solute authority.' It is probably
not necessary to say anything about the first statement, which few, I
fancy, will be inclined to deny. Pure socialism means community of
property, community of social responsibility, and community of
principles. As regards the democratic rules by which the Church governs
itself, there cannot be two ways of looking at them. Peasant and prince
have an equal chance of wearing the triple crown; but in history it will
be found that it has been more often worn by peasants than by princes,
and most often by men issuing from the middle classes. Broadly, the
requirements have always been those answered by personal merit rather
than by any other consideration. The exceptions have perhaps been many,
and the abuses not a few, but the general principle cannot be denied,
and the present Pope came to the supreme ecclesiastical dignity by much
the same steps as the majority of his predecessors. Since his elevation
to the pontificate the Pecci family have established, beyond a doubt,
their connection with the noble race of that name, long prominent in
Siena, and having an ancient and historical right to bear arms and the
title of count--a dignity of uncertain value in Italy, south of the
Tuscan border, but well worth having when it has originated in the
northern part of the country.

Joachim Vincent Pecci, since 1878 Pope, under the name of Leo the
Thirteenth, was born at Carpineto, in the Volscian hills, in 1810. His
father had served in the Napoleonic wars, but had already retired to his
native village, where he was at that time a landed proprietor of
considerable importance and the father of several children. Carpineto
lies on the mountain side, in the neighbourhood of Segni, in a rocky
district, and in the midst of a country well known to Italians as the
Ciociaria. This word is derived from 'cioce,' the sandals worn by the
peasants in that part of the country, in the place of shoes, and bound
by leathern thongs to the foot and leg over linen strips which serve for
stockings. The sandal indeed is common enough, or was common not long
ago, in the Sabine and Samnian hills and in some parts of the Abruzzi,
but it is especially the property of the Volscians, all the way from
Montefortino, the worst den of thieves in Italy, down to the Neapolitan
frontier. Joachim Pecci was born with a plentiful supply of that rough,
bony, untiring mountaineer's energy which has made the Volscians what
they have been for