"These may consider Austria as the truest | accomplished the re-purchase of the imfriend of religion, and best defender of mense appanage in the Papal States setthe Church; while those may look on tled upon the family of Beauharnais by France as most earnest and powerful in the Congress of Vienna. Up to this time attachment to the faith." Let us also not it was the custom upon the evenings of forget the strong personal motive that Thursday and Friday in the Holy Week operates with all to induce them to vote to light up St. Peter's with a marvelous for the oldest and the most infirm of their cross of light, suspended from the dome. number. This was, beyond all denial, Its effects of light and shade were so the case in the election of Sixtus V., who beautiful that it interfered with the sofor years previously accommodated him- lemnity of the time and place. self, with consummate hypocrisy, to simulate a condition, the importance of which he could only have understood from a thorough conviction that such a motive as we have mentioned was an operating principle. What, if the real feebleness of Della Genga had its effect just as the simulated feebleness of Montalto? As such things have been, so may they be again. The genius of Romish polity is unchanging. The shattered health of Leo XII. appeared to give promise of a short sovereignty and a new conclave at no distant period. He became so ill that he had to suspend all business, and was thought past all recovery. He did, however, recover, and all Rome, we are told, attributed the change to the prayers of a saintly bishop who, at the Pope's request, visited him: "He came immediately, saw the Pope, assured him of his recovery, as he had offered up to heaven his own valueless life in exchange for one so precious. It did indeed seem as if he had transfused his own vitality into the Pope's languid frame. He himself died the next day, the 31st of December, and the Pontiff rose like one from the grave." The efficacy of "the prayer of faith to save the sick," no Christian may limit; few may be disposed to believe in the suggestion that the vicarious life-offering was accepted. Still, from one so enfeebled much vigorous policy was not to be expected. Yet he, too, has done something to commemorate. He made some steps in the restoration of the monumental edifices of the city. He commenced the rebuilding of the Basilica of St. Paul's, that had been burned down a few days before his predecessor's death; he repaired the ravages committed by the Anio, and he lent a helping hand to the progress of literature and art. Several useful financial reforms, too, were effected: imposts were abolished; the property-tax greatly reduced; and, above all, he ultimately "While pilgrims from the south were on their knees crowded into the center of the church, travelers from the north were promenading in fects, peeping into the darksome nooks, then the wondrous light, studying its unrivaled efplunging into them to emerge again into a sunshine that had no transition of dawn. And, doing all this, they talked, and laughed, and formed chatting groups, then broke into lounging, sauntering parties, that treated lightly of all intended to be most solemn. It made one ashamed of one's home manners, on seeing wellsore and irritable to witness such conduct, nay dressed people unable to defer to the sacred feelings of others, bringing what used to be the behavior in old 'Paul's' into great St. Peter's." These observations have our hearty concurrence. We have often ourselves shared the feelings which the writer expresses. We could, however, have wished he had abstained from the sneer at "the behavior in old St. Paul's," which provokes the retort that the behavior at St. Peter's, even of the faithful and the native, is often sufficiently irreverent to encourage, or at all events sanction, that of the heretic and the stranger. How constantly are the chatter and the gesticulation of the Roman cicerone heard and seen through its solemn aisles and gorgeous chapels at the very moment when the prayer is being offered up. Leo discontinued this brilliant though popular exhibition, and had the courage also to abolish the dram-shops as a place of resort. This excited much angry feeling; and though he maintained his own course during his life, the measure was revoked in the succeeding reign. He appears, too, to have been kind and charitable, and was wont to visit privately prisons and other institutions, for the purpose of inspection and improvement. The jubilee of 1825 was the most signal event in the reign of Leo XII., and Cardinal Wiseman, as might be expected, has expatiated at great length on the imposing ceremonials connected with it. Christmas eve the Pope proceeds in state On good will, and generally showed themselves right good trencher-men. Opposite each stood his bread, changed his portions, and chatted a serving man, who poured out his wine, cut and talked with him. Now these servitors were not hired, but all brethren of the confraternity; sometimes a royal prince, generally some cardinals, always bishops, prelates, noblemen, priests, gentry, and artificers. Then, occasionally, a sudden commotion, a wavy the outer door, along the passage to the lavatory, movement through the crowd would reach from just as prayers were beginning. All understood what it meant. The Holy Father was coming without notice. Indeed none was required; he came simply to do what every one else was going to do, only he had the first place. He knelt before the first in the line of pilgrims, taking his chance of who it might be. If any priest were in the number, he was naturally placed first; and he would probably feel more sensitively than a dull uneducated peasant, the honor, not unmixed with humiliation, of having so lowly an office discharged, in his person, by the highest of men on earth. And then, he would find himself waited on at table, by that master who coming suddenly in the night upon how to gird himself, and passing along, minishis servants, and finding them watching, knows to the great portico of the Vatican Basili- | same manner. The guests fell to with hearty ca; the doors of the church are all closed, and the Pope strikes the central door which is walled up, and never opened except on these occasions-with a silver hammer; it falls inward, is removed, and the Pope and cardinals enter. The other doors are then open, and the church is filled by an innumerable multitude of every rank, from royal princes down to the poorest pilgrims. Thus is the jubilee commenced. During the whole year of its continuance the theaters are closed, public amusements suspended, the pulpits are occupied by the most eloquent preachers, the confessionals by priests who speak every language, and trains of pilgrims are received, entertained, and conducted from sanctuary to sanctuary by charitable confraternities. Amongst these the most conspicuous is that of the Trinità del Pelligrini, whose ample revenues were devoted in lodging and feeding for three days all pilgrims who sought its hospitality. It is alleged that in the month of November of the jubilee, over 38,000 persons were thus entertained there. The mode of treatment is thus described: "The pilgrim, on his arrival at the house, had his papers of pilgrimage examined, and received his ticket of hospitality. In the evening the new comers were brought into a hall surrounded by raised seats, and supplied with an abundant flow of hot and cold water. Then, after a short prayer, the brothers of the confraternity, or the sisters in their part of the house, washed their feet, wayworn and sore by days or weeks of travel; and the ointments of the apothecary, or the skill of the surgeon was at hand, to dress wounds and bandage sores. "Thus refreshed, the pilgrims joined the long procession to supper. A bench along the wall, and a table before it, railed off to prevent the pressure of curious multitudes, were simple arrangements enough, but the endless length of these, occupied by men of every hue, and many languages, formed a striking spectacle. Before each guest was his plate, knife, fork, and spoon, bread, wine, and dessert. A door in each refectory communicated with a roomy hall, in which huge caldrons smoked with a supply of savory soup sufficient for an army. This was the post of honor; a cardinal or nobleman, in the red coarse gown and badge of the brother hood, with a white apron over it, armed with a ladle, dispensed the steaming fluid into plates held ready; and a string of brothers, at arm's length from one another all round the refectory, handed forward the plates with the alacrity of bricklayers' laborers, and soon furnished each hungry expectant with his reeking portion. Two additional rations were served out in the ters to them. "Supper ended, and its baskets of fragments for the morrow's breakfast put by, the long file proceeded up-stairs to bed, singing one of the short religious strains in which all Italians can join, a sort of simultaneous, yet successive, chorus winding along, stunning to your ears at the spot where you chanced to stand, alternately swelling and fading away, as it came from one or other side of the stairs, then dying away in the deep recesses of the dormitory above, yet seeming to be born again and grow at the beginning of the line, still unemerged from the supper-hall." It is said that persons of the highest rank came in disguise amongst the pilgrims, in order to partake of this hospitality. Leo himself, during the year, served in his own palace twelve pilgrims at table. And the Chevalier Artaud assures us that he continued this practice throughout his reign. At the commencement of 1829, Leo was drawing near the close of his life, and was himself conscious of the fact. He took leave of his secretary, Testa, saying: "A few days more, and we shall not meet again." He gave up the ring usually worn by the Pope to his maggiordomo, and after dispatching some business with Monsignor Gasperini, he said to him: "I have a favor to ask of you, which I shall much value.' "Your Holiness has only to command me,' was the natural reply. "It is this,' the Pope continued, placing before him a paper. 'I have drawn up my epitaph, and I should be obliged to you to correct it, and put it into proper style.' "I would rather have received any commission but that,' said the sorrowful secretary, who was deeply attached to his master. 'Your Holiness, however, is I trust in no hurry.' "Yes, my dear Gasperini, you must bring it with you next time.' At the next audience, Gasperini laid the inscription before the Pope, who read and approved of it. On the 6th of February, after a long conference with the Secretary of State, he was seized with his last illness, and died on the 10th. Francis Xavier Castiglioni, as Pius VIII., was the successor of Leo. He was a man of scholarly attainments and ecclesiastical learning. In 1800 he was ordained Bishop of Montalto, and was raised to the dignity of cardinal in 1816. In his case, too, as in that of Pius VII., (and we may add also in that of Leo X.,) we are told of a prophetic intimation of this future elevation to the Papacy. D'Artaud states that when Castiglioni was once transacting some business with Pius VII., the latter said to him: "Your Holiness Pius VIII. may one day settle the matter." Cardinal Wiseman is scarcely contented to allow this little badinage-possibly a delicate rebuke from the Pope to some assumption of the inferior-to fall into the common category of a casual or a sagacious guess at the truth. "One does not see," he says, in commenting on it, "why if a Jewish high priest had the gift of prophecy for his year of office, one of a much higher order and dignity should not occa sionally be allowed to possess it." One does not see why he should, nor yet why the pontifical scepter should become a serpent or bud because the rod of Aaron did so nevertheless, we would not, while confessing our own blindness, wish to limit the logical vision of another. In matters of belief, faith is the evidence of things unseen, and the eye with which to see them. Be all this as it may, the election was one which caused no surprise, though but for the interference of Austria the choice would have fallen elsewhere. Bowed down with an infirmity which soon preyed upon his vitals and tormented his life, his short pontificate did not endure throughout the succeeding year, for he died on the 1st of December, 1830. Yet short as was his occupation of the chair of St. Peter, it was not uneventful. He witnessed the carrying of the long-contested measure of Catholic Emancipation in England, while he was embroiled with Prussia upon the question of mixed marThe revolution of July, too, riages. which hurled a monarch from his throne, did not fail to communicate its impulse to other portions of Europe. Belgium speedily arose and cast off the sovereignty of Holland. Poland struggled to be free, but without success, and the spirit of insurrection spread to the Papal dominions. The Pope had cope with the secret societies that plotted in Rome, against which he issued his edicts: twenty-six members of the "Carbonari" were arrested, tried, and condemned-one to death, which sentence was commuted, and the rest to imprisonment. Another conclave, and not free from the usual intrigues and the interference of other states. Cardinal Giustiniani, in whose favor the electoral tide was setting strongly, was prohibited by the veto of Spain. Cardinal Wiseman assures us, on the authority of Cardinal Weld, who assisted at the conclave, that Giustiniani looked wretched and pining, while the prospect of the Papacy was before him, but that he brightened up and looked himself again the moment the vision had passed away. This it did speedily, dissolving into the reality of Bartolomeo Cappellari, being elected as Gregory XVI. He was a native of Belluno, in Lombardy, where he was born in 1765; entered the monastery of the Camaldolese order, in Venice, in 1783, assuming the name of Mauro; and in 1805 was created abbot of the monastery of St. Gregory in Rome, where he spent twenty years in the retirement of a man of letters, when he was raised to the dignity of Cardinal in 1826. Thus on his accession to the Papal throne, the world was still agitated by the revolutionary storm; and Gregory had to cope with it at home. This he did with some vigor. Scarce a week had elapsed when a plot, formed for the surprise and capture of St. Angelo, had been discovered and foiled by the vigilance of the government; and a few days after an attack was made on the post-office guard, with the intention of seizing their arms and ammunition, which resulted in a conflict in which many of the assailants were wounded and captured. It must be remembered that Rome had no standing army worth speaking of; that the revolutionary party were now advancing upon the capital, not to make terms, but to expel the Pope if possible, and to substitute a republic in place of the established form of government. Under such circumstances Gregory did, we believe, the best thing to be done, bad as it was-he invited the aid of a foreign power, who, like the allies of his successor, came to protect and remained to occupy. Sir Archibald Alison, in his continuation of the "History of Europe"* has given a brief but true summary of the pontificate of Gregory : "His reign was a long and often arduous struggle with the revolutionary liberals, against whom he was sometimes, at the instigation of the victorious Austrians, obliged to adopt measures of rigor little in unison with the native humanity of his disposition. Fearful of letting in the point of the revolutionary wedge, he saw no safety but in sturdy resistance to all measures of reform, which he regarded as the first letting in of the inundation." Despite the amiability of the man, posterity will, we believe, pronounce the Pontiff to have been bigoted and exclusive in his ecclesiastical administration the sovereign harsh and despotic in his temporal policy; and that during the fifteen years of his reign his subjects had little intermission of oppression. Nor will the Protestants of England readily forget the Encyclical letter of 1844, against the Bible Societies and the free use of the Holy Scriptures. Gregory did much to promote the arts. He added largely to the treasures of the Vatican, in Greek, Etruscan, and Egyptian monuments; opening in 1837 his Etruscan museum, and in 1839, that of Egypt. He also made many valuable additions to the paintings, which he caused to be rearranged. In his pontificate a national bank was first established in Rome; the laws were revised; and a new coinage was issued; the excavations in the old city were continued, and the Roman forum was thoroughly restored. Cardinal Wiseman commemorates many men of learning and genius, who graced the pontificate of Gregory XVI. His sketches of them are lively, anecdotical, *Vol. 7, p. 625. and interesting. Indeed the desultory gossip which ever and anon leads him from the direct course of his narrative into some by-way of art or literature, to illustrate it by tasteful criticism and thoughtful observations, forms one of the chief attractions of the book. A whole chapter is devoted to a sketch of that learned and most patient investigator of manuscripts, Angelo Mai. By his will he left his manuscripts, which were very precious, to the Vatican, and his extensive library was purchased by the Pope, and placed in a separate apartment of that of the Vatican. Another distinguished scholar, too, is not forgotten. One who, as well as Mai, was raised to the dignity of Cardinal-we mean Joseph Mezzofanti. As we perceive that Dr. Russell's biography of this great linguist has just ap peared, we shall abstain here from anticipating the notice which that work may induce. We will only say, in passing, that he was as modest and simple as he was learned, and his outward appearance gave small indications of his hidden intellectual wealth. back beyond the days of Waterloo may have found, in Moore's politico-satirical poems, mention of a person enjoying a celebrity similar to that possessed more lately by a French Count resident in London, as a leader of fashion, remarkable at the same time for wit and accomplishments. Such was the Baron Géramb, in the days 'when George the Third was king.' But some may possibly remember a higher renown gained by him, beyond that of having his last bon-mot quoted in the morning papers. Being an alien, though neither a conspirator nor an assassin, he was ordered to leave the country, and refused. He barricaded his house, and placarded it with the words 'Every Englishman's house is his castle,' in huge letters. He bravely stood the siege of some duration, "Those whose memory does not carry them against the police of those days, and drew crowds round the house; till at length, whether starved out by a stern blockade, or over-reached by Bow-street strategy, he either yielded at discretion, or was captured through want of it, and was forthwith transferred to a foreign shore." Thus ends the first act of the Baron's life the curtain falls and hides him. Now for Act the Second: | in Washington Irving's "Tales of a Traveler," is shown to have been surreptitiously taken from a manuscript of a M. Chattelton, an old painter, who had been seized by brigands in mistake for Lucien Bonaparte. Cardinal Wiseman's volume is a very clever, a very tasteful, and a very agree"Many years later, in the reign of Gregory able one. It is true, it does not add a XVI., let the reader suppose himself to be great deal to our previous knowledgestanding on the small plateau, shaded with little or nothing historical-something, no ilex, which fronts the Franciscan convent above Castel-Gondolfo. He is looking down doubt, as illustrative of the private life of on the lovely lake which takes it name from those with whom he was brought into that village, through an opening in the oaken contact; and even the anecdotes are not screen, enjoying the breeze of an autumn after- all novel: for instance, that of Pius VII. noon. He may see, issuing from the convent and Pacca, when hurried away by Gengate, a monk, not of its fraternity, but clothed eral Radet, finding they had only a few in the white Cistercian habit, a man of portly pence in their purses. Pacca has long dimensions, bestriding the humblest but most since given this story in his memoirs, (as patriarchal of man-bearing animals, selected Cardinal Wiseman acknowledges;) and out of hundreds, his rider used to say, to be in just proportion to the burthen. If the stranger Alison has made it the property of the examines him, he will easily discern, through world in his history of Europe. Howthe gravity of his look, not only a nobleness of ever, the book is an accession in the way countenance, and through the simplicity of his of "Memoirs pour servir." But he who habit, not merely a gracefulness of demeanor, would use these memoirs must remember which speak the highly-bred gentleman, but they are written by one who is a true and even visible remains of the good-humored, kind- faithful son of that Church-a prince of hearted, and soldierly courtier. There lurks still in his eye a sparkling gleam of wit sup-he candidly admits has the allegiance and that politico-ecclesiastical dominion which pressed, or disciplined into harmless coruscations. Once when I met him at Albano, he had brought as a gift to the English Cardinal Acton, a spirited sketch of himself and his 'gallant gray' rolling together in the dust. When I called on him at his convent, he showed me an Imperial autograph letter, just received, announcing to him the gallantry and wounds of his son, fighting in Circassia, and several other royal epistles, written in the pleasant tone of friend to friend." love of his whole heart and intellect. Hence it is that we have throughout elaborate descriptions, eloquent and impassioned, of gorgeous rites and magnificent ceremonies-processions, inaugurations, Papal benedictions, all that is sensuously impressive, all that is æsthetically captivating in a religion built up with the consummate craft of human wisdom on the simple and spiritual foundation of primitive Christianity. We do not censure Cardinal Wiseman for this. It is but the natural consequence of his own convictions and position. Nay, we cordially admit that he has, upon the whole, written with candor, moderation, and a chariWe have already exceeded the limits table abstinence from what could hurt which we prescribed to ourselves when the religious feelings of any sect of we commenced, and must, therefore, omit Christians. But we admonish his readsome pleasant anecdotes which we had in-ers that they see but a part of the pictended to have given. Amongst them is one, in relation to the subject of brigandage, in which "The Painter's Adventure," This change was due to the Baron having been a fellow-prisoner with Cardinal de Gregorio: he became a monk of La Trappe on his liberation, and was afterwards sent to Rome as procurator of the order. ture-unfaithful, we are willing to concede, in this chiefly, that it is too highly colored-unreal, because it is incomplete. |