GENERAL NEWS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 111, 12 June 1875, Page 8

GENERAL NEWS.

The following interesting items we clip from the columns of the * Brooklyn Catholic Review' : — The recent census of the city of Genoa shows that out of a population of 129,269 inhabitants, 128,983 of their own account declared themselves to he Catholics. The email fraction of 1246J Jews and Protestants are endeavouring to rule the day, and lately decided that the children of the Catholics should receive no religious education in the public schools. Fortunately, however, the majority obtained the Victory, and thus, after a short Btruggle, the bill ordering the withdrawal o£ the catechism and prayers from the schools -was rejected, and things remain as they were. The 'Independent' says, very justly, that a religion which is content to bow before the State and submit to State enactments, whatever they may be, is utterly contemptible." We conclude that its enthusiasm for old Catholicism, and its chief pastor, Bishop Reinkens, does not glow at a white heat. That gentleman issued lately a pastoral in reply to the Pope's Encyclical to the German bishops, in which he " characterises the Ultramontane doctrine as absurd, inasmuch as it claims greater obedience on behalf of the Pope than is due to the temporal sovereign. The bishop exhorts hie co-religionists diligently to observe the duties due to the emperor and the empire." The only trouble with the last piece of advice is that Dr. Reinkens knows no duties which are not due "to the emperor and, the empire." The new Archbishop of Florence, Mgr. Cecconi, has been received with much enthusiasm i» Florence on his return fromlus consecration, which took place in Borne. He made a public entry into his archdiocese, and was received by the rait multitude* which lined the streets through

•which he passed with great respect and loud cheering. This is a significant fact when one reflects that everything*,has been done of late to render religion and the clergy unpopular in Italy. A very remarkable Italian noblewoman died recently at Genoa. This was the Marchioness Luigia Negrone-Durazzo. The house of Negrone, of which she was a member, is one of the most illustrious in Italian history, and her ladyship was a worthy daughter of a great race. She was born late in the last century, and married in 1809 the Marquis Durazzo. She leaves no children. Her sister, who died some years ago, was the wife of Antonio Brignole Sala, the great diplomat, and the marchioness was so clever a politician that not only did Brignole delight in her conversation, but Lord Russell, Lord Palmerston, Metternieh, and Cardinal Antonelli were amongst her correspondents. She was highly educated and spoke many languages, and was unusually well informed. But, although her social qualities were of a very high order, her charity and piety far exceeded them. Out of her vast wealth she built a splendid orphan asylum, a cancer hospital, and every day provided dinners for twelve aged persons. On festivals the marchioness distributed clothes and alms to the deserving poor, and her charity was such that she was never known to refuse aid to any well authenticated case of necessity. Twice » week Bhe visited the hospitals and prisons, and during the terrible visitation of the cholera, some years ago, the Marchioness Negrone-Durazao, in her quiet way, did more real good than half the other well-intentioned people put together, for she was blessed with extraordinary common sense and self possession. She was a liberal patroness of the fine arts, and endowed the cathedral of her native city with fine stained glass windows, and the new Church of the Immaculate Conception owes her two splendid chapels and altars decorated with fine pictures and superb marbles. The death of the Marchesa Negrone-Durazzo is keenly felt in Genoa and all over Italy, where she was honored and boloved by persons of all ranks and opinions. She leaves a considerable sum of money to the Church and to his Holiness the Pope. She was essentially a noble type of a Catholic Grande Dame. In the world she was graceful in manners, accomplished, witty, and extremely amusing, and so exquisitely polite that it was said of her, "Her politeness was the essence of Christian charity." She knew how to put her gueits at their ease, and her way of speaking to dependents was motherly and gentle in the extreme. She was pious without ostentations, and her charity was so extensive and active that if it had not been considered with her a matter of course she would hrve earned a world-wide fame for benevolence. But her charity was practised 10 noiselessly and bo unobtrusively, that people seemed to take it for granted. Garibaldi chose a singular spot to abuse the Church in when he •elected the famous mausoleum of Augustus, more popularly known as the Corea amphitheatre. He was invited to a dinner there, and at dessert spoke of Christianity and the Papacy in language far too terrible to repeat. He might have selected another topic for his discourse had he been better educated, for this amphitheatre was once the burial place of the Caesars. Here reited Marcellus, Agrippa, Octavia, wife to Anthony and rival of Cleopatra, the august Empress Livia, Q-ermanicus, Augustus Caesar, and many otheri equally illustrious. At Lady Macbeqh says, "Where are they now?" Their ashes are scattered to the winds, and the Roman* come to their sumptuous tomb, which has long since been converted into an open air theatre, to laugh over the follies depicted in the tragedies of Goldoni or to shudder at Riitori's fine impersonations of the wicked empresses of days long gone by. Sometimes Salvini plays here the great Shakspeare's immortal tragedy of " Othello," or " Hamlet/ but of the Cmsars no on* in the audience stops to think. They are as if they had never been. On the contrary, pilgrims flock daily to Rome from all parts of the world to pray before the shrine of the humble Apostles whom the Caesars slew. Assuredly the contrast between the present condition of the resting place of the mighty Emperors of Rome and that of the Apostles might easily have furnished Garibaldi with a fitting subject for a discourse without the necessity of insulting God. But what might perhaps have struck the old " hero" more forcibly, is the fact thab in this amphitheatre where he was banquetting, the body of the man to whom he is so fond of likening himself, Cola di Rienzi, was was torn to pieces by the infuriated Romans in 1354. It had remained unburied after hii assassination, and was at last drawn by a hook to the Piazzo san Murcello, and then quartered, and the putrid members hung upon a gibbet. Afterwards these remains were burnt by order of Jugurtha and Sciaretti Colonna in the centre of the amphitheatre in question. Instead of upsetting the Colosseum and the ancient Christian monuments of Rome, which are consecrated by religion, tho Italian Government would do well to restore the mausoleum of the Cfflsars, which is still unexplored, and must contain beneath the benches of the modern theatre, a wonderful mine of artistic and curiouß treasures. But the mausoleum is a theatre, and the theatres in modern Rome help greatly in the universal corruption of the people which is now going on in Italy, and the Corea amphitheatre has been of late especially dtvoted to indecent and irreligflfc performances. The German Government has ordered the^issolution of the " Society of St. Francis de Sales" in Alsace and Lorraine, and it is believed that that of St. Vincent de Paul will also soon be suppressed unless it can prove that it has no connection with the same society in France. Now as all the congregations of St. Vincent are united at then* centres, Rome and Paris, it will be impossible for tho Strasbourg branch of the association to prove satisfactorily its own right to continued existence in Bismarckland. A Long Ride. — Some few months ago a sensation was created in Europe by a German officer riding a considerable distance in a given time on one horse. In Australia, where affairs of thia description are not so rare as in Europe, the performance of the feat was not regarded as anything astonishing, as some years previously it had been thrown into the shade by Mr. Weatherly, who rode one horse from Queensland to Melbourne, a distance of 1020 miles, in 17 days, or at the rate of 60 miles a day. The animal he rode was by Besborough or Delapre, and although merely hobbled at night in the bush, finished, the journey quite fresh, -