one hand, you have drawn from obscurity the
beginnings of Christian art, thereby affording it new and precious data;
on the other, you have adorned Rome and the Vatican with works which
furnish a new and brilliant page to the grand history of art embodied in
the Vatican itself. While elsewhere reigned trouble and agitation, here
artists were able, beneath the blessed sway of your Holiness, to enjoy a
kindly welcome, an unrestrained liberty, and the peaceful contemplation of
those venerable structures and sites preserved so happily by the
Pontifical government from the sad alterations blindly wrought in other
cities by the troublous life of modern communities. May the Almighty One
hear our prayer, and persuade both sovereigns and nations that their honor
and glory will be measured, in coming ages, on the degree of protection
they shall have afforded to the temporal power of the Papacy, which has
ever been the unwearied promoter of the development of all the noblest
faculties in man, and which alone can continue to be the custodian of the
works of art originated by itself, and by it so faithfully treasured for
the benefit of all peoples!" This eloquent address will ever remain
carefully guarded by history, a noble monument of gratitude, and not only
this, but also as a testimony, all the more valuable as it is the
spontaneous utterance of men of the most cultivated intellect, in favor of
that sovereignty the destruction of which was sought, and has been
accomplished, by a party in whose ranks could be counted only rude
soldiers, bands of filibusters and politicians, if such they could be
called, whose counsels were inspired, not by the wisdom which
distinguishes statesmen, but by blind passion, and the most unworthy of
all passions, the passion of hatred--hatred of everything connected with
the Christian faith.

The great centennial celebration proceeded. Who would have dared to say,
whilst Nero reigned at Rome, and Christians were as pariahs, tolerated
only in order to afford the spectacle of their tortures to a heathen
multitude, that eighteen hundred years from Nero's time, Christianity
would flourish and celebrate in that city, which was the scene of its
greatest trials, as well as all over the world, its victory and the
glorious martyrdom of its apostolic founders! The month of June, 1867,
will ever be memorable in the annals of the church. Never had so many
bishops assembled in the holy city. Nor were there ever the