erty of scorn for the clouds, but to get it, instead of stripping, he invents a waterproof; he silences the body by content, instead of by control, reigns as a Cæsar instead of an ancient absolutist. We like neither régime, but it is not weakness of character, but misdirected power of character, which produces the second- - a misdirected power which, more wisely used may make the mind and the soul more genuinely free, and therefore more genuinely strong than they have been. The highest song of suffering ever sung was penned by a king, and fortitude, endurance, strength in all forms, are the qualities which, from the days of the Roman patriciat, the aristocrats have not lacked. It is not in the luxurious, but in those who are hankering for luxury, that feebleness is found. From The Spectator, Oct. 26. RELIGIOUS OPINION IN AUSTRIA. From the highest neath him to pay attention to the chill. The own strength alone. modern man is not less desirous of that lib-class to the one next above the lowest the disgust at priestly interference has penetrated every section of society, has so changed opinion that 2,000 country schoolmasters, men as dependent as clerks, as strictly disciplined as soldiers, have publicly declared in the great hall of the Palace at Vienna that they will starve sooner than endure even for a few years more the tyranny of ecclesiastics. The Emperor, a melancholy man trained by Jesuits and habituated to misfortune, is still, it is said, an Ultramontane, still inclined to believe that the Church has a moral right to reign over civil society. A few nobles of the first rank still hold that "fidelity," as it is called, is essential to the character of a gentleman and the position of an aristocrat, and a few of the more remote districts, notably the German Tyrol, are still obedient to the priests. But the active portion of the Austrian people has lost the sense of religious awe. In the haute volée, the real "society," till lately so omnipotent, belief in Christianity is now considered a mark of a weak and credulous mind, of an intellect altogether behind the century. It is decorous to bow to priests, but fashionable to preach the "Gospel of Darwin," a man whose name in Germany drives priests crazy. In the second society, the professional class, priests are scorned with a bitterness kept up by the incessant conflict about education and the right of speech and writing; while the third, or shopkeeping and upper peasant order, has tacitly agreed to limit thought to this world. Creeds may be true, say three in four of the Austrian electors, or they may be false, but priests shall have nothing whatever to do with civil society. The priesthood may preach and teach and chant and read in church without our interference, but out of it they shall have no power whatever. Marriage shall be a contract, education shall be secular, writing shall be free, the family door shall be the property of the family father, and of him alone. The priest," frozen up in a sterile individuality," as the Viennese Municipality say, is not a human being, and he shall not be permitted to interfere in any way whatever in human affairs. Let him stand aside, on a pedestal if he likes, but stand aside carefully, under penalty of being kicked aside with regrettable violence. There is no special inclination, be it remarked, for kicking; these Austrian Germans are too gentle, it may be too lazy, for that; but an absolute conviction, a steady, unchangeable THE outburst of loyal enthusiasm throughout Austria which has followed the Kaiser's .snub to the Bishops, is perhaps the most significant event of an eventful year. It means that the last kingdom honestly faithful to the Papal standard has for ever abandoned its cause. In England, the people of Austria are supposed to be Ultramontanes, and, we imagine, the belief was once in some loose sense well founded, that the Empire, as a whole, could be relied on to support reaction; but it is not so now. The Church has for eighteen years enjoyed undisputed sway in Austria, controlling education, politics, and society with unlimited authority, an entire generation has grown up under its sway, and the feeling of the people has undergone an entire, and, as we believe, a permanent change. That strange and morbid hate towards itself which priestly rule invariably develops, a hatred to which all merely secular passions are feeble, has infected Austria also, and there is probably no country in the world, not even France, where the priesthood, as a caste, is regarded with such contemptuous dislike. The gentry have notceased to be Catholic, the peasants are still superstitious, the bourgeoisie have not thrown off the chain of respectability, but the Church now exists and flourishes in its certainty, which is more of the temperament than the brain, has taken possession of their minds, a conviction that if priests rule civilization will be impossible, a certainty that while they have power life can never be improved. The Austrians are not longing for a new Church, or accepting new dogmas, or tending towards Voltairianism, or obeying any religious impulse whatever. They are simply hungering for the secular "civilization" which they see elsewhere, for the free, progressive society which they are rapidly erecting into an ideal, an object almost of worship, a Promised Land which they will reach, whether they find a Moses or no, and even if they have to leave Aaron behind. Naturally the least revolutionary of mankind, they are driving their Reichsrath towards this end at headlong speed, at a speed which, their usual habits considered, startles observers who have watched them for years, and utterly paralyzes the Church. Even in France Jews are not elected to municipal and political office so readily as in Austria Proper, even in England the baptism of a Hebrew girl without her father's consent would scarcely elicit the passion of emotion displayed last week in the Austrian Chamber. The Minister of Justice could scarcely speak for excitement as he related the news, three-fourths of the representatives were on their feet at once, a storm of imprecations swept through the hall, and the priests were ordered then and there by telegraph to restore their prize. It was not religious feeling which prompted this exhibition. The non-Jewish members did not probably care two straws what faith any girl chose to profess, but they were absolutely resolved that priestly dominance should end; that in the family, as in the State, the civil power should be master, and not the ecclesiastical. That once secured, the people will be tolerably content; but that refused, their secularist dislike to priests may very easily rise into fanaticism. They are good, easy-going people, these Germans of the South, but they are Southerners still, with a latent capacity for savage rage, for boiling over like Italians or Frenchmen, and in a much more destructive way. When they last rose against the Church, the Emperor Ferdinand had to extirpate whole populations before he could even imagine the opposition subdued, and a clear refusal to fulfil their desires might last week have brought down the Hapsburg throne. It would be difficult to state in detail all the causes which have operated to produce this immense change in Austrian sentiment, but some of them are sufficiently patent. The first has, no doubt, been the slow filtration downwards of that contempt for authority of any kind, that disposition to deride anything which is, simply because it is, which has become so conspicuous in every division of South Germany. A mental hunger, an intellectual unrest, has entered into the people, and they are attracted by anything which promises a life different from that which they have hitherto led, any organization other than that they have obeyed; and this unrest, which extends to every institution and department of society, gathers strength from the extreme inefficiency, the visible powerlessness of almost everything existing. The priests control education, but they do not teach; the officials control society, but they do not organize; the nobles control the Army, and it is beaten on every battle-field. Men are sick of rulers who will not even rule; sick till they ask why on earth they should be chosen for rulers, where their commission is; - and to that question there can be no reply. Books have been excluded from the seminaries, and liberal papers, and liberal professors, and even liberal theologians, and yet when 2,000 pupilteachers, select peasants. in reality, are gathered together in Vienna, with the Lord-Lieutenant in the chair, the Church is thunderstruck to find they are all Red. Then, no doubt, the feeling which has been so strong in England at different times, which is at this moment the main difficulty of the Catholic priesthood in Italy and South America, the intense dislike of the priests as celibates, as men dehumanized by the absence of family ties, is acting as a powerful solvent on the old reverence for the Church. "These men," say quiet, fubsy citizens, who think heresy most improper, "cannot comprehend us, and never will. What children have they to teach?" And, lastly, society is exposed throughout South Germany, and indeed throughout all Germany, to two new and most potent intellectual influences. The first of these is the example of America. Three millions of Germans, half of them Southerners, have settled in America. Day by day hundreds of Germans quit their country for the New World, week by week dozens return utterly Americanized, month by month tons of American letters are distributed in every corner of the Empire, letters burning with a "liberalism" stronger, redder, more implacable than that of the Anglo-Saxons. Ireland is scarcely more under the influence of America than Germany is, and of all the peoples now active among mankind the 66 Americanized Germans are the most bitterly anti-sacerdotal, the most nearly akin to those whom we call in England Secularists. They shock and perplex even Americans, who care nothing about priests, and their influence acts on the Ultramontane Church like perpetual rain on plaster; and they are aided by a class as numerous, as powerful, and as anti-sacerdotal as themselves. The whimsical charge brought by the late King of Prussia against the Liberals, and constantly repeated by the priests in Austria, that they were a parcel of Jews," had a basis in truth. Persecuted for twelve centuries by priests, the Jews are avenging themselves on the oppressors, whom also they will survive. Everywhere throughout Germany the Jews are rising to a position such as they have never attained elsewhere in Europe. They are wild for instruction, thirsty for activity, they swarm in the universities, fill professors' chairs, play a great part in literature, and almost monopolize municipal activity and commerce. Full of spirit and tenacity, often eloquent, and always liberal, they are rapidly conciliating all but the most ignorant among the masses, and their weight in every Catholic country is thrown steadily and heavily into the antisacerdotal scale. In them the Church fights a corporation as active, as persistent, and as deathless as its own. Rome boasts of its capacity to wait, but in the strife with the Hebrew race even Roman patience has been tired out, and of all human beings the German priest most dislikes the onset of the Jew. We are by no means sure that we approve the present tendency of Austrian feeling, that we can sympathize much with a movement which, in destroying Ultramontanism, is very likely indeed to set up a worse theory of life in its place. Better any worship than the worship of the Stomach, and Austrians in their recoil from priestcraft seem far too much inclined to believe that the only thing certain is the sweetness of sugar. It is easier to develop Romanism into a grand faith than to develop Secularism, and it is Secularism which Austria has for the time embraced. But the fact of the change is past question. There may, of course, be yet another revolution of the political wheel, the Emperor may yet call upon his half civilized subjects, or the priesthood may establish a régime based on universal suffrage, but so long as the present electoral law subsists, Austria, their last stronghold, is lost to the Ultramontanes. From The Saturday Review, Oct. 23. ITALY AND ROME. At THE opportune, though perhaps temporary, collapse of the Garibaldian insurrection, or invasion, has released Italy from a melancholy alternative. If the attack on the POPE's territory had been successful, if the POPE's troops had been crushed and routed, if Rome had finally risen to claim her Italian rights, the tumult in Italy would not have been easily restrained. When the insurgents had once been driven from Nerola, and from the long mountain chain which enabled them to threaten the Campagna itself, the situation for the Italian Government lost some of its danger, and French menaces became less intolerable. The King of ITALY could afford to run the formidable risk of popular disturbances in order to satisfy an extortionate ally, and might promise with comparative impunity to control a movement which of itself had ceased. the close of a critical four weeks, it is impossible to acquit M. RATTAZZI of incapacity; the heavier charges brought against him of intrigue and of mendacity may be taken, for the present, as non-proven. The cessation of serious fighting at the exact hour of his withdrawal from office and of the French embarkation of troops has given rise to the not unnatural insinuation that the whole Roman rebellion was part of a Ministerial contrivance. M. RATTAZZI's conduct is, however, capable of a simpler and less malicious construction. For his sudden resignation itself no blame can attach to him. The trenchant and audacious language employed by him in the recent negotiations with the Cabinet of the Tuileries rendered it desirable, if harmony was still to be preserved, that he should sacrifice himself to the situation. The explanation of the remainder of the tragi-comedy lies possibly in the naked fact that M. RATTAZZI, like other people, over-estimated, not the Italian passion for Rome, but the preparations of the revolutionary party, and their unanimity among themselves. As the Roman population, by their passive attitude, have showed a complete appreciation of the real power of the insurgents, it is inexcusable that M. RATTAZZI alone should have been mistaken. He despaired, it would seem, of his own authority; he feared for the Monarchy, already shaken to its base; he feared perhaps for his personal reputation, which had suffered already from suspicion of subserviency to French intrigue. Something no doubt he did. He managed to arrest GARIBALDI, and, with the aid of any Papal territory under the pretence that six frigates and some hundred marines, to circumstances required him to do so, while keep him at least so long as he chose to the Garibaldian successes had been so slight remain in honourable captivity at Capre- as they were. Such a policy would, in ra. He even went so far as to suspend the private life, have been disreputable, and Constitution, and imprison two thousand though people do odd things in diplomacy, patriots upon suspicion; and he prevented there is such a thing as national honour and the insurgent forces from carrying cannon good faith. But it was the business and across the frontier, or from entering on their prerogative of the King of ITALY to anticampaign with any other offensive or de- cipate all possible French interventions, to fensive weapons than red shirts and an occa- interdict and check a rash insurrectionary sional rifle. He was afraid to try to do more. raid, to save the POPE himself sooner than He did not venture to disperse the crowds let him be saved by others, and by disinterin every city that went about chanting Gar-estedness and moderation to have won for ibaldian hymns, or to shut up the railways, Italy that moral and diplomatic triumph or to close the recruiting bureaux. Sooner than encounter what he considered to be great internal discontent and disturbance, he preferred to play a bolder, but what in reality, if the Garibaldian movement had been less of a child's play, would have been the wiser game. Thus, come what might, the Monarchy, he thought, would be secure. The courtiers of the King of PERSIA, to save their monarch's person, jumped with one accord -SO HERODOTUS tells us -into the sea. M. RATTAZZI, with supe rior devotion and loyalty, nearly went so far in his desire to preserve his King as to throw his country overboard. M RATTAZZI miscalculated the position, and deserves accordingly to bear the discredit of his failure. The French papers, Ministerial and Liberal, are equally furious with him. M. EMILE DE GIRARDIN calls him an ape, and contrasts him with CAVOUR, whom he describes, on the contrary, as "a man." For diametrically opposite reasons the official journalists, though less virulent, are not less impatient; and it must be admitted that it looks as if M. RATTAZZI had committed the double folly, first, of playing at the game of Brag, and secondly, of being beaten at it. If the movement on Rome was weak, he ought to have repressed it, not only by sheer force, but by those many methods which a Government can employ to divert or adjourn an unwise agitation. If the movement in Rome was, as he seems to have believed, popular and universal, he ought to have crossed the Roman frontier a fortnight back. It is inconceivable that an Italian Prime Minister should have been in ignorance of the French EMPEROR's intention to reoccupy Civita Vecchia if the necessity arose. And in such a case an able statesman ought not, by his vacillation and delay, to have exposed Italy to the terrible danger and humiliation of a second French expedition. We do not say that the King of ITALY could decently have appropriated which has now fallen to the lot of NAPOLEON III. M. RATTAZZI fell a victim to the fatal policy of half measures. He was either too timid or too bold. Either he ought to have repressed an émeute, or else he ought to have won Rome. He did neither. At the critical moment, the French EMPEROR, who knows his men, and who knew perhaps M. RATTAZZI's real calibre, thundered from St. Cloud. Afflavit Napoléon et dissipati sunt. M. RATTAZZI went down. By a singular coincidence the Garibaldian army immediately vanished. A new Ministry was formed on the ruins of the last, and those who have noticed the astonishing promptitude with which, on the earliest acceptance of the French terms by the Florence Court, the embarkation of troops was suspended at Toulon, can understand the relief of the EMPEROR at being spared one more enterprise the fruits of which could in no event be anything but bitter. At such a juncture the appointment of General CIALDINI is certainly the best that could have been made. He is a soldier of no small reputation, and has acquired a name for firmness, and for as much political liberality as is often found joined to military genius. If anybody can, he will execute the Convention of September with rigid honesty. At such a supreme moment as this the Italian public is sure to be occupied with rumours of coups d'état, and with a suspicion of the personal integrity of the KING. General CIALDINI We believe to be above any coup d'état. He is neither a revolutionist, nor a political sceptic. Not many months ago it was stated that he had expressed himself to VICTOR EMMANUEL with soldierlike brevity on the monstrous folly of any design, on the part of an Italian monarch, to set aside the Italian Constitution; and though General CIALDINI is not an unlikely man to put down MENOTTI GARIBALDI, he is not the man to put aside the laws or the institutions of the country. This is the sort of interregnum Minister that Italy wants. Of course it cannot be said that the storm is over. The line taken by the French EMPEROR is a bitter and humiliating pill which the Italian populace will not like digesting. No one can say that there may not be rows in Florence or Milan, or in Genoa. Nor is it absolutely certain that a new flame of insurrection may not break out in the Roman State. But for the moment the Italian sky looks brighter, and critics are beginning even to talk as if all the peril was past. This sanguine view of Italian affairs is clearly premature. The Ides of March are come, but, as far as Italy is concerned, they are not yet gone. First of all, Italy has to surmount and live through the present agitation. The Italians are a clever nation, and if they think it will be their best game to acquiesce in the decision of their KING, they will acquiesce directly. But even if they forgive their KING for a fault which is none of his a species of condonation not universal among patriots they will not give up Rome. This sort of movement will happen again and again. The only difference next time will be that it will be better organized, that Rome and Italy will act in concert, and that no contretemps like the arrest of GARIBALDI will be allowed to spoil the scheme. NAPOLEON III. is too shrewd a politician not to know this. As for the September Convention, it is idle to talk of the violation of it on the part of Italy. It is disregarded by the French Government habitually. The volunteers who this week have been marching through Marseilles, the subscriptions for the POPE opened in the offices of the Catholic journals, the interest taken by the French War Office in the POPE'S Legion, all are a contravention of the spirit of the treaty, and prove that a great Power like France is not neutral in the Roman question, even if she pretends to be so. The truth is that the whole difficulty is kept alive to suit the policy of France. But the policy is a shortsighted one. In pledging himself to uphold the POPE at Rome, the EMPEROR is giving unnecessary hostages to fortune, and exposing France to be wounded in her heel. It is perhaps idle to speak of morality to the Elect of December. But if the EMPEROR is not likely to be touched with ethical, he is not perhaps inaccessible to dynastic and selfish, considerations. He calculates, it is said, upon the POPE's death. Has he ever considered the certain consequences of his own? Does he suppose for an instant that the French democracy would allow any one except himself to court national disaster and humiliation by nailing the national flag to the cause of the temporal power? If the EMPRESS were Regent, a fresh Roman expedition would be enough to produce barricades in every Paris taubourg. It is impossible that NAPOLEON III. should not be alive to the serious requirements of his time; and he can now afford, if he chooses, to be generous. He has had his little triumph. If he has never been able to frighten Count BISMARK, he has almost terrified VICTOR EMMANUEL. This is a success so great, so unexpected, and, under present circumstances, so useful to the Second Empire, that NAPOLEON III. ought to take advantage of it to settle the Roman question for the future. If, after all, he prefers to continue the present situation, with all its dangers and possibilities, history will have to record the fact that the EMPEROR's use of his position at the close of his career was worthy of the arts by which he won it. He will, as far as in him lies, be condemning France to fresh complications, Europe to fresh anxiety, Italy to fresh disorder, and Rome to a fresh experience of ecclesiastical misrule. To other men we should say that conduct of this sort was a crime; to the French EMPEROR one can only say that it would be a mistake. From the Saturday Review, Oct. 26. THE FRENCH EMPEROR'S ITALIAN POLICY. EVENTS in Italy have taken a turn that was not expected a week ago, but the world knows little of what has really happened. The French troops were put on board at Toulon, and then were disembarked. After a great amount of telegraphing backwards and forwards, the Italian Government undertook that the invasion of the Papal territory should not continue, and it has not continued. RATTAZZI resigned office, and CIALDINI has been appointed his successor. This is all that is really known, and every one can put what interpretation he pleases on facts which may be construed in so many ways. One interpretation, which is certainly warranted by much in the past history of the relations between Italy and France, finds in all this nothing but a com |