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Show Papal Secretary Calumniated. "Vox Urbis," writing from Rome to the New York Freeman's Journal, says. The latest papers from New York have ' been making very free with the name of Cardinal Merry del Val. One of them credits him with having denounced de-nounced Archbishop Ireland, another describes him as having taken a most active part in fomenting an anti-American and pro-Spanish feeling in Rome during the Spanish-American war, another an-other pictures him as having organized a subscription to man a Spanish war vessel against the Americans, and so on. It is hard to know what purpose I the writers of these articles, letters and I dispatches can have in view. Anyway they are all very absurd. The cardinal's cardi-nal's father is a Spaniard, whose grand-j grand-j father was an Irishman, but the car-i car-i dinal himself has had less to do with Spain than with any other counf y in Europe. He was born in London and educated mostly in England. Part of his youth was spent in different European Eu-ropean capitals, and the rest of his life has passed here in Rome. lie has never even seen Madrid, and all he knows about Spain itself he must have learnt from' his reading and from a stray' visit to the northern part of the country. Here, in Rome nobody considers con-siders his eminence as a Spaniard he is regarded as a most perfect type of cosmopolitan. It is worth while noting that all the attacks that have been made on him are anonymous and that they bear that notable earmark of calumnyvagueness. cal-umnyvagueness. They do not sbeci-fy, sbeci-fy, for instance, when or where he denounced Archbishop Ireland. In short, they are very mean and cowardly, cow-ardly, and there is not a single word of truth in them. |