myriads; skeptics and cynics were sowing hatred not of the Church
merely but of all religion. It was time to abandon "the prisoner of the
Vatican" humbug, time to permit zealous Catholics, whose orthodoxy no
one could question, to serve God and their fellow-men according to the
needs and methods of the present age.

At last, in the autumn of 1905, the new Pope, Pius X, gave the faithful
tacit permission, if he did not officially command them, to take part in
the elections. Various motives were assigned for this change of front.
Did even the Ultra-montanes realise that, since France had repealed the
Concordat, they could find their best support in Italy? Or were they
driven by the instinct of self-preservation to accept the constitutional
government as a bulwark against the incoming tide of Anarchism,
Socialism, and the other subversive forces? The Church is the most
conservative element in Christendom; in a new upheaval it will surely
rally to the side of any other element which promises to save society
from chaos. These motives have been cited to explain the recent action
of the Holy See, but there were high-minded Catholics who liked to
think that the controlling reason was religious--that the Pope and his
counsellors had at last been persuaded that the old policy of abstention
wrought irreparable harm to the religious life of millions of the
faithful in Italy.

However this may be, Senator Fogazzaro's book, filled with the Liberal
and Christian spirit, has been eagerly caught up as the mouthpiece of
the Christian Democrats, and indeed of all intelligent Catholics in
Italy, who have always held that religion and patriotism are not
incompatible, and that the Church has most injured itself in prolonging
the antagonism. In this respect, _The Saint_, like _Uncle Tom's Cabin_
and similar books which crystallise an entire series of ideals or sum