THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1902. THE GRAND OLD MAN. The New Zealand TABLET

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 9, 27 February 1902, Page 17

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1902. THE GRAND OLD MAN.

The New Zealand TABLET

* To promote the cause of Religion and Justice by the ways of Truth and Peace. 1 LEO XIH. to the N.Z. TABLET.

tN Thursday last the initial day of the papal silver jubilee of Leo XIII. was celebrated in St. Peter's in the presence of a great concourse of 70,000 people. On Sunday next, March 2, the venerable Pontiff touches his ninety-second birthday. He is bent and frail, and, in the ordinary course, his span of life must be brief. Full many a time and oft has the cable-man slain and coffined him. But, happily for the Church over which he has ruled so long and wisely, he still lives on — the bodily machine, it is true, slowing gradually down, but the master mind still fresh and keen and active within its frail tenement. Leo XIII. has far surpassed the average age and length of reign of the Roman Pontiffs. Besides St. Peter, only four Popes have ruled the Church for a longer period than the present Grand Old Man of the Vatican. Pius IX. reigned 31 years (1846-1878) ; Pius VI. 24 years (17751799) ; Adrian I. 23 years and 10 months (772-795) ; and Pius VII. 23 years and five months (1800-1823). Of the long line of Pontiffs that preceded Leo XIII. two only had & longer score of years to their lives — St. Agatho, who died in 682, at the ripe old age of 107, and Gregory IX., who saw his 99th year and passed away in 1241.

Leo was born and brought up amidst the bracing air of the Volscian hills — the .nursing-plaoe of the hardy warriors that in the far-past days kept up such long-drawn, Boer-like struggles with the growing power of early pagan Borne. One who knows him well aptly describes him as a true Italian mountaineer— lean, wiry, well-knit, keen-eyed, slow

of speech, quick of step, erect in bearing, and with the other qualities ot stern endurance which make and mark the hard worker. His old age has been fresh and beautiful, and he enjoyed the rare gift of, so to speak, budding fresh every spring with the young, green leaves. He shared this singular privilege to even a higher degree than some of the world's greatest workers. The genial Autocrat of the Breakfast Table had his faculties fresh and keen after he had climbed the white summit of the Mount Blanc of one-and-eighty years. Tennyson was still writing at eighty. Browning was as lively as a cricket on the hearth at seventy-seven, but fell to pieces in the same year, like the Deacon's ' wonderful one-horse shay,' or like a Sevres vase dropped upon a floor of tesselated tiles. Gladstone, handicapped with four-score years, boasted that he was as good a man with the axe as when he carried only forty. But Leo has surpassed them all both in age and in keenness and grasp of intellect. Lord Brougham — although aided by a little army of secretaries — broke hopelessly down under a far lesser strain than the aged Prisoner of the Vatican has been bearing almost alone, and with only four or five hours' sleep per night, for the twenty-four full years that have elapsed since, at the ripe age of sixty-eight, he succeeded to the papal tiara.

His career in the chair of St. Peteb has furnished a brilliant chapter to the history of the Roman Pontiffs. | Statesmanship and philanthropy,' says Justin McCarthy in his Life of Leo XIII, i are combined in it, «ach at its best and highest.' He is the Pope of prayer, of fw-exten-ding charity, of philosophy, of the olive-branch of peace, of popular government. *Heis a great Pope,' says his latest biographer ; ' there has not been his equal intellectually for a long time, nor shall we presently see his match again.* Above all he is the Pope of the working man, of the poor, and of the afflicted of every degree. It is said that great prophets and great statesmen leave their impress on their age. No sovereign, no statesman, no Pontiff of the pastor present century has left a deepr mark upon his time than the venerable old Pope who is toiling on through his day till the Door shall open to admit him to his reward beyond the veil that lies between the brief life here and the truer and fuller life in the Great Hereafter. • Pope Leo,' says Justin McCarthy, ' is the last survivor of the great European statesmen of the century. During recent years Gladstone, Bismarck, and Pope Leo XIII. have stood alone. The latter is the greatest Pontiff seen on earth for many a century. To improve the condition of the toiling classes all over the world, to mitigate the troubles of the overtasked, to abolish slavery in every form, white and black ; to lighten the load of the heavy laden ; to spread the gospel of peace among the nations — these have been the purposes of Leo's career.' The heritage of his old age is honor and high hope ; and, though his days are many and his form is bent and thin and frail and worn, the hearts of his children throughout the world join in the heartfelt prayer that he may yet be preserved ad multos annos.