l it is a duty, and it must be done.

I have not the heart at present to give more than the briefest
answers to the queries which you so earnestly put to me. No doubt
you were startled to find, from the French papers that reached you
from Tahiti, and on no less authority than that of the "Apostolic
Letter of the Pope," and Cardinal Wiseman's "Pastoral," that this
enlightened country was once more, or was on the eve of becoming, a
"satellite" of Rome. Subsequent information, touching the course of
the almost unprecedented agitation which England has just passed
through, will serve to convince you, either that Pio Nono's
supplications to the Virgin and all the English saints, from
St. Dunstan downwards, have not been so successful as he flattered
himself that they would have been, or that the nation, if it be
about to embrace Romanism, has the oddest way of showing it. It
has acquired most completely the Jesuitical art of disguising
its real feelings; or, as the Anglicans would say, of practising
the doctrine of "reserve." To all appearance the country is more
indomitably Protestant than before.

Nor need you alarm yourself--as in truth you seem too much inclined
to do--about the machinations and triumphs of the Tractarian party.
Their insidious attempts are no doubt a graver evil than the
preposterous pretensions of Rome, to which indeed they gave their
only chance of success. The evil has been much abated, however by
those very assumptions; for it is no longer disguised. Tractarianism
is seen to be what many had proclaimed it,--the strict ally of Rome.
The hopes it inspired were the causes of the Pope's presumption and
of Wiseman's folly; and, by misleading them, it has, to a large
extent, undone the projects both of Rome and itself. But even before
the recent attempts, its successes were very partial.

The degree to which the infection tainted the clergy was no
criterion at all of the sympathy of the people. Too many of the
former were easily converted to a system which confirmed all their
ecclesiastical prejudices, and favored their sacerdotal pretensions;
which endowed every youngster upon whom the bishop laid hands
with "preternatural graces," and with the power of working
"spiritual miracles." But the people generally were in little
danger of being misled by these absurdities; and facts, even before
the recent outbreak, ought to have convinced the clergy, that, if
they thought proper to go to Rome, their flocks