conducted on a strictly religious footing.  The impiegati, or officials who keep them, are all men of sound principles and devotional habits, fervent adherents of the Pope, and habitual communicants.  Lotteries too can be defended on abstract religious grounds, as encouraging a simple faith in providence, and dispelling any overwhelming confidence in your own unsanctified exertions.  When you have made these reflections, you have only got to tell the clerk what sum of money you want to stake, and on what numbers.  The smallest contribution (from eleven baiocchi or about sixpence upwards) will be thankfully received.  A long whity-brown slip of paper is given you, with the numbers written on it, and the sum you may win marked opposite.  No questions whatever, about name or residence or papers, are asked, as they are whenever you want to transact any other piece of business in Rome; and all you have to do, is to keep your slip of paper, and come back on the Saturday to learn whether your numbers have been drawn or not.

There is, in truth, a ludicrous side to the Papal Lotteries; but there is also a very sad one.  It is sad to see the offices on a Thursday night, when they are kept open till midnight, hours after every other shop is closed, and to watch the crowds of common humble people who hurry in, one after the other; servants and cabmen and clerks and beggars, and, above all, women of the poorer class, to stake their small savings—­too often their small pilferings—­on the hoped-for numbers.  When one speaks of the disgrace and shame that this authorized system of gambling confers on the Papal Government; of the improvidence and dishonesty and misery it creates too certainly among the poor, one is always told, by the advocates of the Papacy, that the people are so passionately attached to the lottery, that no Government could run the risk of abolishing it.  If this be true, which I do not believe, I can only say—­shame upon the rulers, who have so demoralized their subjects!

CHAPTER IX.  THE STUDENTS OF THE SAPIENZA.

There is no University properly speaking in Rome.  The constant and minute interference of the priests in the course of study; the rigid censorship extended over all books of learning, and the arbitrary restrictions with which free thought and inquiry are hampered, would of themselves be sufficient to stop the growth of any great school of learning at Rome, even if there existed a demand for such an institution, which there does not.  Still in these days, even at Rome, young men must receive some kind of education, and to meet this want the Sapienza College is provided.  Both in the age of the scholars and the nature of the studies it bears a much closer resemblance to a Scotch high school than to an University, but still, such as it is, it forms the great lay-place of education in the Papal States.  There is a separate theological faculty; the head of the college is a Cardinal, and the whole course of study is under the control and supervision of the priests.  Many, however, of the professors are laymen, the majority of the pupils are educated for secular pursuits, and the families from whom the students come, form as a body the elite in point of education and intelligence amongst the mercantile and professional classes in the Papal States.