of those who
had governed France during sixty years;' and it was universally admitted
that the great body of the clergy, with Archbishop Sibour at their head,
were in this critical moment ardent supporters of the new
government.[55] Kinglake, in a page of immortal beauty, has described
the scene when, thirty days after the _Coup d'etat_, Louis Napoleon
appeared in Notre Dame to receive, amid all the pomp that Catholic
ceremonial could give, the solemn blessing of the Church, and to listen
to the Te Deum thanking the Almighty for what had been accomplished. The
time came, it is true, when the policy of the priests was changed, for
they found that Louis Napoleon was more liberal and less clerical than
they imagined; but in estimating the feelings with which French
Liberals judge the Church, its attitude towards the perjury and violence
of December 2 should never be forgotten.

To those who judge the political ethics of the Roman Catholic Church not
from the deceptive pages of such writers as Newman, but from an
examination of its actual conduct in the different periods of its
history, it will appear in no degree inconsistent. It is but another
instance added to many of the manner in which it regards all acts which
appear conducive to its interests. It was the same spirit that led a
Pope to offer public thanks for the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and to
order Vasari to paint the murder of Coligny on the walls of the Vatican
among the triumphs of the Church. No Christian sovereign of modern times
has left a worse memory behind him than Ferdinand II. of Naples, who
received the Pope when he fled to Gaeta in 1848. He was the sovereign
whose government was described by Gladstone as 'a negation of God.' He
not only destroyed the Constitution he had sworn to observe, but threw
into a loathsome dungeon the Liberal ministers who had trusted him. But
in the eyes of the Pope his services to the Church far outweighed all
defects, and the monument erected to this 'most pious prince' may be
seen in one of the chapels of St. Peter's. Every visitor to Paris may
see the fresco in the Madeleine in which Napoleon I. appears seated
triumphant on the clouds and surrounded by an admiring priesthood, the
most prominent and glorified figure in a picture representing the
history of French Christianity, with Christ above, blessing the work.

It is indeed a most significant fact that in Catholic countries the
highest moral level in public life is