Thy robe paternal grasping in his fears, Arts bloomed, and Learning budded; softening Faith And made all gentle as its odorous breeze, And even still the convocation of the Council-" the Parliament of men, the federation of the world," in a different sense from that of the poet, but in a higher, and truer, and in the only possible sense-affects and somewhat astonishes his imagination. The following passage is supposed to be the language of Cardinal Grandison, and we must admit the imitation of that stately and lucid style is in a high degree artistic: "An Ecumenical Council!" said Lothair. "It is a weak phrase," resumed the Cardinal, "to say it will be the greatest event of this century. I believe it will be the greatest event since the Episcopate of S. Peter; greater, in its consequences to the human race, than the fall of the Roman Empire, the pseudo-Reformation, or the Revolution of France. It is not much more than three hundred years since the last Ecumenical Council, the Council of Trent, and the world still vibrates with its decisions. But the Council of Trent, compared with the impending Council of the Vatican, will be as the medieval world of Europe compared with the vast and complete globe which man has since discovered and mastered. . . . . That alone will be a demonstration of power on the part of the Holy Father which no conqueror from Sesostris to Napoleon has ever equalled. It was only the bishops of Europe that assembled at Trent, and, inspired by the Holy Spirit, their decisions have governed man for more than three hundred years. But now the bishops of the whole world will assemble round the chair of S. Peter, and prove by their presence the catholic character of the Church. Asia will send its patriarchs and pontiffs, and America and Australia its prelates; and at home, my dear young friend, the Council of the Vatican will offer a striking contrast to the Council of Trent; Great Britain will be powerfully represented. The bishops of Ireland might have been counted on, but it is England also that will send her prelates now, and some of them will take no ordinary share in transactions that will give a new form and colour to human existence." "Is it true, sir, that the object of the Council is to declare the infallibility of the Pope?" "In matters of faith and morals," said the Cardinal quickly. "There is no other infallibility. That is a secret with God. All that we can know the decision of the Council on this awful head is that its decision, inspired by the Holy Spirit, must infallibly be right. We must await that decision, and, when made known, we must embrace it, not only with obedience, but with the interior assent of mind and will. But there are other results of the Council on which we may speculate; and which, I believe, it will certainly accomplish :-first, it will show in a manner that cannot be mistaken that there is only one alternative for the human intellect : Rationalism or Faith; and, secondly, it will exhibit to the Christian powers the inevitable future they are now preparing for themselves." It is true, and it is the bare truth. All roads lead to Rome, and on all the roads men march. There are nearly two hundred millions of the sons of Adam of every race, and tongue, and rank, and clime, who look to the throne of Peter with a reverence far beyond that which the tribes of Judah even owned to the sceptre of David. The very list of a Roman Congregation electrifies the fancy by the magnificent incongruity of the historical associations which it suggests, while it soothes the soul by the sense of world-wide unity of faith, and law, and baptism which it confirms. In that august catalogue Jerusalem and Chicago; Venice, Bombay, and Monte Video; Hebron, San Francisco, Pekin, and Westminster; Vienna, Turin, Berlin, Paris, and Madrid; Brisbane, Pernambuco, Dromore, Hongkong, Arad, and Goa; Glasgow, Ghent, Kazan, Pesth, Amsterdam, Chili, Constantinople, revolve as in some marvellous kaleidoscope of infinite variety and exquisite unity. Every skin, every tongue, every clime, every order of society is represented there by men who have the aspect of sages or of saints, by men who counsel sovereigns in seats of oldest power, by men who challenge martyrdom at the hands of savages on desert frontiers. While the rulers of the world are levying men and borrowing money for a war which may bathe Europe in blood, this unique and august assembly proceeds in the name and by the power of the Holy Ghost to declare a hitherto unwritten law, the tradition of well-nigh twenty centuries, and so to consolidate and homage the authority of the Vicar of Christ in the front of a world incredulous, divided against itself, among whose children truths diminish, which is full of wars and rumours of war. In a few days more the great word will have gone forth from all the gates of Rome-from the hallowed lips of the Pontiff, who lives not in vain to the years of Peter, who bears not in vain, true conqueror by the Cross as he is, the symbol Crux de Cruce. With it will spread, we may dare to hope, a great current of grace, and a great energy of faith among all the children of the Church; and in the heretical countries, Germany, America, Britain, even in the Protestant part of VOL. XV.-NO. XXIX. [New Series.] N Ireland, there will be a more zealous propagandism of God's whole truth; and in schismatic countries more eager efforts towards unity; and in heathen countries more missionaries and more martyrs. But meantime the voice of the world is for war, and the Imperial Eagles swoop towards the bastions of Ehrenbreitstein. How the duel of the two great military powers shall end, who but the God of battles can tell? The battalions are equally big and brave, the armament nicely balanced, the generals as valiant and as fortunate who serve the Hohenzollern as those who serve the Bonaparte. The German Empire may reappear; the French Empire may disappear. The Rhine may ripple upon the same and yet another soil at Coblentz, at Cologne, even at Rotterdam. A Prussian garrison at Paris may try again, and this time succeed, in blowing up the Pont de Jena. The Cossack may arrive at Constantinople; the Spanish flag reascend the keep of Gibraltar; Belgium vanish from the map, like Hanover; Italy burst, like a bomb-shell. But when the deluge of blood subsides, whoever and whatever be submerged, for certain, the Ark and the Dove of the Ark will reappear with the rainbow-reappear in augmented reverence and power, ancient of days, but young with the youth of the angels, the Servant of the Servants of Christ, but the King of the Kings of the earth. ART. VIII. THE LAND BILL AND THE LORDS. A Bill to Amend the Law relating to the Occupation and Ownership of Land in Ireland. (Proposed and brought in by Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Chichester Fortescue, and Mr. John Bright.) Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 15 February, 1870. Lords' Amendments to the Irish Land Bill. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 8 July, 1870. HE Irish Land Bill, at the moment that we write these lines, may be compared to some stout ship freighted with the fate of many men, which, after a difficult channel passage, sees morning break over a rising tide with the port of its destination full in view. It has passed many a treacherous shoal and sunken rock. It has weathered not a few gales of rough and contrary winds. It has had its spells of delusive calm. Once it was in imminent danger of sinking. Even when it first saw land the coast was lined with the lamps of the wreckers. The helmsman's hand is still on the tiller, for it is not quite certain how many feet of water there are on the bar. But the voyage is, in truth, at an end; and after a few Custom House formalities the goodly cargo will be landed. O navis, referent in mare te novi Fluctus. O quid agis? Fortiter occupa Portum. When we last wrote on this subject, Mr. Gladstone, in a moment more like despair than any that we can remember in the course of his energetic and zealous career, had said that he feared it must remain for wiser and bolder men, in a more propitious time, to solve the great problem of the Irish Land. There was for some days a serious danger that the Bill would be withdrawn. And if it had been, it may be taken for certain that no English Government would venture to touch the topic for at least ten years to come. Because the danger to the Bill did not in reality proceed from the Opposition. Mr. Disraeli was evidently unfeignedly anxious to get it out of the way, notched and whittled, as far as possible, but not at the risk of utterly destroying its use. Dr. Ball, who took charge of the case of the Irish landlords with the same skilful zeal that he displayed in the case of the Irish Church Establishment last year, is a gentleman who, partly because he was a Liberal politician until very lately, partly because he has a good understanding and no small degree of tact, knows when a measure may be modified but must not be resisted, and how to set the drag of discretion at the right minute on the run-away gallop of the Irish Tories. But where would be the use of passing the Bill over whatever resistance or whatever concessions of the Opposition, if it were certain beforehand not to attain its true end; if, it were certain, that is to say, that it would not satisfy and pacify the Irish people? This for a time seemed to be an evident eventuality. All the signs were sinister. There was a great and sudden increase of agrarian crime. The language used at some public meetings, and in portions of the press, can only be corapared to the whisky drugged with vitriol and bluestone, which is sold to the peasantry at country fairs, causing a perceptible increase of violence and insanity in the country. But even in graver regions the most deplorable fatuities were uttered, and put upon formal record. The Corporation of the City of Dublin actually passed a resolution, which they directed to the Prime Minister, to the effect that the position of the Irish tenant after the Bill had been passed would be rather worse than it was before. One of the Tenant Societies of Munster occupied itself with the task of vilifying Mr. Moore during the last days of his upright life, because he had ventured earnestly and wisely to support the second reading of the Bill. The Freeman's Journal, the organ of Sir John Gray, the one recognized orthodox advocate of Catholic interests in the country, the widely-accepted vehicle of Irish Liberalism, the steady, consistent, and honoured supporter of Liberal Governments like Lord Palmerston's and Lord Russell's, of Governments which denounced tenant-right in every mood and tense, and declared they would sustain the Church Establishment while there was a plank of the Constitution left to stand onthis popular and pious oracle was praying Heaven to pity the country that was handed over to the mercy and wisdom of such Ministers as Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Fortescue. But, happily, Heaven has shed not pity only but sense on a country not unloved of Heaven. There are fewer clouds in the Western sky than Sir Robert Peel saw there a generation ago; the wail of the ocean is not altogether so melancholy as it was, even when Mr. Disraeli last listened to it. The country grows calmer. Crime diminishes. Every tenant in Ireland is thinking, and thanking God in these days that the Land Question will be settled and well settled in a year in which the country has the prospect of a finer harvest than, perhaps, any other country in Europe. The first and the twelfth of July pass by in peace. The noisier and more rancorous elements of opinion seem to die away in vague sound, as ineffectual as the echoes in empty houses. A wiser, less time-serving, and more truth-loving, a manlier, simpler, and more candid public opinion is gradually forming in Ireland; and the study of the process is interesting. There are countries which, in certain conditions of the growth of the public character seem to cast up scum where others deposit lees. Ireland is one of those countries which sometimes flings its worst elements to the surface; but a shake sends them to the bottom, and the liquor is all the clearer and calmer for the process. The main elements of Irish society are sound, notwithstanding the amount of turbulence and flatulence at top. The nation is still, in the main, as a great thinker fancifully described it some fifteen years ago, "a pious peasantry patriarchally presided by a patriotic priesthood." But it has been one of the worst results of the bad state of its public life since the Famine that the country has been drained not merely of bone and sinew, but of soul and brain. Men of honour and of talent have found that the conditions of public life have become gradually intolerable to them. In other countries one generation advances on the line of another. But whatever |