Guzman’s private residence is the finest in Venezuela, and a full-length portrait of James G. Blaine adorns his parlor. That apartment is very handsomely decorated and upholstered, the work having been done by artists imported from Paris; but there is such a vivid brilliancy in the frescoing, the fabrics, and the furniture that one wishes these tropical people who have so much money had a little more refinement of taste. One of the most striking incidents in the career of this extraordinary man was his defiance of the Pope. To realize its full significance, it must be understood that Venezuela has always been a Catholic country; that there was not a Protestant church in the whole country; that Guzman was himself born and baptized a Catholic, and that under the Constitution the archbishop was a member of the National Council. Guzman first suppressed all the monasteries and nunneries of the country, and confiscated their property, which was converted into houses of useful education. Then, in 1876, he sent to Congress a message, in which he said: “I have taken upon myself the responsibility of declaring the Church of Venezuela independent of the Roman Episcopate, and ask that you further order that parish priests shall be elected by the people, the bishop by the rector of the parish, and the archbishops by Congress, returning to the uses of the primitive Church founded by Jesus Christ and His apostles. Such a law will not only resolve the clerical question, but will be besides a grand example for the Christian Church of republican America, hindered in her march towards liberty, order, and progress by the policy, always retrograde, of the Roman Church, and the civilized world will see in this act the most characteristic and palpable sign of advance in the regeneration of Venezuela. “GUZMAN BLANCO.” To this the Congress replied: “Faithful to our duties, faithful to our convictions, and faithful to the holy dogmas of the religion of Jesus Christ, of that great Being who conserved the world’s freedom with His blood, we do not hesitate to emancipate the Church of Venezuela from that Episcopacy which pretends, as an infallible and omnipotent power, to absorb from Rome the vitality of a free people, the beliefs of our consciences, and the noble aspirations and destinies which pertain to us as component parts of the great human family. Congress offers to your Excellency and will give you all the aid you seek to preserve the honor and the right of our nation, and announces now with patriotic pleasure that it has already begun to elaborate the law which your Excellency asks it to frame.”