memory and his dazzling mastery of colour. It is the third paragraph
of his well-known review of Von Ranke's _History of the Popes_. The
passage is familiar to all readers, and some of its phrases are
household words. It is rather long as well as trite; but it contains
in a single page such a profusion of historical suggestion; it is so
vigorous, so characteristic of Macaulay in all his undoubted resources
as in all his mannerism and limitations; it is so essentially true, and
yet so thoroughly obvious; it is so grand in form, and yet so meagre in
philosophic logic, that it may be worth while to analyse it in detail;
and for that purpose it must be set forth, even though it convey to
most readers little more than a sonorous truism.
There is not, and there never was on this earth, a work of human policy
so well deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church. The
history of that Church joins together the two great ages of human
civilisation. No other institution is left standing which carries the
mind back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the
Pantheon, and 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 unbroken series, from the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the
nineteenth century to the Pope who crowned Pepin in the eighth; and far
beyond 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 with 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 vigour. The Catholic Church is still sending forth, to the
farthest ends of the world, missionaries as zealous as those who landed
in Kent with Augustin, and still confronting hostile kings with the
same spirit with which she confronted Attila. The number of her
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