liberals, therefore, while laboring for thorough internal reforms, look with little delight on the increasing strength of Prussia, and sympathize with the present liberal tendencies of Austria.  Opposed to both these parties is the ultramontane, the head of which is the Romish hierarchy, and the body of which is the inert mass of ignorant peasantry, over whom the influence of the clergy seems little shaken by any of the modern moral earthquakes.  Indeed I doubt if any new ideas will ever penetrate a class of peasants who still adhere to styles of costume that must have been ancient when the Turks threatened Vienna, which would be highly picturesque if they were not painfully ugly, and arrayed in which their possessors walk about in the broad light of these latter days, with entire unconsciousness that they do not belong to this age, and that their appearance is as much of an anachronism as if the figures should step out of Holbein’s pictures (which Heaven forbid), or the stone images come down from the portals of the cathedral and walk about.  The ultramontane party, which, so far as it is an intelligent force in modern affairs, is the Romish clergy, and nothing more, hears with aversion any hint of German unity, listens with dread to the needle-guns at Sadowa, hates Prussia in proportion as it fears her, and just now does not draw either with the Austrian Government, whose liberal tendencies are exceedingly distasteful.  It relies upon that great unenlightened mass of Catholic people in Southern Germany and in Austria proper, one of whose sins is certainly not skepticism.  The practical fight now in Bavaria is on the question of education; the priests being resolved to keep the schools of the people in their own control, and the liberal parties seeking to widen educational facilities and admit laymen to a share in the management of institutions of learning.  Now the school visitors must all be ecclesiastics; and although their power is not to be dreaded in the cities, where teachers, like other citizens, are apt to be liberal, it gives them immense power in the rural districts.  The election of the Lower House of the Bavarian parliament, whose members have a six years’ tenure of office, which takes place next spring, excites uncommon interest; for the leading issue will be that of education.  The little local newspapers—­and every city has a small swarm of them, which are remarkable for the absence of news and an abundance of advertisements—­have broken out into a style of personal controversy, which, to put it mildly, makes me, an American, feel quite at home.  Both parties are very much in earnest, and both speak with a freedom that is, in itself, a very hopeful sign.