ce him, not only among heroes and
sages, but also among the most renowned initiators of great movements. His
death is a glorious protest against the Godless, reckless, revolutionary
sects. His high career will be as a monument throughout the centuries,
constantly reminding mankind that, in this age, which may well be called
the age of chaos and confusion--confusion in politics, confusion in the
social State, confusion of ideas--there was, at least, one favored spot,
where truth, order and justice reigned, and there was a contented and
happy people.

STATES OF EUROPE--SWITZERLAND.

The Protestant and free-thinking majority in Switzerland were jealous of
the prosperity of the Catholic Church. They must, therefore, if possible,
divide, and by dividing, weaken, if not destroy, the Catholic body. The
most efficient means they could think of was the establishment of an old
or _alt-Catholic_ Church on the model of that of Germany. The idea was at
hand, and the elements were not far to seek. Among the Swiss Catholic
clergy there were none so weak as to betray their church. In the
coterminous country--France, where there are fifty thousand parochial
priests, some thirty were found already in disgrace among their brethren,
who were ready to form the nucleus of the proposed schismatical church.
The pretext was the pretended novelties introduced by the OEcumenical
Council of the Vatican, which, they insisted, changed the character of the
ancient Catholic Church. The schism once on foot, the majority in the
State affected to treat the real Catholics as dissenters, and the handful
of schismatics as the Catholic Church of Switzerland. Founding on this
idea, persecution was speedily inaugurated. First came the secularization
of several abbeys, which the revolution of the sixteenth century had
respected, in the northern cantons, and the confiscation of the Church of
Zurich, which was handed over to the _alt-Catholics_. Their next measure
was the expulsion of Mgr. Mermillod, Bishop of Hebron and Coadjutor of
Geneva. Mgr. Lachat, Bishop of Bale, was then deprived, and, on a purely
theological pretext, his public adhesion to the Council of the Vatican.
The sixty-nine parish priests of Bernese Jura, having declared in writing
that they remained faithful to the Bishop of Bale, were, in their turn,
suspended from their offices and driven, at first, from their parishes,
and afterwards from the country. As there was not a sufficient number of