since the Reformation. As
these events, though all-absorbing to the actors in them, (as are so
many others of very secondary importance,) have now shrunk to their
true dimensions, and are, in fact, infinitely less momentous than
others which were silently transpiring at the time almost without
notice, I shall content myself with simply condensing a brief
contemporaneous document which gives the chief points, without passion
or prejudice, in a narrative so simple that it vouches for its own
veracity:--

"Without permission of the Crown, or any negotiations with the
Government whatever, Pope Plus the Ninth divided the whole of England
into twelve sees, and assigned these to as many Roman Catholic bishops
with local titles and territorial jurisdiction. The chief of them was
one Nicholas Wiseman (by birth, it is said, a Spaniard), who was created
Archbishop of Westminster and Cardinal.

"'The said Wiseman issued a pastoral letter, which was read on the
27th day of October, 1850, in all the churches and chapels of the
Romanists, congratulating Catholic England on the reestablishment of
the Roman hierarchy. In it he used the startling expression, "Our
beloved country has been restored to its orbit in the ecclesiastical
firmament, from which its light had long vanished."

"'The nation was the more surprised at all this, inasmuch as the
position of Pio Nono was not such as to warrant any expectation of a
step so audacious. Little more than a year had elapsed since his own
subjects in Rome itself rebelled against him, murdered his Prime
Minister, and compelled him, in the disguise of a menial, to fly from
Rome; nor was he restored except by the arms of the French, who besieged
and took Rome in 1849.

"'That the Pope, while holding his own little dominions on so precarious
a tenure, should venture to assume such an exercise of supremacy over
the most powerful nation in the world,--a nation so jealous of its
independence, which had so long been, and which still was, most averse
to his claims,--seemed almost incredible to the people of England; and
they were proportionably indignant.

"'Some affirmed that the aforesaid Cardinal Wiseman was the chief cause
of it all,--the spectacle of many conversions from the Church of England
to that of Rome having deceived him into a notion that the national
mind was far more generally disposed to receive Romanism; and to make
up the long-standing breach with the Papacy, than was really th