Volume 27 — THE HOME-RULE CANDIDATE. A STORY OF “NEW IRELAND.” CHAPTER IV. THE ELECTION.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “THE LITTLE CHAPEL AT MONAMULLIN,” “THE ROMANCE OF A PORTMANTEAU,” ETC., ETC.

I was received at Clonacooney with an enthusiasm that sent the hot blood surging through my veins in prideful throbs. At the entrance to the village I was presented with an address by a splendid specimen of the Irish race in the person of Myles Moriarty, a man who had been “out” in forty-eight, who, on the part of the tenant-farmers of Clonacooney, tendered me welcome and assurances of both moral and physical support.

“The dark hour is passin’ from the ould country, sir, and yours be the hand to wipe the tear from the cheek of Erin,” were his concluding words.

I must have spoken to the point, for I was cheered to the echo, and my right hand almost wrung from the arm by repeated shakings.

In Father O’Dowd’s garden a small platform had been raised, composed of the kitchen table, the safety of which Biddy Finnegan watched over with tender regard.

Around the little grass-plat some hundred of the “boys” were gathered, who bared their heads in respectful reverence when the good priest ascended the dais.

It is chiefly in Ireland that one sees the visible link that binds priests and people. The Irish peasant never forgets that he is in the presence of the Lord’s anointed, and the respect for the clergyman upon the hillside or wayside is the same as though he were clad in his vestments and upon the altar.

Father O’Dowd introduced me in a speech that burned into the minds of his auditory. It was full of fiery eloquence, full of patriotism, full of Catholicity. In dealing with the question of Home Rule he said: “Over a country agitated by dissension and weakened by mistrust we have raised the banner of Home Rule. We raised it hesitatingly, unfurling it tremblingly to the breeze; but the hearts of the people have been moved by the two small words, and the soul of the nation has felt their power and their spell. These words have passed from man to man along the valley and along the hillside. Everywhere our despairing sons have turned to that banner with confidence and hope. Thus far we have borne it. Upon these young and stalwart shoulders,” placing his arm affectionately around me, “we shall now place it, to be borne unto victory. It is meet that the representative of a stainless race, of a race that upheld their creed when its avowal led to the scaffold and gibbet, should go forth from among us young in years, high in hope, ardent in the cause of creed and country. We shall hand our banner into his youthful hands, and with him this trust shall be considered 211sacred. He will defend it, if necessary, with his life. The cause of the church will be his; the cause of the country will be his.”

When it came to my turn to speak a mist seemed to gather before my eyes and my head began to swim.

“Courage!” whispered Father O’Dowd. “Nos hæc novimus esse nihil.”

I plunged in medias res, floundering on, stumbling, staggering, repeating myself, till I felt all aflame, and as if my head were red-hot. Suddenly the idea smote me that I had Wynwood Melton to beat, and I became cool as ice. Yes, the transition was simply instantaneous, and with it came a flow of words such as have never welled from me since, save, perhaps, upon the day of the election.

I spoke for nearly an hour, and I subsequently recollected that I had discussed the entire political situation of Ireland, as I had done some years before in a debate at the Catholic University. Memory came gallantly to the rescue, and when I concluded Father O’Dowd cried enthusiastically:

“A born orator—nascitur, non fit. Now, boys,” addressing the tumultuous assemblage, “haven’t we got the right man, and won’t we put him in the right place?”

When I returned to Kilkenley I found that Mr. Melton had taken his departure.

“He is alive to the importance of an active canvass,” said Mr. Hawthorne, “and has repaired to the tents of his people. I am very sorry that the warning should come from me—a warning that may be of singular disservice to you.”

“I feel that I shall win.”

“My dear young friend, I felt that I would win, and discredited the returns that threw me overboard when I contested Fromsey. Do not let your feelings mislead you. Work as if expecting defeat, and as if endeavoring to reduce the majority against you. I’m an old campaigner and know the ropes.”

My mother was all eagerness to know how I had progressed. When I told her that I had made two speeches, one of them of an hour’s duration, her delight was boundless.

“You were lost, dear child,” she cried. “Your talents are of a high order, and you have at last found a field for them.”

Harry Welstone had attended a meeting at Ballynashaughragawn, and had held forth in my behalf, like a regular brick that he was. All my jealousy disappeared upon the mention of Melton, and Harry was again my confidant in everything.

“I don’t think she cares much for that fellow, Fred.”

“I tell you that they understand each other.” And I writhed in the agony of the thought.

“I think her governor is nibbling for Melton as a son-in-law, but there is no ring of the true metal about the girl’s feelings—nothing that I can detect; and I’m not utterly unobservant.”

I never felt that the gash in my heart was so deep until Miss Hawthorne referred to their leaving.

“Our time is up. We have overstayed our limit.”

“Surely you will not desert us until after the election,” said my mother. “You must celebrate his success, if success it is to be.”

“Oh! Miss Hawthorne is not interested in my success, mother,” I interposed.

She turned her violet eyes full upon me.

212“Much more so than you give me credit for.”

“My non-success, you mean.”

“I do not mean it.”

“It is quite right that you should,” I said bitterly. “I have no claim upon your interest.”

“A very strong one, I assure you.”

“Melton’s the man,” assuming a savage gayety. “How jolly he will feel if he wins! how delighted to bear the news to his lady-love!”

“Does it not strike you, Mr. Ormonde, that your last observation is upon the borderland of—what shall I call it?”

“Truth,” I suggested.

She did not deign to reply to me, but, turning to my mother, expressed a fear that she should leave Kilkenley upon the following day.

“I will not hear of it,” said my mother stoutly.

There was one chance left, and that lay in inducing Mr. Hawthorne to stump the county with me. This scheme I confided to Harry, who highly approved of it. After dinner, when the ladies had returned to the drawing-room, Harry opened fire.

“Mr. Hawthorne, the people about here are exceedingly anxious to hear you speak. They have heard a good deal of your eloquence in Parliament, and have read some of your speeches.”

“I am not reported, sir. Those scoundrels in the press gallery ignore me because I defy them. Would you believe it, gentlemen, my speech upon the removal of a custom-house officer upon a charge of disloyalty to the throne and constitution, and which occupied two hours and a half in its delivery—I went into the question of customs generally, into those of foreign countries, into the national debt, into our relations with Japan, into the contracts for constructing ironclads—in fact, I grasped a series of subjects of the highest importance to the country; and would you believe it, Mr. Speaker—I mean gentlemen—the Times, although I saw that the reporter—yes, gentlemen, I watched him with an eagle eye—was present and apparently engaged in reporting me—the Times, I say, had the audacity to publish that the honorable member for Doodleshire uttered some irrelevant observations which were inaudible in the reporters’ gallery; and yet this unprincipled scoundrel pockets his pay, and reports the flimsy orations of other honorable members not one tithe of so much national importance as mine.” And trembling with anger, Mr. Hawthorne gulped down three glasses of claret in rapid succession.

“The Irish people,” continued Harry, “are the most rhetorical and oratorical in the world, and prefer a good speech to any known amusement except a wake. News of your presence here has gone far and wide, and I may tell you fairly that it is incumbent upon you to let them hear you.”

“I—ahem!—would be very pleased to do so, did a suitable opportunity present itself,” said the M.P. with a pleased smile.

“The opportunity luckily does present itself. On Thursday next our host here must attend a meeting of his constituents at Bohernacallan, and, if you were to accompany him and address the people, I assure you it will be regarded as a very considerable favor by the hundreds who will be assembled.”

“On Thursday next I shall be on my way to London.”

“Not a bit of it,” I chimed in.

213“There is nothing to be done in London now, Mr. Hawthorne,” said Harry.

“My arrangements are all made, and nothing, sir, nothing could induce me to break them. I am a man of iron, adamant in such matters.”

I looked blankly at Harry, but Master Harry was still hopeful, as indicated by a dexterous half-wink while the M.P. was tossing off another glass of claret.

“I may tell you as a matter of fact, Mr. Hawthorne, that you are expected at this meeting.”

“It is very flattering, Mr. Welstone, but the meeting must stand disappointed in so far as I am concerned. No, gentlemen; in the House or outside of it, once I lay down a plan of operations, I never diverge from it by the distance of a single hair.”

Again I looked blankly at Harry, and again I met with a half-wink.

“That’s very unfortunate, Mr. Hawthorne, but I suppose it cannot be helped.”

“It cannot indeed, sir.”

“And reporters coming down from Dublin, too,” said Harry, addressing me.

“What is that you say, Mr. Welstone?” demanded the member of Doodleshire with considerable earnestness.

“Oh! it’s not worth repeating.”

“I think I heard you mention something about reporters?”

“Oh! yes; the Dublin newspapers are sending down special reporters, and the London Times’ correspondent is a reporter on the Daily Express.”

“Ahem!” And Mr. Hawthorne gravely produced a memorandum-book, which he proceeded to scan with apparent interest.

Harry gave me the full wink now.

“Oh dear me—ahem!” exclaimed the M.P. “I find that I need not be in London quite so soon, and if it obliges you, my dear Ormonde, I shall be glad to strike a blow in your aid. Did you say the Times’ correspondent will be there? Not that it makes the slightest difference to me; yet, belonging as I do to the great liberal party, and belonging as this election does to the great liberal party, I deem it a sacred duty to aid the great liberal party in so far as it lies in my power. Mr. Ormonde, rely upon me, sir.”

When later on I spoke with Harry on the question of deceiving my guest, especially as no reporters would be within fifty miles of us, “Don’t bother your head about it, Fred. Leave it all to me. I’ll get Tom Rafferty and the two O’Briens to come with big pencils and lots of paper, and tell them to write for their lives the whole time old Hawthorne is speaking. Everything is fair in love, war, and an election.”

The excitement in the county was intense as soon as the fact of my being in the field became known across its length and breadth. The De Ruthvens were furious, the head of the family, Mr. Beresford de Ruthven, honoring me with a personal visit, in order to ascertain whether I was in my senses or out of them.

“Am I to understand, Mr. Ormonde, that you are a candidate for the representation of this county?” he asked, after the usual ceremonial questions had been pushed aside.

“You are, Mr. De Ruthven.”

“That you have consented to be nominated by a rabble—to be—”

“I have been nominated by no rabble, Mr. De Ruthven.”

214“You are the nominee of the priests.”

“I am, sir; but have a care how you speak of a Catholic clergyman in this house. You are not now at Ruthventown.” I was hot with anger.

“Do you want to break up the harmony that has existed for centuries in the county, Mr. Ormonde?”

“I want to see a liberal represent the county, and I am willing to give way to a better man.”

“Liberal! What liberality do you require? Do not the liberals have their share in everything?”

I had him now.

“How many liberals are there on the grand panel, Mr. De Ruthven?”

“Oh! I grant you that there has been mismanagement,” he hastily replied, “but we’ll see to that.”

“What liberality is it that leaves the roads approaching every Catholic church in a condition that would shame a backwoods clearing, while those near the meanest Protestant place of worship are cared for like the avenues in your own domain?”

“That shall be looked to.”

“Where is the liberality at the union boards, in the magistracy, in the county offices? Is there a single Catholic in any office whatever?”

“O Mr. Ormonde! I see you are primed and loaded, and must go off like a fifth-of-November cracker. Now, all I can say to you is this: that if you persist in this audacious attempt in breaking up the harmony of this great county, on your own head be the penalty; and let me add, sir, that when next you attend the assizes, do not be surprised if you are openly insulted.”

“And do not be surprised, Mr. De Ruthven, if the man who dares insult me is openly horse-whipped.”

Mr. De Ruthven, very much disgusted at my papistical audacity, took his leave, warning me, even when in his carriage, that I was certain of defeat, and equally certain of being put in Coventry.

My attempt to wrest the seat from the conservative party was regarded with the same interest as Mr. A. M. Sullivan’s daring effort to snatch Louth from the Right Honorable Chichester Fortescue—an effort that was crowned with such signal success. The cabinet minister and ex-Irish secretary, who was regarded as Mr. Gladstone’s official representative in Ireland, was deemed invulnerable in Louth, having sat for it for twenty-seven years. The government laughed to scorn the idea of disturbing him, but Mr. Sullivan polled two to one, and was carried in by such a weighty majority as virtually to close the county for ever and a day, as the children’s story-books say.

In my county the conservatives laughed my attempt to scorn, pooh-poohing my pretensions and ridiculing my supporters. My opponent made Ruthventown his headquarters, and from Ruthventown came forth his address. From Ruthventown also was issued a manifesto, or imperial ukase rather, commanding the tenants to vote for the De Ruthven candidate, while from every conservative landlord appeared a notice couched in similar dictatorial terms. To these counter-proclamations were scattered broadcast by my various committees throughout the country, calling upon Catholics to support a Catholic, upon Irishmen to support Home Rule.

Father O’Dowd was indefatigable, leaving Sir Boyle Roche’s bird simply nowhere, as he would appear to be in half a dozen different places at 215one and the same time. He lived upon his little outside-car, and the dead hours of the night saw him dashing through lonely glens, winding up steep mountain-sides, speeding through sleeping villages, all for the purpose of bringing the old faith to the front, and of rescuing representation from the clutches of the Orange clique, who had held it so long, to the prejudice of Catholicity and the shame of Catholics.

“We’ll shake off the yoke now or never!” was his constant cry. “Down with the De Ruthven ascendency! We’ll take their heels off our necks. We have suffered and endured too long and too patiently. We have allowed a little clique to govern a nation at their own sweet will. It is time for the people to assert themselves, to come to the front, to share in their own government. The hour is at hand, and the men.”

The county was ablaze. Meetings were held in every village, and my name was handed from townland to townland as a talisman. The most despicable coercive measures were adopted by the conservative landlords toward their tenants with reference to their votes, threats of eviction, of rent-raising, of persecution being openly resorted to.

“Make no promises, boys. Keep yourselves unpledged,” was the constant cry of Father O’Dowd. “Recollect that you have consciences and a country.”

At one meeting, whilst I was engaged in speaking—even now I feel astonished at my eloquence of that time—I was interrupted by some of the De Ruthven faction, who endeavored to hiss and hoot me down.

“Boys,” yelled a voice in the crowd, “there’s iligant bathing in Missis Moriarty’s pond below; they say it’s Boyne wather.” And ere I could interpose or take any step towards cooling the feverish excitement of my supporters, the luckless Ruthvenites were ruthlessly swept towards the dam in question, where in all human probability they would have been half-drowned had not Father O’Dowd rushed to the rescue.

“Are you mad, boys? Don’t touch a hair of their heads.”

“We want for to larn them manners, yer riverince; shure there’s no great harm in that.”

“If one of these vagabonds is ill-treated by you, they’ll unseat Mr. Ormonde on petition. You will not suffer, but Mr. Ormonde will. For Heaven’s sake, boys, don’t lay a finger on them.”

The announcement caused a general gloom.

“Never mind, boys,” shouted one of the crowd. “Shure if we can’t bate thim afore the election, we can knock sawdust out av thim whin it’s all over, an’ that’s a comfort anyhow.”

From every side promises of support came pouring in. The priests and people were working as one man, silently, swiftly, surely. The “hard word” had gone forth, and every parish was preparing its contingent. The hints and cajoleries of the other side were received in dignified silence—a silence which the ascendency party construed into assent. It was deemed utterly impossible that the tenantry could vote against the nominee of their landlords; and although these “slave-owners” received very significant warnings from their bailiffs, they could not and would not give heed to them.

My address was drawn up in a solemn committee composed of Father O’Dowd, Mr. Hawthorne, 216Mabel, my mother, and myself. I need not reproduce it here. It was Catholic and national, and when it went forth to the county it was received with universal enthusiasm. The opposite party stigmatized it as an “audacious document,” a “firebrand.” “Yes,” said the parish priest of Derrymaleena, “it is a firebrand, and one that lights the funeral pyre of the Orange party.”

I found Miss Hawthorne rewriting a copy of my address.

“I will save you the trouble, Miss Hawthorne,” I said bitterly, and Heaven knows my heart was at a dead ache, “and I will send a copy to Mr. Melton.”

She flushed, the hot blood mounting over her little ears. “You do me a cruel injustice, Mr. Ormonde,” she replied. “Read that!” contemptuously flinging me an open letter across the table.

“I do not wish to pry into Mr. Melton’s secrets.”

“That letter is not from Mr. Melton. I never received one from him in my life, nor do I care to receive one; but since you will not read this letter, you shall hear its contents.”

She read as follows in a pained voice:

My Dear Mrs. Ormonde:

As the coming man is so busy, and is probably at the other side of the county, I write to you to ask you to send me a copy of his address as soon as ever you can. We are all alive here, and Victory is within our grasp. Always yours,

Peter Heffernan.

“Now, Mr. Ormonde, may I ask you if it was generous of you to—”

“Forgive me, Miss Hawthorne,” I exclaimed. “I—I do not know what I am doing, what I am saying. I am distracted—wretched.” I was silent. I dared go no further. The vision of Wynwood Melton cried check to the bounding thoughts that came surging from my heart.

“The evening of the 20th will find you in better form.”

I shook my head. The future was utterly dreary—one blank, sunless waste.

“You will win this election, Mr. Ormonde.”

I sighed deeply.

“A barren victory.”

“A barren victory!” she exclaimed with considerable animation. “Do you consider it a barren victory to beat the Carlton Club, the great conservative stronghold of England, whose every ukase is law—to beat the De Ruthven faction, who have held your beautiful county in subjection since the Pale?”

“A Dead-Sea apple. In winning this election I win your hatred.”

“My hatred?” opening her lovely violet eyes in delicious wonder.

“Yes, Miss Hawthorne; if I am elected I shall have beaten the man you love.”

She flushed again—a shower of rose-petals.

“There is not a more miserable being on the face of this earth than I am this moment, Miss Hawthorne. Were I not pledged in honor to this election, I would stand aside and let Mr. Melton win this stake, as he has won the higher stake—your heart.”

She was about to interrupt me, her lips tremulous, her hands in strong action.

“Hear me for one moment,” I cried, carried away in a rush of tumultuous feeling, every sense in a mad whirl. “I love you, Mabel—love you with a love that is more than love. I tried to hate you. In that vain attempt I resolved to bring sorrow to your heart, to glut my own desire for vengeance. It was jealous despair that led me 217into this conflict. It is possible I may not see you until the fight is over, perhaps never again; but, Mabel Hawthorne, my first, my last love, it may be sweet to you to know why this victory will be a barren one, why the hand that grasps the laurel will seize but dead ashes.” And without trusting myself even to glance at her, I rushed from the room, from the house, and was many miles on the road to Derrymaclury ere thoroughly aware of the fact.

I did not return to Kilkenley. I dreaded the fearful fascination of Mabel’s presence, and, now that I had declared my hopeless love, I did not care to meet her. It would be mean and shabby to hang about her, knowing she was never to be mine. It would be despicable, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, were I again to refer to Melton or the election. There was nothing for it but to remain at a distance. I recall the agonies of those few days with a shiver. The powerful excitement of the approaching contest was over-weighted by the dull gnawing at my heart. I was as one walking in a painful dream. In vain I plunged into the whirl of speech-making, canvassing, and all the absorbing surroundings of the election—truly in vain, for the one idea ever grimly tortured me, and the one hopeless thought ever perched raven-like in my gloom-laden mind.

“Take heart of grace, man,” Father O’Dowd would say. “We’ll beat them three to one.”

Could he minister to the disease that was eating away my very heart?

Harry Welstone came over.

“Why, there has been a sort of panic at Kilkenley on account of your abrupt departure, Fred. The last person who saw you in the flesh was Miss Hawthorne, and she is very reticent in the matter. I tried to pump her, and got quietly sat upon for my pains. She has disappeared, too.”

“What do you mean?”

“She has been playing the invisible princess. Your opponent called twice, and she refused to see him.”

“Is it Melton?” I cried, a wild joy surging around my heart.

“Yes; the great M.P. in embryo.”

“Wouldn’t see him?”

“Said she had a headache.”

“You jest, Harry.”

“Not a bit of it. Old Blunderbuss was as mad as a hatter, but missy stuck fast to her colors.”

“I wish to heaven you hadn’t told me this, Harry.”

“Why?”

“I do not know.”

And I did not know, but so it was. There lay a disturbing element in this news that completely set me astray. Hope, that springs eternal in the human breast; hope, that seemed shut out from mine for ever, was timidly knocking at the portals demanding admittance; but I resolutely barred the portals, raising the drawbridge, and dropping the portcullis. And yet—

No. I would not admit the impossible.

The nomination took place in the court-house at Ballyraken, the county town, which was literally packed with the country people, who had come in from the great harvest districts to hear the “speechifyin’.” The De Ruthven faction mustered very strongly, all the Protestant gentry arriving in their equipages, making “a brave and goodly show.” Mr. Wynwood 218Melton—who appeared in a faultlessly-fitting black frock-coat, with the last rose of summer in his button-hole, a hat that literally shone like jet, and pale lavender gloves—was proposed by Sir Robert Slugby de Ruthven, D.L., and seconded by Mr. Beresford de Ruthven, D.L.

Sir Robert, an aged, aristocratic-looking man, with a lordly voice and royal mien, after dilating, amidst fearful interruption, upon the misfortune that had fallen on the county in the ill-considered enterprise of this rash young man—meaning me—in his hopeless endeavor to disturb the harmony which had so long existed in the county, proceeded to say:

“I have a gentleman to propose to your consideration—a gentleman of birth, a gentleman of education, a gentleman of position, a gentleman of means, a gentleman—”

Here a voice, which I immediately recognized as that of Peter O’Brien, cried out in the crowd:

“Arrah, blur an’ ages, we’re tired av gintlemin; can’t ye stand yerself?”

This sally, which was greeted with a roar of laughter, completely upset the little speech which Sir Robert had prepared, and in a few mumbled words he proposed Mr. Wynwood Melton as a fit and proper person to represent the county in the Imperial Parliament.

Mr. Beresford de Ruthven was an able and popular speaker. He knew how, when, and where to touch the heart of the Irish peasant. His tact was admirable, while he possessed the rare qualification of being enabled to keep his audience in his hands as a juggler his golden balls.

We feared his speech. It was a rock ahead, and every word that fell from his lips was to be caught up and treasured, in order that our best men should reply to him. We knew it was nearly impossible to catch him tripping, and that he was one of those agile performers who spring smilingly to their feet even after an ugly fall.

“I wish this was over,” whispered Father O’Dowd. “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. He’ll butter the boys like parsnips, and promise them the moon.”

Mr. De Ruthven commenced his speech in a breathless silence. Oratory is always respected in Ireland, even in an opponent, although that opponent be a Protestant and an Orangeman. The speaker labored under the disadvantage of possessing but one hand, the other having been accidentally shot off by the bursting of a fowling-piece while Mr. De Ruthven was grouse-shooting in Scotland.

His speech was, unhappily for us, most felicitous. He seemed to suit himself to the occasion, and to make the occasion suit him. A faint murmur followed one or two of his well-directed points, which gradually swelled into open applause, until, to our dismay, we found he was carrying the audience with him.

Our party gazed significantly one at the other. We all perceived that the danger we had already anticipated was upon us in real earnest. At this moment I perceived Peter O’Brien elbowing himself to the front. A dead silence had fallen, one of those unaccountable stillnesses that occasionally come upon all assemblages, however large. Mr. De Ruthven was about to recommence, when Peter, putting his hands to his mouth, and in a voice that could be heard in the adjacent barony, shouted at the top of his lungs:

219“Where’s the hand that sthruck the priest?”

To describe the effect of this query would be impossible. It was simply electrical. In one second the current, which had been flowing smoothly, became dammed, and instantly turned into another channel. In vain did Mr. De Ruthven endeavor to gain a hearing; in vain to disclaim the odious charge that had been indirectly preferred against him. It was useless. Every effort was met by a thousand cries of “Where’s the hand that sthruck the priest?” And in these few words the sun of his eloquence had set for ever. The high-sheriff almost burst a blood-vessel in his endeavor to obtain silence, until, finding the task a hopeless one, he advised Mr. De Ruthven to formally second the nomination and retire, which was accordingly done, and in dumb show.

When Melton presented himself he was received with laughter and jeers. The people had just warmed into that facetious good-humor that is so dangerous to a candidate for their suffrages. Opposition makes a martyr. Laughter causes a man to appear ridiculous.

“What’ll ye take for the posy?”

“Off wud yer gloves.”

“Will ye give us a pup out o’ that hat?”

“Is that coat ped for?”

“The raison it’s so new is that he wants to be able for to turn it, boys.”

“Spake up.”

“Give us a little Irish.”

“Sing the ‘Wearin’ av the Green.’”

“We’ll return ye—to England.”

“Go home to yer mother.”

“Cud ye say boo to a goose?”

“Och! we’ll vote for ye all together like Brown’s cows, an’ he had only wan.”

“Yer a fine man to send—out o’ the counthry.”

“Arrah, what brought ye here at all?”

“Ax for the price o’ the thrain for to take ye home, an’ mebbe ould Beresford wud give it to ye.”

Such were the greetings that interrupted Mr. Wynwood Melton during the delivery of a very brief speech, not one word of which even reached the reporters’ table. He seemed, however, perfectly unruffled, and continued bowing for a considerable time in response to the derisive cheering that followed upon his silence.

Father O’Dowd was received with a whirlwind of cheers, yells, and other manifestations of enthusiastic delight.

In proposing me he was very brief, alluding to the degrading position held by Catholics in a county where the large majority of the people were Catholics, and where everything that could be denied a Catholic was denied him. He was good enough to refer to the intrepidity with which my poor father had upheld the ancient faith, to his true-hearted patriotism, and wound up by declaring that this was the hour for the county to assert itself, both for conscience and country.

I read my speech in the Weekly Courier on the following Saturday, and I suppose I must have uttered it, but I have not the remotest conception of what I said. It read wonderfully well; and as Father O’Dowd told me I surpassed myself, I felt more or less elated at my success.

“If she had been there to hear it!” was my sad, sickening thought.

Læta dies aderat. The eventful day arrived big with my fate and that of the county. I felt that 220I was but the mere instrument, and, if victory were to crown the effort, it would be due to the principle and not the man. We knew that in some districts we would be badly beaten, while in others the issue was somewhat doubtful; but as to the ultimate outcome we entertained not a shadow of a doubt. The people were panting for a chance, and they had got it now.

When I showed the voting-papers to Peter, telling him that a cross marked in pencil should go opposite the name of the candidate for whom the voter wished to vote, he anxiously demanded:

“An’ must the min that votes for the Englishman put in a crass, too?”

“Every man of them.”

“Och, thin, glory be to God! shure it’s a judgmint on thim Protestants for to have to make the sign av the blessed an’ holy crass at all, at all—curse of Crummle on thim!”

Fearing a disturbance, as party spirit ran so high and as my supporters were so excited, a strong detachment of the Sixtieth Rifles was marched into Ballyraken on the eve of the polling. The Protestant landlords had secured free quarters in the town for such of their tenantry as chose to inhabit them, while they themselves occupied the Club House and De Ruthven Arms in a most imposing and demonstrative manner.

I was walking down the main street, all alone, thinking not of the forthcoming ballot, but of Mabel, when I perceived my opponent lounging on the steps of the Club House. I should be compelled to pass the Club House or cross the street, and as I was a member of the club, although I never frequented it, I now resolved upon boldly entering the enemy’s camp.

I was passing Melton with a nod when he stepped forward and in a singularly insolent tone demanded a word with me. He was very white.

“I was at Kilkenley yesterday.”

“Indeed!” I said. His tone was too uncertain to admit of my making any comment upon his visit.

“I suppose Miss Hawthorne is acting under your orders?” he hissed.

“I am at a loss to understand your meaning, sir,” I hotly replied.

“Not at home save to those whom you may be pleased to admit to your palatial residence,” he sneered.

“My residence is a very humble one, Mr. Melton, and when you honored it with your person I hope you found it a hospitable one. Miss Hawthorne is mistress of her own movements, but let me tell you, sir, that she is my mother’s guest, and the guest of an Ormonde is sacred.”

“Very dramatic, but scarcely to the point.”

“I’ll come to any point you please.”

“When this election business is over I may have something to say to you,” his tone fairly exasperating.

I could stand it no longer.

“You white-livered cub, whatever you have to say, say it now!” I shouted, the blood rushing like molten lava through my veins.

“I don’t row in public.”

“Do you wish me to tell you what I think of you, in public, Mr. Melton?”

He smiled.

“Pah! you are not worth this stick, or I’d break it across your shoulders.” And I marched into the 221club, my heart bumping against my ribs from sheer excitement.

What could he mean? Miss Hawthorne refuse to see him at my request? It was too absurd. Some lover’s quarrel. Was this cad her lover? Had her heart gone forth to such a man as this?

It was torture to think it.

Contrary to all expectations, the conduct of the people was orderly and peaceable. The dread of a petition had been seared into their very souls by Father O’Dowd and by the admirable organization that had charge of my interests. They came up to the booths silent, almost sullen. The landlords and bailiffs were all at their posts, uttering a last warning word as the tenants filed into the booths, addressing them cheerily as they emerged therefrom, in the hope of gleaning the much-coveted information as to the direction of the vote; but the responsibility of that day’s work appeared upon every face, and they entered the voting-places as though stepping into a church. Telegrams came pouring in all day from the outlying districts.

“Ballymaclish is all right—a majority of sixty; Derrymaclooney accounts for every man,” cried Father O’Dowd. “Bravo, my dear old parish! I knew I could trust my good, brave, pious children.”

Later on: “The De Ruthvens have carried Tubbercurry.”

“That’s because Father Nolan is on the broad of his back.”

“Ay, and because the Beresfords have stopped at nothing,” observed one of my committee. “If we want a petition we can pick it up in Tubbercurry. A telegram this morning says that there were money and whiskey going all the week.”

“How about Dharnadhulagh?”

“No returns yet.”

“Or Derrycunnihy?”

“Derrycunnihy is doubtful.”

“Not a bit of it.”

“I say it is.”

“I say it isn’t. Sure, Father James O’Neil has it in hands.”

“Oh! that will do. Put us down at forty at the very least.”

This sort of thing went on all day; but as the day wore on and the returns came in, we found at four o’clock that I had a majority, and at five that I had beaten Melton like a hack.

A wild flash of joy quivered through me. Frederic Fitzgerald Ormonde, M.P.! Visions of St. Stephen’s, of fierce debates over the crushing wrongs of expectant Erin, of glorious oratory, of splendid, supreme efforts, of magnificent rewards, honors—Cui bono?

She would hate me for having beaten her lover in the race. But was he her lover? Had not her tell-tale blushes told me all? And yet I had given her no chance of reply. Perhaps—

As this idea smote me a nameless ecstasy vibrated through every fibre of my being, and I longed to get to Kilkenley, I knew not why.

It was excruciating to be compelled to wait and receive the congratulations of my friends and supporters. It was simply fearful to have to sit out a dinner which had been prepared in my honor, and to listen to the leaden speeches all harping upon the one theme.

Somehow or other the night passed onwards, and at about eleven o’clock I found myself free. I rode over to Kilkenley; it was a mad race, and how I contrived to avoid riding down some of my constituents is still a matter of mystery to me. It relieved my feverish spirits to give the reins to my horse, and we flew homewards, past villages, past 222homesteads, past inebriated revellers on low-backed cars, past bonfires which were lighted for miles along the route, past hedges, ditches—everything; nor did I draw rein until I drew up at the lodge, shouting the word “Gate!”

“Lord be merciful to us! but it’s the masther,” cried Mrs. O’Rourke, the lodge-keeper, as she tremblingly threw open the gate. “May I make so bould as to ax ye if ye bet the Englishman, sir?”

“Beat him to smithereens.”

“Glory be to God! I knew Father O’Dowd would settle it.”

There were lights all through the house. The great event had kept the household out of their beds. My mother fell upon my neck in a paroxysm of joy when I told her the news.

“Where is Mabel—I mean Miss Hawthorne, mother?” I stammered.

“She was here a moment ago. Is Mr. Hawthorne at Ballyraken?”

“Yes; I left him making a third speech.”

“You must be worn out, my child. I’ll make you some mulled port.”

Something told me that I should find Mabel in the adjoining room; and my instincts had not deceived me. She stood in the centre of the apartment, one hand resting upon a small table. When I found myself standing opposite to her I felt utterly, totally dumbfounded. I could only stare at her.

“I heard the news,” she said, casting down her violet eyes. Ah! that was all she had to say.

“Will you forgive me?” I cried.

“Mr. Ormonde,” her hands working nervously, her glorious eyes still bent upon the table, her exquisitely-shaped head half averted, “I—I—that is—you have been under a most extraordinary misconception with reference to Mr. Melton. That gentleman is only a friend. As a matter of fact, I—I was so—so distressed at your ideas about him in connection with myself”—here she blushed red as a rose—“that I refused to see him when he came to visit here yesterday.”

“Then you are not in love with him?”

She raised her violet eyes, and her glance met mine as she uttered the, to me, ecstatic word, “No.”

“And not engaged to him?”

“No.”

I do not know what I said or what I did; but this I do know: that when my mother entered the room with a tumbler of mulled port, she dropped the tumbler, uttering an exclamation of delight, and fell to kissing Mabel, exclaiming: “This is the one thing wanted to make me perfectly happy. My poor boy was breaking his heart about you.”

I was declared duly elected to serve the county in the United Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland.

Mr. Hawthorne duly presented me to Mr. Speaker upon the occasion of my taking the oaths and my seat. My first nap in the House was during a speech from the member for Doodleshire, which was not treating the ethereal thunder of his mind with becoming respect, especially as he had just been good enough to give me his daughter in marriage. We were married at the pro-cathedral at Kensington, by Father O’Dowd.

Melton I never met.

Harry Welstone and I are closer friends than ever, as he is in the House, representing the borough 223of Bohernabury, and we are always “agin the government.”

We reside at Kilkenley, and Peter O’Brien is teaching my eldest boy to handle the ribbons.

“Musha, thin, whin I rowled out forninst ye in the dirt beyant at the railway station, it’s little I ever thought I’d see ye misthress av the ould anshint property, ma’am,” is his constant remark to the lady of the manor, while he is perpetually urging upon me the crying necessity for “takin’ a heat out av Drizzlyeye.”

“Bloody wars, Masther Fred, but you an’ ould Butt is too aisy wud him. Give him plinty av impudince, an’ as shure’s me name’s Pether O’Brien ye’ll have Home Rule while ye’d be axin’ the lind av a sack.”

THE END.

A SECTARIAN DIPLOMATIC SERVICE.

Our federal government, as a government, is absolutely forbidden by the Constitution to have anything whatever to do with religion; but the State Department has been for years and is now conducted as if it were an agency for a religious sectarian propaganda. The gentlemen whom it has sent to represent us at foreign courts have acted, in numberless instances and with few exceptions, as if they were the emissaries of Protestant or infidel missionary societies rather than as the ambassadors, ministers, and chargés d’affaires of a government which professes no religion, but which nevertheless has among its citizens eight millions of Roman Catholics, more or less, whose rights and opinions it is bound at least to respect. Many of these gentlemen have seemed to believe that one of their principal duties, especially if accredited to a Catholic country, was to form intimate associations with conspirators and agitators; to espouse their cause; and to fill their despatches to Mr. Seward, Mr. Fish, and Mr. Evarts with absurd but pernicious misrepresentations concerning the relations of the church towards education, civil freedom, and material progress. It may be admitted that many of these agents have erred rather through ignorance than malice; not a few of them have received but a limited education; it is only lately that a knowledge of the French language has been deemed requisite for even an ambassador. Scores of our ministers and chargés d’affaires have been sent abroad, remained for a few years, and returned, without acquiring more than a mere smattering of the language of the country to which they were accredited. Too frequently these misrepresentatives of ours fall into the hands of the agents of the secret sects which are plotting all over the world for the destruction of the church and the overthrow of Christian society, and receive from these sources the erroneous and pernicious views of affairs which they transmit to Washington. One of our diplomatists, returning from a long residence in 224the capital of a Catholic country, had for a fellow-traveller on the steamship an American Catholic.

“I envy you your residence in ——,” said this gentleman; “the intellectual society there is agreeable. Were you not well acquainted with Father —— and Mgr. ——?” naming two individuals of wide-spread celebrity.

“Oh! no,” replied the astute statesman, “not at all; I never met them. They are Papists, you know, and I never cared to waste my time with men who pray to idols, and pretend to believe that a piece of bread is God. Besides,” he added, with ingenuous simplicity, “my interpreter, a very shrewd fellow, told me all the priests in —— were bitter foes of our free republican institutions, and I thought it my duty to keep aloof from them.”

A perusal of the Red Books for the last two years inclines one to believe that many of our ministers to foreign countries derive their opinions and their information chiefly from their “interpreters.” The Hon. Mr. Scadder, rewarded for his eminent services to his party by being torn from his sorrowing constituents at Watertoast, and sent to represent us at the proud court of a papistical sovereign, may be at the mercy of any wag who chooses to humbug him with fantastical lies, or of any emissary from a Masonic sect who is instructed to fill his mind with misrepresentations; but Mr. Fish and Mr. Evarts are men of culture, and are supposed, at least, to be able to distinguish a hawk from a handsaw. It is of them that we chiefly complain. If the exigencies of party have made it impossible for them to select the best men for our diplomatic service, and if they have been obliged to put up with Mr. Scadder and his kind, it has at least been always in their power to cause our foreign agents to understand that it is no part of their duty to write despatches calumniating the Catholic Church, or to employ themselves in promoting the missionary enterprises of Protestant sects in Catholic countries. Had Mr. Fish and Mr. Evarts possessed a true idea of their own official duties, they never could have permitted one of their agents to write a second time such despatches as some of those contained in the Red Books before us. They would have administered to their Scadders, and Marshes, and Beales, and Partridges, and Bassetts a rebuke that would have opened the eyes of these public servants and taught them a useful lesson. Mr. Fish, we know, is a prominent and zealous member of the Protestant Episcopal Church; Mr. Evarts, we believe, is an adherent of the same sect. In their private capacity they have at least a legal right to do what they can to advance the interests of their own communion, and to expose and check the diabolical designs of the Man of Sin. But as Secretary of State at Washington Mr. Fish had not, and Mr. Evarts has not, any right to instruct, encourage, or even permit our agents abroad to calumniate the Catholic Church, to encourage conspiracies against her, or to spend their time, which belongs to the country, and the money with which the country supplies them, in promoting Anti-Catholic propagandism. Such a course is as bad a policy as it is un-American. We trust that the present Secretary of State will give this matter his immediate and careful attention; and the Senate and the House of Representatives 225would do well to look into it. Let him, as becomes his duty, inform the diplomatic agents of this republic that they are sent and paid to attend to the material and political interests of our country, and are expected to keep to themselves their religious opinions, whatever those opinions may be, in their correspondence with the Department of State. A proper sense of dignity on the part of the American who holds the office of the Secretary of State, and a decent respect for others, would not suffer that a diplomatic agent under his control should use his political position to insult the religious convictions of so large, important, and patriotic a portion of his fellow-citizens. Catholic citizens ask no favors as Catholics, and the time has gone by for them to accept silently from the hired agents of our common country insults to their religious faith. No one deprecates more than we do to see the tendency of the Catholic vote in this country given almost exclusively to one of its political parties. The only way in which to prevent this is by the opposite party putting an end to the display of bigotry and fanaticism against the Catholic Church.

The Department of the Interior, in its Indian Bureau, has repeatedly been guilty of gross violations of good faith and fair dealing towards the Catholic Church; but this has been due, probably, to the direct pressure put upon it by the various sects, whose cupidity was excited by the hope of reaping where Catholic priests had sown. But the foreign agents of the State Department often appear to have gone out of their way, in mere wantonness, to insult, irritate, and injure Catholic interests and feeling. Imagine the collector of the port of New York writing official despatches to the Secretary of the Treasury, informing him that, in the absence of anything better to do, he had been giving his mind to an investigation of Catholicism in this metropolis, and that he had arrived at the conclusion that much of the pauperism of the city was due to the facts that the entire Catholic population were in the habit of refusing to work on eight days of the year—days known in the superstitious jargon of the Papists as “days of obligation”—and that vast sums of money were exacted by the priests from their ignorant and degraded dupes, and sent over to Rome to support in idle luxury the pampered pope! It is probable that Secretary Sherman would administer to the collector a severe reprimand, and that this particular letter would not form part of the annual treasury report. But this is precisely the sort of news with which our minister to Hayti—Mr. Ebenezer Bassett—regales Mr. Evarts, so much to the apparent satisfaction of the latter that Mr. Bassett again and again returns to the subject and dwells upon it with unction. Or fancy Postmaster James sending a despatch to Mr. Key to cheer him with the happy intelligence that an unfrocked and disgraced Catholic priest had started a brand-new sect of his own in New York, and predicting that in a short time a majority of the Papists would desert their pastors and joyfully embrace the new gospel. But this is in substance the intelligence that such a man as Mr. Bancroft most delighted to send from Berlin. The collector of the port and the postmaster would be as much out of the line of their duty in the cases we have mentioned as Mr. Bassett and Mr. Bancroft have 226been. The duty of our foreign representatives is to promote the commercial, financial, and political interests of this republic at the courts to which they are accredited, and not to make themselves channels for the conveyance of idle, false, and scandalous gossip, much less to interfere in the domestic affairs of the countries to which they are sent, or allow themselves to be used as the tools of secret societies or of Methodist or any other missionary boards.

We have at present thirteen envoys extraordinary and ministers plenipotentiary—in Austria, Brazil, Chili, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Peru, Russia, and Spain; eight ministers resident—in the Argentine Republic, Belgium, Central American States, Hawaiian Islands, Netherlands, Sweden and Norway, Turkey, and Venezuela; and two ministers resident and consuls-general, in Hayti and Liberia. There are also five chargés d’affaires—in Denmark, Greece, Portugal, Switzerland, and Uruguay and Paraguay. We have no representative in Bolivia, Ecuador, or the United States of Colombia. The great majority of the inhabitants of nineteen of the above-named thirty-one countries are Roman Catholics; yet not one of our foreign representatives is a Catholic. We ask not is this fair, but is it good policy? The population of these nineteen Roman Catholic nations is in round numbers, and according to the latest enumerations, about 170,000,000 souls; but we now are, and so far as we know almost always have been, represented at their capitals by Protestants. Of this, in itself, we do not complain. Wisdom—nay, even common sense—would indeed seem to dictate that the best results would be attained, other things being equal, by sending Catholics as envoys to Catholic countries. An American Catholic in a Catholic country finds himself in sympathy with, and not in antagonism to, the religious habits and modes of thought of the people; and his path towards the accomplishment of any good and worthy object is greatly smoothed by this fact. We believe that intelligent, clever, patriotic, Catholic envoys at Vienna, Rio Janeiro, Santiago, Paris, Rome, Mexico, Lima, Madrid, Buenos Ayres, Brussels, Guatemala, Caracas, Port au Prince, Lisbon, Montevideo, Asuncion, Quito, Bogota, and La Paz would have been more successful in accomplishing the best and highest duties of diplomatic representatives of this republic than Messrs. Beale, Partridge, Logan, Washburne, Marsh, Foster, Gibbs, Cushing, Osborne, Merrill, Williamson, Russell, Bassett, Moran, and Caldwell have been. We are certain that they would not have committed the sins against good taste and propriety which must be laid at the door of nearly all these gentlemen; they surely would not have committed the still graver offences of which we shall have to give some instances. We wish to except from this remark, however, Mr. Moran, long our faithful and exemplary secretary of legation at London, and for the last two or three years our chief representative at Lisbon. Although not a Catholic, Mr. Moran is a gentleman of excellent culture, of correct opinions concerning his official duties, and a very skilful diplomatist. One may look in vain through his despatches for anything that should not be there. We wish 227we could say half as much for some of his confrères.

Let us take, as an instance, our misrepresentative at Rome, Mr. George P. Marsh, of Vermont. Mr. Marsh leaves us in no doubt whether or not he is in full sympathy with the worst political elements in Italy, and inspired by a lively hatred of the church. He deems it one of his most pressing duties to assail and calumniate the Pope; he seems never so happy as when he can give a false and malicious interpretation to the acts of the Papal See; he appears never so miserable as when he finds himself disappointed in his fond anticipation of seeing the Italian government invade the Vatican, drive out the Pope, and finish up what is left of the church in Italy. In what Mr. Marsh is pleased to call his mind, the church in Italy is a ravening wolf, wounded, sick, and in a trap, but still with life enough in her to make her dangerous, and to render it necessary that she should be knocked on the head as soon as possible. Whenever Mr. Marsh observes indications of a willingness on the part of the government to let the wolf live a little longer, or even to make terms with her, he scolds and laments at a fearful rate. He writes as if he were a member of the Extreme Left, and evidently draws his inspiration from the most advanced radical sources. “I see no reason to expect,” says he, “any more vigorous resistance to the encroachments of the church from this administration”—the administration that was in power in November, 1876. What is it that Mr. Marsh would wish? What can be “the encroachments of the church” in Italy—the “encroachments” of men disarmed, despoiled, captive, and helpless as far as human agency is concerned? The elections for members of the Chamber of Deputies in November, 1876, were regarded by Mr. Marsh as evidence that the electors were greatly dissatisfied with the government as it had been administered. Doubtless they were. Mr. Marsh speaks of “the heavy burdens of taxation imposed by it upon the people”; of its “financial difficulties that prevent the execution of important works of public improvement”; of its failure even to attempt “the abolition of the macinto tax, or of any of the financial abuses which weigh so heavily on the poor.” But his remedy for this is simply “a more vigorous resistance to the encroachments of the church”—a little more plundering, a little more confiscation; the seizure of the Vatican, for instance, and the sale of its treasures at public auction, would no doubt put a few million lire in the public treasury. That would suit the amiable Mr. Marsh exactly. But the Italians hesitate, and Mr. Marsh is disgusted with them. At times he informs Mr. Evarts of terrible secrets—confidential information which could only have been communicated to him under the pledge of solemn secrecy by one of those practical jokers who lounge about the cafés in Rome and exercise their ingenuity in beguiling simple foreigners with incredible canards. In a despatch dated April 23, 1877, Mr. Marsh gives an account of a seditious outbreak that had occurred in Central and Southern Italy, instigated by people who were well dressed and who had plenty of money, but whose purpose, as explained by themselves, was “not only the overthrow of the existing government, but the destruction of 228all established civil, social, and religious institutions, and the triumph of universal anarchy.” These, in fact, were members of Mr. Marsh’s own party; but his secret informant in Rome made him believe that they were in the pay of the Pope, and probably Jesuits in disguise! “Long live Pius IX.! was shouted by the Internationalists at Benevento in the same breath with their cries of sedition,” writes Mr. Marsh; and he goes on to warn Mr. Evarts that “the number of persons prepared to lend a ready ear to the promptings of International emissaries”—videlicet the Jesuits in disguise aforesaid—“already large, is increasing; and that Italy may be the theatre of convulsions, to resist which will demand the most strenuous efforts of wise rulers and the most self-sacrificing patriotism on the part of the governing classes,” but always in the direction of resisting “the further encroachments of the church.” Mr. Marsh indulged in glowing hopes when the so-called Clerical Abuses Bill passed the Chamber of Deputies. He described the measure as “a bill for repressing the license of the clergy in public attacks upon the ecclesiastical policy of the government,” and looked for the happiest results to follow its enforcement. Mr. Marsh is an American citizen; he is the representative of a government which plumes itself upon the almost unchecked freedom of its citizens; he is paid by a people whose political shibboleth is “free speech.” If Mr. Marsh were running for Congress in Vermont instead of exercising his powerful intellect as minister at Rome, what would he say concerning an attempt by Congress to enact that the penalty of fine and imprisonment should be inflicted upon every clergyman or minister who should “attack the policy,” for instance, of the government seizing all the Methodist and Baptist meeting-houses throughout the country, and converting them into barracks? The Italian bill was worse than this, for it inflicted these penalties upon every priest who, even in the discharge of his duties as a director, might “disturb the peace of families” by advising a mother to teach her children that it was a sin to steal. But the Italian senate was less brave than Mr. Marsh, and his heart was almost broken by its final rejection of the bill. “This rejection,” he moans, in his despatch of April 23, “will encourage the clergy to measures of more active hostility against the state.” He feels so cut up about it that he returns to the subject in his despatch of May 10, and is so far carried away by his feelings as to write that

“The violence of the clergy and of their lay supporters in Italy and France is almost beyond description, and any one living among them has abundant opportunities of being convinced that they are prepared to resort to arms in support of the pretensions of the Papacy and of the principles of the Syllabus of 1864!”

A viler calumny, a more wicked falsehood against the French and Italian clergy has seldom been written. We are amazed, not that Mr. Marsh should have written it, but that Mr. Evarts should have allowed such balderdash to be printed. But Mr. Marsh grows worse as he goes on. In his despatch of May 26 he almost excels himself. He takes it as a personal grievance that the Pope has compared Prince Bismarck to Attila; he is impatient for the abrogation of the Law of Guarantees; he is 229certain that sooner or later “a violent conflict between the government and the church is inevitable,” and he wishes it to come rather sooner than later. Apparently he is anxious to assist at the final sacrifice, and he is tormented with the fear that the crafty Papists may cheat him out of that gratification.

“The Roman Curia,” he writes, “is at all times shrouded in such mystery that the purposes of those who administer it (sic) are very rarely foreshadowed, and no positive predictions can ever be hazarded concerning it beyond the general presumption that its future will be like its past.” In all soberness and earnestness we ask Mr. Evarts whether Mr. Marsh is kept in Rome for the purpose of writing nonsense about the “mystery” of the “Roman Curia”? What has he to do with the affairs of the Holy See? He is not accredited to the Vatican; he has no more to do with the Pope than our minister at London has to do with the Archbishop of Canterbury. True, the Pope is a far more important personage than is Mr. Tait; but Mr. Marsh, as we understand it, was not sent to Rome to occupy himself about the Pope. Instead of attending to his own business he goes out of his way to insult the Holy Father, and through him the entire Catholic population of the United States. If everything were as it should be, we should have as our representative at Rome, the capital of Christendom and the seat of the head of the universal church, a Catholic statesman. We do not insist upon this; but we do insist that our representative at Rome should be at least a fair-minded, candid, well-educated, and discreet gentleman, and not an ignorant, rude, prejudiced, and foolish dupe like Mr. Marsh. That we may not be accused of doing him injustice, let us give here the exact text of the essential portions of his despatch of May 26 last, to which we have already referred:

“The excesses of the clericals,” he writes, “are producing their natural and legitimate effect in a feeling of dissatisfaction with the position in which Italy has placed herself toward the Papacy by the Law of Guarantees. A recent allocution by the Pope, in which, for acts of the German government, Count Bismarck is likened to Attila, is much commented upon, and it is seriously asked whether Italy can protect herself against all responsibility for tolerating the use of such language in public discourses by the Pope, and its circulation through the press, under the plea that, by the seventh article of the law referred to, she has enacted that the Pope ‘is free to perform all the functions of his spiritual ministry, and to affix to the doors of the basilicas and churches of Rome all acts of that ministry.’ Such questions are bringing more clearly into view the incongruities and inconveniences of the anomalous position in which the general sovereignty of the state and the still higher virtual sovereignty of the Papacy, admitted by the terms of the Law of Guarantees, are placed toward each other. The Syllabus of 1864, having been promulgated before the enactment of that law, was notice to all the world of the extent of the inalienable rights claimed by the Papacy, and it is not a violent stretch of Vatican logic to maintain that, in spite of its protests, the law in question is legally a recognition of those claims. In fact, there are many occasions of collision between the two jurisdictions, such, for example, as the right of asylum implied in the extraterritoriality of the Vatican, which can never be avoided or reconciled without such an abandonment of the claims of one of the parties as will be yielded only to superior force; and hence a violent conflict between them is at any time probable, and at no distant day certainly inevitable. Such occasions were expected by many to arise from the pilgrimages to Rome on the fiftieth episcopal anniversary of the present Pope. But the number of pilgrims thus far has not reached the 230tithe of that predicted, probably not amounting in all to ten thousand, while the garrison and municipal police have been quietly strengthened to a force abundantly able to repress any disturbance. The death of Pius IX. and the election of his successor, events almost hourly expected, are looked to as probably fraught with important changes in the attitude of the Papacy toward Italy, and in the general policy of the church. For this expectation I see no ground, though the Roman Curia is at all times shrouded in such mystery that the purposes of those who administer it are very rarely foreshadowed, and no positive predictions can ever be hazarded concerning it beyond the general presumption that its future will be like its past.”

Mr. Edward F. Beale, of Pennsylvania, was our representative at Vienna, having been sent there to succeed that ardent anti-Catholic, Mr. John Jay, and being now in his turn superseded by Mr. Kasson, of Iowa. Mr. Beale’s career at the Austrian capital was brief but not brilliant. In August, 1876, he undertook to instruct Mr. Fish concerning the drift of public opinion, not only in Austria but in France and England, upon the Eastern question. He had ascertained that the prevailing sentiment in these countries was “religious fervor”; the people were so much in love with Christianity and so full of hatred of Moslemism in that they desired nothing more than to see Russia enter Constantinople, and to drive the Turks out of Europe “bag and baggage.” “It is a question of faith which will govern Europe,” writes the astute Mr. Beale, “and a crusade is quite as possible now as when Peter the Hermit preached.” The European congress which is about to assemble as we are writing will not disturb itself about any “question of faith”; its members will concern themselves only with questions of boundaries, fleets, and money. But not content with forecasting the future, Mr. Beale reverts to the past, and kindly undertakes to furnish the State Department with easy lessons in European history. Thus, in a despatch dated September 27, 1876, and apropos des bottes, he bids Mr. Fish to remember that

“It is interesting to recall that in Bosnia originated the first Protestant movement of Western Europe, and that even before the heresies (as the Catholic Church calls them) of John Huss in Bohemia she had sent out her missionaries to preach the Gospel as she read it, and to disseminate her religious views over the rest of the world. When the persecutions of the Church of Rome were at their worst she offered a generous asylum to her co-religionists, many of whom found here what had been denied them at home—the right to worship God after their own forms and belief.”

In point of fact, the heretics of Bosnia, at the time referred to by our erudite minister at Vienna, were advocating principles utterly subversive of order and tending directly to anarchy. They taught that a subject was released from all allegiance to a ruler if that ruler were in a state of mortal sin, and each subject was to judge for himself as to the spiritual condition of his ruler. The Church of Rome had no hesitation in setting the seal of her condemnation upon this vagary of Protestantism, and even Mr. Beale would probably admit that she was right in so doing. But he evidently was ignorant of the facts, and was anxious only to air his newly-acquired learning and to have a fling at the church. Is there among the secret instructions of our State Department to its agents a rule to this effect: “When you have nothing else to write about, pitch into the Pope”?

It is a far cry from Vienna to 231Port au Prince; but our misrepresentative in Hayti next demands our attention. He, of all his brethren, is perhaps the most vulgar, insolent, and ignorant; but he is one of the most outspoken. The United States pay him $7,500 a year, and have done so since 1869. How much the Protestant Episcopal Church pays him, if anything, we do not know; but he seems to have given much of his time and influence to the advancement of the interests of that body, and to the abuse of the Roman Catholic clergy of the island. Several of Mr. Bassett’s despatches contain eulogiums upon a “Rev. Dr. Holly,” who, he says, was “at Grace Church, New York, in 1874, ordained bishop of Hayti,” and whom Mr. Bassett appears to have taken under his special protection and care. Now, there is no “bishop of Hayti”; there is an archbishop of Port au Prince, the Most Rev. Alexius Guilloux; and he has four suffragans, the bishops of Cap-Haitien, Les Cayes, Gonayves, and Port Paix. “The Rev. Dr. Holly” has no more right to call himself bishop of Hayti than he has to call himself the Pope of Rome; but Mr. Bassett deems it very hard indeed that the archbishop, the bishops, and the clergy of Hayti have taken the liberty of warning their people that “the Rev. Dr. Holly” is not bishop, and that his teachings that marriage is not a sacrament, and that the first duty of a Christian is to revolt against the church, are not to be accepted. In May Mr. Bassett writes to Mr. Evarts that “the Roman Catholic archbishop and his clergy have assumed a pretension to supremacy over the civil code, notably in the matter of marriage”; and in July he writes again a long letter upon “the introduction and growth of Protestantism in Hayti and its influence upon the government.” He admits that in 1804 “Romanism,” which was “then, as now, the faith professed by a great majority of the Haytian people,” “was declared to be the religion of the state and placed under the state’s special protection and support,” and that “it still continues to enjoy that protection and support.” But he complains that “the Roman priesthood have made many strongly-directed and persistent but truly uncommendable efforts to cause to be suppressed, or effectively placed under ban, every other form of worship and belief than their own.” Mr. Bassett is not the only Protestant who cannot or will not understand the difference between the duty of Catholic prelates in a country where heresy does not exist and where it is sought to be introduced from outside, and their duty in countries like our own, where theoretically all religions are placed on the same footing, and the government is absolutely forbidden by its organic law to interfere in any way for the propagation of religious truth or the suppression of religious error. The first ruler of Hayti who endeavored to introduce Protestantism into the island was, according to Mr. Bassett, “Henri Christophe, the autocratic king of the north of Hayti,” who in 1815, although “himself a Roman Catholic,” engaged a clergyman of the Church of England to propagate heresy in his dominions. But King Henri, five years afterwards, “died by his own hand,” and Protestantism made no further progress “until, in 1861, the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States was pleased to establish a mission with the Rev. J. T. Holly as its pastor.”

232He hit upon the idea “of raising up a national clergy in Hayti—a policy which seems never to have been thought of by any other religious denomination in this country, and which opened a new road and gave a new impetus to Protestantism here. The mission continued to grow. It was encouraged and visited in 1863 by Bishop Lee, of Delaware; in 1866 by Bishop Burgess, of Maine; and in 1872 by Bishop Coxe, of Western New York; and finally the Rev. Dr. Holly was, at Grace Church, New York City, in 1874, ordained bishop of Hayti. So that since 1874 there has been established in Hayti an independent Protestant Church, with the distinguishing feature that all its clergy are citizens of the country, several of them educated in the United States under the vigilance of Bishop Holly.”

There are ninety-three Catholic priests in Hayti, and of these nearly all are educated and cultured French gentlemen, who are undoubtedly far better able to discharge the duties of the priestly office than the native apostates who have been “educated in the United States under the vigilance of Bishop Holly.” But Mr. Bassett has the ignorant malice to vilify them and to display his own foolishness in this happy style:

“The French Roman Catholic priest, in coming to Hayti, leaves behind him all his social ties, in the hope of returning to them within eight or ten years, the average period of his labors here. All that he receives while in the country, over and above his scanty personal wants, goes abroad to enrich France at the expense of the Haytian people, and he even bends his energies to accumulate. In addition to his salary from the government, which ranges from 20,000 francs to the archbishop to 1,200 francs to the country curate, he is allowed a tariff of prices for all public religious services performed by him. Baptisms, marriages, funerals, dispensations, indulgences, Masses for the dead—services for each of these yield him by law a revenue ranging from 50 cents up to $50. Not only this, but he can collect offerings from the faithful, and it is even affirmed that many such offerings are made to him under the dread secrecy inspired by the confessional.

“It is true that France lost open political control over this island in 1804, but by means of the Roman Catholic clergy she has maintained almost exclusive control over the religious affairs of these people. Indeed, the domination which she once held over their bodies was hardly more complete than that which she still holds over their consciences and spiritual susceptibilities. The priests, in their present controversy with the government, which is outlined in my No. 501 already referred to, do not fail to rely upon the spiritual subjugation of the Haytian to the papal system of Rome, in connection with their own supposed power over him as citizens of a country which once held him in physical bondage, and to whose interests they themselves are devoted.

“In the light of these facts it is no cause for astonishment that the Haytian government, aroused and inspired by the policy and success of the Protestant Bishop Holly in raising up and establishing a national clergy for the Protestant Episcopal denomination, should seek to conserve its own integrity and the resources of its people, as well as to avoid continual misunderstandings with a class of foreigners resident here and shielded by the dignity of sacerdotal robes, by stimulating and encouraging the young men of the country to enter the ecclesiastical vocation.

“Meanwhile, it ought not to be unknown to those who feel bound by the holy injunction to have the Gospel preached to all the world that in Hayti the door stands wide open for every kind of Christian missionary work.”

And it is for writing such stuff as this that we pay Mr. Ebenezer Bassett $7,500 a year—that is to say, as much as is received by thirty of the “country curates” whom he reviles.

Our space is limited, and we have but skimmed through our two Red Books. We should have been glad to have followed the erratic flight of Mr. Partridge, our late minister to Brazil, who fills quires of paper with ridiculous nonsense 233about “the exactions of Rome,” the wickedness of “the ultramontane party,” and the awful danger that the Brazilian ministry “will yield to the demands of the Roman Curia.” Nothing escapes the birds-eye view of this Partridge; he unconsciously explains much that would otherwise be mysterious by stating that the prime minister of the cabinet is “a member of the Masonic fraternity”; but the scope of his intellect is best shown by his remark that “the throwing of stones at the bishop of Rio, as he ascended the pulpit to preach,” was “a trick of the Jesuits.” It would have been pleasant to congratulate Mr. Orth, who was our representative at Vienna in 1876, upon his sagacity in advocating, with hysterical warmth, the law for the virtual confiscation and destruction of the houses of the religious orders in Austria—a measure denounced by Cardinal Schwarzenberg and thirty-one archbishops and bishops as “a law which equally violates the equality and personal freedom of the citizen, the dignity of religion, the honor of the Catholic Church, and the members of religious orders,” but which, in Mr. Orth’s opinion, was “sound and salutary, and demanded by the progressive spirit of the age.” A page or two is deserved by Mr. Williamson, who gives us a history of a presidential campaign in Chili, in which all the virtues are attributed to the Masonic candidate, and all that is devilish is ascribed to “the church party,” “the ultramontanes,” and “the church.” Delightful would it be to tarry with Mr. Scruggs, our talented and courteous minister at Bogota, who commences one of his despatches thus: “In April last one Bermudez, a bishop of the Roman Catholic Church, proclaimed against the public-school system of this republic,” and who gives an account of the events which followed, closing his glowing periods with the cheerful assurance that “the church property will probably be appropriated to pay the war debt.” The letters of our Mr. Rublee, at Berne, apropos of the Old-Catholic schism in Switzerland; of our Mr. Nicholas Fish, who during a brief interregnum represented us at Berlin; and of several of our other agents, furnish equally tempting matter for comment. But we must pass by them with the remark that none of them are quite so outrageous as those of Mr. Bassett, Mr. Beale, and Mr. Marsh.

The present administration has made changes in six of our most important embassies. Mr. Kasson has been appointed to Vienna, Mr. Stoughton to St. Petersburg, Mr. Hilliard to Brazil, Mr. Lowell to Madrid, Mr. Welsh to London, and Mr. Bayard Taylor to Berlin. It goes without saying that none of these gentlemen have received any diplomatic training. Mr. Kasson is a respectable provincial lawyer, who has sat in Congress, and who rendered important services to his party by going to Florida and taking care that the electoral vote of that State was properly counted. What he knows about Austria, and how he may deport himself there, remains to be seen. Without being extravagant, one may indulge the hope that he may prove to be an improvement upon Mr. Beale. Mr. Welsh is an old and worthy merchant of Philadelphia, a prominent member of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and an extensive dealer in sugars: but we have yet to learn what are his qualifications for the weighty duties of minister to the 234court of St. James. Mr. Lowell is a poet, a man of letters, and a scholar who has done honor to his country; but we should be inclined to doubt his fitness for managing our commercial and political affairs at the court of King Alfonso. Mr. Taylor is a good journalist, in a certain way; he has been a traveller of some experience, and he is an ardent admirer and a close student of Schiller and of Goethe; but he has himself been swift to disclaim the idea that these things made him fit for the post to which he has been appointed, and he rather ridiculed the notion that he had been appointed minister to Berlin in order that he might there finish his great work—a new biography of Goethe. There is much to be said on both sides of the question, “Is it worth while to keep up our diplomatic service at all?” We should be inclined to take the affirmative; but we are not disposed to enter into the discussion at present. One thing, however, is certain, and that is the necessity of freeing the service from the weight of men like Marsh, Beale, Partridge, Orth, Williamson, and Scruggs. There are others as bad, but these will serve as types of the worst. In no sense can they be said to rightly represent this great, free, and noble people; in every sense they may be said to misrepresent the Catholic population of the republic, whose interests, rights, and feelings can no longer be, as they never ought to have been, safely trampled upon by any administration or by any party. Whatever party does this betrays an un-American spirit; its policy is a bad one both for the country and itself, and unless it changes for the better its reign will be short.

THE ARCHIEPISCOPAL PALACE AT BENEVENTUM.^[51]

Beneventum is a small town of about fifteen thousand inhabitants, situated geographically in the kingdom of Naples. It formerly depended, spiritually and temporally, on the Holy See, which also held jurisdiction over part of the territory of the ancient duchy; the other part being subject to the king of Naples as to temporal affairs, and to the archbishop of Beneventum as to those of a spiritual nature.

The archiepiscopal palace, or the episcopio, to use the old term, stands in its proper place, next the cathedral, flanking the apsis. One of the wings faces the market square, where public gratitude has erected a marble statue to Pope Benedict XIII., the immortal benefactor of the city, of which he had been archbishop under the title of Cardinal Orsini. The entrance is to the south. At the west, from the garden terrace, or the windows of the conventino, is a superb view over a fertile valley, the verdure of which extends up the very sides of the mountains that fade away in bluish tints on the horizon. It is at once in the city from the proximity of the inhabitants, and in the 235country as to its pure air, calm solitude, and the enchanting aspect of a landscape that always commands attention and admiration.

The building is not, strictly speaking, a palace.^[52] It is large and spacious, but not lofty or elegant. Nothing in its exterior bespeaks its occupant. It might be taken for a theological seminary or a convent, wrapped as it is in gloomy silence, and surrounded by thick walls. Its general appearance is dismal and unattractive. Only an archæologist would take any pleasure in examining the huge stones of which the walls are built. These stones were hewn out in the time of the Romans, and more than one have the characteristic trou de louve by which they were raised and put in place. They were probably taken from the amphitheatre, for the misfortune that made the Coliseum at Rome an inexhaustible quarry for the construction of so many palaces, like the Farnese, Barberini, etc., also befell the theatre of Beneventum, of which but a bare outline remains, though great blocks from it are to be found at every step in the private dwellings and the walls that surround the city. After the earthquakes of June 5, 1688, and March 4, 1702, the exterior of the palace was greatly modified by Cardinal Orsini, but the building, as a whole, is ancient, and many features of the walls, like the belfry of the cathedral, carry us back to the middle ages. Let us study it in detail, for in more than one respect it presents a model worthy of imitation.^[53]

The portal of the palace is monumental. It has a semi-circular arch, which is more graceful than a square entrance, and more conformable to ecclesiastical traditions. And the tympanum which fits into the arch or ogive offers ample space to the sculptor or painter for decoration. Against the lintel rest the folding doors. These are open all day, however, for the house of a bishop is like that of a father who cannot shut out his children. Above are the arms of Cardinal Orsini, carven in stone. Two other scutcheons once hung beside them: one of Pius IX., destroyed when his temporal power was suppressed in the duchy of Beneventum—that is, in 1860, when the kingdom of Naples was overrun by the Garibaldian hordes; the other that of Cardinal Carafa, the actual archbishop, who was driven into exile, and whose palace was devastated.

Two enormous lions, taken from the front of the Duomo, stand at the sides of the entrance. They have come down from Roman times. They are not of remarkable workmanship, but the outlines are good. There is life in their partly stretched-out forms, and pride in the pose of their heads. The paws are pressed resolutely together. One of them grasps a head covered with a helmet, and the other the remains, 236probably, of one of those nude children to be seen in the mouths of the crouching lions watching at the doors of the churches at Rome, symbolic of helplessness and innocence that need aid and protection from the strong. When the lion is represented crushing a beast or holding a warrior’s head, it signifies the vice to be overcome, the enemy to be annihilated.

Some look upon the lion as the emblem of justice. This queen of the cardinal virtues is generally represented as a woman with various attributes, such as the book of the law, the balance wherein actions are weighed, the sword to smite the guilty, the eagle to show her imperial nature, and the globe indicating the extent of her empire. On the public square at Bari is to be seen a lion of the twelfth century, with the brief but significant inscription, Cvstos Ivsticie, on its collar. The lion, then, does not represent justice itself. That virtue is only exercised in the temple, either by God or by his representative. But the lion stands, like the guardian of Justice, watching at the door of the Holy Place in which she has taken up her abode. Nothing, then, could be more suitable for the door of a bishop, the unflinching enemy of vice as well as the sure protector of virtue, than these two lions, type of the power conferred by the church on her ministers. And they are specially emblematic of the firmness and energy of Cardinal Orsini, who had them placed here.

The wall through which the gateway is cut is bordered by a line of merlons, the peculiar form of which reminds one of Cordova and the Alhambra. They produce a picturesque effect, but are not of the slightest utility. They are the relics of feudal authority and power, the last vestige of which is the annual payment of the cathédratique, identical with the nominal tribute some lords required of their vassals, of no importance in itself, but typical of the honor due from the inferior to the pre-eminence of his lawful chief—in signum præeminentiæ et honoris, to quote the holy canons revived by Cardinal Orsini, and maintained to our day, particularly in this point, by the collateral descendant of Pope Paul IV., who for more than thirty years has occupied the see of Beneventum.

From the top of the wall rises one of those small open belfries called bell-gables. It is of the most primitive construction, being a mere extension of a part of the wall through which an opening for a bell has been made. It terminates in a gable like a mitre, on which are an iron cross fleurdelisée and a small vane to mark the direction of the wind. The cross is always appropriate for a belfry, large or small, if not obligatory, as Anastasius the Bibliothecarius insists in his works. The vane is no less traditional at Rome, where it is generally in the shape of a little banner (the origin of which is quite feudal), wherein the armorial ensigns are so cut as to be emblazoned against the azure sky. Here the vane is shaped like a flame. It once bore the arms of the resident archbishop, but the rain has washed off the color, and the surface is now corroded by rust.

The small bell is of the kind called nola. In ancient times it was rung whenever the archbishop left his palace or re-entered it, as the bells of St. Peter’s at Rome announce the visit and departure of 237the pope. Later it only rang when he set out on a journey and at his coming back. Now it is mute, and no longer announces his appearance in public or his return to the palace.

Passing through the gateway, we come to the court. On the left are the carriage and store houses, and, beyond, the saddle-room, which was quite brilliant in former times when the cardinals went forth in gala array. At the right is an arched passage leading to the interior of the palace, and further on is the porter’s lodge, formerly the guard-house of the curia armata.

Around the court are many ancient monuments and inscriptions, which constitute a small museum, begun long since by the archbishops. There is an Egyptian obelisk of red granite, broken in two, which once stood in the cathedral court. It is covered from top to bottom with hieroglyphics relating to the deeds of some old king. Domitian consecrated it to Isis. On another side are three fragments of fine marble columns: one of cipollino, so called on account of its greenish veins, which resemble those of an onion, in Italian cipolla; the second, of what is called porta santa, because the casing of the door in the Vatican basilica, opened only at the Jubilee, is of this marble, which is of a pale violet color, or a purple that has lost its freshness; and the third is of breccia corallina, the white ground of which is relieved by reddish veins.

The ancient inscriptions collected here, whether sepulchral, votive, or commemorative, are not rare. But they are noteworthy for their clearness and brevity. How expressive, for instance, are these four lines consecrated to the manes of Vibbius Optatus, who died in the flower of youth:

D. M. A. Vibbio . Opta

To. Vix. An. XI. M. XI. D. XIX.

Parent. Infelicissimi

Fecer.

The unfortunate parents had no illustrious name to bequeath to posterity. The discreet marble only echoes a profound grief.

Here is a landmark, rounded at the top, and hewn to a point at the bottom, the better to insert it in the ground, that once stood on the Appian Way, which passes triumphantly through the arch raised to the glory of Trajan at one end of Beneventum.

Beneventum, which copied Rome, even in the device of its senate: S. P. Q. B.—Senatus populusque Beneventanus—had a magistrature of ediles at its head, who made generous provision for the embellishment of the city. Here is a pedestal on which this municipal corps pompously proclaimed itself:

Splendidissimus ordo Beneventanorum.

One cannot help exclaiming, in view of the present order of things:

“Comment en un plomb vil l’or pur s’est-il changé!”

How into vile dross hath the pure gold changed!

The Romans loved statuary, and were lavish of it in all their public as well as private dwellings. Above all, their sculptors produced divinities and illustrious men, but sometimes the principal members of a household, if not the whole family, to adorn the atrium. Who does not remember the Balbus family in the Museum at Naples, the father and son on horseback, and the rest gathered around them? Here we find several statues, both nude and draped. Nudity was 238chiefly confined to heroes and the gods. It signified apotheosis—the ascension to a higher world. The terrestrial garb was laid aside; only a glorified body remained. Pagan art showed itself incapable of fully expressing a state indicated in the middle ages by a radiance surrounding the transfigured body. We have an admirable example of the immediate change to the glorified state in Perugino’s immortal production in the Sala del Cambio at Perugia. There the bankers and money-changers have constantly before their eyes a symbol of the change wrought by divine power on a body in the state of celestial beatitude. Paganism divested the body of its garments, but did not render it luminous. It only invented a symbol which the church has retained to designate the saints—the nimbus around the head, as the most noble part of man because the seat of the intelligence. But it could go no further. From Apollo, who alone had the nimbus in the beginning to express in a measure the luminous atmosphere of the sun, personified in him, it passed to other divinities, and finally even to those to whom the senate accorded the title of divine, thus becoming the equivalent of divus. It is really amusing to see, on the Arch of Constantine at Rome, the Emperor Trajan so divinized that his bare head is surrounded by a nimbus, though he is engaged in the chase. The nude among the Romans was, therefore, a conventional way of expressing what was right in substance, the immutation wrought by glory, and was not intended to excite ignoble passion. In other cases their statues were modestly draped, though sometimes a little too much of the form was revealed by the clinging folds of the garments.

There are several sarcophagi in the court, with nothing extraordinary about them, but even in the most unpretending affording proof of artistic taste. They are adorned with scenic masques, vases of fruit, the genii of the seasons, etc., which have their significance and are not without poetry. Here is one with a medallion of its former occupant in the centre—a portrait full of life and animation, as if he still were under illusion as to his nothingness. It is supported by two genii, winged and nude, as if bearing him to the celestial regions—winged, because they are fulfilling a mission; nude, to indicate their celestial origin. This emblem was common in ancient times. The middle ages did nothing but Christianize it by substituting angels for genii, and placing in their hands, not the body, but the soul, of the deceased, about to receive the reward of his sanctity and good works. We see them on the tomb of King Dagobert, in the abbatial church of St. Denis, snatching the soul of the king from the demon who was endeavoring to bear it away.

But we have lingered too long in the precincts. Let us enter the palace, and first visit the prisons—for prisons there are, the archbishop of Beneventum, as we have said, having formerly a twofold jurisdiction, temporal as well as spiritual. His tribunal of justice imposed the canonical penalties. Fines seem to have been specially employed, for among the officials of the Curia there was one to receive and apply them to some religious object. At the same time there was a register in which they were faithfully recorded. There were, too, different 239degrees of imprisonment. In the carcere alla larga there was comparative liberty. The purgatorio indicates a temporary expiation. The inferno was perhaps the prison from which death alone could be looked forward to as a release. The two latter correspond to the carcere duro of the Venetians. There are similar ones, but not so spacious, in the governor’s castle overlooking Beneventum, which also bore the terrible names of purgatorio and inferno.^[54] Cardinal Orsini, who, though severe, was of a humane disposition, visited these prisons in 1704, at which time there were only three prisoners, it appears, from the report of his visit. After assuring himself that the vaults were in a good condition, capable of resisting all efforts at escape, confornicatæ et proinde tutæ, he saw the necessity of obviating the dampness of the ground by a brick pavement, ut humiditas arceatur, and ordered the inferno to be closed for ever, because, as he said, it was a very damp and atrocious place. A thoughtfulness so full of humanity is something to dwell on. The very text should be cited: “Eminentissimus archiepiscopus utpote humidissimam et immanissimam claudi demandavit et quod sub pœna excommunicationis nemo ibi detendatur.” The prisoners must have been delighted at a threat so much to their advantage.