clergy have been learning, generation after generation, in Mexico and elsewhere. Of course, there are plenty of exceptions, particularly among the higher clergy; but, so far as I have been able to ascertain, education in clerical schools has generally been of this kind. It is instinctive to talk a little, as one occasionally finds an opportunity of doing, to some youth just out of these colleges. I recollect speaking to a young man who had just left the Seminario of Mexico, where he had been through a long course of theology and philosophy. He was astonished to hear that bull-fighting and colearing were not universally practised in Europe; and, when his father began to question me about the Crimean war, the young gentleman’s remarks showed that he had not the faintest idea where England and France were, nor how far they were from one another.
I happened, not long ago, to visit a celebrated monastic college in South Italy, where they educated, not ordinary mortals, but only young men of noble birth; and here I took particular care in inspecting the library, judging that, though the scholars need not learn all that was there, yet that no department of knowledge would be taught there that was not represented on the library-shelves. What I saw fully confirmed all that I had previously seen and heard about the monastic learning of the present day. There were to be seen many fine manuscripts, and black-letter books, and curious old editions of great value, good store of classics (mostly Latin, however), works of the Fathers by the hundred-weight, and quartos and folios of canon-law, theology, metaphysics, and such like, by the ton. But it seemed that, in the estimation of the librarians, the world had stood still since the time of Duns Scotus; for, of what we call positive knowledge, except a little arithmetic and geometry, and a few very poor histories, I saw nothing. It is easy to see how one result of the clerical monopoly of education has therefore come about—that the intellectual standard is very low in Mexico. The Holy Office, too, has had its word to say in the matter. This institution had not much work to do in burning Indians, who were anything but sceptical in their turn of