or Otho and Henry to depose popes; for he
thought that historians should not fit theories to facts, but should be
content with showing how things worked. Much secret and suppressed
antagonism found vent in 1858, when one who had been his assistant in
writing the _Reformation_ and was still his friend, declared that he
would be a heretic whenever he found a backing.

Those with whom he actively coalesced felt at times that he was
incalculable, that he pursued a separate line, and was always learning,
whilst others busied themselves less with the unknown. This note of
distinctness and solitude set him apart from those about him, during his
intimacy with the most catholic of Anglican prelates, Forbes, and with
the lamented Liddon. And it appeared still more when the denominational
barrier of his sympathy was no longer marked, and he, who had stood in
the rank almost with De Maistre and Perrone, found himself acting for
the same ends with their enemies, when he delivered a studied eulogy on
Mignet, exalted the authority of Laurent in religious history and of
Ferrari in civil, and urged the Bavarian academy to elect Taine, as a
writer who had but one rival in France, leaving it to uncertain
conjecture whether the man he meant was Renan. In theory it was his
maxim that a man should guard against his friends. When he first
addressed the university as Rector, saying that as the opportunity might
never come again, he would employ it to utter the thoughts closest to
his heart, he exhorted the students to be always true to their
convictions and not to yield to surroundings; and he invoked, rightly or
wrongly, the example of Burke, his favourite among public men, who,
turning from his associates to obey the light within, carried the nation
with him. A gap was apparent now between the spirit in which he devoted
himself to the service of his Church and that of the men whom he most
esteemed. At that time he was nearly the only German who knew Newman
well and appreciated the grace and force of his mind. But Newman, even
when he was angry, assiduously distinguished the pontiff from his court:

There will necessarily always be round the Pope second-rate people,
who are not subjects of that supernatural wisdom which is his
prerogative. For myself, certainly I have found myself in a different
atmosphere, when I have left the Curia for the Pope himself.

Montalembert protested that there were things in _Kirche und Kirchen_
whi