scorn at the
laborious endeavours which are now being made to confine the intellect
and enslave the soul.'

[Sidenote: 'NO POPERY']

Lord John's manifesto was as fuel to the flames. All over the kingdom
preparations were in progress at the moment for a national carnival--now
fallen largely into disrepute. Guy Fawkes was hastily dethroned, and the
Pope and Cardinal Wiseman were paraded in effigy through the streets of
London, Exeter, and other cities, and burnt at nightfall amid the jeers
of the crowd. Petitions began to pour in against Papal aggression, and
the literature of the subject, in controversial tract, pamphlet, and
volume, grew suddenly not less bewildering than formidable. The arrival
in London of Father Gavazzi, an ex-priest of commanding presence and
impassioned oratory, helped to arouse still further the Protestant
spirit of the nation. The Press, the pulpit, the platform, formed a
triple alliance against the Vatican, and the indignant rejection of the
Pope's claims may be said to have been carried by acclamation. Clamour
ran riot through the land, and spent its force in noisy demonstrations.
The Catholics met the tumult, on the whole, with praiseworthy
moderation, and presently signs of the inevitable reaction began to
appear. Lord John's colleagues were not of one mind as to the wisdom of
the Durham Letter, for if there is one taunt before which an ordinary
Englishman quails, it is the accusation of religious bigotry.

The Durham Letter was an instance in which Lord John's zeal outran his
discretion.[21] Lord Shaftesbury, who was in the thick of the tumult,
and has left a vivid description of it in his journal,[22] declared that
Cardinal Wiseman's manifesto, in spite of its audacity, was likely to
prove 'more hurtful to the shooter than to the target.' Looking back at
the crisis, after an interval of more than forty years, the same
criticism seems to apply with added force to the Durham Letter. Lord
John overshot the mark, and his accusations wounded those whom he did
not intend to attack, and in the recoil of public opinion his own
reputation suffered. He resented, with pardonable warmth, the attitude
of the Vatican, and was jealous of any infringement, from that or any
other quarter, of the Queen's supremacy in her own realms. The most
damaging sentences in the Durham Letter were not directed against the
Catholics, either in Rome, England, or Ireland, but against the
Tractarian clergymen--men whom