find nothing to admire except their own perspicacity in detecting faults
in Raphael's drawing or Michael Angelo's colouring. This is the age of
incompetent criticism in matters artistic, and no one is too ignorant to
volunteer an opinion. It is sufficient to have visited half-a-dozen
Italian towns, and to have read a few pages of fashionable aesthetic
literature--no other education is needed to fit the intelligent young
critic for his easy task. The art of paradox can be learned in five
minutes, and practised by any child; it consists chiefly in taking two
expressions of opinion from different authors, halving them, and uniting
the first half of the one with the second half of the other. The result
is invariably startling, and generally incomprehensible. When a young
society critic knows how to be startling and incomprehensible, his
reputation is soon made, for people readily believe that what they cannot
understand is profound, and anything which astonishes is agreeable to a
taste deadened by a surfeit of spices. But in 1865 the taste of Europe
was in a very different state. The Second Empire was in its glory.
M. Emile Zola had not written his 'Assommoir.' Count Bismarck had only
just brought to a successful termination the first part of his trimachy;
Sadowa and Sedan were yet unfought. Garibaldi had won Naples, and Cavour
had said, "If we did for ourselves what we are doing for Italy, we should
be great scoundrels;" but Garibaldi had not yet failed at Mentana, nor
had Austria ceded Venice. Cardinal Antonelli had yet ten years of life
before him in which to maintain his gallant struggle for the remnant of
the temporal power; Pius IX. was to live thirteen years longer, just long
enough to outlive by one month the "honest king," Victor Emmanuel.
Antonelli's influence pervaded Rome, and to a great extent all the
Catholic Courts of Europe; yet he was far from popular with the Romans.
The Jesuits, however, were even less popular than he, and certainly
received a much larger share of abuse. For the Romans love faction more
than party, and understand it better; so that popular opinion is too