nce of the clergy seems little shaken
by any of the modern moral earthquakes. Indeed I doubt if any new ideas
will ever penetrate a class of peasants who still adhere to styles of
costume that must have been ancient when the Turks threatened Vienna,
which would be highly picturesque if they were not painfully ugly, and
arrayed in which their possessors walk about in the broad light of these
latter days, with entire unconsciousness that they do not belong to this
age, and that their appearance is as much of an anachronism as if the
figures should step out of Holbein's pictures (which Heaven forbid), or
the stone images come down from the portals of the cathedral and walk
about. The ultramontane party, which, so far as it is an intelligent
force in modern affairs, is the Romish clergy, and nothing more, hears
with aversion any hint of German unity, listens with dread to the
needle-guns at Sadowa, hates Prussia in proportion as it fears her,
and just now does not draw either with the Austrian Government, whose
liberal tendencies are exceedingly distasteful. It relies upon that
great unenlightened mass of Catholic people in Southern Germany and
in Austria proper, one of whose sins is certainly not skepticism. The
practical fight now in Bavaria is on the question of education; the
priests being resolved to keep the schools of the people in their own
control, and the liberal parties seeking to widen educational facilities
and admit laymen to a share in the management of institutions of
learning. Now the school visitors must all be ecclesiastics; and
although their power is not to be dreaded in the cities, where teachers,
like other citizens, are apt to be liberal, it gives them immense power
in the rural districts. The election of the Lower House of the Bavarian
parliament, whose members have a six years' tenure of office, which
takes place next spring, excites uncommon interest; for the leading
issue will be that of education. The little local newspapers--and every
city has a small swarm of them, which are remarkable for the absence of
news and an abundance of advertisements--have broken out into a style
of personal controversy, which, to put it mildly, makes me, an American,
feel quite at home. Both parties are very much in earnest, and both
speak with a freedom that is, in itself, a very hopeful sign.

The pretensions of the ultramontane clergy are, indeed, remarkable
enough to attract the attention of others besides the li