574
ESSAYS ON LIBERTY
and impartial harvest to Ehrle, and Schottmüller, and the École Française, raises the question whether the Abbé Duchesne or Father Denifle supplied with all the resources of the archives which are no longer secret would produce a very different or more complete account. As a philosophy of religious persecution the book is inadequate. The derivation of sects, though resting always upon good supports, stands out from an indistinct background of dogmatic history. The intruding maxims, darkened by shadows of earth, fail to ensure at all times the objective and delicate handling of mediæval theory. But the vital parts are protected by a panoply of mail. From the Albigensian crusade to the fall of the Templars and to that Franciscan movement wherein the key to Dante lies, the design and organisation, the activity and decline of the Inquisition constitute a sound and solid structure that will survive the censure of all critics. Apart from surprises still in store at Rome, and the manifest abundance of Philadelphia, the knowledge which is common property, within reach of men who seriously invoke history as the final remedy for untruth and the sovereign arbiter of opinion, can add little to the searching labours of the American.
