Catholic countries, perverse and hostile as they might be, rarely if ever made themselves ridiculous. They wrote with great bitterness and animosity: but with a point which showed that they understood what they were perverting; and that they had obtained their knowledge from sources which could only have been opened to them by violation of duty. Their narratives of events which were passing under my own eyes, day by day, were so near the truth, and yet so far from it, so literally accurate, but so absolutely false, that for the first time I learned to understand Paolo Sarpi's 'History of the Council of Trent:' and foresaw how perhaps, from among nominal Catholics, another Paolo Sarpi will arise to write the History of the Council of the Vatican. But none of this applies to our own country. I am the less disposed to charge these misrepresentations, in the case of English correspondents, to the account of ill will, though they abundantly showed the inborn animosity of an anti-Catholic tradition, because neither correspondents nor journalists ever willingly expose themselves to be laughed at. I therefore put it down to the obvious reason that when English Protestants undertake to write of an Œcumenical Council of the Catholic Church, nothing less than a miracle could preserve them from making themselves ridiculous. This, I am sorry to know, for the fair name of our country, has been the effect produced by English newspapers upon foreign countries. Latterly, however, they seemed to have learned prudence, and to have relied no longer on correspondents who, hardly knowing the name, nature, use, or purpose of anything
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