THE HOME OF THE PECCI FAMILY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VI, Issue 273, 26 July 1878, Page 19

THE HOME OF THE PECCI FAMILY.

(From the London Times.) The Pecci house has nothing to deserve attention outside. The family coat of arms, once above the door, has been removed ; but the clamps which held it are still in their places. The Pecci arms consist of a field gules bearing a cypress or pine — <# pitch tree" (tcom.pece') crossed by a bar argent and the shield so quartered bears on the upper left quarter a comet, or, and on the two lower quarters two French lilies, jleurs de luce, also or. Over the shield is a comital crown, though the [ Peccis were no counts but merely untitled patricians. Besides this escutcheon, which the Osservatore Romano displays as the new Pope's arms with the tiara, other cognizances are to be seen on the Pecci sepulchral monuments — a coat of arms with two rampant lions, or, on a field gules in an ermine mantle — and another escutcheon, where to the pine, the comet and the lilie3 there are, under these lilies, two rose tree boughs, one on each side, each bearing three roses. The houso of the Pecci inside is not without pretensions. The entrance is on the Via Cavour, its front windows looking out into it ; but on the other side it enjoys a view of the valley. The staircase up to the first floor is handsome. On the first floor are the state apartments, an antechamber showing the primitive rafters without ceiling, painted somewhat roughly, but not without artistic taste. On the walls are a portrait of Pope Pius VI. and a series of prints illustrating that Pontiff's checkered career. On a large table in the middle lay several numbers of the Voce delta Verita, and scattered over them half -broken children's toys. In the inner saloon (Sala Nobile) sconces with mirrors, each bearing a candle, hang on the walls all round, interspersed with family pictures. Here are a portrait of Leo XII. (Delia Genga), painted in his Cardinal's robes, the present Pope's father and mother, and that of Cardinal jPecci himself, still young, with a fine countenance, well-chiselled, regular, almost feminine features, a straight, thin nose, a small smiling mouth, dark, and very sweet eyes t with a light pink complexion, probably the gift of the artist's partial fancy. There is the Pope's father in the uniform of a colonel of the first French Empire, with a good florid countenance ; and that of the mother, a native of Cori, sprung from the Prosperi family, a majestic buxom gentlewoman. In the present Pope are blended the features of both his parents, yet his resemblance in youth to Pope Leo XII. is considered very striking both at Carpineto and in Rome. The furniture 'in his room is common-place, and in bad rococo style. Among other portraits, there is one of an Abate Pecci, who rose to some distinction in the last century. There is a third little sitting-room, with gilt looking-glasses and gilt armchairs, and through this one reaches the little family chapel, where the Cardinal often said Mass. On the altar hang a Madonna and Child, with a St. Francis and St. Dominic ; on a side wall a small picture of St. Anthony of Padua. Opposite to the chapel is the Cardinal's bedroom, with an iron bed, canopied with white and blue silk ; over the bolster hangs a silver crucifix. The walls are papered with an imitation of red damask. All in these apartments is plain, unpretending, and somewhat faded and dilapidated, the family living the best part of the year in Rome — a numerous family, as we know, with a patrimony not exceeding 100,000 Roman crowns, or about £20,000. The room where the Pope was born is on an upper floor. The family burial place is in the Capuchin convent outside the town. There is a large slab in the floor, with the family arms, in the middle of the church. The convent adjoining this church is falling to ruin, and is propped up by large beams on the outside.

M. Teefobt, Minister of Public Worship and Education in Hungary, formerly a Free-thinker and bitter opponent of Catholicism, was recently received into the Church by the Franciscan Fathers in Pesth.