Punch (68.1875)

January 16, 1875.]

PUNCH, OK THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

21


EXCERPTA VATICANA.

rom our most
private Vati-
can Corre-
spondent.

Dear Mr.
Punch,

I had the
honour of a
long and most
confidential
interview with
His Holiness
yesterday, of
which, accord-
ing to modern
precedent, I imme-
diately send yon the
account for publica-
tion.

After some general
remarks on the state
of the weather and
other topics of in-
terest, His Holiness
was so gracious as to
read me the draft of
a Bull which he con-
templated publishing
the 1st of April,
1875. I am happy to
say that he took the
precaution of sitting
upon an ottoman, and
not in a chair, whilst
he read it, as in the
latter case it would,
of course, not have
been open to any

alteration or remark. It was entitled in the usual manner from the initial
Words of its first sentence, which were as follows:—

“ Quemdam insanum et dolosum shht-collarosissimiimque serpentem Petri navem
meque veterem limam* mordentem, percussimus et contudimus. Duos excellentes proceres
Anglicanost (teste Monsignore Capelo), unum Regime juxis-consultum peritum, nomine
tantum Sagittarium,J et armigerum respectabilem, nomine tantum Petrum,|| etiam
percussimus et contudimus. Inimo etiam omnes eos et adjutores fautoresque eorum
lrnprobamus, damnamus, atque anathematisamus-”

Here, as the Holy Father paused for breath, taking advantage of a long and
faithful friendship, I looked up into the good-humoured face of Pajpa Pius,
and smiled significantly, humming to myself at the same time the once-
popular refrain from Midas—

“ Be by your friends advised,

Too rash, too hasty, Dad ;

Or, maugre your bolts and wise head,

The world will think you mad.”

I am happy to say the expostulation thus conveyed in song was, at least for
the moment, successful. His Infallibility blushed, winked, smiled, laughed
outright; the Bull “ Quemdam insanum” was torn up, and will never appear,
except in your columns as an enclosure from

Your Yatican Correspondent.

Anglice, old file. + “ Two excellent peers.” J Anglice, an archer. || Petre.

INFALLIBILITY ON STRIKE.

Why has Dr. Manning come back from Rome without the red hat and
stockings F To this conundrum the answer suggested by the well-informed
correspondent of a contemporary is because perhaps for one reason, the Pope
could not just now create him a Cardinal without thereby creating an invidious
distinction:—

“•But the most powerful motive, no doubt, of the Pope’s action at the present moment
in abstaining from nominating Cardinals—Archbishop Manning among them—is the
attitude he has assumed towards the Italian Government. He regards himself as a
prisoner, held captive and deprived of his full liberty of action as Pope by the Italian
authorities; and to give weight to the pretension, he sedulously refrains, as far as he
possibly can, from filling up vacancies in the episcopal sees or Sacred College, only making
new nominations when absolutely compelled to do so.”

At this rate, the Pope’s so-called action is inaction. Can we name it
masterly inaction ? There is less of the master in it than the man—namely,
the working-man. The Pope, in so far as he declines to act, is on strike.
But let us trust that, since he considers Bishops and Cardinals necessary
for souls, he is not, as above represented, on strike, at what he supposes

the expense of souls, for the recovery of his temporal
power.

A strike at that cost, against the Italian Government,
would be infinitely more selfish than the strikes of
bakers, cabmen, and colliers against their employers or
the Legislature, without regard to consequences affecting
the British Public. It is to be hoped that Pius is too
clement to be capable of anything of the kind, and at
any rate he must surely be too knowing not to know
better than, by striking, to allow all the world to find
out what a great part of it has already discovered—that it
can do without him. If His Holiness has really struck,
like the miners of South Wales, it may be expected that
his strike will soon have collapsed also; and, in the
meanwhile, those who care a straw for it must endeavour
to bear it as well as they may.

ADDRESS TO AN ATOM.

By an Uncomfortably Conscious Automaton.

Mysterious particle,

Intangible and most indefinite article,

Which even Science cannot fix or focus ;

Are you indeed of all this hocus-pocus,

Misc’hristened Cosmos, protoplast ? If so
’Tis pity that the happy status quo
Of universal dumb inertia ever
Was broken up by vortices or voices.

’Twere surely better far that space had never
Re-echoed to objectionable noises,

Or witnessed all this pother
Of biologic bustle, whose chief law seems Bother!
Why could not you,

And all your fellow motes, far, far too prankful,

In the embraces of the boundless blue
Rest and be thankful ?

A plague on all your forces and affinities!

A mob of monads, to my notion,

Surpasses one of demons or divinities
Only while idle. With the earliest motion
Began the immitigable Mischief. Why
Must you in chaos cut those primal capers,

Which were “ the promise and the potency ”

Of—all the woes that fill our morning papers ?

’Tis surely a reflection most unpleasant

To think that all the plagues which haunt the present

Spring from that moment in the hidden past,

When the first molecule, weary at last
Of immemorial motionlessness, stirring,

Jostled his neighbour Atom. What a whirring
Went through astounded space !

Thought pictures a grim grin upon the face
Of him, the Prince of Evil;—

Only that then, of course, there was no devil.

At least of the New Creed that’s one prime article;

Though I have little doubt
He was incipient in that self-same particle
Whose fidgets caused the first great stirabout.

If Science’s “ dry light,” at its meridian,

Finds men no more than automatic midges
In its cold ray, the history that bridges
The space between us and the first Ascidian
Were better blotted.

To archetypal atoms was allotted
An easier fate than to the complex mass
Of “ clever matter,” which has dared to pass
For Man, but is, for all its prayers and panics,

A problem in molecular mechanics !

If Conscience be but chemic combination,

And Love a mere molecular affinity ;

What boots all Life’s superfluous botheration
Of mad and painful dreams, that limn Divinity
On fool-projected limbos ? Life ’s a swindle,

If taken a la Tyndall.

And, let who may in that demoniac war win
(“ Survival of the fittest ” !)—yet, as groping
Less anxiously, less fearing, striving, hoping,

An Ape was less a dupe than is a Darwln.

That Atom must be a misguided duffer
Who’d join a Co. ; alone it could not suffer.

Why should it long for partnership and pain so ?

I would I were a monad—I’d remain so;

And as for “ nascent thrills ” and “ ganglia,” drat ’em I
They ’re things for which I should not care—an Atom'