Footnotes
[1.]In 1855 the Bonaparte family were without a name in that Europe where they had possessed so many thrones. One man had compassion on them, and acted generously, Pius VIII. welcomed them to his States. A member of this family, Lucien Bonaparte, Napoleon's brother, having always shown great faithfulness to the Holy See, Pius VIII. conferred upon him the title of a Roman Prince and the principality of Canino. Lucien's son has not been gifted to walk in the footsteps of his honorable father. Balleydier, in his history of the Roman revolution, thus portrays him: “Versed in dissimulation, Charles Bonaparte had, under the preceding Pontificate, acted two very opposite characters. In the morning attending in the ante-chambers of the Cardinals, in the evening at the Conciliabula of the secret Societies, he labored to secure, by a double game, the chances of the present and the probabilities of the future. He had often been seen going piously to the Vatican even, to lay at the feet of Gregory XVI. homage which his heart belied.” No doubt, in 1847 and 1848, he thought himself an abler man than his father, as he marched, poignard in hand, at the head of the malcontents of Rome.[2.]This danger is past.[3.]Mr. Perkins, in his letter to the Times, makes out that they forced open the houses of the inhabitants to make them give up their wine, and that they got drunk.[4.]Protocol, March 18th.[5.]“If we were to sift the pretensions of all our public men, to discover that one person who is necessarily best informed of the past and present state of Italy, and the causes and means that have produced the anarchy which now prevails over the greater part of that unfortunate peninsula, Lord Normanby would inevitably be the man for our purpose. His long residence in Italy, his intimate acquaintance with all that is there distinguished for literature, science, art and statesmanship, and his unquestionable liberality of sentiment, as a politician, give him a paramount claim to our respectful attention, and even to our confidence, when he comes forward to enlighten his countrymen, with respect to Italian affairs—a claim to which no other member of the legislature can have the slightest pretensions. He has, too, throughout a long public career, always maintained such an independence of character, and so nobly and generously subordinated his personal interests to his sense of public duty, as to entitle him as a right to our confidence, when he unbosoms himself either in print or in speech, of that knowledge which he has acquired by long study and experience in official and non-official life, and tells us important truths which it is necessary for us to know, in order to be able to form a correct judgment upon momentous passing events.”—Weekly Register, February 11, 1860.[6.]Whoever thinks to devour the Pope will die of indigestion. These words, though not very polite, proved to be prophetic.[7.]If Russia were a little more within the pale of civilization, it would be noted as an exception. Its bishops were not allowed to proceed to Rome.[8.]The number of prelates at Rome attending the council was never, for any length of time, the same. And writers give the numbers according to the time at which they noted them.[9.]The left arm looking from the door of the Basilica, the right looking from the high altar. As was fitting, it was the Gospel side.[10.]According to the best statistics that can be found.[11.]There appeared at Munich, in 1874, an ingenious caricature. It represented the Prussian chancellor, endeavoring, with a Krupp gun, which he used as a lever, to overthrow a church emblem of Catholicism. Satan comes on the scene, and says: “What are you doing, my friend?” Bismarck, “This church embarrasses me; I want to upset it.” Satan, “It embarrasses me, too. I have been laboring 1800 years to demolish it. If your Excellency succeeds, I pledge myself to resign my office in your favor.”[12.]A later estimate than at page 120.[13.]The late celebrated preacher, Dr. Cumming, also admitted the expansive power which is characteristic of the Catholic Church. And in doing so, he bore witness to its actual growth in his time. In a lecture delivered at Brentford, England, in 1860, he said: “He would do the priests of the Church of Rome the justice to say that a more earnest, energetic, a more industrious body he did not know in any portion of our church; they were laboring incessantly for what they believed to be the truth, and he would that he could say without success, but he was sorry to say with great success. He saw going over to the Church of Rome a section of the nobility and many ministers of our church. These were well instructed, and ought to have known better. In England, account for it as they could, it had made progress to such an extent, during the last twenty years, that it had doubled its churches and doubled its priests.”—Lecture at Brentford. England, 1860.[14.]Discourse delivered in the Church of St. Peter ad vincula, 1st June, 1877, by the Bishop of Poitiers.[15.]La Captivite de Pie IX. par Alexander de St. Albin. Paris, 1878. Pages 513 and 514.[16.]That was the Pantheon, or temple of all the Gods. It is now the Church called St. Mary of the Martyrs (Sæ Mariæ ad Martyres).[17.]Their purpose is sufficiently manifest. But the calumny did not avail them. Pius the Ninth's last illness was of such a character as to render impossible congestion of the brain. He possessed to the end his mental faculties. And when the power of speech failed, he was still able to express his thoughts, which were clear and distinct, by looks and gestures.[18.]“With the aid of Thy grace.”[19.]“We shall enter into the House of the Lord.”[20.]“Depart, Christian soul.”[21.]The crisis in the Eastern question, the attitude of the Holy Father on the occasion of Victor Emmanuel's sudden demise, the consequent devolution of the crown to a new sovereign, the scandal of the Prime Minister's (Orispi's) notorious criminality before the law necessitating his unwilling resignation and the fall of the ministry, the suddenness of the Holy Father's decease; all these events and conditions, in their several degrees and kinds, made the moment at which it had to meet astonishingly propitious for the holding of the Conclave in the Vatican itself.