What makes these documents of the Holy Father more valuable is the fact that Leo XIII. is a hard worker, and labors incessantly. His admirable letters are all written by himself, and he devotes many hours of the night to solitary study. It is his custom to dismiss his chamberlains a little after ten P.M., and to sit down to his writing-table. In the morning he rises early, dresses himself, and summons his chaplain to assist at mass. One morning at seven o'clock the chamberlain-in-waiting, perceiving the usual hour to be past for the ringing of the Pope's bell, knocked lightly at the chamber-door, and, getting no answer, entered the room of the Pontiff, whom he found sitting at his table, with his head supported by his arm, and sound asleep. The candles were still burning. His Holiness when writing had been overcome with sleep, and had not been in bed. CHAPTER XVII. THE INSULT TO POPE PIUS' REMAINS. WHE HEN the saintly Pope Pius IX. died, he left in his will a special request that his body should be interred in the Church of San Lorenzo, outside the walls. On the night of the 12th of July, in accordance with that wish, his hallowed remains were taken from their temporary resting-place in St. Peter's, and removed in solemn procession to the place he had designated. The transfer was not, however, destined to be made in the decorous manner that befitted such a pious and touching ceremony. The infidels of Rome were on the watch for the event; and how they comported themselves on the occasion, is best told in the words of Cardinal Manning of Westminster, who says, "The other night when the bells tolled midnight, there was a procession in the Holy City,- in the city that was once the city of martyrs and the saints and the Vicar of Jesus Christ, but which is now usurped by an anti-Christian faction, who call to mind what the prophet said of 'a nest of unclean birds.' In the midnight-in the silence of the midnight— there went forth from the great basilica of St. Peter's the noblest funeral that the eye of man had ever The sacred body of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, Pius IX., of holy and blessed memory, was borne out by his loving sons to be laid in the tomb which he had chosen for himself in the basilica of San Lorenzo, lying under the altar in the midst of martyrs. And when that procession went forth into the streets, there broke forth the illumination of a thousand torches, a testimony of the love and faith of those who accompanied him to lay him in the tomb of his choice. Nothing sweeter, nothing more solemn, nothing more noble, nothing more innocent, than that funeral procession, can the heart of man conceive; and yet against it there was an outburst of hellish hate, of infernal insult, - the true outcome from the mouth of that old serpent who hates the incarnate God, and the Vicar that reigns in his place. And along the whole pathway of that funeral procession, not only insults of a kind so gross that even among savage men they could not be found were used against it, but language of such vileness that irrational minds would be incapable of using it, and reasonable man alone, when he is disfigured from the likeness of God into the image of Satan, can conceive and utter it. Yet Pius IX., though dead, yet speaketh. He speaks of the undying and implacable hostility between the serpent and his seed, and the incarnate Son of God and all who serve him. And he speaks to us, in that last, lonely, and sweet procession, going, like our Divine Lord to the cross, in the midst of the insults of men, of the faith, the fidelity, the courage, and the perseverance which overcome the scorn of the world. There never was an event in our times which, I believe, has manifested and will manifest three things more strikingly than that procession: First, the love and faith of the true Roman people, as distinguished from those who have come, like an unclean flood, into the streets of the city; next, the shame and humiliation of the antiChristian faction, which made war for more than thirty years upon the living Pontiff, and which has not spared even execration and insult to his body as it was being borne to the tomb; and, lastly, the |