tored them to their ancient power and wealth. He formed the strictest
union with the Pope. He rewarded ecclesiastics, and honored the great
dignitaries of the established church as his most efficient and trusted
lieutenants in the war he waged on human liberty.

But I must allude to some of the things which gave this great man
trouble. Of course nothing worried him so much as popular insurrections,
since they endangered the throne, and opposed the cherished ends of his
life. As early as 1817, what he called "sects" disturbed central Europe.
These were a class of people who resembled the Methodists of England,
and the followers of Madam von Kruedener in Russia,--generally mystics in
religion, who practised the greatest self-denial in this world to make
sure of the promises of the next. The Kingdom of Wuertemberg, the Grand
Duchy of Baden, and Suabia were filled with these people,--perfectly
harmless politically, yet with views which Metternich considered an
innovation, to be stifled in the beginning. So of Bible societies; he
was opposed to these as furnishing a class of subjects for discussion
which brought up to his mind the old dissertations on "the rights of
man." "The Catholic Church," he writes to Count Nesselrode, the Russian
minister, "does not encourage the universal reading of the Bible, which
should be confined to persons who are calm and enlightened." But he goes
on to say that he himself at forty-five reads daily one or two chapters,
and finds new beauties in them, while at the age of twenty he was a
sceptic, and found it difficult not to think that the family of Lot was
unworthy to be saved, Noah unworthy to have lived, Saul a great
criminal, and David a terrible man; that he had tried to understand
everything, but that now he accepts everything without cavil or
criticism. Truly, a Catholic might say, "See the glorious peace and
repose which our faith brings to the most intellectual of men!"

In 1819 an event occurred, of no great importance in itself, but which
was made the excuse for increased stringency in the suppression of
liberal sentiments throughout Germany. This was the assassination of Von
Kotzebue, the dramatic author, at Manheim, at the hands of a fanatic by
the name of Sand. Kotzebue had some employment under the Russian
government, and was supposed to be a propagandist of the views of the
Czar, who had lately become exceedingly hostile to all emancipating
movements. In the early part of his re