The Sun.
London, England, 1867-07-09 00:00:00

tertained by Rossi in the last years of his life. One

day, on the eve of 1848, talking with an eminent
priest of Rome, he was induced to recount to his
friend all the struggles and misgivings of modern
thought which he had experienced. At the end of
this kind of confession, he added :—" I can say
that I have seen all things except a General
Council ; and Ido not despair of seeing one yet."
lle would, indeed, have seen one had it not been
for the dagger of the Revolution. But the dagger
of the Revolution is powerless against the designs
of God. The eminent man who listened to Rossi
was very much struck at what he said. It was
twenty years ago, and it was not then generally
thought that the world would so soon be ripe for
a council. Rossi was no ordinary man. He had
known something of the Church, and he had for-
gotten it, but he learnt to know it again, and to
know none better. One of the offices often Divinely

imposed on the devil is to teach the catechism ;
and he does his work well. Instructed by the
reviving light of faith, Rossi perceived that the
Church alone was capable of pronouncing the fat
lux which should extricate the world from the
chaos into which it had fallen.

The moment is come. Amidst all its marvels,
human skill has not been able to produce a light-
house capable of guiding the mind of man. In
the face of this want Pius IX. speaks, and the
mighty word, the fiat lux, passes his lips, and we
may almost see the light rising above the dark
horizon. To my mind, many men who may have
desired to have lived at another epoch, ought now
to rejoice at living in this ; for it will be one of the
famous turning points of history ; it will witness,
at the very least, the laying of the first stone of
the reconstruction of society. There is here, ',will
not say a hope, but a kind of unanimous convic
tion, that Pius IX. will open, preside over, and
sanction the council whose name, now about to be
inscribed, will last as long as the world lasts,
beside, or perhaps above, the great names of Nice
and of Trent. Once again, in this memorable Pon-
tificate, the astonished world will see events
arrested, or their tumult calmed, so that the Vicar
of Jesus Christ is enabled to do that which
he wishes to do to the glory of God and for the
welfare of the immortal Church of Christ.
Europe has now some reason to count on about
two years of peace, because it is necessary that
the council should be held whenever Pius IX.
shall day. We invite Free-thinkers who
still venture
th
think to consider this : From the
windows of the Vatican Pius IX. can see the
tents of the Piedmontese—the tents of barbarism
—pitched upon his usurped territories. He is,
without arms and without frontiers, protected
against the powerful enemy who wishes to take
from him Rome itself ; he hears the cries -which
welcome the impending fall of the edifice of
Christianity ;
he may ask himself, as every one else
does, by what miracle it is that he has not yet
succumbed ; and it is at such a moment that the
bowels o f the earth are moved at the voice of the
Pontiff to beget anew the civilization of the Cross.
It was said that St. Peter's should be demolished ;
and we find the vast Basilica is become too small
for the crowd of the faithful. Its dimensions
ought rather to be enlarged to admit the world
to assemble around this immutable and immortal
,omb.

I am so filled with admiration at the fine things
which the newspapers are relating about me, as
not to be able to resist a feeling of vain-glory.
According to the Memorial Diplomatique, the Im-
perial Government condescends to be uneasy at
the systematic opposition with which I persecute
it, and makes complaints on this head to the Ponti•

fical Government, which, no doubt, will let me
know that I am
.doing wrong. In such an anxious
moment as this, in the midst of the Universal
Exhibition and of the centenary of St. Peter, I am
troubling, it appears, the Pope and the Emperor,
who are awaiting the arrival of the Grand lurk
and the Convocation of the Council. What a
wonderful position for an insignificant journalist of
8,000 subscribers to be in ? My fellow-labourer in
the press, M. Auguste Vitu and his abbis, perhaps,
less innocently prepare for me another crown.
They cannot imagine that I have left my grand
office in Paris decked with names of 8,000 sub-
scribers,Th within an easy drive of the Exhibition, in
the sole view of kissing the foot of the statue of St.
Peter,fore andthe
Crossofreciot
of the C
a il/oilre a andi 1
wanted, it seems, to prevent the Pope from coming
to the Universal Exhibition, and to dissuade him
from convoking the Council. This is by far too
much ; these gentlemen are really too good to me.
I should have thought that they would not have
imputed plant of such importance but to men such
as M. Havin and M. Girardin, entitled to have
implicit confidence in themselves.
It costs me not a little to dissipate illusions which
our profession, somewhat in ill-repute, might stand
in need of, at a time wken M. vitu himself is
compelled, in order to get himself read, to make
use of gossip and aampfleurism. I should be only
too happy to raise the credit of these poor jour-
nalists, by exhibiting to all the world a journalist
so well up in the affairs of the day. By such means,
people will learn to appreciate better these ques-
tionable personages. this would explain, in a
general way, why photographers invest them with
such proud airs, and exhibit them always with as
many orders on their breast as Abd-el-Kaxler or
Alexander Dumas. Unfortunately, the truth must
be told, and the truth is, that all these tales are
wrongly laid on my shoulder.
lam at Rome, it is true. I am all right here—
nothing more certain ; I have not come here for
nothing--so much I also confess. But what ought
also to be added is, that nobody here is a more in-
significant personage than myself, not only in my
own eyes, but in the eyes of others. I live in a
small room at the far end of a back staircase, which
is not trodden by the feet of earthly potentates. I
hold no council there as to what direction ought to
be given to the affairs of the-world. I go out to
visit influential friends, and to learn their opinions :
but to tell them what I think myself I wait till they
condescend to ask my opinion. I have not yet seen
the Holy Father, and I do not know whether I shall
have that pleasure, on account of the multitude of
persons more important than I who have solicited
an audience before I did, and who have more to
say than I have ; and as the churches, moreover, are
not shut to me, and as the bronze foot in St. Peter's
is always within reach of my lips, and as, also, I am
atliberty to go down on my knees in the street be-
fore the Blessed Sacrament, and before the Pope
whenever they pass, so is the purpose of my journey
fully accomplished. Among the numerous reasons
on account of which I .am a Catholic, and all of
which completely satisfy my reason, there is one
which is especially dear to me, and that is, that
the Catholic faith absolutely destroys in me any
desire of governing my Church, and, by way of
parenthesis, let me observe I cannot comprehend
why so enlightened an intelligence as M. Guizot's
does not submit to such a reason. lam now making
my eighth pilgrimage to Rome, and please God it
shall not be my last.
I should not have visited Rome so many times
in spite of its incomparable beauty, nor should I
feel such a joy as that which irresistibly attracts
me hither had I to bring here advice and warnings.
It is proposed to Catholics to maintain and to de-
fend, even to the shedding of their very blood, the
belief in the infallibility of Peter. For my part,
I have long ago taken this vow, and 1 look upon it
as one of the baptismal vows. It cannot be renewed
explicitly, but I see no way of being a Catholic
without fulfilling it. But I am only at Rome to
hear ; to hear is to believe, to believe is to obey.
I am told journalism is essentially a calling which
consists in
giving advice. I readily grant it, and
in truth I do not abstain from giving advice. I
profess even to give it in case others should not
give it. I should be the more inclined to be proud
of it since I know what it costs ; but it is not in
Rome that I find it necessary to give advice.
Though estimating my profession, and the manner
in which I wish to practise it so high as to prefer it
to every other, and to sacrifice much to it, yet I
flatter myself that I know its limits, and how to
observe them. I write a Catholic newspaper, not
as having a mission, but because I have permission.