His successor, Sixtus V., found the whole Papal dominion in confusion.  It was impossible to collect the taxes.  Life and property were nowhere safe.  By a series of savage enactments and stern acts of justice, Sixtus swept the brigands from his States.  He then applied his powerful will to the collection of money and the improvement of his provinces.  In the four years which followed his election he succeeded in accumulating a round sum of four million crowns, which he stored up in the Castle of S. Angelo.  The total revenues of the Papacy at this epoch were roughly estimated at 750,000 crowns, which in former reigns had been absorbed in current costs and the pontifical establishment.  By rigorous economy and retrenchments of all kinds Sixtus reduced these annual expenses to a sum of 250,000, thus making a clear profit of 500,000 crowns.[71] At the same time he had already spent about a million and a half on works of public utility, including the famous Acqua Felice, which brought excellent water into Rome.  Roads and bridges throughout the States of the Church were repaired, The Chiana of Orvieto and the Pontine Marsh were drained.  Encouragement was extended, not only to agriculture, but also to industries and manufactures.  The country towns obtained wise financial concessions, and the unpopular resumption of lapsed lands and fiefs was discontinued.  Rome meanwhile began to assume her present aspect as a city, by the extensive architectural undertakings which Sixtus set on foot.  He loved building; but he was no lover of antiquity.  For pagan monuments of art he showed a monastic animosity, dispersing or mutilating the statues of the Vatican and Capitol; turning a Minerva into an image of the Faith by putting a cross in her hand; surmounting the columns of Trajan and Antonine with figures of Peter and Paul; destroying the Septizonium of Severus, and wishing to lay sacrilegious hands on Caecilia Metella’s tomb.  To mediaeval relics he was hardly less indifferent.  The old buildings of the Lateran were thrown down to make room for the heavy modern palace.  But, to atone in some measure for these acts of vandalism, Sixtus placed the cupola upon S. Peter’s and raised the obelisk in the great piazza which was destined to be circled with Bernini’s colonnades.  This obelisk he tapped with a cross.  Christian inscriptions, signalizing the triumph of the Pontiff over infidel emperors, the victory of Calvary over Olympus, the superiority of Rome’s saints and martyrs to Rome’s old deities and heroes, left no doubt that what remained of the imperial city had been subdued to Christ and purged of paganism.  Wandering through Rome at the present time, we feel in every part the spirit of the Catholic Revival, and murmur to ourselves those lines of Clough: