most tender solicitude for the welfare of the chosen German people.

But to return to the clergy. While the monasteries and nunneries are
going to the ground in superstition-saturated Spain; while eager workmen
are demolishing the last hiding-places of monkery, and letting the
daylight into places that have well kept the frightful secrets of three
hundred years, and turning the ancient cloister demesne into public
parks and pleasure-grounds,--the Romish priesthood here, in free
Bavaria, seem to imagine that they cannot only resist the progress of
events, but that they can actually bring back the owlish twilight of
the Middle Ages. The reactionary party in Bavaria has, in some of the
provinces, a strong majority; and its supporters and newspapers are
belligerent and aggressive. A few words about the politics of Bavaria
will give you a clew to the general politics of the country.

The reader of the little newspapers here in Munich finds evidence of at
least three parties. There is first the radical. Its members sincerely
desire a united Germany, and, of course, are friendly to Prussia, hate
Napoleon, have little confidence in the Hapsburgs, like to read of
uneasiness in Paris, and hail any movement that overthrows tradition and
the prescriptive right of classes. If its members are Catholic, they are
very mildly so; if they are Protestant, they are not enough so to harm
them; and, in short, if their religious opinions are not as deep as a
well, they are certainly broader than a church door. They are the party
of free inquiry, liberal thought, and progress. Akin to them are what
may be called the conservative liberals, the majority of whom may be
Catholics in profession, but are most likely rationalists in fact; and
with this party the king naturally affiliates, taking his music devoutly
every Sunday morning in the Allerheiligenkirche, attached to the
Residenz, and getting his religion out of Wagner; for, progressive as
the youthful king is, he cannot be supposed to long for a unity which
would wheel his throne off into the limbo of phantoms. The conservative
liberals, therefore, while laboring for thorough internal reforms,
look with little delight on the increasing strength of Prussia, and
sympathize with the present liberal tendencies of Austria. Opposed to
both these parties is the ultramontane, the head of which is the
Romish hierarchy, and the body of which is the inert mass of ignorant
peasantry, over whom the influe