is not peculiarly incident to the fashionable season, and might, indeed, often be reserved for the slack time. Let Government, then, set a good example in this little matter-a little matter of hunger, thirst, sleeplessness, disease, ruin, and death, to many helpless women and let Government see that those who do the nation's needlework, get their employment free of murderous abatement in payment. Were the Government work sent to Lamb's Conduit-street, much would be done at one stroke towards the development of Needlewoman's Hall. There would be no difficulty in finding requisite security. Lamb's Conduitstreet can rise to the occasion.

likes best, in doing good, to follow the example for the making of a soldier's coat has yielded of a lord. The institution was opened early in the eighteenpence to agents and employers, but a year, and there resort to it now about sixtyneedle- shilling only to the actual maker. The shirtwomen. It takes work from shops and families; maker's pay is, in this manner, reduced by threeis answerable for its safe return, and distributes pence in the shilling. Government prices paid it, according to its power, to all women of honest to those who earn them-as they might readily character who come and ask for means of earning be through Needlewoman's Hall-would at once bread. From the payment received for the work, secure better employment to a large number of it deducts, for expenses, a halfpenny in the shil-needlewomen, and afford some protection against ling from the out-door worker, and a penny in the hunger of slack times: for Government work the shilling from the in-door worker-who has, in return, work found, house-room, fire, and a cup of tea. This leaves to the poor needlewoman much more than she could get if her work came to her through the hands of an agent, and this will make the institution self-supporting, if it be once fairly started with a small endowment, and be freely used as an Exchange by needlewomen and their customers. At present the system is one that enables any average needlewoman to earn about six shillings a week, or five and tenpence: some earning more, and a few less and this may be roughly estimated as a shilling a week above their old rate, besides reduction of an hour or two a day in times of labour. The institution has a scale of reasonable market prices for the proper execution of work sent by private families, and it provides women to work, at the usual price of a shilling or eighteenpence a day and their board, for ladies at their homes. It makes no vain effort to revolutionise the market price of labour, but it goes as far as possible towards securing labour to the needlewoman all the year round, and the best price it will fetch.

Whoever is already in immediate relation with the needlewomen for whom he or she may have employment, is already doing all that can be done for the class in the way of ordinary business. But whoever, for requisite security against loss, employs needlewomen through an agent, who has his own profit to take out of the weary stitcher's hire, had better change his system, and help towards the establishment of Needlewoman's Hall by using the institution in In the house in Lamb's Conduit-street are Lamb's Conduit-street. Let the prudent houseairy workrooms; and every applicant for em-wife who does needlework herself, because she ployment is at first set to earn her money by doing the work she receives, for two or three days, in the house, under the eye of a matron. Her value as a worker becomes known, and if she need improvement, something is, we believe, now done for her help to better skill. Thirty or forty women are now working for twelve hours a day within the home. They bring their own dinners, when-as is not always the case they have any to bring, and their own bread. But at tea-time, tea is given them-a fact, perhaps, not reconcilable with the strictest principles of political economy, but a kind fact and a good fact none the less. We peeped in on the comfortable family tea-table, surrounded by poor isolated women, whose common distress was the bond of their kindred, that we should be very sorry to hear that the kettle ceased to sing its unpaid song at five o'clock. Besides, do they not pay their penny in the shilling?

In Needlewoman's Hall, then, there shall be a mighty kettle, and it shall be the pleasant labour of the public to support the modest, hearty efforts of the ladies in Lamb's Conduitstreet, beginning with the public's representative, the Government. At present that which might be a little social blessing to poor women, Government needlework, passes through the hands of two or three agents, diminishing in value until the half-crown paid by Great Britain

does not know where to look for a needlewoman with whose work she will be satisfied, look to Lamb's Conduit-street, and make her wants known to the secretary of the institution there. If anybody wants to endow something with five or ten pounds, and happens not already to have sent the five or ten pounds to one or both of the two prize-fighters, let him give a thought to the plant and machinery of Needlewoman's Hall. Again we say, in the name of London and of every one of our large towns, Wanted a Needlewoman's Hall. Let the institution be brought into busy life, and let its kettle be kept boiling.

ROMAN SHEEP-SHEARING.

THE revenue of the Roman popes as temporal princes has been but a trifle compared to the sums they have shorn their sheep of. This source of income is now drying up. It is a puny trickling where Niagara has been. In the old times popes and priests were, like other men, greedy of gain; and in the moral code of Europe, there was place given among the virtues to a pious fraud. The sincere Roman Catholic of our own day partakes of the knowledge of the day and its refinement; he avoids, therefore, wilful deception, even for a pious end. But in the famous days of Bayard, the most accomplished chevalier might, for his own gain, break

and were shown both at Cologne and Magdeburg. of the bells which rang when Our Lord entered The splinters of the true cross were a year's Jerusalem; a beam of the star which guided the firewood for any city, and of nails there were three wise men of the East; a few sighs of St. found many hundredweight. Thorns from the Joseph, caught when he was planing knotty crown were everywhere, and many of them bled boards; and the thorn in the flesh which gave every Friday. The chalice used at the institu- so much trouble to St. Paul. Pious frauds tion of the Lord's Supper was recovered, toge- never seem to have been too gross for a believther with the bread remaining from that supper. ing crowd. A monk, named Eiselin, came, in Somebody found the dice used by the Roman the year fifteen hundred, to Aldingen, a little soldiers when raffling for the tunic, which was place in Wurtemberg, where he exhibited to the to be seen at Treves, Argenteuil, Rome, good Christians a feather of the wing of the Triant, and other places; the tunic in each angel Gabriel. He who kissed this feather-and town having a papal bull to prove its au-paid for the kiss-was safe against infection thenticity. One pair of the Virgin's slippers from the plague. This precious feather was was particularly neat, but those she wore when stolen; but the monk was none the poorer. In visiting St. Elizabeth are wonderfully large and presence of his landlady, he filled the box that red. A precious wedding-ring of the Virgin had contained the feather with stale hay, which was shown at Perusa, and her hair, which was of he called hay from the manger in which Christ all colours, is preserved, together with some of was laid when born; kiss, therefore, and pay, her combs, in many places. Blood of Our Lord and be safe against infection. Pictures, libellous was found, sometimes in single drops, sometimes daubs, were produced as works of the Evangelist in bottles. Some of it, legend says, was col- St. Luke. Others that fell from Heaven were lected by Nicodemus, who worked wonders with not better painted. These pictures were not it. But the Jews persecuted him, and he was only revered as relics, but for the sake of their compelled to put it in a bird's beak, with a subjects were soon worshipped as idols. Queswritten document, and throw it into the sea. Of tion about the orthodoxy of this kind of service the beak, cast on the shore of Normandy, a mira- arose, and grew into bloody strife, which lasted culous discovery was made. A party, hunting for two centuries, occasioning a schism in the in the neighbourhood, missed suddenly both Christian Church. The Emperor Constantine dogs and stag. They were found at last, kneel- the Fifth, who died in the eighth century, deing together before the miraculous beak. The clared all pictures to be idols, and swept from Duke of Normandy built on the spot a monas- the country all pictures of saints, as well as tery, called Bec, to which the holy blood brought relics. He transformed the monasteries in Cona rich treasure of gold. At another time the stantinople into barracks, and made public scoff very small breeches of St. Joseph were revealed, of monks and nuns. together with his tools. One of the thirty shekels of Judas was found, and also the twelve feet of stout rope with which he hung himself, and his small empty purse, with the lantern he used on the night of the betrayal. Even the perch was found on which the cock sat when he warned Peter, and a few of the cock's feathers. Even relics from the Old Testament were discovered, after having been buried for several thousands of years. Among these were the staff with which Moses parted the Red Sea; manna from the desert; the beard of Noah; the brazen serpent; a piece of the rock out of which Moses struck water, with four holes in it, not larger than peas; the razor used by Dalila in shaving Samson; and the tuning-key of David's harp, which was shown at Erfurt. A relic of great reputation was the cloak of St. Martin, called cappa, or capella, which served as a flag in war. The priests who carried this holy standard were called Capellani, and the church in which it was kept, Capella. These names were afterwards used more generally, and from them are derived our chapel and chaplain.

The belief of the people was so strong, that the priests could venture to show even impossible things, and, before naming a few of them, let us distinctly say that we are not joking. There were to be seen, among other such marvels, the dagger and the shield of the archangel Michael, which he used when fighting the devil; a bottle full of Egyptian darkness; some of the sounds

In the West, this worship of images and relics also at first found resistance. Bihop Claudius of Turin, says: "If you worship the cross on which Christ suffered, you must also worship the ass on which he rode;" and this was really done afterwards. Other people, however, attached importance to the image service; it was adhered to in Europe, and adopted, at last, by the Greek Church also.

In the first days of the Christian Church, persons who, for gross misdemeanour, had been expelled from the community and were desirous of being readmitted, openly told their sins before the congregation, and this penitence was called confession. When the power of the priests increased, they changed this public confession into a secret one. Pope Innocent the Third, early in the thirteenth century, ordered every Catholic to confess privately to a priest, at least once a year, and submit to the penance he imposed. They who neglected this duty were to be excommunicated and deprived the rites of Christian burial. Thus it was given in the hands of the priest to absolve the confessor or not, and he used his discretion very shrewdly, with one eye upon the sinner's purse.

Purgatory was an invention of Pope Gregory the First, in the first years of the sixth century. The rule of this place was known to none but the priests, and they alone were able to judge how many paid masses were required for any soul's deliverance therefrom. The Crusades were

at first armed pilgrimages. The popes favoured them in hope of extending their power over Asia. They exercised, therefore, all means to induce people to take the cross. The chief inducement was the promise of indulgence. The pope ordered it to be preached through the Christian world, that all sins committed, were they ever so great, would be forgiven as soon as the sinner took the cross." This invention of indulgences was now worked by the popes in the most ingenious manner, and became their gold

mine.

That the pope sheared the Christian sheep is allegory; but it is fact also that he is a breeder of real four-legged ewes and rams, and knows how to sell his wool at a price that would astonish all our farmers. He keeps a little flock of lambs, which have been consecrated over the graves of the Apostles, and from the wool of which the bishops' palls are woven.

The pallium, or pall, is originally a Roman cloak. Emperors, as a token of their grace, used to present such a cloak, dyed in purple and embroidered with gold, to the patriarchs and other bishops. The price set on a pall was very high indeed; the revenue got from this source pleased the popes well, and John the Eighth ordained that every archbishop who had not obtained his pall from Rome after three months' time was to be considered as deposed.

The popes gave, however, in the cloak some little value for the treasure of a price they set upon it; this was yet to be saved, so the cloak dwindled away into a worsted ribbon, a few inches wide, with a red cross for its ornament. Such ribbons are woven by nuns from the consecrated wool, and weigh about three ounces. The wool of the pope's little flock of fourlegged lambs would fetch about three millions of florins.

The palls are the more profitable because archbishops are generally old men, who soon die out, and each archbishop is required to pay for a new pall. Nay, he must even do so when transferred to a new place. Some German bishops, those of Würzburg, Bamberg, and Passau, enjoyed like popes this precious right of the pall. The archbishop Marculf of Mayence was compelled to sell the left leg of a golden Christ to pay for his pall. The archbishop Arnold of Treves was very much at a loss when he received, together with the bills, two palls at once, sent to him by two opposition popes disputing each other.

As there were some people who would hardly believe in the power of the pope to forgive sins, Clement the Sixth explained his right to it, and the whole theory of indulgence in this manner, by a bull of the year thirteen hundred and fortytwo. He said in it: "The whole human kind might have been saved by one single drop of the blood of Christ, but having shed so much, and certainly not for nothing, this excess formed an inexhaustible Church treasure, which was still increased by the not superfluous merits of the saints and martyrs. The pope is the keeper of this treasure, and may dispense of it to any degree without fear of exhausting it." Whoever made a pilgrimage to this or that image of a saint, or to this or that place of grace, and paid money enough to the altar, received, not only indulgence for the sins he had committed, but even for those he might commit in years to come. In Germany alone, there were about a hundred images of the Virgin to which pilgrims went. One single author enumerates twelve hundred in sundry lands. The most celebrated in the whole world is that of Loretto, horribly carved in wood (it was said) by the hands of St. Luke. The next in form is that of St. Iago de Compostella, where, on high church feasts, thirty thousand devotees assemble. Waldthuren, in Baden, is celebrated for the wonder-working corporate. This is a napkin, upon which to place the chalice with the plate of wafers. In the A very golden idea crossed the holy brains of fourteenth century, a priest spilt some of the Boniface the Eighth. He was inventor of the consecrated wine, and every drop of it made a Jubilee. They who made a pilgrimage to Rome stain like a divine head with the thorny crown. in such a year, and deposited a certain sum on Before and after Corpus-Christi day, some forty the altar of St. Peter, were to receive indulgence thousand pilgrims fetch from the church red silk for all sins committed during the course of their threads, which have been rubbed against this lives. Who would not profit by such an opporcorporate. They are said to be a cure for erysi- tunity? Sinners from all parts of Europe pelas. More profitable still are those places of flocked to Rome. The year thirteen hundred pilgrimage at which are kept the very holy relics brought two hundred thousand strangers there, to be seen once only in every seven years. The who filled the pockets of the inhabitants, as most precious treasure of this kind is in Aix-well as the coffers of his Holiness. la-Chapelle; it contains a very large frock of millions of pounds sterling were brought to Mary, the swaddling-clothes of Christ, made of the Pope. The harvest surpassed expectaa brownish-yellow felt, and the cloth on which tion, and it is no wonder that every pope, in was laid the head of John the Baptist. At the his turn, longed to repeat the experiment. A end of the fifteenth century, nearly a hundred hundred years is a long time. Clement the Sixth and fifty thousand pilgrims came to Aix-la- ordered that there should be jubilees every fifty Chapelle, and the harvest of the priests was very years, because St. Peter had appeared to him and good; but in the present century, when the said, with a threatening gesture, "Open the gate!" || relics were shown only for a fortnight after a Pope Urban the Sixth contrived three jubilees long intermission, they were visited only by to the century by shortening the period to thirtyforty thousand of the faithful. However, only three years, in remembrance of the age of Our sixteen years ago, about a million of people went Lord. Sixtus the Fourth counted four jubilees to to Trèves to kiss one of the many Holy Coats. the century by fixing the period at five-and-twenty

Some

years, "because human life is so short." The tion, he pretended to want money for carrying second jubilee under Clement the Sixth had a still on war against the Turks, as well as to finish greater success than the first. The crowd in the the Cathedral of St. Peter. But the Turk-tax church was so great that there were many of the would not work; it was a worn-out device, and pilgrims crushed to death. Ten thousand of even Cardinal Ximenes, the wise Spanish mithem died of plague; but their loss was not per-nister, forbade the collections, saying "he had ceived, for the whole number amounted to one million and several hundreds of thousands. The revenue of this jubilee is estimated at more than twenty-two millions of ducats. In the jubilee under Nicholas the Fifth, the bridge over the Tiber could not resist the weight of the crowd; it gave way, and two hundred persons at once, said the priests, fell into Paradise.

The Reformation spoiled the jubilee. At the jubilee of thirty years ago there were not more foreigners in Rome than in other years, and the Italians who went did not give much. The princes also learnt to keep money in their own countries, and put difficulties in the way of pilgrims. The Austrian government even forbade its Italian subjects to go into Rome without a passport from Vienna.

Another good entry in the ledger of the popes came under the head of Annates, that is, the revenue of his first year, payable by every bishop to the pontifical see. The tax for dispensation from fasting, or other stipulations of the Church, was also very productive. That paid by the people who could not marry because of relationship was valuable when marriages between relatives were prohibited to the fourteenth degree. Some one took the trouble to calculate how many such relatives one person might on the average be said to have, and fixed the number at one million forty-eight thousand five hundred and seventy-six.

very reliable intelligence that there was now nothing at all to be apprehended from the Turks." The pope, therefore, issued a bull, by which indulgence was given to all who would contribute to the building of St. Peter's. The whole Christian world was divided into districts, and travellers were sent out, called papal legates or commissioners.

In their price current all manner of crimes were quoted at the lowest figure. Infamous as the document is in itself, the concluding sentence crowns it worthily. Poor people cannot participate in such a comfort, for they, having no money, must do without. For half a ducat even clergymen were free to commit the basest of all crimes. The speculation answered so well, that the sums realised are beyond calculation. Leo the Tenth farmed out his indulgences to eminent persons, by whom they were underlet. One of the chief tenants of indulgences was the Margrave Albrecht of Brandenburg, who was at the same time Bishop of Halberstadt, Archbishop of Madgeburg, and Archbishop and Prince Elector of Mayence, and Cardinal. He owed thirty thousand ducats for pall-money, and hoped, as a dealer in indulgences, to make enough money to pay his debt. Some people bought indulgence for several hundreds of years, although they were old and had but a few years to live. Time to be passed in purgatory was included in these bargains. For such and such a sin, it was said, the penalty is twenty years of There was a tariff according to which indul- purgatory, and for another even thirty; an exgence for any sin was to be had at a fixed price. perienced sinner would thus easily be able to tot This list contained, in forty-two chapters, about up the account against him, and by paying his five hundred items. If, for example, a clergy-score to the pope in cash value before he died, man committed wilful murder, he had to pay for absolution about one pound thirteen and sevenpence. The murder of a father, mother, brother, or sister was cheaper, and might be forgiven for some twelve shillings less. A heretic, willing to return to the bosom of the Roman Church, might be absolved and admitted for less than a guinea and a half. A mass at a house in an excommunicated town cost three or four pounds. By such traffic several popes scraped large sums together, and John the Twenty-Second, the son of a cobbler, left sixteen millions in gold and seventeen millions in bullion.

The revenue of the pontifical see, large as it was, did, however, not satisfy the luxurious Leo

go straight to heaven. He who kissed a relic and paid for it, also obtained indulgence for a certain number of years. Archbishop Albrecht had such a treasure in relics, that indulgence was to be had through them for about eight billions of years.

Our own tribute to Rome of Peter's pence was instituted in the year 740 by Offa, King of Mercia, and was a tax payable from every house in England. It ceased when Henry the Eighth renounced the Pope, after having brought large treasure to the papal see.

A new Serial Tale, entitled

the Tenth, of the House of the Medicis. His A DAY'S RIDE: A LIFE'S ROMANCE,

BY CHARLES LEVER,

children, relations, actors, singers, musicians, and artists absorbed enormous sums, and the "holy father" was very much at a loss for Will be commenced on the 18th August (in No. 69), money. To get out of this disagreeable posi- and continued from week to week until completed.

The right of Translating Articles from ALL THE YEAR ROUND is reserved by the Authors.

Published at the Office. No. 26. Wellington Street, Strand. Printed by C. WHITING, Beaufort House, Strand.