All over Europe this decline is still going on; ecclesiastical establishments are breaking down; other establishments are a-building up. Pius the Ninth seems likely to fulfil his own prophecy, and be the last of the Popes; I mean the last with temporal power. There is a great schism in the north of Europe; the Germans will be Catholics, but no longer Roman. The old forms of piety, such as service in Latin, the withholding of the Bible from the people, compulsory confession, the ungrateful celibacy of a reluctant priesthood--all these are protested against. It is of no avail that the holy coat of Jesus, at Treves, works greater miracles than the apostolical napkins and aprons; of no avail that the Virgin Mary appeared on the nineteenth of September, 1846, to two shepherd-children, at La Salette, in France. What are such things to Ronge and Wessenberg? Neither the miraculous coat, nor the miraculous mother, avails aught against this untoward generation, charm they never so wisely. The decline of piety goes on. By the new Constitution of France, all forms of religion are equal; the Catholic and the Protestant, the Mahometan and the Jew, are equally sheltered under the broad shield of the law. Even Spain, the fortress walled and moated about, whither the spirit of the middle ages retired and shut herself up long since, womanning her walls with unmanly priests and kings, with unfeminine queens and nuns--even Spain fails with the general failure. British capitalists buy up her convents and nunneries, to turn them into woollen mills. Monks and nuns forget their beads in some new handicraft; sister Mary, who sat still in the house, is now also busy with serving, careful, indeed, about more things than formerly, but not cumbered nor troubled as before. Meditative Rachels, and Hannahs, long unblest, who sat in solitude, have now become like practical Dorcas, making garments for the poor; the Bank is become more important than the Inquisition. The order of St. Francis d'Assisi, of St. Benedict, even of St. Dominic himself, is giving way before the new order of Arkwright, Watt, and Fulton,--the order of the spinning jenny and the power-loom. It is no longer books on the miraculous conception, or meditations on the five wounds of the Saviour, or commentaries on the song of songs which is Solomon's, that get printed there: but fiery novels of Eugene Sue, and George Sand; and so extremes meet.