tagne, car tout frêle qu'il était, il était grand marcheur. Nous nous arrêtions dans quelque bel endroit, ayant en face de nous la mer, et le ciel de Naples sur nos têtes. Alors, essoufflés, nous nous reposions quelques minutes, et les entretiens recommençaient.

'Son inépuisable esprit, qui n'était jamais plus actif et plus libre que dans ces moments-là, allait sans précipitation, sans secousse, mais avec un mouvement doux et varié, d'un sujet à un autre. Tous ces sujets se succédaient sans effort, depuis les considérations les plus hautes jusqu'aux remarques les plus ingénieuses, jusqu'aux anecdotes les plus piquants. Toujours d'un naturel parfait, il avait au sein de la plus grande familiarité un besoin d'élégance et de perfection dans le langage dont il ne pouvait se départir. Assis sur un rocher dans la montagne de Sorrente, on aurait pu écrire (et que n'ai-je pas écrit ?) tout ce qui lui échappait dans l'abandon de l'amitié.'

Sorrento, Belvedere Guerracino, January 25.-We left Naples this morning for Sorrento, where we are lodged with the Tocquevilles and Ampère in the Belvedere Guerracino, an old palace about a quarter of a mile from the sea, and a mile and a half from Sorrento.

We have a glorious terrace and loggia. looking north over the orange-covered piano of Sorrento to the sea.

In the pure air of Southern Italy we can almost count the houses in Naples eighteen miles off.

From Naples to Castellamare the road skirts the alluvial plain gained from the sea below Vesuvius, and

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derives its principal interest from the changing views of the mountain.

But from thence to Sorrento it is indescribably beautiful. It runs en corniche round the cliffs, which here sink abruptly into deep water. They are generally of a friable sandstone, like the Saxon Switzerland, and the torrents from the mountains have worn them into deep ravines, up one of which the road runs inwards, for at least a mile before its banks approach near enough to be united by a viaduct.

The view from the chapel where the road crosses a lofty promontory down on the table-land ending in the precipices washed by the sea, on which Sorrento stands, its white houses smothered in orange-groves, is as beautiful as it is singular.

We arrived early, and Tocqueville and I took a long walk among the orange-gardens up the hill.

He spoke with great regret of the Anti-Catholic movement in England.

'The Pope,' he said, 'was very silly when he divided England into dioceses and created English bishops. He threw discredit on his friends the Puseyites, and excited both fear and resentment by showing the extent of his influence, and the mode in which it is exercised. So far from increasing his powers of interference with you, he has much diminished them. He was most to be feared when he acted most silently. Instead of profiting by his false move, you have made one yourselves. Your burst of intolerance puts you in the wrong.

'The cause seems to be a bad one which is defended by mobbing priests, and breaking the windows of twenty chapels.

'I look to England as the great source and the great example of political wisdom and moderation. You have now set a miserable example of bigotry and violence, and your example in this matter, as has been the case in many others, is more likely to be followed where it is bad than where it is good.'

'So far,' I answered, as the present movement is directed against the Roman Catholic religion, I dis-. approve of it as much as you do. No Christian sect has a right to call on its Government to treat the doctrines of any other sect as erroneous. Each sect has its own doctors, martyrs, and tests; and there is no umpire to say which is right. Everyone who maintains the opinions peculiar to the Protestant, to the Roman Catholic, or to the Greek Church, has two thirds of the civilised world against him. But without assuming what Protestants have no right to assume, except among one another, that the Roman Catholic Faith, so far as it differs from our own, is wrong, it seems to me to be capable of proof, and to be in fact proved, that the Roman Catholic practice is in many respects mischievous. Generally speaking, a Protestant population is superior in vigour of thought and of conduct to a Roman Catholic one. On this ground I think, that whatever steps can be taken to repress growth of Roman Catholicism ought to be taken.'

'Not acquiescing fully,' replied Tocqueville, 'in your

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censure of Roman Catholicism, or in the propriety of endeavouring to discourage it, it appears that you are taking bad means for that purpose. The inefficacy

of persecution, whether by the mob or by the law, to repress religious opinions or practices, was supposed to be acknowledged.'

'Even if it were acknowledged,' I said, 'I do not think that it is true. Persecution may be impolitic and may be morally wrong; but it is not always inefficacious. Witness Bohemia, which in 200 years was persecuted from Protestantism into Catholicism.'

'In the first place,' said Tocqueville, 'an efficacious persecution must be a ferocious one, such a one as you could not adopt; and secondly, I am inclined to think that Protestantism, mixing less with daily life than Catholicism, is more easily extirpated. You persecuted the Irish Catholics, and with some vigour, for a century and a half, and at the end of that time they bore a larger proportion to the Protestants than at the beginning. I do not believe that the meetings and protests which your Government seems to encourage, and the riots which it feebly discourages, or even the Acts of Parliament which it obscurely threatens, will arrest the progress of Catholicism, if such a progress there be. But they set a very bad example to Europe. The world was beginning to hope that toleration could co-exist with an Established Church and with, strong religious feelings. It was beginning to hope that intelligence, morality, political freedom, and religious freedom grew together. What you are doing checks these hopes. It

seems to show that the popular Government of an enlightened and moral people is even less tolerant than many Governments which you are accustomed to look down on. The precedent which you are setting will be a pretext for bigotry elsewhere.

'Observe, too, that the outbreak is not directed against what you call the practices of Roman Catholicism, but against its doctrines. Your archbishops and bishops in their address to the Queen do not object to the Roman Catholic Church because it requires the celibacy of the clergy, or because it denies the right of private judgment, but because it is repugnant to God's Word, and sanctions blasphemous fables and deceits.

'In other words, because it interprets certain portions of Scripture in a different way from yours.'

The Tocquevilles drank tea with us.'

Sunday, January 26.—Tocqueville and I took a fine walk over the hills. It had rained all night, and the sky was covered, but the temperature was charming, about 54°. The oranges are not quite ripe; the almonds are some in full bloom, others going off.

We passed a little chapel where Tocqueville always attends the sermon.

'Nothing,' he said, 'can be more amusing than the pantomime and vehemence of the preachers.

'I have often wondered,' he continued, 'that a nation which attaches so much importance as you do to religion, and which knows as well as you do the impotence of written speeches, should yet tolerate written sermons.

1 The Tocquevilles and Ampère spent almost every evening with us while we were at Sorrento.-ED.