Page:History of Freedom.djvu/442

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ESSAYS ON LIBERTY

Gioberti for a prophet, and to conclude th -.t he thus became a trusted representative, until the revolving years found him the champion of a vanished C2 1 J.se, and the Syllabus exposed the illusion and bore av. y his ideal. Harless once said of hirn that no good could be expected froln a man surrounded by a ring of liberals. When Döllinger made persecution answer both for the decline of Spain and the fall of Poland, he appeared to deliver the common creed of Whigs; and he did not protest against the American who called him the acknowledged head of the liberal Catholics. His hopefulness in the tnidst of the movement of 1848, his ready acquiescence in the fall of ancient powers and institutions, his trust in Rome, and in the abstract rights of Germans, suggested a reminiscence of the Avenlr in 1830. Lamennais, returning with Montalembert after his appeal to Rome, met Lacordaire at Munich, and during a banquet given in their honour he learnt, privately, that he was condemned. The three friends spent that afternoon in Döllinger's company; and it was after he had left them that Lamennais produced the encyclical and said: Dieu a þarlé. Montalembert soon returned, attracted as much by Munich art as by religion or literature. The fame of the Bavarian school of Catholic thought spread in France among those who belonged to the wider circles of the A vellir; and priests and laymen follo\ved, as to a scientific shrine. In the .111l11zoircs d'urt Royaliste F'alloux has preserved, with local colour, the spirit of that pilgrimage: Munich lui fut indiqué comme Ie foyer d'une grande rénova- tion religieuse et artistique. Quels nobles et ardents entretiens, queUe passion pour l'Eglise et pour sa cause! Rien n'a plus ressemblé aux discours d'un portique chrétien que les apologies enflammées du vieux Görres, les savantes déductions de Döllinger, la verve originale de Brentano.

Rio, \vho was the earliest of the travellers, describes Döllinger as he found him in 1830: Par un privilège dont il serait difficile de citer un autre exemple,