a court-like prelate observed that this
admiration for Truth did her honour, as it was seldom shared by persons
in her station. "That," said the Queen, "is because truths are not all
made of marble." Men are seldom zealous for an idea in which they do not
perceive some reflection of themselves, in which they have not embarked
some portion of their individuality, or which they cannot connect with
some subjective purpose of their own. It is often more easy to
sympathise with a person in whose opposite views we discern a weakness
corresponding to our own, than with one who unsympathetically avoids to
colour the objectivity of truth, and is guided in his judgment by
facts, not by wishes. We endeavoured not many months ago to show how
remote the theology of Catholic Germany is in its scientific spirit from
that of other countries, and how far asunder are science and policy. The
same method applied to the events of our own day must be yet more
startling, and for a time we can scarcely anticipate that the author of
this work will escape an apparent isolation between the reserve of those
who share his views, but are not free to speak, and the foregone
conclusions of most of those who have already spoken. But a book which
treats of contemporary events in accordance with the signs of the time,
not with the aspirations of men, possesses in time itself an invincible
auxiliary. When the lesson which this great writer draws from the
example of the mediaeval Popes has borne its fruit; when the purpose for
which he has written is attained, and the freedom of the Holy See from
revolutionary aggression and arbitrary protection is recovered by the
heroic determination to abandon that which in the course of events has
ceased to be a basis of independence--he will be the first, but no
longer the only, proclaimer of new ideas, and he will not have written
in vain.

The Christian religion, as it addresses and adapts itself to all
mankind, bears towards the varieties of national character a relation of
which there was no example in the religions of antiquity, and which
heresy repudiates and inevitably seeks to destroy. For heresy, like
paganism, is national, and dependent both on the particular disposition
of the people and on the government of the State. It is identified with
definite local conditions, and moulded by national and political
peculiarities. Catholicity alone is universal in its character and
mission, and independent of those cir