knows too that women are not admitted to the Vatican, and therefore the habits of the court are not effeminate, while the whole of its time is spent in transacting state affairs; and the due course of justice is not disturbed by certain feminine passions.”  After this statement, startling to any one with a knowledge of the past, and still more to an inhabitant of Rome at the present day, the devout inquirer wisely deserts the domain of stern facts, and betakes himself to abstract considerations.  His first position, that the Vicar of Christ ought to follow the example of his master, who had neither court nor kingdom, nor where to lay his head, is upset at once by the argumentum ad hominem, that, according to the same rule, every believer ought to get crucified.  No escape from this dilemma presenting itself to our friend D’s devout but feeble mind, X follows up the assault, by asking him, as a deductio ad absurdum, whether he should like to see the Pope in sandals like St Peter.  The catechumen falls into the trap at once; flares up at the idea of such degradation being inflicted on the “Master of kings and Father of the faithful;” and asks indignantly if, for a “touch of Italianita,” he is to be suspected of having “washed away his baptism from his brow.”  Henceforth great D, after “Charles Reade’s” style, becomes little d.  Logically speaking, it is all over with him.  If the Pope be the master of kings, he must by analogy have the rights of a master, liberty to instruct and power to correct.  The old parallel of a schoolmaster and his scholars is adduced.  D feels he is caught; states, in the stock formula, “that this parallel between the master of kings and the master of scholars puzzles me, because it is unimpeachable; and yet I don’t want to concede everything, and cannot deny everything.”  As a last effort, he suggests with hesitation, that “after all, a law which secured the Pope perfect liberty of speech, action and judgment, would fulfil all the necessities of the case; and that in other respects the Pope might be a subject like anybody else.”  On this suggestion X tramples brutally.  D is asked, how the observance of this law is to be enforced, and can give no answer, on which X bursts into the most virulent abuse of all liberal governments in terms commensurate with the offence.  “Praised be God, the days of Henry the VIIIth are passed, and Catholics and Bishops, and all men of great and free intellects need no longer lose their heads beneath the British axe.  But are you ignorant that the ‘most catholic France’ has had proclaimed from her tribunes, that the law is of no creed?  Are you ignorant of the Josephian laws of Austria?  Glory be now to her young and most devout of catholic sovereigns! but are you not aware, that in the reign of Joseph the bishops in that empire were not allowed to write to, or correspond freely with, the Pope? . . .  I suppose, forsooth, you expect observance of the law from those liberal governments of yours,