504 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 
which has crushed out of Catholics every tendency to free 
mental productiveness." It is, indeed, in Catholic coun- 
tries that the weight of Ultramontanism has been most 
severely felt. It is in such countries that the very finest 
spirits, who have dared, without quitting their faith, to 
plead for freedom or reform, have suffered extinction. 
The extinction, however, was more apparent than real, and 
Herrnes, Hirscher, and Giinther, though individually 
broken and subdued, prepared the way, in Bavaria, for 
the persecuted but unflinching Frohschammer, for D61- 
linger, and for the remarkable liberal movement of which 
Dollinger is the head and guide. 
Though molded for centuries to an obedience un- 
paralleled in any other country, except Spain, the Irish 
intellect is beginning to show signs of independence; 
demanding a diet more suited to its years than the pabu- 
lum of the middle ages, i As for the recent manifesto in 
which pope, cardinal, archbishops, and bishops are united 
in one grand anathema, its character and fate are shadowed 
forth by the vision of Nebuchadnezzar recorded in the 
book of Daniel 1 ,' It resembles the image, whose form was 
terrible, but the gold, and silver, and brass, and iron of 
which rested upon feet of clay. And a stone smote the 
feet of clay, and the iron, and the brass, and the silver, 
and the gold, were broken in pieces together, and became 
like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors, and the wind 
carried them away. 
Monsignor Capel has recently been good enough to pro- 
claim af once the friendliness of his church toward true 
science, and her right to determine what true science is. 
Let us dwell for a moment on the proofs of her scientific 
competence. AVhen Halley's comet appeared in 1456 it 
was regarded as the harbinger of God's vengeance, the 
dispenser of war, pestilence, and famine, and by order of 
the pope the church bells of Europe were rung to scare 
the monster away. An additional daily prayer was added 
to the supplications of the faithful. The comet in due 
time disappeared, and the faithful were comforted by the 
assurance that, as in previous instances relating to eclipses, 
droughts, and rains, so also as regards this "nefarious" 
comet, victory had been vouchsafed to the church. 
Both Pythagoras and Copernicus had taught the 
heliocentric doctrine .that the earth revolves round the 
