Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I. Auguror: Apparent flammantia lumina coelo, Sideruoque rubens fulget ab axe dies. —Lko XIII., Poems. J | 'LL through the long Pontificate of Pius IX., espe- , 1, cially when troubles thickened around him, people could not help saying that the words Crux dc Cruce— "Cross upon Cross"—of the celebrated prophecy attributed to St. Malachy, were verified in his bitter and prolonged trials. While writing, in 1878, the Life of that Pope, the Author could not help asking himself, Who was to be his successor? For the prophecy depicts the Pontiff taking up the cross laid down by Pius as " Light in the Heavens "— Lumen in Ca'lo. Truly the unprecedentedly long reign of the late Pope had closed with the darkest days ever known to the Papacy since the times of the early persecutions. The States of the Church had been absorbed by the new kingdom of Italy. In the palace of the Quirinal was throned a power more hostile to everything Catholic than Henry VIII. or Elizabeth, and supported by a Parliament whose policy and principles are infinitely more irreconcilable with Catholicism than the policy and principles of Cromwell and his Parliament. The two most powerful empires in Europe, those of Germany and Russia, had broken off all diplomatic intercourse with him who was, in a very true sense, " the Prisoner of the Vatican." Republican France, in the hands of Voltairean sceptics and radical revolutionists, was with difficulty withheld from breaking openly with the Pope. Spain was friendly, but powerless to help him. Austria, like Belgium and Portugal, was secretly ruled by these occult but powerful organizations, which gave the law to the President of the French Republic, as well as to the successor of Victor Emmanuel. Great Britain, which had efficiently aided in despoiling...