the Church of Rome remained in full possession of a vast dominion
which in the middle of the preceding century she seemed to be on
the point of losing. No part of Europe remained Protestant,
except that part which had become thoroughly Protestant before
the generation which heard Luther preach had passed away.

Since that time there has been no religious war between Catholics
and Protestants as such. In the time of Cromwell, Protestant
England was united with Catholic France, then governed by a
priest, against Catholic Spain. William the Third, the eminently
Protestant hero, was at the head of a coalition which included
many Catholic powers, and which was secretly favoured even by
Rome, against the Catholic Lewis. In the time of Anne, Protestant
England and Protestant Holland joined with Catholic Savoy and
Catholic Portugal, for the purpose of transferring the crown of
Spain from one bigoted Catholic to another.

The geographical frontier between the two religions has continued
to run almost precisely where it ran at the close of the Thirty
Years' War; nor has Protestantism given any proofs of that
"expansive power" which has been ascribed to it. But the
Protestant boasts, and boasts most justly, that wealth,
civilisation, and intelligence, have increased far more on the
northern than on the southern side of the boundary, and that
countries so little favoured by nature as Scotland and Prussia
are now among the most flourishing and best governed portions of
the world, while the marble palaces of Genoa are deserted, while
banditti infest the beautiful shores of Campania, while the
fertile sea-coast of the Pontifical State is abandoned to
buffaloes and wild boars. It cannot be doubted that, since the