76 MATERIALS IN ITALY. [III. when we remember the enormous mass of historical material which lies ready in Italy for the researches of competent scholars. It would be a waste of words if I were to attempt even to enumerate the treasures which must exist in Rome itself, in the Papal archives, where are, or should be found, the records of that great court of review and international arbitration which the medieval see of Rome claimed to hold. Much has no doubt perished, but touch must remain ; much does remain, as the labours of Theiner have shown, to shed new light on the history of remoter Europe. The Church History of the extreme North, of Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Britain, of the Slavonic lands also, has been already illustrated. What could be more remote or insignificant than the Manx Church ? Yet Dr, Munch succeeded in extracting from the Vatican archives matter which settles the main question of her history, on which we had no record. Throughout the middle ages every great event, nay, every small event, that in the remotest way pretended to public interest, was discussed at Rome ; every great power had a diplomatic agency there ; every leading or aspiring statesman had there an agent and probably a paid patron. It is not only in the records of the great public offices of Rome, but in the libraries of the princely families which furnished so long the cardinals and confidential ministers of the Papal See, that new matter will be found. The researches of Dr. Brady, the printed results of which I have not seen, but some part of which I saw in MS., brought out of the note-books and diaries of the cardinals of the Elizabethan period, not merely some most important personal and chronological details relative to the English episcopate, but revealed an almost unsuspected web of papal intrigue underlying the better known public action of the popes. Where Dr. Brady, who was working with a definite purpose and not very impartial judgment, stumbled on so much that was valuable,