ome, such it has been
described to me by all, whether near him or afar; and if he now seems
to be appointed to pass through all the painful and discouraging
experience which can befall a monarch, and to continue to the end the
course of a prolonged martyrdom, he resembles in this, as in so many
other things, the sixteenth Louis; or rather; to go up higher, he
knows that the disciple is not above the Master, and that the pastor
of a church, whose Lord and Founder died upon the cross, cannot
wonder and cannot refuse that the cross should be laid also upon him
(pp. 624-627).

It is a common opinion, that the Pope, as a sovereign, is bound by the
common law to the forms and ideas of the Middle Ages; and that in
consequence of the progress of society, of the difference between the
thirteenth century and the nineteenth, there is an irreconcilable
discord between the Papacy and the necessities of civil government. All
Catholics are bound to oppose this opinion. Only that which is of Divine
institution is unchangeable through all time. But the sovereignty of the
Popes is extremely elastic, and has already gone through many forms. No
contrast can be stronger than that between the use which the Popes made
of their power in the thirteenth or the fifteenth century, and the
system of Consalvi. There is no reason, therefore, to doubt, that it
will now, after a violent interruption, assume the form best adapted to
the character of the age and the requirements of the Italian people.
There is nothing chimerical in the vision of a new order of things, in
which the election shall fall on men in the prime of their years and
their strength; in which the people shall be reconciled to their
government by free institutions and a share in the conduct of their own
concerns, and the upper classes satisfied by the opening of a suitable
career in public affairs. Justice publicly and speedily administered
would obtain the confidence of the people; the public service would be
sustained by an honourable _esprit de corps_; the chasm between laity
and priesthood would be closed by equality in rights and duties; the
police would not rely on the help of religion, and religion would no
longer drag itself along on the crutches of the police. The integrity of
the Papal States would be under the joint guardianship of the Powers,
who have guaranteed even the dominions of the Sultan; and the Pope would
have no enemies to fear, and his