n his irresponsible holiday.
Mr. Sidney Wilton, however, shook his head; "I do not like the state of
affairs," he said, "I think you will have to come back sooner than you
imagine."

"You are not going to be so foolish as to have an early session?"
inquired Lady Montfort.

He only shrugged his shoulders, and said, "We are in a mess."

What mess? and what was the state of affairs?

This had happened. At the end of the autumn, his Holiness the Pope had
made half a dozen new cardinals, and to the surprise of the world, and
the murmurs of the Italians, there appeared among them the name of an
Englishman, Nigel Penruddock, archbishop _in partibus_. Shortly after
this, a papal bull, "given at St. Peter's, Rome, under the seal of the
fisherman," was issued, establishing a Romish hierarchy in England. This
was soon followed by a pastoral letter by the new cardinal "given out of
the Appian Gate," announcing that "Catholic England had been restored to
its orbit in the ecclesiastical firmament."

The country at first was more stupefied than alarmed. It was conscious
that something extraordinary had happened, and some great action taken
by an ecclesiastical power, which from tradition it was ever inclined to
view with suspicion and some fear. But it held its breath for a while.
It so happened that the prime minister was a member of a great house
which had become illustrious by its profession of Protestant principles,
and even by its sufferings in a cause which England had once looked
on as sacred. The prime minister, a man of distinguished ability,
not devoid even of genius, was also a wily politician, and of almost
unrivalled experience in the management of political parties. The
ministry was weak and nearly worn out, and its chief, influenced partly
by noble and historical sentiments, partly by a conviction that he had
a fine occasion to rally the confidence of the country round himself
and his friends, and to restore the repute of his political connection,
thought fit, without consulting his colleagues, to publish a manifesto
denouncing the aggression of the Pope upon our Protestantism as insolent
and insidious, and as expressing a pretension of supremacy over the
realm of England which made the minister indignant.

A confused public wanted to be led, and now they were led. They
sprang to their feet like an armed man. The corporation of London, the
universities of Oxford and Cambridge had audiences of the Queen; the
count