Macaulay, which I marked in the Edinburgh Review for Sydney to speak,
twenty-nine years ago,--I think before I had ever heard Macaulay's name. A
great many of you boys have spoken it at school since then, and many of
you girls have heard scraps from it. It is a brilliant passage, rather too
ornate for daily food, but not amiss for a luxury, more than candied
orange is after a state dinner. He is speaking of the worldly wisdom and
skilful human policy of the method of organization of the Roman Catholic
Church. He says:--

"The history of that Church joins together the two great ages of human
civilization. No other institution is left standing which carries the mind
back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, when
camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. The proudest
royal houses are but of yesterday, when compared with the line of the
Supreme Pontiffs. That line we trace back in an unbroken series, from the
Pope who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century, to the Pope who
crowned Pepin in the eighth; and far beyond the time of Pepin the august
dynasty extends, till it is lost in the twilight of fable. The Republic of
Venice came next in antiquity. But the Republic of Venice was modern when
compared to the Papacy; and the Republic of Venice is gone, and the Papacy
remains. The Papacy remains, not in decay, not a mere antique, but full of
life and youthful vigor. The Catholic Church is still sending forth to the
farthest ends of the world missionaries as zealous as those who landed in
Kent with Augustine; and still confronting hostile kings with the same
spirit with which she confronted Attila....

"She was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain,
before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still
flourished at Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the temple of
Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigor, when some traveller