ected with the "Catholic
reaction." But if this great awakening and stimulating influence raised
new temptations to human passion and wickedness, it was not only in the
service of evil that this new zeal was displayed. The Council of Trent,
whatever its faults, and it had many, was itself a real reformation.
The "Catholic revival" meant the rekindling of earnest religion and
care for a good life in thousands of souls. If it produced the Jesuits,
it as truly produced Port Royal and the Benedictines. Europe would be
indeed greatly the poorer if it wanted some of the most conspicuous
products of the Catholic revival.

It is Mr. Pattison's great misfortune that through obvious faults of
temper he has missed the success which naturally might have seemed
assured to him, of dealing with these subjects in a large and
dispassionate way. Scholar, thinker, student as he is, conversant with
all literature, familiar with books and names which many well-read
persons have never heard of, he has his bitter prejudices, like the
rest of us, Protestants or Catholics; and what he hates is continually
forcing itself into his mind. He tells, with great and pathetic force,
the terrible story of the judicial murder of Calas at Toulouse, and of
Voltaire's noble and successful efforts to bring the truth to light,
and to repair, as far as could be repaired, its infamous injustice. It
is a story which shows to what frightful lengths fanaticism may go in
leading astray even the tribunals of justice. But unhappily the story
can be paralleled in all times of the world's history; and though the
Toulouse mob and Judges were Catholics, their wickedness is no more a
proof against the Catholic revival than Titus Oates and the George
Gordon riots are against Protestantism, or the Jacobin tribunals
against Republican justice. But Mr. Pattison cannot conclude his
account without an application. Here you have an example of what the
Catholic revival does. It first breaks Calas on the wheel; and then,
because Voltaire took up his cause, it makes modern Frenchmen, if they
are Catholics, believe that Calas deserved it:--

It is part of that general Catholic revival which has been working
for some years, and which like a fog is spreading over the face of
opinion.... The memory of Calas had been vindicated by Voltaire and
the Encyclopedists. That was quite enough for the Catholics....
It is the characteristic of Catholicism that it supersedes r