_April 21st._--Brass to-day publishes an article (the greater part of which was dictated by the Chief to Bucher) on the language used by the Pope in bestowing his benediction upon a large deputation of Catholics last Saturday. I quote the following passages: “Until we are assured of the contrary on more definite information, we are disposed to think that those four hundred persons did not all come to Rome from their different countries merely to deliver the address, but rather that those who have charge of the Vatican policy considered it desirable to give the Pope an opportunity of expressing his views, and that the real pilgrims were reinforced with contingents from the tourists and foreign residents who are always to be found in Rome and the other Italian cities. We shall hardly do the Papal advisers an injustice in crediting them with this little stratagem, when the Pope’s own speech proves that they did not hesitate to impose upon him with the grossest inaccuracies, and when they induced so truth-loving a man to say that a spirit of hostility to the Church had provoked the struggle in Germany. The Pope does not understand the German language, and the Germans who encompass him are no friends of Germany. It is, therefore, no wonder that he is unable to control the statements made to him by his counsellors. Are we not, indeed, accustomed to find the grossest errors respecting Germany prevalent in leading circles in France, a neighbouring country which is in active, personal and literary intercourse with us? Every one in Germany who is capable of forming an independent opinion knows, and every one, with the exception of the party of the _Germania_, will acknowledge, that it was the Catholic reaction which began the quarrel with a Government whose dispositions towards the Catholic Church were most friendly. Every Government, including those of Catholic countries like Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Italy and France, must defend itself against a reactionary movement which now, through the mouth of the Pope, summons to its assistance the elements of opposition in Ireland, Poland, and Holland, in the same way as it must defend itself against the revolutionary democracy. This is confirmed by the Pope himself, so far as France is concerned; as the ‘party’ which fears the Pope so much must, we presume, be held to include the Government that has curbed the zeal of the ultramontane deputies. For the Papal politicians even France is not sufficiently Catholic; France, where for centuries the keenest Papal propaganda has been carried on, where Roman discipline has been maintained by the St. Bartholomew massacres, the dragonnades, and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and whose first care, after stealing Strassburg from us, was to hand over the Protestant Cathedral to the Catholic bishops. The Pope admonishes the party which in France fears him to cultivate a humble spirit. If he knew the real condition of affairs there, as in all other