It is clear to those who have eyes to see such things that God is bestowing special graces upon the English people in our day, and that the hope is not without solid foundation which looks forward to the time when England shall again take rank among the Catholic nations. The evidences of a movement towards the Catholic Church are still clearer and more general in the United States. There is less prejudice and hostility against the church in the United States than in England, and hence her progress is much greater. The Catholics, in the beginning of this century, stood as one to every two hundred of the whole population of the American Republic. The ratio of Catholics now is one to six or seven of the inhabitants. The Catholics will outnumber, before the close of this century, all other believers in Christianity put together in the republic. This is no fanciful statement, but one based on a careful study of statistics, and the estimate is moderate. Even should emigration from Catholic countries to the United States cease altogether--which it will not--or even should it greatly diminish, the supposed loss or diminution, in this source of augmentation, will be fully compensated by the relative increase of births among the Catholics, as compared with that among other portions of the population. The spirit, the tendencies, and the form of political government inherited by the people of the United States are strongly and distinctively Saxon; yet there are no more patriotic or better citizens in the republic than the Roman Catholics, and no more intelligent, practical, and devoted Catholics in the church than the seven millions of Catholics in this same young and vigorous republic. The Catholic faith is the only persistently progressive religious element, compared with the increase of population, in the United States. A striking proof that the Catholic Church flourishes wherever there is honest freedom and wherever human nature has its full share of liberty! Give the Catholic Church equal rights and fair play, and she will again win Europe, and with Europe the world. Now, who will venture to assert that these two mixed Saxon nations, of England and the United States, are not, in the order of divine Providence, the appointed leaders of the great movement of the return of all the Saxons to the Holy Catholic Church? The sun, in his early dawn, first touches the brightest mountain-tops, and, advancing in his course, floods the deepest valleys with his glorious light; and so the Sun of divine grace has begun to enlighten the minds in the highest stations in life in England, in the United States, and in Germany; and what human power will impede the extension of its holy light to the souls of the whole population of these countries? XVII. TRANSITION OF THE LATIN-CELTS