encyclicals, briefs, allocutions to the cardinals and to numerous deputations from far and near, unweariedly fanned the flame of enthusiasm and fanaticism throughout papal Christendom, and thundered threatening prophecies not only against the Italian, but also against foreign states, for with most of them he lived in open war. A collection of his “Speeches delivered at the Vatican” was published in 1874, commented on by Gladstone in the _Contemporary Review_ for January, 1875, who gives abundant quotations showing papal assumptions, maledictions, abuse and misunderstanding of the Scriptures with which they abound. On the fiftieth anniversary of the pope’s episcopal consecration, in June, 1877, crowds from all lands assembled to offer their congratulations, with costly presents and Peter’s pence amounting to sixteen and a half million francs. He died February 8th, 1878, in the eighty-sixth year of his age and thirty-second of his pontificate. His heirs claimed the unpaid dotations of twenty million lire, but were refused by the courts of law.[543]--His secretary Antonelli, descended from an old brigand family, who from the time of his stay at Gaeta was his evil demon, predeceased him in A.D. 1876. Though the son of a poor herdsman and woodcutter, he left more than a hundred million lire. His natural daughter, to the great annoyance of the Vatican, sought, but without success, in the courts of justice to make good her claims against her father’s greedy brothers.