The Sun.
London, England, 1863-08-04 00:00:00

THE HIERARCHY OF CATHOLICISM.

In the form of a rapid synopsis of the contents of the
Annuario Pontifeo, published in Rome, 1863, the Reader
of Saturday gives the following particulars illustrative of
the vast dimensions and the elaborate organisation of the
Catholic Hierarchy. At the head of the Catholic Hier-
archy," says the Reader," stands Rome, whose bishop has
the titles of Representative of Christ, Successor to the
Prince of the Apostles, Pontifex Maximus of the General
Church, Patriarch of the Occident, Primes of Italy, Arch-
bishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Sove-
reign of the Secular Government of the Roman Church,
Next to him stands the College of the Cardinals,
as Collaterals and Coadjutors of the Supreme Ponti-
fex. It consists of six cardinal-bishops, fifty cardinal.
priests, and fourteen cardinal-deacons, but rum-
berg at present only
fifty-eight members. There
are five Patriarchates of the Oriental Ritus with patriarchal
jurisdiction—viz., three in Antiochia for the Melchites,
Maronites, and Syrians. one in Babylon for the Chaldeans,
one in Cilicia for the Armenians. There are, further, seven
Patriarchates of the Latin Ritus—viz., Constantinople,
Alexandria, Antiochia, Jerusalem, Venice, West India, and
Lisbon. There are 176 archbishoprics; of the 131 belong-
ing to the Latin Rite, 12 are dependent directly from the
Roman Patriarchate, 119 of these sees are endowed with
church Provinces. There are 694 bishoprics-640 of Latin,
54 of Oriental Rites. At this moment there are filled
646 bishoprics, with residence. Besides these, there
are 234 titular bishoprics—i.e., inpartibus infiddlium ;
so that the total of the prelates forming the Roman
hierarchy amounts to 980. The apostolical vicariates, the
delegations, and prefectures in all the parts of the world
stand, as is well known, under the Couregatio de propa-
ganda fide in Rome. The number of vicariates is one hun-
dred, of delegations five, of prefectures twenty, ten of which
were first founded by the present Pope, who has also raised
nine archbishoprics to metropolitan churches, and has
created four new archbishoprics and thirty-five bishoprics,
chiefly in England, Holland, and America. In Europe
the Propaganda has the administration of the vicariate of
the Oscanian Duchies, through the Nuntius at
Munich—of N,,rth Germany and Denmark, through
the Bishop of Osnabruck ; it further administers
Saxony, with Misnia and Lusatia, Luxenburg,
Roman- Graubunten, Tessin, Scotland (three vicariates),
Sweden, Herzegovina, Wallachia, Bosnia, Constantinople,
Sofia, Greece, Gibraltar, The rest are spread over the whole
of Asia, Africa (22), America, and Oceania (8). The oldest
of living cardinals is the Cardinal-Priest Antonio Tosti, the
Fnance Minister of Gregory XVI., now 87 years of age;
'he youngest member of the College is the Cardinal-
Deacon Ferreti, 46 years old. The sum-total of the
ages of the present 58 cardinals amounts to 3,803
years, which would give an average of 65 years.
The greatest number of cardinals belong to Roman patrician
families and the nobility of the States of the Church ; a few to
the Neapolitan nobility and that of -Tuscany and Sardinia;
Genoa, Piedmont, and Lombardy are entirely unrepresented.
Of foreigners there are now members of the College—six
Frenchmen, four Germans, three Spaniards, two Hunga-
rians, one Englishman, one Portuguese, and one Belgian.
Not one member of a reigning family at this moment belongs
to it. These are a few of the curious facts contained in the
book before us—a carefully compiled ecclesiastical Almanach
de Gotha, which will be hardly less interesting to posterity
than it is to our own generation.

"We learn from Coburg," bays the Prussian
3foniteur, " that the Prince and Princess Royal
of Prussia are to arrive on August 15th at Tallemburg, to
pass, some time with the Queen of England,"

LITERATURE.

Victor Hugo's Life. Related by One who has
Witnessed it. 2 Vols. W. H. Allen and Co.
If it had been in no other way interesting, this
biography could not but have appealed to the atten•
tion of every scholar in Europe, by reason of its
comprising within the compass of the two volumes
devoted to it, several hitherto unpublished writings
of M. Victor Hugo, writings including among them
a three act drama, entitled "Inez de Castro. But
intrinsically the work itself, the life itself, as written
by the truthful and loving hand of Madame Victor
Hugo, is singularly attractive, has about it a charm
that is often little less than enthralling. As the
reader is at once informed in the preface to this, the
authorised translation of the work, the two goodly
volumes here submitted to his examination forms
merely the first portion of what the translator ex-
cellently well terms " almost autobiography." Ac-
cording to that courtly, old familiar phrase, term-
ing a man's wife his better half, the book is indeed
an autobiography. It has the fascination of auto-
biography without its egotism, And this, forinas-
much as it is penned by the alter ego of the re-
markable writer whose career as a man of letters it
recounts. For ourselves, we will acknowledge at
once, quite frankly that it is about the only aspect
of the life of Victor Hugo, the narrative of which
we should be disposed to regard with unalloyed
satistaction. And even this not always. Even this
with one qualm at least of mingled regret and
disgust. As a literary man purely and simply,
Victor Hugo is here regarded by his gifted and
appreciative wife— le temoin de sa vie ac-
cording to the title page. The political career
is to be related by Madame, in the sequel—under
which head will have to be particularized the cause
of his present exile, and the one blot on the literary
escutcheon of this great Poet, Orator, Dramatist,
Novelist, Publicist, that most spiteful, slanderous,
scurrilous, dastardly brochure of modern times,
Napoleon le Petit. With a sidelong remembrance
of which—a remembrance half of wonder, half of
scorn, and, combining these two emotions, wholely
of pity—we revert with a sense of relief and of
intense satisfaction to the one aspect in which we
should rejoice could we alone scan the history of
the rise and development of Victor Hugo's Reputa-
tion. Of the truthfulness of this singular narrative
we are perfectly well convinced. It bears about it,
indeed, the attestation of its own authenticity.
Raconte par un tenzoin, it might almost be re-
garded, on the contrary, as raconte par Victor
Hugo lui tame. That the manuscript first, that
each proof sheet afterwards, has been scrutinised
by the Hero of the Biography, we may rest assured,
as a mere matter of course. That additional guaran-
tee of accuracy in each minute particular being
in effect a thing inevitable. Fragmentary the story
here related is, without doubt, but fragmentary it
must needs be, if only it assume to itself in
earnest the character of a faithful biography. For
what life is there that is not in ifself essentially and in-
variably fragmentary—a thing of shreds and patches
—a tesselated pathway leading from the cradle on
towards that common goal of all ambition, whether
of the sword or of the pen—the grave ? A
succession of incidents, a chain of episodes,
introductions now to one, now to another of the
various contemporaries among whom the subject
of this Biography plays his part, ever with
increasing importance in his doings and achieve-
mnts :—such are the characters of the chequered
themes furnished to the writer, who is at once the
wife and the witness, as the subject matter of these
all bat one round hundred (of these ninety-eight)
most entertaining chapters of anecdotal recollec-
tion. The first page of the first chapter opens
with a reference to the earliest Hugo of whom there
is anywhere to be found an authentic record, to wit,
Victor's remotest ancestor, one Pierre Antoine
Hugo, born as far back as 1532. The last page of
the last chapter (the 98th) closes with the mention
of the entrance at length into the French academy
of the most renowned and remarkable of the
race, of Victor'a own entrance among the select Forty
in 1841, when, for a fourth time, he knocked at the
door seeking admission, and when, for the first time,
the Great Poet was welcomed by his thenceforth
brother academicians! With what titles to glory,
moreover, did he not take his place amongst
them ! Pre-eminent in one peculiarity of his
genius, at least—pre-eminent in that one par-
ticular amongst the greatest names in French
Literature. And this, we mean not by any
hyperbole of praise, but quite literally. For, in
himself, one of the very greatest of the Poets of
France, one of the very greatest of her Dramatists,
one of the very greatest of her Orators, one of the
very greatest, if not incontestably the greatest of
her Novelists or Romancists—Victor Hugo com-
bines in himself those four characters, each in the
highest grade, Poet, Dramatist, Orator, Novelist,
and, so combining them, stands forth not upon
a tripod of fame, but upon a noble and solid
pyramidal pedestal, squared from the base up-
wards, rendering the crowning symbol or effigy
of this great renown singularly conspicuous among
the grandest figures in the Valhalla of French
Literature. Bugjargal ! Hans of Iceland ! Odes !
Idylls! Tragedies ! Lyrics! Les Feuillesd'Automne!
Dropped from his hand (those undying leaves !) in
the early spring-time of the poet's life ! Le Dernier
Jour d'un Condoning! That passionate and Lear-
ful appeal to the law against the further con-
tinuance of Capital Punishment, a pleading more
persuasive, than if not so logical as, that put forth by
Beecarria! Hernant! Marion de Lorme! Buy Blas!
Les Burgraves ! Le Roi s' Amuse ! Lucrezia Borgia!
Notre Dame de Paris ! Les Miserables ! What
titles to admiration ! What securities for popula-
rity in the present, and for renown in the hereafter !
What fecundity and versatility of genius ! What
abounding affluence of imagination ! Reading, in
Madame Hugo's narrative with the liveliest pos-
sible interest the record of the personal incidents
related of Victor Hugo, we turn ever with an espe-
cial and peculiar zest to the mention of anything that
in any way refers more directly to the circumstances
out of which came forth with wondrous rapidity
those marvellous literary masterpieces. There is
something peculiarly fascinating, where we can
read in this most entertaining biography an
account—now of Victor Hugo's introduction to
M. Chateaubriand, now of his paying a visit
(at his seat in the country near Macon), to M.
Lamartine, now to his remembrance of Charles X,'s
Coronaion, now to his personal memories of the Re-
volution of July, 1830, now to the time when the
Abbe Lamenais was his confessor, now to his home
life while the dreadful scourge of the cholera morbus
was passing through all Paris, as sooner or
later at that time it passed through the
other populous cities of Christendom. But
beyond the charm attaching to all these personal
recollections of his life, we would place the glamour
of those passages in the biography under notice, re-
lating especially and peculiarly, as we have said, to
the composition of one or another of the Poet-
Romancist's great literary masterpieces. Pre-
eminent amongst the whole of which, we would
still place that mediaeval historical Romance of
Notre Dame de Paris which the author at one period,
namely, just at the moment of its completion,
thought of designating anew The Contents of an
Inkbottle! And this, simply because, buying a bottle
of ink with which to write it, Victor Hugo began
writing it, the first dip of ink for that purpose being
taken out of the tattle, on the 27th of July, 1831,
and the last dip of ink, finishing the bottle dry and
writing the very last sentence of the story, being
taken on the 14th January, 1832! Between
those two dates, within the period of those
less than six months, the whole of that
wonderful story was written ! How ?—that is,
under what circumstances ? Let the teenoin
answer ! "Ho (Victor Hugo) bought a bottle of
ink," she writes, " and and a thick piece of
grey worsted knitting, which enveloped him
from the neck to the heels ; he locked
up his clothes, in order not to be tempted to go out,
and set to work at his novel, as if in a prison. He
was very melancholy. [No wonder !] From that
time he never left the writing-table, except to eat
and to sleep. His only amusement was an hour's chat
af.er dinner with some frietads, who would call on hire,
and to whom he sometimes read the pages he had
written during the day. He read aloud thus the
chapter headed Les Cloches' [one of the ihost mar-

vellous of all the chapters] to M. Pierre Leroux,
who [sensible critic] thought this kind of litera-
ture very useless ! After the first few chapters his
melancholy disappeared ; his sadness left him [who
can marvel at it !] : and his work took possession of
him ; he neither felt fatigue nor the win-
try cold which had come upon them. In
December he would sit at work with open windows.
He never doffed his bear-skin but' on one occasion.
On the morning of the 20th December, the Prince
de Craon came to offer to conduct him to the trial
of Charles X.'s Ministers. In order that this
holiday should not be a long one, he did
not even release his clothes from their prison,
and wore his costume of the National Guards."
So the story was written throughout—
so it was completed. Written by Victor
in an extraordinary raiment of grey worsted, cover
ing him (voluntary prisoner that he made himself
to the end that his appointed task might be all the
more securely accomplished) covering the poet of
romance like some thrifty old housewife's robe ed
chambre. And so literally did it come to pass, as
but just now indicated, that the great histori-
cal romance of .Notre Dame was literally the con-
tents of an inkbottle ! It is a book containing records
as strangely enthralling as the one here related by
this congenial biographer of Victor Hugo—the wit-
ness of the life she relates I—it is a work thus re-
plete in almost every page with a singular facina-
tion, that we commend to the countless admirers, in
this country, of this many-sided genius, whose potent
right hand, as that of
" Novelist, Dramatist, Poet has run
O'er each string of the lyre—and is Master of all I"