in every city excepting Rome. For, in the days of the temporal power, everything that was done in the ecclesiastical capital was done by ecclesiastical methods very slow, very sure, but in general very cumbrous and complicated. That Monsignor Pecci, as he was then called, did all that was expected of him in Belgium, and did it well, is amply proved by the fact of his early advancement to the Archbishopric of Perugia. In an almost prophetic way his arrival in Perugia foreshadowed his elevation to the pontificate. Between the two events there was in any case a very remarkable resemblance. When the young prelate reached his archdiocese in Tuscany, Perugia had within a few years been the scene of a bloody strife between the papacy and the revolutionaries.

Antonelli, already Prime Minister, had put down the uprising with a relentless hand; mercenary troops had been employed to inflict condign punishment upon the Perugians; a cruel massacre spared no suspected persons, and even a party of American travelers barely escaped with their lives by the courage and wit of a Swiss soldier, who had formerly seen them at the Vatican, who recognized them, forced the whole party into a closet, and, throwing himself down before the door, pretended to be dead drunk until the danger was passed. The new Archbishop found the popular feeling strongly against the Church and in favor of the unification of Italy; he found the city garrisoned by Italian troops, under the command of officers from whom he could expect but little sympathy; and he saw at once that he must choose and follow a definite course of action. From the first he opened his house to all comers, including the officers of the garrison, and invited the discussion of topics of the day rather than avoided it; he showed his visitors that he was what he is to-day, not only a churchman, but an Italian and a man; and before he had been in Perugia a year he was universally respected and generally liked in the city which Antonelli's troops had reddened with Italian blood.

Few men who attain to the very highest distinctions in the world pass through many different phases of activity before finding the career for which they are naturally fitted; and though adventurers have occasionally reached high places, they

have rarely, if ever, attained and maintained the highest. The life of Leo the Thirteenth has been one of intense concentration, leading by direct steps to the pontificate. In Perugia he was the right man in the right place; he was in the heart of the difficulties between the Papacy and the Italian Kingdom, and he was in his element in a perpetual opposition wherein he was continually gaining ground. There he remained, even after he had been made a Cardinal, until the death of Pius the Ninth, when his own immediate election to the Holy See offered him the final opportunity of his life. Outside of Italy the news that Cardinal Pecci was made Pope conveyed no idea nor especial meaning to those who heard it; among Italian laymen, except in Perugia, it excited curiosity rather than comment; among churchmen it produced profound and universal satisfaction, and the only anxiety that was felt for the future was for the new Pope's physical ability to do the work imposed upon him.

As when he entered upon his duties in Perugia he had met with opposition on all sides, and with a deep-rooted hatred of the Papacy as an earthly power, so, when at last crowned Pope, he found that the world was against him and that he must climb the political glass. mountain down which Pius the Ninth had glided so smoothly and surely to political destruction. In 1878 England represented to the world the success of certain pseudo-scientific theories which never had any real hold upon the believing English people, but which English men of science, of otherwise deserved reputation, floated like toy boats upon the high tide of British imperialism. Mr. Gladstone, though never virulent in attacking any genuine form of Christianity, had promoted the unification of Italy on purely humanitarian grounds; at the same time, by his character and his principles, he was the most typical living representative of the Protestant idea. 1878 Paris, having but lately disgraced the French name in the Commune of 1871, was already boasting again that she was France, that France was republican, and that what Paris called a republic, namely, an anti-religious and often venal bureaucracy, was the only possible government for civilized man. In 1878 the young German Empire, bursting with health and

In

spirits, like a boy fresh from school, was loudly repeating its newly learned lesson to an intimidated if not an admiring world. There was no God but the god of German battles, and Luther and Calvin, who might reasonably have been surprised at finding themselves classed together, were his prophets, subject to the advice and military censorship of Prince Bismarck. Last ly, in 1878, Italian unity was a success, and Italy was just entering upon that brief period of prosperity which she readily ascribed to her victory over the Pope, which dazzled herself and delighted her friends, but which, by the overstraining of her strength in futile speculations, soon ended in the ruin which we deplore to-day.

To be brief, civilized Europe was antiCatholic where it was Protestant, and anti-papal where it was Catholic. The temporal power in its traditional form was irrevocably lost; the purely ecclesiastical rights of the Pope in the management of the Catholic Church were openly resisted in some countries, while it was attempted to abolish them by law in others; and when the body of Pius the Ninth was temporarily laid to rest in Saint Peter's,

grave men in Rome shook their heads, as many grave and not unwise persons did elsewhere, and solemnly declared that the Roman Catholic Church was an institution of the past.

Such was the state of things when Leo the Thirteenth was crowned. He had the world against him; there were battles which must be fought at once, if they were to be fought at all; and the organization which has been the wonder of the world since Gregory the Seventh conceived it and Urban the Second made it a fact, more than eight hundred years ago, was weak from long disuse and clogged by the accumulated refuse of antiquated procedure. Leo the Thirteenth declared war upon two evils as soon as he was Pope-social democracy in Europe at large, and inefficiency among the prelates and priests of the Roman Catholic Church. In other words, he took from the first the position of a censor and a restorer within his own immediate province; and, beyond that, he took his stand among the conservative sovereigns of Europe. Those first steps ultimately decided the opinion of Europe in his favor; his determination

to improve the internal conditions of the Church commanded respect, and his conservative action disarmed suspicion. People remembered how, soon after his accession, Pius the Ninth had shown a dangerous sympathy for the Young Italian party, conveying the impression that he would have been willing to accept something like the honorary presidency of the Confederate States of Italy; and no one had forgotten the disastrous consequences that ensued when, being obliged to retire from the confusion he had produced, the young and enthusiastic Pope fell under the absolute dominion of Cardinal Antonelli's savage reactionism. Europe was proportionately grateful to Leo the Thirteenth for his uncompromising declarations in favor of stability of government; and where more than one nation had expected to find a dangerous adversary, most of the European governments saw at a glance that in one most important respect they had a firm and powerful ally. Leo the Thirteenth could tell the citizens of France that, since they had elected to be governed by what they believed to be a republic, it was their duty to stand by it, to obey its laws, and to fight for its existence; he could tell the world, in one of his most brilliant encyclicals, that man was before

nations were, and that the rights of man go before the rights of any government; but, in the face of any movement even faintly resembling the anarchy that now calls itself socialism, but which by the slightest accident to the machinery of modern history may become again, at any center of action, the Commune of 1871then Leo the Thirteenth becomes as conservative as the British Constitution, as energetic as the new German Empire, and as stubborn as his own inflexible will can make him.

It is generally easy to determine what the great personages of any age have done for themselves; it is quite another matter to calculate with any degree of precision what they have done for others. Leo the Thirteenth's enemies, who are relatively very few, would not go so far as to say that his reign has been a selfish one, nor even one in which he has bestowed the slightest consideration upon his family. The integrity and wisdom with which he has administered the Church's finances for the Church's benefit are beyond doubt or question; and, apart from the legitimate use of the remarkable faculties with which he is endowed by nature, it cannot be said that he has labored for his own fame. In other words, his long and active reign has

been spent in a continuous effort for the good of other men, of which it is exceedingly hard to judge or reckon the results. Roughly, they may be said to have been twofold within and without the immediate sphere of a churchman's action. It would be useless to enlarge, here upon the successful management of internal details, the simplification of old-fashioned rules and methods, the careful selection of men for the work which they were to do. The present Pope has done more to give the Church strength and sincerity in those respects than a dozen of his predecessors. It is of more importance, if possible, to judge of the general political result of so much sustained energy. On the whole, it can hardly be denied by any one who has followed the course of modern events that Pope Leo's influence has been most distinctly in the direction of peace; and should it be the world's misfortune to see him succeeded by a pontiff of more combative disposition, Europe will understand more clearly than now the character of the man whom she must lose in the course of the next few years. Again and again, when a war has been impending between civilized nations, the whole weight of the Vatican's diplomacy has been thrown into the scale to bring about a peaceful solution of the difficulty. Without going further back than the circumstances which immediately preceded the conflict in which we have lately been engaged with Spain, it is known to every one that the Pope used every available means to oppose a declaration of war. Nor must it be imagined that he made the effort on behalf of Spain as a Catholic country. When he was called upon, some years ago, to act as arbitrator between Spain and the German

Empire, in the question of the Caroline Islands, he decided with little hesitation in favor of the Protestant power, because the latter undoubtedly had right and justice on its side. So, on the present occasion, his voice has been given, not for Spain, but for mankind; not for party. but for peace; not for human interests, but for humanity.

The statement, so often repeated in our times, that war is impossible in an age of enlightenment and civilization, has been regularly answered and refuted Ly the grimly convincing argument of blocdshed. We have nevertheless so far advanced upon rougher times that religious warfare is a thing of the past; and it is safe to say that this state will continue until atheism rises with anarchy to attack belief. We may even venture to hope that all extremes of virulence in feeling and speech are at an end between the different denominations of those who believe in one God. Leo the Thirteenth has a right to be judged, to be respected, and to be honored as a man who has done much good in his time, by men of all creeds and of every faith. Of few Popes can it be said that their political influence throughout a long reign has been so steadily and universally beneficent. The man who has set an example of toleration to his age may justly claim some breadth and fairness at the hands of his contemporaries; at a time when wise men consider that a universal war is by no means an impossibility, he who has so often been among the peacemakers deserves an honorable place among the great; and in a century in which so many have striven for gain, he who has labored long and well for others has earned the gratitude of his fellow-men.