There is such a thing as universal truth, and there is such a thing as apostolic succession, made not by edicts, bulls, and church canons, but by an interior life divine and true. But all these Rome has perverted, by hardening the diffusive spirit of truth into so much mechanism cast into a mould in which it has been forcibly kept; and by getting progressively falser and falser as the world has got older and wiser, till the universality became only another name for a narrow and intolerant sectism, while the infallibility committed itself to absurdity, and which reason turns giddy, and faith has no resource but to shut her eyes; and the apostolic succession became narrowed down into a mere dynasty of priests and pontiffs. A hierarchy of magicians, saving souls by machinery, opening and shutting the kingdom of heaven by a "sesame" of incantations which it would have been the labour of a lifetime to make so much as intelligible to St. Peter or St. Paul. Now who shall compute the stupefying and brutalising effects of such a religion? Who will dare say that a principle which so debases reason is not like bands of iron around the expanding heart and struggling limbs of modern freedom? Who will dare tell me that this terrible Church does not lie upon the bosom of the present time like a vast unwieldy and offensive corpse, crushing the life-blood out of the body of modern civilization? It is not as a religious creed that we are looking at this thing; it is not for its theological sins that we are here to condemn it; but it is its effect upon political and social freedom that we are discussing. What must be the ultimate political and social freedom that we are discussing? What must be the ultimate political night that settles upon a people who are without individuality of opinions and independence of will, and whose brains are made tools of in the hands of a clan or an order? Look out there into that sad Europe, and see it all! See, there, how the Catholic element everywhere marks itself with night, and drags the soul, and energies, and freedom of the people backwards and downwards into political and social inaction--into unfathomable quagmires of death! * * * * * INDEX Abel, Carl von, 115,120,126,129,143,149 Abrahamowicz, Colonel, 68, 69 Academie, Royale, 65-67 Acton, 168 Adelaide, Queen Dowager, 51 Adelaide, Australia, 223 Adelbert, Prince, 160 _Adventuresses and Adventurous Ladies_, 15 "Affair of Honour," 80-81 Afghan Campaign, 30, 32 Agra, 33 Albany Museum, 193 Albert, Madame, 76 Alexander I, 95, 105 Alexandra, Princess, 105 Alemannia Corps, 116, 121, 128, 140, 144, 147, 148, 152, 204 Alhambra Theatre, 243 _Allegemeine Zeitung_, 124, 143 _Almanach de Gotha_, 91 "Andalusian Woman," 138 Anderson, Professor, 190, 212 Andrews, Stephen, 253 _Annual Register_, 149 Anstruther, Sir John, 158 _Antony and Cleopatra_, 223 _Archives de la Danse_, 8 Aretz, Gertrude, 7, 113