Archbishop Ireland on Temporal Power

332 • IMPRO VEMENT ERA. Cotta who was Consul in A. D. 20, and it is now known as Casale rotondo, or the round hamlet, perhaps because a house and garden occupies the top of it. It is often called the tomb of Cotta, and was used as a fortress in the middle ages. On the fifth mile was the sepulchre of the Curatii, erected where they fell. The battle was first fought a mile and a half further back jast where two of the Horatii were killed, but all three of the Curatii were very severely wounded. Seeing this, the surviving Horatius, who was still unhurt, pretended to fly towards the city, and by this stratagem vanquished and killed his three wounded antagonists one after the other. Livy the historian, who was born in B. C. 59, speaks of the tombs of the Horatii and Curatii as existing in his day. A little further on, on the right, would be seen the tomb of Pomponius Atticus the epicurean philo- sopher, and the friend of the great orator Cicnro. He was a Ro- man eques or knight, and was born at Rome in B. C. 109. He died in B. C. 32 of voluntary starvation on discovering that he had been attacked by an incurable disease. Paris, France. [to be continued.]

ARCHBISHOP IRELAND ON TEMPORAL POWER. In his defense of "The Pontificate of Pius X," in the Febru- ary 1 issue of the North American Review, Archbishop John Ire- land gives a strong statement upholding the position of the Catho- lic Church on temporal power. It has been charged that the Pope has joined in "the scandalous clamor for provinces and principali- ties," and that he is seeking ''the barbaric pomp of secular king- ship." Says the archbishop: The question at issue is the spiritual independence of the Holy See. It is be- lieved, and rightly so, that a status quo whereby the head of the Universal Church is the civil subject of any one potentate gives no stable guarantee of an unfettered spiritual sovereignty. Many are the supposable contingencies in which the sub- ject of one civil power is barred from the confidence of other civil powers. His- tory had solved the problem by granting to the Papacy temporal kingship. The settlement of history was broken up by Italy. The problem is reopened. The Catholic world has not renounced the ideal; the Papacy has not renounced it; the