The Congregation of the Index was founded by Pius V., in order to relieve the Holy Office of that part of its duties which relates to written and printed thought:  censorship of the press would be the proper term, if censorship, even in its most rigid form, did not fall short of the attributes and functions of this odious tribunal.  It is composed of cardinals and ecclesiastics, many of them distinguished by their learning, some, doubtless, by their piety,—­but all leagued together, and solemnly pledged to sleepless warfare against every form of intellectual freedom.  Without their approbation no manuscript can be seat to the press, no new editions issued, no thought promulgated.  Even the stone-carver is not permitted to use his chisel until they have decided how far love or pride may go in commemoration of the dead.  They mutilate, with equal sovereignty of will, the printed pages of a classic and the manuscript of an unknown scribbler,—­sit in judgment upon Botta and Laplace, as their predecessors sat in judgment upon Guicciardini and Galileo,—­and, in the fervor of their undiscriminating zeal, condemn Robertson and Gibbon, Reid and Hume, the skeptic Bolingbroke and the pious Addison, to the same fiery purgation.  That Italian literature was not crushed by them long ago is, perhaps, the strongest proof of the irrepressible vigor and marvellous vitality of the Italian mind.  Not to be on the “Index” would call a blush to the cheek of the most unambitious of authors,—­would carry a presumption of worthlessness with it from which even the penny-a-liner would shrink with dismay,—­and to the poet and historian would sound like a sentence of perpetual exclusion from all those cherished hopes which irradiate with heavenly light the steep and thorny paths of intellectual renown.

Next to these in importance is the Congregation of the “Propaganda,” or of that celebrated institution for the propagation of the Roman Catholic religion which, since the reign of Gregory XV., has governed, as from a common centre, the immense network of missions that Christian Rome has spread over the lands she hopes to conquer, as Pagan Rome spread her network of military roads over the lands which she had already reduced to subjection.  Cardinals, with a cardinal for prefect and a prelate for secretary, compose this congregation, which holds regular meetings twice a month, and, not unfrequently, extraordinary meetings in the presence of the Pope.  In these the important questions of the missionary world are discussed, reports examined, new missions proposed, new missionaries appointed, new bishoprics founded “among the heathen,” and all these complicated interests taken into impartial consideration.