Friends, I absolutely and peremptorily Believe! (ll. 243-245.) * * * * * I say, I see all, And swear to each detail the most minute In what I think a Pan's face--you, mere cloud: I swear I hear him speak and see him wink, For fear, if once I drop the emphasis, Mankind may doubt there's any cloud at all. (ll. 866-871.) The world has decided that with regard to Certain points, left wholly to himself, When once a man has arbitrated on, ... he must succeed there or go hang. (ll. 289-291.) And of the most important of these "points" is The form of faith his conscience holds the best, Whate'er the process of conviction was. (ll. 296-297.) The Roman Catholic faith is that in which the Bishop was born and educated. It had been decided from childhood that he should become a priest: hence his choice of vocation. And this faith is, for him, one in which power temporal, as well as spiritual, puts forth its claims. Its undaunted champion may assert "I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile," but in drawing the distinction between "Peter's creed" and that of Hildebrand, Blougram recognizes by implication the political aspect of the cause for which the struggle thus closing had been sustained. VI. If then, in satisfaction of the demands of those uncompromising advocates of truth of whom Gigadibs is representative, the prelate of the nineteenth century shall renounce his position as confessor of the creed of the eleventh, in what rank of life may he take his stand? From what career may faith be, without injurious effects, wholly excluded? For if faith, to merit its title, is to be unmixed with doubt, equally must unbelief be unalloyed in quality. A life apart from faith? That of Napoleon? If so, then does the critic claim that Napoleon shares with him the "common primal element of unbelief," belief being an impossibility. Yet to such an admission the Corsican's whole career would give the lie. Whatever the character of the faith which sustained him, faith there was, sufficient to lead him on to colossal deeds: his trust may have been "crazy," "God knows through what, or in what"; but to all intents and purposes it was faith, possessing the essential element of faith, _life_, and the inspiration of life: It's alive And shines and leads him, and that's all we want.