“The perfect harmony with which the entire system works is unparalleled in the civil, religious, or political annals of the world.  A complete espionage is exercised in papal countries, from the Adriatic to the Californian gulf.  And the greater portion of this is accomplished by means of the confessional.  The Superior at Rome can become, at pleasure, as perfectly conversant with your domestic arrangements, and the thousand incidents which daily occur, as you or I, who are cognizant of them.  To what is all this tending?  Ah, Florry, look at the blood-stained records of the past.  The voices of slaughtered thousands, borne to us across the waste of centuries, bid us remember the Duke of Alva, the Albigensian crusade, the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the blazes of Smithfield.  Ignatius Loyola! happy would it have been for millions lost, and millions yet to be, hadst thou perished at the siege of Pampeluna.  Florry, contrast Italy and Germany, Spain and Scotland, and look at Portugal, and South America, and Mexico, and oh, look at this benighted town!  A fairer spot by nature the face of earth cannot boast; yet mark the sloth, the penury, the degradation of its people, the misery that prevails.  And why?  Because they languish under the iron rule of the papal see—­iron, because it admits of no modification.  Entire supremacy over both body and soul, or total annihilation of their power.  May the time speedily come when they shall spurn their oppressors, and trample their yoke in the dust, as their transatlantic brethren will ultimately do.  Oh, Florry, does not your heart yearn toward benighted Italy?  Italy, once so beautiful and noble—­once the acknowledged mistress of the world, as she sat in royal magnificence enthroned on her seven hills; now a miserable waste, divided between petty sovereigns, and a by-word for guilt and degradation!  The glorious image lies a ruin at our feet:  for the spirit that gave beauty and strength, and shed a halo of splendor round its immortal name, has fled afar, perhaps forever; banished by the perfidious system of Papacy—­that sworn foe to liberty, ecclesiastical or political.

“How incomprehensible the apathy with which the English regard the promulgation of Puseyism in their church!  It is stealing silently but swiftly to the very heart of their ecclesiastical institutions, and total subversion will ultimately ensue.  That Americans should contemplate without apprehension the gradual increase of papal power is not so astonishing, for this happy land has never groaned beneath its iron sway.  But that the descendants of Latimer and of Ridley, of Hooper and of Cranmer, should tamely view the encroachments of this monster hydra, is strange indeed.  Do not imagine, Florry, that I doubt the sincerity of all who belong to the Church of Rome.  I know and believe that there are many earnest and conscientious members—­of this there cannot be a doubt; yet it is equally true, that the most devoted Papists are to be found among the most ignorant,