Page:Notes ecclesiological and picturesque.djvu/15

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vii
PREFACE.

Committee of the Ecclesiological Society), to have thrown any light on the churches (I have described exactly a hundred) of the seldom-visited countries of which my little volume treats.

And, with respect to the remarks in the former part of this Preface, it does seem that, at last, the wholesale confiscation of ecclesiastical property, and the butcherly cruelties perpetrated on Calabrian Royalists, are beginning to open men's eyes to the true character of the Italian Revolytion.

If I may end with a reference to the class to whom these pages are principally addressed—what ecclesiologist (to take no higher view than that of a mere ecclesiologist) can fail to execrate the Government that has suppressed that most glorious Convent of Assisi, and left it the victim of complete and certain ruin?

Sackville College,
East Grinsted, June 6th, 1861.

It is remarkable that the date of the above protest against Sacrilege should have been also that of its fearful Nemesis in the death of Count Cavour.