CARDINAL WISEMAN AND LADY MORGAN.

New Zealander, Volume 7, Issue 534, 28 May 1851, Page 4

CARDINAL WISEMAN AND LADY MORGAN.

The following letter, which is of curious interest at the present moment, from the position held by one of the parties concerned, lint been addiesged to the Editor of the Morning Chronicle :—: — It is a curious fact, not generally known, that Cardinal Wiseman's enrlieit apppamnre in ilie field of controversy wns hy a tract entitled, " Remarks on Lady Morgan* Statements regardinc; St. Peter's Chair preseived in the Vatican Basilic." The date of the edition in my possession is 183?, but I believe that it first appeared in 1825. In the second volume published of th.it Lady's " Italy," — which received from Lord Byron the high praise of " learned and excellent" — i» the following passage :— ••The sacrilegious curiosity ol the French broke through all obstacles to fieir seeing their the Chair of St. Peter. They actually temoved itssupeib casket, and discrvered the relic. U[>on its inou!deiin£, r and dusty surface wen* traced carvings, which bore the appearence ol letters. The chair was quicUy biought into a better light, the du*t and robwehs icmoved, and the inscription (lor inscription it was) faithfully copied. The writing is in Arabic rhnracteis, and is the well known confession of the Mahometan faith — There is but one God and Mahomet is his Prophet. It is supposed that thi» chair had been, among the spoils of the Cruiddera, offered to Ihe Church, at a time when a taste for antiquarian lore and the decyphering of inscriptions was not yet in fashion. This story has been since hushed up, the chair replaced, and none lint the unhallowed rememhrr the fact, and none but the audacious repeat it. Yet buch there are even at Rome." Her Ladyship's authorities for this statement «re understood to be Denon and Champollion. The Cmdinal has devoted thirty pages ot daihing and slashing writing, crowded with learned references, to the refutations of what he designates "a foolish and wicked tale." He asserts that there is no tuch inicription ; and he accounts for the carved compartments, which represent the Labours of Hercules, by the hypothesis that the Chair was given to St. Peter by a Roman of rank. His geneial conclusion is, that the chair is " precisely such a one as the antiquarian would expect to find claiming the honour of having been the episcopal throne of the first Roman Pontiff "—which recalls the earthquake, (mentioned by Miss Edgeworth) which " had the honour to be noticed by the Royal Society." I do not write to revive the controversy, nor do I feel competent to declare whether the Cardinal or the lady is in the right. But the circumstance struck me as well worth noticing at the present time. The pamphlet led to her Ladythip's work being placed in the In« dcx Expurgatoiius, — I am, &c.