impiety by the revolution, would receive prompt and just redress, whether by the revocation of the laws which had reduced it to such a state of oppression and servitude, or by the promulgation of others adapted to the suppression of the disastrous effects of an impious administration.

Thwarted hitherto in our hopes by reason, perhaps, of the difficulties which attend the reorganization of a society long overturned, we cannot now refrain from addressing your Majesty and appealing to the uprightness of your intentions; the Catholic spirit of which you have given so many striking proofs on former occasions, and the promises made to us by your Majesty of protecting the church; and we confidently hope that this appeal, penetrating your noble heart, will produce the fruits we have a right to expect.

Your Majesty will undoubtedly perceive that if the church continues to be controlled in the exercise of her sacred rights, if the laws which forbid her to acquire and possess property are not repealed, if churches and convents are still destroyed, if the price of the church property is accepted at the hands of its unlawful purchasers, if the sacred buildings are appropriated to other uses, if the religious orders are not allowed to reassume their distinctive garments and to live in community, if the nuns are obliged to beg for their food and forced to occupy miserable and insufficient edifices, if the newspapers are permitted to insult the pastors with impunity, and to assail the doctrines of the Catholic church-if this state of things is to continue, then the same evils will certainly continue to follow, and perhaps the scandal to the faithful and the wrongs to religion will become.greater than ever before.

Ah, sire, in the name of that faith and piety which are the ornaments of your august family; in the name of the church, whose supreme chief and pastor God has constituted us in spite of our unworthiness; in the name of Almighty God who has chosen you to rule over so Catholic a nation with the sole purpose of healing her ills and of restoring the honor of His holy religion, we earnestly conjure you to put your hands to the work, and laying aside every human consideration, and guided solely by an enlightened wisdom and your Christian feelings, dry up the tears of so interesting a portion of the Catholic family, and by such worthy conduct merit the blessings of Jesus Christ, the prince of pastors.

With this purpose, and in compliance with your own wishes, we send you our representative. He will inform you by word of mouth of the sorrow which has been caused to us by the sad news which thus far has reached us, and he will better acquaint you with our intentions and aims in accrediting him near your majesty.

We have instructed him to ask at once from your Majesty, and in our name, the revocation of the unjust laws which for so long a time have oppressed the church, and to prepare, with the aid of the bishops, and when it may be necessary, with the concurrence of our apostolic authority, the complete and definitive reorganization of ecclesiastical affairs.

Your Majesty is well aware that, in order effectively to repair the evils occasioned by the revolution, and to bring back as soon as possible happy days for the church, the Catholic religion must, above all things, continue to be the glory and the mainstay of the Mexican nation, to the exclusion of every other dissenting worship; that the bishops must be perfectly free in the exercise of their pastoral ministry; that the religious orders should be re-established or reorganized conformably with the instructions and the powers which we have given; that the patrimony of the church and the rights which attach to it may be maintained and protected; that no person may obtain the faculty of teaching and publishing false and subversive tenets; that instruction, whether public or private, should be directed and watched over by the ecclesiastical authority; and that, in short, the chains may be broken which up to the present time have held the church in a state of dependence and subject to the arbitrary rule of the civil government. If the religious edifice should be re-established on such bases and we will not doubt that such will be the case your Majesty will satisfy one of the greatest requirements and one of the most lively aspirations of a people so religious as that of Mexico; your Majesty will calm our anxieties and those of the illustrious episcopacy of that country; you will open the way to the education of a learned and zealous clergy, as well as to the moral reform of your subjects; and, besides, you will give a striking example to the other governments in the republics of America in which similar very lamentable vicissitudes have tried the church; and, lastly, you will labor effectually to consolidate your own throne, to the glory and prosperity of your imperial family.

For these reasons we recommend to your Majesty the apostolic

nuncio who will have the honor to present to you this our confidential letter. May your Majesty be pleased to honor him with your confidence and good will, in order that he may more easily comply with the mission that has been confided to him. Your Majesty will also be pleased to grant the same confidence to the worthy prelates of Mexico, in order that, animated as they are by the Holy Spirit, and desirous of the salvation of souls, they may be enabled to undertake with courage and joyfully the difficult work of restoration in all that they are concerned, and thus concur towards the re-establishment of social order.

Meanwhile we shall not cease daily to direct our humble prayers to the Father of light and the God of all consolation to the end that, all obstacles being overcome, the councils of the enemies of religious and social order turned to nought, political passions calmed, her full liberty restored to the spouse of Jesus Christ, the Mexican nation may be enabled to hail in the person of your Majesty its father, its regenerator, and its greatest and most imperishable glory.

Confidently hoping to see fully consummated these the most ardent desires of our heart, we send to your Majesty and to your august spouse our apostolic benediction.

Given at Rome, in our Apostolic Palace of the Vatican, the 18th of October, 1864.

PIUS IX

102. THE CHARACTER OF MAXIMILIAN

[1868. Felix Salm-Salm, My Diary in Mexico in 1867, Including the Last Days of the Emperor Maximilian; with Leaves from the Diary of the Princess Salm-Salm... (1868), I, 314–318. Published by Richard Bentley, London.]

Prince Felix Salm-Salm, general, aide-de-camp, and chief of the household of the Emperor Maximilian, gave the following character sketch of the ill-fated monarch:

The Emperor was about six feet high, and of a slender figure. His movements, his gait, and especially his greeting, were graceful and light. He had fair hair, not very thick, which he wore carefully parted in the middle. His beard was also fair and very long, and he nursed it with great care. He wore it parted in the middle, and his hand was very frequently occupied with its arrangement. The Emperor's complexion

was pure and clear, and his eyes blue. His mouth had the unmistakeable stamp of the Austrian imperial house, the historical under lip, but not so much pronounced as to be disfiguring.

The Emperor was generally in citizen dress; but in Querétaro, where he stood at the head of his troops, he wore the uniform of a general of division.

When he promenaded, he had his hands behind his back, like a captain of a ship pacing the deck. Another naval habit was, of always carrying in his hand his perspective glass.

The expression of his face was almost always very kind and friendly : one could not look on him without loving him. His friendliness never showed itself in a familiar manner; even with his most intimate friends he always preserved his dignity. Notwithstanding this, he abandoned himself without restraint to his good humour, when in congenial company, and could be very witty and even sarcastic.

He was a very good listener, and fond of hearing the former adventures of the persons around him, whose faults he judged mildly, as he never supposed bad motives. Though he had seen and observed much during his travels, and was a man of very good sense, his heart was too noble and too pure for a profitable knowledge of the world. He had so little conception of wickedness and falsehood in others, that he never would believe in their existence in any man. He was very devoted and true to his friends, and thought more of them than of himself. He forgave easily, and that not only with his lips, but with his heart. Of all men I ever met with in life, the Emperor Maximilian was the noblest, best, and most amiable. Even his very faults were almost virtues; for instance, his kindness, which frequently bordered upon weakness. He could not bear to mortify a man, or harm him in any way, especially if he had done anything against him. He, for instance, did not think much of Baron Lago, the Austrian chargé d'affaires, and blamed the lukewarm and selfish faint-heartedness of that gentleman; still, he wrote to him before his death a few kind lines, that he might show them on his return to Vienna.

He was a great lover and connoisseur of the fine arts, and his feeling for fine forms went so far that it was painful for him to look on anything inharmonious or unsymmetrical. I suppose that was the reason why he was easily captivated by good-looking people, with pleasing, polished manners, as he always supposed that a fine human form must

be animated by a fine soul. This feeling for harmony and order with the Emperor extended even to trifling things, which made him appear sometimes almost pedantic.

He liked to finish every business at once, and answered all questions with great patience, but it was disagreeable to him if he was reminded of the thing afterwards. Therefore he insisted that all his orders, even the most trifling, should be noted down at the very moment he gave them.

Those who would judge of the rich soul of the Emperor, should read his travels, which have been published in England and in different languages. They were, as I understand, published at the desire of his august mother, the Archduchess Sophia, who could not erect to her glorious son any better monument. Though written by the archduke when he was still very young, the whole man is revealed in its pages, and everyone who reads them will concur with me in thinking, what a pity this gifted prince was torn from the world where he might have done such extensive good!

To labour for the advancement of humanity and the progress of the world, was the highest ambition of the Emperor Maximilian. His ideas differed, however, so entirely from the old traditions of the Austrian court, that it was impossible for him to find suitable employment in his own country, which he ardently loved. The experienced tempter in Paris offered him a wide field for his aspirations, and the ambition of the descendant of Charles V. was by no means indifferent to the splendour of an imperial crown. The Emperor of the French had an easy game to play with an open chivalrous character like that of the young archduke. The favourite inclinations and desires of the young lofty-minded prince were skillfully worked upon, and Napoleon III. had not much trouble in captivating him by his proposition, which ought to have been examined with the more care, as it was made by a member of the Napoleonic family to one of the family of Austria. But in the noble unprejudiced soul of the archduke, traditional antipathies gave way to his objective admiration for the great statesman which he expressed on several occasions, and whom he had greatly overrated. Any scruples which he might have entertained were overbalanced by the prospect of a glorious and great sphere of usefulness. He who would benefit humanity must frequently dismiss antagonistic personal feelings and inclinations.