The Roman work of the Marchese Francesco Vitelleschi (Pomponio Leto) has now appeared in English--_Eight Months at Rome_ (Murray). This is welcome, as enabling one to refer the English reader to his pages, of which even Ultramontanes in Rome do not impugn the accuracy. _Quirinus_ is also happily in English. Professor Friedrich's _Tagebuch_ ought to be, but is not. Those and smaller works by Liberal Catholics, compared with the sparkling volumes of M. Louis Veuillot and the Ultramontane serials and pamphlets, and with the Old Catholic writers in the _Rheinischer Merkur_, the _Literaturblatt_ of Bonn, the _Stimmen aus der Katholischen Kirche_, and so forth, slowly bring home to our English understanding the strange principles and wonderful projects which at first we either fail to apprehend, or else imagine that they cannot be seriously entertained. On those principles and projects four distinct controversies have shed a steadily increasing light--the controversy on, 1. The Syllabus; 2. The Vatican Council; 3. The Old Catholic Movement; 4. The Falk Laws. The last two do not come within the scope of this work, but very much of the light by which we gradually come to understand the preceding stages of the movement, is due to the keen discussions to which these two controversies have given rise. Having subscribed for the _Civiltá Cattolica_ for years before the Syllabus appeared, I was not wholly unprepared for the controversy which followed. The _Civiltá_ also enabled me to see how Liberal Catholics connected the Vatican Council with a movement in the past, dating from the Pope's restoration, and with a plan of vast changes for the future. While the hopes of the Ultramontanes seemed visionary, and the fears of the Liberal Catholics seemed exaggerated, it did nevertheless appear possible that great events might come out of a deliberate attempt, made by a large and organized force, to reconstruct the world. Soon after the close of the Franco-German war, a visit to Paris, Munich, Vienna, Berlin, Brussels, and other centres, supplied me with much material, casting light on the enterprise in which the Vatican Council was the legislative episode, and from which the Old Catholic movement was the recoil. It was while engaged in studying such material that I threw off the translation of the discussion held in Rome on the question whether St. Peter had ever visited that city. Soon after broke out the controversy on the Falk Laws. Six weeks spent in a German country town, reading journals and pamphlets, and also in collecting, added to my light, and to the means of getting further light. In the course of the time employed upon the study of growing material was thrown off the review of the Pope's Speeches, under the title of _The Modern Jove_.