X of course replies, that nothing in the world would give him so much pleasure; and during the first dialogue the candid inquirer appears in the character of D, the devout opponent. The pamphlet is much too long and too tedious to give in full. Happily the arguments are few in number; and such as they are, I shall be able to pick them out without much difficulty, quoting the exact words of the dialogue, wherever it rises to peculiar grandeur. X opens the discussion by carrying an assault at once into the enemy's weak places: "You devout believers say that a Court is not fitting for a priest. Everybody, however, knows that, at the Papal Court, the time and money of the public are not frittered away in parties and fetes and dances. Everybody knows too that women are not admitted to the Vatican, and therefore the habits of the court are not effeminate, while the whole of its time is spent in transacting state affairs; and the due course of justice is not disturbed by certain feminine passions." After this statement, startling to any one with a knowledge of the past, and still more to an inhabitant of Rome at the present day, the devout inquirer wisely deserts the domain of stern facts, and betakes himself to abstract considerations. His first position, that the Vicar of Christ ought to follow the example of his master, who had neither court nor kingdom, nor where to lay his head, is upset at once by the _argumentum ad hominem_, that, according to the same rule, every believer ought to get crucified. No escape from this dilemma presenting itself to our friend D's devout but feeble mind, X follows up the assault, by asking him, as a _deductio ad absurdum_, whether he should like to see the Pope in sandals like St Peter. The catechumen falls into the trap at once; flares up at the idea of such degradation being inflicted on the "Master of kings and Father of the faithful;" and asks indignantly if, for a "touch of Italianita," he is to be suspected of having "washed away his baptism from his brow." Henceforth great D, after "Charles Reade's" style, becomes little d. Logically speaking, it is all over with him. If the Pope be the master of kings, he must by analogy have the rights of a master, liberty to instruct and power to correct. The old parallel of a schoolmaster and his scholars is adduced. D feels he is caught; states, in the stock formula, "that this parallel between the master of kings and the master of scholars puzzles me, because it is unimpeachable; and yet I don't want to concede everything, and cannot deny everything." As a last effort, he suggests with hesitation, that "after all, a law which secured the Pope perfect liberty of speech, action and judgment, would fulfil all the necessities of the case; and that in other respects the Pope might be a subject like anybody else." On this suggestion X tramples brutally. D is asked, how the observance of this law is to be enforced, and can give no answer, on