than this age of Christian faith; glorious in great deeds and historic names; glorious in learning and life of the universities with which the Church had studded Europe; glorious in a noble Christian art and architecture; and glorious too in the sublime genius of its poets. And all these great movements, intellectual and social, all pregnant with such grand results for the happiness and enlightenment of mankind, and for the future greatness and civilization of the nations of Europe, were originated and guided to success by the genius of the Catholic Church. The Church was that mysterious power that moulded the nations, and influenced the social condition of successive generations over the whole continent. In the lawless ages of rapine and violence she stood between the tyrant and his victim, and restrained the excesses of feudalism by the sword of her spiritual authority. She was ever the protector of the weak, and the defender of rational liberty. In the words of an eloquent Protestant writer, "The Church was the great bulwark of order, she perpetuated justice and light, and fought the battle of civilization and freedom. The feudal castle could not screen the oppressor of the poor from her vengeance, nor the kingly diadem save the tyrant of his people from her stern maledictions; the Church presided over mediaeval society; her Pontiff reigned with an universal sway, with which the grateful suffrage of Europe invested him; and never was human power exercised with more justice or with more glorious results for the welfare of humanity". And this is the Church which her enemies would shamelessly brand as hostile to the diffusion of knowledge; this the Church that would restrain the freedom of human thought, perpetuate ignorance, and dwarf the intellect of man; the Church of Nicholas, of Leo, and of Benedict; the Church that presided over the revival of Greek learning, and saved the decaying fragments of classic genius; the Church that before the sixteenth century founded fifty-eight universities in Europe, and from her poverty encouraged learning with a munificence which should shame the nations of our day! The Catholic Church cultivated the mind of Petrarch, she inspired the genius of Dante, and listened to the thrilling tones of Ariosto. Calderon was her child, and Tasso loved to linger in her capital. Yes, this is the Church that would dwarf the human intellect! Gothic architecture is her own creation, and the glories of Italian art were developed in the shadow of the Vatican. The palace of Nicholas and of Leo was the temple of learning, and the gifted of every nation flocked to the city of the pontiffs to live in the smile of his favour and on the munificence of his bounty. In his presence the poet felt a new inspiration, the sculptor breathed life into the marble, and the magic pencil of Italy imparted to its matchless productions a more than divine beauty. The same ear that was charmed with the strains of