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CHRONICLE

JOHN EMERICH EDWARD DALBERG-ACTON, born at Naples,
10th January 1834, son of Sir Ferdinand Richard Edward
Dalberg-Acton and Marie de Dalberg, afterwards Countess
Granville.
French school near Paris.
1843-1848. Student at Oscott
" " Edinburgh.
1848-1854. " " Munich University, living with Doellinger.
1855. Visits America in company with Lord Ellesmere.
1858-1862. Becomes editor of _The Rambler_.
1859-1865. M.P. for Carlow.
1862-1864. Founds, edits, and concludes _The Home and Foreign
Review_.
1864. Pius IX. issued _Quanta Cura_, with appended _Syllabus
Errorum_.
1865-1866. M.P. for Bridgnorth
1865. Marries Countess Marie Arco-Valley.
1867-1868. Writes for _The Chronicle_.
1869. Created Baron Acton.
1869-1871. Writes for _North British Review_.
1869-1870. Vatican Council. Acton at Rome. Writes "Letters
of Quirinus" in _alleging Zeitung_.
1872. Honorary degree at Munich.
1874. Letters to _The Times_ on "The Vatican Decrees."
1888. Honorary degree at Cambridge.
1889. " " Oxford.
1890. Honorary Fellow of All Souls'.
1892-1895. Lord-in-Waiting.
1895-1902. Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge
Honorary Fellow of Trinity College.
19th June 1902. Died at Tegernsee.

INTRODUCTION

The two volumes here published contain but a small selection from the
numerous writings of Acton on a variety of topics, which are to be found
scattered through many periodicals of the last half-century. The result
here displayed is therefore not complete. A further selection of nearly
equal quantity might be made, and still much that is valuable in Acton's
work would remain buried. Here, for instance, we have extracted nothing
from the _Chronicle_; and Acton's gifts as a leader-writer remain
without illustration. Yet they were remarkable. Rarely did he show to
better advantage than in the articles and reviews he wrote in that
short-lived rival of the _Saturday Review_. From the two bound volumes
of that single weekly, there might be made a selection which would be of
high interest to all who cared to learn what was passing in the minds of
the most acute and enlightened members of the Roman Communion at one of
the most critical epochs in the history of the papacy. But what could
never