THE POPE TO AN AMERICAN PROTESTANT.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 177, 18 August 1876, Page 8

THE POPE TO AN AMERICAN PROTESTANT.

1-¥ In the ' Atlantic Monthly ' for May, Mr. Thomas Bailey Aldrich describes an interview with Pope Pius IX. The tone of Mr. Aidrich's article is offensively flippant, and the spirit of it, -we regret to say, is more offensively impertinent. . Nevertheless, we make the following abstract, which is all the more delightful coming as it does from a Protestant writer of bigoted tendencies, and extracted from an article which might be called a silly boy's attempt to attack the Vatican. " The Pope advanced," writes Mr. Aldrich, "to the centre of the upper end of the room, leaning heavily oqf^fe his ivory-handled cane, the princes in black and the.Cardinals uiT •carlet standing behind him in picturesque groups. It was a pleasure to turn from the impassible prime minister [Cardinal Antonelli] to the gentle but altogether lovely figure of his august master, with his small, sparkling eyes, remarkably piercing when he looked at you point blank, and a smile none the less winsome, that it lighted up a mouth denoting unusual force of will. His face was not at all the face of a man who had passed nearly half a century in arduous diplomatic and ecclesiastical labors; it waa certainly the face of a man who had led a temperate, blameless private life. . . . Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti waa born in Sinigaglia, May 13, 1792 ; the week previous to this reception he had celebrated his 83rd birthday ; but he did not look over 65 or 70, as he stood there in his cream white skull-cap of broadcloth and his long pontifical robes of the same material — a costume that lent an appearanoe of height to an under-sized, stoutly-built figure. "With his silvery hair strangling from beneath the skull-cap, and his smoothly-shaven, pale face, a trifle heavy, perhaps because of the double chin, he was a very beautif ul'old man After pausing a moment or two in the middle of the chamber, and taking a bird's-eye glance at his guests, the Pope began his rounds. . . the ceremony finished, his Holiness addressed to his guests the neatest of farewells, delivered in enviable French, in which he wished a prosperous voyage to those pilgrims whose homes lay beyond the sea, and a happy return to all. When he touched, as he did briefly, on the misfortunes of the Church, an adorable fire came into his eyes ; fifty of his eighty-three' winters slipped from him as if by enchantment, and for a few seconds he stood forth in the prime of life. He spoke for some five or seven minutes, and nothing could have been more dignified and graceful than the matter and manner of his words. The benediction was followed by a general rustle and movement among the princes and Cardinals at the farther end of the room ; the double door opened softly and closed, and that was the last the Pope saw of us."