a real republic, suppose a legitimate monarch on the throne. The needs of a lawful sovereign are not so great, so numerous, so urgent, as those of a usurper; and a legitimate monarch, from the very fact of his being legitimate, would rule in unison with national recollections and national attachments; in consequence Gallic Catholicism would once more be in conflict with Roman Catholicism, and the evil spirit of Jesuitism would be expelled. In any contingency the existing clerical despotism would be sure to suffer from that reaction of the public mind which comes from the undue pressures of authority in every land, and nowhere with less uncertainty or more revengeful force than in France. Nor must it be thought that the union which now subsists between the Church and the State in France is cordial as well as friendly. United for the moment by a common necessity, the two have ulterior aims and mean different things. Once seated on the imperial throne, which is his real object, Louis Napoleon would treat Pius IX. with as little ceremony as his uncle treated Pius VII. The nephew imitating, would, in all probability, caricature the uncle here as in other things, and the present Pope might find himself a prisoner in France even at the moment when with his saintly hand he had placed the imperial crown on his patron's brows. On the other hand, the Church has no affection for Louis Napoleon. It is true she is now hand in hand with him; but while her hand is in his, her heart and her eye look and long in another direction. Her ultimate object is the restoration of legitimacy. With a man-made President or Emperor she has no sympathies-she can have no sympathies. Holding Kingship, like Priestship, to be of Divine origin and Divine right, she owes allegiance to one sovereign-one alone. Louis Napoleon is to her a mere makeshift, with whom, for want of a better master, she politically puts up, hoping, by his means, to gain power to bring back the rightful heir. In that purpose she may succeed; but no small adroitness does she require in the part she has to play. The Count de Chambord has issued commands to the effect that his friends should keep themselves free from the impure contact of adhesion to the ruling power. But the Church is salaried by the State. Thus drawn in two opposite directions, the Church tries to keep a medium path. Hating the basis of his power, she supports Napoleon; revering his claims, she practically disowns Henry. Her heart and her hand go the reverse way. What wonder if in the consequent confusion she make a mistake; if, loving the rightful heir much, she serve the occupant of his inheritance less; and if the suspicions which would ensue should engender coldness, and coldness lead to alienation. Then the Prince-President, no longer playing at religion, throws off the

mask, and threatens, like his uncle, to turn Protestant, meanwhile driving Jesuitism out of the land.

The present religious movement must be short lived also because it is factitious. Evidence of the assertion may be found among the details already given. Other evidence is at hand. For instance, miracle-mongering has been revived. We do not mean to charge with known falsehood all who are concerned in the frauds or delusions with which Romish writings have recently abounded. Many, we dare say, are dupes of their own fancies and their own desires. But what we wish to mark is, that just at the nick of time when they are wanted prodigies make their bow. If sent for, they could not have arrived more seasonably. Delay, indeed, there has been, but this delay has not arisen from the want of urgent messengers. If miracles in some cases have not come, miracles have been well advertised for. All the excitements of the papal system have been put into play. From Rome, as a centre, the strings of superstition, of old memories, of intense bigotry, of fear, of hope, in all parts, and especially in France, have been pulled, and pulled sometimes with a twitch of impatience. Books full of wonderful stories are in circulation; miraculous tales are recited from the pulpit; religious processions are multiplied; sacred spots are visited; holy relics are displayed; every thing is done by which the imaginations of the ignorant may be made to teem with those fancies which, being projected outwardly, become prodigies. In certain excited states of the public mind prodigies are, so to say, a natural product. A diseased condition becoming for the time a normal condition, produces correspondent effects with unerring certainty. Wishes then assume the shape of realities; fears take a corporal form in some hobgoblin; and even the palsied limb is made rigid and pliable under the vital energy thrown into it by intense and concentrated mental power.

Were it seemly for us to occupy our pages with ridiculous stories, we could abundantly supply instances and details of the efforts which have been made to get up miracles. It must suffice, however, to mention one or two more of the special means employed. The worship of the Virgin has for this purpose been copiously drawn upon, and no means have been spared to kindle thereon and thereby the sensuous and inflammable imaginations of the South. Then a jubilee was proclaimed, offering full pardon of all sins to the faithful and obedient, and special advantages to such as turned to profit the superstitious capital thus supplied. Besides, a speciality has been given to every usual ceremony. The exhibition in Rome at Christmas of the holy relics there preserved of the birth of Jesus and his manger was trumpeted forth as a timely corroboration of the belief of the believing, and a suitable rebuke of the unbelief

of the unbelieving; though the event and all connected with it is a part of the ordinary routine of Rome's superstitious observances. The Queen of Spain became a mother; the Pope sent her a set of baby-linen on which he had bestowed his benediction. The two events are common enough; and not long since the fear of ridicule would have made even Jesuit writers throw over the present of his holiness the discreet veil of silence. But times are changing; there is something to be hoped for from self-glorification, and therefore Rome writes thus:

"On the 4th of January the Holy Father blessed in his private chapel, a set of baby-linen destined for the young princess which the Queen of Spain has just brought forth. The benediction took place in the presence of the palatine cardinals, the prelates of the court, and of the ambassador plenipotentiary from her Catholic Majesty to the Holy See.

"Touching is the custom which this ceremony calls to mind. It goes back to the ages most deeply impressed with the Catholic spirit :—to those ages when sovereigns willingly lowered the pride of their crown before THE SUPERIOR MAJESTY of the pontifical tiara, and like persons of private rank, asked from the Vicar of Jesus Christ a benediction, both on the government of their kingdoms, and the members of their families-happy time when faith was the soul of the world, and bent every brow before its empire.

'Spain, so deeply catholic, could not allow a tradition to become extinct, so Christian and so conformed to the pious sentiments which particularly distinguished its sovereigns. The Queen Isabella, in spite of the misfortunes of the times, and the convulsions which have shaken the church in her country, remembered this custom, always dear to the Queens of Spain. She therefore entreated the pope to bless the linen with which the young princess, granted by heaven to her ardent prayers, was to be clothed. With his usual kindness the Holy Father gave a favourable reception to so pious a request, and a magnificent bundle has been sent by his Holiness to the Spanish Queen. Nothing can equal the richness and beauty of the objects chosen to make up this royal present. The linen is of incomparable fineness; the lace of the greatest value; the coverlets of the royal cradle are admirably embroidered in gold; but the most precious object is a reliquary of the richest and most elegant workmanship. It contains a considerable piece of the holy cradle of our Lord, which has been preserved in the church of "St. Mary the greater," called from this circumstance "the cradlechurch." This will be an inestimable treasure for the young princess, and the most precious among those which are connected with her birth. "In the days of anarchy in which we live, in the midst of this universal contempt for authority and for the sovereign majesty, it is of consequence to call attention to the high esteem in which the Church has always held the person and the power of catholic monarchs. Immediately on the birth of a prince or princess destined by inheritance one day or other to carry the royal sceptre, the church surrounds the cradle

with benedictions: in some sort it consecrates the clothes which are to cover its delicate limbs, and protect its tender life against the dangers of the first months: it puts under the special protection of heaven this creature so frail, and yet so precious in a religious point of view and for the happiness of the people; it thus gives its most striking token of the respect it has for those whom God destines to become the pastors of his people, and the heads of a part of his earthly kingdom, Once more, it seems to us that this is a lesson very well suited to our wants; may we profit by it, and learn that the depositaries of power have a right to all our respect. There is no doctrine more needful to be restored in our days. This is the foundation of society and of states; this is the surest preservative against the revolutionary spirit which has so long tormented Europe.'

What maudlin have we here! Blest baby-clothes a successful antagonist to revolution! Did we not truly describe the present reactionary movement as artificial? What is there any thing sound, any thing manly, any thing sensible, any thing natural, in this mawkish eulogy put forth in France at the most seasonable moment to encourage the President and outshame the opponents of his power? And what must be the state of that man's mind who could write and put his name to drivelling such as we have forced ourselves to translate? No, no!-in such a state of mind there is nothing that Protestantism need fear: the only fear-and of this there is great fear-is that trumpery of the kind may so damage religion as to produce ere long infidelity as barren and as mocking as any that has gone before.

Moreover, the movement cannot last, because it is of foreign origin. It is not native in its growth. It did not spring spontaneously out of the French heart. It is no outward expression of a deeply felt necessity. Whatever flowers or fruit it bears, the plant is an exotic. Not only does the plant come from abroad, but it has been forced on the French nation. Introduced among them most stealthily, it is contraband. Jesuitism has been smuggled into France, first under the frock of the priest, and then under the gown of the President. Forced on the acceptance of the French, it has been equally forced on their retention. The hand that was opening to cast the hateful thing away, has been seized by the stronger hand of the law, and with a merciless gripe compelled to hold what it has.

And what is this foreign gift? It is Ultramontanism. The word is a revelation as well as a proof to those who are conversant with the history of France. Yes, it is that Ultramontanism which is among the deepest dislikes of the French heart, and which can by no possibility take root therein. In France, Catholicism has

f L'Univers, Jan. 25, 1852.

life in the national life. Catholicism has entered into the system, and been appropriated by its organs. But French Catholicism differs totally from Spanish or Italian Catholicism. And it differs just on those points in which France has ever been ready to differ with Rome. Catholicism, as a religion of the senses, suits the Frenchman, who lives a sensuous existence in the light and joy of his own Belle France.' But the Frenchman is a descendant of the Francs; and the very name Francs shows how freedom is in the heart's blood of the nation. Without liberty, religion has no charms for a Frenchman. Hence that warfare of France with Rome, by which the French church wrested out of the Pope's hands the liberties to which neither the Spaniard nor the Italian of old aspired, and the refusal of which constitutes the very essence of Ultramontanism. Ere the present religious movement in France can sink into the heart of the nation, one of two very unlikely things must take place, either the genius of the French people must become totally different, or Jesuitism must form an alliance with freedom. It is no answer to this remark to say that France is now held in fetters of iron. The despotism of a few months does not blot out the testimony of centuries. The French love freedom both in church and state; and freedom in both they will ere long enjoy.

Even at this moment a violent struggle is going on against the attempt to inoculate France with the Ultramontane virus. No sooner had the political horizon been cleared of the smoke of the President's fire-arms than the Jesuitical party began to assail the classics, both ancient and modern, and to call for the introduction into colleges and schools, as manuals of instruction, of selections from the ecclesiastical fathers. The old battle of the ancients against the moderns and the moderns against the ancients was renewed, and is now being fought over again in France. L'Abbé Gaume, with the aid of his pamphlet Le Ver Rongeur, not only of a sudden finds himself a notoriety, but has the questionable distinction of dividing French episcopacy into two camps. The respective forces are led by the Bishop of Arras, who supports Gaume and his literary barbarism, and the Bishop of Orleans, who opposes the same. In this issue once more the merits of Homer, Virgil, Demosthenes, Cicero, the merits of Bossuet, Corneille, and Racine, are a moot point. According to the Ultramontanists, not only the pagan authors must be damned for not having been Catholics, but for the same reason their books must be put under the ban, together with those of their French imitators. In education neither the one nor the other must any longer hold a place. Still more, according to the same authorities it is not very certain that St. Thomas Aquinas is not, as a literary model, far preferable to