[141] Page 192
[142] M. Lauze de Peret, book iii. p. 10.
[143] It is said that certain advisers of Louis XVIII. had endeavoured to persuade him to put the sixth article before the fifth. The king answered with much wisdom, that it was not right to put the exception before the rule.
[144] Archives du Christianisme, vol. iii. p. 406, et seq.
[145] Arch. du Christ. vol. xi. p. 241, et seq. See another notice upon the life of M. de Staël, at the head of his Œuvres Diverses, published in 1829.
[146] Critiques et Portraits littéraires, vol. v. pp. 144, 147.
[147] Le Semeur, vol. xvii. p. 141.
[148] M. Grandpierre, Notices sur le Vice-Amiral Ver-Huell, p. 38, et passim.
[149] The hopes of the author, raised by the enlightened political views of the amiable and upright Lamartine, have not been realized. The coup-d’état of December, 1851, by which Louis Napoleon rejected the opportunity of displaying to the world that he could sacrifice personal ambition to the patriotic observance of the oath he had sworn, to maintain the Constitution inviolably, has induced a policy of intimate alliance with the Romish priesthood. Passing events daily show that whatever advantage the sacerdotal order of the (Roman) Catholics may be supposed to derive from a State connection, that union deeply injures the vitality of Protestantism. As stated in Louis Napoleon’s proclamation promulgating his constitution, “It is still the Concordat that regulates the relations of the State with the Church.” The 20th article of the Constitution makes the cardinals ex officio members of the senate.—Transl.