ts and sympathies of the Catholic world. And the parties
in Italy, when they have torn and exhausted the land which has become
a battle-field; when the sobered and saddened people, tired of the
rule of lawyers and of soldiers, has understood the worth of a moral
and spiritual authority, then will be the time to think of returning
to the Eternal City. In the interval, the things will have
disappeared for whose preservation such pains are taken; and then
there will be better reason than Consalvi had, in the preface to the
_Motu Proprio_ of 6th July 1816, to say: "Divine Providence, which so
conducts human affairs that out of the greatest calamity innumerable
benefits proceed, seems to have intended that the interruption of the
papal government should prepare the way for a more perfect form of
it."

We have written at a length for which we must apologise to our readers;
and yet this is but a meagre sketch of the contents of a book which
deals with a very large proportion of the subjects that occupy the
thoughts and move the feelings of religious men. We will attempt to sum
up in a few words the leading ideas of the author. Addressing a mixed
audience, he undertakes to controvert two different interpretations of
the events which are being fulfilled in Rome. To the Protestants, who
triumph in the expected downfall of the Papacy, he shows the
consequences of being without it. To the Catholics, who see in the Roman
question a great peril to the Church, he explains how the possession of
the temporal sovereignty had become a greater misfortune than its loss
for a time would be. From the opposite aspects of the religious camps of
our age he endeavours to awaken the misgivings of one party, and to
strengthen the confidence of the other. There is an inconsistency
between the Protestant system and the progress of modern learning; there
is none between the authority of the Holy See and the progress of modern
society. The events which are tending to deprive the Pope of his
territory are not to be, therefore, deplored, if we consider the
preceding causes, because they made this catastrophe inevitable; still
less if, looking to the future, we consider the state of Protestantism,
because they remove an obstacle to union which is humanly almost
insurmountable. In a former work Doellinger exhibited the moral and
intellectual exhaustion of Paganism as the prelude to Christianity. In
like manner he now con