notorious that the antipathy between the European and African
races is by no means so strong at Rio Janerio as at Washington.
In our own country this peculiarity of the Roman Catholic system
produced, during the middle ages, many salutary effects. It is
true that, shortly after the battle of Hastings, Saxon prelates
and abbots were violently deposed, and that ecclesiastical
adventurers from the Continent were intruded by hundreds into
lucrative benefices. Yet even then pious divines of Norman blood
raised their voices against such a violation of the constitution
of the Church, refused to accept mitres from the hands of
William, and charged him, on the peril of his soul, not to forget
that the vanquished islanders were his fellow Christians. The
first protector whom the English found among the dominant caste
was Archbishop Anselm. At a time when the English name was a
reproach, and when all the civil and military dignities of the
kingdom were supposed to belong exclusively to the countrymen of
the Conqueror, the despised race learned, with transports of
delight, that one of themselves, Nicholas Breakspear, had been
elevated to the papal throne, and had held out his foot to be
kissed by ambassadors sprung from the noblest houses of Normandy.
It was a national as well as a religious feeling that drew great
multitudes to the shrine of Becket, whom they regarded as the
enemy of their enemies. Whether he was a Norman or a Saxon may be
doubted: but there is no doubt that he perished by Norman hands,
and that the Saxons cherished his memory with peculiar tenderness
and veneration, and, in their popular poetry, represented him as
one of their own race. A successor of Becket was foremost among
the refractory magnates who obtained that charter which secured
the privileges both of the Norman barons and of the Saxon
yeomanry. How great a part the Roman Catholic ecclesiastics