frightened, poor baby, and she sobbed out: "They have cut off
the Queen of France's head, my dear." Such an ineffaceable
recollection colours childhood and sets character. It is an
education for life.

As for the Papacy,--well, years have softened but not destroyed
England's hereditary detestation of Rome. The easy tolerance of the
American for any religion, or for all religions, or for no religion
at all, is the natural outcome of a mixed nationality, and of a
tolerably serene background. We have shed very little of our blood,
or of our neighbour's blood, for the faith that was in us, or in him;
and, during the past half-century, forbearance has broadened into
unconcern. Even the occasional refusal of a pastor to allow a cleric
of another denomination to preach in his church, can hardly be deemed
a violent form of persecution.

What American author, for example, can recall such childish memories
as those which Mr. Edmund Gosse describes with illuminating candour
in "Father and Son"? "We welcomed any social disorder in any part
of Italy, as likely to be annoying to the Papacy. If there was a
custom-house officer stabbed in a fracas at Sassari, we gave loud
thanks that liberty and light were breaking in upon Sardinia." What
American scientist, taking a holiday in Italy, ever carried around
with him such uncomfortable sensations as those described by
Professor Huxley in some of his Roman letters? "I must have a strong
strain of Puritan blood in me somewhere," he writes to Sir John
Donnelly, after a morning spent at Saint Peter's, "for I am possessed
with a desire to arise and slay the whole brood of idolaters, whenever
I assist at one of these services."

Save and except Miss Georgiana Podsnap's faltering fancy for
murdering her partners at a ball, this is the most bloodthirsty
sentiment on record, and suggests but a limited enjoyment of a really
beautiful service. Better the light-hearted unconcern of Mr. John
Richard Green, the historian, who, albeit a clergyman of the Church
of England, preferred going to the Church of Rome when Catholicism
had an organ, and Protestantism, a harmonium. "The difference in
truth between them doesn't seem to me to make up for the difference
in instruments."

Mr. Lowell speaks somewhere of a "divine provincialism," which
expresses the sturdy sense of a nation, and is but ill replaced by
a cosmopolitanism lacking in virtue and distinction. Perhaps this
is England's gift, and insures