have been out of place in his despatch to give what we may call the anecdotal account of the occurrence. We feel confident that the remaining difficulties which have been raised against the accuracy of the Memoirs of Cardinal Consalvi on the ground of their apparent discrepancy from the despatches can be solved in the same way as those which we have mentioned. It is not necessary to maintain that the Cardinal's memory was better than that of other people. The Duke of Wellington, towards the end of his life, is said to have forgotten many things about the campaign and battle of Waterloo, and the best critics on the subject have sometimes set aside the evidence of his recollections. Cardinal Consalvi's Memoirs have a greater claim to credit for perfect accuracy than the chance answers given at all sorts of times by the Duke of Wellington to the questions with which he was so frequently bored to death; for the Memoirs were deliberately written, and must have been the fruit of careful and even painful thought over the past. But it is not neccessary to claim for them any extraordinary immunity from error in minor points of detail. Mistakes, however, require to be proved, and we do not see any reason for thinking that the alleged errors cannot be easily explained by considerations such as we have alleged, drawn from the different characters of a despatch and a memoir respectively, from the great reserve under which the Cardinal wrote to Rome, and the like. After due weight has been given to such considerations, it seems perfectly monstrous to suppose that Consalvi in his old age invented the scene of the attempted substitution of one Concordat for another without warning, and by a disgraceful trick. That stigma must rest upon the memory of the First Napoleon-for there can be no doubt that he was the author of the attempt-whatever Father Theiner may say to the contrary. And, perhaps, from this apparent difference between two versions of the same story given at different times by the same person with different objects, which two versions are yet both true, we may read a useful lesson both as to the ease with which any single historical statement may mislead us, and as to the caution which should IGNATIUS GIRLS' SCHOOL be observed in rejecting the positive assertions of a competent and honest witness because they appear to be inconsistent with other positive assertions of another. If Consalvi had not been himself the witness in both the cases before us, few would have tried to reconcile the discrepancy. The principle of caution of which we speak holds good in a thousand cases, from the four Gospels downwards, but it has not been observed even as to them, much less in a greater number of instances of authorities of far minor certainty in which it would only have been simply reasonable to observe it. Dur Library Table. 1. EVERY great discussion among theologians, and every great step in the development or in the precise statement of Catholic doctrine, brings out prominently one or two men and one or two books, which are either influential in settling to some extent the current of thought, or at least distinguished for the accuracy with which they embody the floating and, before, unformed and unprecise, common belief of Christians. Whether the approaching Council will discuss the question of Pontifical Infallibility or not, we cannot tell; nor whether, if the discussion is raised, this particular assembly of the Bishops of the Catholic Church will finally set it at rest. It is equally uncertain whether it will require a Doctor, with whose name But we it may be specially associated, or who that Doctor may be. think we are neither hasty in our opinion, nor presumptuous in so far stretching the critical office as to state it, when we say, that of all the Pastorals or other pronouncements of Catholic Prelates that have as yet appeared, very few will excite greater attention, or be received with more general respect than Dr. Manning's present Pastoral.* It is, we understand, to be translated into French and Latin at once, and it will then be accessible to the whole Catholic Episcopate. It has, indeed, already been singled out for animadversion by a very distinguished Prelate who differs from the views it expresses. It has been called a treatise," and the epithet is certainly quite correct, though the argument is necessarily condensed almost to an extreme degree, and would, no doubt, gain much by further development and illustration. We shall of course confine ourselves in this place to the barest enumeration of its contents. The first chapter deals with the effect produced both in England and in France by the indication of the Council. There is here that strain of hopefulness and charity which has marked other statements of the Archbishop. He sees even in the Pan-Anglican Synod, and much more in other phenomena, marks of the yearning towards unity, which is affecting the minds of the great Anglo-Saxon race in both hemispheres. There is also a tone of marked liberality towards the ideas of the day. Dr. Manning does not admit the thought that the "principles of '89" can be really in discordance from the principles of Christian right and the spirit of the Church. He quotes largely * The Ecumenical Council and the Infallibility of the Roman Pontiff: A Pastoral Letter to the Clergy, &c. By H. E., Archbishop of Westminster. Long mans. 1869. from an article by M. Albert de Broglie* in the Revue des Deux Mondes of February, 1869, on the relations between Christianity and Society, and he adduces the work of the late M. Leon Godard, Les Principes de '89 et La Doctrine Catholique, as a book corrected under the highest sanction, and as therefore well adapted to allay "the scare which in some quarters appears now to exist" (p. 24). The Archbishop then proceeds to the more difficult part of the question before him. The second chapter treats of the "opportuneness" of defining the Infallibility of the Roman Pontiff, and gives clearly and concisely-first, the reasons against the definition, then the answers to those reasons, and lastly the reasons for the definition. The third chapter sets forth Dr. Manning's own argument in defence of the proposed definition. He first traces the tradition backwards from the Council of Constance to the Council of Chalcedon-the proposition which requires proof being, that the doctrine of Papal Infallibility was ancient, unquestioned, and in possession at the time of the Council of Constance. The tradition is then taken up from the Council of Constance, and brought down to the time of the Gallican Declaration of 1682. Great use is made of M. Gérin's book, to which we drew attention several months ago, and which it can hardly be doubted has already worked a great change in public opinion, making it clear that the Declaration of 1682 was in no proper sense at all the expression of the opinion or belief of the Church of France. The Pastoral concludes with a chapter on the effects of the Council, and a postscript in which the work of Monsigneur Maret, Du Concile Generale et de la Paix Religieuse, is fairly and temperately criticised. 2. Mr. Ffoulkes has published a second pamphlet (A Second Letter to the Most Rev. Archbishop Manning. Hayes. 1869), which will hardly attain for its author even the transient celebrity which followed on the appearance of his former work. The main facts of his case are easily told, and have nothing remarkable about them. Mr. Ffoulkes' work on The Divisions of Christendom was placed on the Index at Rome about a year ago, almost immediately after the appearance of his Letter to the Archbishop of Westminister. This pamphlet, causing great scandal, of course complicated the whole business. Negotiations, if they are so to be called, ensued between Dr. Manning and Mr. Ffoukes, the object of which was to secure to the latter that restoration of reputation among his fellow Catholics which is always the reward of an expression of sorrow for scandal given, and of an humble and respectful submission to the central authority of the Church. At one time a sort of retractation was all but agreed upon, but it got wind that Mr. Ffoukes was reported to have characterised it as no retractation at all. Meanwhile the pamphlet also was placed on the Index, and, if we are to take the story as we find it in the * M. de Broglie is the reputed author of a late article in the Correspondant, in anticipation of the Council, which has created much sensation in France, being considered as a manifesto on the side of (modified) Gallicanism. second pamphlet before us, the terms of his submission were not considered satisfactory at Rome. At length the Archbishop wrote to inform Mr. Ffoulkes that he must not expect absolution until he submitted in the more formal manner required of him. The pamphlet before us is in the main a narrative of this history. It is always a very painful thing to listen to a story of this kind: but Catholics will have the consolation of seeing that it will not tell, in the mind of any candid person, against the authorities of the Church. It is not our business to pass judgment on such matters, but we think that the public voice will certainly not condemn the Archbishop of undue severity, nor think that the terms of submission were exorbitant. Looking at the question-for the moment-as a simple matter of fairness, and taking Mr. Ffoulkes' own statement as to details, we can see only two points on which an impartial friend of his own could imagine that he had ground of complaint. The first point is, that his book was placed on the Index without any notice being sent to the author, who had thus no opportunity of submitting beforehand or of explanation, and the other lies in the fact that when there was question of a retractation, a formal declaration that he submitted to the authority which condemned him was required. The latter, we should imagine, would appear to most Englishmen a matter of simple common sense. Mr. Ffoulkes appears to have wished to set up a counter authority in England, his own Archbishop and the other members of the Hierarchy, and he was willing to be judged by them. This was to make them act on the supposition that the Roman condemnation was insufficient, or inauthoritative, or reversible by themselves. As to the former point, we may take Mr. Ffoulkes on his own ground. He quotes a regulation of Benedict XIV., according to which 66 as often as the question turns upon a work written by a Catholic of good character, and with a reputation gained, either from other published works of his, or may be from this very work, which having been brought under examination, has to be proscribed," the proceeding shall be that the book is condemned donec corrigatur, but the decree not published till the author has been communicated with, and told what should be struck out, changed, or corrected. If he should submit, and prepare a new edition with the proper corrections, the decree is to be suppressed, unless, on account of the wide circulation obtained by the uncorrected edition, it be necessary to condemn that alone. It is quite certain that this method of proceeding was not adopted in the case of Mr. Ffoulkes. The reason appears to be obvious enough, and must have been suggested to Mr. Ffoulkes by the comments made on the Divisions of Christendom by more than one Catholic reviewer. We ourselves have never questioned either the industry, the erudition, the abilities, or the good intentions of Mr. Ffoulkes, and we may therefore perhaps speak without suspicion on the matter. We have been uniformly obliged to speak of his works as not written from a Catholic point of view at all. They have seemed to us absolutely steeped in errors, and they could not |