great bitterness and animosity: but with a point which showed that they understood what they were perverting; and that they had obtained their knowledge from sources which could only have been opened to them by violation of duty. Their narratives of events which were passing under my own eyes, day by day, were so near the truth, and yet so far from it, so literally accurate, but so absolutely false, that for the first time I learned to understand Paolo Sarpi's "History of the Council of Trent;" and foresaw how, perhaps from among nominal Catholics, another Paolo Sarpi will arise to write the History of the Council of the Vatican. But none of this applies to our own country. I am the less disposed to charge these misrepresentations, in the case of English correspondents, to the account of ill will, though they abundantly showed the inborn animosity of an anti-Catholic tradition, because neither correspondents nor journalists ever willingly expose themselves to be laughed at. therefore put it down to the obvious reason that when English Protestants undertake to write of an Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church, noth-ing less than a miracle could preserve them from making themselves ridiculous. This, I am sorry to know, for the fair name of our country, has been the effect produced by English newspapers upon foreign countries. Latterly, however, they seemed to have learned prudence, and to have relied no longer on correspondents who, hardly knowing the name, nature, use, or purpose of anything about which they had to write, were at the mercy of such informants as English travelers meet at a tabled'hôte in Rome. Then appeared paragraphs with

I

out date or place, duly translated, as we discovered by comparing them, from Italian and German newspapers. They were less amusing, but they were even more misleading. By way of preface, I will give the estimate of two distinguished Bishops, who are beyond suspicion, as to the truthfulness of one notorious journal.

Of all the foreign sources from which the English newspapers drew their inspiration, the chief, perhaps, was the "Augsburg Gazette." This paper has many titles to special consideration. The infamous matter of Janus first appeared in it under the form of articles. During the Council, it had in Rome at least one English contributor. Its letters on the Council have been translated into English and published by a Protestant bookseller, in a volume by Quirinus.

I refrain from giving my own estimate of the book, until I have first given the judgment of a distinguished Bishop of Germany, one of the minority opposed to the definition, whose cause the Augsburg Gazette" professed to serve.

Bishop Von Ketteler, of Mayence, publicly protested against "the systematic dishonesty of the correspondent of the Augsburg Gazette.'" "It is a pure invention," he adds, "that the Bishops named in that journal declared that Döllinger represented, as to the substance of the question (of infallibility), the opinions of a majority of the German Bishops." And this, he said, "is not an isolated error, but part of a system which consists in the daring attempt to publish false news, with the object of deceiving the German public, according to a plan concerted beforehand.” "It will be

necessary one day to expose in all their nakedness and abject mendacity the articles of the 'Augsburg Gazette.' They will present a formidable and lasting testimony to the extent of injustice of which party men, who affect the semblance of superior education, have been guilty against the Church."* Again, at a later date, the Bishop of Mayence found it necessary to address to his Diocese another public protest against the inventions of the "Augsburg Gazette," "The Augsburg Gazette,'" he says, "hardly ever pronounces my name without appending to it a falsehood." "It would have been easy for us to prove that every Roman letter of the 'Augsburg Gazette' contains gross perversions and untruths. Whoever is conversant with the state of things here, and reads these letters, cannot doubt an instant that these errors are voluntary, and are part of a concerted system designed to deceive the public. If time fails me to correct publicly this uninterrupted series of falsehoods, it is impossible for me to keep silence when an attempt is made, with so much perfidy, to misrepresent my own convictions." †

* The Vatican, March 4, 1870, p. 145.

The Vatican, June 17, 1870, p. 319. "The Archbishop of Cologne has condemned a pretended Catholic Journal in which the dogma of the Infallibility is attacked, and the proceedings of the Council misrepresented and vilified. The sentence of the Archbishop on this matter derives the greater weight from the fact of his having, as he states, formed part of the minority in the memorable vote of July 13. The Archbishop says: "The clergy of this Diocese are aware that a weekly paper, the "Rheinischer Merkur," constantly attacks, in an odious manner, and with ignoble weapons, the Holy Church, in the person of its lawful chiefs the Pope and the Bishops, and in its highest representative the Ecumenical Council; so that men's minds are disturbed, and the hearts of the

Again, Bishop Hefele, commenting on the Roman correspondents of the "Augsburg Gazette" says: "It is evident that there are people, not Bishops, but having relations with the Council, who are not restrained by duty and conscience."* faithful alienated from the Church. It also openly advocates the abolition, by the secular authority, of the Church's liberty and independence. I therefore hold it to be my duty, in discharge of my pastoral office, to expose the anti-Catholic character of the said paper; not because I regard it as of any greater importance than those other more noisy organs of the press which are the exponents of hatred against religion, but simply because the paper abovenamed pretends to be Catholic. It is on that account that, as Catholic Bishop of this city, I feel called upon to denounce the falsehood of the assumption of the name of Catholic by a journal which is laboring to overthrow the unity of the Church by separating Catholics from that rock on which she is founded. This declaration is also due from me to those my Right Reverend Brethren in the Episcopate who belonged with me to the minority in the Council. The journal in question assumes to be the exponent of the sentiments of that minority, but it never was in any way, directly or indirectly, recognized by it or any of its members; it has been, on the contrary, repeatedly blamed and denounced. Wherefore I exhort all the Reverend Clergy of the Archdiocese to be mindful of their duty as sons of the Catholic Church; and not countenance in any way whatsoever, either by taking it in or reading it, the journal above-named, which outrages our holy Mother. rejects her authority, and desires to see her enslaved. I also exhort you on all fitting occasions to warn your flocks of the dangerous and anti Catholic character of that journal, so that they may be dissuaded from buying or reading it, and may escape being deluded by its errors. I had resolved to order an instruction to be given from the pulpit upon the more recent decisions of the Council, and especially upon the infallible teaching of the Pope, and to explain therein the true sense of the dogma; and thus to remove the prejudices that have been raised against it, as if it were a novel doctrine or one in contradiction to the end of the Church's constitution, or to sound reason; and to meet generally the objections raised against the validity of the Council's decision.'"

* The Vatican, March 4, 1870, p. 145.

We had reason to believe that the names of these people, both German and English, were well known

to us.

Now the testimony of the Bishop of Mayence, as to the falsehoods of these correspondents respecting Rome and Germany, I can confirm by my testimony as to their treatment of matters relating to Rome and England. I do not think there is a mention of my own name without, as the Bishop of Mayence says, the appendage of a falsehood. The whole tissue of the correspondence is false. Even the truths it narrates are falsified; and through this discolored medium the English people, by the help of Quirinus and the "Saturday Review," gaze and are misled.

To relieve this graver aspect of the subject, I will add a few livelier exploits of our English correspondents. On January 14, an English journal announced that the Bishops were unable to speak Latin; and that Cardinal Altieri (who laid down his life for his flock in the cholera three years ago), in whose rooms the Bishops met, "was beside himself." "What is there," the correspondent of another paper asked, "in seven hundred old men dressed in white, and wearing tall paper caps?" "The Oriental Bishops," he says, "refused to wear white mitres:" reasonably, because they never wear them. "The Bishop of Thun attacked the Bishop of Sura with a violence which threatened personal collision." There is no Bishop of Thun. The same paper, July 7, says, "I was positively shocked, yesterday, at finding that the Roman Catholic Hierarchy of my own country is a sham; at least, so far as regards its territorial and inde