scattered over the world. The miracle of the press recalled the Pentecostal gift of tongues, for lo! now did all men, each in his own tongue, hear the words of Peter. The careful chronicler, who is the product of the modern press, watched his sayings, his life and conversation, and the peace and beauty of his character became known to the whole world. The vigilance of the press, both hostile and friendly, never slept. In spite of the efforts of his enemies to distort or suppress the truth, the might of journalism pierced through every flimsy lie or report, and the newspaper training which all readers of any acumen now receive enabled them to form the clearest and most comprehensive judgments upon the Holy Father and his cause.

Not but that the press was used as an engine against him. But as two great political parties react upon each other correctively, so the Catholic press, panoplied in truth and love, easily vanquished its opponent. In fact, reading over the notices of the Pope in our secular journals, we are struck with their average justice and high encomium. Of course there needs must be exceptions. There is the traditional hatred of the Pope which influences many minds, but, it is safe to say, that no true editor has such a mind. There is no more impartial body of men in the world than those who are trained upon a great journal or review. The very habit of thought clears their minds of cant. But it is the shame and confusion of the great editorial body that we cannot exclude narrow-minded and ignorant men from the guild. The sectarian press showed also marked liberality of sentiment upon the mournful occasion; and we need not eulogize the noble and eloquent tributes which appeared in the Catholic press. It may be said that the press of all denominations did its part cheerfully and ably in all that pertained toward placing upon its record and in its archives the life and memory of

Pius IX.

OUR new Sovereign Pontiff, Pope Leo XIII, is described as a tall, majestic, and austere-looking man, with a noble forehead and a countenance expressive of great firmness and sagacity. The personal appearance of the new Pontiff has been apparently deemed so striking that it was telegraphed over the world. It is natural for

us to wish to form some idea of the faces and general appearance of celebrated persons. We were looking over a portrait gallery of Popes recently, and we were struck with the strongly marked features of all of them. An acute historian says that a portrait of an historical personage enabled him

to form a pretty clear idea of the manners and characters of the man. We believe that Lavater, the physiognomist, is no longer held in much esteem; but there is certainly some truth in the world-old proverb, "Vultus, speculum animæ."

The pictures of the first Popes are, very likely, imaginary. It is not probable that their effigies were preserved, and there was an ascetic feeling in the early Christian Church which was not favorable to art nor to the variety of portrait-painting. Not till the middle ages do we find exact pictures. From that period down, the Pontiff's "counterfeit presentment" became necessary for coinage as well as art and history. Many of the Popes wore beards. There is very little beauty amongst them, but high character and strongly marked lines. The family portraits of most royal houses are but a series of simpering nonentities. What commonplace and even vulgar-looking personages are Queen Victoria and the royal family of England!

Pope Leo is said to bear a striking resemblance to our own Cardinal McCloskey, but it must be in manner, for a close comparison of the two photographs reveals marked dissimilarities. At all events, he is

a strikingly noble-looking man, worthy physically of being the High Priest, even according to the order of Aaron.

He was born, March 2d, 1810, at Carpineto, a town in the late Papal States, about forty miles from Rome, and he received at baptism the name of Joachim. His ancestral name is Pecci (pronounced Peckshe). He studied at the Roman College, and showed a legal turn of mind. the most eminent canonist in the sacred col

He was

lege, and an exceedingly good diplomatist, though his native integrity of character seems to have unfitted him for the highest success in that rather dubious science. Monsignor Seton, of New Jersey, who studied with him, says that he was a vegetarian and a great fruit-eater. He was an assiduous student, and very pious. At the early age of twenty-seven he was made one of the Domestic Prelates of Gregory XVI, an infallible judge of character.

About the years 1838-9, the Papal territories were infested with brigands. Byron howls dismally about the curse, and not a tourist of the time seems to have escaped the attention of the robbers. Irate Englishmen speedily accused the clergy as conniving with the thieves. There is no doubt that the local gentry were hand in glove with them. Those very high-toned counts and marquises with which Italy is so liberally supplied, took to the road themselves. Complaints were incessantly made to the Pope for the suppression of the nuisance. He sent Pecci to them, and in three months

he managed to alleviate if not extirpate the evil. He engaged the services of the King of Naples, and at his instance a few "noble counts" were locked up on bread and water. The brigands, deprived of their noble protectors, gradually disbanded, and the picturesque steeple-hat and red belt no longer lent its grace to Italian scenery in those parts.

In 1843, Mgr. Pecci, now Archbishop, was sent as Papal Nuncio to Leopold I, King of Belgium. The rights and liberties of the Church were threatened by the machinations of the Freemasons, with whom the King was in secret if not open sympathy. Leopold himself was an infidel. Belgium, in the main, is a Catholic country, but the restless revolutionaries in that day never ceased disquieting the conscience and inflaming the passions and prejudices of the people. Mgr. Pecci's mission was a complete success. Leopold thought so highly of him that he besought the Pope to bestow upon him the purple. This request was complied with in 1853, after he had been Archbishop of Perugia for seven years.

It is a blessed cause of rejoicing to Americans that we are not pestered with the horrible swarms of secret societies that have been the curse of Italy, even from the days of the Colonna and the Orsini. Cowardly and imbecile demagogues, they prefer the dark ways of trickery and treachery to gain political advantages which they are afraid to demand with the sword, or even at the ballot-box. Archbishop Pecci had this contemptible element to deal with all his life, and will have it up to the day of his death. His courage, firmness, and intrepid defence of the rights of the Church struck the Italian element, unused to such virtues, with admiration, and though, in 1859, the Italian government despoiled him of his seminaries, drove out the Jesuits, and confiscated monastic property, all classes regarded the Archbishop with boundless respect and applause. He wrote vigorous letters against Victor Emanuel's usurpations, and showed a conspicuously bold front before the highhanded measures of the usurping govern

ment.

There has been much written and said about the hostility of Cardinal Antonelli to Cardinal Pecci. "Tantæ ne animis cælestibus iræ ?" The sage correspondent knows intimately the proceedings of every consistory. The reliable contraband in our civil war is the counterpart of the reliable correspondent. The gossip of Roman society, particularly Anglo-American society in Rome, is about as trustworthy as gossip anywhere else. The jealousy of Antonelli did not prevent Pecci from attaining the highest positions in the church. Curious jealousy that!

The confidence felt in him by Pope Pius IX was manifested in his appointment as Camerlengo or Grand Chamberlain, who governs the Church during the interregnum. It is said that this position practically disqualifies for Papal honors, but the fact that he was so quickly and unanimously elected to the Sovereign Pontificate shows that no traditions or precedents hamper the action of a Conclave, bent as it always is, under the Divine guidance, upon electing the most fitting prelate to the highest of earthly honors.

It is a subject of devout thanksgiving that the Church was not left long without a head.

There are instances in Church history where the Papal throne was vacant for upwards of a year, not without considerable confusion and detriment to the conduct of ecclesiastical business. The Providence of God in our distracted times does not suffer his Church long to remain without the strong hand of Peter at the helm. Bright and auspicious may Leo's reign long continue, and we take happy augury from his name Vincat Leo Judea!

THE traveller upon railway cars in America is frequently annoyed with "popular literature." He may desire to gaze upon the scenery, he may have an interesting book, or he may wish to sleep, but the boy with the bundle of books and papers constantly hovers around, and at very short intervals deposits on his lap a crudely illustrated paper or a flame-backed book. In vain does our traveller protest, and to escape the annoyance he eventually invests a dime or a quarter in the dubious literature presented. And such reading matter! We confess that railroad travelling is unspeakably tiresome to ourselves; and in order to relieve its monotony we have devoured all the prize-packages of candy and all the illustrated papers we can lay hold upon. In this way we have mastered all the popular stories and all the cheap books which our teeming press annually and weekly send forth. We feel perfectly competent to write an approved Indian romance or a fashionable novel. The mysterious creatures who compose for the literary weekly press, and who, by the way, are far better paid than your learned historian or essayist, seem to be very slenderly provided with brains. In fact, any predominance of intellectual power is fatal. Sylvanus Cobb, Jr., whose stories in the New York Ledger we, as a boy, so delighted in, that in order to get the paper we often made off with our mother's flatirons, is better paid than Emerson; and the fortune of Mrs. Southworth, who thinks nothing of dashing off a novel in a week, is supposed to be fabulous. The romantic years of youth will seek for tales, and tales,

too, of spice and high color. The resources of Sunday-school libraries are soon exhausted; and the next stage reached is the circulating library. Why we read novels is easily explained. All of us have an ideal which we can never realize. The fairy world which the novelist introduces us to is the world we desire to live in. Just as in dreams we have no idea of space or time, so in the romance we lead a visionary life. We grow interested in impossible persons. We never perceive exaggerations. As the sick man postponed death until he could get the next number of Dickens's Pickwick, our purely romantic and visionary friends become more real to us than our actual ones. The merest balderdash passes with us for rhetoric. "To escape from our environment," as Goethe says, "is the deepest feeling of the human heart." This thought is the worldly expression of the profound reflection of St. Augustine upon our restlessness, which shall never be soothed until we are in the peace of God. The novelist may take greater liberties than the poet, who is bound by the unities. Dickens fairly riots in characterization. Cooper's "red man has modified all our ideas of the Indian. Charles Reade gives us pictures of femineity which, unhappily, are only pictures; and Thackeray introduces us to a cold cynicism, which, happily, does not exist, for to be a cynic one must feel ideal, and the vast majority of people have no ideas at all.

We know thoroughly what is coming in a story; we know the happiness which will descend upon all the parties in a novel; we regret the doom to which the dark-browed villain is invariably condemned; we start a chapter with the clearest knowledge of its ending, and yet we continue reading. In every Indian story the maiden drops a note which her lover finds in the grass; in nautical tales, the captain "shivers his timbers" and orders "the jib-boom to be luffed to landward, and the mainsails to be reefed;" in fashionable novels, the heroine is dressed in plain white with a simple ribbon in her hair, and talks very bad French; and in the philosophical and psychological novel, such as George Eliot writes, the heroine has a dynamic quality," or a projection of the chin which is peculiar to Rubens, or eyes whose stellar power is slightly modified by an inward petulance, which is apparent also in the nez retroussé, an index of character about as safe to be followed as a physician's prescription in heart disease. He gives the patient digitalis, and learns from his survival that he has cardiac disease, and from his death that the disease was deeply seated.

THE Most Reverend James Gibbons, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore, and Primate of the United States, was solemnly invested with the pallium on Sunday, February 10th. The ceremony took place at the cathedral, in Baltimore, and was witnessed by a throng limited only by the capacity of the building. In consequence of the death and out of respect to the memory of our late Holy Father, Pius IX, the occasion was divested, as far as possible, of external display, but, notwithstanding this, it was of a highly impressive and imposing character. A solemn pontifical High Mass was celebrated prior to the ceremony of investiture, with the Rt. Rev. P. N. Lynch, D.D., of Charleston, celebrant, the music of the mass being rendered in Gregorian chant by nearly a hundred choristers. Bishop Lynch also preached on the occasion, and gave a very interesting and graphic sketch of the history of the see of Baltimore, from its foundation down to the present day, eulogizing in eloquent and feeling terms the various deceased prelates who preceded Archbishop Gibbons in this venerable see.

The ceremony was attended and participated in by a large number of Archbishop Gibbons's brethren in the episcopacy, including the hierarchy of the Province, and also about one hundred and fifty priests and

seminarians.

THE public have no idea of the services rendered by a great review, or even a journal, in simply preventing the publication of essays, poems, and other literary afflictions. The writer of this remembers the rather illnatured pleasure he felt, when, in editorial charge of a magazine, he consigned innumerable manuscripts to the waste-basket. The number of people who imagine that they can write is infinite. The French proverb runs, "Ce monde est plein des fous," This world is full of fools; but folly is never so apparent as it is in writing. Perfect grammar and orthography may coexist with perfect inanity. We have read manuscripts that could not be excepted to on the score of grammar, but whose perfect absence of thought was an insuperable objection to them. The reader of this can write, "Cæsar was a great man," but his mere ability so to do does not qualify him for the journalistic profession. If this fact were more generally perceived and acted upon, a great deal of mortification would be saved to would-be contributors, and no little trouble to editors.

ON the 4th of March the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Robert Emmett

was celebrated in a befitting manner by Irishmen and all lovers of liberty everywhere.

This distinguished and gifted patriot and martyr to Irish liberty left behind him a name that never will be forgotten by Irishmen, and the lustre of whose pure life and noble character will only grow brighter in the lapse of ages.

In concluding his memorable speech before sentence of death was pronounced upon him, Robert Emmett requested that no one write his epitaph until Ireland should be free. This request has been observed. The epitaph, alas! is unwritten. When it shall be written, whether in our own day or in the distant future, it matters not, as far as he is concerned, for the memory of his unsullied life, and noble deeds, and most cruel martyrdom, is graven deep in the hearts of all true lovers of freedom, and will endure long after the epitaph itself shall have become obliterated from the crumbling granite on which it will be inscribed.

THE will of our late Holy Father, Pius IX, upon being opened was found to contain, amongst others, the following instructions, written with his own hand: " My body shall be buried in the church of St. Lawrence Without the Walls, under the little arch which surmounts the gridiron that is the stone on which are still visible the stains

made by the martyrdom of the illustrious Levite. The expenses of the monument shall not exceed four hundred crowns.'

The inscription for the monument is also given, written in his Holiness's own writing,

and is as follows:

"Ossafet Cineres Pii P. IX: um. Pont.

Vixit An.—in Pontificatv An.-Orate Pro Eo."

"The bones and dust of Pope Pius IX, Supreme Pontiff. He lived years; in years. Pray for him."

the Pontificate

The private fortune of His Holiness, obtained by inheritance, is bequeathed to relatives by blood. Three hundred thousand francs are given to the poor, and a number of gifts are given to personal friends, including the Comte de Chambord and Queen Isabella.

AT the second plenary council of Baltimore the prelates then and there assembled, in a pastoral which they addressed to the clergy and laity in the United States, said:

"We cheerfully acknowledge the services the Catholic press has rendered to religion, as also the disinterestedness with which, in most instances, it has been conducted, although yielding to publishers and editors a very insufficient return for their labor. We

exhort the Catholic community to extend their publications a more liberal support, in order that they may become more worthy to the great cause they advocate. We remind them that the power of the press is one of the most striking features of modern society, and that it is our duty to avail ourselves of this mode of making known the truths of our religion, and removing the misapprehensions which so generally prevail in regard to them. If many of these papers are not all that we would wish them to be, it will be frequently found that the real cause of their shortcomings is the insufficient support they receive from the Catholic public."

This declaration and exhortation of our chief pastors, whom God has placed over his Church in this country, it is especially important should be borne in mind by those who are concerned for the increase and spread of true religion in the United States. The power of the press is incalculable, and by generously supporting Catholic literature that power may be made available in the defence and diffusion of Catholicity.

IN 1814 Rev. E. D. Fenwick, O. P., a cousin of the late Bishop Fenwick, of Boston, first penetrated the woods of Ohio. The first church was erected in the State in 1818, in Perry County, under the patronage of St. Joseph. Father Fenwick found seven Catholic families in Cincinnati. In 1822 he was consecrated bishop of the diocese of Cincinnati.

The territory of the new diocese, taken from that of Bardstown, Ky., comprised Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michi

gan. In 1826 the Cathedral of Cincinnati was dedicated. In 1832 Bishop Fenwick died and was succeeded by Right Rev. J. Purcell, D.D., now the Most Rev. Archbishop of Cincinnati.