ts reported the names of
nine cardinals who were ready to make terms with Italian unity, of which
the pope himself said: "Ce serait un beau reve." In this country, Newman
did not share the animosity of conservatives against Napoleon III. and
his action in Italy. When the flood, rising, reached the papal throne,
he preserved an embarrassed silence, refusing, in spite of much
solicitation, to commit himself even in private. An impatient M.P. took
the train down to Edgbaston, and began, trying to draw him: "What times
we live in, Father Newman! Look at all that is going on in
Italy."--"Yes, indeed! And look at China too, and New Zealand!"
Lacordaire favoured the cause of the Italians more openly, in spite of
his Paris associates. He hoped, by federation, to save the interests of
the Holy See, but he was reconciled to the loss of provinces, and he
required religious liberty at Rome. Lamoriciere was defeated in
September 1860, and in February the fortress of Gaeta, which had become
the last Roman outwork, fell. Then Lacordaire, disturbed in his
reasoning by the logic of events, and by an earnest appeal to his
priestly conscience, as his biographer says: "ebranle un moment par une
lettre eloquente," broke away from his friends:--

Que Montalembert, notre ami commun, ne voie pas dans ce qui se passe
en Italie, sauf le mal, un progres sensible dans ce que nous avons
toujours cru le bien de l'eglise, cela tient a sa nature passionnee.
Ce qui le domine aujourd'hui c'est la haine du gouvernement
francais.--Dieu se sert de tout, meme du despotisme, meme de
l'egoisme; et il y a meme des choses qu'il ne peut accomplir par des
mains tout a fait pures.--Qu'y puis-je? Me declarer contre l'Italie
parce que ses chaines tombent mal a propos? Non assurement: je laisse
a d'autres une passion aussi profonde, et j'aime mieux accepter ce
que j'estime un bien de quelque part qu'il vienne.--Il est vrai que
la situation temporelle du Pape souffre presentement de la liberation
de l'Italie, et peut-etre en souffrira-t-elle encore assez longtemps:
mais c'est un malheur qui a aussi ses fins dans la politique
mysterieuse de la Providence. Souffrir n'est pas mourir, c'est
quelquefois expier et s'eclairer.

This was written on 22nd February 1861. In April Doellinger spoke on the
Roman question in the Odeon at Munich, and explained himself more fully
in the autumn, in the most popular of all his books.

The