The restoration of the Papal sovereignty, which was happily brought about last year, brings to mind the name of one whose voice was amongst the few in Europe to be raised in sincere and unwavering defence of the Holy See throughout the troubled years of Italian unification. In an age when the flock seemed to be denying Peter, as Peter had once denied his Lord, the ardent crusadership of Louis Veuillot would have sufficiently distinguished an otherwise obscure person; but Veuillot, a man of humble origin, self-educated and self-made in his professional career, has been appreciated as the greatest journalist, and one of the most extraordinary personalities, of the nineteenth century.

He was twenty-five years of age, and had been engaged for eight years in political journalism, when a seemingly chance visit to Rome in 1838 led to his conversion to Catholicism. Now for the first time he found a field for the enthusiastic exercise of his talents. Rome had cast her spell on him and, on returning to Paris, he vowed himself to the service of the Pope and of the Church. Under his direction the Univers, from being an unknown and unimportant journal, became the organ of an articulate Catholic party fighting the anti-clericalism of the reign of Louis-Philippe. Under the Second Empire it stood out as the relentless critic of free thought and religious liberalism, and most of all as the champion of the Temporal Power of the Papacy, already menaced by the Franco-Piedmontese victories of 1859 over Austria, and the subsequent annexation by Victor Emmanuel II of Romagna.