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 about “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 court 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 country 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, probably, 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.