At Malines the foreigners were well represented; in the German conventions but few make their appearance. Twice did France send her chosen warriors to the congress--the first time in 1863, led by Montalembert, at present the most brilliant defender of the Church, and again in 1864, under the Bishop of Orleans, called by some the Bossuet of our day. In August, 1863, the Tuileries were anxiously occupied with the speeches held in the Petit Seminaire at Malines, for in France despotism has gagged free speech, and there a congress of Catholic Europe is an impossibility; the Caesar's minions would tolerate no such assembly. Next to the French delegation, the German, led by A. Reichensperger, of Cologne, was the most numerous. There might also be seen a noble band of Englishmen, and their speaker, Father Herman the convert, seemed another St Bernard preaching the crusade. Spain, Italy, Ireland, Hungary, Poland, Brazil, the United States, Palestine, the Cape of Good Hope, almost every country on the globe, were represented at Malines. True, the assembly was by no means {10} as large as the multitude that met in Rome on June 8, 1862, when Pius IX. saw gathered around him in St. Peter's church three hundred prelates, thousands of priests, and forty to fifty thousand laymen, representing every nation of the earth. Still, the congress at Malines brings to recollection those immense gatherings of bygone times, where princes and bishops, nobles and priests, met to provide for the welfare of the nations committed to their charge.