We all know the story of “Boccaccio’s” Jew, who went to Rome an unbeliever, and came back a Christian.  There is no need for alarm; it is not my intention to repeat the story.  Indeed the only reason for my alluding to it, is to introduce the remark that, at the present day, the Jew would have returned from Rome hardened in heart and unconverted.  The flagrant profligacy, the open immorality, which in the Hebrew’s judgment supplied the strongest testimony to the truth of a religion that survived such scandals, exist no longer.  Rome is, externally, the most moral and decorous of European cities.  In reality, she may be only a whited sepulchre, but at any rate, the whitewash is laid on very thick, and the plaster looks uncommonly like stone.  From various motives, this feature is, I think, but seldom brought prominently forward in descriptions of the Papal city.  Protestant and liberal writers slur over the facts, because, however erroneously, they are deemed inconsistent with the assumed iniquity of the Government and the corruptions of the Papacy.  Catholic narrators know perhaps too much of what goes on behind the scenes to relish calling too close an attention to the apparent proprieties of Rome.  Be the cause what it may, the moral aspect of the Papal city seems to me to be but little dwelt upon, and yet on many accounts it is a very curious one.

As far as Sabbatarianism is concerned, Rome is the Glasgow of Italy.  All shops, except druggists’, tobacconists’, and places of refreshment, are hermetically closed on Sundays.  Even the barbers have to close at half-past ten in the morning under a heavy fine, and during the Sundays in Lent cafes and eating-houses are shut throughout the afternoon, because the waiters are supposed to go to catechism.  The English reading-rooms are locked up; there is no delivery of letters, and no mails go out.  A French band plays on the Pincian at sunset, and the Borghese gardens are thrown open; but these, till evening, are the only public amusements.  At night, it is true, the theatres are open, but then in Roman Catholic countries, Sunday evening is universally accounted a feast.  To make up for this, the theatres are closed on every Friday in the year, as they are too throughout Lent and Advent; and once a week or more there is sure to be a Saint’s day as well, on which shops and all are closed, to the great trial of a traveller’s patience.  All the amusements of the Papal subjects are regulated with the strictest regard to their morals.  Private or public gambling of any kind, excepting always the Papal Lottery, is strictly suppressed.  There are no public dancing-places of any kind, no casinos or “cafes chantants.”  No public masked balls are allowed, except one or two on the last nights of the Carnival.  The theatres themselves are kept under the most rigid “surveillance.”  Every thing, from the titles of the plays to the petticoats of the ballet-girls, undergoes clerical inspection.  The censorship is as unsparing of “double entendres” as of political allusions, and “Palais Royal” farces are ‘Bowdlerized’ down till they emerge from the process innocuous and dull; compared with one at the “Apollo,” a ballet at the Princess’s was a wild and voluptuous orgy.