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Fraser's Magazine.

JULY, 1865.

THE COURT OF ROME-ITS PARTIES

AND ITS MEN.

Old Series Complete in 63 vols.

ever lies without the pale of this circle is matter of no immediate bearing, for either it has dropped away into the rapids of the past, or it is still lying in the cloudy horizon of a future that perplexes with enigmatic possibilities. But between these two capital facts, the Convention and the Encyclical, that stand forward like flanking supporters, there is to be found concentrated for the moment all that survives of the figure and organization of the Court of Rome as a living and acting political body. If we can succeed in grasping the features of the group thus presented us, in rightly comprehending the force of the inward instincts that have resulted in the attitude which meets the eye, then we may reckon on being able to estimate the relative value of the elements which are circulating in the system, and from which, in critical moments, action must unavoidably derive its character.

Ir is not our purpose to enter into an exposition of the facts which have contributed by a long course of action practically to modify the present constitution of the Court of Rome from what it was before the French Revolution, so as to substitute for bodies of more or less independent authority, capable of exercising a wholesome exchange of controlling influence on the State, the one allengrossing and all-centralizing figure of an autocratic Pope. We take the Court of Rome as we find it, without caring to show how it has grown into its present shape, and we are content to look at the features of the political group which has the Convention of September and the Encyclical of Christmas for a frame. In its political aspect the Court of Rome of the present season lies wholly compressed between these two great facts, that clasp We start from the premiss that the it like a ring whose setting gives its Encyclical and Syllabus of the 8th Decharacter to the object enclosed. What-cember were essentially a move made by NEW SERIES-VOL. II., No. 1.

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Rome under the idea of thereby meeting personages-apparently so indissolubly the provocation offered in the Conven- knit together-are really at some distion. In affirming this we advisedly re- tance asunder, and that between them ject the explanations freely circulated in there stand well forward figures which at Rome, with the view of ascribing to the first had been quite hidden from sightdocument an origin wholly foreign to the figures that materially modify the aspect grave measure on the heels of which it of the group, and detract considerably followed so closely. The grounds on from the commanding importance which which we rest our incredulity as to the had seemed to belong to the conspicuous validity of these explanatory asservations figure of the splendid Cardinal. These will appear in the course of this paper. two men-Pius IX. and Cardinal AnThe reader will then make up his own tonelli-whom the world looks upon as mind as to their value. All we care to the twin divinities dividing in love the do here is clearly to define our starting Roman Olympus, stand really to each point, in the belief that the Encyclical other in relations that are close without owes its publication entirely to the pre- being any longer truly cordial, and owe vious publication of the Convention be- their continuance before the world in an tween France and Italy for the evacua- attitude of unimpaired intimacy, to a tion of Rome by the French troops. Had singular combination of qualities in their that Convention not been concluded, we respective characters-in the Pope to an hold that no Encyclical of that precise indwelling weakness that has always shape would have seen the light at that made him unequal to the effort of openly particular moment; consequently that it breaking with an influence he has long is the counter-move made to the great undergone, although often chafed atpolitical measure aforesaid by the Court and in the cardinal to an imperturbable of Rome. But this Court of Rome that evenness of temper, which renders him has thus spoken, what is it? How is it con- happily indifferent to slights from his exstituted? When we refer to it as a political citable sovereign that would have stung entity, of whom is this composed? Who a more punctilious Secretary of State into are the individuals that make it up in the angrily stripping himself of the baubles body; and when we talk of a proclamation of high office. by its organs, what are the elements that have found a mouthpiece? In short, that Court of Rome, the sound of whose mysterious name rings so widely through the world, where does it actually dwell and live and work in the flesh and blood? If we turn for information towards the imaginary group we have conceived to be flanked by the Convention and the Encyclical, then what strikes the eye so sharply, as to make all else sink into the dimness of a mere back-ground, are the apparently interclasped figures of a Pope and a mighty Cardinal Secretary of State; the one beaming with the expanded ecstasy of mystic autocracy, and the other shrewdly sparkling with the solid massiveness of real and absolute ascendancy, but the two linked together, it would seem, in an indissoluble tie of mutual confidence and intimate concord of feelings. Distinct as this combination would look, closer approach will show that in great part it is only the effect of deceptive foreshortening. On looking into the group we shall perceive that these two

The natures of these two men are indeed strangely unlike for partners in so protracted an alliance. In fact this alliance rests now on the defects, not on the qualities of each. Since some time the union lasts only because both parties are wanting in certain senses- -the Pope in that of moral courage to break to his face with a man, the spell of whose unruffled equanimity he has felt for years-the Cardinal in that of moral dignity to throw off the emoluments and emblems of high office after its substance has in great degree been taken from him. Once the case was otherwise, and originally the alliance, now kept up but by mutual inabilities,, was cemented by the attraction which the Cardinal's quality of imperturbable self-possession was calculated under certain circumstances to exercise on a mind so fluctuating and so liable to flighty transports as the Pope's. But the attraction thus exercised depended necessarily for its hold on the continuation of those favorable circumstances which had caused it to be first felt. These have, however,

changed, and the consequence is that the attraction has also lost much of its zest. The cause of the modification is to be found in this, that the natures of the two men are not of commensurate range, and that there are sides in Pius IX.'s character which, when elicited, fail utterly to meet in Cardinal Antonelli's nature with an appropriate response. Those sides were in abeyance when Pius IX. was drawn towards the Cardinal; but of late they have been developed by events, and it is precisely as this has happened and as they have not met with congeniality in Cardinal Antonelli, that the Pope has felt his original cordiality of feeling towards him somewhat chilled. Pius IX. has a highly sensitive surface organization, which is necessarily excitable and liable to hasty transport; while the essentially weak and womanish cast of his monkish nature is always prone to fits of mystic enthusiasm, and always is disposed to look at things excitedly through the prism of a visionary and childish fancy which is for ever ready to take fire. But as these raptures-so quick to flare up-spring from a mere surface sensibility, they are as shallow in substance as they are passing in their manifestations. Pius IX will burst into vehement transports, and an hour after you will find him without a trace of having been affected. Convulsion with him does not give a really disturbing emotion, for his system at heart is lymphatic and all his impulsiveness is mere sheet-lightning of the surface. Hence the exhibitions of eccentric instability, especially in his talk, which so often perplex those who have to do with Pius IX.; for where feelings have no roots deeper than in the skin, they are always liable to be made the momentary sport of a gusty imagination, itself at the mercy of chance blasts. The groundwork, however, of the Pope's nature is monkish mysticism. Once it made him trustfully pursue a dream of Liberalism, the fantastic creation of his heated brain-now it makes him contemplate, through the distorting medium of ecstatic horror, the realities of life. But there is no quality more foreign to Cardinal Antonelli's nature than that of a mystic disposition. All that lies in the region of impalpability-all that partakes of a high-flown essence-ideas of super

human influences, notions of desperate heroism and self-immolation-in short, all that can please the kindled imagination of a mystic is without attraction for a mind so steadily shrewd and alive to the value of positive possession as the Cardinal's. Cardinal Antonelli is ambitious, but particularly of the emoluments and the rank of greatness. He entered the Church to rise, and that object, pursued with indefatigable assiduity, he has accomplished. He is certainly resolved not to allow any offence against punctilio to sting him into resigning his hold on the especial prize he has clutched. A character of this stamp is not troubled with inward enthusiasm. All its native impulses and instincts are towards material interests. Nor are the talents of the Cardinal of an elevated order. Nature has indeed gifted him with a strong dose of shrewdness; but instead of being a vigorous shrewdness, it is merely astute and foxlike. Intuition he may be said to have none; but he has a remarkable power of self-command and unruffled evenness of bearing. He seems never put out; and his pleasant affability has been a powerful assistant to him in captivating the Pope, whose vanity resents any one presuming to talk to him in a tone of authority. This native charm of cheerfulness and urbanity is the quality to which the Cardinal owes his most real triumphs, for his statesmanship amounts practically to next to nothing. He has never shown any initiative or conception except for such small devices as a merely cunning mind may be fertile in. he can strike out one of these tricks he is visibly delighted with his genius; but the genuine bent of his ministry has been to sit still and do nothing beyond enjoy the pleasures of the hour under the protection of foreign bayonets-tiding calmly along the stream of Time without making any provisions for the future. To bring into spontaneous union two men so different in their inward natures as Pius IX. and Cardinal Antonelli, required exceptional circumstances. These were presented by the events of 1849 and the violent revulsion which then was wrought in the Pope's temper. Suddenly Pius IX. felt dismayed at his own work; and, smiting his breast, seated himself on a stool of penance like a

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