ny. It is a much more recent thing that one may
assume the immediate reading of foreign books, or boast of current
contribution from American scholars to the labour of the world's thought
upon these themes.

We should make a great mistake if we supposed that the progress has been
an unceasing forward movement. Quite the contrary, in every aspect of it
the life of the early part of the nineteenth century presents the
spectacle of a great reaction. The resurgence of old ideas and forces
seems almost incredible. In the political world we are wont to attribute
this fact to the disillusionment which the French Revolution had
wrought, and the suffering which the Napoleonic Empire had entailed. The
reaction in the world of thought, and particularly of religious thought,
was, moreover, as marked as that in the world of deeds. The Roman Church
profited by this swing of the pendulum in the minds of men as much as
did the absolute State. Almost the first act of Pius VII. after his
return to Rome in 1814, was the revival of the Society of Jesus, which
had been after long agony in 1773 dissolved by the papacy itself. 'Altar
and throne' became the watchword of an ardent attempt at restoration of
all of that which millions had given their lives to do away. All too
easily, one who writes in sympathy with that which is conventionally
called progress may give the impression that our period is one in which
movement has been all in one direction. That is far from being true. One
whose very ideal of progress is that of movement in directions opposite
to those we have described may well say that the nineteenth century has
had its gifts for him as well. The life of mankind is too complex that
one should write of it with one exclusive standard as to loss and gain.
And whatever be one's standard the facts cannot be ignored.

The France of the thirties and the forties saw a liberal movement within
the Roman Church. The names of Lamennais, of Lacordaire, of Montalembert
and Ozanam, the title _l'Avenir_ occur to men's minds at once. Perhaps
there has never been in France a party more truly Catholic, more devout,
refined and tolerant, more fitted to heal the breach between the
cultivated and the Church. However, before the Second Empire, an end had
been made of that. It cannot be said that the French Church exactly
favoured the infallibility. It certainly did not stand against the
decree as in the old days it would have done. The decree of
infalli