Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/191

Rh yet, unknown, and a human race, then differently classified, will, without doubt, contemplate this ancient Popedom as a much more magnificent creation than we who are now living conceive it to be. Is it not the most harmonious system which thus exhibits itself in an all-embracing form, in a democracy expanding itself through all the members of this unlimited political body, a severely regulated aristocracy, an absolutism without a legal successor, which again rests on a democratic basis. In the immeasurable spiritual sphere, which embraces heaven, earth, and hell, which divides and determines them with a policy, and at the same time a phantasy, of which merely to think makes the brain dizzy, the Pope has placed himself as the centre, he, for the most part, a weak old man. The lightnings of heaven are placed in a trembling hand. Of a truth, people will look back, after innumerable years, to these old men of St. Peter, as upon wonderful beings of antiquity. Some of their monuments, in particular those of metal, will still then be in existence, and people will stand before these old men, with their grave majesty as rulers, with the triple-crowned tiara, with their gloomy or mild, fanatical or benevolent, countenances, with their hands raised for blessing or for cursing, and will exclaim: ‘These were Popes—spiritual fathers—and chiefs of the world at that time! How antiquated and how dark the world must then have been!’

“She was so, and she was not so. From these old men, emanated old age and darkness, it is true, but also youth and light; and many of them had fresher