"Savoy, like the greater part of Italy, is more picturesque than rich. Turin is a beautiful city. The church at Milan, which is far from being completed, needs not, in my opinion, yield to any, in point of art. It is the most wonderful mass of marble which skilled hands have ever raised. It contains an under­ground church, where rests the body of my Holy Patron, the great Charles Borromeo. I had the happiness of seeing the crystal repository in which it lies arrayed in pontifical garments, and I also visited the palace where he was born. Parma, Plaisance, and Modena have left me no impressions with which I care to remember. Loretto, in the Pontifical States, through which the easiest, if not the shortest way to Rome led me, is a poor place, and would have nothing to detain the traveler, were it not for the grand and touching devotion  p296 to the miraculous statue of the Blessed Virgin enthroned in the beautiful church which shelters the holy House of Nazareth.

"Three days and a half travelling took me from Loretto to Rome. The antique and remarkable monuments which I saw on my way, and of which writers say so much, did not make upon me the impression which travelers usually describe as produced upon them. They are remarkable curiosities, merely because they are old. Writers tell us that they are the works of men who surpassed us in art and genius; but paganism shows in them its stupidity, immodesty, and cruelty, whilst it exhibits but few signs of civilization, courage, and humanity.

"There are many cities on the way, but few rural villages; hence the road is a solitary one. The houses, covered with a kind of half-round tiles, are built of stone, ugly outside, and dirty inside; in fact, they are filthy and uncomfortable. As soon as you come within French territory, and until you arrive at Rome, every thing partakes of that common uncleanliness, and the churches are not free from it. The roads are, generally speaking, broad and good; all along we notice the works which Napoleon erected with our money for his own ends; some are praiseworthy, others will last only as long as the Emperor himself. Porticos, columns, and obelisks which recount his ruinous victories, and which are now falling under the revengeful hammer of the nations, are about the only compensation  p297 he left for the extensive devastation and ruin of all the beautiful, artistic, and precious, which Church and State had worked out with so much perseverance and trouble in past centuries.

"Inns are few; the relays are almost the only ones, always expensive and seldom good.​a The landlord and lady are rarely polite, and leave the reception of travelers to a clerk, who troubles himself very little about the comfort of the guest. As soon as you leave Flanders and the environs of Paris, the land becomes poorer; there is hardly as much good soil from Paris to Rome, as there is in the region of Alost. Compared to ours, farm work here is child's play, and experience has taught me the truth of what an Englishman whom I met on my travels said to me: 'When you have travelled through Belgium, you may stop all inquiries about agriculture.' Land, cattle, and people bear testimony to the soundness of that remark. No wonder, then, that the nations love so well to fight on that lovely spot, and always quarrel for its mastery. They laugh at us and scorn us; but the fox also thought the grapes sour — when he could not reach them.

"The examination of passports and trunks at the several custom-houses takes up much valuable time; and here, as well as in the hotels, the officials look for the little contribution, called la bonne main in France, and la bona manu in Italy. These everlasting gratuities, together with the alms-givings, amount, in the end, to quite a sum.  p298 Were I to travel the same road again, I would undoubtedly, if I could, procure one or two companions, hire a coach from Brussels, or at least from Paris, through to Rome. For a person in my position, there is many a reason for following such a course. My present journey and a six weeks' stay in Rome can hardly be undertaken with less than four hundred louis.

"With regard to the famous capital of the world, I here give you my impressions in a few words:

"The antiquities, works of art, extent of the city, and manners of the people, although new and strange to me, can not command my admiration; but one can not but be filled with respect and veneration, when turning his attention to the treasures of christian art. The remaining temples with their antique columns crumbling to pieces under the weight of time; with their mutilated idols and obscene representations, the shame and degradation of the fallen human race — the marvelous and famous public buildings, houses, and palaces of the conquerors of nations, to‑day in ruins and hardly recognizable without the guide book which contains a list of all that pagan Rome once possessed — all those great beings: famous conquerors and far-famed wise men, that horrible assemblage of great and small, good and evil, rich and poor, which gave the law to the three parts of the then known world; above all, that long roll of crowned monsters, who for the first three hundred years waged war  p299 against the God and Founder of the catholic church and against a multitude of martyrs, and whose memory is well-nigh obliterated or barely traceable upon a piece of fallen wall, a pillar crumbled into dust, a dilapidated turret, a half arch of a ruined bridge, a broken vault under which no tourist dare venture — all these things, I say, once so great and admirable, now so little and despicable, made but a weak impression upon me; for they spoke only of what is said here and everywhere, and what St. Teresa expresses so well with a 'tout passe;' every thing earthly passes away.

"But when, from the old and pagan Rome, I turned my eyes to the new and catholic Rome, I felt something difficult to express in words. Instead of all these fallen thrones, these triumphant chariots, these armies of thousands loaded down with the spoils of nations brought to beggary and slavery — instead of all these, I beheld on Holy Thursday, high up on the balcony of St. Peter's church, the most magnificent building of the world, a most amiable and modest old man, with virtue depicted on his countenance and love divine in his heart; stronger alone and without arms, than Napoleon himself with his legions and his free-mason lodges; the successor of Peter; the Father of the christians; carried on the shoulders of picked Roman youths, having no other noise around him but the ringing of religious joy; receiving no expressions of respect and veneration but such as  p300 are ultimately directed to the one true and living God; distributing no gifts but out of the treasury, the keys of which are intrusted to him by that Sovereign Lord, who, without doing injury to any one, gathered his riches at his own expense — at the price of his blood, for the good of all! Here, I beheld the crowned heads of Spain and Etruria, surrounded by great dignitaries and foreigners from all lands and nations, bending low under the blessing hand of the Pontiff; and cheerfully and willingly did they do so. Protestants and infidels themselves could but behave with respect on that solemn occasion; and, if they do not love our Holy Father in their hearts, they are nevertheless forced to acknowledge to their friends that Pius VII truly wields in Rome the power of Pope, of Father — father above all, of universal father of all christians, and is truly clothed with supreme power over all the catholics of the earth, right here in Rome. In Rome, I say, where paganism gathered in all its strength, and disputed for three hundred years with catholicity the mastery of the world, to its utter ruin and confusion! In Rome, the object of the hatred and calumnies of all the branches of error, we behold the successor of the poor fisherman, who, in that same Rome, was crucified with his head downward by the pagans, borne in triumph over the ashes of prostrated paganism and of the foolish wisdom of the ancients. And, notwithstanding the jealousy which schism, heresy, and atheism  p301 with all its brood, cause to rage in their breasts, the unbelievers are struck with amazement, and unwillingly acknowledge that the representative of a God crucified — the Pope of Rome — making the sign of the cross avoid the admiring multitude, rules, by the motion of his hand, over the city and the world, over the bodies and souls of the numberless peoples of this and distant lands. Kneeling among thousands in the grand plaza in front of St. Peter's balcony on that Holy Thursday, amidst the din of vibrating bells, cannon, and music, I can not express the feeling which that solemn night awoke in my heart. 'Where,' I asked of myself, 'are those Roman consuls, those Emperors and Kings — all those powerful and dreaded men?' I seek them in vain; nothing is left of them. . . . And who is the object of all this respect, of this display of the magnificence in the Imperial City? Pius VII, the Pope of Rome; the Pope alone. . . . But he is the Antichrist, the leader of superstition, clamor heretics and Jews! He is a tyrant and usurper in the Church of God of a power which does not belong to him, growl Schismatics! He is an adorer of new Gods, the idol and personification of fanaticism — the corypheus of the rabble, mildly assent the Illuminati clubs and lodges! Indeed! Look around you: here is a Bishop from Armenia; there a prelate from Switzerland; yonder a fanatic from Constantinople; further on a stoic Englishman and a cool-headed American; in  p302 fact, men of all lands, nations, and climes. None is out of his wits; none is drunk; none in fanatic convulsions; and yet all are absorbed in respectful contemplation, and look as transfixed upon the appearance of Pius. . . . More was not needed to appreciate, at their full value, the slanderous epithets so liberally thrown at the head of our church by this 'Generation of Vipers.' I received the blessing of the Father of christians, as the missionary to, and the representative of, a great country in the New World, where I will give an account to my catholic brethren of all these touching events. . . .

"Rome is, in the literal sense of the word, a repository of religious monuments; every street, in and outside of the walls, is filled with them, and it would take years to examine them in detail. The one that has made the most lasting impression upon me, is the wonderful church of St. Peter, where I had the happiness of offering the unbloody Sacrifice of the Mass over the bodies of St. Peter and Paul, in the under­ground chapel. The whole world universally acknowledges that this building is the master-piece of man's genius and skill, that art and invention have here exhausted themselves on this ne plus ultra of grandeur and beauty. Next in beauty ranks the richly adorned Sancta Maria Maggiore, or Our Lady of Snow, where I also said Mass in a chapel under ground, before the Crib in which lay our Saviour. Sta. Maria Rotunda, so‑called because the church is built in a round  p303 shape, is the Pantheon of the old Romans — that is, the repository of all the false gods of unhappy paganism. Here was the seat of error; with reason, then, did Divine Providence enthrone in its place that truth which is to abide forever. The church of the Portuguese​a is small; but is a gem of beauty and riches.

"I pass over many beautiful churches, palaces, (the variation and other magnificent buildings), aqueducts, fountains, amphitheaters, columns, etc., etc. Among the latter the Colonna Trajana is a noteworthy one: it is surmounted by a statue of St. Paul,​b the Apostle beheaded by the sword at the hands of men eager for honors, money, and blood, which says to the looker-on: 'So is he exalted who humbles himself for Christ and his doctrine.' The catacombs, under­ground burying-places, where by the flickering light of a lamp the guide points out to you the hollow places in which the bodies of the great confessors and martyrs were deposited; where the followers of Christ, to escape the wrath of the tyrants, hid themselves with their Popes and priests, and celebrated the divine mysteries, are full of touching remembrances. Convents, colleges, libraries, hospitals, academies, museums, where I admired especially the instruments of torture invented to test the fortitude of Martyrs, and in consequence the truth of our religion, all these furnish abundant material for the curiosity and piety of the traveler, and too much to occupy ourselves any longer with them.

 p304  "I will now tell you, in a few words, how I fared in Rome. I arrived there on Thursday before Passion Week. A congregation of Cardinals was held at the Propaganda the next Monday, and it pleased the Lord that the business, the documents of which I had sent last year from Kentucky, was just brought before it for solution. After the session, I had the honor of an interview with one of the Cardinals, who was so kind as to assure me that the congregation of the Propaganda was well pleased with our new institution, the 'Friends of Mary at the Foot of the Cross,' and had taken it under its special protection. They conceded to it all the favors and privileges attached to the Institution of the Seven Dolors, established in the city of Rome. He assured me that the difficulties and questions submitted to the Congregation would be answered soon, that my work was approved of, and that all the documents would reach me in Belgium in time for me to set out for America before Winter. That was as much as I could wish.

"I remained in Rome about six weeks longer, and had the happiness of seeing some Cardinals, who received me with the utmost kindness, notwithstanding my poor clothes and less inviting exterior."

"During my stay in Rome," he continues, "I was told that the College of the Propaganda had no subjects to send to our regions; that there was question of erecting a new diocese in Upper Louisiana, at St. Louis, Illinois Territory; that the Coadjutor, Bishop Neale, had succeeded Archbishop Carroll in the See of Baltimore; that the very worthy Mr. Maréchal, professor at the Seminary of Baltimore, was appointed to the Episcopal See of Philadelphia, etc.

"I was present at the grand ceremonies of Easter Sunday in the cathedral church of the world. On the 1st of May, at eight P.M., I was,  p306 together with three other gentlemen, introduced to the Holy Father by a Prelate. We had a most friendly audience, and, after the three others had received the marks of a fatherly affection, I myself was favored at his feet with his Apostolical Benediction and other tokens of tenderness."