The example of Rome was immediately followed by thousands of towns and villages over the whole surface of the globe. It would require libraries rather than volumes to reproduce the expressions of pious concurrence which everywhere took place. The replies of the bishops to the Pope before the definition, were printed in nine volumes; the Bull itself, translated into all the tongues and dialects of the universe, by the labors of a learned French sulpician, the Abbe Sire, appeared in ten volumes; the pastoral instructions, publishing and explaining the Bull, together with the articles of religious journals, would certainly make several hundred volumes, especially if to these were added the many books by the most learned men, and the singularly beautiful hymns and poems which flowed from the pens of Catholic poets, no less than the eloquent discourses of the most gifted orators. Descriptions of monuments and celebrations would also immensely swell the list. Sanctuaries, altars, statues, monuments of every kind, as well as pious associations rose everywhere in honor of the Immaculate Conception. The ever-increasing devotion to Mary had become greater than ever. It was to the unbelieving a phenomenon in the moral world of the nineteenth century, which they could neither comprehend nor account for. They could only see that it was as a source of new life to the church. (M45) The education law of France, enacted in 1850, had given rise to differences of opinion among earnest Catholics. These only increased after the celebrated _coup d’etat_ of 2nd December. M. de Montalembert, who had become hostile to Prince Louis Napoleon, on occasion of the iniquitous confiscation of the Orleans property, M. de Falloux, and their friends of the _Correspondant_, and the _Ami de la Religion_, insisted that they ought not to accept the protection of Cæsar in place of the general guarantees which were so profitable to the liberty of the church. They were right, as was but too well shown in the sequel. M. Louis Veuillot and the writers of the _Univers_ opposed their views, and so they accused these gentlemen of servility. But this was too much, as the event also showed.