fallen Church has been
gradually rising from her depressed state and reconquering her old
dominion. No person who calmly reflects on what, within the last few
years, has passed in Spain, in Italy, in South America, in Ireland, in
the Netherlands, in Prussia, even in France, can doubt that the power of
this Church over the hearts and minds of men is now greater far than it
was when the Encyclopaedia and the Philosophical Dictionary appeared. It
is surely remarkable that neither the moral revolution of the eighteenth
century nor the moral counter-revolution of the nineteenth should, in
any perceptible degree, have added to the domain of Protestantism.
During the former period, whatever was lost to Catholicism was lost also
to Christianity; during the latter, whatever was regained by
Christianity in Catholic countries was regained also by Catholicism. We
should naturally have expected that many minds, on the way from
superstition to infidelity, or on the way back from infidelity to
superstition, would have stopped at an intermediate point. Between the
doctrines taught in the schools of the Jesuits and those which were
maintained at the little supper parties of the Baron Holbach there is a
vast interval, in which the human mind, it should seem, might find for
itself some resting-place more satisfactory than either of the two
extremes. And, at the time of the Reformation, millions found such a
resting-place. Whole nations then renounced Popery without ceasing to
believe in a first cause, in a future life, or in the divine mission of
Jesus. In the last century, on the other hand, when a Catholic renounced
his belief in the real presence, it was a thousand to one that he
renounced his belief in the Gospel too; and, when the reaction took
place, with belief in the Gospel came back belief in the real presence.

We by no means venture to deduce from these phenomena any general law;
but we think it a most remarkable fact that no Christian nation which
did not adopt the principles of the Reformation before the end of the
sixteenth century, should ever have adopted them. Catholic communities
have, since that time, become infidel and become Catholic again; but
none has become Protestant.

Here we close this hasty sketch of one of the most important portions of
the history of mankind. Our readers will have great reason to feel
obliged to us if we have interested them sufficiently to induce them to
peruse Professor Ranke's book. We w