated to have been a great traveller, was sent for, and told me that with a great deal of address he had, as a trader, penetrated the territories of a great number of tribes lying south. The first of these, at the distance of some months' travel, he found to be men like themselves, but exceedingly savage in their dispositions, and who, like myself, could kill people at great distances; but, unlike the iron I had attached to a piece of wood, their arms were bows and arrows, it being impossible to extricate the latter when once inserted. Further on, the people were possessed of four eyes-two in front and two behind-and consequently they could walk backwards as well as forwards. The tribe adjoining them frightened him out of his wits: their eyes, instead of being in their heads, were placed under their armpits, so that when they wished to see it was necessary to raise the arm. Feeling uncomfortable amongst them, he proceeded still farther south. He found there people with faces similar to monkeys, and tails a yard long. And the last tribe he visited, after years of travel, were dwarfs, whose ears reached to the ground, and

Egypt, the Soudan and Central Africa, with Explorations from Khartoum on the White Nile to the Regions of the Equator; being Sketches from Sixteen Years' Travel. By John Petherick, F.R.G.S., her Britannic Majesty's Consul for the Soudan. William Blackwood and Sons.

were so wide, that when they lay down one served as a mattress and the other for a covering. He wound up by impressing upon me the danger of proceeding amongst such barbarous hordes."

The tradition of the caudate races of men, or men with tails, inhabiting the unexplored regions of Central Africa, although having its origin either in the Gorillas or the Dokos, described by Krapf as dwelling in the sultry and humid bamboo woods south of Kaffa and Susa, and which has been credited in modern times by the French consul of Jiddah, who wrote a pamphlet upon the subject, noticed some years back in our pages, has been almost uniformly associated with the Niyam-Namsa race of whom Dr. Beke wrote only a year ago. "The country of the Niyam-Niyam and the Mountains of the Moon have no settled place in native African geography, no one appearing to have any idea of where they are to be looked for, except by ascending the Nile to its sources, wherever those sources may happen to be."

To the honour of Great Britain, however, we have here a traveller who has actually visited the country of the Niyam-Nams, and been among its supposed fabulous inhabitants. It is true he did not advance beyond the frontier of their country, but he entered upon their lands, dwelt in their villages, and was in communication with the people whom he found residing on the great south-western tributary to the Lake of Gazelles. The White Nile, in fact, appears beyond this great reservoir to be fed by branches as numerous as the fingers of the hand. The most easterly is the Sobat; then comes the Tu-Bari, hitherto looked upon as the true White Nile; next the Niyam, or Nam-the river of the Niyam-Niyams; then the Jur; and lastly, or most westerly, the river of Gazelles. It still remains to be shown which constitutes the most remote source of the Nile, but the Niyam-Nam would remain at or about the regions in which tradition has ever placed them (while it surrounded these hitherto inaccessible persons with all sorts of absurd fables and fancies), that is to say, at the head waters, and at or about the far-famed sources of the Nile.

Mr. Petherick's experiences in Egypt, it is to be remarked, comprise many very amusing and highly characteristic labours, carried on under the auspices of the late viceroy in search of coal amid recent deposits (!) and French rivalry; a visit to Mount Sinai and Arabia Petræa; sketches of Cossier and Upper Egypt; excursions in Sudan and Kurdufan, with residence at Khartum ; a first trip up the White Nile, with an account of the Hassanyeh, and some ostrich hunting, and wanderings amid the Dar Hamr; a second trading voyage up the White Nile by the country of the Shillukhs to the Lake of the Gazelles; and a third, fourth, and fifth voyage, the fourth of which was characterised by the discovery of Kyt Island, and a first visit to the Jur and the Dur tribes; and the fifth by a still farther southerly extension of our traveller's explorations past the country of the Jur and Dur tribes to the confines of those of the NiyamNam, or Neam-Nam, as he calls them.

It is manifest, then, with the exception of the racy anecdotes associated with life in the Lower Egypt, and which are only new phases of an oftrepeated story, all that is really new, adventurous, and interesting, as well as all that is important in a geographical point of view, attaches itself to the exploration of the White Nile and its tributaries, of the wondrous. Bahr-el-Ghazal, or Gazelle Lake, and its islands, and of the previously