Contemporary Evolution. 



cracy of Christendom has received its supreme blow in 

 the revolutionising of Italy, with loss to the pope of his 

 civil princedom as a result. 



The last hopes of those in France or elsewhere who 

 sigh for the re-elevation of the tattered and disfigured 

 banner of the mediaeval Christian theocracy have long 

 centred in the Count de Chambord. But the head of 

 that government which lately seemed so near accomplish- 

 ing his elevation to the throne disclaimed in distinct and 

 memorable words, in the name of his party and of the 

 French clergy, any desire for mediaeval reaction, and the 

 Count de Chambord himself has accepted liberty of con- 

 science, freedom of worship, and the other articles of 

 modern constitutionalism ; so that his accession, if it were 

 even possible, could not have any other effect than that of 

 lending to modern civicism the halo of his legitimacy. 



The mediaeval Christian theocracy, then, in France may 

 be said to be definitively at an end, and attacks on free- 

 dom and conscience are to be apprehended from the 

 friends and favourers of communistic fanaticism alone. 



In England a parallel series of changes has been 

 differently effected. 



Henry VIII. (that incarnation of the dominant English 

 spirit of his time) completed by his despotism a process 

 which had been gradually developing itself in preceding 

 reigns by the formal absorption of ecclesiastical authority 

 in the person of the king, made " Head of the Church." 



