earnest about the "Divine Right of Kings" as the parson who, less than
forty years ago, preached a sermon to prove that the great cholera
visitation of 1849 was a direct chastisement of the impiety of the Royal
Mint in dropping the letters D.G. from the first florins of Queen
Victoria issued in that year. He bewailed his sad fate in being called
over to Ireland by family affairs at such a moment, and evidently did
not know that the Mass in question had been countermanded by the
Cardinal Archbishop.

The incident, odd enough in itself, interested me the more that
yesterday, as it happens, the Cardinal had spoken with me of this
curious affair.

He heard of it for the first time on Saturday, and, sending at once for
the priest in charge of the Carmelite Church, forbade the celebration.
Later on in the evening, two strangers came to the Archbishop's house,
and in great agitation besought him to allow the arrangements for the
Mass to go on. He declined to do this, and sent them away impaled on a
dilemma. "What you propose," said the Cardinal, "is either a piece of
theatrical tomfoolery, in which case it is unfit to be performed in a
church, or it is flat treason, in which case you should be sent to the
Tower!"

They went away, like the Senatus of Augsburg from the presence of
Napoleon--"_tres mortifies et peu contents_." After they had gone, the
Cardinal remembered that for some time past queer documents had reached
him through the post-office, setting forth the doctrine of Divine Right,
and the story of the Stuarts. One of these, which with the rest he had
thrown into the fire, was an elaborate genealogical chart, designed to
show that the crowns of Great Britain and Ireland ought rightfully to be
worn by a certain princess in Bavaria!

If there is anything more in all this than a new variety of the "blue
China craze," may it not be taken as a symptom of that vague but clearly
growing dissatisfaction with the nineteenth century doctrine of
government by mere majorities, which is by no means confined to Europe?
This feeling underlies the "National Association" for getting a preamble
put into the Constitution of the United States, "recognising Almighty
God as the source of all authority and power in Civil Government." There
was such a recognition in the Articles of Confederation of 1781.
Archbishop Ryan of Philadelphia should have mentioned to His Holiness
the existence of this Association, when he presented to Leo XII