The events of the last few months have, in a special way, drawn the thoughts of men towards two cities which stand out among European capitals as witnesses of the way in which the history of remote times still has its direct bearing on things which are passing before our own eyes. Rome and Paris now stand out, as they have stood out in so many earlier ages, as the historic centres of a period which, there can be no doubt, will live to all time as one of the marked periods of the world's history. And it is not the least wonderful phænomenon of this autumn of wonders that, while our eyes have been drawn at once to Rome and to Paris, they have been drawn far more steadily and with far keener interest towards Paris than they have been drawn towards Rome. We can hardly doubt, whether we look back to the past or onwards to the future, that the fall of the Pope's temporal power is really a greater event than any possible result of the war between Germany and France. Yet such is the greater immediate interest of the present struggle, such perhaps is the instinctive attraction of mankind towards the more noisy and brilliant triumphs of the siege and the battle-field, that the really greater event, simply because of the ease with which it has happened, has passed almost unnoticed in the presence of the lesser. The world has seen the Papacy in several shapes; but the shape of a Pontiff, spiritually infallible, but politically a subject, and the subject not of an universal Emperor but of a mere local King, is something which the world has not seen before. What may come of it, no man can say; but we may be pretty sure that greater things will come of it in one way or another, than can come out of any settlement, in whatever direction, of conflicting French and German interests. Still, at this moment, the present fate of Paris unavoidably draws to itself more of our thoughts than the future fate of Rome. But it is well to keep the two cities together before our eyes, and all the more so because the past history and the present position of those two cities have points in common which no other city in Europe shares with them in their fulness, which only one other city in Europe can claim to share with them in any degree.