into the sacred ministry, the plenitude of whose grand powers he now enjoys, following him from his boyhood through his priestly, episcopal, cardinalitial, and papal careers; and to furnish as complete account as possible of the many notable things he has accomplished since that third day of March, in 1878, when he was elected by the College of Cardinals the successor of Pius the Ninth of glorious memory, and the two hundred and fifty-eighth successor of the blessed St. Peter, the first of the lengthy and unbroken line of Roman Pontiffs, who to-day occupies the Papal throne, and exercises the apostolate of the Fisherman throughout the whole world; while with and in submission to him, are some eleven hundred bishops, governing as many separate sees throughout Christendom.

The latest and lowest estimate puts at more than two hundred and seventeen millions those who render obedience in things spiritual to Leo XIII. Of all nations, and tongues, and forms of government, they form one compact, organic body under the Pope of Rome. Political persecution and worldly criticism. have, by God's mercy, done good. Never has history presented the Church better knit together in its members with its Head. And so the Papacy, possessed of everlasting youth, is a living, visible fact in the world.

Its action is no less manifest. From his high watch

tower our Holy Father, Leo XIII., observes the signs of the times. He, aided by wisdom, experience, and Divine help, has, through encyclical letters, instructed the world at large, and the children of the Church in particular, concerning the sacred fundamental laws of religious, civil, and domestic society. His Holiness has, in like manner, raised his voice against the enemies, secret and avowed, of social order. On his subjects the Holy Father has earnestly inculcated the union of all hearts in the cause of Holy Church; an increase of piety and devotion to our Lord Jesus Christ through the holy rosary; a spirit of unworldliness and of alms-giving by laboring under the banners of S. Francis of Assisi and of S. Vincent of Paul; an extension of the sacred and profane sciences among the clergy; a loyal obedience of people to pastors, and of people and pastors to the Holy See; and, finally, the Father of the Faithful has, "moved by the consciousness of the greatest, the most holy — that is, apostolic - obligation, issued the most memorable encyclic out of the fourteen, on The Christian Constitution of States." To secure the fullest exercise and extension of Holy Church, Pope Leo XIII. has labored to have closer relation with Catholic governments; to non-Catholic rulers he has extended the right hand of friendship; and even with Mahometan and pagan sovereigns has he entered into communication. These varied acts, done

at different times, have been borne by steam and electricity to the furthermost parts of the earth. They have been published and commented on in the press of the civilized world. And so the name of the Pope has become a household word in every land, and the teaching of the Papacy a familiar fact.

CHAPTER II.

THE POPE'S BIRTHPLACE.

'HE birthplace of the present Pope was Carpineto,

THE

a town in the diocese of Anagni in the Papal States; and the date of his entrance into the world in which he has achieved such eminent honors was the second day of March in the year 1810. His parentage was noble, his father being Count Louis Pecci, and his mother Anna Prosperi, the daughter of a noble family whose seat is at Cori, in the near neighborhood of Carpineto. His full name, as given him at his baptism, was Vincent Joachim; he was the youngest of four brothers, two of whom are laymen, the other is a cardinal priest, modest with all his learning, which was conspicuously displayed in the preparatory commissions of the Vatican Council, at which he was one of the theologians of the Holy Father, and also at the Seminary of Perugia, where for six years he taught the philosophy of St. Thomas. The Pope has two sisters, both of whom are happily married, and are the mothers of large families, distinguished for their piety. The Pecci family is one of the oldest and

most respectable of the Sienna nobility, and traces. its origin back through centuries. It was not until the fifteenth century that it removed from Sienna. to Carpineto, and became resident in the States of the Church. Its burial-places are in the Church of the Capuchins at Rome; and its coat-of-arms displays a green pine or poplar tree, a bar, two lilies, six roses, and a coronet on an azure field. An old portrait of the Pope's father, which is kept in the room of the family palace in which his Holiness was born, shows him arrayed in the uniform of a French colonel, thus indicating that he saw foreign service; while a picture of his mother betrays the source from which the Pope obtained that amiability and grace of expression which have been so often remarked upon by all who have looked upon his saintly countenance. The room in which the Pope was born is on the second floor of the Pecci palace; and, while it is furnished in a manner becoming the apartments of a noble family, it has nothing of extravagance about it, and very little of what Americans would consider indispensable to comfort. The floor, like all Italian ones, is of stone and uncarpeted; the bedstead is of iron, surrounded with modest drapery; and a plain silver crucifix, apart from the family portraits, is about the whole ornamentation of the place. The room itself leads into the family chapel, at the altar of which the Holy Father and his priestly brother have