4

world with stories of violence, and outcries, and tumults. Among others an anonymous narrator, Pomponio Leto, who declares himself to be an outsider, and could therefore only speak by hearsay, is quoted as an eye-witness. He graphically describes the confusion of the cardinals, who pulled their red hats over their eyes.' The cardinals had no hats, red or otherwise, and the eye-witness is convicted of fabrication. But it is not Pomponio Leto who says he saw this scene; it is the addition of those who have endeavoured to serve their hostility by destroying the honour of Cardinal Vitelleschi. In spite of repeated categorical denials from his brothers, Pomponio Leto is, for controversial purposes, still declared to be Cardinal Vitelleschi. Now the cardinal certainly would not have talked about red hats. Nevertheless Pomponio Leto, who was inside when the cardinals pulled their hats over their eyes, was outside when the great tumult arose in which Cardinal Schwarzenberg was carried fainting from the Ambo to his seat. He saw, he tells us, the servants outside rushing to the doors of the Council, fearing for the lives of their masters. It is with such melodramatic and mendacious stuff that those who wish to think evil of the Vatican Council are fed and duped.

But history has other witnesses to depend upon. Members of the Council who were never absent from its public congregations except about five or six times in all the eighty-five sessions have declared that no such scenes as Pomponio Leto, following the Italian papers, has described, ever took place. On two occasions the ordinary calm and silence of the Council was broken. In its sessions no applause was ever permitted, no expressions of assent or dissent were allowed. The dead silence in which the members had to speak contrasted strangely with all other public assemblies. It was like nothing but preaching in a church. But on two occasions the speaker tried the self-control of his audience beyond its strength. Strong and loud expressions of dissent were made, and a very visible resentment, at matter not undeserving of it, was expressed. And yet nothing in the Council of the Vatican went beyond or even equalled events of the same kind in the Council of Trent. It is indeed true that one excess does not justify another; but the events prove that when men deliberate on matters of eternal import, they are more liable to be stirred by deep emotions than when they are occupied with the things of this world. When the prelates at Trent heard a speaker say that the Archbishop of Salzburg claimed to confirm the elections of bishops, we read that they stirred up a mighty noise, crying ́ ́Out with him! out with him!' Others repeated Go out! go out!' and others 'Let him be anathema!' Another turned to them, and

• Controversialists and adversaries of the Catholic Church have asserted and reasserted with such tenacity, after reiterated contradiction, that the work entitled Eight Months in Rome during the Vatican Council, by Pomponio Leto, was the work of the late Cardinal Vitelleschi, that it may be well to give an outline of the case.

5

answered, 'Be you anathema.' There may have been noise in the Council of the Vatican, but it did not reach this climax. Reference might be made to a certain debate on the 23rd of March in this year, 1877, when the majesty of the Commons of England lost itself in clamour, chiefly because a majority declined to let a minority have its way.

The axiom, 'Where there is smoke there is fire,' is sure enough. And these tales and tragedies could hardly have been invented if somebody by his imprudence had not made a momentary disturbance, and if the disturbers had not made more noise than they ought in their sudden heat. But in truth the Italian papers and the Augsburg Gazette are the chief sources of these mendacious exaggerations. An Italian paper gave in full the speech of Bishop Strossmayer, who

On its publication in Italy some years ago it fell dead from the press; but when translated into English it fell upon a soil prepared by Janus and Quirinus. It was at once said that it was reported to be the work of Cardinal Vitelleschi; next, that it was probably so; then, that it was certainly so; finally, it was quoted without question or doubt as the work of the cardinal. None of this happened during his life; it began immediately after his death. Pope Honorius was declared to be a heretic forty years after his death—Cardinal Vitelleschi was declared to be Pomponio Leto as soon as he could not expose the imputation. The hope of setting one cardinal against another was a motive too strong to be resisted. The Times first began cautiously: the Daily Telegraph pushed on more boldly. The brothers of Cardinal Vitelleschi, hearing of this stain cast on the memory of their brother, wrote to expose its falsehood. Their words were published, but commented on as evasive; and the calumny was repeated. Next, on the 5th of July, 1876, the Guardian reasserted and filled out the charge with circumstances. Then came the Saturday Review. Then the Contemporary, which over and over again says, Cardinal Vitelleschi writes,' 'Cardinal Vitelleschi affirms,'' Cardinal Vitelleschi tells us,' &c. As if the two Marchesi Vitelleschi, brothers of the cardinal, had not pledged their honour in a public contradiction. Then the Quarterly Review, which, with a candour that stands alone, inserted in its first number of this year a correction of this injurious error. But after all this, on the 24th of February, 1877, the Saturday Review, as if nothing had happened, speaks of Cardinal Vitelleschi as regarding the decrees of 1870 with alarm and disgust. Cardinal Vitelleschi voted for those decrees on the 18th of July, 1870. After all this it is not wonderful that the two brothers, Marchesi Vitelleschi, should write the following letter with a just indignation:

'Rome: January 8, 1877.

'I am grieved beyond measure that there should be in England anyone who still persists in the will to believe that the author of the book entitled 'Pomponio Leto' was my lamented brother, Cardinal Vitelleschi. At the end of June last year, 1876, a protest was inserted in one English journal, signed by us his brothers, in refutation of this odious calumny. I pray, however, that, if thought fit, this renewed protest be inserted in some newspaper, by which I repel, on the part also of my brothers, this most false assertion. And I declare, with full certainty of my conscience, that Cardinal Salvatore Vitelleschi was not in any way the author of the said book; so that whosoever shall say the contrary falsifies shamelessly, and can only say it to outrage the Church of which my deceased brother was a member without reproach. '(Signed) ANGELO NOBILI VITELLESCHI,'

As to the true authorship of Pomponio Leto various things are affirmed. It belongs to the anonymous school of Janus and Quirinus, and seems to be the work of more hands than one, and to betray both a German and an English contributor. Theiner, Acta genuina S. Ec. Conc. Tridentini, tom. ii. P. 606.

was the subject of one of these Homeric commotions. In that speech he was made to apostrophise by name, as present before him and as a chief offender, a bishop who was not there at all to be apostrophised. When the speech had gone the round of Europe in a polyglot version, Bishop Strossmayer in a Roman paper denounced it as a forgery, and his letter has been reprinted again and again in England. Nevertheless the speech is reprinted continually to this day at Glasgow and Belfast, and sown broadcast by post over these kingdoms, and probably wherever the English tongue is spoken.

These details are given not to show that the Vatican Council was never disturbed, or that the Council of Trent was outrageous, but to show that, as it ought to be, a spot upon the rochet of a bishop is more visible than upon the broadcloth of a layman; so, if a bishop or a council of bishops are for a moment stirred beyond their selfcommand, if for once or for twice in eight months there is a clamour such as happens almost every week in our Legislature, the world will dilate the fault into an outrage, and will deceive itself by its own. exaggerations. It can be said with the simplest truth that not an animosity, nor an alienation, nor a quarrel broke the charity of the fathers of the Council. They were opposed on a high sense of duty, and they withstood each other as men that are in earnest; if for a moment the contention was sharp among them, so it was with Paul and Barnabas; and if they parted asunder on the 18th of July it was only for a moment, and they are now once more of one mind and of one heart in the world-wide unity of the infallible faith.

And here we may leave the story of the Council. What remains is to examine the cause of all this tumult round about the Council and in the governments and newspapers and non-Catholic communities of the world; for within the Council and within the Church the movement of men's minds was deep but calm, and soon subsided into tranquillity, like the agitation of pure waters which return to their former state and leave no sediment.

HENRY EDWARD, Cardinal Archbishop.

FOR AND AGAINST THE PLAY.

A DIALOGUE.

N. What a collection of play-bills you have here, and how you gloat over them, as I might do over the sketches of a fine country I had travelled in-reminders of growing health, of restored happiness, and of the only wholesome raptures of the mind.

M. You are very prejudiced. I well know that you have been an ardent traveller, and I don't wish to underrate the joys of the middle passage,' of changing from a bad to a good inn, or of risking a valuable life on the snow borders of a crevasse. All I ask is that you in return should tolerate the imaginative resources of those whose feet are tied-of the poor tethered animals who, but for their mental flights, would see nothing but one clod of earth.

N. I cannot suppose play-bills and mental flights to be intimately associated.

M. But I can, and do. The drama is the focus of beautiful art. It holds within itself poetry brought to life; painting, by means of which, though you sit still, you roam through the universe; music, which stirs those depths of the soul to be reached by music only.

N. Mental flights I perceive it has taught you. This is, I should say, from the purpose of playing.

M. But you say wrong; what I have asserted is a simple fact, and if it seems rhapsodical to you, that is only because you have not known what it is to be roused by the stir, the life, the passion, of the acted drama.

N. The stimulus is unhealthy.

M. Not in a good drama; and if you condescend to glance over those play-bills, you will see that my taste is only for the best kind— tragedy, comedy, and occasionally a first-rate melodrama or a genuine farce, besides opera; neither all Rossini nor all Wagner.

N. A genuine farce, unless it be a series of coarse vulgarities, may be harmless, for you laugh and forget it, and there is no lie in a laugh; but there is something false in the feeling excited by emotional drama even of the best kind.

M. What do you mean by 'false'?
VOL. I.-No. 4.

TT

N. I mean a feeling which only results in tears, and which is not followed up by action: emotions which generate no good work are sterile, and worse than sterile.

M. This seems to me a mistake; for if the action that follows is not immediate, the impulse to prompt it at some future time is roused, and the mind, awakened to the recognition of its own sensibilities, will turn in real life all the more readily to the perception of the joys and sorrows of others, with a desire to partake them. There have even been instances of a total regeneration effected by the sharp, sudden sympathies of the stage, and I can tell you of one which came within my own knowledge. A young fellow at Dublin, the son of a friend of mine, when he was about nineteen sank into a state of indolent apathy approaching to torpor: it was impossible to interest him in anything. Head, hand, and heart seemed equally powerless; he would turn to no pursuit, he would think of no profession. He was in this deplorable condition when the announcement of a distinguished tragic actress to play for a few nights roused a hope for him in his father's mind. He thought that her poetical passion might serve as an electric shock to the boy's numbed faculties ; and he thought rightly. The young man went every night to the theatre, and under the influence of this new stimulus he began to feel his life within him. The effect of emotion created by the pathos of the actress survived her departure; his blood was stirred, his energies were roused. He began to read and think; everything about him was endowed with a fresh vitality; from a moping young dullard he was transformed into an intelligent active man, and he is now well known as a gallant officer.

N. I suspect such an effect is rare. I know a case of a stupid young man who became comparatively clever by having a portion of his brain removed after a railway accident; but I ask you whether it would be advisable on this account to seize and trepan every dull youth, and partially to deprive him of such brains as he may possess. M. Of course not. But where is the analogy?

Your fact

N. The analogy lies in the rarity of the occurrence. is, like mine, an isolated one, or at any rate it is a singular circumstance upon which we cannot reasonably found any general expectations. The more usual condition of the playgoer's mind is that of self-satisfaction; he is elated with his own humanity, and hugs himself because a few of his precious tears have fallen for an imaginary woe. These sensations are so pleasant to him that he seeks to renew them by going to the play again. Now this I call the luxury of sentiment and the quintessence of self-indulgence.

M. With all respect I beg you to remember that imaginary griefs may be coddled as easily and more injuriously in domestic life. This outlet for surplus emotion may act as a safety-valve, and serve to protect the household from alarming explosions.