Januarius could do, for
it gave confidence and courage which very soon showed their
effects in diminishing the number of deaths. It would certainly
appear that in this matter the king was more directly under
Divine inspiration and guidance than was the Pope; for the fact
that King Humbert went to Naples at the risk of his life, while
Leo XIII remained in safety at the Vatican, impressed the Italian
people in favour of the new _regime_ and against the old as
nothing else could have done.
In other parts of Italy the same progress is seen under the
new Italian government. Venice, Genoa, Leghorn, and especially
Rome, which under the sway of the popes was scandalously filthy,
are now among the cleanest cities in Europe. What the relics of
St. Januarius, St. Anthony, and a multitude of local fetiches
throughout Italy were for ages utterly unable to do, has been
accomplished by the development of the simplest sanitary principles.
Spain shows much the same characteristics of a country where
theological considerations have been all-controlling for
centuries.
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