Correspondence Temporal prosperity a Note of the Church

 SIR, It is not quite easy to acquiesce in a proposition of which we are sometimes reminded, when we are tempted to grumble at the slovenly, disgraceful way in which things go on in certain Catholic countries. I am alluding to Italy. We are told in answer, that temporal prosperity is not a "Note" of the Church; but, left to ourselves, I think we should have decided that it was; and so Bellarmine, I think, determines it. Such a doctrine certainly does come home to our common sense. Religion may preach poverty to the saint, but it teaches worldly success and the comforts of life to the faithful at large. It is the foster-parent, if not the natural mother, of industry, thriftiness, order, honesty, and equitable dealing; and these virtues are the infallible antecedents of making money, gaining a character, and rising in society. I cannot see the flaw in this argument; and when Protestants urge it, I cannot answer them.

 Nor do I think that Catholics, and especially our rulers who formally represent the Holy See, like to give up the argument. They set forth Rome as the mother of modern civilisation: they make Italy, and truly, the centre in times past from which literature, the fine arts, philosophy, physical science, commerce, and terrestrial discovery proceeded. But we must take things as they are, not as they were. Greece once was the source of intellectual and social progress, and Greece is so no more; Egypt was so once, and Egypt is so no more. How do we account for this national decay in the case of Greece and Egypt? We answer, that the cause of the political greatness of those countries has ceased . If, then, in like manner, Italy once was great, and now is not, a hard logician will press us with this dilemma either religion is extinct there now, or religion was not the cause of her greatness then.

 The Protestant likes to secure both horns at once; and he infers from the past and present state of Italy, both that religion is at present extinct there, and that it was not the cause of her past greatness.

 I, on the contrary, think it reasonable to take neither horn; they are too sharp to be either of them true. I think each conclusion is half of it true. The more exact conclusion I believe to be this, on the one hand, that religion is the providentially intended, not the necessary nor the only cause of national prosperity; and, on the other, that religion is not indeed extinct in Italy, but still in a most unsatisfactory state. And therefore the contemptible figure which that famous country cuts at present in the eyes of Protestants arises from the circumstance, that religion must not be merely existing or vegetating in a country, but be in a really vigorous state, if it is to develop itself in temporal prosperity . Faith is not enough for the presence of this Note of the Church; there must be some modicum of hope and of charity in a population too. Italy, viewed as a whole, and in her influential and ruling classes and places, seems to me to be in a state of spiritual decadence, and therefore of intellectual.

 What has brought the length and breadth of that fair land into such a state? It is not the fault of the existing generation; it is not the fault of one age; but it must certainly be the fault of the governments. I cannot escape this conclusion. The state of the country is such, that there is a chronic expectation or apprehension among all classes of insurrection and revolution. Is the administration, then, bad? if so, that is at once the fault of the governments. But no; it is not that the people are really discontented; it is that foreign incendiaries are able to make the Italians blaze up at will. Then, I say, they must be mere children: and why are they so provokingly childish, except from the fault of the governments? I repeat, I cannot escape this conclusion. The governments may not be worse than the people; but they must be as bad; and then, observe, it is their duty to improve the people, not the duty of the people to improve the governments. Thus we lose a Note of the Church.

 You must not mistake me to be a zealot for constitutions, much less for the British lion, as if his presence were a panacea. What we should all mean by a state well governed is, not one in which monarchy is limited, not one in which there is a president and chambers, but one in which there are good laws vigorously and impartially enforced; this is the great duty of governments. If, then, the present disturbed state of Italy be in matter of fact a proof of its being badly governed, what we mean by that is just this, that the administration is bad, that its people are not under the impartial and vigorous sway of laws suited to their geographical, national, and social characteristics. And this is what it wants, and nothing but this, to reverse its miserable state. Questions about autocracy, aristocracy, democracy, are nothing to the purpose.

 How the aforesaid status, if revolutionism can be a status, how this condition of things has come about, is too deep a problem perhaps for any of us. So far is pretty clear, that, if not the cause, at least the sustaining power and the sanction, of this serious mischief is Austria. I acknowledge with joy the change of sentiment and policy which has lately taken place in that august court. I am even tempted to believe that a providence more than ordinary protects the throne of the Cæsars, so wonderful have been its fortunes in these latter centuries. Let us hope that the warnings which its adherents have had lately will open their eyes to the dangers of their repressive, suppressive, oppressive system of government. But still, at present the fact is as I have stated it; viz. for the last forty years Austrian influence has been supreme through the Italian peninsula, and a melancholy failure has been the end of it. Its present state is simply a disgrace to the protecting power. What could France have done worse? Would there have been more infidelity, blasphemy, and profligacy; would there have been more of the hideous frantic rebellion against the Almighty which the Jew of Verona depicts to us; would there have been more deadness in priests and people, more relaxation and disorder in convents in this year 1859, if France, and not Austria, had held Lombardy all these years by possession, Tuscany and the Duchies by relationship or special treaty, Naples by sympathy and good offices, and Rome by the ties of ancient alliance? I am as jealous as any one can be of the British Government in matters of religion; but I doubt much whether the Western powers, as they are now termed, would have done near so much harm to the religion of Italy in the last forty years, by letting the wild winds of heaven dance over it, as the Austrians have caused, by excluding from it light and air, shutting and barring the gates, and making it a prison or a charnel-house, in which thought turns putrid and breeds infection by want of circulation, instead of being reared up to the atmosphere of heroic elevation and Divine philosophy.

 Italian society is honeycombed with secret societies, as if with the red ants of Africa. Why do they not spread in England or in Germany? how is it that London or St. Petersburg can admit their central committees without harm to themselves, while they act so fatally upon Italy? "Those wicked societies," says the Archbishop of Dublin lately, "which ever sap the first principles of social order and the foundations of civil life, have found their echo in Turin, Paris, Westminster, and St. Petersburg; and all their deadly hostilities and fierce invectives are directed against the temporal sovereignty of Rome. And whilst they assail the temporal rule of the Holy Father, they vainly hope that the powers of hell shall lead captive the Spouse of Christ." How true are the words of the most reverend prelate! Yet that they should be true is a most severe reflection on those who have allowed such a state of things to grow up; and who are they but the soldiers and diplomatists of Austria?

 I see that the Dublin of this month blames Austria in terms little less severe than my own; though the writer speaks severely of France too, which he has a right to do. "Down to the last few years," he says, "the government of Austria was at once anti-papal and despotic; and of all who suffered from its despotism, none suffered so deeply as the Popes." [n.]

 I am, sir, your obedient servant,  O. H. Note

 We are very glad to hear it generally reported that the retirement from the Dublin, after years of patient service, of some of those distinguished and able men whose zeal has been the means of raising it to so honourable a place in contemporary literature, is to be compensated by a set of fresh writers, whose known talent is the guarantee to the public that the Review will not in years to come fall below the standard of the highest successes of its past career. Ed.  

     Questions and Answers

 DEAR MR. EDITOR, The remarks in your short Prospectus on certain purposes which the Correspondence in the Rambler may subserve, chimed in with certain ideas of my own, which I shall ask your leave to express in your pages. That is, I shall avail myself, if you will let me, of the opportunity which, by means of that department of your Magazine, you offer, to comment on the reasons you assign for offering it.

 Yes, there are many purposes to which such an opening may be turned, and I hope not unprofitable or dangerous. Where education is widely promoted, and thought in consequence is active and incessant, it is a great thing to have a safety-valve, lest in particular minds there should be a formidable generation of steam and an explosion. There are few among us, perhaps, who pay so little regard to their own present or past as not to acknowledge the chronic irritation which may befall even religious men, from the working of their own thoughts, when they have no one to converse with about them. They suffer from perplexities, not exactly of faith, but relative to the logic of faith, or to the consistency of doctrines with each other, or to their limits, or to their form and drift, or to points of history, or to matters of philosophy or duty; of which the very enunciation, if clear and full, would probably be the solution, or, if not so much as this, yet the proximate means of obtaining a solution. It is scarcely possible to overrate the amount of minute uneasiness, vague wonderment, and superstitious apprehension, which take possession of religious minds, Catholic quite as much as Protestant, merely because they are afraid or forbidden to speak out boldly what they feel; or the immediate and perfect relief which they experience on being allowed an honest recognition of difficulties which neither involve doubt in the speaker, nor demand severity in the respondent.

 This might be illustrated in a number of ways, distinct from each other; I will venture to give one instance of what I mean from the subject of mysteries .

 1. First, one great perplexity is caused to a reflecting mind by not knowing whether a particular point is a mystery or not; or, in other words, whether it ought to attempt to answer objections urged against it, or to acknowledge at once and from the first that they are unanswerable. It is a great comfort to a man to know that he ought not to lose time on a point, or to fidget himself, but to say to himself or to others at once, "It is unanswerable, it is beyond us, it is above reason, it is one of the things which we must take upon faith." I have always felt the truth of a passage in Loss and Gain . The hero of the tale is represented as asking his Anglican tutor about the doctrine of eternal punishment. "He had had some difficulty in receiving it; it had seemed to him the hardest doctrine of revelation. Then he said to himself, 'But what is faith in its very notion but an acceptance of the word of God when reason seems to oppose it? How is it faith at all, if there is nothing to try it?' This thought fully satisfied him. The only question was, Is it part of the revealed word? 'I can believe it,' he said, ' if I know for certain that I ought to believe it; but if I am not bound to believe it, I can't believe it.'" Accordingly he is represented as putting the question to his tutor, and failing in obtaining any answer at all, one way or the other.

 On this particular point no Catholic can have any difficulty, for the first priest he meets with will give him a categorical answer; and if he asked a hundred, they would all give him the same. But there are questions which do not yet admit of so distinct a decision.

 For instance, we may take the uncertainty which a Scripture student may sometimes feel as to the nature and limits of Inspiration. The Church has not formally determined many of the questions which necessarily arise as he reads the Pentateuch; and he does not know what he is bound to hold of the statements contained in that sacred volume, and what he need not hold. Three centuries ago, there was a doubt among Catholics whether they might believe that the earth went round the sun. Half Christendom would have told an inquirer that it was a dangerous doctrine; and if he had answered, "But the Church has not spoken on the point," he would have been told, "True; but if necessary she will speak, and just in one way, viz. against the opinion; for it is plain," they would have said, "that unless the earth is in the centre, and the sun and stars go round it, the sun and stars were not made for the earth, nor has man that supreme importance in creation which revelation ascribes to him." Thus the person in question would have been driven back into himself, half-satisfied, and continually murmuring in his own heart, "I wish I knew for certain whether I am at liberty to hold with Galileo or not." He would not be asking to be dispensed from the law of faith, but to know whether in this particular case he was called upon to exercise it.

 And so now, Are we at liberty to hold the probable conclusions of human sciences, e.g . of geology, astronomy, ethnology, history, or must we reject them, as temptations to faith, if the letter of the Scripture text is against them? Are we at liberty in any case? if not in all, in what case? with what limitations? under what cautions?

 This, then, is one use of asking questions, viz. to know distinctly, if we can, what is mystery and what is not, what is to be taken on faith, and what we may reason about: to know what we ought to say to a Protestant; and to know what may be held, and what it is prudent and safe to hold, without danger to oneself.

 2. In the next place, there is a real relief in knowing just where and in what the difficulty lies; to throw the mystery into a sentence, and to give it a term or name, though that name does not make us at all wiser about it.

 Let it be recollected that a mystery in religion is not a real thing in rerum naturâ, not any thing objective, but something subjective. It presupposes a particular intellect contemplating facts or truths, and it is an incidence of the imperfection of that given intellect; and, as regards the race of man, it is in great measure the effect of that penal ignorance which is one of the four characteristics of our fallen state. Like evil, ignorance has no substance. As knowledge, so ignorance, so mysteriousness, is something relative to us. When we say that the Almighty is incomprehensible, we do not mean that incomprehensibility is, strictly speaking, an essential attribute of His nature, else He would not comprehend Himself; but we mean that, from the nature of the case, He cannot be comprehended by any creature .

 And this is the true meaning of the word mysterious, whether used of religious matters or scientific. For instance, when we consider a cone and its sections, and evolve their properties, we come to two separate conclusions about a certain straight line called an asymptote : one is, that it is always approaching a certain curve; and the other is, that though it starts at a given finite distance from it, it never reaches it, even though curve and line are produced indefinitely. Each of these two conclusions is intelligible in itself, both a straight line approaching a curve, and a straight line not reaching a curve; but the compatibility of the two at once is incomprehensible or mysterious. But that incompatibility which distresses us is not a real thing, but our view of the mutual relations of the straight and curved lines towards each other evolved from the two real facts themselves. That is, mysteriousness does not lie in any thing substantive, but in our mode of viewing what is substantive. We do not see how a certain relation is possible, viz. that one thing should ever be approaching another, and yet never meet it. We cannot frame to ourselves an idea imagining this relation; but at the same time each of the two conclusions, taken by itself, is perfectly intelligible.

 And in like manner as regard's the supernatural doctrine of the Holy Trinity. That the Father is God, is in form an intelligible proposition; and so also, that the Word is God; and again, that the Holy Ghost is God. Again, it is sufficiently clear what we mean when we say that there is only one God: but take all four propositions together, and you have the Mystery. It lies in the impossibility of any human intelligence being able to perceive how propositions can be all true, which seem to it destructive of each other, that is, as self-destructive as the above mathematical dictum that a line is always approaching what it never reaches.

 Theologians cannot comprehend these relations more than we can; but they can give names to them. They cannot understand the distinction between God and the Word, or between Father and Son, more than the dullest clodhopper; but they can distinguish them from each other in scientific language. The name which they have given, given under a supernatural guidance, is just as unintelligible as the truth itself is incomprehensible. We gain nothing by it in the way of explanation, but it is a recognition on their part that there is a mystery that is the first gain; next, it is a declaration in what point or points the mystery lies; and thirdly, it does for the mystery what the symbol x does for an unknown quantity, it enables the mind to use it freely, to recognise it whenever it comes up again in the course of investigation, and to speak of it and discuss it with others.

 The term which we introduce as regards the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is the word Person . It expresses, it does not explain, the point of mystery. We know nothing more than before; but we have located the mystery, and may shut up the subject.

 But, though the intellect gains nothing in the way of real satisfaction by having a name given to the mystery, it seems to have gained something. It is one thing to know the fact that there is a mystery, and a call for faith; that we have got to the bottom of the inquiry, and have nothing more to learn; of this I have spoken already: but now I say secondly that a name acts in some sort as an explanation, though it really is not. Metaphysicians must account for this, if my analysis of it will not hold; but still the fact, I think, is so, however it is to be accounted for. Take another instance. We sufficiently understand what is meant by the proposition, "Our Lord has a body;" and again, "Our Lord is present on our altars." The mystery is in the union of the two, viz. the corporeal Presence. Theologians try to reduce this mystery to its most elementary form, and they say that "His body is present after the manner of a spirit . Such a proposition is no removal of the difficulty, it is but a statement of it; yet it is something to take hold of. It is at least a putting of the mystery into shape; the mind no longer floats about in a dreamy way, catching at phantoms. If not an explanation, it is a clear conception of the mystery. Locke, I think it is, who says, that though a shadow is negative, our idea of it is positive: and so here, the vague perplexing mystery is invested with a sort of positive form, and can be dealt with by giving it a name.

 If in the above remarks I have rambled on till you may ask me how I can pretend to refer my remarks to the announcement contained in your Prospectus, with which I started, I must proceed to shelter myself under your own name, who are the RAMBLER par excellence . However, if I am driven to bay, and must per force explain myself, I shall best do so by asking a question on which I really do myself want information, and should be much obliged to any of your readers who would give it. It is one which not unfrequently comes up in conversation with others. My question is: How far is it allowable, or desirable, for laymen to study theology?

 I am, dear Mr. Editor, yours, etc,  H. I.

     The Prospect of War

 SIR, I do not yield to any one in sensitiveness at the thought of the scandal which is involved in a war between three Catholic powers, though, the prospect of one is at this moment doubtful; but should it come to pass, I shall be tempted almost to reconcile myself to it, under the feeling that there are worse scandals than it, and that perhaps it will put an end to them. I am not speaking of the horrors and miseries of war, considered as such, but of the scandal of a war between Catholic nations. As to those intrinsic evils, it is difficult to find a common measure between good and evil, and to determine how much evil is a fair price for a certain good, or the chance of a certain good. But the determination of this problem is not necessary for my purpose; I only say, that if there is war between France and Austria, with that cock-sparrow Sardinia on the side of the former, I shall solace myself with the hope that good will come out of it, and not merely in the Vicar of Wakefield's sense of that phrase.

 It was not so with the Russian war. What good could be expected from a war in which our motive was mere jealousy of Russia, and our aim the consolidation of a barbarous Antichristian power? But even though we view that Anglo-French expedition against Russia in its best light, and the Sardo-French attack upon Austria in its worst, even then there is enough of analogy between the two, to make it wonderful that Englishmen should take it for granted that nothing can be said in behalf of the latter, and that nothing need be said in behalf of the former.

 You will perceive that I am supposing the success of France when I speak of "good;" for what good can come from the success of Austria, I am simply incapable of imagining.

 Now, I must observe, I am no defender of Louis Napoleon, for the simple reason that no one can defend what he does not understand. He is a man to wonder at and admire; but in order to our trusting him, he ought not to be so reserved. I am no lover of those strange cloudy oracles which he utters, whether from the throne or in the Moniteur . They remind one of a certain classical personage who began on a certain occasion

 "Criminibus terrere novis, et spargere voces   In vulgum ambiguas, et quærere conscius arma."

 Once, however, he has spoken clearly; and then the light was still more ominous than the darkness, and the sun came out to burn, not to gladden us. He has told us in one of his works, "Il n'y a jamais eu chez les peuples libres de gouvernement assez fort pour réprimer longtemps la liberté a l'intérieur sans donner la gloire au dehors."

 Nor do I forget that from his position he cannot exert a strictly conservative influence in Europe. By conservatism, I mean a policy founded on the observance of treaties; but Louis Napoleon is on the throne by virtue of a breach of the international engagements of Europe in 1815, in which it was determined that the family of Bonaparte should be for ever excluded from the French throne. He cannot be in love with these treaties, which are aimed at his house; and he could not observe them, if he would, without abdicating. It is no greater breach of the Vienna treaties to put Austria out of Lombardy, than to put him into France. It is plain there is no motive but expedience to persuade him to maintain the status quo . While I write, a foreign newspaper reports of the "French Emperor, that, accepting as a fact the existence of the treaties of 1815, he will never consent to give them, by his signature, a new consecration."

 Nor is Louis Napoleon only mysterious in his personal character, and anti-conservative from his political position; he is also ambitious in his national capacity. It is impossible to forget the history of French rulers towards Italy for the last four centuries. Yet Italy is not the only country which they have attempted: Louis Napoleon was reserved in 1854 as well as now; and his position was the same then; and if France has cast greedy eyes on Italy, she has not been without covetousness towards Turkey in the present generation (Algiers to wit, to say nothing of Syria or Egypt): and yet we were her good friends then, and were the friends of Sardinia too.

 Why is it that we are now showing such unamiable caprice to our dear friend Sardinia? How must Victor Emmanuel be pained and surprised at the ill-treatment! We encouraged and applauded his going to war with Russia; he fought between France and ourselves. What, in the world, was his excuse for going to war? What business had he in the Crimea? He had not the zeal which France showed for the Holy Places; he had not the apprehensions which England felt on the score of India; he fought for fighting's sake. Perhaps, in consideration of the antiquity of his house, he was tolerated as a knight-errant in the nineteenth century; perhaps it was on the plea of pure philanthropy that he defended the innocent Turkey, with which he had no concern, against the Bear of the North: but he may reasonably argue now, that if he might allowably feel philanthropy for the Levant then, he has at present some excuse for feeling patriotism in the cause of Italy, of which he is a neighbour, if not a part; and, if he might decently attack Russia then, he may more reasonably attack Austria now. Yet the gracious and paternal Times, after smiling approval at his feat of arms in the Crimea, now gravely declares that its highness has never recommended any thing but internal development to Sardinia; and that Cavour, the prime minister, to its own surprise and sincere concern, is now suddenly beginning an altogether different course, in going to war.

 Certainly we are not the most consistent people in the world; we are astonished that Sardinia should keep up an effective army at a great expense, though it is not four years since we suddenly thought of asking it whether it had some few thousand men to spare, and borrowed them for a purpose of our own. We thought Charles Albert a great hero for attacking the Austro-Lombards in 1847, and Victor Emmanuel a detestable firebrand for threatening the like in 1859. No wonder Italians trust us as little as we trust Louis Napoleon.

 And now for the latter. I can fancy the Russian minister thus addressing the French three years ago, during the peace negotiations at Paris: "You think it all fair to be jealous of us; yet you allow the encroachments of your neighbours. Austria is your Turk and Russian rolled up into one; worse than the Russian, because she is an actual occupant of a country which is not hers; as bad as the Turk, as ruling by force, not by reason, and as the enemy of reform and improvement. We at least should reform the Turks; we were putting an end to the Black-Sea slave-trade when you interfered with your armies; we were enfeebling an enemy of the Christian name, and you proceeded to exalt the Crescent to the level of the Cross. You forced us to keep our hands off barbarians whom all your past Popes denounced; and you allow Austria to keep her hand upon the throat of a people whom the present Pope defended against her." Louis Napoleon was the man to understand the force of such remarks, for he has been a Philitalian all his life; and accordingly his minister proceeded to introduce the subject to the assembled plenipotentiaries.

 We English, on the contrary, have fallen off in the opposite direction; and I think there are three good reasons for our doing so. First, war is no longer a novelty with us; five years ago, even tailors and pastrycooks, who live in good measure by the superfluous wealth of the community, were eager for the new and strange excitement with which the war furnished them: but they have found that sort of amusement too costly to be worth the purchase. So has the nation at large. The upper classes have given their flesh and blood, and the middle and lower classes have given their earnings; they complained little, but they felt the more. And then the Russian war was hardly over when the Indian revolt broke out; and now, like the burnt child, they wisely dread the fire. Moreover, they are now jealous of France, as they were then jealous of Russia; and this personal feeling determines them in preaching peace, in spite of whatever the logic of the case may be able to plead the other way. And lastly, in spite of their bad opinion of Louis Napoleon, they think he has religion enough to wish to do a service to the Pope in his own way, whereas they themselves have not quite so much religion as that; and though they might, indeed, be tempted to go to war to annihilate the Holy Father, they have no desire at all that others should fight in order to seat him more firmly on the throne.

 But I have wandered from the point with which I started, which was, not the question whether England was or was not inconsistent, but whether there were not scandals, whether there were not evils, in the status quo, more prejudicial to Catholicity than there would be in a war and its consequences; though I should be very sorry indeed to seem to speak in any but the most deprecatory language of the latter.

 Now then, first as to evils. A war between Catholic powers is bad, but a massacre of unarmed ecclesiastics is worse. If the present unsettled state of Italy ends in bringing the Red Republicans upon Rome, and they butchered, as they have threatened, Holy Father, Cardinals, and priests, if this be the prospect, I suppose I might be allowed to acquiesce in a war now as the less evil of the two.

 And next, a war between Catholic powers is certainly a great scandal; but many will think that the presence of Austrian and French troops in the Pontifical States is a more grievous scandal still. Is it not portentous that the Holy Father, the Vicar of Christ, should be sustained on his throne against the rising of his own people by foreign bayonets? Is it not a thing to make a Catholic blush, to think that the mildest and kindest of men should be made to seem to the world like some Pygmalion, with no home in the affections of his people, no power of exciting their loyalty and veneration, no refuge but in their simple dread of the strong arm of Frank and German barbarians? And here is another thing to be considered What is so contradictory as a ruler who cannot rule? St. Peter had, indeed, no temporal kingdom, nor St. Dionysius, nor St. Sixtus; but, according to the divine will, and for the good of the Church, such power was bestowed upon their successors. The Popes might have it, or they might not have it; but it is neither one thing nor the other to accept it and not be able to use it, to have the name and not the power. If it is the divine will that they should have a temporal sword, it is equally so that they should "not bear it in vain." It is an intolerable contradiction that they should reign and not rule. And further still, let it be recollected that one of the principal reasons in the line of expediency put forward, and reasonably put forward, for the Pope having a territory of his own, is, that he may be independent of Catholic powers; and the history of the Avignon Popes is reasonably quoted in favour of this expediency; but how is he independent of them if they garrison his country?

 I have no scruple in thus speaking, because we know it is what the Holy Father feels himself. Let us recollect his conduct at the very beginning of his reign. Then the Austrians only, not the French, were in Italy; and he wanted simply to get rid of the Austrians from Italy altogether. "Nous avons la confiance," he said, "que la nation allemande, si généreusement fière de sa propre nationalité " (you see, it was even a question of races), "ne mettra pas son honneur dans des tentatives sanglantes contre la nation italienne ; mais qu'elle la croira plutôt intéressée à reconnaitre noblement celleci pour sSur, toutes les deux nos filles, toutes les deux si chères à notre cSur, consentant à habiter chacune son territoire naturel, où elles vivront une vie honorable et bénie du Seigneur." In like manner the Holy Father blessed the national flag, "leur recommandant expressment de se borner à défendre le territoire des états de l'Eglise et à en garantir l'inviolabilité ." [n.] What he said to the Germans, he doubtless would have said to the French also. When he returned after his exile, then, indeed, while he was grateful to those who brought him back, he asked them to protect him for a definite time; but after that he proposed to do without them. Again and again has he wished both French and Austrians to withdraw. Mr. Bowyer, in his place in Parliament, announced their withdrawal a year or two ago; and it has been lately stated in the papers, not only that the foreign troops are to go, but that the Pope and Cardinal Antonelli have ever wished it, and have been thwarted by others.

 It will be worth a good deal, then, if the French open a way for placing the lives of ecclesiastics at Rome on a better tenure than they have at present, and its temporal affairs on a better footing. It will be best, indeed, if this can be done by diplomacy under threat of a war, but without actual war; if there is war, and this is its result, the guilt of the war must lie some where or other; but the war, with all its miseries, at least will have a compensation, which the Russian war, our pet plaything, had not.

 I am, sir, etc.  April 2. J. O. Note

 Les Annales, 1849, par M. 1'Abbé Petit, p. 123.  

     Traditions of History in the Schools

 SIR, There is a passage in the letter of an eminent theologian, which appeared in your Number for December last, which seems to me obscure, and to need explanations, unless I am supposing in it allusions which it does not contain.

 He had first said, that St. Francis de Sales " had convinced himself that the common teaching and tradition of the Fathers of the first four centuries was opposed to ... the opinion of St. Augustine" and that Serry "rebukes the saint for this, which he says is a false and dangerous opinion, that has been rejected by the schools." That is, as I understand him, the notion of St. Augustine's doctrine being opposed to that of the common teaching of the early Fathers is rejected by the schools.

 Then the learned writer proceeds: "In this question, which must be discussed on purely historical grounds, it matters not what the Thomists and Augustinians, in the traditional theology of their schools, have settled on the point, or what they have laid down in their lectures. Among theologians of real historical and patristic learning the matter has never been doubtful."

 Here he seems to contrast the theology of the schools and real historical and patristic learning, as if the school-divines did not know history. I am not quarrelling with this proposition, because it is one which I certainly have entertained myself; but I want to know if I am right in thus interpreting him.

 J. J.

 [ Rambler, July 1859.] Correspondence Temporal Prosperity, whether a Note of the Church

 SIR, I cannot resist writing a few lines upon the letter signed O. H. in your last Number.

 With much in it I agree; but O. H.'s argument overlooks altogether the greatest illustration the world has ever seen of an exclusively national Church, I mean the chosen people of God in the Old Testament. We see there a people who were, with few exceptions, the sole depositaries of truth in the world; a people to whom God had expressly promised temporal prosperity as a reward of faith and obedience; with whom God had condescended to make a compact, binding Himself to protect them by his visible power, if they would obey His law; to whom He promised a land flowing with milk and honey, and whom He led thither through a series of stupendous miracles.

 Yet, when we read the Old Testament, we find their history as full of punishments as of favours; and if we turn to secular ancient history, we cannot fail to perceive that in arts, arms, commerce, naval power, philosophy, literature, and weight and influence in the then known world, they were inferior to many other nations, who were, for the most part, heathen, to Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Egyptians, PhSnicians, Greeks, and Romans.

 Now this appears to me absolutely opposed to the argument that temporal prosperity is a note of the Church; for this, observe, is an instance so complete, that it can never occur again. No people will ever be able to look upon itself as the exclusive choice of the Most High. It is the character of the modern Church to be Catholic, to embrace all nations in her fold, and to be as "a field in which the enemy hath sown cockle:" and we are expressly told that this peculiarity is to continue to the end of the world, if not in all probabi1ity to increase. It seems to me, then, that if, as is in point of fact the case, divine punishment is quite as characteristic of the history of the chosen people of God as divine protection; if, as is likewise the case, that people were inferior in temporal greatness and prosperity to many others; if, moreover, as cannot be denied, that people were marked out from the rest of the world in a manner quite different to what any Catholic nation ever can be, then it follows that we should not expect to see nations prosperous in proportion to their Catholicity. I am far from saying the connection may not exist, I should be inclined to think it does; but it follows the ordinary laws of God's providence, which are, and ever must be, a mystery to us. Moreover, since the coming of our Saviour on earth, humiliation, suffering, and poverty are to be looked on as His livery; and His prophecies to His Church rather foretell thorns than roses, strife than peace, and humiliation than triumph. Of course, the lowly virtues of the New Testament are applicable to different states of life in different proportions; but there must be a recognition of them in the king as well as in the hermit. Heroic, by which I mean self-sacrificing, virtues are, as a general rule, less applicable to fathers of families, simply because, all duties being relative, the duty of a man to his wife and children comes before a larger number of more distant duties. This it is which has led, in the Catholic Church, to the celibacy of the clergy; which is no dogma, but a mere consequence of what I may call the division of labour consequent on a more developed state of Christian civilisation. The attire of the glorified Church is to be wrought about with a variety of ornament. Meanwhile, that temporal prosperity should frequently be withheld from the Church, that she should be often bated and despised, that she should be defaced by "spot and wrinkle," that she should be to many a stumbling-block, all this seems to me nothing more than what we might be led to expect.

 1st. Because she is the body of a Head crowned with thorns.

 2d. Because she is like the net, which held many bad as well as good fish.

 3d. Because it is easier for her individual members to excel in one thing rather than in many; and therefore intellect, and even moral virtues, will frequently be found dissociated from the Church, which, in imitation of her Divine Master, calls especially the poor, the sinful, and the ignorant: not that she calls them peculiarly, but because her including them repels the rich, the self-righteous, and the intellectual.

 4th. Because where there is "community of saints," there is probably, to a great extent, community of temporal rewards and punishments; as in the Old Testament the innocent suffered with the guilty, and in the New the innocent for the guilty.

 5th. That as proximity to grace augments responsibility, and diminishes the chance of excuses of ignorance, so it increases the guilt of those who wilfully choose evil rather than good. Sacraments, humanly speaking, cause sacrileges, and faith blasphemy; and this simply through the exercise of man's free-will. We should never forget those awful words of Simeon applied to our Lord, "that He was set for the fall and resurrection of many in Israel;" and then we shall wonder less at what seem the more devilish forms of unbelief in the immediate proximity of all that is most holy.

 6th. That given an imperfect world, it is easier to bring it to acquiesce in a law of expediency than to submit to one which aims at a definition of right and wrong.

 For all these reasons, my common sense is not the least hurt by the fact of the absence of temporal prosperity in the Church in any particular country and at any particular time; though sometimes I might expect to see them culminate together. If I speak of O. H.'s letter as containing a half-truth, I claim no more for my own; for I look upon it as a proof of ignorance as well as presumption, to despise truths which must be partial, because they are shown forth by a human intelligence. Out of the dogmas of the Church I admit no complete truths.

 I am Sir, your obedient servant,  F.

     Prosperity, not the price, but a Reward, of Christian Virtue

 SIR, A writer in a Catholic newspaper has been hard on a sentence of mine in your last Number. May I ask room for a few lines in answer to him?

 I had said, "Religion may preach poverty to the saint, but it teaches worldly success and the comforts of life to the faithful at large." I did not mean that worldly success was the wages, or the  object, of Christian obedience; but I meant that, as a rule, it was the natural effect of certain supernatural graces, and that it was the extra recompense or present, the mantissa, as Maldonatus calls it, the corollarium, as Cornelius à Lapide calls it, coming from a bountiful Providence upon His consistent, faithful servants.

 Our Lord says, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His justice, and all these things shall be added to you." Maldonatus refers us to the instance of Solomon. St. Paul too says, "Godliness is profitable to all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come." What is promised is preached ; though I did not use the word "preach."

 I think experience too proves the truth of what I have said, as a matter of fact. Poverty may either be the high reward of the saint and faithful Christian striving after perfection, or the punishment of the careless Christian. Those who strive after perfection are the few; as to the multitude of Christians, poverty is the token, not of perfection, but of certain great imperfections, or rather great sins. And in like manner, as to the multitude of Christians, the absence of poverty is the token of the absence of those particular sins. I appeal to any one who knows the poor, whether, looking at them as a whole, their miseries do not arise from three causes, carelessness and improvidence, drunkenness, neglect of conjugal and parental duty. The absence of these does not guarantee the presence of supernatural virtue; but their presence testifies to its absence. If whole classes of men are without bread, clothing, or lodging, "in labour and painfulness, in much watchings, in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness," it is not because they are like St. Paul; but, on the contrary, because they utterly neglect "whatsoever things are true, whatsoever modest, whatsoever just, whatsoever holy, whatsoever lovely, whatsoever of good fame;" whatsoever is of "virtue," whatsoever has the "praise of discipline." Here one great exception of course must be joyfully made, viz. of the poor children who have bad parents, the poor wives who have bad husbands, the poor old grandparents, penitents, though they have sinned in their day. I class all these, whom the Almighty afflicts in love, with St. Paul and the perfect, for they are under the discipline of the perfect; nor have I said that individuals have an exact measure of temporal good or evil in proportion to their works; but if a whole independent community be in a slovenly, discontented, disorderly, restless, rebellious condition, "incontinent, unmerciful, traitors, stubborn, puffed up, lovers of pleasure more than of God," as St. Paul says (and this I think is the state of good part of Italy), I cannot but think that such a community, such a nation, is in a state of religious decadence.

 I did not say in my letter, and do not say, that good Christians will make splendid fortunes, or be better off than the children of this world; for men who make worldly success their object, and the one object of their lives, and pursue it with energy and prudence, will commonly have their reward where they seek it, and will beat in the race of wealth or honour the good Catholic, who not only does not make it his sole object, but not his object at all. And in like manner I did not quarrel with the social state of Italy because England surpassed her in worldly greatness, but because she was all in confusion, without stable government, without internal union, without civil obedience, without religious peace.

 I am tempted here to quote some words of the Council of Paris of 1849; they may be taken as a sort of friendly hint addressed by the Christians of France to the Christians of Italy and their abettors. "It is not true," say the Fathers of the Council, "that in holding the inequality of ranks in society, the Church implies that those hapless persons who are both broken with labour, and yet encompassed with utter penury, are fettered to their misfortunes without power of change and as though by some insuperable fate, the pressure of which neither can nor ought to be alleviated. This most perverted sentiment, which of old time was in fashion among the pagans, is utterly foreign to the Christian doctrine, and is abhorred and detested by the Church.

 "Neither is it true that we must understand the Evangelical doctrine concerning the spiritual advantage of pain and its sanctifying power in the sense that it is not lawful for Christians either to desire or to secure a relief of their miseries. For they are taught by the Church to pray daily for deliverance from evil, which in this life is, in the first place sin, next misery or any trouble : and, on every opportunity which offers itself, doth the same Church declare that it is both lawful and honourable for those who are in want of the goods of this life, to strive earnestly in order that every one of them, by means of his strenuous efforts, and in conscientious ways, may alleviate the hardship of his condition, nay further, may succeed, by the assistance of God, in rising to a more prosperous state .

 "Once more, it is not true that the Church disapproves of either the prudent investigations of the learned or the wise endeavours of the civil power, for the amelioration of those classes of society which are in want . What measures soever can be as ascertained and established which are salutary for this purpose, we declare to be worthy of praise, and agreeable to Christian piety " (Decret. pp. 66-68).

 It must be recollected by my critic that these strong sentiments have been "recognita et approbata" by the Holy See.

 I cannot tell, of course, whether he is a priest, but by his authoritative tone I suppose he is; and if so, I recommend him to "preach" to his poorer people, that if they do not strive hard by conscientious ways to rise out of their abject poverty, they are omitting a course of conduct which the Holy See has pronounced to be "lawful, honourable, praiseworthy, and consistent with Christian piety."

 I am, etc.  O. H.

     Lay Students in Theology

 SIR, I beg to direct your writer's attention to a passage in Dr. Newman's recent volume on University Teaching, in answer to his question about laymen studying theology. It agrees pretty nearly with a judgment which I have heard, and to which I defer, viz. that laymen may study the Treatises de Religione and de Ecclesia ; but had better keep clear of the high mysteries of faith and of the subject of grace.

 After mentioning the reasons which "oblige us to introduce the subject of religion into our secular schools," he proceeds to answer the objection that "it is better for a youth to know nothing [of theology] than to have a slender knowledge, which he can use freely for the very reason that it is slender." He writes thus:

 "In the first place, it is obvious to answer, that one great portion of the knowledge here advocated is, as I have just said, historical knowledge, which has little or nothing to do with doctrine. If a Catholic youth mixes with educated Protestants of his own age, he will find them conversant with the outlines and the characteristics of sacred and ecclesiastical history as well as profane: it is desirable that he should be on a par with them, and able to keep up a conversation with them. It is desirable, if he has left our University with honours or prizes, that he should know as well as they the great primitive divisions of Christianity, its polity, its luminaries, its acts, and its fortunes; its great eras, and its course to this day. He should have some idea of its propagation, and the order in which the nations which have submitted to it entered its pale; and the list of its Fathers, and of its writers generally, and the subjects of their works ... He should be able to say what the Holy See has done for learning and science; the place which these islands hold in the literary history of the dark age; what part the Church had, and how its highest interests fared, in the revival of letters and I do not say that we can ensure all this knowledge in every accomplished student who goes from us, but at least we can admit such knowledge, we can encourage it, in our lecture-rooms and examination-halls.

 "And so in like manner as regards Biblical knowledge, it is desirable that, while our students are encouraged to pursue the history of classical literature, they should also be invited to acquaint themselves with some general facts about the canon of Holy Scripture, its history, the Jewish canon, St. Jerome, the Protestant Bible; again, about the languages of Scripture, the contents of its separate books, their authors, and their versions. In all such knowledge I conceive no great harm can lie in being superficial.

 "But now as to Theology itself. To meet the apprehended danger, I would exclude the teaching in extenso of pure dogma from the secular schools, and content myself with enforcing such a broad knowledge of doctrinal subjects as is contained in the catechisms of the Church, or the actual writings of her laity. I would have them apply their minds to such religious topics as laymen actually do treat, and are thought praiseworthy in treating. Certainly I admit that when a lawyer, or physician, or statesman, or merchant, or soldier, sets about discussing theological points, he is likely to succeed as well as an ecclesiastic who meddles with laws or medicine, or the exchange. But I am professing to contemplate Christian knowledge in what may be called its secular aspect, as it is practically useful in the intercourse of life and in general conversation; and I would encourage it as it bears upon the history, literature, and philosophy of Christianity.

 "It is to be considered, that our students are to go out into the world, and a world not of professed Catholics, but of inveterate, often bitter, commonly contemptuous Protestants; nay, of Protestants who, so far as they come from Protestant Universities and public schools, do know their own system, do know, in proportion to their general attainments, the doctrines and arguments of Protestantism. I should desire, then, to encourage in our students an intelligent apprehension of the relations, as I may call them, between the Church and society at large; for instance, the difference between the Church and a religious sect; between the Church and the civil power; what the Church claims of necessity, what it cannot dispense with, what it can; what it can grant, what it cannot. A Catholic hears the celibacy of the clergy discussed; is that usage of faith, or is it not of faith? He hears the Pope accused of interfering with the prerogatives of her Majesty, because he appoints an hierarchy. What is he to answer? What principle is to guide him in the remarks which he cannot escape from the necessity of making? He fills a station of importance, and he is addressed by some friend who has political reasons for wishing to know what is the difference between Canon and Civil Law, whether the Council of Trent has been received in France, whether a priest cannot in certain cases absolve prospectively, what is meant by his intention, what by the opus operatum ; whether, and in what sense, we consider Protestants to be heretics; whether any one can be saved without sacramental confession; whether we deny the reality of natural virtue, and what worth we assign to it.

 "Questions may be multiplied without limit, which occur in conversation between friends in social intercourse, or in the business of life, where no argument is needed, no subtle and delicate disquisition, but a few direct words stating the fact. Half the controversies which go on in the world arise from ignorance of the facts of the case; half the prejudices against Catholicity lie in the misinformation of the prejudiced parties. Candid persons are set right, and enemies silenced, by the mere statement of what it is that we believe. It will not answer the purpose for a Catholic to say, I leave it to theologians,'  I will ask my priest;' but it will commonly give him a triumph, as easy as it is complete, if he can then and there lay down the law, I say lay down the law;' for remarkable it is, that even those who speak against Catholicism like to hear about it, and will excuse its advocate from alleging arguments, if he can gratify their curiosity by giving them information. Generally speaking, however, as I have said, such mere information will really be an argument also. I recollect some twenty-five years ago three friends of my own, as they then were, clergymen of the Establishment, making a tour through Ireland. In the West or South they had occasion to become pedestrians for the day; and they took a boy of thirteen to be their guide. They amused themselves with putting questions to him on the subject of his religion; and one of them confessed to me on his return that that poor child put them all to silence. How? Not of course by any train of argument or refined theological disquisition, but merely by knowing and understanding the answers in his catechism.

 "Nor will argument itself be out of place in the hands of laymen mixing with the world. As secular power, honour, and resources are never more suitably placed than when they are in the hands of Catholics; so secular knowledge and secular gifts are then best employed when they minister to Divine Revelation. Theologians inculcate the matter and determine the details of that revelation; they view it from within; philosophers view it from without; and this external view may be called the Philosophy of Religion, and the office of delineating it externally is most gracefully performed by laymen. In the first age laymen were most commonly the apologists. Such were Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras, Aristides, Hermias, Minucius Felix, Arnobius, and Lactantius. In like manner, in this age some of the most prominent defences of the Church are from laymen; as De Maistre, Chateaubriand, Nicolas, Montalembert, and others. If laymen may write, lay-students may read; they surely may read what their fathers may have written. They might surely study other works too, ancient and modern, whether by ecclesiastics or laymen, which, although they do contain theology, nevertheless in their structure and drift are polemical. Such is Origen's great work against Celsus ... Even, however, if we confine ourselves strictly to the philosophy, that is, the external contemplation of religion, we shall have a range of reading sufficiently wide, and as valuable in its practical application as it is liberal in its character. In it will be included what are commonly called the Evidences, and what is an especially interesting subject at this day, the notes of the Church."

 A letter which has come into my hands from a foreign theologian singularly corroborates some of these remarks, going further than the author. It says, "My opinion is, which many others share, that at present laymen of a certain rank have more need of knowing dogmatic theology, ecclesiastical history, and canon law, than priests. The reason is, that in lay company the deepest and most difficult problems in those subjects are discussed. This is seldom done when any priest is present. Moreover, in your country, laymen have better opportunities than priests to correct a thousand false notions of Protestants."

 H.

 Designs and prospects of Russia

 [Possibly by N. Blehl.]

 SIR, A friend of mine has expressed his views on the subject of the attitude and views of Russia, in connection with the present war, so clearly in an unpublished pamphlet, that I hope that you will allow me to set them before your readers as far as your space admits.

 Russia, as he considers, is the power destined to gain by the mad and lawless policy of France and Sardinia. The "liberalism" put forward is only the familiar repetition of many another stroke of the kind. Such professions of philanthropic sympathy preceded the disruption of Poland; such talk was heard about Greece and before Navarino, and has now half-severed a new region from Turkey on the Danube, to be soon absorbed like Poland. The strings and levers of the Secret Societies of the Continent are in reality in her hands. She has Legitimacy in one hand, and Revolution in the other; and is so practised in the game, that she might almost play it blindfold.

 How long is it since it has been known to the better informed in every country but England which is so enlightened that she cannot see that before Russia's plans in Turkey can be much further developed, Austria must be reduced to at least an inert, suffering, exhausted condition? Austria's Slavic populations must also be taught to look for their future to the cognate Muscovite, and, with those of Turkey, gradually crystallise into Russian provinces, from the Black Sea to the Adriatic.

 This assault of France and Sardinia will probably advance Russia morally and politically though not as yet physically to all but the accomplishment of that design.

 Even a succession of military successes, pitched battles fairly won, can hardly save Austria. She will almost certainly break down in finance, after having, to men's surprise, just raised her head above the level of bankruptcy. Russia will have nothing to do but stand by, guiding events through her satellites in Paris, Turin, and London. If Austria be not sufficiently broken, she can disturb her by conspiracy in her rear, or even by attack. If she be so far broken as to present a prospect of France becoming too powerful, she can head a German alliance, and march to the Rhine, putting Austria once more as ostentatiously as possible in a position of disgraceful obligation for help out of a pit which the helper had dug.

 My own impression is, that the financial ruin and the show of help are for Austria, and that military concussion is reserved for France. But who can say? It may depend on the completeness of Louis Napoleon's collusion with Alexander. If he is yet to join in a partition of Turkey, then the whole weight of all calamity may probably fall on Austria. Still, the former course that, to wit, of hopeless depression of Austria through financial exhaustion, and of France through a defeat at the hands of a new coalition seems the more likely.

 In any event, the real case, as concerns Europe, has not even been hinted at by our wonderful Press and Parliament. On the one hand, a philanthropic impossibility, a lawless propagandism of constitutional forms, is accepted as motive for encouraging the march of France into Italy; on the other hand, a risk of such a thing as French ambition is the utmost motive that has been suggested for misgiving, and for pausing in headlong cooperation with Cavour and the Clubs. Certainly this is, so far, common sense; but how infinitely short of the truths involved, and the motives presented, by three words, "What of Russia?" You will not get that chord touched.

 But there are other motives besides those drawn from strategy, and geographical positions, and sympathies of blood and language, which make Russia intent on paralysing Austria, reducing her to a small German state, and slipping the Muscovite bit into the mouths of her Slavic tribes.

 The same motives which rendered it clear gain to Russia that the prestige of the Germanic empire the shadow of that of Rome should cease, and that Vienna should sink into only the capital of Austria, and her emperor be one, therefore, of a later date than the Romanoff, still prevail. The grandeur of the old imperial dignity is not yet sufficiently stripped from Russia's rival. Like that other august claimant of homage and reverence, the crown of St. Louis, it must be lowered to the dust. Russia must have none but new kings and parvenu states, or, at best, decrepit old ones, as the preliminary to enforcing her long-reserved claim to universal imperial sway, and the fruition of her pretended inheritance through Byzantium and the Palæologi.

 She has also to make her throne the citadel of man's religious necessities. However strong unbelief and vice and revolution may be, in the long-run Russia knows that men must have order, and all that renders order possible; and that, therefore, religion must reappear, like an Ararat, after every deluge. What strength may be got through these moral necessities, after teaching the world to feel them through successive confusions and desolations, and after breaking down every rival representative of such ideas, Russia means to retain for herself. She may somewhat miscalculate final issues, but, in the mean time, such are among her motives; such are, therefore, among the facts with which we are concerned in viewing such an event as war waged against Austria. Every portion of this subject, in which England has been only seeing, on the one hand, a tempting vision of a romantic united Italy, and, on the other, a warning spectre of an aggrandised France, teems, in fact, with Russia's schemes. Her motives and interests, ethnological, geographical, military, political, religious, crowd into the very van of the question. Yet they are unseen, unnamed. Their overwhelming importance is rendered doubly impressive by the dead silence regarding them. Such a demeanour, in the face of such facts, is fearfully ominous; it shows the truth to be so grave as to make the weak look askance, and that where ignorance and panic cannot be supposed, there must be collusion.

 One word as to contingence directly affecting our own shores. Which power is likely to do Russia's work of breaking England when her turn comes? Is it Austria? or is it France? Supposing Louis Napoleon to look forward to the humiliation of England as the triumph which is to give to himself fame, and to his dynasty permanence, when can he most safely attempt it, before or after the crushing of Austria? Austria (like the rest of Germany) might easily be induced to strike a blow to save England, and arrest the domination of France, were she herself standing upright and uncrippled. If French ambition, or rather vain-glory and revenge, are, therefore, ere long to be directed against us, the assault on Austria is a wise preliminary. Our most sure ally will be thus destroyed, not to speak of her dispositions changed by a sense of injury in being abandoned. France assail us with no alarms in her rear, but, on the contrary, with Italian ships, and ports, and sailors, added to her own. The temptation, should France entirely triumph in her present war, to pursue the career desired by Russia will be irresistible; and a deadly struggle between the two great maritime powers will end in the possession by a third of the prize for which they contend.

 H. H.

 [ Rambler, Sept. 1859.] Correspondence  To the Editor of the Rambler Napoleonism not Impious

 SIR, I should not have discovered that your correspondent "Sigma" was aiming at me (for I could agree with almost all he says, excepting what I consider the bitterness of his tone), had he not quoted one clause from my letter. I said that the King of Sardinia was "fighting for fighting's sake" in the Crimea. I continue: "Perhaps, in consideration of the antiquity of his house, he was tolerated as a knight-errant of the nineteenth century." On this he remarks: "Few things had less to do than chivalry or religion with the presence of the Piedmontese troops in the Crimea. Count Cavour at least never doubted that the French alliance was sure of its consummation on the plains of Lombardy. There was no 'fighting for fighting's sake.'" Strange that so able a writer should not have recollected when he wrote (for he must have observed it when he read), that my argument implied that Victor Ermmanuel did not fight for fighting's sake; and that I was arguing against the blindness of Englishmen, who acted as if he was, and as if he had no thought of a quid pro quo ; and who were angry with him now that he was fighting with a professed object, when they could allow him to fight when the best that could be said of him was, that he was fighting with no object at all.

 However, I have not taken up my pen to answer an attack, which scarcely any one will have observed, and in which no one will have been able to concur. I write to protest against your correspondent's severe language on the subject of Louis Napoleon. Speaking of the Lombard war, he says: "France has gathered up her strength to wrestle with the Conservative force of Europe. This is not a mere contest about the boundary of empires, or the faith of treaties, or the mutual antipathy of long-estranged and hostile races. Once more the first-born of democracy has gone forth on her impious apostolate;" her impious apostles being Napoleons I. and III. There is no doubt that such is his meaning, for he proceeds to speak of " Napoleonism ." Such language, almost fanatical, as I think, might still stand as a mere matter of opinion, even though it has been any thing but born out by the event. Louis Napoleon has not been carried away by the Revolution; on the contrary, the apprehension of being involved in it has been one of his reasons, as he gives them, for closing the war. He has again and again disowned any purpose of touching the Pope's temporal power; and even in his Milan proclamation, which was more open to exception than any of his speeches or writings, he says that he came with no "prearranged plan to dispossess sovereigns." We know, on the contrary, what Revolution or Red-republicanism means.

 What I protest against, then, is not your correspondent's extravagant language, as I consider it, nor his running against facts, but his thinking it allowable to slander a remarkable man, merely because he does not understand him. I was far too cautious in my former letter, and am in this, to take Louis Napoleon's part; but it is another thing altogether to indulge in invectives, nay slanderous invectives, against him. Public men have characters, as other men; and their characters are as dear to them. We should do as we would be done by. We may fairly criticise what they have done; we cannot fairly impute what they have not done as yet, and what they disown.

 J. O.