exact damages yet for every day it has so sat. Law of veracity?
What this Popedom had to do by the law of veracity, was to give
up its own foul galvanic life, an offence to gods and men;
honestly to die, and get itself buried.

Far from this was the thing the poor Pope undertook in regard to
it;--and yet, on the whole, it was essentially this too.
"Reforming Pope?" said one of our acquaintance, often in those
weeks, "Was there ever such a miracle? About to break up that
huge imposthume too, by 'curing' it? Turgot and Necker were
nothing to this. God is great; and when a scandal is to end,
brings some devoted man to take charge of it in hope, not in
despair!"--But cannot he reform? asked many simple persons;--to
whom our friend in grim banter would reply: "Reform a
Popedom,--hardly. A wretched old kettle, ruined from top to
bottom, and consisting mainly now of foul _grime_ and _rust_:
stop the holes of it, as your antecessors have been doing, with
temporary putty, it may hang together yet a while; begin to
hammer at it, solder at it, to what you call mend and rectify
it,--it will fall to sherds, as sure as rust is rust; go all into
nameless dissolution,--and the fat in the fire will be a thing
worth looking at, poor Pope!"--So accordingly it has proved. The
poor Pope, amid felicitations and tar-barrels of various kinds,
went on joyfully for a season: but he had awakened, he as no
other man could do, the sleeping elements; mothers of the
whirlwinds, conflagrations, earthquakes. Questions not very
soluble at present, were even sages and heroes set to solve them,
began everywhere with new emphasis to be asked. Questions which
all official men wished, and almost hoped, to postpone till
Doomsday. Doomsday itself _had_ come; that was the terrible