is now raging. Wiseman does not evince any intention of receding in the slightest degree, but on the contrary there appears to lurk throughout his paper a consciousness of an impregnable position, round which the tempest of public rage and fury may blow ever so violently without producing the slightest effect. . . . The Queen takes a great interest in the matter, but she is more against the Puseyites than the Catholics. She disapproves of Lord John's letter."

Among the innumerable addresses referred to by Greville, which urged Her Majesty to resist Papal aggression, were those from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the Corporation of the City of London, and the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, which she consented to receive in person in St. George's Hall, Windsor Castle, December 10th. On that day and for three preceding days the royal borough and the royal residence were hidden by a blinding fog so dense, as Prince Albert said, that "a man standing before his own door fails to recognise it." The carriages of those who undertook to present the petitions, the Duke of Wellington among them, were guided to the Castle by torches flaming through heavy vapour which penetrated the hall of audience, and was not wholly dispersed by great fires and flaring gas. Her Majesty's replies to the addresses were marked by moderation which Greville expected would make the zealots cry out. As she said in a letter written

the following day to her aunt the Duchess of Gloucester, and given in Sir Theodore Martin's Life of the Prince Consort, she would never "have consented to say anything which breathed a spirit of intolerance. Sincerely Protestant as I always have been and always shall be, and indignant as I am at those who call themselves Protestants while they are in fact quite the contrary, I much regret the unchristian and intolerant spirit exhibited by many people at public meetings. I cannot bear to hear the violent abuse of the Catholic religion, which is so painful and so cruel towards the many good and innocent Roman Catholics."

The Government seeing that they had been placed in a fix by Lord John's indiscreet letter, about which they had not been consulted, and that some action must be taken by them to pacify the public, ordered the law officers to examine the statutes on the subject. Parliament was opened February 4, 1851, by the Queen, who on her way from Buckingham Palace to Westminster was greeted by fierce cries of "No Popery, no Popery." Cardinal Wiseman was present in the House of Commons three days later when Lord John Russell asked permission to introduce a Bill to inflict a penalty of persons assuming titles to United Kingdom; to make

documents executed by such

one hundred pounds on pretended sees in the null and void all legal persons; and to make

endowments of such pretended sees, forfeitable to Her

Majesty. After a week's debate such permission was given in Parliament by a majority of three hundred and ninety-five to sixty-three. Those who were not

in favour of the Bill, though small in number were personally influential, and were known to be determined to fight it with might and main on the principle of religious toleration. This fight was postponed by

the sudden fall of the Government February 22, 1851, on a motion for the extension of the suffrage, when Lord John Russell resigned.

The Queen immediately sent for the leader of the Conservatives, Lord Stanley, who in the following June succeeded his father as fourteenth Earl of Derby. At the moment of Lord John's defeat, Lord Stanley had been dining with Her Majesty, and had no expectation that on his next appearance before the Sovereign he should be commissioned to form an Administration. This was an honour he by no means desired for he cared little for power, and he immediately declined it, believing that his party could not carry on a Government at this time. He suggested the formation of a Cabinet composed of the followers of Lord John Russell and of the late Sir Robert Peel, and assured Her Majesty that if such an attempt were unsuccessful, he would endeavour to obey her commands should she repeat them. The Queen then sent for Lord Aberdeen, the recognised leader of the Peelites, but as he, Sir James Graham, and Mr.