In the sixteenth century a new Christendom,outside the obedience of the Holy See and owning no Papal authority, a union of all the newly-created Protestant Churches, a pan-Protestant confederation, was the vision of Archbishop Cranmer. Several attempts were made to bring together German Lutherans and Swiss Zwinglians and Calvinists. The formularies of the Church of England, to be read in the Book of Common Prayer, were framed deliberately that all Protestants who accepted the Creed of Nicea might be members of the established church; and not unskilfully framed, since Lutherans, Zwinglians and Calvinists alike were included in the Anglican episcopate of Queen Elizabeth’s appointment. But the efforts to secure a European Protestant confederation failed. The policy of Cranmer was frustrated. On the reformed doctrine of the Lord’s Supper a common denial of the Mass and Transubstantiation could not bring peace between Lutherans, who held to a Real Presence, and Zwinglians, who as stoutly maintained the contrary. On the questions of discipline and Church government the followers of John Calvin were not to be persuaded to accept the rule of princes in matters of faith and morals. International rivalries and the clash of political interests irritated and still further divided the various schools of Protestantism. When the ‘new religion,’ its forms defined and settled, was established in England and Scotland, in Holland, Switzerland, North Germany and the Scandinavian countries, minorities who would not conform to the religion of the State were penalized and dissent made an offence at law.

Having been all my life a great lover of Italy, I have to while away the time when I am not actually in ‘the land of lands’ by reading books about it. I prefer the books old, because they are usually better written; and I like genuine memoirs packed with things seen rather than novels garnished with travel-pictures. This is not to say that I cannot relish Hans Andersen’s Improvisatore or Hawthorne’s Marble Faun; but I own that their Falstaffian ratio of sack to bread makes them unsatisfactory fare for a reader of my sober tastes. The Italian portions of Evelyn’s Diary used to stand me in good stead; but Evelyn, although I shall never wholly abandon him, is now relegated to a remoter shelf. I have discovered Richard Lassels.

Richard Lassels, author of The Voyage of Italy, was a Catholic priest. He was born (perhaps) in sixteen hundred and three, and he died (undoubtedly) in sixteen sixty-eight. In the interval he mostly travelled —in the capacity of tutor to young noblemen and by preference in Italy. He came (says Antony à Wood) ‘of genteel parents,’ Catholics and loyalists. His kinsman, Henry Lassels, was that devoted Cavalier, Colonel Lane’s Cornet, who rode with King Charles the Second from Bentley to Trent after the battle of Worcester. Charles was disguised as Mistress Lane’s tenant’s son; and Henry Lassels, among other good offices, gave up his own bed at Cirencester and slept on the truckle-bed designed for the King. His kinsman, the priest, would have done the same; for he was a steadfast champion of his own convictions, popular or unpopular, though a model of good temper and fair dealing where those of others were concerned.

Though it is not as much visited as other capitals, Palermo, still the chief town of Sicily, has been a great metropolis in its time. That time is now long ago, but one can still see in it traces that it has wielded sway once, and had the course of history been but slightly different, that it might have rivalled many of the capitals of ununified Italy and all of those of Spain. For fate played Palermo a nasty turn, as we shall see, by subjecting Sicily through her own assent and foolish will to the Aragon domination, long after her quasi-native rulers had ended in Queen Maria. But we are anticipating. Let us go back to earlier times. Palermo began—if we can say that of any town in ancient Sicily, one of the oldest of European countries—as a Phoenician settlement, for Sicily twice was the European outpost against the African invaders, first the Phoenician Carthaginians and then later the Saracens. It, like the rest of Sicily, fell under Greek rule, under Phyrrus, King of Epirus, 276 b.c., but, unlike Syracuse, has no remains redolent of Greece. Then like all Sicily it became Roman (there is a casa romana opposite the Royal Palace), but all the Romans wanted of Sicily was a beautiful province to be filled by cruelly entreated slaves for the benefit solely of the free Romans. After invasions of Goths, Vandals, and other conquerors who passed like locusts, the Byzantines held sway and Palermo was reduced by Belisarius, but they concerned themselves much more about Messina and the slopes of Etna than the Western side of the island in which Palermo lies. The Saracens took it about 835 a.d. Under the African Fatimite Khalifs, in 948, an hereditary Emirate, with its seat in Palermo, was established.

Horace Walpole’s charities were on a much larger scale than a perusal of Lord Macaulay’s bitter and waspish character-sketch of him might lead one to expect. Walpole had an especial fondness for relieving the necessities of those poor souls who lay languishing in the many debtors’ prisons of the age. Again and again we find him writing to his man of business to expend for him in this way two, five, or six guineas, as the case might be, for the prisoners in the Compter, the Clink, the Fleet, or the King’s Bench prisons. He would take pains to raise similar subscriptions for them among his friends, would write to the press on their behalf, and in one instance at least he was at the expense of raising a striking memorial over the grave of a heart-broken bankrupt.

Right in the centre of the metropolis, amid the purlieus of Soho, surrounded by play-houses and taverns, there lies a sad little graveyard. Those who read this may often have passed by it. The gates stand ever open in the day-time, there are seats amid the tombs, the poor and the homeless can rest there awhile, and the children make the place their familiar playground. On a wall opposite the entrance is an old and crumbling monument surmounted by a royal crown. The inscription tells us that near that place is buried Theodore, King of Corsica, ‘who died on Dec. n, 1756, immediately on leaving the King’s Bench Prison’; and it concludes with these lines :

‘The grave—great teacher—to a level brings Heroes and beggars, galley-slaves and kings;
But Theodore this moral learn’d ere dead;
Fate pour’d its lesson on his living head—?
Bestow’d a kingdom, and denied him bread.’

After the experience of the last few years the . ordinary man might be pardoned if he adapted Ecclesiastes and said : ‘Of making many conferences there is no end : and much talking is a weariness to the flesh : and this also is vanity.’

Ruined by the legacies of war, economic confusion, wastage of all sorts, and more than all by a profound psychological restlessness, the symptom of an even deeper spiritual aberratian, the nations of Europe have met in conference after conference and have sought one remedy after another until, like the poor creature of the Gospel, they ‘have suffered many things of many physicians and are nothing the better, but rather the worse'

In such circumstances, what hope for the world’s peace is to be found in further conference? Of what use to continue to chew the cud of bitter argument which the heritage of mutual distrust renders inconclusive, while the national divisions which run like fissures along the frontiers of Europe have made its peoples no less strangers than enemies? More of these international meetings would seem mockery unless some hitherto untried factor were introduced into their councils.

The periodical recurrence of organized movements intended to effect a change in the legal position in regard to divorce in this country, apart from its positive effect in stimulating resistance, has a reflective interest for Catholics. The movements themselves indicate a state of mind in those taking part in them, but they also throw a very interesting light on the social mentality in which they function, and against which they attempt a reaction. It would be a pity if our absorption in the conflict itself should lead us to overlook something of this background against which it is staged. For the major significance of each successive attempt to weaken the basis of our Christian morality is the fact that it is a reaction, attempted by the advocates of change, and originating with them, and is not the expression of any wider movement of thought or conduct among the people.

The question of divorce is only one phase of a conflict in which the issue is now joined over a wide area. If it should be true that the demand for easier divorce, and for the extension of facilities for divorce, is really only a phenomenon which draws attention to a widespread moral collapse that is already effected, then the Catholic Church in its effort for the conversion of England is working against the tide. But if, on the other hand, this demand is artificial, if it is not a tendency, if it is not a straw floating gently on the surface under the propulsion of some swift undercurrent, but merely the illusion of movement which a fitful gust will create on still, deep water, then the Church is working under conditions in which success may well be startling not only in its coming but also in its extent.