attributed to his Jesuit domestic chaplain, Father Roh. But the speech of Archbishop Melchers of Cologne made all the more favourable impression. He spoke, with quiet dignity and freedom, of the perversity and shamefulness of the meddling Roman domination, the system of dispensations, and the unmeasured centralization. Great was the astonishment of the assembly; Cardinal Capalti went on urging, with impatient look and sign, on de Luca, the President for the day, to stop the German Archbishop. At last, when he had nearly finished, de Luca interrupted him, and said he must hand in his proposals to the Commission. Melchers did not let himself be put down; he replied that he had done that long ago, and had received no answer, and observed that he spoke in the name of more than a million German Catholics. And then he quietly went on with his speech. The words of Archbishop Haynald cut deeper still; he is the best speaker in the Council after Strossmayer, and is also subtle and circumspect, so that the Legate, who was visibly anxious to interrupt him, could not discover the right moment for putting his bell in motion.

As little did they dare to interrupt Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, when he ascended the tribune and began as follows:-"We are told we are not to make

long speeches, but I have a great deal to say. We are told again not to repeat what has been said by others, but at the same time we are kept shut up in this Hall, where for the most part we cannot understand one another; we are not allowed to examine the stenographic reports of our speeches, and the only answer made to our representations is always the same- The Pope wills it.' I don't know therefore what has been said by the speakers who have preceded me." He then went on to speak of the rights of the Bishops, their degradation by the Roman centralizing system, "the caves, wherein the Roman doctors have buried themselves from the light of day," etc. He spoke in admirable style, and was listened to with rapt attention, though at every word his auditors expected an interruption from the Legate; but it never came. Darboy himself said afterwards that he had done like Condé, and flung his marshal's staff into the ranks of the enemy.

On January 22, Dupanloup made a speech in the same sense, which has already been reported to you, and took occasion to mention those courtiers who have learnt never to tell the truth to the Pope. Courtiers of this sort from various nations sat and stood in crowds around him. He might have added what was said to

the Pope--vainly, of course-300 years ago, in a work composed by his order, and is just as true now as then: that the dream of omnipotence and infallibility, so studiously produced and cherished in his soul by flatterers, is the main cause, next to the avarice of the Curia, of the decline and corruptions of the Church. Meanwhile it is truly wonderful that so much could be said at all; it was felt to be a moral discomfiture or capitulation of the Curia in its state of siege. Cardinal Schwarzenberg, and after him the Primate of Hungary, had certainly struck the note which still rang on, but the Legates had not dared to silence them with the bell, and so missed the opportunity of principiis obsta. Schwarzenberg had already created a great sensation by recommending the periodical recurrence of Councils, afterwards taken up by Strossmayer, and then falling back on the decree of Constance (for decennial Councils), which is an abomination at Rome. No doubt they would have no objection in Rome to Councils every ten or twenty years, suitably modernized, manipulated, and obedient to every wink, like the present majority; but the fatal Opposition embitters this enjoyment, and when once the great work is accomplished, and Infallibility proclaimed, it will be found at Rome that all this

machinery is not worth its pay, " que le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle;" for it costs too much money to entertain 300 Placet-saying Bishops, to make it worth while often to reproduce the drama, or rather the pantomine.

Other Prelates, whom the Curia reckons among the Di minores gentium, have no indulgence shown them. When an American Bishop spoke of the corruptions and gross falsehoods in the Roman Breviary, and of the fabulous interpolations in the works of some Fathers, e.g., St. Augustine, inserted there, Capalti rang his bell violently the Fathers were not to be so spoken of. But the American did not let himself be disturbed, and proceeded at once to quote the Breviary lections from St. Gregory. He was again called to order, and told he must change the subject or leave the tribune.

In this second Schema, compiled by Jacobini, the second Secretary of the Council, the gross ignorance of the author is glaringly exposed. With the usual selfsufficiency of Rome, and with the aim of making the Bishops still more dependent on the Curia than before, the special conditions of whole countries had been ignored. Thus every Bishop, who wished to leave his diocese, was first to get the Pope's permission from Rome, and the Archbishops were to delate all who

acted otherwise at Rome. Simor observed sharply on that, "This then is the position Rome assigns to Metropolitans, after robbing them of all their ancient rights: to be the accusers of their conprovincial Bishops." Another declared roundly that, if his physician sent him to a watering-place, he should not think of asking leave from Rome. Jacobini would not even recognise the right of Bishops to attend the political assemblies of their countries, of which they are members by the Constitution, because, as the Schema words it, "assembleæ generales" no longer exist in the sense allowed by Urban VIII. The Pope was further to have the right henceforth of giving away the benefices in the Bishop's gift during the vacancy of the See, which would bring in a large increase of taxes for the Curia, and draw a number of candidates to Rome again, as in the palmy days before the Reformation. In Germany we should get back the class of so-called Curtisanen,1 who notoriously did so much to promote the Protestant division. The Bishops inflicted many a blow on the abuse of expensive dispensations to be elaborated at Rome from artificially derived impediments of marriage (as of

1 [The Curtisanen were clerical place-hunters, who came to Rome to beg or traffic for benefices. Cf. "Janus," p. 341.—TR.]