Prince Bismarck began to grow weary of us; and he soon showed signs of his peculiar form of weariness. He scarcely agrees with “what can’t be cured must be endured”; his motto is rather, “What can’t be cured must be killed.” The secularization of schools was carried in the face of the protest of the Prussian Catholic bishops, assembled at Fulda. The solemnization of the sacrament of marriage is handed over to the civil jurisdiction, the same as any other contract. Still not a whisper against the Jesuits, though, as we have already quoted, his quarrel is purely and entirely with them. We pass on to the crowning act in his list of grievances: the embassy to the Court of the Vatican. What a noble thing it looked in the all powerful Chancellor to despatch an ambassador from the high and mighty German empire, the mightiest in the world, to the old man pent up in the Vatican! What a condescension to acknowledge that such a person existed! Of course the Pope would receive such marks of favor with tears of gratitude and open arms. What! is it possible? He actually rejects the ambassador, and sends him back on Bismarck’s hands. Well, well! wonders will never cease. Now there never was such a tempest in a tea‐pot as the explosion this carefully laid train created. The very fact of sending an ambassador at all to a monarch acknowledges the perfect right of that monarch to receive or reject him as he pleases; and to common sense there is an end of the question. The Pope did not choose to receive this ambassador; he had every right to exercise his freedom of action; he exercised his right, but Prince Bismarck’s sensibilities were hurt. It was not so much the fact of rejection as the Pope’s want of politeness that afflicted him. In his speech before the Reichstag he declared that such a thing was without a parallel in the history of diplomacy. What martinets these Germans are for punctilio! We remember Mr. Disraeli actually refusing to accept as sufficient reason for the late war the “breach of etiquette at a German watering‐place.” Now, with all due respect, Prince Bismarck knew, as those he addressed knew, as all the world knows, that this statement was anything but correct. Ambassadors have been rejected before now, and probably will be again. In fact, had certain individuals of this class to and from ourselves been rejected at the outset, it would have saved national difficulties, or at least wounded feelings and displays of school‐boy recriminations scarcely creditable to such high and mighty folk as gentlemen of the diplomatic body. But there is more in the question than this. The Cardinal‐Prince Hohenlohe is a prince of the church. He is in addition attached to the Pope’s household. He gave himself freely and voluntarily to the service of the church. He is not a mere ordinary member of the Catholic body. He stands in relation to the Pope as Von Moltke, the Dane, stands in relation to the Emperor William; as those who were once