men either very advanced in age, or noted for a weak subserviency of character,-the scandalous doctrines and conduct of the neologists of Baden and Wurtemburg, -the more covert and insidious, but not less dangerous attacks directed against the Church by the Hermesian party in the dioceses of Cologne, Treves, and more particularly Breslau, — the system of public education, which, throughout Germany, is too much under the control of the state; wherein the priesthood possess not sufficient influence; wherein often religious instruction, instead of pervading the whole system, stands like a thing apart; where even sometimes the mixture of creeds, and the bad principles of teachers, tend to inoculate the minds of the pupils with religious indifference;-lastly, the intolerance of several governments, which sometimes breaks out into open and brutal violence, sometimes carries on a system of odious intrigues, and secret, vexatious, persecution against the lay as well as clerical members of the Church-such are the evils with which religion has in this country to contend. But the prospects of Catholicism in Germany become every day brighter and more cheering. This hope of a better order of things we found on that great regeneration of religious feeling, which for the last thirty years has been steadily going on, and by the great event of the 20th November 1837, has been vastly accelerated; on the many and brilliant conversions to the Catholic Church from Protestantism during the same period; on the uncorrupted virtues and piety of the peasantry, even in those districts like Baden and Wurtemburg, where the clergy have been most unmindful of their duties; on the signal victory which, in the late contest, the cause of ecclesiastical freedom has obtained, and the important consequences to which it must lead; on the generous protection, extended to the Church by the present king of Bavaria, and on the more favourable dispositions of the court of Austria; on the reorganization of Catholic schools and universities, the revival of religious orders and confraternities in many places, and the return to long neglected practices of piety; lastly, on the ever-increasing vigour, beauty, and fecundity of the German Catholic literature, and the general temper of the population, which, spurning the miserable semi-rationalism of the Prussian Hermesians, and the scandalous heterodoxy of the Baden neologists, evinces daily with greater energy its attachment to Catholic unity.

If now

we turn to the state of Catholic science in Ger

many, we shall find that it has to struggle against many difficulties and disadvantages. 1. The vast preponderance of political power in the hands of the Protestant party naturally secures to the Protestant literature all the aids and advantages which princely patronage, wealth, and influence can afford. 2dly. Many of the universities, those great nurseries of the national literature, are either by statute or practice shut against Catholic talent; and even in the mixed universities, where a Catholic faculty of theology is established, the scarcely less important chairs of Catholic history and Catholic philosophy are either not at all, or most scandalously filled up. 3dly. The daily and periodical press, by means of an iniquitous censorship, is in most states of the confederation arrayed against the Church; and in the recent dispute which has so deeply agitated Germany, the Bavarian press alone has been permitted warmly to espouse the cause of the archbishop of Cologne and his venerable colleagues. 4thly. The concentration of the book-trade in the very Protestant town of Leipzig, has until lately operated prejudicially to the interests of Catholic literature. 5thly. The German Protestant literature being by forty years older than the Catholic, enjoys a sort of classical celebrity, which a new and living literature, however intrinsically superior, can never pretend to. 6thly. In the mixed states, where even the Catholic population outnumbers the Protestant, the zealous Catholic seldom obtains advancement in the university, or receives a pension from the state for his literary services, -a pension which is the more necessary in a country where, owing to a defective law of copy-right, the pecuniary remunerations of genius are often very inadequate. Lastly, while the court of Berlin cherishes and promotes the interests of Protestant literature with such active zeal, Catholic literature receives but a languid encouragement from the court of Vienna. Yet in despite of all these obstacles, Catholic genius has achieved wonders. The great number of eminent theologians, who have of late years adorned the Catholic faculties, the illustrious philosophers, historians, and other literati, who within the last forty years have devoted their

Among the journals which have particularly distinguished themselves in defence of the archbishop, we may name the "Franconian Courier," edited by the able and courageous Zander. The "Political Gazette" of Munich, and one-half of the " Augsburg Universal Gazette," are organs of the Catholics. The Austrian papers have been allowed to raise only a feeble voice in defence of the archbishop.

talents to the defence and glory of the Church,-the evergrowing activity and merit of the Catholic press,-the high degree of excellence which education in all its branches has now attained in Catholic Germany,-the munificent patronage of Lewis of Bavaria, whose purse is ever ready to encourage Catholic art and science, the more than semiCatholic tone of a distinguished portion of the historical literature of Protestant Germany, the growing disgust felt for the extravagant pantheism of Hegel (which still, however, exerts great influence in northern Prussia), and the craving of the German mind for more Christian systems of philosophy,-finally, the march of modern science itself, physical as well as moral, which by its extraordinary revelations has reconciled so many a rebellious spirit in France and Germany to the dogmas of the Church;-these are the symptoms and tokens of a great intellectual futurity,—the final and complete triumph of Catholicism and German science.

Since writing this article important changes have occurred, and still greater are in progress, in the Prussian monarchy. The present enlightened sovereign of that country, after the period allotted to domestic grief had passed away, applied himself to the study of the best method of realising those brilliant expectations which his friends, and the best friends of his country, had long entertained. Not only has he restored the Archbishop of Posen to his diocese, and in Silesia rescued from spoliation one hundred Catholic churches, but he has carried on negotiations with the Holy See, in regard to the Archbishop of Cologne, in a spirit which (as we have learned from a very credible source) is likely to end in propositions acceptable to the pope, and not repugnant to the feelings of the archbishop himself. Moreover, on his coronation he received the deputies of the clergy, nobility, and third estate, from Westphalia and the Rhenish province, with such kindness and cordiality as can never be effaced from the memory of the inhabitants of those provinces. The Bishop of Paderborn, a prelate who in the recent contest had defended with such zeal and courage the rights of the Church, received the monarch's assurance that care should be taken that the Catholic Church in Prussia was placed on a footing as satisfactory as it was in the most Catholic countries. And what did he say to the truckling Prince-bishop of Breslau, who so culpably neglected the care of his diocese, and while he evinced such subserviency to the late king manifested such contumacy towards the holy see?

He told him his conduct had been calculated to bring down ruin both on Church and state. Such is the recompense which sooner or later is sure to await a faithless pusillanimity, even on the part of those whose favour it strove to ingratiate. This prelate, threatened with deposition by the pope, has happily tendered the resignation of his see.

It is also the intention of the Prussian monarch to entrust the government of the Catholic provinces to such civil functionaries as, by their character and their principles, are likely to conciliate the affections of the inhabitants. But let it not be supposed that in these generous efforts for the emancipation of his Catholic subjects from the grasp of oppression, the king has not many difficulties to contend with. The civil functionaries, who in Prussia constitute a powerful political hierarchy-some pantheists in religion, others rationalists, the better part pietists, and the majority naturally very hostile to Catholicism-now strain every nerve to embarrass the new government, impede the execution of the royal designs, and by holding up some of the king's friends to ridicule, and others to odium, sow distrust and dissatisfaction in the public mind. These despotic bureaucrats well know that the policy of the present wise and benevolent sovereign will run directly counter to their religious prejudices and political views. We have heard, from very good authority, that it is his intention to undermine by degrees the system of administrative centralization, to give greater scope, power, and influence to the various provincial legislatures in the monarchy, and to establish on a solid basis the freedom of the Catholic Church. The king, a pietist in religion, belongs to that school of politics called, in Germany, the corporate system; and which shuns alike the anarchical spirit of revolutionary democracy and the centralizing spirit of military despotism.

ART. III.-Value of Annuities and Reversionary Payments. Published under the superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.

F a society were to establish itself with no other avowed intent than to act according to circumstances, and to do what the times would permit in furtherance of an object to

*By a letter dated Munich, the 7th of July, it is stated that the provincial council of Upper Bavaria has, according to a resolution adopted at its last meeting, proposed to the king to introduce again the order of the Jesuits. Our readers will be in no doubt as to his majesty's decision.

be explained only by a few words in its adopted name, the directors would probably be laughed at for the vagueness of their plan. But seeing that few individuals, and no company, can engage for more with any fair probability of success, such an announcement would argue both sense and knowledge of the world.

The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge started with a specific object, declared, in their first prospectus, to be "the imparting useful information to all classes of the community." What they meant by useful* knowledge, seeing that knowledge is useful, useless, or pernicious, according as it is used, neglected, or abused, we think we can undertake to say. Those who remember the manner in which the desire to communicate information to all classes first began to grow, know that the formation of the Mechanics' Institute was the earliest evidence it gave of its active existence. The fierce religious feuds of the time, then, as now, made it difficult to form any association, unless it were one expressly intended to embrace, or to exclude, the great subject of controversy. But there was one doctrine which the promoters of knowledge could not avoid meeting, though that doctrine was rather on the decline, at the period of which we speak. "The diffusion of knowledge is the diffusion of irreligion and immorality," said the high-Church party, stoutly; and many even of those who wished to provide resources for the labourers' leisure, were almost afraid lest there should be some truth in the maxim. Those who had no such fear very humbly represented, in the first instance, that mere reading and writing could do no harm; afterwards, that there were surely some branches of knowledge, useful to the working man, which he might employ his reading upon. "There

can be no harm," they said, "in the manufacturing workman knowing where cotton is grown, and how it is cultivated; and surely he would not thereby be rendered a disloyal subject, if he were permitted to read a little about that wonderful moving power, the energies of which he is directing

* A modern and unmeaning phrase: in the practical sense, all knowledge is useful to some, and useless to others; in the higher sense, all sound knowledge is useful. Sound learning is the old English phrase, and sound means complete in itself: in early works of geometry, a sphere is called a "round and sound' body. And it is worth the noting, in reference to some of the objections made to the Society, that though our ancestors coupled sound learning and religious education, they did not forget that the two are distinct things; nor did they affirm that those whom circumstances prevent from giving the second, were therefore to be debarred from promoting the first.