in his ears? Had it come from the spectacle of that city beneath him,
that city which suggested an embalmed queen still reigning amidst the
dust of her tomb? He knew not; but doubtless both had acted as factors,
and at all events the light which fell upon his mind was complete: he
felt that Catholicism could not exist without the temporal power, that it
must fatally disappear whenever it should no longer be king over this
earth. A first reason of this lay in heredity, in the forces of history,
the long line of the heirs of the Caesars, the popes, the great pontiffs,
in whose veins the blood of Augustus, demanding the empire of the world,
had never ceased to flow. Though they might reside in the Vatican they
had come from the imperial abodes on the Palatine, from the palace of
Septimius Severus, and throughout the centuries their policy had ever
pursued the dream of Roman mastery, of all the nations vanquished,
submissive, and obedient to Rome. If its sovereignty were not universal,
extending alike over bodies and over souls, Catholicism would lose its
/raison d'etre/; for the Church cannot recognise any empire or kingdom
otherwise than politically--the emperors and the kings being purely and
simply so many temporary delegates placed in charge of the nations
pending the time when they shall be called upon to relinquish their
trust. All the nations, all humanity, and the whole world belong to the
Church to whom they have been given by God. And if real and effective
possession is not hers to-day, this is only because she yields to force,
compelled to face accomplished facts, but with the formal reserve that
she is in presence of guilty usurpation, that her possessions are
unjustly withheld from her, and that she awaits the realisation of the
promises of the Christ, who, when the time shall be accomplished, will
for ever restore to her both the earth and mankind. Such is the real
future city which time is to bring: Catholic Rome, sovereign of the world
once more. And Rome the city forms a substantial part of the dream, Rome
whose eternity has been predicted, Rome whose soil has imparted to