Three Ideals. 123 



on the part of the Roman Catholic Church. It is plain to outside 

 observers, whatever it may be to the Roman curia, that the old 

 allies of the Church are no longer of any use to her. . Kings and 

 aristocracies are now only accidentally powerful. They succeed in 

 so far as they interpret and adopt the great currents of popular 

 sentiment. They fail whenever they try to maintain or bring back 

 the system which since the French Revolution has everywhere been 

 struck with incurable decay. Kingly support and court influence 

 can now do but little even for those who can command them. Nor 

 is it by any means certain that even if their hold upon the world 

 were restored to them they would be disposed to exert it in favour 

 of the Church. Courts and aristocracies naturally embody the ideas 

 of the educated classes for the time being, and one great cause of 

 the recent defeats of the Roman Catholic Church has been the 

 general spread of irreligion, using the word in its most general 

 sense, among the educated classes throughout Europe. The number 

 of persons who disbelieve the Christian dogmas is probably greater 

 than at any former time, and what is even more important to the 

 matter in hand, it is becoming less and less fashionable to conceal 

 their disbelief. Kings and nobles are no more proof against this 

 tendency than other educated men, and in so far as they are in- 

 fluenced by it they would not be disposed to help the Church to 

 regain her lost empire, even if they had power to do so. Indeed, 

 in the improbable contingency of this power returning to them, they 

 would almost certainly shrink from exercising it from their desire 

 not to share in the unpopularity of the Church. If the Comte de 

 Chambord were to become king of France, the first request his lay 

 advisers would address to him would be to shake himself free from 

 the priests. When the Roman Catholic Church awakes to the fact 

 that those on whom it has so long leaned have neither their old 

 strength nor their old willingness to use it for ecclesiastical objects, 

 it cannot fail to see that it has only two alternatives to choose 

 between. It must throw up the battle altogether, or it must seek 

 for new alliances among those who have solid support to give. 



"At first sight it must be admitted the prospect appears gloomy 

 enough. All over Europe 'the Revolution' and hatred of the 



