nnected. So far as he was concerned, however, the
time may be regarded as that of youth and hope.

Next came what must be termed the "fighting period," when he stood forth
as the leader among laymen of the party opposed to that "insolent and
aggressive faction" which achieved its imagined triumph at the Vatican
Council. This period, which may perhaps be dated from the issue of the
Syllabus by Pius IX. in 1864, may be considered to close with the reply
to Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet on "The Vatican Decrees," and with the
attempt of the famous Cardinal, in whose mind history was identified
with heresy, to drive from the Roman communion its most illustrious
English layman. Part of this story tells itself in the letters published
by the Abbot Gasquet; and more will be known when those to Doellinger are
given to the world.

We may date the third period of Acton's life from the failure of
Manning's attempt, or indeed a little earlier. He had now given up all
attempt to contend against the dominant influence of the Court of Rome,
though feeling that loyalty to the Church of his Baptism, as a living
body, was independent of the disastrous policy of its hierarchy. During
this time he was occupied with the great unrealised project of the
history of liberty or in movements of English politics and in the usual
avocations of a student. In the earlier part of this period are to be
placed some of the best things that Acton ever wrote, such as the
lectures on Liberty, here republished. It is characterised by his
discovery in the "eighties" that Doellinger and he were divided on the
question of the severity of condemnation to be passed on persecutors and
their approvers. Acton found to his dismay that Doellinger (like
Creighton) was willing to accept pleas in arrest of judgment or at least
mitigation of sentence, which the layman's sterner code repudiated.
Finding that he had misunderstood his master, Acton was for a time
profoundly discouraged, declared himself isolated, and surrendered the
outlook of literary work as vain. He found, in fact, that in
ecclesiastical as in general politics he was alone, however much he
might sympathise with others up to a certain point. On the other hand,
these years witnessed a gradual mellowing of his judgment in regard to
the prospects of the Church, and its capacity to absorb and interpret in
a harmless sense the dogma against whose promulgation he had fought so
eagerly. It might also be correct to say