The passage from New York to Gibraltar took twelve days. The
"Saxonia" is slow, but sure and steady. There was little
sea-sickness, and less cause for it, but small-pox broke out in the
steerage our first day at sea. The child--for a child it was that
showed the dread symptoms--was at once placed in the isolation
hospital. We all had to be vaccinated, and the "Saxonia" steamed
into the harbour of Funchal, Madeira, flying the yellow-jack. There
was, however, little fear of infection among our fellow-passengers in
the first cabin, as became apparent the night before we made port.
There was a dance on the deck, which we were all invited to join.
Conspicuous on the list of dances that lay before each passenger as
we sat down that evening to the dinner table was "the vaccination
waltz!" Next morning a pathetic little wooden box, roughly
carpentered, was landed at Madeira. It contained the remains of the
little child which had died in port--not of small-pox, which had
turned out after all to be chicken-pox--but of two hard-boiled eggs
administered by a fond mother during convalescence. So at least the
story ran on board ship, though I fancy it was just made up to free
us the more completely from apprehension.
Madeira is one of the loveliest islands of the sea. The waters
around it are of the deepest blue, and its sloping fields of the
richest verdure. Funchal, the capital city, is on the shores of a
winding bay. The houses spotlessly white, the roofs red-tiled, form
a pleasing contrast of colour with the green of the fields and the
tropical trees around about them. Madeira belongs to Portugal. The
inhabitants are almost all of them Catholics, and very devout. The
storm of persecution that so lately burst over the mother country has
spared this distant daughter in her sea-girt home.
Quitting the boat at Gibraltar, and passing by rail through Spain and
the south of France, I reached Rome before the middle of May. Rome
is greatly changed since I knew it first, and changed, I am free to
own, for the better. New streets have been opened, old ones
straightened and widened, and all the streets are fairly well kept.
The city has taken over the magnificent Villa Borghese, and turned it
into a park, to which access is given, out of the very heart of Rome,
from piazza, Barberini, along a broad highway, across the Pincian
Hill. The deep valley beyond is bridged by a lofty embankment. No
city is more favoured than Rome in its parks and fountains.
Rome is greatly changed, too, spiritually, and for the better. There
is more of devotion in the churches; more of respect, or at least of
outward respect, for the pilgrim in the streets. In Rome
ecclesiastical things are pretty much as they have always been.
There is a saying familiar to the theologian, _Communia
vilescunt_--common things are held uncommonly cheap. What so common
as the priest in Rome! None so poor as to do him reverence. Even a
bishop on occasion does not fare much better. Apropos of this I have
been told a story, which to quote the well-worn Italian saying, _Se
non é vero, é ben trovato_--if not true, is a clever take-off, and
may serve to point a moral.
Last winter there was a grand function in the Sixtine Chapel. The
Holy Father was there, and the place was packed with people. They
kept pressing forward in their eagerness to get near the Pope. At
last the papal guard turned their backs to the multitude, and held
them there. A belated Cardinal tried to force his way through, but
couldn't. Taking one of the guard by the shoulder, he told him who
he was and that he had to get by. "Oh, pardon me, your Eminence,"
cried the soldier, greatly taken aback, "I thought you were only a
Bishop!"
The public consistory of May the 28th, viewed simply as a pageant,
was well worth waiting for. Cardinals and bishops, in their scarlet
and purple robes, lined the front seats, and the elect Cardinals, in
gorgeous panoply, brought up the rear of a long procession. The
ambassadors to the Holy See and the heads of the old noble families
of Rome, were conspicuous in seats specially reserved for them. But
what struck one as without parallel in so august an assemblage was
this singular circumstance: a peasant from Riese sat in the throne of
Peter, and three other peasants from Riese, two sisters and a niece,
who bore about them all the marks of their peasant ancestry, occupied
the place of honour in a tribune hard by. It was the apotheosis of
democracy. The like had never been seen at the Papal Court, at least
since the swineherd Sixtus, the fifth of that name, refused to
receive, when dressed as a fine lady, the mother whom he afterwards
welcomed when she came back to him in her peasant costume.
It is not easy to gain admittance to a papal consistory, and thereby
hangs another tale. From immemorial time the noble Roman families
have a sort of prescriptive right to a large number of admission
tickets, which they use in part themselves, and in part, it is said,
offer for sale in the hotels of Rome. These are eagerly bought up by
tourists and travellers, who are largely Protestant. Hence it comes
to pass that while a bishop often cannot get a ticket for an
attendant priest, hundreds of Protestants and unbelievers hold
prominent places at the consistory. The story is of the time when
Pasquino (whence our English "pasquinade") entertained the Romans
with his clever satirical skits. They took the form of cartoons, and
were placed during the night at the foot of a statue to which all
Rome was wont to take its way to amuse itself of a morning. After
one of the public consistories, this is what greeted the eye of Rome.
Two young men are hurrying to the Vatican. Some curious passer-by
bids them the time of day, and would know why they hasten so. "We
are on our way," they say, "to the Vatican, to the consistory." "But
where is the use of your going; you can't get in." "Oh, that's all
right," rejoin the confident pair, "we turned Protestant yesterday!"
On leaving Rome I visited Assisi, fraught with memories of St.
Francis and St. Clare, Loreto, also, with its Holy House, and from
Ancona crossed to Tersatto, near Fiume, where the Angels first set
down the House of the Virgin when they came with it over the sea. I
recrossed the Adriatic to Venice in an Austrian boat. Four of us
slept in one small stateroom, packed like sardines. I could barely
squeeze into my berth, and passed the night in dread lest the big
burly German (known to be such by his gutturals) who occupied the
upper berth should fall through and quite flatten me out. My
sympathies have always been with the under dog, and henceforth will
be more than ever--for I was the under sardine!
We came to Venice in the early morning when the newly risen sun had
turned everything into gold. There she sat a queen upon the waters.
Small wonder that one Joseph Sarto should have pined, and pines
still, in his prison-palace of the Vatican, for this old home of his
on the sea, which it is his inclement destiny never more to set eyes
on. Venice is a city without streets. Instead there are canals and
corridors--canals where glide the swan-like gondolas, and corridors
between the houses, so narrow that people living on opposite sides
may shake hands across.
While I sat writing the last paragraph the life of Pope Pius the
Tenth was slowly ebbing away. He was passing to the better world,
where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. He
had fought the good fight, he had kept the faith. He had laboured
while yet it was day, knowing that the night cometh when no one can
labour more. His was a truly simple and apostolic life. He had a
single eye to the glory of God and the good of his fellow-man. If
ever there was one who could say that he sought not the office, but
that the office sought him, he was the Pope whose loss we mourn. He
has done an enduring work for God and the Church, and has left an
inspiring example of a life untainted with worldliness and fragrant
with faith and good works. _Eternal rest grant to him, O Lord, and
let light perpetual shine upon him!_
I spent a night in Domodossola just beyond the beautiful Lago
Maggiore, in the Italian Alps. Here the Rosminian Fathers have a
college for boys, largely attended. A unique feature of the museum
is a room filled with labelled specimens of the different kinds of
stone taken from the great Simplon tunnel--an almost endless variety.
Beyond the Simplon, on the Swiss side, the train, which is driven by
electricity, passes along the side of a precipitous mountain. An
Alpine river winds its way two thousand feet below. From the window
of the train I caught a glimpse of a flying aeroplane, about midway
down. Far beyond on the other side the eye rested on great fields of
untrodden snow. The valleys of Switzerland are for the most part so
narrow that it is easy to get a good view of the wonderful mountain
scenery.
At Berne I had just time to pay a visit to my old acquaintances--I
dare not say friends--the bears. There are as many as seven of them
now in the underground enclosure across the Aar river, the cubbies
that I saw on my first visit having grown into bears. I bought one
or two specimens of the beast in wood, and saw many more that would
have made interesting additions to my former repertoire--bears
painting, bears playing cards, bears playing the piano, bears working
in wood, bears smoking long German pipes, bears nursing sick bears,
and bears rejoicing in the birth of cubbies!
From Berne I passed to Strassburg, from Strassburg along the banks of
the Rhine to Cologne, and from Cologne to Aix-la-Chapelle, known to
me from schooldays as a place where peace treaties were signed.
Peace then brooded on the land, a land of plenty, smiling with
promise of a rich harvest. But on every hand were soldiers, and the
whole nation appeared to be cast in a military mould. Whatever the
outcome of the terrible war into which Europe is plunged to-day, the
future historian will record and lay due stress on this significant
fact, that Germany led the world in war-like preparation, and that
other nations did but strive to keep pace with her.
The return voyage, on the Empress of Britain, was almost without
incident. One day of storm we had, in mid-ocean, when our big ship
was tossed about and great seas broke over her. A day or two later,
on the banks of Newfoundland, an iceberg was sighted almost directly
ahead. It looked ghostlike as it loomed up out of the haze, and the
air for miles around was chill as winter. I left the ship at
Rimouski, about sunrise of a July morning, close to the spot where
her sister ship went down a few weeks before with almost every soul
on board. At Rimouski I took an eastbound train to my old home,
feeling, as I never felt before, the force of Sir Walter's undying
lines:
Breathes there a man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand.
[Transcriber's note: The material in French without accents is as
printed, as are any odd and unusual spellings.]