at her confessionals, and punished his faults by her
penances. In his hour of sickness and trouble her servants sought him
out, teaching him, by her exquisite litanies and prayers, to place his
reliance on God, or strengthening him for the trials of life by the
example of the holy and just. Her prayers had an efficacy to give repose
to the souls of his dead. When, even to his friends, his lifeless body
had become an offence, in the name of God she received it into her
consecrated ground, and under her shadow he rested till the great
reckoning-day. From little better than a slave she raised his wife to be
his equal, and, forbidding him to have more than one, met her recompense
for those noble deeds in a firm friend at every fireside.
Discountenancing all impure love, she put round that fireside the
children of one mother, and made that mother little less than sacred in
their eyes. In ages of lawlessness and rapine, among people but a step
above savages, she vindicated the inviolability of her precincts against
the hand of power, and made her temples a refuge and sanctuary for the
despairing and oppressed. Truly she was the shadow of a great rock in
many a weary land!"

[Sidenote: Analysis of the career of the Church.] This being the point
which I consider the end of the Italian system as a living force in
European progress, its subsequent operation being directed to the senses
and not to the understanding, it will not be amiss if for a moment we
extend our view to later times and to circumstances beyond the strict
compass of this book, endeavouring thus to ascertain the condition of
the Church, especially as to many devout persons it may doubtless appear
that she has lost none of her power.

[Sidenote: Four revolts against the Italian system.] On four occasions
there have been revolts against the Italian Church system: 1st, in the
thirteenth century, the Albigensian; 2nd, in the fourteenth, the
Wiclifite; 3rd, in the sixteenth, the Reformation; 4th, in the
eighteenth, at the French Revolution. On each of these occasions
ecclesiastical authority has exerted whatever offensive or defensive
power it possessed. Its action is a true indication of its condition at
the time. Astronomers can determine the orbit of a comet or other
celestial meteor by three observations of its position as seen from the
earth, and taken at intervals apart.

[Sidenote: The Albigensian revolt.] 1st. Of the Albigensian revolt. We
have ascertained