THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH IN ITALY.
The Roman Catholic Church in Italy. By Alexander Robertson, D.D. (Morgan and Scott. 6s.)—This book may be best described as an invective against the Roman Catholic Church in Italy. The author is a Protestant minister resident in Venice, and as he has many friends among the Italian% he might have written an in- forming book had he not been so blinded by his hatred of the Church of Rome as to be unable to distinguish between truth and falsehood. When describing the state of matters under Pio Nono, he writes thus :—" No sick or dying person was permitted to see a physician until he had first seen a priest, and taken the Sacrament. All wills were invalidated which did not contain legacies to the Church, and once a good fat legacy was secured, the priest, so Italians tell me, often took care the sick person should not recover to rescind it. In administering the Viaticum, it is said, the priest would accidentally rest his elbow too heavily on the patient's heart, or press his thumb on the patient's throat." Italy is a land of calumny, and Italians tell wonderful tales against their priests when they happen to be in ill humour with them. It is amazing, however, that a minister of religion and an educated man should repeat without a word of dissent such a monstrous allegation. There is much of the same kind in Dr. Robertson's volume, which we cannot recommend to our readers.
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