The Sun.
London, England, 1867-11-12 00:00:00

office of France in protecting the Centre and Head
of Christendom, she has placed herself in the lead
of the Christian order, the Christian justice of the
Christian chivalry of .the world. May God main-
tain her firm and inflexible in this noblest mission
upon earth. The Catholic world will confirm her
acts by the sympathy and assent of its heart and
conscience. France thereby invoked upon itself
the enmity, scorn, and revilement of anti-Catholic
and anti-Christian factions. But it has won to
itself the confidence and the sympathy of every man
among the 200,000,000 in all lands, who rguse to

offer up the supernatural unity, order, anl purify
of the Christian world as a homage to the tyranny
of modern Rationalism, the doitleatimi of th:: civil
power, the anti-Christian hatred against the Church
of God. Let France stand firm, and she may stay
the plagub which is devouring Christian Europe.
The prayers of all good men will ascend for her.
These thoughts bring to my mind others of a sadder
cast, and nearer to ourselves. Bat 1 forbear to
speak of our own country.
There are happier thoughts to which I gladly
turn. •

These late events have detected and exposed with
a terrible but just retribution the hollowness, the
imposture, the falsehood, the vainglory, the impc-
tence of the Revolution. Grandildquence, mystery,
pretended übiquity for a long time terrified or dis-
tracted the friends of order. But the veil is rent,
and the idol is broken. On the Ist of November
the ringleader of this godless anarchy proclaimed to
the world from Monte Rotondo—."l here, alone a
Roman General, with full powers from the only
lawful Government—that is of the Roman Republic,
and elected by universal suffrage—have the right to
maintain myself in arms on this territory of my
jurisdiction." On the 3d he and his hordes were
swept away, not by the soldiers of Christendom, nor
by the armies of France, but by the just, judgment
of God, whom, in the Vicar of. His Incarnate
Son, he had outraged and defied.-- Thus, then,
is one vast scandal and danger' swept
out of Italy. Year by year there . have been
arising in Italy the harbingers of a better
day. It has suffered much, and the shadow of a
greater suffering is cast before upon it. But there
is yet time, and there is yet hope. Italy is both
Christian and Catholic. Infidelity and Revolution
have tormented and tainted Italy, but Italy is neither
revolutionary nor Infidel. Factions have risen from
time. to time to the surface; and the traditional
mind and will of Italy is for a while confused and
paralysed. But it is evidently rising again in vigour
and contest ; and if only wise and Christian coun-
sels prevail the Christian mind of Italy will be once
more in the ascendant. Then, and only then, can
the reconciliation of Italy and Rome be accom-
plished. No worse enemy ever came between them
than the Infidel Revolution. When Italy returns
upon the path of its old Catholic glory, the hearts
of the Catholics will return to it. We love
and venerate it as the soil on which the greatest
glories of the Catholic Church are inscribed, and the
Head of the Christian world is divinely Flared.
Apart from these prerogatives Italy has no claim
upon our goodwill beyond other nations ; against
these supreme laws of Providenceltaly has no rights.
We pray that all temporal prosperity may be
upon her, but on the condition of her fidelity to
the order and the unity of the Christian world.
There remains but one more thought, an image
which rises in our minds high above all in calmness,
dignity, and grandeur—the Vicar of Jesus Christ,
immovable in confidence, inflexible in justice, the
Father of his people. Against him can be found no
accusation. Many have been witness against him,
but their testimonies do not agree together. No
man can convict him of injustice, of cruelty, of
oppression, of even lawful severity. He has been
conspired against and betrayed, but he has par-
doned the conspirators and betrayers, to be betrayed
and conspired against again. He has taken no
man's gools, not so much as a shoe latchet. lie
has never harassed the poor of his people, nor
driven them from the humble homes of their fathers,
nor wounded their conscience in that which is
dearest to a Catholic people. The line of Pontiffs
stand alone for justice and mercy in the history
and the assembly of kings. One accusation
against him can alone be proved. He is
a Priest of Jesus. Christ. Some men are to
be found who think thin epough to demind his
dethronement. The Christian world is not yet of
their opinion. Neither were those noble hearts who
gave their life-blood, as millions in all nations are
likewise willing at this hour, in order to forbid this
great sacrilege. In that little band were men
of noble blood, of time-honoured memory, of high
culture, fighting side by side, with simple, faithful
hearts full of devotion to the Vicar of our Lord,
and with striplings under age, mature in faith, and
the manhood of Christian chivalry. These were
the men,who forsaking home, and all that life holds
best and dearest, went to bear arms as private
soldiers, without hire and without. hope, except that
of defending the person and authority of the Vicar
of Christ, and of shedding their brood, if need be,
in the justest warfare and for the holiest cause ; and
God has accepted this offering only from a few :
but there will be fathers, mothers, sisters, wives,
who will mourn over their bier. You will pray for
them, though the sanctity of their cause almost
forbids it, that they may enter into the joy of those
who, face to face, see him for whom they died.
And we may trust that their places here will be
filled up tenfold—a hundredfold—that the manhood
and chivalry of Catholics in all nations will spring
forward with a new energy of devotion and close
around the person of Pius IX., and of those who
shall come after him as an impenetrable wall of liv-
ing strength, against which if revolutionary violence
or ambitious nationalism shall hereafter again dash
itself it may be for ever broken.
This outrage and its chastisement warns all nations
of the Christian and civilised world to provide for
their own safety. It is but one more of the out-
bursts of anti-Christian and anti-social revolution
which has in time past struck at theHoad and Centre
of Christendom. It will certainly renew its as-
sault. It has been utterly and bitterly foiled, but
we do not deceive ourselves with the hope that it is
crushed or extinct. It will return again. Its hordes
aro driven out of view, but they lie under the
horizon. They will re-form their army, and return
hereafter. We have need, therefore, to prepare more
solidly and resolutely than ever.
Three things, we may trust, will come of this
offence against the Christian order of nations, which
has all but plunged Europe into war.
First, That France declare, to all who may affect
to doubt it, that the traditional mission of a thou-
sand years as the Protector of the Holy Soo is not
relaxed, and that it will execute it hereafter, as it
has now, with inflexible decision.
Secondly, That all European nations take security
against the renewal of these dangers to both their
.
external and internal peace. The Catholic nations
have a vital and all-pervading interest in the safety
and independence of the Head of their Religion.
The nations not Catholic have mingled among them
so many millions of Catholic brethren and fellow
subjects that their own internal welfare, as well as
their external peace, is perpetually threatened by
these outrages and scandals. It is the highest in-
terest of all to protect, by international law and re-
ciprocal engagements, the neutrality and exemption
of Rome from all political conflicts, and the inde-
pendence and dignity of the Head of the Catholic
world.
Lastly, The example of their noble blood from
Rome. from France, from Belgium, from Holland,
from Ireland, from England, and other countries,
which has been generously shed, calls with the
voice of a trumpet upon the youth of all Catholic
countries to form a circle around the Vicar of
Jesus Christ. Let the world count their Christian
chivalry to be madness, and their end to be without
honour. There is One reigning above this dark
world who accepts their reproach and their valour
as an offering to Himself.

THE TOWER OF LONDON.—A conc.:rt was given
at the Tower of London last week by the Ist battalion of
the Coldstream Guards, which was well attended by the
official residents of the garrison, as well as by the warders
and their families and the men of the regiment. The pro-
gramme consisted of part songs and instrumental music,
'and several comic songs wore introduced and performed by
a sergeant-major of the Royal Engineers in suek a spirit of
humour as to afford much oatiegotion,