11 SEPTEMBER 1869, Page 1

M. de Montalembert, who is supposed to be near his

end, has written a letter expressing the warmest sympathy with that memorial by the Treves Catholics against the supposed objects of the great (Ecumenical Council, the drift of which we explained in our issue of July 17. M. de Montalembert would himself gladly have signed this memorial against the proposed Ultra- montane policy. He is overcome with humiliation that it should have been left to German Catholics of the Rhine "to take the initiative in a demonstration which would have so well become the antecedents of Catholic France." He speaks, he says, from the very border of the grave. Though he has not yet attained the deliverance "for which he sighs, and which God, in His good pleasure, sees fit that he should so long wait for, still the end of his sufferings cannot be far off, and already he seems to feel that be has the power given him of seeing men and things here below with that sincerity and independence of which death alone can accord the privilege." Does not this really mean that M. de Montalern- bert, with eyes purified by the immediate shadow of death, sees that the Holy See is not infallible ?