ecclesiastical marriage, and that they are still bound to present themselves before the clergyman and to have their children baptized as formerly. The service of the police, we need scarcely say, is not required to induce the Catholics to seek the blessing of the church upon their marriage contracts or to have their children baptized. The result of all this is that many wise and large-minded men, like Von Hoffmann, Von Gerlach, and Von Kirchmann, have lost all sympathy with the policy of Bismarck towards the Catholic Church, as well as confidence in its success. They now thoroughly understand that, were it possible to destroy the church, this would be an irreparable misfortune for the fatherland. The state needs the church more than the church the state. She can live with Hottentots and Esquimaux, but without her neither liberty nor culture can be permanent. It must also be humiliating to Prince Bismarck to see with what little success those who have sought to ape him have met. Mr. Gladstone, from faith in the chancellor, thought to bolster up a falling party by “expostulating” with the Pope, and he has succeeded only in finding himself in the company of Newdegate and Whalley. President Grant has been made to believe that the Pope is such a monstrous man that by means of him even a third term might become possible; and he will retire to the obscurity of private life with the stigma of having sought to stir up religious strife for the furtherance of his own private interest. [37] April, 1874, p. 195. [38] Romans xiii. 1, 2. [39] The _British Quarterly_, January, 1875, p. 17. [40] Luke x. 16. [41] Matthew xviii. 17, 18. [42] Acts iv. 20. [43] Acts xv. 28. [44] The _London Quarterly Review_, January, 1875, p. 160. [45] _Der Culturkampf_, § 28, 29. [46] _Culturkampf_, pp. 33, 34. [47] _Culturkampf_ pp. 44-47. NOTRE DAME DE PITIE. “Was ever sorrow like, unto my sorrow?” There is in the Imperial Library at Paris an old copy of the gospels written on parchment, evidently of the fourteenth or fifteenth century, with the arms of Colbert on the cover. It once belonged to the church of Albi. At the end of the gospels is the _Planctus_, or _Complainte de Notre Dame_ in the _langue d’Oc_—the old language of Southern France—full of naïve piety and charming simplicity. No one could hear unmoved the touching tone of reproach and grief it breathes throughout. It is in thirty-two stanzas, the lines of which, monotonous and melancholy, are like the repeated tollings of a funeral bell. The last words of each verse are an expression of exhausted grief—the dying away of a voice drowned in tears.… It is entitled: “Here begins the Plaint in honor of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ and the sorrow of his most holy Mother.”