I dined with Mr. Coppinger and his two sons: since 1824, he has resided here. The account they give of the irreligion of the shop-keeping class, and of the wretched education which has tainted the springs of French society, is terrible. They said by far the greater number of men at Paris dine away from home in public places, and often leave their wives and families to fare poorly at home, while they themselves feast at a restaurateur's. It appears that on the Sunday night of the last émeute the alarm at Paris was extreme: the rebels were thought to have the best of it; and it was their known intention to sack the quarter of the Tuileries and the Chaussée d'Antin. They think that the present state of things cannot last: but what is to come nobody can tell. _Tuesday, August 1._--This evening I had nearly an hour's talk with Le Père Lacordaire. He remembered that M. and I had called on him three years ago. I recalled to his mind what he had said, that well-informed and sincere persons could not remain out of the Church of Rome. Since then I had been especially studying the question of the Roman Primacy, and yet the conclusion to which I had come, after a most careful examination of antiquity, was in favour of a primacy of order, but against that of jurisdiction. He dwelt on the obscurity of the first three centuries: they were times of persecution, in which the popes had other work to do than to defend their primacy. Yet how remarkable it was that at the Nicene Council this primacy was seen at once emerging from the storm. The legates of the Roman Pontiff presided there. I observed that Hosius, Bishop of Corduba, who signed the first, was not marked as Roman legate, whereas the two priests who followed were; that it was as imperial commissioner, and friend of Constantine, that he presided. He seemed disposed to assume that Hosius must have been papal legate. I said that I by no means impugned the primacy, but entirely recognised it: my defence was in the difference between a primacy and an absolute monarchy: for the claim of universal jurisdiction, as at present exercised, amounts to that. He said they did not consider the papacy an absolute monarchy at all: they who lived within it felt that in fact it was limited in a great number of ways. There were rights inherent in bishops which the Pope could not touch: he could not suspend them from the government of their dioceses without cause given, and a regular ecclesiastical judgment rendered; he could not take from the priest his right to offer the Holy Sacrifice, or to confess, without the like judgment. I quoted the calling in of all the powers of the French episcopate in 1801, because it seemed to the Pope for the good of the whole Church. He admitted the case, and that the power did exist; but it was altogether an exceptional case, such as had never occurred before. I said that in controversy it was necessary to push principles to their