The-papacy-its-history-dogmas-genius-and-prospects-wylie

;4SGINFLUENCE OF POPERY ON NATIONS.gazing, and which under the sway of the Moorish kingswas the garden of Europe, possesses every variety of climate,vast beds of minerals, while its soil is covered with thecereals of the north, interspersed with the cotton and riceplants, the sugar-cane, the mulberry, and the vine. " Thiscountry," he will exclaim, " nature clearly formed to be theseat of a great and powerful kingdom." And such Spainonce was ; and such it would have been to this day, but forits Popery,Ages of bigotry and of the reign of the Inquisitionaccomplished at last the utter demoralization of thepeople ;and now Spain, despite her natural wealth and herhistoric renown, has sunk to the lowest depth of nationalinfamy. Of political weight she is utterly bereft. How seldomis her wheat, or her wool, or her silk, met with in themarket !Abroad her name has long ceased to be honouredat home she presents a spectacle of universal corruptionand decay,—an exchequer bankrupt, a soil half-tilled, harbourswithout ships, highways without passengers or traffic,and villages and towns partially deserted and falling intoruin.From Spain we pass into Italy. The nearer we come tothe centre and seat of the Papacy, we find the darkness thedeeper, and the desolation and ruin, moral and physical, themore gigantic and appalling. Than Italy the world holdsnot a prouder or fairer realm ; but, alas ! we may say withthe traveller, when he first surveyed its beauty from thepassed of the Alps, " the devil has again entered paradise."How much has the Papacy cost Italy ! Her arts, her letters,her empire, her commerce, her domestic peace, thespirit and genius of her sons. Nay, not utterly extinct arethe last, though sorely crushed and overborne ; and now,after twelve centuries of oppression, giving promise to theworld that they willyet revive, and flourish anew upon theruins of the system which has so long enthralled them.Here is Lombardy, " story ful and golden ." its sunny plainsstretching away in their fertility, with corn and wine eternallyspringing up from them : yet the Lombards, the mer-