In England, the effect of the Pope's measures as a
cause of reli- gious panic seems to be waning. The theological combatants argue their grounds with no increase of excitement or exacerba- tion; indeed, from purely clerical quarters have come estimable lessons and suggestions. The Dean of Bristol warns his olergy against meeting Roman Papacy with English Papacy ; exhorts them to cooperate with the sound-feeling laity ; and, con- ceding that the -Pope has formal and spiritual right to war- rant his course, censures the arrogance of his manner • he suggests that the fitting repressive treatment would be the Royal disfavour—the insulted Queen's cold frawn—rather thitn the virtual repeal of the Emancipation Act, or the renewal of penal statutes. The masterly analytical letter of our correspond- ent " E. A. F." strips the case bare of the rhetorical disguises which theological fears and political cunning threw around it. The views embodied in that letter are those toward which sound opinion is generally gravitating. The Premier has evidently been better advised since he shouted aloud his ebullient Protestantism through the ears of the Bishop of Durham : at the Guildhall dinner he was as unexpectedly reserved as he had before been loud and forward. Cardinal Wiseman has returned to London, much sur- prised at the stir raised by one whose " consent" he is said to have obtained before he went to Rome. So much has been attributed to the Premier, that he must have explained all, or most likely made the matter worse. so he holds his peace; and the craving appetite of the Guildhall citizens had to rest content with the vica- rious Protestantism of the Lord Chancellor and the undesired jocosity of the Lord Chief Justice of England. Mr. Disraeli's perspicacity must now teach him that his first impulse of literary emulation carried him off in a direction not the wisest for the party which obeys his genius while rejecting his nominal command. He should have foreseen that the sympathies expressed by Mr. Masterman at Guildhall would be shared by many of the most respectable members of the Conservative party; who will only feel contempt for the critical captiousness which has betrayed the man of genius into something like an historical blunder. His Whig opponent is rarely altogether wrong in taking up a political scent; the game may not be the very game which as a noble Whig hound he ought to hunt, but it will rarely be exceedingly wrong : at present, like an old dog suspecting he is wrong because the young pack so cla- morously seconds him, the Russell hound is 'holding his tongue and slinking behind other dogs : but John Bull, as master of the pack, will sometimes enjoy killing vermin as much as bay- ing a stag ; the sport is all the same, and while the run lasts the false cry is as moving as the true one. The Disraeli hound re- monstrates, that the leader is going to harry a brother dog ; but in the end he will find that the leader's nose was truer than his own. It is Dryden's "white hind" that the Protestant instinct truly scents ; and Mr. Disraeli will find that his cross-run will lead him alone to something worse than a Cobden herring. Without a
metaphor, though Lord John has lost some ound with the higher thinkers, he pleases the aggregate ten-pour , and renews, for a
term of longer or shorter duration. the Whig of place if not of power.
