CHAPTER XIII.

SCENERY OF LAKE GARDA-PESCHIERA

Lake Garda-Memories of Trent-The Council of T tiny as well as Creed of Rome-Questions for Infalli Infallibility have to grope its Way?-Why does it meal?-Why does it need Assessors ?-The Immac Town of Desenzano-Magnificent Bullocks-Land o of Lake Garda-The Iron Peschiera-The Cypress posing Appearance of its Exterior-Richness and Be Plains-Palmerston.

WHEN the morning broke we were skirting Tyrolese Alps. I could see masses of snow summits, from which a piercingly cold air can upon the plains. In a little the sun rose; a were for his warmth. Day was again abroa and the hills; and soon we forgot the night, toward occurrences. The face of the country we kept alternately winding and climbing am the Alps. At length the magnificent expanse the Benacus of the ancients, opened before it was like an arm of the sea. There were masted ships on its waters; there were fine

northern shore; and on the east the conspicuous form of Monte Baldo leaned over it, as if looking at its own shadow in the lake. With the Lago di Garda came the memories of Trent; for at the distance of twenty miles or so from its northern shore is "the little town among the mountains," where the famous Council assembled, in which so many things were voted to be true which had been open questions till then, but to doubt which now were certain and eternal anathema.

The Reformation addressed to Rome the last call to reconsider her position, and change her course while yet it was possible. It said to her, in effect, Repent now: to-morrow it will be too late. Rome gave her reply when she summoned the Council of Trent. That Council crystallized, so to speak, the various doubtful opinions and dogmas which had been floating about in solution, and fixed the creed of Rome. It did more, it fixed her doom. Amid these mountains she issued the fiat of her fate. When she published the proceedings of Trent to the world, she said, "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise; so help me -." To whom did she make her appeal? To the Emperor in the first place, when she prayed for the vengeance of the civil sword; and to the Prince of Darkness in the second, when she invoked damnation on all her opponents. Then her course was irrevocably fixed. She dare not now look behind her to change a single iota were annihilation. She must go forward, amid accumulating errors, and absurdities, and blasphemies: amid opposing arts and sciences, and knowledge, she must go steadily onward,—onward to the precipice !

It is interesting to mark, as we can in history, first, the feeble germinations of a papal dogma; next, its waxing growth; and at last, after the lapse of centuries, its full development and maturity. It is easy to conceive how a mere human science

should advance only by slow and gradual sta for instance, or geology, or even the more p mechanics. Their authors have no infallible truth from error. They must observe nature pare facts; they must deduce conclusions; t previous errors; and this is both a slow and cess. But Infallibility is saved all this labou once, and from the beginning, all that is tr is erroneous. It does so, or it is not Infal then, was it not till the sixteenth century t gave anything like a fixed and complete creed Why did it permit so many men, in all preced in ignorance of so many things in which it coul enlightened them? Why did it permit so ma be debated, which it could so easily have settle it not give that creed to the Church in the first it kept back till the sixteenth? Why does it piecemeal,- one dogma in this century, anothe and so on? Why does it not tell us all at once even to this hour, has it not told us all, but reser important questions for future decision, or revela

If it is replied that the Pope must first collect of the Catholic bishops, this only lands us in de ties. Why should the Pope need assessors and a Infallibility not walk alone, that it uses crutches fallible man not know truth from error till first he the votes of fallible bishops? Why should Inf help, which it cannot in the nature of things need

If it is further replied, that this Infallibility is twixt the Pope and the Council, we are only con greater difficulties. Is it when the decree has be the Council that it becomes infallible? Then the

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Pope that it becomes infallible?

In that case the Infallibility is in the Pope. Or is it, as others maintain, only when the decree has been accepted by the Church that it is infallible, and does the Pope not know whether he ought to believe his own decree till he has heard the judgment of the Church? We had thought that Infallibility was one and indivisible; but it seems it may be parted in twain; nay, more, it may be broken down into an indefinite number of parts; and though no one of these parts taken separately is Infallibility, yet taken together they constitute Infallibility. In other words, the union of a number of finite quantities can make an infinite. Sound philosophy, truly!

If we go back, then, as the Ultramontanist will, to the dogma that the seat of Infallibility is the chair of Peter, the question returns, why cannot, or will not, the Pope determine in one age what he is able and willing to determine in another? The dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, for instance, if it is a truth now, was a truth in the first age, when it was not even dreamed of; it was a truth in the twelfth century, when it was dreamed of; it was a truth in the seventeenth century, when it gave rise to so many scandalous divisions and conflicts; and yet it was not till December 1854 that Infallibility pronounced it to be a truth, and so momentous a truth, that no one can be saved who doubts it. Will any Romanist kindly explain this to us? We can accept no excuses about the variety of opinion in the Church, or about the darkness of the age. No haze, no clouds, can dim an infallible eye. Infallibility should see in the dark as well as in the daylight; and an infallible teacher is bound to reveal all, as well as to know all.

And how happens it, too, that the Pope is infallible in only

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one science, even the theological? In astro some terrible blunders. In geography he ha to be a plain. In politics, in trade, and in all he is daily falling into mistakes. He cannot may blow to-morrow. He cannot tell wheth him may not have poison in it. And yet the and hourly falling into mistakes on the most has only to pronounce dogmatically, and he pr bly. He has but to grasp the pen, with a l like Borgia's, fresh from the poisoned chalice and straightway he indites lines as holy an flowed from the pen of a Paul or a John!

The road now led down upon the lake, whi like a sheet of silver beneath the morning su the poor, faded, straggling town of Desenza usual motley assemblage of commissionaires, a dwarfs, beggars, and idlers of all kinds, waite The poor old town crept close in to the strand, of the crystal waters would make it young again me of the company of halt, blind, and impote lay at the pool of Bethesda. So lay paralytic the shores of the Lake Garda. Alas! sunsh pass across the scene, clothing the waters and th ternate beauty and grandeur; but all changes the poor, tradeless, bookless, spiritless town. mer comes in its beauty or winter in its storms, old, withered, dying Desenzano still. I hurried swallowed a cup of coffee, and rejoined the dilig

Our course lay along the southern shore of t a fine rolling country, richly covered with vi where the rich red soil was being ploughed w Such bullocks I had never before seen. The stat