rsecution answer both for the decline of Spain and the fall of
Poland, he appeared to deliver the common creed of Whigs; and he did not
protest against the American who called him the acknowledged head of the
liberal Catholics. His hopefulness in the midst of the movement of 1848,
his ready acquiescence in the fall of ancient powers and institutions,
his trust in Rome, and in the abstract rights of Germans, suggested a
reminiscence of the _Avenir_ in 1830.

Lamennais, returning with Montalembert after his appeal to Rome, met
Lacordaire at Munich, and during a banquet given in their honour he
learnt, privately, that he was condemned. The three friends spent that
afternoon in Doellinger's company; and it was after he had left them that
Lamennais produced the encyclical and said: _Dieu a parle_. Montalembert
soon returned, attracted as much by Munich art as by religion or
literature. The fame of the Bavarian school of Catholic thought spread
in France among those who belonged to the wider circles of the _Avenir_;
and priests and laymen followed, as to a scientific shrine. In the
_Memoires d'un Royaliste_ Falloux has preserved, with local colour, the
spirit of that pilgrimage:

Munich lui fut indique comme le foyer d'une grande renovation
religieuse et artistique. Quels nobles et ardents entretiens, quelle
passion pour l'Eglise et pour sa cause! Rien n'a plus ressemble aux
discours d'un portique chretien que les apologies enflammees du vieux
Goerres, les savantes deductions de Doellinger, la verve originale de
Brentano.

Rio, who was the earliest of the travellers, describes Doellinger as he
found him in 1830:

Par un privilege dont il serait difficile de citer un autre exemple,
il avait la passion des etudes theologiques comme s'il n'avait ete
que pretre, et la passion des etudes litteraires appliquees aux
auteurs anciens et modernes comme s'il n'avait ete que litterateur; a
quoi il faut ajouter un autre don qu'il y aurait ingratitude a
oublier, celui d'une exposition lucide, patiente et presque
affectueuse, comme s'il n'avait accumule tant de connaissances que
pour avoir le plaisir de les communiquer.

For forty years he remained in correspondence with many of these early
friends, who, in the educational struggle which ended with the ministry
of Falloux in 1850, revived the leading maxims of the rejected master.
As Lacordaire said, on his deathbed: "La parole de l'Avenir avai