should have thought that, at length, the hour of the Church of
Rome was come. An infidel power ascendant, the Pope dying in
captivity, the most illustrious prelates of France living in a
foreign country on Protestant alms, the noblest edifices which
the munificence of former ages had consecrated to the worship of
God turned into temples of Victory, or into banqueting-houses for
political societies, or into Theophilanthropic chapels, such
signs might well be supposed to indicate the approaching end of
that long domination.

But the end was not yet. Again doomed to death, the milk-white
hind was still fated not to die. Even before the funeral rites
had been performed over the ashes of Pius the Sixth, a great
reaction had commenced, which, after the lapse of more than forty
years, appears to be still in progress. Anarchy had had its day.
A new order of things rose out of the confusion, new dynasties,
new laws, new titles; and amidst them emerged the ancient
religion. The Arabs have a fable that the Great Pyramid was built
by antediluvian kings, and alone, of all the works of men, bore
the weight of the flood. Such as this was the fate of the Papacy.
It had been buried under the great inundation; but its deep
foundations had remained unshaken; and when the waters abated, it
appeared alone amidst the ruins of a world which had passed away.
The republic of Holland was gone, and the empire of Germany, and
the great Council of Venice, and the old Helvetian League, and
the House of Bourbon, and the parliaments and aristocracy of
France. Europe was full of young creations, a French empire, a
kingdom of Italy, a Confederation of the Rhine. Nor had the late
events affected only territorial limits and political
institutions. The distribution of property, the composition and