have been very thoughtful joy, a real miracle not heretofore
considered possible or conceivable in the world,--a Reforming
Pope. A simple pious creature, a good country-priest, invested
unexpectedly with the tiara, takes up the New Testament, declares
that this henceforth shall be his rule of governing. No more
finesse, chicanery, hypocrisy, or false or foul dealing of any
kind: God's truth shall be spoken, God's justice shall be done,
on the throne called of St. Peter: an honest Pope, Papa, or
Father of Christendom, shall preside there. And such a throne of
St. Peter; and such a Christendom, for an honest Papa to preside
in! The European populations everywhere hailed the omen; with
shouting and rejoicing leading articles and tar-barrels; thinking
people listened with astonishment,--not with sorrow if they were
faithful or wise; with awe rather as at the heralding of death,
and with a joy as of victory beyond death! Something pious,
grand and as if awful in that joy, revealing once more the
Presence of a Divine Justice in this world. For, to such men it
was very clear how this poor devoted Pope would prosper, with his
New Testament in his band. An alarming business, that of
governing in the throne of St. Peter by the rule of veracity! By
the rule of veracity, the so-called throne of St. Peter was
openly declared, above three hundred years, ago, to be a falsity,
a huge mistake, a pestilent dead carcass, which this Sun was
weary of. More than three hundred years ago, the throne of St.
Peter received peremptory judicial notice to quit; authentic
order, registered in Heaven's chancery and since legible in the
hearts of all brave men, to take itself away,--to begone, and let
us have no more to do with _it_ and its delusions and impious
deliriums;--and it has been sitting every day since, it may
depend upon it, at its own peril withal, and will have to pay