“’But the internal evidence, conclusive as it is, is as nothing to the external.  If we examine the document by the light of the facts which contemporary history supplies, nay, even by the probability or otherwise of its own contents, we shah see the extreme absurdity of supposing that the account from which it was borrowed was ever meant to be a record of facts.  We hesitate not to say, that the political facts of which it makes mention are many of them in the highest degree incredible.  That there may have been a rebellion at Rome is very possible; but assuredly the only nation in Europe, (if we except England,) that was not likely to take the Pope’s part against a republican movement, or resent him on his throne, was the French.  To suppose them thus acting is contrary to all that we know of the history of that nation, and of human nature.  The traces of the terrible revolutions which in that century, and at the close of the preceding one, shook France again and again to her centre, and the outlines of which still live in authentic history, all show the extent to which infidelity and democratic violence prevailed in France; nay, we know that during the dominion of the Emperor Napoleon, if we are to regard his history as literally true, and not a collection of fables and legends,* as some even of that age maintained, that great conqueror arrested and imprisoned the Pope.  That France should have undertaken the task of subduing a republican movement, just when she had come out of a similar revolution, or rather many such,—­and of reseating the Pope on his throne, when she had been more impatient of the restraints of all religion than any other nation in Europe,—­is perfectly incredible!  Not less improbable is it that, supposing (as may perhaps be true) that there was a basis of fact in the asserted rebellion of the Romans, and Pio Nono’s restoration to his dominions (though not by France, that the intelligent reader will on politico-logical grounds pronounce impossible, but more probably by the Spaniards),—­yet can we suppose that a power which was always celebrated for its astuteness and subtlety would choose that very moment of humiliation and ignominy to rush into an act so audacious as that of reestablishing the Romish hierarchy in England,—­in a nation by far the most powerful in the world at that time,—­a nation which, if it had pleased, could have blown Rome into the air in three months?  It must needs have strengthened a thousand-fold the strong antipathies of the English to the See of Rome.  It would, indeed, have justified that storm of indignation with which it is said to have been met.

____

* Dr. Dickkopf may be here supposed to refer to the “Historic Doubts” of Archbishop Whately, which may well deceive even more astute critics.—­Ed. ____