6. Études sur Pascal. 1848, 1856. 7. Chrestomathie Française, Histoire de la littérature Française au XVIII siècle, et Études sur la littérature Française au XIX siècle. 1829, 1849, 1853, etc. He wrote, besides, numerous short pieces, and articles in reviews and journals, suggested by topics of the day.] Upon a single point, the relations of Church and State, his usual comprehensiveness of view and independence of thought appeared to abandon M. Vinet. {183} Justly struck and afflicted by his own experience of the inconveniences of a strict bond between Church and State, disgusted at the servility and falsity which frequently are, sometimes on the part of the State, sometimes on the part of the Church, its results, he concluded that in all cases all alliance between the two conditions of society is radically vicious; and he declared their entire separation a general and absolute principle, the sole reasonable and just system, the sole efficacious guarantee of truth and of liberty in spirituals or temporals. He thus ignored, it appears to me, the natural causes which produce, and the human motives which sanction, a certain alliance between societies civil and ecclesiastical; he ignored also the inestimable advantages which, at certain times and in certain circumstances, each may derive, and has actually derived, from that alliance. In the United States of America, the entire separation of the State and of the different Churches was necessary and salutary, for it was the spontaneous consequence of the condition of men's minds, and of the position of society. {184} In England, in spite of the acts of injustice, and the ills engendered by the intimate union of the state with a Church legally constituted and having exclusive privileges, the coexistence of the Church of England with the freedom, more and more every day complete and recognized, of the Churches of the Dissenters, was for the Christian religion a potent principle of life, of force, and of durability. And if we go back to the ancient history of Europe, who can doubt that at the fall of the Roman Empire, if the State and the Church had not, although distinct institutions, been allied, the development of Christianity would have been far less energetic, and its conquest of its barbarous conquerors far more problematical? This is, I repeat, a question not of principle, but of time, of place, of circumstance, and of condition of society. A complete separation of Church and State may be good and practicable; it is neither the only good system, nor is it always a practicable system. {185}