by two sides or edgings of green foliage. The
procession of the Archbishop and eight
hundred of his clergy dressed in white made
a beautiful effect when their long lines were
seen winding their way among the military.
They slowly ascended the steps of a lofty
chapel to officiate at an altar, the lighted
tapers of which were seen feebly glimmering
in the brilliant sunlight. The ensigns or
standard-bearers walked in procession from
the tribune of the President to the chapel of
the Archbishop. When they had ascended,
the gilded eagles and tricolor banners were
conspicuous above the heads of the clergy.
Over every sanctified flag the Archbishop
uttered a remarkable Latin prayer:

Accipite vexillata cœlesti benedictione sanctificata,
sintque inimicis populi Christiani terribilia, et det vobis
Dominus gratiam, ut, ad ipsius nomen et honorem, cum
illo hostium cuneos potenter penetratis incolumes et
securi.

Receive these standards sanctified by the blessing of
Heaven. May they be the terror of the enemies of the
Christian people, and may God, in honour of his name
and his glory, give you grace to pierce, safe and sound,
into the midst of the battalions of the enemy.

After pronouncing the prayer, the
Archbishop gave the kiss of peace to each ensign,
saying Pax tibi, Peace to thee! and the ensign,
after kissing the pontifical ring, rose from his
knees and walked to his place in the ranks,
where the flag was welcomed with loud cheering.
When the Host was elevated every man in
the whole army of sixty thousand soldiers knelt
on one knee. During the defile the meadow
of the god of war was covered with waving
crops of human life, offering themselves
successively to the service of the deity. Successively,
long fields of gleaming steel, of blazing
brass, and of tricolor-decked lances, galloped
past upon horseback. Long fields of men in
light blue, in dark green with white breasts,
with belted breasts, with red breasts, ran
swiftly past, offering themselves to the god;
last of all, galloped the terrible masses of
artillerymen with their offerings of cannon.
The god of battles, we know now, accepted
the sacrifices offered to his altar. I shall
not venture to guess at present how many of
the animated forms I then saw upon the
Meadow of Mars are to-day mere bones
rotting in oriental earth. Death had his first-
fruits even there and then. I saw a
chandelier fall, and I witnessed a commotion among
the priests. Subsequently I was informed
by the newspapers that the chandelier had                                                     killed one of the clergy of Paris.

In the spring of eighteen hundred and
fifty-three, the Archbishop interdicted the
Abbé Lacordaire for preaching a sermon
which was generally construed to be an attack
on the Emperor. The eloquent Dominican
praised several virtues, such as truthfulness
and integrity, and everybody sent his phrases,
allusions, and quotations away from
themselves to the address of the Tuileries.  The
Archbishop himself heard the discourse in                                                            the church of Saint Roch. He found the
preacher had been guilty of simplicity and
imprudence in using awkward quotations;
and, as he could never permit the pulpit to
be turned into a tribune, he interdicted the
first of French pulpit orators from preaching
for ever after, within ten miles of the capital.

Archbishop Sibour fought bravely a sore
fight against the Univers newspaper. This
singular journal preaches in the last half of
the nineteenth century what Louis the
Fourteenth practised in the last half of the
seventeenth century. It says that human reason
is good for nought; that heresy is worse than
crime; that Luther was worse than the
worst of criminals; and that it is glorious to
destroy the enemies of the Vicar of Christ.
M. Montalembert says some of its writers
have denied to him the right of private
individuals to use the word justice. The journal
is little read, and liberal Roman Catholics
say, "Rather than be Papists like the Univers
we would become Protestants."

Archbishop Sibour forbade the reading of
the Univers in his diocese. But the editor
appealed to Rome. The Parisians, who take
singularly little interest in ecclesiastical
squabbles, felt considerable curiosity to know
whether the Pope would decide in favour of
the editor or of the Archbishop. The Holy
Father decided in favour of the editor. The
Latin secretary of the Pope published an
eulogium upon the Univers newspaper. The
man with the crozier had to knuckle under
to the man with the pen, and the Archbishop
was compelled to annul his prohibition.

The blow dealt by the papal hand to the
authority of the Archbishop was
subsequently mollified a little by an allocution of
the oracle at Rome good enough to admit
human reason to be good for something.
The Pope said, faith and reason are both
gifts of God; and human reason is competent
to discover the existence of God, the
immortality of the soul and human liberty.
This document produced generally in
intelligent circles a comment to this effect. Why,
if human reason can discover such grand
truths, it surely can judge the authority of
the church and the allocutions of the Pope?

The Parisians with one voice proclaim the
generosity of Archbishop Sibour to the poor.
The Univers seemed to insinuate that the
Abbé Verger had been an exception, by
putting into his mouth erroneously the words,
"They do not allow a priest to die of
want." But, I have not heard two opinions
in Paris respecting the amiability and charity
of the prelate. The salary of the Archbishop
of Paris is sixteen hundred pounds a-year,
with a palace and carriage. It would appear
from his will that he had very little to leave
to his family. He left to his niece a thousand
francs a-year, or an annuity of forty pounds.
His bequests for masses and to the poor do
not amount together to five hundred pounds.
I have heard angry voices which denounced the