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Show HALL CAIliE VISITS ROME 7ILL HIS NEXT NOVEL DEAL WITH CATHOLIC CHURSH? Some of His Impressions of Italian Life and the Problems That Distort Dis-tort Italy. Perhaps in view of the fact that Mr. Hall Caine will be in Rome a fortnight, in order to take up his studies where he interrupted them in the springtime, it may be interesting to say something about his devotion o Rome.. Whatever else Mr. Caine may be, he is a pre-eminently popular novelist, one who has swayed first and quickly thousands and then millions of minds and imagi- j nations by each of his novels. And there has been no decline in this popularity; popu-larity; quite the reverse in fact, for the sale of The Christian, his latest work, has been equal to or greater than the sale .of its prerunners among the novels of the author. His coming Romewards, therefore, his assiduous Ftudy of Rome, the enthusiasm en-thusiasm with which he prosecutes this study for study his investigation really real-ly deserves to be called and his confessed con-fessed inclination to write a novel, the scene of which would be Rome and the informing spirit Roman, all mean that Rome holds its- old spell for the intellectual intel-lectual ' and all the cultured, its old charm for the legion of novel readers, its old place in the world as the city wonderful, the city of fascination and the city of imagination. The movement of progress does not seem to have left it stranded behind. Mr. Hall Caine has endeavored to study it from every aspect which it presented to him. It has been difficult, not to s.ay impossible, to go anywhere or to clo anything during his sojourn without coming upon his traces. He has seen a good deal of the Vatican; indeed he has seen of the Vatican in time, under the guidance, first and i luicjimax, ui one Oi. lilt; jt jinincui- ! ate atendants. He has visited frequently fre-quently and has also seen from within, all the representative monasteries, colleges, col-leges, convents and other religious houses of the Eternal City. His friends among the clergy have been men of almost every shade of Catholic opinion, and it should be his own unpardonable fault if he were not fully abreast of the feelings and views of the Catholic or "Black" party. But he has not neglected neglect-ed the "Whites" (Quirinal party) and "Greys" (Moderate party in social life). Under the guidance of Signer Maggio-rino Maggio-rino Ferraris, formerly a member of the Crispi cabinet, still a deputy and now the editor of La Nuova. Antologia, he has seen and touched all the contracts to the "Blacks" which the following of the Quirinal holds. At the house of that famous lady, the learned Countess Lovatelli, a sister of the Duke of Ser-moneta, Ser-moneta, he has had the best of all desirable de-sirable opportunities for judging of the attitude of the Italian state towards the Catholic Church. Add to all this, that during his first visit to Rome there was a succession of jubilees; the jubilee of the Pope and the jubilee of the Italian Ital-ian court, net to speak of the Socialist and "Red" (anarchist) jubilee which characterized the funeral of Cavallotti, and that he has seen almost all their successive developments. The beginning begin-ning of that stay synchronised with the bread riots. Its end coincided with the Hungarian and American national pilgrimages. pil-grimages. It is impossible that he should have witnessed all this phantasmagoria phantas-magoria without receiving due impres- ; Jiui;n, aim i wouia nave oeen a miracle of blindness or stoicism if he had not been tempted to find in them. the most striking materials for a dramatic pre-i pre-i sentation of the Third Rome. I Naturally, he abounded in stories j which he had picked up in many quarters. quar-ters. Some of them were very human and remarkable. . He (had created his own opportunities. It was -easily apparent ap-parent that he had gone about among-the among-the people. There were few of the music halls which he had not frequented. frequent-ed. Thinking that he could take , advantage ad-vantage of the privileges, of a stranger, he had visited during the carnival some of the Veglioni in t'he early hours of the morning, and he had at least attained at-tained the distinction of speedy identification identi-fication in the Roman papers next day. Hence it is interesting to know that his impressions of- the Italian ci-.arac-' ter are friendly. A certain childlikeness I in the peasant character touched him deeply. He said that he had seen "surprisingly little drunkenness, very-little very-little . crime and astonishingly few of the vices which degrade great cities." On the other hand, he confessed it to be his opinion "that the national character charac-ter was being sapped by the spirit of gambling which state fostered with its recognition." . On the Italian social questibn Hall Caine does not speak confidently, but he has been "deeply touched bv the condition of the poor in Italy." They seemed to him "to be poorer than the poor of any other European country except Poland. Frightfully overtaxed, for the most part badly housed, yet so patient, so religious in their simple way, so cneerrui in tneir awiui- poverty, pov-erty, so fond of a laugh, such children whether young or old, whether grave or gay it is impossible not to love them." He was told that in Naples more persons died of destitution than in any other city in Europe. "Perhaps "Per-haps the strongest feeling with which I leave Italy is deep pity of the poor of this lovely and beloved country. At Sorrento, at Amalfi, and all through that marvelous peninsula. I was always al-ways asking myself what there was in the future of Italy for the battalions of half naked little ones who were being be-ing brought up to beg. The condition of the poor in this country is a greater problem than the vexed question of the temporal power of the Pope." Of course he found religious problems paramount in Rome, but he protested always that "they are now paramount throughout Europe. No political questions ques-tions hold' their own with them. The general feeling appears to be a feelir.ir of unrest. In Italy the churches are often crowded; in Poland- they, are crowded; in Spain they are crowded; in France they are often empty; in Germany often empty; in parts of Russia often, empty, and monasteries and convents either in ruins or converted con-verted to secular uses are to be found everywhere. But the gospel is a mighty young gospel still, and in nearly every country of Europe, even in Italy, the strongest current of religious feeling, whether within or without the churches, appears to be that which is going back to the gospel as it was in the beginning. Such are seme of his experiences and impressions. When tihis letter shall have been printed, he will be here to renew them. I for one do not doubt that his stay ir Rome during this coming winter be the fruitful seed time of a gttat novel. If I could conjecture from the data of my'ciose and familiar acquaintance with the novelist's movement, I should say that the church the one true churdh, of course will have the lion's part in the promised work. It has been decided that the Pope from . this day forward to the end of the jubilee will not receive t'he various pilgrimages in special audience, but merely gave hia apostolic blessing to each group in a public and solemn way. There is no truth in the story that the cardinal secretary of state has expressed an opinion about the verdict of the Dreyfus court .nartial. The Holy See is preserving absolute neutrality in the Dreyfus affair. Cardinal Satolli has begun his holiday holi-day by going, as usual, to his villa at Sant'Enea, near Perugia. M. Bourget, to whom Rome is indebted in-debted for OosmopolLs (the. name and the book) and the United States for a valuable study, is preparing a work on North Italy which he is now- sedulously sedu-lously visiting. Don Lorenzo Perosi has scored an'oth- 1 1 '" ' .HI .MIHi.lll ..l... .11111 -UN l,n er success by his Natale di Cristo (The Nativity). The Voice of anti-clerical criticism in Italy confesses that he has climbed another rung on the ladder of fame. " ' ' WILLIAM J. D. CROKE, LL.D. |