“’But, lastly, my laborious researches have led to the important discovery, that, in this very year of pretended hot commotion, England—­in peace with all the world, profound peace within and profound peace without—­celebrated a sort of jubilee of the nations, in a vast building of glass (wonderful for those times), called the Great Exhibition, to which every country had contributed specimens of the comparatively rude manufacture—­of that rude age!  London was filled with foreigners from all parts of the earth; the whole kingdom was in a commotion, indeed, but a commotion of hospitable festivity, in which it shook hands with all the world!

This is a piece of positive evidence which ought to settle the whole matter.  In short, the external and internal evidence alike warrants us in rejecting this absurd story as utterly incredible.’”

“Upon my word,” said young Robinson, “you have said more than I thought you could have said on such a theme.  I really almost doubt whether Dr. Dickkopf has not the best of it, and whether we ought not to agree that the ‘Papal Aggression’ is a sheer delusion.”

“O,” said Harrington, “I have mot given you half the arguments by which an historian, eighteen hundred years hence, might prove that what has actually occurred never could have occurred, and that what has not occurred must, in the very nature of things, have occurred, by a necessity alike political, historical, ethical, logical, and psychological.  And no doubt Dr. Dickkopf is right on the principles on which acute critics may argue; that is, the assumption that certain probabilities will justify conclusions on such subjects.  One might naturally have supposed the Pope to have been more politic than to take this step,—­the French more consistent than to suppress the Republican movement of Italy,—­the English less moderate in expressing their indignation,—­and certainly that there would never have been such an array of odd names to garnish one brief document.  And now, I bethink me, it is far from impossible that some Dr. Dickkopf may even apply to Strauss’s Leben Jesu, and Dr. Whately’s ‘Historic Doubts’ similar reasoning, to prove that the first was elaborate irony, and the second a sincere expression of scepticism.”

“How can that be?”

“Thus:  he will prove that the age was remarkably fond of such species of ironical literature.  As Strauss, in his preface, has expressly admitted (though we all know what he means) that Christianity is true, and has suggested an unimaginably absurd hypothesis as to its true import, founded on the principles of the Hegelian philosophy, the learned Dr. Dickkopf will say, that no one who so spoke of Christianity could have intended seriously to discredit it, and yet certainly could not possibly believe the absurd theory of it concocted out of German philosophy; ergo, that we must regard the whole book as a piece of prolonged irony,—­a little too characteristic of German