Full text of "The Catholic world"

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THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

MONTHLY MAGAZINE

GENERAL LITERATURE. AND SCIENCE.

VOL. XLVIII.
OCTOBER, 1888, TO MARCH, 1889.

NEW YORK:

THE OFFICE OF THE CATHOLIC WORLD,
6 PAR

1889.

CONTENTS.

African Slave-Trade, The. Lady Herbert, 537.
Antisemitic Movement in Europe, The. A,

deGhi'qnier, ...... 741

Authenticity and Veracity of the Gospels.

Rev, A . F. Hewit, 376

Blessed Clement Hofbauer, C.SS.R. A.de

Ghequier, ....... 605

Catholic Deaf-Mutes of New York City, The.

Rev. A. Belanger, .... 542

Chat about the Catholic University, A.Rt,

Rev. John J. Keattf, . . . .216

Children as Suicides. Agnes Reftplier, . . 183
Christianity Universal. Rev. Augustine F.

Hewit, ....... 467

Church Music and Cecilian Music Compared.

Rev. C. Becker, 682

Church Music : its Origin and Different

Forms Most Rev. F. Janssens, . . 95
Congregational Singing and Popular Devo-
tions. George H. Howard and Rt, Rev.

Herbert faughan, 435

Cress of Expiation, The. Agnes Farley

Millar, .483

Divorce L. C. B., 23

Divorce Question, The. Rev. G. M. Searle, 822
Drink and Drink-Sellers the Nation's Bane.

Rev. M. F. Foley, ..... 311

Father Hecker, Tribute to. Rev. A ugustine

F. Hewit, S7i

Fete Dieu Procession in the Province of Que-
bec, A. A. M. Pope, . . . .176

Frederic Ozanam. Rev. Thos. J. Jenkins, . 342

French Rural and Agricultural Orphan

Asylums. L. B. Binsse, . . . .318

How shall We Teach Morality tRev.

Thomas McMillan, .... 592

How the Blind See. John A . Mooney, . 671

Indian Problem and the Catholic Church,

The. Rt. Rev. M irtin Ma>-ty, O.S.B., 577

Irish Affairs, The Home Aspect of. Rev. Ed-
ward B. Brady, 301

Irish Leader, The. Katharine Tynan, . 661

Italian Liberty. Carlo Sptranza, . . 390

James Clarence Mangan. R. M. S., . .33
Jeanetta Grudzinska, Princess of Lowicz.

E. IV, Latimer, ..... 53
John Van Aistyne's Factory. Lewis R.

Dorsay, 102, 237

Liberty of Catholics in Scientific Matters,

The. Rev, John Gmeiner, . . .145

Madame D'Youville. K.Madeline Barry, . 633
Mademoiselle Angelique. John J, a Becket,

Ph,D 617

Mediaeval Baron at Home, A. A. Hilliard

Atteridge, 600

Miss Biddy and Miss Eliza. --Mary Banim, 327
Missron.of Leo XIII. , The. Very Rev. I. T.

Hecker, i

Moral Theology and Monopolies. Rev. C. A .

Oliver, 721

Negroes and the Indians, The, . . . 727

Our Little Enemies. John A. Mconey, . 227
Out of the Church there is no Salvation.

Rev. James P. Ryan, .... 509

Palestrina Myth, The. Rev. Alfred Young, 790
Paul Ringwood: An Autobiography. Harold

Dijon, . . 65, 196, 357, 519, 643, 771

Physiology of the Sea. William Seton, . 162
Plea for Honest Protestants, A. Rev. Walter

Elliott, 351

Presidential Election, The. Thomas Jeffer-
son Mercer, ...... 261

Puck's Tricks on Col. Ingersoll. Charles G.

Herbermann, LL.D., .... 831

St. Catherine of Genoa. Elizabeth G. Mar-
tin 289

St. Thomas Becket. C. E. Hodson, . . 803

Some Mexican Haciendas. C. E. Hodson, . 84
"Stones shall Cry Out, 1\ie.." Arthur F.

Marshall, 585

Successor to Scheherezade, A. Ehuard Eu, 170

Summer Islands, The H. C. Walsh, . . 444
Sweetness of Blessed Thomas More, The.

Richard M. Johnston^ .... 453

Talk about New Books, 119, 267, 398, 546, 6qo, 842
Trouble in the Boston Schools, The. Mary

Elizabeth Blake, 5'

True Site of the Holy Sepulchre, The. Rev.

A . M. Clark, 763

United Italy. Rev. L. A. Dutto, ... 39

Wanted : Sensational Preaching. M. T.

Elder, TS

What is the Good of the Kindergarten ? f.

Thomas 14

William O'Brien, M.P. Katharine Tynan, 151
With Readers and Correspondents, 130, 274,

4', 557. 7i. 8 5'
Word for a Brave Class of Men, A. Richard

F. Johnston, ...... 64$

Hermitage, The, 260

iv CONTENTS.

POETRY.

At Ordination. /?-. Dtnit B. Collins, . 541 Philip H. Sheridan. Charles Alphons Win-

gerter, . . . . . . . 101

Plea to Mary, A. Margaret H. Lawless, 604

I am the Way.-/to/. Alfred Young, . . 5 '8 Q uartet o f Christian Joy, with a Solo on
" In Dura Catena,"-.*/. Louise Malloy, . 52 Taste by the Organist, \.-Rev. Alfred
\jaA.-Lucy Agnrs Hayes 740 Young, 8

" Little Child shall lead Them, A." -fitfi/A

... _ . River of Rest, The. James Buck/tarn, . 161

tr . Cotf/.-, ....... 433

Marquis of Castig'ione, The. M. B. Morse, 194 St. Peter's Denial. Rev. Alfred Young, . 830

Morn and Night. A nnie Cox Stephens, . 762 Shooting Stars. Mary J. Onahan, . . 300

My Violin. Rev. Hugh T. Henry, . . 481 Soul-Solitude. Margaret H. Lawless, . 32

Sunset Blessings. Frank H'aters, . . 584
"Omnia autem probate: Quod bonum est,

tenete." Louise Imogen Guiney, . . 642 Twilight S. F. Quintero, .... 466
On a Christmas Picture. Rev. Alfred

Young, 389 Vision of Beatrice, The. Samuel Byrne, . 670

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

American Weather 570 Jack in the Bush,

Aristotle and the Christian Church. . . 280

Authority ; or, A Plain Reason for Joining the Library of St. Francis de Sales, . . . 419

Church of Rome 419 Life of Lady Georgian* Fullerton, ... 139

Life of St. Jerome 856

Blessed Ones of 1888, The 711 Liturgy for the Laity, 570

Botany for Academies and Colleges, . . 570

Mexico, Picturesque, Political, Progressive, . 280
Catholic Convention of One, A, . . . 419
Compendium Sacrae I. iturgiae, . . . 419 New Saints of 1888. The, . . .71

Conquests of our Holy Faith 711 Nouveau Manuel de Chants Liturgiques, . 71

Credentials of Science the Warrant of Faith, 419 Nun of Kenmare, 1 he, 71

Emmanuel, the Saviour of the World, . . 280 Pacific Coast Almanac for 1889, The, . . 71
Essays on Various Subjects, .... 570 Pearls of a Year. . . . . -7'

Eucharistic G-.-ms 711 Publications of the Catholic Truth Society, . 419

Exposition of the Epistles of St. Paul, An, . 419

Exposition of the Kpistles of St. Paul and of Readings with the Saints, .... 711

the Catholic Epistles, .... 139 Reminiscences of the late Hon. and Rt. Rev.

Exposition of the Gospels, An, . . . 139 Alexander Macdonell, .... 139

Rudiments of Hebrew Grammar, The . . 280
From the World to the Cloister, . . . 711

St. Peter's Chains, . ...... 570

God Knowable and Known, .... 570 St. Thomas et la Predestination, . . . 856

Sursum Corda, . . ... 856

History of Catholic Emancipation, . . 280 Special Devotion to the Holy Ghost, . . 419

History of the Church 419 Synopsis Canonico-Liturgica, .... 419

Holy bee and the Wandering of the Nations,

The, 419 Three Introductory Lectures on the Science

of Thought, ...... 1^9

Illustrated Catholic Family Annual for 1889, 711 Three Kingdoms, 280

II Medagliere di Leone XIlI.,. . . . 280 Training of the Twelve, The, .... 711
Ireland under Coercion, 570 Treatise on Plane Trigonometry, . . . o&o

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XLVIII. OCTOBER, 1888. No. 283.

THE MISSION OF LEO XIII.*

The Providential Mission of Leo XIII. is the title of a lecture
delivered in Washington by the Rector of the Catholic Univer-
sity, and published for general circulation. It was a sort of
Jubilee offering " laid as a tribute of reverence and affection at
the feet of Leo XIII." The object of the lecture is to show that
jn the providence of God the Papacy, in the person of the pre-
sent Pontiff, is engaged in infusing a Christian element -into the
movement of the nations of the world towards more democratic
institutions. That as Pius IX. found it necessary to act mainly
as a restraint upon that movement, because it was in his time
premature and was then almost wholly under the guidance of
the enemies of religion, so the present Pope can safely act upon
it in a different spirit.

" To Leo XIII.," says the lecturer, " God has assigned the task of at least
inaugurating this adjustment of the church to the new, circumstances of
the world, and Providence had admirably fitted him for so delicate and im-
portant a mission. . . . With the clear and practised eye of a philosopher, a
theologian, and a statesman, he had scanned the life of the world, had noted
the throbbings of its pulse, had watched the ways of Providence, and he
knew that those ways, though often obscure to us, are always right."

Bishop Keane's lecture assumes as a fact, what is indeed evi-
dent to all, that the church and the world are entering on new
ways. The conflict of views arising herefrom has divided and
placed in antagonism among themselves the Catholic people of
France, Spain, and Italy. The Holy Father has steadily incul-

* The Providential Mission of Leo XIII. : A Lecture. By John J. Keane, Bishop of
Richmond. Baltimore : John Murphy & Co.

2 ' THE MISSION OF LEO XIII. [Oct.,

cated " that the church is not wedded to any dynasty, or to any
particular species of social organization ; that she does not con
sider any form of government as necessarily hostile or injurious
to her ; that she has no fear of any result which the providence
of God and the due development of nations may bring forth "
(p. 16, 17). The lecturer then points out how, in dealing with
Germany and other nations, the Pope followed up this statement
of principle by his assertion of the rights of conscience, and by
his good will towards all lawful efforts for the amelioration of
the condition of the laboring classes. On p. 25 he shows how
the Holy Father in all this is by no means favoring that false
liberty advocated by Mazzini and Socialists and Atheists, but
the true spirit of the age, asserting man's inalienable rights. The
lecturer refers to the Declaration of American Independence as
the fit proclamation of those rights, and as the public avowal of
their having God and not man as their author, " and their basis in
man's relationship with God." Hence the liberty-loving tone of
the Holy Father's famous encyclicals, on the Christian Constitu-
tion of States, on the Principles of Education, on Human Liberty,
and on Slavery. Finally, he explains the attitude of the Holy
See towards Italy, and ends with a beautiful and touching ac-
count of the Pope's private life.

Now, it is by no means wonderful that such a lecture should
have been given by an American prelate. But it is significant
that it should be printed in Rome in a French translation at the
Propaganda Press, and copious extracts with a highly laudatory
introduction published in the official organ of the Papacy, Le
Moniteur de Rome. The old order changes sure enough.

Many years ago the writer of this article published a sermon,
in the volume of Paulist Sermons for 1863, entitled The Saint of
Our Day. It was an attempt to show by the example of St.
Joseph how the liberty and intelligence of our day can be made
a means of sanctification. It expressed my inmost convictions
then and does so now, and offers, I think, a good reason, in the
providence of God, for the representative governments of these
times: their use as an assistance to Christian perfection. I un-
dertook to show, as does Bishop Keane in his lecture, that every
age of the church has its own characteristic form of expression.
There is something about the sanctity of each age peculiar to
itself. We have had the apostolic age, the age of the martyrs,
that of the fathers of the desert, that of the cloisters, and then
that of the mendicant orders, and finally that of heroic obedience
and military discipline in religion inaugurated by the great St.

1 888.] THE MISSION OF LEO XIII. 3

Ignatius and his order, and carried out practically by St. Vin-
cent de Paul and St. Alphonsus Liguori.

Each type or form of sanctity differed from the others. Each
class of men did in their day what their age required. Each
class was true to its time, its wants, its promises, and therefore
had its peculiar charm and beauty. As the church chants in
honor of her saints the same words, " non est inventus similis
illi " " there is not found one like unto him " so we may say of
the different schools and types of Christian perfection that each
stands out in its own way with unrivalled excellence. None but
those of narrow capacity and a restricted education fail to see
this. It is likewise a monstrous tyranny of opinion to arraign
the past, judge and condemn it, by the standards of the present;
and we resist it with no less energy than the spirit that would
mould the minds and hearts of the present into the antiquated
forms of bygone ages. The Catholic Church, like all that is
divine, is ever ancient and ever new. Her mission is to guide
man to the realization of the great end of his being, and for this
purpose her divine Founder has furnished her with full and ade-
quate means for all men, for all ages, unto the consummation of
time.

What, then, is to be the fruit of her influence on the nine-
teenth century ? To answer this, we must look at the character-
istics of the century itself. It claims to be a period of most ad-
vanced civilization ; to be marked by unprecedented diffusion of
intelligence and liberty. So far as these claims are true, so far you
have the indication of what the people of the age will be when
their intelligence and liberty are completely dedicated to God.
Now, will not a sanctity developed under such circumstances
have at least the merit of completeness ?

The more a civilization solicits the exercise of man's intelli-
gence and enlarges the field for the action of his free will, the
broader will be the basis that it offers for sanctity. Ignorance
and weakness are the negation of life ; they are either sinful or
the consequences of sin, and to remedy these common evils is the
aim of the Christian religion. Enlightened intelligence and true
liberty of the will are essential conditions of all moral actions
and the measure of their merit. Confine men to the exercise of
a few of their faculties, or to any one class of their faculties, and
the remainder will be hid in obscurity, undeveloped, and conse-
quently unsanctified. The true development of sanctity in the
saint will be in proportion to the true enlightenment of the intel-
ligence and the right exercise of the will. A defective know-

4 THE MISSION OF LEO XIII. [Oct.,

ledge and a restricted freedom produce only an incomplete de-
velopment of sanctity. The ideal of true Christian perfection is
the union of religion with a fully enlightened intelligence and an
entire liberty of will directed wholly to the realization of the
great end of our being. It is therefore to be maintained that
the more advanced a civilization, the wider will be the sphere
for the display of the divine character of Christianity. Religion
and sanctity are interested in the advancement of civilization,
and, concede that civilization is advancing, then the fullest glory
of Catholicity is not to be looked for in the past, but in the
future.

The ideal of Catholicity is the union of religion with intelli-
gence and liberty in all their completeness. Man offers a perfect
worship to God when he pays the homage of his entire intelli-
gence and liberty.

Our age is not an age of martyrdom, nor an age of hermits,
nor a monastic age. Although it has its martyrs, its recluses,
and its monastic communities, these are not, and are not likely to
be, its prevailing types of Christian perfection. Liberty and in-
telligence have in many cases, and indeed in whole nations, been
obstacles to religion because they have been perverted from the
great end of human life, union with God. But it is the difficul-
ties and hindrances that Christians find in their age which give
the form to their character and habits, and, when mastered, be-
come the means of divine grace and their titles of glory. Indi-
cate these and you portray that type of sanctity in which the life
of the church will find its actual and living expression.

The above is the substance of the sermon referred to. It
greatly attracted Dr. Brownson's attention at the time, and he
said that it was very bold. But such things are not now so con-
sidered.

Thus much has been said to show the point of view from
which the true philosopher should consider the topic so ably
discussed by Bishop Keane the religious. Therefore, Bishop
Keane does not mean to say that democracy is the direct object
of religion, but that in these times Providence points out democ-
racy as a means in the natural order to assist men to sanctify
their souls; a better means, for these times, than other forms
of government. His idea at bottom is that Catholics are
now returning to a more normal religious life, and must culti-
vate more than formerly their personal and independent union
with the Holy Spirit, and less than before that form of religious
life which was dependent in great degree upon the environments

1 888.] THE MISSION OF LEO XIII. 5

of race and national traditions. Democracy is a remedy and a
radical one for some of the evils that afflict Europe. But such
evils are not the deepest nor the commonest that humanity suf-
fers from. Democracy by itself does not make a man godlike;
and to be godlike is the great, one, radical need of mankind.
When democracy is the providential ruling for the world then
it is that democracy assists men to lead a godlike life ; such, as
the bishop maintains, is the ruling providence of God, in the
natural order, for this age. It is a pointer to the supernatural
order.

The dominant trait of European politics, as advocated by Ca-
tholics, has heretofore been conservative; it will now, doubtless
only gradually, become progressive without being destructive.
Religion in its essential nature is a progressive force and not a
conservative force. Its distinctive action is not that good may
be kept good, but that all men and all things may be made con-
stantly better ; it is elevation. True religion cannot be still.*
A state of things, then, in which religion mainly works to pre-
serve, is abnormal and cannot be permanent ; as said before, the
main work of religion must be elevation. The chief function of
Catholicity has been mainly conservative for the last three hun-
dred years or more ; not conservative altogether, but dominantly

* While on this point I cannot help quoting from the translation of Dr. Scheeben's Glories
of Divine Grace (Benzigers), a work which, to my thinking, shows the positive value of religion
better than any I know of. On page 234, speaking of the supernatural virtue of hope, the au-
thor says : " In the same manner as faith communicates to our reason a supernatural power of
understanding, the infused virtue of hope endows our will with a divine power and a super-
natural confidence, that it may actively pursue and securely attain the highest and infinite
good which no created force can ever attain. Hope carries us upward above all creatures to
God, to let us rest in his bosom, to strengthen us in his omnipotence, and ground us upon it as
upon an immovable rock.

" Hope or confidence, says St. Thomas, is the rising up of the soul by which it confi-
dently pursues a sublime and arduous good, and despises and overcomes all the obstacles that
are in the way of its attainment of this good. It is an elevating sentiment which fills the soul
with a joyous pride in the consciousness of its power.

11 It grants us the consoling and comforting assurance that by grace God has called us to
the ineffable dignity of his sonship ; that we are his heirs and the co-heirs of his Son, and shall
sit upon his throne and shall reign with him ; that the whole world will be subject to us, and
God himself with all his glory, with all his treasures and riches, with all his divine happiness
will be our possession and our joy. . . . This consciousness gives the children of God that
triumphant confidence which fears no danger, no obstacle, which is terrified by no created
power, because it is superior to them all, which knows no hesitation, no trembling, no fear,
no disappointment, and renders us as secure of attaining to our end as if we were already in
possession of it. ... Why should we, then, do ourselves the harm and God the great injus-
tice not to confide in him through his grace ; and, supported by him, why should we not despise
all our enemies and dangers ? The youth rejoices in the fulness of his youthful vigor ; the
warrior is boastful of his strength and valor ; the prince is proud of the great number of his
subjects and of the extent of his riches ; should the children of God alone remain in abject low-
liness and forget their sublime dignity and power ? " I have only to say that these words of
Dr. Scheeben plainly enough indicate what form of government, in the normal condition of

6 THE MISSION OF LEO XIII. [Oct.,

so. The proper state of things is that religion takes man as it
finds him, low or high, and elevates him always. It is the want
of the consciousness of elevation that makes men irreligious. So
true is this that men who have only nature can be deluded
into making a religion of the consciousness of natural progress
alone; such are many Unitarians and even Positivists and Ag-
nostics. But in supernatural, that is to say, in true, religion, the
sense of elevation should be so abounding as to dominate every
other sense. Now, the influence of religion upon its human en-
vironment in the political and social order is to produce this
same sense of elevation in the natural man and in the citizen ; it
must be so. So that the normal effect of religion on civil polity
is to make men freer and more intelligent citizens with a form of
government to suit such conditions.

The church, for the last three hundred years or more, has, in
my humble opinion, been in an attitude of defence, made neces-
sary by the civil condition of Southern Europe and the doc-
trines attacked by her opponents at and since the time of
Luther.

The reason why Catholicity has maintained in Europe the
old order of things is a transitory reason. The church has fa-
vored conservative institutions not because, as some think, she is
essentially conservative, for she is essentially progressive ; the
aim of religion is to move man upward and closer to God. As
God is continually seeking the realization of himself by his pro-
vidence in the natural and supernatural order, the proper state
of things is progress in both. There is no man in the spiritual
life but what is conscious of a ceaseless impulse onward. And
why? Because God's influence is ever elevating. Elevation
and progressive movement are essential to religion. The Holy
Spirit attracts the soul upwards. If such a soul acting in his civil
capacity seeks a downward course, seeks less natural light and
less natural freedom as a man and a citizen, he does so under a
delusion. If he but stands fast and refuses to advance into freer
and more enlightened forms of civil life, it must be because Pro-
vidence has denied him the opportunity. There are ages of the
world where to stand fast is an essential condition of any ad-
vance in the future.

There are some who seem to think that religion can become
a positively constructive force in politics. Such persons, if
monarchists, demand that Catholicity shall make itself respon-
sible for monarchy ; if democrats, that she shall make herself re-
sponsible for democracy. In truth the church has an influence

1 888.] THE MISSION OF LEO XIII. 7

on each, either formative, conservative, or progressive, but only
indirectly in any case. The direct action of true religion is con-
fined to the sanctification of the individual soul. The church is
always willing to follow the providence of God in the natural
order of things ; but it is none of her duty to officiously point it
out and enforce it. The churchman does not supplant the poli-
tician. Nevertheless the tendency of the true religion, direct or
indirect, in the natural or the supernatural order is ever to
elevate. I have always held that it is the intent of divine Pro-
vidence that the people of the civilized world should have more
to do in shaping the governments by which they are ruled.
The democracy will assume more power in one country than
in another ; it will be sooner assumed in one than in an-
other. But this is certain, whoever loves the people most will
get them. The religion that produces men and women most
devoted to the people's welfare is nearest to God ; it will win
the people and will give them every good gift, including that
which men love dearest liberty.

The spread of intelligence that is, the diffusion of primary
education would of itself, in my opinion, make the advent of
democracy inevitable, in varying degrees, more in the West than
in the East. The civilizations of the West and of the East differ
from each other, and so widely as to show an essential difference
in the original elements. I am not sure but that it would take
three or four generations. for even intelligent Eastern peoples to
advance to representative institutions ; some of them are never,
perhaps, destined to do so, whether they be intelligent or not.
The citizens of this free republic but partially understand how
much difference there is between the races of men. This im-
mense difference has been better appreciated in this country since
Americans have had to face it in the Chinese question. That race,
now held back from our shores by drastic laws and its members
viewed in our streets almost as leprosy spots on the civil body,
is not a whit behind many thousands of our native white popu-
lation in intelligence ; and yet it is hopelessly victimized by
paternalism in China, and is a thoroughly pagan race in spite of
its intelligence. And now the problem has gradually crept over
other races ; we seem about to extend the anti-Chinese laws to
other races, and European ones, too ; or at least to whole classes
of certain races. There are some nations in Europe who seem
to be shaking off their vermin upon the United States. They
are sending to us an ignorant population who do not wish to be
enlightened in our sense of the word ; they have no esteem for

8 THE MISSION OF LEO XIII. [Oct.,

the knowledge for which we have a high esteem. They are
people who have been ground down in political and social sub-
jection, and with the apparent consent of religion, and exhibit no
more independence of character here than at home. From po-
liceman in their own country they pass to the emigrant agent,
and, landing here, they pass from him to the labor broker and
the ward politician. To their own self-control they never come,
as a class. Their lives in America are but a rotation from one
" boss " to another ; the habit of subjection is ingrain. These
men, unlike the German, the Anglo Saxon, and the Irish, are
without ideas of their own whether national or personal. The
instinct of self-preservation more than anything else has brought
them here, and in its most selfish form rules them here. In view
of this can we say that the Pope is wrong to cry Cavete ! to the
democratic propaganda set at work among such a people ? Can
we say that the progress of democracy, inevitable in some degree
as it certainly is, is going to be uniform ? that it fits every race
and should be offered at once and everywhere ? Such a demo-
cratic propaganda produces a democracy of Napoleonic plebis-
cites and South American pronunciamientos. It is the pretence
of democracy and the reality of absolutism. Despots are well
content with such a democracy.

Notwithstanding all this, and although such be the condition
of things among certain races, it is nevertheless perfectly true
that free institutions will make their way everywhere among
civilized nations. A greater or less degree of democracy is, in
the providence of God, coming, and men should everywhere be
fitted for it, and that by methods and means to be at once ap-
plied. What Bishop Keane says is evidently true :

" It suffices us to state and to accept the unquestionable fact, and to ex-
press our firm conviction that it is not the work of chance, nor of the devil,
but of the overruling providence of God. Whoever opens his eyes and is
willing to see what is. must recognize that the day of absolute rule and of
so-called paternal governments is over; that if, in some parts of the civi-
lized world, they still hold a struggling existence, their duration must be
stormy and short ; that the laws of the nations can never again be made by
one man or by a few men, unless as the delegated and responsible agents
of the people, for whose welfare alone laws ought to be made."

It has, indeed, been the great problem of Caesar to maintain
himself in the face of this providential movement among the
people. Some amount of freedom is nearly everywhere granted,
or at least some counterfeit of it. Witness the shifts of Bismarck
to rule with haughty absolutism, and to maintain the nation's

1 888.] THE MISSION OF LEO XIII. g

good-will by using a representative assembly. Witness, espe-
cially, the tricks of Napoleon III. He squarely asserted the
people's rights and gave them the cunning device of the plebis-
cite ; so cunning as to win the tolerance if not the actual favor
of many who really loved the people and would give them true
liberty. The writer remembers a conversation with the late
Louis Veuillot during the Second Empire, in which the latter said
that it was fortunate that Napoleon III. was giving a dynasty to
France, and boasted that he had the people's approval by a re-
cent plebiscite. I answered that in America we believed in a
government of checks and balances. What check had the
French people against Louis Napoleon ? Suppose he should turn
his accumulated poweragainst them? I put that question to him
direct. He answered by drawing himself up and striking his
chest, saying nothing, indeed, but meaning his readiness to die
for his rights. I replied : " Oh, yes ! if all men were like Louis
Veuillot, soldiers, ready to die for their country, and if the em-
peror felt this to be so, there would indeed be a check against
despotism." He had no answer to make. Meantime Napoleon
kept Veuillot constantly under the eyes of a detective. We
know how little Napoleon III. really trusted the people.

Of course, the relations of church and state will undergo
very material changes as the old order changes. The church will

" secure the rights and the freedom of religion, not by treating with chang-
ing administrations or governments, but by her hold on the convictions
and affections of the people. It is so in our country, and it is fast becom-
ing so in countries where Caesarism has thus far maintained some hold.
And I am frank to confess that, when I look back at history and see how
Caesar has almost habitually treated religion and the church in the past, I
heartily welcome the future in which she shall no more have to deal with
him, but with the people, who, in the main, and always when in their
senses, know that she is their best friend, and that her interests are their
own " (Lecture, p. 13).

In the long run democracy will be more favorable for the at-
tainment of the real objects for which state and church were
united than other forms of government. In reality church and
state are in the truest sense united when the people are truly
Christian that is to say, in a form of government in which a
Christian people control the state. An old priest of my -ac-
quaintance once said, during a discussion on this topic, that he
didn't care for union of church and state if he could have union
of church and people. A very wise remark, and a solution of a
difficult question, but it can apply only under a popular govern-
ment.

THE MISSION OF LEO XIII. [Oct.,

Franklin was a free-thinker, Washington some kind of an
Episcopalian, Jefferson a Unitarian, and very broad at that, and
Hamilton we know not what he was, if of any religious belief :
his career was short, and ended in a duel ; the Adamses were
Congregationalists, Charles Carroll was a Catholic. Yet there is
not a doubt but that a legitimate government, now hardly second
in power to any in the world, competent for the settlement of
the greatest questions between church and state to the advan-
tage of equity and of religion, was founded by these men and
their like. Where to-day in the whole world would the Holy See
look for the fair settlement of a difficult question between church
and state with so much confidence as to America? Where are
such questions settled more in accordance with Catholic principles
than here? Why so? Because we are a democracy; the men
who rule are chosen by those for whom they act, and must legis-
late in the interests of the people. In Europe men rule on his-
torical lines that is to say, to maintain a traditional policy of
possession or of acquisition. They have found their national or
dynastic content in this. Here, and in every democracy, truly
so called, men must rule more on first principles than on the
lines of historical traditions ; in so doing they are forced to seek
their justification in the principles of sound philosophy, both hea-
then and Christian.

It may be asked what would be the effect upon the ecclesias-
tical regimen of the church herself of a wide-spread democratic
polity among Catholic nations. I answer that it would be most
beneficial. It would result in bringing the Papacy and the
Episcopate closer together, and both into direct communication
with the people, for whose real and spiritual benefit those eccle-
siastical orders are divinely established. It would result in
the College of Cardinals being made a representative body of
all mankind. It would be the religious senate of the world.
Its decisions would be the decisions of the religious sense of
humanity, and whoever would resist them would be ostracized
and suffer a popular abscission from the church whether he
were formally excommunicated or not. When we use the word
representative, we do not, of course, wish to derogate from the
supreme and, under God, original authority of the Papacv, nor
have we any wish to reflect any way unfavorably on the present
order of things. But there is not a day in which we do not
thank God for Leo XIII., and for the cardinals and bishops who
share his responsibility and who assist him in fulfilling his mission,
because of the evident trend of the governing body of the church

1 888.] THE MISSION OF LEO XIII. 11

towards the new order of things. He and they are bringing us
nearer to the realization of the express desire of the Council
of Trent, that the College of Cardinals should be representative.
The Council of Trent (sess. xxiv. c. I, De Reformatione] decreed
that the cardinals should be chosen as far as possible from all
nations, which wise rule was to some extent enforced by Sixtus
V. in his bull Postquam verus ille*

Since Bishop Keane delivered his lecture the Holy Father
has published his letter to the Brazilian bishops on slavery, a
truly magnificent document, full of the most fundamental doc-
trine on the subject of human rights. And lately has appeared
his encyclical on Human Liberty, containing both the true doc-
trine on that subject and an elaborate refutation of the false.
But why is it, it may be asked, that Pope Leo says so much in
this encyclical against false views of liberty? Because false
views of liberty are prevalent in Europe. They are not so pre-
valent here, because, thank God ! we have true liberty ; no man
who has true liberty covets false liberty. The founders of our
institutions Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, the Car-
rolls, and the Adamses had sound views of human liberty. What
the opponents of the church will not learn is that the funda-
mental principles of American liberty have never been contra-
dicted by the church either in their reality or in the terms in
which they have been expressed, but that, on the contrary, they
are rooted in the eternal principles of natural equity, always
defended and propagated by Catholic philosophers, theologians,
doctors, and fathers.

No American wants the government of the French Republic.
We may think it better than a monarchy, but it falls far short of
a free republic. Just so in Italy. No body of law-makers with
true principles of liberty in their minds could ever pass such a
law as that embodied in the new Italian criminal code, making
it a felony, punished by fine and imprisonment, for any man to
declare that the Pope should have a distinct civil autonomy.
This law is an offence against the liberty of the Italian people,

*The eleventh paragraph of the bull is given in the bullarium as follows : "Ut autem ipsi
Cardinales in regimine universalis Ecclesiae, nobis et pro tempore existenti Romano Pontifici
utiliter assistere valeant, ac de omnibus Christianorum regnorum, provinciarumque moribus,
rebus, et negotiis prompte, et fideliter certa ab eis notitia, pro rerum emergentium opportu-
nitate habeatur, prsedicti Concilii Tridentini decreto inherentes, statuimus, ut ex omnibus
Christianitath nationibus, quantum commode fieri poterit, idonei assumantur."

See on this point Baron Hubner's Life of Sixtus V., in which the subject of the sacred
college, as it stood three hundred years ago, is discussed with much judgment and bearing, in
my opinion, on the present state of the church. The work itself is one of the best of modern
historical productions.

12 THE MISSION OF LEO XHL [Oct.,

against liberty of speech and of the press, and shows plainly
enough that the Holy Father has chosen wisely to combat at
length the false views of liberty prevalent in Europe. The
same may be said of the laws in France interfering with edu-
cation. The ideas of liberty among its self-chosen advocates in
France and Italv are all wrong, according to the American ideas
of liberty. If we Americans are right, they are all wrong.
They have to be educated up to it as we were a hundred years
ago. \Vhatever vagaries our non-Catholic fellow-citizens may
have about non-religious education, only a few of the wildest
spirits would dream of prohibiting private schools by law.

Yet we do not despair of the advocates of liberty in France
and Italy. It wants only a little more study of the church and
her principles and more uprightness of motive for the oppo-
nents of the church to see the truth about this matter. We
can learn true liberty here in America because we have actually
got it; we have got it applied here to our civil life in an estab-
lished order of free institutions. But in Europe, amidst decay-
ing thrones and vast armaments, an impoverished people have
difficulties in studying what liberty is, because nowhere in their
sight does true liberty exist. Men with empty stomachs and
half-naked bodies are not apt to be in a proper frame of mind for
the study of principles or the choice of methods. Some may be
annoyed at the amount of space given by the Holy Father to the
refutation of false theories of liberty ; but it does not annoy me.
For the strangest delusions about liberty are prevalent on the
continent of Europe, as is plainly shown by the conduct of the
men who come here from those countries, and who at this
moment are organizing resistance to our true liberties in the
form of Socialism and Anarchism. Who can say that the Holy
Father did not do right to refute errors prevailing not only
among his own people but among the people of continental
Europe generally, where the civilized nations of the world have
their chief seats ?

The Western and the Eastern races are fighting for their
ideas of liberty, as they understand them, in the streets of Rome,
and the Holy Father stands there as the Vicar of Christ to see
fair play, and he knows that such is his providential mission.
However overloaded with refutation of error the encylical may
seem to the Western mind, to the Eastern mind it will be found
over-full of the affirmation of unpalatable truth, and in favor of
personal and civil liberty. Many an aristocrat, both lay and ec-
clesiastic, of Italy, Spain, France, and even of Germany, will

1 888.] THE MISSION OF LEO XIII. 13

find the words of the encyclical a bitter pill to swallow. In
the minds of many of Europe's ablest Catholics, there can be
no altar without the throne ; and the closing paragraphs of the
Pope's encyclical, which emphasize the rights of men and
nations in the direction of freedom and independence, will sound
far harder to many leading Catholics in Vienna and Paris than
will his admonitions on an unbridled press to the Catholics of
New York and Dublin.

We ought to be glad that such a pope as Leo has been
granted us in these times. And we ought to make it a matter
of the prayer of thanksgiving at our devotions and at Mass that
he is so sincere, so studious, so attentive to the signs of the
times. We ought also to thank God that such men as Bishop
Keane and Cardinal Gibbons, and prelates like them, here and in
Europe, know the Pope's mind and can adequately expound his
utterances to the public. I thank God that Pope Leo has the
courage of his convictions. He shows a fearlessness which re-
gards nothing but God, and he dares to do his duty whether
autocrats or anarchists like it or not. Supreme love of truth
should characterize the head of the church when writing such
documents as Papal encyclicals. The term supreme has a pecu-
liar significance in his case. How hard is his task! How much
does he need the prayers of all the faithful that he may be true
to his mission ! How good a claim he has on the sympathy and
co-operation of all honest men !

I. T. HECKER.

14 WHAT is THE GOOD OF THE KINDERGARTEN ? [Oct.,

WHAT IS THE GOOD OF THE KINDERGARTEN?

THE difficulties of educators in any field are great enough
at best; the difficulties of those particular educators upon whom
devolves the duty of organizing a system of education for Cath-
olic children in this country handicapped, as they are, by pov-
erty and opposition must be at least doubled. Considering,
then, the difficulties thus confronting us upon the very threshold,
considering, too, the importance of the work, and its pregnant
influence upon all that is most dear and precious to us either as
Catholics, as parents, or as lovers of humanity, should not our
first care be directed toward an earnest inquiry into the nature
and requirements of our undertaking? The welfare of the Cath-
olic children of America, the refutation of a vigilant and fanati-
cal enemy, motives of economy all unite to render this our first
and most imperative duty. Let us follow the injunction of the
copy-books of our childhood and " hasten slowly " at first ; and,
to be both wise and logical, let us begin where everything ought
to begin, at the beginning. It would be, to say the least, culpa-
ble in us to leave our immediate successors in the predicament of
a young priest who, a few years ago, was sent to take charge of
a poor Southern parish, where a new church was building, and
who found, upon inspecting the new edifice, which his predeces-
sor had gotten as high as the roof, that the first duty staring him
in the face was to pull down the walls, dig up the foundation,
and begin over. A very good priest but a very bad architect,
the predecessor had builded much worse than he knew ; his foun-
dation was wrong.

Let us be warned, and make it our first care to be sure
of our foundation. To do this we must follow the suggestion
previously given, and consider before anything else the funda-
mental part of education or, in other words, the beginning.
But where is that beginning? The scope of this paper does
not permit a discussion of the exact period at which external
influences may be brought to bear upon human development;
and, as such discussion cannot affect, in any immediately practi-
cal way, the establishment of our school system, it may safely be
left for a little longer, at least, to the investigations of psychology.
This much may be said, however: since the sacred office of
educator must be first assumed by the mother, only when she
shall truly appreciate and intelligently understand the functions
of that office can we hope for a perfect foundation upon which to

1 888.] WHAT is THE GOOD OF THE KINDERGARTEN? 15

rear our educational structure. Until that fortunate state of
affairs exists, it will be necessary to consider as the beginning that
moment when the child first leaves the home, and is submitted
to the formal guidance of a professional educator. Judging by
the provisions hitherto made, it appears to be the general idea
that that beginning occurs only when the child enters the prim-
ary school and is set the task of learning to read. Is this idea cor-
rect? Is the imparting of instruction to the mental faculties the
first step which should be taken in the work of organized edu-
cation ? If by education we mean the harmonious development
of the spiritual, the intellectual, and the physical nature of man,
why do we direct our attention to one more than to either of
the others ? And if for any good reason one must take prece-
dence, why the intellectual ? Is that the most important func-
tion of our nature, or is it the most practical ? Does not reli-
gion tell us that our spiritual needs are graver? and does not
every-day life convince us that our physical needs are more
clamorous? But, in reality, how can we assert truthfully that
one is of more importance than another? Does not the perfec-
tion of any one side of our nature demand for its completion the
perfection of every other side also ? Does not the spiritual lean
upon the intellectual, and the intellectual upon the physical ? If
this be so, then the natural course would seem to be : first, the
cultivation of the physical powers, and, through them, of the in-
tellectual and spiritual. This brings us back to a consideration
of the beginning; and, after the preceding remarks, no one will
be surprised at the declaration that that beginning should prop-
erly be made much earlier than in the primary school. True, it
is neither prudent nor practical to address formal instruction of
a more or less abstract nature to the intellect at too early an age ;
but mental and spiritual needs may both be fed almost from
infancy by careful training addressed to them through the sen-
suous nature of the child.

The Kindergarten, then, rather than the primary school,
would seem, according to our present light on the subject, to
be the true foundation which we are seeking. There is to be
found the most consistent and practical application that has yet
been made of the true and beautiful conception of education for
which the Catholics of the United States have so long contended,
and which the Protestant educational writers and workers of
this country so frankly acknowledge in theory, but so stubbornly
refuse to apply in practice the harmonious development of the
human being in his three-fold nature. So far as imperfect

1 6 WHAT is THE GOOD OF THE KINDERGARTEN? [Oct.,

exploration of the vast field of educational science has yet been
able to discover, the methods of the kindergarten appear to be
founded on the laws of human development. With a peculiar
fitness they seem to adapt themselves to the needs of the Catho-
lic child more than to those of any other. They first speak to
him in his intellectual and spiritual capacity by means of visible
symbols, following in this the example of the church itself.

Through the study of primitive man Froebel came to hold
as true the assertion that man is a symbol-making creature ; long
and patient contemplation of the child drew from him the further
declaration that "as even the Christian church does not attempt
to make itself understood without symbols, so the deepest need
of childhood is to make the intellectual its own through symbols
or sensuous forms." He regarded the first period of the child's
life as wholly symbolic, saying: "Let the child grow into a
knowledge of truth by means of types and symbols."

The profound study of nature, animate and inanimate, rang-
ing in its course from man down to minerals, by which Froebel
arrived at his conviction of the value of symbolism to the human
mind and soul at the period of its first awakening, seems from
the reverent spirit in which it was prosecuted, perhaps to have
kept alive in him a certain faith : " Creation/' he says some-
where, " is the embodied thought of God "; but very early in his
neglected and precocious childhood he revolted from the hard,
unloving aspect which a perverted type of Christianity presented
to him under the roof of his father, a German Protestant pastor;
he never reached the true idea of Christianity as embodied in
the Church of God, but he approached sufficiently near to her
to hold with her a fundamental truth, thus expressed in his own
words: " The Christian religion entirely completes the mutual
relation between God and man ; all education that is not founded
on the Christian religion is one-sided and fruitless."

It may be owing to the influence of principles such as these
that the followers of Froebel generally show a less narrow and
ignorant spirit toward the Catholic Church than any other body
of Protestant educators. As frequently as not, perhaps, they do
so unconsciously ; but an accomplished kindergartner in a re-
cent lecture upon Froebel's use of symbols and his insight into
nature, deliberately declared that Catholics seemed nearer to
nature and more fitted to understand her than other people, be-
cause the church appealed to them from infancy through the
symbolic form of her worship. In many kindergartens the place
of honor is given to a copy of some great picture of the Madon-

1 888.] WHAT is THE GOOD OF THE KINDERGARTEN? 17

na and Child ; not, it is to be regretted, for the purpose of incul-
cating any special love of the Mother of God, but at least with
an intention very laudable in itself: the picture is to the kinder-
gartner the type of mother-love, expressed through the grandest
of examples, and she aims by it to impress the heart of the child
with an appreciation of the feeling upon which family life is
founded and by which it is preserved. Can it be possible that
these little children, -after having the dear Mother of God so
presented to them at the most impressible age, can ever grow
into that malignant and perverted state of mind which regards
with hate, suspicion, or indifference her whom the poet felt to
be " our tainted nature's solitary boast " ? With this thought in
mind may we not cherish a hope that the kindergarten is one of
the means by which the bitterness of sectarian hate is yet to be
modified ?

The church places spiritual education above everything else.
She demands that the moral and religious instincts of the child
shall receive at least as much attention as the mental or the
physical. Here, again, the kindergarten is at one with her.
Froebel taught that man is born to a three-fold relationship : to
God, toman, and to nature, and that rightly-directed education
must awaken in him a sense of his duty to each. The ultimate aim
of the kindergarten training, whether it be by means of the plays,
the occupations, the songs, or the stories, is to develop fully in the
child habits of reverence, love, kindness, unselfishness, self-control,
and obedience. Following Froebel's favorite maxim, " We learn
to do by doing," the true kindergartner is in conscience bound
not to let pass the smallest opportunity of exercising the child's
moral nature by encouraging him in the performance of such
acts as give expression to these virtues. He must learn good-
ness by being good ; in other words, he learns " to do by doing '
things of a moral nature as well as those of a mental or physical
nature. This care for the spiritual nature of the child, and the
practical method by which it is to be brought about, is the kin-
dergartner's chief claim to the notice of Catholic educators. It
is the advice of the church, ages old, reduced to practice in the
most literal manner.

Concerning the kindergarten methods of intellectual develop-
ment it is not within the scope of this paper to speak at present;
a subject of such proportions requires separate and exhaustive
consideration. For the present, however, we may accept it as
proof sufficient that they are the best that have yet been pro-
posed since they have revolutionized the teaching in our public
VOL. XLVIII. 2

1 8 WHAT is THE GOOD OF THE KINDERGARTEN-? [Oct.,

schools from the lowest to the highest grade. The public
schools, notwithstanding some laudable endeavors to the con-
trary, still remain distinctly specialists devoted to the training of
the mental faculties alone, and as such they ought to be an au-
thority upon the surest means of accomplishing their own aim.
We may, therefore, accept their dictum on the subject, and de-
vote ourselves to a consideration of that other department of hu-
man culture which, like the spiritual, they largely ignore the
physical.

When we reflect upon the systematic care which the kinder-
garten gives to the training of the senses, and of the bodily
powers in general, we perceive a new and very potent reason for
giving it our attention. Who has greater need of the correct
eye, the skilful hand, the vigorous body than the poor? and to
what schools do the poor come in greater numbers in proportion
to population than to the Catholic parochial schools ? The kin-
dergarten maintains that its training develops in the child at an
early age manual dexterity, habits of precision and order, the
power to observe attentively, to perceive correctly, to under-
stand intelligently, and thereby lays the foundation of any and
every trade. It is the duty of those upon whom devolves the
obligation of improving the condition of the poor to examine the
means so opportunely offered, and, if found suitable, to make
good and immediate use of it. Perhaps through the kindergar-
ten, or some system evolved from it, we shall begin at last to
solve the question, How to make the school in some degree sup-
ply the place filled in mediaeval ages by the guilds, and in recent
times by our own apprentice system. The poor and the igno-
rant continue to crowd to our shores each year ; our enemies
have made it our reproach that these belong almost wholly to us.
In common justice they should rather have made it our glory
that out of such heterogeneous and apparently unpromising ma-
terials the church has produced so many faithful Christians and
good Americans; but let that pass. True enough it is that,
owing to the colossal proportions of the work she has been
obliged to undertake, the church has failed to influence many of
these immigrants ; unfortunately, the state has found its educa-
tional panacea inadequate to perform what the church could not,
and thus the larger cities behold in their midst an ever-increas-
ing population given over to poverty and crime. There is
ground for hope that the kindergarten erected under the shadow
of the church may offer a possible remedy for this unhappy situa-
tion.

i888.] WHAT is THE GOOD OF THE KINDERGARTEN? 19

For two principal reasons, then, the kindergarten deserves
to be studied by the promoters of Catholic education ; and by
them to be accepted or rejected on its merits:

First, because, taking the child at a tender age, before unto-
ward influences have had time to arouse the innate disorder of his
appetite and will, it begins his spiritual development along lines
declared to be marked out by nature. What a golden opportun-
ity is here offered to religion ! Does not the church continually
exhort the mother to begin the religious training of her child as
soon as she perceives the faintest ray of understanding? And
does not the mother, over-burdened, or ignorant, or pre-occu-
pied, or indifferent, almost universally fall far short of the wishes
of the church in this particular ? Imagine the little child the
little poor child, especially placed, at the age of three years,
in the hands of carefully trained, enthusiastic holy women, such
as the church commands in her religious orders, and, from that
age until six or seven, imagine his sympathetic, eager soul reach-
ing out to those sweet, pure, devout influences to which in its
baptismal innocence it responds as it never will respond later ;
expanding under their combined action as the lily-bud expands
under the sunshine, rain, and dew ! Could any after influence
wholly wither that soul so early and so carefully nurtured in the
congenial atmosphere of love, of piety, and of purity ?

Secondly, because the kindergarten trains the physical powers
of the child and makes use of the activity natural to this period
to render him self-helpful and industrious ; leading him finally,
through the force of habit and the pleasure born of skill, to love
work for its own sake, thus making the child's education subserve
the practical necessities of life instead of leaving him, as it is now
too often accused of doing, helpless and incompetent.

Though these reasons appear to be well supported by obser-
vation of the facts presented by the kindergarten, they are offered
here not for unquestioned acceptance, but rather in the hope
that, attention having been called to them, inquiry and investi-
gation may be provoked. This becomes imperative when we
remember that the claims which the advocates of the kinder-
garten make have not been received with entire acquiescence.
True, the opposition has been surprisingly small, yet the truth
remains that leading minds, while commending the system itself,
have doubted. the principles upon which Froebel believed it to be
founded, while others, without denying the underlying principles,
have questioned the method of their application. Prudence sug-
gests to enthusiasm that this disagreement deserves notice at

20 WHAT is THE GOOD OF THE KINDERGARTEN? [Oct.,

the hands of Catholic psychology before the kindergarten can
be generally adopted as part of the parochial-school system.
But supposing, as is likely, that the principles and practices
of the kindergarten are perfectly accordant with the demands
of nature and religion, it yet remains for experience and wisdom
to institute such emendations as shall adapt it to our peculiar
circumstances. The leading promoters of the kindergarten in
this country acknowledge that it is capable of a wider develop-
ment than Froebel had time to give it. The conditions of Amer-
ican life, it is evident, require the introduction of various modifi-
cations in order to adapt it perfectly to the development of the
child born to a destiny, and to duties so radically different from
those of the German child, to whose environment it was natural-
ly most suited as it came from the hands of its inventor. But if
it be true that the kindergarten must be studied in a new light
with a view to adapting it specially to the needs of the American
child, it is equally true that it must be studied not only in this
but in still another light before it can be made to fit the circum-
stances of the child who, in addition to being American, still
further complicates the situation by being Catholic.

Here, therefore, is a call for the Catholic scientist. Now, if
ever, the time seems ripe for more words upon the subject of
infant education than our philosophers and psychologists have
yet seen fit to give us. A pressing need exists at present for
their investigations in the field of pedagogical science a field
in which very great, and it might be added very wild, activity is
evinced just now. Catholic teachers need the help which such
investigation would lend to guide their own efforts intelligently
no less than to counteract the effects of the unwholesome ten-
dencies which the " New Education," left too much to irreligious
and irresponsible influences, so frequently manifests ; nor need
this work be considered beneath the notice of the most com-
manding genius and the widest erudition. Whoever assumes
authority to point the way in elementary education treads dan-
gerous ground. Deep and accurate indeed must be his know-
ledge who endeavors to glean the truth regarding the laws
governing the relation of matter to mind or of mind to soul,
and it is of such material that the thousand pitfalls are Con-
structed which a specious philosophy sets for the inquirer at the
very gate of the far-reaching science of education.

But, granting that upon investigation the kindergarten
prove to be all that its advocates assert, it will be asked : How
is a poor, overburdened, and unjustly taxed people to adopt this

1 888.] WHAT is THE GOOD OF THE KINDERGARTEN? 21

most expensive of educational schemes? Have they not already
undertaken more than they can well perform in attempting to
educate children within the period generally accepted as the
school age proper ? Leaving all answer, except the one bearing
the most practical aspect, to faith, zeal, and charity, it may be
said that the kindergarten advocates insist that, notwithstanding
the cost of its establishment and maintenance, this is the only
truly economical basis upon which to found an educational sys-
tem. And for many reasons : in several ways it is a saving of
time ; and, to the poor especially, time is literally money. The
kindergarten utilizes those years of earliest childhood which
otherwise must be, in a certain degree, wasted, or worse than
wasted if we consider that the child, left to his own unguided
activity, or to the guidance of untrained parents, lays up a store
of bad habits which it must be the first work of the teacher in
the primary school to consume time and labor in helping him to
unlearn so far, at least, as such a thing is possible.

All who recognize the immense force of habit in education
will see here a double saving of time, since in the kindergarten
the child is led to form right habits of thinking and acting
from the beginning. In addition to this, the kindergarten,
with a truly German thrift which of itself might reveal its
origin, seizes the opportunities which the traits peculiar to
early childhood offer in the eagerness of its curiosity, the fresh-
ness of its interest, the impressibility of its mind, to garner a
harvest of mental images and facts which the child draws upon
as food in its ^future development. These qualities, if not in-
telligently fostered and fed when first manifested, grow dull as
years advance, until, often through faulty schooling (educa-
tion would be too gross a misnomer), at a later period they
die out almost totally, leaving the child a listless incompetent
in place of the curious, investigating little creature who a few
years previous kept his elders at their wits' end with his amaz-
ing questions. The kindergarten rests its economic claim upon
yet a fourth reason : the child who enters the primary school
from the kindergarten, it is alleged, shows at once the advan-
tage of his previous training in the ease with which he outstrips
his less fortunate classmate who has not enjoyed a similar train-
ing. His habits of observation well cultivated, and his power
of language developed, he learns to read more quickly ; his
hand practised in answering the behests of the will, he learns
to write more readily ; his mind rich in a store of those con-
ceptions which mathematics require, he apprehends the abstrac-

22 WHAT is THE GOOD OF THE KINDERGARTEN? [Oct.,

tions of arithmetic with greater ease and intelligence. Accord-
ing to this assumption, a class of kindergarten children entering
the primary school should complete the year's work in less time
than a corresponding class of children having no preparation but
the unsystematic training of the home. Finally, it is maintained
that in those early years of childhood which the kindergarten so
thriftily utilizes can be laid the foundation of every occupation
and study to which in later life the youth or the adult may be
called upon to turn his attention, including language, mathemat-
ics, the natural sciences, trades, art, and sociology.

These are pretensions of ambitious proportions certainly ;
yet notwithstanding this, the kindergarten, in the half century
which has elapsed since its establishment, has been accepted by
the promoters of education throughout Europe and the United
States with remarkably little show of opposition. It still re-
mains, however, for Catholic educators to set upon it the seal of
their approbation or the contrary. True, the kindergarten is
in operation in many of our orphan asylums, protectories, indus-
trial homes, and similar institutions; but this does not indicate to
Catholic teachers, parents, and school trustees with sufficient
clearness that the kindergarten may be considered suited to the
universal need of childhood, regardless of surrounding circum-
stances. Upon this must hinge our determination whether or
not this system shall constitute the foundation upon which all
the succeeding education of our children shall rest. Some
secure foundation there must be, and that carefully laid, if we are
to build a lasting monument to American Catholic education.
Only with this end in view is the question to be studied ; and the
immensity of the interests at stake imperatively demand that all
the light which genius, learning, and experience combined can
give be turned upon the subject. We cannot afford to trust to
haphazard experiment, as the state too frequently does. The
material upon which we must operate is too precious ; it is
nothing less than God's most perfect work, the human mind and
soul.

Certainly, if, as is claimed for it, the kindergarten is the most
natural, true, and economical beginning that can be made in the
work of human culture, then duty and expediency leave us no
choice but to adopt it, let the question of ways and means be as
perplexing as it may. We shall have to attempt it, praying that
new Dom Boscos and Father Drumgooles may arise to set our
weakness the example of faith and zeal, and that Mary Caldwells
may appear in every parish to second their work.

1 888.] DIVORCE. 23

The necessarily limited scope of this paper, and the many-
sided nature of the question it has attempted to consider, per-
mit little more than a cursory glance at its most striking points ;
but if the aim previously acknowledged to direct more general
attention to the subject in order to awaken investigation of its
merits be even partly successful, a good and necessary work
will have been initiated. The kindergarten has been in opera-
tion a sufficient length of time to encourage an attempt to judge
it by results. Even in this country, where it was not introduced
until 1856, a generation has had time to mature under the in-
fluence of its methods. It would be a work deserving unquali-
fied gratitude to trace the lives and work of some of the children
who, beginning in the kindergarten and continuing along edu-
cational lines in harmony with its aims, have reached manhood
and womanhood, and now stand ready in our midst to bear that
living testimony which shall aid us in determining what judg-
ment we are to pass upon the principles, methods, aims, and re-
sults of the kindergarten.

Austin, Tex. J. THOMAS.

DIVORCE.

THE family was the patriarchal unit of society, never the in-
dividual. Around this primitive institution centred all legisla-
tion, and in it inhered all blessings and sanctions. Nothing is
more remarkable in the history of those ancient days than the
supreme importance of the family, and the jealous care with
which it was guarded and fenced in every direction. " Thou
hast set the nations of the earth in families."

With the coming of Christ upon earth the twilight of the
early dispensation passed into the clearer radiance of the coming
day. " That which was in part was done away, that which was
perfect " had come, and our Divine Lord raised marriage to the
full dignity of a sacrament, and set upon its indissolubility the
seal of his most awful sanction in those words: "What God
hath joined together let not man put asunder." It is impossible
to exaggerate the full significance or the tremendous importance
of these words. Upon this sacrament rests the whole structure
of civil society. Marriage creates the family, and the family is
the citadel in which are guarded the hopes and the destinies of
humanity no less than the eternal weal or woe of its individual

24 DIVORCE. [Oct.,

members. Unquestionably, it is to the sacramental character of
marriage that woman in all civilized countries owes whatever
of moral and material well-being she now possesses. No refine-
ments of art, no advanced culture of the intellect among men,
have secured to her the proud position which is now her birth-
right whenever and wherever she may choose to claim it. Can
one imagine a higher state of artistic and literary culture than is
presented by the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome? Can
human history present a more profound degradation of woman-
hood?

When these effete civilizations were overwhelmed by the
fresh life of the barbarous tribes of Northern Europe, the change
would have been for woman only that from being the degraded
toy of voluptuaries and tyrants, she should have become the
household slave and burden-bearer of the savage conquerors.
But the Catholic Church, by her firm maintenance of the two
great sacraments of Holy Order and of Matrimony, saved Chris-
tianity and constituted the Christian state, of which these two
sacraments became the joint foundations. When the church's
law of marriage became incorporated into the civil law then
arose the morning star which heralded the dawn of woman's
emancipation.

It is true that this earth was not a paradise for woman
through the Middle Ages, and that she has had her full share
in the frightful struggles and calamities of all the centuries.
But on the whole her elevation has been commensurate with the
elevation and progress of the Christian Church. Never let it be
forgotten that nothing but the assertion of and the protection
by the Catholic Church of the sacramental nature of the marriage
contract have secured to her the fruits of this progress.

At the Reformation this sacramental nature of marriage was
rudely assailed and persistently denied. It was sought to de-
grade it to a mere civil contract, and to place it under the sole
guardianship of the state. In all Protestant countries and com-
munions this attempt succeeded, and surely no consequences of
the Reformation have proved more disastrous to society. Under
the plea of obtaining relief to persons suffering from various
evils incident to ill-assorted marriages, the whole social fabric
of family life has been undermined, and a threatening shadow
thrown upon the honor and dignity of every Christian home ;
for surely if marriage be not a sacrament, but merely a civil
contract with no warrant of indissolubility, as a state of life it
loses inconceivably in dignity and sacredness.

1 888.] DIVORCE. 25

When the sensual and irreligious seekers after easy divorce
cry out, " Prophesy unto us smooth things only," make the con-
venience and the passion of the individual the supreme law, we
turn in edification to the heroic struggles by which in fiercer and
less civilized ages the Pontiffs of the Christian Church upheld
this great corner-stone 'of society. Happy indeed for us all,
Catholics and Protestants alike, that they breasted for our sakes
with unshaken fortitude the wrath of kings and emperors, and
faced with unswerving fidelity the shock of wars, the threat of
imprisonment and even death, rather than betray the cause of
any helpless wife who appealed to them for protection. When
the vicious King Lothaire, of Lorraine, wished to repudiate his
wife Thietberga that he might marry Waldrade, sister of the
Archbishop of Cologne, the grand old Pope Nicholas I. took
upon himself her cause ; and surely the pages of history cannot
furnish a more sublime instance of courage and chivalrous de-
votion to duty than this story and its sequel. The haughty
monarch determined at all hazards to succeed in his designs;
resorted successively to every expedient of fraud and violence.
He first compelled the queen to falsely accuse herself before an
assembly of eight bishops at Aix-la-Chapelle, and again to repeat
her confession before a second assembly at Frankfort. The un-
happy woman appealed to the pope in these touching words:

"Should it come to the knowledge of your Holiness that I have finally
been brought to make the false confession required of me, be persuaded
that violence alone could have wrung it from me, a wretched queen, who
have been more shamefully treated than the most menial slave could have
been."

But, forsaken and condemned by all others, this poor woman
appealed not in vain to the Vicar of Christ. When Lothaire
hesitated not to bribe the corrupt assembly of bishops now con-
vened with great pomp and ostentation to finally try the cause,
and had thus secured their judgment in his favor, the intrepid
pontiff declared all their acts null and void, deposed the corrupt
archbishops, deposed and repudiated his own faithless legates,
and threatened Lothaire with excommunication if he did not at
once put away Waldrade, whom he had newly espoused. When
the enraged king incited his brother, the Emperor Louis, to
march an army upon Rome to avenge himself for this insult, the
undaunted pope refused to yield one iota, and declared that
under no circumstances would he pronounce the marriage of

26 DIVORCE. [Oct.,

Thietberga unlawful. Forced by the rude soldiery to take
sanctuary, he retired to St. Peter's, and there passed two whole
days and nights in prayer and fasting, but still refused to receive
Lothaire, or to grant him absolution unless he restored Thiet-
berga to her rightful place of wife and queen. Lothaire con-
sented to this, but now resolved upon another expedient. He
so ill-treated his wife that she had the weakness to apply to the
pope to pronounce judgment against her and allow her to retire
to a convent. But the pope refused, and replying to her appeal
in a letter full of dignity and firmness, he admonished her to
stand firm and not allow herself to be prevailed on by fear or
force to utter any falsehood, but to be ready to endure even
martyrdom, with the assurance that in that case she would merit
a martyr's reward.

On the death of Nicholas, his successor, Adrian II., main-
tained her cause with equal vigor and success. The effect of
this victory of the sacraments over the lustful union of man and
woman can hardly be exaggerated.

This was by no means an isolated instance of papal interfer-
ence in behalf of this sacrament. We need only allude to the
excommunication of Philip of France by Urban II., in the elev-
enth century, for putting away his wife Bertha and living with
Bertrada, the wife of the Count of Anjou. In this connection we
cannot forbear quoting the heroic language of the Bishop of
Chartres with regard to this same case: "The king may deal
with me as he sees fit, and may do whatever God permits him to
do against me. Whether he casts me into prison or puts me be-
yond the protection of the law, in any event I am determined to
endure all things in defence of the law of God, and no considera-
tion will bring me to share the guilt of those from whose chas-
tisements I should shrink." Innocent III. compelled Philip Au-
gustus to take back his wife Ingelburga, whom he had repudiat-
ed, and in Spain he compelled Alfonso IX., King of Leon, to
break off the marriage unlawfully contracted with his niece.
The contest of Clement with Henry VIII. was but the continua-
tion of the same struggle, and the manifestation of the faithfulness
to duty of the unchangeable church, " the pillar and ground of
the truth." It has been well said that " the maintenance by the
popes of the sacredness of marriage is the key to half the strug-
gles of the middle ages."

It needs surely but a little reflection to 'convince us of the
absolute necessity of the sanctity and indissolubility of marriage

1 888.] DIVORCE. 27

in order to preserve society from the greatest corruption and
disorders. The family is the nursery of the civil state. In the
Christian home alone, invested as it is with the necessary attri-
butes of stability, permanency, and sacramental dignity, can be
found the requisite protection for the helplessness of infancy,
and the wisdom and grace to train the child's developing powers,
thus fitting it for honor and usefulness here and the perfect life
hereafter. Human nature is, moreover, undeniably selfish, and if
this principle were not held in check by any strong counter-
motive, who can conceive the wretchedness and violence which
must ensue? The life of the family furnishes the greatest natu-
ral corrective to this master-instinct of our nature, and when
purified by the grace of the sacrament secures to the individual
a means of self-discipline and culture second only to the higher
life of all, the life of evangelical perfection.

John Stuart Mill somewhere observes that " public spirit,
sense of duty towards the public good, is of all virtues, as women
are now educated and situated, the most rarely to be found
among them." We are sorry to confess that we believe this
statement to be largely true in its general sense, but in the pre-
sent instance certainly it need not be restricted by any limita-
tions of sex. What is surely most needed, imperatively needed,
in this our day and generation, is that young persons should be
trained to take broader, more unselfish views of marriage and its
responsibilities. The thoroughly worldly person never can or
will do this. These ideas are essentially Christian. We do not
by any means assert that persons not influenced by Christian
faith are incapable of that genuine affection which should always
form its basis. But it is nevertheless wholly true that this
natural affection should be strengthened by sacramental grace in
order to enable it to bear successfully the strain and burden of
the marriage state. If it be true that something must needs be
added to perfect this earthly love, beautiful as it certainly is by
nature, in order to secure the well-being of the home, what must
be said of the great number of marriages contracted from inferior
motives, from ambition, love of money, or, most terrible of all,
to acquire a fancied freedom from the restrictions and limitations
imposed upon the unmarried.

The Rev. Dr. Dix, in a recent Lenten lecture, has painted in
terms as truthful as they are graphic the evils resulting from this
class of marriages. Let us not accuse him of exaggeration. It is
well-nigh impossible to exaggerate in this matter, and it cannot be

28 DIVORCE. [Oct.,

doubted that his own observation and experience as a pastor of
souls have furnished the facts which he portrays so brilliantly
and so forcibly. Ah ! if some of those who listened to him, and
some of us who read, could only tell the tales which have come
home to our own hearts and homes, no Lenten lecture ever de-
livered could rival their terror and their pathos. The young
girl, gifted in many ways, conscious of possessing charms of per-
son and of manner, craving above all things admiration and
" conquests," restricted, it may be, by surrounding circumstances,
seeks to escape by marriage from a sphere to her so unendurably
narrow. Alas ! for the home ; alas ! for the husband and the chil-
dren. " I hate a domestic life," said such a one to me. " It is a
terrible bore to have a husband who wishes to play the lover and
read poetry. Let him amuse himself as he likes, and I will do
the same." Said her husband, in reply to a remonstrance as to
the various admirers who filled his house with their gifts of music
and pictures and flowers for its young mistress : " Nonsense ! I
should despise myself if I were capable of being jealous of my
wife. People admire her, and I like to have them do so. It is
all right." All right ; and the divorce came, and to-day the
winds sigh a dirge over her untimely grave ; and her husband,
the handsomest, most versatile and variously gifted man we ever
knew, is consigned to a living death; and the sons, God help them !
alone in their young manhood with their inheritance of shame
and sorrow. And this is not an isolated instance.

We confess to a hearty admiration for the marriage service of
the Episcopal Church, and indeed it is but an adaptation in English
of the most impressive portions of the Catholic Ritual. But it is
truly admirable in its simplicity and dignity; and is well calculated
to impress, not only those to whom it is specially addressed, but all
who are present. How astonishing it is that after such solemn
vows of love and fidelity, " in sickness and in health, for better,
for worse, until death us do part" and after the clergyman has pro-
nounced those awful words of our Divine Lord, " Whom God
hath joined together let not man put asunder," any thus mar-
ried should ever dream of repudiating those vows ; and stranger
still, perhaps, that this same church should find herself unable to
protect the sacredness and indissolubility of the marriage tie !
It is certainly true that she condemns all divorces except for
cause of adultery, and that she forbids her clergy to officiate at
marriages contracted in spite of this prohibition. But how re-
cent is even this legislation, and alas ! how ineffective. The par-

1 888.] DIVORCE. 29

ties thus divorced and remarried cannot be excluded from her
communion. It is only necessary to have the marriage ceremony
performed by a minister of some other denomination, or even by
the civil magistrate a very slight trial, surely, when the newly-
married thereby subject themselves to no ecclesiastical penalties,
and their marriage is regarded as perfectly legal. It is matter
for congratulation that that church is awakening to a sense of
the great evils of divorce, and is endeavoring to shape her legis-
lation accordingly. Nor are there wanting indications that all
the more conservative Protestant communions are anxious in this
respect to return to the first principles of Christian civilization.
It all implies a growing consciousness of the necessity of a sacra-
mental basis for the very life of the community.

All legislation which is designed to subserve the general well-
being ought to be founded on the principle of the greatest good
of the greatest number. No legislation ought ever to be allowed
to override this fundamental principle, and it needs no argument
to prove that the indissolubility of marriage is necessary to pro-
mote this general well-being. In reality, the divorce laws of
most of our States, so far from protecting the rights of our citi-
zens, invite, as it were, the very evils which they claim to repress
and punish. They provide numerous grounds and open endless
facilities for annulling the bond whenever it may become oner-
ous. While in all cases assuming to protect the innocent and
punish the guilty, these same laws tacitly allow the party desir-
ous of obtaining the divorce to set on foot endless persecutions
and plots to entrap and ruin the unhappy person who may stand
in the way of their wicked designs. It needs but a slight ac-
quaintance with the divorce proceedings in our courts to show
how difficult, sometimes how impossible, it is for even the inno-
cent to escape. It has been demonstrated that the procuring of
divorces has been greatly facilitated by the diversity of the laws
regarding it in the different States. Ostensibly the causes are
limited, but practically given the desire of divorce and the re-
quisite money for counsel fees and the coveted release from the
marriage tie is almost certain. If divorce cannot be had for suf-
ficient cause in one State, a temporary removal to another suf-
fices.

In considering the evils attendant upon divorce legislation,
we must not pass over the demoralization of the taste and moral
sense of the community by the constant publication in the daily
journals of the nauseous details of these scandals. The public

30 DIVORCE. [Oct.,

mind is thus familiarized with the tales of dishonored and
wretched homes, and even the very school children may take
their fill of these corrupting and sensational stories.

After all that we have said of the absolute incompatibility of
divorce with the law of God and the welfare of society, it is
nevertheless true, and it would be most unjust to ignore this
fact, that there will ever be some persons for whom relief must
be found from a married life of intolerable suffering. For such
persons, in cases of adultery, gross brutality, and desertion, there
remains a partial relief, which neither God nor man would deny
them, in a separation. But separation does not imply a privilege
of remarriage, and its disabilities ought to be borne patiently by
the innocent until the death of either party dissolve the mar-
riage bond. Truly, for such a sufferer to have peace with God
and his or her own conscience is better than any earthly gain.
There is, however, no doubt that a very large proportion of the
unhappiness in married life, for which a remedy is daily sought
in our courts, might be avoided if the sacred character of this
state of life were more seriously considered in advance. The
church advises her children to think well upon the life which
they are about to enter, and to make their choice in the fear of
God and with regard to their own highest interests.

The married would, under the pressure of such convictions,
strive to adjust their lives in mutual harmony, to minimize their
differences, and repress all things which might beget jealousies
and discords.

We believe it to be true that the characters of all persons
who are living according to the highest requirements of mar-
riage present to the careful observer a manifest superiority over
their unmarried contemporaries, in regard to the virtues of un-
selfishness and self-sacrifice, apart from those who practise re-
ligious chastity.

To this rule there are, of course, exceptions, but in this case
" the exceptions only prove the rule/' No doubt the capacity
for the same virtues exists in the unmarried also, but, from the
necessities of the case, individualism is paramount, and its de-
mands are imperative. The individual needs the environment
of other lives in order to properly develop and foster the
powers which God has given, and which lie dormant in his soul.
We need but suggest the various means by which this evolution
of powers, this wholesome discipline and culture are wrought
and perfected day by day in the family life. By bearing one

1 888.] DIVORCE. 31

another's burdens, in patient endurance of varying moods and
eccentricities and tastes, in mutual adjustments, .and in all the
numerous simple, kindly offices of affection which fill the home,
the character becomes gradually but surely strengthened, ele-
vated, and spiritualized.

No one who has lived for many years in the world, and has
cultivated the powers of observation and reflection, but must
often have noticed the ennobling, often the complete regenera-
tion, of character under the influence of a happy, conscientious
domestic life. We have seen the thoughtless, apparently vain
and selfish young girl, whom only the excitements of pleasure,
or exquisite dressing, or the allurements of the last " No-name "
novel could rouse from listlessness and indolence, transfigured
by a worthy affection. We have watched her with loving ad-
miration from the hour when she stood radiant with youth and
love and beauty at the altar, speaking with gentle firmness the
words which bound her for ever to the man in whose hand she
placed her own without one fear or doubt ; and we have seen
her as the years passed on, no longer indolent, no longer selfish,
ever busied with the thousand tender, homely ministries of the
wife and mother, the light and centre of a happy home. Yes,
and we have seen her when sickness and sorrow and death have
entered that home, watching ever for others' needs, denying her-
self daily without a murmur, "bearing all things, hoping all
things, enduring all things," steadfast ever in her love and trust,
until she has seemed to reflect in her face the very light of the
celestial city. Such is the power and such the grace of the
sacrament of matrimony. Happy, indeed, the country where
such homes abound and marriage is thus honored. It is more
securely defended by far from all the destructive theories of
anarchists, communists, and social disorganizers than it could be
by the presence of standing armies.

Danger to our republic lies alone in the masses of the un-
christianized, the unemployed, and the unhappy. For all these
classes the Church of God offers the only remedies available.
On the one hand, she raises the bulwark of her sanctified homes,
the nurseries of the civic virtues. On the other, she calls to the
life of evangelical perfection a host of men and women whom
she consecrates to the mission of alleviating or remedying every
evil from which humanity is suffering. The sick, the poor, the
ignorant, helpless childhood and dependent age, the vicious, the
criminal, and the slave, all claim her wise and provident care.

32 SOUL-SOLITUDE. [Oct.,

Yes, even the very lepers are not forgotten ; but strong men
give up every hope and sever every tie which binds them to
home and country to go and share the life and die the death of
these poor, helpless outcasts.

Vain will be all attempts to reorganize and regenerate
society on any other basis than the one which our Lord himself
has instituted and blessed as the type of his own union with His
Bride, the Church. " Three things are approved of God : the
concord of brethren, the love of neighbors, and husband and
wife that agree well together" (Ecclus. xxv. i).

L. C. B.

SOUL-SOLITUDE.

FROM dreamless sleep *I with a start awoke.
In deepest solitude the soul of night
Rested, unbroken by a sight or sound
Darkness so heavy, silence so profound,
I felt their contact, and great drops of -sweat
Stood on my brow, and I was trembling still
As o'er me rushed such drowning waves of thought
As sweep the country in a maddening swirl
When mighty rivers leap across their banks :
Such awful thoughts of how the whole world slept
Beneath a sleepless Eye ; how all forgot
Their loves and hates, their plans, their very lives,
And lay, all shorn of power and strength and pride ;
And how God sat, and held their loves and hates
And hopes within the hollow of His hand
And slumbered not, or slept not, or forgot.
And then I shook as with a mighty chill
Lest He should call me, knowing that I waked ;
And as man hides whene'er his Maker calls
Since Adam hid in Eden long ago,
I shut my eyes upon that solemn dark
Ah ! the soul fears to be alone with God !

MARGARET H. LAWLESS.

1 888.] JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 33

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN.

UNDER the ungenerous title of " Poetry from a Dublin Gar-
ret " a writer in the June number of Time attempts to give a
life-sketch of one of Ireland's sweetest song-writers ; but it is so
brimful of inaccuracies and injustice that 1 am tempted to give
here, for the benefit of those who may never have heard of this
truly remarkable man's eventful and sad career, a plain, unvar-
nished tale.

James (Clarence) Mangan (Clarence was a nom-de-plume he
adopted when contributing to the Dublin Penny Journal in the
year 1832) was born in Dublin, May i, 1803. His father, James
Mangan, a native of Shanagolden in the County Limerick,
came to Dublin in 1801, and married Miss Catherine Smith,
daughter of Mr. John Smith, a respectable farmer and grazier
of Kiltale, Dunsaney, in the County Meath. They carried
on business as grocers in No. 3 Fishamble Street, now a very
poor neighborhood. For some years the business prospered
very well, and, having amassed considerable wealth, he sold out
the house in Fishamble Street to the surviving relatives of the
Smith family, the former owners, and invested his money in
house property in the neighborhood of Camden and Charlemont
Streets. This succeeded for a short time, but being addicted to
extravagant habits he very soon ran through his worldly goods,
and eventually failed in business and died of a broken heart.

Young Mangan's uncle, John Smith, took charge of him and
his two brothers, and when James reached his seventh year he
was sent to a school in Saul's Court, off Fishamble Street. This
school was opened in 1760 by a celebrated Jesuit, Father Austin,
and here it was that the Most Re'v. Dr. Murray, Archbishop of
Dublin, received his primary education. This school was subse-
quently directed by the Rev. Dr. Betagh, who was educated
at Paris and Milan ; he was afterwards parish priest of SS.
Michael's and John's parish, and before his death, in 1811, estab-
lished in the city a free school for boys. Dr. Betagh's successor
and the teacher of young Mangan was Michael Blake, who in
after years was Bishop of Dromore, and who restored the Irish
College in Rome. He grew fond of the future poet and placed
him under Father Graham, a learned and classical scholar, who
taught him the rudiments of Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish.
He left this school shortly afterwards, owing to the straitened

VOL. XLVIII. 3

34 JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. [Oct.,

circumstances of the family. It is said on good authority that he
acquired a perfect knowledge of Spanish and German from a
Father Villanueva, a learned Spanish priest with whom he made
acquaintance after leaving school. At any rate he was shortly
afterwards competent to give lessons to young pupils in German,
and thus at a very early age help in a small way towards the
support of his young brothers and his sister. Finding this very
insufficient for all their supports for he became their sole reli-
ance he, in 1820, entered a scrivener's office in the city. During
his leisure moments he contributed to local "almanacs" and
" diaries " short lays, charades, and enigmas ; these being the only
periodicals in his young days which could serve for the ventila-
tion of amateur poetical effusions. In 1825, after five years'
dreary drudgery in the scrivener's office, he obtained employ-
ment from an attorney, with whom he remained for three years.
Shortly before this he made the acquaintance of a Miss Frances
Stacpoole, one of the sisters of a respectable family who lived in
the southern suburbs of the city ; she is said to have been very
beautiful, and it is quite evident Mangan fell passionately in love.
In John Mitchel's words, " Paradise opened before him " ; but it
was of very brief duration, for she was a cold-hearted coquette,
and having gained his heart turned him over to despair. " His
air Paradise was suddenly a darkness and a chaos; he never
loved, and hardly looked upon, any woman for ever more." He
himself best describes his feelings:

" I saw her once one little while and then no more ;
'Twas Paradise on earth awhile and then no more.
Ah ! what avail my vigils pale my magic lore ?
She shone before my eyes awhile and then no more.
The shallop of my peace is wrecked on Beauty's shore ;
Near Hope's fair isle it rode awhile and then no more."

He' seems ever after to have been a different man. He hardly had
set out on life's journey when he fell into the society of low com-
panions, his fellow-clerks, who ridiculed and laughed at his odd
manners and flouted the temperance cup. His life was ever
afterwards an irresolute struggle against an appetite for drink.
With his whole heart he hated the work he had to do, as well as
his fellow-workers, but he could not break from their company.
He wrote of them as he felt:

"As men by bond and shackle trammel
The overloaded horse or camel,

1 888.] JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 35

So is my spirit bound with chains,
And girt with troubles, till 'tis wonder
A single spark of soul remains
Not altogether trampled under."

During the few years he spent in the attorney's office he did
what he could to assist those at home, as was afterwards the
case when more congenial employment was given him, by Dr.
Todd, in cataloguing the books of the library of Trinity College.

About the year 1830 there was formed in the city the "Co-
met Club," consisting of about a dozen members, amongst them
the subject of our sketch, Samuel Lover, Maurice O'Connell (son
of Daniel O'Connell), and Coyne, the poet and dramatist. They
started a newspaper of their own, The Comet, to which Man-
gan contributed several prose essays, many of which are forgot-
ten or unheard of, but are all marked by a quaint humor and
great literary ability ; notably his " Treatise on a Pair of Tongs "
and his " Adventure in the Shades."

While engaged in Trinity College he made the acquaintance
of the celebrated George Petrie, who obtained for him an ap-
pointment in the Ordnance Survey office, situated then in Great
Charles Street, where he came into contact with John O'Donovan
and Eugene O'turry, from whom he learned much of the hidden
gems of the old Celtic ballads, which he would get them to
translate for him, and immediately he would transpose them into
vigorous English verse, preserving the spirit of poetry of the
original authors a^ none other could. It seems, indeed, incredi-
ble, but it is a fact, that he did not know Gaelic, as in later years
he had the valuable assistance of John O'Daly, a celebrated Irish
scholar, in turning into English prose rare old Gaelic songs, as well
as his supervision of the Poets and Poetry of Munster, published in
1849. The same can also be said of those poems which he dis*
guised as translations from the Persian, Hindostani, and other
languages of which he knew nothing ; these and many other so-
called translations were in reality all his own original work.

In 1832 Petrie and O'Donovan started the Dublin Penny Jour-
nal, to which Mangan contributed eight or nine poetical pieces
under the signature of" Clarence," now used for the first time.
Amongst these were " Two Sorts of Human Greatness," from the
German of Blumauer, and the " Glaive Song," from Korner. This
latter is the Marseillaise of the Germans. Notwithstanding his
success at this period, his life appears to have become a burden to
him ; his one passion claimed him ; the slightest quantity of spiritu-
ous liquor seriously affected his delicate [constitution and finely

36 JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. [Oct.,

strung nerves. He was not given to taking opium, as is stated, but
ever and anon would sip during his work a mixture known as tar-
water, of which he prized himself as having an invaluable recipe,
which he gave to several friends. It is curious to note that in
this recipe he forbids those about to use it ever to approach any
intoxicating liquor. For the benefit of my readers I will give
this celebrated tar-water recipe as it appears in a letter from
Mangan to his friend, John De Jean Frazier (who wrote such
stirring songs in the Nation as " The Gathering of the Nation,"
"Song for July 12, 1843," a d later, in John Martin's paper, the
" Irish Felon "): " Pour a gallon of cold water on a quart of tar;
stir both up with a stick for five or six minutes ; let it lie for three
days, then pour it off. Nothing more need be done, except to
skim the oil from its surface. With respect to quantity to be
taken, this will depend on the nature of the disease. In most
cases half a pint in the morning and another in the evening are
sufficient. Bishop Berkeley cured a hideous malady (a gangrene
in the blood) in one of his servants by forcing him to drink tar-
water by night and day. One thing, however, should be par-
ticularly attended to this, namely : that he who takes tar-water
must take nothing that will interfere with it. He must not ap-
proach any intoxicating liquor. Tar-water knows its power. It
is a jealous medicine. It is the Emperor of Specifics, and, Turk-
like, 'twill bear no brother near its throne." Mangan seems to
have had great faith in the curative effects of this strange medi-
cine. Often he would disappear for weeks and months, and
then suddenly turn up like a ghost, and tell his friends he had
been in the country suffering from fever, and cured himself with
draughts of tar-water.

He was ever on the move and most- restless, for it cost him
nothing, poor fellow, to shift his lodgings, as of wardrobes and
furniture he had none. This unsettledness was not a matter of
necessity, as many of his friends made generous offers to him of
bed and board and money ; but a dread of any restraint, and
what he regarded as a surrender of liberty, made him decline
their kindly overtures.

In 1834 he first contributed his German translations to the
Dublin University Magazine. He wrote for over fifteen years for
this magazine, .prose and verse, under the initials " C.," " M.,"and
his full signature, "James C. Mangan." The most admired of his
German translations were collected together in two volumes un-
der the title of " German Anthology," in 1845, but only a third of
them ail are so collected. In 1841 Petrie started the Irish Penny

1 888.] JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 37

Journal, and Mangan's contributions in the poetical line were
some of its chief attractions. In it we find his " Lament for Kin-
cora," " The Woman of Three Cows," " Elegy on the Tironian
Princes buried at Rome," etc. The next year we find Mangan
heralding to his countrymen the great event of the Nation s first
number, started by Charles Gavan Duffy and the Young Ireland
party. Who has not heard or read with enthusiasm Mangan's
inaugural ode ?

" Tis a great day, and glorious, O public ! for you,
This October fifteenth, eighteen forty and two !
For on this day of days, lo, the Nation comes forth,
To commence its career of wit, wisdom, and worth ;
To give Genius its due to do battle with Wrong,
And achieve things undreamed of as yet, save in song ;
Then arise, fling aside your dark mantle of slumber,
And welcome in chorus the Nations first number/'

After Davis' death, in 1845, Duffy spared no pains to secure
Mangan's services for his paper and reclaim him from those
peculiar habits which he often relinquished and ever resumed.
The warm-hearted editor looked with pity on his truly forlorn
condition, and agreed to pay him one pound each week, on the
condition that he should at least contribute one article, prose or
verse, for each week's issue. It is said this was more honored in
the breach than the observance by Mangan. Duffy, in his great
work, Young Ireland, says : " The man most essentially a poet
among the writers of the Nation was Mangan. He was as truly
born to sing deathless songs as Keats or Shelley." To the Na-
tion Mangan contributed several pieces, generally under the sig-
nature of " Terrse Filius." During one of his visits to the Na-
tion office he was introduced to John Mitchel, who had heard
from Duffy and others great praise of his poetical writings.
Mitchel was greatly struck with the strange appearance of Man-
gan ; he remembered having seen him on several occasions in the
library of Trinity College, perched on a ladder perusing some
old tome, dressed in an odd- looking brown garment. On the
I2th of February, 1848, Mitchel started a paper of his own, the
United Irishman, and in the third number we find Mangan con-
tributing, under the initials " J. C. M.," a long prophetic poem,
" The Vision." In the sixth number " The Marseillaise " appears,
in which he calls on the sons of France to awake, arise, and
an " Irish National Hymn " in the fourteenth number. All his
poems in Mitchel's paper are full of the political fire which dis-
tinguished the prose writings of its great editor. To this short-

38 JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. [Oct.,

lived paper he contributed about twenty poems. Mitchel says
in his biographical sketch of him, that from the time he com-
menced to write for his paper he contributed to no other organ.

The last two years .of his life saw him pursue in his private
life the same erratic course, and every effort of his friends to re-
claim him failed. They, however, induced him toward the close
of 1848 to go down to Kiltale, his uncle's home, thinking this
would be the means of restoring his enfeebled constitution; but
after a stay of a few weeks he came up to Dublin again, tired
and weary, as he expressed himself, of his existence while there,
everything having been dull and dreary.

It will not be out of place here to give a life-like portrait of
t\\e personnel of this remarkable man, just as he could be seen in
the streets of Dublin, at the old book-stalls round Trinity Col-
lege wall, or at the Four Courts. He was about five feet six
inches high, slightly stooped, very thin. His head was large and
beautifully shaped ; blue eyes ; and complexion pale indeed, of a
deadly pallor. He was most eccentric as regards dress, seem-
ingly putting on his garments at haphazard, and generally ill-
fitting ones. He usually wore a blue cloth cloak buttoned tight-
ly round him, and under his arm he carried a large, old-fashion-
ed umbrella; he wore a broad-leafed, high-crowned hat. He
seemed totally unaware of his eccentric and remarkable appear-
ance, and never seemed to notice the jocose remarks on him made
by passers-by.

In 1849 there was an appalling outbreak of cholera in the city,
and Mangan had some peculiar idea that there was no such
thing as contagion and that precautions were unnecessary.
However, he seemed to have had at this time a presentiment
that he was doomed to fall a victim to the terrible epidemic. In
June he fell seriously ill at his lodgings in Bride Street, and was
removed to Meath Hospital by direction of his friends, Dr.
Stokes and Rev. C. P. Meehan. The latter was one of his truest
and best friends, ministering to his spiritual wants till, on the
2oth of June, 1849, ne passed away to a brighter and happier
home, of which he had written :

" Where neither passion comes, nor woes,
To vex the genius of repose.
No darkness there divides the sway
With startling dawn and dazzling day :
But gloriously serene
Are the interminable plains ;
One fixed, eternal sunset reigns
O'er the wild, silent scene."

Dublin, June 30, 1888. R. M. S.

1 888.] UNITED ITALY. 39

UNITED ITALY.

ITALY has puzzled English-speaking Catholics for well-nigh
fifty years. She is called a Catholic nation and is ruled by an
infidel government. She produces the highest types of saints
Cottolengo,* e.g., and Dom Bosco and is constantly at war with
the Roman pontiffs. While her religious orders are robbed and
pitilessly dismembered, new ones arise, one of which at least,
established primarily for the education and religious training of
youth, is already the wonder of this age, and recalls the time of
Loyola and Vincent de Paul. Religion is banished from the
universities, colleges, and primary schools of Italy, and she con-
tinues to send missionaries to Asia, to Africa, to Patagonia, to
the Rocky Mountains.

The pope, bishops, and priests of Italy are certainly persecut-
ed by a minority of the Italian people, and the Catholic majority
does not protect them at the polls. Were Italy tyrannized over
by an autocrat, holding in fetters both church and state, it would
not be surprising to see the pope a prisoner in his own domains.
But she enjoys now the blessings of a representative government,
and her people can shape their own laws and their own destinies.
Why do not Italian Catholics avail themselves of their right of
free citizens, go to the polls, elect their own representatives, form
a Catholic government, and invite King Humbert to walk out of
Rome ? Why do they allow the Italian parliament to frame in
this very year of grace 1888 a set of laws that will empower the
enemies of the church to gag and imprison every bishop and
priest in the land, if he dare do his duty and refuse to become a
traitor to his chieftain, the Vicar of Christ? Thus reason many
Americans. I have been asked to give an answer to these and
similar questions, and in doing so I will endeavor to explain :

ist. How Italy came to find herself in her present religious
state.

* To answer the question, " Who is Cottolengo ? " in a foot-note would be utterly impos-
sible. He established the Piccola Casa of Divine Providence in Turin, which is the most re-
markable single institution of charity of this century. The buildings are joining those of
Dom Bosco. If you should visit the Piccola Casa, and then all the institutions of charity of the
Catholic Church in New York City, you would find out that the former does rot fall short of
equalling all the latter. Its inmates number now between three thousand and four thousand.
Any afflicted human being finds its doors open to him. Cottolengo has been declared " Ven-
erable," and I hope to live long enough to see him canonized. His life is written in three
volumes by Gastaldi, who, I think, is a nephew of Silvio Pellico. The work awaits a translator.

4O UNITED ITALY. [Oct.,

2d. Why the Catholics of that country do not seem to en-
deavor to get out of it by the means suggested.

I must ask the reader to glance at the contemporary history
of Italy. We shall begin with the year 1815. It must not, how-
ever, be forgotten that the French encyclopaedists had already
made their influence felt among the educated classes of the Ital-
ian people during the latter half of the eighteenth century
witness Ugo Foscolo and Alfieri. The Congress of Vienna so
dissected Italy as to render her powerless and lifeless as a nation.
The possessions of the ancient Republic of Venice (which had
died of old age and given up the ghost without a struggle at the
approach of Napoleon) were given to Austria. The house of
Savoy and the Pope were allowed their time-honored sceptres,
while the King of Naples and the Dukes of Tuscany, of Parma,
and of Modena were permitted to re-establish their hated rule in
Southern and Central Italy. The island of Corsica reverted to
France, and that of Malta (the grave of msedieval knighthood)
was allotted to England. Switzerland, the Prince of Monaco,
and the Republic of San Marino were given the other shreds of
the peninsula. Meanwhile, not fewer than 150,000 sons of Italy,
who had been drafted into Napoleon's army, had returned to
their homes with their religious ideas shaken or wrecked by con-
tact with the French soldiers ; these latter, during the different
stages of their mighty revolution, had been brought up without
religion. They found their country as fifteen years of war had
left it, ravaged and parcelled out to foreigners and to petty
rulers, who seem to have been unable to realize that with the
nineteenth century a new era had dawned upon the world, one
of progress in developing the material resources of nature. The
North of Europe had awakened to the necessity of popular edu-
cation, and while France and Switzerland were busily engaged
in teaching their people how to read and write, in Italy, South-
ern and Central Italy especially, it was decided to be unneces-
sary to give schools to the lower classes. As late as 1860 the
eight or nine million subjects of the kingdom of Naples were
found to be an almost solid mass of illiteracy. No wonder if
everywhere discontent was breeding among the lower and
middle classes, who looked upon their country as a " once noble
queen now uncrowned and humbled to the dust." No room was
left for national aspirations, no hope to patriotism, unless the
hideous political fabric was pulled down and a new one built
upon its ruins. Liberty, as Americans understand it, had no rest-
ing place between the Alps and the Gulf of Taranto. The mas-

1 888.] UNITED ITALY. 41

ters of Italy, frightened by the horrors of the French Revolution,
made everywhere their absolutism more absolute. To speak a
word, to write a line of protest against the dismemberment of
the Patria was a crime. Men began then to band themselves
into secret societies under the names of Carbonari, Giovane,
Italia, etc. Their leaders found shelter and protection in France,
Switzerland, and England, whence they carried on their propa-
ganda through a secret postal service of their own, embracing
the whole of Italy, and operated mainly by the numerous sailors
who had been initiated into the mysteries of the associations.
It has been generally taken for granted by Catholic writers that
these societies were naturally anti-religious and composed ex-
clusively of bad men. But the evidence for this has never been
clearly stated.

The Roman States, between 1815 and 1870, were little more
than dependencies first of Austria and then of France, the self-
appointed protectors of the Holy See. The influence of the
powerful Prince Metternich (the Bismarck of the early part of
the present century), and of his master, Francis I., was directed
towards absolutism, while beyond the Alps the Bourbon kings
were hard at work to make of France what it was under Louis
XIV. Had the popes dreamed of giving the people of the
Roman provinces a voice in the affairs of state, they could
not have done so without placing themselves in opposition to all
the Catholic crowned heads of Europe. Their policy would
have been suicidal. They, however, who occupied the chair of
Peter between Pius VI. and Pius IX. gave no sign of being so
inclined. The numerous dukes and kings of Italy, swayed by
France and Austria, united in crushing every aspiration of the
malcontents and every attempt to establish popular forms of
government. Conspiracies, rebellions, and revolutions, now in
the North, now in the South, became of frequent occurrence,
and the little monarchs were more than once forced to empty
their treasuries to feed hosts of political prisoners, and to pay
the passage of exiles out of the country.

Meanwhile there arose in Piedmont and Lombardy a galaxy of
brilliant writers, who gave Italy the best productions of the Italian
literature of this century Manzoni, Cesare Cantu, Silvio Pellico,
Massimo d'Azeglio. Catholics in faith all of them, all of them had
dreams of liberty and national independence. In the lecture- room,
in the theatre, in fiction and in history, in prose and in verse they
fanned the flame of what they thought to be patriotism. They
soon became the victims of the ruling powers, and the idols of

42 UNITED ITALY. [Oct.,

the educated middle classes. All of them were laymen, and
bequeathed to Italy the cleanest and wholesomest pages of her
literature. Philosophizing priests followed them Gioberti,
Rosmini, Ausonio Franchi. The first named a profound
thinker, idolized by the people for having flattered them in
works written while an exile of absolutism, a court chaplain, a
professor in the university, a prime minister wielded a powerful
pen and never stinted its use. Finding his political schemes
thwarted by the Jesuits (the faithful adherents of the pope in
politics as well as in religion), he dipped his pen in venomous gall
and wrote that encyclopaedia of calumnies against the Society of
Jesus called the Gesuita Moderno. No other book proved as
hurtful to religion in Italy during this century. It was prompt-
ly placed on the Index. But forbidden fruit is attractive, and
for a few years, in Piedmont at least, where the liberty of the
press had been proclaimed, it passed through more editions,
probably, than the Bible itself. Rosmini was a saintly clergy-
man and the founder of a religious congregation. But he
thought he saw abuses in the church, and wrote about them.
His book, too, Le cinque piaghe della C/tiesa, was placed on the
Index. Ausonio Franchi, whose real name is Francesco
Bonavino, is said to have fought for a time against scruples and
doubts, and then unfrocked himself, turned rationalist, and spent
the rest of his life in writing popular philosophical works calcu-
lated to poison the minds of the people on the subject of religion.
Gioberti and Rosmini found not a few followers of their philo-
sophical theories among the clergy, but the priests who believed
in their political schemes were few and far between.

By concordats with the Holy See the rulers of Italy had
obtained the virtual nomination of bishops. The relations be-
tween church and state were so manifold and intimate that the
occupants of episcopal sees were, in more than one respect, the
officers of the government, and clerical appointments were made
with a view to solidify the different tottering thrones, and, as
sometimes claimed, to give honorable positions to deserving mem-
bers of aristocratic families in full sympathy with their patrons.
The lower clergy and religious orders, at that time well provided
with benefices, thought as Ithe bishops did, and viewed the new
idea of government reform and reconstruction as the germ of a
future political revolution destined to shake, as it had done in
France, both church and state to their very foundations. They
used their moral influence over the people to oppose the revolu-
tionists. These soon learned to look upon the church as their

1 888.] UNITED ITALY. 43

enemy, and saw behind every altar a tyrant, in every clergyman
an enemy of progress. Absolutism is enthroned, they said, be-
hind the sanctuary ; we must demolish the one to reduce the
other. Thus began the war of what became known as liberal-
ism against the church. Gioberti, Manzoni, Cesare Cantu, who
had dreamed beautiful dreams of Italian nationalization and free
institutions, with the pope as honored chieftain, having been used
as tools for a while by the occult sects, soon lost influence, and
radical men, enemies of the altar as well as of the throne, became
eaders of the revolution.

Mazzini, a crafty Genoese, and thoroughly unscrupulous as
to the means to obtain his ends, became the guiding genius of
the vast system of conspiracies in Italy and in Europe. Trained
from youth to hate the Catholic Church by his mother, who was
herself imbued with the principles of the French revolution, he
received in his native city and abroad an education that made
him master of the principal European languages.* He was at
home with his French, German, Spanish, and English fellow-
conspirators as well as with the Italians. While yet a student
in Genoa he was already found, during a popular commotion,
insulting and beating an inoffensive clergyman. The unfortu-
nate Baudiera brothers, in foolishly attempting to destroy an
Austrian fleet in 1844, became the victims of Mazzini's ideas.
Rossi was assassinated in Rome, Louis Napoleon's life was
attempted by Orsini (a frequent emissary of Mazzini), while he
remained quietly in London under the protection of British poli-
ticians. No one else, probably, could give as thoroughly satis-
factory an explanation of the epidemic of revolutions that broke
out everywhere in Europe during the year 1848 as Mazzini.
A universal republic built out of the debris of monarchies, and
a new religion based on rationalistic principles, was his Utopia.
For a time, at least, there was a Young Italy, a Young France,
a Young Switzerland, a Young Poland a Young Europe; and
Mazzini, from his hiding-place, directed the movements of all.
His agents in America were numerous.

Garibaldi, a sailor from Nice, had early in life become an
associate of Mazzini, and was used by him, like many others of
his profession, in secretly disseminating revolutionary literature
in Italy. A fearless adventurer, he helped to form republics in
South America, fought bravely in 1848 against the Austrians,
defeated in 1849 a French detachment near Rome, and one of Nea-

* Mazzini and his mother are buried side by side in the famous Campo Santo, but beyond
the limits of consecrated ground.

44 UNITED ITALY. [Oct.,

politans at Palestrina. Twice exiled from Piedmont, he settled in
1850 in New York. Between the years 1854 and 1859 an agree-
ment was entered into between Cavour and the leading revolution-
ists to unite Italy under the Sardinian flag. Garibaldi was quietly
invited back to Piedmont. By this time the thrones of Naples,
of Parma, of Modena, of Tuscany, and the Roman provinces had
been thoroughly undermined by the ever-active plotters of the
secret societies. Austria alone stood in the way ; and it was left
to Cavour's diplomacy to overcome the obstacle. He procured
a matrimonial alliance between the courts of Paris and Turin ;
the saintly Princess Clotilda, Victor Emmanuel's daughter, was
sacrificed in marriage to the Prince of Paris (Plon Plon), and a
promise was made of the cession of Savoy and Nice to France.
Asa quid pro quo Napoleon crossed the Alps with his armies,
and with the help of the Sardinians drove Austria from Lom-
bardy, which was given to Victor Emmanuel. Parma, Modena,
and Tuscany, by successful revolutions connived at by Cavour,
and several of the Roman provinces, were annexed to Piedmont
with the secret approval of the French emperor. On May 5,
1860, Garibaldi, a native of what was then a French province,
and a citizen of the United States, embarked with one thousand
volunteers near Genoa on board a Sardinian steamer flying a
foreign flag. He landed at Marsala, in Sicily, and, aided by
local revolutionists who were in the plot, took possession first
of the island and then of the mainland in the name of Victor
Emmanuel, whose navy and land forces openly co-operated with
him.

The kingdom of Italy was thus established. How Venice
in 1866 and Rome in 1870 came into possession of the present
government of Italy is fresh in the minds of every reader. By
an alliance with Prussia the former was acquired and the Franco-
Prussian war gave the opportunity to enter the latter. It is
needless to say that the clergy opposed revolutionary wars and
insurrection, and remained faithful to the pope and to their mon-
archs. The masses of the people, especially of the rural dis-
tricts, followed their priests and bishops. It was, therefore,
necessary to the permanence of the new government that the in-
fluence of the church should be crushed and, if possible, annihil-
ated. Priests and bishops by the hundred from Southern and
Central Italy were banished to Northern provinces, or, to use
the hypocritical jargon of the revolution, were relegated to a
domicilio coatto (forced domicile). The writer remembers receiv-
ing the blessing more than once of one of those exiles, the ven-

1 888.] UNITED ITALY. 45

arable Archbishop of Parma. They for years were the victims
of the daily insults of the ribald Garibaldians, and subsisted, as
best they could, on the commiseration and charity of the Catho-
lics. At the same time the pay-roll of the men who lived on the
bounty of the government was swelled to immoderate propor-
tions. Former Carbonari, plotters from Venice, from Tyrol,
from the Papal States, were invited to become citizens of the new
kingdom, pensioned and settled in the towns of Piedmont and
Lombardy. Many of them, who had learned in the secret haunts
of conspiracy to handle the dagger better than their beads, lived
in idleness and became the terror of law-abiding people. The
pension rolls and the wars against the Austrians, the Papal States,
and against the kingdom of Naples, had brought the govern-
ment to the verge of bankruptcy. Its credit was little more
than zero. A vast system of church spoliation, called by the eu-
phonious name of secularization of ecclesiastical property, was
promptly devised. It answered the three-fold purpose of de-
priving the clergy of the sinews of war, of deterring young men
from entering the sanctuary, and of successfully meeting the
financial crisis. Those magnificent structures, the monasteries
of the religious orders, the pride of Italian architecture, their
rich treasures of art, their immense libraries, the accumulations
of centuries, were sold out at auction. Hundreds of churches
went the same way or were demolished. Others were turned
into soldiers' barracks, and even into brothels. The bishops'
estates and those of their chapters, the innumerable benefices of
the secular clergy, all fell in their turn under the hammer of the
government auctioneer. Thus the Italian scoffers at religion,
Jews and foreigners, the minions of the triumphant revolution,
were afforded an opportunity of enriching themselves by buying
church property and church estates at one-third of their real
value.*

Still the work of religious destruction did not proceed as
rapidly as desired. The church must be sapped at its founda-
tions, and endeavors made to deprive her of ministers. Laws
were enacted forcing every able-bodied aspirant to holy orders
into the ranks of the army. And when it was discovered that
Catholics willingly paid from three to four thousand francs to

* My indictment against the Italian government is strong enough without exaggerating
the gravity of its charges. The benefices belonging to parish churches have never been sold,
but taxed to an amount equal to over one-third of the net income. Bishops, canons, and others
were given in exchange for their benefices an amount, in bonds, equal to the net proceeds from
their sale. But as these were sold generally very cheap, and as the bonds are heavily taxed,
little income is left to the beneficiaries.

46 UNITED ITALY. [Oct.,

redeem each of the young Levites by procuring for them sub-
stitutes, a supplementary law was passed forbidding it. It
seemed as if the times of Antichrist had come. The clergy, the
Catholics and the conservatives, looked in dismay upon their
tyrants as a scourge from God. A stand might have been made
with the ballot which the constitution had placed in the hands of
the Catholic majority. But elections and plebiscites are farces
in the face of a standing army of not less than two hundred
thousand men, especially among peoples wholly unaccustomed
to the electoral system. To aggravate the situation there came
forth from Rome the famous formula addressed to Catholics :
Ne eletti ne elettori, which paraphrased means, You are forbidden
to have anything to do with national elections. You must be
neither candidates nor voters. That order has never been re-
voked. Pius IX. stoutly refused to recognize the usurpation.
And, although retaining for himself after 1848 only the shadow
of power through the interested intervention of France, he un-
dertook to protect the rights of the former rulers of Italy, de-
pending on Providence for the triumph of his ideas. He with-
held from the new government the privilege of interfering in
the nomination of bishops to vacant sees. Many dioceses re-
mained vacant for indefinite periods, while the ordinaries of
others were prevented from taking possession of their episcopal
residences and the remnants of their revenues.

A system of centralization was next devised which soon
made it impossible for any but the partisans of the revolution to
enter the more honorable and lucrative walks of life. The uni-
versities (brought into existence and nursed by the church) were
thoroughly secularized, and the military academies established.
Thus, to obtain a professorship, to practise law or medicine, to
become an officer in the army, to follow even the humbler call-
ing of a druggist or engineer, you must first "go through the
mill " and obtain a diploma from the government. A clerical
that is, whoever remains faithful to the practice of the Catholic
religion and dtires to protest against the paganization of his
country need not apply for position or entertain any hope of
advancement. The old men of letters and the scientists of Italy
were Catholics. Infidels, Protestants, and Jews were called from
beyond the Alps to take their places and teach in the universi-
ties. The railways and telegraphs were in the hands of the
government, and the employees must subscribe to the new poli-
tical tenets. The government reserved to itself the exclusive
right to manufacture and sell salt and tobacco, and thus recruit-

1 888.] UNITED ITALY. 47

ed thousands of adherents. Judges, magistrates, policemen (their
name is Legion), and the entire army are forced to subscribe to
the new order of things, not only politically but frequently to
renounce the practice of their religious duties. Chaplaincies in
the army in time of peace were abolished, and once a year the
common soldier is allowed a few hours to receive the sacra-
ments at Eastertide. But the day before the captain thus ad-
dresses his company: " If there be a fool in my command who
wishes to go to confession, an opportunity will be afforded him
to-morrow morning. He will be allowed to leave the barracks
for that purpose between the hours of six and ten. His com-
rades, however, will learn to know him as an enemy of the coun-
try." It looks incredible. But in 1866 just such a harangue
was addressed to the company of which my brother was a mem-
ber.

It would be useless to attempt to tell of all the obstacles
thrown in the way of aspirants to holy orders, and how priests
and bishops are hampered at every step by vexatious official
interference with the exercise of their ministry. Pilgrimages,
religious processions, funerals, the ringing of bells for service,
etc., have all been subjected to legislative enactments, and fre-
quently prevented under frivolous pretexts. In 1870, being then
twenty years of age, I was subject to the law of conscription. I
was then a student of theology in the seminary of my native
diocese. On a given day the order was handed me to present
myself at the seat of the mandamento* and draw a number which
would assign me to the first or second categoria of the army.
Providence favored me. The number which I drew from the
fatal urn with trembling hand made it possible for me to con-
tinue my studies in the seminary instead of beginning four years
active service as a common soldier. A few days later it became
necessary to present myself, together with all the young men of
the circondario of my age, to a mixed committee of army officers
and surgeons, to be examined as to my physical ability for army
service. I was forced not only to put off my seminarist's sou-
tane, but to strip myself naked before them and some fifty other
persons. A uniformed officer scanned me from head to foot,
felt my chest and other parts of the body, and with a sneering
compliment that I must have been descended from the ancient

* They divided Italy into provinces, these into ctrcondarii, and the circondarii into man-
damenti. The army was then divided into two categoric, or classes. The first was the
standing army in time of peace. The second class, after a few days' drilling, was dismissed,
only to be called out in time of war.

48 UNITED ITALY. [Oct.,

Taurini* and would make a good bersagliere, put my name on
the roll. An humble petition from my bishop,f who stood well
with the government, to his majesty's minister of war, after
several months' delay, obtained me permission to prosecute my
studies for the priesthood. I was ordained in 1874 for the
foreign missions, and on the eve of my departure for Mississippi
asked for the necessary passport to leave Italy. It was not
granted without a security of two thousand francs for my
prompt return to Italy should I be called at any time between
the years 1875 and 1887, the period of my liability to service.
Had I not done so, I would have been arrested on crossing the
frontiers as an ordinary deserter. Is it any wonder if it is dif-
ficult to obtain young Italian priests to minister to their coun-
trymen in foreign lands?

The press, oftentimes subsidized by the government, is used
as an instrument of torture upon the clergy. No calumny is too
base that it may not be used against the ministers of religion to
vilify them in the eyes of the people. The pictorial art is pros-
tituted by illustrated monthly magazines and weekly sheets in
vile cartoons against priests, bishops, and popes. The most
august ceremonies and practices of religion are ridiculed in ro-
mances, in which ecclesiastics appear as debauchees, in vulgar
street ballads and on the stage as well as in periodicals. The
courts of justice afford no redress.

From what has been said the conclusion might be drawn that
by this time religion has been well-nigh banished from Italy.
On the contrary, the very fact that the government is now busily
engaged in framing a new engine of persecution to be used
against the church, in the shape of a new set of laws against the
abuses of the clergy, is proof that the fortress has not been taken
and that the siege has been laid in vain. Ninety per cent, of the
Italian women and seventy per cent, of the men are to-day prac-
tical Catholics. Faith was too deeply rooted in the Italian peo-
ple to be swept away by a few decades of persecution. The
masses of the Italian contadini, or farmers (Italy is an agricultural
country), kept aloof from the religio-political strife and continued
quietly to practise what the catechism had taught them, and to

* Taurini, a broad-chested and broad-shouldered race, were a people inhabiting parts of
Piedmont before the times of the Romans. Turin (in Latin, Augusta Taurinorum) is called
after them.

t He was the priest who assisted at Victor Emmanuel's morganatic marriage with the dis-
reputable Countess Mirafiore, and got as a fee the mitre for the Diocese of Cuneo. One of his
first episcopal acts was to dismiss the Jesuits from the Episcopal College, where they had
been teaching in the garb of secular priests. Requiescat in pace.

1 8 88.] UNITED ITALY. 49

pursue the cultivation of their fields. Enormous taxes and the
forced military servitude of their sons, at a period of life when
they are most needed on the farm, did not contribute to endear
to them the new regime. Meanwhile, the clergy have not been
idle. Fra Agostino da monte Feltro finds no church in Italy
large enough to give standing-room to the throngs of artisans
and workingmen that flock to hear his lectures. The children
of Dom Bosco are training hundreds of thousands of young men
to stand by the church in the work of saving their country. A
Catholic press is being gradually established to answer the at-
tacks and refute the calumnies of the parasitical official period-
icals. Editors and publishers cheerfully undergo fines and im-
prisonment in the defence of truth. During a visit to my native
country two years ago I saw everywhere, especially in the
Northern provinces, evidences of a religious revival rather than
of decay.

King Humbert and his ministers, after seventeen years' resi-
dence in the Quirinal, do not yet feel at home. They lately
heard the voice of reaction and felt insecure in " intangible
Rome." That voice must be stifled, the priests must be gagged.
It must become a crime to say that the pope is the rightful sov-
ereign of Rome. The following laws have been, therefore, for-
mulated by the ministers and are now being discussed in Par-
liament by this time, perhaps, placed on the statute book :
"Whoever attempts any overt act intended to alter the unity,
the integrity, or the independence of the state is punishable with
penal servitude for life." Or, following Cardinal Manning's trans-
lation of another, formula of the same law: "Whosoever does
anything tending to make the country 'or any part of it subject
to a foreign power, or to tamper with the unity of the kingdom,
is punishable with penal servitude for life." "The minister of
any denomination who, in the exercise of his functions, publicly
censures .or outrages the institutions and lords of the state, is
punishable with a year's imprisonment or a fine of one thousand
francs." A third law provides that if "a minister of any denom-
ination, abusing the moral power he possesses by virtue of his
office, brings irtfo contempt the institutions and laws of the
country or the acts of the authorities, he is punishable with im-
prisonment, six months to three years, and a fine of from five
hundred to three thousand francs." The reader needs not be
told that these statutes are tyrannical, not only because they are
intended to stifle the Roman question, but because their elastic,
ity and the indefiniteness of their wording will leave it in the

VOL, XLVIII. 4

50 UNITED ITALY. [Oct.,

power of judges and the government executive to convict or ac-
quit as the political exigencies of the case may require. Hence-
forth it will be possible, if these laws are approved, for every
petty magistrate or pretofobo (priest-hater) to have priests and
bishops indicted and convicted, if any of them will dare (as
surely they will) to condemn the- usurpation of Rome or any of
the iniquitous laws against religion. Will these statutes be ap-
proved by the Chamber of Deputies and by the Senate, and will
they obtain the necessary signature of the king ? Assuredly
they will, judging from past experience, notwithstanding the
protest of every priest and bishop in Italy, unless foreign pres-
sure be brought to bear on the Italian government rendering it
impolitic to adopt them. This is all that can be said of them at
present.

I am done with my first point. The way is now smooth to
the second. Why do not the Catholics of Italy endeavor to
overthrow their government by electing Catholic represen-
tatives ? Answer : Because the pope forbids them to do so.
Why ? First, because he knows that to go to the polls, to ac-
cept candidatures and offices, would be recognizing, before the
world, the status quo and the revolution. Second, because he
knows that a Catholic party could not be successful. It must
be borne in mind that Italy is not a republic governed by uni-
versal suffrage, but a limited monarchy with the balance of
power largely in favor of the crown whenever it chooses to
exercise it. The constitution by which it is governed provides
for two legislative bodies, the Chamber of Deputies and the Sen-
ate. Only the deputies are elected by the people ; the senators
are appointed for life by the king, and are naturally his creatures.
The hereditary monarchy retains for itself an unlimited veto
power. Suppose now that an election takes place. A ministeri-
al candidate is in the field and the clericals or Catholics nominate
an opposition ticket. All the government employees, the judges,
the magistrates, the policemen, all the soldiers of the neighbor-
ing barracks would be ordered at once to carry the election or
the officials be dismissed and the soldiers punished. The priest
should leave his pulpit, the people their church tp enter the po-
litical arena. The government invariably selects Sunday for
election-day. But let us look at the bright side of the medal and
suppose that a Catholic deputy is elected. He will present him-
self to the chamber to be sworn, and, as likely as not, will be
told that his election is annulled owing to the undue influence of
the clergy in procuring it. Let us continue to suppose. His

1 888.] UNITED ITALY. 51

credentials are accepted. Before taking his seat he is required
to take the following oath : " I swear to be faithful to the king
and loyally to observe the constitution and the laws of the state."
Can he conscientiously swear to be loyal to the usurper of Rome
and not to do that which he was elected to do by his constitu-
ents ? Again suppose the highly improbable. A majority of
Catholic deputies are elected and seated. They legislate to
break the fetters of the church. Will the life-senators repudiate
all their fo'rmer legislation and write the sentence of their con-
demnation before the world ? If they should, there would yet
be the royal veto to overcome, backed by an army of two hun-
dred thousand men, capable of immediate increase to eight hun-
dred thousand men.

I have heard it said by Americans : Let the people of Italy
rise in their might, throw their tyrants into the Tiber, and
set the pope free. Would the attempt succeed? Not without
perjury and treachery. Leo XIII. would rather breathe his last
a prisoner in his own house than consent to become the monarch
of the world by unlawful means. And what right-thinking man
would turn the fair land of Italy into a pool of blood and a house
of carnage to re-establish the temporal power of the pope?
Americans have also offered the Italian Catholics the following
words of sympathy: "You are the slaves of a handful of infidel
demagogues, but your shackles are of your own making." But I
answer, let somebody write a truthful history of Europe during
this century, and it will be seen that, were it not for the gold of
Protestant nations interested in destroying the temporal sover-
eignty of the Roman pontiffs, were it not for Louis Napoleon's
double-dealing and the apathy and dereliction of duty of the
old autocratic rulers of Italy, Victor Emmanuel's unclean ashes
would not to-day pollute the Pantheon of Rome.

What is the future of the Catholic Church in Italy ? It will
grow stronger and healthier under persecution until Europe shall
see the propriety of again giving freedom and independence to
the Vicar of Christ, the centre of unity and peace in the Christian
world. The words of St. Ambrose have proved prophetic for
fourteen hundred years and they will continue so: "Italia, Italia-
aliquando tentata mutata nunquam ! "

Jackson, Miss. L. A. DUTTO.

52 " IN DURA CATENA" [Oct

" IN DURA CATENA."

O OUTRAGED land ! O tortured land !

Let not thy burdened heart grow faint ;
Remember thy fair brow hath borne

The crown of martyr and of saint.
The judgment blast shall ring at last ;
The tyrant's knell shall ring at last.
Thy voice, that seems too weak in pain
To fire a nation's blood again,
Is not too weak for God to hear

The power of its plaint :
Is not too light for God to slight

The passion of its plaint.

Poor Erin, struggle on !

A fateful day a final day

Is coming to thy foes and thee.
Ah ! not to be a tyrant's prey

Is thy eternal destiny !
Thy freedom bowed hath cried aloud,
For vengeance hath it cried aloud.
That cry shall bring its answer down ;
Yet shalt thou wear a nation's crown,
While crushing persecution's might

Shall stand thy liberty :
While stern and strong, defying wrong,

Shall reign thy liberty.

Brave Erin, struggle on !
Baltimore, Md. M. LOUISE MALLOY.

1 888.] JEANETTA GRUDZINSKA, PRINCESS OF Lowicz. 53

JEANETTA GRUDZINSKA, PRINCESS OF LOWICZ.

AN interesting article in a late number of the Revue Britan-
nique, by a Polish pen, recalls to mind a lady whose memory had
well-nigh faded out of sight, though an imperial throne was for-
feited for her sake, and in a most difficult and exceptional posi-
tion she seems to have exhibited fidelity, self-restraint, good
judgment, and many endearing qualities.

This lady was Jeanetta Grudzinska, Princess of Lowicz, wife
of the Grand Duke Constantine of Russia, elder brother of the
Czar Nicholas, and, during the lifetime of the Emperor Alexan-
der I., heir-presumptive to the Russian throne.

The article in the Revue Britannique contains a brief biogra-
phy of the princess and extracts from some of her letters, but it
presupposes the reader's acquaintance with events on which the
interest of her life is founded. We therefore propose to offer a
short account of the condition of things in Russia when, in 1820,
her marriage connected her with the imperial family.

The father of the Grand Dukes Alexander, Constantine,
Nicholas, and Michael was the Emperor Paul, son of the Em-
press Catherine and her husband Peter, who did not survive a
cup of coffee drunk in prison the day after he had abdicated the
imperial throne.

Paul was exceedingly distrusted by his mother, who kept
him in a state of abject pupilage. He was allowed no influence
at court, no part in public affairs. He was merely permitted to
superintend the drill and the uniforms of the army. The only
gleam of happiness in his sad life was when he passed a year as
the Comte du Nord, travelling with his sweet young wife, Doro-
thea of Montb611iard, to the courts of France, Holland, Italy,
and Germany. The history of that journey has been told us in
the memoirs of Madame d'Oberkirch, who was the intimate
friend of the grand duchess, and in her pages Paul appears in a
most amiable light, though throughout the narrative, notwith-
standing its reserves, we can see with what terror the Empress
Catherine inspired her son and her daughter-in-law.

We judge from his wife's letters to Madame d'Oberkirch, to
whom she wrote as friend to friend, and from that lady's account
of the life led in private by the married pair, that Paul was ex-
ceedingly attached to the beautiful, amiable, and intelligent lady
he had married when a young widower.

54 JEANETTA GRUDZINSKA, PRINCESS OF Lowicz. [Oct.,

The Czar Paul, after succeeding his mother, is believed (for
court chronicles in Russia are seldom matter-of-fact) to have
shown symptoms of the insanity latent in his family since the
days of Ivan the Terrible. He disgusted the army by his strict
regulations as to drill and dress, especially in the matter of hair-
powder, concerning which Suwarroff got himself into disgrace,
notwithstanding his splendid services, by reminding the emperor
that hair-powder was not gunpowder ; and lastly, he exasperated
his people by suddenly becoming the partisan of everything
French and forming an alliance with the Emperor Napoleon.

A conspiracy was formed to dethrone him. Alexander, his
heir, was notified of this plot, and appears to have accepted it as
a necessity. But the conspirators Had no idea of putting their
own lives in jeopardy by showing the dethroned emperor any
mercy. They surprised him at night. Naked and unarmed, he
fought with desperation, but they overpowered him and stran-
gled him with the sash of a young captain who was looking on
while the work was performed by leading Russian generals.

Alexander never recovered the shock of this night's tragedy.
He was forced to accept the situation, but his mild, gentle, and
just nature made him all his life liable to fits of deep depression,
which, had he lived, would probably have ended in religious
melancholy. After the close of the Napoleonic wars he planned
the Holy Alliance in a fit of fervor. Considering all revolutions
as tending to atheism and all reforms as tending to revolution,
he formed a league with the new ruler of France and the sove-
reigns of Prussia and Austria (England, under Lord Castlereagh,
approving though not joining the alliance) to put down any
symptoms of revolution as calculated to disturb the new map of
Europe marked out by the treaties of Vienna. Faithful to this
alliance, he refused to encourage the Greeks or the Rumanians
when they revolted against the Turks, although in alliance with
them he might either have secured permanent influence with a
Christian emperor at Constantinople, or have acquired for him-
self that much-coveted city.

He died of malarial fever at Tangarog, in the Crimea, Decem-
ber 5, 1825, and his last hours were embittered by the discovery of
the first Nihilist conspiracy a plot to assassinate him, not be-
cause he was unpopular or accused of any tyranny, but because
he was an obstacle to that programme of reform which, based
upon the principle that " whatever is is wrong," was to begin
by making a clean sweep of existing institutions and reducing
everything to nothing.

i888.] JEANETTA GRUDZINSKA, PRINCESS OF Lowicz. 55

On Alexander's accession to the Russian throne he had en-
deavored to associate his brother Constantine with him in the
affairs of government. Constantine had in his father's lifetime
made, in 1799, a campaign with Suwarroff. At- Austerlitz, in
1805, he distinguished himself by his rashness and his bravery,
and he attended his brother Alexander through the campaigns
of 1812, 1813, and 1814. After the wars were over he returned
to Russia, and was married to a refined and gentle lady, Princess
Juliana of Saxe-Coburg, sister of the Duchess of Kent, King
Leopold the reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and aunt
both to Prince Albert and to Queen Victoria.

But the eccentricities, the fits of passion, the brutalities and
the savagery of Constantine so terrified and alienated the poor
lady that she refused to live with him, and retired first to
Switzerland and subsequently to her own family at Saxe-Coburg.
Complaints of all kinds poured in upon Alexander concerning
the unbearable brutalities of his brother's conduct, and Constan-
tine was dismissed from the Russian court to superintend affairs
in the new kingdom of Poland. In this capacity some French
wits called him the chief of police to the Holy Alliance.

In Paris, in 1814, the grand duke had been thrown into con-
tact with some of the Polish leaders and had conceived a high
esteem for them, showing preference thenceforward for the
Poles over his own countrymen. At Warsaw he was head and
chief, in St. Petersburg his position was secondary and uncom-
fortable. At the beginning of his career he had exhibited his
father Paul's strange fancy for matters of military dress and
drill. It was currently reported at St. Petersburg that he had
said he hated war because it spoiled his soldiers' uniforms. A
button loose, or boots ill-blacked, or a beard a fraction too long
was sufficient under his generalship to destroy for life the pro-
fessional prospects of any officer, and yet he had talent and a
quick knowledge of character, was generous, industrious, and
by no means inaccessible to emotions of kindliness. He was a
good son, a good husband (at least to his last wife), and a good
brother ; but his fierce explosions of rage and his general eccen-
tricity destroyed the effect of his good qualities. Nevertheless
all Polish writers unite in saying of him, " Quit avait unboncceur ;
tons ceux qui font connu sont d' accord sur ce point"

His administration in Poland had little to distinguish it. It
was a field where his rude and savage character found full sway,
but his private life after his retirement from the Russian court
is a far more attractive history. Between Constantine in public

56 JEANETTA GRUDZINSKA, PRINCESS OF Lowicz. [Oct.,

and Constantine in private there was a strange contradiction.
The two characters are inconsistent, and their reconciliation
might form an interesting psychological problem. .

At the period when Constantine appeared in Warsaw as
generalissimo of the troops, and governor-general of the King-
dom of Poland there was living in that capital a family of good
birth but of impaired reputation. Broniec was the name by
which it was known, though it often was called Grudzinska.
The truth was Count Grudzinska, who appears to have been a
"just man," and even a pious one, had been the first husband of
a lady who, having with great difficulty procured a divorce from
him, married a certain Broniec, once marshal at the court of the
King of Saxony, a mere adventurer in spite of his title of mar-
shal, which he habitually bore. By her first husband Madame
Broniec had had three daughters, whose custody s"he was per-
mitted to retain. The names of these young ladies were Jean-
etta, Josephine, and Antoinette.

The Poles have a proverb that no apple falls far from its
apple-tree, but the three young ladies Grudzinska were not like
the maternal apple-tree at all. They may have inherited ami-
able and attractive qualities from their father, but they owed
more to their education, which was undertaken by a lady who,
though political events had reduced her to needy circumstances,
moved and was esteemed in the best society. Daily to this
lady's house the three sisters repaired at seven in the morning,
not returning to their own home till evening, receiving there
not merely knowledge but education. Subsequently they were
introduced into society in Warsaw by this lady with her own
daughters, for in spite of her small means she had the best
entrees.

The fair young girls were pitied, approved, and soon became
great favorites in society, where they were taken under the
especial patronage of the chief leaders of fashion.

The state of affairs in their own household was neither cred-
itable nor comfortable. Count Grudzinska, a devout Catholic,
had refused to lend his name to his wife's proceedings for a
divorce, and whilst the young girls were growing up confusion,
intrigue, and distress prevailed. A legal divorce had been at
length procured by Madame Grudzinska, who forthwith married
Marshal Broniec.

It is not surprising that with this man at the head of the
household debts increased rapidly and disorder and discomfort
reigned. Even the money remitted by Grudzinska for his
daughters' education melted before reaching their instructress.

i888.] JEANETTA GRUDZINSKA, PRINCESS OF Lowicz. 57

Hence it was felt by every one to be desirable that the
three fair sisters should marry early and leave their home.
Josephine, an amiable and beautiful girl, married a distinguished
Polish gentleman. The youngest sister, Antoinette, married
General Chlapowski, subsequently a leader in the Polish Revolu-
tion, and dictator of Poland in 1831, for a brief period, between
the overthrow of the Russian government and its terrible restor-
ation.

Jeanetta was not so beautiful as her two sisters, but, as a
contemporary writer has said of her, " in all things that she did
she charmed." Her sweetness of disposition was as attractive
as her powers of conversation. " In amiability she was without
a rival." In 1818 she met the Grand Duke Constantine for the
first time, and the acquaintance soon ripened into love. The
courtship lasted for more than two years. Constantine was still
the husband of the Princess Juliana, and in Russia a divorce can
only be obtained by favor of the emperor, who claims to be,
ex-officio, the head of all Greek Christians in his dominions. In
1820 Constantine repaired to St. Petersburg, and made it his
earnest request to his brother and his mother that he might be
divorced from his Saxe-Coburg wife and marry (with the im-
perial permission) the lady whom he loved.

It cost him tears and prayers and sacrifices to attain this end.
The divorce was at last given and the consent granted, but a
heavy price had to be paid for them. Previous to the marriage
an imperial ukase was published depriving the- children of any
marriage contracted by a member of the imperial house with
any lady not belonging to a reigning family of all rights of suc-
cession to the throne. To this Constantine consented, and also
agreed that his Polish wife should not be considered a member
of the imperial family. Besides these conditions, which were
known to the public, there was a third kept a profound secret
between Constantine, his brother, and their mother. Constan
tine had signed and placed in the hands of his brother a paper
by which he renounced his right of succession as heir presump-
tive to the imperial throne. This paper was sealed and de-
posited by Alexander with the president of his grand council,
only to be opened in case of his death, when it was to be read
immediately.

These conditions having been at last arranged, not without
much difficulty, for Constantine, though willing to surrender his
own rights, was jealous for those of his wife, the imperial lover
went back to Warsaw, made his formal demand to Count Grud-

58 JEANETTA GRUDZINSKA, PRINCESS OF Lowicz. [Oct.,

zinska for the hand of his daughter, and was married to Jeanetta
on April 24, 1820.*

A contemporary memoir writer thus speaks of this wedding:
" The Grand Duke Constantine Paulovitch, brother and heir of
the emperor, married April 24, 1820, Mademoiselle Grudzinska.
For several years there has been talk of his attachment, and
those who knew him well predicted how it would end. Of
course disparaging remarks have been made on the young
lady. But these are effectually silenced by the marriage. Mad-
emoiselle Grudzinska immediately after her wedding took up
her residence at the grand ducal palace, and since then she and
the grand duke are seen everywhere together. It is consid-
ered very surprising that the emperor and his mother should
have given their consent to this marriage. It is said that the
grand duke when last at St. Petersburg wept three days at
their feet imploring their permission. Jeanetta has no title as
yet, but it is said the emperor intends to give her one. This
subject is the theme of conversation in all circles. Many ladies
envy Jeanetta, but I pity her."

The marriage on the whole was act unhappy, though the
bride soon found herself assailed by annoyances, many of them
caused by the insatiable demands of her needy and voracious
family. Jeanetta seems most sincerely to have loved her hus-
band, but from the first he forbade her interference in public
affairs and warned her never to intercede with him on behalf of
her countrymen. If she had hoped to stand the friend of Poland
and to assuage the miseries of her own people, she soon found
that no influence on such subjects was allowed her.

The emperor created her Princess of Lowicz and presented
to his brother large estates that bore that name. These were
settled on the prospective children of the marriage. But no
children came. By degrees the princess adapted herself to her
anomalous position. She overlooked much, she forgot much.
She could " suffer and be still."

But though denied all political influence, her influence was
great over the semi-barbarian who was her husband. In her
society and under the spell of her affection he became calmer
and more refined. He always spoke of her as his home angel.
Though forced to be deaf to innumerable demands for honors
and money which harassed her continually, her correspondence

* The marriage, of course, was invalid, Constantine's divorced wife being yet alive. Let
us hope that Jeanetta's imperfect religious instruction left her in good faith in contracting it.
EDITOR.

i888] JEANETTA GRUDZINSKA, PRINCESS OF Lowicz. 59

with her mother and sisters was most loving. Never did
a family fe"te-day or a birthday pass forgotten. To her family
she wrote only of her happiness, of her husband's attentions to
her, of the kindness that she received, of the embarrassment she
felt when she found herself treated with more distinction than
her rank gave her a claim to. After a great review at Lowicz
she writes :

" I slipped away into the church, thinking that no one would notice
that I had disappeared ; and was astonished to find that a chair and a
carpet had been made ready for me in one of the chapels."

And yet within a few days of the anniversary of her marriage
she thus opens her heart to a friend of her childhood :

" BELVIDERE, April 3, 1821.
" MY BELOVED ANGELE :

" I have no excuses to offer you for my silence, nor will our mutual af-
fection require them. But I must tell you that I have passed the first year
of my married life in sadness, vexation, and perpetual irritation. This will
explain my silence. I am now recovering by degrees my strength, moral
and physical. . . . My surroundings are charming. I find all sorts of
pleasant things in my home, all kinds of advantages. But this is only of
late. At first it appeared to me all gloomy and sad, and its luxury was un-
bearable. ... I have suffered very, very much. It seems to me that I never
had so many trials in my life as during this year, quon dit fare annee de
miel, mat's que j'appele plaisamment, mats avec raison, I' annee de fiel the year
not of honey but of gall. But all that is over now and I am completely
happy, and all things have improved. My health, too, is better for a long
rest. After some months of married life people know each other far bet-
ter than they can possibly do, as you know, before marriage. One has to
bear and forbear, and make mutual concessions. I am doing so and begin
to feel happy. You will understand that this letter is only for you and for
your mother."

Notwithstanding the conditions on which the emperor and
the empress-mother insisted before they would consent to the
grand duke's marriage, the relations of the princess with the
emperor and the court were always friendly. When Alexan-
der came to Warsaw soon after his brother's marriage he gained
golden opinions even from the reluctant Poles. The Princess of
Lowicz felt the attractions of his character and always spoke of
him with enthusiasm.

For three years and a half after this the princess led a quiet
life at Belvidere, a palace which, though almost a country-seat,
was within the limits of Warsaw. Her health was not good, but
time and her husband's tender solicitude for her in her weakness

60 JEANETTA GRUDZINSKA, PRINCESS OF Lowicz. [Oct.,

drew them more closely together. Besides this she had the
good opinion of the czar, and the affection of the whole impe-
rial family, more particularly that of the Grand Duke Michael
and his sisters, the Grand Duchesses Anne and Marie.

A few days before Christmas, 1825, the Emperor Alexander
died in the Crimea after a brief illness. Up to the last he pa-
thetically refused to be thought ill, or to omit the duties of his
station.

The Grand Duke Nicholas, residing in St. Petersburg, imme-
diately on receipt of the intelligence took the oath of allegiance
to Constantine, his elder brother. He then despatched two
couriers to Warsaw to inform Constantine that he' was now em-
peror. Strange to say both couriers died upon the road, and
the news was brought to Warsaw by an aid-de-camp of Nicho-
las, who was charged to present to the new emperor the respect-
ful homage of his brother.

Before, however, this messenger was despatched from St.
Petersburg, the army, as well as Nicholas, had sworn allegiance
to Constantine. No sooner had they done so than the president
of the council produced the letter that the Emperor Alexander
had confided to his keeping. It conferred the imperial crown
on Nicholas, and enclosed a letter from Constantine confirming
and sanctioning this arrangement.

In spite of the production of this document Nicholas per-
sisted in despatching his aid-de-camp to Warsaw to assure his
brother of his loyalty and submission.

The effect produced at Belvidere by the arrival of this mes-
senger was very great. Some say that Constantine fainted on
learning of the death of Alexander. It is certain that he at once
shut himself up alone in a state of great excitement. Even the
princess was not suffered to come near him. From a distance
she stood with clasped hands where he might see her from a
window. At the end of two hours he came forth self-collected
and calm, though all the furniture in his room had, during his
transport, been broken and battered. His first words were to
the princess, an assurance that she might make her mind easy,
for he was not going to reign.

He at once despatched his youngest brother, Michael, to Nich-
olas, confirming his resignation of the throne, and Nicholas, who
during the interval had thoroughly crushed the projected insur-
rection of the Nihilists, made preparations for his coronation.
But Constantine was still popular with the party of Old Russia,
the party that loved long beards and the national costume, and

i888.] JEANETTA GRUDZINSKA, PRINCESS OF Lowicz. 61

Nicholas was anxious that his subjects should receive some per-
sonal assurance that he was to be crowned czar with the full
consent of his deposed brother. He therefore urged Constan-
tine to be present at his coronation. Constantine returned no
answer, but on the eve of the day appointed he drove into
Moscow in a travelling carriage, attended by a single aid-de-
camp. Nicholas, grateful and delighted, hastened to welcome
him ; but his surprise and embarrassment were great when
Constantine announced that he only meant to stay one night,
and should set off on his return home the next morning. It had
to be explained to him, with fear and trembling, that there had
been some delay in the preparations, and that the coronation
would not take place for a week. With some grumbling at the
delay, Constantine consented to remain till after the ceremony.
His native ferocity, aggravated by the excitements of the occa-
sion, kept the new Czar Nicholas all that week in a state of great
uneasiness, and it is not quite certain what thoughts were
stirring in the heart of the elder brother, but not many hours
before the coronation took place Constantine became aware that
in the preparations for the ceremonial everything had been
arranged so as to do him honor. This seemed to produce on
him the effect of a sudden revelation. That afternoon, at a
review, he abruptly placed himself at the head of his own regi-
ment, and advancing to where the emperor sat on horseback at
the far end of the great court of the Kremlin, he raised his hand
respectfully in military salute to him as his superior. The
emperor seized him by the arm. Constantine bent forward and
kissed the hand of his brother;. The emperor flung himself upon
his neck and they embraced in a transport of brotherly affection.
Next day, the Grand Duke Constantine refused to place him-
self upon the throne that had been prepared for him at the coro-
nation, but took his place simply as a grand duke of the impe-
rial family by the side of his brother Michael. The next morning,
in spite of the earnest remonstrances of the emperor, he started
back to Poland.

He returned to his home, to the Polish army he was endeav-
oring to discipline after the western fashion, and to the wife who
loved the wild nature she had conquered. That he was unpopu-
lar only made her love him with more wifely devotion ; and in
truth he must have had some qualities well worthy of her
love.

Here are parts of two letters written by him to his wife's
mother :

62 JEANETTA GRUDZINSKA, PRINCESS OF Lowicz. [Oct.,

" MADAME : I had much pleasure in receiving the letter you wrote me
on my birthday. Accept my thanks nay, my gratitude for this new
proof of your kindness. The pretty casket you have sent me was a sur-
prise, and I am greatly obliged for it. Its design reminds me of that time
in my life when, under your protection, I was endeavoring to secure my
future happiness, and when my wife was beginning to make me happy.
My affection for her increases daily, for she is the source of all my happi-
ness, and my sole aim is to try to make her happy and content. Thank
God, her health is improved, and she is ever that sweet and charming
Jeanetta whom you have always known.''

And again :

"Thanks to our excellent Jeanetta, I enjoy a happiness in my home
that I had never dreamed of, and I pray God it may continue until death/'

But events in Poland were in preparation for a crisis. In
1830-1831 all Europe was enveloped in clouds and darkness, and
the treaties of Vienna, then shattered by the shock of revolution,
were in another generation to be swept away. Revolutionary
fires had indeed been smouldering throughout Europe ever since
the Spanish revolution of 1823. In Poland, as in Italy, there
were secret societies which kept up fermentation beneath the
social surface. The Revolution of 1830, in France, attracted the
sympathies of all unquiet spirits, and when an order came to mo-
bilize the Polish army, that it might be ready to advance on
revolutionary France, the latent spirit of disaffection burst out
into activity. On the night of November 29, 1830, a party of
young men began a movement which at first, for a few hours,
seemed to fail of success, but by daylight, owing to a variety of
causes, had become a temporary victory.

Eighteen of the conspirators made their way to the palace of
Belvidere. They entered it without opposition while all within
it lay asleep and in apparent security. They murdered two of the
grand duke's gentlemen in cold blood and made their way into
his chamber. He had been awakened by his valet. He sprang
out of bed, flung a cloak over his night-clothes, and rushed down
a small stairway to his wife's apartments. There he found the
greatest confusion. The court ladies had all left their beds and
had assembled in the salon. The princess made them all fall on
their knees around her husband and pray aloud for his safety.
Unhappily Constantine had wholly lost his self-possession, and
though a soldier brave to rashness in his early career, he now
trembled with terror. The eighteen conspirators, after search-
ing his apartments, retired in haste, murdering General Gendre,
his chief counsellor, on their way. They had not gone a hun-

1 888.] JEANETTA GRUDZINSKA, PRINCESS OF Lowicz. 63

dred yards from the palace when a party of Polish horsemen
galloped up to the rescue. Why the little band of conspirators
was not annihilated it is hard to say. But by this time the in-
surrection had spread among 1 the populace of Warsaw ; Polish
soldiers were fraternizing with the instigators of the movement,
and no troops remained faithful to the grand duke but four regi-
ments of cavalry.

Had he put himself at the head of these four regiments he
might have won the victory, but he seemed dazed by the events
of the night. He trembled like a leaf and wandered aimlessly
among his troops, a prey to a despair which seemed to have stu-
pefied him. He and his wife retired before the fury of the storm
and sought shelter at Wiezbno. There for some days they lived
in a gardener's hut, destitute of comforts of every kind. The
princess showed courage and capacity in this emergency, but she
could not always restrain her feelings.

The leader chosen by the insurgents was General Chlapow-
ski, and one of his titles to their confidence was his resentment
against the grand duke for an insult publicly put upon him in
1818. Yet since that time he had married Antoinette Grudzin-
ska, the Princess of Lowicz's favorite sister. The princess had
favored the match, in spite of her mother's opposition. Chlap-
owski deemed it his duty as a patriot to negotiate. The nego-
tiation came to nothing, and it lost him the confidence of his
countrymen. But as the deputation sent by him to confer with
the Grand Duke Constantine left the camp in which Constantine
still retained eight thousand men, it was followed by a large part
of the Polish cavalry. There was nothing left for Constantine
but flight, and as Chlapowski took no pains to arrest him in his
retreat he lost still more the confidence of those who a few weeks
before had been blindly devoted to him.

Not long after this the Polish revolution lost all prospect of
success, though the struggle was continued a few months longer.
The czar hurried troops to the scene of action, his army being
already mobilized with a view of threatening France under her
new sovereign. The general in command was Diebitsch, who had
won his laurels in the Turkish wars. He advanced upon War-
saw, and with him came the cholera. The Poles won a battle,
and those who had been hand-to-hand with the Russians in the
conflict were stricken down within a few hours. The dirt, the
fever of men's minds, and the absence of all sanitary precau-
tions made the plague horrible in Warsaw. Nevertheless the
war went on. Step by step Diebitsch advanced, but early in

64 JEANETTA GRUDZINSKA, PRINCESS OF Lowicz. [Oct.,

January the Poles gained an important victory. Diebitsch re-
treated to his camp, and in his despair and self-abandonment
took refuge in drunkenness. It was thus that a messenger from
the czar found him and presented him his dismission. The next
day Diebitsch was seized with cholera and died. The messen-
ger passed on to Minsk to carry despatches to the Grand Duke
Constantine. The day after their interview the grand duke also
died of cholera. He was fifty-three years of age.

His widow retired to St. Petersburg. On her way she
wrote thus to her mother:

"AUGUST 2, 1831.

"DEAR MAMMA : Your daughter is very, very miserable. She has lost
him for whom she lived, and now she is alone, without husband, friend, or
protector. O mother! you can never know the grief this parting has
caused me.''

In the middle of September a few words written in a tremb-
ling, hand close the records in her journal : " I am very ill and
have received the last sacraments."

Yet she lingered a few weeks longer. She was watched over
with affectionate solicitude by the imperial family. She had a
presentiment that she would die upon the anniversary of that
dreadful night when, roused from peaceful slumber, she fled with
her husband from their home at Belvidere. The Emperor
Nicholas, with kind consideration, had the dates changed in the
little calendar she always used in order to mislead her. But in
vain. She died on November 29, 1831, exactly one year after
the attack on the palace of her husband.

She was buried in the Catholic chapel built by Alexander I.,
at Tsarskoe-S61o, near St. Petersburg, and the court wore mourn-
ing for her for two weeks.

" Many tears," says a French writer, often hostile to empe-
rors and kings, " were shed upon the tomb of this Polish lady,
so fair, so tender, and so faithful. Her own conjugal devotion,
and the beneficent influences of her love upon the character of
her husband were no secrets to any one. The Grand Duke
Constantine, though fierce in temper and generous by impulse,
gave up a throne to win her, and having won her he showed her
during the remainder of his life the submission of a child and
the devotion of a knight in a romance of chivalry.' 5

E. W. LATIMER.

1 888.] PAUL RINGWOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 65

PAUL RINGWOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

CHAPTER I.
A LITTLE CHILD.

ABOUT three roods from the main street, in a garden, amidst
many elm-trees, stood the house in which I was born a gray
stone cottage, lichen-roofed, ivy-hidden. A large casement win-
dow overlooked the street on the north side of the house. Fac-
ing the east was the porch, vine-covered, a stoop on either side.
The south end rambled away into a summer kitchen and out-
houses; the west led to the spring and a path through fields.
Cross the threshold of the porch and straightway you are in the
dining-room : a cheery room, with substantial table of mahogany,
a side-board of like wood holding quaint candlesticks, odd cad-
dies, winter or summer never without its vases of flowers, put
there by the hands of my dear mother. From the dining-room,
turning to your right, a corridor led you to the parlor. In the
corridor stood a book-case, hanging above it a family tree to-
gether with a water-color painting of a coat-of-arms.

The parlor: with its leathern, brass-nailed chairs, but two of
them alike such comfortable chairs, made for every lazy pos-
ture. On either side the fire-place that bloomed with roses in
the summer, whose fire ruddily lit the blue and yellow tiles in
the winter, were placed the two Spanish chairs, alike, sacred to
father and mother. When mother died and, other troubles fol-
lowing, I became my father's companion, her chair fell to me.
Portraits of grandparents, and great and greater-grandparents
hung on the parlor walls. Everywhere there are books, and in a
corner, fitted in the wall, an organ, which, after my mother died,
I never heard played but once again.

At the end of the dining-room, to the left, a door led to a sit-
ting-room, beyond which were the kitchens; to the right was a
staircase leading straight to the garrets. On the second floor
was a corridor, opening on bedrooms and a library, terminated
by the " little room " the room where I and my brother, some
few minutes my senior, first saw the light of this world ; the room
destined to be mine for fifteen years after. Pink carpeted, pink
curtained, the furniture wicker-work, I have a notion that this
dainty room influenced all my after-tastes, making me foolishly
seek for a prettiness that is neither manly nor artistic. There
VOL. XLVIII. 5

66 PAUL RING WOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Oct.,

were two garrets : one, the smaller, a maid's room ; the other
had curious gable windows, its floor strewn with boxes of novels,
boxes of Punch, boxes of the Illustrated London News, boxes of
magazines and miscellanies. A charming garret, under whose
roof I have spent many hours with my good old friends, the books
and pictures. How much was learned there, how much that had
to be unlearned !

My father's occupation if what was done without an effort
may be called an occupation was to be a gentleman. It was the
general opinion that he succeeded admirably. He was a stern
man, a reserved man, an excessively proud man, and my mother
loved him with a love that fell just short of worship. But once
do I remember his ever having spoken a kind word to me, though
he had a term of endearment for me of which I shall speak. He
ruled me; for years I was his constant companion ; yet he never
conversed with me, and I loved and revered him. There must
have been an attraction about him, for there were servants in the
house who had served him a lifetime, to whom he had never
opened his lips, and they declared that there was no man like the
" master."

" What sort of a man is Mr. Ringwood, Maggy?" asked a
gossip of the parlor-maid.

" Sure," said Maggy, " I've lived in his house eleven year, and
he never's spoke the first word to me ; he's one of the rale sort."

He was a very handsome man, a lavishly generous man.
These may have been reasons for the liking all had for him,
though every one feared him. As dearly as my mother loved my
father, so he loved her. Mother was as unreserved as he was
reserved ; as lavish with endearments as he was chary of them.
They had but one trait in common. She, too, was generous, al-
ways giving. And yet theirs was a perfect union.

Bert was idolized by my mother ; it was different with me.
I was a freckle-faced, red-haired, snub-nosed little monster ; my
twin-brother, with his flaxen curls, rosy complexion, and black
eyes, a young Cupid. How often have I heard myself contrasted
with my brother. Glad as I was to hear his beauty praised, I
could not help but wish that I were not so ugly, that I might have
more of my mother's love. Not that she was unkind to me ; she
could not have been, for she was kind to every one. Yet I felt
that I was not much loved. I inherited nothing of that charm
my parents had that drew people to them. I knew that I was
lacking in something. How often, when a little child, have I
cudgelled my brains trying to find out what that was I lacked.

1 888.] PAUL RING WOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 67

What was there I did not do to gain the love of the people about
me ! I gave away all my little possessions to win the love of
some boy friend, and, thank God ! I was blind enough to think
that it was I was loved, not my gifts. Yes. I humbly thank him,
for those were happy moments when I dreamed I had gotten the
one thing lacking in my life.

The first remembrance I have of the decade now in the tell-
ing is of Bert, our nurse, and myself talking of a summer trip we
were to make to Bethlehem, in Pennsylvania. My mother had
well taught us the story of Him who was cradled in an Eastern
Bethlehem, and it was of this Bethlehem Bert and I thought and
spoke as we stood under the archway of the stone bridge cross-
ing Wingo Creek, the creek that runs by Allemaine, the town
where we were born. We wondered whether there would be
angels in this town to which we were going, asking Nurse Barnes
to tell us. I am not sure that she told us that we would find
angels there, but am inclined to think she did, for she was a very
oracle to us, and I know we settled between ourselves what to
say to the angels when we met them. I remember our getting
down a folio of colored Scripture prints, finding the one of the
stable-palace of the King, our being much troubled because of the
shepherds in the scene having but scanty clothing.

" It was terrible cold," said Bert, almost whimpering.

" Let's give 'em our fuzzy coats," I proposed.

" I was a-thinkin'," said Bert.

Then we went to mother to tell her of our new philanthropy,
and she fondled Bert, telling father how good he was. We did
not find angels in the staid Moravian town, but we did find shep-
herd boys, to whom we gave clothes and sweets. To us they
were very real shepherds, who spoke as Bethlehem shepherds
should speak, in an unknown tongue. It mattered little to us
that their speech was that most barbarous of all dialects, Penn-
sylvania Dutch. We did not understand them, and that de-
lighted us.

It was in Bethlehem that my father gave me the name that
remained with me as long as he lived. I was suffering as only a
child can suffer with toothache, and it was decided that the tooth
must come out. So I was taken by my father to a dentist, Bert
insisting on coming along. The dark room hung with dingy
curtains; the worn, carpet- covered chair in which I was to sit ;
the dentist, an old man in scarlet wrapper, fumbling in a horrible
box for a horrible steel instrument all these things are visible to
me to-day. I can hear the old man telling me in a droning,

68 PAUL RINGWOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Oct.,

voice that he would not hurt me, I knowing full well that he
was an arrant liar. I can see Bert on the other side of a glass
door looking in at me, and weeping. I can hear my father coldly
telling me not to make a noise and frighten Bert. " No," I said
to myself, " I won't scream ; I won't frighten Bert." Poor Bert !
how frightened he did look. Then the dentist puts the cold
steel into my mouth. A wrench, two wrenches, a third, and I
feel as if my whole lower jaw has been pulled off. I did not
scream, though I bled like a knifed pig.

I was in a plight when I got home ; blood over my shirt,
hands, and face. "Well, it does not hurt now, does it?" father
asked. It did hurt, and I said so.

"Nonsense!" said my father, "the tooth is out; how can it
hurt ?"

Looking up from her tatting my mother exclaimed : " How
bloody you are, my dear Paul !"

\ Faint, I staggered to a chair, mother letting fall her work
and running to fetch me some water.

" What is the matter, Paul?" father asked surprisedly.

I could barely stammer, " I think, papa, he pulled some bone";
then I fainted. Yes, the old man in scarlet had fractured my
jaw. When I came to I was stretched on a bed, father and
mother beside me.

" Better, Soldier ?" asked my father. That was the name he
gave me ever after, saying it coldly, but I think it meant much
to him. What a misnomer it was you who read this autobio-
graphy will know.

I can remember no time when my brother and I could not
read. We were born in such an atmosphere of reading that, for
ourselves, I can accept Dogberry's dictum, "Reading comes by
nature." In every other branch of learning I was a dullard.
Not so with Bert. His progress was rapid in all things. No
wonder that father was proud of his handsome son, that mother
loved him as she did. Our first teacher was a sweet-faced
maiden lady of English birth. Her name was Chelsea, and I
think her father had failed in business. Out of her small means
she had educated and cared for three orphan girls. She pa-
tiently tried to teach me, hiding my dulness from my parents
as well as she could. I distinctly remember her telling my
father that I was dull, not stupid. This she acknowledged when
pushed to it by my father, who, with reason, was finding fault
with me. Her saving clause, that I was not stupid, has been the
means of -keeping me from becoming so. It heartened me when,

r888.] PAUL RINGWOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 69

burdened with many studies, I was becoming hopeless. May
God bless this good woman wherever she be !

Our next teacher was a man by the name of Whit. He was
a New-Englander, a Puritan of the most pronounced type.
Never can I forget the horror he filled me with. I am sure that
the man did not mean to be unkind to me ; he could not help
being harsh, it was his nature. He had two hobbies, arithmetic
and grammar. Miss Chelsea said that I did very nicely in the first ;
the second I hated with the hatred of a Grant White. Anything
well done was now in the past tense of his beloved grammar.
It seemed to me the more I tried to understand his explanations
the further I was from doing so. How his ringing, " You are an
arrant ass !" stung my ears and set my head aching. It must be
acknowledged that I was deserving of the first application of this
gentle alliterative.

It was a question as to the numeral affix to the name of that
much-wived maker of martyrs, Henry Tudor, first head of the
English Church. Bert was stating that " Henry, eighth of that
name " Here I interrupted, anxious to show my learning :
" Wasn't it because he had eight wives, too?"

" You are an arrant ass ! Proceed, Elbert," said our master.

Mr. Whit was succeeded by a Mr. Woods, a kind and good
man. He taught Bert Latin and French ; tried to teach me. I
did learn some Latin, did learn to read French. How I tried to
speak it and could not ! Father said that I was obstinate and
would not. To make me pronounce the French words correctly
I was kept days and days from Bert, from the books I loved. I
tried; how I tried! Sometimes I succeeded fairly, most times
not at all ; and then it was that I was accused of obstinacy. I
obstinate, father, when I would have given anything and every-
thing for a kind word from you ? Yes ; though in all else dull, I
loved books. How well I remember the first novel read by me
that wonderful book, Nicholas Nickleby. My first reading of it
must have been in my eighth or ninth year, for it was in Mr.
Whit's time.

Probably there were never two men more opposite than Whit
and the monster Squeers. Yet to me the first was a personifi-
cation of the last, and I was Smike ; Bert, Nicholas. Of course,
it was very ridiculous, but how often did I plan that Bert and I
were to run away ! Not that home was in any way like " Dothe-
boys Hall," only that I was so often wretchedly unhappy. My
plans were never told to Bert ; I felt too sure that he would laugh
at them. Nicholas Nickleby has never been an abstraction to

;o PAUL RINGWOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Oct.,

me. He is my oldest friend. And my next was Hamlet, or, ra-
ther, Hamlet as I saw him in Booth. Reading and rereading the
play, I thought as many others have thought with perhaps as
little reason that I understood you, Hamlet.

It has just been said that mine was an unhappy life. Not al-
together. The happiness my books have given me is not easy to
tell. I cannot think that I was discontented. A discontented
being is one who thinks every one and everything wrong but
himself, and I was sure that all things were as they should be ;
only myself was wrong. I knew how lacking I was in mind and
person. I wished to please and could not, no matter how I
tried. Fault was not often found with me, no one systematically
scolded me, save Mr. Whit. My mother pitied me, Bert patro-
nized me, my father ignored me. Sometimes father noticed me ;
for instance, the day he called me to be taught chess. It may
seem overstrained to talk of the exaltation of a child's soul.
However that may be, I was weeping tears of joy in my heart
as I followed my father to the library, which opened out of his
bedroom. He was the greatest of men to me, and he was going
to teach me how to play chess. We sat down at the board, and
I took up the box of men to slide open the lid. Trembling with
excitement, the box slipped from my hands, and kings, queens, and
pawns clattered over the table and the floor. It was a valuable
set, and I cried out : " O papa ! I am sure I have broke none ! "

He said nothing, lightly drumming on the table with his
fingers whilst I gathered together the scattered court and army.
I was stooping beside him to pick up the last of the pawns, one
of his hands hanging over the arm of his chair. I don't know
what possessed me to be so bold, but I took his hand, so white
and fine, and kissed it. He smiled, and put his hand on my hair
to stroke it. Only for a moment. No wonder the harshness of
my red crop irritated him. " Come, Paul,'' he said, "get to your
place if we are to begin to-day."

For a while I learned very well. Then things began to go
wrong. I cared nothing for the game ; I was happy and proud
because I was with my father. Full of this happiness, I made
blunder after blunder, almost playing at random.

" Paul, do you know what you are doing?" father asked
gently.

I looked up at him, laughing from very glee.

" Paul, get down a dictionary," said my father.

" The large one, papa ? " I asked.

" Either,'' he answered very gently.

i888.] PAUL RING WOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 71

When I had brought the book to him he said, not angrily
but how he cut me : " Look for the word blockhead."

I stared stupidly at him, stared stupidly as, going to his bed-
room, he poured water into a basin to wash his hands. And the
hand he washed most was the hand I had kissed, the hand with
which he had stroked my hair. I turned dully away, and went
to my " little room " and sat down on the floor by the window.
Not crying, only thinking and longing. It was a very little
child, but it was a child longing to die.

After all these years I do not blame my father ; I was far from
blaming him then. He was so fine ; not a dandy, mind you,
never was a man less of one ; it must have been hard for him to
realize that he had begotten so coarse and dull a lump of flesh as
myself.

CHAPTER II.

DEATH.

Our birthday, my brother's and mine, tails on the 8th of
September. It was shortly after we had celebrated our entering
into our tenth year that we lost our mother. Devotedly reli-
gious, mother was not satisfied with seeing that her children
learned well the Episcopal catechism and the collects, and that
they attended the frequent services, but she would have the ser-
vants of her household perform their religious duties. Never
was Catholic mistress more in earnest about her servants going
to confession and to Mass than was this Protestant mistress.
How often, early of a winter morning, would she leave her warm
bed-room to go to the stables to rouse the coachman's family and
send them off to Mass! She could and did forgive Dan and
Dan's wife many omissions of duty, but she would excuse no
staying away from church. There was no severity about mo-
ther's religion, but to much sweetness was joined a very exact
idea that for religion to avail one its precepts must be rigidly
conformed to.

One Sunday morning late in October mother rose from her
bed to rouse Dan and his wife. She said afterwards that had
the weather been fine she would have remained in bed. Snow
had fallen over-night, and now a heavy sleet was falling. Pat-
tering against the pane it had waked me, and standing by the
window, a quilt wrapped about me, peering into the darkness, I
saw my mother pass, a lantern in one hand, the other carrying an

72 PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Oct.,

umbrella. Looking out on her, slipping and stumbling through
the sleet and snow, an overpowering sense of my naughtiness
came over me. In a childish way I thought of the reprobates of
whom I had heard, thinking I must be one of them, or how else
account for so good a mother caring so little for me ? Still
watching, I saw her returning to the house. Suddenly she
threw out her arms, the lantern waving frantically, then it fell to
the ground extinguished, and all was dark. Wringing my hands
helplessly, I ran down-stairs in my night-shirt, bare-footed, out
into the garden towards where my mother had fallen. It was
pitch dark, and several times I fell. Although my eyes were
becoming used to the darkness I could see nothing of mother.
Standing still, I called softly, " Mamma! mamma! " calling many
times before I heard faintly whispered : " Is that you, Paul? "

I had passed my mother in the carriage-drive, and going back
a little way soon found her. She was lying on her back in the
road, and when I stooped over her and begged her to get up and
come to the house, she said that she could not, but that I must
go and call Dan and Mary to help her, and to be sure not make a
noise and waken father. I readily found my way to Dan's
house, for light was gleaming in its lower windows, and before I
reached it I could hear his wife's loud voice grumbling that the
mistress would not let a poor woman have her bit of sleep. Dan
was in his shirt-sleeves washing his face in a pail of water when
I burst open the door, calling on him and Mary to come to
mother, for she was dying.

" Glory preserve us ! " exclaimed Mary. " The poor craychur
is a mash uv blood, an' naked ! "

My night-shirt was torn and my legs scratched and bleeding
where I had fallen. Pulling Mary by her gown and taking Dan's
hand, still wet from his morning's wash, I prayed them to come
quick, before mother died. Mary hoisted me on her shoulders,
and, bidding Dan bring a lantern, we went, an odd procession, to
mother. She lay as I had left her, and, setting me on my
feet, Mary began to wail over her.

"Hush, hush!" mother commanded in a whisper, "you will
rouse Mr. Ringwood. Help me to my feet, and then you and
Dan can support me to the house."

In that way we went, mother leaning on Dan and Mary,
I going before with the lantern. With all mother's caution,
she was the one who roused father. When we had reached the
house, by the light of a candle she had left burning on the side-
board, mother noticed the strange plight I was in.

1 888.] PAUL RING WOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 73

" My poor child ! " she cried, " out in all that cold with noth-
ing on ! "

Her crying-out brought my father, half-dressed, running down-
stairs, Bert and the maids at his heels. No one spoke to father ; in-
stinctively he seemed to know what was the matter and how it had
all come about. With scarcely an order, he had mother carried
upstairs, Dan off for the doctor, myself sent to put some clothes on.

I had washed and dressed myself, feeling stiff and sore and
was sitting before a little fire I had kindled in the grate, when
cook came into the room. She was weeping, and said: " Master
Paul, the mistress is askin' for you." Then she burst out: " Oh !
this is the black day for us all."

Not questioning cook, I left her to weep and ran to mother's
room. She was in bed, my father sitting by her side, the doctor
giving his directions to Nurse Barnes, who still lived with us.
Bert was not there; I found he had been sent to breakfast.
Mother put an arm about my neck and rested my head on her
bosom, whispering: " You must stay with mamma till she gets
well, Paul." By way of answer I did what I had seldom done
before, kissed my mother.

Had it been but the fall my mother suffered from, she would
soon have gotten well. But she had taken a cold which brought
on a lung disease, and day by day she grew weaker, less able to
talk to father or to me. She was so good to me, showing me so
much love, speaking so often of how I had gone to her on that
cold morning, that had I not understood that she was dying she
would have made me very happy. Hanging in her room was a
picture of Christ healing the sick. They were the prayers of a
child, but they were hearty ones that I put up to him to heal
my mother.

One cold November night the unwatched fires had gone out
in the parlor and the library ; we were gathered together in my
mother's room all our household, the clergyman, and the doc-
tor. My mother was gasping for breath, and the hand that held
mine was nerveless. Father stood beside me, one hand resting
on my shoulder, the other holding the lower part of his face, his
head bent, gazing on my mother, listening to what she was say-
ing. " Be good to Paul, Arthur," she said, and smiled. There
was a stir in the room. The clergyman was preparing to give
my mother the communion. We all knelt. It was then about
seven o'clock.

Another hour had gone when mother called out for my
father to raise her. At the same time she made a motion to her

74 PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Oct.,

lips, and the nurse thinking she wanted drink, brought it ; but
she motioned her away, looking earnestly at me.

Did she want me to kiss her good-by ? I thought so, and
clambering onto the bed, kissed her cheek.

She smiled and, heaving a deep sigh, fell asleep.

CHAPTER III.

MY BROTHER LEAVES HOME.

We are told that no one is necessary in this life, that there is
no situation in life, however well filled, but there is some one who
will fill it as well. We are told that the instances in proof of
this are beyond number. Were this sincerely believed in, vain-
glory would be at an end. There are exceptions to this sweep-
ing belittling of man. Who ever heard it advanced as a doc-
trine to be believed that the place of a good mother is readily
supplied ? Not by a stepmother, if the stepmother of literature
is a faithful picture of the thing it portrays. If my father be-
lieved, and I am sure he did not, that my mother's place could
be filled, he never acted up to his belief.

When my mother died the house was cared for by Nurse
Barnes, who did her work well. The two creatures left mother-
less cared for themselves as best they could ; in wholesome awe
of a father who did not interfere with them as long as they kept
within bounds, the bounds being the garden gates. Every mo-
ment passed beyond the gates was to be strictly accounted for.
The territory being limited in which we could work mischief,
we were seldom in trouble. Do not give children opportunity
and they will not be troublesome, is a maxim that should be
cherished by parents.

Bert and I kept close together for more than a month after
mother died ; then we drifted apart, as we had been before that
time I to my books, Bert to his boy friends. He could not be
blamed for finding me tiresome ; I made myself tiresome to
every one ; he drew every one to him. Not a boy in the neigh-
borhood but looked up to Bert. All things that a boy can do
he did excellently well. Wherever he went were bright faces.
I was fond of one thing, reading. It is true that I liked cricket
liked, indeed, all the games the boys played ; but who would
want a fellow on his side who would be sure to lose ? This I
will say for myself: I think that I could have become a good
cricket-player only, when I found the boys did not want me, I
became too timid to join them. Not the whole truth. There

1 888.] PAUL RING WOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 75

was much, too, of the spirit of " if you don't want me I don't
want you " mingled with this keeping of myself aloof. When
one is told, time and again, by word and deed, that one's com-
pany is not wished for, it would argue an entire want of spirit if
one did not in some way return the compliment.

During the Christmas holidays it was decided that Bert was
to go to Segur Hall to prepare for college. I was to remain at
home to be taught by Mr. Woods, my education not having pro-
gressed enough to fit me for the Hall. When father was not
within earshot Bert went about singing, delighted at the idea
of a change; and no wonder, for ours was now a very gloomy
house. I was feeling badly enough about his leaving home,
dreading nothing so much as that he would find it out. I feared
he might think me envious of him. Child as I was, I managed
to keep a cheerful countenance up to the night of the third of
January, the eve of his going away.

All that day Bert and I had not been apart. He had been
very good and kind to me, giving me his horned frog and pigeons
to take care of. I am sorry to say that Blacky, our tom-cat, ate
the horned frog, save the horns, before Bert returned home. We
were seated before the parlor fire-place, the burning coals redly
lighting up the drawn window-curtains. For the hundredth
time since it had been settled that he was to go to boarding-
school, Bert wondered what it would be like, and I listened to
his conjectures with a very full heart.

He had talked till, I think, it irked him to talk more, when,
throwing himself back in his chair, he began to hum the air of the
hymn

"Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear us "-

a hymn my dear mother sang so often for us, herself playing the
sweet music on the organ. There was the organ, shut and silent,
and she gone where is ever sweetest music. When Bert began
to sing I turned to where the organ stood, all the pent-up sorrow
in my child's heart breaking forth. I did not shed tears, but
locking my hands, beat them against my little bosom, crying in an
undertone: " Bert, Bert! what am I to do? Mamma's dead, and
now you're going away ! " Bert's big eyes rounded as he said :
" Well, Paul Ringwood, you're a funny boy ! I'm just as sorry,
I'm sorrier than you about mamma, but that won't do nothing."
I have hinted that Bert was wise beyond his years, but some-
how his philosophy did not console me. It heartened me, how-
ever, to keep down all other outbreaks with which I was threat
ened on that evening. Shortly after the scene I had made, Bert

76 PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Oct.,

went to bid father good-night ; I to Bert's bedroom to wait for
him. The fire was blazing brightly for Bert when he came from
the library, something hidden in his hands, his eyes sparkling,
his cheeks glowing with excitement.

" Guess what I've got ! " he exclaimed ; " I bet you won't ! "

" A watch," I said, not exhibiting much discernment, for this
was the one thing Bert desired most.

" Yes," he said, a little downcast at my ready guessing. " You
won't guess what kind."

For a wonder I had tact enough to say : " A silver one ? "

"There ! I knew you wouldn't," he cried, triumphantly open-
ing his hands and exposing a gold stem-winder nestled in a blue
velvet case. After we had gloated over it for a while, Bert said:
" I don't like this black string," showing me a silk guard like my
father wore. Long before two chains had been made, one of
Bert's hair, one of mine. My hair for Bert, his for me. Both
were ornamented with gold, and I humbly proposed to Bert that
he should wear the chain of my hair.

" Wear that red thing ! " Bert cried indignantly. " You must
be crazy."

At last it was settled that Bert was to wear the silk guard
till, with our united savings, a gold chain could be bought. I
was to stay with Bert till he fell asleep. " It's the last night,
Bert," I pleaded, when he asked me what was the use of it. We
said our prayers together for the last time, then Bert kissed me
lightly on the cheek, jumped into bed, and was soon asleep.

Watching him from where I sat in a great chair before the
fire, I, too, fell asleep.

CHAPTER IV.

"GENTLE AMY MORRISON.''

Bert gone away, I was left entirely to myself and Mr. Woods.
If the progress I now made in my studies was not first-rate, it
was sure ; what I got, gotten well Mr. Woods telling father
that I compared favorably with boys of my age. When it was
taken into consideration that my desultory reading had given me
a stock of varied information, I was less and less looked upon as
a dunce. My studies went on until March, when my teacher
falling sick, I was so unfortunate as to lose him. No one came
to take his place ; still, I did not give up study, often floundering,
often losing myself ; in spite of all, making progress. As fre-
quently as when mother lived, I went to St. Bede's. No matter

1 888.] PAUL RINGWOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 77

how bad the weather might be, I was present at what we called
" Matins " and " Evensong." There was a young girl of about
eighteen who was as regularly at service as myself. Her name
was Amy Morrison I knew it from hearing Nurse Barnes speak
of her and to this day I do not know who had the sweetest,
prettiest face, Miss Amy or our Lady in the picture of the An-
nunciation on the great glass window above the altar. I often
wished that she would speak to me, but though when we met
she nodded and smiled, she never spoke. The desire to know
her grew on me as time passed, till I found myself praying that
we might be friends. I would sit in church looking at her so
wistfully that had I been other than a very little boy it must
needs have annoyed her. At last she was brought to speak to
me, as I devoutly believed, in answer to my prayers. There
was a notice in the vestibule of the church, placed above the
reach of my eye. I was standing tip-toe trying to make it out,
when a hand was laid on my shoulder and a gentle voice read
the notice for me. Looking up I saw Amy Morrison smiling
down on me.

" You will not be able to come," she said ; " the service is at
night."

" Oh ! yes, I'll come," I replied.
" By yourself?" she inquired.

Drawing myself up, I answered with much dignity : " Of
course ! Why not ? "

She laughed, and asked : " Does your father let you go out at
night?"

" I know he'd let me go to church," I answered confidently.

" But nowhere else ? ''

" I never go anywhere ; no one wants me," was my frank con-
fession.

Miss Amy looked pained, and asked if I was Paul Ringwood.

"Yes, Miss Amy," I replied.

"So you know my name?" she said smiling.

" I've heard Nurse Barnes say how good you are," I answered,
with no intention of paying a compliment.

Reddening, she said that I must not mind Nurse Barnes, and
took a little watch from the belt about her waist to see the time.
" I am going to walk down the road with you, Paul," she said.

Putting my hand in hers, I told her how glad I was, and
how I had been longing for her to speak to me.

"Had I known, Paul! 1 ' she said. "You looked so cross at
me in church I thought I must have offended you."

78 PAUL RING WOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Oct.,

Then I had not been looking wistfully at her, as I had fondly
thought. " I didn't mean to ; I was born with this," I explained,
putting my finger on the crease between my eyebrows. " I was
born with front teeth, too; Richard III. was born with teeth; he
was bad ; Nurse Barnes says I will be very bad or very good."

Miss Amy said that she did not believe that my teeth would
have anything to do with it, but she hoped that I would be very
good. We got along finely. I talked as I had never talked be-
fore, telling her all about Bert and mother. When we reached
our garden gates I begged her to come in, offering as an induce-
ment for her to do so a sight of the horned frog. But she said
no ; she would another time.

After this she took a walk with me almost every day, though
the other time for her entering our gates did not come. I owe
much to her. She brought me out, made me manlier, and laid
the foundation for what was to bring me the greatest blessing
that can come to man. She was the confidant of all my little
troubles. When Blacky ate the frog, and I did not know how
to tell Bert, it was she who wrote a little letter, which letter I
copied and sent him. When his answer came I gave it to Miss
Amy to read to me ; I was afraid to read it myself. To my
horror, he wrote that the letter I had sent him was the foolishest
he had ever read ; that he did not care about the frog, but that
he hoped the horns choked Blacky. When she had read Bert's
letter, Miss Amy laughed very heartily; then examining it close-
ly said: "How much alike you and your brother write, Paul!"

CHAPTER V.

THEOLOGICAL.

One June morning Miss Amy asked me if I had ever thought
of being confirmed. I told her truthfully that I never had. It
was the one church ceremony I disliked, being associated in my
mind with Good Friday and penitential works. Our bishop was
an enemy to colored stoles and altar furniture ; this being the
case, all our altar ornaments were banished, save a cross and
pair of candlesticks, when he visited us. In a chancel after his
own heart he may have been a pleasant enough man ; but in St.
Bede's sanctuary he was always cross, openly finding fault with
our clergymen, who were, indeed, unhappy during his visit.
After the bishop's departure they would soon get over their
miser}', wearing just as fine vestments and burning as many

1 888.] PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 79

candles as if their bishop had never expressed a wish that they
wouldn't.

I have not forgotten my first impression of an Episcopalian
bishop. We had at home an illustrated Arabian Nights, in which
was a picture of the Barber's seventh brother. He had a scowl-
ing face, and was dressed in a white gown with a sleeveless robe
over it. When our bishop began to scold, I, a very little boy,
took him to be the seventh brother, and with tears begged my
mother to take me home, which she did not do, but let me hide
my face in her lap for the remainder of the service.

When Miss Amy pressed me to think of confirmation I re-
plied that I did not believe there was much good in it, for every
one seemed to be so sorry when the bishop came. No doubt
but that my frankness shocked her, though she was too gentle to
show it. She could never have read the Thirty-nine Articles,
for she told me confirmation was a very great sacrament the
receiving of which brought many blessings, the bishop the in-
strument by which those blessings were imparted to the faithful.
Although it was Miss Amy who declared it, I did not at all be-
lieve this last. I suppose that I must have looked incredulous,
for she entered into an explanation of the apostolic succession that
I understood pretty well, except, as I told her, I could not make
out how -a man who had it would try to make little of it. Miss
Amy said that it was unfortunate, and I said I thought so, too.
The end of it was that I made up my mind to overcome my hor-
ror of the bishop, and get from him whatever he could give me
of confirmation.

The annual scolding was over, the clergymen were looking
hopefully for the morrow when the bishop would leave us, and
Miss Amy and I were taking a stroll in the graveyard. We had
not gone far when we saw the bishop and our pastor advancing
towards us. We would have gotten out of their way, but before
you could bless yourself, as Dan's wife would say, the bishop had
my hand in his fat, flabby hand. Afterwards I told Miss Amy,
in confidence, that he had no bones in his hand. He opened his
mouth and grinned, and, never having seen a person with so
many teeth, I wondered if he, too, had been born with teeth.

" Now, my little boy," the bishop said patronizingly, " I con-
firmed you this morning ; tell me, What is confirmation?"

I thought our rector was looking so uncomfortable because
he thought that I would not be able to answer the bis-hop's
question. I knew that I could. Had not Miss Amy instructed
me, and if she did not know, who did ?

8o PAUL RINGWOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Oct.,

" Confirmation,'' I replied, " is a sacrament in which, by the
imposition of the bishop's hands, we receive the sevenfold gifts
of the Holy Ghost.".

" Umph ! " exclaimed the bishop ; " who taught you that ? "

" I prepared Paul for confirmation," Miss Amy said firmly.
Still grinning, the bishop turned to the rector and said : " What
does Brother Linton say to his parishioners holding such views ? "

The rector shirked the question. " I think Paul a very apt
pupil," he said, kindly laying his hand on my head.

The bishop swelled up. " Will you have it announced this
afternoon that I shall preach some Gospel truths Gospel truths,
please to remember at an especial service to-night ? " he said, and
then walked off pompously, the worried-looking rector follow-
ing. The bishop's sermon, owing to the slim attendance he had,
was a failure, and the following Sunday the rector had his re-
venge in a sermon on the one, true faith.

"Miss Amy," I asked, after the rector's sermon, " have we
one faith in our church ? "

Miss Amy looked surprised, and said how she could believe
it I don't know " Certainly, Paul ; what makes you ask such a
question?"

" I was only wondering," I answered.

CHAPTER VI.

"I AM BLIND."

During the time of which I have been telling in the last two
chapters, I do not suppose my father spoke to me half-a-dozen
times. I was much troubled about him, fearing that he was not
in good health. Physicians often came to visit him, remaining
for what seemed to me hours, shut up with my father in his
room. I begged Nurse Barnes to tell me what was the mat-
ter, but all she could do was to exclaim : " Bless you, child !
how am I to know ?" And when I teased her to ask father,
she shook her head, and said that it was as much as her place
was worth to do so. After a time, as he never complained, we
began to think less and less of the visits of the doctors. One
day Nurse Barnes came to the " little room," where I spent the
greater part of my time reading, a satisfied smile on her face.

" Them's phrenologers," she said.

"Who?" I asked.

" Them doctors," she answered. " They tells fortunes by the
lumps on a person's head.''

1 888.] PAUL RINGWOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 81

" How do you know?" I asked, meaning- how did she know
that the doctors were phrenologists.

" Didn't I see them feeling his head, an' Mr. Ringwood set-
tin' still, lettin' 'em ?"

This was convincing enough to set Nurse Barnes and myself
to feeling our own bumps for the next half-hour. As neither of
us knew anything about phrenology we derived no benefit from
this absurd proceeding, except the benefit always derived from a
hearty laugh. About two weeks after Nurse Barnes' supposed
discovery I went to the library for a book. In my frequent
visits to the library I would always find my father there, read-
ing or writing. He never looked up from his occupation, and I
would softly get what I needed from the shelves, afraid of dis-
turbing him. On this day he was neither reading nor writing,
but sat bent forward in his chair, his head resting in his hands.
Quietly as I passed over the strips of green carpet on the oaken
floor, he heard me. Looking up, he said sharply : " Who's
there?"

I was too startled to think of the strangeness of his question,
he looking me full in the face.

" Paul, father," I said. " I've come to get a book ; shall I go
away ?"

Getting up from his chair without answering me, he put out
his hands as one does who walks in the dark, and went slowly to
a shelf of books. He passed his hands over their backs, took one
from its place, fluttered its leaves, and, in attempting to put it
back, let it fall to the floor. Giving vent to a short laugh, he
muttered something to himself about being awkward, but did
not again attempt to put the book in its place. I stood staring
stupidly at him, afraid of I knew not what; afraid to remain in
the room, still more afraid to go away.

After a little he asked : " Are you there, Paul ?"

Still I did not see into the meaning of his putting such ques-
tions to me, and I answered, surprisedly : " Yes, papa ; do you
want me to go away ?" For answer he said : " Come here." I
went over to where he stood and timidly touched his hand. He
hastily withdrew his from mine, a moment after laying it kindly
on my shoulder.

" Are you fond of reading ?" he asked.

Was it possible that my father did not know how my time
was spent ? of my frequent visits to the book-room ? I had
thought he knew of my love for books, and that, although he had
never said so, he was pleased with me for it. So full of self-love

VOL. XLVIII. &

82 A QUARTET OF CHRISTIAN JOY, [Oct.,

was I that there was a lump in my throat as I answered: " Yes,
papa, 1 like to read." Not seeming to notice what I had said,
he commanded'gently : " Bring my chair here."

I rolled his big chair to where he stood, and again putting
out his hands as those do who are in the dark, he felt for it, and
sat down.

As I stood by him, timidly resting a hand on the arm of his
chair, sweetly and quietly, as I had often heard him speak to
mother and to Bert but never before to me, he said : " Soldier, I
am blind."

HAROLD DIJON.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

A QUARTET OF CHRISTIAN JOY, WITH A SOLO ON
TASTE, BY THE ORGANIST.

THE SOPRANO.

LA me ! I am all of a flutter

As I think of that duo to-day

Which I sang with Miss Flatus

In the Et Incarnatus

I wish she would just keep away ;

You know how she flats ; and it sounded like cats

At a serenade up on the gutter.

THE ALTO.

I pity that blonde- whiskered German

Who thinks he sings tenor " to kill."

He always will blunder

In trios no wonder!

Looking sideways at little Miss Trill,

Who draws the green curtain to hide all the flirtin'

She carries on during the sermon.

THE TENOR.

There's that horrid old Signor Bassedo,
Whose singing I never could bear ;
At the vitam venturi
I got in such a fury

1 888.] WITH A SOLO ON TASTE, BY THE ORGANIST. 83

To see him reach over my chair,
And eat all my candy that I had kept handy
To ease my throat after the Credo.

THE BASS.

Just fancy my mortification !

To give my Qui tollis to Fedge,

Who sings like a cow,

And only knows how

To set all one's teeth on an edge.

If I'm to bear that I'll just take up my hat.

After all, it's a poor " situation."

THE ORGANIST.

I'm sick of this church-organ playing,
And singers like these I'll not stand.
If 'twere not for the sal'ry they're paying
I'd go and beat drum for a band.

And I'm sick of the spittoons and candy,
The peanuts, and papers, and such ;
The men smelling strongly of brandy,
And the ladies of perfume too much.

This quarrelsome quartet surpasses

The worst that e'er sang in a choir ;

And we've got such a poor set of " Masses,"

Only fit to be put in the fire.

And it's just where I'd put them to-morrow ;
But his rev'rence has " taste," and I can't.
For " of music." he says, " one must borrow
The joy that is lacking in chant."

Truth, you know, all depends upon taste,

And Goodness and Beauty likewise.

Believe what you please,

And be quite at your ease,

Though 'tis horrid or naughty if nice.

Sing to make them " feel good," not to be understood:

Why sell diamonds when one prefers paste ?

ALFRED YOUNG.

84 SOME MEXICAN HACIENDAS. [Oct.,

SOME MEXICAN HACIENDAS.

THE ideal system of farming is that of small freeholds, where
the farmer possesses sufficient land to employ the powers of him-
self and his numerous family, who, far from being a burden to him,
are an essential factor in his operations if prosperity is to be at-
tained. When, as in France, you see a blue-bloused peasant at-
tempting to work his little holding in all about as large as a
fair- sized building-lot you see a thrall engaged in a hopeless
struggle, a Sisyphus created by the Code Napoleon, a nominal
landowner but actual serf of the banker or money-lender ; the
man's life is infinitely harder and his fare coarser and more
scanty than that of the hired laborer, and the yield of his land
only a third of what is attained with capital and modern appli-
ances. On the other hand, what more dreary than the contem-
plation of the huge wheat farms of thirty or forty thousand acres
in Dakota and California wheat-mines, they may be more fitly
styled no children's prattle, no snug homestead, no warm fire-
side and abundant though simple hospitality ; a mere monotonous
wilderness of grain, a bald, prison-like barrack for the " hands "
not a home, this ; half the workingmen being discharged on the
arrival of the slack season; a pecuniary success, perhaps, for the
absentee owner: and that is all.

The Mexican agricultural system, however, seems to possess
the evils of both these methods and the advantages of neither.
The land is held in immense tracts (instance a case in the neigh-
borhood of the writer where the traveller has to ride for eighty
miles through a single property), but from the withdrawal of
wealth with the Spaniards, from devastating wars and gambling
losses, the great majority of landowners are without the means
of developing the resources of their estates ; so that, for all prac-
tical good resulting from large portions of them, they might as
well be in the moon. In Spanish days ample means to work
these principalities were derived from the silver mines, and the
produce of the lands in turn supported the miners; the two in-
dustries were interdependent ; but peonage is the sole remnant of
that golden age. Years ago, when inspecting a Mexican haci-
enda, amongst the assets we came on three thousand dollars debt.
"Who owe these moneys?" "Oh! the work-people," replied
the owner. " And what chance is there of collecting these
debts?" we rejoined. "You don't want to collect them," said

1 888.] SOME MEXICAN HACIENDAS. 85

our friend ; " leave things as they are ; the law compels the
debtor to remain with his employer till his liability is discharged,
which it never is ; by this means you insure reliable labor."
Where you find a native landowner in Mexico you often find an
overburdened wretch loaded with debt and ready to sell his
birthright to any brother who will offer him a mess of pottage
in exchange.

We lately made an interesting excursion to a fine hacienda in
Northern Mexico. At an early hour we repaired to the ap-
pointed rendezvous, a servant carrying blankets, pillows, and a
valise containing changes of clothing, knives and forks, and vari-
ous comestibles. The first hour's delay passed pleasantly enough
in discussing matters of local interest, and in anticipations of the
journey ; after that we speculated on the cause of our entertain-
er's delay. Two hours elapsed ; we began to look out for his car-
riage, and finally, losing all patience, we returned to our home
loading Mexican properties and proprietors with the reverse of
blessings. As dinner was preparing, arrived an emissary with a
rambling story about horses that wouldn't go and a carriage in
ruinous condition, replaced by a fine team of mules and a first-
rate ambulance, and urging us to hurry off without delay ; this
request, however, met with aflat refusal, hunger and annoyance
not tending to produce amiability. But the midday meal dis-
cussed with a bottle of Bordeaux and a havannah restored confi-
dence. We repaired to our host's town-house. Here the main
party was assembled, but our Jehu had departed to water his
mules; a fresh delay this, and on his return we found by his un-
certain gait and convivial aspect that this worthy's potations had
been different in character from those of his beasts. And now the
question was, how to stow such a varied assortment of bedding,
baggage, and provisions ; some on the box-seat to the driver's
discomfort and chagrin, more inside jamming the passengers to-
gether, and a miscellaneous array of goods corded on behind ;
the old Bostonian's night-cap, which insisted on protruding from
his pillowcase, exciting the derision of a knot of youthful " greas-
ers." At length, with a liberal accompaniment of yelling, halloo-
ing, and whipcracking, we were off, pounding and bumping over
the cobble-paved streets, the inside passengers being cannoned
against each other in most aggravating sort, the fat baker and
his vagrant portmanteau being especially an object of terror to
his neighbors ; the sole stable object present being a swarthy
daughter of the soil, who, reclining easily in her seat and emit-
ting cigarette smoke from her nostrils, smiled benignantly on the

86 SOME MEXICAN HACIENDAS. [Oct.,

confusion and hubbub. In front, around, and behind us rode a
guard of honor, composed of sons, cousins, brothers-in-law, and
other attach6s of the proprietors, caballeros all in bravery of
sabre, carbine, and pistol, and formidable for attack or defence :
in reality lazy, unwasheri Bardolphs and ancient Pistols prefer-
ring to hang on to their relative's coat-tails to doing a stroke of
work for themselves. The pitching and heaving of our laboring
vehicle started the case of apples which we had provided to last
us a week,,and the juicy fruit bounced about ricochetting against
the nasal organ of the luckless New-Eaglander and endangering
his spectacles, he the while wishing himself safely back in the
Hub of the Universe. So we distributed the luscious missiles
amongst the attendant horsemen, who fell on them with the vo-
racity of wolves.

Onwards we urged our wild career, the driver shouting,
swearing, and gesticulating with arms and legs after the manner
of his kind. Now a trace would break, now a strap unbuckle,
and at every such contretemps the lithe, active youth who sat
by the driver with a second whip would bound over the wheel,
run by the team, and speedily adjust the disarranged harness.
But in the open country we progressed more smoothly, passed a
few ranches, rattled through a country town, and so onwards
again. Across our path lay prostrate telegraph wires, and in-
quiry elicited that they had been erected by a former progres-
sive State governor, who but half-completed the work ; his suc-
sessor, caring more for champagne than telegraphy, discontin-
ued the undertaking ; so there stand or lie the abandoned posts
and wires as Providence may dictate, a monument of half-hearted
measures and dissipated public funds. About dusk we reached
a collection of adobe hovels at the foot of the mountains. Ere
this we should have been at our destination, but we were in
Mexico, where delays are the rule ; so there was nothing for it
but to remain where we were and wait for morning. The inte-
rior of the rest-house had variety enough : tutelary divinities
decorated the walls, and sleeping infants were strewn on the
floor, where the denizens of the fowl-yard disputed the posses-
sion of stray bones and other relics of ancient repasts. It was
picturesque in the gloaming to watch our retainers preparing
the evening meal at a fire in the road. Strips of goat, impaled on
iron stakes stuck in the ground, hissed and broiled to perfection,
and proved most appetizing when we subsequently tore them to
pieces, cannibal fashion, with teeth and fingers, seated at a din-
ing-table as large as a writing-desk. Throughout the trip our

1 888.] SOME MEXICAN HACIENDAS. 87

knives and torks, with other superfluities of civilization, reposed
within our cases. We should have given dire offence by produc-
ing them, so we imitated our entertainers' manners with indiffer-
ent success, taking practical lessons in the customs of the cave-
dwellers and others of our remote ancestors.

With previous experience of the ways and usages of the Mexi-
can flea, an insect as diligent as the ant, as large as the house-fly,
and as virulent as the wasp, the writer resolved to pass the night
in the ambulance ensconced in his own blankets ; but all in vain.
The hospitable natives forced on him a choice assortment of teem-
ing goat-skins, which it was impossible with a good grace to re-
fuse ; and as a consequence repose was banished. So wore away
the weary hours, enlivened by the crowing of roosters perched
overhead, the grunting of hogs beneath the carriage, and the yelp-
ings and bayings of the colony of curs without which no Mexi-
can hamlet is complete. A cup of chocolate (and you must come
to Mexico to learn what chocolate is) and a bite of bread, and we
started betimes with the usual accompaniments of shouts, bark-
ings, and cracking of whips. And now began the exciting part of
the journey, the ascent of the mountains by a steep, zigzag path
cut in the hill-side. This was well enough, and a tine prospect we
gained, from the summit, of the country traversed on the previ-
ous day ; but when we began to descend again the case became
different. Our cochero, who had continued his potations, made
various creditable attempts at driving us over the edge to
shorten the journey, but he was eventually dethroned and placed
on one of the horses; and now that no neck but his own was in
jeopardy general satisfaction prevailed and confidence was re-
stored.

Here we came on the river (save the mark !), a large, broad
sinuosity of boulder and pebble, along one side of which trickled
" mucho agua " an'glict, a rivulet which those possessed of power-
ful eyesight were able to make out unaided by their binoculars,
about enough water for a frugal housewife to boil her beans and
cabbage in. Well, we can't have everything ; the dry, bracing
climate of Mexico and the moisture and verdure of Old Eng-
land together. Not being farmers, we prefer things as they are ;
besides, water, being scarce, has a corresponding value and is
worth more than the land it fertilizes, and farm produce has
a high value ; it's as long as it's broad.

A friend once remarked that if Mexico had more water
and different inhabitants it would be a delightful country,
which elicited the rejoinder that the same remark would apply

88 SOME MEXICAN HACIENDAS. [Oct.,

to Tartarus, a reply more epigrammatic than just. For this
country grows upon one, and Humboldt is not the only for-
eigner who has felt its charm. Still it is a dry country, as the
writer once proved, riding a day and a half between two rivers ;
and his patient steed, unprovided with even a flask of refresh-
ment, must have been yet more strongly of that opinion. Why
he did not burst himself by the amount he finally gulped down,
or why, like Munchausen's horse, he did not empty the stream by
his prolonged efforts, has always remained to me a mystery.

So for hours we wound our way through mountain wilds and
desolations, seeing no sign of human habitation and little animal
life of any sort or kind. But it must not be hence inferred that
these lands are useless ; the Yankee farmer, his view limited to
hogs and corn, might have no use for them ; but large flocks of
goats flourish and increase in districts like these, finding in bush
and thorny shrub their favorite sustenance. Their skins consti-
tute their chief value, goat's flesh being sold in the towns for
what it will fetch ; a nickle for a leg is certainly not excessive;
animal diet is cheaper than any other, and a great benefit this
must be to the poorer folk. But the frequent spectacle of half-
a-dozen kids lashed together by the forefeet and balancing each
other on the back of an ass, their bodies and hind legs dangling
helplessly in space, they the while performing a piteous chorus, is
not one that Mr. Bergh's Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals would be likely to approve; and if the goatherds were
now and then suspended by their thumbs from a rafter for a few
hours at a stretch it might perchance give them a practical les-
son in humanity.

In these mountain wastes is found an inexhaustible quantity
of lechuguilla, a small plant of the aloe family, the strong fibre
of which, called ixtle, is one of the staple Mexican products
tougher than hemp, and of great value for ropemaking and the
manufacture of mats and brushes. The laborer engaged in pro-
curing this fibre betakes himself to the wilderness, stretches his
blanket as a shelter on a bush or booth of rods, and, seating him-
self beneath it, with a common knife draws the white, strong
strings from the lechuguilla leaves with which he has surrounded
himself. More work can be done, however, by the aid of an in-
expensive and portable machine now made in the United States ;
but an arroba (25 Ibs ) is in any case a good day's work.

Before noon we reached the hacienda, consisting of a large
square of adobe buildings, with corrals, barns, stores, out-houses,
and tanks for drinking-water. It was an extensive place, though

1 888.] SOME MEXICAN HACIENDAS. 89

decaying ; but a little money spent in plaster, whitewash, and
other needed repairs would do wonders. On entering' the own-
er's house the effect was that which one experiences in chancing
on some deserted military post in the Territories; but in this
case the building was tenanted, absence of adornment and fur-
niture to the contrary notwithstanding. Some of the smaller
dwellings were more homelike, and in one of these we took our
meals, our female companion of the journey, one of the daugh-
ters of the house, supplying- our needs with ready grace,, her
cigarette in her mouth, and her beaming smile suffusing- her
features. Her brother's baby swung chandelier-like from the
ceiling in its cradle, a converted oil-can case ; neighbors lounged
in and out by the open door to see what it was all about, and we
thought that to sit on the corner of the bed, or on a candle-box,
dining on tortillas and frijoles hot and hot from the kitchen, was
an al fresco feast by no means to be despised. One rough-look-
ing old gentleman, weatherbeaten as his habiliments, asked us
into his house, and with honest pride showed us a photograph
of his son, a professional man and master of six languages. And
then a vast individual, stouter than the head-man of a village in
Hindoostan, introduced himself to us, and did the honors of his
home ; like a wise man, he let others do the working he having
several dozen hands employed in collecting ixtle giving him
leisure to retain his two hundred and forty pounds of avoirdupois,
and means enough to surround himself with various conveni-
ences and mementos of civilization which one was astonished to
see in parts so remote.

The one thing in thorough repair on the property was the
chapel, built in 1805, and but lately restored in taste which we
have not the heart to criticize. The local decorators acted up
to their lights, and the best of us can do no more. " Still wedded
to their old habits," remarked one of the party, " no progress
here." To us it seemed inexpressibly touching that amidst all
this poverty and decay means should yet be found to rightly
order the house in which a Bread of higher worth than that
grown in neighboring fields is dispensed to the simple popula-
tion, and we wondered whether our mammoth wheat-farms in
the Western States, already alluded to, have also their temples
of the Most High.

"Man, as a moral and intelligent being, cannot be made happy merely
by explosions of merriment, or by a cheerfulness derived only from
stacks of corn or vats full of new wine. . . . Amidst all her joyful increase
Nature breathes a sadness which directs us beyond the earth for a remedy.

go SOME MEXICAN HACIENDAS. [Oct.,

Like many a marble statue of Mary, ever virgin, nature says, Look above
me to my Maker. And by the sadness which underlies her smile she
directs us away from this shadow of death to worlds where 'their sun shall
no more go down, nor their moon withdraw her shining.' "

A night's rest at the hacienda was a choice of evils. Those
possessed of a lofty indifference to fleas arranged their couches
on the earthen floor, but others, more squeamish, in the absence
of bedsteads, sought repose stretched on narrow benches, and
eclipsed the feats of the mighty Blondin, who exhibited his dex-
terity in balancing his body only during waking hours. The
entire absence of the lavatory and its adjuncts proved embarrass-
ing for some days, till the writer, panting for relief from his
earthy envelope, surreptitiously abstracted some soap from his
travelling-bag, and, adjourning to the horse-pond, cleansed his
hands forthwith, to the admiration and wonderment of the un-
washen natives.

Rides about the property were most interesting. Marvellous
engineering skill has been displayed in the construction of the
endless succession of irrigation ditches and their ramifications.
The amount of land cultivated and capable of culture is bewil-
dering, and the yield enormous, the towering corn-stalks being
sometimes weighted with two or three cobs covered with, say,
a thousand grains each. And when this is cut a dense carpet
of grass of deepest emerald remains, on which and the corn-
stalks the oxen speedily fatten and attain to the true form of
bovine grace; and when we remember that two good crops,
wheat and corn, are yearly taken from the same ground, and
that without the use of fertilizers, it may be seen that the soil
cannot readily be exhausted. The implements employed are of
the crudest description, the single-handled wooden plough
merely scratching the ground. Owners without means to pay
wages often farm on the share system, but this, too, implies capi-
tal ; for the laborers being destitute of means, the landlord must
provide tools, seed, and beasts. How should these places be
treated? Owned by princes and worked by poorly-paid labor?
acquired by companies and sold or let in moderate portions to
yeomen farmers ? or how ? Some little time ago, we believe, a
Socialistic colony was established on the Mexican Pacific coast.
There is certainly more sense in this than in speechifying against
the existing order in large centres of population, and trying to
render the artisan dissatisfied with his lot. It will be interesting
to watch the outcome of the experiment mentioned. In an able
paper recently read it is pointed out that

1 888.] SOME MEXICAN HACIENDAS. 91

" the sentiment and aspiration of Socialism are distinctively Christian
To be pained by the discrepancies of conditions round us ; to own the
enormous chasm yawning- between Lazarus and Dives ; to hold the broth-
erhood and essential equality of all the children of our Father if this is the
spirit of Socialism, so it is also the spirit of Christianity. . . . Every Chris-
tian is a bit of a Socialist, and every Socialist is a bit of a Christian. Social-
ism only exists in Christian countries."

But granting- all this, our scheme cannot be worked out with-
out a head, a presiding spirit of considerable administrative pow-
er, and he must be seconded by able lieutenants. Though the
district is healthy, we must have our physicians, and it is to be
hoped the chapel will not be converted into a materialistic lec-
ture-hall. Can Socialism fill these conditions ? We quote again
from the paper just referred to :

" No doubt the city of God itself is a place where men hunger no more,
neither thirst any more. But supposing this attained in glorified work-
houses and model lodging-houses, what then? As I lay down Socialistic
bobks I sometimes seem to see men, each like the other, ticketed and la-
belled, and hear the boast: 'There are none but workmen here.' Give
humanity any end but dying of dulness ; the slow holocaust of humdrum, the
stertorous martyrdom of stupidity. . . . Socialism takes no account of the
spiritual nature, says nothing of sorrow or sin, of penitence or pardon. In
the perfectly drained rows of model lodging-houses, where it proposes to
feed the millions of the future, it makes no provision against these inher-
ent evils of our earthly condition. It may squeeze all things flat; it can-
not make all things new."

One thing is certain, these vast fertile tracts of Mexico are not
for ever going to lie fallow or partially developed ; as in ages
long ago so now the movement of population is Westward, and
the Rio Grande is fordable. The Mexican government is aware
of the fact that an increased industrious population means in-
creased production, increased revenue, and increased national
prosperity. It will encourage and assist any reasonable project
of the character in question. And it does seem passing strange
that men should make their homes in plains which during the
greater portion of the year are frozen wastes and chilly solitudes,
when the garden of the Lord lies before them in Mexico, spark-
ling in perpetual sunshine. But the matter must be taken in
hand by a capitalist, a syndicate, or a company, and the large
estates let, leased, or sold in manageable portions to farmers.
The only chances the poor white man now has in the country
are on the railroads, and in the mines and business houses of
foreigners.

One hears various stories of the treatment of strangers by

92 SOME MEXICAN HACIENDAS. [Oct.,

Mexican employers that are not encouraging. Thus, a proprietor
engaged an American engineer to manage his saw-mill. Now,
when a thing is done by a competent hand it appears simplicity
itself. So the cunning Mexican carefully observed his work-
man's movements, and then, estimating that thirty dollars a
month in wages would be more economical than a hundred,
forthwith replaced the trained mechanic by a native, with this
result: on the first day of the new regime the machinery was
broken ; no one competent to repair it could be found, and the
business came to a full stop. Plenty of similar instances of
short-sighted acuteness might be cited. It is better to employ
than to be employed by the Mexican. One poor fellow we
knew, an amiable person of some literary power, grinding in
the prison-house for the Philistines: in other words, teaching
English in the public schools for thirty-five dollars a month if
he could get it.

When you find a prosperous hacienda it often happens that it
is the property of a native lady who has married a foreigner ; the
former is the capitalist, but the latter supplies the brain-power
and activity without which capital is of little avail. We
lately visited a property of this description in the neighborhood
of a large town, and a charming place it was. There is the
busy hum of the cotton factory, employing seventy or eighty
hands and the Mexicans are said to be teachable and to make
very good mill operatives hard by is the flour-mill; then there
is the distillery, where mescal is made from the maguey, of which
there is a considerable plantation adjacent. And something else
is thought of but mere money-making: there are several gardens
with broad gravel walks, flowers and fruit trees, fountains and
fish-ponds stocked with golden carp. The avenue of noble trees
by which the property is approached makes the visitor imagine
that he is entering a baronial demesne in Europe, and a lovely
little park of dark evergreens stands in the centre of the place
facing the owner's residence; the houses of the work-people being
ranged in a broad street on either side, clean, substantial, and
orderly. The foreman is a Frenchman, and the proprietor's son,
a handsome, bright young fellow, combining in his person the
united graces and virtues of Gaul and Iberia, gives a general
supervision to the whole, and occasionally betakes him to the
neighboring mountains for a few days with rifle and hound,
bearing back with him bears or deer as tokens of his prowess.
These heights are heavily timbered with oak, pine, and cedar,
and the woodmen who cut and remove the fuel on the backs of

1 888.] SOME MEXICAN HACIENDAS. 93

asses pay a toll to the owner for the privilege. Lime is also
prepared for building purposes; goats and cattle browse on the
rich herbage; and a little cultivation is undertaken. Looking on
the broad expanse of rich, black soil, with a sufficiency of water
to give it a high productiveness, we mentally construct an idyllic
picture. Wild grasses have given place to crops of grain, the
substantial farmer has replaced the sandal-shod goat-herd, and
where the howl of the coyote was heard the prattle of children's
voices enlivens the smiling homestead.

C. E. HODSON.

POSTSCRIPT.

In the foregoing paper, intended as it is for general readers,
we have studiously avoided the wearisome statistics of the emi-
gration agent. But for the benefit of any would-be Mexican emi-
grant who may chance to see it we here add a few facts.

The Mexican government is acting in an enlightened spirit,
and, as its own population does not increase and is moreover
poor, welcomes bond fide, industrious emigrants whencesoever
they may come, and offers them all assistance and protection.
It is found more economical for this work to be left to private
companies than for the government to undertake it. In some
cases, in consideration of surveying unimproved lands, the com-
pany receives from government a portion of it, say a third. A
great deal of attention is now attracted to colonization in the
territory of Lower California. Lorenzo Castro, in his Republic
of Mexico, gives this district twenty-two thousand inhabitants and
eight thousand square leagues. He describes it as

" a chain of mountains bathed by the sea. . . . The country is broken,
its plains barren, and the landscape disagreeable and unpleasant to the eye.
The climate is temperate in its northern portion and extremely warm in
the south. . . . Natural productions are but few, for the want of streams,
the scarcity of rains, and the barrenness of the soil."

For our own part we would rather buy a hacienda with
buildings, irrigation ditches, and cultivated land than undertake
the wearisome task of reducing a desert ; and if a property were
purchased with judgment, this course might prove the more
profitable one. Large haciendas may be had at half-a-dollar an
acre or less. Mexican husbandry is unscientific ; the plough is a
simple wooden affair with an iron point to scratch the soil, and is
drawn by a yoke of oxen. Possibly, Mexican methods are best

94 SOME MEXICAN HACIENDAS. [Oct.,

for Mexico. Irrigation ditches are skilfully constructed, and no
people understand the whole matter better than these; but per-
haps they are too generous with the water. Wheat is sown in
October and reaped in the spring, the fields being irrigated
monthly. After this corn and pumpkins are planted, which are
irrigated three times and gathered about September. Prices
vary very much, but two dollars and a half a bushel for wheat and
seventy-five cents for corn is a good average at present. Wheat-
straw, cured in the milk, is used instead of hay, and costs some-
times fourteen dollars a ton; corn-stalks are also chopped up
and fed to work animals.

No doubt the cultivation of cotton would pay very well, as
there are a number of mills to supply. The best cotton comes
from the Laguna district, with Villa Lerdo, at the junction of the
Mexican Central and the Mexican National Railroads, as its dis-
tributing centre; much cotton is imported from the United
States. No doubt fodder crops alfalfa, Johnson grass, timothy,
millet, luzerne, and so on would pay well on lands with con-
venient railroad facilities. As these are being increased prices
are being equalized, the old mode of transportation by lumbering
ox-cart or on the backs of asses being tedious and costly. Some
persons assert that the railroads bring rain with them ; in Coa-
huila there certainly appears to be enough for anybody. This
State will probably attract emigrants to it, being so near the
American frontier, having plenty of water, good soil, railway
facilities, and a choice of climates. It is hard to imagine where
so perfect a climate may be found as that about the capital of
this State ; certainly in no part of the United States with which
we are acquainted, and we have lived in most sections. There is
a winter, though neither long nor severe, and one does not per-
spire in the summer, except, of course, from exercise; it is a
country formed for the white man to work in. Fruits and vege-
tables of the temperate zone flourish and it is a garden of roses.
At Parras there are many vineyards, and it is famous for its
wines and brandies ; this industry is peculiarly adapted to this
district. The art of making good butter and cheese is unknown,
and one pays seventy-five cents per pound for Goshen butter or
the sour, unsavoury produce of the country ; a well-conducted
dairy would meet a want.

The simplest and most promising industry of the country is
the produce of ixtle already referred to. The hands who gather
it are paid about half-a-dollar for an arroba, which sells on the
spot at double the money, and at Tampico for half as much

1 888.] CHURCH Music: ITS ORIGIN AND DIFPERENT FORMS. 95

again. The trade in hides and goat-skins is considerable, and
when systematic farming and stall-feeding is adopted, a good
class of beef will be produced, to be shipped by rail to the capi-
tal of the Republic, and other large centres of population.
Those wishing for information on Mexican land laws, titles, etc.,
may consult Castro's book already referred to, and he himself
having had some forty years' experience in the subject, must be a
good authority on Mexican titles. The same remarks apply to
the postmaster of San Antonio, Texas (where, too, Mr. Castro
resides), but his official duties, added to the care of some eight
millions of money which, to the gratification of himself and his
friends, has lately fallen to his lot, may disincline him to other
business. On titles to properties bankers at the leading cities
might be properly consulted, and Mr. Seixas, an American gen-
tleman long resident in Mexico, and now at Saltillo, has many
valuable properties placed in his hands for sale.

C. E. H.

CHURCH MUSIC: ITS ORIGIN AND DIFFERENT

FORMS.

ECCLESIASTICAL chant forms an important part of the Liturgy
of the church, and greatly promotes devotion and piety if com-
posed and executed according to the spirit of religion.

"The church," says St. Basil, "in order to excite in our souls tender
sentiments of piety, combines with her teaching an agreeable melody,
that, though unable to understand the words pronounced, our hearts may-
be lured to a willing captivity in the soft bondage of its delicious sweet-
ness."

St. Augustine thus recalls the memories of what he had heard
in the church of Milan :

"The hymns and songs, O my God ! and the sweet chant of thy church
stirred and penetrated my being. These voices streamed upon my ears
and caused truth to flow into my heart ; from its springs the emotions
welled up and lastly tears poured forth, and I rejoiced in them."

Nothing, however, is known of the music which the early
Christians sang in their churches, and whatever may be ad-
vanced as to the origin of early church music rests on specula-
tion rather than on fact. Not one piece of music, either of the

g6 CHURCH Music: IT'S ORIGIN AND DIFFERENT FORMS. [Oct.,

Hebrews before Christ or of the Christians before the era of
St. Gregory the Great, is now in existence. Even the Gregorian
chant, which was sung from the day of the great saint until the
day of Guido of Arezzo, four hundred years later, though some
fragments exist, is quite unintelligible. The signs which ex-
pressed the value of the notes were learned in the musical
schools by means of tradition, and when Guido changed the
method of teaching they were no longer used, and their mean-
ing became lost.

The Greeks attained to a higher degree of civilization than
the Egyptians, yet the latter were more advanced in music.
The old Greek instruments, found in ruins and preserved in
museums, are not furnished with a neck, and each string is capa-
ble of producing but one tone ; whilst some Egyptian instruments
have been found furnished with a neck and dividing marks, so
that by the pressure of the fingers, shortening or lengthening the
strings on the neck, a deeper or higher tone could be produced.
The Hebrews were for four hundred years in captivity in Egypt,
and it is by no means unreasonable to suppose that there they
became acquainted with this more advanced music, and that in
the Promised Land they used the same general style of music,
the same or similar musical instruments. " Praise him with
sound of trumpet, praise him with psaltery and harp. Praise
him with timbrel, praise him with strings and organs. Praise
him on high-sounding cymbals " (Psalm cl. 3-5). Their music,
if it corresponded to the poetry of their psalms, hymns, and can-
ticles, must have been beautiful. The Lord sang a canticle after
the Last Supper, "and when they had said a hymn, they went
forth to the Mount of Olives " (Mark xiv. 26). Said, in this
place, means sung, " for a hymn is sung," says St. Augustine,
commenting on this passage. Some conclude from old Hebrew
rituals that this was the hymn which the Hebrews sang in
thanksgiving after the eating of the Paschal Lamb, which com-
menced with Psalm cxii., In exitu Israel de sEgypto, and finished
with Psalm cxviii., Beati immaculati in via.

The early Christians sang in their churches, St. Paul admon-
ishing, Eph. v. 19: "Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns
and spiritual canticles, singing and making melody in your
hearts to the Lord." The first converts to Christianity came
from among the Jews, many Christian rites and ceremonies
found their origin in the Jewish rites and ceremonies, and may
we not conclude that the music also of the early church was
borrowed from the synagogue ? But who can tell its nature, its

1 888.] CHURCH Music: ITS ORIGIN AND DIFFERENT FORMS. 97

melody and composition? As the church spread among differ-
ent nationalities, her rites were modified by the temper, habits,
and costumes of these different peoples, and her music also was
modified and altered according to the pre-existing national musi-
cal taste. There was then no Congregation of Rites to prescribe
universal and exact ceremonies and vestments and chant for the
universal church, and each nation, whilst keeping to the unity of
faith, suited itself to its own predilection and national tradition.
The various Eastern rites, the Slavonian, Bulgarian, Ambrosian,
Spanish, Lyonnese, the Sarum rite in England, etc., bear testi-
mony to this diversity. As with the ceremonies of each national
church, so also with its chants and canticles. The Jews sang
some psalms alternately, in two choirs ; not so the faithful in the
Western Church until the time of St. Ambrose (who died 397),
who was the first, at Milan, to establish this custom, according
to what he had already heard in the Oriental churches, and it was
from Milan that antiphonal singing spread to all the churches in
the West. He is said to have first introduced in the West the
custom of singing hymns, and most of the hymns which occur in
the daily or ferial office are ascribed to St. Ambrose. Pruden-
tius and Hilary, contemporaries of. Ambrose, composed also
many of the hymns of the Roman Breviary. The Gloria in the
days of St. Gregory was recited by the bishops on Sundays and
feast days, and by the priests only on Easter, and the Credo was
not said at all in the Roman Church : as Mabillon remarks : " It
needed not to make a profession of faith, because it had never
been affected by any heresy."

To understand the gradual development of music we should
first call attention to the great difficulty with which pupils had in
early times to contend in order to learn the value and pitch of
each note. The notation of music among the ancients was very
inaccurate and intricate. They knew neither bars, nor clefs, nor
keys. The Greeks used all the letters of the alphabet, each letter
indicating a certain note, and when notes went above or below
them, in height or depth, the same alphabet was used, but invert-
ed or contorted. Pope Gregory (who died 604), a great lover of
music, improved on the Greek method by using only seven let-
ters, #, b, c, d, e,f,g; the first seven were made by capital letters,
the next by ordinary letters, the third seven by doubling the let-
ters, etc., and in the reformation of church music he based him-
self principally upon the Ambrosian chant. John the Deacon,
who lived towards the end of the ninth century, thus writes in
his life of Saint Gregory :

VOL. XLVIII. 7

98 CHURCH Music: ITS ORIGIN AND DIFFERENT FORMS. [Oct.,

" He built two dwellings, one at the Church of St. Peter, the other at the
Lateran patriarchal house, where unto this day are still preserved the couch
on which he reposed when modulating, his strap (flagellum) with which he
threatened the boys, and also the authentic Antiphonary."

From the Roman schools, which existed for over three hundred
years, singers were sent to England, Germany, and France, but
many of the churches, especially in France, fell back to their old
chants, which, if more barbarous, were better suited to the popu-
lar musical taste and comprehension. Abuses crept in, and al-
ready in the life of St. Leo II., who died 683, we read that he
reformed the Gregorian chant and composed several hymns for
the divine office. The middle ages, with their migration of nations,
and great civil disturbances, were not a suitable time for the im-
provement and advance of arts. Guido of Arezzo, in the begin-
ning of the eleventh century, invented the bars and clefs; he
discarded the letters of the alphabet, and substituted the first sylla-
bles of the beginning and middle of the three first lines of the
hymn in honor of St. John the Baptist:

Ux queant laxis REsonare fibris
MIra gestorum FAmuli tuorum,
SOLve polluti LAbii reatum
Sancte Joannes.

He made use of two movable clefs, of G and F, as we now call
them, which, placed on any bar, indicated the beginning of his
notation. This so facilitated the teaching of music that, whereas
before it required three years to acquire the art of solmization,
it now required but as many weeks.

As a matter of interest to musicians we here add a few re-
marks. The ancient nations had a predilection for the sombre
and grand modulation of music, and commenced the scale with
the minor key of A. Guido changed it to the major UT or C.
S-t. Gregory adopted seven notes, a, b, c, d, e, f, g, the same as
now commonly used ; Guido used only six, from UT (c) to LA (a).
This was undoubtedly a retrogressive movement, and later on the
seventh was again added and called SI. T'he sign fc, mol or flat,
which lowers the note a half-tone, was known already at the time
of Guido, and was used to soften the fourth when ascending, to
be replaced by the sign fc, natural, when descending the scale ;
but the sign , dur or sharp, which elevates a note half a tone,
was invented about two hundred and fifty years after Guide's
death. In the old Gregorian system sharps are unknown and the
newer editions have also discarded them. Counterpoint and

1 888.] CHURCH Music: ITS ORIGIN AND DIFFERENT FORMS. 99

harmony were invented after the great disturbances of the middle
ages, when music, cut loose of its narrow swaddling clothes, be-
gan to be cultivated in earnest and made rapid strides in ad-
vance.

Gregorian chant thus belongs to the infant days of musical art ;
we admire it for its simplicity and a certain solemnity, which the
flavor of antiquity has imparted to it. Some of its compositions,
especially the Requiem Mass and some of the hymns, many of
which date from a far later period than St. Gregory the thir-
teenth and fourteenth century are truly grand, impressive, and
majestic ; but the greatest portion of the Gregorian chant lacks
harmony and melody. Owing to the innumerable variations in
the older manuscript copies, even the best experts find it impos-
sible to tell which manuscripts come nearest to the early Gre-
gorian chant.

Gregorian chant was sung in cloister and monastery, but it
was not much relished by the people in the parochial churches,
particularly in those which had but few clergy ; * and the music
substituted to please the people soon degenerated into songs,
worldly, light, and frivolous, which evoked the bulls of popes and
the decrees of councils to check this crying abuse.

It is said that the Council of Trent intended to pass some
severe canons against the music then in vogue, but just at that
time Palestrina composed his church music, which, though en-
tirely unlike the Gregorian, was received with such favor as to
prevent a strict legislation on the part of the council. But, not-
withstanding these endeavors, the Gregorian was not successful
in keeping its ground to the exclusion of other music. At the
present day very few churches confine themselves to this chant
alone. Nor is it intended by the church that it should be so.
All the basilicas in Rome have their own figured music, of a
rather florid style, not printed but in manuscript, for fear they
might lose the exclusive ownership.

In 1882 there were in Rome but three churches, and two of
these collegiate churches, which confined themselves to the Gre-
gorian chant. And why should they ? The rigid architectural
style of earlier ages was superseded by the florid Gothic style of
the thirteenth and fourteenth century, and why should not the
rigid and uncultivated style of early music be developed by

* A law passed in the year 520 prescribed that the principal church of Rome should have
sixty priests, one hundred deacons, ninety subdeacons, one hundred and ten readers, twenty
chanters. Clerics were required to learn music; what a grand and tremendous choir, then, of
three hundred and eighty trained voices ! These, supported by a powerful organ, would un-
doubtedly sattsfy the musical taste of any congregation, and would soon teach them to joim in.

ioo CHURCH Music: ITS ORIGIN AND DIFFERENT FORMS. [Oct.,

man's genius and be made subservient to God's service ? Why
not adopt the grand chords, the harmonious melodies of later
composers wherewith to praise the Lord and to chant of his
glory and power ? If they breathe religion, if they are the out-
pourings of devotion, why not dedicate them to Him who
granted genius to the composers?

Tollatur abusus, maneat usus. This seems to be the guiding
rule of the church in this matter, as we will now see by its de-
crees. The Council of Trent, De Sacrificio Misstz, commands the
ordinaries of dioceses " to banish from the churches that kind of
music which, whether for organ or for chant, contains anything
lascivious or impure." The Second Plenary Council of Balti-
more, No. 361, repeats the same injunction, and in No. 380
recommends the teaching of the rudiments of Gregorian chant
in parochial schools, so that the people may sing at Vespers and
other similar services. Mark, no mention is made of the people
singing at Mass. The Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, held
1884, speaks in the same manner, and specifies in No. 117 that
profane melodies be not used, but only such as are grave, pious,
and truly ecclesiastical. It forbids music that mutilates the
words of the Liturgy or repeats them by too frequent iteration,
or transposes them in such a manner as to change their meaning
either entirely or partially.

The same council refused to entertain a motion made by a
few bishops, to give the council's recommendation to the so-
called Caecilian music. Neither the Council of Trent nor the
Council of Baltimore, approved by Rome, desired to enforce, not
even to recommend, any particular kind of figured music ; they
only specified what kind of music should not be tolerated in the
churches. The Gregorian chant stands in high favor with the
church and is decidedly her property ; it is the only music to
which she has deigned to give her full approval, because it con-
tains nothing that can ever be censured in the least: it is grave,
not lascivious, impure, or profane ; it does not mutilate, trans-
pose, or repeat the words of the Liturgy. Still, in view of the
fact that all Roman basilicas execute their own figured music,
that it is sung in >the solemn Papal celebrations at Rome, that in
principle it is neither condemned nor disapproved by popes or
councils, we may conclude that the ordinaries of dioceses need
not be more Roman than Rome itself. It is their duty to be
vigilant, to banish from choirs all music frivolous, sensuous,
worldly ; music that does violence to the Liturgy of divine ser-
vice ; and should abuse ;run so high that nothing but an heroic

1 888.] PHILIP H. SHERIDAN. 101

and extreme measure could check it, it might then be deemed
the bishop's duty to banish all figured music, and to tolerate
nothing but what the church has approved the Gregorian
chant.

F. JANSSENS.

PHILIP H. SHERIDAN.

FAIR Arlington, mute camp of warriors' tombs,
Thy fame is perfect now ! For in thy breast
Is laid the Nation's Mars. Break not his rest,

Save when the funeral volley hoarsely booms

Across some new-made grave within thy glooms.

God grant him peace ! He loved sweet Peace the best,
E'en when, like scourging whirlwind of the West,

He swept the valleys, arm'd with War's dread dooms.

He warred to strangle War. The horrid game

Of blood begun, he knew it must be played

Unto the bitter end ; and Mercy bade
Him play it fast. So, where his riders came

They rode like Ruin's angels, battle-mad ;

And War made way for Peace, as he had prayed.

CHARLES ALPHONS WINGERTER.

Wheeling, W. Va.

102 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [Oct.,

JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY.

XXXIII.

CORDS OF ADAM.
" I will draw them with the cords of Adam." Osee xi. 4.

THE day, which had been clear as well as cold until several
hours past noon, was fast growing gray and blustery when Zip-
porah let herself out of the front door. The air was heavy,
either with the promise of unshed snow which would not be so
bad a thing to be caught in, thought the girl or, possibly, with
the sharp, disagreeable needles of sleet and hail. But she was in
the mood to be venturesome in any case. She was thoroughly
dissatisfied with herself and with things in general, for reasons
into which she did not care to look too curiously.

Although she was no longer the Zipporah who had stood on
Shirley's corner, innocently quarrelling with her maidenly im-
pulses, and essaying to put them down with the strong hand of
common sense, yet she had not even now given up her fight to
the extent of squarely admitting to herself that she had one on
her hands. The last two months should have done a good deal
towards enlightening her had she been less nervously bent on
blindness. But she was like one who has been half-asleep be-
hind jealously drawn curtains, not anxious to admit the day with
its call to action and decision. To such idlers it happens now
and again to oversleep themselves entirely, and to find, when they
are ready to welcome the light, that thick darkness has once
more settled down upon them.

Some dim notion that a catastrophe of this kind had befallen
her had been besieging the girl's mind for the last fortnight, and
to-day nothing prevented its triumphant entrance but the sheer,
blind courage that will not admit itself beaten even in extremity,
and which sometimes carries the day at last by virtue of its appa-
rently insensate resistance in the face of long odds. There had
been many times when she and Paul Murray had drawn so peril-
ously near each other that the barrier between them, fully de-
fined as to its nature to his apprehension only, had been more
than once in danger of yielding altogether. Both of them had felt
it, but in their different fashions he entirely conscious, she
averting her eyes and flying, as she had done again to-day. Per-

1 888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 103

haps it was only the veil of reserve which nearly hid the girl's
heart from her own view in guarding it so jealously from his, which
had finally allowed her lover to persuade himself that he alone
would be the sufferer from their knowledge of each other, and
that he might absolve himself from any explanation. Possibly
he was afraid to trust himself to make one, since it was only
when he was away from her that he was able to be quite so sure
that she was scathless. At all events, after yielding again and
again to a temptation which on each occasion he assured himself
that he would master in the end, he had at last grown certain
that it was mastering him, and must be dealt with by the strong
hand, and at once, if it were to be dealt with successfully at all.
But as frequent meetings could not well be avoided under the
existing circumstances, it was his manner only that had changed,
and that in ways so undefinable that the girl, while she was quick
to feel the difference, was more than puzzled to account to her-
self for the sense of depression and of ill omen that had begun
to cloud her remembrance of their recent meetings.

She had run away from danger many times, and knew it, but
that was instinctive and inevitable. She was an Atalanta whom
no golden apples would ever cause to stop or turn her face. If
she were caught it would be by a pursuer who legitimately out-
stripped her in the running. More than once the beating of her
heart had warned her that her strength was failing and that the
end was near. What would the end be like? That there was a
scruple in his way she knew, but its strength she underestimat-
ed, measuring it by that of her own feminine pride, whose gauge
she had of late taken more exactly. Would he give way, so that
they might meet on equal terms? Why not? But was she
quite sure that she wished to see him yield ? Would she not, at
least, be willing to make concessions if she could bring him to the
point of bending first? Spite of her criticism of the Dona Blan-
ca, it was in her also to say, " Return to the desert don't give in
for me." They are not the weakest women in whom that senti-
ment is developed the most strongly. The girl was built on
honestly natural lines, and the supernatural lay as yet entirely
beyond her. Perhaps she had reached her first real appreciation
of what it might mean to him this very day.

Something, at all events, had quickened in her. The sense of
failure and disappointment which had dimly troubled her for the
last fortnight had grown more palpable in these days when Paul
Murray had absented himself altogether from the house, for a
reason of which she knew nothing, not having been in the room

104 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE' s FACTORY. [Oct.,

when the doctor advised him to keep himself for the pres-
ent out of John Van Alstyne's sight. Of all possible endings to
her flight, that of the cessation of pursuit had never once oc-
curred to her until now. What was in Paul Murray's heart had
been more than once too evident in his eyes for her to misread
it, and if she averted her own it was only because that was her
nature. Half-denying it to herself, she had yet instinctively
credited him with knowing how things were going with her, at
least as fully as she knew with regard to him. And that he was
a man of honor and of conscience she knew as she knew his eyes
were blue and his hands strong. Two weeks ago nothing could
have made her believe that her little romance could end as she
now perceived that it was ending.

She had said nothing as yet to any one but John Van Alstyne
himself of her determination to remain in the village for the
present, though she had this very morning written the letter
which should notify her parents of her intention and the reason
for it. She had been entirely honest both in her reason and her
statement of it. It was for the old man's sake alone that she had
resolved to stay at her self-appointed post of duty. Yet doubt-
less there had lain at the bottom of her reticence to her pupils,
when she had closed the school on the previous Friday noon,
some unavowed hope that what he would naturally take to mean
her impending departure would restore matters to their old foot-
ing between her and Paul Murray. But as he continued to stay
away, and, even now when he had come, had not put a single
question which suggested that he had given her movements a
passing consideration, the horrible dread that he might suppose she
stayed on his account seized and worried her as one beast worries
another. Even the unavowed hope whose existence she would
have calmly denied to herself a few days earlier now showed itself
unblushingly, and mocked at her until shame drove her from the
ground where charity had entrenched her, and she resolved to
tear up her letter, to take back her promise to John Van Alstyne,
and to go home the very next day. Altogether, she had a " bad
quarter of an hour " of it as she was slowly walking toward the
bridge that blustery Sunday afternoon, the wind, and presently
the hail, cutting her face with what she may have felt to be a
salutary castigation. At all events, she made no effort to shield
herself against it. It was only when the down-pour changed into
a driving, icy rain which threatened both to drench and to freeze
her that she turned back toward the house. She had been absent
perhaps an hour, and as she was going up the steps of the piazza.

1 888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE^ s FACTORY. 105

Paul Murray opened the front door. He had an umbrella in his
hand, and what Zip recognized as her own water-proof hung
across his arm. He had thought of her, then.

"I was just coming to look for you," he said, holding the
door wide open ; " I should have started when the rain began,
but it was impossible for me to leave Mr. Van Alstyne just then.
Are you very wet ?"

" No," said the girl ; " only cold and damp. I was on the
bridge when it began to pour so, and my dress is water-proof."

Paul looked at her critically from head to foot. " You'd bet-
ter go and change it," he advised. " It poured with a vengeance
when it did begin, and you look something more than damp."

He had closed the door, but was standing with his hand upon
the knob. Zipporah turned away without a word and went to-
ward the stairs. His voice arrested her as she set her foot upon
the lower step.

" There is an excellent fire in the library," he suggested ; " I
closed the door as I passed it, thinking you might want to go in
there to warm yourself."

" Thank you," said Zip, who had turned half-round to listen,
" but there is a fire in my own room also."

She began her ascent again, but again his voice followed her ;
he came toward the stairs, laid his hand on the lower banister,
and looked up at her where she stood, a trifle above him.

" School is over," he remarked. The girl nodded.

" You are going back home, I suppose ?" he went on in a
tentative sort of way. Zip inclined her head again.

"This week?"

"To-morrow," said she, swallowing something in her throat
and not looking at him.

" Mr. Van Alstyne will miss his kind nurse sadly, I'm afraid,"
said Paul. " The squire knows that you are going, I suppose?"

" Not yet," she answered, coloring.

" No ? Oughtn't you to have told him ?"

Getting no reply, and seeking her eyes in vain, he began
again :

" I have business in Riverside to-morrow. Perhaps you can
be ready to go up in the noon train, when I do?"

"No," faltered Zip. "I have I must wait and see Squire
Cadwallader. I I forgot about him."

She lifted her eyes, and for a minute they looked at each
other in the half-light coming through the transom window.

" Come back into the library, won't you ?" he said in a tone

io6 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [Oct.,

grown unfamiliar to her ear of late, and which gave her a little,
quick shiver. " Not now when you have changed your dress.
I have something to say to you. You won't be long, will you ?"

But Zip was long enough. There was lead in her feet, ap-
parently, and numbness in her fingers, if all the useless efforts she
made to be quick about her toilette might be put in evidence.
When she did get down-stairs again the library door stood ajar,
the glimmer of the fire showing through the opening. Paul
Murray was standing beside the hearth, his arm resting on the
mantel-piece, his eyes plunged into the glowing coals. Her step
was light ; perhaps he did not hear it. She came inside the door
and stood still, feeling conscious of nothing so vivid as the im-
pulse to flee upstairs again and hide herself. He looked round
at her, smiling gravely, and then came and closed the door be-
hind her.

" There is a draught," he said, as if the action needed explan-
ation. " Go over and put yourself in the arm-chair by the fire.
You look cold."

The girl did as she was bidden, and Paul sat down opposite
her and looked into the fire again. A coal fell out of the grate
and tinkled on the fender. A sinister face shaped itself in one of.
the dark hollows that broke the glowing mass above, and looked
out at Zipporah, who could not turn her eyes away from it.

" I had something to say to you," Paul began at last, rising
and beginning to pace up and down in front of the hearth, " but
I don't know how to say it."

He stopped, but if he expected any assistance he was disap-
pointed. He sat down again and leaned forward, his elbows on
his knees.

" Suppose," he said, " that Aben Hamet had known himself
thoroughly at the outset, and had reason to believe that he knew
Blanca likewise don't you think he ought to have gone back to
the desert at once, without putting her and himself to the pain
of obliging her to tell him to do so ?"

" I don't know," faltered Zip at last, breaking the long pause
that followed this diplomatic essay in criticism.

" I think he ought," said Paul, " but probably he couldn't. I
think I ought," he went on in a way that a strange listener might
have found irrelevant, but which was plain enough to her to
whom it was addressed ; " but I, too, have let the occasion slip
when it was possible. I wish I might ask you not to go home
to-morrow, or to go only to come back again, and to be my wife.
But how can I ? God knows, there is nothing in this world that
I want so much as you. You forgive me for telling you so ? "

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 107

" I thank you," said the girl, so low that he barely caught the
words. Then she covered her face with her hands.

" I have been a fool, and worse," Paul went on with his self-
accusation. " I knew as well, or nearly so, the first night I ever
saw you, that it would come to this so far as I am concerned
as I know it now. What I could not have known, or guessed"
a little tremble in his voice here " was that what was so danger-
ous, and so sweet, to me, might perhaps become so to you. I
knew what I was about, God forgive me! for my own part,
but how were you to know ? And how could I tell you ? I
should have kept out of the way."

Then there was silence, which, after a time that to both of
them seemed long, the man broke again :

" You forgive me? And you understand me? "

" I have nothing to forgive," she answered.

"But you don't understand me? How shall I explain and
not seem to wilfully offend you ? We differ in religion. I make
no pretence at being a pious man. T am only an average, ordi-
nary, every-day Christian. But that I am, to the core of my
mind as well as of my heart. I don't mean that I could not ask
for and receive a dispensation which would save my conscience
while permitting me to marry you, remaining in your present
belief. But there is another obstacle. I promised my mother,
just before she died, that I would never do a thing like that.
And almost my only virtue is that I don't know how to break
my word."

The girl sighed, but she said nothing. The situation could
not well have been more embarrassing for her.

" There is only one way," Paul began again. " For me, no
change is possible. But what you said up-stairs this afternoon
gives me courage to ask whether one is not possible to you?"

" How should it be? I also have been taught to believe I
am a Christian or will be, some day. I can hardly say as much
about myself at present. But how can you expect me to hold
the things taught me by my parents more lightly than you do?"

" Well, if the case were as simple as that, I couldn't expect
it. Yet, even if my faith were as narrowly traditional as that
would make it, I am bound to say that I think it would carry
its own warranty with it to me, as it does, and I suppose must
do, to millions in all ages. The test of experience, if it is a nar-
row one, is a final one, also. We each eat our own loaf. You
say you cannot call yourself a Christian. Why not?"

" I have never joined any church. I have never been bap-
tized. But, of course, I shall some day."

io8 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [Oct.,

" Why not mine ? " said Paul, with a smile more persuasive,
and more usual, than any expression that had thus far crossed
either face.

" I haven't any," responded Zip, a little giimmer coming
into her eyes also. " But if I had, and you should enter it, what
would your people say ? "

" I thought we agreed this afternoon that to adhere to a re-
ligion because our parents did so or because it was our own,
simply for that reason was not an admirable thing to do. Don't
you see that unless one religion is absolutely true, none is of any
vital importance? What do you believe, anyway ? "

" I believe the Bible, I suppose," said Zip.

" So do I," said Paul. " We are on common ground so far, at
any rate. What do you believe about it ? Do you believe, to
take the chief thing at once, that our Lord Jesus Christ is
God ? "

"Why, of course."

" Well, then, how do you avoid the conclusion that the only
church which even pretends to trace its history back to him
must be that which he founded ? "

" But I have been told always that it became corrupt, and
that the Protestant churches came into existence to reform
Christianity, and to bring it back to what he taught."

" And it never occurred to you that of two contradictories
both cannot be true ? Don't you see that you cannot at the
same time believe that God founded a church which he pro-
mised should never fail, and yet assert that as a matter of fact it
did fail ? Admit the failure of the church, and you have denied
the Divinity of its founder. You see that ? "

" I think so," said Zip. " My brother Tom wrote me some-
thing like it in a letter I got yesterday."

Then she blushed, seeing Paul's amused smile.

" Did you consult him ? " he said. " You were interested in
the question, then?"

Zip caught her breath. " Yes, I was," she admitted. " But
Tom denies both.''

" You mean he denies the Divinity of our Lord ? Well, he is
logical. It is really all or nothing, as we agreed once before to-
day. But you and I, we stand on the same ground at bottom,
don't we ? You can't have faith, I suppose, seeing you have not
even baptism. But be honest, dear. You want to believe, I see
you do. And that is the first step, I've heard say."

It was the old Paul Murray who had somehow got nearer to

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYN&S FACTORY. 109

her during this speech. The laugh was in his eyes again, and
his hand found hers. She let it lie still a minute, but then she
drew it away.

" Yes," she said, blushing, " I do. But I must be honest with
myself, and with you, too. As yet, I truly don't see my way
clearly. And though I do want to, for your sake, and for mine
too, still I don't think it would ever have occurred to me to con-
sider the matter at all except for you. And how can I be sure
that is a good motive? Besides, there are my father and mother.
Do you know how terrible it would seem to them? Who is to
persuade me what I ought to do? "

" Not I," said Paul, rising to his feet again. " You and I
are both too far gone to be sure of our own motives. I don't
want to persuade you. But, for your own sake, I do want you
to consider the matter fairly and study Christianity to the bot-
tom. Your mind is too clear for it to be even moderately safe
for you to stop short of that. And when you have arrived at a
decision ? You will let me know ?"

" Yes," said the girl, rising also.

" And you can't be ready to go up to town with me to-mor-
row ? " he asked, as they turned toward the door. " I know a
good priest in Riverside a convert, too to whom I would be
glad to introduce you.''

" No," said Zip, in a momentary forgetfulness. " I'm not
going home just at present. I have written to tell them so.
How can I leave Mr. Van Alstyne when he needs me so much ?
I promised him."

Paul threw back his head and laughed. The girl turned
scarlet.

" I thought you told me you were going home to-morrow,"
he said, catching her hand again and turning her to face the fire.
" I'm afraid you haven't any conscience about fibs. Or have
you just changed your mind ? What made you ? "

" I won't tell you," she said in a little heat, yet not quite able
to keep back a smile. Then she pulled away her hand and ran
out of the room.

XXXIV.
GETTING OUT OF THE WOODS.

Altogether, Paul Murray felt happier than he had ever
done in his life before. It seemed to him that he had got on to

i io JOHN VAN ALSTYNE' s FACTORY. [Oct.,

a watch-tower whence, far on the horizon line, he beheld all his
ships coming in, well-laden and prosperous.

The afternoon had been a notable one to him in more ways
than that just recounted. He had come up to the house in a
state of serious and apparently well-founded depression. The
year was drawing to a close, and if things continued much longer
as they stood at present with Mr. Van Alstyne, his own hands
would be tied completely. During the last week one of those
periodical crises in the business world had taken place which
disturb trade through all its centres, and to all appearance it was
likely to be of long standing. At the Corners one of the mills
was to begin running on half-time the present week, and was like
enough to close entirely by the end of it. But that was a mere
item, one of the straws which show how the wind is blow-
ing.

In John Van Alstyne's factory such a wind, in ordinary
times, would have blown up "nothing but a shower." This
time it looked as if the veritable deluge had set it. Somehow or
other, the projects which had shaped themselves between Seth
Lamson and Mr. Hadleigh had slipped into the .stream of current
rumor, and were now common property throughout the neigh-
borhood. John Van Alstyne had sunk into complete imbecility,
though he was fast regaining physical strength and might live on
for years. His factory could no longer be kept running on the
existing basis, nor, indeed, on any other, for who was to author-
ize the necessary access to his capital? His cousin being on
hand, it was competent for him to make application to have the
old man adjudged in lunacy, and his business wound up and con-
verted into cash by the ordinary processes of law ; steps to that
effect had either been already taken or would speedily be so.
Such was the gossip which was now on all tongues, and who
was to dispute it ? Things looked black enough for the hands.
To lose such employment as many of them had now had for
years was bad enough at the best, but to face the prospect of
having none at all to replace it for an indefinite period, and at
the hardest time of the year, was worse still. But that was the
outlook. Paul Murray, when appealed to for confirmation or for
contradiction of the reports flying about, could say absolutely
nothing. He was a fixture at his present post until the year was
ended, and could keep the works running till then. After that
he would be powerless.

Unless, indeed, he had suddenly thought to himself when left
alone with John Van Alstyne on this Sunday afternoon, the im-

1 888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY, in

possible should happen, and his powers should be renewed at the
source from which they had originally flowed. He had never
been sanguine in his hopes for the old man's recovery. It would
mean, should it happen, so very much to him that a certain
native modesty had, perhaps, more than anything else to do
with his incredulity about it. Why should the skies fall to let
him catch a singing, far-flying lark ?

But to-day the expression of John Van Alstyne's face, the
keen intelligence in his eyes, even the word or two which found
their way across his lips, had begotten an involuntary belief and
hope within the young man's mind. The caution Squire Cad-
wallader had given him passed out of his memory altogether,
and he acted on his own initiative. Taking a leaf from Zip-
porah's book with the half-conscious imitativeness which belongs
to the feeling he had for her, perhaps he sat down before the
old man and gave him a rapid summary of the state of his affairs.
Naturally, he omitted all reference to the rumors which have
been described, but he put the situation clearly in all other re-
spects. Most of it Mr. Van Alstyne could not but have divined
already. It was plain enough to Paul Murray that his statement
was closely followed and fully apprehended. But, after all,
what could be done about it ? That the old man's tongue was
still bound was but too evident. Only detached words, or frag-
ments of them, would issue from it.

But, while Paul was still facing that difficult problem, one of
these fragments, reiterated for the third or fourth time, arrested
his attention, chiefly because it was at last accompanied by a
significant movement of John Van Alstyne's right hand.

" Paper?" suggested Paul, rising. " Do you want to try to
write?"

Plainly, that was exactly what the old man had in mind.
Without much confidence in the success of such an experiment,
since he was aware of the failure of those made at Squire Cad-
wallader's suggestion a month earlier, Paul brought a pad of
scribbling paper which he found lying on the table, took a pencil
from his pocket, and put both in a convenient position at Mr. Van
Alstyne's hand. Evidently the invalid had his own doubts also.
He made an apparently aimless mark or two, perhaps to test his
own power to carry out his volition, for while Paul Murray
turned away his face to conceal the sense of overwhelming fail-
ure which he felt these meaningless lines had written there too
plainly, John Van Alstyne went on to make his signature, as
clear, as characteristically bold as he had ever executed it.

ii2 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE' s FACTORY. [Oct.,

He looked up when he had finished it, but Paul's head was still
averted. Before he raised it again, John Van Alstyne had at
last opened the gate of communication between himself and his
kind. One of the rarer phenomena of aphasia had taken place,
and while the portals of his speech were still barred, his will and
his intelligence had regained complete possession of his organs
of voluntary motion.

Nevertheless, his instructions were given very briefly. He
asked for his check-book, and he demanded to see his lawyer
with the least possible delay. And then, looking out of the win-
dow near which they were sitting, it was he who, with a touch
of the old kindness which, perhaps, showed more than anything
else how completely he was his own man again, had suggested
to Paul that Zipporah was out in the storm and ought to be
looked after. And then Paul had found her, and, however their
affair might terminate, it too had sought the issue of open speech
and complete mutual understanding, and so had left memories
behind it which silence, however well comprehended, would
have been too barren to produce. No wonder Paul Murray felt
light of heart. It was too well ballasted that day with gratitude
to God to be otherwise than buoyant.

He called the hands together the next morning, and, without
referring in any manner to the current gossip, announced to them
tkat Mr. Van Alstyne had so far recovered that it was certain
that the works would be kept running, and the state of affairs
sketched out by him just before his seizure realized to the letter.
Possibly the assurance was a trifle premature, like all things
which depend upon contingencies, however near they seem to
their actualization, but Paul Murray, though neither a prophet
nor the son of a prophet, was for that once in the true prophetic
vein. Prudent as he ordinarily was, he could not refrain from
leaving behind him something of the gladness he carried with
him when he went up to Riverside to execute John Van Al-
styne's errand to his legal adviser.

Judge Mount heard him through in silence. Then, turning
to his desk, he drew out of it a document which he threw across
the table on either side of which they were sitting. Paul took it
up and looked at the endorsement on the back of the folio. It
was the application to the Supreme Court of the State of New
York of Francis Van Alstyne-Hadleigh, acting for himself and
other heirs, for a commission in the nature of a writ de lunatico
inquirendo against John Van Alstyne, of the village of Milton
Centre, county of . It contained his petition, which Paul

1 888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 113

did not trouble himself to read, followed by the affidavits of
Sarah Porter Van Alstyne, Seth Lamson, Alfred Morrell Saw-
yer, and Eben Lant. It was on the last name only that Paul
Murray paused.

" Lant ?" he said, looking across the table at Judge Mount,
who was smoothing his goatee while regarding Paul over the
top of his glasses. " What on earth does Lant know about Mr.
Van Alstyne's mental condition ?"

" Been a sort of body-servant to him lately, hasn't he ?
That's what his affidavit indicates."

Paul looked at the date of Lant's testimony. It had been
sworn to before a notary in Milton Corners the previous Mon-
day. " He made up his valuable mind with considerable rapid-
ity," he said. " He must have been at Mr. Van Alstyne's house
just about a week when this was signed, and I am greatly in
error if his opportunities for seeing him have exceeded a half an
hour daily. Most of his free time is spent in boozing about the
village. He is at the house at all only because his wife and
children were taken in there as a sort of charity, and he has
been allowed to make himself useful in little ways in order to
save what remnant of self-respect he has left. As for Mr. Lam-
son, I am aware that he has called once or twice lately, in com-
pany with Dr. Sawyer, and that he was present when Mr. Van
Alstyne had his stroke. But as for Mr. Hadleigh, I am not sure
that he saw him at all, after the very first."

"You think the witnesses not competent, is that it?"

" I wouldn't say that, exactly," returned Paul. " It is their
haste rather than their incompetency except, perhaps, in the case
of Eben Lant which strikes me. I must own that I think such a
conclusion might have been honestly drawn by any one who saw
Mr. Van Alstyne but seldom. Even now, as I tell you, if you
judged solely by his attempts at speaking, you might infer that
his mind was crippled in some permanent manner. But the note
I brought you from him puts that supposition altogether aside,
it seems to me."

" Yes, yes ; I incline to that belief myself," assented the law-
yer. ' This application was submitted to me for decision on Fri-
day last, and 1 meant to run down to the village this week in any
case, in order to try and form some independent judgment of my
own. I knew that Dr. Cadwallader had entertained an opinion
of his case diametrically opposed to that sworn to here by his
colleague. Still, I thought it not improbable that he also might
have changed his views."
VOL. XLVIII. 8

ii4 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE' s FACTORY. [Oct.,

" Not in the least," said Paul. " I notice Dr. Sawyer's affida
vit was sworn to last Tuesday, in Montpelier. I heard he had
gone up home for a visit a week or more ago. I'd like to lay
something heavy that he didn't consult the squire as to the pro-
priety of making this statement, although I don't doubt its per-
fect honesty as coming from him. In fact, I know no good rea-
son why 1 should doubt it in the case of any of these witnesses.
I am bound to say, though, that very different testimony would
have been borne by all those who have been in constant attend-
ance on Mr. Van Alstyne. Then you will go back with me this
afternoon ?"

" I think I can manage it," returned Judge Mount, looking
at his watch. " I have rather an important interview on my
hands, though, between this and train time. However yes, I
will go without fail. I have never quite forgiven myself for my
delay last fall, necessary as it seemed. It is rather curious, con-
sidering all things, that I should happen to be the court to
whom this application is submitted. I was never more sur-
prised by an apparently small coincidence in my life."

" There has been a rumor flying about for the last week as to
what was under way," said Paul. " All of Mr. Van Alstyne's
employees had got hold of it, and I was puzzled to guess how,
until Lant's name here explained it."

" You didn't mention it to Mr. Van Alstyne, of course?"

" Naturally, I didn't. He is by no means out of danger, as
Squire Cadwallader told me this very morning. His mind is
perfectly sound, but a recurring stroke, which may or may not
occur, might easily be fatal. That is why he has been kept in
ignorance of many things. I incline for my own part, at least
since my experience of yesterday, to think we have been more
reticent than was really advisable. He has plainly been fretting
over it. Still, I don't know what good it would have done to
talk more. He couldn't have accomplished anything until now.
He wants to go down to the factory at once, or at least as soon
as he gets through his business with you. We have kept him
away thus far, though he has been out frequently in the car-
riage."

V It was a frightful position for him if he has been conscious
all the time, as I see you believe," said the lawyer, rising to ac-
company Paul Murray to the door of his office. " You haven't
any remaining doubt on that head?"

" No; he wrote as much to me this morning. I did doubt it,
1 fconfess, though Squire Cadwallader has always been of that

1 888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 115

opinion. The doctor was as pleased as a child with a new toy
when I told him what had happened before I came away to-
day."

Judge Mount laughed. " Yes," he said, " there's nothing in
the world like having made a lucky guess for putting a man in
a good humor with himself. If the doctor wasn't all abroad
when I was down there, I'm as blind as a bat. I know it struck
me that he was whistling to keep his courage up. Well, I'll
meet you at the depot without fail, Mr. Murray. By the way,
you kept, I hope, Mr. Van Alstyne's communication to you con-
cerning his mental condition throughout this period? He sign-
ed it?"

" Well, no, I didn't. I left it on the pad on which it was writ-
ten, for the doctor to see. Why ? "

" Because it might easily be an important document in case
Mr. Van Alstyne's death should soon occur. His will would be
tolerably certain to be contested in that event, and his condition
closely inquired into with retrospective reference to such testi-
mony as I have in my desk there. Well, let us hope there may
not be another slip between the cup and the lip for him."

So that affair got itself satisfactorily settled, and by the end
of the week the news that Mr. Van Alstyne was driving daily to
the mill and taking active interest in what was going on there
had reached nearly all who were concerned in knowing it. He
was practically dumb, but he signed all necessary papers, and
otherwise put more strain upon himself than Squire Cadwalla-
der was satisfied with.

" ' The night cometh wherein no man can work,' " John Van
Alstyne wrote once when the squire was expostulating with him
concerning his activity. And with that the squire was obliged
to be contented. More than once he had it on the tip of his
tongue to try what additional force he might lend to his remon-
strances by laying plainly before the old man the nature of the
misunderstanding he had fomented, together with the results
which had ensued upon it. He would have liked to caution him,
too, that his hesitating and apparently purposeless speech though
those who were most about him had now begun to attach the
old man's own meaning to his words, so that in calling for what
he wanted he no longer was obliged to resort to writing might
easily be used as a lever in upsetting the conditions of his testa-
ment, should his natural heirs find them unsatisfactory. But he
refrained, not liking to seem to take it for granted that they
would be so. What ground, for that matter, had he for such a

n6 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [Oci

supposition ? That a will had been signed he knew, having been
one of the witnesses to it, but heirs-at-law must be grasping in-
deed who could not be well satisfied with such a generous slice
as might easily have been cut off from John Van Alstyne's im-
mease fortune, while leaving its bulk almost unimpaired. De-
spite Mr. Hadleigh's application, the blame of which, in some
of his self-upbraiding moods, the squire laid mostly at his own
door, he hoped that the young man might be a heavy benefici-
ary by Mr. Van Alstyne's death, when it should occur. The
squire was indulging in that sort of vicarious generosity with
which most of us would be glad to pay our debts to those whom
we think we have injured.

XXXV.

MOTHER AND DAUGHTER.

Meantime, Zipporah, after a brief storm of epistles which
raged for two or three days between the village and Riverside,
and which ended in the most abrupt and unexpected descent of
Mrs. Colton upon the Van Alstyne mansion late on the last day
of the week which had opened so auspiciously, had been left
there after all in peace, to her own most unfeigned surprise.
The little tempest in a teapot had had some not unamusing
features. Zip's first letter, giving her views of the situation,
and what she thought the law of kindness required at her hands,
reached her mother in the afternoon of the day when Paul Mur-
ray went up to interview the lawyer. There had been no diplo-
macy at all in the composition of it. It had struck the girl as
such an obviously necessary thing to do, seeing that the old
man's only natural friends had departed, leaving him to the care
of servants and of strangers, that she simply announced her in-
tention at the same time that she recorded her refusal to continue
teaching throughout the winter. To do Mrs. Colton justice, had
the matter seemed to her quite as simple as her daughter's state-
ment represented it, she would have been quick to commend her
resolution. But while she was yet pondering over it, her son's
wife came in, brimming over with teasing information.

" Zip isn't coming home this winter, is she ? " she began. " She
isn't going to teach school, either."

" What "makes you say that, Fanny?" asked Mrs. Colton,
looking up from the letter which lay open on her lap.

1 888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 117

" That's a letter from her, isn't it? " Fanny went on. " I sup-
pose she tells you."

" Did she write to you, too?" asked Mrs. Colton in consider-
able surprise.

" Not she," returned Fanny. " She doesn't waste valuable
time in that way. She isdeep in the study of theology, I under-
stand. I suppose that is what she is going to devote her serious
attention to, now that she has given up the school."

"What do you mean, Fanny?" said Mrs. Colton severely.
" Who has been telling you anything about her intentions? She
writes to say that as Mrs. Van Alstyne has gone away for the
winter, and as there is nobody but the servants to look after the
sick old gentleman, she would like to stay for the present, as he
seems to need her and be glad to have her there. I don't see
that there is anything that need prevent. She says it seems to
her a thing laid on her to do, and I don't know but what she is
right."

Mrs. Colton had been reared among Friends, and had carried
from them, when she " married out of meeting," not a little of
their respect for inward " leadings." Moreover, Mattie's account
of what had seemed to her the true state of matters with regard
to Zip had entirely eased her mind of its apprehensions about
Paul Murray. Mattie's visit, occurring during the week of pre-
paration for the birthday celebration, when Paul's manner was at
its stiffest with her sister, who on her part was apparently much
occupied with Mr. Hadleigh, had resulted, so far as her mother
was concerned, in no very great access of light, though it had
put to rest the fears awakened by Brother Meeker.

" I shouldn't at all wonder if it was laid on her," said Fanny,
mocking. " I thought so when I heard about it this afternoon.
It just struck me what a neat little sum in addition it made along
with a letter from Tom that Nat got this morning."

Mrs. Colton took off her spectacles and put them in their case
and rose as if to leave the room. It was not merely her little
ruse when her daughter-in-law grew too vexatious, but her saf-
est device for keeping the temper which Fanny enjoyed seeing
her on the point of losing.

" Going upstairs to answer Zip, Mother Colton ? Oh ! that
isn't necessary. Your desk is here, and I'm going. Give her my
love, won't you? And tell her I entirely approve of Mr. Murray,
and that I think her investigations of his religion are a most ex-
cellent way of spending her time. I walked all the way down
High Street with him this afternoon, and got my information

n8 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [Oct.,

from him about her movements. Say I think he is quite worth
the trouble she seems to be taking for him. Tom wrote Nat that
he had been carrying on a lively controversial correspondence
with her lately on that subject."

Mrs. Colton turned back and faced her daughter-in-law with
the most rigid and uncompromising of her expressions.

" Mr. Murray said that to you ? "

"Mr. Murray said what to me? That Zip was studying his
religion ? Did I say so? Didn't 1 tell you Tom wrote it to Nat?
As for Mr. Murray, we talked about lots of things. He is a most
interesting person full of information. I wonder Zip didn't ap-
ply at once to headquarters instead of going round by way of
Tom. / would."

Then Fanny took her departure, having out of sheer kittenish
love of mischief worked an entire change in Mrs. Colton's views
concerning the propriety and prudence of acceding to her daugh-
ter's proposition. It had been hardly a request on the girl's part.
That sense of independence in their filial relations which is of
quick growth in so many young Americans had been in her one
of the results which followed her involuntary exile from home
the previous summer. Although she had speedily more than
reconciled herself to the new order of things, the little pang of
mingled pride and wounded feeling with which she had first re-
ceived her father's determination on that head had, to her mind,
cut, or at all events greatly weakened, that thread of complete
subordination which had, until then, been whole in all its strands.
Her father had by no means intended to throw her altogether on
her own resources. But his experiment, which had never secured
the approbation of his wife, had been accepted by the girl as her
sufficient warranty for relying on them should she so elect. Still,
her letter expressly asked for approval of her present course,
and would probably have received it but for what had just taken
place between her mother and her brother's wife.

Her mother's response, therefore, which was peremptory in
its refusal, though it contained no allusion to the cause which
made it so, struck the girl strangely.

" Needed at home ? " she said to herself. " Why am I needed
any more than I have been for the last three months? Father
expressly said he thought I would decide to keep the school all
winter. Mother can't really understand how matters stand here."

But this time her reiterated statement of her reasons ended
with some brief words which showed well enough that she con-
sidered herself entirely competent to decide the question for her-

i888.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 119

self. .It was that which, after some prolonged consultation with
her husband, who inclined this time to be of one mind with his
daughter, suddenly resolved Mrs. Colton to go down and " spy
out the land " for herself. She knew her daughter well enough,
or thought she did, to be sure that her presence and her spoken
wishes would carry their old weight with her.

LEWIS R. DORSAY.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS.

FREDERICK THICKSTUN is a name we do not remember to
have noticed before, even in the list of contributors to the cur-
rent periodicals. If A Mexican Girl (Boston : Ticknor & Co.) is
his first effort at novel- writing, he cannot have wasted much of
the time devoted to preliminary training. Though he comes
into the arena unheralded, he is fully equipped for action, and
carries off the prizes with unmistakable ease. His book not only
shows direct observation, which is not uncommon, but direct
transcription, which is. We are accustomed to hard straining
toward it on all sides. What is known as " realism in art " is
one of the results which those of us who try to keep abreast of
current literature are at once most familiar with and most
fatigued by. Realism is not a bad thing in itself; it is distinctly
good, one would say, if only as a contribution to psychology, to
know just how things strike minds capable of receiving and of
passing on impressions. But one has a choice even among im-
pressions. The chief of those one gets from the majority of the
artists, so busy in recording them, is of the operator himself,
with his head under the photographer's black cloth. The plate
he produces is apt to be blurred. It shows, indeed, what he
thought it advisable to look at, but in such a way that one takes
at once, and instinctively, to surmising why he turned his lenses
in this direction rather than in that. Yes, we say, this must be
Jones's pig-sty and that Smith's dung-heap, and this looks like a
section of a wheat-field with nothing more enlivening than a scare-
crow in it. Why didn't the man slant the glass up and get that
cliff with the sun on it, or show us Ruth, yonder, with a clean

120 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Oct.,

apron on, gleaning after the reapers ? They belong equally to
the landscape, besides being agreeable to the eye and not repel-
lent to the other senses.

Mr. Thickstun, although he shows nice discrimination in the
choice of his point of view and thoroughly good workman-
ship in the reproduction of his subject, is by no means a mere
photographer. Still, his skill in that line is what strikes his
reader first, since it is what comes first before his notice. Fine
points of psychology were not what interested Mr. Thickstun
in his observation of Captain Jack Hawley, the superintendent
of the "petered-out quicksilver mine" at New Ripa, Califor-
nia. The nature of his mental operations was clear enough to
him, the proof lying not merely in the extremely good page or
two in which they are described, but in those others where Cap-
tain Jack, being left to speak for himself, produces on the reader
the precise effect indicated in advance by the author. To give
such indications is often a disastrous policy for novelists to
adopt; but Mr. Thickstun evidently knew his man well enough
to venture on it without even a suspicion that he was skating on
dangerous ground. And yet he had the courage to say things
like this about him :

"Whatever was of interest to Captain Jack immediately assumed, from
his point of view, an axial relation to all mundane affairs. And as his
speculations concerned only the visible and tangible, and as the visible
and tangible in New Ripa always bore a well-defined relationship to the
mine superintendent, it is evident that his friends were frequently called
upon to regard his personal concerns as the pivot on which a dependent
universe balanced falteringly. He was never without his opinion, neither
was he backward about expressing it ; yet he was so sincere, so uncon-
sciously transparent in his healthy, hearty egoism that he could hardly be
regarded as offensive. . . . His talk was superabundant, but his lively in-
terest in his own remarks was likely to prove contagious, even to people
who were brought constantly under his influence. . . . To materialize on
paper the nice inflexions of his numerous languages would be as hopeless
a task as to clutch and hold the images of a dissolving view ; but, through
whatever language or dialect he uttered his feelings, he left the impression
that his words were a part of himself had been wrenched from some portion
cf his insides and flung down before your face and eyes, to be contemplated in
spite of any pangs of conventional squeamishness. . . . Captain Jack's irrever-
ence was in reality of the sort that is very commonly associated in the
West with the simplest, most childlike veneration for holy things. His
belief in the power and grandeur of God was orthodox in the extreme, yet
he was for ever associating the Creator's name with belittling objects.
Ideas and their opposites came to him simultaneously ; he was always him-
self and his antipode. . . . The result was often an intellectual monstrosity
whose existence another man would have concealed ; but Captain Jack no

i888.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 121

more thought of hiding an idea because of a possible blemish than he
thought of hiding his nose because there happened to be a little white

mole on it."

That is a sufficiently difficult programme, seeing that Captain
Jack does nothing more important to the" conduct of the story
than talk consistently up to it. The strength of the book lies in
its delineation of the men in it, spite of its title. Panchita is a
mere animal, useful only to bring about and accentuate that in-
ward struggle by which Roslin, the schoolmaster, begins to
round out and complete his knowledge of himself. And her ani-
malism, to Mr. Thickstun's praise be it spoken, is indicated with-
out one offensive touch. Roslin is a triumph of psychological
portraiture. He has begun life in poverty. He has no brilliant
qualities, and such education as he has gained he has worked
hard for.

" He studied hard, but learned slowly; he even displayed less quick-
ness of intellect than he actually possessed. But he mastered what he
undertook, and was sometimes conscious of certain solid qualities of brain,
as well as of muscle, which his more versatile companions seemed inclined
to admire. Quick-witted boys were a never-ending source of surprise to
him.' 1

There is a brief period in Roslin's youth when, having learn-
ed " at least the dictionary definition of an ideal," he, too, un-
imaginative as he is, becomes a dreamer. His visions soar no
higher, indeed, than that earthy philosopher, Benjamin Frank-
lin, whom he secretly worships as " the greatest man that ever
lived." He longs to immortalize himself, to do something heroic ;
he is sad because he was born too late for the war. But that
mood soon passes. He weighs himself conscientiously in the
scales of comparison held out by the world, and is honest enough
to read the verdict without impatience. He settles down to
teaching as his life-work, is successful in it so far as his pupils
go, but at last awakes to the fact that in the place where he is
he cannot earn money enough to meet his actual wants. So he
goes to California. If you had watched him, sitting in a public
place for an hour or so, says Mr. Thickstun, "you would have
known him for such as he has been described.

" You would not rank him below the average man in intellect ; but if
you studied him closely, you would conclude that his knowledge of him-
self, though conscientiously accurate as far as it went, was quite elemen-
tary ; that he had never rightly comprehended those qualities of soul and
body which most men, studying them earliest, comprehend best. He had

122 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Oct.,

never received nor given largely. The world had never touched him ef-
fectually. His whole air was settled and serene. You would ask yourself,
as you looked at him, How will it be when passion beats its way into that
calm retreat, overturning with tempests, deafening with thunders, and
scorching with lightnings ? "

Roslin's apprenticeship begins on the first evening of his ar-
rival, when Panchita's voice, thrown purposely into the moon-
light to allure him, pierces him with a sense of somewhat alto-
gether new and strange. He meets her, and feels that "sympa-
thy of sense rather than of mind, that wonderful physical attrac-
tion of souls which, disembodied, would repel." He knows
nothing to her discredit, but though he doubts her instinctively,
he doubts still more " the justice of his judgment of her. A man
of large conscience and small experience is never sure of his relations
to people." There is searching analysis in the pages which de-
scribe Roslin's struggle with himself. His love is honest ; why,
then, does he know it to degrade him ? Why is it he feels that
all his old ideals of unselfish devotion to his kind, which should
render back to God at least one little corner of his universe re-
deemed and purified, must give way if Panchita becomes his
wife? What friendship could he have with her, " whom he knew
to be in some wav unworthy, whose very beauty was the out-
ward stamp of some secret inward fault."

Nevertheless, the thought of parting with her does not occur
to him. To gain her he will come down from the loftier plane
on which he had hoped to walk for ever. " He had lived his ac-
tive good, it was now time to try the passive. He had figured in
life as a positive quantity ; henceforward it must be as a nega-
tive, or at best as zero.' 5 One grows strangely interested in him.
It is Good and Evil balancing, without picturesque or brilliant
accompaniments to distract attention from the simple equation.
Captain Jack's little story of Panchita's antecedents, told inten-
tionally, comes as a relief. You have been in safe hands. Mr.
Thickstun knew his man too well to let him turn his back on
positive knowledge, or degrade himself utterly below the lowest
ideal of a " pure-minded man, who is not strong enough to be
something more than that only."

We have given unusual space to this novel it is so seldom
that one deserves it ! Dr. Stafford is as real as Roslin or Captain
Jack, and even Warner barely less so. As for their delineator,
he should have a future before him. His work is stronger than
that of Howe, the author of The Story of a Country Town,
not only because it is more objective, but because it is much

1 888.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 123

healthier. One feels that he has by no means exhausted himself,
that he has not been autobiographic save in that sense in which
one's own experience must always help hold the candle by which
we study other lives.

An Iceland Fisherman (New York: W. S. Gottsberger) is
translated, by Clara Cadiot, from the French of Pierre Loti,
whose Lands of Exile was briefly noticed in the July CATHO-
LIC WORLD. It is a beautiful story, exquisitely told so exquis-
itely that even a translation as awkwardly made in some respects
as this one is, cannot avoid retaining much of the peculiar charm
of the original. To say that is to say, also, that the art of Pierre
Loti is not merely a matter of technique, admirable as his tech-
nique is. His work will not always permit a critic to recom-
mend it who thinks mere literary art, or art of any kind, to be
distinctly not an end in itself. But the Iceland Fisherman, taken
as a whole, and in spite of a slight blemish or two of the kind
which is popularly known as French, is a delightful piece of ima-
ginative literature. It is simply that. It has no ethical purpose
whatever. But the central characters, Yann Gaos and his sweet-
heart, his " first wife," Mademoiselle Gaud, though unusually
well conceived and delicately drawn, are entirely natural and
agreeable types. Temperamental pride, as distinguished from
that which is occupied in, and bred from, the pleased contempla-
tion of self as other, and presumably better, than one's neighbors,
is painted with extremely fine touches in Yann, who so long tor-
ments his own heart, and that of the girl who loves him, through
sheer, instinctive obstinacy. Gaud herself is most charming
and pathetic. And yet, when the sea, Yann's first betrothed,
claims him after their brief si-x days of wedded happiness, the
reader bears it no resentment. It is to the sea the fisherman
belongs, for he too is of the number of the blind, elemental forces.

The book is poetic a romance rather than a novel, and it
addresses the imagination in a singularly articulate voice.

Maiwa's Revenge (New York: Harper & Brothers) is inter-
esting, well written, and particularly adapted to the entertain-
ment of boys. Allan Quatermain is again Mr. Haggard's hero,
and so absorbed does the reader become in the old gentleman's
after-dinner account of the " three bull elephants '' who fell at his
hand, slain by three successive shots, that he almost omits to no-
tice that the story is half-finished before Maiwa, her wrongs and
her revenge, come into sight at all. But she is just sufficiently
picturesque when she does come, and she wins the applause of
the right-minded when dread of her well-hurled assegai shunts

124 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Oct.,

her husband into his own lion-trap, whose iron teeth " sprang up
like living teeth and fastened in him.'' That should be ac-
counted an achievement for a novelist, even when he is writ-
ing of heathen Zulus. For one, to quote Allan Quatermain,
" though I trust I am a Christian, I cannot say that I felt sorry
for him."

Mrs. Lynn Linton's latest novel, Through the. Long Nights
(New York : Harper & Brothers), is long, and, after a fashion,
entertaining. Mrs. Linton, though she has not the charm and
the purity of tone which honorably distinguish Mrs. Oliphant,
has a good deal of her staying power. Year in and year out her
novels trickle into the stream of current literature, where, if they
do nobody but their author any marked good, they can also pro-
duce nothing much which is actively evil. Not that their writer
is over-careful of the moralities. But she is, or we mistake her,
entirely guiltless of any intention either to corrupt the pure or
to sneer too obviously at the conventionally correct. The trade
of novel-writing is evidently a hard one for good women.

Good men, or even moderately prudent men, seem, some-
how, to find it not so difficult. Mr. James Payn, for example,
who once seriously recommended respectable British parents to
consider it as a profession which might well share their con-
sideration with law and medicine, the army and the navy, as
a possible and even desirable issue for the aspirations of their
sons toward a remunerative career, himself keeps on working
at it as faithfully, and as harmlessly, to say the least about it, as
he might have done as a doctor. The Mystery of Mirbridge (New
York : Harper & Brothers) is really a very skilful piece of
mechanism. It is entertaining, too, and quite innocuous. Is it,
perhaps, because the male steersman knows better where the
shoals and quicksands lie that, when he is guiltless of evil intent,
he avoids them so much more skilfully, as a general rule?

The September Lippincott the magazine, publishing an en-
tire fiction in each number, may be considered as a monthly
novel with minor appendices brings Amelie Rives once more
very prominently before the public. Like that which contained
" The Quick or the Dead ?" this is pre-eminently a Rives number.
For some reason, which, if it be not glaringly obvious must be
almost impenetrably recondite, this young lady, whose own blast
upon her trumpet is ear-piercing by itself, does not appear of
late without an escort, so to say, of inferior trumpeters. Or are
they meant to do duty as expounders and apologists? Mr. Ed-
gar Fawcett plays chorus to the tragedy with an essay entitled

1 888.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 125

"A few more Words about Miss Rives," which opens with the
remark that " In literature, as in life, the candor of innocence is
sometimes mistaken for that of intentional impurity." He
thinks, having given "The Quick or the Dead ?" a second peru-
sal, that he can see some reasons why people were actually so
much offended by it, as well as others going to show why they
need not have been so. One of them, which seems intended to
do double duty and solve both doubts, is to the effect that while
Miss Rives intended to make Barbara a very emotional person,
and succeeded, she failed to make her sufficiently intellectual to
establish an equilibrium. Hence, much slopping over. If we
had Miss Rives' ear we should incline to bid her beware of this
particular variety of apologetics. There is something that
seems almost invidious about it, isn't there? Then comes the
editor, devoting two or three pages of Book-Talk to the task of
showing, chiefly by means of the example of dead and gone gen-
iuses whose fame owes little to the opinions of their own genera-
tion of reviewers, that "if a man believes in Miss Rives, he need
not be disturbed in any way by contemporary criticism."

Herod and Mariamne, which is based upon the narrative of
Josephus, shows, in point of fact, a force of conception and a
vigor of expression very unusual in a woman inexperienced and
young. Unusual, but not unprecedented. Emily Bron'e dis-
played as much strength of diction and of feeling, combined with
a far higher and more spiritual idea of love, in Wuthering Heights.
Cruel, hardly human as Heathcote is, where his passion for
Cathy is concerned he rises to heights impossible to Herod.
Miss Laurence Alma-Tadema, too, a girl in her teens at the time,
gave equally strong evidence in Loves Martyr, published three
or four years ago, that she knew, as Mr. Fawcett puts it, " how
to steep a love-story in realism, acted on by some peculiar force
of her time, without stopping to consider what dangers must
surround any such literary exploit, unless a good deal of dis-
criminative caution be made to accompany it." The greatest
danger, one inclines to believe, is retroactive in its effects.
" This sword's hilt is the sharpest " in the case of these young
persons who appear to wield it with such expertness, but who
must, after all, bleed their own veins dry while awkwardly hack-
ing at alien flesh.

Still, Mariamne, though near akin to Barbara, is an improve-
ment on her. As was said once of the nuns of Port Royal, she is
pure as an angel and proud as a devil. Cruel, too, like her prede-
cessor ; as ready to order a slave to the scourging or to humili-

i26 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Oct.,

ate an enemy of her own sex as Barbara was to lash a dog. There
is undoubtedly verisimilitude in that combination. What other
sort of honest woman could be the willing mate of a monster of
bestiality and cruelty such as the Herod of Miss Rives' trage-
dy, even for a day ? What Herods become actually they are
potentially ; as the tiger's cub is none the less a tiger because its
coat has not yet grown mangy with man-eating.

Yet, on the whole, Miss Rives shows more promise in this
tragedy than in what has gone before it. If her soul, to use the
words once addressed to George Sand by Mrs. Browning, shall
ever begin to " moan defiance among the lions of her tumultuous
senses," she has enough imagination, combined with a certainly
unusual facility of expression, to do good, and possibly enduring,
work. As yet there are not many signs of it. Mentally and spi-
ritually she is still painfully out of equipoise.

Mr. Algernon Charles Swinburne's latest poem, The Armada,
may be found in the August Fortnightly, where it occupies
twenty-odd pages. It is the grimmer and more grisly of the
two deities who preside over his temple of art to whom the
poet this time offers incense. It is the praise of hatred Laus
Odii which he celebrates : hatred of God, hatred of the Chris-
tian church and her priesthood ; even hatred of Ireland is dragged
into his verse in defiance of all principles of art, since Ireland had
no necessary connection with the theme he undertook. But,
when all is said and done, Mr. Swinburne is not that thing be-
loved of Dr. Johnson, " a good hater." He shrieks too much in
falsetto ; he foams too impotently at the mouth. So the sea,
which he worships, lifts its waves just so far and no farther with
each recurring tide, and overshoots the mark assigned it with no-
thing more effective than wind-blown spume. Mr. Swinburne
overshoots his own aim in like manner, and nobody but him is
likely to fail to see it.

When England went out to repel the Spanish invader, as she
was bound to do by every natural right, the admiral who chased
the foe out of her waters was the Catholic Howard of Effingham,
who, like his opponents, had priests on board his vessel, and
Mass said daily. When the "kernes of murderous Ireland," as
Mr. Swinburne puts it, " raged dow as a ravening flood to slay
. . . their brethren whom shipwreck spares," it was the lord-
deputy of England who incited the slaughter, legalized and took
part in it. So, too, just as this poem must have been passing
through the printer's hands, English middle-class Dissenters and
English Churchmen were hanging on the lips of a Roman Car-

i888.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 127

dinal, pleading the cause of human freedom, and middle-class
English Liberalism was all arrayed on the side of " Catholic Ire-
land, murderous Ireland," to protest before the world that the
England of their forefathers and of to-day, though not indeed
the phantom England of the Swinburnian fancy, has been uni-
formly on the side of " greed and fraud," and that the cup of her
iniquities at last is over-full. In the face of independent testi-
mony of that order, how oddly sarcastic sounds this apostrophe
to her :

" Truth is in thee, and none may win thee to lie, forsaking the face of truth :
Freedom lives by the grace she gives thee, born again from thy deathless youth :
Faith should fail, and the world turn pale, wert thou the prey of the ser-
pent's tooth.
Greed and fraud, unabashed, unaiued, may strive to sting at thy heel in vain."

Taken at its worst, and the best in that direction is bad
enough, the venom of hatred which is slavered throughout this
poem is still almost innocuous. Mr. Swinburne is as futile in spite
as he is in homage to the other object of his melodious aspirations,
the Venus rising from the sea which always affords him his hap-
piest inspirations. One feels tempted to say that from the " Lord
God of the priests of Rome," whom the poet also addresses as
" God the Devil, God the Liar, God the Accurst," down to the
last poor victim being Balfoured out of England's way in an Irish
prison, not one being, Creator or creature, need be actively of-
fended by him. His venom harms no one so seriously as him
w'iio, for his sins, is condemned to the bootless satisfaction of
spitting it out in sounding words. He should stick to the sea.
She alone repays his love by bringing his fancies serenely and
harmoniously to the birth. Nothing could be better or more
admirably descriptive than these lines, for instance :

" For the sepulchres hollowed and shaped of the wind in the swerve of the

seas,
The graves that gape for their pasture, and laugh, thrilled through by the

breeze,
The sweet, soft, merciless waters, await and are fain of these.

"As the hiss of a Python heaving in menace of doom to be,

They hear through the clear night round them, whose hours are as clouds

that flee,
The whisper of tempest sleeping, the heave and the hiss of the sea"

There is a fine, Swinburnian ring, indeed, in all these verses,
but so, too, is there now and again the familiar piling up of words

128 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Oct.,

which are sound only, so far as conveying ideas or creating
tangible images is concerned. The poem, in fact, having a defi-
nite aim, surpasses, by so much, a great deal of Mr. Swinburne's
later verse.

Mr. Edgar Saltus has just published another novel, Eden
(Chicago, New York, and San Francisco : Belford, Clarke & Co.)
It is open to fewer objections on the score of morality than its
predecessors, but it is hardly less unpleasant in its manner and
its general effect. Mr. Saltus seems to us to have hit himself off
very neatly, though, we suppose, inadvertently, in the descrip-
tion of " Alphabet Jones, the novelist," which he puts into the
mouth of Mrs. Manhattan. " Personally he is as inoffensive as a
glass of lemonade, but I can't bear his books. He uses words I
dont understand, and tells of things I don't want to."

Eden is married, for love, to a man old enough to be her
father. She suspects him of an intrigue with a lady who turns
out to be his daughter by a wife previously divorced, of whose
existence he has never thought it worth while to inform Eden.
On her own side, she is rather inclined to flirt with her husband's
secretary, who turns out to be his son. She runs away to her
father when, as she supposes, her husband betrays her, and tells
him she cannot live longer with a man whose honor is not as un-
stained as that of her father himself.

" ' Tell me,' she asked, her sultry eyes flashing with vistas of victory
' Tell me how my mother would have acted had such an indignity been put
on her. Tell me,' she repeated, ' and through your knowledge of her, so
will I act. Yes,' she added, and then paused, amazed at the expression of
her father's face. It was as though some unseen force had stabbed him
from behind. The mouth twitched in the contraction of sudden pain, the
nostrils quivered, and he bowed his head ; then, his eyes lowered and
turned from her, he answered in a voice that trembled just a little, and yet
was perfectly distinct :-. '\ "' ? >.*..

" ' It was such a frhih. a$4h is that marred your mother's life ; let it not
mar your own.' " -' $];;

', y. "'''

Here is one of the bright sayings he puts into the mouth of
Mrs. Manhattan: " It is my opinion, an opinion, I believe, which
is shared by many good people, that a woman who marries a
second time, does not deserve to have lost her first husband."
Here is another, repeated by her to Eden, from the lips of an
" elderly man at her side," at the opera: " He has been minister
abroad, you know. He says," she added* " that you are the most
appetizing thing he has seen."

1 888.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 129

And thus he describes Eden at the dinner-table :

" When the meal was served she ate it in solitude, but the solitude was
not irksome to her; it was populous with recovered dreams. Among the
dishes that were brought her was one of terrapin, which she partook of
with an art of her own ; and subsequently, in a manner which it must have
been a pleasure to behold, she nibbled at a peach peaches and terrapin
representing, as every one knows, the two articles of food which are the
most difficult to eat with grace."

When Eden gets into a rage with her husband, " Don't speak
to me!" she cries; "and if anywhere within the purlieus (!) of
your being there is a spark of shame, leave me." And presently,
after a considerable more tall talk on either side, she makes a
movement to leave the room.

" But this Usselex prevented. He planted himself very firmly before
her. His attitude was as arrestive as an obelisk, and uncircuitable as a laby-
rinth."

A mere, ordinary writer, not master, as his friends say Mr.
Saltus is, of a style beyond all praise which is about what we
think of him ourselves would doubtless have said that as she
could neither get around him nor go through him, she was
obliged to stay just where she was. But how cheap and com-
mon that would sound beside Mr. Saltus' arrestive obelisk and
uncircuitable labyrinth ! Really, a man might write thus who
had climbed up into literature from the counter of a retail dry-
goods store, and got his knowledge of society from the flashily
dressed women to whom he has sold cheap ribbons, cotton-
backed, by the half-yard, his morality from an anaemic imagina-
tion, and his command of language from incessant studies in
books on synonyms !

.i'u'VtO.

VOL. XLVIII. 9

130 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Oct.,

WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS.

STORY OF A CONVERSION.

Born in Philadelphia, and in a section of it which was intensely "Native
American," among my earliest recollections are scenes of the riots of 1844, I be-
ing then a boy of ten years. I grew up among the prejudices born of such
events, and early learned to look upon a " foreigner '' with suspicion, and upon a
" Roman Catholic foreigner '' as one who lived in this country by tolerance, not
by any just right.

My father died when I had hardly emerged from infancy, and so I know lit-
tle of his religious notions save by tradition. My good mother was a sincere Bap-
tist of the " Hard-shell " school, and I was early taught that Sunday was a day
for gloomy silence and cold dinners. On Sunday mornings, at 9 o'clock, I was
sent, with my sisters, to the Sunday-school of the Spruce Street Baptist Church,
and on emerging therefrom, about half-past ten, I was duly led, by my pious and
watchful mother, into the church, there to listen to sermons extending over an
hour. The only recollection of these I now have is that of being unwillingly kept
awake by chewing cloves, which my mother carried in her pocket, I suspect, for
the benefit of my older sisters as well as of myself. Occasionally I escaped this
ordeal by playing "hookey" amidst the tomb-stones of the adjoining grave-yard,
to me a far pleasanter place than the church, with its blank walls and elevated
pulpit. In the afternoon we again attended Sunday-school ; but to this I did not
object, for what with the singing ; the striving for, and occasionally winning, a
prize for memorizing Scriptural verses ; the " library books " to be taken out, and
the chance to talk to my boy companions, I needed no cloves to keep me awake.
Certainly Protestants contrive to make their Sunday-schools pleasurable and at-
tractive, if not spiritually profitable, to children, and this is, I believe, one of the
chief methods by which the sects are recruited.

My mother was little given to talking about religion, except to the minister
when he occasionally visited our house, and I do not recollect that I was taught
at home more of it than to say the Our Father and to sing infantile hymns of the
" Twinkle, twinkle, little star," order. Of my Sunday-school training I retained
oily the Ten Commandments and the notion that I must not " hit the other fel-
low when he was down '' in other words, that I must do to others as I would
have them do to me. Of the " library books,'' of which I read a great many, I
only remember that boys who went fishing on the Sabbath were generally drowned,
and that the Catholics had been guilty of numberless cruel persecutions of inno-
cent Protestants, who, so far as I then learned, never retaliated. Here also I first
learned of the iniquities of the Inquisition, for which, of course, the Catholic
Church was to be held responsible. However, to this moral ballast, so to speak,
I owe it that during the many years I liyed without religion I was enabled to
keep fairly before the wind of my neighbors' good opinion, and even occasionally
to do some little good to my kind.

At about the age of fifteen I went to reside on a farm on the borders of
Maryland, a few miles from Dover, Del., where I remained about four years.
The people I now came in contact with were nearly all Methodists, and here for
the first time I witnessed what is called a " shouting " Methodist revival. At
first this sort of religious service excited curiosity, then astonishment and emo-

1 888.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 131

tion at its excessive fervor ; and indeed helped on, no doubt, by the example of
youthful companions, and being of a sympathetic if not religious temperament
on several occasions I was brought to the verge of "getting religion." The next
day, however, freed from the spell of the eloquent " exhorter," I would fall back
to my normal condition. I was, perhaps, abetted in this weakness also by those
about me, for I observed a calm worldliness about those who had "shouted''
loudest the night before which greatly helped me to throw off the spell. If I
were asked to name the chief excitant of these " revivals," I should reply that,
while undoubtedly some of the speakers were really eloquent and capable of ex-
citing intense emotion in their auditors, the very life and spirit of the meetings
was the extraordinarily fervent congregational singing. One need only to attend
a Southern Methodist camp-meeting, and watch the effect of the singing, to ap-
preciate the force of some of Father Young's arguments in favor of congregation-
al singing in the Catholic Church. Indeed, while sermons made little impres-
sion on me in those days perhaps because I had no real bent toward religion, or
it may be because of the fine-spun theories of which the sermons were generally
woven I even yet recall the pleasure with which I mingled my voice with those
of others in giving fervent utterance to the hymns of Watts and Wesley. Of the
supernatural side of religion, at this time, I knew little or nothing, though I pos-
sessed, in a misty way, a belief in the Holy Trinity, that Jesus Christ died to save
sinners, and that belief in this was sufficient for salvation; but that church-going
was an essential to my eternal welfare was no part of my creed. And this atti-
tude I believe to be that of thousands of decent-living Protestants, especially in
our large cities.

A:>out the age of ninetean I returned to Philadelphia, and began to learn the
printer's trade. Being self-willed, my gentle mother's exhortations and example
had little effect upon me, and I seldom entered a church, and when I did so was
indifferent as to its denomination. Soon after reaching my majority I married a
young lady who had been reared in the Episcopal faith, but who, like myself, was
rather indifferent to religion. We seldom attended any church, spending our
Sundays quietly at home in reading, or else seeking recreation in out-door excur-
sions. Indeed, I think we were fair samples of the average Protestant, looking
upon religion as a mere matter of good morals, not something to be cherished
and lived up to as of the most vital concern. Our religion was, practically,
summed up in the desire to pay our debts and live decent, inoffensive lives, and to
this end church-going did not appear to us a sine qud non. Holding such
notions, it may seem illogical, but nevertheless when our childreji were old
enough we faithfully sent them to Sunday-school. One ground, perhaps, for our
notion about church-going was, that we observed that the daily lives and actions
of punctilious church-goers, among our acquaintance, were not much different
from our own. In other words, that their religion was mainly a Sunday affair,
and did not materially affect their dealings with their neighbors. The following
incident may illustrate my meaning ; yet I by no means wish to be under-
stood as implying that this is an average sample of Protestant church-goers,
though I have known a good many such. Sitting with a friend one Sunday
evening, on the piazza of a house near a country church, there came to our ears
the loud tones of a voice in fervent prayer or exhortation ; gradually the sounds
increased in Ipudness till they became stentorian. Turning to me, my friend,
something of a wag, dryly remarked, " He's topping-off." Inquiry elicited the
information that the voice proceeded from a farmer who had the reputation of

132 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Oct.,

partly filling his market-baskets with small, scrubby potatoes, and " topping-off "
with big ones.

In 1860 I came to New York to fill a position on a newly established daily
paper. In this occupation I remained about five years, and as I slept in daytime
in order that I might work at night, I did not during those years enter a church
save once. And that exception occurred in this wise : Going to my home in
Brooklyn, between the hours of four and five in the morning, in passing through
Court Street I observed a crowd of people hurrying into a church. As this was a
daily occurrence, and as inclement weather seemed not to diminish the number, I
was curious to know what drew them. Asking a car-driver, one morning, I was
told : " It's first Mass they're going to, sir." Soon after, on a cold, sleety morn-
ing such a morning as would cause most people to shrink from venturing out I
noticed a crowd larger than usual struggling along into the church. Acting on
the impulse of the moment, I sprang from the car on which I was riding, resolved
to see for myself what attractions there were in a "first Mass." Passing up the
steps with the people, in a few moments I stood for the first time within the walls
of a Catholic church. The service soon began, and for a while I watched the
priest. Understanding almost nothing of what was passing before me, I turned
my attention to the people. The first thing about them that impressed me was
their self-abandoned, devout attitudes. Then for some time I sat curiously
watching a poor old woman passing through her fingers what I took to be a black
cord, and I also noticed that she occasionally kissed some part of it and passed
her hand down and across her breast. While speculating as to what all this
meant, I suddenly heard the tinkling of a bell. Straightway down upon their
knees fell all the people, with bowed heads. This sight and the sudden movement
or was it the Divine Presence? sent a thrill of awe through me, and involunta-
rily I bowed my head, though ignorant of what was transpiring. Soon after the
service ended, and as I passed out with the crowd I was struck with the fact that
it was composed mostly of those who were evidently working-people. For a while
I thought much of what I had seen and felt, and especially I wondered what there
was in the Catholic religion that could draw people from their comfortable beds
and homes at such uncanny hours ; but gradually the matter passed from my
mind. This was due partly, perhaps, that up to this time I had not numbered
among my friends an intelligent Catholic, nor, though all my life a diligent reader
of miscellaneous literature, had I read a Catholic book. Occasionally I had seen a
Catholic paper, or read an extract from one in a secular journal, but the over-
vigorous and. often offensive polemics, and, as then seemed to me, unwarrantable
claim to possessing the only true religion, disgusted and repelled me.

But I had now reached the turning point in my life. As I look back to this
period I recognize the hand of God directing for my good ^events which I then
deemed great misfortunes. In 1865, owing to broken health, I quitted the night
work and became *' reader " in a book-printing office. Here I read many Catho-
lic books while they were passing through the press, especially those published
by the Catholic Publication Society, then recently established by the Very Rev.
I. T. Hecker a work, by the by, which should win him the lasting gratitude of
American Catholics, for through this instrumentality our Catholic literature has
been lifted up and greatly enriched. I also read THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

I was now brought into mental contact with minds capable of enlightening me
as to the real history of the Catholic Church, and also of setting clearly before my
mind the beauties, truth, and consistency of the Catholic religion. Gradually my

.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 133

mind opened to and absorbed these facts : ist, that the Catholic Church, being the
only church of Christendom for sixteen hundred years, must be the one founded by
Jesus Christ, and the one whose doctrines were promulgated by the apostles ; 2d,
that I found in the Apostles' Creed whatever sound doctrines I had learned of in
Protestant churches, and that, consequently, they must have been derived from the
Catholic Church ; 3d, that the history of the Catholic Church was identical with
that of modern civilization, which was moulded by her ; 4th, that heroic charity-
had always marked her religious orders, as is splendidly illustrated by the lives of
such saints as St. Francis and St. Vincent de Paul, who especially excited my
reneration ; $th, that if abuses had at times crept into the church they were due
to human weakness or the meddling of laymen, but in no way invalidated the
Divine infallibility of her doctrines ; 6th, that she had been, in the days of her
greatest power, the benefactor and protector of the poor and the humble. This
latter point especially impressed and won me, and this impression has been deep-
ened by subsequent reading upon the middle ages, the monastic orders, and the
guilds. Indeed, I am fixed in the belief that the Catholic Church can and will
solve the social problems now everywhere pressing for solution, and I rejoice ex-
ceedingly that the best and highest Catholic minds are now earnestly striving to
this end.

It was, however, no easy task to reconcile my mind to accept the facts so
plainly presented by Catholic writers, for they completely overturned all my pre-
vious notions and refuted what I had heretofore held as the truth. If I were to
accept as true what I was now learning, what was to become of my cherished
beliefs as to the Inquisition and its .horrors ; the St. Bartholomew massacre ;
Bloody Mary ; the poor Covenanters and Huguenots ; the malevolent Jesuits,
who were stealthily striving to establish here, upon the ruins of our republic, a
despotism similar to those upheld by them in Europe, and a host of other
grievances that I had been taught to lay at the church's door ? I struggled hard
against admitting the truth of what I had now learned, arguing that Catholic
writers colored or suppressed the facts to suit their purposes, but the evidences
accumulated some even being furnished by Protestants (about this time I read
Cobbett) as I went along, and in the end I was obliged to succumb. Perhaps
nothing did so much to reconcile me to this as the constant reading of the always
temperate and fair-minded pages of THE CATHOLIC WORLD. Indeed, I do
not hesitate to say that, under Providence, I largely owe my conversion to the
teachings of that magazine, for I have never cared to read purely theological or
didactic writings. So far as I can now recall, the first book which gave me a
taste of the true flavor of the Catholic spirit was Constance Sherwood.

Thus far it was the historical or human side of the church which most in-
terested me. Her supernatural side had not as yet much attracted my attention.
What religious ideas I had thus far imbibed had been received unconsciously,
and perhaps not fully assimilated. And so for some years I drifted along, mak-
ing no practical application to myself of the precious knowledge I was acquiring.
But the seed was not falling upon altogether barren soil, as the sequel proved.

At this period there fell upon me long-continued afflictions and sorrows
such sorrows as cause the soul, however blindly, to reach out beyond its earthly
tenement for consolation. In the midst of my troubles I began seriously to ask
myself, " For what was I created ? " " Is this life the beginning and end of my
career ? " " If there be another and a better life, should I not strive to attain
it ? " I determined to do so. This resolution once formed, I begun to weigh the

134 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Oct.,

claims of the different forms of religion of which I knew anything. Study of a
catechism, with frequent reference to a Bible for verification, proved to me that
the claims of the church to be Divinely founded were substantiated, as were her
doctrines, by Scripture as well as tradition. I soon reached the conclusion that
if any religion was true it must be the Catholic religion. I resolved to seek
admission to the Catholic Church. Then I began to find stumbling-blocks : first
the confessional ; then the " worship " as I still ignorantly viewed it of the
saints (so astounded was I when I first came upon the teaching of the Church
relative to the Mother of God that I turned to a Protestant Bible to ascertain if
it were the same personage whom I had known simply as " Mary, the mother of
Jesus," for I had never heard mention in a Protestant pulpit of the Immaculate
Conception) ; then I had a lingering doubt about the Real Presence, but especi-
ally I was haunted with the fear that I could not really "get religion," as I did not
feel any overwhelming religious emotion. Fortunately, during these latter years
I had made acquaintance and gained the friendship of some intelligent Catholics,
and at this crisis I had the wise counsel of a well-informed and experienced Catho-
lic gentleman (a publisher), who introduced me to a Lazarist father then giving a
mission in Brooklyn, whose advice and explanations were extremely helpful. I
attended the mission, and was much benefited therefrom. I was, however,
astonished at the character of the preaching its practical and direct simplicity,
not to say bluntness, " a spade being called a spade." I had said nothing to the
priest about my doubts as to "getting religion," and this still troubled me.
Again I consulted my friend, and he introduced me to the present Bishop of
Peoria, who quickly convinced me that the Catholic religion was an intellectual,
not simply an emotional, religion, and that it required no spiritual convulsions to
fit me to become a Catholic a view which has since been more fully developed to
my mind by reading the writings of the Very Rev. I. T. Hecker, who has also
made clear to me that there is no dissonance between Catholicity and republican
institutions. Since then, too, I have learned that the Catholic religion, while not
emotional in the sense in which I had looked at it, is yet adapted to every cast of
soul ; that however fervent of spirit one may be, his soul can here find ample
food ; that if he be fired by heroic charity, he can here find wide fields for its
exercise ; that if he be curious to explore the deeps of metaphysics and ethics, he
will here find them almost soundless. And I have also learned that to live up to
the letter and the spirit of the Catholic religion is no easy task.

Nothing now prevented me from following the bent of my inclinations, and
soon afterwards I received baptism and was admitted to the church. As the
years roll by I am more and more satisfied of the wisdom of my choice, and more
and more I rejoice and thank God for the peace and happiness I have found.
God has blessed me far beyond my deserts. May he grant me the grace of per-
severance and a happy death !

CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN INDIA.

In the Nineteenth Century for July Sir William Wilson Hunter, a candid Pro-
testant, presents a view of the progress of Christian missions in India which
affords encouragement and consolation to those who hope for the spread of Chris-
tianity among the peoples of that vast and wonderful region. The writer's
well-known reputation for scholarship, accuracy of observation, freedom from

1 888.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 135

sectarian rancor, and discernment of good wherever found, entitle his statements
to great consideration. His judgments have not been formed simply by view-
ing the field from afar in a peaceful English home, reading the reports of
missionaries, and hearing the superficial accounts of travellers, but he has lived
for a quarter of a century in India, and labored in an honorable service, though
not as a missionary himself, but, as he styles it, as "a plain secular person." He
gives precise, positive information which seems not to be exaggeration of the
favorable nor depreciation of the adverse view. His article, we regret to say,
deals almost wholly with Protestant missions. We should be glad if so fair-
minded and just an observer and courteous a critic had seen more of Catholic
missions and would tell about them. We have studied to some extent the wbrk
of Protestant missions, but have never found them set forth in so favorable a
light as in this article.

The difficulties attending their inception at home and abroad are described.
A century ago Protestant Christendom was in a state of absolute apathy con-
cerning the condition of the heathen. This had to be overcome by the piofceers,
and hostile prejudices had to be encountered in the field itself, for European gov-
ernments and trading companies had despoiled and enslaved the Hindus. The
missionaries have finally succeeded in awakening, to some extent, the political
conscience of England, and have brought about the abolition of abuses that were
worse than pagan, and have obtained for the natives secure protection against
the rapacity of the whites.

Let us compare this field with others. Mr. Hunter's estimate of the results
of Protestant missions in the entire heathen world is as follows:

"In 1795 there were two half-starved missionaries. At present there are
6,000 missionaries with 30,000 auxiliaries engaged in active work." The whole
number of converts made since then he estimates as 3,000,000. He considers
the number of Protestant church communicants in Christendom as 30,000,000.
According to these figures a good percentage of the Protestant Christians of the
world have been made such by missionaries. India has been the largest mis-
sionary field: it has to-day 138,000 Protestant communicants.

While exhibiting the utmost impartiality toward the different sects engaged
in this work, Mr. Hunter calls particular attention to the successful methods
adopted by the Oxford Brotherhood, who belong to the High- Church party in
the Church of England.

" They are," he says, " men of birth and scholarship living in common a life of apostolic
simplicity and self-sacrifice. . . . Among the Hindus, for the past twenty- four hundred years,
every preacher who would appeal to the popular heart must fulfil two conditions and conform
to a certain type he must cut himself off from the world by a solemn act, like the Great Re-
nunciation of Buddha ; and he must come forth from his solitary self-communings with a simple
message to his fellow-men. Our missionaries do not seem to Indian thinkers to possess either
of the initial qualifications necessary for any great awakening of the people.

" Many years ago, when I lived in an Indian district, and looked out on the world with keen
young eyes, I noted down certain personal observations which I may venture to reproduce here.
The missionaries enjoyed the popular esteem accorded in India to men of letters and teachers
of youth. They were even more highly regarded as the guides who had opened up the paths
of Western knowledge, and who were still the pioneers of education among the backward races.
The mission printing-presses might almost be said to have created Bengali as a language of
literary prose ; and they had developed ruder tongues, like Santali or Assamese, into written
vehicles of thought. But whatever might be the self-sacrifices of our missionaries, or the inter-
nal conflicts which they passed through, their lives did not appear in the light of a Great Re-
nunciation. ' To the natives,' I wrote, 'the missionary seems to be a charitable Englishman

136 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Oct.,

who keeps an excellent cheap school, speaks the language well, preaches a European form of
their old incarnations, and drives out his wife and little ones in a pony-carriage. This friendly
neighbor, this affectionate husband, this good man, is of an estimable type, of a type which has
done much to raise the English character in the eyes of the natives, but it is not the traditional
type to which the popular preacher in India must conform.'"

The writer has thus acknowledged a glorious principle as old as the church, and
we are happy to applaud his appreciation of it.

The prospects for future conversions are not discouraging, he thinks ; but
" the process must be slow and difficult, 1 ' and the converts will probably come
chiefly

"fAmthelow castes and the so-called aboriginal peoples. . . . There are fifty millions of
human beings in India sitting on the outskirts of Hinduism or beyond its pale, who, within the
next fifty years, will incorporate themselves in one or other of the higher faiths. ... I myself
do not expect that any Englishman or any European will in our days individually bring about
a great Christian awakening in India. But I think it within reasonable probability that some
native of India will spring up whose life and preaching may lead to an accession on a great
scale to the Christian church. If such a man arises he will set in motion a mighty movement,
whose consequences it is impossible to foresee. And I believe that if ever he comes, he will be
produced by influences and surroundings of which the Oxford Brotherhood in Calcutta is at
present the forerunner and prototype."

He gives also indirect testimony of the great results which Catholic missiona-
ries have attained and may hope to attain. He says that Protestants

" must purge their cause of bigotry and cant. Of bigotry, such as the injustice which some
pious people in England do to the Roman Catholic clergy in India ; to that great church which
is quietly, and with small worldly means, educating, disciplining, and consoling a Christian
population three times more numerous than all the Protestant converts in India put together."

We do not ignore the good which Protestant missionaries have and are ac-
complishing in India, but the article under consideration shows that the Catholic
Church is the greatest and most successful instrument for propagating Chris-
tianity in India, and that this superiority is to be attributed solely to its unparal-
leled spiritual influence upon mankind. The Oxford Brotherhood have repudiate d
the Reformation doctrines and methods and have adopted Catholic teaching and
practices, and the results are in their favor as compared with other Protestant
missionaries. Mr. Hunter's conclusion, though he has not expressed it in so
many words, is undoubtedly that the hope of the conversion of India lies chiefly
in the Catholic Church. If some native of India does rise up to lead great multi-
tudes to Christianity, as Mr. Hunter thinks probable, he will not be merely the
kindly neighbor who keeps a cheap school and drives out with his wife in a pony-
carriage. He will be one who will follow with giant strides in the footsteps of
St. Francis Xavier. The true typical missionary hero would be easily recognized ;
a man of God cannot be disguised. If St. Paul were in Calcutta the whole city
would find out his character and doctrine within a month ; they would hear his
cry, " I am crucified to the world and the world to me."

To wrest a people from the dominion of Satan and bring their proud hearts
and sensual bodies under the dominion of the spirit of God would be a difficult
work for a comfortable, well-fed, and well-paid apostle to attempt. Evidently it
will be useless to expect such an apostle as the writer describes as necessary un-
less the Catholic Church gives him. Moreover, it is not a pious fancy for Mr.
Hunter, who is no enthusiast, to suppose a means fitly adapted to the end.
Christianity from its very cradle has been propagated on a large scale only by

1 888.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 137

such instruments. The apostles of nations, says Alban Butler, are, next to the
twelve apostles, the greatest wonder in the church of God.

But does not the favorable showing which Protestantism makes in India pre-
sent a formidable obstacle to the success of Catholicism ? it may be asked. On
the contrary, it may prove a help. Arianism was propagated among heathen na-
tions more extensively than Protestantism has ever been, but this only prepared
the way for a more complete triumph of Catholicism.

And it must be borne in mind that Protestant missions have succeeded in
later times by un-Protestant methods. Nothing could be more untrue than the
claim that their missionary converts have for their rule of faith the Bible and the
Bible only. They have been taught Christianity by men claiming, at least im-
plicitly, to have authority from above. A large proportion of them have been
trained in missionary schools from early childhood. The Protestant missionary
appears among the heathen with not one whit less of authority, so far as the
heathen can perceive, than the Catholic, and he is looked up to as the official ex-
ponent of a religion and a civilization gifted with supreme right to spread every-
where their beneficent institutions. Furthermore, it was only after the era of
Bible distributing had been supplemented and in great part supplanted by that
of authoritative teaching that any appreciable progress was made. And at
this day, the Protestant missionary who appeals most confidently to his voca-
tion to preach Christ (not simply to deliver the Bible that Christ may preach him-
self) is the one who behaves most like a genuine apostle of Christ and makes
most converts.

Judging from the past, says Mr. Mallock, it would not be strange if Catholi-
cism reconquered Christendom. Islam is most to be dreaded ; its past triumphs
have been great, but it swept away only churches that had fallen from Catholic
unity. The Catholic Church hurled it back from Europe, and even bore its own
victorious Christian banners to Jerusalem. The triumph of false religions over
mankind, where the circumstances are favorable, is the most natural thing in the
world. The inclinations and passions of man will come to a compromise with
righteousness quite readily, but they will not submit to be crucified without a
struggle. When we consider what the Catholic faith requires of men, it seems to
us a wonder that it has held so great a sway as it has in the world. Truly, the
mercy and goodness of God toward the nations is marvellous.

H. H. WYMAN.

The Editor of THE CATHOLIC WORLD :

SIR : A mysterious writer in your August number mysterious in more than
one sense criticises several sentences from the article, " Our Drinks and Our
Drunkards," published in the June number. He well deserves the hint you give
him in the head-line : " Please be More Accurate ! "

The good-natured and learned critic inadvertently omitted one sentence that
is of equal importance with the three sentences he quoted. To be accurate, let
me quote four sentences from page 348 :

" From corn, rye, and wheat we get the alcohols which, in the form we drink them, are
known as whiskeys. These alcohols are not the same as the alcohol of brandy. They are
amylic alcohols. Amylic alcohols are hurtful. They may be made less hurtful by means of
successive distillations, but even distillation will not give them the quality of the alcohol of
wine."

138 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Oct.,

In these four sentences I have tried to convey to the readers of THE CATHOLIC
WORLD a fact which it can do them no harm to remember, a fact of which, I
hope, no special pleader for whiskey will make them lose sight. This fact is not
"that the alcohol of whiskey is amylic (or amyl) alcohol," but that the alcohol
of whiskey is an amylic alcohol. " We have only to consult any organic chemis-
try to find that " the technical compound-word " amylic (or amyl) alcohol " has
no plural. " Amyl alcohol is not a wholesome thing," says my instructor, " and
it may well be admitted that three ounces will kill a man." But do not fear
whiskey on this account. Please think -well of whiskey ! Try six ounces of it !
A fine argument, indeed !

You can imagine a man used to the text-book or the laboratory mentally
dividing his glass of whiskey into compartments, wherein he fictitiously stores
in exact proportions common alcohol, " amylic (or amyl) alcohol," and those
other constituents of whiskey which every reader fully appreciates now that he
has learned all about them from Richter (Smith's translation). When this skil-
ful analyst, having performed many delicate mental operations, swallows the
whiskey, will he be any better off than you or I ? No. He takes it as a whole.
If his mental analysis has been " checked " in the laboratory, well and good.
His eyes are open as well as his mouth. But forty quotations will make the
whiskey neither better nor worse than it is. If the readers of THE CATHOLIC
WORLD, leaving Richter to the lecturer and his chemistry class, will take up Dr.
Francis E. Englehardt's Report to the State Board of Health, 1882 which was
not in my hands when writing " Our Drinks and Our Drunkards " they will
learn something practical about the liquors we actually drink. The learned doc-
tor analyzed twenty-five samples of whiskey. In twenty of these he found ap-
preciable quantities of the poisonous " amylic (or amyl) alcohol," and traces of
the same poison in the other five samples. Whether our favorite whiskey con-
tains thirty or sixty per cent, of common alcohol, we shall do no injustice to the
alcohols of corn, rye, wheat, rice, oats, the beet-root, or the potato nor shall we
injure ourselves by qualifying them as amylic alcohols. Where, on page 348, I
venture to say that three ounces of amylic alcohol will kill a man I use the term
" amylic alcohol " in its technical sense. If in the four sentences I have already
quoted I have not made clear the sense in which I use the adjective " amylic, 1 '
then indeed I am rightly chargeable with a want of clearness, but not with a
want of accuracy. I fear my statement is too accurate to suit some people.
Certainly I have not said that three ounces of whiskey will kill a man. Nor
shall I say this, unless I know the man and the whiskey.

Pardon me if I now quote the critic's fifth paragraph :

" Later on we find it stated (page 349) that the ' brandies,' as well as other liquors, which
three-fourths of the people drink are made from these poisonous alcohols ' ; though previously
the writer made a distinction, but not a very well founded one, for they may be formed to some
extent in the fermentation of grape sugar as well as in that of maltose."

May I be allowed to join the author of this lucid paragraph-sentence in the hon-
est criticism of his own work, expressed in the last and tersest paragraph of his note ?

" Loose writing of this sort should be avoided. It does as much harm as good to the
cause of temperance."

And may I add it can do no good to the cause of whiskey, good or bad, and it
does positive harm to a cause which some men still have at heart the cause of
the mother- tongue? Respectfully, J. A. M.

1 888.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 139

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

LIFE OF LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON. From the French of Mrs. Augus-
tus Craven. By Henry James Coleridge, S.J. London : Bentley &
Son.

Mrs. Craven's French biography of Lady Fullerton we have not seen, but
it surely must be a delightful book. Father Coleridge was sure to make
the English translation as nearly equal as possible to the original. It is,
indeed, a charming volume, aside from any comparison with the French Life,
which we are unable to make. Nor is it a mere literal translation, but,
while in the main a reproduction of the original, it is in some respects
modified by expansion and retrenchment, with a view to making it better
adapted to an English-reading public.

The subject of the memoir is a remarkably interesting person in two
respects. First, as an author of great merit, and again as a distinguished
convert to the Catholic Church, eminent for her great piety and for her
numerous and excellent works of charity. Lady Georgiana Fullerton was
the daughter of Lord Granville, long British Minister at Paris, and the
granddaughter of the Marquis of Stafford and the Duke of Devonshire.
Her husband was Mr. Fullerton, who became a Catholic a considerable
time before his wife, and in the sequel was equally generous and zealous in
promoting the good works to which both devoted their efforts and their
wealth during a long course of years.

Lady Georgiana's career as a novelist was brilliant and successful. The
most noteworthy of her novels are Ellen Middleton, Grantley Manor, Con-
stance Shenuood, and Mrs. Gerald's Niece. Those who have not read them
will find their perusal not disappointing, even if they credit our assurance
that they are far above the common mark.

The biography of Lady Fullerton is full of an uncommon interest, en-
hanced by the delightful style of its authors. To a certain class of readers
it will be especially attractive because of the high social and intellectual
position of the subject of the memoir, and of the many other persons who
are introduced into the narrative as connected by blood or friendship with
her life and taking parts in the events of its history. If such readers are
attracted by the humility, the self-denial, the intense sympathy with the
poor and suffering, and the other Christian virtues which shone out so
brightly in the life of Lady Georgiana Fullerton, the perusal of her biogra-
phy may be very useful to them as well as entertaining.

REMINISCENCES OF THE LATE HON. AND RIGHT REV. ALEXANDER MAC-
DONELL, first Catholic Bishop of Upper Canada, and (incidentally) of other
old residents of the province. By W. J. Macdonell. Toronto : Williamson
&Co.

A brief and extremely interesting account of the life and character of a strong
man in soul and body has recently been printed. Alexander Macdonell, first
Bishop of Kingston, Upper Canada, died nearly fifty years ago, his gigantic frame
worn out with years and labors spent in the apostolic ministry. He was a true

140 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Oct.,

missionary ; there being indeed not very much difference between the heroic men
who lived and died evangelizing the savages of British America and those who,
like Bishop Macdonell, quickly followed in their footsteps in the wilderness, the
pastors of the pioneer settlers.

The subject of this sketch was born in 1762 on the borders of Loch Ness, In-
vernesshire, was educated at the Scottish Colleges of Paris and Valladolid, and
ordained priest in 1787; and from the very first to the very last of his ministry
was the faithful shepherd of the little clan Macdonell of Glengarry. Father Mac-
donell's first great success in life was saving his people from starvation. The
lairds would not allow them to live by the land, and his gracious majesty George
III., or the government which called itself by his name, would not allow them to
escape starvation by water that is to say, the clansmen were dispossessed of their
holdings in the mountains by brutal landlords who converted their estates into
sheep-walks, and then were prevented by cruel an ti- emigration acts from going to
the colonies ; the object being to force them into the army. This amiable pur-
pose Father Macdonell defeated with infinite difficulty by moving his bare-legged
gillies and their families in a body to Glasgow and procuring them employment in
factories. But this only postponed the crisis. By 1795 the wars of the French
Revolution had so interfered with business that the Highlanders were thrown out
of work. Now they must enlist or starve ; and if they enlisted, the author of this
memoir says that they would be " compelled, according to the then universal
practice, to declare themselves Protestants." To escape this misery Father Mac-
donell and his relatives resorted to that curious thing called " Catholic loyalty to
the king." A deputation was sent to London, their address was most graciously
received by the king, and the first Glengarry Fencible Regiment was enrolled, the
first Catholic corps raised as such since the Reformation, and Father Macdonell,
in spite of the laws to the contrary, was gazetted chaplain. After spending a few
years in the Island of Guernsey, the Fencibles were sent into Ireland to help
put down the Rebellion of '98. The chaplain was, from the account before us, the
ruling spirit of the regiment, commanded as it was by a kinsman and a Catholic,
and he used his power for good. The Protestant yeomanry and some portions
of the regular troops had carried on a most savage warfare against the people
whether combatants or not, and showed a particular spite against the poor little
chapels of the mountain districts of Wexford and Wicklow, many of them being
found turned into stables for the horses of the soldiery. These Father Macdonell
" caused to be cleansed, and restored to their original sacred purpose, performed
divine service in them himself, and invited the clergy and congregations to attend,
most of whom had been driven into the mountains and bogs to escape the cruelty
of the yeomanry, etc." The poor people came back with joy to their homes and
altars.

The regiment was disbanded after the peace of 1802, and again that eternal
problem of the poor Scotch and Irish these many generations back, how to keep
alive under English rule, confronted the clan. Father Macdonell journeyed to
London to obtain a grant of land in Upper Canada with a view to emigration.
He was offered instead a grant of eighty acres and four slaves per man if he
would lead his people to the Island of Trinidad in the West Indies, and "for him-
self and a few special friends such salaries as would make them independent."
The reason for this generosity was the total lack of British colonists in that quar-
ter of the colonies, and the difficulty of obtaining settlers on account of the deadly
fevers incident to the climate. He preferred the unbroken wilderness and the

NEW PUBLICATIONS. 141

healthful snows of the far north, and by dint of earnest solicitation got a royal
patent for a grant of land to every officer and soldier he should take with him.

Somebody has said that to be under British laws administered by British land-
lords is to be between the devil and the deep sea. When a man has got the British
government on his side he may be secure so far as the deep sea is concerned, but he
has yet to look out for the devil. " The Highland proprietors took alarm," says Mr.
Macdonell, " and endeavored by various means to prevent their people from emi-
grating. The regulations of the Emigration Act were rigidly enforced, and many
of the poor men, after selling their effects and repairing with their families to the
place of embarkation, were not permitted to emigrate. Such effect did the fears
and threats of the Highland lairds produce upon the ministry, that even Lord Ho-
bart, Colonial Secretary of State, urged Father Macdonell to conduct his emi-
grants to Upper Canada by way of the United States, that the odium of directly
assisting emigration from the Highlands might be avoided, there being at the time
a provincial law which granted two hundred acres of land to every loyal subject
entering Upper Canada from the United States with the intention to settle in the
Province." This advice was declined, and regardless of opposition, and almost
smuggling his people away, he settled them in a wilderness remote enough from
British law to leave them free to live. They had to fight Orangemen in their new
home, and they were annoyed in various ways by meddling officials and bad neigh-
bors. But all this they could bear. They had their era of privation and toil in
the woods of Canada, but every tenant was his own landlord and every subject a
citizen, and so they in course of time prospered greatly. That these poor High-
landers had escaped with their lives from the Egyptian house of bondage, even
after having been cruelly battered by the enemies of their race and their religion,
was owing almost wholly to the tender, priestly love of Alexander Macdonell, and
to his unflinching determination to place the sea between them and their landlords
and lawlords.

For more than thirty years, as priest and bishop, he served them ; and besides
them very many other little scattered pioneer communities of Scottish, Irish, and
French Catholics. He travelled incessantly through a vast tract of country, mostly
without roads or bridges, often a-foot and carrying his vestments, altar furniture,
and personal effects on his back, later on using common country wagons or going
on horseback, sometimes in Indian bark canoes. His soul was fired with love of
God and of his kind ; he celebrated Mass, preached the word of God, heard con-
fessions and administered the other sacraments ; the knowledge of the precious
graces his ministrations would give to his poor, struggling people would not allow
him to rest. Like every other pioneer priest, he was also the father of his people ;
and his advice was sought by all, and ever given with prudence as well as af-
fection upon affairs of every kind. By his zeal, judgment, patience, and good
sense the social standing and the material prosperity of the early Catholic settlers,
whatever their race, were wonderfully improved.

On the last day of the year 1820 he was consecrated bishop in partibus and
became vicar-apostolic of Upper Canada, embracing the present dioceses of Kings-
ton, Toronto, Hamilton, London, Ottawa, Pembroke, and Peterborough. From
this time till his death he was of infinite help to the whole Canadian Church by his
dealings with the English and Canadian governments in its behalf. It is well
known that it was for many years the policy of Great Britain to control the Catho-
lic religion in Canada, with a view to making it practically a " church by law
established." That this abominable union of incongruities failed of consum-

142 NEW PUBLIC A TIONS. [Oct.,

mation was due in great part to the vigor and tact of Bishop Macdonell's re-
sistance.

It is nearly half a century since the weary limbs and brave heart of this
noble apostle of the Gael in exile were laid at rest. But the effects of his labors
abide. Not only in Canada, but in many places in the States are theMacdonells
and Macdonalds to be found, intelligent, prosperous, and soundly Catholic men
and women. The writer of this notice remembers serving at a mission in a busy
little Western city whose population was made up of representatives from the
great nations of Europe absorbed into a community of the most energetic type of
the pure New England stock. On asking the pastor who was the gentleman who
acted as volunteer usher during the services, the answer was : " His name is Mac-
donell, and he is one of the Macdonells of Glengarry. He is a first-rate Catholic,
an excellent lawyer, and is mayor of the city."

AN EXPOSITION OF THE GOSPELS : Consisting of an Analysis of each Chap-
ter and of a Commentary, Critical, Exegetical, Doctrinal, and Moral. By
His Grace the Most Rev. John MacEvilly, D.D., Archbishop of Tuam.
Two volumes. Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Third edition, revised and
corrected. New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago : Benziger Brothers.

AN EXPOSITION OF THE EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL AND OF THE CATHOLIC
EPISTLES. By His Grace the Most Rev. John MacEvilly, Archbishop of
Tuam. Two volumes. Third edition, enlarged. New York, Cincin-
nati, and Chicago : Benziger Brothers.

The reader might ask, What is the good of such books as these to a lay-
man ? In answer to that question we ask another: What do you mean by
a layman ? Do you mean that if he be intelligent he is sure to be totally
given to worldly ambition or money-getting? If simple, that his soul is
daubed with the mire of his barnyard as well as his boots ? If so, then a
layman has no use for such books, or any other books. But if a layman
means to be a man and a Christian, and does not permit himself to be cut
off from the delightful and profitable study of the word of God, these vol-
umes are of infinite use to him. The assumption that a Christian, because
he is a layman, has no practical use for a plain commentary on the Gospel,
is not true, and is extremely unjust to the average lot of the Christian. It
is equivalent to saying that the baptized and communicating Catholic is not
much because he is not ordained. Until men rid themselves of the perni-
cious error that the priesthood is a caste, monopolizing the whole intelli-
gent side of religion, our Catholicity will lack a trait of genuineness. Our
progress towards the divine ideal involved in the complete acceptation of
Christianity will be clogged and halting, unless it take on an element of
individuality. The response to the ruling of the Holy Spirit in the indi-
vidual soul must be largely mechanical if devoid of spontaneity. This is
an error which cannot but be fruitful of a progeny of near-sighted Chris-
tians Christians within whose range of mental vision the great and wide
purposes of the faith they hold are at best but vague; Christians who, in
fact, "cannot see beyond their nose."

In the words of our Divine Lord, "we adore that which we know" (St.
John iv. 22), and the first and vital condition of our worship is knowledge.
Of all men, the Christian has wisdom for his birthright. And the Scrip-
tures of the New Testament contain the original documents of that birth-

1 888 .] NEW PUB Lie A TIONS. 143

right. There is no reading so profitable, in the long run so entertaining,
as that which tells the story of the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. Any
conception of the layman's vocation which leaves out of view the frequent
use of Scripture is, to say the least, defective. Hence Archbishop Mac-
Evilly, as he says in his preface, wrote these commentaries in the vernacu-
lar, "to furnish the intelligent laity and the reading portion of the Catho-
lic community with a thoroughly Catholic exposition, in their own lan-
guage, of one of the most important portions of the Holy Scriptures, and
to serve as a practical reply to the clumsy calumnies so often refuted of
those who charge the Catholic Church with interdicting for her own pur-
poses the reading of the Sacred Scriptures, even when such reading is
hedged round with the proper safeguards.'' The archbishop further says,
"The character of the age on which we have fallen influenced me in pub-
lishing a commentary on the Gospels at the present time/' and he goes on
to show that the errors of our day are more fundamental than in the age
which immediately preceded this. Hence he asks :

" Was it ever more necessary at any period in the history of Christianity than it is at the
present day to place before the world in as clear a light as possible an exposition, in accordance
with the unerring teachings of the Catholic Church, of the fundamental principles of faith and
morals with which the Son of God came down to enlighten a world which he found sitting in
darkness and in the shadow of death ? "

This is the third edition of this really great work, a fact very encourag-
ing, and one that proves its merit and its timeliness. The plan adopted is
to collate the comments of the Fathers and Doctors of the church, add-
ing the author's own. The scope is critical, explanatory, and doctrinal, in-
terspersed with moral reflections. The work is full of learning; the style is
direct; the language easily understood by any intelligent person. There
is no parade of erudition, though the author is fully equipped for his work..

THREE INTRODUCTORY LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF THOUGHT, delivered
at the Royal Institution, London, during the month of March, 1887. By
F. Max Miiller. With an appendix which contains a correspondence
on "Thought without Words," between F. Max Miiller and Francis
Galton, the Duke of Argyle, George J. Romaine, and others. Chica-
go : The Open Court Publishing Company.

In these three lectures we have an instance of the tendency ot a spe-
cialist to exaggerate the importance of his own particular line of study and
research. Prof. Max Miiller is certainly a great philologist, but we think he
is out of his element when he enters the domain of psychology, notwith-
standing that the two subjects are so closely allied.

His thesis is that language and thought are identical, because insepara-
ble. We cannot think without words, he asserts ; therefore thought is lan-
guage and language is thought. By thought he means the formation of
concepts, which is nothing but addition and subtraction. Now, the con-
cept cannot be formed or expressed without a sign, which is the word
spoken, written, or merely thought. Hence the word and the concept are
the same, and language and thought are identical. Such is his argument ;
and we think that every candid reader will give to this presentation of the
case the verdict of "not proven." Even were we to admit that language
and thought are inseparable, there is a wide difference between insepara-

144 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Oct., 1888.

bility and identity. As the Duke of Argyle well says in his thoughtful
and suggestive letter: "Language is a product of thought; an expression
of it; a vehicle for the communication of it; a channel for the convey-
ance of it ; and an embodiment which is essential to its growth and
continuity." This is correlation, not identity. Max Miiller has fallen into
an error similar to that of those specialists who, engrossed in the study
of man's bodily frame, lose sight of his spiritual nature, and because the
brain is the organ or instrument of thought, boldly proclaim that thought
is but a secretion of the brain. In both cases the inference is altogether
unwarranted.

BOOKS RECEIVED.
Mention of books in this place does not preclude extended notice in subsequent numbers.

LOURDES: Its Inhabitants, Its Pilgrims, and Its Miracles. With an account of the Apparitions
at the Grotto, and a Sketch of Bernadette's subsequent History. By Richard F. Clarke, S J.
New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago : Benziger Bros.

A CATHOLIC CONVENTION OF ONE VERSUS THE CINCINNATI PRESBYTERIAN CONVENTION.
By Rev. Abram J. Ryan. New York : D. & J. Sadlier & Co.

THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. By Thomas Charles Edwards, D.D., Principal of the Uni-
versity College of Wales, Aberystwyth. New York : A. C. Armstrong & Son.

STUDIES IN CRITICISM. By Florence Trail. New York : Worthington Co.

FATHER VAHEY'S CONTROVERSIAL LETTERS. Rev. J. W. Vahey, Ridgeway, Wis. Milwau-
kee, Wis. : Hoffmann Bros.

THE WATER LILY : An Oriental Fairy Tale. By Frank Waters. Ottawa : J. Durie & Son.

THE PRACTICE OF HUMILITY. By His Holiness Pope Leo XIII. Translated from the Italian
by Rev. J. F. X. O'Connor, S.J. New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago : Benziger Bros.

ST. PETER'S CHAINS ; or, Rome and the Italian Revolution. A series of Sonnets by Aubrey de
Vere, LL.D. London : Burns & Gates ; New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co.

PADDY BLAKE'S SOJOURN AMONG THE SOUPERS, and other Poems. Second edition. By the
Author of Verses on Doctrinal and Devotional Subjects. Dublin : James Duffy & Sons.

AUTHORITY ; or, a Plain Reason for joining the Church of Rome. By Luke Rivington, M.A.,
Magdalen College, Oxford. London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co, ; New York : Catholic
Publication Society Co.

ESSAYS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. By his Eminence Cardinal Wiseman, late Archbishop of
Westminster. With a biographical introduction by the Rev. "Jeremiah Murphy, Queens-
town. London : Thomas Baker. (For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.)

CATHOLIC BIOGRAPHIES. Vol. I. St. Patrick, St. George, St. Bede, St. Ignatius Loyola, Bless-
ed Thomas More, Queen Mary, Father Arrowsmith, Dom Bosco, St. Columba. London :
. The Catholic Truth Society. (For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.)

CATHOLIC BIOGRAPHIES. Vol. II. Venerable Philip Howard, Blessed John Fisher, Miss
Catherine Boys, The English Martyrs, Blessed Edmund Campion, Venerable John Ogilvie,
St. Alphonsus Liguori. St. Francis de Sales. London : The Catholic Truth Society. (For
sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.)

CATHOLIC BIOGRAPHIES. Vol. III. Leo XIII., St. Peter Claver, St. Alphonsus Rodri-
guez, St. John Berchmans, St. Thomas of Canterbury, St. Teresa, St. Augustine, St.
Benedict. London : The Catholic Truth Society. (For sale by the Catholic Publication
Society Co.)

THE ENGLISH MARTYRS under Henry VIII. and Elizabeth (1535-1583). London : The Ca-
tholic Truth Society. (For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.)

Publications of the Catholic Truth Society Seven vols. London : The Catholic Truth
Society. (For sale by the Catholic .Publication Society Co.)

MEXICO PICTURESQUE, POLITICAL, PROGRESSIVE. By Mary Elizabeth Blake and Margaret
F. Sullivan. Boston : Lee & Shepard ; New York : Charles T. Dillingham.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XLVIII. NOVEMBER, 1888. No. 284.

THE LIBERTY OF CATHOLICS IN SCIENTIFIC MAT-
TERS.

PROBABLY no Catholic scientist has contributed more to
point out the weak points of Darwinism, and to correct the false
opinion of many that the theory of evolution in any and every
form means the elimination of the Creator and Ruler of the uni-
verse, than Dr. St. George Mivart. He, indeed, " deserves the
gratitude of English-speaking Catholics for his writings on these
subjects," * and it is to be hoped that he may long continue to
labor in his chosen sphere of scientific investigation. Yet like
other intellectually great men before him, who on some point or
other were in advance of their age, Dr. Mivart has had to face,
and probably will have still to face, hostile criticism.f Perhaps
he has advanced some rather too bold and untenable opinions ;
yet as long as a higher authority will not decide on the mooted
points, his views deserve at least the careful consideration of re-
flecting Catholics. Dr. Mivart is not in the habit of publishing
his views hastily. Besides, he seems to be in correspondence
with some of the most far-seeing Catholic thinkers of England.:}:

For these reasons it might be rather rash for Catholic writers
to declare that he has transgressed the limits of that scientific
liberty to which every Catholic thinker is entitled. Yet the dis-
cussions he has started have no doubt made the following ques-
tion a timely subject for inquiry : What are the proper limits of
the liberty of Catholics in matters of science?

* Dublin Review, January, 1888, p. 189.

t Cf. Dublin Review, October, 1887, pp. 401-19, and January, 1888, pp. 188-9. The Ly-
ceum, Dublin, September, 1887, pp. 1-5, and November, 1887, pp. 69-71.
JCf. The Forum, New York, March, 1887, p. 10.

1 46 LIBER TY OF CA THOLICS IN SCIENTIFIC MA TTERS. [No v. ,

A Catholic scientist must always bear in mind that no fact of
science can ever really contradict any truth of divine revelation.
God, being the Author of both nature and revelation, cannot
teach contradictory propositions. Hence scientific truths can
never be contrary to truths of revelation, but they may, and
generally are, outside of the domain of divinely revealed doc-
trines. Intelligent Catholics of all ages were well aware that
God never intended to teach mankind all possible knowledge by
his supernatural revelation, but that he has left to human -in-
vestigation the vast realm of the visible universe. Hence the
church has always respected scientific liberty within its proper
sphere, and never considered it her rnissio* to interfere in purely
scientific questions. Whenever she has officially taken notice of
scientific discussions, it was only when, and so far as, these
seemed to intrude on her doctrines, a domain which every Cath-
olic scientist is bound to respect. On this point Pius IX.* has
declared that all Catholic teachers and writers are obliged to
firmly hold not only what has been defined by express decrees of
general councils or of Roman pontiffs, but also those things
" which are taught as divinely revealed by the ordinary magis-
terium of the entire church scattered over the globe, and there-
fore held by Catholic theologians with universal and constant
consent to belong to faith."

II.

Now, just hereby, some may think, the scientific liberty of
Catholics is cramrped, for how can a Catholic scientist impar-
tially investigate and decide on scientific views which some re-
spectable Catholic theologians may denounce as incompatible
with Catholic doctrine ? No doubt in such cases Catholic scien-
tists ought to have a proper regard for the opinion of the theolo-
gians and proceed cautiously before declaring such views settled
facts of science. But this will not prevent them from treating
the same, so long as no unquestionable final results are attained,
as mere hypotheses or provisional assumptions, in accordance
with which various facts can be explained. Catholic scientists
have all desirable liberty to search for facts supporting such hy-
potheses, to compare and classify such facts, and to draw such

* In the Apostolic Letter to the Archbishop of Munich, Freisingeo, December ai, 1863.

1 888.] LIBER TY OF CA THOLICS IN SCIENTIFIC MA TTERS. 147

generalizations or conclusions from them as they may undoubt-
edly imply. By doing so, Catholic scientists may gradually
either find out that the respective hypotheses are untenable that
is, conflicting with facts ascertained with certainty or they may
establish the truth of such hypotheses so firmly that no theolo-
gian of any consequence will care to call the same any more in
question.

A simple illustration of how Catholic scientists may consistent-
ly go on within the proper sphere of their investigations, in spite
of theological opinions to the contrary, is afforded us by Co-
lumbus.* When he broached his intention of seeking a new
world beyond the wide Atlantic, " he was in danger of being
convicted not merely of error, but of heterodoxy," for believing
in the possibility of antipodes. He " was assailed with citations
from the Bible and the Testament : the book of Genesis, the
Psalms of David, the prophets, the epistles, and the gospels. To
these were added the expositions of various saints and reverend
commentators: St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine, St. Jerome
and St. Gregory, St. Basil and St. Ambrose, and Lactantius Firmi-
anus." Without questioning the authority of the Bible and the
Fathers, within their proper spheres, Columbus made the neces-
sary preparations for the voyage, and discovered America.
After this, theologians generally were no longer inclined to dis-
pute the existence of inhabitable land on the other side of the
ocean.

There is nothing on the part of the church to prevent Catholic
scientists generally from following this example of Columbus. If,
instead of raising theological quarrels, they will remain within the
proper spheres of their investigations, they will be in no danger
of ever getting into collision with the ecclesiastical authorities.
In a letter on a meeting of Catholic scientists, addressed to Mgr.
Mauritius d'Hulst. May 20, 1887, His Holiness Leo XIII. espe-
cially inculcated that in matters concerning theology every scien-
tist should act as a naturalist, or historian, or mathematician, or
critic, and never assume the character of a theologian (" . . . in
rebus ipsis quae habeant cum intima Theologia cognationem, sic
unusquisque agat physicum, sic historicum, vel mathematicum,
vel criticum, ut numquam sibi sumat earn quae propria est theo-
logi personam "). If this advice were generally followed, there
would be no occasion for controversies between Catholic scien-
tists and Catholic theologians. Had Galilei quietly pursued such
a course, instead of arousing bitter theological disputes by his

* See Washington Irving]: The Life mnd Voyages of Christopher Columbus, vol. i. chap. iii.

148 LIBERTY OF CA THOLICS IN SCIENTIFIC MA TTERS. [Nov.,

indiscreet zeal,* the ecclesiastical authorities at Rome would
undoubtedly not have meddled with his scientific investigations.
How far Rome was from intending to interfere with reasonable
scientific liberty even in Galilei's case, is plainly shown by the
fact which is generally overlooked that the Copernican sys-
tem was then only forbidden to be taught as an established the-
ory, but not as a hypothesis to account for some then known
astronomical facts. Hence also the correction of the works of
Copernicus, which was officially ordered, March 15, 1616, merely
consisted in changing the sentences which taught the Copernican
system as an established doctrine into sentences proposing the
same as a hypothesis. Had Galilei quietly started from this hy-
pothetical assumption, had he gradually removed the objections
which were advanced against it at the time even by prominent
scientists, and had he finally proved conclusively the truth of the
system, the theologians would, no doubt, have gradually ceased
to combat it. If Catholic scientists would always pursue the line
of conduct indicated by Leo XIII., in the above-mentioned let-
ter to Mgr. D'Hulst, they would certainly avoid raising useless
and often harmful controversies with theologians.

III.

But, on the other hand, theologians ought to be very circum-
spect before denouncing any widely held or respectably held
scientific view as heretical, or inconsistent with Catholic doc-
trine. It is not the part of theology to instruct mankind on
matters of natural science. Even the authority of the Fathers,
the venerable ancient teachers of the church, as an eminent mo-
dern theologianf truly observes, " extends only to matters of faith
and morals, and truths essentially connected with them. Conse-
quently, purely scientific views of the Fathers have no greater
weight than the scientific principles on which they rest. . . . For
sufficient reasons we may deviate from them, no matter how
unanimously they may have been held by the Fathers." What
we are obliged to hold fidei divina actu is, as Pius IX. has de-
clared,^: that which has been defined by the general councils and
the Roman pontiffs, and which is taught by the ordinary teaching
authority of the entire church (ordinario totius Ecclesias per or-

* See Dr. Joseph Aschbach : Allgemeines Kirchen-Lexicon, sub Galilei,
t Dr. J. B. Heinrich : DogmatiscJte Theologie, Mainz, 1873, vo1 - ' P- 8l -
% Littene " Tuas Hbenter," addressed to the Archbishop of Munich, Freisingen, Dec. 21,
-1863.

1 8 88 .] LIBER TY OF CA THOLICS IN SCIENTIFIC MA TTERS. 1 49

bem dispersas magisterio) as being divinely revealed ; and which
is tJterefore with universal and constant consent taught by Catho-
lic theologians to belong to faith ("ideoque universal! et constanti
consensu a Catholicis theologis ad fidem pertinere retinentur ").
The " therefore " "ideoque" it seems, has often been over-
looked by some theologians. It is to be remembered that infalli-
bility has been promised to the ordinary teaching authority of the
church, the bishops united with the successor of St. Peter, and to
the latter alone if speaking ex cathedra, but not to the theologians
as a class of learned divines, no matter how eminent they may per-
sonally be, or how unanimous on any particular point. Their
unanimous consent on any point will only then be a guarantee that
the respective doctrine is to be held as divinely revealed, if this
consent is founded on the infallible authority of the ordinary
magisterium of the church.

Now, as to the great scientific questions which have been
raised in recent times, there is no reason for assuming that the
ordinary magisterium of the church has ever given them any
serious attention. And inasmuch as such views as that the sun
moves around the earth were superseded by the progress of
scientific discovery, so we may expect the same with regard to
other views. That the world was created in six ordinary days,
that the deluge at the time of Noe covered the entire earth, are
not doctrines of the church, but merely opinions. Such views can
be and have been given up in consequence of indisputable proofs
establishing their contradictories. Perhaps some other views at
present widely held among theologians and educated men gene-
rally will gradually be given up, and that even before this century
closes. But this does not affect the infallible teaching authority
of the church, nor any one of her dogmas of faith, but only some
theological views and opinions which have been built up on more
or less unsafe foundations.

IV.

From all this we see that Catholics do enjoy all reasonable
scientific liberty which may be desired, and that all talk of the
church being 'an obstacle to the progress of modern science is
without foundation. Of course the ecclesiastical authorities do
not favor useless, and often even harmful, controversies between
Catholic theologians and Catholic scientists. Yet this does not
impede the progress of true science, but only tends to make the

1 50 LIBERTY OF CA THOLICS IN SCIENTIFIC MA TTERS. [Nov.,

representatives both of theology and of science work within their
proper spheres with greater circumspection. True, solid science
can only gain thereby, and mankind will be afflicted with fewer
wild and false theories.

In order to work harmoniously together for the best interests
of both science and religion, our theological and scientific writers
ought to be capable of viewing all sides of the religio-scientific
questions which they intend to discuss. This they are unable to
do if they are " mere specialists, entirely deficient in that general
cultivation which alone enables a man to see his own subject in
true perspective and proportion, and to teach that subject in the
most effective way." Hence Catholic scientists ought to be well
informed on all points of theology, with which their own pecu-
liar lines of investigation are likely to come in contact ; nor is
this so difficult a matter as one would suppose. But, on the
other hand, every theologian who intends to publicly pass a
judgment on any scientific view, ought to be fully acquainted
with the real or apparent foundations of such view and its exact
bearing on Catholic doctrine.

If anywhere, it is in our United States that the representa-
tives of religion ought to be abreast of the age, if not in advance
of it in scientific matters. For in all our public universities and
higher schools the various branches of modern science* and the
latest scientific theories or views are carefully taught. Hence,
too, the wisdom of establishing the Catholic University of Wash-
ington, in which our brightest minds will be fully equipped with
both scientific and religious learning. Hence the Fathers of the
last Plenary Council of Baltimore have wisely decreed (No. 149
and 167) that the study of the various branches of natural science
shall for the future be carefully cultivated in our ecclesiastical
seminaries. They have thereby effectually proved that the Ca-
tholic Church is neither hostile nor indifferent to the progress of
modern scientific truths.

JOHN GMEINER.

St. Thomas' Seminary^ St. Paul, Minn.

1 888.] WILLIAM O'BxiEV, M.P. 151

WILLIAM O'BRIEN, M.P.

IT is a fortunate thing for a nation, and especially for a nation
whose national temperament is so artistically impressionable as
the Irish, when its leaders are heroic leaders, set apart from
other men by qualities loftier and stronger than fall to the lot of
common humanity. This heroic quality was to be expected,
perhaps, in the men who have led all Irish national movements
before the present one, movements which often partook of the
character of a gallant forlorn hope, calling for special qualities of
devotion, self-sacrifice, and heroic enthusiasm in its adherents,
but that the movement of to-day, born with the elements of suc-
cess in its practicality, should be led by men not less in heroic
qualities than their predecessors, is, I think, a matter for com-
ment and congratulation. The Parnellite movement has none
of the glamour and glitter of a military revolution, but no
heaven-sent soldier of them all makes a more impressive figure
than that consummate statesman, Mr. Parnell, cool and keen, with
his genius for silence or speech oftener silence his gift for
opportunities, a sphinx to his enemies, a great mind, not always to
be read, but always to be trusted, to his friends and his followers.
Not Dante eating his bitter bread at Can Grande's table was a
stranger or more distinguished figure than is John Dillon in his
prison-cell to-day, gloomy as Dante's self, weighed upon by that
sense of responsibility for the race which burdens here and there
the shoulders of an exceptionally gifted nature, almost repellent
in the coldness of the clear face and deep eyes, which look at
one but to look away ; in those windows of the soul one finds
but little trace of the common humanity ; there is almost anguish
in their solemnity, while there is also exaltation the rapt and
distant look of one who sees not Thabor but Gethsemani. More
lovable than either in his warm humanity is William O'Brien, a
tall man with shoulders slightly bowed from delicacy, or from
much bending over a desk ; with a long, colorless, worn face*
which is no mask to hide the fervent nature ; deep-set, short-
sighted eyes needing strong glasses to eke them out eyes which
have more crow's-feet about them than belong properly to the
man's thirty-six years; a low but ample forehead with the fair,
brown hair pushed away from it, with ideality and imagination
large above the temples, heavy brows, and a large, slightly
hooked nose these, with a somewhat ragged beard and an elo-

152 WILLIAM O'BRIEN, M.P. [Nov.,

quent and kindly mouth, make the facial characteristics of the
man who is to-day the best-loved man of the Irish people. But
no mere cataloguing of looks and features can give any idea of
the genial manner, helped out by the richest of Irish brogues ; a
chance meeting with him leaves one with the sense of some new
pleasantness come into one's day that is, if one is fortunate
enough to be a friend ; he has other sides to his nature, and can
be also the terrible enemy, or the keen man of business, as the
occasion requires.

Mr. O'Brien was born at Mallow on October 2, 1852. The
American who joins his transatlantic steamer at Queenstown
will have a charming glimpse from Mallow station of the town,
lying in its valley of the Blackwater sleepy enough, as I saw it ;
a very Sleepy Hollow and looking little like the mother-town
of so fiery a son. It is cool amid its green trees, with around
it the softly-swelling, gray-blue hills, and its green valley check-
ered in lines of silver, with many a rivulet flowing down from
the higher lands. He was born of a patriot stock, and alas ! a
stock bearing in its veins the fatal germ of consumption. In his
childhood the house was full of merry boys and girls ; at the
beginning of his political career no one was left to watch with
and hope for him but his mother, and even she stricken with
blindness ; she was not long spared, and now no mortal could
stand more lonelily alone than this young leader, beloved of mil-
lions. He was never robust, though God gave his angels guard
over him because he was destined for great things in the future
of this faithful land. At school Cloyne Diocesan College he
left leaping and hurling to his brothers, while he carried off the
intellectual honors of the school. In '67, the year of the Fenian
rising, his elder brother was out with Captain Mackey, one of
the most daring of the Fenian leaders, taking part in wild raids
on police-barracks, and coming unscathed through danger only
to be arrested and imprisoned after the suspension of the Habeas
Corpus Act. This was the first blow to the hitherto happy and
prosperous family. Afterwards there is an almost unbroken re-
cord of disaster and death. The father's death was followed
rapidly by the deaths of two brothers and a sister the three lay
dying at the one time and when the house was well-nigh empty
and desolate it fell to the lot of the lad yet in his teens to provide
for those still left. A sketch of Captain Mackey, contributed to
the Cork Daily Herald, was the means of securing for him a posi-
tion on that paper, where he remained till 1876. Then he came
to Dublin with his mother, and joined the reporting staff of the

1 888.] WILLIAM O'BRIEN, M.P. 153

Freeman's Journal, doing the ordinary short-hand work of a re-
porter. The late Mr. E. Dvvyer Gray, with that fine quality of
discrimination and selection which marked him, was quick to
appreciate the new-comer, and at a time when William O'Brien's
health, always precarious, had ebbed to a very low point indeed,
he in all probability saved his life by sending him to Egypt for
some time, perhaps the greatest among the great services rendered
by this most brilliant of editors to his country. Here in his new
leisure the young journalist had time to pen those charming let-
ters from Egypt which, appearing in the. Freeman, first drew at-
tention to a style picturesque, fervid, and full of color and life,
with an incisiveness as ot the journalist, but with an added lite-
rary quality distinct and distinguished, which not all the rush
of newspaper and political life has been able to kill out of his
work. He returned from the East greatly better in health.
Soon after came those letters from the distressed districts of
Ireland which in 1879 startled the people in Ireland, alike classes
and masses, as it were, from a slumber. Scarcely ever before
were there such newspaper letters, unless it might be those of
another Irishman, Dr. W. H. Russell, from the Crimea impas-
sioned, appealing, denunciatory, heart-breaking ; it was as if the
Prophet Ezechiel had suddenly appeared among the hardened
and the light living, with the very inspired words of warning
and terror on his lips. Soon there were two relief funds in full
working order, the amiable Duchess of Marlborough at Dublin
Castle receiving and bestowing generous alms, as well as the re-
presentatives of the people at the Dublin Mansion House. But
the distress of those bitter years was the beginning of the end.
The stars in their courses were fighting against a system of land-
lordism which rendered imperative occasional famines. The
time had come when rent so long paid to the last farthing at
what cost only Heaven knows could no longer be paid. Then
the English House of Commons brought in a poor and grudging
relief bill, passed it, to see it haughtily rejected by the unteach-
able and unforgetting House of Lords. It was time for the few
strong men here to act. In the autumn of that last of three years
of lean kine, 1879, the Land League was founded how and where
the history of to-day and yesterday records. We hear nothing
of Mr. O'Brien at its inception, but when the day of persecution
came he was quick to offer his services, to be used as the leaders
should see fit. However, his frail health made those leaders
pitiful ; the}' hesitated to place him in any post of danger, seeing
too clearly that in all probability it would be to him a post of

154 WILLIAM O'BRIEN, M.P. [Nov.,

death; so for a few months longer he remained hidden. The
fight with Mr. Forster waxed fast and furious. In 1881, in the
summer of the year, it was resolved to found a newspaper as
the organ of the new revolution. Mr. O'Brien's services were
again ready, and he was appointed editor of United Ireland.
What a terrible and effectual weapon it proved in his hands we
know ; the unknown young journalist sprang at once into noto-
riety, and the very day after Mr. Parnell's arrest the newest and
ablest of his lieutenants followed him to Kilmainham Jail.

Now comes one of the saddest episodes of William O'Brien's
life. His mother, long weak and ailing, helpless in her blind-
ness, was stricken with mortal illness when the last of her boys
was taken from her, to an imprisonment fatally unsuited to his
delicate health. She was removed to the Hospice for the Dy-
ing, that loveliest of charities which the Irish Sisters of Charity
have in their tender keeping, at their spacious old house at
Harold's Cross, in the outskirts of Dublin. Here her son, in
charge of his jailers, was permitted to visit her once or twice ;
here he came, a free man at last, to her death-bed.

If you would know William O'Brien under an altogether
new aspect, you must see the sweet-faced English nun in whose
arms his mother died, and hear her speak of him. Upon her
some of that mother's tenderness must have descended. Here
for her counsel, and her blessing, and her prayers comes this
terrible revolutionist on the eve of any great event in his event-
ful life, be it Mitchellstown, be it Canada, be it Tullamore. Per-
haps he could not so well have taken in his hands his life, his
fortunes, his stainless honor yes, and the reputation of the
cause he would die for and gone down into death and danger
almost into the bottomless pit, if it were not for the presence
upon earth of this visible angel-guardian. What she will say of
him is too sacred to be repeated, but she will give one a glimpse
of the passionate fervor and devotion one had almost said
saintliness which mark him out pre-eminently as a Christian
soldier, which makes one realize what a detestable insolence and
mockery that was which at his Belfast trial four years ago ques-
tioned his faith, by way of discrediting him with the unco guid
Northern Orangeman. One thinks of him as wending his way
up the stately old avenue, blooming with chestnut boughs, of
Our Lady's Hospice. It is such a preparation as the knights of
old made, with fasting and vigil, before enrolling themselves
under the banner of God. No great Church of the Templars or
the Knights of St. John could be holier than this ante-chamber

1 888.] WILLIAM O*BRIEN, M.P. 155

of heaven, where those are waiting- for whom the curtain shall
in a moment, sooner or later, be withdrawn by angel hands,
from the circle of whom every minute one arises, and, with a
smile backward, passes the portal into the Presence. And who
shall say that the less picturesque knights of to-day, fighting
God's battles and the battles of his poor, with a knightliness con-
tinued through ages, are less in his sight than those splendid
knights of old ? I have shrunk myself from the sadness of see-
ing the wards of the Hospice, though I have been told there is
no sadness, rather heavenly joy ; but I know the gray, stately old
house, with its large windows, through which the wide sky and
the waving of green boughs may come to dying eyes. I know
the lovely chapel full of light and color, pure as a large lily,
where in peace rests for a while the mortal shell from which the
bird has flown before being laid reverently in holy earth. It is
a lovely place to come to for peace and comfort and counsel.

Mr. O'Brien has held his editorship since 1881, and has im-
pressed his spirit strongly upon the paper. Its history was for
some years a history of persecution, over the details of which
one need not linger ; they are too well known. For long it
fought desperately, with the strength and courage of despera-
tion, and with desperate weapons ; but turning the files of it one
can pick out its editor's work by its nobility, its loftiness, even
when it is violent. He is an underpaid editor by his own will,
refusing to accept any but the barest stipend for his splendid
services ; this is but a single instance of his selflessness. During
what Mr. T. M. Healy has called " Lord Spencer's three-years'
agony in Ireland," Mr. O'Brien waged with him an unrelenting
duel. To-day, when the Red Earl, with unexampled splendor
of generosity, is Mr. Gladstone's right-hand man in the struggle
for Home Rule, O'Brien's not less generous heart must be sorely
wrung by the remembrance ; only one feels the more detesta-
tion for the hideous system which made two such men foes, two
as brave and as generous as were that Godfrey who fought for
the Holy Sepulchre and the great Saladin. Not that there
need remain any bitterness. Again and again, in his place in
Parliament and on the public platform, and to-day, when his
comrades are engaged in wresting from the grave and the prison
the secret of brave John Mandeville's death, Mr. O'Brien has
made his recantation. During those years of his editorship
United Ireland and its editor have faced many perils : in Mr.
Forster's strong regime of 1881, when the paper was suppressed
after a gallant struggle, its entire staff being either imprisoned

156 WILLIAM O'BRIEN, M.P. [Nov.,

or obliged to fly the country ; again, in Earl Spencer's " White
Terror" of the three years following Lord Frederick Caven-
dish's murder, when prosecution followed prosecution ; even
within the present Tory regime, when a coup d'ttat was planned
and all but executed, being stopped at the last moment by a
newly cropped-up, legal difficulty. The files of the paper for
those years are very interesting ; it is a lurid page of Irish his-
tory, and it could have found no fitter chronicler than O'Brien.
The story is told in tense, nervous, brilliant English which
flashes before one vividly the days of the Terror. Nor is he
always at fever heat. The kindly and affectionate nature of the
man is revealed here and there when he deals with his friends
and colleagues ; the narrative grows silken, soft, and tender
when he touches upon Mr. Parnell, a great and chivalrous love
of whom seems to be in many ways the guiding passion of
O'Brien's life. I recall a description of his some years ago I
wish I could put my hand upon it of a visit paid to the Irish
leader's shooting-lodge in the Wicklow Mountains. That was a
glimpse worth having of two little-understood men. Mr. Par-
nell was no longer the sphinx, immobile and mysterious ; he was
the grave, strong, repressed man, with strong passions and
strong emotions ay, and kindly ones, below his calm. One
heard how as a child he had drunk in greedily the shameful and
horrible story of the abominable cruelties and wrongs of '98
a story which had bitten itself into the soft tablet of the child's
mind, to grow deeper and more ineffaceable as the child grew to
manhood, with a resolve to do all within him to free his Ireland
from the rule which made such things possible. One saw clear-
ly, too, little disguised, the love of the writer for his subject, a
love as tender and admiring as the love of Oliver for Roland.

Yet another side of Mr. O'Brien the writer is as he appears
in his lectures, where he can be all things by turns. Within the
last couple of years he has made three notable appearances on
the lecture platform, each time in aid of a charity or some other
public object. For the Cork Young Ireland Society he took as
his subject a stirring one : "The Irish National Idea"; for the
Sacred Heart House, a Dublin charity instituted to fight the old
evil system of proselytism, he lectured to a huge audience on
" The Lost Opportunities of the Irish Gentry " ; last month the
Leinster Hall was filled to overflowing to hear his lecture on
the Press, in aid of that society of his brother pressmen of which
he is president. Nothing in his career is a more interesting
fact than the way in which those lectures were attended by

1 888.] WILLIAM O'BKIEN. M.P. 157

a class in all political matters bitterly opposed to him. That
their eloquence bore inquiry, almost conviction, into many of
those hitherto unquestioning minds one cannot doubt. I have
in my mind one convert of his, an artist singularly gifted and a
member of a family nearly every one of whom is distinguished,
who was swept away altogether out of life-long prejudices and
class pride by the torrent of his fiery eloquence. One cannot
but feel in reading after him that while journalism has gained a
brilliant member in him, literature has lost. For a quiet and
contemplative bookish life would have mellowed this fiery
genius into a great and restrained power. Here is an extract
from his " Irish National Idea," the rush and fervor of which
took strong men off their feet :

"The Irish cause has all the passionate*romance and glamour of lore :
it is invested with some of the sanctity of religion. No knight of chivalry
ever panted for the applause of his lady with a prouder love-light in his
eyes than the flashing glance with which men have welcomed their death-
wound, to the fierce music of battle for Ireland. The dungeons in which
unnumbered Irishmen have grown gaunt and gray with torment are illu-
mined by a faith only less absorbing than the ethereal light of the cloister,
and by visions- only less entrancing. The passion of Irish patriotism is
blent with whatever is ennobling and divine in our being, with all that is
tenderest in our associations. It is the whispered poetry of our cradles.
It is the song that is sung by every brook that goes by us, for every brook
has been in its day red with the blood of Heroes. It is the strange voice
we hear from every grave-yard where our fathers are sleeping, for every
Irish grave-yard contains the bones of saints and martyrs. When the
framers of the penal laws denied us books, and drew the thick black veil
over Irish history, they forgot the ruins themselves had made. They might
give our flesh to the sword and our fields to the spoiler, but before they
could blot out the traces of their sin, or deface the title-deeds of our heri-
tage, they would have had to uproot to their last scrap of sculptured
filigree the majestic shrines in which the old race worshipped ;
they would have had to demolish to their last stone the castles
which lay like wounded giants to mark where the fight had been the
sorest; they would have had to level the pillar-towers and seal up the
sources of the holy wells ; and even then they would not have stilled the
voices of Ireland's past, for in a country where every green hill-side has
been a battle-field the very ghosts would rise as witnesses through the
penal darkness, and the voices of the night-winds would come, laden with
the memories of wrongs unavenged, of a strife unfinished, and of a hope
which only brightened in suffering, and which no human weapon could
subdue. When it was transportation to learn the alphabet, wnen Irishmen
were rung outside the gates of Irish cities like lepers at sundown, by the
evening bell, one little treason-song, "The Blackbird," sung low round the
winter fireside, had more influence in keeping alive the spirit of Irish
nationality than all the enactments of the diabolic penal code could coun-

158 WILLIAM O'BRIEN, M.P. [Nov.,

teract. What the star that shone over Bethlehem was to the Eastern
Kings, what the vision of the Holy Grail was to the Knights of the Round
Table, what the Holy Sepulchre was to the dying eyes of the Crusaders
fainting in the parched Syrian desert, that to the children of the Irish race
is the tradition that there has been, and the faith that there will be, a
golden-hearted Irish nation, a land of song, and wit, and learning, and
holiness, and all the fair flowering of the human mind and soul."

This is his confession of faith, chanted in the almost over-pas-
sionate oratory of the poet and the Celt : yet the confession and
profession of faith of a people old-fashioned in their strange senti-
mental patriotism which keeps no march with the times, which
Time cannot wither or distance destroy. Is it again the fascina-
tion of the hills "the fair hills of holy Ireland" which are
blue and gray and rosy in lines across the land? No flat coun-
try has power so to fascinateHhe hearts and souls of her children ;
the strange charm is all-powerful to the Swiss, the Welchman,
the Highlander, to the dweller in Wicklow hills, or Donegal
mountains, or in the massive and rugged Galtees. For the air of
the hills is as free as the eagle sailing above them in the blue. I
have said Mr. O'Brien is not always at fever-heat. He has a fine
and delicate quality of humor which is a relief to the tense quali-
ties which mark the man and his work.

The note of passion is, perhaps, the most marked thing in Mr.
O'Brien's orator} 7 , written or spoken. At a time when Irish
peasants were being tried for their lives by hostile judges and
hostile jurors, the very language of whom was a sealed book to
the unhappy accused, it needed no sympathy with crime to
awaken in the heart of the bystander a very agony of pity for
them who were as helpless in the toils of the accusers as any
dumb animal might be. I was present at one such trial. The
prisoners had the joyless, gray-colored faces of the West of Ire-
land peasantry, as unlike the Irish Thug of the English comic
prints as they were unlike the rollicking Irishman of the music-
halls: a certain Spanish regularity of feature one or two of them
had. The crime was altogether abominable, but the criminals
if these were the criminals had their case prejudged; it was a
heartrending thing to see them look from face to face as if they
would read there their fate only one or two could speak a word
of English ;.the police-interpreter even, who told them their sen-
tence, was moved to tears, and then man after man flung his
arms in the air cross-wise, pouring out in their strange, fierce,
western tongue their denials and their appeals to a higher
power. Dublin was a shambles in those days. And if it all

1 888.] WILLIAM O'BRIEN, M.P. 159

weighed heavily on the mind and heart of the most ordinarily
humane person, think what it must have been to O'Brien ! Man
after man on the scaffold cried aloud before the face of God his
innocence: in a time of war, and that was a time of war, there
may sometimes be a mistake between innocent and guilty.
O'Brien could not save them, but with all the strength that was
in him he cried aloud his horror. For one such article, which I
quote, he was prosecuted. He called it " Accusing Spirits."

"I am going before my God. lam as innocent as the child in the
cradle." Myles Joyce on the gallows, December 15, 1882.

" On my oath, I never fired a shot at John Huddy, nor Joseph Huddy,
nor any other man since the day I was born. Kerrigan and his family
have sworn falsely.'' Thomas Higgins on being sentenced, December 16.

" I solemnly swear that I am as innocent of that deed as any man that
ever drew breath." Michael Flynn on being sentenced, December 20.

" Of the fact that, since his condemnation and previous to Saturday last,
he declared that he was innocent of the murder, there is not the slightest
doubt.'' "Freeman" 1 ' report of Francis Hynes' execution.

" Two of these men spoke from the very gallows, with the noose round
their necks. They were unquestioning Catholics. The world's opinion
was to them a feathers-weight. The rustle of the unseen was falling mys-
teriously on their ears. There was an old-fashioned maxim of the books :
' Better ninety-nine guilty ones should escape than that one innocent
man should suffer.' The theory of the manipulator of the Crimes Act
seems to be that somebody must be hanged the right person, if possible ;
but at all events somebody. Mistakes will occur; but out of any given
half-dozen victims, though there may be one or two who do not deserve
hanging, there will be almost certainly one or two who do. Better, in any
case, that a garrulous peasant should be kicked into eternity by Mr. Marwood
than that the detective police should acknowledge itself baffled, and cream-
faced loyalists go about in terror of their lives. It is impossible to study
the trials and scaffold scenes of the last few months without putting this
horrible construction upon them. If Hynes, or Walsh, or Joyce, or Hig-
gins kad had the fair trial by their peers which has been the proud priv-
ilege of the meanest churl in England since the day of Runnymede, thek
dying protestations need not have troubled the rest of the public. We
desire to avoid exaggerated language, for we recognize the gravity of the
subject and of our responsibility, but our attachment to the elementary
principles of justice impels us deliberately to say that, both as to the tri-
bunal and the evidence, the proceedings against these men bear an indeli-
ble taint of foul play. Upon their trial the ordinary detective machinery,
vigilance, resource, and ingenuity to discover scraps of evidence, and the
intelligence to piece them together, counted for little. Packed juries and
bribed witnesses were the all-sufficient implements of justice. Anybody
can govern with a state' of siege, or win with loaded dice, or hang with un-
obstructed hanging machinery. When the art of trying a man consists in
picking out of the panel his twelve worst enemies, and the production of
evidence means chiefly the getting at the worst side of the veriest villain

160 WILLIAM O'BRIEN, M.P. [Nov.,

in the community, and humbly consulting his prepossessions as to the re-
ward, and the little precautions necessary to make the bed of the informer
a bed of velvet, verdicts of ' guilty ' and hangings may be had in any
desired quantity but if this is moral government in the Victorian age why
cut Strafford's head off for tampering with Irish juries, or strike King
James' crown away for influencing English ones, or hold Torquemada ac-
cursed for doing with hot pincers what the great and good Earl Spencer
does with bags of gold? What is worse about the White Terror set up in
Green Street is the ghastly pretence that it is all done to save the sacred
right of trial by jury in Ireland ; that it is necessary to pack juries that we
may have juries at all ; that it is better to convict upon paid swearing than
to adopt drum-head ideas of evidence. Out upon the imposture ! If the
trials of the last few months are trials by jury such as Englishmen bled to
maintain, we solemnly declare that the sooner we have the tribunal of the
three judges, or the rough-and-ready justice of the court-martials, the bet-
ter for public decency, and for the accused themselves. An Alexandria
telegram of last Friday tells us that " nearly five hundred prisoners have
been discharged for want of evidence." In Alexandria they have the ad-
vantage of martial law. We wonder if these five hundred had been tried by
packed juries of Levantine shopkeepers, with sums of five hundred pounds
dangling before every needy wretch who could coin obliging evidence,
how many of the five hundred would have escaped the rope and boot of
the Egyptian Marwood ? Again we say, the dying declarations prefixed
to this article may be all false, but they may be also, some of them, or all
of them, true ; and the scandal a scandal which would throw England into
a blaze if the victims were Sydneys or Russells, and not mere Gaelic-
speaking mountaineers is that there is nothing in the mode of trial to
satisfy the public conscience that murder may not have been avenged by
murder."

Strange, bitter, terrible writing, as terrible in its deadly earn-
est as was ever Swift's in its fiercest jesting.

I have not touched at all upon the later events of Mr.
O'Brien's eventful life, for he is in the very forefront of Irish his-
tory of to-day, which also is English history. Canada, Mitchells-
town, Tullamore none of all these need I chronicle. But
through all dangers his life has been preserved. From that
quixotic raid into Canada, which only a man like him un-nine-
teenth-century, every inch of him could have conceived or exe-
cuted, he returned safe from Orange bullets, as later he was to
emerge from Tullamore, weakened indeed in health but with his
life safe, though splendidly physiqued John Mandeville is in his
grave to-day. Nothing can be stranger than the way in which
the feeble life in him, which in " piping times of peace " flickered
like a wasted candle which the next wind's breath blows out, has
become comparatively strong and steady ; a strange thing in an
eight years' space of fighting and persecution, of terrible anxiety

i888.] THE RIVER OF REST. 161

and of bodily danger, of wearing excitement and incessant work,
yet a true thing. May not we Irish believe fondly, as I have
said, that God has given his angels charge over him, because he
has done great things, because he is reserved for great things in
the cause of the faithful Irish?

KATHARINE TYNAN.

THE RIVER OF REST.

To live for ever on the earth alas !

How sad it were, while time flows ceaseless on,
And all things else around us change and pass,

And everything is new beneath the sun !

Behold, how soon our hopes come to their flower,

And we have plucked the best that earth can give-
Ambition, pleasure, riches, honor, power;
We outlive all, what little time we live.

Oh ! not to linger when the battle 's done,
When all the harvest 's gathered in, is best.

Come, grateful slumber, with the sinking sun !
Come, blessed Lethe, heavenward-flowing rest!

JAMES BUCKHAM.

VOL. XLVIII. II

162 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SEA. [Nov.,

PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SEA.

THE sea, which covers almost three-quarters of the globe,
was until within a few years an unexplored region. We were
ignorant of its geography and of the animals that live in it. We
thought that below a certain depth there must be utter darkness.
And what living thing could exist a mile from the surface, where
it would have to bear the enormous pressure of nearly a ton to
the square inch ? But now we know that there is no zero of ani-
mal life in the ocean, even at a depth of five miles and a quarter.
Nor is light entirely wanting at such a long distance from the
sunshine, and animals do live even when they support a pressure
of several tons to the square inch ; and they die only when the
pressure is removed and they are brought to the surface.

The first who devoted himself to the study of marine zoology
was the late Professor Edward Forbes, of England. This bril-
liant naturalist maintained that animal life ceased at the compa-
ratively shallow depth of eighteen hundred feet. But Forbes*
deep-sea work did not extend beyond the Mediterranean, and his
views were soon proved to be incorrect by the French scientists
on the Travailleur. Our own government has taken a prominent
part in solving the problems relating to the sea-. As far back as
1846 the United States Coast Survey, under Professor Bache,
threw not a little light on its physical geography, while Professor
Baird, of the United States Fish Commission, added a great deal
to our knowledge of the deep-sea fauna. In 1851-1852 Lieuten-
ant Lee of our navy, and in 1853 Lieutenant Berryman in the
same brig, the Dolphin made the first surveys of the deep Atlan-
tic. In 1854 Midshipman Brooke, U.S.N., invented the first in-
strument for bringing up samples from the bottom. True, it
brought up only a small quantity 'in a quill. But its fundamental
principle, the detaching of the weight, has been retained in all
succeeding instruments, which are simply modifications of his.
There is no more fascinating book than Maury's Physical Geogra-
phy of the Sea, while the very latest and most important contribu-
tion to the subject is Professor Alexander Agassiz's Three Cruises
of the United States Coast Survey Steamer Blake.

The bed of the ocean would seem to be of great antiquity, and
the animals living on the bottom must have been for numberless
ages surrounded by the same conditions. During the earliest
geological period the North American continent was probably

1 888.] PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SEA. 163

shaped like a huge V, one arm of which lay mainly in British
America, the other arm extended to Labrador. This ancient ter-
restrial fold was the nucleus of the present continent. But rising
above the Palaeozoic sea were several other elevated ridges,
forming what are now the Alleghanies and Rocky Mountains ; and
it was upon the submarine plateau which extended between the
narrow coast-lines of that epoch that were deposited the inter-
esting animal remains which have been found in such abundance.
We have likewise discovered many tracks and ripple marks,
showing that land, at the time they were made, was not far off.
In that distant age the Silurian there was probably a free
equatorial current flowing round the globe, and Europe was an
archipelago of islands.

Coming down to the Cretaceous or chalk age, we find that
the shallow-water deposits of the Devonian, Carboniferous, Tri-
assic, and Jurassic ages have joined many of the islands of Eu-
rope together. These deposits, too, have given Africa much the
form it has to-day, save, perhaps, the channel through which still
flowed the water of the Indian Ocean through Arabia into the
Atlantic. There was likewise a wide strait parting the north of
Asia from China and India, as well as an inland sea forming the
Caspian and Black Seas into one. In the chalk a-e we also find
America very much altered. A deep bay stretches from the
Gulf of Mexico to the base of the Rocky Mountains. The Isth-
mus of Panama did not yet exist, but a number of islands have
risen above the waters which covered what is now Central
America, and the equatorial current has been greatly diminished.
Coming down to the Tertiary epoch, we find the inland sea of
western Asia greatly reduced in size. The Indian current no
longer passes through the Mediterranean. South America, ex-
cepting the Pampas and the Gulf of the Amazon, looked about as
it does to-day ; while the coast of North America had almost got
to its present outlines. Towards the close of the Tertiary age
the gulf which at one time had reached as far as the Rocky
Mountains and covered the peninsula of Florida had shrunk to
its present dimensions, while the Gulf Stream, pent up between
the submarine plateau of Yucatan and the then diminutive island
of Cuba, had furrowed a channel in some places over a mile
deep, bringing with it the deposits out of which the peninsulas
of Yucatan and Florida were to be constructed.

In the opinion of Professor Alexander Agassiz (which is ar-
rived at by estimating the wearing action of water) five millions
of years is a safe estimate of the time which has elapsed since the

164 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SEA. [Nov.,

beginning of the Tertiary age. It is interesting to know that of
all the crinoids and trilobites which were so abundantly develop-
ed and which formed the most prominent shell-fish of the early
Silurian seas, but which disappeared suddenly in the Carbonifer-
ous era, the only representative which has survived to the pres-
ent time is the common horseshoe crab. The existence to-day of
the very same species of shallow-water invertebrates and fishes
on both sides of the Isthmus of Panama, as well as the fact
that the animals of the Gulf of Mexico are much more nearly re-
lated to those of the Pacific than to those of the Atlantic, prove
that the two oceans were separated at a comparatively recent
epoch. At such distant points, too, as the Caribbean Sea and the
Red Sea, the existence of identical fauna indicates the flow in a
former age of an equatorial current which gradually swept these
wanderers along the floor of the ocean. Soundings likewise in-
dicate the former connection of the East Indian archipelago to
Asia, as well as of Madagascar to Africa; while the fossil spon-
ges found in the Jurassic beds of Bavaria and Switzerland, and
which are common in the white chalk of England, speak of the
time when Europe was largely under water.

Alexander Agassiz has divided the sea into three zones of
depth namely, the littoral, which begins at tide-water mark and
ends at nine hundred feet; the continental, which extends to a
depth of about one mile ; and, lastly, the abyssal zone, which
reaches to an unknown lower limit. But it is not likely that fu-
ture explorations will obtain much deeper soundings than those
already made in the Northwest Pacific off the coast of Japan,
namely, five miles and a quarter. The average depth of the
ocean is about three miles, which is more than twice as far be-
low the shore-line as Mount Washington is above it, and the bot-
tom temperature at this depth is very near the freezing-point of
fresh water. In the Mediterranean, however, the temperature is
higher, and only such deep-water species exist in this land-locked
sea as can support a comparatively high temperature. In a for-
mer geological age the water of the Mediterranean must have
been much colder, for we find in it fossil arctic forms identical
with those found in the glacial deposits of Sweden.

A bird's-eye view of the bed of the Atlantic would show us
the island of Porto Rico towering up to a great height like a
mountain of the Himalayas ; the Bermudas would appear like a
gigantic but isolated alp, not quite so high, with several peaks ;
while the Azores would resemble the highest land of an exten-
sive plateau, a thousand miles broad from east to west; and this

1 888.] PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SEA. 165

belt of comparatively shallow water, which begins at Iceland
and runs far to the southward, divides the North Atlantic into
two valleys, an eastern and a western. The Gulf of Mexico, in
this bird's-eye view, would take the appearance of a great de-
pression more than two miles deep, bounded on the south by a
ridge of sand extending from Yucatan to Key West, and with an
opening leading to the Caribbean Sea, while the latter would
assume the form of another depression not quite so deep. Here
let us observe that the latest soundings made by the United
States Coast Survey reveal the interesting fact that the Gulf of
Mexico may be characterized as an almost tideless American
Mediterranean. The slope of the continent runs for a long dis-
tance below the sea-level before it reaches the lowest point in
the gulf, which, as we have said, is over two miles deep, while a
curve of little more than six hundred feet below the surface
stretches almost from Yucatan to the extremity of Florida. It
is likewise interesting to find how many of the West India islands
are separated by water very little more than three-quarters of a
mile deep, and this comparatively shallow space would make
Jamaica the northern end of a great promontory ; while the
same depth of three-quarters of a mile unites the string of islands
from Martinique to the Orinoco River.

Of all the currents of the ocean none has been so closely
studied, and none is of so much importance to climate, as the
Gulf Stream. If it were to disappear and only the Isthmus of
Panama, twenty-seven and one-half miles broad at the narrowest
part, keeps it in its track the effect on Europe would be dis-
astrous ; an arctic temperature would follow. This benign
stream is caused by the trade-winds, and the first chart of it was
made by Benjamin Franklin, who learned of its existence from
Nantucket whalemen.

The whole body of the Atlantic within the influence of the
trade-winds may be said to be moving slowly westward, until at
length having struck the coast of South America it is deflected
to the north and into the Caribbean Sea, and thence into the
Gulf of Mexico, where the pent-up current, rising more than
three feet above the general level, forms a hill of water from
which springs the Gulf Stream proper. The velocity of the
stream off St. Augustine, Florida, is" four miles an hour. But as
it flows to the northward and eastward assuming more and
more the shape of a fan its velocity decreases as its breadth in-
creases, until off Newfoundland it is less than two miles an hour.

The great influence which its warm water has in carrying to

PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SEA. [Nov.,

a high latitude the fauna of a southern region was shown by the
dredgings of the United States Fish Commission ; many fish
were brought up off the coast of New England that were charac-
teristic of the West Indies. But if Franklin was the first to
make known to the world the existence of the Gulf Stream, it
should be said that the existence of a flow of warm surface-water
from the equator toward the poles, and a compensating cold
under-current returning to the equator, was maintained by Leo-
nardo da Vinci.

Despite the fanciful pictures which some writers have drawn
of the ocean bed, its desolation, at least in its deepest parts, must
be extreme. Beyond the first mile it is a vast desert of slime
and ooze, upon which is constantly dripping a rain of dead car-
casses from the surface, which carcasses supply the nourishment
for the scanty fauna inhabiting the abyssal region in some
places more than five miles from the sunshine; and the micro-
scope reveals that the slimy matter covering this deepest ocean
bed is very similar in composition to the ancient chalk of the
Cretaceous period, while mixed with it here and there are minute
metallic and magnetic bodies, which have been proved to be
dust from meteorites. At long intervals a phosphorescent light
gleams from the head of some passing fish which has strayed
hither from a higher and happier zone. But it is not until we
have mounted a good deal nearer the surface that the scene
changes for the better. We now meet with forests of brilliantly
coloKed sponges, while the phosphorescent animals swimming
about are much more numerous ; and the nearer we get to the
littoral zone, more and more phosphorescent lights appear, till
at length the scene becomes truly animated. When only twelve
hundred feet separate us from the sunshine we come upon the
first sea-weed and kelp (twelve hundred feet is the deepest limit
of plant life in the water) ; but we must rise still another thou-
sand feet and more, and get as near the top as one hundred and
twenty feet, before we find any reef-building corals. As plants
do not live in the deep sea, the deep-sea animals either prey on
one another or get their food from dead organisms and plants
which sink down to them. Thus Maury says: "The sea, like
the snow-cloud with its flakes in a calm, is always letting fall
upon its bed showers of microscopic shells." And experiment
proves that a tiny shell would take about a week to fall from the
surface to the deepest depths. Since sunlight does not pene-
trate much further than the littoral zone, there would be beyond
this perpetual darkness except for phosphorescence. Many of

1 888.] PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SEA. 167

the animals inhabiting the continental and abyssal zones have
merely rudimentary eyes. But these blind creatures have very
long feelers, which help them to grope their way along the
bottom. Other deep-sea animals, on the contrary, have enor-
mous eyes, and these very likely congregate around such of their
number as are phosphorescent, and may perhaps follow the
moving lamp-posts about wherever they go. And so bright is
this light on many of the fish brought up by the dredge that
during the brief space the animals survive it is not difficult to
read by it.

The reason why fishes and mollusks living more than three
miles under water are able to bear a pressure of several tons is
that they have exceedingly loose tissues, which allow the water to
flow through every interstice and thus to equalize the weight.
When the pressure is removed they perish. In the Challenger
expedition, sent out by the British government, all the sharks
brought up from a depth of a little less than three-quarters of a
mile were dead when they got to the surface.

In the abyssal zone nearly all the fauna belong to the class
known as protozoa, the distinguishing character of which is that
nourishment is absorbed through every part of their jelly-like
bodies ; and it is from their skeletons some of silica, some of
carbonate of lime that the chalky mud is formed of which we
have spoken. From this mud, in the early days of deep-sea
study, Haeckel imagined he had derived his famous Monera a
creature presenting the phenomena of life, irritability and nutri-
tion, without any trace of differentiation of organs. Huxley
christened this marvellous being which fitted in so well with
Haeckel's godless theory of creation " Bathybius Haeckelii"
But later researches have furnished overwhelming proof that
Monera existed only in the German professor's imagination.

Most of the phosphorescent animals seem to prefer the litto-
ral zone, often living near the surface, where they drift about as
the wind and waves list. The " Phrosnima " has four eyes. With
one pair it sees sideways and downwards, with the other pair,
placed on its back, it sees upwards ; and through some of these
tiny creatures you may distinguish the eyes moving on the op-
posite side of their transparent heads. But if there are wander-
ers in the sea without any fixed abode, other animals apparently
live and die on the spot where they were born. Many of the
blind fish of the continental and abyssal zones have burrowing
habits and live buried in the mud. Perhaps the most astonish-
ing deep-sea fish discovered is the " Gastrostomus Bairdii,"

1 68 PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SEA. [Nov.,

which gets its food by doing nothing except keep open its enor-
mous mouth, into which the water and the food it contains
pours. Its head alone protrudes above the ooze of the bottom;
its fins are atrophied, and its power to move about is very small
if, indeed, it ever moves.

As deep-sea animals are seldom called on to make violent
movements, they are softer and less muscular than their shallow-
water allies who feel the effects of storms, and who have more
enemies to escape from while their long, eel-like bodies and
huge heads admirably fit them to burrow and root in the slime.

By an inexperienced eye some of the deep-sea fauna might be
mistaken for plants. The stalked crinoids, or sea-lilies, who live
in colonies and are chained to the bottom, where they sway U>
and fro but never quit their anchorage, are very plant-like ani-
mals. Their family may be traced back to the distant Jurassic
age, and a fossil one has been found in South Germany whose
stem was almost sixty feet long. Not a few of the deep-sea me-
dusae, or jelly-fish, wander to the surface. One, dredged up by
the Challenger in the South Atlantic from a depth of two miles
and a quarter, was remarkable for its many sense-segments and
for a large muscle underneath the corona. Deep-sea worms are
exceedingly numerous, and they make their home in tubes com-
posed of their own secretions. Good specimens have been ob-
tained at a depth of three miles and a half.

But perhaps no animals living in the sea are so interesting
as the sponges, which are extremely ancient, and may be traced
back even to the Silurian epoch. To quote the words of Profes-
sor Alexander Agassiz :

"All our ordinary notions of individuality, of colonies, and of species
are completely upset. It seems as if in the sponges we had a mass in which
the different parts might be considered as organs capable in themselves of
a certain amount of independence, yet subject to a general subordination,
so that we are dealing neither with individuals nor colonies in the ordinary
sense of the word.''

Food is conveyed to the sponge in the constant stream of
water which passes through all its flesh, while the sponge re-
mains fastened to the bottom.

The color of the sea in some places is affected by plants. The
Red Sea gets its name from a tiny sea-weed of a blood-red tint.
The same weed was observed by Darwin on the west coast of
South America, and Alexander Agassiz, during calm weather,
saw it in the Gulf of Mexico.

1 888.] PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SEA. 169

In the middle of the southern portion of the North Atlantic is
what is called the Sargasso Sea, which was the dread of old na-
vigators, who, when the wind was light, could with great diffi-
culty make their way through it. This floating prairie, com-
posed of tough and tangled sea-weed, is about a thousand miles
broad, and it, as well as the floating prairies found in the Pacific,
are looked upon as the survivors of a vastly larger field of sea-
weed which was swept round the globe by the equatorial cur-
rent in a former geological age. In the Sargasso Sea is found
that curious little fish Antennarius provided with uncommon-
ly long fore-fins, which enable it to cling to the sea-weed, out of
which it builds for its eggs a nest very like a bird's nest.

Before we close let us say a few words about dredging and
sounding. At first rope was used. But a new era dawned for
deep-sea study when, in 1872, Sir William Thomson invented a
machine in which wire took the place of hemp. But he would
hardly know his own invention with the great improvements
made in it by Lleutenant-tommander Sigsbee, U.S.N. On the
Blake steel wire, with Sigsbee's machine, was used for the deepest
soundings; and the very moment the sinker touched bottom the
wire ceased to run out and the dropping of the shot was detect-
ed on deck with unerring certainty.

The advantage of steel wire in dredging is the speed with
which the dredge can be lowered and hoisted. On the Challenger
expedition the best part of a day was spent in lifting the dredge
from a depth somewhat less than two miles. On the Blake seve-
ral hauls a day were made from a greater depth.

Although much has already been done in deep-sea work, there
is still a vast field to be explored in the 140,000,000 of square miles
which compose the water-hemisphere. If oceanic dredgings
have not yet brought to light as many types of former geological
epochs as we had expected, we may still not unreasonably hope
that from the abyssal region where conditions have remained
the same for so many ages an animal more curious than any we
have yet discovered will one day be brought to the surface.

WILLIAM SETON.

170 A SUCCESSOR TO SCHEHEREZADE. [Nov.,

A SUCCESSOR TO SCHEHEREZADE.

As long as the imaginative faculty continues to be a part of
human nature Scheherezade will be a name to conjure with.
No man who possesses this faculty ever leaves the delights of his
childhood entirely behind him. Of these, those wondrous thou-
sand-and-one tales ol the Arabian Nights constitute so consider-
able a share that, when we have once formed a loyal devotion to
the fascinating bride of Schariar, it lingers with us to the end
shared, perhaps, by other and later weavers of fairy lore. Such
weavers are numerous enough, for fairy tales have not gone out
of fashion ; so far from it, indeed, that every year the holiday
trade in books of this sort grows larger. New editions and new
compilations of legends and tales and folk-lore are largely issued.
That such literature will continue to* fill an important place in
the yearly list of new publications is highly desirable. What
lover of the fairy race, the benevolent " little people," can help
wishing that the Christmas day may never dawn when no happy
youngster will find in his stocking a copy of the Arabian Nights
or of Hans Andersen's Tales those idyllic fairy stories that are
veritable prose poems? Though Andersen has clothed his
stories in all the graceful and finely-textured robes of prose
poetry, it has remained for Mr. Frank Waters to prove that one
of Scheherezade's successors can weave us a fairy tale from the
golden threads of rhyme and rhythm.*

The Water-Lily is one of the rare flowers of poesy that have
bloomed in that literary Sahara, Upper Canada. From the
Lower Provinces we could cull a nosegay of such blossoms en-
crusted in smooth and classic French, like crystallized flowers
from the age of the " Grand Monarque."

! Whether or not it is to be regretted that anything so exqui-
site as this poetic fairy tale should have sprung from the midst
of Canadian Philistinism, it is something to be grateful for that
the Philistines have not been lacking in appreciation, during the
few weeks that have ensued since its publication, of the merits of
the poem. An enthusiastic recognition has been given it by the
leading journals of the Dominion.

Scarcely fair is it to this new and gifted poet that his first
published effort should be treated merely as a fairy tale. When

* The Water-Lily : An Oriental Fairy Tale. By Frank Waters. Ottawa : J. Durie & Son.

1 888.] A SUCCESSOR TO SCHEHEREZADE. '171

connected with the first productions of modest young writers,
titles should, like many other things, hardly be taken " au pied de
la lettre" Taking the author's word, however, in all literalness,
considering his poem only as "an Oriental fairy tale," we find
that the story is worthy to be a fluttering end of Scheherezade's
mantle of fancy. It is tender and simple and sorrowful ; an ap-
peal to all hearts, childish or mature. What deeper chords the
poem strikes, the author's own words, in the charming prose of
his brief preface, can best tell : " The story hints to us not only
of the strength and wonder of a mother's love, conquering all
death and change, but also of that strange perversity in our
nature which ever goads us on to yearn for that which is forbid-
den us ; of the veiled destruction which so often awaits us, even
as we lay our hand on the prohibited prize ; of the vanity with
which men or angels would oppose the rulings of the ineffable
and all-wise Providence that sways through all ; and of the sol-
emn certainty bitter or sweet, as we ourselves make it that all
is best as it stands ordered for us, and that, in over-stepping the
bounds marked out for us, it may be but to fall over the brink of
some blossom-hidden despair."

The author's final excuse for his work is that his " little effort
has been put forth as a feeble dam thrown adventurously out
into the roaring torrent of evil to abide or be swept away as
it lodges on men's hearts or misses them and its object together."

Such a preface gives us high hope of the moral tone of the
work, very scant hope of its poetical rank ; for nowadays,
though it is to be doubted if good poetry is any scarcer than
it ever was, poets are divided into two classes those with a pur-
pose and those with a poem. Seldom do they encroach upon
each other. Seldom, in recent poetry, are form and soul united.
Giving always our high reverence to the master of Christian
song, Aubrey de Vere, we have very few Catholic poets to be
proud of. There are hardly anv of them who can command the
rippling flow of sound of even the least pretentious writers of
vers de soci^te. Most of these latter are satisfied with their page
in the current magazines and their daintily bound volumes of
collected verse. One of them, however, feeling his lack in one
of those moments of discontent that even a writer of vers de
societe" feels now and then, moans :

"Genius walked grand among us,

Her own to signify,
And, while I thrilled with yearning,
Smiled on me and passed by."

A SUCCESSOR TO SCHEHEREZADE. [Nov.,

It is such a rare thing for a writer to realize that genius has
passed him by that one is inclined to believe the realization a
token of better poetry or less poetry for the future.

If Mr. Waters' future productions fulfil the promise of his
first, we are justified in the belief that upon him also Genius has
smiled and, lingering with him, has claimed him for her own.
She has set her signet mark upon his poem. She has given him
the true artist's dowry keen senses, a just taste, and creative
force. Thus the poem is perforce a beautiful one. If it be
more than that, if it has fulfilled the purpose of all literature, the
reading public must decide. " The purpose of all literature '' is
a phrase I use advisedly, keeping in mind the dictum of that
sensible and burly old fellow, Dr. Johnson, that " a book should
teach us either to enjoy life or endure it." That the Water-Lily
does both, even that heterogeneous mass, the reading public,
cannot deny. Of the nearly two thousand lines of the poem
none is without its own special beauty. Here is his tribute to
Nature :

["Nature is the go-between

Of a loving earth and heaven

Unto her the sign is given,

And by her the token rendered :

And her service here is tendered,

That thy mind, attuned by her

To a mood the holier,

May through her be given to see

Part of that wide mystery

Of which she holds the master-key

The Underneath, Around, Above,

The Heart of Man, the Heart of Love."

Has any one of the few Christian poets who realize that " Na-
ture is the handmaid of God " more beautifully defined her at-
tributes? That Mr. Waters' word-pictures are not lacking in
the poet's perspective, suggestion, the following passage, taken
at random from many such, proves :

" Far around the utmost rim
Of horizon, closing all,
Rose the summits dusk and dim
Of the distant mountain-wall ;
Faint as half-forgotten dream
When the morning opes our eyes,
And we grope athwart the stream
Of our waking thought, to find

1 888.] A SUCCESSOR TO SCHEHEREZADE. 173

The ideal, dim surmise

Of some shadowy paradise

Lost 'mid the intricacies

Of our night-thoughts, vague and blind."

Wordsworth himself never painted the "floral sweets" more
minutely or more exquisitely than the author of the Water-Lily.
With a delicate line or two he shows us

"Where the feathery fern droops o'er,
Fluttering its lace-like plumes
(Broidered with the clinging spore),
In each zephyr trembling o'er,
Making pleasant lights and glooms."

In his picture,

"Purple hyacinths nodded slowly
Where the grass grew long and lush ;
Poppies, drowsed with melancholy,
Bloomed into that dark-red flush
Which the opium-eater shows
When the sleepy nectar flows
Throbbingly through every vein
With a joy akin to pain."

With a few broad strokes he paints for us, in vivid flashes of
color,

" Red geraniums, all aflame,
Scarlet as a maiden's shame,
With their burning fringes set
Round the taper minaret
Of the long receptacle,
Slender as a heron's bill."

He shows us

"From every stalk-held cup
Turban-tulips streaked with gold;
Maiden lilies, lifting up
Their silver chalice, chaste of mould ;
Violets, roses, fold on fold,
To the atmosphere laid bare,
Till it swooned with sweetness there :
From all there breathed a fragrance such
As the heavenly censers yield
Which the choral angels wield
When they bend before their King,
Adoring, and adoring sing.''

174 A SUCCESSOR TO SCHEHEREZADE. [Nov.,

Mr. Waters' deft wielding of the poet's tools of simile and
metaphor is nowhere better displayed than when he speaks of
the mountain stream, his entire description of which almost
rivals Tennyson's famous " Brook," leaping from rock to rock
" like a flying antelope "; or again, when he tell us,

" It wound meandering down
The verdant sloping of the vale,
Like a silver scarf outblown
On the fluttering of the gale."

In every sense of the term Mr. Waters' diction is pure. His
imagery is never in the faintest degree sensuous. The wings of
his fancy are never clipped by insidious earthly passion. He has
a singular felicity of epithet which prompts him to picture the
mother seeking her child "with quick, fond feet," and describes
her anxious tones as

*' A silvery voice athwart the shadows,
Like a dove wounded, fluttering fell."

He characterizes her first intimation of the loss of her child as

" The feeling of a want unknown,
Impalpable as are those swells
Of fairy music zephyr- blown
From the slim hyacinth's swinging bells.''

Though dwelling at length upon the descriptive beauties of
the poem, I have omitted touching upon the darker and deeper
shadings of the picture the forcible and majestic limning of the
figure of the Wandering Angel ; the weird power displayed in
the account of the child's dream ; the pathos of the blackbird's
song, wherein the child's soul speaks to the mother's with such
unerring though unintelligible keenness that the mother, op-
pressed ever after by an overmastering sadness and unrest, and
ever after haunted by the song, dies while still seeking to fathom
its mystery, "and in the Unknown found her child."

There is no task more thankless than to turn over the pages
of a beautiful poem with an eye to brief quotation. One pas-
sage after another is marked, one's pencil poises irresolutely in
the air, till, with a despairing shrug, one gives up the effort of
discrimination. In regard to the Water-Lily, in truth the effort
is almost needless, for the poem possesses one of the qualities
that Poe thought requisite to a perfect poem viz., it is not
too long to be read through at one sitting. Though the claim

1 88 8.] A SUCCESSOR TO SCHEHEREZADE. 175

of the Water-Lily be great or small to the epithet perfect, as
abler critics shall decide, I fancy I may say with impunity that
the busiest man or woman will not regret the hour or two of
pleasant reading afforded by the poem. Its lessons are for daily
life and all its needs ; its cadences have the ease and naturalness
of the music of a bird-song ; " the silver mist of melancholy " (to
quote from our new poet) enshrouding it will not trammel the
cheerfulness of the reader, but give him an insight into those
dreams of the saints and the poets that are so high above, so
far removed from, the commonplace interpretations of life which
we call realities.

In saying this of the Water-Lily I have said all, though
this comprehensive all has been far more adequately and more
beautifully summarized by the friend at whose request I have
penned these straggling paragraphs. The letter lies before me
now in which, with that fine discernment of the beautiful, that
apt comprehension of the limitations of poetic expression which
not every lover of poetry is blessed with, my friend directed my
attention a few days since to Mr. Waters' "Oriental fairy tale."
Brushing its privacy aside, I cannot refrain from quoting a few
sentences of this letter for the benefit of any adherents of the
modern analytical school who believe in the moral dissection of
everything in earth and heaven and all else that lies between
these spheres : " As for the analysis of this poem, as we use the
word nowadays, I am sure you will agree with me that one
might as well undertake to expose the 'true inwardness,' the
raison d'etre, of the beauty that's in a pure sunset, or in Beetho-
ven's Sonate Pathttique, or in one of Chopin's Nocturnes, or in a
collection of diamonds and rubies and pearls ; one might as well
attempt to show the elite of humanity the true diagnosis of
'the heart of man, the heart of love.' In a word, such a task is
an utter impossibility. Still, the world is waiting to hear the
sweetest songs, to inhale the most ethereal perfume, to respond
to the noblest suggestion ; only, so bulky and so busy is this
world that it must be told, ' Here is the treasure,' and even then
it is not the great, bustling majority that stop breathless to
listen, but the precious minority, the 'saving remnant' of hu-
manity." ELWARD Eu.

176 A FETE DIEU PROCESSION. [Nov.,

DIEU PROCESSION IN THE PROVINCE OF
QUEBEC.

A FINE day in June is a good gift from God. I know of no
better way of sanctifying it than hearing Mass in a country vil-
lage in the Province of Quebec, and taking part in the Fete
Dieu procession of the Blessed Sacrament. The particular vil-
lage that E and I chose this year in which to combine our

visible expression of devotion and our invisible study of " French-
Canadian life and character" was Sault-au-Recollet, seven
miles from the heart of the city of Montreal, on the southern
branch of the Ottawa, known as the Rivtire des Prairies. Half
an hour's drive in one of the crowded carriages of the Canadian
Pacific Railway, wherein you make acquaintance (by sight only)
of one or two eminent Canadian statesmen, a missionary bishop,
two nuns, three young seminarians, various thrifty housewives
returning with their week's supply of necessaries, a farmer or
two, divers travelling agents, a man whose leg had been blown
off recently in a gas explosion and who persisted in being taken
home to be nursed, three priests, and, last and most lovely, a
little maid of ten summers, in spotless white raiment, wreath, and
veil, going out by train to receive the blessing of " grandpere"
she having that morning made her First Communion.

" Sault-au-Recollet! " calls the conductor, and you, by means
of a brave little jump, alight on the platform, which is almost
two feet below the step of the carriage, and look wildly around
you as the train steams slowly off to crawl through the iron sus-
pension bridge which spans the rapids between Sault-au-Recollet
and Bord-au-Plouffe. Carriages there are none apparently ; but
as you gaze a spider-like vehicle, drawn by a veritable ghost of
Rosinante, comes in sight and the driver declares himself bound
for the village. Along with a small contingent of our fellow-
passengers, E and I entered this chariot, called in these

parts " la diligence."

The road winds along the margin of the turbulent river, and
the music of the ever-foaming rapids keeps time to our tuneful
thoughts. Under branching elms, across cool, bubbling streams,
and past picturesque cottages we are slowly driven. A turn in
the road brings us to a lofty mission cross in a little enclosure
by the wayside. Upon the cross are nailed the instruments of
the Passion, and as we pass it our driver lifts his hat in saluta-

i888.] A FETE DIEU PROCESSION. 177

tion. Before this simple shrine knelt a little girl in a blue frock,
her high straw hat trimmed with a band of vivid red, and her
cJiapelet between her little brown fingers. Further along the
road we encountered a band of children, all dressed with neat-
ness and a picturesque effect of color; they were singing lustily,
with all the power of their shrill little voices, and the burden of
their song was in the interests of the morrow :

" Donnez, donnez, donnez, donnez,
Donnez, donnez un beau jour ! "

When the cross-roads were reached our driver reined up
Rosinante and alighted at the door of a large brick building
known as " Peloquin's Hotel," a house liberally patronized both
in summer and winter by excursion parties from the city.

Admirable in all its arrangements we found this village hos-
telry, and it was in a very contented frame of mind that we
opened our eyes on the morning of " Procession Sunday." Our
awakening was at an early hour, for, determined to share all the
village privileges, we had decided upon approaching the sacra-
ments in the. little chapel of the Jesuit Fathers' novitiate, situ-
ate fully a mile from Peloquin's. A well-laid " trottoir " extends
along the roadside, so that our shoes were none the worse of
the dampness of earth and grass as we slowly wended our way
along the beautiful country road. Throughout the night the
rain-fall had been considerable, and a cloudy sky frowning sul-
lenly above the rapid river gave promise of bad weather and a
consequent disappointment. Our walk was most enjoyable, in
spite of the threatening aspect of nature the country was so
lovely in its new spring livery, and the gardens all so sweet with
their brave show of lilacs and lilies. Pretty cottages extend
from Peloquin's to the beautiful convent of the Sacred Heart,
the well-kept grounds of which occupy a large space on the
map of our route. Then the road meets the river, and the two
run along in harmony for a little way until the shore widens out
from us, and we pass on under the lindens and over a meadow
where a brook murmurs among sweet yellow cowslips and
blossoming choke-cherry trees. On we go past shrines of
curious style and decoration, past primitive Canadian cottages
and more stately houses in shaded grounds, past the residence
St. Janvier, presented by Monsignor Vinet to the diocese of
Montreal as a home for invalided priests on until we come to
" the Hill which is called Beautiful," or, in other words, to the
wide gateway which divides from the outer world the Canadian

VOL. XLVIII. 12

178 A FETE DIEU PROCESSION. [Nov.,

novitiate of the Society of Jesus. Up the broad plane of avenue,
under grand old limes and elms, past a shrine of the Blessed
Mother, in the shadow of which is a parterre of flowers planted
in the device of the sacred monogram, and an unpretending
flight of steps, leads us to the small brown door through which
so many men have entered as Saul to emerge as Paul. It was a
new experience this, and we trembled somewhat at our own
temerity. The door was opened by a young lay brother, a
pretty boy of possibly twenty years of age, whose downcast lids
could not veil the beauty of his large, lustrous eyes.

We asked for an English-speaking father, and he ushered us
into the poor little chapel to prepare for confession. What a
poor little chapel ! Poor as to space, furniture, decoration, and
yet how holy ! A quaint old altar, some good oil-paintings, two
bits of delicate painting in needlework, old and of great value,
a terrible suggestion in crude colors of St. Michael on the war-
path the picture, I was afterwards told, was painted by a native
Mexican, which probably accounts for the saint having five os-
trich-feathers in his hair a side altar to the Blessed Virgin, a
small harmonium, and some rows of yellow benches complete
the inventory of the furniture of this nursery of saints. I am
forgetting to include the confessional, of tiny proportions, tucked
behind the door in such wise that the penitent is more or less
shaken according as the door be more or less frequently opened
during the time of his recital of transgressions.

We had time for our examen of conscience and prayer be-
fore the father entered the chapel. What a privilege it was to
kneel at his feet in that sanctified spot, to have holy absolution
given us, and to receive gentle words of counsel from one whose
every word has a power to encourage and to heal ! And then
the Mass, the novices forming the chief part of the congrega-
tion, with their pious demeanor and their strange and shabby
gowns. Finding ourselres the only worldlings in the chapel, we
consulted the father as to the practicability of attending the Low
Mass in the parish church and there receiving Holy Communion.
This being possible, we did it, and hurried back to our hotel for
breakfast, as the High Mass was to begin at nine o'clock.

Half-past eight saw us retracing our steps, duly fortified for
the fatigue of the morning. Past us rolled neat vehicles, full be-
yond the original intention of the builders, for none could be left
at home to-day : even the babies must come to do honor to the
Bon Dieu. From all the quaint old homesteads come the families
in Sunday raiment ; along an avenue to our left came evidently

1 888.] A FETE DIEU PROCESSION. 179

an entire household, the mother of proportions seldom attained
save by a daughter of Israel or a French-Canadian matron, the
father thin as a rail, his shining broadcloth coat hanging in
wrinkles around him, his trousers showing a strongly marked
crease down the centre of each calf, and his silk hat resplendent
in gloss though antique in shape. In his arms, clad in pink and
blue, reposed the baby. Before us trotted two tiny boys, aged
possibly four and six. They wore on their breast long white
favors, tipped with golden fringe, and having some sign printed
thereon. Thinking they were goodly specimens of some village
Band of Hope, we stopped them to inspect their decorations ; to
our amusement they consisted of a large portrait of a " fatted
calf," and a golden legend to the effect that Jean St. Jean was
one of the guild of butchers. The youngsters had come from
the city, and had probably purloined their respective fathers'
ribbons, so as to be entitled to the admiration of their coun-
try cousins. The broad space of greensward in front of the
church was edged by horses and carriages tied to the fence
nicely kept horses and neat carriages, telling of the prosperity of
Sault-au-Recollet. There was no loitering outside to talk of
current events ; each parishioner with grave solemnity entered
the church and took his seat. We did likewise, with this differ-
ence, that we took some one else's seat.

In some parts, of the sacred edifice there was room and to
spare; in others seats were at a premium. I counted nine little
boys perched on the holy-water cask. In they carrfe, the good
country people, many of them in gorgeous toilets. Why the
mind of the French-Canadian peasant woman runs on plush I can-
not say ; that it does so was evident from the number of ruby and
mustard-colored plastrons of that effective material that were
proudly borne up the various aisles. After the Gospel the curt
made the announcements for the following week, begimning with a
few well-chosen words on the subject of the procession of the day,
in which he recommended his flock not to engage in idle conver-
sation on the route, but to say their beads and endeavor to re-
main recollected. In the sanctuary were seated three old priests
from St. Janvier, the vicaire of the parish, and two young Je-
suits from the novitiate.

At the conclusion of the Mass we all left the church for the
greensward, where an old priest, with a beautiful, delicate face,
formed us into line. He never was in political life, that old gen-
tleman, or at least he never was an organizer of political pro-
cessions, for he decreed that we should walk in a double line, four

180 A F'ETE DIEU PROCESSION. [Nov.,

abreast, two and two, which was, as every one who has ever
tried to elongate a torchlight procession will know, a terrible
waste of material. First went a man of important demeanor,
carrying a blue mace whereon, under a golden ball, ran the
legends, " Dieu et mon Droit " and " Honi soit qui mal y
pense " in what honor I know not. Next to him came a man,
gorgeous in white gloves, bearing aloft the banner of the Blessed
Sacrament, and then the women of the parish, the Sodalities of
Les Dames de Ste. Anne, of Les Enfants de Marie, and female
members of the Third Order of St. Francis; then the Guard of
Honor of the Blessed Sacrament, the acolytes and the white-
robed choir, the cross-bearer and the thurifer, the priests, and
the canopy under which the venerable curt bore aloft the Holy
of Holies, supported by two other white-haired clergymen,
and then the men of the various sodalities. Down the broad in-
cline in front of the church and out into the village highway
poured the procession, and just when the Blessed Sacrament
passed the portals of the gateway the gray clouds broke and
the sun shone forth in all his splendor. Along under the willows
swept the cortege, and music filled the air. The main part of
the singing was done by the two young Jesuits, whose magnifi-
cent voices carried the Pange Lingua across the blue waves of the
swift river, and echoed from the opposite banks of the fair island,
of Jesus. Solemn and slow was our pace and recollected our
demeanor; in the hand of every man and woman hung a rosary,
and the plfea to our merciful Mother, Pries pour nous,pauvres
ptcheurs, arose on all sides.

The village was gay with flowers and -bunting, a grand de-
coration was formed by flags loaned by the Ladies of the Sacred
Heart, small standards floated from the window of every cot-
tage, and the ground was strewn with bright blossoms from gar-
den and meadow. In passing the neat homes of the good peo-
ple of Sault-au-Recollet we had distractions, pardonable per-
haps to strangers, and took many a glimpse at the exquisitely
tidy and clean interiors of these cottages. In the doorway or
on the gallery of almost every one was a baby, who, too small
to go to church, had been securely tied to its little chair and
probably confided to the protection of St. Joseph. "Anxious?"
said a French-Canadian woman to me the other day " anxious?
Yes, of course I am, but I have to work for my living; I cannot
be always running after my children, so I give them to St. Jo-
seph and tell him to take care of them, and voilh, tout" St. Jo-
seph took good care of these mites, and of the aged and infirm

1 888.] A FETE DIEU PROCESSION. 181

too who, likewise propped up in their chairs, sat on the galleries
and bowed their heads, encased in red or blue toques, as Jesus of
Nazareth passed them by. In one house only did the dwellers
appear too fashionable to join in the procession ; they lounged on
their veranda, and their devotion apparently continued only so
long as the Blessed Sacrament was directly within their range
of vision.

At the first repository came the sign to kneel ; and even the
cherished plush plastrons wenfdown in the dust as their wearers,
with a faith stronger than fashion, bent low under the Divine
Benediction. Then up again and on on past the pretty gar-
dens, and the road to the mill and the bright river; past little
shops and cottage homes to another resting place, where again
the Son of Man was lifted up to the adoration of the multitude.

*' Genitori, Genitoque,"
sang the young Jesuit fathers,

" Laus et jubilatio
Salus, honor, virtus quoque
Sit et benedictio.''

And again the blessing, the flashing of the golden ostensorium,
the clinking of the beads of many chapelets, the lowly adoration
of the faithful Canadians. Then up and back, back towards the
church, past the babies and the aged and infirm, past the homes,
the doors whereof stood wide open, the better to admit the bless-
ing of the Bon Dieu, and up the greensward to the church for a
third and last benediction ; at the close of which the people dis-
persed quietly and with decorum, not waiting for the usual chat-
ter and gossip which too often mar the harmony of a Sunday
morning in the country.

Our prayers finished, E and I set about an inspection of the

old church of Our Lady of the Visitation. The fagade is quite
new, and really imposing with its tall twin towers. But enter,
pass under the choir gallery, and you are at once in the last cen-
tury. The interior is white ; ceiling and walls both are decorat-
ed with delicate gold tracery in high relief. The pulpit on the
wall, according to the old French fashion is also in white and
gold, an exquisite bit of carving. The buttresses of the ceiling
are finished with curiously wrought heads, painted in faint flesh-
tints. The golden tracery in the sanctuary is very rich ; the altar
appears to date from the middle ages, and is probably one of
those exported from France in the days when that country was

182

A FATE DIEU PROCESSION.

[Nov.,

interested in the propagation of religion in Canada. It is richly
gilt, this altar, and well appointed. Over it hangs an old oil-
painting of the Visitation, and in the side-chapels are also some
ancient works of art, along with several more modern aids to
devotion, the most noticeable of which is a miniature representa-
tion of the Grotto of Lourdes, executed in wood or in stucco, and
all complete.

The quaint antiquity of the church interested us so much that
we were bold enough to call upon Monsieur le Curt and ask him
to enlighten us as to the probable date of its erection. Monsieur
le Cure lives in a magnificent modern mansion of gray stone,
apparently very complete in all its appointments. We found
him organizing a dinner-party ; the old clergymen from St.
Janvier who had assisted in the procession had accepted his hos-
pitable invitation to remain to dinner with himself and Monsieur
le Vicaire, but the two young Jesuits were, with many thanks,
declining, and, as we entered, they departed to the adjacent
novitiate. Monsieur le Curt, a dear old man with a kind and
fatherly manner, told us that his parish had had its beginning in
1696, when the Christian Indians of Ville Marie were brought
from the mountain and established at Sault-au-R6collet. The
cause of their removal from the" Mission of the Mountain," which
was upon the actual site of the Grand Seminary, was the too great
facility with which they could purchase " fire-water " from the
white traders. The same danger was found to prevail at Sault-
au-R6collet, so that in 1721 the Indian mission was removed and
permanently established at Oka, on the Lake of the Two Moun-
tains, where it still exists. The actual church of Sault-au-Re-
collet was built in 1751 ; the extension and fagade were added of
late years.

While we talked to the cure" the odor of boiled and roast
grew more and more apparent, and we bethought ourselves of
the possible wrath of the cook, and hurriedly said good-by,
promising to return another day for a second chapter in the his-
tory of Sault-au-R6collet.

And then back through the daisies and buttercups, through
the cowslips and clover, under the blossoms and over the
brooks, until our hotel is reached. In the afternoon Benediction
at the convent of the Sacred Heart, and then the convenient
train from Ottawa, which brings us to Montreal in ample time
to allow us to attend the last English sermon of the season at
the eight o'clock service in the Church of the Gesu.

A. M. POPE.

1 888.] CHILDREN AS SUICIDES. 183

CHILDREN AS SUICIDES.

EVERY now and then we hear a complaint from large-hearted,
children-loving people that there are no longer any children for
them to love. They generally utter this lamentation about
Christmas time, when they discover that the babies won't believe
in Santa Claus and the little girls won't play with dolls ; or when
they have strayed recklessly into juvenile ball-rooms under the
fond delusion that they will witness an old-fashioned game of
romps ; or worse than all when they have innocently asked
some solemn mite of a child if she likes The Arabian Nights, and
have been answered, with a strong implied rebuke, that she pre-
fers Plutarch's Lives and Prescott's Conquest of Mexico. It is
hard not to sympathize with these crestfallen adults, whose ob-
solete notions of childish ignorance and simplicity have led them
into such humiliating errors. They feel, probably, like the hap-
less old lady in Punch who says weakly to her small niece : " Do
you hear the chou-chou, Ethel?'' To which the nineteenth-cen-
tury baby replies, with chilling condescension : " If you mean the
locomotive, auntie, I hear it very well."

But there is another side of the question which is not so dis-
tinctly humorous, and at which the most light-hearted of us can-
not afford to be amused. The crimes of children have become
as palpably mature as their pleasures, and, if less numerous than
they were fifty years ago, are infinitely more painful to contem-
plate. Thanks to compulsory school-laws and reformatory insti-
tutions, there are fewer little vagabonds roaming around our
streets, pilfering meagrely from open shops and provision-stands,
and becoming inured to a life of beggary and vice through sheer
unconsciousness of anything cleaner or better. But, on the other
hand, we can hardly open a newspaper without seeing how a
thirteen-year-old lad has adroitly robbed his employer, and has
started promptly for the far West on his slender stolen capital;
or how a twelve-year-old girl has been enticed away from home
and safety by depraved companions as young or younger than
herself ; or how a nine-year-old baby has killed his little brother
because he failed to see " much good in a brother anyway,"
which was the argument actually advanced by a sardonic infan-
tile murderer some few months ago. Or perhaps and this really
seems the most hopeless spectacle of all we read how some
miserable little boy or girl has come to the very grown-up

1 84 CHILDREN AS SUICIDES. [Nov.,

conclusion that life is not worth living, and, with the help of a
piece of rope or five cents' worth of laudanum, has braved the
unknown and unfeared terrors of eternity. In fact, the para-
graphs headed " A Youthful Suicide " have become such a fre-
quent occurrence of late that we hardly stop to notice them, but
pass lightly on to some more piquant narrative of vice. It is
only when the thing happens at our very doors, and the paper
consequently devotes a column or so to the details of one espe-
cial case, that we begin to ask ourselves whether self-destruction
is or ought to be in the recognized catalogue of childish short-
comings.

Nothing could well seem more utterly trivial than the causes
which provoke the greater number of these young people to
take their own lives. From the little lad- of seven who drowned
himself because his mother would not give him any lunch, to the
boy of sixteen who shot himself recently in Philadelphia over the
grave of his pet dog, or the half-grown girl in Buffalo who
hanged herself in the attic because her father would not per-
mit her to go to the skating-rink, we read everywhere the
same sad story of morbid emotionalism and unrestrained tem-
per. Sometimes it is the fear of punishment which drives a
foolish child to suicide, and sometimes resentment at parental
discipline ; in both of which cases there is apt to be much out-
spoken sympathy for the small sufferer, and much implied cen-
sure for the home methods which have produced such unnatural
results. Yet, strange as it may seem, those hapless little waifs
who are rescued occasionally from real and sickening cruelty
never appear to have even thought of death as a possible way out
of their troubles. They surfer on and on with a dim, pitiful resig-
nation until some kindly hand snatches them from their misery
and publishes to an indignant world the story of their wrongs.
But the well-housed, well-fed, and often well-loved children who
deliberately kill themselves rather than bear some merited dis-
grace or pay the penalty for some guilty misdemeanor, belong
to a totally different class. Nervous, sensitive, self-absorbed lit.
tie creatures, without the careless vitality of childhood or the
gay defiance of youth, their physical cowardice is at the mercy
of every exaggerated emotion. It is hard enough to make a boy
truthful and generous ; it is not possible to make him brave. I
have before me now the account of a thirteen-vear-old lad, the
son of a wealthy farmer in the South, who committed suicide be-
cause his mother thought fit to punish him for some irritating
childish offence. The boy, it seems, was the spoiled darling of

1 888.] CHILDREN AS SUICIDES. 185

the family, and ill-accustomed to penalties of any kind. Stung
to a sense of resentment which would be comical were it not so
bitter, he brooded for some time over his grievance, and, finally
concluding that life was not tolerable on such terms, he proceed-
ed to hang himself with wagon-lines in the barn, leaving a heri-
tage of grief and unmerited self-reproach to his heart-stricken
parent. Another little fellow, only seven years of age, made a
similar attempt because his mother threatened to tell his father
about some particular piece of naughtiness. She saw him pass
the door with a coil of rope in his hand, and asked him what he
was going to do with it. " Make a swing," was the unconcerned
reply ; and when the poor woman went to the barn a few min-
utes later she found the child hanging by his neck to a cross-
beam, while the water-pail which he had kicked from under him
was still rolling at his feet. Fortunately she was in time to cut
him down, a half-strangled and wholly frightened little boy, with
a purple face, a deep red ring around his neck, and an altered
opinion regarding the pleasures and pangs of suffocation.

The appalling part of such an incident is the extraordinary
youth of the culprit. Eight years ago an English writer on
suicide announced to the startled world that, of the sixty thou-
sand Europeans who annually took their own lives, two thousand
were children. The youngest case then recorded was that of a
boy of nine who drowned himself for grief at the loss of his pet
canary. Since 1880 we have beaten the record many times. The
number of suicides has increased enormously, and America alone
can point to more than one baby of seven who has wearied of
his hardly tasted existence. From twelve to sixteen, however,
appears to be the age at which children are most prone to self-
destruction, and, if we examine a few of the instances so persist-
ently brought before the public, we shall see but too plainly how
links are wrought in the sad continuity of crime. Just as one
daring robbery or brutal murder gives birth to a dragon-brood
of sins, so each miserable piece of .childish folly leaves behind it
the germ of another tragic development. About a year ago a
Philadelphia carpenter named Niblick came home from his hard
day's work to find the lifeless body of his thirteen-year-old
daughter swinging from a nail in his little front parlor. The girl
was motherless, and had been left in charge of the house, and
of two younger children who were crouched trembling on the
floor, staring helplessly at their dead sister. One of them, a boy
of five, made the astonishing statement that a neighbor named
McClelland and her daughter Florence, who was Annie Niblick's

1 86

CHILDREN AS SUICIDES.

[Nov.,

friend and playmate, had come in during their father's absence,
and had deliberately hanged the little girl against the wall, drag-
ging the chair from under her. The story was too absurd to gain
any credence, and the child himself, on being questioned, broke
down utterly and refused to repeat his words. It was shown,
moreover, that Annie had been guilty of some trivial disobedi-
ence and feared her father's anger. The coroner's jury exoner-
ated the accused, and brought in a simple verdict of " death by
strangulation " ; and the matter was well-nigh forgotten by
the public until thirteen months afterwards, when Florence
McClelland, being then just fourteen years of age, had her pho-
tograph taken as a farewell gift for her mother, swallowed five
cents' worth of laudanum, and sat down quietly to die. Happily
her condition was discovered before it was too late, and the
prompt use of remedies brought her back to consciousness. She
confessed that she had tried to kill herself because the story of
Annie Niblick's death had given rise to unkind rumors in the
neighborhood, and had forced her to leave her situation. The
problem of living down this foolish scandal was more than her
weak courage could face. It would be better, she thought, to
"go and join Annie"; and, as the means of suicide are always
perilously cheap and easy, only a narrow chance prevented the
rapid fulfilment of her plans. As it was, the dramatic paragraphs
devoted to her proceedings, the vivid newspaper accounts of her
beauty which may very safely be doubted of her " big brown
eyes and plaintive face," of the historic tin-type, " a perfect like-
ness, with her long brown hair falling over her shoulders," and
of her charms and trials and sorrows generally, were enough to
set a dozen more foolish little girls all on edge to follow her pic-
turesque example.

A still more striking instance of the close connection which
such crimes bear to one another may be found in the history of
two children who, six months ago, lived next door to each other
in one of the humbler suburbs of Philadelphia. The younger,
Katie Kearney, was a bright little Catholic girl of twelve, and
her companion, Carrie Fitzgerald, was only a few months older.
Carrie had a stepmother, with whom, after the not uncommon
fashion of stepchildren, she failed to agree ; and one afternoon,
when the friends were confiding to each other the history of all
their vexations, she suggested that suicide was the easiest way
out of them, in fact the way that " most people " took to get rid
of the inevitable burdens of life. Katie listened, only half-con-
vinced ; but two weeks later Carrie pushed her theories into

1 888.] CHILDREN AS SUICIDES. 187

practice by hanging herself in one of the Kearneys' bed-rooms,
where she was discovered and cut down in scant time to save
her life. After that Mr. Kearney, not relishing his daughter's
intimacy with her neighbor, moved into another street, and
Katie had new, and let us hope more cheerful, companions. But
the seed had been already planted in the child's soul ; the image
of Carrie dangling from the rope was always in her mind ; the
"easy way" of getting rid of troubles was too felicitous to be
forgotten. Three months later she was found hanging stiff and
cold by the side of her little bed. A strong piece of bag-twine
was twisted around her neck and fastened to a hook in the wall ;
a chair lying overturned at her feet showed how her purpose
had been accomplished. Whether she had in idle mood been
trying to imitate her friend, with no real thought of suicide, and
had missed her footing on the chair, or whether the morbid im-
pulse of the moment had proved too powerful a temptation,
none will ever know. Her home was happy, her days un-
troubled, and her death one of those pitiful, purposeless, ignoble
tragedies that throw a! blight over the broad face of ordinary
commonplace life.

Now, even looking at such cases from the most tolerant and
charitable standpoint, we cannot help thinking that self-destruc-
tion is not a wholesome topic for children's conversations, and
that there is something distinctly unnatural in these premature
speculations and experiments. But the plain fact of their un-
fitness does not make it any easier to close our eyes to their ex-
istence, and it may on the whole be better worth our while to
inquire into the influences at work. Little boys and girls of
twelve do not, as a rule, belong to that highly esoteric band of
scientific pessimists who demonstrate with mathematical pre-
cision the inherent joylessness of life. They are wont not to vex
their minds over abstract questions, but each one regards his
own case as exceptional, and makes it the subject of his exclu-
sive contemplation. That lack of perspective which is the re-
sult of childish short-sightedness gives a terrible prominence to
the matter in hand ; and when this matter is one which embraces
the whole gamut of youthful suffering, when it entails sorrow
and pain and fear, each real in kind if trivial in degree, then the
child's soul is demoralized and his customary serenity stands
him in little stead. The troubles of children seem to us so
grotesquely disproportionate because, without experience and
without foresight, they feel as if the whole of life were made up
of the present melancholy moment. It is true the cloud soon

1 88 CHILDREN AS SUICIDES. [Nov.,

melts away, but it is none the less black while it threatens ; the
ordeal is quickly over, but, for the moment at least, it is a heart-
breaking affair.

Added to the unreasoning bitterness of a child's grief is the
sense of impotence which makes it seem impossible for him to
escape ; and here we have a clue to the motives which prompt
him to suicide. It is a way out of his hardships, and the only
way that lies within his feeble power. He is weak, and grown-
up people are strong ; but in this fashion, at least, he can defy
them. He is unhappy, and grown-up people are unkind ; but by
this one act he can turn the tables and inflict on them the pangs
that he is suffering now. He is insignificant, and grown-up
people think lightly of his woes ; but here is a method by which
he can suddenly become of the utmost importance and have the
whole household excited over his fate. This is the train of
thought which we descry in a morbid, self-centred child like
Harriet Martineau, though, drolly enough, she is disposed even
in mature age to ascribe much finer motives to her petulant
discontent. It figures handsomely in her autobiography as a
" devouring passion for justice," which is a strangely reverential
term to invent for the not uncommon naughtiness of an ill-tem-
pered little girl.

"Being usually very unhappy," she writes, "I was constantly longing
for heaven, and seriously and very frequently planning suicide in order to
get there. I knew it was considered a crime, but I did not feel it so. I
had a devouring passion for justice justice first to my own precious self,
and then to other oppressed people. Now and then I brooded over my
injuries, and those of others who dared not speak; and then the tempta-
tion to suicide was very strong. No doubt there was much vindictiveness
in it. I gloated over the thought that I would make somebody care about
me in some sort of way at last ; and, as to my reception in the oth^r world,
I felt sure that God would not be very angry with me for making haste to
him when nobody else cared for me and so many people plagued me. One
day I went to the kitchen to get the great carving-knife to cut my throat ;
but the servants were at dinner, and that put it off for the time. By de-
grees the design dwindled down into running away."

The incident of the carving-knife and of the servants being at
dinner strikes us as rather an anti-climax to such a passionate
narrative. One feels that this was not the stuff out of which real
suicides are made, and that the little Harriet found too much
consolation in her own self-pity and unctuous imaginings to be
ever driven to the final step. Her trouble was the trouble of
most unhappy children, as well as of unhappy adults that mel-
ancholy, unconscious egotism which turns all our thoughts in

1 888.] CHILDREN AS SUICIDES. 189

upon ourselves. In her behalf must be urged the deafness
which to some degree separated her from other children, and
prevented her from throwing herself heartily into their projects
and pastimes. The girl who proudly relates to you her baby
sister's last and most inane witticism, or who tells you with
glowing eyes how her brother has run a half-mile race in pre-
cisely ten seconds and three-quarters less than five other boys,
may not grow into a brilliant woman, but neither will she de-
sire to cut her own throat because nobody loves her. The man
who waxes eloquent over his favorite newspaper, or his favorite
Congressman, or his own particular plan for municipal reform,
may be the least interesting of companions, but he is in scant
danger of blowing out his brains because of the irremediable
evils of life.

All this, however, is but. a partial and, in some measure, a
superficial way of looking at the difficulty. It is not granted to
every one to be happy, or even to have wholesome, unselfish dis-
positions ; but it is expected of every one that we make a brave
struggle against our most depressing influences, a brave effort
for better and brighter things. And this struggle is as distinctly
within the compass of a child's ability as of a man's or woman's.
In fact the radical difference between right and wrong appeals
far more sharply to the infant than to the adult mind ; for the
young regard all ethical questions with a rigid directness unre-
lieved by any of those vague gradations that our more elaborate
casuistry can devise. Harriet Martineau, indeed, cheated herself
or would have us think so into the belief that God would not
be angry with her for " making haste " to him ; but the aver-
age child is quickly taught that suicide is akin to murder, that
the finality of the act debars the sinner from the last grace of
contrition, and that a brave endurance of our earthly vexations
is the test, not only of human worth, but also of our spiritual
advancement. The English writer whose statistics of suicide I
have already quoted confesses somewhat regretfully that reli-
gion is the only effective barrier against this insidious disease.
He himself is prepared to treat the matter from " a broader and
more liberal basis " (!); but the fact remains, and he is prompt to
recognize it, that for mankind generally there is no preventive
like an honest hope of heaven, an uncompromising fear of hell:

"Antipathy to self-killing on religious grounds constitutes the only
real resistance to it that has so far been discovered ; and it is precisely the
diminution of this religious antipathy which explains its recent large ex-
tension. In suggesting that a wider and more general popular view might

190 CHILDREN AS SUICIDES. [Nov.,

usefully be taken of the subject as a whole, we strongly insist, at the same
time, on the practical usefulness and healthy effects of the purely religious
objections to suicide. They alone have controlled it in the past ; they
alone, so far as we can at present judge, seem capable of holding it in the
future. No other regulating force appears to be available."

The children, then, whose religious instruction enables them to
realize the plain fact that self-murder is a grievous sin are pro-
vided with one efficient weapon against the promptings of a
morbid self-love ; and if their daily occupations be of a simple,
healthy order, and their reading of a cleanly, bracing sort, it is
hard to understand how such a lamentable fate could befall them.
Reading, indeed, has been too' often held responsible for this as
for countless other evils; suicide, we are facetiously told, keeps
pace with the alphabet, and to Cadmus and John Faust belong,
in equal shares, the blame. Now, happily or unhappily, the
alphabet is one of those gifts which can never be withdrawn
from mankind. If the educated German and Frenchman kill
themselves, while the ignorant Italian and Spaniard live blithely
on, it follows, not so much that learning itself is in fault espe-
cially as a very moderate portion suffices for this unpleasant result
as that the generality of readers make but an indifferent use of
the little that they know. It is neither possible nor desirable to
keep children in ignorance of their letters ; but that is no reason
why " all print," to use Mr. Boffin's pregnant phrase, should be
open to their inspection. One-third of the juvenile crimes com-
mitted every year may be easily traced to the influence of coarse
and vicious literature. The youthful thief and rowdy finds a
congenial example in the flashy, dare-devil hero of a cheap novel;
the silly school-girl has her head hopelessly turned by the ro-
mantic adventures of the low-born maidens who figure in the
weekly story-papers. And to these prolific sources of vice may
be added others less commonly understood and less vigorously
combated. Mr. Froude has drawn for us a lively picture of the
reading-rooms of free libraries, and no one familiar with these
institutions will be disposed to question the accuracy of his de-
tails. Knowledge is power, or so, at least, we used to be told ;
but the books from which such lustihood may be garnered stand
in unbroken ranks, hoary with dust, while propped up at the
long black tables are little boys and girls eagerly devouring the
dubious folly of the hour. Nobody knows what these small,
stooping, pale-faced creatures are reading, and apparently no-
body cares. The same parents who keep a close watch over the
contents of their own book-shelves turn their children out to

i888.] CHILDREN AS SUICIDES. 191

browse, not on the rich pasturage of the vigorous old authors
so bravely recommended by Lamb, but on whatever vapid trum-
pery their ignorance or their weakness may select.

Then again there is the ever-vexed and vexing subject of the
daily press, that mighty giant whose huge bulk is the idol of the
many and the abhorrence of the few ; whose self-trumpeted vir-
tues sound deafeningly in our ears, and whose plague-spots are
exhibited with such ostentatious indifference before our startled
eyes. It is not easy to judge this vast creation by the same
rules that we lay down authoritatively for a Sunday-school an-
nual or a primary text-book. The duty of seeing all things and
handling all things is not compatible with great delicacy of mind
or touch ; the task of pleasing a given number of patrons is hardly
conducive to a fantastic nicety of judgment. Rather let us be
grateful for the general tone of our best newspapers, which is both
clean and wholesome, and for their general integrity, which, save
when party issues are at stake, is wont to deal squarely with the
interests of the public. Because the press is obstinately blind to
its own faults through no lack of critics to point them out we
need not be blind to its obvious merits, the merits of manliness
and decency ; but neither need we yield assent to its extrava-
gant pretensions, and grow to think it the one essential element
of civilization. The man who makes it his curious boast that he
reads nothing but the papers condemns himself unsolicited to an
intellectual prison fare ; but what shall we say to the following
modest paragraph, which is copied verbatim from a Western
daily, and which doubtless embodies the unspoken views of many
American parents ?

"The boy or girl who is a regular newspaper reader will grow up in in-
telligence, and will use good language, both in speaking and writing, even
with a limited education. It is news, science, literature, grammar, history,
geography, and spelling combined.''

This seems a powerful combination, but there are still one or
two articles forgotten on the list. The boy or girl who is a
" regular newspaper reader " learns something besides science,
literature, grammar, history, geography, and spelling some-
thing more promptly recognized and easily acquired than any
of these valuable studies. " The story of all the malcontents as
ever was hanged is very amusing," wrote little Marjorie Flem.
ing in her diary half a century ago ; and the children of to-day
seem to be much of her mode of thinking. A murderer is an
object of more genuine interest to them than Bismarck or the
czar ; a daring train robbery is far more alluring than all the

192 CHILDREN AS SUICIDES. [Nov.,

wonders of the Lick Observatory. To them, moreover, belongs
the imitative passion which is the accompaniment of an imperfect
development ; they naturally seek to do what is done by other
and older people, especially if their imaginations are fired by the
melodramatic flavor of the deed. We are told that wherever the
Indiana White Caps have taken upon their shoulders the burden of
administering justice after their own fantastic methods, the small
boys band themselves together in imitation of their fathers, and
any urchin who cheats too successfully at marbles, or otherwise
offends against their stringent legislature, is lashed by masked
comrades into a more delicate sense of propriety. So, too, the
youthful thieves, murderers, and suicides model their actions
after the example set them by adults more familiar with the de-
.t-atls'fO'f :crime. The German girl who saturated her clothing
'W^Jth; Benzine, and set fire to herself on the railway station at
Nftrdhausen just as the train rolled in, had evidently studied
.the. -.picturesque features of her part. The little American boy
who flung himself on the track before an advancing locomotive
followed some outside suggestion rather than an inward impulse.
It was testified by the brakeman, who looked on powerless to
save, that this child of fourteen raised his head but once, gave
but one brief glance at the fearful engine that thundered near,
and then, trembling, buried his face in his hands. Yet what
were his boyish troubles, what could the troubles of that age be,
compared to such a moment of horror and despair ! The French
lad of thirteen who hanged himself after making a will in which
he solemnly bequeathed his body to the earth and his soul to Rous-
seau " Reddite ergo quae sunt Caesaris Csesari " was but re-
producing after his feeble fashion the sickly sentimentality of his
surroundings.

It might perhaps be thought by sober-minded people that
such juvenile records are not in themselves healthy reading
for little people, and that the less they learn about such un-
pleasing possibilities the better ; but not only are they given
every facility for self-enlightenment, which it seems can hardly
be avoided, but now and then especial pains are taken to help
them on their way. That a mere baby, only seven years old,
should deliberately drown himself because his mother hard-
worked, doubtless, and vexed, after the hasty fashion of mothers,
by interruptions refused to give him a slice of bread and butter,
is, we grant, an interesting problem to the student of causes and
effects, but it is not a pleasant study or example for other little
boys of seven who would probably never dream of such a thing

i888.] CHILDREN AS SUICIDES. 193

for themselves. Yet Mrs. Piatt has thought fit to celebrate this
infantine tragedy in verses sedulously addressed to youthful
readers, and calculated to arouse their warmest sympathies for
the deed. I quote the poem entire to show how many graceful
and pleasing sentiments can be woven around the suicide of a
child:

"Yes, brown and rosy, perhaps, like you,

Was the little boy they have not found,
Or perhaps his eyes, like yours, were blue,
And his poor, sweet head faint golden, too
The little child who was drowned.

" I hardly think his mother was right

Did she have it ? not to give him the bread ;
But he shut the door, and then ' Good-night '
(Yes, he went alone and without any light) ;
' I'll never come home,' he said.

I '

w-.

" Poor little child ! he was seven years old.

Why, the bird's wild nest was new in the tree,;,
There were roses enough for him to hold
In his two small hands. But the river is cold
In the summer-time, you see.

" From the trouble of tears where did he go ?

Where did he go with his two bare feet ?
That life was bitter he seemed to know ;
(What manner of bread did he think to eat ?)

Did he know that death was sweet ?"

The best thing that can be said for these mellifluous verses is
that no child, unless he were a member of a juvenile Browning
Club, would be likely to extract much meaning out of them.
Life is bitter and death is sweet, but this certainty is one which
does not ordinarily dawn upon our perceptions at seven. Neither
is it desirable that such a speedy and logical solution of the prob-
lem should enter the infant mind. " Suicide," says a well-known
writer, "is the most exclusively personal of all forms of gratifica-
tion. No other act is so intensely individual or so profoundly
selfish ; no other act is so restively independent or so inquisitive-
ly experimental." Now, this restless and defiant independence
hardly strikes us as the natural attribute of a child, and it is not
good husbandry on our part to plant such seed and nourish it.
In fact, the proverbially dense little girl who gained for herself
an immortal place in literature by convincing Mr. Wordsworth
that she knew nothing about death, and could not be made to
VOL. XLVIJI. 13

194 THE MARQUIS OF CASTIGLIONE. [Nov.,

understand it, is a refreshing type to the weary student of mod-
ern precocity. Imagine the guileless poet's frame of mind if,
instead of the

" simple child

That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,"

he had encountered the small American rustic wandering wilfully
" from the trouble of tears " down to his self-sought grave !
Fancy the author of " Lucy Gray " and " Alice Fell " reading
Mrs. Piatt's verses, and conjuring up in his brain the exact spe-
cies of child to whom such reflections are addressed ! And fancy
the little boy or girl who has listened alert and wide-eyed to the
thrilling story of a baby's suicide, deigning to take an interest in
such commonplace trivialities as Barbara Lewthwaite's pet lamb
or Alice Fell's cloak ot " duffel gray." Verily, the old order
changes, and the new one, while dazzlingly magnificent in scope,
is as yet somewhat comfortless in detail. We have ridden fast
since Wordsworth's day, and les enfans perdus have paid the
penalty of our speed. AGNES REPPLIER.

THE MARQUIS OF CASTIGLIONE.*

BORN a prince and marquis, growing up to wealth and splen-
dor,

All the honors of this world wooing him to win and wear,
And a father's high ambition, and a mother's watching tender,
Pointing out the path to glory, softening every roughness
there.

In his beautiful young manhood called to take his stately sta-
tion
At the proudest court of Europe, by his future king to

stand,

Think what visions must have risen upon his imagination
Pleasure, but to smile and taste it; glory, but to lift his
hand!

* St. Aloysius Gonzaga was by birth the Marquis of Castiglione, Prince of the Holy Roman
Empire, Marquis of Solferino, etc., but resigned his rank and dignities to enter the Jesuit
order.

i888.] THE MARQUIS OF CASTIGLIONE. 195

Should he pluck life's reddest roses? Drain its jewel-crusted

chalice?

Crowd with joys the days and years, and then leave them, satis-
fied ?
Should he grasp the harsher laurels? For the conflict leave the

palace ?
Challenging- a future glory from the battle where he died ?

Be the happiness still higher and the glory more enduring !
Should he write the wondrous poems that outlast a thousand

lives ?
That were fame well worth the winning, and a vision more

alluring,

Stainless sweet and pure and golden as the honey the bee
hives!

Oh ! to gather all its fulness from the life that lay before him,
And yet claim a recognition from the life that was to be ;

Bind the blossoms round his brows, yet plant the future laurels

o'er him ;
Shine in sunlight like a dew-drop share the sea's eternity !

That were life ! But here was God ; and at once the riddle

ended ;

For he gained all things forever when he left them, every one ;
Perfect bliss on earth with future bliss in heaven blended ;
And for fame ! behold his church there, and beside it in the

sun,

Satin-smooth and golden-hearted, breathing sweetly all delight, j
See St. Aloysius' lilies, still and stately, tall and white !

M. B. MORSE.

195 PAUL RINGWOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Nov.,

PAUL RINGWOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
CHAPTER VI. Continued.

I HAD never seen but two blind in my life one whose eyes
were shut, one whose eyes were fearful things to look at. My
father's eyes were intelligent, bright, and handsome as they had
ever been.

" It can't be," I cried ; " they're not shut, they're not like old
Dave's"

" God forbid !" interrupted my father. And that was the
nearest approach to a complaint I have ever heard that brave
gentleman, my father, utter in the long years of his blindness.
Forgetting that he did not like me to touch him, I put my arm
about father's neck. Gently putting me from him, he said :
" Don't be foolish."

" No, papa, I won't," I said ; " but I am so sorry, I don't
know what to do.''

" I will tell you what you must not do," he said ; " you must
not let Bert know, and you must not cry and pity me."

I promised not to tell Bert, but how could I promise not to
pity him when my heart was aching for him? Still, I did make
such a promise, the only promise I ever made my poor father
that I have not kept. I wanted to ask him if he would ever get
his sight again, what had caused his blindness, but I did not dare
to. Afterwards it was told me that he had lost his sight from
too much reading and writing, and that there was a possibility
of its being restored. It may as well be said here that my
father never spoke of his blindness to me, and that it always an-
noyed him to have strangers speak to him of it.

" Do you think that you can read to me? lead me when I
wish to walk?" my father asked.

" Yes, yes ! " I cried, my heart swelling with pride that I
could be of service to him.

" That will do," he said, motioning me to be still. " No doubt
you will do your best," and a look of pain crossed his face.
" What do you do with yourself during the day ? "

I told him how I went to St. Bede's every day ; of my friend,
Amy Morrison, how she took walks with me. " When I come
home I read till Nurse Barnes has my dinner ready, and then I
read till bedtime."

1 888.] PAUL RING WOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 197

" What do you read ? " he questioned.

" Novels, history, travels, and poetry," I answered.

He smiled, thinking, probably, what a little creature I was.
" What are you reading now ? " he asked.

" I am going to read Ruskin's Ethics of the Dust" I answered.

" Suppose that you read it to me," said father ; " but before
you begin, call Nurse Barnes to me."

Nurse Barnes dropped the sheet that she was hemming, and
called on her stars, when I told her that she was wanted by my
father. When she had somewhat gotten over the surprise it
gave her, that she should be wanted by father, she followed me
to the book-room, wondering all the way what it could be he
wanted her for. Not only nurse's starched muslins but her re-
peated curtsies announced her. Every time she curtsied, and
that was whenever father spoke, something snapped. And when
this something snapped, she put on an unconscious look that did
not deceive me in the least. Later on she told me what it was
that snapped. " Them dused whel-buns in my cossets ; an' be-
lieve me or not, Master Paul, I was that ashamed I didn't know
whether I was on my head or on my heels."

"Good morning, nurse; sit down," was the way my father
greeted her.

Three snaps and a crackle, during which father had a won-
dering look in his sightless eyes.

" I'm settin' all day, leastways, to speak the truth, exceptin'
when I'm about the house ; and if it be about the maids, Mr.
Ringwood, I say nothing, they're that careless; and I beg par-
don, Mr. Ringwood, who in all these years has never found fault ;
I know the soup 's not what it ought to be, but cook never did
an' never will know how to make clear soup ; an', Mr. Ringwood,
I said it a hundred times, if you only would go about the house
you never could find as much dust as you'd put on a pin's head,
not if you looked ever so " Nurse stopped breathless.

My father bowed his head and said Mrs. Ringwood had
always appreciated nurse's services. " I sent for you merely to
say that in future Master Paul will take his meals with me.
You will have our meals, if you please, nurse, served to us here,
in the book-room."

Amazed as nurse was, I was more so. I take my meals
with father ! What could it mean? I found out after. Blind,
he would be sure to commit a thousand awkwardnesses at table,
and he preferred that I should be the sole witness of what I am
sure he felt to be his shame. Nurse did not let her amazement

198 PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Nov.,

express itself in words. The awe in which she stood of my
father would have led her to do without question a much
stranger thing than was the serving his dinner in the book-room.
With much crackling of dress and snapping of whale-bones she
asked: " Don't you think, Mr. Ringwood, the table set aside the
window would be cheerfuller lookin' into the garden ? " Father
smiled. " As you please, nurse," he said. " I shall not see the
garden, though you may as well be told, nurse, I have lost my
sight."

I cannot convey in words my father's calm abstraction
in saying this. He spoke of his loss as though it were an affair of
no moment, of no interest to himself. Nurse stared at him, then
looked appealingly to me, who crept softly to her side and
whispered, " Papa's blind." When she quite understood, she
threw up her wrinkled hands, exclaiming: "You poor, poor
soul ; God help you ! " and burst into tears.

All in all, I think my father was pleased with nurse's ready
appreciation an appreciation clearer to him than for many days
I was capable of making mine of what his affliction must have
cost so proud a man as he was ; for he stretched out a hand, and
receiving hers in his grasp, held it whilst he said : " You are very
good, nurse."

Dropping her hand, he continued in his natural tone : " I won't
detain you longer ; we dine at the usual hour. Paul, get your
book."

Nurse curtsied, but not hearing her move to go, father
said: "Well?"

" If you please, Mr. Ringwood," stammered nurse, " if I
could wait at table; Tiff" a sort of butler "is so clumsy."

"Certainly, certainly; anything you think fit," said father.
" Have you the book, Paul ? "

I don't know how she managed it, but nurse went out of the
room, her dress not crackling once. Getting down the book, I
sat beside my father, and began what was to be my pleasure for
many and many a day and night. After I had read an hour or
so, he told me to tell him when I was tired. In the beginning
of these readings I could not continue for more than two hours at
a time without saying, " Papa, may I rest now ? " He would nod
his head, and I would go to the garden for a while, or, in the win-
ter, to talk with Nurse Barnes. After some months I cared no
longer about resting, and would read on till father had tired
of listening. A number of bool<;s I have read in this manner
at a sitting, only stopping for my meals. He never talked to

1 888.] PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 199

me about the books I read to him, and it was only by guessing
that I could tell what he liked. It has been said that my father
was selfish in keeping me so entirely to himself that my edu-
cation was neglected. I learned much from these readings, and
I am quite sure that it never occurred to me to think that
my father was selfish, for was not I happy " most times " ?

CHAPTER VII.
A CHILD'S LONGING.

Bert was still ignorant of father's affliction when he return-
ed home for the holidays. When told of it he showed a great
deal of "feeling ; weeping, he threw himself into father's arms
arms that held him in fatherly embrace. What further passed
between them I do not know, for I was told to go away and
leave them alone.

For several days the readings were interrupted, Bert being
the greater part of the time with father. Since father's blind-
ness I had seen but little of Amy Morrison, but now that I was
altogether free we again took our walks together. It was after
one of these walks, the last I ever took with her, that I had my
first quarrel with Bert.

One morning early in July Amy Morrison and I were seated
on a fallen tree on the brow of a hill at the entrance of a little
wood. The great heat of summer had not come to parch the
fields, and the hillside was yellow with buttercups swaying in a
cool west wind ; the Wingo a pearly thread between its yellow
banks.

We had been talking of what I was to be when I became a
man, and both, of one mind, had decided that I would be a cler-
gyman.

" Paul," said Amy, stooping to pluck a buttercup, " if you are
to be a clergyman you must go to college."

" Of course," I assented ; " but not now ; papa needs me ; I
must read to him."

" You cannot go on reading always,'' said Amy. " You are
almost eleven, and I am afraid, Paul, you are not well up in your
studies." And looking at me sadly, she gently smoothed back
my hair.

" I just know nothing," I candidly acknowledged. " I don't
believe I'll ever know enough to be a clergyman."

2OO

PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

[Nov.,

" You know how to say your prayers," said Amy.

" That's not enough," I said decidedly.

" It is much," Amy declared ; adding, "and you have read a
great deal. You should speak to your father, Paul ; tell him
how anxious you are to go to school. 9 He thinks you do not
care to study ; tell him the whole truth."

" Oh ! I cannot do that," I exclaimed. "Were I to tell him
now, he would think I am tired of him. I'm not much, but I'm
all he's got."

" Has he not Bert ?" Amy asked.

" Bert has to go to college ; he will be here only till after
vacation," I answered.

" And why must Bert have an education and not Paul ? "
she questioned.

" You see. Bert is very intelligent, and I am so dull," I
sighed. " I am afraid to ask father ; I dare not. There would
be no use in it, either."

Amy put her arm about me and tried to console me with the
hope of better days to come. When she had said all she could
to hearten a little boy who was very hopeless, the little boy felt
very thankful, and began to believe that if Amy Morrison
liked him he could not be so wretched a boy after all.

Looking at her watch, Amy said that it was getting late, and
that I must go home or I would be missed.

" I don't believe it," I said doggedly ; " Bert is there."

Looking earnestly at me, Amy said : " Paul, ask God to save
you from pride ; it is a great vice, and brings no manner of hap-
piness with it."

I reddened under her steady gaze, feeling that she read me
clearly. We sauntered slowly down the hillside, across the rus-
tic bridge, through the country lane. On the way we talked but
little, and when we parted, Amy did what she had never done
before ; she stooped and kissed me, whispering softly, " God
bless you, little Paul."

Mine is but a dreary whistle, but on that day, as I went along
under the great buttonwood trees that lined the street, I think
that I whistled fairly well. Standing at the garden-gate to whis-
tle, looking out on the hills so bright and gay on that sunshiny
morning, I thought of my only friend, Amy Morrison. Present-
ly I heard my name sharply called, and, turning about, saw Bert
coming down the drive, his face flushed and angry.

" Fatker wants you," he called out ; continuing as he came up,
"You're a pretty fellow ! Nothing to do but to loaf about the

1 888.] PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 201

streets, and when I come home after working hard for ten
months you expect me to attend to father. If you weren't a
fool I'd say you're a brute " He stopped, choked with anger.

In my utter surprise all I could do was to gasp, " Bert ! "

" Yes, Bert, and Bert," mimicked my brother, continuing in
broken speech : " Do you think I've nothing to do but poke
about the house all day? You're jealous 'cause father don't
like you as well as me. You knew I was going to Bob Greaves'
to-day, and out of spite you ran off, so 's I'd have to stay at
home as if Bob 'd want you. Why even mother couldn't bear
you, you red-headed monkey "

May God forgive me ! I was but a child, and what a troop
of injustices rose before me ! I seized my brother by the throat,
and, though he was the stronger, taking him by surprise, threw
him to the ground. "You liar!" I screamed. "How dare
you ? Mother did love me ; you know she did ! "

Twisting himself out of my grasp, panting for breath, he
sneered : " I ought to be proud to have a half-idiot for twin
brother "

Beside myself, I was screaming that I would break every
bone in Bert's body, when father, led by Tiff, came between us.

It was to me my father spoke in a low voice, coldly and
clearly. " Paul, what is the meaning of this brawl ? Have you
lost your reason ? "

I could not speak. I tried to, and the words would not
shape themselves on my lips. All I could utter was, " Father ! "

He stretched out his hand, and going to him I put mine in
his. He dropped it and caught my arm. " My boy, Bert, is he
here ? "

" Here I am, father," said Bert, putting his hand on the hand
that now always carried a cane.

" Again I ask you, Paul," said father, " why were you quar-
relling with Bert?"

Again I tried to speak, failing as before.

Not letting go of my arm, he turned to Bert. " Since this
fellow won't speak, what has he been doing to you, my boy ? "

Bert ! Bert ! it was but a child's quarrel, but after all these
years I can only cry out, How could you, my brother, be so
cruel?

" He got angry because Bob Greaves has not asked him to-
day ; that's not my fault, father," said Bert.

I was now sullen. " That's not so, Bert," I interrupted ; " I
don't care a snap of my finger for Bob Greaves."

2O2

PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

[Nov.,

" Unfortunate boy ! " said my father, " we all know you to be
a monster of selfishness. Who has ever accused you of caring
for any one ? "

" Father," I cried it is not too much to say that I was nigh
heart-broken " I am not like other boys, and, father, I am so un-
happy."

" More's the pity that you are not as other boys. You are a
most ungrateful one. What is there you can want? A good
home, abundance of all you need. Do you know, you poor child,
that there are millions of human beings who would think the
poorest meal you ever sat down to a banquet? What do you
want ? "

It might be thought that my father was a gross man when
he thus spoke of eating as if it were the highest good. Did one
think so he would be wrong. My father instanced good eating
because he thought there was no other sort of blessedness I
could so well appreciate. In answer to his question of what
I wanted, I stammered that I did not know.

" Pshaw ! " he said; " I would not be surprised if you wanted
a whipping."

He still held my arm, and in all simplicity I asked : " Will
you whip me, father? "

Letting go my arm he said, still low-voiced : " Go away from
me ; if you are in a better humor to-morrow, come to me as
usual. Bert!"

My brother took his hand, and, followed by Tiff, they went to
the house. I ran down the garden path to where there was a
short cut across the fields to the stream. There, on the bank, I
threw myself at full length where I could see the clear, cool
water rippling along, and it brought to my mind the river in
the Pilgrims Progress. Do not say that a child cannot long for
such things, for I longed for it, longed for death. I was angry
with all of the world I knew, till, hearing the bell ringing for
afternoon service, I thought of Amy Morrison, and the thought
heartened me. I thought I could not be so very bad if she
cared for me. So I jumped up and, after I had dusted my
clothes, hurried to church.

The little boys it was a saint's day sang very sweetly that
afternoon, and in a better way they made me again wish the jour-
ney of life was over. My little brain began to dream ; the altar
seemed to me to be the great white throne, and I saw my mother
there. Before I was conscious of anything else, I sneezed. A
tear running down my nose had tickled it. A most unusual

1 888.] PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 203

thing for me to do, to cry. Even when a baby, Nurse Barnes
says that I was very quiet. After the service Amy spoke to me.
" You have been crying, Paul," she said.

We went to a retired part of the graveyard, and there I told
her all about it. And this was the advice and comfort that she
gave me : " Go to your father to-morrow as usual. I am com-
ing to see you very soon, Paul."

CHAPTER VIII.
AMY'S VISIT.

That night I begged Bert's pardon, but he would have none
of it; nevertheless I felt better for having asked it. It was
harder to go to father, for I was afraid of him. It was only after
breakfast the following day that I did go. He was sitting with
his face to the warm morning sun, twirling his thumbs and
whistling softly. He stopped abruptly when he heard my foot-
step. Going up to him I said : " Papa, you are sitting in the sun;
shall I move your chair? ''

Without speaking he rose from his seat, and I wheeled the
chair into the shadow where he would get the benefit of the
cool west wind and yet be out of a draught. When I had led
him to his seat he looked pleased, and I asked him hesitatingly
if I should read to him.

" Do you think that you could read Flaubert's Femme de
Feu f " he asked.

I don't suppose that my hair s'tood on end, but my blood
crept. Read French to him ! I knew that I could not, and I
dared not tell him so. Like a little foot, I said that I would try.
The book I was to read is a vile one, I know. Then I knew
nothing about it. How many vile books I have read, and what
a miracle of God's goodness that they did not corrupt me !
Getting down the novel, I began, not to read, but to stammer
over the words. I understood tolerably well, but could not pro-
nounce. Father let me read one paragraph, then stopped me.

"Do as you please," he said, when I asked if I should get an
English book. So I began another novel, Froude's History of
England, the second volume of which was just published.

Bert and I became friends a few days after. As he was away
from home a great deal, I saw but little of him, and my reading
aloud went on as before his return from school. .One morning,
during a pause in the reading, Nurse Barnes came into the book-

2O4 PAUL RINGWOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Nov.,

room and said, with many apologies to father, that Miss Amy
Morrison would be very glad if she could see him for a few
minutes.

" Miss Amy Morrison," father said, dreamily ; '* yes, I have
heard of her. She is a friend of yours, is she not, Soldier ? "

I reddened with pleasure. I could say it honestly, she was a
friend of mine.

" I will be down-stairs presently, nurse," father said. Feel-
ing his neck-tie to ascertain if it was aright, he stretched out his
hand, and I knew that I was to lead him to the parlor.

Amy nodded pleasantly to me, shook hands with father, and
asked him to excuse her intrusion.

Father said that he was very glad indeed to meet one who
had been so good a friend to his son, and surprised me by warm-
ly thanking Amy for the interest she took in me.

They conversed on a variety of subjects when, speaking of
books, Amy said that she had heard that I read to him.

" tje is both reader and guide to me ; he is my constant com-
panion/' said father. My cheeks flushed with pleasure as I lis-
tened to this praise.

" You will miss him when he goes to college," said Amy.

" Do you think Paul would be benefited by being sent to
college ? " asked father.

By the expression of her countenance I knew a way had been
opened for Amy to give utterance to what she had come to
say.

"Assuredly it would do him good," she answered. "I dare
say that in a few months Paul would be first in his classes."

Father laughed good-humoredly. No wonder he laughed.
Amy must be joking, I thought, to suppose that I should ever be
head of a class.

" I fear that you overestimate Paul's ability," he said ; " he
has not shone brilliantly in the past."

" I did pretty well for Mr. Wood, papa," I took heart to say,
Amy encouraging me with a smile.

Taking no notice of what I said, he continued : " You see, he
is absolutely incapable ; beyond reading a book, Paul is fit for
nothing."

How heavy he did make my heart !

" Then Paul does not go to college next year with his
brother ? " suggested Amy.

" I have not thought of his going," father returned.

It was plain enough, in Amy's face, that she was disheartened.

1 888.] PAUL RINGWOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 205

But she said bravely : " Why not give him a trial, Mr. Ring-
wood? I feel sure he would astonish you."

" He has done so already, though perhaps not in the manner
you suppose," he said.

Overlooking father's sarcasm, Amy said : " Do not think me
meddlesome if I beg you, Mr. Ring wood, to give Paul a trial."

Father bowed grandly, and said: "I am honored by the
interest Miss Morrison takes in my son."

Surely after that speech Amy would have nothing further to
say. But she had. " I would be an impertinent miss, indeed,
did I suppose my liking for Paul honored you," she said.

My father fluttered the ends of his fingers outwardly, again
bowed, and asked : " Shall we talk of something else ? "

Amy was plucky enough not to let even this silence her.
" That is, Mr. Ringwood, you think me a busybody?" she said,
questioningly.

Father was shocked. Miss Amy a busybody ! He was
charmed, delighted to find that Paul was capable of exciting in-
terest in the bosom of one so highly praised. He assured Amy
that she had shaken the resolution He had taken of keeping Paul
at home, begged her to continue her interest in his poor son,
and entreated her to come occasionally and talk with him.

Amy listened silently to this long speech. When it had ended,
she took up her sunshade, and, asking pardon for having stayed
so long, went away. I accompanied her to the door.

" Paul," said Amy, when she was bidding me good-by, " I
am afraid you'll not get to college. I'll come again, though."
Then she whispered me to pray. "Ask God," she said ; " if it is
his will, in spite of everything, you will get there."

I did pray. Amy came again and again, but I did not get to
college.

CHAPTER IX.

THE BEGINNING OF ANOTHER ORDER OF THINGS.

From ten to fifteen the years go slowly. These five years of
my life seem to me like a dream. To remember anything of
this period I have to close my eyes and absorb myself in
thought. Then I see a little boy climbing upon a stool to get a
book down from a shelf. I see him seat himself beside a man in
an easy-chair, a man with a well-defined profile, handsome face,
whose long, taper fingers lie folded in his lap. The boy begins

206 PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Nov.,

to read aloud, and his voice rings in my ears, a plaintive treble.
Sometimes he stops in his reading to gaze dreamily out of the
window close by ; then he sighs inaudibly and goes on with his
book. A thin voice, but quite a good reader. It is odd, but
when I look at that little boy I feel very sad. After a time, an
elderly woman in fresh white cap and apron comes in to lay a
table for dinner. This done, the man and boy take their dinner.
Though I listen closely, I do not often hear the man speak to the
boy. For how many days, weeks, and months, nay, years, does
this scene repeat itself. My father recovered enough of his sight
to be able to get about by himself, but never again was he able
to dispense with a reader.

It would be leaving a wrong impression did I say aught to
make one believe that in these years I found unhappiness. No ;
but I never found happiness. Had my father lowered himself a
little to my level, I might have been happy. No matter how in-
significant one may be, there is always something he would wish
to confide to another. No life is so quiet as to be altogether
without its happenings, though they be known but to one's self.
In a still life a new thought is an event that may be productive
of tangibilities when communicated to another. A book is an
event; yet what is a book but visible thought ? I had no one to
confide in. It is true that I saw Amy Morrison at times, but too
seldom, and for too short a time to be able to submit to her my
little confidences.

There was one thing about my life that was good. It made
me rely on myself. By the time I had reached my fifteenth
birthday I was as self-reliant as a man ; much more so than are
many men. I did not realize it then that in many things father
relied altogether on my judgment. The truth of this was proved
to me by the fact that, whereas I had been something worse than
a nonentity in my father's house, no one now dreamt of disputing
my commands.

Bert was still at college, and as he grew older was constantly
getting into difficulties, principally money troubles. He always
wrote to me to solve these difficulties for him. Father and he
no longer got on well together, and there were times when it
was impossible for me to speak to him about Bert. The worst
of it was that no sooner was Bert put on his legs than he was
down again. He was handsome, generous, a universal favorite,
and thoughtless, not wilful, in any wrong-doing.

No longer a cipher at home, my fifteenth birthday found me
almost a necessity to father. Not only did I read for him, and

1 888.] PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 207

write his letters ; I was sometimes his counsellor. When there
was a question of selling some real estate, a word of mine, hesi-
tatingly uttered, decided father to keep it. Afterwards, when
the property came to Bert, that lot sold for three times and more
the price offered my father. This is not told for the purpose of
making any one believe that mine was an extraordinary judg-
ment. It is evident that, though a bookish boy, I was not vision-
ary. I was fond of building air-castles, but averse to dwelling in
them. There was and is a most practical side to me, and this
side is the one most visible to the world. I am generally thought
to be perhaps I am a hard man. Though my father no longer
despised me, he looked upon me as a boy without feeling.

He silently taught me one lesson ; to worship truth, to follow
whithersoever it might lead me.

And this brings me to the telling of the step I took when in
my sixteenth year, a step that changed the whole course of my
life. This step is commonly called " going over to Rome." Not
deeming this the proper place for controversy, my reasons for
becoming a Catholic will be but briefly put here.

Attached as I was to what with latent humor I styled the
Anglo-Catholic Church, my faith in its divine mission was doomed
to be shaken. In common with all mankind that brilliant novel-
ist, Mr. Froude, the exception I had a profound contempt for its
unholy originator, the bloody Henry VIII. Of course I, as are
all members of the Protestant Episcopal body, had been taught
to believe that Henry had nothing to do with the origin of the
English Establishment. Fortunately I had history and a. grain
of common sense to teach me otherwise. The question then put
itself abruptly to me, Where is the church ? Not being a vision-
ary, I did not dream of an infinitely good God leaving man to
shift for himself. In a hard and uncompromising way I knew
that there was a divinely appointed guide somewhere. My duty
was to find that guide, and I set to work practically to find it. I
prayed sturdily, demanding of heaven to be shown the truth.
That the truth was in " Romanism " I no more believed than
that it was in the book of Mormon. Neither 'did I know how
near my beliefs were to those of a Catholic.

Father's sight was now so improved that he no longer kept
within the garden's limits. He was fond of music, and every
night during the opera season in Philiopolis he and I were in
our chairs at the Academy of Music.

It was the last performance of a German troupe, the opera
Faust, and it was close on to a December midnight, snowing

208 PAUL RING WOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Nov.,

hard, when we got to the cab waiting for us. Whether it was
the grand old music surging in ray ears, the crisp frosty air, the
darkness and muffled stillness after the heat, dazzle, and noise of
the opera crush room, I do not at all know, but I was in an exalt-
ed mood. Unconsciously I hummed aloud the air of the noble
Faust march.

" You seem to be in good humor," said father from his corner
of the cab. Having said that I had enjoyed the music very
much, father continued, not at all to the point, and as if I had
not spoken: " You are getting to be a big fellow ; you will soon
have a moustache."

There was a good coat ot down on my upper lip.

" Now that you are getting to be a man, you will want to
leave me. I suppose that I will have to send you to college next
year " my heart was beating very fast " perhaps you should
have gone before, though what more you would have learned
than you have from your reading I don't know."

If my experience of college youth is of any worth, I think my
father's estimate of my knowledge was a correct one.

When in the train that goes to Allemaine father again spoke
of my going to college, now in an annoyed way. He needed
me, and because of my love and pity for him 1 begged him to
keep me at home.

He immediately, in a cheery tone, told me not to fret about
it, and that he would see about getting a tutor for me.

It is but left for me to acknowledge myself a hypo-
crite. Longing to go to college, I was about to thank him
w.hen an involuntary start I gave dislodged a hand-bill from
one of the Bible-racks so common in our American railway
coaches.

" What is it ? " father asked, as I smoothed out the hand-bill
preparatory to reading it.

Then I read aloud, " The Rev. Francis Decker, C. P., will de-
liver a lecture entitled, ' Is it Honest? ' at the Town Hall, Alle-
maine, December , 18 , for the benefit of the Catholic paro-
chial schools. Ti'ckets, fifty cents." Then followed a list of
places where tickets could be bought.

" ' Is it Honest ? ' " father repeated. " That is a strange title ;
suppose we go to hear what he has to say."

I assented, though, to tell the truth, I felt no interest in the
lecture.

" You can get chairs to-morrow," said father. " When does
he lecture ? "

1 888.] PAUL RING WOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 209

Examining the hand-bill, I found that the lecture was to be

given the next night but one.

"Do you think there will be many people there, papa?" 1
asked ; not that I cared to know, but for the sake of saying some-
thing.

" A jam," answered father. " Romanists always flock to hear
their priests talk."

This set me thinking. If " Romanists " flocked to hear their
priests, either the matter of their discourses, or their manner of
handling them, must be of interest, or people would not be
anxious to listen. My curiosity was aroused. I re-read the
hand-bill, and then put it in my pocket.

At home in the book-room a brisk fire was burning in the
open grate, on a table a livery of cold chicken, ring loaves, and a
flagon of wine. After warming ourselves we fell to eating, for
we were hungry, and then, as neither of us was sleepy, father
proposed my reading Tennyson's " Holy Grail." It had struck
two by the great clock on the stairs before I finished reading.
As I closed the book father said : " That poem is the apotheosis
of purity."

I agreed with him, though I but dimly understood his saying.

CHAPTER X.
I AM DESIRED TO REFUSE A GREAT GIFT.

Friday, the day of the lecture, came, wet and sloppy, the
snow of the past days having turned to rain. Father gave up all
idea of going to the lecture, but told me to go if I wished. My
curiosity had been roused, and at a few minutes before eight in
the evening I took my seat in the crowded hall, close to a plat-
form on which were seated a number of clergymen and several
laymen.

The face of the lecturer was kindly and grave, lit up at times
as he spoke by a sweet, patient smile. His lecture was a gain-
saying of untruths told and retold against the Catholic Church,
and as I listened stronger and stronger came over me the belief
that he spoke the truth, till it quite overcame me, and I felt as if
I must have always believed in the old historical church. I was
like one whose working of a difficult problem, by the mere giv-
ing of a little sign, has been suddenly made clear.

When the applause following the exit of the speaker had sub-

VOL. XLVIII. 14

2IO

PAUL RING WOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

[Nov.,

sided, I turned to an old gentleman who sat beside me and
asked : " Are you a Catholic ? "

He looked very much astonished, as well he might be, and
replied that he was.

" Can you tell me the best time to see a priest ? " was my
next question.

" It depends upon your business," the old gentleman answered.
" The priests will be in the confessionals to-morrow from two in
the afternoon until iate at night."

" I merely wish to talk with a priest," I said.

" If that is the case, the best time would be after Vespers on
Sunday. Vespers are at three in the afternoon," he informed
me.

I thanked him, and we lost one another in the crowd passing
out. As my father had never in any way troubled himself about
my beliefs or unbeliefs indeed, up to that time, I cannot remem-
ber that he ever spoke to me on the subject of religion I did
not suppose that he would object to my becoming a Catholic.
Again, so marked had been this indifference that, when Sunday
came, it did not enter into my head to tell him that I was going
to Vespers at the Catholic church.

I was lingering at the church door when the old gentleman
to, whom I had spoken at the lecture came up and offered me a
seat in his pew. I was very glad to accept his offer, still more
so when I found that his sitting was near the altar. The service
impressed me with the thought that I was for the first time in
my life in a house of prayer. Every one present prayed.

Vespers over, my friend pointed out a door which would let
me into a passage leading directly to the priests' dwelling. Fol-
lowing his direction I presently found myself on the door-step
of the parsonage. And now my heart failed me. What if I
should be laughed at? Whom was I to ask for? I knew no one.
Had not the door been suddenly opened my hesitation might
have led me to go away, but now there stood before me a youth-
ful cleric, who, though pallid, was exceedingly handsome.

" Do you wish to see any one ? " he asked.

" I wish to see a priest," J answered, my heart throbbing.

" Whom do you wish to see? '* he asked. " There are several
priests in the house."

" Any one, if it is no trouble," I replied.

" I am a priest. As I am here, will I do ? " he asked.

" You might," was my not flattering answer.

He laughed, and, taking me gently by the arm, led me into a

1 888.] PAUL RINGWOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 211

sparely furnished parlor. Placing a chair for me and seating
himself, he asked: " Now what can I do for you?"

Unable to think of a better way of putting it, I blurted out,
" 1 believe that I want to be a Catholic."

" Oh ! " he gasped in his astonishment.

" Don't people ever become Catholics?" I asked, much hurt
by his surprise.

" Thank God, yes ! " he answered, reverently. "I myself be-
came one."

" You seemed so surprised ? " I said, questioningly.

" You are young, my child," he explained.

" I am almost sixteen," I retorted, with some indignation.

" I would have taken you to be eighteen, at least," said the
priest, smiling, and laying his forefinger on his upper lip.

My cheeks became the color of my moustache.

Looking at me for a moment in a thoughtful way, he asked :
" What is your name ? ''

" Paul Ringwood," I told him.

"Are you a son of Arthur Ringwood, of Hill House?" he
questioned, a troubled look in his eyes.

" Yes," I replied ; "do you know my father?"

" He has been very kind to me, Paul," the priest answered ;
" I fear he will think it a poor return I make if I encourage you
in your wish to become a Catholic."

" Father won't care," I exclaimed; " he lets me do as I please
about religion."

"You do not know what a conversion to the Faith means,
even in this age. Do you think you are able to bear calumny,
hatred, the loss of every friend you have ?" asked the priest.

" I wouldn't like it," I answered honestly, adding with much
confidence, " but I am sure father would not care in the least."

" What has made you think of this, Paul?" he asked, at the
same time looking at a nickel watch he took from an inside pock-
et of his cassock. " I have half an hour to spare ; then I must go
see some sick persons."

When I had finished telling him what has already been told
here of my wish to be a Catholic the priest said : " Yours is a
very old story, Paul ; I have heard it many times, but never
from one so young. By the bye," he added, a little sharply,
" what Catholic has been talking to you of late ?''

" I don't understand," I answered, somewhat startled by his
abruptness.

" Who has put all this into your head ?" he explained.

212 PAUL RING WOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Nov.,

" I know no Catholics," was my reply ; " at least, only some
of the servants at home ; but they scarcely ever speak to me, and
never about religion."

He looked at me long and earnestly. "God bless you, Paul,"
he said, at last; '' if you become a Catholic, take care you be a
good one. God is very good to you."

Feeling his words very strongly, my heart swelled and my
eyes moistened. When I had calmed myself, he asked : '' What
doubts have you, Paul what is there that you find hard to be-
lieve ? "

Thinking this a strange question, I said : " If I believe the
Church is Truth, how can I have any doubts ? "

" So you are a thinker, Paul," he said.

" Every one thinks," 1 answered. In my opinion, if what he
had said was meant for a compliment, it did not amount to
much.

" If every one thought," said the priest, " there would be fewer
persons out of the church." Rising from his chair, he continued:
" Now, Paul, my time is up. You are not of age ; you must ask
your father's consent before taking any further steps ; then come
and tell me what he says. By the way, you don't know my
name." He then wrote on a card, which he gave me, " Clement
Weldon."

" I will ask father this evening," I said. " I am coming to
Mass to-morrow ; can I see you afterwards ?"

" Which Mass, Paul ? Each priest has his hour for saying
Mass; mine is half-past five, but that is too early for you?" he
said interrogatively.

I told him it was not, and, impelled by some sudden emotion,
I knelt for Father Weldon's blessing.

, Very tenderly he said : " God bless you always, my child ! "
and he signed me with the sign of the cross.

On reaching home, I went straight to the book-room and was
immediately greeted by my father with : " You must have had a
long sermon ; who was it preached ? "

" I did not go to St. Bede's ; I went to the Catholic church
to Vespers," I answered.

" What possessed you to go there? Have you become infat-
uated with Rome?" Not waiting for an answer, he continued,
" I have had dinner ; you had better see if anything has been put
by for you, and then read for me."

" I'm not hungry, papa," I said ; " I'll read now if you wish."

" Nonsense ! " exclaimed father, " get your dinner ; the world

1 888.] PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 213

is not coming to an end because, for once, you said your prayers
with the ' Black Robes.' "

The book I read that night to father was Ruffini's Lorenzo
Benoni. I have never seen the book since, but my memory is to
be trusted that its tales of the Catholic priesthood must be glar-
ingly untruthful, or I could scarcely have known so well as I did
that the author was falsifying. No reading that I have ever made
has been as distasteful as was that.

The reading ended, I closed the book and said abruptly:
"Papa, may I become a Catholic?"

Father turned quickly in his chair. " Become a what ?" he
exclaimed, amazed at what I said.

" A Catholic," I faltered, scarcely able to speak for the chok-
ing sensation in my throat.

Father burst out laughing. "That is a good joke!" he ex-
claimed, still laughing ; " I thought we at St. Bede's were the
Simon Pure Catholics."

As I thought he would, father treated the idea of my beconiT
ing a Catholic as a joke.

" Henry VIII. 's church," I said, no longer choked in my ut-
terance.

" Don't bother me about such nonsense," said father; "only
be a good boy. What kind of weather is it clear ? "

Not sorry that I so easily obtained what I took to be his con-
sent, 1 was quite as glad as father seemed to be to change the
subject. Drawing aside the window-curtain I saw that it was a
bright moonlight night, clear and frosty, freezing hard.

Next morning, so as not to rouse any one, I crept softly down-
stairs, letting myself quietly out-doors into the bright, frosty
starlight. It was a long walk to the church, but, though taken
over a frozen pavement, it did not seem lengthy to me ; neither
did I feel the bitter cold.

There were but few persons beside myself in the dark church,
lit by the two lights on the high altar, and the glow of the
sanctuary lamp.

Spoken words, grand ceremonial, the charms of music are im-
pressive. The Low Mass at dawn ; the priest, whose every vest-
ment is a wondrous symbol, a shadowy figure before the shadowed
altar ; an appalling stillness only broken now and then by the
tinkle of a bell all these things impress even one who does not
understand. To one who does ! A muffled tinkle, and he knows
the Lord of heaven and earth has quickly come as lightning
cleaves the skies, and even as long ago in Galilee he stood beside

PAUL RINGWOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Nov.,

the troubled ones, he now stands there upon the altar to console
and comfort those who are weary. Heaven alone can present a
more wondrous sight, and only heaven, because there the veil is
withdrawn.

Shortly after Father Weldon had ended his Mass he came to
me where I knelt. For a moment he held my hand in hearty
greeting, then led me to the sacristy, where there was a fire in a
stove.

11 Good news, Paul?" he asked.

When I had told him all that passed between my father and
myself he said : " Paul, I cannot instruct or baptize you until
you have from your father an explicit yes or no. Talk to
him again, tell him what you told me yesterday ; if nothing else
is gained, he will at least know that this is not a whim of
yours."

I hesitated, then said : " It will be very hard to tell him all I
told you you don't know my father."

The priest smiled. "Yes, I do, Paul," he said; " I know it
will be hard. But if you are serious this should not frighten
you. You had better tell him you have talked with me ; he will
remember my name."

I promised to do all this, but, in spite of feeling so sure of my
father's indifference as to what faith was professed by me, did not
like to do it.

Preparing myself after breakfast to speak to him, father asked
me, in the cutting tone he had not used for many a day: " Where
were you this morning?"

"At Mass, at the Catholic church," I answered.

"What is the meaning of all this?" he demanded, the expres-
sion on his face leaving me no room to doubt his anger.

To my surprise I was not afraid of him. I told him in as
straightforward a manner as I knew all that I had told Father
Weldon. It was only after I had ceased speaking for some min-
utes that he said : " You went to this priest without asking my
permission ! "

" I didn't think you would care, papa; you never cared where
I went," I said, making this unfortunate speech in a very shaky
voice.

" Has Father Weldon already taught you to reproach your
father?" he asked, speaking below his breath.

The interpretation he put upon my words hurt me beyond
measure. " Papa ! " I cried, " Father Weldon says you have
been very kind to him ; he won't instruct or baptize me without

1 888.] PAUL RINGWOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 215

your consent. He says I must have an explicit yes before he
does anything."

Very much surprised, he asked : " Did the priest say all that,
or are you weaving a tissue of lies ? "

It was pride that kept me silent. I had never deceived him,
and my self-love was hurt that he should doubt my word.

There was a long silence, then father stretched forth his hand,
and said : " Soldier ! "

This sudden change in his manner unstrung me. Tears were
streaming down my cheeks as I put my hand in his.

" Soldier," he repeated, " I have never asked anything of you;
now I ask you to do something for me. I have been a good
father to you. Show me that you appreciate my kindness, and
put this worse than nonsense out of your head."

Had I never shown any good will to my father ?

There were tears in my eyes, but none in my voice, as I said :
" Father, I cannot, I cannot ; you may stop me from being a
Catholic now, but I will be one some day, that is the truth."

He flung my hand from him, and exclaimed : " You insolent
puppy ! Sit down and write what I tell you."

Going to a desk I took out materials for writing, and waited
for father to dictate. Perhaps five minutes had elapsed my sus-
pense made it seem longer before he dictated the following
note :

" FATHER WELDON : You have not acted like a priest, inasmuch as you
have acted honestly. I give my full consent to your making a Romanist
out of Paul Ringwood if you are willing that Paul Ringwood suffer the
consequences."

" Bring it to me to sign ! " and I brought the paper to him, to
which he put his signature, "Arthur Ringwood." When he had
done this he said : " You will now take this note to Father Wei-
don ; do not speak to me again on the subject ; only, in the event
of what you call becoming a Catholic, let me know."
" Papa," I began, " I do thank you very much "
" Leave the room ! " he interrupted, pointing to the door.

HAROLD DIJON.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

216 A CHAT ABOUT THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY. [Nov.,

A CHAT ABOUT THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY.

DURING one of the many journeys by rail which the interests
of the Catholic University of America have lately imposed on
me, I happened to be placed at a table of the dining-room car
vis h-vis with two pleasant-looking gentlemen, whom I had no-
ticed as occupants of the same coach with myself. Our proxim-
ity led naturally to an exchange of civilities, and our first re-
marks about the comforts of this novel style of restaurant had
soon broadened into a conversation. As we dashed through the
vast prairies, over a road-bed so straight and level that our table
furnishing was scarcely jarred as we sped along, we talked of the
parched look of the country after the long drought, of the short-
ness of the crops, of the probable effect on our home markets and
our foreign exports, and, once our thoughts nad crossed the sea,
we found as wide a field for an exchange of prognostics in regard
to international complications there as we next did in regard
to our coming presidential election at home.

Growing more communicative as we went on, they asked and
ascertained who I was, and I learned that one of them was Mr.

G , a Catholic from Cincinnati, and the other Mr. L , a

Unitarian from New Haven. After this interchange of confi-
dences, Mr. G seemed to think that propriety required an

allusion to the Catholic University, and so he began:

" You had a great day, had you not, at the laying of the
corner-stone, last May ?"

Yes, I replied ; it was indeed a memorable day in the history
of our undertaking. The elements seemed, indeed, to have con-
spired against us; but the stormy background only served to
bring out the lights of the picture more clearly, and I think all
were agreed that it was a grand tribute to the Catholic Church,
and an omen that the energy embarked in the cause would
surely, with God's blessing, win success from all difficulties.

"You apprehend difficulties, then?" he inquired.

What important undertaking, I answered, has ever been ac-
complished without them? Every great work of the Church of
Christ, especially, has had the cross in it, and we neither hope
nor desire that this one should be an exception.

"From what source do you anticipate them?" said he.

Well, it is but reasonable to expect them from both friends
and foes. Differences of opinion are very natural in regard to

1888.] A CHAT ABOUT THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY. 217

all weighty questions, and even people of the best intentions are
apt to be contentious. Then, too, it is not to be wondered at that
some evil minds should be found, ready to invent what is false,
or to put malicious constructions on what is true. And, doubt-
less, Satan will know how to raise obstacles in the way of a work
on which he can look with no favor. But really we have met
nothing thus far to cause us any apprehension or much disquiet.
On the contrary, we have been astonished at the smoothness of
our course ; the success attending our efforts has surpassed our
hopes, and the counter-ripples have been just about enough to
arouse comment and excite interest.

" If I am not mistaken," timidly ventured Mr. L , " you are

erecting a magnificent structure that will cost some millions."

He saw by the amused look in my face that he was mistaken,
but I relieved his embarrassment by telling him that it was not
the first time I had found that impression entertained.

No, I continued, the building which we are putting up, while
suitable in style and proportions for the purposes of a university,
will be characterized by the simplicity and modesty becoming
the divinity studies to which it is to be devoted, and will cost
only a part of Miss Caldwell's gift. We have never forgotten,
as one of our critics rather snappishly accused us of doing, that
it is not buildings but men that make a university, and the funds
which we are now collecting are meant almost exclusively for
the men, for the endowment of the professorships, and afterwards
for the scholarships and fellowships.

" I notice," put in Mr. G , " that your critics doubt whether

you will be able, for many a year to come, to bring together a
body of distinguished professors in America."

Yes, I answered ; we are blessed with a few croaking friends,
who will not let us lose sight of the difficulties to be overcome.
And this is assuredly not a small one, nor has it been overlooked.
For a few years, of course, we will have to look abroad for most
of our professors, and we find already that there is no dearth of
men of learning and renown willing to unite their lives with such
a work in our young republic. We will need only eight or ten
for our Faculty of Divinity, and there is now no reasonable doubt
that we will have our corps sufficiently complete in time for the
inauguration of the University in November of next year.

" But do you really mean," said Mr. L , with a look of be-
wilderment, "that all these eight or ten professors are to be en-
gaged in teaching theology ?"

Anxious to save him from a renewal of embarrassment, I

218 A CHAT ABOUT THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY. [Nov.,

chimed in with him as far as I could. It does indeed, said I,
seem at first sight a large number of professors for a special line
of study. But consider for a moment, in the first place in regard
to the doctrines of religion, which are obviously the primary ob-
ject of the Faculty of Divinity, that they are not only data of
Revelation, which one could learn from a catechism ; they are
great luminous principles of thought, which have guided the
loftiest soarings of the noblest intellects in all ages ; they are
rules of action, which enter into all the duties of individual con-
duct and into all the multiform relationships of human society ;
they are springs of life, whose presence or absence has had very
much to do with shaping the good or evil fortunes of all the in-
dividuals and all the communities that have ever existed. See
what a boundless field is here opened of most interesting and
most important study, and of most careful and conscientious and
enlightened teaching, on the part of theologians, philosophers,
moralists, and historians. Next, reflect upon the numerous lines
of study opened up by Scriptural research studies of ancient
languages, of long buried antiquities, of Oriental historic records
and sacred lore, of patristic interpretation and the multiform ex-
egesis of the sacred text. Think, too, of the marvellously inter-
esting and important history of the church, the inner history of
Christendom, now more than ever, through the voice of Leo
XIII., inviting students to its critical perusal. Then, too, the
Canon Law or ecclesiastical legislation of that world-wide
church, springing as it does from the development of her ex-
ternal organization and the modifications in her relationships with
the world in successive epochs a branch of study whose techni-
cal knowledge is indispensable in the administration of ecclesias-
tical matters, and whose scientific examination is the study of the
church's constitutional history. Besides, think of the liturgical
studies called for by a priest's sacred ministry, and the studies of
literature and eloquence that will fit him for the highest useful-
ness as a writer and a preacher, and the acquaintance which he
needs to make with the true and the false, the certain and the
unproved, of the various natural sciences which to-day claim to
have a word to say about Divine Revelation : think of all this,
and I feel sure you will acknowledge that we have here vast
realms of intellectual labor appealing to the noblest ambition of
students and calling for the devoted work of numerous pro-
fessors.

During this enumeration Mr. G had forgotten to eat, and

listened as if spell-bound. " Surely," said he musingly, " that

1 888.] A CHAT ABOUT THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY. 219

must stir the heart of any young man of talent who has a spark (ff
intellectual ambition. But do you intend," he inquired, "to have
every student study all those branches?"

Oh ! no, said I, laughing ; that would not be practicable.
It is not our aim to make each student " a Jack-of-all-trades," but
to make him master of one or of a few. In courses of elementary
instruction, scholars are given a bird's-eye view of the whole
field of knowledge, or as much of it as possible ; but a university
course aims at making specialists, who alone can be accurate or
profound scholars ; and our students will be carefully directed in
selecting the special studies which suit their talents of which
will be called for by their future field of labor.

" But," said he pensively, " how immense is their field ot
labor, and how few the laborers ! Is it to be hoped that the as-
pirants to the priesthood in our country can be spared so long
from their work as to have time for such studies ? "

That is indeed, I replied, a serious question, and one
which we have not failed to ponder attentively. It was one of
the chief problems examined by the Third Plenary Council. No
one could know as well as the Prelates of the Council did what
were the needs of the great harvest-field ; yet when the question
came up whether the term of study preparatory for the priest-
hood should be prolonged and perfected, their decision was that
it must be done, that the condition of the church in our country
now made it both possible and necessary. And when, in pursu-
ance of the same inquiry, the question arose as to the estab-
lishment of a university course of ecclesiastical studies, that also
was decided on as both practicable and necessary in the present
condition of things. The strain and hurry which necessarily
characterized the church's development and organization half or
even a quarter of a century ago, no longer exists to any such de-
gree in large portions of the country, and thus the careful pre-
paration which the church desires for the ministers of the Di-
vine Word becomes more and more practicable ; while, at the
same time, the intellectual requirements and the intellectual
dangers of our people are growing apace, and demand of the ex-
ponent of Divine truth far more than was necessary in the
simpler conditions of pioneer times. That is the conviction
which was voiced in the decision of the Third Plenary Council,
and you may rest assured that the bishops who so decided in re-
gard to their ecclesiastical students will see to its realization in
their regard. I may say that a plan is being perfected which
will make the additional time of study required by the council

220 A CHAT ABOUT THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY. [Nov.,

htfend with the advantages which we", hope to offer, so that a
large number of the best students may be allowed at least one
year in the University, of whom a considerable proportion will be
sure to stay longer. Besides, we trust that numbers of priests
already in the sacred ministry, and practically acquainted with
the needs before them, will secure leave to come for a special
course of longer or shorter duration. Some such applications
we have already received, and they are apt to be numerous. So
that there is every likelihood that the difficulty will be, not to
procure students, but to accommodate all who will apply.

But, I added, our dinner is over, and there may be other hungry
passengers waiting for our table ; suppose we adjourn to our coach.

As we reached our seats, we were joined by a gentleman
whom we had remarked as evidently interested in what he could
overhear of our conversation. He introduced himself as Mr.

W , a Catholic from Philadelphia, and asked the privilege of

forming one of our little group, which was unanimously granted
with pleasure.

When we were cozily settled in our places, Mr. L was the

first to recommence. " I have been listening," said he, " with
great interest to what you have been saying about studies and
students. But do you consider that what you have described
will constitute a university ?"

Not at all, I answered ; it is only one of the faculties of a uni-
versity. The other faculties will be added as rapidly as circum-
stances and means will permit, so as to offer to all comers the
very highest facilities for education in general scholarship, in the
sciences, and in the professions.

" But is there not," he asked, "some ground for the charge,
which I have heard urged, that the whole spirit and scope of
your studies will be narrowed, and made alien to the notion of a
university, by being thus hinged on to dogma?"

Is the universe narrowed, I asked, by having God in it? Or
humanity by having Christ in it ? Or the mind and heart of
mankind by being illumined by the light and expanded and up-
lifted by the love which he sheds forth? Or the philosophy of
the ancients by receiving into it his answers to their puzzled
questions? Or the study of the wonders of nature by the knowl-
edge that they are the works of God? Or is the whole field of
human thought narrow or cramped by the conviction that there
can never be a contradiction between the words of God and the
works of God, or between maw's duty to creatures' and his duty
to their Creator ?

1 888.] A CHAT ABOUT THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY. ' 221

" Well, no," he replied, " no reasonable being could say that ;
though I acknowledge that what some people say often sounds
very like it. And I must acknowledge that, for those who be-
lieve in God and Revelation, it is logical to place him and what
concerns our relations to him as the very centre and soul of
their intellectual system. But permit me to press my question a
little further and to ask, Have not we outsiders some reason for
believing that your system will be narrowed by being exclusive-
ly Catholic, exclusively denominational? Is not that contrary to
the broad universality which the very name university implies?
And is it not equally contrary to the broad liberality of our
American ideas and institutions ? "

Once more allow me, said I, to answer by asking a question.
Is it narrowness of mind to seek and choose the certain truth
rather than the conflicting multitude of uncertain opinions ? Or
are we to say that there is no certain truth, but only uncertain
opinions in regard to the most important questions that the hu-
man mind must ask ? And is it a characteristic of a true univer-
sity to profess such scepticism about those questions? Or is
that to be called a university which, professing to embrace the
whole field of human thought in its scope, omits altogether this
most important of all realms of thought? Or does our Ameri-
can toleration of the opinions of others mean that you are not
to hold or profess any absolutely certain convictions of your
own?

" Well, really," he replied, laughing, " I must acknowledge
myself overwhelmed by such an avalanche of conclusions from
my own premises. Candidly, I never looked at things from just
that standpoint, and 1 must admit that, from the standpoint of a
church which believes in the certainty of Revelation and the
unerringness of its transmission, your views and your course are
entirely logical. And I must honestly add that I envy you who
have such convictions, and your students, who will be started
out in life with certainty instead of scepticism or agnosticism for
their stock in trade. But tell me candidly, is there really no
foundation for the charge, so often repeated of late, that if you
ever get the power you will try to force your convictions on
your fellow-citizens who differ with you ?"

The two Catholics burst into a hearty laugh, to the evident
discomfiture of our good friend. Really, I replied, we often
are at a loss whether to be amused or provoked at this charge.
It has been laid at the door of Archbishop Ryan, of Archbishop
Kenrick, of Archbishop Hughes, of Father Hecker, and each

222 A CHAT ABOUT THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY. [Nov.,

one of them has denounced the imputation as a base lie ; and yet
would-be respectable authors are found to reproduce the forger-
ies unblushingly, and gullible readers, no doubt, are found to
believe them, though every Catholic knows them to be utterly
alien to his convictions and to the spirit of his church. In other
times and under other circumstances both Catholics and Protest-
ants have advocated and practised persecution and coercion of
conscience; but such are not our times or our circumstances.
As we now demand respect for our just rights, and freedom to
act out our convictions peacefully, so I declare that, even if all
imaginable power were in our hands, we would honorably re-
spect the just rights and the peaceable convictions of our fellow-
citizens.

Mr. L professing himself entirely satisfied, it seemed as if

there would be a lull in the conversation. But Mr. W took

up the thread.

" May I be allowed to ask,'' said he, " whether there is any
truth in the assertion, which I have heard, that the present plan
of the Catholic University goes entirely beyond the idea and in-
tention of the Third Plenary Council?"

Really, I answered, I cannot imagine on what such a no-
tion could be based. The council decreed the establishment of
a university course of ecclesiastical studies, around which, it ex-
pressly said, the other studies of a true university might be
grouped.* That is precisely the plan which we are working
out. Only we must say in all thankfulness that the development
of facts since the council has given us reason to hope that the
entire plan can be realized in far less time than could then have
been expected. You may rest assured that the executive com-
mittee of archbishops, bishops, priests, and laymen, appointed by
the council, and who number sixteen in all, will not be likely to
commit so egregious a mistake as to transgress the council's in-
tention.

" But," he ventured, " is it not rumored that the bishops are
divided among themselves on the question of the University,, and
especially in regard to its location at Washington ?"

Yes, said I, rumored by adventurous scribblers, who, when
they have not, and could not have, knowledge of facts, invent
them to order. That there should be absolute unanimity on

* The words of the decree are as follows : " Ita ut, seminario tali semel incepto, haberetur
nucleus vel germen quoddam unde, favente Dei gratia, perfecta suo tempore effloresceret stu-
diorum universitas." That is: " So that, this seminary being once begun, there should be a
nucleus or germ from which, God favoring, a perfect university should in time develop"
(Cone. Plen. III., n. 182).

1 888.] A CHAT ABOUT THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY. 223

every point is not expected of any committee entrusted with
any question of importance ; but a more harmonious committee
never managed a great work than that in charge of the Univer-
sity. As to the location, you are doubtless aware that, after care-
fully weighing the reasons pro and con, a majority of the board
voted for Washington ; and when, at the request of our Holy
Father the Pope, the bishops of the whole country were asked to
express their views on the question, the majority in favor of
Washington was so great that there could be no hesitation as to
the final decision. And the press, whether Catholic or not, both
in America and in Europe, has been almost unanimous in com-
mending the wisdom of the choice.

"But," he urged, "will it not be a sad disadvantage to
Georgetown College ? "

Can you suppose for a moment, I replied, that the bishops
could have been capable of deliberately aiming a blow at dear
old Georgetown, or at any other of the institutions that have
been hitherto the bulwarks of our Christian education? Assur-
edly, nothing could have been farther from their intention, nor
have they any idea that such will be the result. These institu
tions take boys at a very tender age, and lead them up to gradu-
ation at the age of nineteen or twenty. It is only then that the
proposed university is to begin its work with them, and lead
them to the highest scholarship, to the fullest learning. Hence,
every young man in whose heart the desire is awakened to
share in the advantages of the University, will, by the very fact,
be led to one or other of our colleges as the way to it, and will
have in the thought an incentive to application and success which
scarcely anything else could supply. Thus the University, instead
of being a disadvantage to Georgetown College or any other,
will be a help to them all, as they in their turn, by their affilia-
tion with it, will be its helpers and " feeders." The authorities
of the University of Notre Dame, one of the foremost institu-
tions of the country, told me recently that to have such a relation
ship with the Catholic University of America would be their
ambition and their earnest endeavor. Even when we have come
as far as the establishment of the professional faculties, all care
shall be taken that our schools shall work with theirs in fraternal
harmony and mutual aid. Our aim is not to destroy or to in-
jure, but to develop and improve.

" But," he persisted, " might not Georgetown, or some such
college, have been chosen as the nucleus of the University ? And
let me ask in all candor, may not the Jesuits, so long the foremost

224 A CHAT ABOUT THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY. [Nov.,

champions of Christian education, rightly feel aggrieved that the
University was not placed under their direction?"

As a matter of course, said I, the executive committee took
into careful consideration the claims of the principal colleges al-
ready existing, and the great and unquestionable merits of the
Jesuits as our chief educators. But their final decision was that
the proposed University could not be a development from, nor
an addition to, any of our colleges, but must be a new institution
entirely, related to them all, but distinct from them all, and
above them all. They also decided, as did the Third Plenary
Council before them, that the universal and comprehensive char-
acter which they wished the new institution to possess, would
not permit its being in the hands of any one religious order;
that it must be organized on the plan of the church's own or-
ganization, under the direction of the bishops of the country,
and with room both in its professorial chairs and on its students'
benches for every order and every rank and condition, with no
distinction save that of individual ability and merit. This deci-
sion our Holy Father the Pope has most emphatically not only en-
dorsed, but made his own. And now let me assure you that the
Jesuits are not the men to take amiss a decision of the Pope and
the bishops of the country. They take a vow of special obedi-
ence to the Pope and are loyal in its observance ; and they are
intimately blended with the church's organization and life
throughout the country, and perfectly appreciate the necessity
of harmony with the bishops. In fact, some of our most zealous
helpers in the work are Jesuit fathers ; and only a few weeks
ago I received from the late Provincial of the Eastern Province,
himself one of the most distinguished men of the order, a letter
in which he denounced as a calumny the assertion made by
some silly people that the Jesuits have been in opposition to the
University, and declared that any possible individual act having
such an appearance ought to be explained, or be punished. I am
glad to have this opportunity of mentioning this fact, for I am
sure it is his desire that it should be as widely known as possible.
No, dear friend, you may dismiss all such apprehensions as
groundless, and may rest assured that all sensible people now
recognize that no matter what notions on the subject individuals
may have had and that those notions should have been very
various is quite natural the only wise thing to do now is to ac-
cept heartily the plan to which the Pope and the bishops have
committed us irrevocably, and to carry it out with the noble
earnestness and the grand success which the whole church and

i888.] A CHAT ABOUT THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY. 225

the whole world expect from the Catholics of America. In other
countries they might make allowance for possibilities of failure
or of only partial success, owing to scarcity of funds or to gov-
ernmental opposition. But they all know that no such cause for
apprehension exists in America, and so they expect from us un-
mingled success. And surely we have only to work together
as, thanks be to God, we are already doing and their expecta-
tion will not be disappointed.

" Permit me," said Mr. G , " to offer one other difficulty.

Is there not danger that many will regard the University as a
Southern institution, because situated south of Mason and Dix-
on's line ?"

Well, really, I answered, that would be a most singular
stretch of the spirit of sectionalism. Can the National Capital be
considered a Southern city, or the seat of Southern institutions?
It was precisely in order to avoid every semblance of any kind of
sectionalism that the bishops decided in favor of the National
Capital. They did not even advert to its being in the old mother-
see of Baltimore; for they desire that it should no more belong
to any one see in particular than to any one State or section in
particular. Such, too, is the mind of Leo XIII., who earnestly
desired that the University should be located in the very Capital
of our country, that it may thereby be more thoroughly identi-
fied with the life of the whole country. Surely this must be
obvious to any reasonable mind, and with unreasonable people,
you know, there is no use in arguing.

"By the way," said Mr. L , "did you see those two articles

on the University, claiming to be from a Catholic layman, which
recently appeared in the Independent ?"

Yes, I answered, my attention was called to them, and a fine
specimen they were of how unreasonable people can think and
write. Candidly, I consider them as so palpably an outpouring
of unreasonable spleen, that I wonder how the Independent could
have published them. However, I am glad that they gave me
an opportunity of presenting to the readers of the Independent a
brief statement of the real facts of the case. That the)' should
be rightly understood is all that we desire, for they carry their
own evidence.

" One question more, if you please," said he, " and I am done.
Do you really calculate that your University will rival the great
institutions of the country, Harvard and Yale, for instance, in
excellence and prestige ? "

Well, said I, laughingly, while we ask other people to be

VOL. XLVIII. 15

226 A CHAI ABOUT THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY. [Nov.,

reasonable with us, of course we too must be reasonable. We
know that Harvard and Yale did not become what they are in a
day. They have a very long start before us. But we have their
experience to guide us, and we mean to profit by it. Our calcu-
lation certainly is to give, in each successive faculty and chair
that we will add on, quite as high an order of teaching as that
in Harvard or Yale or anywhere else, and to give a great deal
more besides, which we, from our standpoint of theology and
philosophy, can well give, but which they, from theirs, cannot
give possibly. And we are content to let this decide the result.
Whoever desires for himself, or for his sons, just those advan-
tages for head and heart which the Catholic University of
America will supply, will know where to come for them. And
if it is not these, but some diSerent advantages, that this one or
that one may be in search of, he will doubtless choose according-
ly. Our thought is not one of rivalry with others, but of offer-
ing to our Catholic people, and to any others who may appreci-
ate them, the very highest and truest educational advantages,
with belief in God, love of God, dutifulness toward God and
toward one's fellow-men, pervading and animating the whole
system. What worldly prestige such a system may have, we
care but little ; that it will be appreciated by those who think
rightly, we confidently hope. And among them we are content
to have our field of labor.

A few pleasant comments of a summing-up character, some
delightful chit-chat about things in general, and we had reached
our destination.

JOHN J. KEANE.

1 888.] OUR LITTLE ENEMIES. 227

OUR LITTLE ENEMIES.

A LITTLE less than fifty years ago, in 1839, Schoenlein found
that Favus, a skin disease, better known as " crusted ringworm,"
was caused by a diminutive fungus called Achorion, which, set-
tling on the skin, made a home there, and speedily raised a fine
family of little Achorions. Think of a man's being turned into
a mushroom garden ! Under the lens this audacious and bother-
some plant took the form of cylindrical, flexible tubes, enclosing
the spores out of which the new growths were developed.
Schoenlein's discovery upset the current theory of the disease,
and set some men to thinking. Not one of the thinkers could
have reasoned out the intimate relations which time and study
have shown to exist between our life and plant-life. By degrees
we have learned that the air we breathe, the water we drink,
our food, the very organs and vessels of our body, are filled with
minute living things, many of them so minute as to be barely
visible under a powerful microscope. Fortunately for us, all
these little organisms are not harmful. If they were, life and
death would be synonymous terms.

Bacteria is a general term applied to our little enemies what-
ever their form or habits. But the different species are dis-
tinguished one from another by specific names, which generally
suggest the form of the organism. Some of our worst foes
have such fine names as bacillus, vibrio, and micrococcus. The bac-
illus is rod-like, as the name implies ; the vibrio, curved or
twisted, and the micrococcus, shaped like a grain of seed. Not
only are the bacteria the smallest of all known beings, but they
are the most elementary and the most simply organized. Some
varieties are seemingly motionless ; others move in undulatory
lines or in circles. Seen under a powerful microscope, certain of
the micrococci are no larger than the period at the end of this
sentence. It is reasonable to assume that there are bacteria
which even the microscope cannot bring within our vision.
These little beings reproduce themselves in one of two ways :
by spores, whence the}' develop as a plant from a seed ; or by
fissiparity, where the being breaks itself into pieces, each piece
starting on an independent life, and in time multiplying its kind
by cutting itself up into new organisms.

Thanks to the patient, ingenious studies and experiments of
Davaine, Pasteur, Koch, Klebs, and the large number of in-

228 OUR LITTLE ENEMIES. [Nov.,

quirers who have followed in the footsteps of the older men, or
cut new paths for themselves, our knowledge of these wonder-
ful pigmies has been rapidly enlarged. Step by step it was
proven that when we suffered from certain disorders, certain
kinds of bacteria were present in or on our bodies. Were the
bacteria the cause of the disease, or merely an accompaniment?
The surgeons helped to settle the question. They adopted, un-
der Lister's impulse, methods of treatment based on the notion
that bacteria caused disease. The new treatment was success-
ful, and the science and art of surgery were revolutionized.
However unwillingly, medical science has been in turn com-
pelled to modify its theory of disease and its methods of treat-
ment. The very latest discoveries suggest that the new theory
may before long work as thorough a revolution in medicine as
it has already done in surgery.

Let us run over the list of the diseases in which the abnormal
growth of special bacteria has been determined. First, there is
hydrophobia. The mad dog, biting man or brute, introduces
into the body a bacteria that propagates itself along the nervous
fibres and in the nerve substances until it reaches the bulb lo-
cated in the brain. When this point has been touched the pecu-
liar form of madness called hydrophobia appears. The progress
of the bacteria may be slower or quicker, depending on con-
ditions not yet clearly understood. There have been cases
where the brain was attacked within forty-eight hours, and at
least one case is recorded where the venomous little murderer
was four years and ten months in working its way to the brain
In cases of scarlatina, a special growth called bacterium punctum
is found in the blood. The connection between \.\\Q punctum and
the disease was shown by Doctors Coze and Feltz. They trans-
ferred some of the suspicious bacteria into the blood of living
rabbits. There the punctum grew in numbers, and the poor rab-
bits had a speedy ending. The small-pox eruption, which we all
fear, however plain-faced we may be, is caused by one of these
miserable little organisms. Another has letters-patent on chick-
en-pox. Dr. Felheisen caught the bacteria that give us erysipe-
las. He inoculated man with them successfully. Cornil found
that the bacteria of erysipelas make their home in the lympha-
tics. Ever on the watch, these hungry parasites get into the
body by way of the skin. A slight pin-scratch will make an en-
trance long and wide enough for them. Septicaemia, or blood-
poisoning, is the work of a virulent organism whose power to
do evil increases as it passes from one subject to another. The

1 888.] OUR LITTLE ENEMIES. 229

diphtheria, which makes such sad havoc everywhere, is a bacte-
rial disease. Oertel and Letzerich have fixed on the diphtheritic
bacillus, and followed it on its way through the body. Having
entered by the nostrils or mouth, it settles on the mucous mem-
brane of the throat. Sometimes the bacillus is satisfied with
the location, and stays in the throat until the doctor serves a
writ of ejectment. But more often this too vigorous pioneer
sends out colonies into the tissues, or enters the blood, and
thus spreads itself through the whole body. Until experiment
had made known these facts, it was not easy to explain the many
strange symptoms which frequently accompany this disease.
Vernueil discovered the bacillus of tetanus, or lock-jaw, as it is
familiarly called. Heretofore the character of a wound was
supposed to determine lock-jaw. Now we know that the real
cause is the bacillus that lights on the wound. Schiitz and Lof-
fler, in Germany, as well as Bouchard and Capitan, in France,
have shown that in cases of glanders a particular kind of vibrio
is found to have planted itself in the body. Letzerich and
Tschamer carefully studied that dear old friend of childhood's
happy hours, the whooping-cough. They captured the vile mon-
ster-let that made our little stomachs so sore, and cut right into
dear mother's heart. All the trouble was caused by a con-
temptible micrococcus, very like the one ordinarily found on
lemons. This petty thing spreads itself over the respiratory pas-
sages and the bronchias, which, being irritated, in time irritate
us. Whereupon sensible youngsters cough themselves blue in
the effort to reject the impertinent intruder. The bacteria of
typhoid fever, and more lately of pneumonia, have been care-
fully studied and described. As to tuberculosis, or consump-
tion, Dr. Villemin was the first to prove it a disease that can be
transmitted. Koch, as every one knows, found the guilty ba-
cilli. They are so small that a cubic millimeter of tuberculous
lung holds millions upon millions of them. Cornil has followed
this bacillus on its travels through the body. Entering by the
nose and mouth it halts at the larynx. Thence it sends out ex-
ploring parties. When they have made themselves secure in
the lungs, they send out new parties to found settlements in
other organs. Leprosy, which is so much more common than
we have been led to suppose, is due to bacteria. When we have
a boil, or a sty, or worse still, a " carbuncle," we may feel sure
that a mighty small thing with a mighty big name a staphylo-
coccus has, without our leave, been having a fine time at our
expense.

230

OUR LITTLE ENEMIES.

[Nov.,

How do the bacteriologists as the scientific men are called
who devote themselves to these special studies determine the
bacillus, or micrococcus, which is to be held responsible for a
particular disease? They examine the saliva or other excretions,
or the blood, of a patient. There they find great numbers of bac-
teria of all sorts. The observer cannot tell which variety is the
more numerous. He must separate them into families. Only
then can he take a trustworthy census. The bacteriologist who
would do good work must be a very cleanly man. On his hands,
in the air, on the different articles in the laboratory, there are
bacteria. He does not wish that any of these should get into his
experimental drop of blood, or saliva. It has been proven that
no bacteria will survive a temperature of three to four hundred
degrees Fahrenheit. The bacteriologist keeps a stock of glass
plates on hand. These he exposes to a high temperature.
When they are sufficiently heated, he calls them " sterilized."
He means that they are absolutely free from any living thing.
Now he must look to his hands. He washes them in a cleansing
solution anti-septic is his name for it. Or perhaps he uses fresh
bread-crumbs. Dr. Von Esmarch has lately proven by experi-
ment that the soft part of fresh bread is better than any of the
ordinary anti-septic solutions, not only for removing germs from
the hands, but also from the walls of hospitals and sick rooms.
With clean hands the operator places the drop of living liquid
on a sterilized plate. The plate has been prepared in a way to
assure the bacteria's receiving nourishment. Covering the plate
securely, he allows the different broods to develop. From time
to time he divides the rapidly growing mass, and starts new
growths on other " sterilized " plates. After a while he will have
the various bacteria that were in the drop of blood or saliva
grouped into families according to their kind ; and one of these
families will be inordinately large compared with the others.
Here is my game ! says the bacteriologist. These little things
caused the chill, or the fever, or the delirium. Putting some
specimens under the microscope, he soon determines whether he
has to deal with a known variety, or with a species hitherto un-
observed. If the latter, he cultivates it, and then experiments
with it on some of the lower animals, to see whether he can re-
produce in them the disease he has reason to think his new bac-
teria caused in man.

Bacteria are cultivated in gelatine, or in beef bouillon. The
gelatine is, in some respects, the more serviceable medium. It
admits of freer handling than the bouillon, and so allows the bac-

1 888.] OUR LITTLE ENEMIES. 231

teriologist more readily to separate the bacteria as they multiply.
Being transparent, the gelatine offers no hindrance to a close
study of the motion, forms and process of reproduction of the
different organisms. However, it has one disadvantage. It de-
composes more quickly than the bouillon. A sterilized bouillon
will last an indefinite time. At the " Carnegie Laboratory" Dr.
Grauer has a pretty glassful, four years old, and still as transpar-
ent as on the day it was bottled.

Though a number of the bacteria are unfriendly to us, we are
bound to do them justice. Many are good to look upon ; and
whatever your prejudice, as you scrutinize the slender rootlet,
and fairy mushroom-cap, you feel that you cannot but pardon
such a pretty, little thing for trying to preserve its life, even at
your expense. The rapidity with which they are propagated is
almost incredible. Davaine calculated that were a few germs of
certain species introduced into the human body, they would in-
crease at such a rate that within three days there would be sixty
thousand millions of them in the blood. What is compound in-
terest to that? or stock in a "Trust"? The "capitalistic mo-
nopolist " may gather more dollars in a year than we can in a
life-time; but when it comes to bacteria it looks as if we had an
even chance.

Death is all around us. We are rather proud of it to judge
by the pretentiousness of the marble monuments in the cemeter-
ies. And yet the mere thought of disease frightens some peo-
ple. A knowledge of details scares a still greater number.
Some of us are not easily frightened. We have been through a
full course of patent-medicine almanacs. In the discoveries of
the bacteriologists there is nothing to add to our fears. If the
conclusions of these learned men be true, mankind has always
been preyed upon by beings of whose existence it did not dream.
And harmful as they have been, our ignorance has not hindered
us from making a good fight against them. Our pills and po-
tions may not have done us much good ; but, few of the bacteria
can have grown fat on them mark my words ! New theories do
not disturb a Christian. At the age of forty, if he have an active
mind, he is busy feeding his own private Theory-Crematory.
A new theory of disease alarms him no more than a new theory
of evolution, or a new theory about the deluge. If the Christian
be calm, why should the infidel, or atheist, or agnostic trouble
himself? Question as we may, both Christian and agnostic will
fight for their lives the former reasonably, and the latter not
unnaturally. We may contend one with another about words or

232

OUR LITTLE ENEMIES.

[Nov.,

ideas, but we are knit together like brothers in protecting our
lives. Thanks to the men who tracked our bitter, deadly, little
enemies, the bacteria, we have already learned how to defend
ourselves against their attacks.

The chief worker in our behalf has been a good Christian, M.
Pasteur. The method of inoculation devised and practised by
him has been followed by other men with considerable success.
And yet this method rested on no scientific basis. It was wholly
experimental. Pasteur noticed that when he introduced bacteria
into the body of an animal, with fatal effect, the introduction of
the offspring of these bacteria into another animal of the same
species proved still more fatal. In other words, some bacteria
grew more virulent as they were transmitted from one subject
to another of the same species. Strange to say, when he intro-
duced the same bacteria into some other species of animal, the
very contrary happened. The bacteria became less and less
poisonous as they passed from one animal to another. Whereupon
Pasteur made up his mind to cultivate bacteria here a batch of
savages, and there a batch of tamer constitution. Then he began
to experiment. A patient had a fatal disease. Pasteur inoculat-
ed him first with worn-out, exhausted bacteria. Then he tried a
more vigorous stock. And so he kept on until he had introduc-
ed his strongest growth into the body of the sick man. Experi-
ence proved that Pasteur's methods were beneficial to man and
beast. Why ? Pasteur did not know. His method was wholly
empirical. He did thus and so, with such and such results ; but
neither he nor any one else could say why this particular kind of
inoculation was effective.

If you observe a gelatine "culture," in which a family of bac-
teria is growing, you will notice that day by day the gelatine is
losing its solid form. In time it liquefies. Remove your bac-
teria, and you will find that they are lifeless. Why so? Some
said that they kept themselves alive on the gelatine, that in time
they exhausted it ; the gelatine was disintegrated, and the bac-
teria starved. This was not the true reason. As long ago as
1879 Dr. Chauveau, a professor at the Lyons School of Medicine,
maintained that the reason certain bacteria brought disease into
the human body was because they secreted a soluble poison. If
they secreted a larger quantity of poison than the body could
bear, death ensued. Moreover, said Dr. Chauveau, if we are
protected from disease by inoculation, we owe it to the poison
secreted by the bacteria. In 1880 Dr. Chauveau was able to
offer proofs in support of his position ; and then and since he has

1 888.] OUR LITTLE ENEMIES. 233

shown that his theory was more than probable. Indeed, it was
a fair inference from well-established facts. Living, as we know,
means continual waste and reparation. Each minute we are be-
ing consumed and renewed. The waste is hurtful to us. We
have to get rid of it; and so the skin and the different organs of
the body are constantly occupied in relieving us of the things
that oppose life. Now, chemistry shows that all these waste
substances contain poisons. Why should the bacteria escape the
common law? How can they live unless they throw off the
waste that accompanies all life? And if they do throw off waste,
they secrete poisons. How does this fact serve us, or the bac-
teriologists? Let us see.

Chauveau's theory and facts were full of suggestion. How-
ever there were other men with other notions. An Italian, Dr.
Cantani, had been studying the problem, and he argued after this
fashion : " When we place bacteria in a ' culture,' we see that
some species are stronger than 'others. Now, we know that in
the struggle for life the strong overcome the weak. It is always
the old story of the big and little fishes. I shall inoculate as a
curative of disease, but not in the way M. Pasteur does. I shall
look for the bacteria that is stronger than the one which kills us.
Our enemy shall fight with his own enemy. It will be bacteria
against bacteria and the best bacteria will win." The argu-
ment was all right. On the face of it, the fight would be more
even than it is now. After some experiments with the bacteria
of consumption, Dr. Cantani fixed on the good bacteria in which
we could safely trust a bacterial St. George ! It proved to be
of very common stock, low-bred, the bacterium termo, which is
found wherever there is putrefaction. Everything being ready,
the doctor chose an honored patient, and introduced the termo,
by thousands, into the respiratory passages. The termo must
have gone to work with a will; for the patient soon improved,
the more painful symptoms were by degrees alleviated, and final-
ly the cough and expectoration ceased. Another Italian, Dr.
Salama, of Pisa, took up Cantani's remedy, and found it bene-
ficial. Further experiments have been made in the same direc-
tion, but the results have not been methodically reported.

Dr. Peyraud was not satisfied with Pasteur's way of treating
hydrophobia. His experiments led him in a wholly new path.
The results of his work were reported to the French Academy
of Sciences in December, 1887. Some years ago he discovered
that animals inoculated with essence of tansy were affected very
much as if they had been bitten by a mad dog. From this fact

OUR LITTLE ENEMIES. [Nov.,

the doctor argued that the chemical composition of the essence
of tansy must be similar to that of the poison which causes ra-
bies. Should this be the case, might not hydrophobia be cured
by inoculating the patient with the tansy essence ? Such was the
question that presented itself to Peyraud. He made experiment
after experiment. He satisfied himself, and then challenged his
peers. The doctor lives at Libourne, some distance from Bor-
deaux. To Bordeaux he went, and there he put his theories to
the test before the faculty of medicine. Taking a number of rab-
bits, he inoculated one batch with the tansy essence. Then he
inoculated them with the virus of rabies. Selecting another
batch, he inoculated them with the virus of rabies alone. These
poor fellows took hydrophobia, and died of it. The other lot,
which had first been inoculated with the essence of tansy, were
alive and well when Dr. Peyraud made his report nine months
after the public experiment. Certainly the doctor had made a
long step in advance. His theory, backed by his successful ex-
periment, had a new value. It suggested a more reasonable
and safer treatment than Pasteur's. By Pasteur's method of in-
oculation a living organism is put into the body. There it mul-
tiplies, uncontrolled. Instead of doing good, it may do harm.
It may bring disease instead of protection against disease. This
uncertain agent Peyraud would replace by a chemical substance
which may be definitely controlled. The limits of a dose of es-
sence of tansy may be fixed by experiment. Does not Peyraud's
successful treatment of hydrophobia suggest a new line of in-
quiry ? Should we not look among known chemicals for the
vaccines which will protect us against the terrible, little bacteria?
The bacteriologists, and physicians as well, put on their think-
ing-caps.

Meantime Pasteur had been trying his best to find a reason-
able explanation for his own practice. Here was the problem :
How came it that the introduction of weakened bacteria into
a living body prevented virulent bacteria from making a fatal
lodgment there? As we have seen, there are only two possible
answers to this question. Either the bacteria, in the effort to
live and develop in the body, consume certain substances that
form a part of the body, and are at the same time necessary to
the life of the bacteria, or else, in the act of living, the bacteria
throw off waste matter, which is poisonous. If we assume the
first answer to be the correct one, we have to argue this way :
The bacteria that are introduced into our bodies by Pasteur,
having eaten up the substances on which this particular kind of

1 888.] OUR LITTLE ENEMIES. 235

bacteria live, all later intruders of the same variety are starved
to death. If, on the other hand, we assume the second answer
to be the true one, we must argue thus: The poisons which the
bacteria secrete in the effort to live kill them in time ; and this
poison remaining in the body kills any bacteria of the same va-
riety that, later on, enter the body. Pasteur leaned to this latter
view. He made experiments, but they did not help him. Then
he took up the other theory; was again disappointed, and re-
turned to his first opinion.' New experiments promised more
definite results ; but ill-health compelled him to rest from his
labors, and the problem remained unsolved.

Meantime his assistants, Roux and Chamberland, pursued the
investigations. When making his famous studies on splenic
fever, Pasteur traced the disease to a species of bacteria called
the septic vibrio. Roux and Chamberland noticed that when
this vibrio was cultivated in a bouillon, it was short-lived, seldom
producing a second generation. When they added fresh bouillon
there were new signs of life, but only for a little while. Here, if
anywhere, it was fair to assume that the bacteria poisoned them-
selves. To remove all doubts on this point the two investiga-
tors took a quantity of a " culture," and raised it to a high tem-
perature, thus killing every visible living thing within it. If this
" sterilized " culture were now infused into a living animal, no
harm could follow unless the vibrio had poisoned the culture while
living. Pasteur's assistants inoculated a number of guinea-pigs
with a measured dose of the " sterilized " culture. When a
guinea-pig is attacked by septicaemia he invariably dies. But
the guinea-pigs which were inoculated showed symptoms of
blood-poisoning, and yet quickly recovered. Evidently the new
treatment had secured them against a fatal disease. The conse-
quences that logically follow from these experiments point to a
total change in the treatment of contagious diseases, and they
prove the soundness of Dr. Chauveau's reasoning, and the value
of Dr. Peyraud's suggestion. Once for all it is settled, inasmuch
as anything experimental can be settled, that bacteria secrete
poisons; that these poisons are fatal to the bacteria as well as to
us, and that we may protect ourselves from the poisonous bac-
teria by introducing a dose of their secretions into our bodies.
But the discoveries of Roux and Chamberland did not end here.
They found that the poison secreted by the bacteria in the bouil-
lon was fifty times less poisonous than that secreted in the hu-
man body by the same bacteria. Evidently, then, the virulence
of the bacterial poison depends on the medium in which the be-

236 OUR LITTLE ENEMIES. [Nov.,

ing lives. And therefore, choosing the proper media, the chem-
ist may extract from bacteria remedies of various kinds, just as,
nowadays, many of the remedies in use are extracted from vege-
table substances. Are we to have a new school of chemists?
But the layman who ventures to ask questions about chemistry,
or medicine, treads on ground hardly less dangerous than that
of theology. The theologian has bowels of compassion, some-
times ; but the modern " scientist " is inexorable. With Pasteur
in the lead, even the layman may be bold. These are Pasteur's
words, spoken before the Academy of Sciences, in March last,
when he reported the discoveries of his assistants :

4< It is proven that immunity against a mortal and infectious disease
may be secured by the injection of chemical substances, in doses ; and that
these substances are the result of life in bacteria. This is a fact of capital
importance. . . . My joy is great that I have been a witness of this new
progress realized in my laboratory."

Steps have already been taken to utilize these discoveries.
The well-known bacteriologists Chautemesse and Widal made
experiments with the bacillus of typhoid fever. Usually mice
give up the ghost when this bacillus attacks them. Chautemesse
and Widal sterilized a bouillon in which the typhoid bacillus had
been cultivated. Mice inoculated with this bouillon were not in-
jured by it; and, alter inoculation, they were proof against the
living bacilli which were introduced into their bodies. If the
bacteriologists are right, they have fixed upon the cure, and the
preventive, of typhoid fever. All they have to do is to deter-
mine the dose suitable to man, and to prepare the vaccine in suffi-
cient quantities for general use.

The cause of contagious diseases has always been a great
mystery to mankind. Has not the mystery at last been solved?
Better still, have we not good grounds for hoping that the viru-
lence of a long line of diseases leprosy, consumption, small-pox,
hydrophobia, pneumonia, typhoid fever, scarlet fever, diphtheria,
croup, and measles will soon be permanently modified ? With-
in a few weeks Pasteur has announced the discovery of a vaccine
against that terrible plague, cholera. Arguing from analogy,
the yellow fever is a bacterial disease. Thus far, however, all
attempts to detect the true bacteria have failed. Dr. Freire's
widely advertised vaccine is useless. In the South our fellow-
citizens are just now falling fast before this baleful disease.
Heroic sacrifices are daily made to save the sick. Let us hope
that our American bacteriologists are at work in the interest of

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 237

humanity. They ought to be as clever and as philanthropic as
the Germans or Frenchmen.

Are we to have a wholly new science of medicine? Whether
or not, the outlook promises good things to mankind ; and mil-
lions will, with Pasteur, exclaim : " Our joy is great! " Greater
still must our wonder be, as we reflect on these new, and cer-
tainly incomplete, revelations of the mystery of life ; a mystery
that "science " does not solve. Rather does she help to deepen
it. To-day there is a mighty, bawling crowd of men who claim
to hold the key to the mystery. Did they wrench it from the
hand of the All-Seeing, All-Knowing, Almighty God?

JOHN A. MOONEY.

JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY,
xxxv. Continued.

ZIPPORAH, in fact, was not nearly so well grounded in rebellion
as her letters had indicated, nor even as she had been when they
were written. Besides taking counsel of her own mind she had
talked over the matter with Mary Anne Murray, who inclined
strongly to the view that the girl's first duty was obedience to
her mother's wishes. Still, she thought the case a hard one,
chiefly because her own father's weak health forbade her offering
to take Zipporah's place, and neither of them liked the idea of
leaving Mr. Van Alstyne alone with only servants to attend to
his comfort. His daily visits to the mill used up so much of his
strength that when he returned home after them it was often to
hours of semi-somnolence. One would have said he was vege-
tating in the afternoons to pay for the activity of the early hours
of the day. The doctor, finding him once or twice in this condi-
tion, shook his head and looked sober. He, too, had been taken
into Zip's confidence, and was strong in the opinion that she
should settle her difficulty entirely by her own lights, and in the
way that to him seemed the best one.

" Why," he said testily, " it is absurd to talk of going home
under the circumstances. I don't see what your mother can be
thinking about. Milton Centre is Milton Centre this week, isn't
it, just as much as it was last week ? I'll write to Mrs. Colton,
sha'n't I, and tell her just how the case stands? You can't have
made it plain to her. I know she must be a good woman; I've

238 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [Nov.,

got evidence of that before me, but the best women I know are
as apt, and apter, to be cranky than the worst ones."

Zip smiled an anxious little smile. " Miss Murray thinks I
ought to go if mother insists," she said.

" Well, that only proves what I've just been saying. You get
a rule fixed up once before the average good woman's eyes, and
she is bound to toe the line about it if she breaks her neck. Of
course, girls ought to mind their mothers especially when their
mothers and their fathers are of one opinion in all things. Let
me catch one of mine doubting on that point ! "

The squire laughed, and so did Zip. Bella and Lucy ruled
the Cadwallader household, but, as their father sometimes re-
marked, they were generally very good to him and their mother
so long as they behaved themselves.

" You see," he went on, " the case with you is a little diSerent
from what it would be if you had not been away from home so
long, and been well, as you may say, thrown on your own re-
sources. I had a little talk with your father, the first day he
brought you, about that matter. It seemed to me a thing I
wouldn't do myself by one of my girls, unless I were absolutely
forced to it by circumstances I couldn't control. That is not his
case, I take it ? "

Zip blushed. " No, it isn't," she answered after a brief hesi-
tation. " And that is the way I felt and feel about it, too. But I
don't know. Mother is very decided, though she don't give me
any reasons at all. She never wanted me to come. She thinks
exactly as you do about keeping girls at home. But, after all, I
am glad father sent me. And I would like to stay. That is just
what makes me think I ought to go back especially as Miss
Murray says so too."

" You're a woman all over, an't you ? " said the squire. " Nine
out of ten of them, I observe, if you don't throw any make-weight
in the other scale, are sure to come to the conclusion that the
thing they don't want to do is just the one they ought to. I
shouldn't wonder if they're right about it, as a general rule, but
you won't be, now take my word for it. You stay right where
you are, my dear. You are cut out for your post, and I call it
providential so would your mother, if she saw just how things
stand and you are a chip off of her block, as I think you must be."

" Well, I don't know about that," said Zip. " I guess I am
like her in some things, but I know she always thinks I want
looking after more than well, more than my sister does."

" That settles it," returned the squire with an emphatic nod.

1 888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 239

"Your sister is a chip off the other block, then, and that one
she don't know as well as she knows her own. I see I shall
have to write to the old lady myself."

" I don't think she'd like to hear you call her that ! " said Zip,
smiling-. " She isn't so very old."

" Well, to the young middle-aged lady, if you think she would
prefer that classification. Let me see this is Friday. I ought
to be able to get a fair statement of the good common sense of
the subject before her early enough to let her send you a despatch
to-morrow afternoon. It'll be all right, you'll see."

The squire's letter, however, like many another good deed
that he projected, did not get itself into tangible shape in time to
be of any use. And neither her daughter nor any missive from
her reaching Mrs. Colton by the noon post on Saturday, she rose
up and went in search of her with that curious sort of indelibe-
rate deliberation which was one of her occasional characteristics.

" Mother sometimes flashes at you like lightning out of a clear
sky." Mattie said about her once, " and the funny thing is that
she is so cool about it. She is hot and cold all in a breath then.
You'd think that she had come into the world for the express
purpose of doing that one thing, and had been getting ready for
it all her life, when after all she probably never once thought
about it until that very minute."

It was after dusk when the stage which brought Mrs. Colton
from the Corners drew up in front of Mr. Van Alstyne's door,
where, by a teasing coincidence, Paul Murray and Zipporah
were just then standing. It was in the nature of things that the
mutual understanding they had come to should have put them
on another footing with each otber. There was no love-making,
but there had been a good deal of that close talk which either
presupposes or foreshadows love between people capable of any
feeling which really deserves that name. And one of the best
proofs that the girl possessed that capacity was that she had
even less idea of yielding her point now than she had ever had.
After her feminine fashion of giving some external expression to
her feelings, she had that very day scrawled in her largest script
and pinned up beneath her mirror, as a text by which to fortify
her resolution to be honest with herself, the lines :

"Of love that never found his earthly close,
What sequel ? Streaming eyes and breaking hearts?
Or all the same as if he had not been ?
Not so."

Her fancy, which busied itself a good deal with the future in

240 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [Nov.,

those days, had already provided her with several varieties of
picturesque single-blessedness among which to choose when once
stern reason and unpurchasable conscience should have bidden
her turn away for ever from happiness and Paul Murray. As
yet they allowed her to dally on the border-land, and as it was a
foregone conclusion with her that friendship with him was going
to last for ever, under whatever contingency, her reserve was
vanishing, and they were getting very close to solid ground.

Paul had walked up from the mill later than usual that after-
noon, and was going away earlier. He had declined to give her
any advice at all about her movements. " I think you should be
able to settle that for yourself," he had said to her the only time
she broached the subject which the girl had found more gene-
rous than satisfactory. But just after the early dinner to-day
Father Seetin, who had been making a sick-call in the vicinity
of the factory, and who now and again stopped to pay a
friendly visit to Mr. Van Alstyne, dropped in for that pur-
pose, and, as he passed Zipporah on entering the library, he
handed her a scrap of a note in which Paul Murray had of-
fered the suggestion that she might find the priest a more dis-
interested adviser than he could possibly be. She acted on the
hint, and although it was the first time that she had exchanged
more than a casual word or two with Father Seetin, she present-
ly found her way to laying her other difficulty in sufficiently plain
shape before him. Both naturally and supernaturally he was
sympathetic and easily approachable ; he had, too, a pretty clear
knowledge already of the other side of the case, and what he
said had the intended result of plan-ting the girl more firmly than
ever on her own ground. That is what she had been telling
Paul, as they prolonged their talk, lingering at first on the porch
and then going down the gravel-walk together to the gate,
where they were still standing when the stage lumbered up and
stopped.

" Father Seetin thinks that whether I go back now to please
mother, or stay here until some satisfactory substitute for me
turns up, is a thing I am capable of deciding for myself," she had
begun, " so I am not any wiser on that head than I was before.
I told him Squire Cadwallader had written home for me, and
then he proposed to me to stop thinking about it for the present
and wait for results."

" Did you talk about anything else ? "

"A little," hesitated Zip.

"Well?"

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 241

" Well, he thinks I ought to go home and make up my mind
in as unbiassed a way as I can. He says the only personal con-
sideration that ought to enter into that question is that of my own
relation to God. And then I told him that the more 1 think, the
more confused my mind grows, so that sometimes I even doubt
whether there is any God at all at least, any God to whom it
makes any difference what we do; so that I didn't see why I
might not just as well as well please you, as hold out about
it."

"And then he said?"

" He said, ' But you can't come into the church that way.
And if you could, Paul Murray is the last man to wish it. Besides,
you are too honest yourself in any case. No, no ; stick to your
integrity, and pray hard for the illumination of the Holy Spirit.
I'll tell you oue thing. I am convinced that no one whose in-
telligence is unclouded and whose heart is simple can persevere
long m that road without coming out at the end where you
would like to be. That, perhaps, is what sometimes moves me
and others to receive those whose motives are not as single as we
would like to have them. We are so sure of our remedy that to
those who are weak we administer it without prescribing too se-
vere a regimen of intellectual gymnastics by way of preparation.
But I counsel it to you. Don't take a decided step until you
fairly see your way."

" And you are going to follow his advice? v '

" Why, of course. What else did you tell me to ask it for?
Who is coming here in the stage, I wonder? Goodness! it is
my mother! "

The two approached the steps, which the driver was letting
down. Mrs. Colton, descending, kissed her daughter and scold-
ed her almost in the same breath.

" Whatever are you thinking about, standing here in this cold
with nothing but that flimsy cloud about your head!" were her
first words.

" Oh ! I'm used to it," said Zip. " I never catch cold. Mo-
ther, this is Mr. Murray."

The sudden additional chill in Mrs. Colton's manner would
have been perceptible at the North Pole. Somehow it amused
both of the young people, and, although they preserved extreme
decorum, that must doubtless have been equally evident to a
person so impressionable. But as Paul took his leave at once
after escorting the mother and daughter to the house, Mrs. Col-
ton made no present allusion to him. Zip took her directly to
VOL. XLVIII. 16

242 JOHN VAN ALSTYN& s FACTORY. [Nov.,

the dining-room, where supper was waiting and a hot fire burn-
ing, and devoted herself to thawing her out with considerable
apparent success.

Mrs. Colton watched the girl closely as she moved about, do-
ing the honors of the house as if it were her own, and, as she
watched, she became aware of a certain change in her, hardly de-
finable but quite real. Zipporah was fast entering into full pos-
session of herself; if she had not yet consciously assumed entire
personal responsibility she was clearly on the way to it. Mrs.
Colton had come prepared to command, but she found herself
involuntarily slipping back into a position where argument, or,
at the most, persuasion, would be the only available weapon at
her disposal. She even began to feel that her unexpected ar-
rival needed explanation, as if to an equal, and, feeling so, she
declined attempting any for the present. She chatted away in-
stead about family affairs, as if her dropping in at a strange place,
twenty miles from home, on a cold winter night, were the most
natural and customary of polite attentions.

As for Zip, cool as she looked, her heart had really been in
her mouth. But as she began to catch the significance of what
was going on her mother's manner being just a trifle too natu-
ral not to be assumed a sense of the humor of the thing began
to tickle her. Looking up once from the urn as she was brew-
ing the tea, she caught a glimpse of both their faces reflected in
the glass over the mantel, and could not refrain a smile.

''Poor little mother! " she said to herself. " I do believe she
is wondering what she came for. She looks as if she were afraid
I am going to scold her. Well, as Lucy tells the squire, I won't
if she'll be real good."

XXXVI.
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER.

Supper ended without an allusion on either side to the pur-
port of Mrs. Colton's visit, and afterwards Zipporah went with
her mother to Mr. Van Alstyne's room. They found Lant and
his wife there with the old man. Having been taken up roundly
by Paul Murray on the score of his affidavit, and his gossip about
it, Lant had been observing a more rigorous abstinence from
whiskey for several days, and as he was really handy, and gentle
in his manners when sober, he made a very tolerable attendant.
The pair left the room when Mrs. Colton and her daughter en-

1 888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE' s FACTORY. 243

tered. It was somewhat late for the girl's evening visit, and Mr.
Van Alstyne was already in bed. He seemed, or Zip thought so,
rather more fatigued than the night had found him lately, and
though he smiled and gave his hand to her mother, he made no
effort to speak. It was the girl's habit to read to him at this
hour, and with some little nervousness, caused by her mother's
presence, she attended to that task as usual. But he soon grevr
drowsy and they left him.

" Mr. Van Alstyne seems very feeble," Mrs. Colton remarked
when they were at last settled down in Zipporah's cozy room.
" I thought he was recovering his strength."

" So he was," returned the girl, " but the squire thinks he is
overtaxing himself now by going down to the factory every
morning and insisting on looking after so many things. Now
to-morrow he will keep quiet all day and will be brighter."

" Do you always read the Bible to him nights ? Somebody
said he was a regular old infidel."

" Somebody ! " said Zip. " Perhaps it was the very somebody
who ran up to Riverside with gossip about my affairs. If some-
body were half as good as Mr. Van Alstyne, it might be better
for him. Yes ; I always read the New Testament to him before
he goes to sleep. He used to do it himself until he was taken
ill."

" Is that all you do for him ? "

" Why, no. I amuse him, I talk to him, and try to keep him
cheerful. And I superintend things here in the house a little,
now that he begins to go out more. Until last Monday he was
more dependent on me than he has been since. He was shut up
in a dungeon, you might say, before that. Now he is out, but
only on ticket-of-leave, the squire says. Did you get a letter
from Squire Cadwallader to-day, mother?"

" What should I get a letter from him for?"

" Because he wrote one, I suppose. He said yesterday that
he was going to."

" Why, what could he have to" say to me? I don't know the
man."

" Well, mother," Zip answered slowly and after a little pause,
" he is Mr. Van Alstyne's doctor, and as it seems to him that I am
needed here for awhile longer, and I told him I couldn't succeed
in persuading you to be of that mind, he undertook to write as
much to you. Now that you are here, I suppose you will be
able to see it for yourself."

"You don't ask me to believe that there is no one else who,

244 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE' s FACTOXY. [Nov.,

has more interest in him than you have? Suppose you hadn't
been here at all then what? "

" Well, I don't know. Suppose I had been born without a
nose then what? I am here, and he is in need of the very
greatest care. Only that his daughter-in-law thought he was
certainly booked for the grave, and that he would never recover
the use of his reason, I think she probably might have remained.
But she didn't, and now Mr. Van Alstyne declines to have her
come back. She sent him a letter yesterday morning, saying that
the good news had reached her, and that she would return almost
immediately ; but he wrote at once and told her to complete her
visit. She said some things in his room, early in his illness,
when she took it for granted he was beyond hearing, that she
will find it pleasant to remember when she knows she was mis-
taken. She can't know it yet, or she wouldn't have written as
she did."

" Well," Mrs. Colton began after a rather prolonged silence,
" all I have to say is that it seems to me very queer that you, a
young girl and a stranger, should feel called on to take the place
of a man's natural friends."

" Everything is queer, so far as I can see," returned Zip se-
dately. " But why is it any queerer for me to put my hand to
this work, for which nobody else seems to be ready, than it was
to come here in the first place, or than it would be for me to go
on teaching through the winter? Father said he expected I
would do so, and I am sure he would have been quite willing."

" Yes ; but you didnt keep the school."

"Anybody could do that," said Zip a little scornfully. "I
couldn't do this well and do that too. I should have been all
worn out. Honest, mother, wouldn't you have done just the
very same thing, in my place? You can't imagine how kind Mr.
Van Alstyne has been to me. And you can't possibly know what
his death would have meant to all the people he has at work
here, if it had taken place even a week ago. If you did, you
wouldn't wonder at my anxiety to do all I possibly can to help
him back to life. If Miss Murray could come and take my
place, I would do exactly as you want me to. But she can't be
spared from home, and so I truly think it is my plain duty to
stay where I am. Girls can't always go on doing just as they are
told about everything. If it was a little thing, I would but it is
a big thing, and I can't."

" Yes," said her mother, "that's you. I always knew that
hitch was in you somewhere, and that if ever you took it into

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYN^S FACTORY. 245

your head that you had found just what you wanted, you would
have it, no matter what it cost."

Zip smiled, more with her eyes than her mouth, and came
across the hearth to sit down at her mother's side.

" How did you know that? " she asked, looking square into
Mrs. Colton's eyes. " Was it because you remembered what a
fuss grandmother made when you took off your Quaker bonnet
and would insist on marrying father? Aunt Huldah told me
about it when I was there last Christmas. Weren't you a
naughty little girl, though ? Aunt Huldah don't really approve
of you to this day. 5 '

Mrs. Colton frowned slightly, and bit her lip in a vain effort
to keep back an answering smile.

" See here, Zip," she said, presently, taking both of the girl's
hands- "if it were nothing but Mr. Van Alstyne, of course I
would not only be willing to let you stay, but I should agree
that there was nothing else possible under the circumstances.
But is that all your reason for staying?"

"Why, what other could I have? I shall go back just as
soon as ever things can be arranged differently. There is some
talk about the Murrays giving up their house and coming here,
and of course that would release me at once."

The girl had dropped her eyes from her mother's in answer-
ing her last question. Mrs. Colton pressed it further, noting that
sign.

" I don't know yet what other reason you could have. You
might have several. What were you and that young man, Mur-
ray, talking about out in the cold this evening ? You must have
been very interested if you couldn't shut the front door on him
when he was ready to go, but must follow him down to the
gate."

Zip made an attempt to draw a way her hands, but her mother
held them fast. The girl's eyes were still cast down, but less
in embarrassment now than in thought. Mrs. Colton had ex-
pected to see her writhe under her thrust and seek to evade it.
But nothing could have shown better the steadying process that
had been going on within her of late than her resolution, sudden-
ly acted on but not sudden in itself, to stand up and face the mu-
sic. Still, she did not speak until her mother had urged her in-
quiry further.

" Is there anything between you two ?" she asked.

"No, mother," Zip said finally, "if you mean by that to ask
if we are engaged. But, if I were a Catholic, we should be."

246 JOHN VAN ALSTYN&S FACTORY. [Nov.,

"But you're not a Catholic, thank God! and never will be.
Why, they are pagans, they are idolaters ! " said her mother, draw-
ing back and growing rigid in the energy of her disapproval.

" No," returned her daughter, " I'm not, and it is like enough
I never shall be. I'm not anything, not even a Christian."

"Pity!" said her mother. " Weren't you born in a Chris-
tian country ? "

"So was Mr. Murray," said Zip demurely.

"You know well enough what I mean. When we talk of
Christians we don't include image-worshippers."

" See here, mother. Aunt Huldah's chief complaint against
you is that you were not content to go and marry out of meet-
ing, but that you have always declared since that neither she nor
poor old grandmother are Christians."

"Neither they are they are Hicksites. If you deny that
Christ is God, how can you be a Christian? "

"I don't pretend to judge," said Zip. " I am only very sure
that I am not one myself, since you didn't even allow father to
have us baptized."

" I don't believe in infant baptism."

" I know," said Zip ; "but then father did. I don't see how
you can be so sure about anything for which you have nothing
but your own notions as a rule. That is the one thing that
makes me incline to believe that Catholics may be right in call-
ing their church the only true one. The)' have a rule and a cri-
terion, and they say they can show that both go back to the very
beginning of Christianity. They all believe the same things,
their fathers believed them also, and you find their church
wherever you go throughout the world. History is full of it, I
know. So, if they are not Christians, one thing I am sure of, and
that is that there are none anywhere and that Christianity is not
true. Tom says it isn't."

" Tom, indeed ! " interjected Mrs. Colton. But she said noth-
ing further, and presently Zip went on again.

" If it is on account of Mr. Murray that you are worrying,
mother, there isn't any need. The mischief is done, so far as that
goes. Now that I see all that it involves I would study his re-
ligion in any case. If 1 can see my way to accepting it with a
good conscience I mean, if I am sure I would become a Catho-
lic whether he were one or not why then we shall marry each
other one of these days. If not, not."

"You are sure of that?" said her mother with a ring of in-
credulity in her voice.

1 888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYN& s FACTORY. 247

" Very sure, because it does not depend on me. Mr. Murray
would not marry a girl who was not of his religion."

" Zip ! " said her mother, " are you not ashamed to own to
such a thing ! There was no such hitch as that between your
father and me. I might have remained a Friend if I had chosen,
but I wouldn't in any case. A daughter of mine ought to blush
at the thought of yielding more to any man than he would be
willing to yield to her."

"Yes," said Zip, half smiling, "your daughter did blush at
the thought until she once got it into her head that there might
be such a thing as real truth in the world, and that if there were,
people who knew it must hold it fast, and could not yield. Mr.
Murray is sure that he has it, and I'm not sure he hasn't. Right
or wrong, I don't see what else he could do so long as he is of
that mind. If I give in, it will not be to him, but to something
greater than either of us, to which I ought to yield in any case."

Mrs. Colton made no reply. She saw so clearly that the only
battle she had cared to fight had gone against her, that for the
present she threw up the contest. And the next morning, Mr.
Van Alstyne being unusually bright and cheery, and Zipporah
having left them together for awhile, they opened a rather brisk
fire of correspondence on the subject which was common to
them. Except to her husband, after her return home, Mrs. Col-
ton was not communicative as to what passed between her and
the invalid. But when Squire Cadwallader came in on Sunday
afternoon, primed with arguments and persuasions, he found a
much readier convert than he had expected. Mrs. Colton even
prolonged her visit to the middle of the week, and, having made
Paul Murray's acquaintance, was pleased to pronounce him "very
much of a gentleman."

" I have no objection to him, personally," she remarked to her
daughter. " But I must say, I think it is odd that a man of his
years and intelligence should go on worshipping images and
confessing his sins to a priest. It's against good American hu-
man nature."

Zip laughed. " He don't worship images," she objected.
" And you ought to know Father Seetin. His great-grandfather
came over in the Mayflower, and his grandfather 'fit into the
Revolution,' and his father was a colonel in the war of 1812, and
he was brought up a Methodist over here in East Milton. How
is that for American human nature ? I suppose it must be he
that Mr. Murray goes to confession to. I was very near doing
it myself the other day, without being a Catholic at all."

248 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [Nov.,

" Well, you beat me ! " returned her mother. " And I sup-
pose you expect me to believe that what you'll do isn't all cut
and dried already in your mind ?"

Zip sighed. " Yes," she said, " you may believe it, because
it is true. If wishing would do it, I don't mind owning that it
would be done with great speed. I thought I believed a good
many things all the things you and father taught me until now,
and now I see I never have believed any of them. You ought to
pray a little for me, mother, if you think that praying is of any
use. All or nothing, there they go swinging in the scale, and I
never can be certain what it is that makes the All side seem to go
down and be the heavier ! "

Mrs. Colton looked closely at the girl.

" You are in earnest, I do believe ! " she said at last.

" Be sure of that, mother," Zip answered. "Just as soon as
ever I can, I am going back home to try and fight it out there, by
myself."

XXXVII.
COMING TO A DECISION.

Until after the holidays were over, time slipped by at the
Centre without bringing any incident worthy of mention. Mr.
Van Alstyne's health continued to improve, notwithstanding the
daily tax he insisted on putting on it. Possibly he may have
been bent on demonstrating how fully he was master of all his
faculties excepting speech. That still tripped and faltered, and,
in doing so, testified to the continued existence, however attenu-
ated, of the physical cause which had prostrated him at first.

Just after the new year began Mr. Hadleigh made his second
appearance. He was less gaunt, and seemed to be in better
health than when he went away. To Squire Cadwallader's in-
quiries on that subject he replied that he had remained only a
short time in New York after going down in the fall, and had
then started for Florida, where he found the climate more pro-
pitious. He added that having learned on his return how near-
ly complete had been the recovery of Mr. Van Alstyne, he had
run up for a flying visit of congratulation before setting off
again.

" You are going back to England? " asked the squire.

"Perhaps perhaps to the North Pole or to the Transvaal.
I haven't decided."

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 249

" Better take your rheumatism for a counsellor aqd keep out
of the polar regions," said the doctor, with a little laugh. To
himself he added the reflection that there was frost enough in
the man's inside to fit him for an equatorial climate.

Mr. Hadleigh's visit lasted rather more than a week. His
afternoons he spent chiefly with his cousin in the library ; in the
mornings, when Mr. Van Alstyne was always driven down to
the factory, he prowled about the neighborhood in an apparent-
ly aimless sort of way. Once or twice the squire found him in
his private office, chatting with Dr. Sawyer, or, in the latter's
absence, deep in one volume or another taken from the well-lined
shelves which covered one end of the room. Sometimes, too, he
made his appearance at the factory, and fell into his old ways of
superficial intimacy with Paul Murray, who explained to him
something of the plans projected for extending and perfecting
Mr. Van Alstyne's works.

" We shall have an industrial community here in course of
time," Murray said one day, ''and carry on a good many kinds
of manufacturing. One thing Mr. Van Alstyne spoke about late-
ly is setting out a lot of mulberry-trees in the spring and after-
wards bringing over a number of families from Capri to teach
silk-making. We've got one such family now, and perhaps that
may have suggested it. We shall have to erect special buildings
for that."

" Making industrial communities is very pretty work to
amuse one's mind with," said Mr. Hadleigh, "especially a mind
that illness has enfeebled. You don't take much stock in that
sort of thing yourself, do you? Communism isn't exactly in
your line, I should think."

" Well, perhaps I expressed myself badly. 1 meant to use the
word in a general sense not a community, but the whole com-
munity here at Milton Centre will, we hope, in course of time be
greatly enlarged and correspondingly improved by what Mr.
Van Alstyne is bent on making a try for. He means, for one
thing, to give every man or woman he employs a chance to ac-
quire a home of his own, not a mere hired tenement. That
shows as well as anything how far his mind is from communistic
schemes. Probably they won't all do it, but the fault will not be
on his side. And as to varieties of occupation, he wants to make
the place as far as possible independent and self-supporting. It
goes without saying that the agricultural community outside
must be extended to meet the increased wants of a larger popu-
lation, but that is a matter sure to regulate itself. The railroad

250 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [Nov.,

also may be left to find its own way here, and doubtless won't be
long in doing it."

"And the principle of all that?"

Paul reflected. " I'm not sure I know just how to put it," he
said at last. " As it stands in Mr. Van Alstyne's mind, where,
of course, it is shaped by his peculiar opportunities as well as by
his disposition, I don't know why it might not be described as
a sore of centralized communism, if you can get at what I mean
by that. In his present condition, where all our intercourse has
to be carried on by writing at least his part of it we natural-
ly get along with less of it than would otherwise be the case.
I can perceive by what he does jot down that he has been brood-
ing over his schemes a good deal during these months when
it often seemed more than doubtful that his mind was unimpair-
ed. And it is from such brief notes, also, that I have got
the idea which I just now expressed by the phrase ' centralized
communism.' For instance: ' I am not a spring of living water,'
he wrote me the other day, * I'm nothing but a canal.' And
again : ' Get it out of your head that 1 am owner I am only
steward and distributer.' Here's another one of them," taking
a scrap of wrapping-paper from his pocket-book. Mr. Van Al-
styne had written on it : "I only focus the rays, so as to start the
burning."

Mr. Hadleigh took it and looked at it.

"Very pretty," he said with a faint sneer; "very poetical.
How does he propose to keep that thing up after his present use
as a burning-glass is over, do you know ?"

" He has made a will, I know," returned Paul, " but, natural-
ly, I have not been invited to read it." Then he turned away to
answer a call already more than once repeated, and Mr. Had-
leigh sauntered off up the road. A day or two after he left the
village, and again those who had seen most of him breathed the
freer for his departure.

One bright day early in February Zipporah Colton drove
herself over to the Corners. She was alone in the cutter, and,
lapped deep in robes, and closely furred and hooded, she would
have looked as bright and cheery as the day itself but for the
unwontedly serious expression of her eyes. She had two errands
in view, and one of them being the return of some books she had
borrowed from Father Seetin, her hour had been chosen with
reference to that one when he was most likely to be found at
home, shortly after his early dinner.

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNL'S FACTORY. 251

The old priest was standing at his window when she drew up
before his gate, and seeing her, he came out himself to greet her.

" You are coming in to warm yourself, I hope," he said, see-
ing that she hesitated after giving him the package.

" If I may," she answered, a slight hesitation in her manner;
" if you are sure it won't bother you to talk to me a little."

"This is Liberty Hall," he said, smiling; "or, rather, it is, in
that respect at least, like what one of my favorite saints says of
Paradise : ' He who wills may enter.' It couldn't bother me in
the least either to talk to or to listen to you."

"So you are through with Nicolas, are you? How do you
like him ?" he asked after they had entered, and the girl, throw-
ing back her wraps, but observing a sort of constrained silence,
was warming herself beside the fire. She had applied to him for
books directly after Mrs. Colton's departure, and, looking over
his shelves in search of something adapted to such difficulties as
she had mentioned to him, and knowing that she read French,
he had finally settled upon the admirable Etude Philosophique sur
le Christianisme as likely to meet them all.

"It is the work of a layman," he had written in sending her the
volumes, " and is perhaps a little antiquated in view of some of
the newer objections to the old truths. But I incline to think
that none of these are in your way at present, and I would be
at a loss to put my hand on anything in English which would be
so well adapted as this is to all the wants of a sincere, intelligent,
and open-minded inquirer. When I was younger and had more
leisure I sometimes thought of translating it, but those days are
over."

" I have read him a good deal," the girl replied, looking up at
Father Seetin ; " all through to begin with, and some parts two
or three times over. I like him."

"I thought you would," he answered in his cheerful way;
" I often pick him up, just for the pleasure I find in his style.
Somehow one's own old thoughts strike one as novel and bril-
liant when one gets them in another tongue, don't you think? "

" Perhaps that is it," acquiesced the girl. " I have often
wondered why it is that the French seems so much crisper and
more expressive, somehow, than the closest translation of it
sounds. It is just the novelty of it, maybe, or else the little
strangeness that is always in a language people are not born to."

"Well, did he take you through the woods?" asked the
priest, seeing that she paused. To him, experienced in the ways
of many people, it was tolerably plain that she had things to say,

252 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. [Nov.,

and had come resolved to say them, and yet needed some per-
suasion to get them into shape. The readiness with which she
had dropped into criticism, as if she were catching at a straw to
save her from deep waters, amused him just a trifle.

"Through then^?" she answered, hesitating. " Yes, in one
way."

" Not in all ways, then ? What is the difficulty ? "

" I am not sure that there is any. But, if there is, it comes
before one begins to go into the woods at all," she said, going on
with his figure. " I mean that I have no trouble in seeing that
the history of all peoples, what they have believed and done,
goes to confirm the truth of the Bible. And I see, too, that the
whole Bible leads up to Christianity, and that Christianity is
what is taught by your church. I haven't any doubt about that
in my mind perhaps I had not very much before I began read-
ing this book, but, if I had, it is all gone."

"And yet you have a doubt still? What about?"

" About God himself," she answered, speaking very low. " I
see that men have always believed in one, and that false religions
show that as plainly as the true one if any is true. And I see
that if he exists, such as the Bible shows him, that there is only
one thing for me to do. But oh ! " she said, with a certain ve-
hemence, but not looking at the priest, " if you could know how
big that ' if ' seems to me ! I. go up to it and think I am going to
pass it as easily as all the rest, and at once it grows up into a
wall. I can't get by it."

"What did you mean, then, when you said you saw that all
other history tended to confirm the truth of the Bible?"

" I don't know whether I can answer you. Suppose I see
that the history of the world, so far as it is recorded there, is a
true history, and that the Jews did and suffered whatever is
written there inconsequence of their belief that they really were
a chosen people. Does that prove that their belief itself was
true?"

" I see," returned Father Seetin. " Your difficulty is funda-
mental and individual." He pondered fora little. "Suppose,"
he said at last, " I suggest to you a fundamental and individual
solution for it. Just consider yourself for a moment. Your life,
what does it consist in? How do you maintain it?"

"By eating and drinking and breathing?" asked Zip. "Is
that what you mean?"

" Partly ; that to begin with, at all events. It is the broadest
ground, for, as }'ou know, there is no sort of living creature,

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 253

plant or animal, that does not stand upon it. Food is the first
essential. Now, do you see what that means?"

" I don't believe so."

"Well, it means that physical life is composed of two factors,
the self and the not-self, the subject and the object, and a con-
tinued relation between them. When that relation is severed,
life ends. You see that ? "

"Yes."

"And you see that both terms implied in that relation must
be real ? You can't feed anything on nothing. You can't shut
up a plant in a vacuum, though you should write ' air' all over it,
and succeed in deceiving it with a word. I see you get at what
I mean. Very well ; that answers for the lower forms of life,
and for your own so far as that is merely animal. But now,
when you have got air enough, and food and drink and shelter,
are you supplied with all you need?"

"No, I am not."

" And the race you belong to, the race of rational mankind,
never has been. Their history shows that, for it is the history
of their religions. And religion is the relation of man to God.
As you say, even the false religions bear witness to the true one.
Man's intellect, always the same in kind, bears witness to the Su-
preme Intellect which is its law, and its guarantee of sanity, and
the condition of its being. His language, which is noun and
noun and the connecting verb, that is, subject and object and
their relation in its last analysis, bears witness to it. The axioms
of geometry show it. They show, that is, that truth is one, uni-
versal, and immutable, and so they prove God to demonstration.
That is for the intelligence ; it gives you the first article of man's
natural creed : I believe in one God, the Creator of all things.
He exists, for we exist, and in his intellectual image. You see
that ? "

" I don't suppose I ever doubted it," returned the girl. " But
that is not precisely what I mean or, at least, not all I mean."

" I know it isn't. You want the proof of a God who shall
sustain some personal relation to you which is not intellectual
merely. So you ought, since you are not an exception to your
race by being purely intellectual yourself. Like the rest of us
you have a heart as well as a head an emotional nature, that is,
which wants its food, its satisfaction, as your body does, and your
mind. But you have already told me that you do not doubt the
existence of God the Creator, that you believe the Bible to be
historically true, and that you see that it points directly to that

254 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE* s FACTORY. [Nov.,

only church which claims to have been founded by Jesus Christ.
That states your case so far, doesn't it ? "

"Yes, completely."

" Now then, Christianity, in its final analysis, as it applies to
the individual soul, is also the history of a real relation that is, a
relation both of whose terms are real a relation between man,
whose intellectual and emotional nature demands a perfect satis-
faction, and a personal, loving God who shall fulfil his expecta-
tion. In its exterior aspect, as a church, with a creed and a
history, it professes to supply that want through the medium of
prayer and the sacraments. Here, it says, are the channels of
grace; in other words, the storehouse of man's only true food.
Only one of them, prayer, was left open to fallen humanity.
Use it sincerely, simply, and see if it does not show you the way
to God the Eternal Lover of the soul, God Incarnate in Jesus
Christ. You pray?"

Zipporah bowed gravely.

" And prayer has led you to just that point, beyond which
you cannot go ?"

" Yes."

" Well now, see here. If you were hungry and I told you
there was an excellent loaf in my cupboard, to which you were
welcome, I couldn't really do any more than that for you, could
I ? Even if I held it to your lips I couldn't make you swallow it.
Now, what I want to bring home to you is that, to use a vulgar-
ism that exactly expresses what I mean, ' the proof of the pud-
ding is in the eating.' The last act which makes you a Chris-
tian is a voluntary one a blind one, if you like to call it so,
though I don't see that myself an act of faith. It is not more
blind than the baby's is when it suckles its mother; not more
blind than mine is when I take the dose my doctor tells me is
good for my indigestion. I tell you, and not only I but the liv-
ing church, the only organization which has kept health and
strength throughout the ages, tells you that in her is the seed
of the new life, and its satisfying food. Your craving tells you,
you have never found it yet. Go to her and she will give it
you."

The girl's head had been drooping lower and lower. When
she lifted it after a silence that had lasted several minutes the
tears were standing in her eyes, and presently they came tum-
bling down her cheeks.

" You won't give it to me ! " she said with a sob. "You told
me I must go home first."

1 888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 255

Father Seetin smiled, though his own emotion was not slight.
" Poor little girl ! " he said, " you are hungrier than I
thought you were when we talked the other day. And then,
how could I know that I was going to be unexpectedly ' taken
up into a chariot ' and led to ' a certain water ' ? Nothing that
I know of hinders my baptizing you if you 'believe with all your
heart ' what I have been trying to expound to you. Ah ! it is
the essential thing that, the believing with the Jieart. It is hard-
ly belief so far as the head goes. If one has got a head, he must
see God the Creator, and if he doesn't stultify himself, he ought
to be able to see God the Redeemer in history. But believing
with the heart is another thing it is the will there that takes
the final step. However, I don't want to preach any more.
Would you like me to baptize you to-day ? "

" If you will," said Zip with great meekness. And so it hap-
pened that with one old woman, who was saying her beads in
the church, for sole witness, Zipporah Colton was made a Chris-
tian, " and went on her way rejoicing."

XXXVIII.
CONCLUSION.

On her way back home Zipporah stopped at the doctor's
office. She was in no mood to see the girls and indulge in any
chat, and declined the proposition of Dr. Sawyer, whom she
found alone there, to go into the house. Squire Cadwallader,
with whom she had an errand, had not been over to the Centre
for several days, being laid up, as the young doctor told her,
with a feverish cold which at present confined him to his room.

" I think, then, that perhaps you would better drive back
with me," the girl said after a moment's perplexity. " Mr. Van
Alstyne has not seemed quite so well lately, and it begins to
trouble me. At first I did not like to send over for the squire,
because he was complaining the last time he came, and I knew
there must be something serious to keep him."

" Any special trouble with the old gentleman ? " asked the
doctor, putting on his overcoat at once, " or is it just the gradual
breaking-down that might have been expected ? "

"I don't know what it is. I have been hoping to see him en-
tirely regain his strength, he has been improving so steadily up
to within the last week or two."

"You are all optimists over your way, I know," answered

256 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE' s FACTORY. [Nov.,

Dr. Sawyer as he got into the cutter after her. " What seems
to be the trouble? Is it his mind or his body that attracts your
notice ? "

" Both, I think and yet I am not quite sure. I have fancied
that he seems to take notions more. And then his eyes don't
look quite natural."

" I have been told," said the doctor, " that his afternoons are
always a succession of naps, varied by futile talk."

" Mr. Hadleigh said so, perhaps," returned the girl. " You
see he was never much with Mr. Van Alstyne in the mornings,
when he is at his best. He tires himself out then, and rests in
the afternoon, and afterwards has a good evening. At least,
that is how it has been until within ten days or so. He keeps
awake more nowadays, and yet don't seem quite right. I hear
he takes whims occasionally down at the factory, and I have
fancied that he acted as if he were suspicious of something or
other. He is different in some way, I am sure, and yet I can't
certainly say how."

" Well," said the doctor, " all those symptoms are natural
enough, and just what I should have looked for. Such an ap-
parent improvement as he has been showing for some time past
is often characteristic of his trouble. It was sure to pass, and
chronic weakness and gradually deepening imbecility to set in,
unless death outstrips it."

"The squire didn't say so," returned Zipporah, "and besides,
it is irritability that I notice. He is not imbecile."

" I suppose you know what the squire is," said the doctor.
" He is hopeful and kindhearted. And he took a sort of a grudge
against Lamson they are going out of partnership, you know?
and he has just painted things sky-blue and scarlet to suit his
own taste in landscape. That's what /think, anyhow."

But the report which Dr. Sawyer carried back to the squire
concerning Mr. Van Alstyne's physical condition was of such a
nature that the elder physician shook off his own indisposition as
well as he was able, and drove over the next day. It was an hour
or two past noon when he came, and, as usual, Mr. Van Alstyne
was dozing in the library. The squire sat looking at him, .and
questioning Zipporah closely for some time, not wishing to dis-
turb him until he should wake naturally. His study of him then
was long and careful, and when it was ended he signed to Zip-
porah to follow him into the dining-room.

" Do you know what I think ? " he said, closing the door care-
fully, and looking about the room. " Anybody within hear-

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 257

ing? It is an unpleasant thing 1 to say, but it looks to me as if
Mr. Van Alstyne's life and reason are being tampered with."
" Not really? " said Zip, horrified.

" Just that. No natural cause would dilate his pupils that
way. Why, he is half blind. He wouldn't have known me but
by my voice. And his heart is weaker than it should be a
great deal weaker than when I saw him last. In fact, his pulse
then was better than my own. Now, see here. You said to
Sawyer that he seemed to take odd notions. Notions about
what? Whom did they concern?"

" Mr. Murray has spoken of those. Within a few days he has
once or twice fancied that there was something following him
about, when he is down at the mill. Once it was a black cat he
said he felt it rub against him, and saw it but there wasn't any
there. Here, all I have noticed is that he seems to take dislikes."
"To whom ?"

" Lant, chiefly. Perhaps for Mrs. Lant too, but that I don't
feel sure of. They are usually there together, when I have no-
ticed it. I have been thinking whether I ought not to keep
Lant out of the way, but there isn't anybody else so handy, and
I could hardly send him off and yet keep her."

" Humph ! " grunted the squire. " Lant takes him his meals?"
" Now that he has begun eating them in the library or his
own room again, he does. Until shortly after this new trouble
began he has been coming to the table with me."
" You send his meals in from the table ? "
" I carry them in myself. But I seldom stay while he eats.
Noons and evenings Lant is generally there, but in the morning
I' am afraid he sleeps too late. Mrs. Lant waits on him then.
But what motive could he have for such a horrible crime? As
for her, I'm sure she has nothing to do with it. And there is
no one else. I give him all his medicines myself, and he takes
nothing at all between meals. That I am certain of."

" The last day I was here he complained of a bitter taste in
his mouth. I gave him something for his digestion. Was he
made that complaint again ? "

" Sometimes. You know he don't write much lately- his
sight has been weaker."

" Well now, I tell you there is something wrong. Lant's mo-
tives, if he has any hand in it, don't count for much. I know
him of old, and the stock he comes from. Every male critter of
the lot goes to the devil by way of the gin-mill. But I never
knew one of them take in the gallows or the jail as a last station,
VOL. XLVIII. 17

258 JOHN VAN ALSTYNE' s FACTORY. [Nov.,

and if the fellow has been tampering with Van Alstyne in any
way, I don't believe he has had murder in view. They are
a chicken-livered crowd, the whole of 'em, men and women, and
I guess I can squeeze the truth out of him. There's nothing I'd
like better." The squire looked grim, but jubilant also, which
struck Zipporah as a curious combination under the circum-
stances.

" But Mr. Van Alstyne?" she asked.

" You mean, what damage has been done to him ? None, I
hope, that can't be repaired if my suspicion is well grounded. I
haven't got here any too soon, though. I'll drive off now and
make some calls hereabouts, and come back to supper."

Possibly the squire's essay as an amateur detective that even-
ing may not have been his first one. It was simple enough. He
had formed a theory, aided in doing so not only by the physical
signs presented, but by his recollection of a morning during Mr.
Hadleigh's recent visit, when he had happened on him in his
private office, so immersed in a treatise on medical jurispru-
dence that he had had time to run down half a page with him
before the reader turned. The case in which he had been en-
grossed was one in which a will had been successfully contested
on the ground that both before and after its execution weak-
ness of mind and aphasia, succeeded by unmistakable softening,
were shown to have existed. Mr. Hadleigh, looking up unem-
barrassed, began talking on that and on kindred subjects in his
usual impersonal manner. " I am a barrister, as you know," he
ended, " and for a man whose briefs have been few and far be-
tween, there has been a curious number of them which turned
on points like these. I had one murder case, by the way. It
was a singular one, too, for I suppose no one concerned really
doubted the motive, and the crime was accomplished. But the
modus operandi was so simple that I got the woman off. All she
did was to open the window and let a draught in on an inconve-
nient husband with pneumonia. She might have felt very warm,
you know, and been of a heedless turn of mind. She was a
grateful creature. I pocketed a rousing fee from her just before
I started for South America "

Then he sauntered off, leaving the book where it lay, and
when the squire put it back on the shelf, he also found it neces-
sary to replace the fullest work he had on the action of drugs in
the system. To-day he mentally brought them both forth again,
and collating them with what he had observed in his patient, he
jumped to a conclusion which he was not slow in verifying. Mr.

i888.] JOHN VAN ALSTYNE'S FACTORY. 259

Van Alstyne's food was being medicated with a drug whose ac-
tion has until very recently been credited with being cumulative;
not fatally poisonous until enough of it has been stored up in the
system. Lant, terrified into an admission when confronted with
the result of an analysis made by the squire, was able to affirm
truthfully that he had consented to give the doses at all only
when he had been convinced by seeing Mr. Hadleigh swallow
them, and even by taking them once or twice himself, that they
did not threaten life. So the squire let him off, having secured
his affidavit on the subject, and holding it over his head to secure
his silence.

Nor did any one attempt for the present to learn Mr. Had-
leigh's whereabouts. What had been attempted was frustrated,
and, as the squire said, the stone he had now in his pocket could
lie there safely for seven years and then be all the deadlier in the
flinging. As a matter of fact it came into play within the year,
Mr. Van Alstyne, near the close of it, having a second stroke,
which was almost immediately fatal. Mr. Hadleigh, who was
still on this side of the Atlantic when the event took place, began
taking steps to contest the will, whose contents, far more favora-
ble to him than they might have been had any of those about
John Van Alstyne ever had the heart to tell him what had been
planned against his life, were yet not sufficiently so to satisfy
him. Then the squire confronted him both with Lant and Lant's
affidavit, and enforced inaction.

And so the chronicle of John Van Alstyne's Factory might
properly end. Yet, looking back upon it, and considering sun-
dry little touches of human nature observed by the chronicler
when in Milton Centre some months back, another picture pre-
sents itself. For the first notable result of the frustrated plot
was the unpremeditatedly hasty marriage of Paul Murray and
Zipporah Colton, and their settling down at once to housekeeping
with Mr. Van Alstyne. That, however, might be taken for
granted. There were no obstacles, and the advantages of such a
step were evident to everybody.

One might almost say there was not any courtship, properly
speaking, so short was the interval between Lant's ejection and
the nuptial Mass,, but for a brief passage which took place two
or three days after Zipporah's baptism. She had seen and
talked very much as usual with Paul Murray during the inter-
val, but it was not until Father Seetin happened to congratulate
him that he learned what she had done.

" I don't understand," he said to her with great gravity the

260 THE HERMITAGE. [Nov.,

next time they met, "just what sort of a conscience you suppose
yourself to have. Truth for its own sake don't seem to be one
of the virtues you cherish in it, does it?"

"I don't know," she answered, looking out of the window
near which they stood. " What makes you think I am given to
fibbing?"

" Didn't you promise me, once, that when you made up your
mind to lay down your arms and surrender, you would let me
know?"

" No," said she, " I never did."

" That's just what I expected," he answered, turning her
round to face him. "You certainly are the most unconscionable
concocter of whoppers that I ever met. Why didn't you tell
me you had been to Father Seetin?"

" Because because," said Zip, " because I just couldn't."

LEWIS R. DORSAY.
[THE END.]

THE HERMITAGE.

To fleshly eyes no spot 's more desolate

Than my poor cave so illy dressed, so bare

Of even needful things. Than mine no fare

More mean and couch less soft day's close await.

Nor doth the view before me compensate

For sufferings in the body borne, for there

The bird wings not her flight, nor beast makes lair :

Wastes dreary stretch beyond my grotto's gate.

And yet for me this solitude hath charms,

The spirit's wealth the body's want supplies.

I do but lack, O happy need ! what harms

The soul in upward course retards her rise

To that safe region where no more alarms

Nor strifes are known, and where reigns Christ the prize.

i888.] THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. 261

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.

WHEN a man has crossed the divide and is going down the
decline of life, and has twelve times taken part in presidential
elections, he may indeed claim to be a sovereign citizen ; and he
may also claim ability to interpret the lessons of the presidential
year.

Some years ago I made a journey to the Northwest to visit
a relative; it was the last time I left Old Virginia. While wait-
ing at a railroad station in a little city of the State of Wiscon-
sin I saw a placard printed in six different languages : English,
French, German, Scandinavian, Polish, and Flemish. Did it bid
us keep the peace with each other? Was it the governor's
proclamation forbidding us to carry arms? The Constitution of
the United States guarantees the carrying of arms to every man
in the country. It was a notice addressed to the people of all
those different races, warning them to " Beware of Pickpock-
ets ! " And, as a matter of fact, thieves and lawbreakers gene-
rally are the only enemies of the American citizen. He does
not fear his neighbor of a different race and tongue. Ethnic
problems we have, but their solution is not to be written in
blood. When the men of Europe are freed by the ocean transit
from the dynasties and statesmen who rule their destinies, they
live at peace except with pickpockets. The race hatred, the
greed of warlike renown, the ambition of dynastic rule, the
thirst for vengeance all are left behind when the emigrant bids
adieu to his European home.

The theory of this government is, that men, if left to them-
selves, will love peace and follow its paths ; that intelligence and
liberty conduce to peace, but not to torpidity. Peace hath her
victories no less renowned than war aye, a thousand times
more renowned. It is a trait of the highest civilization that the
victories of truth o.ver error should be gained by the weapons of
persuasion. In a proper state of things the great men of a na-
tion are not those who advance a good cause by putting its
enemies to death, but rather those who save its enemies by con-
vincing them of the truth. It is trite, it may sound school-boy-
ish, but it is true of the proper state of public life, that the pen is
mightier than the sword ; that the voice which summons men
to the hustings is more sacred than that which bids the can-
noneer to his post.

262 THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. [Nov.,

The spectacular glories of the autumn manoeuvres of their
great armies and navies engage the attention of the nations of
Europe. Look at me, says France to Germany : with my Lebel
rifle and my military telephone and my phoenix army. I am
ready to batter you to pieces.

Look at me, says Italy : look at my navy ; I am taking my
place as a first-class power on the sea.

Look at me, says Russia : the Orient and Ind are mine or
soon shall be ; and my million of armed men makes my auto-
crat the heir-presumptive of Europe's sick man.

Look at me, says Bismarck : I hold in leash the young war-
dog of the world, and I rule a nation of soldiers.

Look at me, says Britain : I hold beneath my heel the warlike
and fiery Celt; I have done it for seven centuries, and will do it
till he writhes no more.

Great spectacles these, truly ; but is it credible that we speak
of Christendom ? Is it not awful that there are four millions of
men under arms eager for war in Christian Europe? Is it not
sad that, after all, the supreme quality of Christian civilization
is still the same as that of savagery ? But, thank God ! Europe
is no longer the whole of Christendom. God has raised up in
the Western hemisphere a new nation, vast, powerful, rich, but
above all peaceful. Our autumn manoeuvres are the gathering
of the whole people to the discussion of the principles of good
government and the choice of competent men to carry it on the
elections.

There is no spectacular exhibition of warlike power in the
Old World so creditable to its peoples as the peaceful solution of
the difficult problems of government reached by colonies of
those same nations, not only in the great West, but everywhere
in America. Here have come into the forests and upon the wild
prairies of a new world immense numbers of men, total stran-
gers to each other, their blood poisoned with generations of race
hatred against their new neighbors; men with little education in
the ways of liberty, to whom citizenship has meant but the tax-
gatherer and the conscription officer, poor men in rivalry for the
riches of a fruitful land here they have come and here they live
in peace ; they found municipalities without bloodshed, establish
systems of education, open great channels of commerce, and
though polyglot in tongue and diverse in race, they are one in
the love of true liberty, intelligent and reliable in their submis-
sion to legitimate authority, quick and vigorous to repress an-
archism. Perhaps some of my readers may be surprised at

1 888.] THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. 263

these broad assertions, for the elements of social disturbance
among us are mostly foreign. But go to the new States and see,
as I have seen, the great cities, and especially the vast and fruit-
ful areas of farm-land, made happy and prosperous by nationali-
ties whose whole history in the Old World is the story of at-
tempts to destroy each other ; see them there, dwelling together
in harmony, and ask the reason why. There is but one answer.
The institutions of this country are so near the guileless, natural
man's ideal of what is just and true in the civil order that it
needs but the salt of a small proportion of the native American
stock to set them forth in securing the ends of good govern-
ment.

It is to maintain a knowledge and a love of these institutions
among all the people that the providence of God has brought
about the frequency of our elections. It is during the political
canvass that the people are invited, and in a manner forced, to
study the fundamental principles which inform their public life.
The business of all the political parties is persuasion, and they
will not leave untried any of its methods, or leave unsolicited a
single voter in the land. We have much to object against parti-
san organizations, and what I have here to say in their praise
does not apply to ward politics in cities. But taken every-
where, a great party succeeds because it has persuaded more
men than its opponent ; persuasion has gained its victory. It
may have dark and crooked ways, but in the long run it must
succeed by other ways, by appealing to the virtue and intelli-
gence of the people. If it is triumphant it is because it has
reached more men with stronger arguments ; that is why it has
gained the election. It is seldom that the defeated party does
not blame itself more than its rival the day after election.

By the end of October there will not be a sluggard citizen in
America. The very Seven Sleepers will get up and prepare to
vote. Every man will hear a number of good speeches and read
acres of excellent argument touching the principles of govern-
ment, critical of the qualities of the public men asking for office.
The very children will scream for parties and for men, while
their fathers shout and their mothers pray. And when all is
over and the honest count has seated the victor in the highest
place of the nation, the people will pass from the honest labor of
public life to the honest labor of private bread-winning with
good-humored submission to defeat on the one hand, and good-
natured acceptance of triumph on the other.

When I look at Europe I see an entirely different state of

264 THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. [Nov.,

things, even in those countries in which the electoral system has
been introduced. How different it is with poor Italy! Hear
what men say of her men not right, yet not wholly wrong.
She struggles, they say, with the advancing torpor of death.
Every city is an old curiosity shop, and every man trades with
the foreigner, trades off the old clothes of bygone greatness, and
with the profits buys the ill-fitting tinsel of modern life, appear-
ing like an effete dotard arrayed in the habiliments of a long-de-
parted youth. It is a nation in which whole kingdoms were ex-
ploited by a handful of adventurers under Garibaldi; it is alive
with priests and infested with atheists ; has the brightest natural
genius of the human race, and is filled with the most grossly ig-
norant people in Europe ; has the memorial of a martyr at every
crossroads and a Christianity which allows the Apostolic See and
its occupant to be pelted with filth, and thinks its duty done
with novenas of reparation. One is tempted to say that it is a
land of summer's sun and icy hearts ; a nation which, at this dis-
tance, seems without faith or hope or love, political, civil, or re-
ligious.

But wait till the Italians who have come to us have assimi-
lated the spirit of our institutions, they and their children, and
we shall see their race, which has held the primacy of the mod-
ern world in religion, in philosophy, in art, in literature, setting
a pattern for the reconstruction of the political system of their
native country, that land which has the charm of natural beauty
and the consecration of heroic memories. In this connection it
is pertinent to ask, What has made the present outlook in Ire-
land so hopeful ? Has it not been the growth of political char-
acter attained by Irishmen and their sons in America? So shall
the incessant study and practice of free politics by Italians in
America, through our frequent elections, enable them to assist in
the solution of their great problem at home. American-bred
freedom is the direst enemy that atheistic politics can en-
counter.

In our eagerness to prevent pauper immigration let us not
forget how much of the life-blood of our nation now runs in the
veins of a foreign-born population. Do you see how they spring
to their work these election times ? Are you narrow enough to
say that as a class they are venal voters ? There is not a May-
flower blossom in all New England promising fairer fruit for our
country's future than the exotic flowers from Germany and Ire
land now waving in the battle breezes of the presidential year.
These men are fresh from the desecrated shrines of Erin and the

1 888.] THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. 265

armed barracks of Fatherland, but they are men, and the Ameri-
can republic heeds but honest men to make good citizens.

The proudest day of my life and the happiest was when, as a
stripling, I made my long journey on horseback to the little
church on the bank of the Potomac, and for the first time re-
ceived my Redeemer in Communion proud and happy as a
Christian. But there was another day when I was very proud
and happy ; it was the day I cast my first vpte. It is now many
years ago, and in those days men were not bullied by mill-owners
nor bribed by political bosses, or tricked or scared by anybody.
It was Virginia's good old way of voting ; it was in the old-
fashioned viva voce manner, by word of mouth, in the presence
of God and my neighbors. So at the coming election my heart
will thrill with pride to see the new voters boastfully casting
their first ballots. Just twenty-one ! Full of the vigor and up-
rightness of youth, the strength of new manhood, proudly step-
ping to the ballot-box ; the very age when the flower of Europe's
noblest stock slouches along unwillingly to the barracks to be
cursed and cudgelled by brutal drill sergeants, to be butchered
to glut the lust for dynastic power or the thirst for race ven-
geance.

Among the fathers of the Republic the value of elections fre-
quently held and hotly contested was admitted, though not with
entire unanimity. Jefferson knew their value, and highly ap-
proved the custom of annual elections still in vogue in the New
England States. Writing to Samuel Adams February 26, 1800,
he says:

" A letter from you, my respectable friend, after three-and-twenty
years of separation, has given me a pleasure I cannot express. It recalls
to my mind the anxious days we then passed in struggling for the cause of
mankind. Your principles have been tested in the crucible of time and
have come out pure. You have proved that it was monarchy, not merely
British monarchy, you opposed. A government by representatives, elect-
ed by the people at short periods, was our object, and our maxim at that
day was, 'Where annual election ends, tyranny begins '? nor have our de-
partures from it been sanctioned by the happiness of their effects.''

A little more than twelve months after he thus wrote to John
Dickinson :

."A just and solid republican government maintained here will be a
standing monument and example for the aim and imitation of other coun-
tries ; and I join with you in the hope and belief that they will see from
our example that a free government is of all others the most energetic;
that the inquiry which has been excited among the mass of mankind by

266 THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. [Nov.,

our Revolution and its consequences will ameliorate the condition of man
over a great portion of the globe. What a satisfaction have we in the
contemplation of the benevolent effects of our efforts, compared with those
of the leaders on the other side, who have discountenanced all advances
in science as dangerous innovations, have endeavored to render philoso-
phy and republicanism terms of reproach, to persuade us that man cannot
be governed but by the rod, etc. I shall have the happiness of living and
dying in the contrary hope."

It will be a hundred years next March since Jefferson wrote
from France of our newly-adopted Constitution :

" The operations which have taken place in America lately fill me with
pleasure. In the first place, they realize the confidence I had that when-
ever our affairs go obviously wrong the good sense of the people will in-
terpose and set them to rights. The example of changing a constitution
by assembling the wise men'of the State instead of assembling armies will
be worth as much to the world as former examples we had given them.
The Constitution, too, which was the result of our deliberations, is unques-
tionably the wisest ever yet presented to men."

So did the fathers who are gone to their account shout and
vaunt their champions, and vote ; so for a hundred years and
more have the whole American people done, and only on one
dread question was the fateful appeal taken from the ballot to
the bullet.

The farmer and the artisan will contend for their respective
interests ; the toiler and the capitalist will come nearer to a fair
accommodation; the rich and the 'poor will learn each other's
faults and be compelled to own each other's virtues ; especially
will the rich be taught what is the poor man's life and learn to
respect his hope. The election, from the standpoint of all the par-
ties, means, Let every farmer reap his own field ; let the artisan
call no man master ; let the very tramp have hope ; let the rich
man have his own and not a dollar more, and let the poor man
claim his right and get it sure. Let the rich no longer wonder
who the poor are:

" As some rich woman, on a winter's morn,
Eyes through her silken curtains the poor drudge
Who with numb, blackened fingers makes her fire
At cock-crow, on a starlit winter's morn,
When the frost flowers the whitened window-panes,
And wonders how she lives and what the thoughts
Of that poor drudge may be."

By the time our chill November gives us one of his shorten-
ing days to be consecrated to thanksgiving to God for his favors

1 888.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 267

to the nation, we shall all thank him first for a season of fruitful
study of our government, and then for peace; every man shall
have wrestled with his neighbor, a bloodless victory been won
and yet no man been vanquished. We could never thank God
for a better guerdon of continued peace than what his providence
has granted us in the hot battle of the presidential year. And
when at last the victorious brow is crowned at the citv named
after him who had patriotism without passion and loved his coun-
try for the sake of all mankind, the whole nation will say, Well
done ! One side gains the victory and the other tastes the bit-
terness of defeat, but it is a victory which is no man's conquest
and a defeat which entails no man's wrong.
Mercer s Ferry, Va. THOMAS JEFFERSON MERCER.

TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS.

IN Remember the Alamo (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.)
Mrs. Amelia E. Barr has made an interesting and prettily writ-
ten story, having for its historical basis the events immediately
preceding and accompanying the establishment of Texan inde-
pendence in 1836. The historical part of it is in the main sound,
though there *re what seem to be trifling blunders such, for
example, as making a general of him who was only Colonel Sher-
man at the battle of San Jacinto. The time was full of stirring
incidents so full that Mrs. Barr, in dealing with the real men
who figure in her tale, has not often gone outside the written re-
cord of either their words or their deeds. She knows how to be
interesting in narration, but her story, had it been less disfigured
in its imaginative portions by a wholly unnecessary and irrelevant
spirit of religious bigotry, would have been more thoroughly
agreeable reading.

The McVeys (Boston and New York : Houghton, MifHin &
Co.) is a very good novel. Mr. Joseph Kirkland has a keen eye
for human nature, and a clever hand for its delineation. His
present story is evidently a sort of sequel to one with which the
present writer has no acquaintance : Zury : the Meanest Man in
Spring County. But The McVeys stands sufficiently well on its
own feet to prevent one's ignorance of its predecessor from be-
ing an irreparable misfortune. Possibly, if the mistiness sur-
rounding Zury's relationship to Anne and her twins were cleared

268 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Nov.,

away more fully than it is by the allusions to her editing a
Fourierite newspaper in her youth, and the not very explicit
hints by which she evades Dr. Strafford's amusing importunities,
it would be less pleasant reading. As it stands, it may be recom-
mended safely. It is full of wholesome lessons on a good many
diverse points, and they have the merit of being given without
the least touch of didacticism. The talk, let the speakers be who
they may, is uniformly interesting and characteristic, and almost
always amusing into the bargain. Here is a specimen of it, taken
from the chapter entitled " The Circuit Court of Spring County,"
in which Abe Lincoln, Stephen A. Douglas, and David Davis
figure, all of them " circuit riders " at the time :

"All his late fellow-travellers greeted Zury kindly the circuit judge
even volunteering unanswerable reasons why he should not offer his seat.
Lincoln said :

" ' Friend Prouder, I hear that they are talking of running you for the
legislature.'

" ' Wai ya-as some has be'n tryin' t' put up some sech a joke on me ;
from which I jedge th't they 'llaow to be beat in the race. I notice
th't when the' 'xpect t' win the' don't hunt 'raound fer aoutsiders t' share th'
stakes ; but when the' 'xpect t' lose, the' 're awful lib'ral.'

" ' Aha ! Probably they think some of the stock on the Prouder farm
live-stock or other will help them pull the load up the hill.'

" 'No ! To do 'em justice, I guess the' don't expect no campaign-fund-
contributions from the me-anest man in Spring County! The' don't fool
themselves with no sech crazy dreams as that, no more 'n the' fool me with
talkin' abaout my gittin' thar.'

" 'Oh ! well let them try, and you jest try and help 'em a leetle. You
don't know where lightning might strike. I may be in the House myself,
and whether I am or not, we want jest such men as you there men that
won't steal, and that are too smart to be stole from.'

" Next day, at the opening of court, Zury had a small case foreclosure
on Hobbs' farm and was compelled (not for the first time) to hear himself
publicly denounced in court as a hard-hearted creditor; an oppressor of
the poor debtor ; a capitalist who ground the faces of his fellow-citizens.
Zury got up to reply to the offensive, and to some extent unjust, tirade, but
the judge cut him off, saying that as the decree must go in his favor, there
was no occasion to take the time of the court in hearing his side of the
case. When the court adjourned and they all met at dinner, he had a
chance to relieve his mind.

'" Sech fellers is glad enough t'git my money it's only payin' it back
th't the' object to. I've heer'd too much o' jest sech talk t' take much
stock in it. Th' feller's poor wal, what then ? Dew these laoud-maouth
galoots perpose t' git up a subscription t' help him ? Ef the' dew, mebbe I
mought give as much as anybody else. But that an't what the' 're after.
Not much ! What the' want is fer me t' give between five 'n' six hundred
dollars 'n' nobody else t' give a blame cent ! Their idee o' charity is fer A.

1 888.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 269

t'tell B. haowmuch C.'d orter give t' D. Smith 'n' Jones may quar'l pootty
lively in school boards 'n' church meetin's 'n' one thing another ; but the's
one thing the' 're sure t' 'gree on ; 'n' that is what somebody else 'd orter
dew 'spesh'ly what Zury Praouder 'd orter give Buri Hobbs.' "

Mr. Kirkland shows a very even vein of portraiture ; we re-
call none of his characters as merely typical ; each is distinctive-
ly individual. The girls and women, too, are not less well drawn
than the men, and his knowledge of the sex, as brought out in
one of Dr. Stratford's talks with Phil, throws a reflex light upon
himself which is agreeable.

Miss Agnes Repplier has brought together, under the title
Books and Men (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin &
Co.), seven essays which have already appeared in the Atlantic
Monthly. They are extremely pleasant reading. Miss Repplier
has a charmingly well-bred style, and of books, at all events, she
shows a wide and discriminating knowledge. As for men, the
men in these pages are, after all, the men of books, who some-
times differ from the men one meets in broadcloth or in tweed,
awaiting, their apotheosis into calf-skin and gilt lettering. Once
between the covers, as Miss Repplier found out long before she
made her pleasant sketch of Claverhouse, the man is a compound
of some one or other side of himself and the particular friend or
enemy who has taken him in hand. Still, that is generally true
of him even while he still walks in the flesh. The papers on
children in this volume are particularly good reading, even in a
book which does not contain a single dull or uninstructive page.
The essay on " Some Aspects of Pessimism " pleases us less,
however, than any of the others. It is hardly fair, is it, to St.
Teresa, for example, to put her among the pessimists, especially
when it is done by a misquotation? She does not say: ",It is
given us either to die or to suffer,'' but she prays for either death
or suffering, so testifying in the most unmistakable way to her
present possession of a joy superior to all transitory pains, and
her intense realization of its abiding and eternal quality. And is
it really true, that " As a matter of fact, the abstract question of
whether our present existence be enjoyable or otherwise, is one
which creeds do not materially modify " ? Pessimism is the natu-
ral note of a humanity which has been cast out of Eden and has
no hope of Paradise. The wolf at the door, either of body,
mind, or soul, is an unanswerable argument to those who cannot
meet it with at least " one ray of that divine ecstasy that sent
Christian maidens smiling to the lions." Nowadays the lions
roar at our young people and our old ones, for that matter in

270 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Nov.,

a different arena, literary, social, what-not. They are danger-
ous only when too much is made of their ferocity. They tear
nobody who does not fear them. Such Christians as Mrs. Hum-
phrey Ward's Catherine, indeed, taking their tinge from their
progenitor, are bound to be gloomy, sad, and fearful. But it is
as true now to the experience of any one who chooses to put it
really to the test as it was to St. Thomas, that " it is chiefly that
we might enjoy him that the Son of God has been given us." We
should have been glad to find Miss Repplier pounding at least a.
trifle harder on that string. Why should the Christian of the nine-
teenth century leave the sceptic and the pessimist on one side,
and the " Hallelujah lass'' and the "Christian scientist" on the
other, to monopolize the courage which belongs to conviction ?
It should be his, as it was that of the Christian of the cata-
combs. There is no occasion for vehemence or display about it.
No doubt St. Agnes never ran about the streets proclaiming her
celestial betrothal, and her contempt of mundane joys. But
when she did enter the arena her attitude was as unmistakable
as her courage was serene.

Miss Repplier, who strikes us as too respectful in her treat-
ment of Mr. Saltus, seems, on the other hand, somewhat insensi-
tive to the charm of Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson. To couple
him with the lugubrious author of John Inglesant is as droll in its
way a very similar way, for that matter as Pet Marjorie's col-
location of " Tom Jones and Grey's Elegy " as " both excellent
and much spoke of by both sex." Or do we take her amiss
when we credit her with laying off on the supposititious shoul-
ders of " Mr. Millais and Sir Frederick Leighton " her per-
sonal share of that "decay of sentiment" with which she is
charging the rest of us who read ? Mr. Stevenson, at least, not
only wields the magician's wand himself, but shows pretty plain-
ly how he does so in that collection of delightful essays which
he calls Memories and Portraits (London : Chatto & Windus).
Truth to tell, Mr. Stevenson is enjoyable more for what he is
and feels, and for the way in which he lets one know just how
and what that is, than for his critical appreciation of other and
contemporary writers. Perhaps that is why he has so much
stronger hold than most of his contemporary essayists and story-
tellers on the emotions of his constantly increasing public. Even
the horrifying White-chapel murders are laid upon the shoul-
ders of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Perhaps, too, it is the chief
reason why his critical remarks when they are entirely imper-
sonal, in the air so to say, and not pinned to the breast-pockets of

i888.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 271

his friendly rivals for popular favor, are generally extremely
worthy of consideration. Consider these, for instance, which
occur in the paper entitled " A Gossip on Romance " :

" No art produces illusion ; in the theatre we never forget that we are in
the theatre ; and while we read a story we sit wavering between two minds,
now merely clapping our hands at the merit of the performance, now con-
descending to take an active part in fancy with the characters. This last
is the triumph of romantic story-telling; when the reader consciously
plays at being the hero, the scene is a good scene. Now, in character-
studies the pleasure that we take is critical; we watch, we approve, we
smile at incongruities, we are moved to sudden heats of sympathy with
courage, suffering, or virtue. But the characters are still themselves, they
are not us ; the more clearly they are depicted, the more widely do they
stand away from us, the more imperiously do they thrust us back into our
place as a spectator. I cannot identify myself with Rawdon Crawley or
with Eugene de Rastignac, for I have scarce a hope or fear in common
with them. It is not character but incident that woos us out of our re-
serve. Something happens as we desire to have it happen to ourselves ;
some situation that we have long dallied with in fancy, is realized in the
story with enticing and appropriate details. Then we forget the charac-
ters ; then we push the hero aside ; then we plunge into the tale in our
own person and bathe in fresh experience ; and then, and then only, do
we say we have been reading a romance."

Three or four of Mr. Frank R. Stockton's recent stories
have been put into book form and given the name of the only
one of them which has any appreciable share of their author's
peculiar quality, Amos Kilbright (New York : Charles Scribner's
Sons). The idea of this one and its working out are particularly
Stocktonian. Amos Kilbright is a materialized spirit, called up
at a seance by his grandson, " old Mr. Scott," and presenting
himself as a young man of twenty-five, at which age he "disap-
peared from this earth one hundred and two years ago." The
spiritualists were disappointed when they saw him, having " con-
ceived the idea that the grandfather of old Mr. Scott ought, in
the ordinary nature of things, to be a very venerable personage."
" They, therefore, set me aside, as it were," says Amos, in telling
his story, " and occupied themselves with other matters. Old
Mr. Scott went away unsatisfied and strengthened in his disbe-
lief in the powers of the spiritualists," and in " the temporary
confusion ... I was left exposed to the influence of the ma-
terializing agencies for a much longer time than had been in-
tended."

What is funny in the story and Mr. Stockton's stones when
they are not funny in his own vein are nothing is, as usual, the

272 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Nov.,

remarks made by Mrs. Colesworthy, the person who persistently
takes the prosaic, common-sense view of a state of affairs which
common sense gets a view of only because it flies so obviously
in its face. Some of these are cheery in the extreme. Mrs. Coles-
worthy has no love for spiritualists and no belief in spirits, but
having been reluctantly convinced by her husband, who is a
member of the London Psychical Society, that Amos has really
been clothed upon with flesh, and exceedingly dreads being de-
materialized again by the German "psychic scientist" about to
be imported for that purpose, she pleads pathetically with "old
Mr. Scott " to be good to his progenitor.

" O Mr. Scott !' she cried, leaning so far forward in her chair that it
seemed as if she were about to go down on her knees before the old man,
'this gentleman is your grandfather! Yes, he is, indeed. Oh ! don't dis-
card him, for it was you who were the cause of his being here. Don.'t you
remember when you went to the spiritualist meeting, and asked to see the
spirit of your grandfather ? That spirit came, but you didn't know it. The
people who materialized him were surprised when they saw this young
man; and they thought he couldn't be your grandfather, and so they didn't
say anything about it ; and they left him right in the middle of whatever they
use, and he kept on materializing without their thinking of him until he
became just what you see him now. And if he now wore old-fashioned
clothes with a queue, he would be the exact image of that portrait of him
which you have, only a little bit older-looking and fuller in the face. But
the spiritualists made him cut off his long hair, because they said that
wouldn't do in these days, and dressed him in those common clothes just
like any other person. And oh ! dear Mr. Scott, you must see for yourself
that he is truly your grandfather !"

And again when Amos falls in love and wants to marry, and
the Colesworthys discuss whether Lilian ought to be told the
true state of affairs.

" If things go on, she must be told, and what will happen then, I would
like to know? ... It would be a queer case, any way,' Mrs. Colesworthy
continued. ' Mr. Kilbright has had a wife, but he never was a widower.
Now, having been married, and never having been a widower, it would
seem as if he ought not to marry again. But his first wife is dead now,
there can be no doubt about that."

Scribner's Sons also reprint from an English edition a new
book by the author of How to be Happy though Married. This
anonymous and self-appointed mentor to the weaker sex turns
out, as might have been expected, to be an Anglican clergyman.
His new venture is entitled, The Five Talents of Woman, and one
cannot avoid feeling that it has been most appropriately dedi-

1 888.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 273

cated to "John Ruskin . . . and My Wife." " Madame, je vous fe-
licite" will, we take it, be the instinctive homage of every well-reg-
ulated female reader of this volume to the lady in question. It
must be so consoling, one feels, to occupy the favored place at the
feet of a counsellor so wise, so amiable, so tender, as it were, and
then to rise up and put all, or almost all, of his advice in instant
practice for his special behoof. Almost all, for though he lays it
down plainly on his second page that the "five talents " are, " I.
To please people ; 2. To feed them in dainty ways ; 3. To clothe
them ; 4. To keep them orderly ; $. To teach them," it is ob-
vious that the last two would need to be carefully wrapped in a
napkin where he personally is concerned. Still, that is not to
say or to imply that there are not wise and useful counsels in
this volume. It is full of them. Whether the ordinary woman
would buy it up in large editions for her special delectation is
doubtful ; but the ordinary man, and the pedagogue of both
sexes, will be sure to do it for her. Its manifest destiny is to be
ordered in quantities for Christmas presents and premiums in
young ladies' academies. Why not? Somebody must teach
girls what they were intended for, and who so capable as a pupil
of Ruskin, who is at the same time the masculine half of a pair
settled in the snug, cosy, delightful connubiality of an English
rectory? There is a fitness in that which can hardly escape
even that blindest of all blind men, him who won't see.

VOL. XLVIII. 18

274 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Nov.,

WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS.

THE STORY OF MY CONVERSION

includes the conversion of five others, and was the result of faithful, unceasing
prayer.

,1 was singularly blessed in my parents and home. That home was all that
wealth and refinement could make it. My father, a prominent business man, was
a model of many virtues. But, born and educated a Catholic, he apostatized, and
married the loveliest daughter of a prominent Episcopal family. In fact, many
of the relatives on both my parents' sides were either priests, ministers, or bish-
ops.

We children were brought up very strictly in the Episcopal faith, father al-
ways accompanying us to church. My youngest sister in some way fell in with
Catholic relatives, and, being a girl of strong character and thinking mind, she
finally became a convert ; and to her beauty of character, her saintly life and
prayers, is due the fact that in course of time five of us followed her step, mo-
ther, sister, and a nephew being the first. All this seemed to make me more
stubborn in my hatred for everything Catholic. While in this state of mind I re-
ceived a stroke of facial paralysis, and for a long time was under the doctor's
care, and gave no sign of recovery.

One day a " Mother," accompanied by a Sister of Mercy, called to see us, and
among other things said : " If I have a novena said for you, will you not study the
Catholic religion and become a Catholic ? " I gave her my promise. One morn-
ing, while washing my face, the muscles worked violently, and my maid, fearful
of some new misfortune to me, sent at once for the doctor. His first words
were : " Thank God ! you will recover." Later in the day the same dear " Mo-
ther " and Sister of Mercy called, and said that their novena had ended that
morning. My recovery, which had been doubtful up to that time, was very
rapid. The dear " Sisters " continued to pray for the conversion of my father
and myself, but I seemed to grow only more bitter in my dislike of everything
Catholic. Soon after dear " Mother " M A died.

Being an actress, I travelled much throughout the States and Canada think-
ing no more of my promise. Four years ago, on one of my tours, while in Ma-
con, Georgia, I was prostrated with " Dengue fever," and was so dangerously ill
that I had to close my season and send my company North. While ill there I had
a strange experience. One night I saw, or seemed to see, by my bedside the

kind, noble face of Mother M A , who had been dead ten years or more,

and heard her gentle voice as she said : " I cannot help you now as I did once, for
you did not keep your promise to me ; but I will pray for you, that before it is too
late you may take the right path to your blessed Lord." The impression was so
vivid as I regained consciousness that 1 could scarcely believe the attendant at
my bedside that no visitor had been present. The good Sisters of Mercy at the
convent heard of my dream and came to see me, showing me every kindness and
offering me their prayers and Masses. I recovered, and still I hardened my
heart. And still dear, faithful Sisters in all parts of the country were praying for
father and me, and a merciful God was directing our footsteps to bring us both
in his own good time into the true fold.

1 888.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 275

Mother having gone to her rest in communion with the Catholic Church, my
father was alone and our home broken up. Finding his health failing, and de-
siring to be well taken care of, he went to a Catholic hospital and engaged board,
stipulating, however, that religion should never be spoken of to him. He had a
large, lovely room, filled with his books, papers, pictures, and other reminders of
home. Nearly four years he was there and made no sign of relenting. Five
months before his death I went to that city and remained his constant attendant
and nurse until his death, the dear Sisters letting me remain with him all day
until he went to sleep at night. The Sisters kept their promise. Not a word of
religion was said to him, but prayers were going up on high for both of us. I saw
the time drawing near when my father would no longer need my care, and I
grieved to see one who had been such a moral man die without other consolations
of religion than my reading the Testament to him. I could see that something
was on his mind ; he was unhappy and ill at ease, fretful, and almost impossi-
ble to please.

One day, while leaning on my arm, he gently guided me towards the chapel of
the hospital. We entered, and he sat there as long as his strength would permit.
As I glanced furtively at him, I saw his great, soulful eyes were full of tears. My
prayer was : " O God ! soften his heart ; even this religion is better than none."
One morning, when I came as usual to pass the day with him, I met the
priest leaving his room as I entered, and I knew as soon as I looked in my fa-
ther's face that he had returned to the true faith and the faith of his fathers.
His face shone with a new, strange light, and I knew the peace of God, which
passeth understanding, had fallen on him. I never think of his peaceful face, from
which every worldly thought had fallen away, that I do not with a heart full of
gratitude say, Thank God for his unspeakable gift of the Sacrament of Penance !
a little taste of heaven to us poor mortals.

I was thankful that he had found peace, but felt more than ever alone. Still
I never let him see the pain in my heart, but tried to enter into his happiness. I
could see how his religion was aiding his footsteps to the grave and envied him
his tranquillity. One day, a few weeks before his death, he asked me to promise
to go to Mass every day I could for three months after his death in order to say
the prayers for the dead for him. I promised, and told him if it would make him
happier I would become a Catholic. The promise seemed to relieve his mind,
and soon after he received the last rites that faithful Mother Church bestows on
her children. And as gently as a child would fall asleep God called his spirit
home.

I returned at once to my profession, and did not forget my promise. I got
several good religious works Faith of our Fathers, the True Religion, and a
?rayer-book and tried all alone to prepare myself for my new step. And to my
surprise I saw the church in a new light, and recognized the truth and beauty of
icr teachings. From a girl I had noticed inconsistencies in the Protestant faith
that forcibly struck me. While professing to take the Testament for a guide, I
saw plainly they only believed as much of it as they individually pleased to accept.
)ur Saviour forbade divorced persons to marry, and it was a constant practice
/ith us to ignore that command. We accused him of not meaning what he said
/hen he spoke the words, " This is my body." He said : " Whose sins you shall
forgive, they are forgiven them ; whose sins you shall retain, they are retained."
"he Protestant says : " That is too humiliating; he don't mean it that way and
we won't do it. We prefer an easier road to heaven." In the creed which the

276 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Nov.,

Episcopalians use they say, " I believe in the Holy Catholic Church," when
they know they are using borrowed words. And that their church, divided as it
is, is far from being universal. We pretended to believe in the Communion of
Saints while we ridiculed the church that actually did. Study, fear, and perplexity
followed and passed away. At last on Friday morning, the 22d of September, 1886,
I started out all alone to become a Catholic. My guardian angel must have
directed me, for I went to a church only a few doors from where part of my child-
hood had been passed. I saw people coming out of the lower church, and walked
timidly down. No one noticed me ; every one was intent on his own devotions.
I waited for a time, and saw some people coming from one of the confessionals.
So commanding all my courage, I entered. The priest asked me several ques-
tions, which I did not answer. Finally, my poor tongue, that had seemed para-
lyzed, managed to say in a very awkward manner, Father, I want to be a Catholic
and I don't know how. The dear, good father said : " God bless you, my child !
Go to the pastoral residence and ask for one of the fathers." I went at once, and
there met for the first time the kind priest who made all so easy for me, and
who for the two happy years I have been a Catholic has been my spiritual direc-
tor. He baptized me. So I became by the grace of God a Catholic. I kept my
word to my beloved father, and not only for three months, but for two years, I
have daily heard Mass for the beloved dead, and the living. My daily prayer is
that God's richest blessings may rest on the good fathers of that church, and the
many Sisters in the different convents throughout the country whose prayers
were the means of bringing so many of a family to the true church.

STORY OF A CONVERSION.

If any one had predicted to me fifteen years ago that I would some day be-
come a Catholic I would have scouted the idea as the most unlikely thing that
could possibly happen. So it appeared to me then, and yet it is now nearly ten
years since I made my abjuration of Protestantism and became a happy member
of the One, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. Truly, the change wrought in me
was a miracle of grace.

I had been strictly brought up by good and pious parents, who were old-fash-
ioned Episcopalians and knew nothing of Catholicism except that our servants
mostly professed that faith, and that it was considered a good religion for them
and other uneducated people, whom I pitied for their blindness to the "pure light
of the Gospel." The only time that I can remember entering a Catholic Church
I was persuaded by a friend to go to Vespers at St. Stephen's. The music was
considered very fine, and it was rather the fashion for young people to go to hear
it on Sunday afternoons. With my ignorant prejudices against the church I felt
all the time as if I were doing something very wicked. I felt great pity for the poor
" idolaters," as I thought them; who bowed to the altar, and my only devotion
while in the church was a fervent act of thanksgiving for Luther and the glorious
Reformation ! Furthermore, I felt it my duty to go to my own church in the
evening to atone for my sin in taking part in a Romish service !

As we grew older, some members of my family and some intimate friends be-
came " Anglo-Catholics," and, though I despised their ritualism and endless talk
of lights, vestments, altars, etc., I was induced to read some of the books written
by " advanced " English clergymen (almost all of whom, by the way, have since

1 888.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 277

become Catholics), and insensibly I came to believe in the apostolic succession, the
Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament, non-communicating attendance during
the communion service, etc. Later, some friends persuaded me to go to confes-
sion to a prominent Ritualistic clergyman, and never shall I forget the anguish of
mind I suffered while reading to that gentleman my general confession covering
more than thirty years. As it was done in good faith I verily believe it earned for
me the grace of conversion.

Shortly after my brother told me one day that he feared he would have to
become a Catholic. I was struck dumb with grief and horror, while he proceed-
ed to quote to me the numerous texts in the Gospels proving the supremacy of
St. Peter and the unity of the church ; how to St. Peter alone were given the keys
of heaven ; how, in mentioning the apostles, he almost always comes first, and it
is generally " Peter and the other apostles " ; how our Lord paid the tribute-
money only for himself and St. Peter; how he said, " I will pray for thee that thy
faith fail not, and when thou art converted strengthen thy brethren."

A light seemed to break in upon me, and I felt from that moment that if our
Lord did, indeed, found a church, that church was the one I had always despised
as only fit for the poor and ignorant. It was a most unwelcome conviction, for it
is a hard trial to turn one's back on all the traditions and teachings of the past,
and to wound the hearts of relations and friends who felt deeply the slight put
upon their own form of worship. But the inner voice could not be stifled, and I
had one great blessing to be thankful for, in addition to the grace of conversion :
my husband felt as I did. In vain we tried to believe in the " branch theory."
Everything we read in history, now that our eyes were once opened to the truth,
confirmed us in .the belief that there is but one church, and that that one was
founded on a Rock. So, after a delay of eighteen months, in order to be quite
assured of our convictions, we had the unspeakable blessing of being received to-
gether into the fold of that dear Mother Church, and never can we sufficiently
thank Almighty God for his great gift of faith.

A PAGE IN MY LIFE'S HISTORY. BY A SCHOOL-GIRL.

My early life passed without pain or trial, with the exception of one great blow
which I thought then small and trivial, but which I now look back upon as my
greatest cross.

Once a sudden and strange idea seized me. I had heard and read a great
deal about boarding-schools, and happening one day to mention my desire to a
dear friend, she concluded she would like nothing better herself, and we both ac-
cordingly agreed to ask our parents' consent. So we parted full of expectation
and hope. But very different were the results. She was refused, while my fa-
ther consented to let me go the following September.

Imagine my surprise and chagrin, for I was a Protestant, when I learned that
my father had chosen a convent, instead of the fashionable boarding-school I ex-
pected him to select. I had read many startling things concerning such places,
and had the most absurd ideas of priests and nuns ; but as my father was inflex-
ible in his choice, I resolved to face the inevitable, and a few months later found
me enclosed in convent walls.

I soon found that the Sisters were very different from what I had imagined.

278 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Nov.,

My foolish notions of them were dispelled, but still I remained very distant, and
spoke to them only when necessary.

I had never learned much of their religion, but to me it appeared like base
superstition, and I firmly resolved to close my heart and mind against all that was
passing around me.

Two years passed away uneventfully, and I was perfectly happy and content-
ed among my new friends.

Few changes occurred outwardly, but in my heart strange things were hap-
pening. I could not shut my eyes to the exemplary lives of the Sisters and my
companions. I could not prevent myself from feeling the influence of their gen-
tle, joyful, and tranquil mien, as I contrasted their contentment with the disquie-
tude of my own heart. The familiarity of the youngest of my companions with
the great truths of which I had, up to that time, heard so little, astonished me. All
this interfered sadly with my peace and happiness. Oh ! the struggle that was
going on within me. Finally, the grace of God prevailed, the victory was won,
and I had made up my mind to become a Catholic, in spite of the pain it would
cause my parents and the sacrifice I knew it would cost me.

Having conquered myself, God made the rest easy, and my first resolve was
to make known my intentions to one of the Sisters.

She bade me consider seriously the step I was going to take, and to com-
mend myself to God and seek his aid by praysr. I received instructions first
from a Sister, and they were completed by the father who conducted our retreat
in 1886. In December I received the most holy Sacrament of Baptism. God had
wonderfully favored me, for I had never been baptized, and now, as the purifying
waters were poured over me, I spiritually felt the veil of sin rise, which left me as
pure and spotless as an infant when first crowned with its baptismal innocence.
To complete my joy, the next morning I received the most holy Eucharist. I
cannot remember how I first came to believe this wonderful mystery ; however,
it was owing to no exertion on my part, for whenever I entered the chapel a
strange sensation came over me, and I found myself involuntarily adoring my
God and Saviour in the tabernacle.

Two years have almost passed since then, and I have never ceased to thank
God for leading me to this source of unbounded happiness. If by my prayers and
example I can induce my parents and sisters to follow my path, my happiness
will be complete.

I cannot bring my " page " to a close until I have expressed my gratitude to
my parents for their generosity and kindness, not only in sending me to a con-
vent, but also in giving their consent to my becoming a Catholic so willingly ; I
feel confident that God will not allow their generosity to pass without reward.

E. D. M.

THE PAN-CORVAN SYNOD.

Once upon a time there was a beautiful black crow. He lived in the north
country, which had formerly belonged to the robin-redbreast family. But being so
large he and his tribe had dispossessed the robins, and finding their little habita-
tions too small, had pulled them down, and built their own nests of unsightly sticks
on the ruins. In the course of years these crows became quite powerful, and
when they found a robin they would pick out his eyes and kill him, and invite the
neighboring crows to the banquet.

1 888.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 279

But it came to pass in the course of time that the crows grew tired of robins
and found carrion much more to their taste, and so they took a sort of pitying
care over the robins and allowed them to live if they did not increase too much.
But tyrants have their day, and so the crows. For there came in one of the great
parliaments of the crows a division ; and one party of the crows said : " Even
though we are crows, yet we are a branch of the robin family." Now, one of them
had a red feather very cleverly sewed in his breast by a milliner, and when he had
shown it to his fellows they wished to be the same. For you must know that
the crows secretly admired the robins, though it was not policy to confess it.

The red-feather party began to increase among the crows, much to the dis-
turbance of the old squawkers, and it was made a penal offence to wear the red
feather. But the daws and the jays and the magpies said, " Let them wear their
red feathers ; no one will ever take them for robins."

The red-feather party were nicknamed robinettes by some wag, and they re-
joiced greatly in the name. Some of them went so far as to paint their breasts
red, and a great emporium was opened in Corvusdale for the sale of red feathers.
But no one ever mistook the crows for the robins.

The robinettes then held a council and sent a long memorial to their gover-
nors and the authorities, in which they attempted to prove that they were all robins
originally. " We are the true robins," they said. " In primitive times the robin
was large like us, with two red feathers. But as he grew old and corrupt in his
ways he grew red-breasted and small like the present robins, who are no robins
at all. Come then, you are the children, with us, of those who left the corrupt
nest of the robin-redbreast, and who built again the true nest of the large primi-
tive black robin. One thing remains to make that work complete which our
ancestors began. Put in two red feathers and all will be well, and we shall be
known for the only true and primitive race of robins in the world, and all the
other birds will wish to be adopted into our tribe."

But those old black robins said : " No ; our fathers were wise, the primitive
robins had no red feathers. If you will be true crows you must not be mock-
robins. We know we are the descendants of the primitive robins, but we will
call ourselves crows, because the robins have our name, and we might be mista-
ken for them if we adopted it. Moreover, would it not be well for you to be
adopted into the robin tribe ? " .

After this the crows and the robinettes agreed to disagree and form a broad
and comprehensive family.

So there joined the crows the cockatoo who screeches so sweetly, and the
rook and the raven, the blue jay came also, and the sea-gull, and the chirping
sparrow also claimed to be a crow. And these all held a synod called the Pan-
Corvan Synod. And there were present the peacock, the crows, the daws, the
magpies, the wagtails, the buzzards, the larks, the parrots, the wrens, thrushes,
sparrows. But the robins were not there. Some red-breasted thrushes came
from over the sea, and the robinettes wanted to admire them, but they dared not
for these thrushes were not proud of their dirty red breasts and would gladly
have painted themselves all black, like their mothers, the crows. So they all
began to caw, and screech, whistle, sing, and call one another at once. And
when they were through an old crow of dignity arose and read the report. And
it was this : " We, the members of the Pan-Corvan Synod, agree to disagree,
and agree not to insist on our disagreements."

280 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Nov.,

Then all the birds flew away, and each, in his own nest and country, ridiculed
the crows and their synod.

After this there arose a " school of thought " among some of the robinettes, and
they said that to be a real robinette one must be painted browh and red, and be
small. So they purchased near-sighted glasses of great power, which they always
used, and thus became small in their own eyes. They even wrote great volumes
to prove that they were real robinettes.

Then arose another school of thought, and these said they were robins and
that the old robins were their brothers, long-lost. But the old robins would not
recognize them as brothers, and the crows disowned them. And at last many
of them died with their glasses on, and a few became real robins by starving
themselves small, and being washed by the authorities among the old robins.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

ARISTOTLE AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. An Essay. By Brother Aza-
rias (of the Brothers of the Christian Schools). New York : William
H. Sadlier.

This is a scholarly essay. It evidences a wide erudition and a skilful
and judicious use of this erudition. Its one hundred and forty pages might
have been extended to ten times the space by a writer with a tendency to
amplification, but Brother Azarias is terse and strong, he condenses rath-
er than amplifies ; from one of his paragraphs a chapter might be made.
Hence, for busy and thoughtful men his essays make agreeable and sug-
gestive reading. One has not to read much to find a little, but on the con-
trary even by reading a little he may find much. The author does not
write merely for the sake of writing. He has something to say and he
says it in masterly manner. He writes on learned questions with the
exactness of a philosopher and with the beautiful expression of a poet.
With him brevity and precision do not become dulness or obscurity. His
style is clearness itself, and to our mind quite a model in its way.

This essay on Aristotle and the Christian Church was prepared by re-
quest of the Concord School of Philosophy, as a contribution to its sum-
mer session of 1887. It was published at the beginning of the present year
by Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., of London. The American edition is a re-
print and almost a fac-simile of the English. It is well printed on good
paper, and has an exhaustive index.

The essay was received abroad with marked approbation. Cardinal
Manning wrote of it as "a book which will be very useful in recalling stu-
dents to the world-wide philosophy of the Catholic Church." The learned
editor of L 'Instruction Publique the organ of the Paris University trans-
lated several chapters into French and issued them in the current numbers
of this important journal.

The author proposes to establish two points : "The true record of the
attitude of the church towards the Aristotelian philosophy, from its con-
demnation by the Council of Paris in 1209 to its full recognition by the
legates of Urban V., in 1366." Brother Azarias writes clearly on this

1 8 88 .] NE w PUBLIC A TIONS. 2 8 1

vexed question'and has cleverly utilized documents which have been re-
cently discovered. The second point the essay proposes to establish is
that Scholastic philosophy is "as distinct from that of the Lyceum as St.
Peter's is from the Parthenon." The task proposed is thoroughly done.
There is no rehash of old thoughts on trite subjects. Whenever some old
ground is gone over, the manner in which the author writes reminds one
of the line of Pope:

" What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed."

This is especially shown in the admirable chapter on the " Limitations of
Thought," which we would wish to quote entire, but rather leave it to our
readers to seek out for themselves.

The learning evidenced is vast and varied, but it is not obtruded. It is
always confirmatory of bold statements or of exact premises. To the stu-
dious and learned priesthood and laity this essay ought to be very wel-
come. We heartily commend it to their attention.

A TREATISE ON PLAIN TRIGONOMETRY. By John Casey, LL.D., F.R.S.,
F.R.U.I., Professor of Higher Mathematics in the Catholic University
of Ireland.

This work is worthy of the high reputation of the writer. It has been
before the public for some time, and this verdict has been pronounced upon
it without reserve by many high authorities. If one might venture to dis-
sent from this chorus of approval it would be in this, that it is difficult to
decide for what period in education it is intended. It deals with a subject
usually classed amongst the elementary parts of a student's mathematical
career, and yet even a very able mathematician would find it a tough job to
master it wholly. However, the principal difficulties lie in the examples,
more especially in those which are contained in the last parts of the work.
Many of these are very interesting, and are on various subjects still occu-
pying the attention of the mathematical world. These are due, many to
Dr. Casey himself and many to Neuberg, M'Cay, Crofton, and other dis-
tinguished contributors. The modern geometry of the triangle, due to Bro-
card, Neuberg, Lemoine, M'Cay, and the author himself, is not left without
notice, and we find a short proof of Malfatti's theorem (Lechmiitz's), and ex-
pressions for the radii of Malfatti's circles, obtained by a process simplified
from one due to Hymer. The formula of Breitschneider and Dostor, con-
necting the lengths of the sides and diagonals of a quadrilateral with its
area, is obtained as a theorem immediately deduced from another theorem.

Although much new matter is introduced, not found in the text-books
in the English language, the book'is not larger, apparently, to the eye than
Todhunter's, as compensation has been made for the additions by improve-
ments in style and method of arrangement. One may see, by comparing
the cumbersome operations of early arithmeticians in such matters as mul-
tiplication and division with the simple methods of modern times, that a
science like trigonometry must beat once simplified and extended by every
man of ability who writes a new treatise on it.

The method which has always been made use of by the writers of
previous text-books to show that sin 6, cos#, etc., are each the product of an
infinite number of factors of a certain type, and of no others, involves cer-
tain assumptions which the writers of previous text-books have laborious-

282 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Nov.,

ly endeavored to prove. Dr. Casey gives a proof on new principles, which,
as far as we can see, seems to be quite satisfactory, and is certainly elegant
and short.

There is a section of Imaginary Angles, with their sines and cosines,
which are, of course, functions of complex functions. There is another on
Hyperbolic Functions, which in the equilateral hyperbola correspond to
sines and cosines in the circle. These last we find, from a note in French
taken from Mansion, to have been invented by Le P. Vincenti de Ricatti,
S.J., in the last century. Both these branches of analysis are now of the
greatest importance, being found in all higher works on mathematics and
physics. We venture to think that this is the first work on trigonometry
in which they have been included which has been produced in the English
language.

It may be interesting, or rather it must be interesting, to all friends of
Erin and of Dr. Casey to hear that his Elements of Euclid has been adopted
as the text book of geometry to be used in the schools of Hindustan.
This, we believe, will secure for it an immense circulation. His Treatise on
Conic Sections is being translated into Spanish, and may possibly succeed to
the European fame of Dr. Salmon's celebrated work on conies, which has
been recognized by all the universities of Europe as the classical work on
that subject during the last quarter of a century. R. C.

RUDIMENTS OF THE HEBREW GRAMMAR. Translated from the seventh
Latin edition of Vosen-Kaulen's Rudiment a. By H. Gabriels, Rector
of St. Joseph's Seminary, Troy, N. Y. St. Louis : B. Herder.

This small duodecimo of one hundred and twenty-eight pages is the
briefest and simplest manual for a short course in the rudiments of Hebrew
we have ever seen, while yet it is complete and sufficient. The grammar of
Tregelles, in English, is very similar to it, and there are one or two other
small manuals of the kind. They are all substantially alike, containing
what is most essential in the larger grammars, of which there are several,
all very excellent. It is much better to use a small rudimentary manual
for that short course which is all that can be given as a part of the obliga-
tory seminary curriculum than to spend time on a large grammar. A long
and thorough course of Hebrew can only be given to a small and select
class of students who engage in it from choice, or to post-graduates in the
University. For such, the grammars of Gesenius, Nordheimer, and Har-
per are amply sufficient, and some one of them, or some other similar
manual, is necessary. For ordinary, practical use in our seminaries, noth-
ing better can be desired than the little- grammar now edited by Dr. Ga-
briels. At the end there are some exercises in reading, and a vocabulary of
the words contained in them. The volume contains, therefore, all that a
student who has two or three classes a week for one year can need or use
with any practical benefit. It is to be hoped that some, after acquiring the
rudiments of Hebrew, will prosecute their studies further in a more
thorough course.

THREE KINGDOMS. A Hand-Book of the Agassiz Association. By Harlan
H. Ballard, President of the Association. Seventh thousand. New
York : The Writers' Publishing Co.

It can scarcely be too often repeated that a knowledge of any branch

1 88 3.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 283

of natural history adds an enduring charm to country life, or even to occa-
sional rambles through wood and field. By a keener, because more intelli-
gent, appreciation of the manifold beauties of nature we are the more
easily led to recognize God in his works, to see in the mirror of nature
some image of his power, his providence, and his love. The enthusiasm
which can be evoked by such study is illustrated by the success of the
Agassiz Association, the record of whose aims, history, and results is con-
tained in the volume before us.

This association was the outgrowth of the author's life-long love of
nature and his belief that " education was incomplete unless it include
some practical knowledge of the common objects around us." It was
founded in 1875 in connection with the school which Mr. Ballard was then
teaching in Lenox, Mass. The work met with such signal success that in
1880 a general invitation was given to school-children throughout the land
to organize branches under a very simple general constitution. The re-
sponse was gratifying beyond expectation, and came from adults as well as
children. Within seven years more than fifteen thousand students have
been aided, and over twelve hundred local scientific societies or chapters
have been established ; some of these are composed wholly of adults.
Where these chapters have been impracticable, individuals have joined as
corresponding members. The aim is to study some branch of natural his-
tory, not so much from books as from personal observation. A cardinal
principle of the association is that " nothing can take the place of personal
contact with nature." And so the members make excursions into the
country, gathering specimens from the animal, vegetable, or mineral king-
doms. These they classify, study, and arrange in cabinets. Papers em-
bodying the results of this observation and study are written, read, and
discussed in the meetings of the chapters. The work has the aid of the
foremost scientific men of the day, and some fifty specialists in various
branches of natural history have volunteered to solve whatever difficulties
may perplex the young naturalist.

This hand-book is filled with valuable information for members of such
an organization. There is so much that is practical in its pages plans for
making simple cabinets, hints for the preservation of specimens, even an
outline of parliamentary rules for use in the meetings. There is a valua-
ble list of the most useful books in the various departments embraced
under natural history. The great charm of the book is in the spirit in
which it is written. It is alive with the enthusiasm of a devoted and rev-
erent lover of nature, and as such it cannot fail to beget in those who use
it the same devoted love ; its influence upon the young especially must be
beneficent to lead them, as the author seeks, little by little into " a wise
and loving study of the works of God."

MEXICO PICTURESQUE, POLITICAL, PROGRESSIVE. By Mary Elizabeth
Blake, author of On the Wing, Poems, etc., and Margaret F.Sullivan,
author of Ireland of To-day. Boston : Lee & Shepard ; New York :
Charles T. Dillingham.

We venture to say that two better representatives of the best type of
American women could not have visited Mexico than the ladies who
wrote this book. They are charming writers, full of fancy's best adorn-

284 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Nov.,

merits of truth poets they both are, indeed full of sympathy with the
whole world's struggling and aspiring people, and truth-tellers of a high
order. Of course we must add that, being American-bred women, they are
full of courage and sufficiently emancipated from the tyranny of conven-
tionality to reap and glean the traveller's harvest to the entire satisfaction
of the reader. The first part of the book describes the country and nation
as seen by the artist and the poet; the second part deals with the material
and political condition of the people.

These two ladies made a journey together into Mexico, enjoying the hur-
ried leisure of the people of our busy North. They have keen eyes, much
taste, brilliant pens, and kindly feelings. They love the antique and they do
not despise the conservative; but withal, they appreciate that the essential
of all true life is progress. And so they put together these twelve chap-
ters of observation, making a really delightful book. What, to tell the
truth, pleases us most is the tone of sympathy throughout ; they love the
people and palliate their defects and emphasize their virtues. They are
not mere travellers, they are Christians, and so they note every elevating
trait of character and use every defect perceived as a suggestion of self-
examination of their own American consciences.

Picturesque Mexico is the name given to the group of eight chapters
forming the first part of this handsome book ; and no land and people in
the two hemispheres better deserve the name picturesque. The mountain
chains are wide and high, and are of wonderful variety, abounding in vol-
canic peaks, and hiding in their remote and almost inaccessible valleys
communities which may be called eremitical. Nearly half of the population
is still of pure Aztec blood, or of that of the races subjugated by'the Aztecs
in prehistoric times ; and the remainder of the people are of every variety
of tint and temperament which can be formed by all degrees of infusion of
the old Spanish-Moresco blood into that of the native Indian. The entire
nation seems to live a dreamy, contemplative life. Those vital forces which
north of the Rio Grande and in Europe are torrents of mighty power seem
south of that river so slow in trade and in literature as to appear to a visitor
at an utter standstill, all the more strangely when seen by a traveller
alighting from that most anti-eremetical of appliances, an American railroad
train. The effect of all this upon the faculties of two observant literary
women is delightfully reproduced in this book as observed among the
classes and the masses, in speech and in dress, in town and country, in re-
ligion (to a very limited extent), and in politics and in commerce, with a
rosy-hued forecast of the future. There is no pretence of a complete study ;
but Mexico has been searched through with two magnets of much attrac-
tive power, namely, the sympathetic interest of these writers ; and the result
is a valuable collection of bright particles whose inspection under a
literary microscope the reader finds of surpassing interest.

Most of these chapters have appeared in our pages, and were at the time
a welcome tonic to our literary organs, taken before Mr. Charles E. Hod-
son's Mexican articles, which appeared soon after. Tnese last are hard
facts, told hard, told by a business man, vouched for by years of residence
in the country, and, what is more, after years of residence in many coun-
tries. The two points of view, that of this book and that of Mr. Hodson,
are the sympathetic and the economical. They are both true, being taken

1 888.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 285

faithfully of the same objects but through different mediums : and|any
human medium through which men and things are viewed, however truth-
ful it may be in itself, is not universal.

The fact is that Mexico is becoming one of the several fields which the
world contains of the conflict between the Oriental and the Occidental.
Business viewed here as it is really, with its own ends in view and none
other, is just the same as if done in the bazaars of the East; it is fair
enough, profitable enough, active enough ; so this book shows it in pictur-
esque glimpses under Moresco arches, about orange-shaded plazas. Busi-^
ness in Mexico, studied by an Anglo-Saxon from the point of view of per-
centages in New York and London, is a miserable business indeed. So with
politics. To be ruled by a military caste whose leaders are natives of the
soil and love the country, is excellent liberty if you look for an arabesque
pattern. And what if the suffrage be an illusion there? What if voting by
proxy, and the blood-curdling spectacle of only one ticket in the field, and
the high-flown pronunciamiento and the volcanic revolution what if all this
holds place instead of conventions and platforms ? Well, what would you
have among a race of olive cheeks and diamond-flashing eyes, to say noth-
ing of the four millions of Aztecs but partly Christianized and less civil-
ized ? Therefore we patiently hear complaints from one who seeks in-
vestment for capital, or who puts mines and haciendas upon the
Anglo-Saxon market.

EMMANUEL, THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. Vol. III. of a Popular Defence
of Christian Doctrine. By Rev. John Gmeiner, Professor in St. Thomas'
Seminary, St. Paul, Minn. Milwaukee : Hoffman Bros.

Since the time of His coming the prophecy has been verified that Christ
is a "sign which shall be contradicted." "What think you of Christ?
Whose Son is he? " is just as much a question of to-day as it was when
the Word Incarnate dwelt among men. And the vindication of his divinity
has ever been the subject of the most profound Christian study, of the
most carefully guarded definition by the great councils of the church. It
is, however, a commentary on the state of religious belief in these days
that such a defence should be a popular need ; that scepticism concerning
so fundamental a truth of Christianity should be so general as to require it.
This is almost wholly the result of the disintegrating principles of Protes-
tantism. The downfall of Arianism and its cognate errors was the defeat
of all popular rejection of the Divinity of Christ, but when Protestantism
broke the unity and coherency of Christian belief, it prepared the way for
a renewal of this general scepticism ; the rejection of the Church of Christ
led to the rejection of Christ as the Son of God, just as the principle of the
right of private judgment in the interpretation of Holy Scripture led first
to its mutilation and finally to the present general rejection, or at least
doubt, of its divine inspiration. An unlicensed critical spirit has been de-
structive of the historical veracity of Gospel and tradition alike concerning
Christ. The teaching of Buddha, Mohammed, and other founders of relig-
ious systems has been made popular, and is made suggestive of such com-
parison with Christ and his teaching as to weaken or destroy faith in his
divinity. This is obviously the fruit of the rejection of the church as the
criterion of truth, the basic error of Protestantism, and this is why the

286 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Nov.,

spectacle of a Colenso or a Stanley in a professedly Christian pulpit is not
an anomaly.

Father Gmeiner's little treatise is, therefore, a valuable addition to his
other volumes of a Popular Defence of Christian Doctrine. It is an ad-
mirable epitome of Catholic teaching, its arguments are clearly and cogent-
ly put before the reader, and the numerous references show the author's
wide research in all subjects kindred to his theme. It is a convincing
though condensed refutation of all, even the most recent, errors of those
who reject Christ, the Son of the living God.

IL MEDAGLIERE DI LEONE XIII. Versi di Geremia Brunelli, Professor di
Letteratura nel Seminario di Perugia. Con versioni poetiche in lingua
Latina, Francese, Spagnola, Tedesca, Inglese. Tournai (Belgique) : So-
cieta San Giovanni Desclee, Lefebvre e Ci. ; New York : Caryl Coleman,
Eccl. Dept. Gorham Manufacturing Co.

The Jubilee of our Holy Father, Leo XI II., has called forth a most won-
derful exhibition of the devotion of the entire Catholic world to the See of
Peter, an unparalleled manifestation of love toward its present occupant
by his faithful children, and many a mark of respect from non-Catholics.
Among the vast number of gifts sent to the Pontiff there is none to be
admired so much as those that are the brain-work of the givers. The
medals of Leo XIII., by Jeremiah Brunelli, professor of literature in the
Seminary of Perugia, is such a work. The author, a warm personal friend
of the Holy Father, has taken for his theme the various medals issued by
the Pope, and in twelve short but very beautiful Italian poems praises
most deservedly the many virtues and works of the Pontiff. His reason
for this form of gift, he tells us, is because the Holy Father delights in
song, and because he became a poet through the fostering care of the
Pope. His words are rendered in English by Francis A. Cunningham, of the
American College, Rome.

The poet was not satisfied to embody his thoughts in Italian alone, so
he asked several of his fellow-poets to translate his verses into Latin,
French, Spanish, German, and English. And we must congratulate him on
the successful manner they have been turned into the several languages,
more particularly the English version by the young American Levite above
named. In order to present his poems and the translations in a form
worthy of acceptance by the Holy Father, and at the same time honorable
to himself, Professor Brunelli called to his aid the celebrated liturgical
printers of Tournay, Belgium, Desclee, Lefebvre & Co., and they have
returned him a quarto volume of great beauty, a marvel of typographical
art ; embellished by fac-similes of the medals ; strong, well-formed initial
letters; and a most artistic portrait of his. Holiness, printed in silvery gray
tones upon a very delicate blue-and-gold background. The latter part of
the volume is taken up with a well-written account of the literary life of
Leo XIII., and illustrated by pictures of his birth-place, residences, etc.
We cannot resist giving our readers the English version of the professor's
poem on the " Medal of the Future " :

" In Broader and more beauteous field of gold,
Come, sculptor, carve what I suggest to thee.
Amidst the purple choir let us behold
Great Leo's figure clothed in majesty ;

1 388.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 287

" The five great sisters, bowing reverently
Before their Father, tell what love his fold
In all the world still bear him ; their free
And willing hands extending gifts untold ;

" And emulating them, before the throne
Of our great Levite, kneel the Arts, to bear
Whate'er of fair or grand the world has known.

" If in this chosen band I could appear
With humble gift, methinks I should have flown
From earth, and touched Heaven's lowest sphere."

THE HISTORY OF CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION, and the Progress of the
Catholic Church in the British Isles (chiefly in England) from 1771 to
1820. By W. J. Amherst, S.J. Two volumes. London : Kegan Paul,
Trench & Co. [For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co., New
York.]

The emancipation of Catholics in Great Britain, while it more immedi-
ately and directly affected the position of Catholics in the British Isles,
was also a matter of great importance to the offshoots of the mother-coun-
try in all parts of the world ; for it was in part the effect and in part the
cause of the now generally recognized right of Catholics to that equality
in civil and religious matters with their Protestant fellow-citizens which
they at present so fully enjoy. Father Amherst was for eleven years
gathering together the materials on which his book is based ; and as it is
the only work in which a systematic account of the events which preceded
emancipation is given, the student of the ecclesiastical history of Great
Britain will find it indispensable. A powerful motive of Father Amherst in
writing and publishing is his desire to stir up the Catholic young men of
our own days to greater zeal in the service of religion and of the church,
by bringing before them the exertions made by their fathers in battling
for those privileges of which they are now enjoying the possession. No
one who has given a thought to the subject can deny that this is a matter
of grave importance. Is the Catholic layman unable to further the cause
of the church in our own times ? Is there no service which he can render?
Are business and pleasure to be his only pursuits? Is he to be left to be-
come just as worldly as Protestants ? No one who is acquainted with
Catholic principles of conduct and action can look with satisfaction upon
the present state of things, and every one must feel, with Father Amherst,
that there is something wanting. To make this want felt has been one ob-
ject of the author of this work.

The Introduction is mainly devoted to the refutation of Mr. Gladstone's
still un retracted assertion that Catholics cannot be loyal to their country.
Then follows the history of the events which between the years 1771 and
1820 led up to the final struggle which resulted in the great act of 1829.
The account of the struggle itself is not given, as it is easily to be found
elsewhere. The period in question embraces many topics of great interest,
such as, e.g., the Veto question, the action of the Catholic Committee and
of Bishop Milner, the opposition encountered by Milner, and the efforts
made to discredit him at Rome. Of the time which it embraces the ac-
count is full and accurate, and the work will form a valuable and indeed
indispensable addition to that English Catholic literature which is doing so

238 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Nov., 1888.

much to dispel the clouds of misrepresentation which have collected in the
past. There is a very full index.

JACK IN THE BUSH ; or, A Summer on a Salmon River. By Robert Grant.
Boston : Jordan, Marsh & Co.

Jack is an American boy who gets a great deal of fun and healthy out-
door recreation on a Canadian river, quite unmindful of the laws relating
to fishing expeditions within her Majesty's Dominion. The delights of
camping-out are vividly described. In one of the trips made by Jack and
his companion, Max, they are startled by a blood-curdling growl, which
came from a monster bear. With no small difficulty the bear is killed.
Boys will devour this book. It is a fine specimen of the printer's art, and
is adorned with choice illustrations.

BOOKS RECEIVED.
i

Mention of books in this place does not preclude extended notice in subsequent numbers.

BRIAN : A Tragedy. Ry Paul MacSwiney. New York : Beith Luis Nion Fraternity.

THE SERMON BIBLE : Genesis to II. Samuel. New York : A. C. Armstrong & Son.

LITURGY FOR THE LAITY ; or, An Explanation of Sacred Objects connected with Divine
Worship. By Rev. James H. O'Donnell. New York : P. O'Shea.

THE PRACTICE OF HUMILITY : A Treatise composed by our Holy Father Pope Leo XIII.
Translated from the Italian by Dom Joseph Jerome Vaughan, O.S.B. London : Burns &
Gates ; New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co.

LITTLE ANTHOLOGY : A Collection of Fables, Descriptions, Epigrams, and Maxims contain-
ing the Roots of the Greek Language. By Very Rev. Canon Maunoury, formerly Profes-
sor in the Seminary of Seez. Translated from the Twenty-fourth French Edition. St.
Louis : B. Herder.

THE BACON-SHAKSPERE QUESTION. By C. Slopes. London : T. G. Johnson ; New York :
The Catholic Publication Society Co.

NOTES ON PARKMAN'S " CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC." By Oscar W. Collet.

MEDITATIONS ON THE LIFE AND VIRTUES OF ST. IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA. Translated from the
French by M. A. W. London : Burns & Gates ; New York : The Catholic Publication
Society Co.

LE CENTENAIRE DU POETE HOLLANDAIS VONDEL. Par M. 1'Abbe Brouwers, Cure de Boven-
kerk-lez-Amsterdam, Chevalier de la Couronne de Chene, etc. Lille : Imprinlrie
Victor Ducoulombier.

LIBRARY OF ST. FRANCIS DE SALES : Works of this Doctor of the Church translated into
English. By Rev. Henry Benedict Mackey, O.S.B. Vol. IV. Letters to Persons in Reli-
gion. London : Burns & Gates ; New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co.

THE CATHOLIC DOGMA: "Extra Ecclesiam Nullus omnino Salvatur." By Michael Muller,
C.SS.R. New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago : Benziger Bros.

HISTORY OF THE CHURCH : From its First Establishment to Our Own Times. By Rev. J. A.
Birkhaeuser, formerly Professor of Church History and Canon Law in the Provincial Semi-
nary of St. Francis de Sales, Milwaukee, Wis. New York and Cincinnati : Fr. Pustet &
Co.

AN EXPOSITION OF THE EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL. By Bernardino a Piconio. Translated and
edited from the original Latin by A. H. Prichard, B.A. Merton College, Oxford. Epistle
to the Romans, and the First Epistle to the Corinthians. London : John Hodges. (For
sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co.)

THE ROSARY OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN. By Fr. Wilfrid Lescher, O.P. London: Burns &
Oates ; New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XLVIII. DECEMBER, 1888. No. 285.

ST. CATHARINE OF GENOA.

IN the north porch of the Church of St. Paul the Apostle on
Ninth Avenue, New York, between the statues of two great
Doctors of the Church, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Alphonsus
Liguori, there stands the figure of a woman clad in a secular
dress. Alone of the four holy women whose effigies find place in
the two side porches, she neither wears a habit nor carries a
distinctively religious emblem. St. Teresa has her beads and
her book of hours; St. Clara holds the monstrance in her hands
and the Franciscan cord encircles her waist; St. Bridget's r ^ 7
wimple and swathing habit proclaim her, too, a nun. But St.
Catharine of Genoa holds up a sweeping robe, from the belt at v -
the waist of which depends a bunch of keys. It is finished at the
throat with a small, rolling collar, and made with "leg-of-mutton"
sleeves A veil is thrown about her head and shoulders, but it
imitates that which still forms part of the street-wear of many
Italian women, and not the coif of the religious.

If you enter the church by this door you will find her again in
the north aisle a portrait this time. Here she holds and is looking
down at a crucifix rising out of a heart, and the eyeless regard of a
skull confronts you from a book pressed against her side. Her
black gown is shapeless, uncinctured, and flowing, but her collar
and cuffs are like those which women wear to-day, and her veil has
become the merest drapery, leaving her smoothly parted hair
exposed and her ears uncovered. It is an intense face, intel-
lectual and worn, that of a woman well on in middle life. There
are several portraits of her in existence, most of which represent
her as she was in youth, when, as her earliest biographer records,
she had " a tall and slenderly made but perfectly proportioned
figure, an oval face with regular features, and a magnificent

290 ST. CATHARINE OF GENOA. [Dec.,

head of hair. Long- black lashes veiled her glance, and her fore-
head, high and smooth, seemed the seat of intelligence and
thought. In a word," he adds, " her exterior was as charming
to the eyes of the world as her soul was pleasing to the eyes of
God." But in whatever other respect the pictures of her differ
with regard to costume the painters now arraying her in silk
ruffled to the waist and velvet over-dress, and again in the simpler
fashion she adopted after her conversion they all agree in leav-
ing it absolutely secular; even in the fresco on the ceiling of the
church of the Annunziata in Genoa, which depicts her reception
into heaven.

How is it that she, who takes her place not only among the
saints, but as if by right between the Doctors, has borrowed
from none of the great religious orders the protection of its
habit?

Well, it is because neither as maid, wife, nor widow did she
ever depart from the plain road of the ordinary good Christian
woman. On that road, it is true, she went farther than most,
even of the great saints, have gone. But so long as she lived
she knew no exterior restrictions save the plain duties of her
state, and no commandments less wide than those two great
ones on which depends the whole law : Thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with
thy whole mind ; and, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
A child, she was obedient to her parents; a wife, to her husband;
a widow, her duties as the unsalaried matron of the great hos-
pital of her native city formed the only special rule that bound
her. Even that commonest feature of devout lives which is
known as spiritual direction does not appear in hers until she
had passed her fiftieth year, having already spent twenty-five
in such a close and uninterrupted communion with God as has
hardly any recorded parallel. At that age she became a widow,
after thirty-four years of a most uncongenial and unhappy mar-
riage. Three years later she fell into ill health which continued
to baffle the physicians until her death at sixty-three, and it is
only when her constant interior occupation had begun to sap
visibly and strangely the foundations of her physical life that we
find a director beside her. Up to that period she appears to
have approached the Sacrament of Penance in the most ordinary
way, accusing herself of her faults and renewing her permission
to receive Holy Communion, but never unveiling what passed be-
tween her soul and God. But that this course, so unusual in the
case of those who are visited with extraordinary supernatural

1 888.] ST. CATHARINE OF GENOA. 291

favors, was dictated neither by self-reliant pride nor natural
reticence becomes sufficiently plain from her own words :

" I gave to Love," she says, in one of the most remarkable of those ac-
counts which have been preserved by her director, a Genoese priest named
Cattaneo Marabotto, in obedience to whom they were given, "the keys of
the house, with full power to do all that was necessary, paying no regard
to either soul or body, to friends, relatives, or the world. . . . And when I
saw that he accepted this charge, I turned toward him to contemplate his
operations, and remained absorbed and attentive to his work. He made
me see that many things were imperfections which I had regarded until
then as just and excellent. He found faults in everything. When, pressed
by my interior fire, I began to speak of those spiritual things which I knew,
because Love had shown them to me, he reprimanded me at once. ' Say
nothing,' he said to me ; ' do not permit the ardor you experience to evap-
orate in words ; do nothing which can procure you any refreshment.'
And then when I kept silent, paying attention to nothing, saying only to
myself, ' If the body cannot endure this, let it die; I do not care,' Love
rebuked me again, saying: 'I desire you to close your interior eyes, so that
the me of the old man cannot see my work ; he must die, and you shall
employ him in nothing.' Then I remained like a mere thing, seeking no
vent but sobs, sighs, and groans ; and yet Love said to me once more: 'You
act as if you were insupportable to yourself : what ails you ? If you experi-
ence a.natural sentiment it is because your own self is still alive. Stop this
sobbing ; I do not wish to see one of these exterior signs.' After having
been reprimanded thus I no longer made any act at all, inward or outward.
But still, when any one spoke in my presence of things which bore analogy
to those which I felt in my soul, my ears unclosed; I hoped to hear some-
thing which would render more tolerable the immense interior assault I
suffered. Thus, too, I looked about me, so that I might forget for a little
the great ardor which consumed me, and procure some alleviation through
the eyes. These acts did not proceed from my free will ; natural inclina-
tion wrought them without my choice, and I did not perceive it. Yet Love
again repressed me. 'This manner of looking and listening displeases me,'
said he ; ' these things are the defences and excuses of the old man, and
they must disappear.' . . . He was so jealous of my soul, he so examined all
things, even in their most minute details, he destroyed with so much care
all which could not live in the presence of God, that, spite of the diabolical
perversity of my natural self, I saw it in the end almost annihilated and no
longer able to cause me any fear.''

As this is neither the first nor the second time that the read-
ers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD have been invited to consider St.
Catharine of Genoa, it will not be necessary to repeat many de-
tails of her exterior life. But the month of All Souls is an ap-
propriate season to give to the study of her who is by eminence
the saint of purgatory ; more than ever in this year, which the
Holy Father has so especially signalized as one of charity to the
suffering souls suffering only because they were not willing to

292 Sr. CATHARINE OF GENOA. [Dec.,

die in this life to " the old man," and become entirely obedient
to the call and admonitions of the Divine Love. It is sufficient
to say that Catharine Fieschi was born toward the close of the
year 1447. The precise date is unknown, but it is probably in-
ferred from that of her baptism, which was conferred in the
cathedral of Genoa, her native city. She is supposed to have
been the youngest of five children, all of whom died before her.
Her father was viceroy of Naples under Rene of Anjou, and
grand-nephew of Pope Innocent IV. Another member of the
house of Fieschi wore the tiara as Adrian V. Her mother, Fran-
cesca di Negro, belonged to a family less well known but not
less noble. Catharine's only sister, Limbania, who is thought
to have been the eldest of the family, became a nun in the con-
vent of Our Lady of Grace at Genoa, and Catharine, whose at-
traction to prayer and to penance had made itself felt as early as
her eighth year, wished to follow her thither. Her father died
in 1460 or 1461, and about this time she made application,
through her confessor, to be received at the convent, but was
refused on account of her extreme youth. She was only thir-
teen, but her ideal of virtue may be gathered from the rules
which she had already followed for several years. She had pro-
posed to herself

" Never to make her own will the principle of her actions, and to be
more in dread of it than of hell or the demons, since nothing could injure
her but by its aid; to conform herself to the will of God in all that happened
to her and in all she sought for; to receive all that should reach heron the
part of creatures as having been arranged by the order of God, since no-
thing occurs without his permission ; and to will all things for the same
ends and through the same motives by which God wills them, without con-
sidering her private interests."

So, when she met this unexpected rebuff, we are told that al-
though it caused her acute distress, at the end of a few minutes
she regained composure, saying to herself with energy :

" It is God who subjects me to this trial. His adorable will opposes
itself to my design for reasons which I do not know, but which must be
merciful and just. I resign to him the disposal of myself, in order that he
may bring me to my end by ways which his wisdom judges to be the best."

Nevertheless, she did not at once abandon her desire to be-
come a nun, and counted upon making another effort when she
should have reached the proper age. But having been left under
the care of her eldest brother by the death of her father, he
arranged a marriage, ior political and family reasons, between

1 8 88.] Sr. CATHARINE OF GENOA. 293

her and Julian Adorno, who belonged to a house which had risen
by force of riches from the middle class to the highest honors of
the republic during the often-repeated struggles between the
factions of the Guelphs and Ghibellines. With the acquiescence
of his mother, James Fieschi offered his sister's hand to the hus-
band he had selected for her, and it was accepted. All other
preliminaries having been arranged, that which her relatives ap-
pear to have thought the least important of them all was
attended to, and Catharine, who had just entered her six-
teenth year, was notified that her marriage was fixed for the I3th
of January, 1463. She seems to have offered no resistance.

"Accustomed from her earliest infancy," says one of her biographers,
"to live in perfect obedience to her mother, and to see the divine will in the
order of his providence, she submitted without a murmur. A humble vic-
tim, sacrificed to family interests, she allowed herself to be led to the altar,
and pronounced the fatal yes, notwithstanding her horror of the marriage
tie."

From every human point of view the alliance was most ill-
advised. Even the policy which prompted it proved mistaken,
for Julian Adorno, possessing no good points save a handsome
person and powerful connections, neutralized even these by his
hard, selfish, and sensual dispositions. If there were children of
the marriage, as some of the lives tell us although the oldest one,
written by her director, makes no mention of them they died in
infancy, and Adorno, who was both a gambler and a spendthrift,
speedily wasted both his own fortune and that of Catharine. It
had been her wish to be a good wife and to gain her husband's
affection, but in this she failed. Nevertheless, while himself pur-
suing the same profligate career as before his marriage, he im-
posed upon her the most rigorous seclusion. The English trans-
lation from what is known in Italy as the Vita Antica, or Old
Life, written by Padre Marabotto, which was brought out some
fourteen years ago by the Catholic Publication Society, says of this
period that Catharine was always obedient and patient with her
husband's eccentricities, but at the same time suffered so much
from him that her health was broken and she became so re-
duced and wasted as to be a most pitiable object. To satisfy
him she lived alone in a solitary house, never going out but to
hear one daily Mass, from which she returned as quickly as
possible. Her lonely days and nights were spent chiefly before
her crucifix in prayer. And, if one may hazard a conjecture, it
seems probable that it is to this period that she refers in the first
chapters of her Spiritual Dialogue as the " week of contempla-

294 Sr. CATHARINE OF GENOA. [Dec.,

tion" which the Soul secured to itself when first it began its jour-
ney in company with the Body and Self-Love. Her innocent
childhood, hardly ended as to years when she became a wite, with
its lowly submission and its lofty prayer, could not have suffered
much from either source.

Catharine must have been twenty-one when, yielding to the
solicitations of her family and her friends, who began to fear for
her life on account of the weakness and emaciation to which she
had been reduced, she consented to enter into the ordinary rela-
tions of Genoese society. She busied herself, says one of the lives,
in " external affairs and feminine amusements, as women are prone
to do, yet not to a sinful extent." But as the saints judge them-
selves, not according to their external acts, but by the conform-
ity of these to the grace which preceded them, Catharine her-
self paints this period in words which speak the most poignant
contrition. It lasted five years, and was then ended by a con-
version, so sudden and so complete that it has been ranked with
that of St. Paul, and the day on which it occurred, March 22,
1473, is given in some calendars as that of her feast. It is more
usual, however, to observe, with the church, the day of her death,
which took place September 14, 1510.

Her conversion was on this wise: Her compliance with the
solicitations of those who represented to her that her manner of
life was only a slow suicide had never been spontaneous and
hearty. Though she committed no sin, as the world counts sin,
by going into society, by dressing and amusing herself like other
women of her age and social rank, yet she did decline from her
own vocation, which was to a life of solitude and prayer, and to
the attainment of which even the faults and the folly of her hus-
band actively contributed. It seems probable, moreover, that
her new departure, however agreeable to her other friends, was
not wholly to Julian Adorno's liking. Certain it is, that when
she once for all abandoned it,, after a trial of five years, he not
merely renounced voluntarily his conjugal rights, but turned
from his evil ways, became a tertiary of St. Francis, and for
twenty-four years lived an honest life ajid made a good death.
Before his end arrived he had regained a part of his fortune,
which he left to her by a will in which he expressed strongly his
appreciation of her virtues. Nevertheless, in spite of his reform,
he never ceased to lead her a hard life. His temper was severe
and violent, and in his last sickness, which was attended by keen
and long-continued pains, he fell into complaints so blasphemous
that his final conversion is accounted as due to a miracle

1 888.] ST. CATHARINE OF GENOA. 295

wrought in answer to his wife's prayers. But this is antici-
pating.

A prey to the remorse which increased as she sank deeper into
what every one else called innocent amusements, Catharine, then in
her twenty-sixth year, went one day to visit her sister and open
her mind to her. By Limbania's advice she sought the confessor
of the convent. She had no sooner entered his confessional than
he was summoned elsewhere, and, bidding her wait for him, he left
it. In his absence " a ray of celestial light illumined her intelli-
gence, and she felt a burning dart penetrate the depth of her
heart and kindle there the flame of love divine." Carried be-
yond herself, she almost lost the power of speech, and was only
able to signify to the priest when he returned that her confession
must be deferred. As soon as she could she made her way
home, saying within herself: " No more world, no more sin."

"Her vocation and her correspondence with it," writes Padre Mara-
botto, " were like those of the glorious Apostle St. Paul ; that is, in one in-
stant she was made perfect. And this was evident, because in that instant
and ever thereafter she proceeded not like a beginner but like one already
perfect ; for this reason she never knew how to give any account of the
way to obtain perfection, because she herself had not attained it by
acquired virtues, but simply by infused grace, which instantaneously
wrought in her such effects as usually require the uninterrupted exercises
of a whole life."

Nevertheless, this testimony of her director needs some quali-
fication. Catharine herself continually speaks of the growth and
increase of divine love in her soul, and of her purgation as the
work of years. What she actually received in that instant of
her conversion, and never lost again, was such a vision of the Su-
preme Good as caused everything else to recede and take its
proper place for ever. To her, as to St. Paul, there had been re-
vealed that for which all souls yearn, however blindly the love
of God, made manifest in Jesus Christ. Her conversion, indeed,
was perfect, for it was a complete and permanent turning away
from creatures to seek satisfaction in their Creator ; but she her-
self, who was to experience the purging flames of love and help
to kindle them in other hearts, has another tale to tell concerning
what followed it. True, she says that from the moment of. her
conversion she was so filled with the love of God that she could
never at any moment see how it could increase within her;
yet she adds:

"Every day I felt myself ridded of trifles which pure Love cast out
from me ; his penetrating eyes saw imperfections the most slight, the most

296 Sr. CATHARINE OF GENOA. . [Dec.,

secret, the most unobserved, and he purified my interior more and more
until it was completely clean. God performs this work without calling
man to his aid ; the Lord alone comprehends the purity which must be at-
tained, but, by a disposition full of mercy, he shows the work to man only
when it is perfected. For, should a creature who has once remitted itself
entirely into the hands of Jesus, and who can no longer desire anything
but perfection, comprehend once what the least imperfection is in the
sight of the Most High, and then see in itself all those which God discov-
ers and casts out therefrom, it would be reduced to ashes."

And again she thus describes the work of God in the soul :

"God begins by inciting man to abandon sin ; afterward he illuminates
the understanding by the light of faith; then he inflames the will by
means of a certain delight and savor. He accomplishes this triple opera-
tion in an instant, and more rapidly than one could believe ; he does so
more or less in men according as he sees them produce the fruit which should
result from it ; but he accords to every soul light and grace enough to save it,
providing it yields its consent and does what lies within its power. As to this
consent, it is sufficient, after the divine call, that the creature should yield
itself to its Lord in order that he may do what he wills within it; that it
should resolve to sin no more, and to quit all things for the love of the
Most High. This assent takes place as soon as man's will unites itself to
that of God, and even without his knowledge; he does not see his own
consent, but there remains in him a powerful interior impression which
effectuates it. This union in spirit attaches man to God by a tie which is,
so to say, indissoluble ; for, after God has spoken, and the creature has
yielded consent, God works almost alone ; and if man lets himself be guided,
if he obeys the inspiration which is sent him, he disposes him, leads and
conducts him to the perfection for which he was created."

What meaning St. Catharine herself attached to this doctrine,
which has sometimes been perverted, is plain enough Irom her
conduct. That forms the most complete commentary on her
words. God begins, she says, "by inciting man to abandon sin ;
afterward he illumines his understanding by the light of faith."
What God did for her was to enlighten her conscience as to the
gravity of her offences against him, showing her at the same
time the love with which he had created and redeemed her.
For two or three days she remained, plunged in the profound
grief occasioned by this double view, and then made a general
confession so complete and contrite that the priest who received
it was amazed. And on the feast of the Annunciation, which was
the third day after her conversion, on receiving the Body of our
Lord she received also that hunger for the Bread of Life which
never left her afterward, and could only be satisfied by daily
Communion. That sounds extraordinary, but, if it be so, it is
only in degree. In kind it is what animates every truly Chris-

1 888.] ST. CATHARINE OF GENOA. 297

, tian soul and keeps it sane and healthy in a world full of weak-
ness and delusions. What it means is, that the interior action in
the soul which moves it to desire and seek after the supernatural
gifts of God, can only be surely known as his when it corre-
sponds with his exterior action in the kingdom of Jesus Christ
on earth, the church which he has founded. It is not sufficient,
as the " Bible Christian " holds, to have an intellectual belief in
the historical Christ of the Gospels ; to admit, in words, his
divinity ; to form an ideal of him, no matter how reverent, nor
even to pray to him, except it be with a mind entirely simple,
sincere, and ready to follow his inspirations. " Lo here is Christ,
and lo there," says every sectary that Christendom has known,
and with the Book in his hand he has sought to impose on men
his own conception of the Word Incarnate. But our Lord Jesus
Christ is not an ideal of any man's mind. He is real, he is pres-
ent in the world ; on myriads of altars he is offered to his Father
from the rising of the sun to its setting. He is the seed of im-
mortality for soul and body to those who feed upon him; he is
the centre to which the longings of all souls point; it is his pres-
ence which excites the desire even of those who do not know
him, and it is he alone who can satisfy it.

That, as it seems to me, is the one great lesson taught by the
life and doctrine of St. Catharine of Genoa. All of her experiences
illuminate and corroborate each other. And it is for this rea-
son that Upham's treatise on her, which the " American Tract
Society " brought out many years ago, under the title of Catha-
rine Adorno, is so unsatisfactory. It is called a life of her, but
it is not so. It seeks to adapt her doctrine and her wonderful
interior experiences to the uses of Protestant perfectionism,
and with that end in view it gives a tolerably full account of
many of those sayings by which she sought to express the inex-
pressible. But of that which fed and kept alive the inner life which
he finds so wonderful and so inimitable, Upham has nothing to
say. Really the most prominent of the few facts of her external
life, he passes it by in silence as a superstition which belonged to
the dark age in which she lived, an imperfection which would
lot have entered into it had she been born in post-Reformation
times. There is something pleasant in the naiivet6 of the man
when, nearing the end of his unbroken eulogy, he pauses to con-
sider an objection which he foresees that his readers will bring
against him. They will wonder, he knows, that he has recorded
no relapses into sin, no falls and risings again, no "backsliding,"
in short. Well, he says, it is because he cannot see that any such

298 Sr. CATHARINE OF GENOA. [Dec.,

befell her. Her course went straight upward, and she never cast
a glance behind. It is marvellous in his eyes, but so it is. He
supposes she tried harder than he and his readers, and was more
faithful. He has no other explanation to offer. And yet he could
not have read the lives from which he compiled his own with the
most casual attention and not have found the open secret he is
looking for. Hatred of sin he can see there, for it is writ large,
and the " law in his members, fighting against the law of his
mind," makes him comprehend it. And the desire of perfection,
too, he sees, and in his fashion feels it, for " every creature
groaneth and travaileth in pain ; . . . even we ourselves, who have
the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan within ourselves, waiting for the
adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of the body." What
ails him is, that heresy has blinded him to what St. Paul saw, and
St. Catharine the present Christ, the food of those " who walk not
according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit." The conver-
sion and the spiritualgrowth of St. Paul and St. Catharine have,
indeed, more points of resemblance than that of their instanta-
neous thoroughness. To each of them was vouchsafed the vision
of Jesus Christ; and as the Apostle testifies to the Corinthians
that it was from the Lord himself that he received the doctrine
of the real presence of his Body in the sacrament, so Catharine
bears witness that it was from that source that she drew the force
of her new life:

" I find in me,'' she says, "only two things to which I cannot bring my-
self to consent, and but one which it is impossible to me not to wish for
and desire. That which I long for is the Holy Communion, for that is God
himself. Those to which I am unable to consent are sin, no matter how
slight, and the Passion of our Saviour. Do what I may, I cannot be pleased
that God, my Love, should have endured torments so immense; I would
rather, were it possible, suffer for every soul as many pains as there are in
hell."

She received the Blessed Sacrament every day, but she said
once :

"Should my confessor say to me, ' I do not wish you to communicate,'
I would answer him, ' Very well, father. Only, I cannot say with you that
J do not "wish to, for I wish to very much ! ' '

She envied no one but priests, we are told again, and that not
because they received our Lord each morning, for that she did
likewise, but because they held him in their hands, and at Christ-
mas might celebrate three Masses.

" Ah, Lord ! " we find her crying to him, " it seems to me that if I were

1 888.] Sr. CATHARINE OF GENOA. 299

dead I should revive again to receive thee, and if one presented me with an
unconsecrated host I should know it as one knows wine from water."

Even the few facts of her exterior life which go be} 7 ond the
ordinary for instance, her complete fasts from all food except
what she herself calls " the Bread of Life, which is Jesus Christ,
our Lord, our Saviour, and our Love," during the Lents and
Advents of twenty-three successive years bear witness to this
one point, in which meet the exterior and the interior action of
God upon souls regenerated in his Son.

And that is why it seems as if too much stress has hitherto
been laid, even by her most faithful biographers, on the extraor-
dinary nature of her experiences. Excepting these fasts, which,
as she said when spoken to about them, were involuntary and
wholly the work of God, there are no miracles in her life except
such as are constantly wrought in answer to earnest prayer.
Conversions were ascribed to her petitions during her life, but
no cures of bodilv maladies until after her death. She was not
the instrument of mighty external works, as was St. Catharine of
Siena, nor of marvellous ones such as attested the mission of St.
Francis Xavier. She was simply a woman, too young at the
period of her marriage, as well as too much absorbed in the
science of God, to have acquired much of the knowledge of her
time. Her intelligence, certainly, must have been clearer than
most, since she grasped so soon and held so firmly the truth that
the Uncreated Good alone is desirable. But she lived the
ordinary external life of women from her cradle to her grave,
occupying herself, it is true, in works of charity to the poor and
the sick, but not more so than many another of her sex who has
lever attained the honors of the altar. What is extraordinary
about her is the complete purity to which her soul arrived while
in the body, and the road to that, as she herself describes it, is
very plain, and so within the reach of every one of us that no one
;an miss it except by turning aside to sin :

" Let him," she says, "who wishes to experience these things abstain, as
St. Paul commands, from every appearance of evil. Whenever man does
this, at once God infuses into his soul some gift of grace, which he increases

'jith so much love that the man is lost, absorbed, transformed, and overpowered.
And however difficult it may seem to abstain from evil, no one would allow
any hindrance to prevent him from doing everything for God who could

je the readiness with which he comes to the help of man, and the loving
:are with which he defends him from his adversaries. But when man has
once entered the straight road, he learns that // is God who works all that
is good in us by -his gracious inspirations and the love infused into the soul,

300 SHOOTING STARS. [Dec.,

which knows no hindrance because God mingles so great a satisfaction
with all its toils. // is enough for man not to act in contradiction to his con-
science, for God inspires all the good he would have us do, and gives the instinct
and the strength for it."

That is the path, the straight and unique path, which begins
with the Commandments and stretches on into the special calls
made known to each soul at every moment by the duty or the
inspiration of that moment. And the guide is one Love. And
the end is one God. No soul walking along it, with an eye
single, need pass through any other purgatory. And no soul,
entering the cleansing fires beyond this life, will ever do so but
because he has wilfully departed from it in greater or lesser
degree.*

ELIZABETH G. MARTIN.

SHOOTING STARS.

A FLASH ! and then a darkness ;
A world and now 'tis gone.
God of Might ! what means it?
Worlds are falling round us,
Yet we live on !
Chicago, MARY J. ONAIIAN.

* The Holy See has granted to the diocese of Genoa the public celebration of the feast of
St. Catharine, and we sincerely hope that before the end of his pontificate the present Holy
Father will extend the privilege to the whole church. The virtues of St. Catharine and the
character of her spirituality suggest to us the method God would follow in the sanctification of
the American intellect. She was of the Northern Italian stock, called the Yankees of Italy. It
is pleasant to know that the Church of St. Catharine of Genoa in this city, One Hundred and
Fifty-fifth Street and Tenth Avenue, is, so far as we are aware, the first one of that title in the
New World. ED.

1 888.] THE HOME ASPECT OF IRISH A f FAIRS. 301

THE HOME ASPECT OF IRISH AFFAIRS.

IT is some ten years the past summer since I had the oppor-
tunity of observing the aspect of Irish affairs on Irish soil, and,
as these have been busy years in the political life of the country, I
went there a few months ago, expecting to find things greatly
changed. Nor was I disappointed. Ireland has undergone
changes in the last ten years that amount to little less than a
revolution. There has unfortunately been no change in the
government or the weather ; both are still bad. But there has
been a vast change in the sentiments and social condition of the
people. The political caldron that has been boiling so fast and
furious for these years has drawn the whole population of the
island within its vortex and has imparted to the people some-
thing of its own heat and energy.

When a visitor from our shores looks out upon the Irish
landscape and sees the melancholy mists hang over the hills
that girdle the pensive valleys, and the almost invariable fore-
ground of silent ruins, and the sparse population plodding
leisurely along, and then the quiet towns and deserted vil-
lages through which he passes, the American observer cannot
help thinking that the country is asleep ; that stagnation and
decay brood over the land ; that all activity, whether industrial
or intellectual, has fled from its inhabitants. But let him ques
tion the first man he meets on the political situation and he will
find a mental Vesuvius; he will discover that the country is alive
and alert; that the people of Ireland fully realize their backward
condition, know their national needs, and take the keenest in-
terest in public affairs. There is no such thing as apathy or dull
indifference to be met with in any quarter. The very beggars
on the streets have their views on the situation, and they are
energetic and not unfrequently eloquent in their expression of
them. Such universality of interest and activity is rarely wit-
nessed in the sweep of the most popular movements. And in
view of this general awakening of the people we must regard
the agitation of the past ten years as a vast process of education
which has disciplined the Irish people to think and act, and, I
am happy to say, to think and act for the most part in unison. It
has been the necessary, and, I make bold to say, the providential
preparation for the responsibilities of self-government which
they are about to assume. Other movements there have

302 THE HOME ASPECT OF IRISH AFFAIRS. [Dec.,

doubtless been that evoked great enthusiasm and stirred the
country to its depths, but I am quite convinced that the present
movement has had a greater effect in moulding the political
thought and tone of the people, and has made a more lasting
impression on the mind of the nation, than any that has preceded
it. It has, in very truth, created a new heart and a new soul in the
body politic. The most listless observer cannot help being im-
pressed by the earnest and intelligent interest which all classes
take in the political situation, and the fixed determination and con-
fident hope of the vast majority that a final adjustment must be ar-
rived at in the not distant future. Indeed, the opinion is prevalent
among all parties that the present struggle will be decisive, and
political feeling runs high alike in the castle and the cabin. Ten
years ago a large part of the Irish people would have been satis-
fied with a reasonable settlement of the land question ; they
looked for nothing more. Some there always were who de-
manded Repeal, but they were regarded as impractical politi-
cians. To-day and henceforth the land question is secondary.
Were the land given over to the tenants to-morrow they would
not be content to take it without Home Rule. It is no longer a
matter of opinion or debate in Ireland as to the advantages to be
derived from self-government ; it is not an open question, as the
tariff question is with us, but it is the settled, unalterable con-
viction of five-sixths of the Irish people that Home Rule is the
only possible future for their country. Nor are their ideas of the
benefits that would accrue from national autonomy something
vague and indefinite; they are tangible and they would seem
to be practical.

The feeling that Ireland is a distinct nation and ought to
have control of her own affairs has, of course, been the dominant
sentiment of her people for centuries, but the aspiration after
self-government is now far more than that; it is a fixed principle
in the national mind, as well as a fixed feeling in the national
heart. This is the hopeful aspect of the Irish question at home.
The people have quite made up their minds that nothing short
of Home Rule will do. My experience in the country satisfies
me that the Home-Rule movement has come to stay. It can
never again be suppressed, and I doubt if it can be much longer
delayed. No one can come in contact with the present agitation
in Ireland without feeling that there is the awakened conscious-
ness and strength of a nation behind it, and its march, however
checked or impeded, is as irresistible and as certain as the move-
ment of a glacier, and, like the glacier too, it gathers force

1 888.] THE HOME ASPECT OF IRISH AFFAIRS. 303

steadily and stealthily as it advances. Prudent men and promi-
nent men of naturally conservative tendencies, who ten years
ago looked askance at the advanced party in Irish politics and
shook their heads ominously when the Parnell programme was
mentioned, are to-day the most pronounced Home-Rulers, and
they will assure you as their absolute conviction that there is no
other possible remedy for the country. In very truth, so uni-
versal and so unequivocal is the sentiment of Home Rule
throughout the land that any man, not in the government em-
ploy or belonging to the landlord class or actively identified with
an Orange lodge, who questions the necessity and utility of self-
government is looked upon as a crank. I had a conversation
with one young gentleman who spoke rather languidly of the
movement, and when I asked him if he did not think that Home
Rule would be a benefit to the country he replied that it prob-
ably would, but then it would make game-preservation next to
impossible. Another gentleman, a great lover of trees, thought
Home Rule might be a very good thing, but it would not foster
plantations ; it might even lead to the destruction of the woods,
and that would be a great calamity. I sympathized with him
somewhat. Others, again, object to Home Rule because they
think it would bring a flood of democracy upon the country.
The real old Irish gentleman would lose his position in society,
and to a great extent his occupation also. This is doubtless true,
and it would not be the least among the benefits that self-govern-
ment would confer. I did not get the objections of any full-
blooded Orangeman, but, of course, the great objection of Irish
Protestants generally is that Home Rule means Catholic ascen-
dency, though I am happy to say that numbers of Protestants
whom I met had no such objection to make and were strongly
in favor of Home Rule. As to the rank and file of the Catholics,
they are Home-Rulers to a man. and, I would be strictly justified
in saying, to a woman also. About the first question put to you
on all occasions by the most casual acquaintances is, " What do
you think of the chances of our getting Home Rule in Ireland ? "
And if you expressed yourself affirmatively and thought they
were good, the response invariably followed, " God send it
soon"; and there are few readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD
who would not, I think, heartily join with me in the amen.

The present regime is altogether the most hateful that poor
Ireland has had to endure in recent times. Mr. Balfour has un-
dertaken to establish a reign of terror in the country. But he
don't terrify, he only exasperates. That is one of the notable

304. THE HOME ASPECT OF IRISH AFFAIRS. [Dec.,

features of the present agitation. The people have lost their
terror of the law. The midnight raids of the police do not alarm
them ; they take all such things very coolly in Ireland now.
Even the frowning shadow of the county prison does not chill
them as it once did. The fact that so many gallant gentlemen
have been locked up lately has robbed the prison-cell of its
odium in the eyes of the people. To have occupied a plank-bed
for one's country has become an undoubted distinction. The
Irish suspect is as proud of his distinction as a d6cor6 of the
Legion of Honor under the First Empire. Anything- more ut-
terly destructive of all respect for law and civil authority than
the present methods of the Irish government cannot be con-
ceived. English laws were, of course, never held in very pro-
found respect in Ireland, but now they have positively lost the
power of exciting even fear. And how can it be otherwise?
Men highest in the esteem of their fellows, men of the most
pure and self-denying lives, men whose characters and careers
are open and upright as the day, are arrested, subjected to a mere
mockery of trial, and clapped into prison, not for deeds or even
words of violence, but for words of counsel and encouragement
to a grossly wronged and suffering people. Men who preach
peace to the exasperated multitudes and tell them that every
overt act they commit is a crime alike against their country and
their God ; men whom their opponents admit condemn crime,
at least as a matter of policy these men to be treated as felons
and made to herd with common criminals ! If this course and
it is the one persistently pursued by the present government in
Ireland be not exasperating, there is nothing in the history of
human injustice that is. And all this in the last quarter of the
nineteenth century and under the most liberal and enlightened
government in the world, forsooth ! The most damaging im-
peachment of the present government and its methods that I
heard when in Ireland came from the lips of one of the most
gentle and conservative members of the Irish episcopate ; and I
felt that the condition of things must be bad indeed when such a
man could not keep his patience with the administration. Not a
few of the government officials, and even the police, express their
disgust for the duties they have to perform, and there is more re-
luctance on their part to enforce the coercion laws than is gene-
rally supposed. To show the spirit that animates the govern-
ment I will mention an incident related to me by a gentleman of
position in one of the midland counties. A certain police in-
spector was transferred from a quiet district to a disturbed one

1 888.] THE HOME ASPECT OF IRISH AFFAIRS. 305

where evictions had taken place. He was given to understand
that there was a suspicion that he had too much sympathy with
the people and was too lenient in the discharge of his duties. In
his new field, however, there would be ample opportunity for
him to prove his loyalty. A collision between the police and
the evicted tenants in this district was imminent, and the inspec-
tor came to consult with my informant as to what course he
should pursue. If he did not give his men the order to fire
on the defenceless people when the collision came, his loyalty
would be still further suspected; if he did give the order to
fire he would incur universal odium. What was he to do? I
regret to say he was inclined to prove his loyalty, even at the ex-
pense of shedding defenceless blood ; but he was persuaded to
invoke the aid of the local clergy to avert the threatened colli-
sion, and thus he escaped from the dangerous dilemma, though it
is very doubtful if he satisfied his task-masters in Dublin Castle by
the course that he took. This incident enables us to understand
the conduct of the magistrates and police officers in the affair at
Mit.chelstown, where so much innocent blood was so wantonly
shed. Loyalty to the behests of the Irish government just now
means disloyalty to all the sentiments of common humanity. It
were needless to refer to the grossly inhuman character of the
evictions that are of such frequent occurrence. The newspaper
reports have made the whole civilized world familiar with these
atrocities. An Irish eviction is beyond question the cruellest,
most barbarous thing the nineteenth century knows of. But
why don't the tenants pay their rents ? They do when they are
able. If a farm is taxed out of all proportion to the value of its
products, to meet the full demands of the landlord is plainly im-
possible. The most the tenants can do under such circumstances
is to offer as much of the rent as they can, and this, with few ex-
ceptions, they are doing. There are, of course, dishonest men in
Ireland as elsewhere who try to evade their just obligations.
There are farmers who take advantage of the disturbed state of
things and refuse to pay fair and just rents. These men are
rogues simply, and they should receive the treatment meted out
to thieves in every civilized community. I think it very proba-
ble, too, that this class is on the increase, though I believe it
still far from numerous. Look at the general aspect of the
igrarian question as it stands, however, and you will see the
>osition in which the tenant farmers of Ireland are placed. The
British government has admitted again and again, and confirmed
by repeated acts of ParliameD*, the broad fact that the contracts

VOL. XLVIII. 20

3o6. THE HOME ASPECT OF IRISH AFFAIRS. [Dec.,

between the landlords and the tenant farmers of Ireland were
unfair, nay, even unjust, and these contracts have been in thou-
sands of cases set aside and readjusted by the supreme authority
of the state. Courts have been established to fix fair rents and
are now in full operation throughout the country. So that, on the
admission of the English government itself, the great majority of
the tenant farmers of Ireland have been paying excessive and
therefore unjust rents for generations. Now, the machinery put
in motion to correct this injustice is notoriously inadequate.
Only a small proportion of the rack-rented farmers can secure
redress in a reasonable time ; and besides the " law's delay "
there is considerable expense attending it, which numbers cannot
afford. The opinion, too, is gaining ground and, I fear, not with-
out some foundation that these land courts are partial to the land-
lords ; hence it is that recourse to them is neither as feasible nor
as general as the situation demands. What are the distressed
tenants to do meanwhile? Make the best terms they can with
their landlord, of course, and, if he prove unreasonable, hold out
against him by every possible means that their needs can dic-
tate, their wits can invent, and their consciences can permit.
And this is exactly their attitude and the present phase of the
fight. As a case in the concrete will enable my readers to
realize the actual condition of the tenant farmers better than any
general or abstract statement on the subject, I venture to submit
one. I formed the acquaintance of a fairly intelligent man who
rented a farm of forty-three acres from a noble lord whose pres-
ence in Ireland would never be known only for the report of his
gun in the shooting season. I tried to get to the bottom of this
man's farming and financial affairs, and he was not unwilling to
enlighten me. This farmer had a family of seven children, most
of them girls ; he worked the farm himself with the assistance
of his son ; he seldom or ever hired help, so that his farming
operations were conducted on the most economical if not the
most scientific basis. The land was good, the labor of the hus-
bandman unceasing. What were the fruits ? The net income
from cattle, pigs, poultry, hay, oats, potatoes, turnips, milk,
butter, eggs, etc., for ten years, never once exceeded .65 a year,
and some years was under .55 and each year the absentee
landlord received 46 12s. Sd., leaving the wretched balance to
the toiling tenant to pay his taxes and meet the current expenses
of his family. There has been an appeal made to the land courts
in this case, of course, but the judges have not got to it yet ; they
will doubtless reach it by and by and decide it at their leisure.

1 888.] THE HOME ASPECT OF IRISH AFFAIRS. 307

Many of my readers who know the cruel exactions of some Irish
landlords will consider this a very mild illustration of the harsh-
ness of the system ; but just because it is a mild illustration and
represents the system almost at its best it seems to me all the
more forcible. With such hard facts before us it were idle to
add that the great mass of the tenant farmers of Ireland cannot
secure anything more than the bare necessities of life ; they have
few of its comforts and absolutely none of its luxuries. Their
toil is unremitting, their fare meagre, their houses poor, and their
position insecure. Is it any wonder they clamor for change ?

The angel of democracy that soars so constantly on the hori-
zon of the nineteenth century has touched the tenant farmers of
Ireland with his wings, and they will never again settle down in
mute submission to injustice or stolid indifference to their rights.
A great change has come over them already a change that is
not, perhaps, an unmixed blessing, but there it is, and there is no
mistaking its meaning. They realize that as members of the
same human family their wants and desires have to be consid-
ered as well as those of the landlords, and that the first-fruits of
their industry should belong to themselves and their families.
The last shadow and sense of vassalage has disappeared forever.
They no longer stand cringing and uncovered in the presence of
their hereditary rulers, but meet them as man to man, asserting
their rights and insisting upon them.

Reverence for rank and social station is said to be a promi-
nent, and it was thought to be a permanent, element in the Irish
character, but it is amazing how rapidly this element is being
eliminated in the old land itself. There is more social homage
paid to a lord, simply because he is a lord, in certain circles of
New York society to-day than there is in Cork. In no other Eu-
ropean country with which we are acquainted is the spirit of de-
mocracy so visibly at work and the influence of so-called Ameri-
can ideas so manifest as in Ireland ; and, strange'to say, the mem-
bers of the aristocracy are yielding, and on the whole rather
gracefully, to the spirit of the times. They do not look for the
same consideration from the common people which they former-
ly received. They, too, are becoming democratic, and in not a few
cases they are disposed to mingle freely, on public occasions at
least, with the multitudes. As for the merchants and profession-
al men generally, they identify themselves with the masses. The
altered tone of the times was forcibly brought home to me on one
occasion when, driving along a country road, we passed an ele-
gant equipage, the occupant of which exchanged the customary

308 THE HOME ASPECT OF IRISH AFFAIRS. [Dec.,

salutation with our driver, who was also the owner of the car.
" Good-morning, John ; fine day." " Good-morning kindly, sir ;
very fine day indeed." " Driver, who is that gentleman ? " we in-
quired as soon as he had passed. " The Honorable Mr. F , son

of the Earl of D ," was the reply. " And how is it you didn't

take off your hat to him ?" we asked. " Ah ! they don't hardly any
of them do that in this part of the country any more," he answered.
Old times are surely changed when the lords of the soil send
polite notes to their tenants requesting permission to hunt over
their fields, and these requests are not unfrequently refused for
good and sufficient reason.

The advance in ideas has not, thus far at least, I am sorry to
say, advanced the prosperity of the country. Ireland, though a
progressive country, is still a poor country. The cultivation of
the land is the chief industry, and we have some notion how
much wealth that produces. The manufacturing industries are
few and on a limited scale. There is only one town that can be
called a manufacturing centre, and Belfast and its industries re-
present but a small section of the country. There are, it is true,
some manufactories springing up in the south of Ireland, and
with every prospect of permanence and increase, but throughout
the greater part of the island there is hardly a grist-mill in active
operation. That this lack of enterprise is not the fault but the
misfortune of the country has been demonstrated over and over
again. This condition of industrial paralysis has undoubtedly
been superinduced by the government, and it is the opinion of
most men that it will continue as long as the present system of
government lasts. The people have no heart to undertake any-
thing while they are so thoroughly dissatisfied with their politi-
cal situation. Capital is also wanting. But it is confidently
asserted that the attainment of Home Rule would give more im-
petus to industry of every kind than any amount of capital could
possibly do. T.his may be a vain hope, though it is very gene-
rally entertained. The country is certainly productive enough
to supply and sustain large manufacturing enterprises ; skilled
labor, under favorable circumstances, ought to be cheap and
abundant, and the geographical position of Ireland should secure
it a wide market. Where, then, can the difficulty lie? An Eng-
lish gentleman with whom I was one day travelling in a railway
carriage expressed it in a few words. He was looking out on a
rich and beautiful part of the County Westmeath, through which
we were passing; he was'evidently filled with admiration of the
scene, and, after contemplating it for some time, he turned

1 888.] THE HOME ASPECT OF IRISH AFFAIRS. 309

abruptly tome and exclaimed: "This is a rich and beautiful
country, but it is most abominably governed." It is the sheet
anchor of Ireland's hope that so many Englishmen nowadays
hold precisely the same opinion. After centuries of disturbance
and disaster it has at last begun to dawn on the English mind
that British rule in Ireland has not been a very pronounced suc-
cess ; and while there is still a latent suspicion that the Irish peo-
ple are scarcely fit to manage their own affairs, the average Eng-
lishman is willing to give them a limited trial.

There are few people more quick to resent an injury than the
people of Ireland, but on the other hand there are few so quick to
forgive one. This is luminously illustrated in the attitude of the
country toward the sister kingdom to-day. There is no wholesale
denunciation of England and everything English to be heard in
Ireland now. The simplest are careful to distinguish between the
party that bears the olive-branch of concession and the party that
bears the sword of coercion. For the English Liberals there is
nothing but kindly words and friendly feelings, and, after Mr.
Parnell himself, there is no man more esteemed by the masses
of the Irish people than Mr. Gladstone. Yet it is only within
a few years that he has sheathed the sword and abandoned the
old policy of brute force. One act of generosity or even a few
words of genuine sympathy seem sufficient to dispel the " trea-
sured wrongs" of centuries ; and were the final act of justice and
reparation once consummated, I am satisfied that the last trace of
traditional hate between the two countries would disappear for
ever from the pages of history. Talking with a common laborer
on one occasion over a crying act of injustice which a near rela-
tive of his had endured at the hands of the government, I re-
marked that the treatment the poor man had received was in-
famous, and I could not understand how the English people
would tolerate such tyranny. " Ah ! well," he replied, "a great
many of the English people are very good and very kind-hearted,
and they would not allow such things to happen if they could."
It would be a very great gain to the Irish cause if some of its
advocates on this side of the Atlantic could be induced to take
an equally just and charitable view of the situation.

The discipline and self-control of the people under the most
trying circumstances, and the sinking of all party feeling and
sectional interests for the sake of the national cause, afford the
best proof of their intelligence and their capacity for self-govern-
ment. The advance in this direction during the past ten years
can hardly be conceived by those who have not seen the evi-

3io THE HOME ASPECT OF IRISH AFFAIRS, [Dec.,

dences of it. This is all due to the conspicuous ability of the
popular leaders, to the influence of the press, and the general
educational growth of the country. There are very few homes
in Ireland now where the weekly newspaper does not find its
way, and there are fewer still where it cannot be read and un-
derstood by all the grown-up members of the family.

During my recent visit I did come across a single young per-
son who could not read and write, and the broad views of the
most illiterate on national affairs was a constant source of sur-
prise to me. When a few years of political education have
wrought so great a change in the popular mind, what progress
may we not look for in the coming years of freedom and pros-
perity ?

It was thought in certain circles that the great political fer-
ment through which the country has passed, and is still passing
in these latter years, would dim the religious faith of the Irish
people, but I am happy to say there are no indications of it.
The faith of Ireland is still the same it is the most fervent faith
in Christendom. Misconceptions and murmurings there have
been between some of the national leaders and the ecclesiastical
authorities, but the religious loyalty of the masses has not been
in the least affected. How could it ? The most patriotic men in
Ireland are its most prominent archbishdps and bishops, and it
is well known that seven-eighths of the priests are heart and soul
with the national movement, and on the most trying occasions
they are the foremost men in the breach.

A well-known Irish member of the House of Commons told
me that without the aid of the priests they could accomplish
nothing in Ireland. No, politics in Catholic Ireland have made
no rupture between the church and the people ; their cause is
one and their union is inseparable. Through the long and weary
centuries of the past they have suffered together, the one sus-
taining the other and imparting hope when all but hope was lost,
and through the better years to come they shall march on to-
gether; and when at last the day of victory finally dawns and
Erin's Sunburst rises once more above the dark horizon of cen-
turies, it shall be surmounted by the Cross.

EDWARD B. BRADY.

1 888.] DRINK AND DRINK-SELLERS THE NA TION"S BANE. 3 T i

DRINK AND DRINK-SELLERS THE NATION'S BANE.

DIFFERING among themselves as to the best means of dealing
with this drink question, many observant and thoughtful lovers
of their country, of all shades of religious and political belief, see
in intemperance the cause of many, if not of most, of the grievous
ills now afflicting us, the germ of innumerable other evils yet to
come, and a standing menace, great and ever growing, to our
free institutions. Yet there are others who take not so dark a
view some because they incline by nature more readily to the
bright side of things; some because they more willingly embrace
an optimistic view of such a matter as less disturbing to their
tranquillity of mind and less likely to hint at duty-calls to labor or
sacrifice ; while there are no doubt others whom reflection has
not yet convinced that as a people we have aught to apprehend
from drunkenness.

Intemperance, we are told, is not now so great an evil in this
country as it was in the early part of the century, and is gradu-
ally becoming less; two statements, neither of which is correct.
It is true that in the early part of this century there was much
drinking and a proportionately larger consumption of ardent
spirits, whiskey and brandy, than now. They were on the table
and sideboard of most families who made any pretence to good
social standing, and were lavishly dispensed to all comers. The
not over-prosperous farmer could afford, with whiskey at twen-
ty cents per gallon, to be lavish of this species of refreshment
upon himself and field hands. The weary city laborer, who could
get a generous portion of fiery stimulant for a few coppers, be-
came naturally enough a liberal purchaser and imbiber. At pub-
lic and private gatherings, social, political, and often religious
too, whiskey was seldom wanting. Out of this flowing of whiskey
as water great evils came. Not the least of which were that
drunkenness came to be looked upon by society at large as a par-
donable weakness at least in a man ; that the practice of drink-
ing, moderately or immoderately, became very general ; and that
the business of dram-selling was seldom deemed odious.

Our country consumes proportionally less whiskey now than
in the early days of the century ; yet with less whiskey and more
beer intemperance has steadily increased. Beer-sellers and beer-
drinkers do not seem to be " of the race of those men by whom
salvation was brought to Israel." In one of the beer-drinking

312 DRINK AND DRINK-SELLERS THE NA TION'S BANE. [Dec.,

centres of the country, Pittsburgh, Pa., Judge White, in a court
address last April, said : " From thirteen years' experience in the
Criminal Court I am thoroughly convinced that there are far
more evils resulting from the use of beer in this country than
from whiskey." Is not our increase in crime out of all propor-
tion to our increase in population? Enter the numerous im-
mense public institutions wherein drink's victims are sheltered,
penitentiaries, jails, houses of correction, juvenile reformatories,
insane asylums, hospitals, almshouses, and orphan asylums; go
into the slums of New York, Boston, Chicago, Baltimore, San
Francisco, and our other great cities, where dirt, degradation, and
drunkenness herd together, and where at every step is found a
rum-shop or a brothel, or both combined ; go into the gilded sa-
loon, the aristocratic club-house, the banquet hall of the million-
aire magnate, where jewelled hands quaff sparkling draughts and
where too often drunken orgies are the closing scene use the
eyes and ears and brains that God has given you, and then con-
clude that drunkenness is not a menace to the land. In a dis-
course, full of truth and beauty and power, delivered in August,
1884, at the Annual Convention of the Catholic Total Abstinence
Union of America, in Chicago, Rt. Rev. Bishop Spalding, of Peo-
ria, said: " In our day and country novice is so glaring and
wide-spread as intemperance, which is also the great pool whose
steaming waters fill the land with a moral miasma which pro-
duces hydra-headed crime as fatally as the malaria of foul marsh-
es produces fever and ague." These words are true. There has
been discovered and applied no disinfectant powerful enough to
counteract the poison of the steaming cesspool of intemperance.
Drinking was undoubtedly a source of .evil in the early days
of this century, but it did not then so readily or so often lead to
fixed habits of drunkenness, to crime, to physical and mental ruin
as now. In those days, when men drank liquor, they commonly
drank a pure, unadulterated article. Now, when they drink
whiskey or wine or beer, they are drinking the Lord, the chem-
ist, and the compounder alone know what ; vile stuffs of which
deadly drugs form an essential part, which ruin the body, craze
the mind, and excite the basest passions. It must also be borne
in mind that the power of the demon of drunkenness has been
steadily increased as years rolled on by causes that grew out of
our very growth and strengthened with our very strength. In
the last sixty years the character of our population has greatly
changed ; we are now a mingling of nearly all the races and tem-
peraments of the globe. Causes that produced certain results

1 888.] DRINK AND DRINK-SELLERS THE NA TION'S BANE. 3 1 3

among our people of sixty years ago may produce very different
results among our people of to-day. Then, too, our modes of life
have wonderfully altered in that period ; we have become the
most nervous, active people on the face of the earth, knowing no
rest and seeming to care for none, leading a life which craves the
aid of a stimulating force. Nor must we forget what powerful
allies drunkenness has found in the scanty food and raiment of
our underpaid drudges in shops and factories, and in the squalid
misery of the thousands of overcrowded poor in our largest
cities.

No one can form an intelligent appreciation of any question
concerning our national life without considering the bearing that
immigration has had and is likely to have on that life. Since
1820 Europe alone has sent to our shores nearly fourteen million
souls, who have had great part in making the nation what it is.
This country has never had, nor will it ever have, more devoted
children than most of these, more ardent defenders of her liber-
ties, more zealous supporters of her institutions. Yet, on the
other hand, it must in the interest of truth be said that many
have come hither who have never appreciated the blessings
which Divine Providence showers upon the dwellers in this fa-
vored land ; many who seem to have left behind them all the vir-
tues of the Old-World civilization and brought hither only its
vices ; many who seem to desire, not so much a land flowing with
milk and honey, as one sodden with beer and whiskey ; many who
are the determined foes of every movement that tends to prevent
the desecration of the Sunday, break the power of the corrupt,
arrogant, and dangerous liquor-traffic, or stem the swelling tide
of intemperance. The foundations of our liberties were laid by
lovers of sobriety and order. To-day our free institutions have
no more treacherous and dangerous enemies than those whiskey-
sellers and their patrons, who seek to control our government,
national, State, and municipal ; or those beer-sellers and their ad-
herents, who seek to tear up the very corner-stone of our reli-
gious, political, and social fabric, and by the combined powers of
bombast, beer, and bomb substitute anarchy for order, lawless-
ness for law, license for liberty.

We must, too, bear well in mind that but a few years since
the great majority of the negroes of this country were slaves
slaves of other men and women, creatures owned by other crea-
tures as were the dog and horse. But amidst many evils one
good remained to this poor people they were not the slaves of
drunkenness. What of these weak, dependent beings to-day ?

314 DRINK AND DRINK-SELLERS THE NA TION'S BANE. [Dec-.,

Freemen before the law, they are fast becoming the thralls of
rum and the rum-power, deluded victims and agents of low, de-
signing- whites, who use the poor negroes' passions and weak-
nesses that their own coffers may be filled and their unholy domi-
nation perpetuated. The negro race is not dying out among us.
If drink and the drink-seller be suffered to make this people as
the tigers of African jungles, then let America beware !

What a fatal error would it be if they who are carrying on
the crusade against drunkenness and its causes were lulled to in-
action by the cry that the wave of intemperance is subsiding; if
they were persuaded to lay down their arms because, forsooth,
assured that their vigilant and unrelenting enemy is in full flight!
If drunkenness and the drink-traffic, notwithstanding the efforts
that are being made to repress the one and to at least control
the other, are yet so fraught with danger to us, how dreadful
would be our present condition had not some restraints been put
upon such monstrous evils; how hopeless would be the outlook
if these checks were removed !

The learned Bishop of Peoria, in the address whence we have
already quoted, declares that the drinking of alcoholic liquor "is
the cause of three-fourths of the crime and misery which disgrace
religion and society," and that " there is another evil which, if
not checked, must undermine free government, and for which the
liquor-trade more than any other cause is responsible the dese-
cration of Sunday." A few months later the hierarchy of the
Catholic Church in the United States, in solemn council as-
sembled, pronounced these memorable words : " There can be
no manner of doubt that the abuse of intoxicating drinks is to be
reckoned among the most deplorable evils of this country. This
excess is an unceasing stimulant to vice and a fruitful source of
misery; vast numbers of men and entire families are plunged
into hopeless ruin, and multitudes of souls are by it dragged
down to eternal perdition. . . . Hence it behooves all Christians
to be filled with zeal against this vice, and for the love of God
and country to endeavor to root out this pestilential evil." In the
face of such strong and authoritative utterances, how can Catho-
lics help recognizing in intemperance the enemy of their God
and country, how can they refuse to do all that lies in their power
" to root out this pestilential evil"?

Nor should Americans, proud of their country, delude them-
selves with the thought that intemperance can never undermine
the foundations upon which rests the fair and stately edifice of
our liberties. Intemperance alone may never be able to bring

1 888.] DRINK AND DRINK-SELLERS THE NA TION'S BANE. 3 1 5

about such a result; but it must be remembered that drunken-
ness, like other vices, whether national or individual, seldom
stands alone. Drunkenness has indeed many a foul companion.
Where it abounds will be found rapine and lust, perjury and blas-
phemy, murder and suicide, lost manhood and degraded woman-
hood ; there love of God, of country, of family are speedily for-
gotten ; there, indeed, is a land "to hastening ills a prey."

Some persons who are most anxious for the repression of in-
temperance, but who are so eminently conservative as to venture
no effort in this or any other direction unless they see success
coming to meet them half-way, advise the more pronounced foes
of intemperance not to bring overmuch pressure to bear upon
this vice lest the evil be exaggerated. Sometimes, indeed, it
may be wiser, owing to peculiar circumstances, to patiently tol-
erate for a time an existing evil rather than, in a clearly hopeless
attempt to lessen or remove it, risk the bringing about of a
greater evil. It is also true that at times it is very difficult
to judge just what amount of pressure can judiciously be brought
to bear upon any given form of wrong. Indeed, the experience
of those who in public or in private endeavor to combat vice is
that the vicious are very often morbidly sensitive and apt to re-
sent as excessive pressure any healing touch, however gentle.

Those who, in combatting wrong and upholding right, have
run counter to men's deep-seated passions or prejudices, have in-
variably been denounced as meddlers by the ones whom they
wished to aid, and as extremists by those who should have
shared their labors. But shall men, because these things are so,
desist from opposition to vice? The worldly-minded and the
indolent, well content to jog along the easy way of pagan moral-
ity, answer YES. Calvary, the martyr's death, the confessor's
life, tell us emphatically No. In the presence, then, of the
great and growing harm done by intemperance, what man who
loves his fellow-man, what citizen who loves his country, what
Christian who loves his brother for whom Christ died, can rest
an idle and indifferent spectator of evils which he might do some
little to hinder, check, or uproot?

Much as the nation has to fear from the drunkard, it has much
more to fear from the drunkard-maker. But a few years since
the liquor-traffic, creator of drunkards and fosterer of drunken-
ness, was a child in weakness ; to-day it is a giant in strength,
mighty, unscrupulous, and traitorous. Who can deny the influ-
ence of this traffic in the land? Its voice is powerful in the halls
of Congress, in our State legislatures, in our city councils.

316 DRINK AND DRINK-SELLERS THE NATION'S BANE. [Dec.,

The force of aroused and indignant, intelligent public opinion
has in some places driven unwilling legislators to enact measures
for the stricter regulation of the liquor business, and in some
others the popular voice has suppressed the traffic altogether.
Yet all know how extremely difficult it is to secure the enforce-
ment of any laws that are not to the liking of the liquor interest.
What Cardinal Manning has lately said is as true in our great
cities as in those of Great Britain :

"The next cause of utter wreck is, I will not say intoxicating drink,
but the drink trade. This is a public, permanent, and ubiquitous agency
of degradation to the people of these realms. That foul and fetid
housing drives men and women to drink, and that drink renders their dens
sevenfold more foul and fetid, is certain. The degradation of men, women,
and children follows by an inevitable law, but only those who are trying
to save them have any adequate knowledge of the inhuman and helpless
state of those who have fallen into drunkenness. I am not going to mor-
alize upon drunkenness. I will only say that the whole land is suffering
from the direct or indirect power of the drink trade. In times of depression
only one interest still prospers its profits maybe slightly lessened, but its
gains are always large and safe that is, the great trade in drink, which en-
riches half a million of brewers, distillers, and publicans, with the trades
depending on them, and wrecks millions of men, women, and children.
This one traffic, more than any other cause, destroys the domestic life of
the people. The evidence taken by the Housing Commission expressly
shows that in the overcrowded rooms in Dublin the moral wreck wrought
in London is not equally found. A counteraction or preservative is there
present and powerful. This I can affirm also of a large number of homes
in London. Tne same is affirmed on evidence of Glasgow. Nevertheless
these exceptions only prove the rule. The drink trade of this country has
a sleeping partner who gives it effectual protection. Every successive
government raises at least a third of its budget by the trade in drink. Of
this no more need be said. It changes man and woman into idiocy and
brutality. It is our shame, scandal, and sin ; and unless brought under by
the will of the people and no other power can it will be our downfall."

In recounting the causes which seem to threaten the per-
manency of our institutions, no one forgets the dangers arising
from the conflict between labor and capital. But some do for-
get one of the most powerful indirect agencies that have
brought about this conflict intemperance. The best and truest
friends of the workingman acknowledge in shame and sor-
row that much of the misery and degradation in which many
a wage-earner and his family live is due to drink. While as a
matter of fact labor has ofttimes just reason to complain of the
tyranny of capital, it has oftener just reason to complain of the
tyranny of rum. Great strikes, that have involved thousands,

1 888. ] DRINK AND DRINK- SELLERS THE NA TION'S BANE. 3 1 7

have taken place because the worker's pittance was cut down a
few cents per day ; yet many of these very men willingly give up
daily a much larger sum to the laziest and most bloated of capi-
talists the saloon-keeper deliberately pay him to ruin them-
selves and their families. Would to God that our workingmen,
our country's pride, could be made to realize that intemperance
is their bane and the grog-seller their deadliest enemy ! Never
were truer words spoken than these of the honest and fearless
leader of the Knights of Labor :

" When I know," says Mr. Powderly, " that, if free from the shackles of
intemperance, the workingmen of America would hew out for themselves a
name and a place in the world which was never dreamed of in past cen-
turies, it makes my heart sick that one man of them should ever raise to
his mouth the glass that damns both body and soul."

If our workingmen could be emancipated from the slavery of
drink, from the thraldom of the saloon, they would never as a
class have to bow to capitalistic tyranny, and labor troubles
would soon cease to be a disturbing factor in the land.

Is it at all surprising that many earnest and thoughtful men
now despair of the Republic? They see on all sides the ruin
wrought by intemperance; they see its ally, the liquor-selling
power, enthroned in the high places of the land, and the rulers of
the people truckling and subservient before it; they see men
whose mission calls them to the front of the battle against in-
temperance and its causes forgetful of their solemn obligations
some of them listless lookers-on at the struggle ; others scoffers
at those who bear the brunt of the contest; others, through
human respect or hope of gain, so lost to sense of decency and
duty as to be fosterers of the drink-traffic and thereby encour-
agers of drunkenness. But, God be thanked ! there is yet
abundant room for hope. The combined influence of church
and school is making our people see in intemperance and its allies
the deadly foes of God, of country, and of home. Throughout
the land men, women, and children are banded against these
enemies. The well-disciplined rum power now finds itself con-
fronted by the organized strength of the friends of religion,
sobriety, decency, and good order. Weak and corrupt rulers
are being made to realize that virtue is still a power among us.
Our people are becoming more and more convinced that, apart
from all higher considerations, their temporal interest and tem-
perance go hand-in-hand. In the van of the battle against intempe-
rance and its causes is borne the spotless, cross emblazoned

318 FRENCH RURAL AND [Dec.,

banner of the great Catholic Total Abstinence Union of America.
Under its majestic folds is marshalled a mighty host. Devoted
archbishops and bishops, zealous priests and brave laymen, are
there Catholics who realize that duty to God and their country
summons them to arms. In all quarters of this great Republic
let the struggle go on bravely and faithfully ! Dismayed by no
difficulties, daunted by no dangers, let every American do his
duty and our country shall not perish.

M. F. FOLEY.

Baltimore, Md.

FRENCH RURAL AND AGRICULTURAL ORPHAN

ASYLUMS. *

GOD in his infinite wisdom allows serious difficulties and con-
sequent discouragement to stand in the way of charitable work
for the relief of human misery and affliction, in greater or less
degree according to the field of its operation. But thereby zeal,
intelligence, and industry are stimulated, with the assistance
of his grace, to overcome obstacles ; opportunity is given to
earn increased merit and to become more deserving of that high
reward which he has prepared in the world to come.

Take the case of the orphan, so generally an object of interest
and sympathy. Here the principal and great difficulty lies in
obtaining satisfactory final results. What becomes of orphans
after leaving the asylum about the age of fourteen or fifteen? If
they can find a home with kind and good relatives or friends the
question is partly answered. But if they are without this assist-
ance, or if it is of a worthless and undesirable character, what
then? Employment is found for girls far more easily than for
boys. What chances are there ordinarily for the latter, if with-
out protection, to start in a career of industry by which they can
promptly become self-supporting and in time learn how to earn a
livelihood? The apprentice system, nearly obsolete in our coun-
try, is almost hopeless of access for an orphan lad without a home
or friends. That this subject is one of great importance and de-

* The writer has obtained his facts mainly from Les Orphelinats de garfon, et la societi de
patronage des orphelinats agricoles de France, par le Capitaine Blanc ; Toulouse. Nouveaux
sfatuts de la societf de patronage des orphelinats agricoles ; Paris. L'Orphelin, revue de la so-
ciitf de patronage des orphelinats agricoles des France ; Paris. Les Orpftelins d 1 Alsace-Lor-
raine, par M. Hippolyte Maze ; Paris. Rapport fait au Congres Regional de Poitiers le 21
Mai, 1887, au nom de la Socittt des Agricultures de France ; Paris.

1 888.] AGRICULTURAL ORPHAN ASYLUMS. 319

serving of proper solicitude is shown by the practice in Amster-
dam, a city well supplied with orphan asylums, which are its long-
established and favorite charity, and in which much experience
has been accumulated in their management. The present writer
found that in the Catholic male orphan asylum there the only
one besides the Catholic female asylum which he had opportunity
to visit the boys are apprenticed to a trade or occupation as soon
as they are old and strong enough, but the asylum remains their
home, if necessary, until they come of age.* There in a separate
department their characters are formed. They are taught to
be self-dependent, to look after their clothes and their person, to
avoid contracting bad or repulsive habits, and to acquire proper
manners, and are thus suitably trained and prepared for the time
when they will have to leave and be thrown on their own re-
sources. Van Speyk,f a heroic young lieutenant of the Dutch
navy of this century, was reared in the municipal orphan asylum
of Amsterdam. Each orphan asylum, whether male or female, has
a distinctive uniform for its inmates, which they must always
wear when walking in the streets of the city.

It is pretty certain that there is no position in which a raw
boy of fourteen or fifteen years, healthy and of fair physical con-
dition, can by his labor so well give an equivalent for a home
and support as on a farm. But country homes do not always
prove for orphan boys the happy ones they are supposed to be,
and cases now and then come to light in which the poor youths
are found to have fared very badly. Employers have been
known to be hard, exacting, and sometimes even cruel. Not
having had the blessing of home training, the orphan boy is at
great disadvantage. He may have bad manners or repulsive
habits which make him an object of dislike rather than interest.

Experience has shown that the above considerations, not out
of place here, concern our own country as well as others. But
let us see now the condition and necessities in France which
prompted the establishment of the valuable institutions which
are the subject of this article.

A quarter of a century ago there was for all France, having a
population of forty millions, an insufficiency of male orphan asy-
lums, while of those for girls there was a good supply. On the
subject of the effects of this disparity, then felt by all the bishops

* I have been reliably informed that all the asylums of Amsterdam are alike in that respect.

t In 1830, during the Belgian revolution, being in command of a Dutch vessel of war
which had got aground in the harbor of Antwerp, he blew up his vessel and perished with it
rather than surrender it to the insurgents.

320 FRENCH RURAL AND [Dec.,

of France to be a great evil, Mgr. Palu, Bishop of Blois, thus
expressed himself to a friend :

" We are never at a loss to find a home for an orphan girl, but if an or-
phan boy is thrown on our.hands we do not know where to place him."

There was besides another injurious inequality. Cities and
towns were pretty well provided with charitable institutions,
while the country had hardly any. An intelligent peasant? of the
south of France, as reported in the Contemporain of 1870 by the
Marquis de Gouvello, gave in these words his estimate of the
disadvantages in consequence resulting to him:

" If I had established myself in the neighboring town," he said, " I
would have got for my children, first, the benefit of the creche [day nursery]
and the sails d'astle [kindergarten], and, next, those of mutual relief associa-
tions, of a hospital in case of sickness, and of a home for the aged when
they become too old to work. As I am now situated, barely a few months'
schooling at the village school during the winter months is all they can
get; if they fall sick during their childhood or after they have grown up,
there is no assisting protection for them to call upon, and when they have
grown old they are bound to become, as I shall, a burden on their family."

He thus demonstrated that there was an inducement, addi-
tional to that of the hope of finding more remunerative labor,
to cause a flow of the rural population to the cities and towns a
tendency much lamented by French land-owners because of the
consequent ever-increasing scarcity of agricultural laborers.

It is also pertinent to the subject to mention that the moral
condition of a large part of the population of France is such as to
increase the number of orphans beyond what it would ordinarily
be from natural causes. Rev. Father Joseph, at the Congress of
Autun in 1882,* estimated that there were then on the soil of
France, despite all the efforts of official and private benevolence,
one hundred thousand children either orphans or abandoned. He
referred to statistics showing the number of illegitimate births
to amount annually to 90,000, hardly a third of which are
brought up by their mothers; and to the undeniable fact of the
growth, in the laboring classes, of practical divorce, the too
common result of which is the ultimate abandonment of the chil-
dren by the mother or father on whose hands they happen to fall.

Relief for these innocent, helpless victims was naturally
sought in a varied application of the principle laid down by M.

* Congresses or, as we would call them, conventions for the consideration of Catholic in-
terests have of late years been held frequently in France, in different cities according to selec-
tion.

i888.] AGRICULTURAL ORPHAN ASYLUMS. 321

Demetz, and carried out by him so successfully at Mettray.* It
led in 1828 to the establishment of the first agricultural orphan
asylum, in which orphan boys were brought up to be agricultur-
ists and nothing else. But the idea of such institutions did not
originate in France. They had been started long before in other
countries. They were inaugurated as early as 1775 in the Swiss
canton of Argau, and very shortly afterward in England, Hol-
land, and Belgium. But there was no beginning of real success
in France until 1839. A great many failures had followed, prin-
cipally upon defective financial management; the chief features
of which were running in debt without a clear prospect of hav-
ing money to pay, and, next, gratuitous admission of orphans
without certain adequate sources of income. To these were
added other various difficulties, such as not selecting a suitable
location, not getting a proper equipment, and not securing suit-
able men for the management.

These successive failures, where so great and varied good had
been hopefully looked for, were naturally a great disappointment
and cause of despondency to many persons deeply interested in
the work. But after a number of years had gone by, and when
all hope of ever succeeding had been well-nigh given up, a way to
avoid the fatal mistakes of the past and to make a new departure
under a corrected and carefully considered method was happily
suggested by the Marquis de Gouvello, a gentleman well known
for his strong religious principles and his devotion to the cause.
The Marquis de Gouvello is descended from an old family of
Brittany, is of high social position, and possessed of a large
landed estate. His great-grandfather on his mother's side was
Donatien Leray de Chaumont, a former owner of the old, pictur-
esque chateau of Chaumont, in Touraine, who, at great cost to
himself, rendered signal services to the cause of American inde-
pendence.f His mother was a daughter of Vincent Leray de
Chaumont, who settled at Cape Vincent, in Jefferson County, N.
Y., for the purpose of turning to account the wild lands there
received from the United States government in payment for the
large and important advances made by Donatien Leray.

The first step of the marquis was to experiment in his own
way by founding, in 1863, on land of his own near Vendome
(Loir-et-Cher), two agricultural orphan asylums, that af St.
Joseph de Nourray for boys, and of Huisseau for girls. To

* For an account of the institution at Mettray see THE CATHOLIC WORLD of November, 1885.
t A very interesting historical narrative of these services appeared in the Century of Marcli
last under the heading of " Franklin's Home and Host in France."

VOL. XLVIII. 21

322 FRENCH RURAL AND [Dec.,

the former he gave 120 hectares* of land, and to the latter ten.
He had no difficulty in securing sisters to take charge of the
girls, but found that orders of male religious competent to teach
boys agriculture were very scarce. He was partly helped out
of his difficulty by Rev. Father Moreau, then superior of the
Congregation of the Holy Cross, which has been long estab-
lished and holds valuable property in the United States, from
whom he got three fathers for the house of Nourray. But their
duties did not extend beyond instructing and watching the boys
and forming their morals ; the tillage of the soil and care of
money matters had to be attended to by the founder, who also
had to look after Huisseau, and besides attend to his own estate
of 1,000 hectares at Kerle"venan, in Brittany.

Five years of successful experience and observation led him to
finally conceive the idea of a charitable association organized for
the express purpose of promoting the establishment of agricul-
tural orphan asylums throughout France, and of helping to main-
tain them. His system embraced the foundation of two sepa-
rate and distinct but interdependent institutions, one to be
called Asiles Ruraux (rural asylums) for the reception, under the
management of sisters, of orphan boys under thirteen years; and
the other Asiles Agricoles, managed by men, for the training to
agriculture of orphan boys coming out of the Asiles Ruraux,
which were to be, as it were, primary and preparatory schools
for the former.

His idea met with sympathy, encouragement, and promise of
support from many ecclesiastics and lay persons, among whom
were prominent Very Rev. Father Etienne, superior-general of
the Lazarists ; Brother Philippe, superior-general of the Bro-
thers of Christian Schools ; the Abb6 Mequignon, M. Drouyn de
Lhuys, Count de Clezieux, the Marquis of Pontois-Pontcarre*, the
Duke and Duchess of La Rochefoucauld-Doudeauville, the
Duchesses of Chevreuse and of Reggio, the Marchioness of St.
Paul, Mmes. de Curazon-Latour and de Vatismenil. A first
meeting, for the purpose of organizing the society, was held on
the /th of August, 1868, at the House of the Lazarists, and was
presided over by his Eminence Cardinal Donnat. The views and
plan set forth thereat by the Marquis de Gouvello were approved,
and a society was then and there formed under the title of " Socie'te'
de Patronage des Orphelinats Agricoles" (Society for the Patronage

* The are is 100 square metres. A hectare (i.e., 100 ares) is equal to 2.471143 acres say
two acres and a half.

i888.] AGRICULTURAL ORPHAN ASYLUMS. 323

of Agricultural Orphanages), and its by-laws, revised in 1887,
declare its object to be

"To promote and develop establishments, in the country, intended to take
charge of poor orphan boys and children, in a moral sense abandoned,
in order to secure for such, besides Christian education, primary and
agricultural instruction.
To the above end, the society

(1) Grants appropriations to agricultural orphan asylums and to rural ones,

when managed in a satisfactory manner.

(2) It adopts children and places them in approved institutions under its

patronage.

(3) It encourages the training of special teachers in order to meet de-
mands from persons desirous of founding agricultural orphan asylums.

(4) It exercises an officious patronage over young men who have left the in-

stitutions, and assists them to find suitable situations.

(5) It stands ready to serve persons or charitable associations desirous of

placing children in the houses recommended by the society."

Rural orphan asylums take in boys under thirteen, and after
that age they are cared for in agricultural asylums.

The society is composed of benefactors who have subscribed
500 francs; of founders, subscribers, and lady patronesses. The
annual dues for the founders is at least 100 francs each ($20), and
for the subscribers not less than 20 francs, which last sum may
be made up by contributions from more than one person. In
order not to shut out the offerings of the poor, minimum yearly
subscriptions of 60 centimes (12 cents) are accepted, if gathered
together by decades by some one of the givers, so as to form a
sum of six francs. Such subscribers are called associates, and
are not members of the society. It is managed by an exec-
utive committee consisting of the president, two vice-presi-
dents, the secretary and his two assistants, the treasurer, and
thirteen members. General meetings are called once a year, and
the proceedings are published in L'Orphelin, a monthly review
of the work of the society, containing also regularly abundant
and varied contributions on agricultural, instructive, and edifying
subjects specially intended for the instruction and advance-
ment of the asylums. The lady patronesses have a president,
two vice-presidents, and two secretaries, all of their own sex ;
they meet at the call of the president. The presentation of chil-
dren for adoption lies with them. The lady president is entitled
to be present at the meetings of the executive committee and to
take a part in the business there transacted. The society debars
itself from owning or holding any pecuniary interest whatever in
any asylum. The charge for keeping an orphan is only 200 francs

324 FRENCH RURAL AND [Dec.,

($40) per annum, and is too low to allow of any being admitted gra-
tuitously. Hence pay for orphans entirely destitute must be pro-
vided from some source or other. The labor of a boy from six-
teen years up to twenty is considered to be a sufficiently remu-
nerative equivalent for his maintenance.

In order to demonstrate practically the soundness of the
theory which he advocated, the Marquis de Gouvello, in 1878,
turned several large buildings belonging to him, near his chateau
of Kerl6venan (Morbihan), into a rural asylum which he called
Kerhars. He gave it a hectare of land and put it in charge of the
Sisters of St. Vincent of Paul. Then at a short distance from
there he founded, in the year following, on a piece of land of
fifty hectares, the Agricultural Orphan Asylum of Kerbot, which is
managed by the Brothers of St. Francis Regis, and takes the boys
that come out of Kerhars. Both institutions have worked very
well so far, and each may be considered a model type of its kind.

When the society was formed there were forty agricultural
asylums remaining in existence, the earliest of which dated back
to 1835. During a period of only eighteen years, from 1868 to
1886, forty-one more were established, making a total of eighty-
two, of which eighteen are rural asylums. From the published
tabular statistical statement, as of October, 1886, these eighty-
two houses had, at that date, under their care 5,362 boys, and the
aggregate for the fifty-one years preceding was 25,409, exclusive
of the figures not given for seven houses. The largest number
of inmates, 500, is at Citeaux ; the smallest, four, is at Breille.
The least extent of land occupied is half a hectare, at the rural
asylum of La Fert6 St. Aubin ; the greatest is 400 hectares, at
Citeaux. One rural and two agricultural asylums were about
to be given up. The boys are variously trained to agriculture,
gardening, and the cultivation of the vine, in some asylums to all
three, in others to two, and in some to one only of the first two
named. Some houses are managed by religious, others by priests,
others again are under local lay direction. The male religious are
the Clercs de St. Viateur, the Brothers of the Christian Schools,
of St. Vincent of Paul, of St. Francis of Assisi, of St. Francis
Regis, of St. Gabriel of Ploermel, of the Holy Ghost, of the Holy
Cross, and Salesian Priests ; * the female religious are the Little
Sisters of the Orphans, the Daughters of St. Vincent of Paul,
the Sisters of St. Vincent of Paul, of St. Philomena, and of
-Our Lady of Angels. The best evidence that the asylums
are doing real good work is the interest taken in them

* Very nearly all these are distinctively devoted to an agricultural life.

1 888.] AGRICULTURAL ORPHAN ASYLUMS. 325

within two years past by such undeniable experts and judges
as the Society of Agriculturists of France. It was stated
at the general meeting of the SocietZ de Patronage des Orphelinats
Agricoles, held on the 3Oth of May, present year, and presided over
by Mgr. Richard, Archbishop of Paris, and his Eminence Cardinal
Desprez, Archbishop of Toulouse, both honorary presidents,
that the society above named had gone into an inspection of all
the asylums, and had been thus far so well satisfied that it had
resolved to appropriate yearly for their assistance 3,000 francs
($600), divisible in turn among ten houses.

His Eminence Cardinal di Rende, while nuncio at Paris,
thought it worth his while to visit the rural asylum of Kerhars
and the agricultural one of Kerbot, in order to see the manage-
ment of each, and apply the knowledge obtained towards estab-
lishing like institutions in his archdiocese of Benevento.

It would hardly do to omit noticing here another special
orphan society founded by the Marquis of Gouvello which, while
providing for a pressing charitable need and satisfying national
feeling, proved particularly distasteful to the German conquerors
of Alsace-Lorraine. Its inhabitants had been given the option,
available up to October, 1872, either to abjure their French,
nationality and become Prussians or leave the country. Great
numbers of them chose the latter alternative, but nobody seemed
to have given much thought to the distressing case of the French-
born orphans and half-orphans in the annexed provinces who
had been left to shift for themselves. The Marquis de Gouvello
was the first to think of and interest other persons in them. He
founded the society of Les Orphelins d 'Alsace-Lorraine for the pur-
pose of bringing- them on French soil and taking care of .them
until of age. At the close of July, 1872, when the option had only
two months longer to run, he hurried to Nancy and Metz and
got together fourteen children, whom he took back with him. A
zealous representative whom he had left in charge, and who was
getting along finely with the work, was arrested by the Prussian
police, clapped into prison, and kept there seventeen days until the
representative of France with the Army of Occupation interfered
in his behalf. Afterward the number of orphans obtained was
swelled up to 300, and in 1873 it had attained 500, with a pros-
pect of still further additions, because the Prussian authori-
ties would not relieve the children of parents who had refused to
give up their French nationality.

In time a crowning reward came to the Marquis de Gouvello
and his colaborers, in the shape of the formal approbation of His

326 FRENCH RURAL ORPHAN ASYLUMS. [Dec.,

Holiness Leo XIII. as soon as their excellent charitable work
and the good done by it were brought to his notice. By his brief
dated 3d February, 1886, addressed to Cardinal Desprez, Hon-
orary President of the Socie'te' de Patronage des Orphelinats Agricoles,
the Sovereign Pontiff mentions the marquis by name as having
by his zeal and piety founded the society, to which he gives all
praise and encouragement, closing with most delicate and touch-
ing complimentary words for France, of which he says that " by
a particular privilege of God she has been endowed with the gift
of fertile invention and of practical work adapted for the relief
of misery."

By a later brief, under the seal of the Fisherman, dated 4th
June, 1886, he grants for a period of seven years from its date, to
all the faithful who shall thereafter become members of the
society, upon the day of their admission a plenary indulgence,
and to those already members, or who shall become so, a plenary
indulgence in articulo mortis ; either to be obtained upon the
usual conditions, which are explained in the brief. A plenary in-
dulgence upon different conditions is also accorded to present and
future members, and all the spiritual benefits therein stated are
also made applicable, by way of suffrage, to the souls of the faith-
ful who have departed this life united with God in charity.

It must not be inferred, because the society exerts itself mainly
in behalf of male orphans, that it has no care for procuring similar
advantages of country training for girls. It encourages, as far as
in its power, the establishment in the country of orphanages in
which female orphans and destitute, unprotected girls are trained
to good morals and religious habits, and are taught to work in
the field and at gardening, to look after cattle and stock, to cook,
wash, do coarse sewing and such other household work as is
usual in the country.

The information contained in the preceding pages is best
completed by particulars of the working forces of two rural and
three agricultural asylums, considered to be respectively models
of their kind :

Elancourt, founded and managed by the Abb6 M6quignon.
has two hundred boys, under the care of fifteen Sisters of St.
Vincent de Paul.

Kerhars has only sixty, who are looked after by five sisters of
the same order.

Gradignan, near Bordeaux, has thirty-nine 'hectares of land,
worked by two hundred boys of divers ages, under the direction
of twenty-one adults.

1 888.] Miss BIDDY AND Miss ELIZA. 327

At Nourray one hundred and ten hectares are tilled by forty
boys, varying in age from ten to seventeen years, under the
direction of six Brothers of St. Francis Regis.

At Kerbot fifty hectares are cultivated by twenty-five boys
from twelve to sixteen years old, and four religious.

Capitaine Blanc, editor of LQrphelin, thinks that Kerhars as a
rural asylum, and Nourray and Kerbot as agricultural asylums,
particularly Kerbot, are, as regards number of inmates, working
force, and land under cultivation, under best conditions of suc-
cess.

The present writer has looked through Rev. P. A. Baart's book
on orphans and orphan asylums of Catholic foundation in the
United States, and though many of them are situated in the
country, and some even derive part of their support from farms,
it does not appear that any are agricultural in the sense in which
it is understood and practised in France.

Our country seems, then, to be in this respect an untried field.
There is no lack of land here. Is there nothing for us to learn
from the rural agricultural asylums of France, nothing that can
be usefully adapted to the needs of our orphans ? The subject
evidently calls for earnest consideration.

L. B. BINSSE.

MISS BIDDY AND MISS ELIZA.

BACK goes my memory, further and further, from place to
place, from one figure to another, until it stands " stock still," as
is the saying, in the centre of an old town in the south of Ireland
and before a gabled house and the tempting window of a cake-
shop ; from the shop-door down one step into the shop, and
then the memory lias somehow got into the brain of a very
little child who has to stand on tip-toes to reach up with her
penny :

" Good-morning, Miss Biddy. A rabbit and a Wellington
cake, if you please."

The child is very small and very young, yet takes in every
item of that delicious scene before Miss Biddy who never dis-
turbs herself, when engaged in literary pursuits, until she finds it
quite convenient to do so is ready to lay aside the newspaper.
The shop is a small one, there are far finer cake-shops in the
town, but to the child no place is like this, and when she grows

328 Miss BIDDY AND Miss ELIZA. [Dec.,

up she will have just the same, and she will be either Miss Biddy
or Miss Eliza. There, on shelves against the wall and in the
window, are glass jars containing every known preparation in
many-colored sweets and sugar-sticks ; the counter is laid out
with tins of cakes " Wellington crackers " first, large, sweet,
good, and cheap at a halfpenny, well drilled in rows, all upright
and eyes (caraway seeds) front ; next a tin burrow full of rabbits,
also ranged in lines, all with their little scuts cocked, paws for-
ward, ears back, and currant eyes staring convulsively at the
child about to devour one of their number. The child eyes
them, and, feeling for their terror, determines in her own mind
that, as Miss Biddy has not heard her request, she won't take a
rabbit, but a rock a rock is as good, and can't look at her like
that. Beside the rabbits is a tin of Shrewsbury cakes, then tarts,
and the child thinks of the Knave of Hearts; next come Queen
cakes in heart-shape they must belong to the Queen of Hearts
buns, and so on by gradations' until the rich seed and pound
cake are reached ; and by this time Miss Biddy, folding up the
newspaper, purses her thin lips together, emits from them a long
puf-f-f, and announces: " Well, little Kathleen, there's great news
for the country to-day. Tomasina had nine kittens this morn-
ing."

" O Miss Biddy, may I go see them ? And when will you
give a christening? "

" We will have a great gathering and a christening when
their eyes are open and, recollect, the child that helps a kitten's
eyes to open before their time is a common murderer aqd de-
serves to be baked in a pie! But I may as well tell you, little
Kathleen, Tomasina informs me that seven of them are weak and
in danger of death."

The child knows well what that means, and prays to have the
whole nine preserved ; but it is no use : she is told that Tomasina
knows best, that there is no hope.

Miss Biddy and Miss Eliza O'Ryan were two maiden ladies
who in earlier days had filled a higher position in social life than
that of pastry-cooks. They belonged to an old and highly re-
spectable family in a distant part of the country, and, when fam-
ily losses left them poor, they determined, rather than separate,
to go into some business not requiring either large capital or a
regular training for they had neither, but in their place a con-
siderable stock of ancestral pride which made it painful for them
to enter into trade in their own town ; therefore they migrated
and started life anew in this southern town, where, to begin with,

1 888.] Miss BIDDY AND Miss ELIZA. 329

they knew no one and had no friendly hand to help them on.
And, apart from that, if ever there were two women utterly un-
fitted by manner, character, and education for such a way of life
as they now entered on, those two were Miss Biddy and Miss
Eliza O'Ryan.

Miss Biddy was considerably the elder of the two. Very
short of stature and slight of make, with a striking 1 face, not
quite handsome, yet, even at seventy, far from plain a pale,
dark face, a high, square forehead, small, straight nose, dark eyes
that were at times soft, at times brilliant, black eyebrows, and
hair free from a single white streak. Her peculiar feature was
the thin mouth, which had grown puckered and wrinkled from
a habit of pursing the lips together and outward in order to puff
out, in long whiffs, her every strong sentiment and all her senti-
ments were strong : disdain, anger, contentment, amusement,
each was appropriately expressed in this long-drawn puff. She
invariably wore a dark-brown stuff dress, spare of skirt and
with a pelerine or cape to the waist a sort of pilgrim's gown, a
stern, nothing-to-do-with-the-vanities-of-foolish-womankind sort of
gown that went well with the grave face, around which closed
the most particular and natty of Quaker-like cap-borders of
white tulle, gauffred as if by machinery. In manner Miss Biddy
was quiet and gentlemanly, though peculiar ; one peculiarity
was a liking for a position in front of the fire, where, her hands
behind her back, she faced the room, and in that position she
generally grew inspired, told the oddest stories without a
smile (unless the long puff were to be considered one), and quoted
poetry by the yard. She was looked upon a*s very learned and
as having herself composed most of the poetry she poured forth.
It was in the shop her manner was most whimsical and decided,
for if a call for cakes came when she happened to be telling a
story or reciting a poem she went absently forth (out to the shop
would not express it), heard the demand as through a dream, and,
with her dark eyes fixed on the customer, continued story or
poem while she papered and delivered over the pastry. The
effect of this was at times ludicrous in the extreme, as one day
when the old lady, who was an ardent patriot, was in the midst
of a long story about the rebellion of " Silken Thomas," and a
country-woman coming in for " a pennorth of crackers," Miss
Biddy, her eyes blazing with indignant fire, went on with:

"Yes ! Five of them executed together! And may the God of
Vengeance pour his wrath on their murderer's descendants even
to the last generation ! "

33 Miss BIDDY AND Miss ELIZA. [Dec.,

"O Lord, ma'am, who were they?" ejaculated the woman,
who stood transfixed by the black eyes, her hand, with the penny
held out, poised at one side of the counter, the old lady's hand,
with the cakes held aloft, poised at the other side. Miss Biddy
awoke, caught the absurdity of the situation, and answered sol-
emnly :

" My five uncles, ma'am. Hanged, strung up, every one of
them, before their own door, for sheep-stealing."

" May the Lord save us !" said the woman, backing out of the
place, penny and all.

" Amen !" responded Miss Biddy, while from the parlor in-
side came Miss Eliza's " Biddy, Biddy, what's to become of us
if you go on in this way?"

Indeed, it was not on all occasions an easy matter to deal with
the old lady, who required strict attention to good manners on
the part of her customers ; she had been known deliberately to
take up and fling into the street a number of cakes " fingered" by
an ignorant peasant woman, and then issue the command :

" Woman, take your money from off my counter, and take
your form from out my shop ! "

With all her peculiarities Miss Biddy O'Ryan generally main-
tained a calm, unruffled demeanor, while her friends well knew
that behind the oddities were a gentle heart and much genuine
humor.

The younger sister by fully ten years, Miss Eliza, in every re-
spect except gentleness of heart differed from her elder. She
was tall, very stout, of a fresh pink-and-white complexion, and
with a wealth of kind-hearted good-nature in the smiles that were
ever around her small mouth and dimpled chin. Her pride in
and her love of her sister were intense, and she never tired of
telling tales of Biddy's youth, when the latter who always
scorned being a girl and resented deeply that her short stature
prevented the putting-on of boys' clothes had beaten all the
boys at Latin and mathematics, and knew French as well as a
Frenchman ; of how Biddy, in imitation of boys of spirit, had run
away from home, her whereabouts being only discovered when
she wrote a despatch (not a letter) commencing : " To the family
of the O'Ryans, greeting! " and informing the said family that,
as their children were all mere girls, she had travelled on foot
many miles to take up her abode with an aunt who had ten sons,
whose studies and manly sports, being those most congenial to
her nature, she could share.

In most ways the contrast between the sisters was as great as

1 888.] Miss BIDDY AND Miss ELIZA. 331

in their appearance. Miss Eliza was somewhat careless of dress
and liked a gay color now and again ; she was quick of temper,
but as quickly recovered the genial, smiling, hearty manner that
made all at home with her at once. It was only in the shop that
she allowed her pride at all to show itself in the quick resentment
with which she met any attempt on the part of the vulgar public
to treat her as a mere born and bred cake-seller, not as one in
that position by the accidents of fortune ; but then a soft word
mollified her at once, and if she did use a sharp word she was
sure to make up for it by giving for nothing a cake that took
away all profits from her sale. She was good-nature itself, yet
full of a droll sense of humor that made her stories of people and
of things an endless source of amusement, for she narrated them
with all the vivacity, gesture, and color peculiar to born story-
tellers. Both women were refined and cultured in their speech,
but one marked peculiarity always crept into Miss Eliza's lan-
guage when she grew excited in her narration, which she always
gave as colloquially as possible: it was the use of "she-she" in
place of " said she" a peculiarity sometimes but rarely to be
heard amongst our peasantry.

Miss Biddy and Miss Eliza were only known to differ on two
subjects Eliza's charity, which threatened to leave them without
food to put in their own mouths, and her passion for the study
and practice of medicine. Had Miss Eliza but been born a gen-
eration later she would have undoubtedly made a name and a
position in the first rank of female M.D.s. It was not that she
had a woman's faculty for nurse-tending or a woman's quick in-
sight into disease and its treatment ; it was that she had a perfect
genius and an uncontrollable passion for the science. She had
had an uncle, one of the eminent physicians of the old school,
who had recognized his niece's talent even in her early youth,
had begun her medical education, and from him she had inherited
many valuable medical and surgical books and instruments. The
books she had studied deeply, and she had also acquired from
her mother an extensive knowledge of herbal science, for many
women in former days made the preparation of simples a careful
study. There was no such thing in Miss Eliza's day as the pos-
sibility of a woman's becoming a regular doctor ; so, her love of
physic growing with her years and superadded to an ardent
charity that impelled her to give help however and wherever
she could, she gradually came to be known far and wide amongst
the poor of the town, and even in the country around, as " better
than all the dispensary doctors put together." In fact, she

33 2 Miss BIDDY AND Miss ELIZA. [Dec.,

brought such zeal to the work, took in each case such a deep and
untiring interest, and possessed, in addition to genuine knowl-
edge, such a rare intuitive power if there can be such a thing in
medicine that she seemed almost to possess some charm. She
had fitted up a back kitchen as a sort of surgery, and here,
for hours each morning, there came crowds of poor sufferers to
consult this woman, who was rarely known to fail in the cure
even of patients sent away from the hospitals as incurable. Very
frequently, as her skill became known, the rich secretly applied
to her, and on more than one occasion her treatment was gen-
erously lauded by the first physician in the city. Certain it is
that the dispensary doctors had an easy time of it so long as Miss
Eliza practised, which she did almost to the day of her death.

Now, it was on this subject that she and Miss Biddy had, from
time to time, a misunderstanding, or, I might better say, an un-
derstanding, for Biddy made her thoughts on the matter perfectly
clear.

" I will thank you to tell me, Eliza O'Ryan,'' she would say,
" where all this is to end ? Charity is a great virtue I do
not deny it ; neither do I deny that we are bound to give to the
poor according to, and even a little beyond, our means. But we
are poor women more's the pity ! and yet you are giving, giv-
ing, giving, one way or another, from morning till night. You
give what often leaves both you and me wanting food. You
know you do. I saw you, Eliza O'Ryan, rob the till three times
yesterday when you thought 1 was asleep, but I had my eye on
you, may God forgive you ! But, for the matter of that, we
might pull on if it was not for your mad doctoring. That, I tell
you, will be your ruin. Here you are, depending on cakes (and
a crumbling fpundation they are to depend on !) for a living, yet
you fill the place, morning, noon, and night, with the blind, the
lame, and the halt (to say nothing of incipient fevers and small-
pox) all of them poor and most of them in such rags that before
long no decent people will have the stomach to touch one of your
cakes, and then you'll have no till to rob, ma'am ! And that's
not all, but in your professional pride (quotha !), your mad anxiety
to cure what the paid doctors turn off as incurable don't inter-
rupt me, Eliza O'Ryan ! it's pride, mad ambition and pride,
not pure charity I say, in your folly and passion to beat the
whole School of Medicine and College of Surgeons, you provide
drugs and herbs and linen and plasters free, gratis, for nothing,
to every man or woman that you think can't buy them. I'm
older than you, and in the course of nature I can't live long,

1 888.] Miss BIDDY AND Miss ELIZA. 333

especially when it comes to living on stale cakes and remnants
of sugar tomfooleries ; but I'd be glad you would tell me, how
am I to rest in my grave and you in the poor-house? Ah ! little
Kathleen, it's a weary world where nobody lives!"

And having lashed Miss Eliza up to flouncing out of the little
parlor to hide her tears, and herself into a passion for which, alas!
there was only too good cause, Miss Biddy, standing in her
accustomed place with her hands behind her back and her back
to the fire, would emit a long and bitter puff, and then turn her
attention to the objects of her own and her sister's mutual
pleasures the cats, the dogs, and two little children.

These children never exactly knew how they came to be such
intimate associates of the two old ladies. The elder child had a
dim recollection of being carried, wrapped in Miss Eliza's shawl,
and set down on the old horse-hair sofa, directly facing Miss
Biddy ; next, of finding her way alone to the small parlor, and up
on the sofa, where were Fosco, the little white terrier, Tomasina,
the tabby, and two kittens ; then, as her younger sister grew able
to walk, of taking her also to the sofa, the dog, and the cats; and
from that time forth one or other of the children paid daily visits
to their friends, with whom a strong and most curious friendship
sprang up.

Seated on the old sofa, her chubby legs stuck straight out,
Fosco's head in her lap, Tomasina purring beside her, and the
kittens hugged up tight, little Maud or little Kathleen listened
in rapt delight to Miss Biddy or Miss Eliza holding forth. The
strange part of all was that for the most part both ladies talked
on and on to the children as they would to grown folk, ram-
bling from history to poem, from poem to story, from story to
reminiscence, the reminiscences full of graphic character sketches
and told with inimitable humor. Never in all was there one
word that could touch a child's innocence and purity ; but the
sisters seemed to take for granted what actually was the case,
that, young as were the listeners, they yet took in every humor-
ous point and every incident just as well as elder folk, and en-
joyed intensely the companionship and appreciated the charac-
ters of their certainly very original friends, who, on their side,
appeared just as thoroughly to enjoy the child society they so
attracted to themselves. Miss Eliza would often pause in a nar-
rative to say :

" Remember, little Maud, I am telling you these stories, and
you, when you grow up, will write books and put these people
into them."

334 Miss BIDDY AND Miss ELIZA. [Dec.,

At times Miss Eliza or Miss Biddy waxed moral or instruc-
tive and gave comical little lessons on any fault of manner or
character detected in the little people as when little Kathleen,
in all the pride of new red morocco shoes and open-work socks,
went to show her finery, Miss Eliza looked and admired with :

" 'Pon my honor, the shoes are charming and a credit to the
slwemaker ; I think I will order just such a pair for Miss Biddy.
But [having no doubt detected incipient vanity about natty little
limbs], good Lord ! Biddy, did you ever see such legs and feet
under a cow or a horse ? "

Miss Biddy greatly and rightly despised any departure from
simplicity of words.

" Mamma ! " she once remarked on hearing one of the small
friends use the name. " Mamma! That, child, is not the way to
address your mother. It is a silly, foreign imitation of a word.
It is as if you were a tottering ba-lamb on four weak legs and un-
able to speak like a human child. It is an indignity to your good
mother to address her as if she were an ojd woolly sheep. Say
' Mother,' child ; it is a good, wholesome word. Do you sup-
pose the sons and daughters of her Majesty the Queen speak of
their mother as 'my royal ma-ma'? And when you say the
' Hail Mary,' would you attempt to say, ' Holy Mamma of
God, pray for us'? "

It was not always grown-up talk amongst the cronies ; the
fascination for the children lay in the way in which the two
ladies entered heart and mind into their every way of entertain-
ing. In fact, it appeared as if they themselves were the enter-
tained when they gave a cat's tea or christening on the occasion
and they were many of kittens ; or when, of a winter's night,
the wind howled and rumbled and seemed to talk in the old
chimney, and Miss Biddy, bending her ear to the fire-place,
would stop in the very middle of her sentence, hold up her hand
for silence, listen, and then, to the spell-bound children, tell how
the lodgers in the chimney had come home. She would question,
pause for answers to her queries, and then repeat those lodgers'
marvellous tales of their last adventures by town and country,
and land and sea.

PART II.

In the summer evenings Miss Eliza would often take a little
friend by the hand and together they would stroll about the cu-
rious by-ways of the ancient city. One of her favorite walks was

1 888.] Miss BIDDY AND Miss ELIZA. 335

to pass up a long street that led to the Western Gateway of the
town, almost the only part of the old fortifications then left stand-
ing. Of a fine evening this was a pleasant way, for the whole
top of the street was built across by the old houses beside and
over this West Gate, the tall, open archway of which made a per-
fect frame, through which was seen the summer sun in its last
flood of light before it sank into the night, and its last brilliant
rays came as if in a glory through the old stone arch. This was
Miss Eliza's most frequent walk, and here she invariably paused
a moment before passing through the gateway, remaining silent
and with a look on her face as if of prayer. Instinctively her child-
companion had quickly learned to be silent also at such times,
and somehow worked out in her mind that Miss Eliza was pray-
ing here, because out beyond that glowing sea of gold was
heaven, and that the quiet archway was the gate of that happy
land.

It was on one of those occasions that, coming near this spot,
the two friends saw workmen hurrying from the door of the
gabled gate-house, and saw also the signs of bricks and mortar
and fallen stones about the place. As if startled, Miss Eliza sud-
denly stopped motionless, then hurriedly addressed one of the
men, asking him what was about being done to the gate-house.
He answered that the corporation had decided that houses, old
arch and all, must come down, in order to open up the roadway
and give a free view of the new church beyond.

" Pull down the house ! Pull down almost the last remnant
of the ancient walls ! The Goths !" muttered his questioner.

" True for you, ma'am, an' it's sorry I am to see the old place
going, but there won't be a stone of it left by this day week."
And the man went his way.

By this time the rest of the workmen had left, but, as the en-
trance door had already been removed, the house was free for
access, and the lady, followed by the child, whose presence she
seemed to have forgotten, went in and up the narrow, time-worn
stairs, pausing here and there to look into the empty rooms, and
going from place to place somehow as if the whole dwelling were
as familiar to her as her home. There was nothing of interest
about these rooms; if this were indeed the original gate-house, it
had been so beplastered and whitewashed and semi-modernized
that it was poor and commonplace-looking all but one apart-
ment, to which Miss Eliza went as if to her destination, and at
the door of which she paused and knocked, then, starting at her
own act, quickly turned the door-handle and entered.

33 6 Miss BIDDY AND Miss ELIZA. [Dec.,

It was a large room directly over the arch, and with deep em-
brasured windows looking east and west, so that the place was
flooded with the light of the setting sun. The apartment was
handsome, although quite bare of furniture, if I except a board
raised on a few bricks so as to form a seat, upon which the labor-
ers had evidently rested while at their meals. Here Miss Eliza
seated herself, and, her face hidden in her hands, sat long and
silently, apparently utterly unconscious of any other presence in
the room. The sun sank low, then disappeared ; the after-glow
slowly changed and faded, and still the quiet figure sat on and on,
motionless, until fear began to grow over the little child, who had
all the time remained at the window. With that strange intui-
tion that comes so soon to some natures, she divined that her
friend must not just then be disturbed. But now she was begin-
ning to dread the silence and quiet of the empty house, when she
was startled by the sound of passionate sobs that seemed to burst
forth as if in spite of the strongest control of the weeping wo-
man. Little Kathleen, for that one hour, was a woman before her
time ; she went over and without one word put her little arms
around her friend's neck, and the strong woman, leaning her head
against the small figure that scarcely reached her shoulder as she
sat, cried with the terrible, rending sobs that come only from
those who rarely weep.

For a long time she remained so, then her crying ceased as
suddenly as it began, and yet for a time she never lifted her head
nor spoke. When she did move it was but to rise quickly, take
one long look around the room, and then, with Kathleen's hand
in hers, go down the stairs and out into the street, where she
stood a moment or two turned towards the house, and said :

" Take a last look, child, at the Gate to Heaven, for you'll
never see it again this side the grave."

She did not speak again until they reached home, when she
sat down wearily on the sofa, and Miss Biddy, looking sharply
at her, asked no questions, but puffed long and with a trouble
somehow expressed in the sound.

" The West Gate is to be pulled down, Biddy, and the old
house with it."

" Ay, and I see, Eliza O'Ryan, that you are the same big
fool you ever were. ' He that calleth !' may God forgive
me, but I can't help it when I look at you, you poor, weak-
hearted woman, and think of what you might be! Don't mind
me, Eliza ; it may be that if I was a mere woman myself 1 should
have done the same."

1 888.] Miss BIDDY AND Miss ELIZA. 337

" Little Kathleen,'' said Miss Eliza, " I'm going to tell you a
story. This time it's not a fairy tale, which is fancy ; it's not his-
tory, which is full of lies ; it's real life history, and every word
true, though may be a little too grown-up for you. Eh ?"

"No, Miss Eliza; go on, please."

" Once upon a time, then" (" And a very good time it was,"
muttered the child, supplying under her breath the usual, but now
omitted, end of the preface), " there lived in a far-away town a
young girl. She was very young and very light-hearted, and a
good many people said it was little wonder the heart of one with
such white skin, such soft, pink cheeks, such beaming eyes and
laughing lips should be a bright heart ; and if ever there was one,
it was. And kind, too, though they say the young are always
selfish ; she was not so, for she was youngest in a household
where the mother gave the example of unselfishness, and taught
each child the purest happiness comes from making, not our-
selves, but others happy.

" Well, it so happened that she was to be married to a young
man of a far higher family and position than her own (though she
too was of a good old race). He was one of the noble house
of Desmond ; a fine, handsome youth, so quiet and so studious
that he rarely went into company, but seemed as if he left all the
gayety and all the courting to his father, a kind, amiable man,
who loved the bright young girl as if she were already his daugh-
ter, and who seemed full of anxiety to have the young people
married, that his son might be drawn from the strangely lonely
life he led.

" It was a curious engagement. There had been for years an
intimacy between the two families, notwithstanding the differ-
ence of rank, and so the young people had known each other for
years before old Mr. Desmond proposed to the girl's parents for
their daughter as a wife for his son. Quiet and retiring as was
young Desmond, and bright and laughing as was the girl, she
had known him through childhood and girlhood, and had gradu-
ally become sincerely attached to him ; and so her parents con-
sented to the marriage, and so it was settled it should be. But,
though young Desmond sometimes left his books to walk with
her, he never, after the first day, spoke of their marriage, never
seemed more than he had been before, but, on the contrary, as
time went on, seemed to grow colder and more distant than he
had been in their earlier days of friendly intercourse. His man-
ner became so strange that the young girl, who loved him well,
and had been led to believe that he loved her else why should

VOL. XLVIII. 22

338 Miss BIDDY AND Miss ELIZA. [Dec.,

he have asked her to marry him ? was unable to understand the
reason of his coldness, and grew daily more and more unhappy
over the fancies that rose to her mind, thinking, in her foolish
affection, that some want in herself, some disappointment in her
character, had made him regret his choice; yet she had not
courage to speak of her troubles to any one, only became sad
and silent, not knowing what to do, until her elder sister who
was sister and brother, father and mother, to her all her life saw
how things were, and, arming herself with a horsewhip (though
she would not be able to horsewhip a fly), demanded an explana-
tion of young Henry Desmond. He, coolly enough, told her
that in truth he was averse to the marriage and had only con-
sented to propose for her sister in order to gratify his old father,
but that he neither loved the girl he was betrothed to nor could
he bear the thought that a Desmond should marry one whose
family, no matter how ancient " (" And it was an ancient race
more ancient than his own," interpolated Miss Eliza, throwing
back her head) " and respectable, was not equal in rank to that of
Desmond. He added, however, that he would do anything rather
than displease his father.

" ' Do anything ! ' cried the elder sister. ' Do anything! Is
that how you speak of marrying my sister, too good and too
beautiful for all the Desmonds put together, seed, breed, and
generation ! As for you, who have meanly and cruelly engaged
her affections by pretending a love you did not feel, mark my
words, you will live to regret your conduct/'

" She was too hurt in her family pride, but far more wounded
in her love for her young sister, to remember the horsewhip ;
she only turned away, sad and miserable, for well she knew that
for such a marriage to take place would only be to insure a
broken heart for the affectionate but high-spirited girl, who
could not long remain blind to the truth. And she was right.
The sisters told no one what had happened ; they went away to-
gether to a quiet country place for a while, and when they re-
turned the younger announced that she had changed her mind
and would not marry, for that Henry Desmond was not the man
to make her happy. He took the announcement as quietly as he
had taken the prospect of the horsewhipping, but his father
raged and stormed and broke off all acquaintance with the family
of one who had so scandalously ill-treated his son, who, in his
mean selfishness, never told one word of the truth, while the
young girl was too proud, and, though she hid it well, at first
too broken-hearted, to speak ; but, though her gayety and cheer-

1 888.] Miss BIDDY AND Miss ELIZA. 339

fulness gradually returned, she never again gave a thought to
any man.

" Well, to make a long story short, years went on. The sisters
became orphans and were left poor, very poor. They quitted
their native town and moved to a city a good way off, where no
one knew them or how changed their life was, and where they
just barely managed to get along somehow or other. They had
not been long in their new home when one day a message was
brought that a gentleman who was very ill sent to beg the
younger of the sisters would visit him. Full of surprise, she
went, for she never refused her help to one in suffering, and,
dying in an ancient house in the city, friendless and desolate,
she found Henry Desmond. He told her he had been some
years living there with no companions but his books ; he had
learned by chance that she and her sister were in the same town ;
a longing to see the kind faces and the friends of his childhood
had come over him, and he had sent to her, feeling certain she
would forgive him, now he was dying, and be the friend she had
been before he caused her sorrow.

" She did. She had loved an imaginary man who never exist-
ed, but for his sake she now cared and tendecj the poor dying
man as if he were a brother to the man she had loved cared
for him so kindly that his heart was moved deeply ; he knew
something of her straitened circumstances, and a longing came
over him to make all the reparation in his power for the wrong
he had done by leaving her in comfort for the rest of her life.
But he had no income save that which came from his property,
and that he could not leave away from the heir-at-law. He
could only leave a life use of a certain portion of it to his wife
were he married, and that he might do this he begged of his
friend to marry him even now, on his death-bed, that he might
show his gratitude for her goodness, for the blessings she had
been the means of bringing to him in his last hours.

" But here the woman's nature showed itself supreme. She
was doing all that a woman could do in kindness and mercy for
the man she had once loved ; she was even the means under
God of saving his soul," for during many years he had neglected
the practice of his religion ; she brought him round to repent-
ance, to a fervent renewal of his faith ; and even the priest who
attended the sick man, when he learned her story and knew the
dying wish of Desmond, begged of the woman, whose poverty
he more than suspected, to consent to the marriage. But no,
nothing could induce her to do so ; what she had done she had

340 Miss BIDDY AND Miss ELIZA. [Dec.,

done in mercy and kindness, as she hoped for such. Henry Des-
mond had cared nothing for the affection of her youth ; she would
not, even to be saved from dire poverty, be married now for cold
gratitude, and she would not give it to the Desmond family to
say that she had worked upon a dying man's gratitude in order
to enrich herself.

" So it ended. Henry Desmond died, and his family, who had
been almost strangers to him, came and took possession of all,
while she who had loved him in her early youth and who had been
his only comfort in the end, went on quietly with her life in her
home, where actual poverty was threatening at the very time
when she, in her pride, threw aside a fortune.

" But there was one friend, a gentleman of the town, who had
come to know and to think highly of the lonely sisters. Some
business matter made him aware of their poverty, and he also
learned the fact that one of them had refused to obtain Des-
mond's property by marrying him when he was on his death-bed.
The gentleman went to the heirs and made to them such a repre
sentation of the lady's generosity and kindness as induced them
to beg her acceptance of a sum of money that saved both sisters
from want for many a year and gave them for some time com-
parative comfort. God alone knew what the gratitude of those
lonely women was. They had no way of repaying their friend's
goodness except by loving his little children very dearly and
love them dearly they do."

As Miss Eliza concluded her long and certainly for such a
young hearer rather "grown-up" story, she laid her hand very
tenderly on little Kathleen's head, and the child, who had listened
in rapt attention, got quietly down from her place on the old
sofa, said "good-night" to Miss Biddy and Miss Eliza, and went
home to cogitate over the first romance she had ever heard, and
which had saddened her much, wanting, as it did, the old ending :
" And if they did not live happy, that you and I may."

Time went on with the two old ladies and their child friends,
making little change in the old people, until one day the children,
going to pay their usual visit, found Miss Eliza in tears and look-
ing she, so strong to help others broken-hearted and lost. Miss
Biddy 'had suddenly grown weak and had lain down as she said
quietly to die, and Miss Eliza's skill as a physician told her only
too surely that it was so ; that the sister who during her long
life had never known illness was passing away. But Miss Bid-
dy's manly common-sense asserted itself; she would have no sad-
ness about the matter " we must all come to it, and the less fuss

1 888.] Miss BIDDY AND Miss ELIZA. 341

over such a small person the better." She made her prepara-
tions with quiet devotion, cheered all around her by her quaint
ways and sayings, demanded to be neatly dressed, pelerine and
all, and declared she must have her best cap on. " If I am
dying-," she said, " I see no reason for making a fright of my-
self." All through it was easy to see her effort to lessen the mis-
ery of the loving sister, but at the last she was unable to control
the feeling uppermost in her mind: "What will become of that
poor, soft-hearted woman when she is all alone?"

So, when she had received the last sacraments and had spent
some time in silent prayer .for strength in the journey before
her, she took Miss Eliza's hand in hers and made her dying
speech, grotesque enough in its abruptness but for the sad truth
underlying every word :

" Eliza O'Ryan, I'm dying, and I see it plainly before me that
if you don't mark my words and mend your ways you will go to
the devil with your charity. I'm going, Eliza. God bless you
for all !" .

And, left to herself, Miss Eliza did in a worldly sense go to
the bad with her charity, for her passion for doctoring and her
passion for almsgiving grew and grew and went hand-in-hand.
She spent every spare shilling on medicinal works and on procur-
ing herbs and drugs, and she spent time and the shillings that were
not to spare on doctoring and helping the poor. Her reputation
grew, but her business as a cake merchant declined gradually
though surely, until, before many years had passed, she found
herself with nothing to live upon but the aid of those amongst the
wealthier citizens who had benefited by her skilful treatment.
But to live so was more than her proud heart could bear, and the
thought of dependence hastened her end ; she gave up her house
and shop, and ended her days quietly in lodgings in a house that
looked straight across to where the West Gate and the old gate-
house once stood. Miss Eliza left a will which contained no
words but the directions, twice repeated and scored under, that
she was to be buried at the right hand of her sister, and the two
child friends of the old ladies, going to visit the grave, found that
it lay between that of Miss Biddy and one on which was a mar-
ble slab bearing the name of Henry Desmond.

MARY BANIM.

342 FR&D&RIC OZANAM. [Dec.,

FREDERIC OZANAM.*

LIVING in an age, as we do, when society, once baptized and
Christian, seeks, or has the appearance of seeking, to change its
base back to paganism and to turn all the affairs of men on the
pivot of self-interest, it behooves every man-loving heart to cast
about for a bond of union founded on disinterested charity.
Speaking even in a human sense, it will not serve any portion of
mankind's best interests that men be divided and fight, one class
against another, the poor against the rich, the high against the
humbly-born, the ignorant against the truly enlightened. Our
common good is bound up in one another, and we must know
our mutual rights and do our duty to bring about the greatest
happiness for the greatest number. Undying brotherly love,
springing from the true faith and in the hope of a common im-
mortality, is the only absolutely certain means of reconciling con-
flicting minds and holding the world back from the precipice of
despair and the bottomless abysses of communism and bestiality.

Only on the steps of the altar do we see the magnificent mon-
arch of charity, St. Vincent de Paul, distributing 40,000,000
francs in alms. Only through the church can we so much as
hope for a practical society of men who will seek the good of
their fellows at the sacrifice of the three strongest passions en-
gendered by the fall : our love of fame, of wealth, and of our
good pleasure. Only in the pale of the Catholic Church can
such an organization as St. Vincent de Paul's Society find birth
and grow to the maturity of manhood it to-day possesses. Its
foundation in France by Fr6d6ric Ozanam and his seven associates
was the Catholic answer given to the taunting challenge of the
St. Simonians and infidels: "Bah! your Christianity is dead.
Have done with talk about its glories. Show us your works."
And from the hour the inspiration struck these young men
some students, others lawyers, others writers for the press of Paris
they took the keynote of their society from a priest-editor, M.
Bailly, and learned how to commence work from Sceur Rosalie.
The first taught them that they must unostentatiously give the
poor not only alms in money or kind, but, more than either, the
alms of good advice (Taumdne de la direction) by placing their
knowledge as doctors, lawyers, men of business, at the service of
their poor. The second a true "queen by right divine," as she
has been beautifully, called by Kathleen O'Meara, and made so

* Fridfric Ozanam, Professor at the Sorbonne : His Life and Works. By Kathleen
O'Meara. Second American Edition. New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1888.

1 888.] FREDERIC OZANAM. 343

by the acclaim of king and peers, the poor and the great, whom
she controlled by the sweet majesty of wise charity apportioned
to them some of her poor families to visit, console, direct, and
help only so much as to make them capable of self-assistance.
For St. Vincent's charity must be prudent and not encourage
sloth. Like the modest apostle of lay charity that he was,
Ozanam imitated the great patron chosen by not naming the
society as if he had had any share in its initiation. The saint
had always claimed his foundation of Sisters of Charity as having
sprung from circumstances, only guided by Providence ; in like
manner Ozanam would take no glory to himself or his comrades,
but roundly declared " it was God who willed and founded their
society," " created not after man's fashion, with a deliberate pur-
pose, . . . but from elements already existing."

Look at these humble but intelligent eight as they meet once
a week, discuss the wants of their poor, make a little collection,
and close with a prayer to God and their glorious patron, St.
Vincent. No politics nor personal concerns are to be so much
as mentioned ; no eloquence or fine language tolerated. Their
aim is charity for suffering man for God's sake. The next pic-
ture introduces the white habit of St. Dominic, borne with such
courage and dignity by the incomparable Lacordaire and his
two companions. They came to encourage the young society,
now grown numerous by the accession of some of the best sons
of France. They grew by the eloquent demonstration of the
need for their common country of religion on the one hand, and
practically Catholic men like the Brothers of St. Vincent de Paul
on the other. Needless to describe how the genius of Ozanam
fifty years ago fired the best Catholic French youth and man-
hood ; how in five years he founded fourteen conferences in
Paris alone, fourteen more in the provinces ; and how in twenty
odd years his successors saw the death of the St. Simonians
who had taunted them with the sterility of religion, and saw
the " eight poor fellows," increased to two thousand in Paris, at-
tending one-fourth of the poor of that vast city, five hundred
conferences in France, and branches flourishing " in England,
Belgium, Spain, America, and in Jerusalem." But we are an-
ticipating.

Twenty years, from 1833 to 1853, was the time allotted by
Providence for the marvellous fulness of life of the Catholic leader,
litterateur, doctor of laws, and father of a world-wide society.
Ozanam had seen the reintroduction of the religious orders into
France after their repeated expulsion and massacre, and the dole-
ful success of over fifteen different revolutions from 1798 to

344 FR&D&RIC OZANAM. [Dec.,

the advent of the last Napoleon. He sent one Archbishop of
Paris to die on the barricades, and conquered the timidity of
another.* By his direct influence Lacordaire was lifted into the
pulpit of Notre Dame, whence he drew France by " golden
chains round about his feet," and hurled such beneficent thun-
derbolts at the enemies of God and society that you would say
he was another angel in the army of Sennacherib, only he smote to
save. And the nation followed in the wake of the triumph of
Catholicity. Ozanam had assisted at the at least partial resurrec-
tion of France under the lead of kindred spirits. First of these is
the Christian tribune, Montalembert, whom to mention is to re-
call all the glorious line of the Monks of the West filing by in
grandest procession. The young genius of the beautiful soul of
Henri Perreyve had bloomed and almost faded, leaving the odor
of his virtues in deeds and written works to refresh strug-
gling youth in the path of self-sacrificing glory. Debonald,
Cochin, De Solignis, Aratry, and others as brilliant and as
Catholic, had risen on all sides and joined themselves with the
sons of St. Vincent de Paul in the warfare against the spirit of
infidelity and immorality stalking over the land. We touch, in
passing, the years Ozanam spent in attaining unsought dignities
as professor of law and literature in the famous Sorbonne ; the
numerous and brilliant works he composed on civilization, the
Franciscan poets, with their great tertiary, magnificent Dante,
at their head ; his trenchant contributions to controversy and
periodical literature and come to his last steps, his travels in
Italy, one principal object of which was the spread of the society.
Do not imagine so great a work and so powerful a lever in the
hands of God for the defeat of the legions of darkness was al-
lowed to exist without resistance from the enemy of salvation.
Dukes and nobles opposed Ozanam, he being a republican, on
the score of politics, too easily crediting the reports of the cavil-
ling that the society was but a cover for party and national de-
signs ; and especially was this the case in Italy. He overcame
objections by explaining the simple objects of the association, and
obtained the triumph, so happy for his adversaries, of seeing the
seeds he had sown when he first attempted the conferences in
Italy in 1847 spring up into two flourishing conferences in 1853
in Leghorn and Pisa, seven in Tuscany and the neighboring
places. " I see with pleasure," he writes, " a great affluence of
young men, students, merchants, clerks, sons of noble families,
university professors, and the draper round the corner, all elbow-
ing each other and all led by first-rate presidents."

* Life of Frfdfric Ozanam, p. 240.

1 888.] FR&D&RIC OZANAM. 345

One of his very last acts was the establishment, after much op-
position, of two conferences in the city of St. Catharine, in Siena,
and the encouragement to " form conferences in houses of edu-
cation." His force was spent. His will, written August 15 at
Antignano, "implores the prayers of his friends of the Society of
St. Vincent de Paul." "To his tender wife, Amelie," he bids
farewell ; this is the very Amelie who wrote her thanks to the
American society a few years back, on the occasion of the Vin-
centian Jubilee, for their appreciation and love of her husband.
With the words upon his lips, " My God ! have mercy on me,"
he died on the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, Sep-
tember 8, 1853.

We have in Fr6deric Ozanam and his and our society of St.
Vincent de Paul, praised before Christendom by Leo XIII., the
model association of Catholics. It has for its mission the lay
apostolate of saving the souls of its members and those of their
spiritual clients. It has still more the purpose of reconciling
conflicting classes of society and warding off those conflicts of
classes rife under so many forms, not only in schismatical and her-
etical countries, but in the heart of Catholic nations. If the rich
are not persuaded by charity to give up a part of their surplus
wealth and personally to visit and help their suffering brethren ;
and if the poor and downtrodden are not taught to suffer for
God's sake and better their condition by industry and thrift by
means of work furnished them by public-spirited and Christian-
minded employers, there can be no doubt that communism and
monopoly will between them grind the life out of civilized
humanity. Here, blessed be God in his saints and heroes ! the
Vincents and Ozanams of the past and present all may stand
upon the one platform of mutual aid for body and soul. Active,
subscribing, and corresponding members may be and are of all
classes of society among men, and multitudes can be saved by
this organization who would lose faith in themselves and in God
but for its charity. Looking back at the lives of those whose
names are written high up on the eternal granite hills, the saints,
sages, and true benefactors of mankind, one is forced to the sweet
reflection that, even for earthly fame that is lasting, it is better to
become a saint and hero of mother-church than to shine in the
ranks and annals of the world. For the mother never forgets
the glories of her children, but sings them on to countless gene-
rations, whilst the world's heroes are forgotten, trodden out of
sight by the ruthless tramp of ages, or consigned to the poor
meed of " pointing a moral or adorning a tale."

Knottsville, Ky. THOS. J. JENKINS.

346 A WORD FOR A BRAVE CLASS OF MEN. [Dec.,

A WORD FOR A BRAVE CLASS OF MEN.

ONE of the greatest glories of the Catholic Church lies in the
fact that her all-seeing eye and her tireless charity fails not any
one or any class of the human family. Her hospitals for the sick,
her homes for the poor and the aged, her asylums for the orphan,
the blind, deaf, and dumb, her lying-in places for women in travail,
her monasteries and convents, her sodalities for the pious in the
world, her societies for all manner of men and purposes all these
institutions of the church evince the tender and watchful care of
a mother consulting the special wants and aspirations of each
one of her children. From babyhood to old age and the grave,
and even after the grave, her maternity knows and cares for her
charges. On the platform of disgrace she stands with the crim-
inal, and, when his body dangles in the air to be hooted at and
loathed by the multitude, she alone, in her priest, kneels by him
as yet her son, praying that the flown soul may merit the sight
of God by the wedding garment of her sacraments.

If the church, then, desires to help and save each one of her
children, it follows, as a matter of course, that any considerable
flock which has strayed or is liable to stray away should most
assuredly be sought after and carefully watched. There is just
such a flock in the United States this day. By their very call-
ing are they exposed beyond the ordinary man to all the snares
of the evil one. They are looked down upon for the vices inci-
dental to their profession, whilst few consider the difficulties in
their way for spiritual good.

For the clerk, merchant, or day laborer it is a matter of com-
parative ease to get to Mass on Sundays. In fact, even to an
indifferent Catholic it is about as pleasant as staying at home.
The church is hard by, the eye of the priest is near. A mechanic
will, therefore, attend to his duties regularly, because they are
always being brought home to him by the force of association.
His work is over by Saturday night. He has ample time for
sleep. When he awakes in the morning the town or village is
quiet with the general cessation of business. The stillness of the
air, broken only by the pealing of the church-bells, reminds him
forcibly of the sacredness of the day and his obligations.

Railroad men have neither these admonitions nor these op-
portunities of frequenting the church or the sacraments, yet I
doubt very seriously if special attention has ever been given to

1 888.] A WORD FOR A BRAVE CLASS OF MEN. 347

their case. The church has priests who are devoted to foreign
missions, to sailors, to the negro, churches and priests in the
slums of the large cities for her poorest and most ignorant chil-
dren, priests in hospitals, convents, asylums, and jails, priests and
nuns looking after and tending all her children in the United
States with the one exception of the railroader.

To show the ease with which a naturally pious man may rap-
idly become lukewarm and neglectful of his duties from the mere
accidentals of a railroad life, it will be necessary for me to pre-
sent a few phases only of that profession. I am qualified by
actual experience, if not by other means, to give true illustra-
tions.

To begin with, and, one might almost say, to end with, a rail-
road man can never call any hour his own. We will suppose
him hired on Monday as freight brakeman. Being a good Catho-
lic and not having been to the sacraments for some time, he
thinks that he will perform his duties on Sunday. As likely as
not, when Saturday night comes, he is midway on his " run"
miles from town and the church and their associations. He may
arrive at the terminal point at four or five in the morning. If
business is active on the road the " crew " may be ordered out at
once for a return trip. Half-asleep, he ascends the cars to apply
the brakes, and, while Mass is going on, instead of being at the
church to commune with his God, he is likely cursing his luck and
the railroad company for being obliged to work though sore
and tired. A rare occurrence for him is a Sunday to himself.
On that day, fewer passenger trains being run, the moving of
freights is easier and more frequent. Even allowing him the
very unlikely possibility of an occasional Sunday, he has per-
haps been up night and day for the better part of the week, and
is too worn out, I might almost say, to think even of God, too
dead asleep to hear the church-bells ringing.

There are passenger trains also which are run regularly on
Sundays as well as during the week. The crew on that train
probably leave their starting-point before Masses have begun
and reach their destination after they are over. They pick up
and drop men, women, and children going to or coming from
the church. They cannot go to church, even though they have
.not been long enough on the railroad to have become indifferent.
The gatekeeper, the switchman, the car- cleaners and greasers,
the flagmen at the crossings, the wipers in the round-house, the
watchmen at the tunnels or bridges or cuts, the track-walkers
in fact, all the subordinate employees of the railroad have to be

348 A WORD FOR A BRAVE CLASS OF MEN. [Dec.,

at their posts on this supposed day of rest as much as during the
six days previous.

Yet these same men are in every respect worthy of the same
privileges of quiet recreation and divine worship as any class
of men in the world. Their life is hard, laborious, rough, and
dangerous. They become so used to the sight of the mashed
and the mangled that, in time, they fail to appreciate physical
danger or suffering, and thence, by a natural consequence, the
snares and evils in the way of their souls. They are brave, noble
men, eminently so. Many a conductor, brakeman, fireman, or
engineer has perished in the faithful discharge of his duty, guard-
ing the life and property given into his trust. What is the
reward for this lite of sacrifice? The coroner's notice. If they
lose a leg or an arm in the performance of their hard duties and
are thereby rendered unfit for paying positions on the road, they
are relegated to the hopeless and humble offices of flagman and
watchman.

If these men, then, are not worthy of the special care of the
church from the temptations incident to the character of their
employment, from its natural hardness and wildness, from their
courageous discharge of duty in the very face of death, from the
other manly and noble qualities which, under other circumstances,
would have made of them good children of their spiritual mo-
ther, at least their families are entitled to all the tenderness and
all the watchfulness that she can exercise.

There are many times in all families when a man's presence is
necessary at his home, or, at least, it is an additional safeguard
for his children to know that his authority is near by to support
the commands of a mother often too busy with or tired from
work to make herself obeyed. As their daughters are growing
up into womanhood and developing their first natural instincts
for male society, they are exposed to much "danger from the at-
tentions of foolish or unscrupulous young men. There is need
at this period of a father's constant manliness to meet such repro-
bates as they deserve. There never was a harder fact than this.
The water towns of Connecticut and Massachusetts, where hus-
bands see their wives and children only a few times during the
year, give us enough evidence as to the baneful effect of a man's
constant absence from home. A railroader's case is even worse.
The fisherman's wife and daughter at least have the same house,
friends, church, and priest the year around and for years. An
unfortunate condition of the family of the railroader is that they
can count on nothing permanent anywhere. Their father and

1 888.] A WORD FOR A BRAVE CLASS OF MEN. 349

husband may, and is likely at any time to be shifted to another
part of the system, and they follow to a new home, strangers,
and a strange church.

The disruption of old ties and time-honored associations is
unfortunate in any case. But to a woman it is especially so. It
is indeed a beautiful trait in woman this devotion to her kneel-
ing spot near the altar, and to the good man of God who, from
long knowledge of her troubles, knows what balm to give to each
wound.

There can be no question, then, as to the need these men,
their wives and daughters, have of the watchful care of the
church. It might be asked, How can they be reached ? Easily.
If two Protestant women, Miss Jenny Smith and her companion,
can draw together in round-houses and machine-shops the sooty
engineers and firemen and the roughest of freight brakemen, and
retain their attention to their sermons, prayers, etc., it does most
certainly stand to reason that priests, filled with apostolic zeal,
could go down likewise into the shops, where they would be
cheerfully welcomed by the officers of the road go down and
work wonders amongst these brave men.

There is no place in the United States where the influence
of the church, always on the side of order, is more needed or
could do more good. A word to these men from a priest, one
who would come right down among them, would tend more to
stifle discontent than a successful strike. The officers of the
church must find out these stray sheep and their families. They
must watch over the latter when the husband and father cannot.
If he be killed they must take care that his wife does not die of
starvation nor his daughters go to perdition. In the ever-
changeful and precarious nature of the lives of these men there
is need of the unchanging and safe protection of the church. If
the priests would go amongst them and their families, look for
them at the round-house and on the trains and engines, the
church would bring back to her fold many a wanderer, and
would gain additions to her flock from amongst those who be-
fore knew her not. The priest would be welcomed by the offi-
cers, the men, their wives and children. The work-shops and the
car-sheds would be the scene of conversions, of reformation from
vice, and of the beginnings of Christian virtue.

I venture the assertion that the first zealous priest who un-
dertakes this work will be more than gratified at the result. I
know its necessity from actual experience and observation, and
I will feel the same gratitude as my former companions if the

350 THE DEMON POTTER. [Dec.,

matter is given the attention it deserves. I venture also the ob-
servation that, if the power of circumstances in moulding a
man's spiritual life be considered, it will be made manifest to
the sceptical that the railroader is not, after all, composed of
hopeless material. I finally venture to state as a truth that such
practical considerations as flow naturally from the above are of
as much service to the parish priest as many hours' study of theo-
logy in preparation for a dogmatic sermon on Sunday.

RICHARD F. JOHNSTON.

Montgomery, Ala.

THE DEMON POTTER.

WHEN Satan crafty Satan
A humble soul would slay,
He sends a Tarquin passion
This fair Lucrece to fashion
As though a soul were clay.

Then Satan merry Satan

Maliciously doth laugh
To see the potter moulding ;
To see a vase unfolding

For ashes and for chaff.

But Satan wrathful Satan

If all is nothing worth
Of skill to thus deform it, "
Of lustful touch to warm it,

Will strike it to the earth.

For Satan purblind Satan
He hath no eyes to see

That Truth may not be flattered ;

That chastity so shattered
From sin is smitten free.

CHARLES HENRY LUDERS.

1 888.] A PLEA FOR HONEST PROTESTANTS. 351

A PLEA FOR HONEST PROTESTANTS.*

WE have most carefully examined this book of two hundred
and ninety-four pages, compiled largely from a previous work
entitled God the Teacher of Mankind and containing the same
doctrine, and we find the pith and substance of it to be this very
extraordinary doctrine, that ever} 7 baptized Protestant who has
arrived at the use of reason is now in the state of mortal sin.
The only exception admitted to this general sweeping statement
is the catechumen (one under instruction to be received into the
church). All the rest, whether they know anything about the
Catholic Church or not, are in mortal sin, and unless they get
out of it will be damned.

Father Muller does not say so, in so many words, but he
might as well, for it is a conclusion which follows inevitably
from his teaching. We challenge any reader of fair ability and
instruction in theological reasoning, who will read this book
with attention, to say that our statement is not correct or to avoid
coming to our conclusion about it himself. We do not mean to
say, either, that Father Miiller has intended to teach this ; per-
haps not. But he has done it, all the same, unmistakably.

He has followed Dr. Brownson, who was undoubtedly a good
logician, and whose conclusions would have been generally very
decisive had his premises been true, which unfortunately was
sometimes not the case.

We cannot help wondering that Father Miiller's books, con-
taining this error, have received such unqualified approval. We
can only account for it by supposing that those who gave their
approval did not read the books carefully and critically, and took
it for granted that their doctrine must be correct. In this way
many high dignitaries, including Pope Leo himself, approved
Mr. Henri Lasserre's translation of the Gospels, although after-
wards it was, on more careful examination, put on the " Index."

We shall now proceed to prove unmistakably that Father
Muller teaches that all Protestants who have arrived at the use
of reason are actually in the state of mortal sin.

To do this we must premise that every baptized person who is
not in mortal sin is in a state of grace. Now, Father Miiller lays
down the following :

" The church teaches that the infant validly baptized . . . receives in

* The Catholic Dogma : Out of the Church there is no Salvation. By Rev. Michael
Muller, C.SS.K. New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago : Benziger Bros.

352 A PLEA FOR HONEST PROTESTANTS. [Dec.,

the sacrament the infused habit of faith and sanctity, and this habit suf-
fices for salvation until the child comes to the use of reason. . . . But
when arrived at the use of reason the child needs something beyond this
infused habit and it is bound to elicit the act of faith. . . . The habit may
be lost by the omission to elicit the act of faith, which neither is nor
can be elicited out of the Catholic Church ; for out of her the credible
object, which is Deus revelans et ecclesia proponens (God revealing and the
church proposing for our belief), is wanting. Consequently , outside of the
church there can be no salvation for any one, even though baptized, who has come
to the use of reason " {No Salvation out of the Church, p. 181).

Now, we affirm that mortal sin must intervene to place a
person who is in a state of grace in a state of mortal sin, and
therefore the above proposition carries with it necessarily this
one : Every baptized person who has come to the use of reason outside
of the church is in mortal sin.

The logic of Dr. Brownson and Father Miiller may be very
correct and their conclusion follow, granting the premises ; but
that conclusion does not and never can follow, unless there is
mortal sin somehow or somewhere, and so if there is no salva-
tion for any one, even though baptized, outside of the church,
they must necessarily all be in mortal sin. If the person " is
bound to elicit an act of faith," and such act " cannot be elicited
outside of the church," all this cannot put a person who is in a
state of grace out of it into a state of perdition unless such a
failure and such an impossibility involve a mortal sin. Baptism
gives sanctifying grace, which can never be forfeited except by
mortal sin.

We should judge from what Father Miiller says on the very
next page that he does not wish to teach such a doctrine, but he
does teach it nevertheless. He says : " Invincible ignorance ex-
cuses from sin, if you will, the omission to elicit the act, but it
cannot supply the defect caused by the omission. Something
more than to be excused from. the sin of infidelity or heresy is
necessary to salvation." To all this we say if this omission to
elicit an act of faith which he says is excused from sin is not a
mortal sin, it can never put a person in a state of grace into a
state of damnation. What is that " something more " which is
necessary to put a person who was once in a state of grace and is
excused from sin into a state of grace now? The answer is, noth-
ing whatever.

How can a man be put into a state which he has never been
out of? What "something more" than the state of grace is
necessary for salvation ?

We have before noticed that Father Miiller teaches the same

1 888.] A PLEA FOR HONEST PROTESTANTS. 353

doctrine, that all Protestants are in mortal sin, in his book, God
the Teacher of Mankind (p. 285), most clearly and unmistakably :
" Non-Catholics, therefore, in order to enter heaven, must cease to
be what they are, and become something which they are not.''
What is this but to say non-Catholics must get out of the state of
mortal sin in which they are, and get into the state of grace in
which they are not? From this it is impossible to avoid the con-
clusion that the inculpable omission of eliciting an act of faith is a
mortal sin ; and that a Protestant can be in mortal sin and not
in mortal sin, can be culpable and inculpable in reference to the
same act at one and the same time.

It is strange that Father Miiller cannot see his own contradic-
tion ; but he does not, and goes right on to put all Protestants,
baptized or not, into a state of damnation i.e., in mortal sin.
He shows this by the way he seeks to get St. Augustine in his
favor. He thus quotes him (p. 191) :

" But those who through ignorance are baptized there (with heretics),
judging the sect to be the church of Christ, sin less than those (who know
it to be heretical) ; nevertheless they are wounded by the sacrilege of
schism, and therefore sin not lightly, because others sin more gravely."

Here Father Miiller does not stop to inquire whether this ignor-
ance is a culpable ignorance or not, but implicitly takes it for
granted that ignorance, pure and simple, is a grievous sin, and
concludes that all without exception are in a state of mortal sin.
Schism, according to this, whether voluntary or not, inflicts a
wound the wound of mortal sin. Heresy inflicts a bigger one,
whether it be formal heresy or material heresy, which is really
no guilt of heresy at all but only error, as is made clear by St.
Augustine himself k.

" Those who defend their opinion, although it is false and perverse, with
no pertinacious animosity, especially when their errors have arisen not from
the audacity of their own presumption but they have received them from
their parents who have fallen away, seduced by error and who seek the
truth with a careful solicitude, prepared to correct themselves when they
find out the truth, are by no means to be considered heretics " (Epist. 43,
alias 162. See Murray, De Ecclesta, sect iii. 55).

From this it appears how vainly he quotes St. Augustine
again to show that material heretics or Protestants in good faith
must be now in mortal sin. " For Christian charity cannot be
kept out of the unity of the church." We should say that this
would depend upon whether unity was lost sinfully or not. But
Father Miiller does not stop to consider this : the failure to be in
VOL. XLVIII. 23

354 A PLEA FOR HONEST PROTESTANTS. [Dec.,

unity, no matter how it has happened, always involves mortal sin.
Father Muller, no matter where he starts, always comes to the
same end. You are not in the visible Catholic Church, therefore
you are in a state of perdition and, we must add as a necessary
consequence, you are (hie et nunc) in a state of mortal sin.

We do not doubt Father Muller will deny he has ever taught this
doctrine. If he has not taught it in so many words, it is his teach-
ing by necessary inference from one end of his book to the other,
and we hold it just as impossible to deny it as a necessary conse-
quence of his teaching as it is to deny that two and two make four.

And what utter absurdity this leads to ! Let us examine
what Father Muller in effect says : A child is validly baptized
and receives the habit of faith, which suffices for his salvation
until he reaches the age of reason. At that time he is bound to
make an act of faith ; but he cannot make an act of faith without
the ecclesia proponens (the church proposing). Then, we say, God
is bound to make known to him, then and there, the ecclesia pro-
ponens, otherwise God would be commanding him to perform an
impossibility, which God certainly cannot do. He is the infinite
justice, and such a thing is manifestly unjust. God must there-
fore send him at once an angel or somebody in the flesh to teach
him, or enlighten his mind by an interior inspiration, so that he
can come at the ecclesia proponens, and not put it off, as Father
Miiller says, until the hour of his death. Either this, or he is not
bound to elicit the act of faith, and his habit of faith received at
baptism will still suffice.

In the absence of the ecclesia proponens, on the supposition that
it is necessary to have it in order to make an act of faith, there is
no obligation ; without which obligation, and disobedience to it,
the person cannot fall from the state of grace into the state of
perdition. A person already in a state of grace cannot fall out of
it without mortal sin, and this is absolutely certain ; therefore if he
is bound to elicit an act of faith and is inculpably ignorant of the
ecclesia proponens (and Father Muller admits that there may be
such persons over and over again), then the ecclesia proponens can-
not be necessary for the act of faith, and the person must make his
act of faith without it. One does not go to bed in a state of grace,
and without sin wake up in the morning in a state of perdition.

As this person commits no actual sin, but simply lapses out
of the state of sanctifying grace, the only way we can conceive
of his getting into the state of perdition is on the supposition
that he goes back into original sin, which would certainly be
an original idea of Father Miiller's. We cannot find such a thing
in any theology we have ever read. Catholics have always been

1 888.] A PLEA FOR HONEST PROTESTANTS. 355

taught that original sin once remitted in baptism never returns.
Father Miiller seems to have this idea dimly floating in his brain,
for he says in his Familiar Explanation that Protestants have left
the true church in their founders. They are inculpable them-
selves, but Luther and Calvin and Henry VIII. were culpable
and they are culpable in them ! We inherited original sin from
Adam Protestants inherit actual sin from Luther ! However,
although this is the logical outcome of Father Miiller's teaching,
we do not believe he can mean seriously to advance such an ab-
surdity, and therefore we will let it pass.

Father Miiller seems to think he extricates himself from this
mass of absurdity by proposing the following question: "What
are we to think of the salvation of those who are out of the pale
of the church without any fault of theirs, and who never had
any opportunity of knowing better ? " The answer he gives to
this question is this :

" Their inculpable ignorance will not save them ; but if they fear God
and live up to their conscience, God, in his infinite mercy, will furnish
them with the necessary means of salvation, even so as to send, if needed,
an angel to instruct them in the Catholic faith rather than let them perish
through inculpable ignorance."

This answer might have an application to an unbaptized per-
son who needs a release from original sin, but not to a baptized
person who has not committed actual mortal sin and is inculpa-
bly ignorant of the visible Catholic Church. For a baptized
person can only fall from a state of grace into a state of perdi-
tion by a personal, actual mortal sin. This cannot be com-
mitted inculpably. If he does commit actual mortal sin and
perseveres in this miserable state until death (as he must, accord-
ing to Father Miiller), why should an angel be sent to him
rather than to any other man in mortal sin ?

It seems to us that Father Miiller's book is a crude, undigest-
ed performance. It is fairly bristling with error, and calculated
to do a great deal of harm. "Extra ecclesiam omnino non est salus "
(" Out of the church there is absolutely no salvation"). This
we must and do entirely adhere to. But it is entirely lawful to
hold that it is only necessary to believe explicitly necessitate me-
dii (or as a condition sine qua non) that there is a God who re-
wards the good and punishes the wicked ; also, that through
the merits of Christ sufficient grace for salvation is given to all
who come to the use of reason. St. Paul says that the heathen
by the light of nature can come to the knowledge of God, and
are inexcusable if they do not :

" For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are

356 A PLEA FOR HONEST PROTESTANTS. [Dec.,

clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, his eternal
power and divinity, so that they are inexcusable because that when they
had known God they have, not glorified him as God nor gave thanks "
(Rom. i. 20). And again : " For the same is Lord over all, rich to all that
call upon him " (Rom. x. 12).

What hinders us, then, from believing that any one, assisted
by divine grace, whether baptized or unbaptized, heathen, Jew,
Mahometan, or Protestant, in inculpable ignorance, " who fears
God and lives up to his conscience," as Father Miiller says, is
now or, to use Bonal's terms, hie et nunc in a state of grace ?

Such a one believes explicitly in God the rewarder and the
Eternal Truth. He says: My God, I believe thou art the Eter-
nal Truth. I only wish to know what is necessary for my sal-
vation, and I am most ready to follow it, and to obey thee in
all things as my sovereign Lord and the Supreme Good. Such
a one implicitly believes in the Incarnation, the Holy Trinity, the
Roman Catholic Church and all she teaches ; for all these truths
are contained in the belief of God and his veracity. An act of
this kind is an act of true contrition and wipes out mortal sin
completely. And such a person is a member of the Holy Ro-
man Catholic Church, not in re but invoto, and makes no excep-
tion to the principle, Extra ecclesiam omnino non est salus.

Cardinal Manning expresses it very beautifully :

" The work of the Holy Ghost, even in the order of nature, so to say,
that is, outside of the church of God and of the revealed knowledge of
Jesus Christ among the heathen that working is universal in the soul of
every human being.

Nor need this be done in a manner such as is considered
miraculous.

Father Miiller, it seems to us, has sinned much against charity
(we hope not intentionally) in attributing to his brethren who
disagree with him bad motives, in calling them opprobrious
names, and in twisting their language to a bad sense, thus do-
ing his best to gibbet them, and kill not only their doctrine but
themselves in the public estimation. This may be excused on
the plea that he often does not understand the meaning of words
in the English language, and evidently has not been gifted with
a clear head, and has allowed himself to be run away with by a
fiery and indiscriminating zeal. We hope he will be more cau-
tious in the future.

Father Mailer requested, through his publishers, that this
book should be noticed in THE CATHOLIC WORLD. We have
complied with his request.

WALTER ELLIOTT.

1 888.] PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 357

PAUL RINGWOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

CHAPTER XI.
HONEY AND GALL.

WHEN I got to the priests' house Father Weldon was out on
sick-calls, and I had to wait fully two hours in the shabby parlor
before he came in, looking cold and tired.

" What! you, Paul?" he exclaimed when he saw me.

Smiling not very cheerfully, I said : " I have a note for you
from my father."

" He does not consent, then ?" asked the priest.

"Oh! yes," I responded, " but he is very angry with me."

The day had turned cloudy, and, the light being dim in the
room, Father Weldon went to the window to read my father's
message. His cheeks flushed as he read the insulting first words,
but his face was quite white when he closed the note and re-
placed it in its envelope. " Paul," he asked, as he seated himself
wearily, "do you know what is in this note?"

"Of course!" was my surprised answer ; " I wrote it for my
father."

" He made you write this?" And Father Weldon tapped the
note with his forefinger.

I nodded in assent, and the priest exclaimed under his breath,
" Cruel ! cruel ! " He sat for some moments, his head resting in his
hands, his arms propped on his knees. Suddenly looking up, he
asked : " Do you understand what the consequences of your be-
coming a Catholic would be?"

"I'd be happier " I began, when he interrupted me : " Yes!
yes ! but has not your father threatened you in any way ?"

" No," I answered ; " he is not pleased, that is all."

" As I thought," said Father Weldon to himself ; " he has left
all for me to tell. Now listen well, Paul," he continued briskly.
" I have something very unpleasant to tell you. Some ten years
ago, when you were a very little boy, we were in much difficulty
here money difficulty. We had begun an orphanage, had a
houseful of little orphans, and very little money to buy them food
or clothing. Your father heard of our straitened circumstances.
He paid me a visit, gave me a considerable sum of money for
the orphans, and at the same time did them another service ot
which it is not necessary to speak just yet. On this occasion he

358 PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Dec.,

said, when he had made known to me what he intended doing
for the orphans : ' Remember, I have no liking for the religion
which these children are taught, but I have sympathy for their
hungry little bodies.' I thanked your father heartily for his
goodness to us, and expressed a wish that some day he would
think better of the church. ' So badly do I think of it,' he
answered, ' that were a child of mine to embrace your faith I
would turn that child out of my house in order that others of my
family might not be perverted by his bad example.' He has
been most charitable to us since. If you know nothing of it, it
must be because all your father's charities pass through the hands
of his lawyer, Mr. Mole."

Father Weldon paused to wipe his forehead with his handker-
chief. He was perspiring, though the room was chilly, and I
saw that his hand trembled. " And now, Paul, do you under-
stand why I have told you this?" he asked.

" I don't believe that he will send me away from home. I am
sure he cannot mean it," I said positively.

" It is ten years since your father made that threat. He has
not forgotten," said the priest.

I am not in the least a hero ; I had no idea of making a heroic
sacrifice. The thought of being driven from home was almost
unbearable to me, and in my heart I hesitated. I looked to Father
Weldon for comfort ; he was gazing out through the window.

"Father!" I cried at last, his silence becoming intolerable,
"what am I to do?"

" My poor boy," he answered gently, " all I can tell you is to
pray, and that you know yourself. My Lord and my God ! " he
went on in impassioned tones, " it was you who sent this boy to
me. Teach him what to do." He was almost sobbing, it seemed
to me, his frame shook so. " Paul," he said, when he had become
calmer, "pray for me, too, that I may do the right thing by you.
Now go away, Paul ; I have a long office and much work to do."
Pressing my hand warmly, he added : " Do not be afraid to come
back to tell me your decision, whatever it may be. I will not
try to change it, nor shall I ever have any but a friendly feeling
for you."

My heart was full. Not knowing what I would do, 1 could
not speak, and thus left the priest without another word. When
I reached home I went straight to the " little room" and threw
myself on a lounge. I was as one stupefied, unable to think
collectedly. My head ached dully and I scarcely noticed the
hours in their passing. It was late in the afternoon when I re-

1-888.] PAUL RING WOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 359

membered Father Weldon's advice to pray. I tried, and could
not. All I could do was to say the Holy Name over and over
again. I heard five o'clock strike, and then I said to myself and
God alone knows how miserable I felt in saying it " I will go
to my father and tell him I will not be a Catholic."

In the book-room I found no one, and then I knocked at my
father's door. I knocked three times, each time more faintly.
At the third knocking my father called out : " Who's there? "

" It is I, papa," I cried ; " please let me in ! "

I heard his tread on the carpet, heard him, poor, half-blind
man, stumble against a chair.

He opened the door, and, looking up. I saw that he was smil-
ing. " So you have gotten over your nonsense ! That's a brave
boy." And he put out his hand to me.

The day had cleared again, and in the west the sun was stain-
ing the snow with ruddy gold. The sky was as though on fire,
and the glory of it made me think of the gateways of the heav-
enly city.

I did not take my father's hand, but said : " Papa, all day I've
tried I must be a Catholic."

He raised the cane he carried, and pointed from him. " I
positively forbid you to come near me again till you are in your
senses," he said. " Should you become a Catholic you are to let
me know. Not a word !" for I made an attempt to speak.
" Tell Father Weldon that if he baptizes you he will hear from
Mr. Mole. He must not try to see me ; I forbid him my house.
Now go !"

Going away quietly, I heard him close and lock the door after
me. In the corridor I met Nurse Barnes. " What is the mat-
ter, Master Paul ? " she asked in a frightened way ; " there's
been no dinner took to-day ! "

Putting nurse off as best I could, I went for my hat and over-
coat to go to Father Weldon for the third time that day. The
priest saw me coming up the board walk to the house, and he
himself admitted me to the parlor. Before he had time to ques-
tion me I entered into an account of how I had passed the day,
and gave him my father's message. Instead of congratulating
me, as I expected him to, my decision seemed to depress him.
In surprise I asked : " Don't you think that I ought to be a
Catholic, Father Weldon ? "

There was no warmth in his voice as he said : " I have never
seen God's hand so plainly as I see it in this; it is God's will ;
may his will be done in all things !" After a long silence Father

360 PAUL RINGWOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Dec.,

Weldon appointed an hour for me to come to him to be prepar-
ed for my reception into the church. Later, when I moved to
leave him, he said: "The orphans will pray that your conver-
sion may end happily, Paul"; adding to himself, "If they knew
the danger they are in ! "

So much time has been already spent in telling of this greatest
event in my life that I pass over the two weeks that elapsed before
my baptism, only stopping to say that much was said to induce
me not to " go over to Rome "not by my father, for he never
spoke to me, nor by Amy Morrison. It seemed that I was
grieving her, and yet it appeared to me that she thought I was
taking a right step. The persons who interested themselves in
my welfare were strangers to me. I am glad of this opportu-
nity to say that their somewhat impertinent meddling did not in
the least annoy me, and of two or three I can add that I am
truly thankful for what they meant to be a kindness. On Christ-
mas eve I was baptized, and on the morrow, at the Mass of
dawn, my First Communion was made to give me strength to
bear the trouble Father Weldon and myself felt was coming.

My hand was on the knob of the parlor-door. It was Christ-
mas day, and I was on the way to tell my father. As I was
about to turn the knob I was stopped by the sound of music.
Not since mother died had I heard our organ. Softly the air
rose and fell ; now crashing, now trembling, the sounds seemed
to beat against the closed door before which I stood and listened
to the triumph march in Faust. And then the sounds fell and
merged into the plaintive melody of Kingsley's " Three Fishers."
Then all was silence.

The afternoon was gloomy, snow was falling fast, and in the
parlor I now entered was an uncertain light, save where a branch
of candles was lit above the organ. My father turned towards
me as I entered, seeing enough to know it was his son.
. " Well ! " he said.

,As I did not speak, he repeated, " Well ! "

" Father," I said, " I have come to tell you "

" You have gone against my wishes ? " he asked.

My answer was to throw myself on my knees before him and
bury my head in his lap.

Shaking me off, he exclaimed : " This is outrageous ! Get up !"

I got to my feet, and, God forgive me ! I felt my heart har-
dening towards my father.

"You have always been my shame; you are but fulfilling
your early promise of bringing disgrace on me," he said, or,

i888.] PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 361

rather, cried out. " Clandestine in all your doings, never to be
trusted ! Go to the priests who have taught you how to
lie"

" You are not just," I interrupted ; "did not Father Weldon
send me to you ?" Then I said what should have been left un-
said, truth though it was : " Father, it is you who have not
treated me well all my life long."

Swish came a rushing sound, and my cheek lay open, cut to
the bone. I have the mark to-day. He had struck me with his
cane, the first blow he had ever given me. I am sure that he
did not mean to strike my face. Poor father ! he could not see
well. Whilst I stanched the blood with my handkerchief he
put his hand into his pocket and drew forth a roll of money.

"Here," he said, "take this and leave my house. Listen well.
This money is all you will ever receive from me. Father Weldon
long ago accepted a loan of money from me for his orphanage ;
this money would have been yours. To-morrow I make a gift
of it to his orphans ; as you are a good papist, no doubt you are
glad that your money goes to the church. When you are of age
you will have six thousand dollars that has been left you by your
mother; till then starve or steal. Only go away from me and
never let me hear your voice again."

Now I understood why Father Weldon feared for the or-
phans. Suppose that my father had suddenly demanded a re-
turn of the loan, would not the orphanage have been in peril of
ruin ? If ever one was thankful, I was thankful that my great
blessing was not to bring harm to others.

I had not taken the money offered me, nor made any move-
ment towards leaving the room. " Here, take this ! " he repeat-
ed, and threw the money on the floor at my feet.

Not stooping to pick it up, I begged : u Won't you say good-
by to me, father?"

His answer was : " Do you wish to be put out of the house by
force ? "

" May I take some clothes with me?" I remained to ask.

" Take what you please ; you will see that a hundred dollars
is not a great fortune," he sneered.

Therefore a hundred dollars lay at my feet. 1 picked it up
and placed it on a table.

" I've put the money on the table " I began, when he took
me by the arm and thrust me with gentle force out of the room,
locking the door behind me.

362 PAUL RING WOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Dec.,

CHAPTER XII.

ABROAD. lift (|

I hurried to the " little room " to bathe and tie up my face,
and to make up a bundle of clothes, smiling with an aching
heart, because the thought I once had of going out into the
world to seek my fortune was about to be realized. My face
caused me much trouble ; 1 could not at first stanch the blood,
using much sticking-plaster before I could keep my cheek well
in its place ; for the blood would break out and work the plaster
away. At last I succeeded in keeping the plaster long enough
in place to knot a handkerchief about my head. Fortunately
it was cold, still snowing, so that a comforter about my ears
would not appear odd.

Father, generous in all things, was most liberal in his gifts to
me of pocket-money. Though I spent freely, I found on count-
ing my little hoard that I had eighteen dollars and thirty-three
cents. With this very small fortune I intended going to the
city to seek work, feeling sure that work could be easily found.
I would not go to Father Weldon. Foolish pride kept me from
him. It appeared to me that if I were to go to the priest and
tell him my story, it would seem to be setting up a claim on his
charity.

And now that everything was in readiness for my entrance in-
to the world, I looked about to bid my home good-by. Muffled
up as I was, I could hear my father moving about in the book-
room. My heart sank, for never before had I loved him so,
never had home been so dear to me. Uttering a broken sob, I
knelt a short time beside my bed, and when I rose from my
knees I felt much comforted.

Noiselessly I stole from the house which I was to enter
but once again. Turning about in the snow-hidden path to take
a last look at it, I saw my father standing at a window of the
book-room, and I waved my hand, forgetting that at such a
distance he could not see me even had he wished to. The old
house-clock struck a quarter to five. To be in time for the five
train I would have to hurry. " Good-by, old clock," I said, and
started into a sort of jog-trot.

It was not easy getting on ; the sidewalk was deep in snow,
it was coming on to night, and I often tripped and stumbled.
Abandoning the sidewalk for the middle of the road, where the
street-cars and passing wagons had marked out a pathway, I

1 888.] PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 363

was able to run ; the sound of the train's whistle at Fisher's Sta-
tion, the one before Wayne, hurried me on. There was- barely
time to get my ticket and board the train.

As I was the only passenger, the conductor would have en-
tered into a conversation with me had any encouragement been
given him. " Are you sick ? " he asked. My face was paining
me ; I was weak from fasting, Christmas day though it was, and
I simply nodded my head. I must have cried out had I attempt-
ed to speak. The conductor looked at me curiously, then left
my car for another, whistling softly as he went.

After what seemed an interminable tolling of a bell, Green
Street Station, the stopping-place, was reached. The night was
dark, and the falling snow almost blinded me as I walked down
Green Street. But few persons were out of their houses. A
party of young men, singing, passed me as I stood in the shadow
of a house, trying to gather together my scattered wits. I want-
ed to get to a hotel, but was so confused by the pain in my head
that I did not know which way to go to find one. A policeman
came along, beating his hands together to warm them, and I
asked him to direct- me to a hotel.

" Take the next car that passes," he said, "and ask the con-
ductor to let you off at the Bingham House " interrupting
himself to exclaim, " Here's your car now." And hastily thank-
ing him, I ran to board it.

Market Street, the street where the car left me, save for the
great caravansary of a hotel, was as a street of the dead. The
hotel, purified by the falling snow, its frosty windows glowing
with light, appeared to my fancy like the immortal castle of
Elsinore. It was a very Osric who threw me a pen to write my
name in the castle's mighty book of guests. I told this nobleman
that I would like to have a room and some tea. Osric busily
filed his finger-nails whilst I made known my wants. Pausing in
his occupation, he admired his hand, stretched it out, and, as one
does who touches an object to see if it is hot, placed two fingers
on the knob of an electric bell, drawing them suddenly back as
though they were burned. I almost expected to see Osric
put them in his mouth. My fancy converted the servant, who
came at the call of the bell, into one of Othello's Moorish guard.

"Supper and room ninety," said Osric shortly, handing one
of the castle's keys to the Moor.

Bidding Osric good-night, I was about to follow the Moor
when Osric called out: "See here! is that all your baggage ?"
pointing with disdain at my little satchel.

364 PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Dec.,

" Yes," I said innocently ; "it is not heavy, I can carry it."

Osric laughed, and threw a card on the bar for me to read.
The card requested guests without baggage to pay in advance.

" How much will it be?" I asked.

" Supper, bed, breakfast, two fifty," demanded Osric.

At that rate, I thought, my money would be gone in a week.
" I won't need breakfast, Osric," I answered.

Twirling his moustache, Osric asked fiercely what it was I
had called him.

" I was thinking of Osric, a nobleman," I answered meekly.

My answer appeared to mollify him, and he asked me if I
were an Englishman.

" No," I replied ; " Osric was a nobleman at the court of King
Claudius."

The new Osric's watery eyes gave a faint sparkle. "Sam!
give me that key," he ordered. " I will give you a better
room," he said to me confidentially; "just remember Colonel
Twigger left to-day. Hope you'll rest well, sir."

If I were worthy of Colonel Twigger's bed, why not of a
breakfast as well ? So I handed Osric five dollars, getting back
two dollars and two quarters ; one of the latter speedily found its
way into the Moor's pocket. To this day I have not decided
who was the greater fool, Osric or Paul Ringwood.

As I was hungry, I enjoyed my supper, and I was tired
enough to have found a bed much less luxurious than Colonel
Twigger's a comfortable one. My prayers said, I slept soundly,
waking as the new day broke cold, clear, and bracing.

CHAPTER XIII.
MRS. GLASS.

When I had dressed myself it was too early for breakfast,
and as the bells of St. John's were ringing for Mass, and I
wished to hear Mass before setting out to look for work, I started
out to the church. Besides, I had not made any plans for the
day, and where could I make them better than in the presence of
our King?

The future did not worry me. God is good. A Catholic
should not be troubled because his outlook is dark. No one of
us ever doubts the church's final triumph over all obstacles.
Surely the God who looks so well after the temporal and spirit-
ual welfare of his church will not be unmindful of her members.

1 888.] PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 365

We hear so much in our tired time of taking heed for the mor-
row. Is not the Master's teaching, " Be not solicitous for the
morrow," as wholesome to-day as it was eighteen hundred
years ago ? A sad class is that whose pupils think themselves
wiser than their master. And our Master is divine ; do we pre-
tend to teach him ? The atheist, who wishes to do away with
God, is more logical than he who would teach God. It is all
very well to talk of holy prudence, but there is such a thing as
unholy prudence, and what the world calls imprudence is a qual-
ity many saints have possessed in a remarkable degree. There
is no fear that any one will follow his example, therefore it will
not be dangerous to cite Francis of Assisi.

Very many lodging-houses I visited before I came to one that
I thought might suit my slender purse. It was on Cherry Street ;
an old-fashioned brick house, very small ; close-drawn green
blinds at the little windows, a large green door with a big iron
knocker. Tacked on a shutter was a card bearing the inscrip-
tion, " Room to rent. Inquire within. Don't break the door
knocking; the lady of the house is not deaf."

Taking the warning given me as a possible lodger, I knocked
very softly. As no one came, I knocked as before. Then I
heard a chain taken down, the door was opened, and a little old
woman stood before me. Her face was a pucker of wrinkles ex-
tended in a kindly smile, and her keen eyes peered pleasantly at
me from out the shadow of a Shaker bonnet. She wore a broad
linen collar over a plain alpaca gown, making me think her a
Quaker; but her first words undeceived me.

" Thet was a beautiful knock you giv', young man," she said.

I felt that I deserved the compliment and blushed, as I made
known my want of a lodging.

"Tha's what I said to m'self when I seen you through the
blinds. Jane Glass, I ses to m'self, here's a man looking fur
your room. Jes you wait, I ses, tel he knocks. An' I waited
twice, en then, I ses, I reckon he'll do. But firs' an' foremos',
you airn't a Yank, air you? '' And the little old woman looked as
sternly at me as she knew how, which was not very sternly after
all. My idea of a Yankee was a New-Englander, and therefore I
told her no, I was not a Yankee. Not altogether satisfied as to
my politics, Mrs. Glass then asked me on which side my folks
had fought in the war. My father, I said, had not been in the
army, but my mother's people had been Confederates.

44 Well, I'll swan !" exclaimed Mrs. Glass, " ef you airn't the
fust Johnny Reb I've spoke t' fur years ! Jes you walk right in

366 PAUL RING WOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Dec.,

an' make yeh-se'f t' home. I jes' could kiss you, young man."
And to my great surprise Mrs. Glass did kiss me. After this
astonishing proceeding she took my hand and pulled me into a
cozy little kitchen where a jolly fire blazed in a Lilliputian range.
Gathering up a half-knit stocking from an easy-chair, she made
me sit down, saying : " You jes' keep cool leas' ways, thet's not
what 1 mean ter say; I'm thet flustered I jes' don't know what I
am sayin' you jes' get hotted up, an' I'll make you a cup-a-
coughy, which I an't had cons'lation uv doin' fur a Johnny Reb
sence Luke died you didn't know my Luke ? Lands sakes !
course he didn't, too young. En so yer cussin's fit ? Well ! well ! "
and Mrs. Glass' voice was lost in a closet in which she had dis-
appeared.

What would my father have said, I thought, to this second
conversion he who had cut himself off from my mother's kin
because of their Southern proclivities? Mrs. Glass did not give
me much time for thinking, neither would she let me talk till I
had swallowed the refreshing cup of coffee she had prepared.
This done, I asked to see the room she wished to let. She got
up immediately, and, telling me to follow her, led the way to a
room back of a sparely furnished parlor. This room, however,
was well supplied with comfortable furniture of an old pattern,
such as may be seen in many an ancient Virginian farmhouse.
She watched me anxiously as I took in the room, and her eyes
glistened when I expressed my satisfaction.

" T' be canded, young man," she said, ' there mus' hev been a
score es hes looked thet room over, all a-grumblin' et it."

To be frank myself, I said : " I like the room, but I don't
know that I can afford it ; I'm very poor."

" Thet an't no sin," said Mrs. Glass, sniffing.

" It is uncomfortable,'' I said.

" You bet ! " emphasized Mrs. Glass, and laughed. " Befo'
the wa', me an' Luke, my husban' es is no mo', we was smart
fixed keepin' store b'low Alexandry en Virginny ; the Feds took
ev'rything, an' hedn't been fur Hezikier, Luke's brother, leavin*
me this yer house an' a income, I reckon Jane Glass ed be in th'
poo'-house.''

When Mrs. Glass had finished her disjointed tale I asked
her what her charges would be for the room and part board,
breakfast and supper, stipulating that my payments were to be
made weekly. She rubbed her nose reflectively, and said :
" Honey, I'm tellin' you the truth : I an't sartain what I'd oughter
get. What ud you think right en proper?"

1 888.] PAUL RINGWOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 367

Assuring her that I did not know, Mrs. Glass asked me to
walk back to the kitchen, and she would call in a neighbor who
knew more about room-letting than she did. " Now mind you,"
she said, her hand on the latch of the back door, " you let me du
the talkin'. Martha Blan' es a Yankee, en et took me fo' years
to get used to her. Don't let on what you air. Ef she knowed
you es a Reb, there's no know'n' what payment she'd try en get
uv you."

After a considerable time, during which I got very drowsy,
Mrs. Glass returned, running into the kitchen. Shading her
mouth with her hand, she said in a loud whisper: "She's
a-comin'," and hurried back to the door, which she opened wide,
admitting a tall, angular woman in black silk, a knitted red
shawl about her shoulders, and a wonderful hat which seemed to
be entirely made of a cock's plumage.

"Miss Blan', Mr. Walter Scott," introduced Mrs. Glass,
making signals to me not to contradict her. She told me after-
wards that, ashamed to confess to Miss Bland her ignorance of
my name, and seeing a book bearing Sir Walter's name, she had
borrowed the great name for me.

Miss Bland bowed and I bowed, and Miss Bland said : " The
illustrious Sir Walter having left no male progeny, I differed
with Mrs. Glass when she said you were a descendant of Amy
Robsart's creator "

"I said no such a thing," protested Mrs. Glass, indignantly ;
" I an't no such fool es to think him a descendant of Gord-er-
mighty."

Miss Bland smiled compassionately and, changing the subject,
said: "Mrs. Glass wishes to know what pecuniary recompense
she should ask for the use of her apartment with partial board ;
three dollars paid weekly would not be excessive ? "

" You du surprise me, Miss Blan'," exclaimed Mrs. Glass,
muttering something about skinning a flea.

Knowing from my day's experience that I could not do as
well elsewhere, I said the terms suited me and I found them
very moderate. On this Mrs. Glass said decidedly, striking her
hands together as she mentioned each item: " Breakfus', en
supper, en room, two dollars en four bits ; take et or leave et es
you pleases,"

Not knowing how much four bits might be, I looked won-
deringly from Mrs. Glass to Miss Bland. The latter lady ex-
plained, " Mrs. Glass means to say that two dollars and fifty
cents will be elaborately sufficient e-lab-o-rate-ly," she repeated,
evidently enjoying her meal of syllables.

368 PAUL RINGWOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Dec.,

Closing- with Mrs. Glass' offer, we shortly became quite a
convivial little company. It was about half-past four in the
afternoon when Mrs. Glass said it would soon be time for tea.
So she lit a lamp, and Miss Bland said she would go to the
baker's at the corner for some hot rolls. Whilst she was gone,
Mrs. Glass broiled three herrings and brewed the tea, and I help-
ed to set the table.

During tea Miss Bland, whose age was very uncertain, al-
luded frequently to a certain Charles how Charles never liked
his tea too strong, how red was his favorite color, and so on. I
found out afterwards that Miss Bland was to have married this
Charles had not his "pa" thought it better for him to marry
money. " And marry money he did," said Mrs. Glass, who told
me all this. " But bless your heart, honey, she an't got no
grudge agin him. He goes rampin' and prancin' through the
streets in his brusch with that proud puss uv a wife he's got, an*
never a year goes by but Miss Blan' sends that boy of theirs the
on'y one Gord-er-mighty ever give 'em, en' he a cripple a gif,
though poo' es a chu'ch mouse es no name for her." After
being told this I always thought that there was something lova-
ble about Miss Bland. It was very foolish in her, no doubt, to
see a likeness in her situation to that of Amy Robsart, and cer-
tainly Charles, a thin, hatchet-faced man, whom I came in time
to know, was not at all like Elizabeth's favorite is supposed to
have been. Nevertheless, 1 respected Miss Bland's constancy.

We had finished tea, leaving on each plate a melancholy her-
ring's head Mrs. Glass is quite 'right in saying the tail of a her-
ring is its most relishable part and Mrs. Glass was pouring hot
water into the teapot for what she called the remnant cup.

" What wouldn't I hev give fur a cup-a-tea when I was in
prison ! " she said, and sighed.

Quickly drawing in my breath, my amazement showed itself
in my looks.

"You wasn't ever in prison, was you, Mr. Scott?" Mrs.
Glass asked calmly, stirring the tea-leaves with a spoon.

Beginning to suspect that Mrs. Glass was a very immoral old
woman, I exclaimed indignantly, "Of course I never was! "

Not noticing my indignation, she went on with her stirring,
laughing silently to herself. Closing the teapot lid with a little
clatter, she said : " You see, honey, en the fust year uv th' wa' I
was up to Cecilsburg visitin' some uv my kin. La, bless us!
them was times ! " For a moment Mrs. Glass was lost in
thought; then she continued: "The Yanks was thet riled agen

1 888.] PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 369

us Confeds they made laws such as 'd make a goat laugh ; no
store dast hang up red an' white flannels, no chile dast go en the
street with a white dress an' a red sash ; fur why ? them was
Confederix colors. Well, one day I was a-coming' down the
street, jes' by th' cap'n's office, when I seen comin' up the street
a red an' white cow, an' there was somethin' wicked en thet
cow's looks. ' La ! Jane Glass,' I ses to m'se'f, ' thet'll never
do ! ' an' I bust ento the cap'n's office excited. ' Cap'n',' I ses, all-
tremblin', 'es this here goin' to be 'lowed?' 'What, madam?'
he ses p'lite es can be. ' Come here an' look,' I ses, an' he come
to the door. He didn't see nothin' but thet ole cow comin' along
bellerin' now an' agen. ' What es et, madam ? ' he as't, surpris'
like. ' Thet there cow,' I ses, shakin' my finger et the ole rebel.
' Air you a-goin ' to 'low such carryn's on, a red an' white cow
goin' roun" loose?' He looked et me an' sorter snickered, an' I
was jest a-steppin' off when he ses : ' Hold on, my good woman.'
' I an't your good woman,' I ses, all en a fluster. He paid no
'tention, but blows a whistle, an' a lot of sojers comes en th'
room, an' agen all I could say or do they puts me en Fort
McHennery fur two months fur insultin' thet low-down offiseer ;
an' what wouldn't I hev give fur a cup-a-tea them days ! "

I laughed heartily at Mrs. Glass' funny story, relieved that
the cause of her imprisonment was not such a disgraceful thing
after all.

The remnant-cup having been drunk, Miss Bland, in a very
ladylike way, helped to wash the dishes and wrapped the her-
ring heads in paper, for her cat, she said. When this necessary
piece of housework was done, Miss Bland said that she must
think about going home. She looked at me so earnestly as she
said it that I was compelled to offer myself as her escort.

" If it would not be too much trouble, Mr. Scott," she said. " I
don't believe in girls going about at night unprotected; Charles
never did, either," she added retrospectively.

Mrs. Glass need not have given me so many directions how
to find my way back, for she stood on the doorstep, lamp in
hand, all the time I was gone; besides, Miss Bland lived but a
block away. It must have been very uncomfortable for Miss
Bland, she was so much taller than myself ; but she seemed to
expect it, so I offered her my arm. However, she complimented
me on my evenness of step and said that I must be quite used to
gallanting the ladies. I said, truthfully, that I had never escort-
ed any one before.

" You are a confirmed bachelor, I see," she said ; " I think my-

VOL. XLVIII. 24

370 PAUL RINGWOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Dec.,

self I will remain a maiden." This last statement I had no
difficulty in believing.

When I was again seated before the kitchen fire Mrs. Glass
said : " Now, Mr. Scott, tell me somethin' about yourself."

I hesitated. Should I tell her the whole truth or not? The
thought of how innocently frank she had been with me made me
tell her that because my father did not like the idea of my be-
coming a Catholic I had left home and that I was now looking
for work.

" Good-ness gracious ! " she exclaimed ; " he mus' be a odd
man. I an't got no use fur th' Pope nuther, but I ses this : ef a
man thinks he'll get to heav'n sooner by buttin' his head agen a
wall, why let him butt, I ses."

The good woman was much surprised when I told her I had
no trade, and still more so when, in answer to her question, I said
my father had none either. Before we parted for the night she
asked me if I had any objections to being called Scott. As I had
none, it was by this name I went with Mrs. Glass, even after she
came to know the name I had a right to.

I lay awake for a long time thinking of father and of my fu-
ture, feeling very hopeful. As I gazed at the moon through the
frosty window-panes, I fell asleep, praying the protection of that
dear Lady, our Mother, whose footstool is the moon, whose
crown is of golden stars.

CHAPTER XIV.
WORK!

A LONG time ago the truth came to me that the world is very
hungry; that, busy as it is, very worthy men and women their
number is not small, nor does it lessen perforce wring idle
hands. " Give us this day our daily bread," aside from any
spiritual meaning that it has, is a prayer unceasing on their lips
lips that seldom know aught else but what they ask for in its
most restricted sense.

It was just after Christmas that I went to seek bread, and
everywhere I went " Business is dull " greeted me. With sev-
eral shopkeepers my patched face told against me, the patches
gave me such a warlike appearance. With all, my want of ex-
perience was a bar to my employment. I told of my willingness
to learn, but no one expressed a willingness to teach me. Seeing
the advertisement of an invalid for a reader and amanuensis, I
a'pplied. The old gentleman who advertised received me very

1 888.] PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 371

kindly, questioned me as to what I knew of books, seemed satis-
fied, and told me I would suit. In my joy I inquired when I
could begin the performance of my duties. The old gentleman
took off a curious skull-cap he wore and scratched his head.

" The first seance might take place this evening," he said,
thoughtfully. " Professor Roland will call down Milton to-night,
and you will write what the great poet dictates. Over three
thousand verses have I written, but my hand begins to fail. You
will write for me," he explained in graveyard tones.

It struck me, when the old gentleman so readily engaged me,
that he was a little wrong in his head. Now I was convinced of
it. . Telling this most polite of madmen that I did not think it
would be possible for me to act as amanuensis for Milton, I rose
to go.

" It stands to reason," he said, paying no attention to my
objection, " that Milton has much improved as a poet. He, and
Shakspere, and Sophocles, aided by six great French and Spanish
dramatists, are concocting a drama which Milton has promised
to give to the world through me. You would magnetize superb-
ly, my friend," he added.

Even this last was no inducement for me to remain with one
who thought no more of conversing with a spirit than I do of eat-
ing my breakfast. The old gentleman waited patiently while I
repeated that I felt myself unable to fill the position offered me.

" Will you have the future opened to you?" he asked, when
I had finished.

Thanking him, I said I believed not. Then he asked me what
I did want, and when I said I wanted nothing he became very
irate, and bade me " Get out!" which I did, gladly.

After three weeks' search this was the nearest I got to the
bread that I was seeking. Not only were seven dollars and a
half gone for my board and lodging, but other small sums had
gone from my little hoard. It was a pleasure for me occasion-
ally to bring home trifling gifts for Mrs. Glass and Miss Bland.
For instance, when I saw Miss Bland again she was not attired
in the rusty black silk in which I had first seen her, but in a
grayish stuff, with a faded red ribbon about her neck. She apolo-
gized for what she called being in "dish-a-bill."

"La! MissBlan'," said Mrs. Glass, " what's the dit'runts?
Put on a new ribbon, an' thet frock's es good's noo." That is
how I came to present Miss Bland with a brand-new ribbon of a
flaming scarlet color.

One night, after my usual ill-success, I counted my money and

372 PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Dec.,

found that I had but a little more than enough to pay Mrs. Glass
for another week's board. The lightness of my purse did not make
me heavy-hearted, neither was I troubled for the future. I said
my prayers, and felt convinced that all would yet be well. The
next evening Miss Bland came in after supper. " You have not
established yourself yet, have you, Mr. Scott?" she asked hesi-
tatingly.

" Th' poo' feller's feet mus' be sore, an' what's the matter
with them folks es hes sto's es more'n I knows ; but he an't got
no show yet," Mrs. Glass answered for me.

"I have been pondering over it," said Miss Bland, "and I
think that he should apply to Mr. Guggins."

" La! Miss Blan', you wouldn't send him there," interrupted
Mrs. Glass.

Miss Bland first froze, and then became agitated. " I don't
see why I shouldn't," she said faintly.

Mrs. Glass did not speak, but coughed gently behind her hand.

Recovering herself, Miss Bland continued, addressing me:
" Mr. Guggins is wholesale and retail baskets ; if you were to go
to him to-morrow and tell him Martha Bland sent you, I think
you would find employment."

My outlook was such a blank as to leave me nothing to do
but to thank Miss Bland and say that I would try my luck with
Mr. Guggins. When I had written down the address of Gug-
gins, from Miss Bland's dictation, she drew forth a mildewed vis-
iting-card having the name of Martha Bland printed on it. Hour
many years must have passed since its printing !

" You might hand him my card," said Miss Bland ; " it will
sustain the veracity of your appeal, and I do hope, Mr. Scott,
your star is now in the ascendant."

It was a comet year, and Mrs. Glass remarked that she had
the same thought as Miss Bland, and she did hope I'd be like
"a comic en th' heavens."

The warehouse and salesroom of " Charles Guggins, Basket
and Wooden-Ware," stood on a wharf, its many windows blinking
in the sun at the Delaware. If trade was dull in all things else,
at least, so it seemed, there was a great demand for baskets. The
salesmen were so busy that I had much difficulty in getting one
to listen to me, who did not want to buy baskets, but only to see
the baskets' owner. One of them stopped long enough to say
shortly : " Mr. Guggins never gets here before eleven" ; a moment
after he was bowing before a man who wanted baskets by the
gross.

1 888.] PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 373

It was only nine o'clock, and a full two hours were before me.
As nothing better occurred to me, I went up Chestnut Street to
Earle's picture-gallery. Having been there often before with my
father, I was well known to the clerks. One of them asked me
about his health. Answering him as best I could, I hurried into
the picture-room, feeling very. badly, thinking of father and of
home. At that moment I was ungrateful enough to think Mrs.
Glass a very vulgar woman, to detest the name of Guggins.
And, for the time, the cost of my faith was terrifying me. Star-
ing stupidly before me at a battle-piece in which was depicted a
coward running away from the enemy, the thought came gradu-
ally to me that, having put on the armor of a great Captain,
would I fly ere the fight had well begun ? I left the gallery
ashamed, and I went where my heart bade me go, to the quaint
old Jesuit church in Willing's Alley ; there, kneeling at my Cap-
tain's feet, I got fresh strength and heart to follow the path which
he has trod.

The State-House clock was striking eleven as I again entered
the warehouse of Guggins. This time I pushed straight back to
where the offices were. An elderly man stood at the door of
one of these glass rooms. Going up to him I asked where Mr.
Guggins was to be found. The man's face was a curious mix-
ture of harshness and timidity a hatchet-face, soft eyes, and
hard mouth. To my astonishment the voice that said, " I am
Mr. Guggins," was remarkable for nothing but an excessive meek-
ness. " What is it you wish ? " he asked, almost in a whisper.

" I am looking for work " I began, when he interrupted me
with a sound that I can liken to nothing else but a dog's yelp.

"You shouldn't come to me," he whispered, and was about
to close the office-door in my face when I said : " Miss Bland
sent me to you ; here is her card." And I handed him the bit of
pasteboard, brown with age.

Putting on a pair of eye-glasses, he read the card, then let his
hands fall helplessly, and stared in a dazed way before him. Re-
collecting himself, he took me by the arm, drew me into the
office, and shut the door.

Taking two or three turns up and down the room, he stopped
suddenly before me, and asked : " Is Miss ahem ! Bland well ?"

I replied that, to the best of my knowledge, her general
health was good.

" Are you a relative of Miss Eland's? I cannot place you."

Answering in the negative, I told him how it was that I had
come to be sent by Miss Bland.

374 PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Dec.,

" I really do not need any one," he said, as though thinking
aloud. " Martha Bland 1 Martha Bland ! who'd have thought it
after all these years ? "

I was feeling very miserable, wishing myself far away from
Mr. Guggins, much perspicacity not being needed for me to
know that I was in the presence gf Miss Eland's Charles. Say-
ing that I was sorry to have troubled him, I made a move to go
away, but he put his hand on my shoulder and gently forced me
to sit down.

" Since Miss Bland asks it," he said, "you may consider your-
self in my employ. They," and he motioned towards the ware-
house, " will find something for you to do. When I broke the
tie that bound us, I wanted to make a settlement on her ; she
wouldn't hear to it, and now that she asks something " He
stopped abruptly, a faint smile flickering over his odd face.

It surprised me to hear a man of so unromantic an appear-
ance speaking in such a strain ; after-experience taught me that
Guggins was as full of romance as Miss Bland herself.

" What. did you say your name is?" he asked.

I had not given him any name, and now told him, " Walter
Scott." My reason for holding on to the name given me by
Mrs. Glass was this: theoretically republican, my father was
practically as aristocratic as an English Conservative. Well
aware that he would not like one of his name to be employed as
I expected to be, I respected his prejudices and gave the false
name, not without twinges of conscience.

Guggins called in a husky whisper through a speaking-tube:
" Hawkins ! "

" You will not begin work to-day," he said ; " come to-mor-
row at sevin.'' Turning to a slender youth who had just enter-
ed, he continued : " Hawkins, this young man will be in your
department. You can find some work for him to do ?"

Of course Hawkins took a question put in this way for a com-
mand. There was great need of a boy of my size, he said. I
did not at all fancy being called a boy by Hawkins, more par-
ticularly as he had the appearance of being no more than a boy
himself. Nevertheless, I took the hand he stretched out to me
when Guggins introduced me to him.

Guggins dismissed the clerk with " That will do, Hawkins."

Why Hawkins winked at me as he left the office I was at a
loss to know. Probably he had no reason ; it was his way, that
is all.

" I will give you four dollars a week," said Guggins, when

1 888.] PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. -375

Hawkins was out of earshot, "only you must not say any-
thing about it in the warehouse. It is a dollar more than I'm
accustomed to give for the work you'll have to do but Martha
Bland sent you to me." And I think he tried to throw a senti-
mental look into his hatchet-face. I protested against getting
more than my deserts, insisting that I was seeking work, not
charity. He said that I was very green, and told me not to
worry, that he would have something to occupy me in the office
if I found time hanging heavy in the warehouse.

After all, four dollars a week is not a great fortune, so I
pocketed my scruples, thanked my employer, and laid my hand
on the door-knob.

" I'll go out to the front with you," said Guggins, and we
went silently through the little army of clerks.

At the door was a pile of tiny straw baskets, colored mottoes
worked in their sides. Selecting one with "Keepsake" fancifully
wrought on it, he said : " I wish you would give this to Miss
Bland with my compliments."

I said that I would, and with a ligkt heart bade him good-
morning. As I turned the corner I looked back, and saw that
Guggins was still standing where I had left him, staring absently
at the silently flowing river. Of all odd people, I thought to
myself, Miss Bland and her sometime lover are the oddest.

Going straight to Miss Eland's, I found her in her little sitting-
room making herself a bonnet. My good news pleased her very
much, but I noticed as I thanked her that her mind was wandering
to the little basket I carried. So I made haste to give her
Guggins' message and his gift. Miss Bland trembled as she took
the basket from me, while tears began to roll down her faded
cheeks. Reading the basket's inscription, she murmured : " How
appropriate, how like Charles ! " Then, while I was trying to say
something, prevented by the awkward feeling that had come
over me, she took from a little cupboard an album, and, opening
it, showed me the picture of a young man.

" This is Charles, taken fifteen years ago ; I haven't seen him
close for all that time is he much changed ? " she asked.

How like and how unlike. the photograph was Guggins! He
was an ugly old man, and yet this weak-faced, rather good-look-
ing youth plainly was Guggins. Seeing the resemblance I said
that he had not changed very much. Miss Bland brightened at
this, and said as I got up to leave: " Mrs. Glass is on the tiptoe
of expectation. Tell her I am coming to tea this afternoon."

Mrs. Glass was overjoyed at my news, and very mysterious

376 AUTHENTICITY AND VERACITY OF THE GOSPELS. [Dec.,

was her foreknowledge of how I was to show some folks at home
that I could have a fortune of my own, and no thanks to any one
but myself.

" Walter Scott," she said, when her congratulations were ex-
hausted, " we mus' hev a feas' t'night ! Miss Blan' likes yoisters,
you likes yoisters ; what you say t' yoister-pie ? "

An oyster-pie we did have, and an egg-nog after. Supper
over, we played a three-handed game of euchre, and were as
happy a trio as could be found in the broad United States.

HAROLD DIJON.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

:..^.*....^c.*A...... .- .{- <_: .(. ;

AUTHENTICITY AND VERACITY OF THE GOSPELS.

I WISH to present a brief summary of arguments proving the
authenticity of the Gospels and their historical truth, for the
benefit of those who desire to defend their faith or to know why
one ought to believe.

One who has been familiar from childhood with the Gospels
finds it very difficult not to believe them. Some do eradicate
this belief. M. Renan has described this uprooting process in
his own case. And such a person is made to say in Robert Els-
mere: " To him who has once been a Christian of the old sort, the
parting with the Christian mythology is the rending asunder
of bones and marrow" (p. 355). I cannot hope to make any im-
pression on unbelievers of this sort, who have broken to pieces
the mirror in their soul. But those whose unfaith is merely
negative, an obscurity or absence of apprehension of the historic
verity of the Gospels, caused by the lack of Christian instruction
and the mist of unbelief in the atmosphere, may be made to see,
or to see more clearly, the truth respecting Jesus Christ and
Christianity in the light of evidence, if they will only pay atten-
tion with a candid mind and an upright heart.

It is just here that we meet our chief and only serious ob-
stacle, which is the difficulty of gaining attention to historical
evidence and bringing the contention within the rules of sound
critical and otherwise truly scientific discussion. The disciples
of Strauss have striven to make what is called in French a fin
de non recevoir, i.e., a plea in bar, which rules out all testimony to
miracles, prophecy, revelation, and everything preternatural or

1 888.] AUTHENTICITY AND VERACITY OF THE GOSPELS. 377

supernatural. I quote here and in other places from Robert
Elsmere, not as a work of any authority or argumentative value,
but because this novel, written by a lady, furnishes a specimen
of the mental attitude and the notions of a certain cultured
class who have been captivated by one of the newest forms of
infidelity, which treats Christianity as a " mythology."
Langham says to Elsmere :

" History depends on testimony. What is the nature and the value of
testimony at given times? In other words, did the man of the third
century understand, or report, or interpret facts in the same way as the
man of the sixteenth or the nineteenth ? And if not, what are the differ-
ences, and what are the deductions to be made from them, if any? " (p. 199).

In the course of the story this question is answered in the
sense that the prevalent belief in the preternatural, in the past,
disqualifies all the witnesses to miracles and events in the super-
natural order. Mr. Wendover sums up the case to Elsmere in
these words :

" It is discreditable now for the man of intelligence to refuse to read his
Livy in the light of his Mommsen. My object has been to help in making
it discreditable to him to refuse to read his Christian documents in the light
of a trained scientific criticism. We shall have made some positive
advance in rationality when the man who is perfectly capable of dealing
sanely with legend in one connection, and, in another, will insist on con-
founding it with history proper, cannot do so any longer without losing
caste, without falling tpso facto out of court with men of education " (p. 318).

This is the fin de non recevoir of which I have spoken. In an-
other form it appears in Mr. Grey's remark : " I am old-
fashioned enough to stick to the b priori impossibility of mira-
cles " (p. 353).

This is the way in which it is sought to stifle the advocate of
Christianity and stop the ears of the simple multitude. Rational
evidence and demonstration are eluded by an unproved and un-
provable h priori assertion which is not one of those propositions
which are undemonstrable because self-evident. Historical evi-
dence is eluded by a similarly gratuitous assumption that all
testimony to the miraculous and supernatural is legend ; and
the legends and myths of Strauss, Renan, and Wellhausen, de-
manding more credulity than the universal extent of the Deluge,
are palmed off as scientific history. The supple and well-oiled
antagonist eludes our attempt to grasp him in the struggle of
close argument, and dances around at a safe distance, brandish-
ing in the air the arms of taunt, mockery, and boasting.

378 AUTHENTICITY AND VERACITY OF THE GOSPELS. [Dec.,

Precisely what we complain of is: that our adversaries will
not treat these matters of religion on the same principles of evi-
dence and criticism which they apply to all matters of secular
history, literature, and science. We want nothing more than to
bring the whole question of the evidences of supernatural religion,
with its facts and doctrines, to an impartial discussion within the
sphere of rational philosophy and historical evidence. Protestants
are at a disadvantage in this discussion, because they use two
measures and two contradictory sets of principles. They argue
now on Catholic principles, and then on those which they have
been controverting. For instance, they treat ecclesiastical mira-
cles in the spirit, by the method, of those with whom they have
been disputing on Scriptural miracles. There are some miracu-
lous facts of a recent date which can be proved by evidence cap-
able of enduring any test. They have been investigated, and
their reality tested, stated, and proved, according to all the rules
of juridical and scientific evidence, by lawyers, physicians, and
scientists of undoubted competence. One such fact dashes into
fragments the brittle theories of all the Greys and Wendovers in
the world. These evidences are not discussed ; they are simply
ignored. They are not, indeed, fundamental, like those which
concern the facts of the Gospel. The principles and method of
those who reject and ignore them furnish, however, an illustra-
tion of the treatment which the miracles, the resurrection, and
the manifest evidence of the divinity of Jesus Christ, set forth by
the testimony and teaching of the Apostles, receive at the hands
of modern sceptics. Their policy consists in raising a mist and
pouring out a flood of language, without any logic or consis-
tency. Their spirit is expressed by the French pasquinade :

"A part du Rot defense cl Dieu,
De faire miracle en ce lieu."

It is our contention that the authenticity of the Gospels is
proved by irrefragable evidence ; that their historic verity is a
necessary consequence of their authenticity; and that from their
verity the supernatural Christian religion, involving the super-
natural religion whose perfect outcome is Christianity, in all pre-
Christian ages; is a necessary conclusion. At present I confine
myself to the authenticity and veracity of the Gospels.*

Christianity, organized in the Catholic Church, is a colossal
historical monument of testimony to the facts related in the Gos-
pels, and to the authenticity of the Gospels, which it has received

* In my treatment of this topic I have closely followed and summarized the first part of the
second volume of Le Christianisme et les Temps Presents, by the Abbe Bougaud.

1 888.] AUTHENTICITY AND VERACITY OF THE GOSPELS. 379

and venerated from the beginning. There is no possible way of
accounting for the foundation of the church upon faith in these
facts, and for the universal acceptance of the Gospels as authen-
tic memoirs and records, except by their manifest historical
verity. At the end of the persecution of Diocletian, when Chris-
tianity emerged from the catacombs and began to be the public,
recognized religion of the Roman Empire i.e., in A.D. 312 it is
an incontestable fact that the universal church carried in her
hands the Four Gospels, proclaiming them to be the authentic,
genuine works of the Evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke, and
John. Eusebius says :

"This appears also to be the proper place to give a summary statement
of the books of the New Testament, already mentioned. And here among
the first must be placed the holy quaternion of the Gospels" (EccL Hist.,
1. iii. c. 25).

In the foregoing chapter he specifies the authors and gives
particulars. Constantine ordered a recension to be made of the
Greek text of the Gospels, by a collation of the most ancient
MSS., and had fifty magnificent copies engrossed for as many of
the principal churches. The church of the fourth century receiv-
ed its tradition from the third, the third from the second, and the
second from the first, under circumstances making falsification
impossible. I consider this to be a conclusive proof in a purely
rational and historical sense, prescinding from any motive de-
rived from church authority. We are not obliged, however, to
rest the case upon this testimony, and I merely take it as a start-
ing point for a retrospective glance at the testimony which cov-
ers the two centuries between Eusebius and St. John, and the
additional half-century between Eusebius and St. Matthew. In
the foregoing age, between A.D. 185 and 254, lived Origen.
whose vast learning and independent spirit are well known.
Origen writes that there are four Gospels " which alone are ad-
mitted as above controversy in the universal church of God"
(Comment on S. Matt.} He wrote commentaries and homilies on
each of the Gospels, citing a multitude of texts. Some entire
portions and a great number of fragments of this vast work are
extant. His testimony is equivalent to that of his age, and, be-
sides, there are numerous quotations from the Gospels in the
writings of his contemporaries. No one contests the truth of
the above statement. Tertullian was twenty-five years older
than Origen (160-240). In a work of the date A.D. 207 he
writes :

" We lay it down as our first position that the evangelical Testament

380 AUTHENTICITY AND VERACITY OF THE GOSPELS. [Dec.,

has Apostles for its authors, to whom was assigned by the Lord himself
this office of publishing the Gospels. Since, however, there are apos-
tolic men also, they are yet not alone, but appear with Apostles and after
Apostles. . . . Of the Apostles, therefore, John and Matthew first instil faith
into us; whilst of apostolic men, Luke and Mark renew it afterwards"
{Against Marcion, book iv. ch. 2 ; translation of the Ante-Nicene Li-
brary).

St. Irenaeus is between twenty and forty years older than
Tertullian. He was born between A.D. 120 and 140, and died
A.D. 202. He was the disciple of St. Polycarp, Bishop of
Smyrna and martyr, who was the disciple of St. John and care-
fully instructed by him. The testimony of Irenaeus is therefore
a reflection of that of St. John. Besides this, he had an intimate
knowledge of the traditions of the principal churches. He says:

" For, after our Lord rose from the dead, the Apostles were invested with
power from on high when the Holy Spirit came down, were filled from all,
and had perfect knowledge ; they departed to the ends of the earth, preach-
ing the glad tidings of the good things from God to us, and proclaiming the
peace of Heaven to men, who indeed do all equally and individually possess
the Gospel of God. Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the He-
brews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome
and laying the foundations of the church. After their departure, Mark,
their disciple and interpreter, did also hand down to us in writing what had
been preached by Peter. Luke, also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a
book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards John, the disciple of the
Lord, who also had leaned upon his- breast, did also himself publish a Gos-
pel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia" (Against Herts., iii. i).

Tertullian cites 925 texts from the Gospels, Trenaeus 469, Justin
Martyr 65, the apostolic Fathers 34; in all 1,493 citations between
A.D. 90 and 207. A large part of the Four Gospels is con-
tained in these citations, and a-much larger context is implied in
them.

St. Justin Martyr was born A.D. 103 and died in 167. The
chronological period of his writings lies between the latter date
and A.D. 133.

Justin writes : " For the Apostles, in the memoirs composed
by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us,
etc." And further on:

" On the day called Sunday all who live in cities or in the country
gather together to one place, and the Memoirs of the Apostles or the writ-
ings of the prophets are read as long as time permits '' (ApoL, i. Ixvi.-vii.)

The Gospels were therefore read in churches as early as A.D.
140. Allusions or citations are found in Papias, A.D. 120;
ent of Rome, A.D. 96; and Barnabas, perhaps as early as 72.

i888.] AUTHENTICITY AND VERACITY OF THE GOSPELS. 381

We have seen that the light of testimony is abundant and
clear as far back as A.D. 160. The period between A.D. 100
and 160, in which written documents are scanty, is really covered
by the connected links which join St. Irenaeus to St. John the
Apostle, as well as by the tradition of the apostolic churches, in
which, as Tertullian testifies, authentic copies of the Gospels
were carefully preserved, and by the thirty-four quotations of
texts, as having the authority of Sacred Scripture, by Barnabas,
Polycarp, Ignatius, Clement, Papias, and Hermas.

But the modern exact and minute criticism has furnished an-
other and most conclusive testimony to the authenticity and
genuineness of the Four Gospels, from the ancient Latin and
Syriac versions, and the Codex Sinaiticus of the Greek text dis-
covered on Mt. Sinai by Tischendorff. A full exposition of this
critical argument cannot be given in a brief popular essay. It is
only possible to indicate the data on which critics have based
their conclusions, and to state in a general way the results of
critical investigation. Most readers have to rely, as we are
generally obliged to do in other special sciences, on the compe-
tence and consent of experts, as the principal motive of our own
private rational judgment upon the matter in question.

The case of the Latin version is briefly this. The existence
of a Latin version which was made at latest as early as A.D. 150
is certain. It is considered by competent critics to be probable
that there were two such versions, one Italian, the other African.
A minute examination of all the Latin texts which can be found
existing as early as A.D. 150 shows, by a concatenation of
minute facts such as a critic alone can appreciate, that at least a
half-century must be allowed to have elapsed after the composi-
tion of the Gospels, in order to account for these numerous mi-
croscopic phenomena.

The ancient Syriac version, discovered and published by
Cureton, is still older. It is considered by critics as certain
that the author of the ancient Latin version in translating
from the Greek had the Syriac version before his eyes, and that
this version dates from the beginning of the second or the end of
the first century. Moreover, the translation of St. Matthew was
made from the original Syro-Chaldaic, not from the Greek.
Thus, St. Matthew's Gospel was translated into Syriac, Greek,
and Latin, the other Gospels into Syriac and Latin, so early as to
be in common use in these languages during the period which
includes St. John the Apostle, St. Clement of Rome, St. Polycarp,
and St. Irenaeus.

382 AUTHENTICITY AND VERACITY OF THE GOSPELS. [Dec.,

The Codex Sinaiticus, which Tischendorff discovered, al-
though written in the fourth century, has no connection with the
MSS. of Constantine, but is a copy of an older MS. preserved
in the archives of Mt. Sinai. This completes the series of links
connecting copies and versions with the authentic originals. Add
to this the peculiarities of style in the Greek text of the Gospels,
proving that they could not have been composed in the second
century, and there is a concatenation of critical proofs of their
origin during the first seventy years after Christ which cannot
be broken. This has been made so evident that negative criti-
cism has been obliged to surrender its position. Renan says :

"In 'fine, I admit as authentic the four canonical Gospels. In my
opinion, all are frpm the first century, and are mainly the work of the
authors to whom they are ascribed '' (Vie de ftsus, Introd. p. xxiii.)

The same is the judgment of Reuss, Holzmann, Schenkel,
Reville, and Nicolas.

Since it has been placed beyond dispute that we have the
authentic testimony of the apostles and first disciples of Christ,
embodied in the institutions of Christianity, handed down by
numerous, widely extended, and agreeing traditions, and recorded
in genuine written documents, nothing remains except the vindi-
cation of the trustworthiness and historical verity of this testi-
mony.

Negative and sceptical criticism has but one plea to make
viz., that all this testimony is incredible. The ultimate reason
for discarding it is the & priori impossibility of the miraculous
and supernatural.

This is an unhistorical, unscientific, unphilosophical, and
utterly absurd plea. It is a most extreme instance of what the
French language so finely designates by the term outreciiidance.
Such a procedure is directly contrary to the method of experi-
mental science and the principle of induction advocated by Lord
Bacon. Testimony must be examined according to the rules of
evidence, and attested facts admitted, no matter how improbable
they may seem to be antecedently, or how confidently some may
assert that they are h priori impossible. It might have been pro-
nounced impossible b priori that science should discover chemi-
cal elements in fixed stars, should ascertain the sun's movement
of translation in space and its rate of velocity, or should weigh
the moon and planets. The conquest of the Roman Empire by
Christianity, the succession of the heir of St. Peter to the place
of Nero, which were surely events of great antecedent improba-

i888.] AUTHENTICITY AND VERACITY OF THE GOSPELS. 383

bility in a purely human sense, might have appeared to intelli-
gent persons to be a priori impossible. But, as Lacordaire has
well said, " You cannot burn facts" Ab actu ad posse valet con-
sequentia The possibility of anything is a necessary logical con-
clusion from its actual existence. If miracles were impossible
they would never occur, there could not be credible testimony to
their occurrence, any more than there could be an aeronautic ex-
pedition to Sirius and back, well attested and proved by credi-
ble witnesses. Apparent miracles could be explained according
to natural laws ; genuine and veritable history could be sepa-
rated from myth and legend ; indubitable facts and events such
as the life of Christ and the origin of Christianity, supposing
them to be merely human and natural, could be historically and
philosophically accounted for and explained. Science and history
have swept away the baseless and vaporous though often beauti-
ful cloud-fabrics and fog-landscapes of fanciful legend and hypo-
thetical cosmogony. Livy has been succeeded by Mommsen.
And, as there is but one position now remaining to negative
criticism on the Gospels that the Apostles and Evangelists
imagined or invented what sceptics are pleased to call the fable,
fairy tale, or mythology of the Christian Gospel they are bound
to do for the Evangelists what Mommsen has done for Livy.

There is no parallel, however, between Livy, who recorded
the legends of an epoch seven centuries before he wrote, and the
Evangelists, who were historians of their own time. Neither is
there any parallel between Strauss, Renan, and the like, and judi-
cious, truly critical modern historians like Mommsen, Curtius,
and their compeers. Their efforts to reconstruct the history of
Christ and Christianity have been discarded as futile by their
own successors. German incredulity, taken up at second-hand by
some Frenchmen and Englishmen, to be revamped for a credulous
public, has evaporated into the mists of absolute, universal
scepticism, which leaves nothing true, real, or worth caring
about. Nothing remains except phenomena, without efficient or
final cause, a chaos ruled over by chance.

Whoever disdains this utter and destructive agnosticism,
admits the principle of cause and the sufficient reason, and
recognizes the necessity of accounting for the faith of the first
Christians, their heroism, and their success in originating that
Christianity which went forth conquering and to conquer, must
acknowledge the unwritten and the written Gospel of the first
century as a credible testimony to facts, including those which
are miraculous and supernatural.

384 AUTHENTICITY AND VERACITY OF THE GOSPELS. [Dec.,

The four Evangelists wrote their Gospels at different dates,
and for distinct immediate purposes, during the last sixty years of
the first century. Each bears the stamp of originality and of
individual character upon it. All reflect the oral Gospel con-
tinually and everywhere preached by those who were eye-
witnesses and ministers of the word or fully instructed by these,
and had thus become a common and universal possession of the
faithful. Those who write after the composition of one or more
prior Gospels either copy or supplement each other. The two
Apostles write from personal knowledge, and the other two from
the information given them by Apostles and others who had per-
sonal knowledge of the events and facts narrated. Three of the
Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and John, were devoid of literary
culture, and the other, Luke, was, to some extent at least, an
educated man. John was unquestionably endowed with genius
of a high order. St. Paul possessed both genius and learning.
Neither the one nor the other advantage was possessed, so far as
we can perceive, to any notable degree by any of the other Apostles.
Taken together, the first disciples of Christ were incapable of
originating, inventing, or idealizing the story of his life, the doc-
trine and ethical code of his religion, or the plan of the spiritual
kingdom which they announce. Not even St. John or St. Paul,
highly gifted as they were, was capable of rising, by the native,
original force of his intellect and imagination, to the sublimity of
that portrait of ideally perfect humanity which is presented in
the Gospel. Moreover, St. Matthew and St. Mark or rather St.
Peter, from whom the Gospel of St, Mark is derived borrowed
nothing from St. John or St. Paul. Nor did St. Luke, as he
himself testifies, borrow from St. Paul an ideal conception of the
character of Christ, but searched carefully, in a true historical
spirit, into all the original testimonies of those who were with
him from the beginning, and narrates with the same artless
simplicity, though with more literary form and elegance of
diction. The portrait is the same in all, and the history is the
same. The Four Gospels have one common origin, in the vivid
remembrance and continual recitation of the wonderful history,
in public and private, the oral Gospel with which the minds and
hearts of the first Christians were so imbued that any alteration
by an afterthought was impossible. The entire character of the
Messiah, his private and public career, the nature of his teaching,
the ideal of that spiritual kingdom which he proclaimed,' are so
unique, so sublime, so transcendent, that the delineation of these
in the Gospels can only be explained by regarding them as photo-

1 888.] AUTHENTICITY AND VERACITY OF THE GOSPELS. 385

graphs from the very person of Christ. Moreover, the Evangelists
narrated, and the Apostles preached, events and doctrines not only
far superior to any character, life, and teaching of such an ideal
Messiah as they were capable of conceiving, but totally different
and in violent contradiction to all their native prejudices; entirely
alien from the ideal of their age and nation, and from their own
individual concepts resulting from their early education. Such a
figure as Jesus Christ could not have been cast in the mould of
Peter, Matthew, John, or Paul. One might better look for Gothic
architecture in ancient Athens, Greek sculpture in ancient Egypt,
or the pictures of Raffaello in a Chinese pagoda, than for the
Christian ideal as an original invention of a simple, honest fisher-
man of the Sea of Galilee or a pupil of the rabbinical academy at
Jerusalem. The Apostles and disciples who founded Christianity
were dominated by ideas and transformed by an influence coming
upon them from some intellectual and moral power above and
beyond their own narrow limitations. The Christian religion
demands an author equal to the conception and execution of so
stupendous an effect. The religion of the lettered class in China
cannot be explained without going back to Confucius; the Zend-
Avesta demands Zoroaster ; Buddhism must be referred to
Sakya-Mouni. The conquest of Mexico, one of the most extra-
ordinary events in history, which would seem incredible if it were
not certain, could not have been effected by the lieutenants and
soldiers of Cortes without Cortes himself, who, Prescott says,
''Maybe truly said to have effected the conquest bv his own
resources" (Conq. of Mex., vol. iii. p. 354).

In like manner, the Christian religion cannot be ascribed to
any author except Jesus Christ. Those who call it a mythology
must refer it to him as the originator. The idea of his character,
his mission, his spiritual kingdom, was received by the Apostles,
impressed upon them, dominated over them, was the object of a
firm, invincible faith which was the spring of a superhuman hero-
ism and a burning devotion to his person and cause which set the
world on fire. He impressed this idea on their minds, and awoke
this devotion in their hearts. The origin of the idea was in his
mind, the source of the impulse was in his heart, the power
which effected the foundation of his empire was in his will, it
was his aspiration and intention which was realized as the world-
idea of a world-religion, in actual, historical Christianity.

It would have been simply impossible that a young man of
humble parentage, brought up in a village of Galilee, with no
other instruction than that of his parents and the synagogue,

VOL. XLVIII. 25

386 AUTHENTICITY AND VERACITY OF THE GOSPELS. [Dec.,

however exceptional his natural gifts and moral qualities might
have been, should have become what Jesus Christ was, and ac-
complished what he did, in person and through his instruments.
The great men alluded to above were the offspring of their
age and country, and each one of them in his character and
achievements is limited by his environment, confined to his par-
ticular sphere. Confucius is an ideal Chinaman, Zoroaster an
ideal Persian, Sakya-Mouni an ideal Hindu, Cortes an ideal
Spanish cavalier of the sixteenth century.

" The age, the country, the race to which men belong are the limita-
tions of their personal character. However great a man may be, he was
born in some particular place ; he lived somewhere ; he came from some
one people ; and he bears the stamp of these things impressed upon him.
Looking at the greatest men in history, we perceive that they are men of
their time. They espouse ardently its interests and passions, and sympa-
thize with its emotions of joy and sorrow. This is evidently the case with
leaders in politics, legislation, and war. What fulcrum would they have for
the lever with which they control or move the world, if they were not men
of their time? Is it not true, furthermore, that even the men of abstract
thought, the solitary contemplatives, the poets, the philosophers, the
artists, all those who are devoted to that ideal life which is in a wider and
more permanent relation with humanity in general, are also men of their
time ? Can we not hear in their poetic measures, together with the plain-
tive outcry of humanity, the distinct plaint of their epoch ; together with
the sighs of the human soul, the sighs of the particular people, of the age,
of the city where this human soul has prayed, wept, suffered, and loved ?
Name the greatest: Homer, Job, JEschylus, Isaiah, Socrates, Phidias,
Sophocles, Plato, Virgil, Tacitus, Dante, Michael Angelo, Shakspere, Mil-
ton, Corneille, Racine, Bossuet. What are they? Incarnations of
Greece, Arabia, Judea, pagan Rome, Christian Italy, Spain, France, Eng-
land. The greater they are the more perfectly they embody, with the
genius of humanity, the genius of that portion of the human race of which
they are the immediate offspring. Homer is the great Pelasgian ; ^Eschy-
lus is the great Hellene ; Job is the great Arab ; Isaiah the great Hebrew ;
Tacitus the great Roman ; Dante the great Italian ; Shakspere is the great
Englishman ; Bossuet is the great Frenchman. But what is Jesus Christ?
Neither a Hebrew nor a Greek, neither ancient nor modern. What, then,
is he ? He is man. or rather he is The Man." *

The perfect sinless innocence of the character and life of
Jesus Christ, which he openly asserted without encountering any
accusation from his enemies other than a disregard of certain
rabbinical prescriptions and the claim of being the Messiah and
the Son of God, is an absolute proof of the credibility of the tes-
timony which he gave respecting his own person and office.

* Chrzstzanisme. Par 1'Abbe Bougaud. Vol. ii. p. 682.

1 888.] AUTHENTICITY AND VERACITY OF THE GOSPELS. 387

This moral perfection was not merely faultlessness, but the
highest and most symmetrical positive sanctity, which consists
essentially, both in God and in created natures, in the perfect
harmony of intellect and will respecting that which is their
highest and best object. Dr. Liddon and Dr. Fisher have pre-
sented this argument in a manner which leaves nothing to be de-
sired. It would be easy to cite from the writings of men not
holding the Catholic faith eloquent tributes of homage to the
human excellence of Jesus Christ as unique and surpassing the
highest level of human nature in the greatest and best men. But
this is only one premise, happily one which is so universally con-
ceded that there is no need to prove it. We add another: viz.,
that the existence of such transcendent excellence supposes a
sufficient reason above the ordinary laws to which human nature
is subject. A special and exceptional action of God is the only
reasonable cause which can be assigned for the production of
such an unique effect. Jesus Christ was filled with the spirit of
God ; his wisdom and virtue were of divine origin, and the idea
of his spiritual kingdom as it was in his mind and intention was
a divine concept ; its fulfilment in history is a divine work. The
supernatural is therefore necessarily introduced through the door
opened by a purely rational and historical appreciation of evi-
dence and fact. The work of the painter's hand is a proof of the
painter's soul which animates an organ superior to a merely ani-
mal organ in its organic operation. The character and career of
Jesus Christ, and the origin and triumph of Christianity, are a
masterpiece manifesting the special exercise of a divine wisdom
and power.

The denial of this premise involves a reductio ad absurdum and
overthrows the first premise, which has been conceded. It can
only be denied by supposing either hallucination or deliberate
invention somewhere, or a mixture of both, as the origin of the
idea of the supernatural in Christ and Christianity. The Apostles
and Evangelists cannot have been the first originators of this
idea, as a product of either hallucination or invention. It is not
a mere question, at present, of particular miracles, or even of the
fact of the Resurrection, taken as isolated from the apostolic Gos-
pel as a whole. It is a question of the entire concept of the per-
son, character, office, and work of Christ. The Apostles were in-
capable of inventing this. Moreover, to ascribe their idea to
hallucination is to suppose that the illusions of an insane mind
can excel the sane creations of genius. The Gospels bear the
marks of sincerity, honesty, fidelity, and an absolute subjugation

388 AUTHENTICITY AND VERACITY OF THE GOSPELS. [Dec.,

under the power of a personality and a current of events which
had carried them away from themselves and their accustomed
world into a new sphere, where, to their own astonishment, they
became the founders of an empire.

Hallucination or deliberate invention are equally inconceiv-
able in the Master of the Apostles. Especially such an hallucina-
tion as would be the dream of a mere man, endowed only with
the natural gifts of humanity, that he was a superhuman, even a
divine person, would be a sure mark of insanity. Knowingly and
wilfully to pretend to possess superhuman gifts, but above all to
be truly divine as well as human, would be impossible to one who
was pure, holy, and filled with the love of the highest and best.

The conclusion is that we are to look to Jesus Christ himself
for the testimony to his true character and mission. His trans-
cendent human excellence, which is so evident as to dazzle the
eyes even of those who would shut out the sight if they could, is
the reason of his credibility. Truthfulness is an essential ele-
ment in his sanctity ; not merely veracity in speaking according
to his mind, but perfect conformity, also, of his mind to the
real, objective truth. Jesus Christ had the interior consciousness
of his relation to God and to men ; and he professed to be what,
he knew himself to be, to do what he knew that he was sent
to do. I do not propose to consider the testimony of Jesus
Christ to his own character and mission in its full meaning and
extent. It cannot be done in the little space which remains, and
it is not necessary for the present argument. It is enough to
state what is evident at first sight from even a superficial perusal
of the Gospels, that Jesus Christ declared himself to be in a rela-
tion to God so far above the natural condition of humanity that
he was the recipient of a knowledge of divine truth, an authority
and a power, by which he was constituted the Prophet, Priest,
King, and Final Judge of the human race. He foretold his own
death and resurrection, his invisible and perpetual presence and
operation in the church, and the prevalence of his kingdom in the
world. It required neither genius, learning, science, or any
other special aptitude for investigating extraordinary facts and
sifting testimony, to make the Apostles competent witnesses to
the teaching and to the great actions and sufferings of their
Master. Nothing but common sense, honesty, and a fair oppor-
tunity for seeing and hearing things which were obviously sensible
and intelligible were necessary. The one great and fundamental
fact which they attest is the Resurrection. Their belief in it as a
fact which it was impossible to doubt, and the faith which they

1 888.] ON A CHRISTMAS PICTURE. 389

communicated to a multitude in their own and all succeeding
ages, cannot be explained in any way except by the fact and the
evidence of the Resurrection. This has been demonstrated so
completely and so frequently, and every opposite theory has
been so manifestly futile, that we are warranted in affirming that
the narrative of the Gospels is strictly historical. The life,
death, resurrection, and subsequent effects produced by the
action on the world, of Jesus Christ, make up one stupendous,
supernatural fact. It is much more wonderful than any miracle
recorded in the Bible. The only logical alternative to belief in
this fact is a universal scepticism which undermines all philoso-
phy, history, and science, as well as all religion.

AUGUSTINE F. HEWIT.

ON A CHRISTMAS PICTURE

OF THE ELEVATED HOST AS THE INFANT JESUS IN THE CRIB.

Invitation..

THEY who to-day are loved the most
Find warmest welcome at the feast.
Come! I will be thy generous Host,
* And thou shall be my merry guest. \

II.

Communion.

Here I lie longing in my Love-made bower,

With arms outstretched to clasp thee to my Heart.

At this sweet moment of the Day and Hour
Lovers so chaste should not e'en breathe apart.

ALFRED YOUNG.

390 ITALIAN LIBERTY. [Dec.,

ITALIAN LIBERTY.

Evviva la liberta ! Liberty for ever! Long has the blue
Italian vault echoed this noble cry a cry that lifts the hearts of
all true men the world over. To-day the Italian chorus sounds
loud as ever. But when the historian of Liberty's progress in
time tells the tale of the last thirty years to our children they
will pity the simple men whose love and hopes were recompensed
with shouting, and scorn the tricksters who cheated their fellows
and wronged fair Liberty. How often her name has been used
by calculating diplomatists and politicians whose one aim was
to fix a clique or a dynasty upon an unsuspecting people!

Cavour has the credit of directing, controlling the political
movements which at length carried Victor Emmanuel upon the
throne of "United Italy." The secret workings of his internal
and external policy have not wholly come to light. Still we know
enough of his methods and agents to form a just estimate of his
character. Some men call him noble, beautiful. However, it is
well to remember that there are fashions in thoughts and in
phrases quite as much as in clothes.

Where it served his purpose to be open, Cavour was charm-
ingly frank. We have one of his sayings which not only discloses
his own mind and heart, but photographs the crowd he chose as
his instruments. "When I wish to carry a proposal / eat a
monk" said the great apostle of "a free church in a free state."
There is so much sweetness and light in this simple motto that it
could not but commend itself to the " lovers of liberty " who
took up the work which unappreciative Death hindered Cavour
from completing. " Death to the priests !" our sons, our
brothers has been a rallying-cry just as useful as "Liberty for
ever !" to the political leaders whose ideas of unification were
based not on peace but on submission.

" Death to the priests !" is a slogan that certainly brings no re-
joicing to the optimistic student of social evolution. Only a
warm, southern imagination could picture a civilization where
Liberty and Murder walked hand-in-hand enlightening the world.
The expression is exaggerated, figurative, and in the mouth
of the Italian " bosses " or rabble is to be taken with the same
allowance as the traditional cry of" Liberty for ever! 5 '

Ministers of state know when to encourage and how to take

i888.] ITALIAN LIBERTY. 391

advantage of the " voice of the people." And recently Signer
Crispi has been active in showing his sense of obligation to his
own choristers, and bold in testifying his fidelity to the tradi-
tions of that unselfish friend of church, state, people, party, and
king, Camillo Cavour. Let us have the whole story. It will
give new heart to all friends of true liberty.

In 1860 a commission was appointed to unify the Italian legal
code. Ministry after ministry has been buried and forgotten,
but the code is not yet unified. The Crispi ministry has been
trying its hand at the work. In the spring of this year Mr.
Zanardelli, Minister of Justice, brought before the Chambers a
unified penal code. To lovers of liberty the following provisions
of the new code are respectfully submitted :

"ARTICLE 101. Whoever commits an act calculated to subject the
state, or a part of it, to a foreign dominion, or to change its unity, is pun-
ished with imprisonment. .

"ARTICLE 173. The minister of religion who, in the exercise of his
functions, publicly censures or makes little of the institutions or laws of
the state, or the acts of the authority, is punished with imprisonment up to
a year, and with a fine up to a thousand lire.

"ARTICLE 174. The minister of religion who, abusing the moral force
deriving from his ministry, excites others not to recognize the institutions
or laws of the state, or the acts of the authority, or otherwise to trans-
gress one's duties towards the country or those inhering to a public
office, or who prejudices patrimonial interests or disturbs the peace of the
family, is punished with imprisonment of from six months to three years,
with a fine of from five hundred to three thousand lire, and ivith perpetual
or temporary inter diction from an ecclesiastical benefice.

"ARTICLE 175. A minister of religion who exercises acts of external
worship in opposition to the provisions of the government is punished with
imprisonment up to three months, and with a fine of from five hundred up
to fifteen hundred lire.

"ARTICLE 176. A minister of religion who, in the exercise or through
the abuse of his ministry, commits any other offence whatsoever, subjects
himself to the penalty established for the offence committed, augmented by
from a sixth to a third, except where the quality of a minister of religion
has been already taken into consideration by the law."

Patience breeds kicks in this world. Does this explain
Crispi's last blow at popular rights? Or is it a mere bit of
politics taken out of Machiavelli ? They have such " fine "
minds, these new Italian diplomatists ; and the traditions of
cheating, conscienceless politics are so plentiful. Is it bluster,
meant to hide division and weakness? Or is it a rash challenge
to the friends of liberty not only in Italy but throughout the
civilized world? In any case it is a crime and a blunder. Time

39 2 ITALIAN LIBERTY. [Dec.,

makes all things even ; and time will exact correction and ex-
piation.

The politicians who served their own selfish purposes and
the ambitions of a petty dynasty forced their kingdom and their
king upon the Italian people. Keep this fact before your eyes,
ye friends of liberty ! And this other fact seizing Rome, and
robbing pope, church, and people they made an issue with the
world and the country. That issue the Roman question is a
political issue, an issue to be settled with the Catholics of the
world through governments or peoples ; with the Pope as a
spiritual and temporal ruler ; and with Italian freemen. Pius
IX. made clear the position of the Papacy in the allocution of
March, 1877: " Entire and real independence in the exercise of
the apostolic ministry." There is the problem for the dynasty
and the politicians. How are they to hold what they have, save
their personal and political reputations, and still assure the
Papacy an " entire and real independence in the exercise of the
apostolic ministry "? Mr. Crispi saw the difficulty as far back
as 1864, nearly a quarter of a century ago. Said deputy Crispi
to his fellow-deputies : " General La Marmora was right in not
being able to comprehend the simultaneous presence of the king
and the pope in Rome. A logical man, and a good Catholic as
we all know, he could not imagine how these two powers could
exercise their functions in the same city without friction. The
Roman pontiff of to-day cannot become the citizen of a great
state, descending from the throne which is venerated by the
whole Catholic world." And again : '' The presence of the pope
in the Eternal City will always be a circumstance calculated to
hinder the solution of the Roman question." Having read these
words of deputy Crispi, turn to Article 101 of the penal laws of
minister Crispi, carried in this year of grace and liberty 1888.
You will see that minister Crispi's grasp of the real situation
agrees absolutely with deputy Crispi's forecast of 1864. The
minister knows that the great majority of Italians are united in
the opinion that " the Roman pontiff of to-day cannot become
the citizen of a great state, descending from the throne which is
venerated by the whole Catholic world." He knows that the pres-
ence of the pope and the king in Rome made a living, politi-
cal question still unsolved the "Roman question." A man,
a statesman, a lover of his country would glory in its solution.
A coward, a servant of courts, a spurner of the people would
try to stifle the question, as Crispi has done. Evviva la liberta !
Let us choke the mass of Italians till they consent to be more

i888.]_ ITALIAN LIBERTY. 393

" illogical " than La Marmora ! Let us jail them because they
still think, with deputy Crispi, that the Roman pontiff of to-day
cannot descend from the throne which is venerated by the whole
Catholic world ! " We cannot solve the question we have
forced on the people. When it is solved our day is done.
Let us stamp the question out!" And they will when God
ceases to breathe the spirit of true liberty into human souls.

Articles 173, 174, 175, 176 are intended still further to com-
plicate the " Roman question," to divide the people, to injure
the church, to damage religion, and to wound liberty. They
are inspired neither by justice nor statesmanship nor good poli-
tics. They are an outrage against law, against freedom of
speech, against manliness, against experience. Think of a Crispi
daring to foul our statute-books with regulations denying the
equality of all men before the law! Think of a Zanardelli doling
out punishments among us according to our profession, and not
according to our crime ! Picture to yourselves an American
official proposing one law and one penalty for our religious
teachers and another law and penalty for laymen ! Every one
of these articles bears the imprint of calculating, specious tyran-
ny. But they serve one good purpose. They lay bare before
the world the mean aims and the illiberal methods of the men
who rule Italy ; and they show how closely connected are these
men with the traditions of the worst tyrannies of the past and
how opposed they are to the spirit of the age.

Articles 173, 174, 175 are as plainly political as Article 101.
They are vicious, because they assume a state of facts which has
no existence. Their wording is purposely vague, with the in-
tention of concealing their purpose and of giving the largest
scope for persecution. They put a named class of citizens at the
mercy of a witness, true or false, and a magistrate. They make a
crime out of an open and honest expression of opinion. They
lift the "institutions," the "laws," the acts of officials into a
position nowhere in this world accorded to the law of God. Im-
agine our House and Senate discussing a proposal to forbid
our workingmen, or lawyers, or clergymen, "in the exercise of
their functions," to censure publicly the laws of the state or the
acts of the authority ! But we have no Italian " free church in a
free state." We were not. baptized by Garibaldi. We do not
appreciate unity and liberty after the glorified fashion of Cavour
and Mazzini and Victor Emmanuel. Shall we ever enjoy that
blessing ?

Article 174 is curious reading. It assumes that a minister of

394 ITALIAN LIBERTY. [Dec.,

religion, even in Italy, has a special kind of moral force deriving
from his ministry. Certainly this official acknowledgment is
creditable to the ministers of religion and to the moral subjects
who willingly submit themselves to moral force. Why not pun-
ish the latter as well as the former? How are you to catch a
man abusing his *' moral force," or convict him if you make bold
to charge him with this novel crime ? Who is to determine that
a man's moral force has excited another man " not to recognize
the institutions of the country" how cleverly that is put! or
" otherwise to transgress one's duties towards the country or those
inhering to a public office"? And by what mode of procedure
is it to be established that, abusing his own particular " moral
force," a man has prejudiced "patrimonial interests" or dis-
turbed the peace of a family? Certainly, under the name of law,
the citizens of every country have at times been subjected to the
most shameful abuses; but it is safe to say that no government
of civilized men has ever attempted to throttle a people by means
more scandalous, despotic, contemptible than those devised in
this unified Italian penal code. Evviva la liberta !

Now, the minister of religion who abuses his " moral force" " is,
you will remark, liable to " temporary or perpetual interdiction from
an ecclesiastical benefice." Lovers of liberty! behold the real,
bona fide " free church in a free state"! At any rate, the state
is free to interdict churchmen and to control the disposition of
ecclesiastical benefices. There you are, old Truepenny, with
your claws on the benefice, and your pretty physical force put-
ting down vile " moral force" ! But, on the whole, this is such
a little thing it is hardly worth speaking of in the face of Article
175. This article deserves a second quoting.

Article 175. " A minister of religion who exercises acts of
external worship in opposition to the provisions of the govermnent is
punished with imprisonment up to three months, and with a
fine of from five hundred up to fifteen hundred lire." Eppur si
muove ! Shade of Dante ! of Savonarola! of Galileo's self ! Im-
prison a man for saying his prayers in opposition to the provisions
of a government ! Here is a so-called government -a govern-
ment whose official religion is that of the Catholic, Apostolic,
Roman Church that would imprison a priest who fulfils his
conscientious obligations to say Mass, hear confessions, baptize in-
fants, marry an honest couple, comfort the dying, bury the dead,
contrary to the provisions of the government! Is this progress?
and are we too blind to recognize it? Why not provide our
worship for us? Is little Leo to be cast down, and great Crispi,

i888.] ITALIAN LIBERTY. 395

or Zanardelli, or Coccapieller, the " ossesso" or Cipriani, " de-
serter, insurgent, threefold murderer, and life convict" and six
times deputy to be our governmental Pope? Death to the
priests? Bah! Why not make them ?

If Garibaldi baptized, there can be no reason why Crispi
should not ordain. But the " moral force." the " moral force " !
Who would supply the " moral force"? There's the rub. Until
the right man has been found the ministry has determined to
utilize the present, "moral force" clergy. Follow these words,
translated from the Corriere of Milan, June 6, 1888. They are
words spoken in the Chamber of Deputies, by Zanardelli, amid
the "greatest attention" :

"That/ar/of {he clergy which dedicates itself to its proper spiritual
duties will have no fear of the present code. We allow ample liberty of
conscience, the greatest security to ministers of religion ; but outside of
this we must hold high our rights and those of our country. Thus we pro-
tect the elect of the clergy, whom we esteem, care for, and who we believe
should be thankful to us therefor. Let the clergy leave to us the turbulent
arena of party politics ; limit itself to that which is strictly its duty and its
mission ; we will perfect ours. Italy cannot renounce its rights, its patriotic
duties."

What do all these contradictory, subtle words mean, if not a bid
for an "anti-clerical " clergy, a government clergy, a dis-unifi-
cated clergy ? Elect, if you please ! You others are clergy, not
men, not citizens. What liberty of conscience we choose to give
you is ample. Leave the "turbulent arena of party politics"
kindly to us. This is our country, not yours. Our rights, not
yours, are the rights. Limit yourselves to your duties and
mission, as we choose to conceive them. We will perfect our
noble mission by protecting the elect. Evviva la liberth ! A
" protected " clergy in a turbulent state !

The clergy were already under the ban of the law. The first
step of Piedmont towards realizing the ideal of a free church in
a free state was to elevate the clergy to the position of inchoate
criminals. This is not the first attempt to weight them down
with heavier shackles than the old. A dozen years ago the
government tried to pass laws of a like import with those pre-
sented by the Crispi ministry. Then one Senator Pantaleoni,
who, whatever his politics, had a strong sense of manhood, stood
up in his place and put a question which the most turbulent poli-
tician will find it hard to answer. Said the senator: "What
sort of a country would you make where by law a penalty is im-
posed on the man who is faithful to what he deems an obligation

39 6 ITALIAN LIBERTY. [Dec.,

of conscience, and immunity is shown to a scrub of a priest* who
has betrayed his conscience to escape a prison ?"

" Infamous government ! " cries out the well-known revolu-
tionary writer, Parmenio Bettoli, in the Gazzetta di Parma, review-
ing the action of the Crispi ministry during the Roman elections
of June 17, 1888. On that day Crispi publicly voted for one
Hector Ferrari, who is not only a declared enemy of the mon-
archy, but who once grossly insulted the reigning king. The
elections, under the government's inspiration, were used as a
public demonstration against the "enemy in the Vatican." Judge
of the liberty of the government, and of Italy, from the cries of
the Roman rabble on the evening of the elections: "Death to
Pius IX.!" this very likely from a friend of state education.
"Death to Leo XIII.! Down with the priests! Death to the
Vatican! Down with the peasant of Carpineto / '" they do not
like peasant people, these Italian royalist "liberals." "To the
Tiber with the Vatican ! To the gallows with the Holy Father !"
How charmingly polite ! Now once more, all together :
" Death to the priests ! "

There breathes no man with an intelligent soul who does not
love Italy. And the Italy he loves is that of Francis of Assisi,
of Dante, of Petrarch, of Boccaccio if you will, of Savonarola,
of Giotto, of Angelico and Leonardo and Raphael and Michael
Angelo. Willy-nilly, he loves the Rome and the Italy of the
popes. To-day, as he walks through the boulevards and piazzas,
he looks sadly on the statues of the new great men, Cavour, Gari-
baldi, Victor Emmanuel, Mazzini. These be thy gods, O Israel !
And Liberty, where is she? Gome with me to Florence of the
flowers. From the station we enter the Piazza Vecchia, turn to
the left to have one look at Santa Maria Novella, Michael
Angelo's bride ; turn again to the left, by the Street of the Lily,
and here we are at Saint Ambrose's church, San Lorenzo. Up
the broad nave ; here, beneath the dome, we cross the south tran-
sept, mount to the " New Sacristy," and stand admiring and
dumb before Angelo's great work. Hasten this way ! I have
brought you to see the mausoleum of Giuliano de' Medici above
all, this one mighty, moving figure. Who is this sleeping
woman, with the firm, strong, suffering, drooping head, the
vigorous breasts, the broad arm, the powerful thighs? Mark the
star upon her brow Lumen de coelo and the foot, firm planted.
You do not recognize her. No wonder, when the men of
Angelo's day looked and knew her not. The great Michael

* Un tristanzuolo di prete.

1 888.] ITALIAN LIBERTY. 397

carved not mere statues but ideas in stone. This his work,
painted, or chiselled, or penned. For he wrote, in heated, feel-
ing, passionate words, the thoughts whose full expression he
feared brush or tool had missed. " Night," the name he gave
this sleeping Amazon. But when they took him at his word,
and praised the thing for what it was not, he seized the pen and
told the secret. The sleeper is Liberty. Why she sleeps let
him tell who knew:

" 'Tis sweet to sleep, and to be stone even so,
While wrong and infamy possess the year ;
And great good fortune not to see or hear :
Then wake me not at all : speak low speak low ! "

Italian Liberty sleeps. Is there not one man who is not
ashamed to waken her? Yes; there is one man the Pope. This
Pope, perchance. He has spoken out aloud. Has he broken
the loved one's slumbers? We shall see. But when the sons of
liberty throughout the world have echoed his manly cry, she
will find waking sweeter still than sleep. The politicians have
heard Leo's warning, cheering voice. Watch the diplomatists !
They have ears for the people to-day. They are learning their
lesson. Let us pray they learn more before we die. What a
glorious morn will that be on which Liberty, not ashamed to see
or to hear, opens her eyes on Italy free Italy! Meantime,
fellow-Americans, let us rend the skies with our native shout :
Down with all tyrants! To the deep sea with political tricks-
ters ! Equal rights for all men ! Liberty for ever ! Evviva f
Speak loud ! speak loud !

CARLO SPERANZA.

TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Dec.,

TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS.

THERE is always something pleasant and suggestive in the
work of George Macdonald, even though the pleasure is far
from being unmixed and the suggestions not invariably valuable.
The latter, especially, suffer from something which it seems
paradoxical to call vagueness, since the points one feels
inclined to cavil it are usually expressed with what looks at
first sight like startling lucidity. Is there anything more mis-
leading than clear-cut statements about essentially mysterious
subjects? Mr. Macdonald has grown used by this time to the
appellation of heretic from straight Protestant orthodoxy, and
doubtless glories in it, since his fashion of heresy is one which in
our days carries little obloquy with it and is no detriment to
popularity with the reading public. At bottom we suspect him
to be really not only more orthodox than his critics, both in
his denials and his affirmations, but more so than is apparent
even to himself.

His latest story, The Elect Lady (New York: D. Appleton &
Co.), has fewer points of interest for the general reader than
usual. Mr. Macdonald is more of a preacher, and his hero
more of a prig, than the exigencies of even the determinately
virtuous novelist actually demand. And while they each exhort
and instruct by turns, the interests of the story suffer. There is
not much story, to begin with, and no plot whatever. Some-
thing in the way of development of character is done in Alexa
and the laird, her father, but such real interest as the book pos-
sesses centres as it should, for that matter in Dawtie, the " elect
lady." She is a simple little Scotch peasant, who has learned as
a child from Andrew Ingram to walk as literally in the foot-
steps of our Lord as the circumstances of the case permitted.
The circumstances, even in the case of innocent children, ignorant
by no fault of theirs, yet still ignorant, and shut away from the
channels through which His grace flows most freely, leave more
to be desired than Mr. Macdonald is aware of. What he takes
to be freedom is still bondage. His tether is longer than it once
was, and he crops at all the grass within his reach, but there are
wider pastures and more satisfying food beyond him. Meanwhile,
for souls more restricted than his own, he has some messages worth
delivering. Dawtie is very charming, and Andrew, prig though

1 888.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 399

he be, has many a nugget of solid gold like these to brighten up
his hortatory speech with :

' Weel, 'gien the deevil be goin' aboot like a roarin' lion, seekin' whom
he may devoor, as father says, it's no likely He wouldna be goin' aboot as
weel, seekin' to haud him aff o's !"

" No man can be one with another who is not one with Christ."
" I do not believe God's will will be done, to all eternity, without my pray_
ing for it. Where first am I accountable that His will should be done? Is
it not in myself ? How is His will to be done in me without my willing it ?
Does He not want me ... to will what He wills? And when I find I
cannot, what am I to do but pray for help ? I pray and He helps me.''

This one Mr. Macdonald utters in his own person :

" Dawtie was at peace, becaus.e she desired nothing but what she knew He
was best pleased to give her. Even had she cherished for Andrew the
kind of love her mother feared, her Lord's will would have been her com-
fort and strength. If any one say, 'Then she could not know what love
is!' I answer, 'That person does not know what the better love is, that
lifts the being into such a serene air that it can fast from many things and
yet be blessed beyond what any other granted desire could make it. "

Another issue of Appleton's Town and Country Library, to
which The Elect Lady also belongs, is an anonymous novel called
Aristocracy. When Henry Holt published Democracy, some five
or six years back, that skit at republican institutions was under-
stood to have afforded much pleasure to such members of the
upper classes in " the mother-country," as Lord Sackville calls
it, as had leisure and ability to read it. The present story is per-
haps intended as a " retort courteous " for the other one ; certainly
it has a good many laughs in it for whoever can go through it
without making a wry face. The characters, so far as they
represent members of the British aristocracy, are generally
understood to be but thinly veiled portraits. The story of it is
not worth condensing, but some of the dialogue is eminently
adapted to quotation. This scene takes place at " Ash wyn wick"
(pronounced Azzick, explains the author with becoming gravity)
" Park, the seat of the Marquis of Oaktorrington (pronounced
Otton), in Hertfordshire (pronounced Harfudsheer)" :

" And now," Lady Oaktorrington says, coming forward, " won't some
one help me about this Primrose meeting? I have to preside at the first
meeting of our habitation to-morrow, and I don't know in the least any-
thing about it all. I depended on Lord Oaktorrington telling me."

;< Haven't you got a book ?" asks Montie Vereker.

'' Yes, I have. But it doesn't tell one anything. It assumes one
knows everything when one knows nothing. I want to know such lots of

400 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Dec.,

things I hardly know where to begin. For instance, what are the princi-
ples of the Conservative party? It's the Conservative party .the Primrose
League belongs to, isn't it ?"

" Most decidedly," Lord Bouverie answers, pompously. " It was founded
by Lord Beaconsfield, and he was a Conservative."

"Oh, yes, I forgot that. It's kept up in his honor, of course. How
silly of me ! But the principles of the Conservative party, what are they?"

" I'm blessed if / could tell you ontj let alone the lot of 'em if there are
any," says Lord Beyndour (pronounced Banner), "except that it's against
old Gladstone."

" And supports Lord Salisbury," adds Lord Bouverie, grandly. " That's
quite sufficient. Urn ? Eh ?"

" But what do they mean by calling it the Constitutional party ?"

" Because it upholds the Constitution,'' says the Duke of Harborough.
" I should think any fool could tell that."

" Upholds the Constitution? What Constitution?''

" The Constitution of the Primrose League,'' replies Lord Bouverie,
with a sweep of his hand. " Um ? Eh ?"

"I fancy it means the Constitution of England,'' suggests the duke,
humbly dismounting from his 'high horse as the road becomes more diffi-
cult. " England's got a Constitution, hasn't it ?"

" Upon my word, I couldn't tell you. I'd say it has," answers Lord Beyn-
dour.

"Yes, I think it must have," adds Montie Vereker, with one eye shut
and the other gazing into space. " Else what do they mean by talking of
the Constitutional party ?"

" Why don't you ask mamma ?'' says Emily Bouverie. " She's a dame.
So are Augusta and I, for that .matter; but we know nothing about it at
all." '

" It doesn't really matter, I should think," says Lady Henry, " so long
as you get people to vote for the Conservative candidates at elections.
That's really all you've got to do if you're a dame. You haven't had an
election here ? No. Well, we had one the other day at Lord Grafton's,
where I was staying. No one said anything about such boring stuff as
principles and constitutions. We just bought a lot of things at the shops,
and gave the village people a grand treat, with buns and tea for the women,
and bread and cheese and beer for the men. Everything was decorated
with primroses, don't you know, and there was a large portrait of Lord
Beaconsfield, framed in laurel leaves, out on the lawn. Of course there
were a lot of leaflets sent down from London to be distributed, showing up
the villany of Gladstone and Chamberlain."

" Oh ! pray don't mention that dreadful man's name again," cries Lady
Oaktorrington. "He wants to destroy the church and plant atheism in
England in its place, I hear."

" So does John Bright, the old square-toed, psalm-singing scoundrel!"
says the duke. " He and Chamberlain want to abolish us, too. A nice
pair, truly!"

" I wonder they are not put in the Tower,'' says Lady Oaktorrington,
" or beheaded or something. The Queen is far too lenient and forgiv-
ing."

1 888.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 401

" I quite agree with you," says Lord Bouverie, solemnly. " I wish 7 were
on the throne. You'd see a different state of things in England then, I can
assure you."

Four very good books for young girls are Minnie Caldwell, by
the Rev. F. C. Kolbe, D.D. (New York: Catholic Publication
Society Co.; London : Burns & Gates) ; Raymond Kerskaw, by Ma-
ria Mclntosh Cox (Boston : Roberts Brothers) ; The Youngest Miss
Lorton, by Nora Perry, and Voting Maids and Old, by Clara Louise
Burnham, both published by Ticknor & Co. Dr. Kolbe's stories
(his book contains three of them, the scenes being all laid in Cape
Town) belong to a class of which we have had far too few in
Catholic light literature. Perhaps we shall hardly indicate the
class better than we have already done in coupling them with the
work of Miss Cox and Nora Perry. They deal with the exterior
life as shaped and modelled from an interior whose inmost
springs are kept more out of sight than is customary with our
purveyors of wholesome fiction. No doubt it is less easy for a
Catholic writer to ignore dogma and forget the sacraments than
it is for others. When the " charity of Christ ^constrains " a man
or a woman, it has a way of burning up disguises which has to
be reckoned with, and which makes the effort to spread nets out
of sight of the birds one would like to catch a tolerably thankless
one. Dr. Kolbe, though his pleasant tales are essentially reli-
gious, has been able to avoid that difficulty, for the reason that
he was writing for Catholic girls only, and so could take his skele-
ton for granted. They give some pleasant glimpses of life at the
Cape, but concern themselves chiefly with what one might call
the natural development of characters founded in the super-
natural.

Raymond Kershaw is primarily a story of the successful effort
of the hero, a boy of nineteen, and his girl cousin, Alison Carter,
to make a living for themselves and Raymond's widowed mother
by running a farm, raising stock, fruit, and vegetables for mar-
ket; and only secondarily what our "Anglican brethren" call
"a church story." It is very pleasantly told, and is full of useful
hints.

Miss Perry is always delightful, and the ten stories which
make up her latest volume are, without exception, excellent and to
be heartily recommended. Dolly Lorton is an especially pleas-
ant little girl, in spite of or, perhaps, because of ? her indiscreet,
good-natured tongue. The lessons Miss Perry inculcates are
always worth studying, and her manner is itself a study. The
best of this collection is That Ridiculous Child, but all are good.

VOL. XLVIII. 26

402 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Dec.,

Miss Clara Louise Burnham, in Young Maids and Old, gives
another example of how well an honest-hearted and modest
woman may amuse and entertain readers of her own sex. With-
out one approach to dangerous ground she has drawn the picture
of a good-hearted but flirty girl for one of her heroines, and with-
out one trace of prudishness delineated extreme modesty, refine-
ment, and reserve in the other, while involving both of them in
cordial, honest, happily terminated love-making. And on that
achievement we are heartily glad to congratulate her. She is
never dull, and she never preaches, but her story leaves a thor-
oughly pleasant and desirable impression on the reader's mind.

Mr. Henry James's latest novel, The Reverberator (New York
and London: Macmillan & Co.), was worth writing and is worth
reading two things which do not always seem to us true of his
work, much as we invariably admire his technique. Too many
blows cannot well be aimed at that most distressing incidental
result of " freedom and equality " which makes the existence of
the " society journal," the gossiping, scandal-mongering news-
paper, filled with Details of private life and personal chatter, pos-
sible among us. And though it may be idle to dream that Mr.
James is read by many of those who are so made that they think
it fame to see themselves and their doings chronicled in the
weekly " social column " which scarcely one of our great jour-
nals now omits to furnish, yet what more effectual shaft exists
for piercing their pachydermatous tissue than that of the imper-
sonal irony which impales without malice and tickets in a purely
scientific spirit? Mr. James, though read by comparatively few,
is talked about by almost everybody, and in this very clever
piece of workmanship he has deserved that the talk should be
altogether favorable.

The Reverberator is the name of an American newspaper,
whose foreign correspondent, George M. Flack, is in Paris at the
-opening of the story. There he meets and renews his acquain-
tance with the Dossons, father and two daughters, with whom
he had crossed the Atlantic a year earlier. There is no salient
point about any of the Dossons, unless it be their singularly un-
obtrusive lack of salience, which is so pronounced that it becomes
almost a positive quality. They are rich, but they put on no
airs; they are ignorant, but they pretend to no knowledge, not
even the knowledge of their ignorance, which " fits them loosely,
like an easy glove." Francie, the heroine, is the only one of
them who reads anything but newspapers, and she. varies that
entertainment by nothing but Tauchnitz novels. She is very

1 888.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 403

beautiful, with fine lines, delightful color, and graceful, unaffect-
ed, girlish manners. Her manners, however, do not appear to
be a great part of her charm for Gaston Probert, a half-Ameri-
can Frenchman, the only living son of a South Carolinian settled
for many years in France. " Born in Paris," says Mr. James io
describing him, " he had been brought up altogether on French
lines in a family which French society had irrecoverably ab-
sorbed. His father, a Carolinian and a Catholic, was a Gallo-.
maniac of the old American type. His three sisters had mar-
ried Frenchmen, and one of them lived in Brittany and the others
much of the time in Touraine. His only brother had fallen dur-
ing the terrible year in defence of their adoptive country."

Gaston is not Francina Dosson's only admirer. He has been
preceded by George M. Flack, whom the whole Dosson family
regard as a great and elevated person on account of his sup-
posed dignity as an editor. Even his modest disavowal of that
title in favor of the more exact one of correspondent raises him
in their estimation. They argue that if his abilities had not
been of the most conspicuous type he would have been kept at
home, drudging in the editorial office, instead of being furnished
with travelling expenses and cards enabling him to interview all
sorts of distinguished and titled foreigners. But, though they ad-
mire him, and Papa Dosson might have been willing enough to ac-
cept him as a son-in-law, and though Mr. James does not give his
readers any special reason for supposing that Francie herself
would have been unpersuadable, yet Mr. Flack by no means satis-
fies the innocent ambition of the elder Miss Dosson for her beau-
tiful little sister. Fidelia has brought the family abroad for the
second time, knowing that rich American girls are said to do ex-
tremely well in the way of marriage " over there," and she has no
idea of handing her over even to an American editor. Gaston
Probert meets Miss Dosson's entire approval and is not slow in
gaining that of Frahcie also. His difficulty arises when he faces
the thought of presenting the socially unpresentable Dossons to
his father and sisters. However, he gets over that without too
much trouble. He is one of a most united and affectionate
family, who appreciate the fact that his heart is irrevocably en-
gaged, and who end by yielding, though with some wry faces,
graciously made in private for the most part, to Francie's inno-
cent charm and striking beauty. She is taken into their interior,
and Gaston's favorite sister, by way of proving to the little girl
how fully they have adopted her as one of themselves, tells her
quantities of family gossip, including the fact that one of their

404 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Dec.,

relatives "had that disease what do they call it? that she used
to steal things in shops." Now, all this, and a good deal of a
still more scandalous nature, Fraricie innocently repeats to Mr.
George M. Flack, whose disappointment with regard to herself
she pities, and with whose " aspirations," as she calls them, she
sympathizes, when he confides to her his great desire to get some
" genuine, first-hand information, straight from the tap," about
ihe Parisian grand monde. Gaston is in America, attending to
business for her father and his own, at the time when she is so
obligingly candid. She knows that Mr. Flack is going to " write
a piece " about her, her portrait, which an " American impres-
sionist " has painted, and her approaching marriage, for The Re-
verberator, but, to do her justice, she has no definite idea that he
will repeat all the Probert gossip with which she supplies him,
still less that he will embellish and improve upon it:

" Of course I must be quite square with you," the young man said. " If
I want to see the picture, it's because I want to write about it. The whole
thing will go bang into The Reverberator. You must understand that in
advance. I wouldn't write about it without seeing it."

" J'espere bten ! " said Francie, who was getting on famously with her
French-. " Of course if you praise him Mr. Waterlow will like it."

" I don't know that he cares for my praise, and I don't care much whether
he likes it or noL If you like it, that's the principal thing."

" Oh ! I shall be awfully proud."

" I shall speak of you personally I shall say that you are the prettiest
girl that has ever come over."

" You may say what you like," Francie rejoined. " It will be immense
fun to be in the newspapers. 1 '

" It may be fun to you, but it's death to us,'' the Proberts say,
like the frogs in the fable. '' Oh ! the most awful thing,"
explains Francie's prospective sister-in-law to that young lady
when a family council sends for her to see what explanation, if
any, she can offer for what has happened.

. " 'A newspaper sent this morning from America to my father, containing
two horrible columns of vulgar lies and scandal about our family, about all
of us, about y*ou, about your picture, about poor Marguerite, calling her
" Margot," about Maxime and Leonie de Villepreux, saying he's her lover,
about all our affairs, about Gaston, about your marriage, about your sister
and your dresses and your dimples, about our darling father, whose history
it professes to relate in the most ignoble, the most revolting terms.
Papa's in the most awful state ! But who has done it ? Who has done it ?
Who has done it ? '

"'Why! Mr. Flack Mr. Flack!' Francie quickly replied. She was
appalled, overwhelmed, but her foremost feeling was the wish not to appear
to disavow her knowledge."

1 888.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 405

It is just here that one's sympathetic admiration is for the first
time roused by Francie. Though neither she nor her people can
appreciate the sort of horror caused the Proberts by this publicity,
she does comprehend the reality of it to them, and believes her-
self to foresee that it will break up a marriage on which she has
set her heart. But it never occurs to her to deny her share in
the guilt of it on the contrary, her compunction even exaggerates
it by failing to suggest the palliative explanation which she
might justly offer. She knows neither how to lie nor how to
offer an excuse, but accepts the role of culprit with that truly
American naivete which Mr. James is fond of making much of.
It is a very good thing to start with, but somehow when it is a
heroine's only stock in trade, apart from her color, her facial lines,
and her dimples, it does not excite a wildly patriotic enthusiasm.
But then it was not meant to do so, and hence the common
verdict which counts Mr. James as snobbishly un-American.
Still, given his limitations, which are strict, and not all self-
chosen, we doubt if he could be in much better business than that
to which he addressed himself in this little tale.

Roberts Brothers reprint in admirable ho'liday style, with fine
binding, paper, and numerous illustrations, the poet Thomas K.
Hervey's Book of Christmas. It is curious rather than interesting,
has no special charm of manner, and possesses a plentiful lack of
really valuable information or suggestion. But for those who
have not Washington Irving's Sketch-Book at hand, and who care
to read about how Englishmen have eaten, drunken, carolled
Christmas anthems, and generally amused themselves in the days
preceding and following that most solemn and yet most joyful
of all festivals excepting Easter, it will doubtless seem to have
good points.

When Age grows Young (New York: Charles T. Dillingham)
is entitled a romance by its author, Mr. Hyland C. Kirk. Its
hero, Daniel Ritter, possesses from boyhood the ineradicable
conviction that he "was not born to die." A congenital and un-
conscious "Christian scientist'' of the most advanced type, he
thinks dying a mere blunder like the robber in Paul Clifford,
who with tears addresses his moribund chief with the exhorta-
tion : " Don't you die, captain ! Hany dam fool can do that ! "
Daniel cannot be brought to see any obvious necessity which
should oblige a reasonably determined person to quit the present
scene of human activity. Still, as he gradually becomes per-
suaded that determination alone will not afford a perfect vantage-
ground against the king of terrors, he begins to investigate life

406 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Dec.,

scientifically, with a view to discovering the secret of perpetu-
ating- it. In the prime of his youth, and while yet engaged in
this search, he is burned to death. Mr. Kirk's novel, beginning
with an apparition of Ritter or his double some three years after
this accident, and going on at great length to detail Daniel's
boyhood, his beliefs and his researches, with the apparent view
of inducing the reader's belief in his resuscitation, ends lamely
enough with the explanation that his supposed death was a mis-
take, which he had availed himself of as a means to hide from
persevering enemies while pursuing his biological studies in an
underground cavern, in the congenial company of a tame panther.
The story, considered as a source of entertainment, counts for
little ; considered as speculation, it counts for nothing. Yet Mr.
Kirk is an old speculator on the " possibility of not dying," a
volume of his bearing that title, and propounding the view
that endless life on the basis of physical existence is possible and
desirable, having gained curiously hearty praise in many quar-
ters. " The stubborn fact that all men now die," he is bold to af-
firm, "is not different from the fact that rapid transit was impossible
before steam was understood'' (/) It may have been at the feet of
Mr. Kirk that the Rev. Goodwin, D.D., had been sitting before
he startled a convention of Methodist and Presbyterian divines
some months since, with the assurance that it was time to give
up preaching that the world is one day to be burned up. The
world, he assured them, is not going to suffer any such indig-
nity. It is bound to endure forever. In fact, it cannot afford to
"go out of business," as he put it, just as Edison has been mak-
ing all those stupendous discoveries by which time and space
have been practically annihilated. Even Dr. Goodwin's clerical
listeners, shocked though some of them were by his new
eschatology, seemed as a body to conclude there might be some-
thing to say for his side of the question, for they resolved, after
some brief debate, that discussion of the subject was neither
profitable nor desirable. "This is a mad world, my masters!"
and few things in it are madder than the professed novelists
who teach philosophy and theology, and the professed teachers
who go to them to get bolstered up on knotty points of doctrine.
The Egoist, which is the latest number we have received of
Roberts Brothers' popular edition of George Meredith's works, is
what an Englishman of Richardson's period might have called
" monstrous clever." It is certainly that, and to be that is a
great deal but it is not more than that. Mr. Meredith has
enormous talent. Now and then, as in several of the scenes in

1 888.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 407

The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, notably in the last one between
Richard and Lucy, it touches so high a point that one is ready to
credit him with genius, to accept as true the wildest of the wild
encomiums which his true adorers lavish on his work. But from
that not often-gained high- water mark our own admiration slips
back in a fast-receding tide. Only a sudden storm has carried it
so far, and when the flood is out one sees the stretch of mud,
sand, and weedy rocks over which it flowed, and knows that
one might have walked safely in rubber boots and oil-cloth
through its heaviest welter. Still, it. is much to have created ,for
half an hour or so the impression of the deep sea, and the rock
rising midway in it.

That impression is never given by The Egoist, supremely
clever as very much of it is. The insight of it is often so keen
and penetrating, and its expression so clear-cut, that one strong
though not abiding result of it is a sense that in Sir Willoughby
Patterne Mr. Meredith has created an illusion by reproducing a
real man, viewed from the coolly critical standpoint of his fellow-
man. Here, one feels inclined to say, is the self-seeking, vain,
egoistic heart of " that kind of man " laid bare, shown up, not as
he appears to himself and wishes to appear to women, but as he
looks under the lens of a singularly disinterested fraternal regard.
And, to be just to Mr. Meredith, that seems to be precisely what
he aimed at not to paint one egoist, but to give " a chosen
sample, digestibly "; to condense into an acrid yet nose-tickling
essence the mildly unpleasant odor of a 'whole garden full of
dahlias and London-pride. And as he aimed at that result, and
hit it, he must be acknowledged an artist, often supremely adroit
in his manipulation, and irresistibly comic in his achievement.
Some of the scenes toward the close of the novel, that especially
where Sir Willoughby offers himself to Lastitia, and is too sharply
impaled on his own vanity to be able to believe her refusal arises
from anything but sheer misunderstanding, are wonderfully droll.
But to have aimed, and so successfully, at such a mark, in itself
ranks Mr. Meredith among the critics rather than the creators in
art. Still, for any good place but the highest we are most willing
to accord him our suffrage. One curious point in a writer who
often seems so felicitous in his choice of words for his ideas is
that this verbal charm seems to vanish in the effort of reading
him aloud. Then we have found him tire even listeners and
readers of more than average endurance.

Like all of Mr. Meredith's novels, The Egoist is too bulky.
Skilful as his padding is, it does not frankly escape the familiar,

408 TALK ABOUT NL w BOOKS. [Dec.,

yielding character of bran. Here and there throughout its more
than five hundred close-printed pages we have marked passages
quotable for insight or for drollery, but the scenes are too long
to be given in full, and too connected not to be spoiled by con-
densation.

Here is a specimen of some acute moralizing on women :

"Maidens are commonly reduced to read the masters of their destinies
by their instincts ; and when these have been edged by over-activity, they
must hoodwink their maidenliness to suffer themselves to read : and then
they must dupe their minds, else men would soon see they were gifted to
discern. Total ignorance being their pledge of purity to men, they have to
expunge the writing of their perceptives on the tablets of the brain : they
have to know not when they do know. The instinct of seeking to knowr,
crossed by the task of blotting knowledge out, creates that conflict of the
natural with the artificial creature to which their ultimately-revealed
double-face, complained of by ever-dissatisfied men, is owing. Wonder in
no degree that they indulge a craving to be fools, or that many of them
act the character. Jeer at them as little for not showing growth. You have
reared them to this pitch, and at this pitch they have partly civilized you.
Supposing you to want it done wholly, you must yield just as many points
in your requisitions as are needed to let the wits of young women reap their
due harvest and be of good use to their souls. You will then have a fair
battle, a braver, with better results."

And here are some characteristic Meredith touches, a propos
of Sir Willoughby's half-hearted effort to divest himself of his
old love, Lastitia, in compliment to Clara, the new :

" In the hundred and fourth chapter of the thirteenth volume of the
BOOK OF EGOISM it is written : Possession without obligation to the object pos-
sessed approaches felicity.

" It is the rarest condition of ownership. For example : the possession
of land is not without obligation both to the soil and the tax-collector;
the possession of fine clothing is oppressed by obligation ; gold, jewelry,
works of art, enviable household furniture, are positive fetters ; the pos-
session of a wife we find surcharged with obligation. In all these cases
possession is a gentle term for enslavement, bestowing the sort of felicity
attained to by the helot drunk. You can have the joy, the pride, the
intoxication of possession ; you can have no free soul.

" But there is one instance of possession, and that the most perfect, which
leaves us free, under not a shadow of obligation, receiving ever, never
giving, or, if giving, giving only of our waste ; as it were (saufvotre respect)
by form of perspiration, radiation, if you like; unconscious poral bountiful-
ness; and it is a beneficent process for the system. Our possession of an
adoring female's worship is this instance. The soft, cherishable Parsee is
hardly at any season other than prostrate. She craves nothing save
that you continue in being her sun; which is your firm constitutional
endeavor ; and thus you have a most exact alliance, she supplying spirit

i888.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 409

to your matter, while at the same time presenting matter to your spirit
verily a comfortable opposition. The gods do bless it.

"That they do so indeed is evident in the men they select for such a
felicitous crown and aureole. Weak men would be rendered nervous by
the flattery of a woman's worship; or they would be for returning it, at
least partially, as though it could be bandied to and fro without emulgence
of the poetry ; or they would be pitiful and quite spoil the thing. Some
would be for transforming the beautiful solitary vestal flame by the first
effort of the multiplication-table into your hearth-fire of slippered affection.
So these men are not they whom the gods have ever selected, but rather
men of a pattern with themselves, very high and very solid men, who main-
tain the crown by holding divinely independent of the great emotion they
have sown.

"A clear approach to felicity had long been the portion of Sir Willoughby
Patterne in his relations with Laetitia Dale. She belonged to him : he was
quite unshackled by her. She was everything that was good in a parasite,
nothing that was bad. His dedicated critic she was, reviewing him with a
favor equal to perfect efficiency in her office; and whatever the world
might say of him, to her the happy gentleman could constantly turn for his
refreshing balsamic bath. She flew to the soul in him, pleasingly arousing
sensations of that inhabitant; and he allowed her the right to fly, in the
manner of kings, as we have heard, consenting to the privileges acted on
by cats. These may not address their majesties, but they may stare ; nor
will it be contested that the attentive circular eyes of the humble domestic
creatures are an embellishment to royal pornp and grandeur. . . . Further,
to quote from the same volume of THE BOOK : There is pain in the surrender-
ing of that we are fain to relinquish. The idea is too exquisitely attenuate,
as are those of the whole body-guard of the heart of Egoism, and will slip
through you unless you shall have made a study of the gross of volumes of
the first and second sections of THE BOOK, and that will take you up to se-
nility; or yoit must make a personal entry into the pages, perchance, or an
escape o^lt of them}'

The last italics are our own. They indicate, if we do not
grandly mistake, the secret source of much of the Meredithan
insight into the core of things. " Look in thy heart and write "
is a simpler and older formula amounting to the same thing.

410 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Dec.,

WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS.

FOUND IN A NEWSPAPER.

A few years ago there came to a house in Texas a parcel wrapped in a news-
paper. The son of the house took up this wrapper in an idle moment and found
it to be a Catholic weekly.

All that he had heard of Catholics led him to believe them to be a " hard
lot." Perhaps he had an ill-defined notion that priests and nuns are not without
horns. He had read when younger a story of what purported to be Mexican
life, in which story much mention was made of the "adoration of the Virgin.''
He connected, in a way, the Virgin of the story with Mary, the Mother of Jesus.
The goddess, as he called her, of the book interested him deeply. He wondered
much about her, and would have been glad to learn something more of her, in-
stinctively knowing that it would be useless to ask for information from his kins-
folk or his friends.

All remembrance of the " goddess " had not left him when he took up this
Catholic newspaper to read. The first article to meet his eye was entitled
" What Catholic Devotion to Mary is." He read and reread the article, and
for the first time understood something of what is meant by the Incarnation of
God the Son. And, he says, the thought came to him in the words of Elizabeth,
for he is a diligent reader of the Scripture, " Why is it that the Mother of my
Lord should come unto me ? '' From babyhood he had heard much of a saving
faith in Jesus. Little by little, not all at once, it dawned on him that he did not
in the least know in what this saving faith consisted. He blamed himself for his
want of knowledge, and with lowliness of heart went to his minister to be in-
structed.

It would be impossible to put in words his amazement when he discovered
that the minister was as knowledgeless as himself more so, for he was enlight-
ened somewhat by the article on devotion to Mary. He was told to believe, and
when he asked, " Believe what ? " he was told to have faith. " Faith in what ? "
he repeated, and there was reproach in the tone of the voice that said, " Are you
not a believer ? " It was a circle ; and he might have likened it to the buggy-
wheels he saw from the minister's window spinning along over the parched road,
scattering dust that choked and blinded. One text of Scripture was now con-
stantly in his mind : " Lord, I believe ; help thou mine unbelief."

The theme of the newspaper article spoken of was that of the Incarnation.
The word was not a new one to him. The Theosophic " craze " had mildly at-
tacked his native town. Much, at that time, had been spoken in his presence of
the incarnation of Buddha, and he heard many inquiries as to what is Buddhism.
He never heard any one condemned for seeking an acquaintance with this religion,
and he heard many regrets that the works of the disciples of Buddha were not
more easy of access. " For," these seekers into untruth said, "we would get
just what they believe from the works of Buddhists."

Of the Incarnation of God the Son he knew nothing, neither had he ever
heard it spoken of. It is true that Christmas day was kept in the Sunday-school
and at home. No one, however, associated the day with the Word made Flesh.

i888.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 411

At the Sunday-school there was a Christmas-tree, and the superintendent, dis-
guised as Santa Claus, distributed gifts to the children. Never a word was said
of the Child, cradled in a manger, who gave that day a name and a reason for
being. He sought hopelessly to find out what in reality the doctrine of the In-
carnation is. There was reason for his hopelessness. All he learned from his
anxious inquiry was that Jesus Christ as man was not at all God, though the
Second Person of the Blessed Trinity is. It was then he heard of the Unitarians,
and he thought them more logical than were his acquaintances.

The soiled newspaper he held on to. It was precious to him. Not that
he had any thought of becoming a Catholic, but he was grateful to it for having
roused in him a desire to know better that Jesus in whom he had been told so
often to believe, and who he felt he must believe was God. One day he asked a
friend did Catholics believe in Jesus. He was told they did, but that they adored
Mary. The article on devotion to Mary was very far from countenancing any
adoration of her. Remembering this, he denied that Catholics adored Mary.
" But they call her Mother of God," this one said triumphantly.

It puzzled him greatly. He could not understand. If Jesus was God, and
Mary his mother, why was it wrong to call her so ? You see, he believed in the
God-Man ; the one to whom he spoke did not. He went back to his newspaper.
In the article that interested him was a petition, " Mary, pray for me." A
thought came over him to pronounce these words aloud. How would they
sound ? He said them, with awe and cold shuddering. In his ignorance he
felt as though he had pronounced an incantation. Not for long this. After a
little while he added the petition to his daily prayers.

It was now that he became curious to know something of Catholic belief. He
received no encouragement in the search after knowledge that he undertook.
He was advised not to tamper with anything Catholic. The words Papist and Ro-
manist were seldom used in his town. Catholic was considered sufficiently con-
temptuous. Indeed, to call one of his townsmen a Catholic would have been as
great an insult as you could offer him. When he persisted, he was offered works
on the church by the church's enemies. He said he would prefer to have some
books by Catholic authors. It was sweetly innocent in the youth to believe that
such books would be given him. No, he was told, that would never do. He
would find nothing but lies in such books. Catholics never told the truth about
themselves. He thought of the works of the disciples of Buddha. But he
said nothing. There was an advertisement of a spare number of Ca.holic books
in his newspaper. For these books he sent.

Many days had to pass before these books could come to him, and he spent them ,
advised to do so, in searching the Scripture. He had been used to read his Bible
daily, having a superstitious notion that every such reading must necessarily ad-
vance him a step nearer heaven. Now he read to learn. The wonderful first
chapter of St. Luke's Gospel spoke to him as it had never spoken before. He
had read of the God Incarnate having founded a church, but, like most of his
" persuasion," attached little or no meaning to what he read. It became clear to
him now that not only had a church been founded, but that that church was to
endure for all time. Not for a moment did he believe that this church was one
of the warring sects about him. Neither did it yet come to him that the church
of the Scripture was one and the same with the Catholic Church.

His reading prepared him for The Faith of our Fathers, the first of the
books sent for that he read. This book to him was a revelation, and a perfect

412 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Dec.,

one. It now became nigh impossible for him to restrain his indignation when he
heard the church belied. Yet much restraint on his part was necessary. He
wished to be further instructed in the one living faith. Had he let it be known
whither he was tending, obstacles that for him would have been insurmountable
would be laid in the way of his getting knowledge. Secrecy was a thing alto-
gether hateful to him, and he suffered as an early Christian suffered, forced to
mole in the ground, to keep hidden within him the precious faith confided to his
care till such time as he should be called on openly to confess it. His time had
not yet come. Come it would, he knew, and he must patiently bide its coming.
Guided by further advertisements found on the fly-leaves of his books, he
procured other Catholic works. These last were as carefully read as had been
the first. His diligence was admirable. He was very anxious to meet a priest.
No priest dwelt in his town ; as far as he knew, no priest had ever put foot in it.
The nearest one to where he lived was some forty miles away. Greatly to his
joy, something happened which caused him to visit the town where this priest
dwelt. He had discovered that of the idolatries and foolishnesses attributed to
Catholics, not one was believed in or practised by them. With other false ideas
went the revolting picture that had been limned for him of a Catholic priest.
His imagination drew for him another picture, of a falseness, also. He expected
to meet with an angelic being. What he found was, a little old gentleman busily
reading a black -bound book, clad in a long black garment which he wondered at,
never having seen the like before. A whimsical thought struck him that at any
rate it was not the notorious scarlet robe.

Father A , without pausing in his reading, motioned him to a chair. He

sat down, a repulsed feeling overcoming him. This feeling of repulsion was
quickly succeeded by a complacent thought that when the priest knew what he
came for there would be an opening of arms. And he made to himself a pleas-
ant enough picture of his being welcomed as was the prodigal son. The picture
was not very clear as to the killing of the fatted calf, for he could not readily con-
ceive in what the calf in this instance was to consist. At last Father A laid

down his breviary and listened to him state his case. When he had ended the
priest leisurely wiped his spectacles and replaced them on his nose. Then he
spoke seriously and with deep reverence of God's great goodness in putting into
this youth's heart a desire to know the Truth ; of the immense favor it is to be
one of Christ's fold ; advised prayer and reading Catholic books ; regretted that
the youth lived at such a distance from a Catholic church. Having said all this,
the priest gave him his blessing and bade him good-morning. He left the priest
a wiser if not yet a happier youth. He had learned the lesson that all converts
Have to learn that they can give nothing to God's church, but that they have
everything to get from that church.

Very different was this interview from what he remembered of X , who left

the Primitive Methodists to become a " Hard-Shell Baptist." There had been tea-
drinkingsfor X , and a reception ; and he was called Brother X , and every-
body seemed to think that a great event had taken place when X became a

"H. S. B." He desired no tea-drinkings nor any of the other good things that

had come to X , but, more than he had any idea of, he had looked for a warm

reception because his f ither was what the newspapers call a "prominent citizen."
His cheeks glowed with shame because of his impertinent self-esteem, and he
saw his little personality dwindling into utter insignificance before that tremen-
dous, everlasting fact, God's Holy Catholic Church.

1 888.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 413

There had been much of alloy in the preciousness of the humility with which
he had searched into the mysteries of the faith. It was a truer humility that
guided the search he continued, that governed his successful attempt at instruct-
ing himself for the step he was determined on, more than ever, of becoming a
Catholic. He was now in his nineteenth year, and his father determined to send
him to college. The youth, with what was perhaps incipient " Jesuitical crafti-
ness," asked that he be allowed to choose the college to which he should be sent.
His father gave his consent to this, not promising lightly or because he was a
careless father, but because he had confidence in his son's judgment. In the
newspaper which he so highly prized and so carefully preserved the youth found
the advertisement of a Catholic college in an adjoining State. With many mis-
givings he told his father of his wish to go to this Catholic college. To his
astonishment, his father not only consented but actually commended him for his
wise choice. " The professors at this college," he said, " are good teachers,
and," he added tersely, " they'll keep you clean." In a few weeks, to his not un-
mingled happiness, he found himself in a college where all were Catholics; that
college in a town where every man, woman, and child was of the one fold. His
happiness was only incomplete because he was not as those about him were, but
he consoled himself with the thought that in a few days he would not be the
only one there without a wedding-garment.

What was his dismay when, on speaking to a priest of the college about his
wish to be baptized, he received a decided repulse partaking somewhat of the
nature of a rebuff. He was told that, though sufficiently instructed to be bap-
tized, he had not his father's consent. He was not of age, and before anything
could be done that consent must be obtained. He went to the president of the
college, only to meet with a like repulse. He was told to write for his father's
consent, though such writing, it was added, would probably bring a summons for
him to return home.

He was miserably unhappy. He almost longed that there might be some
truth in those vast mendacities, perpetrated on silly, credulous folk, of inquisitorial
assemblies that forced one, whether or no, into the Catholic Church. In the ab-
sence of such convenient congregations he saw nothing for him to do but to
write to his father. This he did. The answer to his petition was a refusal down-
right ; a letter to make him sad, for he saw that his father was sad. Other letters
were written on both sides, letters that seemed to have but one result to make
him all but hopeless.

He suffered much. He was tortured with envy of others for the blessings
they had, though some of them held their treasures lightly blessings in which he
could have no part. It was bitter anguish for him to remain away, shut out from
the Holy Communion his companions could so freely receive. At last a day came,
in answer to many prayers, that brought a letter containing his father's consent.
Happy was he in his baptism, and happy is he in the possession that has been
given him ; happy in being an instrument of good to others. In that house where
he had had uncanny notions of priests, in that house where the first glimpse of
God's great Light of Faith met his spiritual gaze, in that house the town lacking
a church God's priests have entered, and there have offered more than once the
unceasing sacrifice, Holy Mass.

It may be objected by some one who may read this true narration that the ig-
norance of those outside the church concerning the mystery of the Incarnation of
the Son of God has been exaggerated. That it has not will be sufficiently proved

WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Dec.,

if such a one would put the question, " What is the Incarnation ? " to almost any
non-Catholic; or, if this one be not a Catholic, let him put the question to
himself. He will find that he is virtually a Nestorian. The writer of this, while
yet himself a Protestant, heard on two different occasions preached from a non-
Catholic pulpit the doctrine that Christ could sin, and a portion, at least, of the
two congregations found this a consoling doctrine "it makes Christ so much
more like us." This is blasphemy, but not the writer's.

It is as true to-day as it was in the days of the Council of Ephesus that he
who denies the Mother denies the God-Man.

THE REPORT OF THE ENGLISH COMMISSION ON EDUCATION AND THE
NEW YORK "TIMES."

We have read with pleasure an article in the New York Times of September
30, entitled " The Religious Problem in English Schools," in which the editor
admits that there is a problem to be solved even in American schools, which
hitherto have been held by many to be altogether perfect, insomuch that the
least fault finding with them was put down as an attack on education, or at least
on the principle of education by the state.

Indeed, so enthusiastic have some people been in their admiration of the sys-
tem that it seems to have been useless for any one to point out a defect in it, or
even so much as to justify themselves against such false suspicions or accusa-
tions as, in the heat of their love and consequent indignation, the upholders of
education, purely secular as it now is, were moved to entertain and bring forward.
Many articles and essays have been written and speeches made by Catholics to
show that their church is not now (history proves that she was not in past ages)
opposed to education nor even to state education. There have been, indeed, one
or two over-zealous theorizers who objected to the state having anything to do
with, education, but they were never authorized to speak for the Catholic Church
or for their fellow-Catholics, and hence their opinions were their own private
property.

The declaration of our real belief in public Christian schools was made ap-
parently to the deaf and to the blind so blind, indeed, that they were not merely
unable to read the Catholic statements, but they could not ever, see the parochial
school-houses springing up on every side all over the land. These were built by
the self-sacrifice of citizens already taxed for the public schools, because they sin-
cerely and honestly held that a very important and even vital branch of education
was not supplied in the latter. With such substantial arguments as costly build-
ings and teachers of their own, engaged in precisely the same work as the public
schools, sometimes only across the street from them, one would suppose that fair
men would perceive that they were not built out of hatred of learning, but that, as
the Times says, there was " a problem " of a serious nature yet to be solved, so
that the state education might be suited to all its citizens.

This is the religious difficulty which exists here as well as in England, and let
us thank God that, as the editor says, "the American people are hardly less im-
patient than the English with the secular character of education." It is safe to
say that if their ancestors had not believed and acted on the belief that religion
is " an element of great importance in a system of schools," there would be no
United States of America for us to live in. This Republic is a product of the

1 888.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 415

Christian religion and of Christian principles, and it is idle to look for liberty ex-
cept where Christianity has taken hold. The fathers of the Republic were reli-
gious-minded almost to a man. Now we want Christianity in the schools, and we
would like to hare undivided Christianity, with no distinction or difference in reli-
gious belief, as it was once although, indeed, for a very short time, since even in
St. Paul's time Christians had begun to form sects and schisms. But the trouble
is that we cannot practically get that kind of Christianity ; we of course, as Catho-
lics, say and believe that we can furnish it, but the people as a unit will not agree
with us. Well, what are we to do ? No true American would say : Let the state
force some one particular denomination on all. On the other hand, we know that
while each holds certain peculiar tenets, some points of grave importance to the
state are common to all denominations. Then let the state unite itself, not with
one only, but with all of them, and say : I want your help in educating the child.
I want you to sit down with me and let us settle upon some plan by which the
young, while enjoying the benefits of a secular education at the expense of the
public, may not be deprived of your salutary counsels.

The Royal Commission (of England) which gave occasion to the article in
the Times, and of which Cardinal Manning was a member, found

"That all classes in England desired to give their youth a moral and religious training,
even if the instruction did not come under the direction of the school inspectors. It was also
found that nearly one-third of the children, if not taught morals in the school, would neither be
taught at home nor through the different denominations. The poor children who needed the
training of the heart and conscience would not receive it outside of the board school at all."

Further, quoting with approval Mr. Sharpe, whom they eulogize as "one of
the greatest authorities in the practical working of such institutions," they say
that

" It is very undesirable to have persons of different religious faiths in the same college ; and,
though the religious difficulty seems to be partially overcome in the case of undenominational
colleges, yet it is at the sacrifice of denominational instruction, which is most valuable in produc-
ing a race of religious and moral teachers."

Such is the opinion of fifteen out of twenty-three of the members of the Royal
Commission the majority report. The denominational system is in actual use
in England, and they declare it to be unwise to change it to the secular or neutral
system which we have in the United States. Yet they do not object to purely
secular schools for those who desire them. This is our position exactly. Catho-
lics have no quarrel with anybody. They only want their own children properly
brought up. What the English say of their country is equally true in ours, and
perhaps the religious school is more necessary here on account of the general
tone of society, which, tending towards individual freedom and early emancipation
of the young from the control of the old, has more need of religious restraints.

The main objection brought forward against denominational participation in
public education arises from the desirableness (in the opinion of some) of mould-
ing all the children according to one American type of character. Catholics have
always held that unity of religious faith is an advantage to a nation even in a
temporal point of view, and hence the ideal which these men have of the Ameri-
can citizen of the future is not an untrue one ; but we must look at things as they
are. If we were all of one faith, or could be made so by state schools, there
would be some practical sense in this reasoning ; but we are not and will not be
perhaps for ages. Which, then, shall we choose ? To continue as we are now, a

416 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Dec.,

nation Christian, although divided into sects ? or shall we become pagan or ag-
nostic for the sake of becoming uniform ? It seems to us that with all the draw-
backs of religious division inside of Christianity among our population things
have gone on pretty well. We did not see that the Northern soldiers were less
patriotic because different regiments had chaplains of different denominations,
according to the belief of their members ; we are not aware that there was any
want of unity in camp or on the battle-field on account of that. Is it likely that if
they were all of one way of thinking, and that way mere agnosticism or secularism,
with no hope of heaven or fear of hell or trust in God, that such sameness would
have made citizens more ready to sacrifice themselves for others and braver de-
fenders of the flag and country ?

Would it improve matters if to-morrow all political parties should coalesce
into one ? The Republican, perhaps, will answer yes, if all become Republicans,
and so the Democrats will say likewise. But "quot capita tot sentential' as Hor-
ace has it, and as long as heads will differ men will instinctively seek out those of
their own way of thinking and organize with them for protection, and for aggres-
sion too. The few philosophers who can be neutral and stand alone entirely free
from partisanship or "sectarianism " might be carried in a horse-car, and will
probably be theorizers only and exert mighty little influence and do less work in
any direction. To make religion " unsectarian '' (sic) or undenominational, so that
your Christian of the future would have no particular creed, no particular church
or pastor or traditions, and would be neutral wherever there is any controversy, is
to emasculate it entirely. This age and country is of all others the one when and
where men will organize and form themselves into parties, or let us say " denom-
inations.'' If then it is desirable to have religion in education, why should not
the editor suggest that a commission be appointed here, on the English plan, to
inquire into the facts at all events, and " prepare them for the statesman *' who
will one of these days be called upon to save the Republic by supporting its reli-
gious foundation, which is being so rapidly undermined by the prevalence of god-
lessness ? The Catholic Church will give all the information it possesses, and
perhaps we could suggest some way of meeting this difficulty and satisfying both
Catholic and Protestant parents without union of church and state, and without
taxing anybody for religious teaching.

PATRICK F. MCSWEENY.

THE "CENTURY'S" HISTORY OF THE WAR.*

The war of the Rebellion is, next to the Revolutionary war, the most important
epoch in our history, perhaps in the history of the world. There is no parallel to
be found to that mighty struggle in the history of civilization, or at least of mod-
ern civilization. When has there been a war fought so honestly and to so per-
fect a close, and whose results have been so providentially adjusted to the best
interests of both parties ? A man's bitterest enemies are those of his own house-
hold, and so are a nation's. And this enmity in the bosom of our national family

* Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Being for the most part Contributions by Union
and Confederate Officers. Based upon the Century War Series. Edited by Robert Underwood
Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel, of the Editorial Staff of the Century Magazine. New York:
The Century Co.

1 888.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 417

burst out into a furious, long-continued, and most bloody struggle. The hatred
of the sections was sealed with blood, and the poison of a deadlier hate was
rubbed into the open wounds by the first measures of reconstruction. And yet
within a generation the sections are at perfect peace without a standing army or
without national garrisons at the South, other than "the bivouac of the dead "
Union soldiers in the national cemeteries adjacent to the great battle-fields.

All this is fact, and is evident to intelligent men, not only to ourselves, but
even more so to foreigners. But a singular and unique witness to the peaceful
resultant of the deadliest of modern wars is exhibited in these volumes. They
form a complete military history of the war from beginning to end, written by
participants on both sides, many of them high in command, all living at peace
with each other and exhibiting only a desire to contribute the best evidence of
the manly qualities of the combatants and the military science of the leaders.

It is a symposium on the battles and strategy of the war, furnished by the men
who personally conducted its operations. The men who less than a generation
ago were divided by a line of fire, and whose dearest purpose then was to put
each other to death, are now calmly and peacefully gathering the moral and
scientific lessons of the great conflict. It is amazing with what kindliness and
entire good-nature these men discuss together their battles and campaigns men
whose very names meant slaughter and destruction to each other. That this has
been done is owing to the generosity and public spirit of the owners of the
Century Magazine ; and that it has been done so well, edited so perfectly, and
supplemented by such a thorough sifting of figures and other statistics gathered
from the records of the United States War Department, is owing to the competent
editorial work of Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel. As
published serially in that great monthly they attracted widespread attention. The
numerous illustrations have been made from sketches or photographs taken al-
ways on the spot, and in many cases at or right after the time of the occurrence.

But the reader would be mistaken if he supposed that this great work is a
mere reproduction of the text of the Century war articles. Even so, it would have
made a splendid and unique work. But the whole letter- press has been recast,
and the type, apparently new throughout, is of a much larger form, the lines run-
ning across the page, and the size of the volumes reaching almost to a quarto.
We do not know whether the pictures are simply reproductions from the maga-
zine ; they seem to us to be often enlarged.

The contributions here given which did not appear in the magazine, and are
therefore entirely new to the public, are so numerous and in many cases so im-
portant as to make this work of altogether superior value to the bound volumes
of the monthly. The articles referred to are fully as finely and as copiously illus-
trated as those already known to the public. But these volumes possess an ad-
ditional feature of excellence in the carefully prepared and accurate resume that
concludes the account of each action, whether military or naval. The names and
officers of each regiment or battery that took part in the engagement, the loss in
killed, wounded, and missing, etc., are given at length, and for the Confederate as
well as for the Federal forces. The reader is assisted in understanding the
relative positions and the movements of the opposing forces by numerous maps
showing the region of the country operated over and the precise topographical
features of the battle-fields.

It seems to us that until the inventive genius of man takes a long stride for-
ward and finally reproduces the exact tints of nature by means of the press, that

VOL. XLVIII. 27

4i 8 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Dec.,

the printer's art can offer these volumes as its most excellent product. It is well
that they tell the story of one of our heroic epochs, and are sold for a price which
will place them in the homes of the humblest artisans and farmers of our coun-
try.

Our praise may seem fulsome ; the fault we find with it ourselves is that it
but feebly conveys our admiration for the writers, printers, publishers, and own-
ers of this marvellous work.

READING CIRCLES.

Many young ladies who are graduated from Catholic academies and other
schools feel, when school-time is past, a mature desire for self-improvement.
They seek a more advanced course of Catholic reading ; they have acquired a
love for still deeper study. For this they need competent guidance and encour-
agement.

A plan has been proposed to meet these requirements which is well worthy of
consideration. The writer recommends the formation of a society which would
be conducted for the benefit of the Catholic women of the United States. The
society would confine itself to Catholic literature, Catholic subjects, Catholic
writers. This field is undoubtedly large, but if thought desirable it might be
restricted to American writers. Such a society should in no way be exclusive ; it
should be managed with a liberal desire to give due recognition to all concerned.
It would differ from local literary clubs inasmuch as there need be no social
element ; everything could be done by correspondence. Meetings of members,
however, might be held for the interchange of ideas and the better understanding
of subjects pertaining to self-improvement. Classified lists of books could be
arranged for those desiring information regarding particular subjects.

The foremost object of the society would be to counteract as far as possible
the general indifference shown towards Catholic literature, to suggest ways and
means of acquiring a knowledge of our own writers. In a general way this de-
sire for an elective course of reading would enlarge our knowledge of the church,
its effect upon civilization, the arts, science, and literature. We would more easily
realize the idea of the church as a whole, and its members as individuals, and get
a correct Catholic view regarding subjects relating to events and personages past
and present. We can readily see that such a society would produce much good.

Catholic papers are constantly lamenting the want of interest in Catholic
literature and the injudicious selection of books. Public libraries contain many
of our best Catholic works, but they are much neglected. The taste of Catho-
lic readers is not sufficiently educated. Our Catholic libraries are often incom-
plete. Among many books to make a good selection is very difficult. Does the
fault lie with the people, or with the failure to directly suggest better books to
them ?

It is a fact, moreover, that many of the more educated of our young ladies
know very little of the writers of their own religion, or the place of excellence
these writers have attained. Catholic literary aspirants are disheartened. They
should be encouraged by opening through such an organization as this the vast field
of labor for the Catholic litterateur. Indications are not wanting that many now
read novels which contain little more than the amorous intrigues of the French
society dame or the unending flirtations of the English lord.

With a definite plan for home study these young women might be induced to

1 888.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 419

make a profitable course of reading. To select what is desirable to be read, to
arrange courses, to designate the best and most practical, to aid the development
of just discrimination, this would be the task of some willing, responsible persons
in authority. With all the valuable suggestions the document contains, we would
propose that the society be not solely for the higher classes of young ladies, but
likewise for the masses of Catholic working-girls. By this means literature of a
light, sensational character would be discarded for profitable novels, Catholic
romances, useful biography. There would be needed a director)' of all Catholic
books from David down to Hendrik Conscience and Christian Reid, which exten-
sive field, however, would be divided into courses. Some comments should be
added to distinguish the books of a high order of excellence.

We heartily commend the plan. We remember the good St. Anselm's So-
ciety has done in England, and, though we may not be able to follow its work in
every detail, its spirit could and should animate the organization of the society
here proposed. We have endeavored to give some outline of the need, the aim,
and the good to be accomplished through such a society. It must be, if properly
organized and carefully conducted, a potential factor in securing what is at
present one of our greatest needs a Catholic reading public. We therefore
submit the plan to our readers and invite their comments, their suggestions, their
co-operation. We commend it to the consideration of the Catholic press of the
country, and would instance the success of such organizations as the Chautauqua
Society or the Agassiz Association as a guarantee of the good that might come
from a Catholic society organized on the same or a similar plan. All communi-
cations should be addressed to " Reading Circle," office of THE CATHOLIC
WORLD, 6 Park Place, New York City.

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

SPECIAL DEVOTION TO THE HOLY GHOST: A Manual for the Use of Semi-
narians, Priests, Religious, and Christian People. By the Very Rev.
Dr. Otto Zardetti, V.G. With a Letter of Introduction by the Rt. Rev.
John Keane, D.D., Bishop of Richmond. Milwaukee : Hoffmann
Brothers.

This book is published to aid souls to live by the instinct of the Holy
Spirit. It is designed for all Christian people, but is especially prepared
for the use of those who serve the altar or aspire to do so. The author
affirms that he has always had a lively appreciation of the office of God
the Holy Ghost in the sanctification of men, and hence on previous occa-
sions has published short Latin treatises showing the relation of the Holy
Spirit to the Blessed Sacrament, the Blessed Virgin, and on like subjects.
The immediate cause of this little volume is the exhortation of the Third
Plenary Council calling upon all who aspire to the apostolic ministry to
cultivate a devout union with the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of the High-
Priest Christ. Bishop Keane, rector of the Washington University, in a
commendatory letter to the author, says that these words will make the
council memorable. The bishop continues, referring to the intellectual
culture of the clergy which the university will secure :

" In vain should we seek for the bestowal of the highest learning on our priests and our
people unless the Holy Spirit of Truth and of love were its light and its life. If only we can
pour that highest light and highest love into our country's mind and heart, then what can these
be too great and noble for her attainment ? We are pioneers in a great work."

42O NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Dec.,

This little work, beautifully printed though the binding is somewhat
gaudily colored is divided into four parts, the first showing the fitness and
opportuneness of the devotion to our times and this country. The second
part explains the objects and rules of the confraternity of the Servants of
the Holy Ghost. The third part is doctrinal, containing an exposition of
the dogmatic principles underlying this devotion, a proper introduction to
the fourth part, which is a selection of approved prayers, hymns, and other
devotional exercises "leading the Servant of the Holy Ghost to adore
Qod in spirit and in truth."

We are fully persuaded this book is well calculated to attain the pur-
pose of the author. It is intelligently, we may say learnedly, written, and
is full of a devotional unction so necessary in arousing men and women to
adopt a new sort of religious exercise.

I God could not give to Dr. Zardetti a nobler mission than to assist in
the sanctification of the Catholic priesthood. No one wishes well to the
Catholic people whom God will not soon inspire with love for the clergy.
They should be well prayed for, indeed ; for upon the clergy depends much
of the spiritual and not a little of the temporal welfare of any Catholic
people. They are the very salt of a good people, being made up of men of
noble natural qualities elevated to a state whose supernatural excellence
is simply beyond expression. A good priest bears Christ our Lord in his
soul and body for the building up of the temple of God in each soul in his
parish. There is not a Catholic layman alive who has not felt the benefi-
cent power of the words, the presence, the very looks of that unique repre-
sentative of the Redeemer of men called "our priest.' 1 He is indeed a
lonely man, being celibate and being taken apart from the common occu-
pations of men ; and yet he is the best loved of women, the most loyally
loved by men, the most tenderly loved by the little children of the people.
And of all the loves that pour out their balm of sweetness upon the soul
and body of man none is so tender, so sweet, so pure, so long-suffering, so
divine as the love which enraptures and at the same time torments the
priest's heart. It is a love stronger than death and mightier than any
"human love whatever, and is the only explanation of that absolute self-
forgetfulness in the service of his people which is the dominant trait of the
priestly character.

But all this is said of the good priest. It is not said of one who loves
money or covets the society of the rich, or who enjoys the amusements of
the world, or who is a low-grade man and takes a low view of his state as
that of a mere profession, and tosses off to " monks " the inner voice call-
ing him to priestly perfection ; it is not said of lazy or sensual or worldly
priests, but of good priests, whose souls are aflame with the fires of the
altar the happiest, the busiest, the most eager, the purest, and oftentimes
the saddest men on earth ; such priests as we have now among us by the
hundreds and hundreds. The writer of this knows what is a good priest,
for he has spent many years among all sorts of them, and it fills him with
consolation to bear witness that our American priesthood is worthy of a
Catholic people's love, is better and better every year, and that the appli-
ances for forming a perfect priesthood are becoming more and more ade-
quate to that end.

These words have been written to recommend to the attention of the
priesthood Dr. Zardetti's little manual, Devotion to the Holy Ghost, be-

1 888.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 421

cause that devotion is the one which priests should just now give their
immediate attention to, in preference, we make bold to say, to any others.
Of course devotion to our Lord's Sacred Humanity is enthroned upon
our altars as the sacerdotal devotion. But is it not well advanced in our
affections? Has not the Sacred Heart a full chorus of praise from our
lips and hearts ? Can another word be added to the learning and unction
of our treatises, and can anything more be said for our confraternities of
the Blessed Sacrament? But who hears about devotion to the Holy
Ghost? From the day we leave the seminary the doctrine and adoration of
God the Sanctifier must trust almost altogether to the feast and octave of
Pentecost for setting us on fire.

THE CREDENTIALS OF SCIENCE THE WARRANT OF FAITH. By Josiah Par-
sons Cooke, LL.D., Erving Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy in
Harvard University. New York : Robert Carter & Bros.

We believe that the study of the ideas presented here is the turning-
point of Christian apologetics in our day. Professor Cooke has taken up
the issues of the age and discusses them scientifically ; he is not willing to
let them go till he has exhausted their value to him. Such men are not
numerous in the history of any great movement of human thought, and in
the present one have heretofore been especially lacking. He grasps his
thesis with a familiar and vigorous power which could only be the result
of a high order of intelligence applied to honest study through a long se-
ries of years. His thesis may be summed up in one of the concluding
paragraphs of his book (p. 321):

" Man knows nature because he is in harmony with it ; man knows spiritual truth in the
same way ; and certitude in either case rests on similar evidence. Such are the general propo-
sitions which I have sought to maintain in these lectures. We have to thank the evolutionists
for a plausible explanation of the first of the propositions, and they wjll not object if we apply
the same principles to the second. A simple cell, at first only slightly sensitive to the light,
has developed into that organ of wonderful adaptations, the eye. By the suivival of the fittest,
each advantage gained has been held and handed down : and thus the organ has been gradually
adjusted to the environment and fitted to give to the mind of man truthful information about
external objects and accurate impressions of the beauties of the outer world. . . . The method
by which these results have been worked out is, however, a question of no importance to our
argument, so long as we all admit, as all do, evolutionists with the rest, that the capacity of
these organs to give accurate information about the external world is wholly due to their adap-
tation to their environment.

" But if man's harmony with his environment physically is an evidence of truth, then his
harmony with his environment spiritually must be equally so. If a sensitive nerve can be
trusted, a sensitive conscience is not less trustworthy ; otherwise man's mind must have grown
into harmony with its environment in one relation and not in another. If, when man longs for
beauty and harmony, the impressions which flow in through the eye and ear are to be trusted,
then it must be that when in his higher moods he yearns for purity, and righteousness, and
holiness, the assurances which come to him on his bended knees are equally well founded."

That is to say, the inner religious life of man is a witness of the exter-
nal reality of God and his ethical law, just as the inner scientific life of
man is witness of the external reality of nature and its laws. The inner
life of man is real the whole of that life, ethical as well as scientific.
Whatever makes for the equation between the phenomena of perception
and the thing perceived in the material world makes no less for the equa-
tion between the phenomena of the moral and religious consciousness and

422 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Dec.,

the objective reality of the spiritual world. Life [is real, inner as well as
outer, religious as well as scientific. The reality of life depends upon that
most fundamental of all principles, that the object characterizes the action
of the subject. All rational life is made up of the object, the subject, and
their relation. The object awakens the activity of the subject. The object
witnesses itself to the subject. The object proves itself to the subject.
The subject perceives because the object is perceptible, that is to say, real.
The final outcome of the study of all human life is that the phenomena of
our inner life are not characterized by the mind's own act, as Kant's theory
of categories would teach, are not idle dreams of an unregulated mental
force, are not the creations of sprites and demons acting upon us as upon
their spirit-slaves ; the phenomena of our inner life are the direct product
of the infinitely real and infinitely active force of supreme being. This
gives us the product of sensible perception as to the material universe, and
no less really the product of the inner touch of our souls with the Supreme
Good, union with which is the end and destiny of man.

Professor Cooke does not enter formally upon this question, which is
strictly philosophical. He takes for granted, however, that it lies at the
root of every other question, and he everywhere takes for granted the true
solution of it. It would be too much to ask of him to deal with both the
philosophy and the natural science of this age's perplexity. He does more
than one man's part in fully meeting the attack of godless science by com-
paring its own credentials with those of Christian faith and proving that
faith and science stand or fall together. The reality of the object arousing
the activity of the subject and characterizing it is the one only guarantee
of scientific certitude in all its grades ; and Professor Cooke proves that the
same guarantee is amply present in the facts of consciousness in the do-
main of religion, and that they are at least as peremptory upon the rational
man for acceptance.

" Even among scholars," says the author, "who, while familiar with the general results of
science, are strangers to its methods, there is a common misapprehension in regard to the cer-
tainty of scientific conclusions or in regard to the infallibility of scientific evidence. Physical
science is constantly spoken of as exact, and as yielding positive proofs in contrast with the
moral sciences, whose results are less definite and more questionable. As regards physical
science all this is to a great extent true, since a large mass of facts which have been established
in relation to the phenomena of nature are as certain as the axioms of geometry ; but no results
of measurements are absolutely exact, and the accredited values have every possible degree of
precision. There are very few magnitudes of nature which are known accurately within a thou-
sandth part of their value ; and our knowledge of such fundamental quantities is often in error
to the extent of one-tenth. To scientific experts this is a familiar fact, and in all their deduc-
tions they take into account the resulting uncertainty ; but literary men are apt to reason as if
they thought everything accepted in science was known with equal exactness, and are led into
error by this unconscious assumption " (page 112).

This extract is but a statement of what is clearly proved by Professor
Cooke in many carefully arranged examples of the difficulties of arriving
at results worthy of acceptance by men of science ; analogous to the diffi-
culty some minds experience in overcoming their obstacles to perceiving
the credibility of the articles of theistic and Christian belief. This part of
his work is the most valuable, and, we think, is an addition to the literature
of the subject altogether new.

Professor Cooke is not a Catholic, but he is reasoning upon lines which

1 88 8.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 423

are universal. We do not agree with him in everything, but his main
thesis is true and his support of it is complete ; his errors such as conced-
ing too much to the demands of the scientific propaganda, and a low view
of the primeval apprehension of the existence of God are those of an apo-
logist anxious to broaden as much as possible the extent of agreement with
the adversary : anxious rather to conquer error than men.

The broader generalizations of science are but the catholicity of truth
in the natural order, whether expressed in technical formulas or in popular
language. We want more men like this writer men who have the courage
to use their high place in the scientific world to express the universality of
truth. He exercises his vocation of public teacher with a conscientious
conviction of loyalty to duty ; all that he says bears that impress. He has
taken for his task to show that the processes by which the principles of nat-
ural religion are arrived at are what are known as scientific processes.
This has always been the doctrine of the Catholic schools, more especially
since the days of St. Thomas, who maintains that there is a formulated
statement of premises and conclusions establishing various grades of cer-
tainty of the existence and attributes of God. St. Thomas describes the
process of reasoning to be followed in seeking the knowledge of the exist-
ence of the Supreme Being in a way that has no fitter parallel than the
description of a geometrical proposition or a chemical experiment: in
other words, the apprehension of God belongs to the order of knowledge
called scientific.

Professor Cooke's fairness towards the Catholic Church is shown in his
estimate of the Galileo case, which is substantially that of the most intelli-
gent Catholic writers on the subject :

" It was his controversial spirit, rendered especially irritating by the great influence of his
powerful utterance, which led to the collision of Galileo with the papal authorities. At heart
he was a good Catholic and a faithful son of the church. He had many friends among the
most influential of the clergy, and there can be no question that he would have been left to
teach as he pleased, and even been honored for his innovations, if only he had avoided theo-
logical issues instead of rushing into them. There was no need of forcing that greatly irritated
lion caged at the Vatican to show its claws. Neither truth nor honor required it ; and though
we may not think that a scholar can honorably hold an equivocal position in regard to facts of
demonstration, yet the distinction ' ex hypothesi ' and ' ex animo' was one which he avowedly
accepted. And when he violated his pledges, and again revived the old issues, we cannot won-
der that his conduct provoked censure ; and it may be questioned whether he was treated any
more harshly than is many a man at the present day for a much less departure from prescribed
creeds " (page 76) .

We recommend this book to all who are interested in the great ques-
tions at issue between scientific and religious men. As to its purport and
excellence we have said much for a notice in this department of the maga-
zine, and yet not as much as we should like to say. As to the style, it is
a pure medium of precise thought. The book is well printed and bound.

AN EXPOSITION OF THE EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL. By Bernardine a Pico-
nio. Translated and edited from the original Latin by A. H. Prichard,
B.A. Merton College, Oxford. Epistle to the Romans, and the First
Epistle to the Corinthians. London: John Hodges. (For sale by the
Catholic Publication Society Co.)

Great credit is certainly due to this publishing house for the Catholic
works which they have been placing on the market, such as the one here

424 NE w PUBLICA TIONS. [Dec ,

noticed, Father Gasquet's Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries, Maldo-
nado's Commentary on the Gospels, Cornelius a Lapide's Commentary on the
Gospels, Father Jones's answer to Dr. Littledale, Dom Weldon's Chronicle of
the English Benedictine Monks, Life and Mission of St. Benedict, S. Hubert
Burke's Historical Portraits of the Tudor Dynasty, and offering to the
British public Father Lambert's celebrated Notes on Ingersoll. These books,
and others of like importance, which are to be had of the Catholic Publi-
cation Society Company, are to be followed by Dr. Daniel Rock's Hier-
urgia,or the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass; the Abbe Rohrbacher's Universal
Church History, and Mabillon's Complete Works of St. Bernard. Such of
these as are translations are done in the best style, honestly, as far as we
can judge, and by men whose learning and mastery of languages guaran-
tee a correct and elegant rendition. Furthermore the translators show a
theological and historical reading in Catholic literature which enables
them to do their work intelligently. No doubt the chief sale of these pub-
lications will not be among Catholics, at least in England. But Catholics
could not ask a more faithful reproduction of these works from scholars of
their own faith. And we are glad to know that the Protestant public has
found out that there is so much worth translating, buying, and reading in
Catholic ecclesiastical literature.

Piconio wrote his famous Triplex Expositio of the Epistles of St. Paul
nearly two hundred years ago, and it still remains an unique aid to the
understanding of the doctrine of the Apostle of the Gentiles. After many
other commentaries have appeared, often full of learning and insight, Pico-
nio has still a high reputation in Catholic schools, and is to-day in univer-
sal use by professors. Hence the value of his work in the vernacular, as
being standard and approved in the interpretation of a part of Holy Writ
extremely useful, and extremely difficult, in places, to be understood. St.
Paul stands out even among the Apostles as the most eager, zealous, and
active of them all, and his epistles, to use Piconio's words, are "like foun-
tains of light and fire, perpetual and inexhaustible in the church of God.
From them the life of the intellect and the life of the heart are abundantly
supplied to all who piously meditate upon them, by the hidden ministry
of the Holy Ghost. ... St. Paul wrote in all fourteen epistles", not with
ink but with the spirit of the living God."

Father Lallemant says that the first reading of Holy Scripture is apt to
be dry and tiresome, but that if one perseveres there is no higher pleasure
the soul can know than Jdrinking at those fountains of celestial wisdom.
And this is especially true of the writings of St. Paul. Difficult to under-
stand, easily wrested to an evil purpose by the unlearned and unstable, yet
to the honest Christian reader they are the medium of a divine influence
altogether peculiar and essentially Catholic. Until one has known St.
Paul well he has hardly grasped the meaning or enjoyed the substance of
what is known among spiritual writers as liberty of spirit : " For you, breth-
ren, have been called unto liberty" (Gal. v. 13).

In speaking of Piconio's work we have called it unique, because he has
divided his commentary into three parts, given simultaneously for each
chapter. The first is a paraphrase giving the apostle's own words, with
such additions as are requisite for a full elucidation of the sense ; the second
is a commentary on every verse or expression which needs explanation,

1 888.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. . 425

including an analysis of each separate chapter ; the third consists of pious
moral and ascetical observations deducible from the text. That the writer
was amply competent for the first two his repute in learned circles is good
evidence. Read the third and you will perceive how fruitful and unctuous
it is for the spiritual life, which might well be expected from one who for
over fifty-eight years was a fervent member of the Capuchin order. Listen
to his words in his preface to this book printed in his old age, six years be-
fore the end of a long life of sanctity and learning :

" At length, by God's providence, set free from official care of others' souls, I found my
time more fully at my own disposal, and without hesitation, and I think under divine im-
pulse, I gave it entirely, day and night, to study and meditation on these founts of life
divine, life of the understanding and life of the heart. ... I was not disappointed ;
for I saw the light and felt the flame, and my mind fed on the truth of God's words, and
my heart, animated by their divine ardor, lived again."

We desire to recommend this book to all. Of course to the priesthood
any commendation of it is unnecessary. But among the laity there are
many souls, one of whose greatest drawbacks in the spiritual life is un-
familiarity with the Word of God. Let them read the Scriptures daily, if
only for a few minutes, let them bear along with them such guides as Pico-
nio, and the Spirit of God will illumine their minds and inflame their hearts
with a freshness and vigor of divine life altogether peculiar.

LIBRARY OF ST. FRANCIS DE SALES : Works of this Doctor of the Church
translated into English. By Rev. Henry Benedict Mackey, O.S.B. Vol.
IV. Letters to Persons in Religion. London : Burns & Gates ; New
York: The Catholic Publication Society Co.

What we find of peculiar value in spiritual letters of holy men and
women is their spontaneity : heart toheart. A letter is a confidential com-
munication of one soul to another, and, even when not distinctively religious,
is often the truest revelation of the writer's best characteristics. In these
letters of St. Francis de Sales we have the direct and simple statement of
the maxims of a devout life practically applied. But St. Francis de Sales
was a man whose heart was at his finger-tips and in the glances of his eyes,
and flowed out in celestial wisdom from his pen as he wrote to his spiritual
children and friends. These letters are the mirrors of the best traits of his
character affection, unction, cheerfulness, immense confidence in God, and
Christian liberty. In reading these letters you find a saint who gives you
the idea that he would give you everything you asked and let you do any-
thing you liked, and yet by that very means lead you nearer to God. St.
Augustine's motto, " Love God and do as you please," found in St. Francis
a most perfect interpreter. He is the apostle of the easy burden and the
light yoke, joined with heroic sanctity.

These holy letters are addressed for the most part to members of the
Visitation Order, and are directed in great part to their guidance in
acquiring the spirit peculiar to that order. But he draws his wisdom from
those deep fountains of religious life common to all who wish to serve God
courageously, whether in religion or in the world.

This is the fourth volume of the Library of St. Francis de Sales, trans-
lated and edited by the English Benedictines, and is a valuable addition to
the other volumes of the series already before the public. We bespeak for
it the same hearty welcome accorded to the previous volumes.

426 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Dec.,

AUTHORITY ; OR, A PLAIN REASON FOR JOINING THE CHURCH OF ROME.
By Luke Rivington, M.A., Magdalen College, Oxford. London: Kegan
Paul, Trench & Co.; New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co.

The difference between Anglicans and Catholics has the advantage of
simplicity : it turns upon the one point of the seat of external authority in
the church of Christ. That there is a divinely instituted society, that it is
perpetual in its external life, that it has a divine right to men's allegiance, and
that in some way that society is at present known as the Catholic Church, are
matters agreed upon by Anglicans as fully as by Catholics. What is not
agreed upon is the seat of authority. Hence Mr. Rivington does well to
name his little book giving his reasons for seeking the communion of the
Roman Church, " Authority." Persons who end their life-doubts as he has
done discover that divine authority in matters of religion, as far as it has
been extended into this outer world of our sensible human existence, is
centred and seated in the Apostle Peter and his successors in the See of
Rome.

Mr. Rivington's book, though not large, gives a good summary of the
arguments, drawing largely from the witness of the early Fathers and
Doctors of the Christian faith, for the papal supremacy. We suppose that
he is a man of ripe scholarship in this department of learning, for he uses
his matter with a familiarity which could hardly come from any but a
patient and matured acquaintance with the authorities. His treatment of
his proofs is solid and ought to be convincing. He is not without an
appreciation of the force of arguments drawn from other sources than
antiquity and sanctity, for he recognizes such convincing elements in
the Catholic claim as the general view of church history, the instinctive
admissions of enemies, the common sense of mankind, the views of students
whose profane and infidel character enabled them to be of a scientific frame
of mind when discussing this question so very remote from their own more
radical difficulties such evidences as these he does not ignore, for they are
based upon the innate quality of uttering what is true which must charac-
terize the organs of human opinion taken largely and running along for
generations together. But the author's main and almost exclusive task is
to carefully examine the biblical and patristic evidences of the primacy ;
and in this his book, excellently written as to its style, is a close and con-
vincing argument. May the grace of God go along with it into many men's
and women's hands, and into their souls to give them courage to follow the
light ! Nobody who has not gone through the struggle knows how courage
is the virtue most to be prayed for in behalf of Anglican inquirers.

HISTORY OF THE CHURCH : From its First Establishment to Our Own Times.
By Rev. J. A. Birkhseuser, formerly Professor of Church History and Canon
Law in the Provincial Seminary of St. Francis de Sales, Milwaukee, Wis.
New York and Cincinnati : Fr. Pustet & Co.

We cannot but welcome a new work on the history of the church, especially
when it is written for English-speaking Catholics. To use the words quoted by
our author from an English Catholic writer, we may say : " We are behindhand
in many departments of literature, but in none, probably, is the dearth of read-
able books more saddening than in this one subject of ecclesiastical history."
Most of the books we have are translations, but mere translations do not meet our

1 888.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 427

needs. The facts on which history rests are the same, no matter in what lan-
guage they are told, but the way in which these facts are treated, the prominence
given to some over others, are made to depend, in great measure, on the char-
acter and bent of mind of those for whom they are written. Hence it is that
these translations from the French or German do not meet the needs of our
students. Sometimes, too, they are mere compilations of facts and dates put
in a dry and uninteresting form, useful for such as have a special zest for the
study of history, but altogether unsuited for those who ought to have a thorough
knowledge of history without at the same time making it a specialty. Such
works when placed in the hands of the student are apt to repel him and make
him look on history as a task to be got over as quickly as possible. Yet few
studies are of more importance now than that of ecclesiastical history. There
has been a new impulse given to it by learned men of other nations, and if we
would keep pace with them it can only be done by an equally diligent study.
And if we would have our young men continue the work, it can only be done by
giving them a deep and earnest love for it from the outstart.

It is not sufficient to know in a general way that the teaching of the church
has been ever the same, but we must be able to point out how this is so, to show
how the teaching of one age or one century is connected with and explains what
has gone before, to show, in fine, that the doctrine of the church has been de-
veloped indeed, but by a true, internal growth, and not by additions from with-
out. It is true all this knowledge cannot be acquired in the seminary or from a
text-book, but what we can and do expect is that during their course a real love
for the study be given them and that such books are placed in their hands as
will make the study of history attractive and give them a desire to continue
their study afterwards in larger and deeper works. This is the hope of the au-
thor of the present work ; this is the reason of it.

He makes no claim to originality in the book, he brings no new evidence of
his own on disputed points ; he simply places before the student the result of his
own studies for many years. As a professor of history in one of our large semi-
naries, he has had abundant opportunity to test the capacity of young men pre-
paring for the priesthood, and to find what are the things useful and necessary to
them. These he has now put forth in the hope that they may be useful to stu-
dents generally. The book is not a mere chronicle, nor is it a selection from
other writers. The work is the author's own. Many topics treated at length by
others he has passed over briefly. But many others that he has judged to be of
importance, and in our opinion rightly such, for instance, as the writings of the
Fathers and the important events of the middle ages these he has treated at
greater length. The arrangement of the book is excellent, the style throughout
simple, yet at the same time interesting, and, where the subject demands it, forci-
ble and pointed. In all respects it is certainly a step in advance of some
other books of the same class, and we feel confident that the author's hope will
be realized and that it will fill a long-felt need.

A word of commendation is due to the publishers for the excellence of their
work. The book makes a handsome, large octavo volume, and, while not as
bulky as many other works of its kind, is printed from beautifully clear type on
good paper. We need not say how important and necessary such features are
in a text-book such as this is designed to be, and we feel that in these particulars
the Messrs. Pustet & Co. have admirably seconded the author's aim to make
the work popular with the student of church history.

428 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Dec.,

THE HOLY SEE AND THE WANDERING OF THE NATIONS, FROM ST. LEO I. TO
ST. GREGORY I. By Thomas W. Allies, K.C.S.G., Author of Formation of
Christendom, etc. New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co. ; Lon-
don : Burns & Gates,

This volume is the sixth in a series well known to the public from the title
of the first, The Formation of Christendom. Each of these volumes is a study
of an epoch in the development of the divine planjor the redemption of the hu-
man race from heathenism and barbarism by means of the external organization
of the church. The object of the whole work is to show how God implanted in
the hearts of men and embodied in the public institutions of nations the prin-
ciples of the Christian faith. This work of infusing Christ's truth and grace
into the private lives of men and his civilization into their civil organisms he
committed to the divine society of the Christian church. The author has in the
previous volumes, especially in the first one, eloquently contrasted Christianity, as
a divine element endowed with power altogether superhuman, with the various
institutions of civil society which were the organic forces of the public life of
mankind when the apostles went forth from Jerusalem to preach the Gospel.
The first effects of their mission are described in The Formation of Christen-
dom with much power of graphic description. We think that work worthy the
pen of the best modern historians and capable of holding the interest of the
reader from beginning to end, even though he be of the class who need for his-
torical study the charm of an elegant style and the stimulant of an author's
vividly shown personality; for Mr. Allies is a ^first-rate writer as well as a com-
petent historian.

The present volume is one of peculiar interest because it treats of the final
collapse, noisy, bloody, rapid, and in the highest degree picturesque, of the Western
Empire. The period gone over is from the end of the fifth century to the be-
ginning of the, seventh, and starting with St. Leo I. ends with St. Gregory the
Great, two among the greatest names the line of Roman pontiffs has bequeathed
to our veneration. The main fact, it seems to us, at least from the point of view
of the race problem, is that the imperial majesty of Rome, led by the prophetic
instinct of Constantine, escaped from the torrents of barbarian invasion in the
West by establishing anew Rome among the feeble and plastic nationalities of
the East. But the Rome of Peter stood fast and breasted the angry floods. If
the seat of Christian authority had followed that of the imperial authority to
Constantinople the civilization of Western Europe would have been Saracenic.
Mr. Allies shows how this calamity was averted by the introduction of Chris-
tianity as an element of national unity in public life, and hence of warlike power
sufficient to stay the progress of Mohammedan conquest south of the Pyrenees,
and how in private life the Gospel and its purity and holiness gradually cleansed
the blood of the fierce Goths and Germans of their wolfish taint, and developed
true manhood and womanhood by the slow but ever-deepening activity of re-
ligious influences in the private and domestic sphere. Rome was the very centre
of that monastic institute which made the minster the nucleus of the city as
well as the educational focus for all that makes for an orderly and reasonable
existence. Rome was the centre, too, of that episcopate which took noble men
from boorish cabins or the rude abodes of the war-lords, and made them poten-
tates of peace, armed them with spiritual sceptres more mighty than the sword,
and exhibited in every barbarian tribe the peaceful pomp of the church's wor-
ship, and charmed the rude hearts of men with the chaste melody of her divine
song.

I f 88. ] NEW PUBLICA TIONS. 429

It was from Rome, too, that the nascent power of the Christian state was
both taught to know its own rights and to respect those of the Christian church.
The lesson taught by Pope Symmachus the last year of the volcanic fifth cen-
tury to the Eastern emperor was not less carefully and plainly taught to petty
leaders who were founding the nations whose representatives to-day need
the same lesson. That pontiff, as quoted by our author, wrote to the Eastern
emperor :

" Remember that you are a man in order to use a power granted to you by God. For
though these things pass first under the judgment of man, they must go on to the divine ex-
amination. You may say, It is written, ' Let every soul be subject to higher powers.' We
accept human powers in their proper place until they set up their wills against God. But if
all power be from God, more, then, that which is given to things divine. Acknowledge God
in us and we will acknowledge God in thee. But if you do not acknowledge God, you cannot
use a privilege derived from Him whos% rights you despise. ... In this, O chief of human
powers, I, as successor, however unmerited, in the Apostolic See, cease not to remind you that
whatever may be your material power in the world, you are but a man. . . . What matters it
whether it be a heathen or a so-called Christian who attempts to infringe the genuine tradition
of the apostolic rule ? Who so blind as to deem that in countries where every heresy has free
license to exhibit its opinions the Catholic communion alone should be subverted by those
who think themselves religious ? " (pp. 133, 134, 135).

In this volume we have eloquent proof of the power of Papal Rome and of
the Catholic Church in communion with her. During the two hundred years
embraced in this history, organic Catholicity (which means the Apostolic Roman
Church) founded nations, preserved the arts and letters of a dying civilization,
broke the shackles from the limbs of millions of slaves, elevated woman from
degradation, taught nomadic tribes to till the soil and live in peace, produced a
multitude of men and women of most exalted character, drawing the material
from the wild hordes of the forests in a word, Christianized nations and
created a rudimentary civilization. In all this warfare and victory the church had
naught but words : the words of Christ were her only weapons.

We thank Mr. Allies for this good book ; we wish him an extensive sale of it,
and also of the preceding volumes of the series.

SYNOPSIS CANONICO-LITURGICA, EX CORPORE JURIS. Concilio Tridentino
Romanorum Pontificum constitutionibus, S. R. E. Congregationum Decretis,
Ecclesiasque Mediolanensis Actibus, Aloysio Adone ab Presbytero Neapoli-
tano Rationali Methodo Concinnata. Neapoli : Apud auctorem, via S. Matteo
a Toledo 21. (For sale by Benziger Bros., New York.)

This compilation of the Rev. Aloysius Adone will be welcomed with no
small degree of satisfaction by those who have experienced the difficulty of learn-
ing the decisions of the Holy See in reference to subjects discussed and settled
by the sacred congregations.

From the very nature of their publication the decrees issued from time to
time by the Roman court are scattered through several volumes of the official
bulletin. They are put forth in order of time, not according to their subject-
matter save inasmuch as this comes under the cognizance of one congregation
rather than another.

Up to this time to find all the legislation upon any given question was more
or less tedious in proportion to the number of utterances on the subject. The
perusal of Gardelini and Acta Sancta Sedh is a task requiring not a little patience
and considerable time, yet heretofore this was indispensable if accurate know-
ledge in certain matters was desired.

430 NEW PUBLICATIONS. ' [Dec.,

Adone, however, by arranging the numerous decrees under their proper
heads, has done much to lighten the labor of future searchers. He has produced
an excellent book, upon which he has evidently bestowed great care, and has much
facilitated inquiry by well-planned synthetic and analytic indices. He divides the
work into three books, the first of which is " De rebus ad sacrum cultum spectan-
tibus." This is again divided into chapters treating of all that pertains to the
church edifice, the altars, vestments, garniture, the administration of the Holy
Sacraments, and the like. The second book, " De personis prout ad sacrum
cultum referuntur,''. is devoted to declarations concerning the rights and pre-
eminence of bishops, cathedral chapters, the duties of parish priests, etc. The
third great division, " De sacri cultus multiformi ratione/' embraces the body of
decrees relating to the festivals of the various churches, the celebration of the
Mass, the reservation and exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, the burial of the
dead, etc.

If space permitted we should go into the details of the chapters of the book,
feeling confident that we should be doing a useful work in bringing to the atten-
tion of those interested in liturgy the merits of a volume of considerable value to
them.

COMPENDIUM SACR^E LITURGI^ JUXTA RITUM ROMANUM. Una cum Appen-
dice de Jure Ecclesiastico Particular! in America Foederata Sept. vigente.
Scripsit P. Innocentius Wapelhorst, O.S.F., S. Theol. Lector, olim Rector
Sem. Salesiani et S. Liturg. Professor. Neo-Eboraci, Cincinnati, S. Ludovici :
Benziger Fratres.

Father Wapelhorst's Compendium is one of those books of which we have
cause to be proud. It is the work of a specialist who has a thorough acquaintance
with his subject, and a thorough knowledge of the needs of his readers. Until
quite lately the study of liturgical and rubrical questions in America was attended
with considerable difficulty arising from this, that authors brief enough and at the
same time full enough were not to be had. The time allotted in the seminary for
this branch of ecclesiastical learning does not permit the careful perusal of such
works as those of De Herdt, and many of the compendiums are really but sum-
maries.

To have a good text-book on sacred liturgy was very desirable. Not long
since Dr. Gabriels wrote an excellent one, and now we have Father Wapelhorst's.
With such books as these the way to knowledge has been greatly improved for
the student. He has no longer to hurry through three volumes with only a dim
perception of what is necessary, what not, or else to gather the very barest infor-
mation from the summaries ; he has a book which contains what he should know
in order to possess a fair acquaintance with the subject.

That he should have such an acquaintance with this subject is hardly neces-
sary to say. Carelessness in liturgical matters is scarcely less excusable than in
matters moral or dogmatic. Rubrics are put forth by the law-making authority
in the church for the common good for order and decorum in God's service.
Books which help to advance an appreciation of the importance and the necessity
of liturgical knowledge are good books and deserve praise, and especially so
when they are written with evidence that their authors are well versed in the
subjects of which they treat. Father Wapelhorst has our congratulations.

1 888.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 431

PUBLICATIONS OF THE CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, Vols. 1-7. The Catholic's
Library of Tales and Poems. Edited by James Britten, Hon. Secretary
Catholic Truth Society. Vol. I. Catholic Biographies, vols. i and 2. Lon-
don : Depot of the Society. Agents for the United States : The Catholic Pub-
lication Society Co.

The Catholic Truth Society was founded twenty-three years ago in order "to
disseminate among Catholics small and cheap devotional works ; to assist the
uneducated poor to a better knowledge of their religion; to spread among Prot-
estants a better knowledge of Catholic truth ; and to promote the circulation
of good, cheap, and popular Catholic books." The Bishop of Salford is the
president of the committee, and among its patrons are the cardinals and bishops
of England, the archbishops of Dublin, Cashel, Calcutta, and Melbourne. In
addition to its depots in England it has one in Melbourne and an agency in this
country the Catholic Publication Society Co., New York. The. list of its
publications fills fourteen pages, and, beginning with leaflets for distribution sold
for 6d. the hundred, it includes a Penny Library, made up of a Scriptural Series,
a Doctrinal and Controversial Series, a Devotional Series, a Biographical
Series, the Catholic's Library of Poems and the Catholic's Library of Tales. The
volumes mentioned at the head of this notice are a collection of the chief
publications of the Society, in fact almost the whole of them with the exception of
the leaflets and devotional works. It is the intention of the Society to continue
the publication of these volumes as matter accumulates. Among the authors
who have contributed to these publications are many of the best-known English
and Irish Catholic writers Cardinal Manning, Canon Northcote, Father Rickaby,
S.J., Mr. C. F. B. Allnatt, Mr. E. H. Thompson, Father Morris, S.J., MissMulhol-
land, Lady Herbert, the Rev. Arthur Ryan, the Rev. Matthew Russell, SJ. By
Cardinal Newman's special permission, \h& Lectures on the Present Position of
Catholics in England are being published for twopence each in eight numbers.

The work which the Society has done in the past has, we believe, secured for
it permanent existence ; the future promises even a wider and fuller development
of that work a development not confined, we hope, to the British Isles or to the
British possessions, but extended to all English-speaking countries. Why should
not all who are interested in the spread of Catholic literature unite their forces
and their energies in some one society ? Unity is strength ; and if we have
already what may be called a centre of unity, why should it not be adopted ?
That the Catholic Truth Society would form such a centre seems highly probable.
An evidence of the importance attached to it is afforded by the conference on its
work which took place last month in London, in which a very large number of
the clergy, both secular and regular, and of distinguished laymen took part. We
hope to give a fuller account of this conference in a future number.

A CATHOLIC CONVENTION OF ONE VERSUS THE CINCINNATI PRESBYTERIAN
CONVENTION. By Rev. Abram J. Ryan. New York : D. & J. Sadlier & Co.

This little book is a running commentary on the Presbyterian Convention
held in Cincinnati in May, 1885, taking up its proceedings day by day. The
Catholic Convention was Father Ryan himself, then the guest of a priest of Ken-
tucky.

At the time of writing the author was a very sick man ; he died in the fol-
lowing spring. But the book shows no sign of weakness or failing powers. It
is bright, lively, and eminently readable. And it is animated by a spirit of
charity and humility which makes it, as it seems to us, readable by Protestants

432 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Dec, 1888.

as well as Catholics. The great and common objection to books of this kind
(of which not a few have appeared in recent times), in which the weaknesses of
Protestantism are exposed, is the unsparing way in which the ridicule which is
no doubt deserved is applied, so that it is asking too much to expect Protestants
to read them. What is said is all true enough, but they cannot see it quite yet.

But though there are plenty of sharp hits in Father Ryan's book, yet they
are generally such as can be enjoyed by all except those who may in some cases
be the immediate objects of them. And mixed with them are plenty of
solid facts presented calmly and temperately, which cannot but impress all who
read them. Through all runs the spirit of Catholic faith, that certainty without
boastfulness which always leaves in the mind which meets with it the feeling
that here is true knowledge and science, not mere shifting opinion.

We commend this unpretending little work most heartily to the notice of our
readers.

BOOKS RECEIVED.
Mention of books in this place does not preclude extended notice in subsequent numbers.

THE LIFE OF ST. JOHN BERCHMANS, OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS. Translated from the French.
With an Appendix, giving an account of the miracles after death which have been approved
by the Holy See. From the Italian of Father Boero, S. J. Published with the approbation
of the Rt. Rev. Bishop of Philadelphia. Philadelphia : Peter F. Cunningham & Son.

THE LIFE OF ST. FRANCIS SOLANUS, APOSTLE OF PERU. By a Priest of the Order of St.
Francis, Province of the Sacred Heart. New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago : Benziger
Bros.

A CATECHISM OF MENTAL PRAYER. By Very Rev. Joseph Simler, Superior-General of the
Society of Mary, of Paris. Translated from the second French edition. Nazareth, Day-
ton, Ohio.

GUIDE OF THE MAN OF GOOD WILL IN THE EXERCISE OF MENTAL PRAYER. By the Very
Rev. Joseph Simler, Superior-General of the Society of Mary, of Paris. Translated from
the French. Nazareth, Dayton, Ohio.

THE NEW SAINTS OF 1888 : St. John Rerchmans, S.J.; St. Peter Claver, S.J.; St. Alphonsus
Rodriguez. S.J. ; and the Seven Sainted Founders of the Servites. By Rev. Francis
Goldie, S.J., Rev. Fr. Scola, S.J., etc. Reprinted by arrangement with the Authors. New
York, Cincinnati, and Chicago : Benziger Bros.

LIFE AND TIMES OF THE MOST REV. JOHN CARROLL, Bishop and First Archbishop of Balti-
more. Embracing the History of the Catholic Church in the United States, 1763-1815.
With Portraits, Views, and Fac-similes. By John Gilmary Shea. New York : John G.
Shea. [An extended notice of this work will appear in the next number.]

GOD KNOWABLE AND KNOWN. By Maurice Ronayne, S.J., Author of Religion and Science :
The.ir Union Historically Considered. New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago: Benziger
Bros. [This book will be noticed in the January number.]

REQUIESCANT IN PACE. Short Meditations for the Month of November. By Richard F.
Clarke, S.J. New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago : Benziger Brothers.

THE SOCIAL INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY, with special reference to Contemporary Problems.
By David J. Hill, LL.D., President of Bucknell University. The Newton Lectures for
1887. Boston : Silver, Burdett & Co.

THE STORY or MARY THE MOTHER. Compiled by Rose Porter. Boston: D. Lothrop Company.

THE BLESSED ONES OF 1888 : Bl. Clement Maria Hofbauer, C.SS. R. ; Bl. Louis Marie Grignon
de Montfort ; Bl. Brother Egidius Mary of St. Joseph ; Bl. Sister Josephine Mary of St.
Agnes, O.S.A. Translated from the German of Rev. Hermann Koneberg, O.S.B. , by
Eliza A. Donnelly. New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago : Benziger Bros.

OUR CELESTIAL HOME : An Astronomer's View of Heaven. By Jermain G. Porter, A.M.,
Director of the Cincinnati Observatory. New York: Anson D. F. Randolph & Co.

THE POCKET PEW REGISTER AND SCHOOL ASSESSMENT RECORD. Rev. Chas. M. Carroll,
D.D. McGregor, Iowa: J. F. Widman.

A NOVENA FOR THE RELIEF OF THE POOR SOULS IN PURGATORY. By a Missionary of the
Sacred Heart Milwaukee : Hoffmann Bros.

UN INVIERNO EN NUEVA YORK. Apuntes de Viaje y Esbozos de Pluma. Por D. Eusebio
Guiteras. Barcelona : Gorgas y Ca.

THE TRAINING OF THE TWELVE ; or, Passages out of the Gospels exhibiting the Twelve
Disciples of Jesus under Discipline for the Apostleship. By Alexander Balmain Bruce,
D. D., Professor of Apologetics and New Testament Exegesis, Free Church College, Glas-
gow. Fourth Edition, Revised and Improved. New York : A. C. Armstrong & Son.

LITURGY FOR THE LAITY ; or, An Explanation of the Sacred Objects connected with Divine
Worship. By Rev. James H. O'Donnell. New York: P. O'Shea,

READINGS WITH THE SAINTS. Compiled from their Writings for the use of Priests, Religious,
and Christians in the World. By a Priest of the Diocese of Clifton. London : Burns &
Oates ; New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XLVIII. JANUARY, 1889. No. 286.

"A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM."

CHRISTMAS POEM.

PROMISE I'd made my comrade,

Holding my hand so fast
As through the city's highways,

Chattering softly, we passed
Promise to show him the bustle

Filling the market-place
E'er when the stream-girdled city

Leadeth its life of grace,

When from the mountain forests

Wander the fir-trees to town,
Out of tkeir cross-boughed branches

Sending their sweetness down
Over the mud-grimed cobbles,

Over the baubles bright
Shining to tempt the kind hearts

Thinking of Christmas night :

Gay leaden soldiers charging

Scarlet-combed chanticleer,
Glittering swans and fishes

Each with its magnet near;
Fringes of golden tinsel,

Bright balls festooned below,
Santa Claus, silver-frosted,

Wonderful popcorn snow ;

434 A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM. [Jan.

Boxes of shining laurel,

Pearl-beaded mistletoe,
Close coral strings of the alder,

Holly-boughs' winter glow ;
Star of the Eastern Magi

Wrought of the green club-moss,
Even the Christmas message

Taking the form of the Cross.

Jingle of car-bells beside us,

Whirr of swift trains o'erhead,
Rumble of trucks deep-laden,

Hurry in every tread ;
Yet, now and then, some passer

Smiling at sweet boy-face,
Eager young eyes' wide gazing,

Slow-speaking tongue's child-grace.

Wide were my comrade's wishes

Cometh not all at faith's call?
"Yet to him dearest seeming

Ox and ass in their stall
Where, in the great shop-windows,

Figure of angel and saint
Unto the shadows of this world

Lierht of another lent.

Child-voice spoke softly : " See Jesus,"

Reverent-thoughted eyes
Gazing at Bethlehem's manger

Made in quaint German wise :
Joseph near, with his lilies,

Guarding the Mother mild,
Gay-winged seraphs, bent meekly,

Praising the Holy Child ;

Shepherds with sheep and watch-dog,

Camels with tasselled rein,
Magi in jewelled raiment,

Star of Judaean plain.
Drew me within, my comrade,

Nearer the manger-throne.
One with'the lambs and the angels,

Little child-heart bent down,

1889-] CONGREGATIONAL SINGING. 435

As, in the presence of Jesus,

Centuries many ago,
Hearts of the wise men and shepherds

Bent with the dumb beasts low.
Loosing my hand from its clasping,

Heart with its child-thoughts full,
Patted he gently the watch-dog,

Soft kissed the lamb's hard wool.

Guessed they amid the hurry

Passers-by on the street
How to the earth's first Christmas

Wandered our pilgrim feet?
Felt they who, pausing a moment,

Sweet in the boy-face smiled,
As, in the presence of Jesus,

Led by a little child?

EDITH W. COOK.

CONGREGATIONAL SINGING AND POPULAR DE-
VOTIONS.

EACH human organ and sense is capable of offering its partic-
ular worship and adoration to God. The mind, the heart, and
the voice each has its separate attribute and function in this stu-
pendous act. Worship may be silent. This is unquestionable.
The contemplation of God, in love and faith, is in itself worship.
But the worship of Heaven is not silent. The Apocalypse
teaches that the voice of the mighty congregation, of the vast
concourse of worshippers who assemble in the church militant
to offer their homage to God, should not be hushed.

By the eminent Protestant ecclesiastical historian Bingham
each distinctive rite of Roman-Catholicism, as to-day practised
in our churches, is clearly and impartially shown to be of primi-
tive origin, to have arisen in an age usually pointed to by Pro-
testants as free from the so-called modern superstitions of Rome.
Therefore I believe Bingham when he says (i. 295 et seq.) :
" From the first and apostolical age singing was always a part of
divine service, in which the whole body of the church joined."
I also believe with St. Jerome (Hieron. Ep. 22, ad Eustach.) that
the service of the ancient church usually began with psalmody*

436 CONGREGATIONAL SINGING [Jan.,

No\v, by psalmody was never meant the perhaps scientific
but none the less distracting quavers of an ambitious so-
prano, or even the labored performance of the average
modern Catholic choir. The term psalmody cannot be dis-
sociated from the idea of plain singing by the people, or
by trained choirs whose purpose is not to supplant but to
lead and tend to harmonize the less skilful efforts of the con-
gregation. It may well be believed that antiphonal sing-
ing, said by Fathers of the church to have been revealed to
St. Ignatius in a vision, was divinely ordered to encourage sing-
ing by the people. But certain Protestant writers profess to be-
lieve that the worship of God during many ages preceding the
Reformation was to the laity (so to speak) a lost art. And such
writers, if asked in what the worship of God consists, would not
omit to mention congregational singing as an essential element.

It is true that, in ages long before Luther's day, in almost
every parish church the melody was led with force and volume
by singers in the sanctuary ; and it is not to be believed that the
people in nave and transept were slow in uniting to swell the
chorus of praise. That antiphonal singing was common in Eng-
land in the middle ages is certain from numerous records of the
fact. Thus, by an order of Archbishop Winchelsey, made in
1305, every church in the province of Canterbury was obliged to
be furnished with an antiphonary. Now, according to Spelman,
the cost of such a book was about twenty-six marks, equal to at
least five hundred dollars of our money. Such was the value put
in England upon antiphonal, and, as may be conjectured, congre.
gational, singing in the early part of the fourteenth century. For
certainly, when the proper of the Mass, the Vesper chants, and
other psalms and hymns ot the church were as familiar to the
people as was their horn-book, and were sung, as' we know they
were, in the simplest tones, the people must have united in that
most natural, and I may also say spiritually necessary, act of
praise.

Before the Reformation, as there was but one religion, so
there was but one style of church music in Europe. This was
the plain chant, and the descant based upon it. The entire Eng-
lish (Protestant) choral service, as now sung in the English cathe-
drals and large parish churches, and as somewhat effectively
imitated in certain of the larger Episcopal churches in this
country, was first set to musical notes and published by John
Marbeck (or Merbecke), organist of Windsor. His notation of
the English cathedral service was published under the title :

1889.] AND POPULAR DEVOTIONS. 437

THE BOOKE OF COMMON-PRAIER,
NOTED 1550.

Imprinted by Richard Grafton, Printer to the Kinges Majestic, cwn pri-vi-
legio ad imprimendum solum.

A comparison of the Te Deum Laudamus and other parts of
Marbeck's publication with the Catholic missals, graduals, and
antiphonaries of his time proves that the plain song of the Cath-
olic Church in the principal hymns and responses was appropri-
ated to the English Protestant service. The chant to the Te
Deum .as published by Meibomius (Antiques Mus. Auct. Sept.,
Amst. 1652 ; vide Prcef. Lectori benevolo), from a copy nearly
as ancient as the venerable hymn itself, and another example of
the same canto-fermo given by Glareanus (Dodecad. p. no) in
1547. correspond with that retained by Marbeck and now used
in the English Established Church. In fact, no deviation is
discernible, except where the change of syllables in the transla-
tion from Latin to English required it. The same is true of the
practice in the direction of church music by those separatists
from Catholicity known as the Picards, or Bohemian Brethren,
whose hymn-books, printed with musical notes at Ulm in 1538,
show that melodies used by them originated from the chants to
which the ancient Latin hymns of the Catholic Church, such as
the Stabat Mater Dolorosa, Te Deum Laudamus, O lux beata Trini-
tas, Pange lingua gloriosi, etc., were sung. It is also observable
that in the English cathedrals and many of the English churches,
and in such of the Episcopal churches of this country as have
adopted the choral service, the Litany is sung to the same tones,
or to close imitations of the tones, used in the Litany of the
Saints and the Litany of the Blessed Virgin, certain changes be-
ing of course necessary because of the alteration in or blending
of the petitions, and the translation into the vernacular.

Now, I maintain that up to several ages, at least a century,
before the Reformation congregational singing, as to many parts
of the Mass and Vespers and other services, was universally
practised throughout the Catholic Church in Europe. But in
the century preceding the great revolt the principal part of the
psalm-tune was appropriated to a single singer, or, if not to a
soloist, to what might be termed a present average choir, the
congregation joining scarcely at all. This gave rise to a more
scientific or artistic music ; an accurate knowledge of the art be-
came necessary ; and at length the people were incapable of tak-
ing any part in the sacred function.

The instigators of the secession of the sixteenth century saw
the deprivation under which the people suffered. Their first act

438 CONGREGATIONAL SINGING [Jan.,

was to restore congregational singing, and this divinely exampled
mode of worship, as it undoubtedly was in great part the inspira-
tion of the sixteenth century revolt against the church, has ever
been the attraction, the cohesive power, the very life-principle of
Protestantism. Huss and Jerome of Prague, and afterwards Lu-
ther and Calvin, only restored to the people what was a Catholic
privilege unhappily fallen into desuetude ; and by the attraction
of joining in the divine service with voice and soul the people
were the more readily betrayed into throwing doctrine, ecclesi-
astical traditions, and the memories of childhood to the winds.
However base may have been the motives or the hypocrisy
of the leaders of the Reformation, God forbid that we should
believe that the entire mass of the people were drawn from the
church of their fathers by motives of unmixed heresy. I have
too much faith in human nature, and in the effect upon the heart
of the teachings of our holy religion, to believe that whole na-
tions of Catholics were suddenly possessed with a deliberate
desire to pervert the faith and to rebel against God.

There can be no reason, as it appears to me, why congrega-
tional singing, known to be common at this day in the Catholic*
countries of Europe, cannot be gradually introduced here at even
the ordinary liturgical services of the church i.e., Mass, Ves-
pers, and Benediction. I should be glad to hear even an Amen
sung by the entire congregation. Of course, repetition of the
word would have to be avoided. (A few Sundays ago I irreve-
rently timed the singing of an Amen to a Credo, and found that the
priest's fast was lengthened by it just four minutes and a half.)
There are several simple responses, etc., in the Mass and Vespers,
the meaning and pronunciation of which in the Latin are perfectly
well known by the people, and which could by a little practice
be sung by the whole congregation. Take, for instance, the Glo-
ria Patri, the Et cum spiritu tuo, the Deo gratias, the Gloria tibi
Domine, the Laus tibi Christe, the Sed libera nos a malo, the re-
sponsive parts of the Preface, etc.

Wherever the Church says Latin is obligatory, I, with all loyal
Catholics, say : Let it be used. But, as we all know, Latin hymns
and prayers are not of obligation at all the services which may
be provided for the ordinary uses of the laity. At Mass, Vespers,
and Benediction* this obligation strictly exists ; although English

* The following, from the decrees of the Congregation of Rites, is given by Wapelhorst,
Compendium Sacrce Liturgies (Benzigers), No. 218 : " Utrum liceat generaliter ut chorus
musicorum (id est cantores), coram SSmo. Sacramento solemniter exposito decantet hymnos in
lingua vernacula ? Resp. Posse : dummodo non agatur de hymnis Te Deum et aliis quibus"
cumque liturgicis precibus, quaa nonnisi latina lingua decantari debent " (S. R. C., 27 Feb., 1882'
Leavenworthen) ; nee licet ista decantare infra ipsam Benedictionem post Tantum Ergj
inchoatum [EDITOR].

1889.] AND POPULAR DEVOTIONS. 439

hymns can be and are sung at Low Mass, before and after High
Mass, and before and after the Exposition of the Blessed Sacra-
ment. English prayers can also, as is known, be read after the
Asperges before High Mass, and after Low Mass. But congrega-
tional singing and popular devotions in the vernacular must, of
course, be chiefly encouraged at, and find their development in,
those services of the church at which the vulgar tongue is in no
wise prohibited. The church is rich in such services, which are
too well known to need enumeration.

Knowing that in England great attention has been given by
Catholics to the subjects of congregational singing and popular
devotions in the vernacular, I wrote to the Bishop of Salford,
who, if not the originator, is the chief promoter of the movement,
and in my letter asked substantially the following questions :

I. How far, and with what success, has congregational sing-
ing, in the vernacular, been introduced in England?

II. At what services of the church ?

III. What English prayers are read, and at what services?
The bishop's courteous, comprehensive, and most interesting

reply is, with his permission, given in full below.*

GEORGE H. HOWARD.

Washington, D. C,

BISHOP'S HOUSE, SALFORD.

DEAR SIR: In reply to your letter of the i/th I beg to ob-
serve that we must begin by a clear distinction. We cannot
lawfully translate the Vespers or other hours of the Breviary into
the vernacular for congregational use. The liturgical services
of the church must be confined to the language of the church.
Hence we do not sing Vespers, or Compline, or any part of the
liturgy in English. It is most important to keep this distinction
clear, because it involves a principle for which we must insist
uncompromisingly.

Next, there can be no doubt but that in proportion to the ed-
ucation of the people will be their desire to understand, and take
part in, devotional services. Hence it is important to provide
services which shall attract and interest them by satisfying this
natural desire. Now, people are more interested when they are
themselves performers than when they are simply spectators and
listeners.

* I take pleasure in here correcting an error which has been put in print relative to the chant-
ing of English psalms in the cathedral of Salford. It has been stated that these are the Vesper
psalms. It is to this error the bishop's attention having been called to it in my letter he
alludes in his opening paragraph. The error, I think, originated with the New York Indepen,
dent, a publication which of late has treated Catholic subjects with some civility. G. H. H.

44Q CONGREGATIONAL SINGING [Jan.,

The bishops of England have recently published a Manual of
Prayers for Congregational Use. To this has been added a val-
uable Supplement, used in several of the dioceses. The object
the bishops had in view was to promote the use of vernacular
devotions. The English prayers thus used render a service
which Latin prayers can never render that is, they are con-
stantly teaching in a plain, popular, and intelligible way
all the doctrines of the church, and instil into the heart all those
sentiments of praise, devotion, hope, love, humility, penance,
resignation, etc., which are so essential to a Christian life. It is
well to pray in an unknown tongue, but it is more useful to pray
in one which is perfectly understood. In these days especially,
when the mind and heart, educated and impressionable as they
have been made by circumstances, are open to all kinds of
worldly impressions all the day long, it is absolutely necessary
to familiarize the people with doctrinal truths and religious sen-
timents. We do this by putting the words conveying these
doctrines and sentiments into their mouths, and -that with such fre-
quency for instance, every Sunday as that a continuous and last-
ing impression shall be made upon the soul. From a religious
point of view the habitual use of vernacular prayers and hymns
thus becomes an educational medium of the very highest value.

English people are naturally fond of singing hymns and
psalms. They also have a traditional reverence and affection for
the great standard popular devotions of the church. The schools
teach them to sing ; their knowledge of reading makes the use of
English prayers easy.

To illustrate the effect of popular devotions compared with
that of Vespers in Latin I may mention the following fact:
When I came to Salford sixteen years ago I found a congrega-
tion of fifty to sixty people attending Latin Compline in the ca-
thedral on Sunday evenings. It was sung by the sanctuary boys
at one end of the church, and by the choir at the other end, the
miserably small congregation sitting or kneeling between these
two sets of singers taking no part in the service and evidently
understanding nothing of the literal meaning of the psalms and
hymns thus sung. I determined to change this, and introduced
a selection, in the vernacular, of psalms, hymns, and antiphons,
with short night prayers, all set to simple and attractive music.
The effect was magical. The cathedral filled every night. The
rector walked up and down the gangways encouraging the
people to sing alternately with the body of singers in the sanc-
tuary. The Children of Mary naturally and easily took the lead;

1889.] AND POPULAR DEVOTIONS. 441

and now, with a good, powerful organ, the music is iairly drawn
out of the whole congregation and is well sustained.

People, of course, want training ; they are often shy and afraid
to hear their own voices ; some hang back on the old habit in
which they were brought up, and insist on remaining silent, if
not passive ; but all this can be changed by firmness, kindness, and
perseverance on the part of the priest. If the priest makes up
his mind to have a musical popular service but really makes up
his mind the thing is certain to succeed. It was thus Canon
Beesley succeeded so well in my cathedral here. The congre-
gation of the cathedral is not what is called a wealthy or a
highly educated congregation, but is made up almost exclusively
ot working-people and factory-hands. As a congregation they
had not been accustomed to hear their own voices. Nevertheless
a little intelligent painstaking and perseverance have secured a
great success. Our Sunday evening services are most popular
and are always well attended.

As I have said, the whole matter really is in the hands of the
clergy. Whenever they take it up earnestly success attends their
efforts ; but if they wait for the people to take the initiative, or
are afraid of the criticisms which form convenient topics for con-
versation among a certain class of people, they will have to wait
a long time before they have a good popular musical service. In
these matters the people are thoroughly Catholic ; they are the
sheep who follow their shepherd. This throws a greater respon-
sibility upon the shepherd.

Another reason for the use of the vernacular in popular de-
votions is that non-Catholics understand and appreciate it. It
attracts and instructs them, and removes an obstacle in the way
of their conversion.

In many parts of England these English services for Sunday
have been taken up with great effect. A practical way of getting
over the difficulty in introducing them is the following :

Get the regular choir to practise them, get the Sunday-school,
get the elder children and the day-school, get the Children of
Mary or any other confraternity, to practise them. Distribute
the words among the congregation. Let a priest encourage the
people to sing out by keeping time for them, either in the pulpit
or while walking up and down among them, until the whole con-
gregation has been got thoroughly into the habit of singing. A
powerful organ will after that keep them up and draw the
music out of them without any difficulty. Above all things, en-
list the interest and services of the younger members of the con-

44 2 CONGREGATIONAL SINGING [Jan.,

gregation. There is nothing we complain of so much as the
negligence of young people in coming to church. Many when
they leave school practically leave church at the same time.
Attach them to the church by engaging their services. Make
them feel that you have something for them to do. They will
soon relish and value that which they do well. And as sure
as they find that they are taking a leading part in the congrega-
tional singing, they will feel themselves drawn to church by the
cords of Adam as well as by the invitations of grace.

I must say a word in passing on popular singing by men :
There exists a popular fallacy that men, workingmen, cannot
sing. In appearance they may be rough, hard, and ungraceful.
Do not let these outward appearances persuade any one that
these men cannot sing. I can mention three congregations those
of St. John's Cathedral, St. Peter's, Salford, and St. Patrick's,
Manchester where I have heard great confraternities of work-
ingmen fill the whole church with their manly voices, singing the
hymns with the greatest precision and regularity. I have never
heard anything more soul-stirring than the singing by these great
confraternities of men. It has been equal to anything I have
ever heard in Germany. They were men wholly untrained in
the art of singing till they became members of their confraterni-
ties and were taught to sing their hymns. When once they find
out what they can do there are no people more interested in
their work than the men. They feel the attractive influence of
music as other people do, and they soon begin to sing, if only
properly encouraged to do so. I believe it is entirely our own
fault if we ever deserve the reproach that our services are for
women and children only. The fact is, our services are made for
all, for men, women, and children, and all are perfectly capable
of being trained to take part in them. But to succeed in carry-
ing out a general movement in favor of popular singing we must
count, in the first place, upon training the young. And so I come
back to the question of the young.

I believe that our Sunday-schools, which are intended for
many who have just left week-day school, might be made a much
more powerful auxiliary to the church than they have been.
Half the time given to Sunday-school work should be set aside,
during part of the year at least, or indeed on every Sunday, for
regular instruction in religious singing. The evening service,
the psalms, hymns, antiphons, etc., should be thoroughly well
practised until all have become perfectly familiar with the words
and the music. After a good rehearsal on the Sunday afternoon

1889.] AND POPULAR DEVOTIONS. 443

and other members of the congregation might be allowed to at-
tend this rehearsal they would be all ready and glad to be in
their places in the church for the evening service. The young
people from the Sunday-school may then either be distributed over
the church or they may be placed together, according to circum-
stances. In one Church it will be found that distributing them
will induce the whole congregation to sing; in another it will be
found more effective to pack them together in a body to respond
to the choir in the sanctuary ; while in a third church the young
people from the Sunday-school will practically form the choir
themselves, and the congregation will respond.

In some churches it will be found possible to divide the con-
gregation itself, as it were, into two choirs, one side taking one
verse of the psalm, and the other side the other. But as a gene-
ral rule the easiest and simplest manner is to place a choir in the
sanctuary, or even in the organ gallery, which shall take alternate
parts with the congregation. A person, not necessarily a priest,
will be required to lead and act as cantor, or, better still, there
may be two cantors who will sing together. The prayers which
are to be recited or sung in monotone may be sung either by a
priest or by a cantor. The harmonied antiphons which Father
Daniel has composed for St. John's Cathedral must of course
necessarily be sung by a trained choir. They are very melodious
and are easily learnt.

It is the Supplement to the Manual of Devotions for Congre-
gational Use that contains the words used at the English services
1 am speaking of. They take the form of night prayers put to
music. The music has been adapted or composed by Father
Daniel, one of the priests of the cathedral. It is also to him that
we are indebted for the selection of the music for the seventy
hymns which are also found in the Supplement, and for the mu-
sic to the English of the Te Deum and of the Salve Reg ina. The
printed music of the evening services and of the hymns is sold by
the sacristan of the cathedral. Messrs. Richardson & Son. Der-
by, and Messrs. Burns & Gates, London, have issued editions
of the Manual. But in ordering it it is necessary to specify that
the edition required is the one with the Supplement.

Believe me to be, dear sir, with blessings on your efforts to
promote popular devotions, your faithful servant,

>fi HERBERT, Bishop of Salford.

To Mr. GEORGE H. HOWARD, Metropolitan Club, Washington, D. C., U. S. A.

441- THE SUMMER ISLANDS. [Jan.,

THE SUMMER ISLANDS.

" No ; ne'er did the wave in its element steep

An island of lovelier charms ;
It blooms in the giant embrace of the deep

Like Hebe in Hercules' arms.
The blush of your bowers is light to the eye,

And their melody balm to the ear ;
But the fiery planet of day is too nigh,

And the snow-spirit never comes here."

So sang- Tom Moore when he held a government sinecure
in these lovely islands. In his day the islands of Bermuda
were but little known, and scarce a visitor ever sought them ; in-
deed, it is only within the past few years that the charm of Ber-
muda as a winter resort has been discovered, and it was dis-
covered 'by enterprising Americans, who now flock there by the
thousands. The fact that " the snow-spirit" never comes here
only lends an added charm to those who are weary of the sprite
and glad to escape it, and Bermuda now bids fair to outrival our
own winter sunny spots where the "snow-spirit" dare not go.
But our home resorts will always be more or less protected by
the fact that one does not have to venture forth upon a wintry
sea to reach them, and the passage from New York to Bermuda
is almost always a rough one, so that all but accomplished sailors
readily succumb. Nor is the first sight of land reassuring to the
sea-sick passenger. He strains his eyes to gaze upon some dots
away out upon the ocean which look as if they must for ever rock
with the motion of the sea. But as one steams nearer and nearer
he begins to see that it is land sure enough, though not a re-
markable amount of it. Just think of it, the entire area of these
islands, over six hundred miles away from our coast, does not
amount to twenty square miles, and the group includes between
three and four hundred islands. To be sure, they are mostly
mere rocks with a little verdure and a tree or so upon them, not
more than twenty of them being large enough to be inhabitable.
The four largest islands are united by ferry, causeways, and
bridges, and so are virtually thrown into one; the strip of con-
nected mainland being thus about twenty-five miles long,
though nowhere more than three miles in breadth, and is in
most places not one. This narrow strip extends in a curved line
resembling a shepherd's crook. Encircling the islands is a
chain of reefs with but a small number of navigable openings,
which renders the enclosed land an- almost impregnable natural

1889.] THE SUMMER ISLANDS.

445

fortress. There are forts and batteries at commanding 1 points,
and a good stock of torpedoes. If we should ever fight John
Bull again we would find Bermuda a rather uncomfortable little
neighbor, so well is it adapted to give shelter to a fleet and as a
base of naval operations. As far back as 1810 England awoke to
the fact of the importance of Bermuda as a naval station, and it
was then that the establishment of the dock-yard was begun.
The fortifications upon Ireland Island are now formidable and
extensive, and there is every facility for repairing ships. The
enormous floating dock is famous, and is the largest in the world.
It was built in England, and moored in its present position in
1869.

From off the dock-yard one plainly sees

"The white-walled, distant town,
And whiter sails go skimming down,"

though the sails can hardly be called whiter than the gleam-
ing white walls and houses of Hamilton. When Mark Twain
visited these islands he could find no better simile for the intense
white of a Bermuda house than that it resembled the white of
the icing of a cake. The white of marble, he declared, was
modest and retiring compared with it. The whiteness of Ham-
ilton simply dazzles the spectator. The houses are white, the
roofs and chimneys are white, the streets are white. The
houses are built of white coral blocks, which are easily quarried
by means of a long chisel used like a crowbar in drilling, and
then the stone is sawed to the required dimensions with a com-
mon hand-saw. The stone is exceedingly soft, but hardens upon
exposure to the air. The houses are roofed with coral slates and
then whitewashed. Nothing whiter can be imagined in this
world. The roads are formed by cutting down into the white
coral, and then the surface is smoothed.

It is a surprise and a pleasure to land in Bermuda for the
first time. You are so entirely left alone that you feel a delight-
ful sense of freedom. No hackmen rush at you, no hotel men
attempt to bear you away in their clutches. It was some time
before I was able to find a vehicle in order to drive about and
settle for myself where I should like to stay. After finding a
lodging-place I drove over a great part of the main island,
upon which the chief town of Hamilton is situated. One can
get a great variety of scenery in a few hours' drive over this
beautiful island. Now you drive by a bold and rocky coast and
look out upon a wonderful sea of many colors and fine stretches

446 THE SUMMER ISLANDS. [Jan.,

of sandy beach ; then you are plunged into the thick shade of
cedars, while enormous oleander bushes covered with large, exqui-
site flowers, literally line the dazzling white road. These oleanders
attain an enormous size, often towering above the stunted pines,
and grow in great profusion all over the islands, bearing several
varieties of flowers. You catch glimpses now and then of fields
of white, stately lilies, and then skirt along by thick clumps
of banana-trees, or by tall and erect bamboos, and jungles of
mangroves, and here and there orange, lemon, lime, pomegranate
and papaw trees, and varieties of the palm. The gleaming
white houses which peep at you from amid trees and
flowering oleanders make a very pretty contrast to the green
foliage about them. You see no grand or stately mansions, but
all the houses, even the very humblest cottages, present a neat
and attractive appearance. Abject poverty, if it exists in Ber-
muda, is hidden away from sight. Indeed, it is said that there
is no such thing as pauperism, strictly so called ; certainly one
sees no beggars nor any signs of absolute want.

The people are very trustful, and business seems to amble
along in a happy-go-lucky fashion. If a Bermuda merchant
wishes to indulge in a little social gossip and recreation, he does
not hesitate to close his store and relax himself for an hour or so.
I passed one store upon whose closed door hung this legend,
" Gone West, but not far." It is hard to know what the people
gossip about, though. They are so good and upright, and such
devout and regular church-goers, that there seems to be no scan-
dal worth mentioning, and nothing ever seems to happen. The
local papers rarely give any local news except the sayings and
doings of the House of Assembly, which take up an abnormal
amount of space. For the rest they are made up of a few ex-
tracts of New York papers several days old, a letter or so from
"Pro Bono Publico " and "Constant Reader," and advertise-
ments. Though they give but little news they charge enormous
prices. The Royal Bermuda Gazette, the principal sheet, a week-
ly, as are the other two local papers, charges sixpence, or twelve
cents, per copy. It is a small single sheet, and does not contain
as much matter as a page of an ordinary American paper. Its
subscription price is twenty-four shillings per year, or nearly six
dollars. I asked a Bermudian of a philosophic cast of counte-
nance how it was that such small papers were so dear. " Well,"
he said, after considerable reflection, " news over here is very
scarce, you see, and I suppose they have to charge high for it."
This may seem as if it were intended for a joke, but it was said

1889.] THE SUMMER ISLANDS. 447

with perfect seriousness. The people are not much given to
joking, and are not blessed with a very keen appreciation of hu-
mor ; they are apt to take things too literally.

Simplicity undoubtedly has its charm, but in some forms it is
apt to become very tiresome. I discovered some miles from
Hamilton a very charmingly situated boarding-house and one
has to make such discoveries for himself, for Hamiltonians are
apt to give the impression that there is no living outside of the
town and there took up my quarters for some time. It was a
beautiful spot, and one could live very happily there if it were
not for the unwearying efforts of the host to entertain him.
This man, in the simplicity of his heart, imagined that it was his
duty to entertain his guests by continually talking to them'
The Ancient Mariner was nothing to him, for that man of the
skinny hand and. the glittering eye had at least a very marvellous
and wonderful tale to tell, so that I am certain I would have
foregone the pleasure of attending any wedding, even my own,
to have heard him pour it forth. But this our host spoke " an
infinite deal of nonsense " and repeated it every day. His stock
of jokes. was small but had a wonderful lasting power, and by
firing these at us incessantly he easily dislodged us from a fa-
vorite entrenchment of ours beneath a pride-of-India tree just in
front of the house, and drove us to hiding in caves where he
could not find us. There were a number of these little caverns
washed out by the water, and in them we spent many a pleasant
idle morning freed from our terrible host, who seemed to have
no duties in life except to carve the meat and to talk.

The population of these islands amounts to about fifteen thou-
sand souls, of whom sixty per cent, are colored. The white
population is mainly composed of descendants of the old English
settlers, with a sprinkling of immigrants from America and Por-
tugal. They are very kind-hearted and hospitable people, but
singularly unenterprising. The negroes appear to possess more
energy than the whites, seem anxious to improve themselves,
and are gradually taking a better position. Their upward pro-
gress is looked upon with considerable suspicion by the whites,
who, of course, wish to retain the upper-hand, and seem to fear
he negroes as possible rivals in the local government of the
island in the near future. The colored people are slowly acquir-
ing small patches of land, and they give evidence of considerable
thrift. They are careful to send their children to school, and are
very polite. Both white and colored people have a peculiar
enunciation, entirely eliminate the r t and talk with a somewhat
unpleasant drawl.

448 THE SUMMER ISLANDS. [Jan.,

The government of Bermuda is administered by a governor,
council, and House of Assembly. The governor is appointed by
the crown, and holds office for six years, and is generally an of-
ficer of the Royal Artillery or Royal Engineers. The council is
composed of ten members, appointed by the imperial govern-
ment for life. With the governor as president it sits as a privy
council for executive duties. The House of Assembly is an
elected body of thirty-six members. There are about eight hun-
dred and sixty electors altogether, who must possess freehold
property amounting to sixty pounds. About one-third of the
electors are colored men, though there is rarely more than one
colored man elected as a member of the House. Members serve
a term of seven years. The local laws are passed by the two houses
and the governor. The governor is also commander of the for-
ces. There are always about fifteen hundred English soldiers
stationed in different parts of the islands. They appear to have
a very easy time of it ; but if not of much use they are highly
ornamental, as their brilliant red coats contrast well with the
gleaming white of the coral stone.

The two principal and almost sole exports from the islands
are the famous Bermuda onions and potatoes ; these find a ready
sale in the New York markets. The farmers appear to be com-
pletely in the hands of the middlemen, into whose pockets the
lion's share of the profits goes. Agriculture is not at all in an
advanced condition, and the implements used are rude and old-
fashioned. There are not more than three thousand acres alto-
gether under cultivation. The agriculturist has to contend with
continued droughts and parasitic diseases. An onion blight has
lately developed itself against which no headway has yet been
made. The islanders will be in a bad way indeed if their pride
and glory and chief mainstay, the onion, fails them. The whole-
souled devotion of the Bermuda farmer to potatoes and onions
causes a great scarcity of other vegetables; there are no berries,
and but little fruit other than bananas and melons, which are
plentiful and delicious. At one time Bermuda did a thriving
business in arrowroot, but she is being driven out of the market
by cheaper West India starches. The waters about the islands
teem with a great variety of fish, but, strange to say, hardly
enough are caught to supply the wants of the inhabitants. What
fishing is done is carried on in a desultory fashion by a few
negroes and Portuguese, who readily dispose of their catches at
eight cents per pound. There is no fish-market or market of
any kind. An energetic fisherman could soon make a fortune in

1889] THE SUMMER ISLANDS. 449

Bermuda. The common people as a rule seem to be perfectly
content if they make a bare living, and have no ambition beyond
that.

Although the Bermudas cover so small an area, there is con-
siderable difference between the inhabitants of the various
islands. Hamilton is the metropolis and the seat of government,
and is considered to be the centre of life and gayety and culture.
The extremes of rustic simplicity are found upon St. David's
Island. There are old people here who actually have never left
their own island, who never even have been led, by curiosity and
a desire to see life, to venture out to explore the wonders of Ham-
ilton.

In older days wrecking used to be a favorite pastime among
the innocent people of St. David's, though it was by no means
confined to them ; for it appears generally to have been looked
upon as a laudable and noble calling, and it is said that it is very
hard to persuade some of the old-timers now that they have not a
moral and legal right to all that the sea may bring them. St.
David's had a parson noted far and wide for his eloquence and
piety, and his activity and zeal as a wrecker. Once, during an elo-
quent discourse, he observed that the male members of his con-
gregation were quietly stealing away. He at once divined the
cause of this sudden desertion, and, checking his exhortation, ex-
citedly cried out : " Hold on, hold on ! Wait till I take off my
gown, and we'll all start even!"

The quaintest collection of houses is found at St. George's.
This is the oldest settlement upon the islands, and was founded
early in the seventeenth century. It tor a long time was the
principal town and the seat of government; but its glory has de-
parted, and scarce a sound is now heard in its narrow streets,
some of them barely six feet wide. During our war a very thriv-
ing business was done here in the way of fitting out blockade-
runners. In the centre of the town is a very pretty garden, full
of rare plants and trees ; it contains a monument to Sir George
Somers, who commanded the ship Adventure, bound for the
colony of Virginia, but which was wrecked off Bermuda in 1609.
Sir George and his crew managed to land, and built a cedar
pinnace in which they reached Virginia. But they shortly after-
wards returned to Bermuda, which was then uninhabited, in
order to found a settlement. Sir George died, and his faithful
crew, with the exception of three men who remained to keep
possession of the islands, sailed for England, taking with them the
embalmed body of their commander. Upon their arrival in Eng-
VOL. XLVIII. 29

450 THE SUMMER ISLANDS. [Jan.,

land a company was formed to colonize the islands. In 1612 a
shipload of emigrants landed in Bermuda, and ever since it has
been a colony of Great Britain. Though Sir George's body was
taken to the mother-country he literally left his heart in Ber-
muda. It lies beneath the monument erected to his memory.
From him the Bermudas are also called the Somers Islands,
naturally and aptly converted into Summer Islands.

While wandering about the narrow streets of St. George's I
came upon a house which told me that the American consular
agent dwelt within, so, like a good American, I walked in to pay
my respects. In the hall I was met by a very diminutive and
very young man, or rather boy, of whom I inquired for the con-
sular agent ; with as much dignity as he could command he in-
formed me that he was the person I was in search of. I stated
my nationality, afad we sat down in an office together ; in a short
while a portly and distinguished-looking gentleman walked in,
whom the boy impressively introduced as " my deputy." The
boy was very communicative and anxious to impress me, telling
me, among other things, that his rank was equal to that of a
colonel in the army. I subsequently found out that he amused
the people about him immensely by his pretensions, and his brief
history as a representative of our government is worth telling, as
it throws some light upon the reasons why in so many places our
consular service is a travesty. The young man was obliged to
leave not long after I had the pleasure of making his acquaint-
ance, and this, in short, is the history of his diplomatic experi-
ence : He had been a page in the Senate, and, by getting sev-
eral senators to sign his petition for a diplomatic post, he was
sent out as consular, or rather, I believe, commercial agent, to
St. George's. There is no salary attached to this position, and it
had been vacant for years ; the fees would not suffice to keep a
goat in comfortable circumstances, scarcely amounting to $100
per year. It does seem strange that the government should
send out any one to a position utterly untenable, except to one
who had other means of support. At Hamilton we have a
consul, and a courtly and efficient one. He has held his position
through the various administrations since Lincoln's time, by
whom he was appointed, and has been in the service twenty-six
years, longer than any living American diplomat. To his posi-
tion a salary is attached, and he has for some years appointed a
vice-consul at St. George's to look after the very small amount
of business done at this port. His appointee was the fine-looking
old gentleman alluded to above, to whom I was introduced as

1889.] THE SUMMER ISLANDS. 451

" my deputy." This gentleman is a native and a man of inde-
pendent means. When the office of commercial agent was re-
vived he attempted to instruct our young representative in his
not very onerous duties ; but that young man, not being very
teachable, kindly allowed the "deputy" to do such little work as
there was to be done, while he himself pocketed the small fees.
Not only this, but he hired from his " deputy" an office and bed-
room, and boarded with him. As he had no money of his own,
he was of course unable to pay for his board and room-rent.
The kind-hearted " deputy" fed him and lodged him and did his
work for him for two or three months, but finally was obliged to
tell him that, although he appreciated the honor of harboring a
representative of our government, he could afford the luxury no
longer. And so our, poor little representative, who could find no
one else to keep him in the hopes of realizing upon the ships that
never came in, was obliged to write to his mamma for some
money to enable him to get home again. Upon the home-bound
steamer he amused the passengers greatly to whom he pretended
that he was offon a leave of absence by his extreme condescension
of manner. And this is the brief, absurd, and true history of our
commercial agent at St. George's.

Boating and bathing form the principal amusements in Ber-
muda. The native Bermudian is naturally an amphibious ani-
mal, and cares nothing for an upset. There is a great deal of
boat-racing, and the little craft are made to carry an enormous
stretch of canvas. The Royal Bermuda Yacht Club gives many
gala-days upon the water, and it is an exquisite sight to see the
trim craft darting about among the coral reefs in waters of many
hues, spreading to the wind wonderful stretches of snowy can-
vas. But the most unique and extraordinary races are the
" dingey" races. The " dingey" is a little open boat of ten or
twelve feet keel, which carries in a race an amount of canvas
out of all proportion to its size. By exact measurement a certain
dingey of ten feet keel carried a mast twenty-seven feet high, a
bowsprit twelve feet long, and a boom and spinaker boom twen-
ty-one feet long each, making a stretch of canvas of forty-two
feet. It is a very common thing for a dingey in a race to fill
and go down ; its crew are always ready for an emergency of the
kind, and the boat is afterwards recovered. Such trifling acci-
dents only add to the excitement and pleasure of the race. The
bathing is always delightful, and may be indulged in by a fairly
healthy person all the year round with safety. The water is far
warmer than our sea water, and is always so clear and limpid that
the temptation to take a plunge is well-nigh irresistible.

45 2 THE SUMMER ISLANDS. [Jan.,

It would take a volume to describe all the beauties of these
Summer Islands. Here and there are to be found wonderful
caves full of gleaming stalactites ; there are sounds and bays
whose waters have all the tints of the rainbow, and so clear that
you can see far down into their depths, which disclose exquisite
coral formations and a multitude of curious denizens of the sea.
On the shores generally the waves wash in gently, for their force
is broken by the surrounding reefs ; the south shore of Bermuda,
the largest island, bears the nearest resemblance to our own sea-
coast. Here the waves break angrily with a booming sound and
there is considerable surf. At a short distance from the land are
many curious, saucer-shaped rocks, called boilers, flattened and
hollowed by the long-continued action of the waves. Indeed, it
is a land of wonderful pictures ; an impressionist would go mad
in attempting to paint some of its views.

Over all there hangs a spirit of peace and dreamful ease. You
feel far away from the world's toil and endeavor ; everything
about you suggests peace and restfulness. Readily you can im-
agine yourself in the land of the lotos and give yourself over to
watching

" The crisping ripples on the beach,
And tender curving lines of creamy spray.

Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore
Than labor in the deep ocean, wind and wave and oar. 1 '

As Bermuda becomes better known its popularity as a win-
ter resort must increase ; the charm of its climate, the beauty of
its scenery, and the entire change of life which it affords cannot
fail to attract many to its peaceful shores. Of course Americans
will demand that the creature comforts be well looked after, and
the inhabitants are gradually awakening to the fact that it is well
to attend to such matters, for it is dawning upon them that several
thousand rich Americans are very desirable guests to entertain,
and may be more profitable even than onions, inasmuch as dis-
ease does not blight their pecuniary value, but on the contrary
rather increases it. With its charming winter climate and its
wonderful natural advantages there is no reason why Bermuda
should not be the most popular winter resort for all the inhabi-
tants of our Eastern States who love not the snow-spirit and have
the time and means to escape it. H. C. WALSH.

1889.] THE SWEETNESS OF BLESSED THOMAS MORE. 453

THE SWEETNESS OF BLESSED THOMAS MORE.

As fair a sight as one can wish to indulge is that of a great
man in whose presence one feels no dread to enter because of
any sternness of look or deportment in the majesty that towers
so loftily above him. The worshipful feeling that mankind ever
have had for such is a part of the awe imparted by Heaven for
the divine. In the presence of extraordinary human greatness a
mind endued with this higher sensibility cannot fail to become
solemnized above the even contemplation of those around him,
his equals or not very far his superiors, because of that supreme
Greatness to which it suspects that such excellency looks with
far clearer vision than its own, and by which it is sustained,
perhaps inspired. Tyrants in time past, some with and some
without thrones, have availed of this tendency to exact, often to
obtain, service not due. Accidents have made great, or so made
appear, a far larger number than prowess of arm or of genius,
and many a fantastic trick these have played with the fortunes,
consciences, and lives of those whom Heaven, with meaning in-
scrutable to the wisest, has allowed them to mislead and oppress.
It is a temptation not easily withstood. Not only men of great
parts in high positions, but officials down to the pettiest, some-
times seem to feel that they must assume forbidding manners in
order to repress temerity which might venture to approach too
nearly. The faculty to support greatness of any kind or degree,
whether of gifts or place, without overbearing, is rare. The pre-
cepts of Christ touching humility, as manifestly as his miracles,
declared the God. They who had walked with him, and been
the special recipients of his confidence, affection, and promises,
must become as little children or be unfit for the mission and
destiny to which he had appointed them. So ever afterwards
has every successor to the chief of the apostles written himself
" Servant of servants."

These thoughts are preliminary to a brief consideration of
Sir Thomas More, a man who perhaps was as near being devoid
of this infirmity as any very distinguished personage that ever
has lived. The characteristic which made him be so specially
loved in his own and all subsequent times is here named, for
want of a more significant English term, sweetness. The French
have a much more expressive word douceur. M. Olier, founder
of the Society of St. Sulpice, in his little book entitled Introduc-
tion a la Vie et aux Vertus Chre'tiennes, has an interesting chapter

454 THE SWEETNESS OF BLESSED THOMAS MORE. [Jan.,

on the discussion of this virtue, which he styles " la consommation
du Chretien. Car," he argues, " elle presuppose en lui I'an6an-
tissement de tout le propre, et la mort a tout int6r6t : en sorte que
ni le m6pris 1'irrite, ni la perte des biens et du repos de la vie ne
le tire de la douceur." In another part of the chapter he points
out the two ways in which this gift so rare is imparted : one
directly to the innocent whom God is raising for special designs,
the second obtained by the naturally perverse after violent efforts
attended by painful fidelity ; the former is by " infusion," the lat-
ter by "acquisition." History has recorded not a few instances
wherein men in great estate or with great powers of understand-
ing, by the exercise of temperance and other discipline toward
self-mortification, have succeeded in subduing to reasonable,
sometimes admirable, control the passions that hinder the proper
work and full enjoyment of existence. Of those to whom this
gift has been imparted by infusion, Sir Thomas More seems the
most conspicuous of all mankind.

Doubtless it is not so easy for a humorous as for a serious
nature to lead a life of innocence. Now, More, inheriting such a
nature from his father, long one of the judges of the Court of
King's Bench, was even in boyhood the readiest and raciest of
wits. When a page in the household of Cardinal Morton, Lord
Chancellor under Henry VII., his improvised interference in the
Christmas entertainments at the palace were such that it was
said " he alone made more sport than all the players besides."
While at Oxford no fun was to be compared with that aroused
by him and Erasmus in the interstices of laborious college en-
grossments. Yet it is certain that after leaving Oxford he pon-
dered for some time the notion of becoming a monk of the order
of Franciscans. For how long his mind was thus employed we
know not, for, unfortunately, his biographies make only brief
allusion to it. It is known, however, that he once lived in a
lodging near a Carthusian monastery, and as a lay brother prac-
tised the usual austerities. His reason for leaving this abode
and giving up the intention which had led him there may have
been that he feared his love of merriment might prove an ob-
stacle to the just performance of monastic obligations, or that in
the English church he saw so much of the tendency to side with
the arrogant despotism of the Tudor dynasty, which was becom-
ing more and more defiant towards the See of Rome. At all
events, he withdrew, but not without taking with him his hair
shirt, which he wore until his death.* Convinced that the priest-

* This shirt may yet be seen in a convent at Spilsburg, near Blandford, in the county of
Dorset.

1889.] THE SWEETNESS OF BLESSED THOMAS MORE. 455

hood was not his vocation (for the secular was becoming as cor-
rupt as it was regardless of papal authority), he decided for the
law. " God," said one of his biographers, " had allotted for him
not to live solitary, but that he should be a pattern to reverend
married men how they should bring up their children how
they should employ their endeavors wholly for the good of their
country, yet excellently perform the virtues of religious men."
It was a brief courtship, wherein the only item of sentiment was
of a kind peculiar in the affairs of the heart. It seems curious
that a young man, handsome, gifted, courteous, after finding
himself in love with a girl of a family, the first he had entered
since his change of mind, out of compassion for her older sister,
who might repine at the younger's marriage before her own,
espoused her in preference to the one who had inspired his affec-
tions, and lived with her in unalloyed happiness until her death.
After a decent interval he took to wife another rustic, and, not-
withstanding her rude ways, her seven years of seniority, and
her temper not of the best, appeared to live, if not quite as hap-
pily as before, in a reasonable contentment. It is pleasing to
contemplate how such a man may live with such a family. In
his house at Chelsea, which he built at the age of thirty-four and
ever afterwards resided therein, besides himself and his new
rather we might say his old wife, dwelt his daughters, their hus-
bands and children. In spite of the wife's rudeness and her
being given to scolding, particularly for her husband's want of
proper ambition, the head of the family gained entire obedience,
and even succeeded in inducing her to learn and practise for his
entertainment on several instruments of music. Above all duties
in that household were those of religion. One of the biographers
wrote about the performance of these as follows :

'' His custom was daily (besides his private prayers with his children)
to say the seven psalms, the litany and the suffrages following; so was
his guise with his wife and children and household nightly, before he went
to bed, to go to his chapel, and there on his knees ordinarily to say certain
psalms and collects with them.''

If ever a family man performed to perfection his domestic
duties, surely it was he. An enthusiast in the love of learning,
his thoughts occupied often with the sublimer heights to which
they were invited and in which his family, and especially his
wife, were not competent to participate, yet he would never
give to it the leisure time of political and professional work
which he regarded as belonging to domestic intercourse. In a
letter written in Latin to a friend he lamented, yet without com-
plaint, thus :

456 THE SWEETNESS OF BLESSED THOMAS MORE. [Jan.,

" The greater part of the day is spent on other men's affairs, the re-
mainder of it must be given to my family at home ; so that I can reserve
no part to myself that is, to study. I must gossip with my wife, chat
with my children, and find something to say to my servants; for all these
things I reckon a part of my business, unless I were to become a stranger
in mine own house ; for with whomsoever either nature, or choice, or
chance hath engaged a man in any relation of life, he must endeavor to
make himself as acceptable to them as possible for him to be. . . . All
the time which I can gain to myself is that which I can steal from my sleep
and my meals, and because that is not much I have made but a slow
progress.''

Already eminent at twenty-four as a ripe scholar, an eloquent
lawyer, and a sheriff with judicial as well as executory powers,
he was then elected to the Parliament called by Henry VI I. ,
after seven years' intermission, in order for granting a subsidy on
the marriage of his daughter with James IV. of Scotland, and he
was the very first who in that assembly became noted for elo-
quence, and that in opposition to the demands of the crown.
The monarch having claimed a sum far in excess of what was
just, More boldly spoke against and succeeded in dissuading
the Commons from acceding to it. The punishment of this au-
dacity first was vicarious. The culprit's visible property being
too small, and his invisible dubious, his father was shut up in the
Tower, until the payment of a hundred pounds fine, on a charge
of which he was notoriously innocent. It was a commentary on
the treacherousness in high places and the already far-gone decline
of the English hierarchy, that the Bishop of Winchester tried to
inveigle the courageous boy into a confession of offence which
would have ruined him and from which he was saved through an
humble priest in that dignitary's household. The death of the
king prevented the punishment of More himself, which only had
been delayed.

How often are disappointing the goodly promises of youth !
Newly come to the empire, recalling exiles, remitting exorbitant
taxes, and dismissing profligates from the court, the Roman
people were happy, believing that Caligula had inherited all the
shining qualities of Germanicus. The young Nero, a model of
condescension, affability, and mercifulness, when called upon to
sign a warrant for the execution of some malefactors declared
that he wished he had never. learned to write. So Henry VIII.,
beyond all precedent complaisant and popular, was happily con-
trasted in men's recollections with the gross despotism and the
mean penuriousness of his father. Yet from the very first he
was understood by More, who, as long as he could, resisted the

1889.] THE SWEETNESS OF BLESSED THOMAS MORE. 457

solicitations of him and Wolsey to give up his profession and
take service under the government. The minister wanted him
not more because of his great abilities than of his unambitious
dispositions, that he believed would shut out all danger of rival
ship. His very courage recommended him to a monarch who
for a season seemed as gallant as he was accomplished in person
and understanding. When a ship belonging to the pope had
been seized in an English port for an alleged breach of interna-
tional law, and More had pleaded with success the cause of the de-
fendant, Henry generously commended his demeanor. Feeling
that he might be charged justly with incivism if he persistently
kept himself from the service of his country, he retired from
the bar, was made Master of the Requests, and, having been
knighted, became member of the Privy Council. It was then
that, contrary to the usage among courtiers, he removed toChel
sea, and, renting land adjacent to his dwelling, let his family en-
gage in the raising of farm products. For this home he had the
love which, with sound minds in sound bodies, Heaven often be-
stows upon those whom especially it loves. The only instance
of duplicity recorded of him was one which the straitest casuist
must have forgiven. Besides the time spent at meetings of
the council, the king was ever sending for him on holidays, and
even at nights, to be entertained by his conversation on science,
literature, divinity, "and such other faculties," but especially for
the sake of his unapproachable humor.

"When he perceived his pleasant conceits so much to delight them "
(for the queen shared in this pastime) " that he could scarce once in a
month get leave to go home to his wife and children, and that he could
not be two days absent from the court but he must be sent for again, he,
much misliking this restraint of his liberty, began therefore to dissemble
his mirth, and so little by little to disuse himself that he from thenceforth
at such seasons was no more so ordinarily sent for."

Have we not pitied sometimes an aged clown who, more in
sadness than in jest, must make his jokes, which, more than any
serious things possible for him to invent or reproduce, helped to
maintain him and his dependants? But the young statesman con-
cealed his redundance of fun for the sake of society far dearer
than was to be found in a king's palace. Henry, graciously com-
passionating the decline of ease in the presence of so sublime
majesty, thought to reassure him by appearing occasionally at
his home in Chelsea, dining, and afterwards walking with him in
his garden, the while holding his arm about his neck. One day,
in answer to congratulation from Roper, husband of his daughter
Meg, he answered :

458 THE SWEETNESS OF BLESSED THOMAS MORE. [Jan.,

" I thank our Lord, I find his grace my very good lord indeed, and I
believe he doth as singularly favor me as any subject within this realm.
Howbeit, son Roper, I may tell thee I have no cause to be proud thereof ;
for if my head would win him a castle in France it should not fail to go.''

In the Parliament summoned in the year 1523 More was
made Speaker by the king and the minister, with expectation
that he would overawe the Commons and force them to grant
the full subsidy that was demanded. Yet, to the disgust of
Wolsey, whom it pleased to be present on the occasion, More
without passion resisted the exorbitance, after which the cardi-
nal, unexpectedly discomfited, said fretfully that he wished that
he had been in Rome when he was made Speaker. Still Henry
did not withdraw his confidence, especially his affection, which,
perhaps, was stronger than what was felt by him for any person
whatsoever. The rivalry which Wolsey counted upon having pru-
dently forefended sprang from the very things that had seemed
least minatory. The total absence of ambition in the man, the
most learned, eloquent, and witty as he was the most honorable
and devout among all the attendants upon the court, at last pro-
voked his jealousy, and he sought to rid himself of his influence
by having him sent as ambassador to Spain. Whether it were
the foresight of sore homesickness, or other dangerous malady,
in such terms he besought his sovereign not to send a faithful
servant to his grave that he was excused and shortly after raised
to the chancellorship of the duchy of Lancaster, which he con-
tinued to hold until the fall of Wolsey.

Never were two colleagues who, so similar in some respects,
were so unlike in the rest. Great scholars, great politicians
both. Both had served king and country with distinguished
ability at home and abroad. One gloried in power, pomp, and
their circumstance. The other was fondest, fond only, of his
plain country home, where, with his wife, children, and servants,
he could render daily and nightly humble worship to the Most
High, and enjoy in humble gratitude the fruits of his labors of
every sort. One, a prince of the church, performed his priestly
functions in state arrogant as magnificent, with marquises and
earls for his attendants, seeming not well to remember how
meek and lowly was the Lamb whose unbloody Sacrifice he was
solemnizing. The other in the silence of eveningtide led his
household into his simply appointed chapel, knelt in humble sup-
plication for all that they knew it to be their duty to pray for,
and then, after reasonable indulgence in chattings usual among
simple country-folk, took such sleep as Heaven bestows upon the

1889.] THE SWEETNESS OF BLESSED THOMAS MORE. 459

industrious and guileless. Wolsey was a minister of two mighty
sovereigns, the pope and the king ; a delayer and a caviller with
one who was a lover of righteousness and a seeker of peace, and
at the same time a flatterer of the other and an abettor of his
ever-growing despotism. More was a faithful, efficient servant
to one of these potentates within the limits of official obligation,
beyond which neither threatenings of danger nor promises of
highest exaltation could present even momentarily a temptation
to invade unjustly the domain of the other. Wolsey, more ex-
alted in place, was jealous of More, who, in spite of his virtues or
because of them, was nearer to the sovereign's heart. More,
never envying but compassionating him who would regard him
as a rival, kept himself as long as possible from the eminence on
whose summit he tottered between pride and apprehension, and
desired only that he might be allowed to withdraw wholly from
the court, to which he had come with reluctance, and, living con-
stantly in the bosom of his family, give himself to his profession,
to philosophy, and to religion.

The real character of Henry VIII., theretofore hidden from
all eyes except those of More, was developed when Anne Boleyn
had grown up to the beauty whose attractions he could not
resist. By some, only a few, writers More has been blamed for
apparent dissimulation in declining at first to assume in the
matter of the king's divorce the attitude that he afterwards
maintained. Yet it seems strange that his integrity, made so
illustrious at the end of this case, should have been questioned
by any thoughtful mind during the period through which its dis-
cussion was protracted. The learned world seemed to be divid-
ed in opinion on the legality of a marriage contracted as that
with Queen Catharine. In the existing condition of European
civilization it was not a question, if indeed it ought ever to have
been, for laymen. When asked his opinion by the king he an-
swered by referring him to the writings of the doctors of the
church. The question was not as to the lawfulness of the mar-
riage with Anne before the former had been dissolved in pur-
suance of the canons, on which More could never have felt a
doubt ; but it was about a matter on which the most able and
cultured minds throughout Christendom were not, or seemed
not, agreed. His silence was of a part with his modest nature,
that shrank from the expression of opinions outside of his studies
and official duties. Wolsey, vacillating as ambitious, pursued
the double course that ruined his fortunes, embittered his life,
and blasted his fame ; in his integrity the unhappy Catharine

460 THE SWEETNESS OF BLESSED THOMAS MORE. [Jan.,

never had had confidence, while of More she was accustomed to
say that he was the one sound councillor in the kingdom. For
Wolsey it was indeed a great day of redemption when, aged and
broken, but sustained by the courage which penance and pardon
had imparted, in obedience to the summons to repair to London
and answer to the charge of treason, he rose from the bed of
death, and, journeying as far as Leicester Abbey, lay down in
peace. Not for him the glory that was sheo* around the sublime
death of his successor; but not too far below was the resignation
enjoyed when he who had

" Sounded all the depths and shoals of honor "
within so brief while had nothing to call his own save his

" Robe
And his integrity to heaven."

The trust reposed in More by the king, aside from the charm
of conversation and bearing that made him beloved of all, was
of a kind that princes, however despotic, find it indispensable
to put in subjects whose competence for public business is recog-
nized universally, and whose integritv is unquestionable. But
for the sweetness of his disposition and his cheerful religious
faith he must have suffered keenly from homesickness during so
tnany prolonged absences. An admission of this was made,
though in the merriest words, in a letter to Erasmus written
at Cambray, whither he had been sent as ambassador to negotiate
a treaty between England, France, and the emperor. On his
return, after a success far beyond the highest hopes, he learned
at Woodstock, where the court was then sojourning, of the de-
struction by fire of a part of his dwelling and all his outhouses,
together with the year's crops stored therein. The letter written
to his wife on this occasion is, of its kind, perhaps without an
equal. A portion of it is subjoined :

" Therefore, I pray you, be of good cheere, and take all the howsold
with you to church, and there thank God, both for that he hath given us
and for that he hath left us, which, if it please hym, he can increase when
he will. And if it please hym to leave us yet lesse, at hys pleasure be it.
I pray you make some good ensearche what my poore neighbours have
loste, and bidde them take no thought therefore, and if I shold leave
myself not a spone, there shall no poore neighbours of mine bere no losse
by any chance happened in my house. I praye you be, with my children
and howsold, merry in God. And devise somewhat with your friends what
way wer best to, take for provision to be made for corne for our howsold
and sede thys yere coming, il ye thinke it good that we keepe the ground
still in our handes. And whether ye think it good y l we so shall do or not,

1889.] THE SWEETNESS OF BLESSED THOMAS MORE. 461

yit I think it wer not best sodenlye thus to leave it all up, and to put away
our folk of our farme, till we have somewhat advised us thereon. Howbeit,
if we have more nowe than we shall neede, and which can get the other
maisters, ye may then discharge us of them. But I wold not any were
sodenlye sent away he wote not nere wither."

If history, outside of the saints,. can show a more illustrative
example of cheerful pursuance in the line of the lessons of the
Redeemer, we should like it to be pointed out.

If Wolsey had not been a Christian and a penitent, anguishing
must have been his grief at the quick rise upon his ruin of the
modest countryman of Chelsea, of whose ambitions justly he had
lived in no dread while he was revelling in that

" World of wealth he had drawn together
For his own ends, indeed, to gain the popedom."

Yet, when reflection has subdued him, the poet well might
imagine such a dialogue as this:

Wolsey. What news abroad ?

Cromwell. The heaviest and the worst

Is your displeasure with the king.

Wolsey. God bless him !

Cromwell. The next is, that Sir Thomas More is chosen

Lord Chancellor in your place.
Wolsey. That's somewhat sudden :

But he's a learned man. May he continue

Long in his highness' favor, and do justice

For truth's sake and his conscience ; that his bones ' *l t tl \" ( Q

When he has run his course, and sleeps in blessings,

May have a tomb of orphans' tears wept on them.

What more ?
Cromwell. That Cranmer is returned with welcome,

Install'd Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.
! Wolsey. That's news indeed.
Cromwell. Last, that the Lady Anne,

Whom the king hath in secrecy long married,

This day was receive^ in open as his queen,

Going to chapel ; and the voice is now

Only about her coronation.
Wolsey. There was the weight that pull'd me down.

The call to be lord chancellor was obeyed by More with
much reluctance. In his speech, when installed, he said:

" I have been drawn by force, as the king's majesty often professeth, to
his highness' service as a courtier; but to take this dignity upon me is
most of all against my will ; yet such is his highness' benignity, such is his
bounty, that he highly esteemeth the small dutifulness of his meanest sub-
jects, and seeketh still magnificently to recompense his servants. ... It
is a burthen, not a glory ; a care, not a dignity. . . . When I look upon

462 THE SWEETNESS OF BLESSED THOMAS MORE. [Jan.,

this seat; when I think how great and what kind of personages have pos-
sessed this place before me; when I call to mind who he was that sat in it
last of all, a man of what singular wisdom, of what notable experience,
what a prosperous and favorable fortune he had for a great space, and
how at last, dejected with a heavy downfall, he hath died inglorious I have
cause enough by my predecessor's example to think honor but slippery
and this dignity not so grateful to me as it may seem to others. . . .
Wherefore I ascend this seat as a place full of labor and danger, void of all
solid and true honor; the which by how much the higher it is, by so much
greater fall I am to fear, as well in respect of the very nature of the thing
itself as because I am warned by this late fearful example."

Of his deportment, both as judge of common-law courts and
in chancery, nothing ever has been said but what was in his
praise. True to the behests both of law and equity, yet, when-
ever consistently with these, he yielded to the suggestions of
compassion and charity. To poor litigants he was particularly
gracious, and many times remitted to them the fees that were
perquisites of his office. He was the first English judge to
maintain that the dispute (never yet decided) between law and
equity might be ended by assigning to only one court adjudica-
tion of the claims of each. A man upright as he was learned
could not but look with disfavor upon the continued jealousies
of two tribunals, the province of each being protection of the
citizen in all of his legal rights. On this question many of the
greatest minds from that period until now have differed. In
furtherance of his peculiar views he often in private appealed to
the law judges to abate some of the rigor of their rulings, and
whenever not able to succeed in such appeals he resolutely
enjoined the execution of their judgments when to him they
seemed unconscionably strict in accord with law, which by
reason of its universality is not adequate for every species of
equitable relief. Once he invited these judges to dine with him
at Westminster, and while in the midst of excellent Gascony
wine and other good cheer he proposed :

"That if the justices of every court unto whom the reformation of the
rigor of the law, by reason of their office, most especially appertained
would, upon reasonable considerations, by their own discretions (as they
were, he thought, in conscience bound) mitigate and reform the rigor of
the law themselves, there should from henceforth by him no more injunc-
tions be granted."

When they declined, after they had taken their leave he said
to his son-in-law :

" I perceive, son, why they like not so to do. For they see that they
may, by the verdict of a jury, cast off all quarrel from themselves, and
therefore am I compelled to abide the adventure of all such reports."

1889.] THE SWEETNESS OF BLESSED THOMAS MORE. 463

It is curious that out of the decrees made during his chancel-
lorship there should be but one that has descended to us, and
that one of the parties litigant should have been his own wife.
Lady More, a good wife and stepmother, yet had her own opin-
ions about some things, and not unfrequently sought to enforce
them, even with an ejaculation as threatening as tilly vally ! all
of whose import was known, possibly, to none except herself.

" It happened on a time that a beggar-woman's little dog, which she
had lost, was presented for a jewel to Lady More, and she had kept some
se'night very carefully; but at last the beggar had notice where the dog
was, and presently she came to complain to Sir Thomas, as he was sitting
in his hall, that his lady withheld her dog from her. Presently my lady
was sent for, and the dog brought with her ; which Sir Thomas taking in
his hands, caused his wife, because she was the worthier person, to stand at
the upper end of the hall, and the beggar at the lower end ; and saying that
he sat there to do every one justice, he bade each of them call the dog ;
which when they did the dog went presently to the beggar, forsaking my
lady. When he saw this, he bade my lady be contented, for it was none of
hers; yet she, repining at the sentence of my lord chancellor, agreed with
the beggar, and gave her a piece of gold which would well have bought
three dogs, and so all parties were agreed ; every one smiling to see his
manner of inquiring out the truth."

The same sweetness was manifested in his filial as in other
relations. His father continued, although past ninety years, to sit
as one of the puisne judges of the King's Bench, and for him the
affection of this son was just as it was when as a little child he
was dandled upon his knee. It was his daily habit, when repair-
ing to his own court, first to enter that of the King's Bench, kneel,
ask, and receive the old man's blessing. When the latter died,
weeping as a young child would have wept, he embraced his
body while commending to heaven the soul that had departed.

At length, as he had foreseen from the period when, grown
weary of faded beauty, the king turned his eyes upon Anne, the
time of trial came I will not say temptation, for it does not
appear that at any time he hesitated what he must do when de-
mand would be made upon him for co-operation of a kind that
his conscience must condemn. When the demand came, in the
kneeling suppliant before him Henry saw, and he knew it, a
courage intrepid as ever fired warrior's breast upon any field.
His resignation was accepted, and the subject greatest in fame,
honor, learning, and genius retired to his simple home, having
saved from all the avails of his various work and service a pro-
perty whose income was not above one hundred pounds sterling.
In one of the biographies there is a delightful account of the

464 THE SWEETNESS OF BLESSED THOMAS MORE. [Jan.,

merry conference had with his children who all, with their
consorts and children, had always dwelt with him touching the
still more economical living to which they thereafter must de-
scend when these " must be content to be contributaries to-
gether." If, beginning with Lincoln Inn's fare, and, descend-
ing, they might not be able to maintain even Oxford fare

"where many great, learned, and ancient fathers and doctors are con-
tinually conversant, . . . then may we after, with bag and wallet, go a-beg-
ging together, hoping that for pity some good folks will give us their
charity, and at every man's door to sing a Salve Regtna, whereby we shall
keep company and be merry together."

In the brief respite he enjoyed to the full the retirement which,
as was shown in one of his letters to Erasmus, he had always de-
sired in order that he might live "only to God and himself."
But when a committee of bishops, with twenty pounds for the
purchase of a dress suitable for the occasion, brought an invita-
tion to attend at Anne's coronation, and it was declined, the new
queen was resolved upon his death. All the world knows how
he endured her ruthless pursuit. There is to be witnessed in the
midst of dangers sometimes a quality higher than the highest
courage. It is the uncomplaining, almost unsuffering, submission
of innocence to injustice that it knows it can neither resist nor
avoid. In More this virtue took on a beauty yet more exquisite
from his temporary childlike apprehension of insufficiency for
the ordeal before him. It makes the heart leap to be told of his
joyousness while, after his appearance before Cranmer, Lord
Chancellor Audley, the Duke of Norfolk, and Cromwell, a royal
committee appointed for his trial as an accomplice with the
" holy maid of Kent," he was returning home in company with
Roper. Said the latter :

' I trust, sir, all is well, you are so merry.''

" It is so indeed, son, thank God ! "

" Are you then, sir, put out of the bill ? "

" Wouldst thou know, son, why I am so joyful ? In good faith,! rejoice
that I have given the devil a foul fall ; because I have with those lords
gone so far that without great shame I can never go back,"

It was the gleefulness of a child after successful essay of steps
for which its young strength was doubted to be fully adequate.

It was at his own trial for high treason that appeared the
majestic courage of whose fame four centuries are full. Neither
desiring nor shunning martyrdom, standing upon the right of a
British subject to be condemned only after fair trial by his peers,

1889-] THE SWEETNESS OF BLESSED THOMAS MORE. 465

he put the marks of everlasting infamy upon his judges and
prosecutors by exposure of the gross unlawfulness of their pro-
ceedings and the audacious falsehood of their testimony. His
cross-questioning of Rich, the solicitor-general, the most in-
famous lawyer that ever belonged to the English bar, reads
almost like a denunciation from a Hebrew prophet. . Yet when
the trial was over- he lapsed again into the simple merry-hearted-
ness that now was to be with him to the end. It appears almost
preterhuman, his absolute freedom from resentment.

" I believe, Meg," he said one day to his daughter, who had come to
visit him in the Tower, " they that have put me here weene they have
done me a high displeasure; but I assure thee, on my faith, mine own
good daughter, if it had not been for my wife and ye that be my children I
would not have failed long ere this to have closed myself in as strait a
room, and straiter too. But since I am come hither without mine own
desert, I trust that God by his goodness will discharge me of my care, and,
with his gracious help, supply my lack among you." So his compassionate
regard for the sovereign : "And surely, daughter, it is a great pity that any
Christian prince should, by a flexible council ready to follow his affections,
and by a weak clergy lacking grace constantly to stand to their learning,
with flattery be so shamefully abused."

As for the vengeful woman who had been the chief leader in
his persecution, the feeling indulged by him may be known by
the following talk with this same daughter:

" How goeth the world, Meg, and how doth the Queen Anne ? "

" In faith, father, never better; there is nothing else in the court but

dancing and sporting."

" Never better ! Alas ! Meg, it pitieth me to remember unto what

misery, poor soul ! she will shortly come. These dances of hers will prove

such dances that she will spurn our heads off like footballs ; but it will

not be long ere her head will dance the like dance."

To the very last obedient to the king's pleasure, that he use not
many words at his execution, he answered : " I did purpose to
have spoken somewhat, but I will conform myself to the king's
commandment." And so, pronouncing on his knees the Miserere,
and after giving a piece of gold and a merry word to the execu-
tioner, he laid his head upon the block.

More is a saint of Christ's grace. But, in fine, whose career
among the not inspired and the unsainted shall we compare with
this in the matter of the peculiar characteristic which this article
has attempted to portray ? If any, that of Socrates. Yet Socra-
tes was and showed himself to be conscious of superiority to the
men of his time. Certainly the courage of Socrates never has
been outdone. Still (though not with boasting) he would tell of

VOL. XLVIII. 30

TWILIGHT. [Jan.,

occasions whereon it had been exerted. When, along with
others, ordered by the Thirty to bring Leon from Salamis that
he might be put to death,

" I made known to them," he said afterwards, " both in word and deed,
that (if it be not too hard an expression) I did not care at all for death
provided I did nothing unjust or unholy, which was the great object of my
solicitude. The great authority of the government did not influence me
to violate my sense of right."

He knew, and he so said, that the calumnies heaped upon him had
their main foundation in the contemplation of his superior wis-
dom. He had excited antipathy long and general by refusing
to speak in terms other than were deserved of the abuses and fol-
lies of his time. Before the court that tried him he stood, though
without anger, as an accuser rather than as a defendant. If there
was pathos there also was scorn in the words with which, after
condemnation, he left the judgment-hall : "It is now time for
us to go our respective ways, I to die and you to live ; and which
of us is going on a better voyage is known to God alone." Of
such a man his loving biographer could say well : " To me, as I
have described him, he seemed such as the best and happiest of
men would be." Outside of Christian history, without doubt he
is the most illustrious example. Sir Thomas More, his equal in
other gifts, had the unspeakable advantage of having and of
learning, perfectly as is possible to human nature, the precept
that to become fittest for the kingdom of heaven a man must be
ever as a child. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON.

Baltimore, Md.

TWILIGHT.

I STAND in shadow, for the day is done ;
And at my window, turning from the west,
I gaze upon the far hill's purple crest,
Lit with the torches of the sunken sun ;
The eve is still, and murmur hear I none
To break the perfect quietude and rest,
Save, like the farewells of a parting guest,
The distant echoes of the sunset gun.

calm, sweet hour ! wherein all thought is prayer,
When unseen hands, like those of Him who healed,
From weary hearts the daily burdens roll,
Breathing the incense of the twilight air.

To Him whose garments pass me, half-revealed,

1 raise the silent vespers of the soul !

S. F. QUINTERO.

1889.] CHRISTIANITY UNIVERSAL. 467

CHRISTIANITY UNIVERSAL.

THE most serious objection raised against the truth of the
Christian religion is the alleged fact that it is local and particular,
the religion of only a minority of mankind. A divine religion, it
is argued, ought to be universal.

I consider this objection as it is made by those who admit
that Christianity is partially true, and that all other religions are
partially true ; all being phases or forms of a universal religion.
They look forward to a new development of religion, in which
the comprehensive and extensive universality of the fundamental
principles of truth, morals, and civilization shall be more perfect-
ly manifested ; whereby all mankind will be raised to a higher
level, and continue to make indefinite progress toward an ideal
state. With those who listen eagerly to blasphemous ribaldry
against Christianity, and with those who take the road of a dis-
mal and degrading scepticism, I have nothing to do. They do
not wish to listen to reason, and reasoning has no influence over
them.

To those who are wearied with Christianity as they appre-
hend it, and aspire for something better which will approach to
their idea of a world-religion, I have something to say.

How do they, admitting that man is a religious being, and
that religion ought to be, not the exclusive possession of a
chosen, specially favored number of men, in certain places and
times, meet the objection of those who deny that there is or can
be any basis for religion in anything known to us or knowable ;
the objection, namely, that if there were a manifest providence
of God over the human race, there ought to be a universal reli-
gion, whereas such a religion does not exist ? If they say that
this religion is to come, how will they explain the fact that it will
be too late for the hundreds of generations which have lived
before the period of this world-religion ? They can only reply
that the partial, successive, imperfect forms of religion heretofore
existing sufficed for the essential needs of mankind, and for its
gradual, progressive, religious evolution.

The same answer in substance can be made in defence of
Christianity against the objection of non-universality. Although
Christianity is thus far the religion of the minority of mankind,
we can hope and prognosticate with good reason that it will
eventually supplant all other religions and embrace within its

468 CHRISTIANITY UNIVERSAL. [Jan.,

circle all mankind. In its nature and capabilities it is a world-
religion. It is catholic in comprehension, and can become uni-
versal in extension.

As for past generations, a Christian can maintain that the
providence of God has abandoned none of them, but has fur-
nished all with the means necessary to salvation. We cannot, in-
deed, allow that pagan superstitions are forms and phases of a di-
vine religion. But we can affirm that, in the pagan world, enough
of the " Light which enlighteneth every man coming into this
world," and of the grace which is universal, has been granted to
all men of good will to enable them to attain the end for which
they were created. At the beginning, during ages whose num-
ber cannot be certainly known to us, the primitive religion of
which Christianity is the perfect flower was universal. Among
the principal nations descended from Noah, the patriarchal reli-
gion was substantially preserved for centuries, and only gradually
became degenerate. Even in the popular idolatry which became
prevalent, there were elements of a higher and better religion,
echoes from the tradition of purer ages. Then, there has always
been the inner light, the voice of conscience, the revelation of
God in his works, the secret illuminations and inspirations of the
Spirit' of God, to counteract the effect of the degrading fables of
mythology, of obscene rites and cruel superstitions.

The objection to Christianity which is under consideration
has been, to a great extent, evoked by an imperfect and distorted
conception of its positive and exclusive claim to be the one, true,
and divine religion. This distorted conception, in its extreme,
represents all mankind as under a doom from birth, which deter-
mines them unavoidably to live in sin, and to sink after death
into hopeless, everlasting misery. Some are saved, through a
special act of mercy, by means of explicit faith in a divine revela-
tion making known to them the way of salvation which is through
the divine Redeemer, and by a special grace; while the great
multitude are left to perish. This is the dreary view of religion
which was presented before my eyes in childhood. I have always
rejected it with the whole force of my reason, conscience, and
heart, ever since I have been able to think for myself; and I com-
passionate those who are driven into doubt and unbelief by mis-
taking this spectre for the radiant and benign genius of Chris-
tianity.

The vindication of the Christian religion demands that the
allegation that it is not a universal religion be denied and dis-
proved. This is deeply felt and strongly asserted by the advo-

1889.] CHRISTIANITY UNIVERSAL. 469

catesof what is called the Progressive Orthodoxy. Their affirma-
tion of the universality of Christianity is an admirable and at-
tractive feature in the new phase of Protestant orthodoxy which
they present, in opposition to modern infidelity, and in distinc-
tion from the doctrine of the old school, from which they have
to some extent separated themselves. They remain, neverthe-
less, so far trammelled by their traditional theology that they
are unable to make an explanation of the difficulty which lies in
the way, consonant with both reason and revelation. An ex-
planation they have, which is the most salient and conspicuous
novelty in their scheme. Leaving on one side the general
controversy with unbelievers in Christianity, I wish to attend
particularly to this explanation, and in the direct discussion of
this issue I shall find an indirect way of engaging in the general
contention and giving an answer to the objection.

Progressive orthodoxy, proceeding from Christian premises,
recognizes in the special providence of God over the human
race a way of redemption. This presupposes a universal need of
redemption in the race, as a race; and the universality of the
Christian religion is accentuated and specially insisted on, as a
consequence from the postulate that Jesus Christ has actually
redeemed all mankind. These two propositions are conceded.
Then follows another : that the necessary medium of appropriat-
ing the benefit of redemption is an explicit faith in Christ the
Redeemer. This proposition in its universality I do not con-
cede. I concede the necessity of this explicit faith to those to
whom the object of it, viz., Jesus Christ the Saviour of men, has
been sufficiently made known by a divine revelation proposed
with such evidence as to make it certain ; but I deny it in re-
spect to all others. Since it is evident that this object of faith
has been proposed, in this life, to a small minority of mankind
only, the orthodox progressists conjecture that it is proposed to
all other men in the intermediate state where the souls of the
departed subsist, awaiting the resurrection. A Catholic theolo-
gian can allow that this is an admissible conjecture in respect to
some souls, by way of exception ; but it cannot be conceded that,
as a general rule, there is any period of probation after this
present life.

This kind of tentative, conjectural way of showing that
Christianity is universal does not at all answer the purpose.
Something more positive and certain is necessary in order to re-
move the great obstruction to belief. It is nothing but a make-
shift, an ingenious expedient, which can only serve as a tern-

4/0 CHRISTIANITY UNIVERSAL. [Jan.,

porary shelter in controversy. Instead of relegating the dis-
cussion into the obscure realm of Hades, it is the part of the
Christian advocate to justify the ways of divine Providence
toward mankind in this world and in this life ; and to show that
no human being lives or dies under a doom of misery, unless he
has made it for himself, contrary to the intention of his Creator.
This is the real gist of the matter. And, no matter how pro-
gressive Protestant orthodoxy may be, or how often it may shift
its position, it cannot get out of a cul de sac in which it is shut up
by a wall of its own construction. When it is pushed by ration-
alism in front, it has to fall back on its old doctrine of original
sin in order to account for the need there is for a Redeemer
and a Redemption for all mankind. The progressists are in a
dilemma. If they deny original sin and the universal need of
redemption, they have surrendered to rationalism and renounced
the defence of Christianity. " Fallen in Adam, redeemed in
Christ," is the motto on the banner of the cross. If they persist
in maintaining this primary, fundamental dogma, in the dis-
torted form given it by the Reformers and embodied in their con-
fessions of faith, they cannot answer the arguments of rational-
ists derived from pure reason. They must give up either reason
or revelation ; unless they can separate their preconceived ideas
about revealed dogmas from the truth itself and thus secure a
tenable position.

It is impossible to stir one step before gaining a point of de
parture in such a concept of human nature as fallen in Adam and
affected by original sin, that, on the one hand, there is no sur-
render of revealed dogma, and, on the other, no evident contra-
diction of reason. Original sin is in the offspring of Adam, in
each one from his conception, and it has the true nature of sin,
being the state of the death of the soul, the cause of which was
the transgression of Adam.

What is a sin ? It is a free act of a rational creature which
turns him away from his proper end, away from his proper rela-
tion to God, away from his chief good. The state of sin is the
condition to which his actual sin has reduced him. It is a state
of death, as being a privation of his highest form of life, and of
that chief good the possession of which during his immortal ex-
istence is properly called everlasting life. Therefore, a sin
which produces this effect is called mortal.

The end for which human nature was destined was the im-
mediate intuition of God as he is in his essence, with all the
good which is the sequel of this sublime and beatific vision.

1889] CHRISTIANITY UNIVERSAL. 471

The relation to God was that of sonship by adoption. The
highest form of life was in its principle the grace of God.
When Adam sinned he lost the grace which had been given him
at his creation by which he was constituted in a filial relation to
God, together with those special gifts and privileges which ac-
companied and were dependent on this best and most perfect
gift of God. The right of transmitting these gifts to his pos-
terity was included in the original endowment, which was not
merely a personal grant, but was an investiture of Adam in his
quality of head and representative of the whole human race. In
consequence of this forfeiture, the offspring of Adam are con-
ceived and born in the state and condition' of nature into which
he fell by his transgression. The transgression was simply and
solely his personal act, for which he alone was blameworthy and
responsible to God. His actual sin, his demerit, his remorse, he
could not transmit; for these things are as incommunicable as
identity and self-consciousness. How, then, can it be true that
we all sinned and fell in Adam, are conceived and. born in this
sin of origin and nature, liable to the punishment which was in-
curred by the disobedience of our ancestor before we had come
into existence? There is one, and only one, answer to this q'ues-
tion. It is indeed possible to refuse to answer it at all, to say
that it is unanswerable, that original sin is a mystery which God
comprehends but which we must receive on pure faith in his rev-
elation. This is very well, if the dogma is left in its simplicity
as stated in Holy Scripture and in definitions of Catholic faith, for
those who cannot go any deeper into theology, and who are not
bound to instruct those who are perplexed by difficulties. But the
case is otherwise in controversy. Expositions have been given,
answers have been invented to the questions which unavoidably
arise in the perpetually curious and inquiring minds of men,
which are directly contrary to reason, and which are contradictory
to revealed truths. We can believe mysteries which are above
reason, but we cannot reasonably assent to any proposition which
contradicts any truth which is self-evident or demonstrated, or
which has been revealed. Now, to say that a person can be de-
serving of blame for an act committed before he existed, or be-
cause he is the offspring of a criminal, or because of his nature, or
on account of acts to which he is determined by outward or in-
ward necessity, or because of an arbitrary imputation of the acts
of another, is absurd and therefore incredible. It is also incredi-
ble that God deprives any rational creature of any of those rights
which he has radicated in his essence and its properties, or

47 2 CHRISTIANITY UNIVERSAL. [Jan.,

dooms him to unavoidable everlasting misery, unless he has for-
feited his rights by such an abuse of reason and free-will and
justly deserves such a punishment.

We are, therefore, compelled to deny that we are bound to
accuse ourselves of having committed the sin of Adam and to
repent of it, or to beg pardon for having been born ; or to repent
of having a fallen nature, or of any inclinations or acts or omis-
sions which we cannot help; or that we are doomed to everlast-
ing woe on account of original sin. In order to make these
denials logically, and at the same time to preserve the Scriptural
and Catholic doctrine intact, we must deny that those rights
which were conferred on humanity in the person of Adam, and
were forfeited by his sin, are radicated in the human essence and
its properties. They were a gratuitous gift, and as such subject
to any conditions which the sovereign will of God was pleased to
impose. In fact, God did make the transmission and perpetuity
of this gift dependent on the obedience of Adam to a precept,
and by his actual disobedience the gift granted conditionally to
humanity was forfeited. Henceforth Adam could only transmit
to his natural posterity mere human nature as it is by virtue
of its essence, its specific properties, its native rights, and what-
ever is demanded by the nature of man according to his logical
definition as a rational animal. God, without any derogation
from his wisdom, justice, or goodness, might have created man in
the state of pure nature, for a final destiny not transcending its
essential capacities and exigencies. In that hypothetical state
and order of humanity the parents of the human race would
have been constituted by creation, and their posterity conceived
and born, just as men are now born, excepting the qualification
of sin. This qualification belongs to the state of lapsed nature in
distinction from the state of pure nature. It does not denote an
intrinsic, essential, and physical difference, but a distinction of
mode and relation. It denotes no change from good nature to
evil nature; no subtraction of good natural properties or
qualities, either wholly or partially ; no addition of such as are
bad i.e., no total or partial depravation of the rational and
animal constituents which are substantially united in the com-
posite being man. His spiritual and immortal soul, with its
faculties of intellect and will having a necessary inclination to
truth and goodness ; his organized body with its organs and
senses, duly related to their proper objects and fitted for their
proper operations all these remain in the state of lapsed nature
as they might have been in a state of pure nature. What, then, is

1889.] CHRISTIANITY UNIVERSAL. 473

the proper ratio of sin in lapsed nature? In the first place, the
lapse from a higher state was a sin committed by Adam in his
representative character. There is a certain principle of soli-
darity running- through all human affairs, by virtue of which
families, tribes, nations, any sort of multitude organized in a
corporate unity, are regarded as included in their heads and
representatives, and participating in certain acts really emanating
from their individual wills. There is a community in both good
and evil, by which individuals who have done nothing either
worthy of praise or blame share with those to whom personally
belongs the credit or disgrace of the accruing benefit or disaster.
In the same way that Americans of the present day may say that
we declared our independence of the English crown in 1776, it is
true to say that we all sinned in Adam. Our birthright was lost
by his sin, and we suffer many privations which were incurred by
that sin and therefore are justly called penalties, although our
conscience does not accuse us, and God does not blame us, as
having personally offended him and deserved punishment.

Again, the lack of sanctifying grace, of the filial relation to
God, and of any title to inherit the kingdom of heaven, in the
state of lapsed nature is a privation, whereas in the state of pure
nature it would have been a mere negation. A corpse and a wax
figure are both destitute of life ; but in the corpse this negation
of vitality is a privation and is the state of death. The lack of
grace which is the highest life of the soul, in men who are born
in original sin, is a privation of the life virtually given to us in
our first parents. Therefore, it is in us under that qualification
of the death of the soul, which is the definition of sin, as it is in
each one of us by birth, given by the Council of Trent. It is im-
plied in the notion of a defect by privation which is a state of sin,
that the soul affected by it is unfit for the filial relation to God
and incapable of attaining the final end for which it was destined
in the first intention of the Creator. Pure nature is nude nature ;
lapsed nature is denuded nature. A child undressed does not
differ from a child who has never been dressed. But, while the
young savage may be quite fit to run about on his native soil, the
civilized child must be properly attired before it can be brought
into the family circle.

One more illustration will perhaps suffice to make the dis-
tinction plain between the two states of pure and lapsed nature.

A king adopts a boy' of servile condition by birth, making
him and his future descendants his heirs. For grievous miscon-
duct the king's adopted son is disinherited and sent into exile.

474 CHRISTIANITY UNIVERSAL. [Jan.,

His children and descendants are peasants, in consequence of his
offence against the king, instead of being princes by birth and
condition. They may be said to have sinned in their father, and
to have incurred, as a disgrace and punishment, the privation
of dignity and wealth, together with its natural consequences ;
although they are innocent of their father's crime, and are actu-
ally in the same condition which they would have inherited if
their father had not been elevated to royal dignity by the grace
of the sovereign. They may still be good and happy peasants,
arid even enjoy the favor and protection of their king as his ser-
vants, though they are excluded from the advantage of being his
children.

If we suppose that the king offers forgiveness and restoration
to all of this disinherited family, on condition that they deserve it
by good conduct in their state of exile and servitude, and that
he furnishes them with the means of gaining the education and
fulfilling the meritorious services which shall make them worthy
to be restored to their inheritance, the parallel will be more per-
fect.

The first intention of God respecting mankind was made ir-
revocably. The destination of the race of Adam remained un-
changed. When Adam and the race in him lapsed into the con-
dition of fallen and despoiled nature, the supernatural order of
the world did not lapse into an order merely natural. It was
modified, but not abolished. The first state of original justice
was not re-established, but the state of repaired nature was inau-
gurated by the promise of a Redeemer, opening a way of restora-
tion through the redemption. Adam and Eve were sent out of
Paradise, that they and their offspring might work out their sal-
vation, sorrowfully but hopefully, in the Vale of Tears in hac
lacrymarum valle. And although we have always been looking
back with regretful sighs upon our lost Eden, yet we have
good reason to say, with St. Francis de Sales, that " the state of
redemption is a hundred times better than the state of original
justice."

We can understand now, I trust, the universal need of re-
demption, in which the offspring of Adam are constituted before
they have done either good or evil, and what is meant by the lost
condition into which they are born. By the gratuitous goodness
of God, men are intended for a state of adopted sonship and in-
timate friendship with God in this life, to be consummated in the
future life by participation in the sanctity, glory, and beatitude
which God alone possesses by his essence, and which are not due

1889.] CHRISTIANITY UNIVERSAL. 475

to the created rational nature, however perfect and sinless it may
be. By the fall human nature lost its proportion to this high
destination, and aH who are born in original sin are unfit and in-
capable for the inchoate or complete filial union with their Crea-
tor and Lord as their Father. Therefore, if they are to be re-
stored to this privileged state, they must be redeemed, a new
grace must be accorded to them ; and since God has so decreed,
this redemption must be accomplished by the Incarnate Son of
God, coming into the world as its Saviour. Actually, the mass
of mankind have many sins and miseries which cry aloud for a
Redeemer, and the fulness of the redemption wrought by him
extends to all these.

But it is, first of all, the substitution of Jesus Christ and
the Virgin Mary, the second Adam and Eve, in the place of the
first, and the fulfilment by them of a more excellent and difficult
work of obedience than the one which our first parents failed to
accomplish. In this act of obedience the merit of Jesus Christ
expiated the sin of Adam, and obtained the reversal of the sen-
tence of exile which was the penalty of that sin. There exists
the same solidarity of mankind in this restoration in Christ as in
the fall in Adam. The promise of redemption was made to
Adam and Eve as the representatives and parents of the human
race. From the nature of the case the redemption is universal,
and is most clearly declared to be so in the Holy Scriptures,
especially those of the New Testament.

Nevertheless, men are not born in the state of grace, much
less are they exempt from liability to sin, or made secure of ob-
taining admission into the. kingdom of heaven at the end of their
earthly life, on account of the Redemption. Each one needs to
be personally sanctified, justified, and brought, by his fulfilment
of certain conditions during his probation, to the attainment of
that celestial destiny which the Redemption has rendered at-
tainable by all who belong to the human race. If this is the
common and attainable end for all those who are placed in the
state of human probation, for which all are obliged to strive, and
not only permitted but commanded to aspire and hope, the
necessary means ought to be universally provided, and made as
common as air, water, earth, and food.

It is the contention of the progressive orthodox party that
this is manifestly not the case during this earthly life, and that
the state of probation must therefore extend beyond this life, not
reaching its final term until the Day of Judgment. They con-
sider an explicit knowledge of Christ as the Redeemer, explicit

476 CHRISTIANITY UNIVERSAL. [Jan.,

faith in him, and a certain spiritual experience derived from this
faith, as an indispensable condition of justification and salvation.
This faith was attainable only by a few, even among the wor-
shippers of the One True God, before Christ came. Even now
Christ has been preached to only a third part, at most, of the
human race. Moreover, the advocates of future probation mani-
festly incline to restrict very much the number of nominal
Christians who have a full and fair opportunity, and a final, de-
cisive probation, in this life.

This view is certainly unphilosophical. Man is not a pure
spirit ; he is a rational animal. He has not his complete being
and subsistence, and ail the constituents of his human personality,
in his soul alone, but in his total specific essence, which com-
prises his body as animated by his soul. This world is his native
sphere, his place of growth, maturity, decay, and death. It is
here that he is constituted in those relations of all kinds, God-
ward and manward, which make up that initial, inchoate human
life which on the face of it bears all the marks of a state of trial,
probation, education, and warfare ; of a voyage across the ocean
toward the shore of eternity. According to the view in ques-
tion, the greatest part of history, the development of mankind
through the ages, and the grand course of human life and activ-
ity, are mostly without scope or object, significance or value.
This view cannot be proved from Scripture, which does not
categorically condemn it, because it takes no notice of it and takes
the opposite for granted. It is contrary to tradition, even in
great part to ancient and general ethnic tradition, and seems to be
adopted by its advocates as a dernier ressort and by way of hy-
pothesis. It is the common sense of mankind that this world is
the theatre of that probation which is decisive of the fina,! des-
tiny of man. And there is no way of establishing the universal-
ity of Christianity as the world-religion which will satisfy the
exigencies of the case, except one which is based on this common
belief.

It is obvious that Christianity in the most strict and definite
sense cannot be called universal, according to the entire exten-
sion of that predicate. Those elements of doctrine, law, and
worship which are brought to perfection in Christianity were in
the primitive religion of the patriarchs, and in Judaism, in a
more germinal and obscure form, wherefore they may be in-
cluded in the term Christianity. The Jehovah-Elohim of the
Old Testament is the Emmanuel of prophecy, who received the
name of Jesus at his human birth and is the Messiah, the Christ,

1889.] CHRISTIANITY UNIVERSAL. 477

of Jews and Gentiles. The original world-religion was inchoate
Christianity, the society of men professing it was the inchoate
Catholic Church. One and the same religion is therefore
actually universal in respect to time, as existing through all ages
from the first. Moreover, on the part of God, this universal re-
ligion was provided for all mankind. It became restricted by
the departure of the great mass of men, after many centuries had
elapsed, from the primitive religion, and the gradual formation
of new and human forms of religion throughout the greater part
of the world. It is the fault of men, and not an abandonment of
the nations on the part of God, which has brought about the ex-
clusion of the majority from the special privileges of the elect
people of God. Nevertheless, since God has exercised a special
providence over that portion of the race to whom he has sent
prophets and apostles, whom he has enlightened by the splendor
of revelation, and on whom he has conferred special graces, the
question arises: Why has he not treated all mankind in the same
manner and with equal mercy ? We cannot penetrate into these
secret counsels of God, or explain the reasons for the different
methods of his providence. But, after all, the one momentous
question is : Whether every man without exception who attains
to a sufficient exercise of reason to be really a moral, responsible
agent, on probation for eternity, has sufficient grace to enable
him to become a child of God and an inheritor of the kingdom of
heaven. As for all those who do not attain this use of reason,
whether infants, or adults who are intellectually and morally on
a par with infants, it is absurd to consider them as subject to
any judgment at all. They have rationality in their essence, but
it is in abeyance ; they are incapable of merit or demerit ; and it
is certain that God will give every one of them in the future life
that perfection and happiness which are proportioned to their
quality, either supernatural or natural. The question of proba-
tion has nothing to do with this class of human beings who have
never emerged from the chrysalis state.

Those who confine the operation of grace within the sphere
of the church must defend their particularism as they best can.
Their notions are not Christian and Catholic ideas, but individ-
ual and sectarian opinions. The universality of Christianity
can only be affirmed by taking a wider view of the scope and
range of divine Providence over all mankind. The Christian re-
ligion, in its inchoate form at the beginning of the world ; in its
progressive development from Adam to Moses and from Moses
to Christ ; and in its finally complete form in the Christian

4/8 CHRISTIANITY UNIVERSAL. [Jan.,

church; is an act of the special providence of the divine Creator
and Redeemer, whose name in the ancient religion is Jehovah-
Elohim, and in the Gospel, Jesus Christ. He is one and the
same person, whether operating by his divine nature alone, or
by his human nature alone, purely divine or purely human works,
or by the concurrence of both those which are theandric. There
is unity of. plan and purpose in his entire administration of his
kingdom on the earth, from Eden to Calvary, from Calvary to
the Valley of Jehoshaphat. The whole course of nature, the uni-
versal providence which rules over all human events, is a part of
the one grand design which includes the universe and all its
endless ages, all subordinated to one central object, the Incarna-
tion and its glorious consummation. We must therefore take in
the whole administration of the government of this world in a
comprehensive view of that providence over men, in respect to
their probation and their final destiny, which is concentrated in
that which is strictly and properly called Christianity. The
goodness of the Creator and the grace of the Redeemer pervade
the whole system, include the whole race, and reach every indi-
vidual. There is but one chief end in view, viz., to bring the
fellow-men of the Son of God made man into a share of his son-
ship, by adoption, and a share in his celestial kingdom. This
universal intention embracing all men necessarily implies the
provision of the means necessary to attain the end. Qui vult
finem vult media He who wills an end wills the means to attain
it. The Almighty cannot lack means to accomplish his ends.
Provision of the most direct, perfect, and efficacious means by
a clear revelation, by a divinely constituted religion, by sacra-
ments, by numerous and easy means of grace, does not exclude
the provision and use of other sufficient means, even such as are
extraordinary, supposing that these last are necessary. The
manifestation which God makes of himself through his works,
the elements of truth and morality which are contained in
human religions, the surviving traditions of the primitive revela-
tion, the dictates of rational nature and conscience, the teachings
of philosophy, are all means which divine Providence can make
use of as channels and instruments of grace. There is the in-
terior realm of the intellect and the will, also, over which God is
sovereign, and where he can secretly give illuminations and holy
impulses. Moreover, it is a point of Catholic belief that every
human being is placed under the care of a special guardian
angel. The nature and condition of a just probation require that
nothing impossible should be required of any one. Human

1889.] CHRISTIANITY UNIVERSAL. 479

nature, even in its denuded condition, does not determine any
one to actual sins. Power to do good moral acts remains, and if
anything is commanded which surpasses the ability of nature,
the aid of grace is offered to make the fulfilment of the precept
possible or less difficult. No one is bound to go beyond the cir-
cle of his knowledge and the capacity of his free-will, and if he
sincerely and honestly follows such light as he has, and obeys
his conscience, he can keep the natural law without any grievous
sin from the first moment of the exercise of reason, the common
and universal grace of God always giving him all requisite aid.
If he does not know God explicitly and distinctly, it is enough
for him to turn toward him implicitly and confusedly under the
idea of the good and the right. It is the common doctrine of
Catholic theologians, St. Augustine and St. Thomas included,
that to one who thus fulfils what is obligatory by the law of
nature sufficient grace will be given to fulfil all else which is re-
quisite according to the law which is above nature, in order that
he may become a child of God and inherit the kingdom of
heaven. The assertion that it is sufficient to turn to God by a
virtual or implicit act may seem startling to some readers, and
I will therefore confirm it by citing a theological authority of
great weight, Billuart, the most eminent author of modern times
in the Dominican school. St. Thomas teaches that every child,
on first attaining the full exercise of reason, is bound to determine
his will to his due final end, i.e., to convert himself to God ; and
that if he does this he obtains the remission of original sin.*
Billuart, in his exposition of this statement, discusses the diffi-
culty which arises in respect to a child who is ignorant of the
existence of God, which he solves as follows :

" There are two distinct modes of conversion to God, one explicit and
formal to God distinctly and explicitly known either by faith or by the
light of nature ; the other virtual and implicit, in which one proposes to
live according to reason, or loves that moral good in which God as the
author and end of this good is implicitly contained. "t

Billuart further argues that, according to St. Thomas' doc-
trine, if one who converts himself to God in the best way that he
can is incapable of making that act of faith which is indispensably
necessary to justification, God will in some opportune time and
way give him the necessary revelation of that which is necessary
to be explicitly believed, either by ordinary or extraordinary
means. It would not be of great practical benefit to the majority

* Sum. Theol., Prima Secundae, qu. 89, 6.
t Cursus Theol., torn. viii. diss. viii. art. 7.

4So CHRISTIANITY UNIVERSAL. [Jan.,

of mankind if the grant of sufficient grace depended on a perfect
observance of the natural law from the first exercise of reason.
There is, however, ample and respectable authority for the
opinion that this grace is continually offered to all men, however
sinful, so long as they live. Those who sin, and those who live
and die impenitent, must impute the privation of grace and sal-
vation to their own abuse of free-will, and not to a doom which
was unavoidable.

The Abbe de Broglie has well expressed this common doc-
trine of Catholic theology :

" Narrow and exclusive ideas denying all moral good among pagans
are in nowise Christian doctrine. Catholic tradition distinguishes two
orders of moral good, the natural and the supernatural. Natural good
exists among pagans. They have the law of God engraven in their hearts,
as St. Paul teaches. If they have less aid than Christians for the practical
observance of this law, they are not, on this account, in a totally impotent
condition, and we are not in any way bound to deny their virtues. Man is
able, without faith or grace, to know the good and to distinguish it from
evil. He can, whether it be as the effect of an antique tradition, or from
the sole testimony of his own conscience, believe in future retribution, and
find in this belief a motive to conquer his passions and reform his life. He
can die for his conviction, as he dies for his country and his flag. This is
not all ; even the supernatural is not inaccessible to men in this condition.
Indeed, according to the opinion of the great majority of theologians, God
wills to save all men, and his grace flows through channels and in a
measure which are unknown to us upon all well-disposed souls."*

The world-religion, which has been the same in essence from
the beginning', and in its final, perfect form is Christianity,
diffuses its light and power everywhere, always, and for all ; and,
in this sense, Christianity is and always has been universal.
There is no kingdom of hell upon earth, but only the kingdom of
Christ, against which hell is always warring. There is one reve-
lation, one religion, one faith, one church. All men who have
faith, hope, and the love of God are, if not explicitly and formally
members of the Catholic Church, at least virtually Christians,
united to the soul of the church b/ an invisible bond.

This is not, however, any justification of the principle of
indifferentism. When the faith and the church are explicitly
proposed, the obligation to embrace and profess the divine truth
and law at once arises. Those who are virtually Christians are
justified because they have the implicit will and intention to
believe and obey God without any reservation. But one who
refuses to believe the Catholic faith and enter the visible fold of

* LIHistoire des Religions^ ch. viii. p. 249.

1889.] MY VIOLIN. 481

the Catholic Church, when they are sufficiently proposed to him,
has no such will and intention. An apostate deliberately turns
his back on God and the light, to bury himself in darkness.

Nor is there any just inference to be drawn from the doctrine
that the heathen have not been abandoned to a hopeless doom of
perdition, which should diminish the zeal of Christians for their
conversion. It is not true, as is sometimes said, that the only
imperative motive for missionary zeal lies in the conviction that
the heathen must all fall into everlasting fire unless they are
rescued by Christian missionaries. It is enough that Christianity
will give them easier and more abundant means of grace, by
which a much greater number will be actually saved than we
can possibly hope for otherwise. It is worth much labor and
sacrifice even to put an end to the slave-trade and other horrors
of paganism, to diffuse the blessings of civilization, and to make
the world better and happier.

Moreover, we ought to consider the glory of God, the honor
of Jesus Christ, the triumph of the taith, the exaltation of Chris-
tianity, the victory of truth over error, the fulfilment of the com-
mandment of the Lord to preach the Gospel to all nations, as the
highest and most imperative motives for the effort to make Chris-
tianity literally universal. AUGUSTINE F. HEWIT.

MY VIOLIN.

WHEN the soft shadows end
Day's many-voiced din,
Careless where others wend,

My footsteps bend
Toward my trusty friend,

My Violin.
Its sober suit of dun
Hideth a soul within
Passionate as the sun ;

And oh ! there's none
My soul hath stronger won,

Dear Violin !

What is its song its creed
Borrowed from Nature's book?
Pleasure it doth not plead

Like to Pan's reed,
Plucked where through merry mead

Babbles the brook :
VOL. XLVIII. 31

482 MY VIOLIN. [Jan.,

Singeth no lust of gain,
As doth the Siren shell,
Tempting, ah ! not in vain,

To trust the main,
And seek the golden grain

Men love too well :
Ah, no ! a softer song
Sings it than reed or lyre ;
Heard as when zephyrs throng

The boughs among,
And wake to strophes long

The woodland choir.
Poet ! whose every word
Melts this rapt heart of mine,
Joyance of bee and bird

Thy heart hath heard
Till every fibre stirred

With thrill divine!
So when thy minstrelsy
Pleadeth the higher themes
Sung in Earth's jubilee

To Deity-
How thy poor cage to me

Transfigured seems !
Yet hath it something, too,
Like to a mother's croon ;
Mourning the joy it knew,

Thrilled thro' and thro',
When from the latticed blue

Shone stars and moon !
Hark to the melody
Flowing so clear, so thin
Naught feel I, hear, or see

But thee and me
Sharing one ecstasy,

My Violin!

Dearest! my dreaming ear
Presses thy throbbing heart;
Each murmur, soft and clear,

Ravished I hear;
Oh! that our souls so near

Ever should part!
Philadelphia. HUGH T. HENRY.

1889.] THE CROSS OF EXPIATION. 483

THE CROSS OF EXPIATION.

AND still the fat woman talked on. She had talked without
cessation for some hours now ; it seemed to Tamson as if she had
talked all night, but this may be taken as a stretch of exhausted
imagination. Certain it is, however, that the latter had dropped
into short, uncomfortable naps to the sound of the loud, strident
Voice, and had awakened from them to hear it still pursuing its
monologue, still recounting with much detail the life history of
its owner, her childhood, girlhood, and present mode of existence
with all its attendant circumstances, and with such collateral adven-
tures as from time to time suggested themselves.

The engine throbbed and thumped like the pulse of one in
high fever ; with every movement of the boat the misty oil-lamp
rose and fell ; the cabin was small and stuffy ; to the smell of red
velvet and straw which Channel-boat cabins always possess was
added an odor of stale fruit ; when Tamson closed her eyes she
could imagine herself in the purlieus of Covent Garden market
late in the afternoon when the slightly damaged contents of the
stalls are offered at a low price.

" My father," continued the fat woman, " would not hear of it ;
he was frantic, simply frantic. ' I would rather follow you to your
grave,' he said.''

Poor Tamson tried to goad her weary attention with the spur
of politeness, and to at least seem interested in the love-story she
was listening to, when the cabin-door opened and a fair-bearded,
weather-beaten face looked in.

" Morning, ladies ; anything I can do for you ? The sun 's rising
and it 's a lovely day. You'd better let me help you on deck."

And the steward, not deigning to answer* one of the questions
which were poured on him by Tamson's companion, walked to
the girl's berth, and, bundling her up in her shawls and wraps,
half-led, half-carried her up the stairs. He settled her comfort-
ably on an unencumbered bit of the deck (most of it was covered
with hampers and baskets piled and packed one on the other), her
back against a soft bale of stuff and her face towards a distant line
of hilly shore. He brought her some tea, and while she drank it
the captain came down from the bridge and stopped to inquire
how she felt.

"If it had been a fine night," he said, " I'd ha' had you up
here. I reckon you didn't get much sleep with her." And he
jerked his head expressively towards the cabin.

484 THE CROSS OF EXPIATION. [Jan.,

" Is she really the chaplain's wife?" asked Tamson, whose ideas
of the clergy and their helpmeets were taken from her own expe-
rience of Cornish vicars and vicaresses, among whom she had
always been a petted favorite.

" Yes," answered the captain, " but he's a mighty poor soul ;
there an't more than half a dozen Protestants in Vilport. I ex-
pect his bishop put him where he'd do the least harm.''

The lady whose husband he was thus commenting on appear-
ing at that moment, Captain Reed abruptly took his departure.

" I wish I'd had my tea here," said the fat woman. " It's much
pleasanter than down below. That is Vilport, over there to the
left; we shall be in in an hour or so now. This is your first visit
to France, you say ? Are you going to stay with friends? There
are very few English residents in Vilport just ourselves, the
Charnpneys, and Mr. Sendel, the timber merchant. Are you
going to visit the Sendels?"

"No."

"The Champneys?"

''No."

A gleam of rage came into the fat woman's eye. She avenged
her baffled curiosity by remarking : " There are two or three
other families, small skippers and such like, but not people we
should care to know."

This maddeningly uncommunicative girl did not look like the
daughter of a "small skipper." She wore her dark-blue gown
with a certain style, and the name on her trunk was Pommeroy.
Mrs. Bradley, who prided herself on her knowledge of such
things, was aware that this was the name of a good old Dorset-
shire family. She was dying to find out where the girl came
from and where she was going; yet in all the fifteen hours which
they had spent in each other's society on the little packet-boat
that carried fruit and butter and an occasional passenger from
the Norman to the Sussex coast and vice-versa, she had not been
able to extract one definite answer.

As a matter of fact, Tamson Pommeroy was not of a reserved
nature. She would have talked with tolerable freedom had her
fellow-passenger been of a different calibre. She would have
been even glad to ask sundry questions as to Vilport and its in-
habitants ; but she shrank from this obtrusively conversational
being, and her persistent silence at length met with its reward.
Mrs. Bradley became offended and withdrew to the other side of
the boat.

They approached nearer and nearer the coast, and at about

1889.] THE CROSS OF EXPIATION. 485

nine o'clock were so close to it that Tamson could see the roofs of
the houses peeping from among the trees. It was a long line of
undulating hill, cut into here and there by deep, fertile valleys.
From the boat it looked as if the trees grew to the water's edge ;
and indeed at high tide the beach was but an insignificant strip.
A range of hill rose towards the west and culminated in one ex-
treme point up whose steep sides clambered the woods ; at the
foot clustered the town of Vilport.

The boat went snorting fussily into the harbor. As it neared
the quay there arose a great clamor from blue-clad commission-
aires and ragged nondescripts who were eagerly awaiting its ar-
rival. Tamson had lived all her life in the glorious Cornish
country ; but here was something which almost took her breath
away. It was no extraordinary scenic grandeur, but the sense of
sunlight, air, and color; the strange houses, eight and nine stories
high, some of them bearing traces of great architectural beauty,
reflecting their clear outlines in the waters of the basin around
which they stood ; the grim old lieutenance opce used as a de-
fence against the English, who in spite of brave resistance cap-
tured the place over and over again, planting their flag no less
than fifteen times on the tower of the fort ; the oddly active men
on the shore, who could not even throw a rope without excited
yells and gestures all made a scene as interesting as it was dis-
tinctly foreign.

" Come, ladies, you must get ashore as quickly as possible,"
said the captain.

In obedience to his command Tamson followed a small, nimble
personage, who had shouldered her trunks, to a long shed. Her
knowledge of French was absolutely nil. I doubt if she could
have even said bon jour, or, saying it, would have understood its
meaning. Her conductor spoke a little English, and she gathered
from him that this was the custom-house, and that the fierce-look-
ing individual indued with a cock-hat and sword was demanding
her keys. The- ceremony of examination over, she left her boxes
in the dingy building and walked out into the June noonday.
The boat was being unloaded ; dozens of empty baskets were
carried off to make room for the full ones. There were crates
and boxes of high-smelling cheeses, coops of poultry, osier bas-
kets of eggs and butter and cherries. Tamson had never ima-
gined there were so many kinds of cherries in the world. There
were red and white ones, small and large, little guignes, yellow
and black, clearly crimson, almost transparent " courtes queux,"
and great purple-cheeked beauties darkly wine-colored around
the stone.

486 THE CROSS OF EXPIATION. [Jan.,

She watched the loading of the boat for some time ; then she
began to look around for the unknown person who was to meet
her. She thought it would be her grandfather himself ; yes,
surely it must be her grandfather. Her imagination had already
clothed him with a personality. He would be tall and thin, up-
right in spite of his great age, and distinguished-looking an
old edition of the father, she could just remember. His letter
was dated Chateau des Roquettes ; that was the name of his
place. Chateau meant castle. " Was it anything like Tregenna
Castle?" she wondered, or " Tregothnan ? " or "Sir John St.
Aubyn's place on St. Michael's Mount?" How lovely it would
be to live in a battlemented building with trim gardens on one
side and the sea washing against the walls on the other! In the
meantime she wished he would come ; it was past two o'clock,
and she was desperately hungry. A feeling of despair crept over
her ; she had almost resolved to seek her ci-devant persecutor,
Mrs. Bradley, and ask her advice, when a gentleman came up.
He was rather stout and seemed to feel the heat ; his straw hat
was pushed back so that its outer brim rested on his shoulders
and for.med a sort of speckled black and white halo around his
fair, flushed face.

" I think you must be Mile, de PommereV' he said, raising the
halo ; " if so, I am sent to meet you. I am the British consul."

" Oh ! " said Tamson, with a little gasp, " I'm so glad there's
somebody to take care of me."

" We will go in my office," he said ; " we can talk better there
than in this sun."

So together they dived up a narrow street, and under a great
archway over which ramped the royal arms of England, and
so into a cool and shady little room. Here Mr. Champneys ex-
plained to Tamson that her grandfather had commissioned him
to meet her and put her in the diligence. Her ultimate destina-
tion, the Chateau of Les Roquettes, was about five miles off.

" The diligence does not start till five o'clock," said the con-
sul. " I have ordered some lunch to be brought to you here. I
will come in again by and by and see how you are getting
along."

About four o'clock he returned. " Well," he asked, " were
the cutlets good ? That's all right. So you have never seen
your grandfather, you say ? "

" No. He is my father's grandfather, my great-grandfather.
I didn't know of his existence until a few weeks ago, and then
Mr. Tyacke, my lawyer, told me about him. When my mother

1889.] THE CROSS OF EXPIATION. 487

died in the autumn Mr. Tyacke wrote to him ; it was a long time
before he could convince him that I was really my father's child.
He had to get all sorts of proofs and certificates."

" And then ? "

" And then he said that I must come over here."

" And were you glad ? "

"No, sorry. I hated leaving Mallow. Shall I like Les Ro-
quettes ? Is the house large ? "

" Not very ; at least I imagine not, as I have never been in-
side. Do you speak French ? "

" Not a word."

" Well, you're very plucky to come over here alone to peo-
ple whom you have never seen. Don't you feel nervous ? "

" No. I dare say I shall when I arrive at the chateau. I
shall wait outside the gate for half an hour or so, and then make
a bolt for the front door. I am never nervous until I am
brought face to face with whatever it is that scares me."

" I will walk to the diligence with you. I have already se-
cured you a seat."

The diligence, which left the hotel known as the Cheval Blanc
twice a day, going as far as the fashionable watering-place Ben-
ville, was a great, red, lumbering vehicle, of a design positively
archaic ; it was drawn by two horses, and its arrival and depar-
ture was a bi-daily excitement to the inhabitants of Vilport.
The place Mr. Champneys had taken for Tamson, and into which
he helped her climb, was a narrow, padded bench under a leather
cover that looked like a superannuated gig-hood stuck on to the
body of the conveyance. The driver sat next to her, with his
right foot on the shaft, holding his reins loosely and vociferating
frantically. At last, after much swaying and rattling, many
"youp-pi's" and " houp-la's," they got clear of the town and its
cobbled streets, and were out on the country road, which wound
now up, now down, and now along the level among gardens and
orchards, and fields of rye and barley which came rustling up to
the roadside. The driver spoke several times to Tamson, but
she could only shake her head and smile in answer to his re-
marks ; so, after a little, he addressed them exclusively to his
horses, of which one was white and the other brown. > The white
.one, being lazy, was apostrophized frequently in this style : " Pig
and sluggard! Wilt thou exert thyself, thou species of idiot?
Wilt thou see thy brother die before thine eyes, O beast that
thou art?" Then to the brown one: "But thou, my little one,
my cabbage, my rat of paradise, thou who dost all the work,

488 THE CROSS OF EXPIATION. [Jan.,

thou shalt have a treat to-night ; so, so, my angel, gently up the
hill. Ah ! devil, I will make thee suffer. I will touch thy
hide ! " And then crack went the whip ; the fearful threats and
imprecations ending in nothing more alarming than a series of
pistol-like reports produced by the long lash.

The road ran by the coast, and the sea was never out of sight
for more than a few minutes; several times they stopped to de-
liver parcels, and once the driver returned with his cap full of
cherries, which he insisted on Tamson sharing with him. At last,
as the evening deepened and grew gray, they approached the
foot of a steep hill ; slowly the tired horses climbed it, the heavy
coach groaning and creaking. It was very dark, for tall trees
on either side interlaced their branches overhead. The road,
hitherto white with dust, was now damp, and water lurked in
little puddles. The summit reached, they dashed on wildly for
a hundred yards or so, and then stopped at an iron gate. On
either hand the gate was a hedge, and behind the hedge a tangle
of acacia, thorn, and chestnut trees ; no sign of habitation was
visible. Only when Tamson pressed her face against the iron
bars she caught a glimpse of a house, of no more imposing ex-
terior than an ordinary English farmstead. The garden was
unkempt and wild, with beds full of rank hydrangeas and tall
poppies ; just to the left of the gate was a long, narrow pond
covered with green weed. This could not be Les Roquettes!
The diligence had disappeared no, there it was, come out from
the shadow again on the winding road. Wildly Tamson shout-
ed, thinking that the driver had mistaken her destination, but a
dreary echo was all the shout produced. Not a living thing was
in sight, neither cat nor dog nor sheep nor cow only the girl
standing forlorn beside her baggage. She raised her hand and
jerked the bell ; harsh and loud the sound clanged out on the
startled silence ; there was the click of wooden shoes on the
paved pathway, and a woman in a tall white cap appeared. She
seemed to have expected Tamson, for she smiled and signed for
her to follow. Down the garden path they went, between the
dusky laurels, through the open door, and across a dark and
slippery hall into a long, low room. The windows of the room
looked out upon the sea, and by one window sat an old, old
lady whose face was seamed and puckered into a thousand
wrinkles ; the hands which lay in her lap exactly matched in
color the yellow-white beads of the ivory rosary she was finger-
ing. She did not notice their entrance, her lips continued to
move, until the servant touched her and spoke at some length, as

1889.] THE CROSS OF EXPIATION. 489

though explaining something. Then the old lady rose, and,
trembling violently, turned to Tamson ; but what she said was
unintelligible, for she spoke in French. It was doubtless a wel-
come, for she kissed the girl kindly while the tears ran down her
cheeks; she held her at arm's length, looking at her with that
curious, retrospective look peculiar to old people a look as
though searching for the traces of some dead face. By and by
the old lady grew calmer ; she motioned to Tamson to sit down
beside her in an ancient, stiff-backed chair whose cushions were
covered in faded tapestry. As conversation was impossible, the
two could only smile at each other, and with little nods and pats
convey their well-meaning. A lamp was brought in, followed by
dinner ; and soon after dinner the maid appeared with candles,
and Tamson understood that it was bedtime.

Her bed-room was a large, gloomy apartment with a huge bed
in an alcove ; the mantelpiece was decorated with a gilt clock
with a group representing the sacrifice of Iphigenia on the top ;
it was flanked by branching candelabra and two vases full of
bouquets of shell flowers; the curtains and hangings were in
heavy damask of a stony drab, and the place smelt musty. She
was very tired, and, utterly overcome with the dreariness of the
situation, she flung herself on the bed and wept bitterly. She
was not without courage, but it had been severely tried.

Life, up to her nineteenth year> had been such an easy thing
with her, she had accepted it as it came, smooth and bright.
She and her mother had always lived in the cottage in the pretty
Cornish town of Mallow where she had been born, and where
her father had died while she was yet a baby. Her mother's in-
come had always been sufficient for their wants. She had not
troubled herself to inquire as to its source any more than she
had bothered about the stock she herself sprang from. Then
suddenly her mother died; and when the first stunning effects of
her grief had passed and she could review her position calmly,
she learnt how peculiar that position was. She was absolutely
penniless ; her mother's money had died with her. Mr. Tyacke,
the lawyer, who managed everything for her, told her that she
had rich relations whose duty it would be to take care of her,
and to them he had written. He told her also that these relations
lived in France, and that she was of French extraction ; her real
name was Thomasine (of which came Tamson, the Cornish cor-
ruption) Valerie Rival Pommere des Roquettes ; her grandfather
when he came to England, some fifty years before, had dropped
his surname together with his title, and had been known only by

49 THE CROSS OF EXPIATION. [Jan.,

the Anglicized appellative " Pommeroy '' ; her father's grand-
father, the Vicomte des Roquettes, was still living, and it was to
him the lawyer wrote. After some correspondence came the
final order. Tamson was to go to France, to the remote corner
of Normandy where the Chateau of Les Roquettes was, and live.

She was excited and rather pleased at the prospect. It was
sad to have to leave all the friends she loved, but at nineteen
untravelled, unsophisticated nineteen "abroad " means so much.
Only when she arrived at Vilport and found no one there to meet
her did she begin to think that perhaps these unknown grandpa-
rents wouldn't be altogether perfect. And then the dismal house,
the stern maid-servant and the feeble old lady, the inability to
make herself understood, the loneliness and desertion of the
place, added to her bodily fatigue, overcame her. It was not in
her nature to weep long, however, and her tears were soon ex-
hausted ; she flung open the window and leaned out. The air
coming across the dew-drenched garden was sweet, heavy with
the breath of honeysuckle and roses. In the distance she could
hear the sea washing against the cliff; it sounded friendly and
homelike ; it sang its low song soothingly, and, lulled by that
song, she fell asleep.

In the morning the sun shone and the sea was laughing in
its light; through the window came the hymn of birds and the
hum of insects. It was impossible to feel sad. Her breakfast of
coffee and rolls she took alone, and afterwards went out to ex-
plore the garden. There were clipped yew-trees and holly-
bushes, winding walks, and a dilapidated summer-house with
statues of heathen gods and goddesses mouldering in the .niches ;
there was a big, deserted stable-yard, and beyond it a field in
which stood a picturesque farmhouse, whose stone court was
full of ducks and geese and gobbling turkeys; the field ended on
the edge of a low, indented cliff, down which she scrambled to
the beach. Following the shore-line some little way, she came
suddenly upon a smooth, green plot of ground on an elevated
point of the cliff; it was enclosed in railings, and in the centre of
the ground stood a huge cross ; it seemed cut from one solid
block of gray granite, mounted on a flight of square steps ; it
must have baen visible far out at sea. Tamson walked around
and around the cross, but no word was written upon it ; only on
one of the steps lay a bouquet of faded wild flowers, dog-roses,
meadow-sweet, and marguerites.

The maid had given her to understand that lunch would be
at twelve. She wondered if she should meet her great-grand-

1889.] THE CROSS OF EXPIATION. 491

father, and if he spoke English. At any rate, she must learn
French, and learn it quickly; she meant to devote her afternoons
to study. But no grandfather appeared, only the old lady with
her shaking head and pale, wan face, who, after lunch, was en-
sconced in the window by the maid (she called her Gracieuse, a
name ill-fitted to the hard-featured woman), a foot-stool filled
with hot charcoal placed beneath her feet and a little table by
her side ; on the table were some books Thomas a Kempis and
The Devout Life and a glass of sugared water. Then, with her
rosary between her fingers, she turned her face towards the
west, and where she sat the big, stone cross was full in view.

Three days rolled by. It was Sunday, and at nine o'clock a
chaise which must have been built half a century ago came
creaking to the door; it was driven by a youth who tried to look
as elderly as his hat and livery, and almost succeeded. Tamson,
her great-grandmother, and Gracieuse got into the chaise and
were driven slowly away. The church was about two miles off,
a quaint little edifice, with a congregation of peasants in dark blue
blouses and white caps. Tamson was a little doubtful as to the
exact function of three farmers who sat on a bench in the chan-
cel, their broad backs to the congregation ; but she soon discov-
ered 'they were there to chant the responses and lead the singing.
She was also much puzzled at the "pain be"nit " ; it is not custo-
mary in England to offer this blest bread.

In rural France two little acolytes make the tour of the
church, carrying baskets full of square bits of cake, to which
each person helps himself, the greedily inclined taking a handful,
the modest one or two scraps. The cake is provided by the
parishioners, each in turn, and great is the emulation among
good housewives as to the excellence and quantity ; what is left
is distributed to the poor.

After Mass the people stood in little groups in the church-
yard, waiting to say bonjour to Monsieur le Cure; presently he
came, a genial-looking man, with a kindly word for each. He
spoke to Madame la Comtesse des Roquettes, and Gracieuse
answered him; then he turned to Tamson. " I speak English,"
he said ; " oh ! yes, my dear."

Tamson could have hugged him with delight, but contented
herself with grasping his outstretched hand. " I'm so glad," she
said; " I haven't spoken to a soul since I came here."

His answer was a benevolent smile and a repetition of the
words "all right," then a flow of fluent French. She stared a
little blankly. " Do you understand me ? " she asked.

49 2 THE CROSS OF EXPIA now. [Jan.,

He laughed and nodded.

" All right, my dear, all right. I speak English very well
oh ! yes, all right."

Then the terrible truth dawned on her like the raven, " what
he uttered was his only stock and store " ; he had aired it from
a desire to say something agreeable to the new-comer, and per-
haps also from a little innocent vanity. Poor Tamson, appre-
ciating his motives, tried to smile cheerfully and look pleased.

As she helped her grandmother to remount the steps of the
chateau she noticed some one in the hall. The change from the
glaring noonday to the dark shadow was so great she could not
see what manner of man addressed her ; only she heard a voice
through the general gloom :

" Welcome to Les Roquettes, if I am not too late to bid you
welcome. I was compelled to be absent when you arrived."

By this time her eyes, grown accustomed to the dimness,
could make out the speaker ; it was her great-grandfather. He
went on :

" It is only lately that I was made aware of the existence of
so charming a relative. Messieurs your father and grandfather
did not deign to keep me au courant of their affairs. In the
salon I shall be better able to see if you resemble my dutiful
son." Here he opened a door to the left. Tamson had already
peeped into the room beyond, but was not attracted by its white
walls and strips of looking-glass and its rows of Louis XVI.
chairs. In each panel on the wall hung a portrait in pastel.
Afterwards, when she had leisure to examine these portraits, she
was struck by the likeness she bore to some of them.

Her grandfather (for we needs must drop the prefix great)
placed her in front of the window, and scrutinized her with a
slightly amused, slightly sarcastic expression.

" Well, what do you think of me?" she asked rather pertly.

" Mademoiselle, there can be but one opinion of you," he an-
swered, bowing low ; "permit me again to say how charmed I
am to see you."

He was a strange-looking old gentleman, this ancestor of hers ;
in his youth he must have been about the average height ; age.
unable to bend his stiff back, had revenged itself by shrivelling
him ; his wizened face was closely shaven, his hair and eyes still
dark ; it was a proud face and cynical. On entering the house
her grandmother had walked past her husband, and at lunch
Tamson noticed that they did not speak to one another ; he was
studiously polite in attending 1 to his wife and waiting on her,

1889.] THE CROSS OF EXPIATION. 493

but she never acknowledged his courtesies by so much as an in-
clination of the head.

At first Tamson thought that her grandmother was perhaps
indisposed or a little out of humor, but by and by the terrible
truth dawned on her that for some reason husband and wife
never exchanged a word. Some sin had been committed by one
or the other too grave for forgiveness. Every day the vicomte
inquired politely after madame's health, every day the answer
was returned to him by Gracieuse, the old lady never by a
sign admitting that she was aware of his presence ; only an in-
creased trembling of her hands and head betrayed her emotion
when he was near.

The first dismal meal was only a sample of its successor?.
To Tamson the words dejeuner and diner grew to mean an hour
or an hour and a half of torture ; there were always half a dozen
courses to be gone through, and the jaws of age move slowly.
Dawdle and trifle as she would with her food, she had always
finished long before the others, and there was nothing to do but
to contemplate the old couple who had lived their lives and
were going to their graves with so much bitter enmity between
them. There was more ceremony when the vicomte was at
home ; a man in livery assisted at table, and after dinner they all
repaired to the salon and sat there in state till bedtime. There
was a spindle-legged piano in the salon. Once Tamson muster-
ed courage to touch it, but the chord she struck sounded weak
and tremulous, and the reverberation ended in a snap which an-
nounced the worn-out string had broken ; this was not encourag-
ing, and she made no further effort at music.

As midsummer approached the houses in the neighborhood
filled. Often Tamson would pass a party of boys and girls
laughing and chattering on the highway. She caught a rumor
now and again of gay doings at other chateaux excursions,
picnics, garden parties but none of this festivity came her way ;
the inhabitants of Les Roquettes were left severely alone. The
girl grew nervous and low-spirited. She moped through her
days, wandering aimlessly about the lanes and on the beach, and
often passing hours on the steps of the stone cross, which had a
strange fascination for her. She noticed that when her grand-
father was at home there were always bouquets of fresh flowers
on the steps ; as the season advanced and roses gave way to
asters, the bouquets would be made of golden-rod, ragwort,
everything wild and uncultivated. One September morning when
she was out earlier than usual she saw him walking slowly across

494 THE CROSS OF EXPIATION. [Jan.,

the field ; his hands were full of bright-hued leaves and berries.
He laid them down and knelt beside them, his head uncov-
ered in the sharp morning air.

Of the inhabitants of Les Roquettes, her grandfather was the
one she knew best ; he would sometimes talk to her for five or
ten minutes, and he spoke English perfectly, She could now
understand, and even speak, French fairly well, and made valiant
efforts to get into conversation with her grandmother ; but the
old lady seemed not to care to hold communication save with
her books and thoughts.

One evening when they were in the salon Tamson made a
resolve. She was sick of mysteries. She would penetrate
them. She would find out what it was that had raised the im-
penetrable barrier between husband and wife, what it was that
had exiled her father and his father, and above all what was the
meaning of the stone cross.

"Grandfather," she said, "is there some one buried out there,
in.the field?"

He raised his head and looked at her, his sunken eyes illu-
minated by a sudden gleam.

"What field?"

" The field by the beach, where the cross is."

" Yes; it is a grave."

She longed to ask more, but something in his tone forbade
further questioning. She dare not add, " Whose grave? "

"Would you like to drive with me to Vilport?" he asked one
morning, some days after her attempted questioning. A drive
to Vilport, after the long weeks of solitude, seemed a proposal
ot absolute dissipation, which she gladly accepted. They started
offside by side in the high gig which was the vicomte's especial
conveyance. The little town seemed so bright and lively ; the
shops, to her unaccustomed eyes, presented vast attractions. It
was market-day, and the fuss and bustle of the market square
was most entertaining. Her grandfather had business with his
avout, and left her to wander about among the stalls, whose
owners implored her to buy poultry, melons, and strange little
cheeses that were damp and soft and evil-smelling. She was
enjoying herself immensely when she came face to face with Mrs.
Bradley. In her joy at meeting some one that she knew she
shook her hand cordially.

" Well," said the fat woman, " this is a surprise. I never ex-
pected to see you again alive. My house is close here ; you must

1889.] THE CROSS OF EXPIATION. 495

come in and have a cup of tea with me. You really must. I
will take no refusal, and I have heaps to tell you and talk to you
about."

Tamson was rather taken aback by this greeting, which im-
plied some years, at least, of intimacy. However, she accepted
the invitation, and by and by they were seated in Mrs. Bradley's
drawing-room.

" And so you are Monsieur de Pommere's granddaughter ! "
began the chaplain's wife. " Why didn't you tell me so on the
boat? I could have given you many a hint."

"Thank you," answered Tamson, a little stiffly. "I don't
think any hints were necessary. Why don't you give my grand-
father his proper title?" The word " vicomte " was a little im-
pressive to her English ears, and she thought as well to maintain
her dignity with this very familiar person.

"His title? Oh! well, you know in France the surname is
used as often as the title ; but if you prefer it, I will say the
Vicomte des Roquettes. How is the old lady ? "

" Very well, thank you."

" Wonderful how they both last, isn't it ? You know he is
ninety-four and she can't be much younger seven or eight years,
perhaps. It really seems, as an old woman said to my husband
the other day, 'as if the Bon Dieu had forgotten them.' Are you
a Catholic ? "

"Yes."

" You believe in purgatory, don't you, then ? Some one said
to me once that people sometimes made their purgatory on earth.
I think your grandparents have made theirs, don't you ? "

" Really, Mrs. Bradley, I don't presume to think about the
length of other people's purgatories. My own is as much as I
can contemplate."

" Exactly ; of course ; but isn't it a very uncomfortable
house ?" Poor Tamson ! her regard for truth would not permit
her to say no. She avoided the question by answering :

"All French houses are uncomfortable, I think, judged by
our English standard."

"Oh ! no, they are not ; quite the contrary. But tell me, is it
true they never speak to each other ? "

Tamson was beginning to bitterly repent her folly in having
let herself be beguiled into a position where she could be exposed
to such merciless " pumping." Without waiting for a reply her
persecutor went on :

" I don't see how you can sleep at night I really don't. /

496 THE CROSS OF EXPIATION. [Jan.,

couldn't in the house with that fearful old man ; aren't you afraid
of him?"

" Why should I be ? "

" Well, I couldn't ; there are such strange stories about.
They say the place is haunted, and then that cross, you know
they say the shadow slants right over the lawn. And of course no
one goes near the place. Everybody shuns it. / wouldn't pass
it after dark."

" I must go now," said Tamson, rising and mustering all her
dignity ; "don't trouble to come to the door."

" Well, my dear, you're in a great hurry, but just let me say
this: If you should ever want a friend, you know I mean if
anything should happen, and there's no telling what might happen,
for they say things like that take such a hold on people as to
force them to a similar action Margaret Bradley is here and
willing to help you."

"Mrs. Bradley," said Tamson, facing round, " what do you
mean? What are you hinting at when you say those things?
What is the mystery at Les Roquettes ? I insist upon knowing."

"You mean to say you don't know ? Well, then, least said
soonest mending, and I'll hold my tongue."

" You'll do no such thing ! " cried the girl, who was now
thoroughly roused, her eyes flashing with indignation. Laying
hold of Mrs. Bradley 's arm, she marched her back into the salon.
" Now you will tell me from beginning to end what you mean,
or I will fetch my grandfather and he will make you speak ! "

" Mercy ! Don't be so violent! And as to him, I wouldn't
have him in the house ; he's nothing more nor less than a
murderer ! There, now you've got it, and don't blame me ; you
forced me."

A shiver of horror passed over the girl ; she stood for a
moment transfixed and cold, then the old principle that blood is
thicker than water forced her to speak in defence of her kindred.

" It is a lie !" she said, in a low, clear voice.

" You are mighty polite, I must say. I wish for your sake it
was a lie. I can afford to forgive you your rudeness, poor child !
but it is none the less a fact that your grandfather is a murderer.
He killed his wife's brother before her eyes."

" There where the cross is?"

" No; that belongs to another story just as bad or rather it
belongs to the first part of the story. Come, sit down, and I will
tell you all about it."

Fascinated, sick at heart, yet unable to tear herself away,

1889] THE CROSS OF EXPIATION. 497

Tamson obeyed, and Mrs. Bradley, delighted to have secured
one to whom the old scandal was a novelty, settled herself for
half an hour's solid enjoyment.

" It's years and years ago," she began, " and, of course, I
don't know all the ins and outs of the case ; but there was some
one the old vicomte cared for very much better than he cared
for his wife, people say. It seems his wife was very proud and
sullen, and not as nice to him as she might have been, and this
young girl she was a sort of companion was very charming,
gentle, and good. No one ever breathed a word against her, poor
thing ! but the vicomtesse grew furiously jealous and made the
girl's life a burden to her. The vicomte saw how she was
worried, and he promised to get her another situation. The
vicomtesse found a note, or something which he had written to
the companion, and she was beside herself with rage. Her brother
was with her at the time ; he always hated the vicomte, and
they say he put the girl out with his own hands. Anyhow, it
was night when the note was found, a winter's night and stormy.
The vicomte was away, and his wife went to the girl's room
and insisted on her getting up and leaving the house then and
there. Madame's brother, as I said, helped turn the poor thing
out. Out she went into the wind and rain, the servants heard her
moans and cries, but dare not interfere. She wandered about, but
in the darkness she lost her way; perhaps she did it on purpose
in her misery who knows? Anyhow, she missed her footing on
the cliff, and the next day her body came ashore just there where
the cross stands."

" And the vicomte? "

" The vicomte came home next evening ; he heard the story
here in Vilport, and he rode like a madman to the chateau. He
found his wife and her brother seated at chess in the hall. There
was a fearful scene. He challenged the brother there and then
to fight, and swore that if he wouldn't he would shoot him like a
dog. They fought with only the chess-table between them.
The brother fired at the vicomte's arm, but he aimed right at
the heart, and madame's brother fell dead. They say you can
see the blood-stain on the floor to this day."

" Go on," said Tamson, too breathlessly interested to have the
recital stop.

" The vicomte stood his ground like a man. He would not

run away, and, besides, he had friends at court and the king

didn't want to punish one of his devoted adherents; so he got

off with a fine and an injunction forbidding him to go to Paris

VOL. XLVIII. 32

THE CROSS OF EXPIA TION. [Jan.,

for five years. Everybody expected that he would at least go
away from Les Roquettes in fact, from Normandy. But no,
there he stayed, as bold as brass, determined to live it down ; and
perhaps he would have lived it down had his wife helped him.
But, as I said before, she was a proud, cold woman, and she
never forgave him. She would not go away, for she took up
the position of injured innocence, and so there they have lived
ever since. He put up the cross where the girl's body was
found. He has never been inside a church since the day of
the duel, but they say he goes and prays at the cross for hours.
There was a son, a young lad about eighteen or nineteen. I
suppose he couldn't endure his home, for he disappeared soon
after the murder."

" It was not a murder," interrupted Tamson. " I suppose the
son was my grandfather ; he was an artist, and I know he went to
Cornwall when he was quite young."

" He must have married early," said Mrs. Bradley. " A man
does not often see the fourth generation, even if he lives to be as
old as the vicomte."

" I know he married early," answered Tamson ; " so did my
father. He was only twenty-six when he died, and I was three
years old. I think you meant well, but I wish you had not told
me, the tragedy is such an old one fifty years, you say ? It
might be forgotten."

" Ah ! yes. But, you know, the sins of the fathers, unto the
third and fourth generation. Of course it makes you feel un-
comfortable."

Only the woman's absolute stupidity freed her from a sus-
picion of malice. She was honestly too b$te to understand how
her words hurt, and too much in love with the sound of her own
voice to imagine it could possibly be obnoxious to others.

Tamson found her grandfather waiting for her at the door of
the Cheval Blanc. She could not prevent a shrinking feeling
as she took her seat beside him, though, looking at him as he
drove slowly homeward in the autumn twilight, it was difficult
to connect him with the events whose recital she had just listen-
e,d to.

For fifty years this awful silence had reigned between them !
For fifty years one had been hardly unforgiving, the other per-
haps unsoticitous of pardon.

At dinner she could not eat, she was so preoccupied with
watching those two, the hero and heroine of so fierce a drama.
It really seemed, as Mrs. Bradley had said, as though God had

1889.] THE CROSS OF EXPIATION. 499

forgotten them and left them to drag the chain of their existence
through endless years.

When she rose to go to bed her grandfather called her to his
side. " Are you happy here, child ? " he asked with unwonted
interest. " It must be terribly dull for you, and you look sad to-
night ; you are too young to be sad. Your eyes are like my
boy's," he continued " my boy who was so weak he could not
bear trouble, and ran away from home and country to avoid it.
If he had stayed it might have been different here. Well, child,
kiss me good-night."

Something in her face betrayed her, showed that she shrank
from his caress. He looked at her sharply. " What ! " he said,
" you too ? " Then he turned away.

He walked across the room and stood by a small table, his
back toward her. Such an old back it was, and it seemed to
have grown suddenly bent ; every line of it expressed loneliness
and desertion. Then two arms stole round his neck, and a soft
cheek lay against his withered one.

" I am here, grandfather," was all she said.

" Child," he answered, with a great sob, " no one has kissed
me for fifty years ! "

She drew him to a chair and knelt beside him, soothing him,
for he was weeping the scant few tears of extreme age. Her
touch had opened the floodgates of his imprisoned soul, and he be-
gan to speak of the past, taking it for granted that she knew the
whole sad story.

" I loved her," he said, " but it was a pure love. I was bad,
but not so bad as they imagined. Then that devil killed her.
The sight of her dead face maddened me, and then they all turn-
ed against me, even my son. I have had nothing to love for
fifty years, and without love man is damned."

When he became quieter she persuaded him to go to bed.
In the morning they met as usual, only she went to him and
greeted him lovingly instead of, as previously, with a formal
greeting.

November was upon them now, and the days were short, the
nights long and dreary. The wind swept the fallen leaves into
heaps about the garden, or blew them drifting along the paths.
The sea moaned restlessly ; sometimes when the tide was high the
spray would come up wet and salt against the windows.

One dark night Tamson awoke suddenly and started from
her sleep. Some one was moving in the house; up and down the
corridors she heard the sound of steps. Flinging on a dressing-

50O THE CROSS OF EXPIATION. [Jan.,

gown, she opened her door. There was a light in the hall below.
It was a square hall, furnished like a sitting-room, with a great
open fire-place. Candles and a fire were burning, and before
the latter was a table set with chessmen ; by the table were two
empty chairs, and standing near them her grandfather ; in the
background were the servants, Gracieuse and the others from
the kitchen.

The vicomte's eyes were blazing and his cheeks flushed ; he
was speaking in loud, angry tones to some unseen being.

" II est fou he is mad," said Gracieuse to the trembling
girl. " Can you not see ? This is the end." He was indeed de-
lirious, and his disordered brain was enacting once more the
scene of half a century ago the scene which had been in a man-
ner the last of his life, and had condemned him and his wife to a
living death. In his hand he held a long rapier ; the bare blade
glittered and flashed as he moved it from side to side. One of
the men went to him and tried to take the sword away, but he
turned so fiercely on him he was obliged to desist.

It was a horrible sight the old man, mad with imaginary rage,
raving and cursing, while the sweat poured down his brow ; the
frightened servants huddled together, fearful lest he should hurt
himself or them.

Then another step was heard ; it was Madame la Vicomtesse.
Quietly she moved down the stairs and across the hall to her
husband's side.

" Raoul," she said, laying her hand on his arm " Raoul,
come, come with me ; you must not stay here."

He dropped the sword, looking at her bewilderedly, not un-
derstanding ; then the voice he had not heard through such long
years went on.

"You are ill, dear come. You will not refuse me?" He
bowed with his old courtly grace, and they crossed the hall to-
gether, she leaning on her husband's arm, looking proudly before
her, with her head erect.

Tamson followed them upstairs to madame's room, but those
two alone went in. The door was gently shut ; what passed be-
yond it she never knew, only she waited patiently through the
dark hours.

When the morning was dawning the vicomtesse came out.

"Send for Monsieur le Cur6," she said.

The good priest came in haste. He was with the dying man
for a long, long time.

All that day and the next Tamson hoped to be admitted to

THE TROUBLE IN THE BOSTON SCHOOLS. 501

his bedside, but was forced to content herself with such little
offices as she could perform quietly. Her grandmother alone
waited on the vicomte, nursing- him jealously, as if she feared
lest any one should come between them. On the third day she
sent for Tamson.

" Come," she said ; "you are of our race, and he loves you.
Stay with him now. I have an errand I must do."

In a big invalid-chair lay the old man, pulled up to the win-
dow so that he could look across the snow-covered garden to
where the granite cross stood gray above the laurels.

He never spoke, never moved his eyes from the window, until
his wife returned ; then he looked at her inquiringly.

"I have taken the flowers,' 5 she said; "and see, I have
brought you some of them they are winter roses."

AGNES FARLEY MILLAR.

THE TROUBLE IN THE BOSTON SCHOOLS.

THE importance which belongs by right to the question of
education in the political economy of nations is pushed, under
the forms of a republican government, into a prominence rela-
tively greater than it holds elsewhere. Where power is to re-
main as a free gift in the hands of the people, subject to no law
of heredity or succession, it is obvious that enlightenment, which
is the only safeguard of power, should be the object of first and
most vital interest to the state. It is jealousy in regard to a
high standard of excellence which has given such sharpness to
discussions concerning the public-school question in the United
States during the last half-century ; it is reflection upon the best
means of attaining it which has led thoughtful minds on one side
to uphold, on the other to condemn, the proposed introduction of
private instruction. Apart from the large class which considers
religious training necessary in the daily formation of character,
and the other large class which demands that development of
the intellect in the future citizen shall be kept absolutely free
from the influence of creed, there are many minds occupied by
the problem, unbiassed by any consideration more narrow than
the ultimate effect upon the individual. It is too early yet to
anticipate a final verdict ; but at present public opinion is strong-
ly in favor of unsectarian methods. It has even, in the New
England States, gone to the extent of claiming that the common-

502 THE TROUBLE IN THE BOSTON SCHOOLS. [Jan.,

wealth shall be authorized to compel attendance on the public
school and to prevent the establishment of others.

A proceeding farther removed from equity and plain-dealing
than this it would be hard to imagine ; but we will assume for
the present that such a course is justifiable. We will pass over
the fact that a direct animus against a particular instead of a
general principle is shown at the outset by allowing the numer-
ous secular schools of the Baptists, Episcopalians, Methodists,
Wesleyans, and others to go unchallenged, while only those be-
longing to the Roman Catholic profession are attacked. We
will make a virtue of necessity, and allow the vox populi to be
the vox Dei, and proceed to investigate how the project of un-
sectarianism is carried out. With this purpose in view let us
look at some recent occurrences in Boston.

For generations this city has prided itself with some justice
upon holding place in the first rank among educationalists. It
has given to the school question its most careful attention,
best wisdom, and lavish support. The twenty-four members of
its school board hav$ been chosen almost wholly upon their
merits as men of intelligence, practical ability, and breadth of
character. Although nominated upon party tickets and voted
for in the general municipal election, the choice of names has
been kept admirably free from politics and partisanship, the same
candidate often being placed upon both Republican and Demo-
cratic ballots. The aim has honestly been to secure the best
men, and it has been carried out with great success. No salary,
patronage, or perquisites of any kind pertaining to the office,
it has been possible to keep the position substantially free from
the degrading elements which so often stain many otherwise
honorable places, and the best element among the people has
thus received willing representation. To the deliberations of
the body have invariably been brought courtesy, deference, and
a desire to make each measure serve the public good as com-
pletely as possible. Its various decisions have been carefully
studied, and if from time to time some lack of individual judg-
ment has tended toward a straining of principle or a deviation
from a broad and elevating policy, the sentiment of the whole
has never failed to correct or check the bias. The stigma of
prejudice or dishonest purpose could scarcely be farther remov-
ed from any body of earnest and enlightened men. During the
last five or six years the board has been nearly equally divided,
as is the population of the city, between the two sects, Catholic
and Protestant. In detail it was composed of a Congregational

1889.] THE TROUBLE IN THE BOSTON SCHOOLS. 503

minister, a Hebrew rabbi, half a dozen doctors, half a dozen law-
yers, a college president, one or two ex-school superintendents
and masters, two female members, and a quota of practical busi-
ness men. Until recently the mayor of the city was ex-officio
president, but a later regulation changed this ruling.

Before the committee, in the main thus constituted, a com-
plaint was brought in May of last year to the effect that in the
English High School a certain teacher had from time to time in-
sulted the intelligence of his pupils by giving erroneous inter-
pretations of historical facts, and had continued to do so after
his attention had been called to the mistake. The complainant
also stated that the teacher in question had " trespassed on the
forbidden ground of religion," and demanded an investigation,
provided the accusation was proven correct. An inquiry was
immediately instituted. The statements were found to be exact,
with the reservation on the teacher's part that the interpreta-
tions given by him were drawn from the text of the standard
history which had been for some years in use among the higher
grades of schools. This also was looked into. The book in
question, Swinton's, was discovered to be " misleading and am-
biguous," affording opportunity by its definitions for individual
prejudice or ignorance'to distort truth in proffering explanation.
The publishers of Swinton's History were thus advised by the
committee of investigation, and offered an opportunity of revis-
ing its mistakes ; the teacher, Mr. Travis, was admonished that
he was clearly outside his duties in meddling with religious sub-
jects at all, but that, if he still prefered to offer personal opinions
upon doctrinal points, he should make himself sure of the cor-
rectness of his statements. Neither suggestion was accepted.
The publishers declined to make any change, and Mr. Travis
persisted in his former line of conduct to the extent of recurring
to the subject in a set of examination papers given to 'his class.
The answers to these papers showed such a want of clear infor-
mation, and such an innocent misconception of the real 'facts on
the part of the pupils, that the committee proceeded to supple-
ment their earlier action by severer methods. Such an evident
bias had been imparted by Mr. Travis in the teaching given his
boys that his charge was transferred from the department of
mediaeval to that of ancient history, where such mistakes would
be hereafter impossible without, however, interfering either with
his rank or the salary belonging to it. At the same time Swin-
ton's was dropped from the authorized list of text-books.

Now, bearing in mind that the public schools were to be

504 THE TROUBLE IN THE BOSTON SCHOOLS. [Jan.,

kept as free from error as is consistent with human frailty, and
as removed from taint of religious bigotry as is possible to hu-
man conscientiousness, what other course was left open to the
men in charge of these interests? Two grave accusations had
been made ; both had been found to be correct. Not only re-
gard for the integrity and purity of education, but the positive
demand of public opinion for unsectarian teaching, required that
both these defects should be instantly remedied. The action as
taken was one of moderation and fairness, and it was practically
unanimous. Only two out of the twenty-four members voted
against the propriety of the rebuke, and it was thus placed on
record.

Hereupon ensues a result which makes one doubt either con-
sistency of principle or loyalty of purpose on the part of a
certain portion of the public. A storm of angry denunciation
sweeps through city and State. Mass-meetings of indignation
are held in Faneuil Hall and Tremont Temple ; newspapers give
large space to editorial comment and incendiary protestation ;
the pulpits of 'the city are made rostrums for fiery appeals to
the bigotry and prejudice of the people. Here and there a few
of the best journals notably the Advertiser try to stem the
torrent of popular vituperation by a calm statement of facts and
truth in the case, and by the urgent representation that justice
could be satisfied with no less, and clemency ask no more, than
the actual turn affairs had taken. It was as unnoted as a child's
wall of sand before the incoming tide, and as useless. A frenzy
seemed to possess both the populace and its leaders. A " Com-
mittee of a Hundred " chosen from secular ranks, and a com-
mittee of clerics from the Evangelical Alliance, were appointed to
wait upon the School Board with only the insufficient and often
erroneous data of the public press as foundation for complaint;
and upon .the occasions appointed for receiving these petitions of
remonstrance, every attempt at elucidation before the hearing
was deliberately and decidedly refused, as if they feared lest the
quarrel should be too easily settled. " You will not, then, allow
one of your own class, a Protestant minister like yourselves, to lay
before you the simple facts concerning his and our ground of
action?'' inquired the chairman of the text-book division. "No.
We are here to present a remonstrance, not to listen to explana-
tion," answered the reverend spokesman. " I congratulate you
on placing yourself on record by the side of Sir Lucius
O'Trigger," retorted the chairman, with pardonable irony, and the
hearing went on. The disturbance was instantly seized upon by

1889.] THE TROUBLE IN THE BOSTON SCHOOLS. 505

politicians. Twenty-five thousand women were urged into tak-
ing the steps necessary -as a preparation for voting, and they
were instructed to consider the merits of candidates solely from
their partisan attitude in relation to the school question. Toward
the last of this special excitement a large number of Catholic
women, acting under legal 'advice, qualified themselves also to
make use of the ballot, if necessary to protect their principles.

The reason for this tremendous outburst was not far to seek.
The merits of the case are stated here with absolute fairness ;
the circumstances are line for line as laid down in the preceding
paragraphs. But the historical fact misstated was one relating
to the Catholic Church ; the ignorant and prejudiced explanation
was given on a point of Catholic doctrine ; the person who
brought the circumstances first to the notice of the board was a
Catholic priest. Lo ! then, why reason should run out the door
and justice fly through the window ! Here was prima facie
evidence that Jesuits were tampering with the public system,
and that a corrupt and venal school committee were aiding and
abetting their designs. If it had been a Protestant minister
pointing out an injury done the consciences of his people by a
libellous interpretation of some teaching of his church ; or a
rabbi asking that slander against the convictions of his race
should be suppressed from the text-books his children were re-
quired to use in daily study ; or even an atheistic student of
history demanding, in the interests of accuracy, that some point
now wrongly defined should be correctly stated, and that the
flippancy and narrowness of private belief should not be
allowed to color public instruction, and if these suggestions had
been accepted all would have been well. The public mind, if
moved at all by the announcement, would have been stirred to
gratitude that some such guardianship over just and faithful
training existed, rather than to wrath over complaint and com-
plainant. But a Catholic doctrine ! And a Catholic priest ! And
an attempt to insist that a Protestant teacher should not. meddle
with dogma, or, if he did, should give the truth instead of his
distortion of it! To arms at once and no quarter! Liberty of
conscience was threatened and the freedom of the public schools.
Alas ! that the old leaven of bigotry is so lively and so subtle
even yet in the inner consciousness of New England that her
children can mistake intolerance for earnestness and dogmatism
for justice ; that reason can be so usurped by conceit as to blind
them to the real nature of a failing, and to make them, while
assailing the phantom of sectarianism, be themselves the body
and soul of fanaticism !

5o6 THE TROUBLE IN THE BOSTON SCHOOLS. [Jan.,

In deed and truth the Rev. Father Metcalf American born
and bred, a public-school graduate, a convert, and a brilliant
scholar was wholly within his right as a citizen in the step taken.
Waiving entirely the special religious aspect of the case, any one
noting the introduction of theological matter into presumably
unsectarian schools, or the inaccuracy of historical statements in
presumably correct text-books, is doing a kindness to the state
and the people in pointing out his discovery, since he ultimately
strengthens the desired aim in promoting liberal and truthful
knowledge. And ordinarily any such service would have been
so recognized by the public ; for the public has in the main that
intuitive perception between wrong and right which the vulgar
call "horse sense." But the word Catholic and the alertness
of the leaders were too much. The animal instinct of animosity
did not give time for the sober second thought of intelligence to
gain the ascendency ; and the result is before us. Then, too,
the sentiment of those sentinels of the outer gates those wardens
of small sects and petty interests whose positions are somewhat
dependent upon a condition of unrest rather than of quiet, sounded
the tocsin too suddenly to admit of sober reflection. They called
the rank and file into battalions and placed them under party
banners almost before the good people knew what they were to
fight against.

The main interest in this episode, which makes it deserve
more than passing notice, lies not in the demonstration itself, but
in the conditions which have made it possible. That such an
outburst could take place, after long years of companionship and
mutual trusts had brought Catholic and Protestant into intimate
and harmonious relations, and given to each a passably clear
comprehension of the other's motives, shows the bias of old con-
servatism to be too strong for the liberalism of modern times.
No thread is so hard to disentangle from the woof of character
as that of heredity, especially, most unfortunately, if it mark a
dark instead of a bright line. Neither that gallant march, shoul-
der to shoulder, through the long years of the war of the rebel-
lion, nor the willing offering of limb and life on the battle-fields
of the republic, nor the respect won for honorable offices well
filled in every department of government, have sufficed to wipe
out the stain of distrust and suspicion which still soils the aver-
age New England mind in its estimate of Catholic citizenship.
A reed shaken by the wind is enough to put in motion, even at
this late day, the currents of calumny. To be sure Boston is
not New England, and the whole of Boston did not join in the

1889.] THE TROUBLE IN THE BOSTON SCHOOLS. 507

hue and cry against an act of justice. Many of its best and
most broadly cultivated gave unqualified assent to the grounds
of action and the final position taken ; but outside this, in city
and country, unreasoning clamor and virulent abuse were al-
most unanimous. There was not sense enough left in the com-
munity to perceive that all this feverish excitement and quixotic
tilting at windmills was simply playing into the hands of their
pet horror, the parochial school ; and that Catholics, confronted
thus by positive evidence of the hollowness of pretence in the
unsectarian system, would consider themselves obliged, willing
or unwilling, to found educational establishments of their own.

If the zealots who so loudly raised the cry of " seditious
practices," "popish interference with the liberty of American in-
stitutions," or "danger to the public schools," would reflect for a
moment, it would become as clear to themselves as it already is
to the rest of the world that it is their action and not that of the
Catholic which is imperilling their chosen system. The attitude
of the latter has been throughout thoroughly dignified and self-re-
strained. Secure in the justice of their position, they have re-
frained from useless discussion upon a subject which the best
authorities among their adversaries have already sufficiently well
stated for them. Professor Fisher, of Yale, probably the best
historical reference in the country, has published a strong and
fair statement of the doctrine of the church on the topic in ques-
tion. Many of the better class of daily and weekly papers, ac-
cepting his definition as absolute, drew the only inference possi-
ble that in such case the remonstrant was wholly right in mak-
ing his complaint, and the committee equally so in coming to
their conclusions. But the zealot never reflects. It would de-
prive him of too much ammunition in the shape of bombastic fire-
brands, without which his style of warfare is impossible.

It would be matter of great interest to know what the nation-
al answer would be to the questions raised in this local issue.
The latter part of the nineteenth century, in a republic which as
yet is onlv in the formative stage, which prides itself upon lib-
erty of thought, speech, and action, and in the composition of
which all nations and creeds find representation, would seem the
last time and place in the world to look for fanaticism. Yet it is
here, and in that portion which public opinion has united in con-
sidering its most enlightened centre, that the epidemic has
broken loose. Such queries as the Woman s Journal has been
circulating through its columns in apparent good faith: " Should
Roman Catholics be elected on our School Board? Should Ro-

5o8 THE TROUBLE IN THE BOSTON SCHOOLS. [Jan.,

man Catholics be permitted to teach in our public schools?"
would be insults if they were not so naively absurd. By what
right can any such question be asked concerning the formation
or guardianship of non-sectarian schools, if there is any sincerity
in the promise that they are to be kept wholly free from religious
distinctions ? What has creed or belief to do with qualifications
wholly intellectual and temperamental, verified by general com-
petitive examinations, and subject to exact tests of fitness? And
how can any Catholic place his child at a pupil's desk where the
simple fact of his persuasion debars one of his co-religionists
from filling the teacher's chair? Yet it is precisely such an issue
as this which has caused the registration of over twenty-five
thousand women in a single town, to vote upon the school ques-
tion this month, and to subserve every higher interest of suitabil-
ity to this wholly irrelevant point.

Whatever results from this most ill-timed and ill-tempered
agitation must have an effect,' direct or indirect, on the whole
question of education in America. The school system as it is
must be declared infallible, beyond the reach of mistake or error,
and as such not to be tampered with in the way of change ; or
freedom at least from abuse must be assured every honest ef-
fort to assist in cleansing it from faults and insuring it from fail-
ure. If attempts to point out weakness are to be assailed by
such malevolence as has characterized this late outburst, there
can be no longer public instruction. It is already private, and
hedged in by the narrowest and most offensive of all prejudices,
that against conscience. If the security of the state can only be
assured by bolstering up erroneous doctrine; if the integrity of a
school system cannot bear the elimination of an error from its
course of study; if the Protestant population insists on being left
to the enjoyment of fallacies and falsehoods in relation to the
motives and beliefs of its Catholic fellow-citizens, then but one
course is left to pursue. The parochial school is no longer a
question of feasibility but of necessity. Fortunately at the
present time the choice need not be between ignorance and mis-
representation^ There is plenty of trained labor and available
material to make the new departure a success, if it should once
be fully determined upon.* But let the people who are push-
ing matters to such an extremity reflect that theirs has been the
harsh and bitter course of intolerance, theirs the opposition to

+ The writer doubtless uses these words in reference to an instant and practical necessity ;
for the last Plenary Council has made it of obligation upon every Catholic parish to establish
a parochial school as soon as possible, regardless of the character of the public schools of the
neighborhood. EDITOR.

1889] OUT OF THE CHURCH THERE is NO SALVATION. 509

simple justice, theirs the unmasking' of the hollow pretence of
unsectarian education. Coming where it does, the disturbance
is of a piece with certain lines of conduct which have periodical-
ly stained the fair fame of the commonwealth from its first set-
tlement to the present day. Mr. Brooks Adams in his Emancipa-
tion of Massachusetts has made a keen and accurate dissection of
her earlier history, and given graphic expression to the thraldom
of the yoke under which she struggled for two centuries. He
has shown how, under the hierarchy of ministers who so long
controlled the functions of her government, her proud boast of
"Freedom to worship God !" was made empty by the banish-
ment of Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams, the hanging of
Quakers, the persecution of Catholics, the execution of witches,
and the flogging of heretics at the cart-tail. The title of his
work proves that he believes the State to have emerged from this
condition of despotism. We who love her would gladly coin-
cide with him ; but the outbreak of Know-Nothingism thirty-five
years ago, and this newer outburst of rancorous feeling to-day,
would go to prove that she is not yet out of the penumbra.
The one hopeful point of prognosis is that the shadows are cast
now by the lower rather than the higher orders in the world of
intellect and refinement. And the shortening of shadow is proof
that the sun is rising. MARY ELIZABETH BLAKE.

OUT OF THE CHURCH THERE IS NO SALVATION.

" WHEN," says Cardinal Newman, " we consider the beauty,
the majesty, the completeness, the resources, the consolations
of the Catholic religion, it may strike us with wonder that it
does not convert the multitude of those who come in its way."
This, he goes on to say, is apt to be the surprise especially of
converts to Jhe church, "who know from sad experience how
barren, unmeaning, and baseless are all other forms of religion,
what poor attractions they have to offer, and how little they have
to say for themselves." Yet, in spite of every effort made to
bring home the truth of Catholic teaching to all hearts, many
still remain unconvinced, and many, while entirely convinced of
the truth, fail to embrace it. In spite of all reasons which mili-
tate in favor of the church, in spite of all the beauty and bright-
ness with which her Divine Founder has adorned her and which

5io OUT OF THE CHURCH THERE is NO SALVATION. [Jan.,

ought to win all hearts to her love and service, very many remain
separated from her divine life and unity. Strive as we may, it
seems we never shall have done with error. Destroy it in one
form and it comes forth, phcenix-like, in another. Why this should
be so we shall probably never understand fully until God may
please to reveal to us why he permitted his enemy and ours to
sow evil in that Garden of Delights which his own hand had
made so fair, and which he had destined for the perpetual use of
the creature stamped with his own divine image.

For the Catholic, therefore, to be a member of the church,
to be one with her, to be counted among her faithful children, is
not only in some sense the first of all obligations but the highest
of all earthly privileges. To repose in her bosom is true certi-
tude in the midst of doubt and hesitation; it is consolation in
the midst of trouble, it is joy beyond measure. For others the
church is a dark shadow in their path, a thief that comes in the
stillness and darkness of the night to steal away some loved one
from their very side, and then by a cruel tyranny to erect a
barrier of eternal separation that withers every natural affection
and scoffs at every tender emotion of the soul. For others,
again, the church is like a song that is sung or a tale that is told ;
an obsolete institution, a stain on the face of society which
modern progress is destined to wipe out for ever. There are
others, and in this our day their name is legion, who seat them-
selves on the stool of unholy indifference and smile at the divi-
sions among religious people and at the efforts of the church to
produce unity of faith among all men. All religions, they say,
are good in their way, but the easiest way, after all, is to get on
without being attached to any special form of religion. Perhaps
they quote a line of Pope's to show that, after all, a man's religion
must be all right if his life is upright. However, the man whose
life is upright before God and man, and whose creed is real and
practical infidelity, is a something still left to the discovery of
modern science.

A man, as a matter of form or propriety, may belong to this
or that religious body, while at the same time he receives just as
many or as few of the doctrines professed by the teachers and
preachers of that body as he pleases.

" Religious controversy," says Frederick Robertson in his sermon on
Obedience, " is fast settling into a conflict between two extreme parties :
those who believe everything and those who believe nothing the disciples
of credulity and the disciples of scepticism. The first rely on authority.

1889.] OUT OF THE CHURCH THERE is NO SALVATION. 511

Foremost among these, and the only consistent ones, are the adherents of
the Church of Rome ; and into this body by logical consistency ought to
merge all Dissenters, Churchmen, Bible Christians who receive their
opinions because their sect, their church, or their documents assert them,
not because they are true eternally in themselves.''

His estimate of authority in the Catholic Church is funda-
mentally incorrect. We believe what the church teaches, not
merely because she teaches, but essentially because in our heart
and reason we are convinced that she has been appointed by
God to teach us the truth.

But, no matter whether Protestant or sceptic, all the men of
our day outside the church can see in the dogma of Catholic
unity, Out of the church there is no salvation, nothing more than
a spirit of intolerance so gross as to amount to frightful barbar-
ism. Now, in answer to this charge of intolerance I propose to
do nothing more than explain this dogma on Catholic principles
as laid down and taught in Catholic theology, and then leave it
to the good judgment and conscience of the right-minded reader
whether or no " exclusive salvation " be the frightful nightmare of
barbarism our enemies would fain have themselves and others
believe. It is said by many, and I think with evident truth, that
the best defence of religion, and the best method of proving the
claim of the Catholic Church as a teacher from God, is to give
a calm, clear, faithful, and forcible exposition of her doctrines.
The doctrines of the church are in general so little studied, so
badly comprehended even by men otherwise learned, that when
they come to look at them from a real Catholic standpoint they
open their eyes in wide astonishment, as though they beheld a
new revelation and an order of things entirely different from the
shapeless mass of absurdities and contradictions they had imag-
ined. If the church were what her enemies would fondly make
her, then, I say, the sooner she were wiped off the face of the
earth the better for the cause of liberty and humanity. 1 say it
is often like a new revelation to Protestants and others when
Catholic truth is presented to them in its calm and simple
reality.

I remember the great cry of our professor of theology when I
was in the seminary was : " Gentlemen, don't be afraid to know
too much theology. The more you know the milder you will
be, because you will see the bearing of the whole on each part,
and how each part has to correspond with the whole." The
principles of Catholic theology are not isolated, but each one
has a bearing on every other and is modified by it. It was re-

512 OUT OF THE CHURCH THERE is NO SALVATION. [Jan.,

marked of this professor that the older he grew and the more
he studied the milder his teaching became. Faber very justly re-
marks that " the doctrines of the church are much safer in the
hands of a mild than a rigid theologian." Before explaining
directly this dogma, "Out of the church there is no salvation,"
we must understand well certain fundamental principles, which,
once explained, are taken for granted throughout Catholic
theology.

In the eyes of the church heresy or unbelief of whatever kind
is regarded as the worst of sins. Now, then, what is sin? Sin
is disobedience to the law of God. Sin may be either material
or formal. In every formal or actual sin the intellect must have
a knowledge of what we are doing, and the consciousness of the
mind must be fixed upon the action with two objects before it,
the law and the Lawgiver. A sin is formal when committed
with a full knowledge of what we are doing and a full consent
of the will. Hence we can understand how the malice of sin is
increased in proportion to the light and knowledge of the sinner,
and where there is no knowledge of the moral guilt, of the
action there can be no sin. A sin is material when committed
without intention or without sufficient knowledge. However,
those who have it in their power to know and still purposely
remain in ignorance are morally responsible for the sins com-
mitted under the influence of such ignorance, and here comes in
the distinction of vincible and invincible ignorance, of good and
bad faith. Ignorance is termed vincible when it can be over-
come by the ordinary helps of nature and grace. Thus a man is
said to be in vincible ignorance who refuses to know his duty in
order to shirk it. Such is the man who refuses to profess any
religion lest a restraint should be placed on the indulgence of
his passions; and this is the worst sort of ignorance, and is called
" affected " ignorance, or ignorance loved. Again, a man is in
vincible ignorance who, from sloth or other cause, fails to acquire
the knowledge necessary for his station and position in life as,
for instance, a doctor, priest, etc. ; and this ignorance is called
supine. So, in order that ignorance be guilty in the sight of
God, two conditions are necessary : a possibility of overcoming
it and an obligation to overcome it. Hence we say a man who
knows himself to be ignorant, and knows his obligation of dis-
pelling that ignorance, is in bad faith. This obligation, of course,
is relative : a layman, for example, is not bound to know theology
like a priest. Ignorance is said to be invincible when it cannot
be overcome by the ordinary helps of nature and grace, and a

OUT OF THE CHURCH THERE is NO SALVATION. 513

man acting- under such ignorance is said to be in good faith ; and
no matter what the actions resulting from such ignorance, they
cannot be formal sins nor deserve eternal damnation. Now, all
this is simply saying that for each man his own individual con-
science is his highest law, and as long as his actions are in con-
formity to his conscience he cannot commit sin, even should the
heavens fall. We also remark that vincible and invincible igno-
rance, when applied to morals, are relative terms, and that what
would be vincible for one man may be invincible for another. I
am not aware that any writer, Catholic or Protestant, has main-
tained that conscience could be violated without sin.

Now, if we keep these principles, about which there is no
dispute among Catholic theologians, before our minds, I think we
can easily understand the explanation of this Catholic dogma.
" Out of the church there is no salvation. 5 '

I take for granted that the Catholic Church is the church of
Christ, and I say, resting on the words of Jesus Christ himself,
that being- a member of this church is as necessary for salvation
as is baptism. " He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved,
but he that believeth not shall be condemned " (St. Mark xvi.
16). Belonging to the church is the very first essential for faith in
Jesus Christ. '" He that heareth you heareth me, and he that
despiseth you despiseth me. And he that despiseth me de-
spiseth Him that sent me " (St. Luke x. 16). Faith is, then, like
baptism, one of the most essential conditions for salvation. But
we know from Catholic teaching that there are various means of
supplying for baptism when it cannot be actually received in its
sacramental form. We know that the church honors as saints
and martyrs the little children who were slain in the cause of
Christ, and she calls martyrdom the baptism of blood. Again,
she regards the desire of baptism as a sufficient substitute for
baptism when the sacrament cannot be received. So we say of
the church, as we say of baptism, no one can be saved who is
not united to it either in reality or desire. Now, this desire, in
order to be sufficient for salvation, need not be formal and ex-
plicit, springing from a positive knowledge of the true church; it
is enough that it be a disposition of the heart which implies the
sincere wish and desire of belonging to Christ's true church.
The church has nowhere defined precisely and categorically the
conditions of this desire necessary for salvation ; it leaves this
to the judgment of God. However, resting on excellent au-
thority and not trusting my own judgment, I have no hesita-
tion in saying that an implicit desire is sufficient that is, a desire

VOL. XLVIII. 33

514 * OUT OF THE CHURCH THERE is NO SALVATION. [Jan.,

contained in other actions and such a desire can well exist in a
man who has the will to obey the law of God, as far as he knows
it, and who is willing to use such means as are reasonably within
his power to arrive at the truth. If such a man be in error, his
error is one of good faith and can never be a cause of his eternal
damnation. Good faith will damn no one, neither will invincible
ignorance. Here we can be positive, for we have the express
authority of the church herself to support us. The church
condemned, as an impious doctrine, this proposition of Baius:
" Infidelitas negativa est peccatum " Negative unbelief is. a sin.
The Council of Trent says : " Deus impossibilia nonjubet " God
does not command what is impossible. Alexander VIII. (1690)
condemned a proposition which stated : That in the state of
nature invincible ignorance of the law of nature does not excuse
from formal sin. Now, if invincible ignorance excuses from sin,
even when there is question of the natural law, h fortiori must it
excuse from sin in case of divine positive law, such as the law of
receiving baptism, joining the church, etc.

" For whoever have sinned without the law," says St. Paul, "shall
perish without the law. For when the gentiles, who have not the law, do
by nature those things that are of the law, these, having not the law, are a
law to themselves, . . . their conscience bearing witness to them, and
their thoughts within themselves accusing them or else defending them "
(Rom. ii. 12-15).

Who, then, come directly under the condemnation of this
dogma, Out of the church there is no salvation ? Those, and those
only, who are in voluntary and culpable separation from the
church, who obstinately resist the known truth when clearly and
sufficiently presented to them. Separation from the church
must be known and consented to by a culpable act of the heart
and mind before it can be formal heresy and sufficient of itself
to exclude from eternal life. Protestants will be forced to admit
that such an act would condemn one in the sight of God. " A
man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid ;
knowing that he that is such a one is subverted and sinneth,
being condemned by his own judgment" (Titus iii. 10, 11). This
Scripture condemnation clearly applies only to formal heretics.
If the separation be not voluntary and culpable, then there is
good faith and invincible ignorance, and these cannot be a cause
of reprobation. The error is then a misfortune, but not a fault.

Culpable separation from the church is what every man's own

i8?9-l OUT OF THE CHURCH THERE is NO SALVATION. 515

conscience condemns, and this is all that is meant by this dogma.
Outside the church there is no salvation.

Such is the principle. Now, as to its application, I shall con-
fine myself to three classes: infants who die without baptism,
Protestants, and finally pagans ; because I think that under these
headings humanity as a whole may be included. About infants
who die without baptism there are various opinions among Ca-
tholic theologians. I will give one perfectly reconcilable with
the principles here laid down, and explicitly taught by many
approved theologians, and which we can hold and be perfectly
good Catholics. I know that Bossuet and four other bishops
denounced the opinion to Innocent XI. at Rome, but I know
that Rome never condemned it, as anybody can see by looking at
the twenty-sixth proposition of the bull Auctorem fidei. The
opinion was held by Catharinus, a Dominican, who was present
at the Council of Trent, and Cardinal Sfondrate defended it in a
work he published at Rome in 1696, and I think it is an opinion
almost generally held in our day. It is evidently the opinion
of Cardinal Manning, as anybody can see by reading his book on
Sin and Its Consequences. Here is the opinion itself: Infants who
die in original sin shall enjoy a natural beatitude founded on the
natural knowledge and love of God. The condition of infants,
then, who die without baptism, is one of happiness and content-
ment, though not of supernatural beatitude. They are not in a
supernatural state, and consequently are not in a condition to
enjoy supernatural happiness. Probably, as Cardinal Manning
says, they would not enjoy supernatural happiness any more
than a poor man would enjoy the court of a king. The poor
man with his plain clothes and plainer manners would much pre-
fer to be let go back to smoke his pipe in peace among his plain
but honest friends by his own humble fireside, rather than be
forced to sit down to a champagne supper among the lords and
ladies of the royal court. So those poor infants who die with-
out baptism have not on the wedding-garment, and are not pre-
pared to enter the guest-chamber where the marriage of the
king's son is being celebrated.

What of Protestants? If they are in good faith and invinci-
ble ignorance as to the true church that is, if they sincerely be-
lieve they are in the true church of Christ and keep out of
mortal sin or if, having committed mortal sin, they obtain par-
don for it by true contrition and a sincere repentance, then I say
they are in the way of salvation, and we can recommend all such
to God as dear brethren in Jesus Christ. But can Protestants be

5i6 OUT OF THE CHURCH THERE is NO SALVATION. [Jan.,

in good faith ? I will answer this question by quoting two very
high authorities, both well known in this country and in Europe.
The first is Cardinal Manning, speaking of that church to which
he himself once belonged. He ought, therefore, to be a high and
interesting authority on the question.

" It is to me a consolation and joy I say it again and again, and more
strongly as I grow older, . . . it is my consolation to believe that
multitudes of such persons [he speaks of Anglicans] are in good faith,
and that God in his mercy will make allowance for them, knowing what are
the prejudices of childhood, of an education studiously erroneous ; what is
the power of parents and teachers, of public authority, of public opinion,
and of public law ; how all these things create in their minds a conviction
.that they are in the right and that they believe the one faith and are in the
one church in which alone is salvation. We rejoice to commend them to
;.the love of our Heavenly Father, believing that though they may be
materially in error and in many things in opposition to his truth and to his
will, yet they do not know and, morally speaking, cannot know it, and that
therefore he will not require it at their hands'* (Nature of Sin).

The other authority bears with it a name enshrined in the
hearts of the American people, Catholic and Protestant the
name of Cardinal de Cheverus, formerly Bishop of Boston. His
testimony is from personal knowledge of Protestants converted
by himself to the Catholic faith. " Many Protestants," he says,
"can be in good faith and invincible ignorance which excuses
before God." Hence, he concludes, we ought to be very in-
dulgent toward those who are deceived, and very slow to con-
demn them of culpable error {Life, 2d edition, p. 140, in French).
Of course what is said of Protestants will apply with equal or
greater force to the members of the Russian Church and of all
the other schismatical churches of the East.

Let us finally take an extreme case, and one that will certain-
ly include every other. A man is born in the wild woods and
brought up among savage beasts, ignorant of the primary truths
of the faith, never baptized. What of him according to the Ca-
tholic doctrine of exclusive salvation? I answer with St.
Thomas of Aquin, prince of theologians, and with every Ca-
tholic theologian that has ever written on the subject, certissime
tencndwn est it must be held as certain that if such a one obeys
the true dictates of his natural reason and follows his conscience,
such as it is, God will by means known to himself reveal to such
a soul, precious in his sight, all that is necessary to form at least
an implicit desire of baptism and of belonging to the true church,
so that/^he can, if he will, secure his eternal salvation. St.

1889.] OUT OF THE CHURCH THERE is NO SALVATION. 517

Thomas clearly enough teaches that if a child or a savage, who
is practically a child, makes an act of the will toward what is
good and right (bonum honestum in confuso], that child or savage
is justified, because, doing all that lies in his power, his act, im-
perfect in itself, is elevated to divine charity by grace. All,
therefore, that is required of the savage or the child is that he
should turn to what is good and right (eo modo quo potuerii),
which leaves room for salvation to the multitude of uncultured
savages the world over, who are capable of nothing more than
this (Sutnma, la, 232, art. 89, qu. 6). Now, I ask, where is the
barbarism and intolerance of this much-abused dogma?

From the explanation given the reader will easily understand
why the church never pronounces concerning the reprobation
of any one in particular, and how careful we ought to be, and
how we must take all circumstances of time and place, of pre-
judice and education, of law and influence, into consideration, if
we would avoid the sin of rash judgment in deciding upon the
good or bad faith of any one outside the church. We know that
God is justice itself, but above all his prerogatives in his deal-
ings with man stands his mercy : superexaltat misericordia judi-
cium mercy outranks judgment. We cannot sound the^depths
of divine wisdom, but we know that every act of God and every
permission of his is infinitely worthy of divine love and good-
ness; and if we fear for those who are not within the pale of the
one true church, we can also hope that, if they keep a pure con-
science and guard the faith such as they know it, they may one
day come to sit down in their Father's house with Abraham and
Isaac and Jacob, with Peter and James and John, and all the
saints, where there shall never be aught more of heresy or sep-
aration of brethren all stamped with the image of the same God,
and redeemed with the same blood of his only-begotten Son,
Christ Jesus our Lord.

Davenport, Iowa. JAMES P. RYAN.

5i8 I AM THE ^W AY. [Jan.,

I AM THE WAY.

"Thou hast laid thy body as the ground, and as a way to them that passed over."-
ISAIAS'H. 23.

" WHAT haste, good pilgrim? Whither art thou bound ?"
" Jerusalem, good sir, is where I long to stay."

" Methinks thy way is o'er rough, thorny ground]
To seek so blest an end. Art not astray ? "

" If there be thorns I know not. To my feet

This One True Way is from all hindrance free.
All ways to him who loves are sweet.

Farewell ! But hist ! Wilt thou not walk with me ? "

I AM THE TRUTH.

"The watchmen who keep the city found me: Have you seen Him whom my soul
loveth ? "CANT. iii. 3.

Time was I set me out lost Truth to find.
Heart-sick ; foot-sore ; aweary grew my mind :
When haply oh, to pride what bitter cost!
Truth found me wandering. I, not Truth, was lost.

I AM THE LIFE.

" He shall drink of the torrent by the way ; therefore shall he lift up the head. 1 ' Ps. cix. 7.
"The water that I will give him shall become in him a fountain of water springing up into
life everlasting." ST. JOHN iv. 14.

The Disciple.

For life I am athirst: yet drink to die.
Of living water, Lord, thy servant give.

The Master.

If thou wouldst gain true immortality,

Stoop low and drink with Me of death ; and live!

ALFRED YOUNG.

1889-] PAUL RINGWOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 519

PAUL RINGWOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

CHAPTER XV.
AT WORK.

THE sun was scarcely up on the cold January morning when
I went for the first time to work at Guggins' warehouse. As I
ran all the way to keep my blood in circulation, there was a full
half-hour left for me to admire the beauties of the Delaware
before the porter came to open the warehouse doors. Even
when the doors had been thrown open I had the place to myself,
and, not knowing what else to do, I sat down to warm myself by
a stove in which the porter had kindled a fire. About twenty
minutes past seven the clerks, in batches, began to drop in. No
notice was taken of me till a youth whom the others called Gor-
mick attracted attention to me by shouting to a watery-eyed
boy rolling himself a cigarette, " Is that the sweep, Flat? "

" I'm everlastingly jiggered if I know," called back Flat.

" I say, Sealskin " because of my cap " are you sweep, or
what?" questioned Gormick.

" I don't know what I am," I answered. " Is Hawkins here ?
He knows."

I had risen from my seat to answer Gormick, wishing with
all my heart that I was at my work, whatever it was to be.

" Well, you'd better get to work and help sweep out; you'll
find a sprinkler somewhere back," advised Gormick. " We don't
want no idlers about," he added, and, by way of setting me a
good example, pulled out a cigar, lit it, and took the chair I had
vacated.

I had no idea of the use of a sprinkler other than the one use
I had seen gardeners make of them, not dreaming they are used
to water floors ; so I stared helplessly at Gormick enjoying his
cigar.

"What are you staring at, stupid ?" asked Gormick; "why
don't you go to work ? "

The clerks, who, drawn by curiosity, stood making a half-
circle about me, burst into a loud laugh.

My temper had begun to rise. I did not know that these
young men had no special grudge against me ; that each one of
them had gone through, in a greater or less degree according

520 PAUL RINGWOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Jan.,

to the state of ignorance in which he had entered Guggins' em-
ployment, what I was now called on to endure.

" How am I to know what to do? Why don't you show
me?" I asked, not unreasonably.

" If you give me any sauce I'll pitch you into the river,"
blustered Gormick.

Again there was a laugh, suppressed to hear my reply. " I
don't believe }^ou will," I said, having little confidence in my
ability to resist him should he attempt to handle me roughly.

There was not a sound, every one intent on hearing Gormick's
answer. Very red in the face he said: " Wait till I finish this
cigar; I'll teach you ! "

They all appeared disgusted save the weak-eyed Flat. One
good-natured-looking fellow sneered : " You'll be a long time
getting through that cigar, Gormick ; better not let the bosses
catch you." Taking me by the arm, he said kindly, " Come
along, Sealskin ; I'll show you what to do. By the bye, did old
hen-pecked say you were to sweep ? "

Instead of answering his question, I asked who " old hen-
pecked " might be, and was told, to my surprise, that Guggins
was so called. " Did he say you were to sweep ? " he repeated.
, " He said I was to help Hawkins," I said.

"Then you'd better wait till Hawkins comes. I wish you
were in our department ; we're a better crowd than Hawkins'
lot. What's your name, Sealskin? Mine's Ned Link."

I was about to tell my name when I heard it shouted by
some one, and looking up saw Hawkins beckoning to me.

" All right now," said Ned Link. " I say," he called after
me, " meet me in front at noon, and I'll show you where to get
a daisy lunch."

Briskly nodding my head in assent, I hurried after Hawkins.
My work was in the retail department, where besides myself
were Hawkins, Gormick, Flat, and two other youths ; all young,
and, though I was the youngest, I looked the oldest. In spite of
the novelty of the situation, and of my being kept busy all morn-
ing dusting baskets and wooden-ware, time crawled, and when
twelve o'clock came I was glad to be told that I might go to
dinner.

As he had said, Ned Link was waiting for me, and we went,
to a place called Stafford's, where we got as much meat and
vegetables as we could eat for fifteen cents apiece. Then, hav-
ing still a half-hour of our own, we took a walk on the river-
front, Ned Link telling me a great deal about himself in our

1889.] PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 521

walk. He was the only son of a widow, who was a mancipist,
he told me, and when I asked what a mancipist was he ex-
claimed at my ignorance :

" Don't you know what a mancipist is ? Why, that's one who
makes hands beautiful 'tends to finger-nails. Mother paints,
too," he added.

I remarked that I would hardly have thought hand-beautify-
ing to be a very lucrative business.

" It an't, neither," said Ned ; "there's not enough of it; but
mother makes it up, and she does right well."

I supposed she " made it up ' by her painting, and asked if
any of her pictures were in the galleries.

" What are you giving me, Scott ? " he said.

Assuring him that I was serious, he remarked that I was fresh,
and explained : " She paints women's faces, and men's, too, for
that matter. Two dollars for cheeks and nose, and when it's a
whole face with eyebrows and lashes it's five, sometimes ten.
That's not bad."

He interested me very much in his account of a mancipist,
and when he asked me to take tea at his house on the follo'wing
Sunday I willingly promised to do so.

The afternoon was passed in much the same way as the morn-
ing, and as was spent the remainder of the week. On Saturday
afternoon at six o'clock, closing hour, Ned Link came running
into our department to tell me that I was wanted by the boss in
his office.

My employer was seated in a pivot-chair, nervously finger-
ing his scanty whiskers. " Oh! is that you, Scott?" he said as
I entered. " Take a chair."

I seated myself and waited his orders. He seemed to have
none to give me, so I told him that I had delivered his message
and gift to Miss Bland.

" Was she pleased, do you think, Scott ? " he asked in a
husky whisper.

When I had truthfully told him what Miss Bland had said he
asked thoughtfully : " Do you think she'd like another basket,
Scott? I might send her another."

I suggested mildly that Miss Bland might have enough of
baskets. He immediately retorted : " Of course! of course ! I
had no idea of sending another; it was just a thought I had."

After a long pause he asked me how I liked my work. My
answer was not a candid one. I said that I liked it well,
whereas I was miserable at being debarred from what had be-
come a second nature to me books.

522 PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Jan.,

" I sent for you to pay you your week's salary," he said.
" You are always to come to me for it ; the payer has nothing to
do with you.''

There could not be much coming to me, I had been working
but three days, was my suggestion.

" We'll call it a week," he said, and counted out four dollars.

It would be wrong for me to take it, I said ; it had not been
earned. With an authority one would not have given him credit
for, he said he was the judge of that, and pushed the money across
the desk to me.

I saw nothing else to do but to take the money and wish him
good-evening, both of which things I did in a shamefaced sort
of way.

Ned Link was waiting to remind me of my promise to take
tea with him on the morrow, and to walk home with me as far as
our ways lay together. On the road he treated me to several
anecdotes of his mother, exhibiting a deal of honest pride in
her that was pleasant to witness.

Mrs. Glass became quite jealous when I told her of my inten-
tion of taking tea with Mrs. Link. " I s'pose you'll be gettin'
'bove my ways, an' '11 want a higher sort uv boardin' place," she
said.

It astonished me that Mrs. Glass should get excited over such
an ordinary occurrence as taking tea with a friend. Later in the
evening she asked pardon for what she call her contrariness.
" The fac' es, Walter Scott," she said, " I can't b'ar you to be
away the on'y day you can stay to home." Then I think that I
was more pleased than otherwise.

CHAPTER XVI.
A LETTER FROM HOME.

There are miles of small houses in Philiopolis like the small
house Mrs. Link, the mancipist, dwelt in the same number of
bricks, the same number of rooms, the same uniformity, that is
about as melancholy a thing in the way of architecture as was
ever conceived in the mind of man. Take a smooth strip of
wood, measure it off into squares, paint little windows and doors
on it the same number of windows in each square, one door to
each and you have an exact fac-simile of Philiopolis. But we
can forgive its dreary sameness, for it is a " city of homes."

To Mrs. Link's credit be it said, she had made its interior
unlike anything in Philiopolis, or any other city in the world, for

1889.] PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 523

aught I know. The little passage-way into which a little maid
admitted me when I had jangled a little bell was painted a
glowing gamboge bower of sunflowers, done by Mrs. Link her-
self, as was afterwards told me. The little parlor was hung with
arras of blue calico, heavily powdered with Japanese figures in
decalcomanie. The chairs were no two alike, all with spindle
legs. A great yellow pot, large enough for a small orange-tree,
stood in the centre of the room, and in it grew a sickly calla a
room decidedly not an exemplification of the ape theory, inas-
much as it was not imitative in its decorations.

The lady who met me in the parlor needed no introduction
to tell me that she was Ned's mother. She had the same good-
natured face and cheery smile that he had.

" I'm Ned's mother," she said ; " he'll be here presently.
You're Mr. Scott, I presume?" I made a bow of assent, and
Mrs. Link chattered on: " You must make yourself at home;
you're Ned's Damon you must be, he talks so much about you
my friends say we are very much alike all my customers say,
' Make me youthful like yourself, Mrs. Link,' which is very com-
plimentary, but how is one to do it and nothing to build on?
Isn't Ned a splendid fellow ? He's not a bit like his poor fa-
ther, and what a blessing! His father " Mrs. Link rounded her
fist, put it to her lips, and reeled in her chair " It's dreadful! "
As it seemed to be expected of me, I expressed my horror in
dumb show. " But you mustn't say anything to Ned there he
comes ! " and Ned walked into the room and grasped me warm-
ly by the hand. Lovingly putting an arm about Mrs. Link's
neck, he said : " So you have met mother at last ! Do you
know, mother, he's been just wild, as the girls say, to see you? "

Taking my extreme youthfulness into consideration, Mrs.
Link showed herself unnecessarily confused. Taking out a
handkerchief to hide purely imaginary blushes, she murmured
something about being very much flattered, and that she did not
know how it was, but people were so complimentary.

" All the men fall in love with you, mother," declared Ned,
with an artless innocence for which I love him now.

In the course of our conversation, something being said about
books, Mrs. Link suggested to Ned that perhaps I would like to
see their library and picture-gallery. Wondering very much, I
said that I would rather eagerly, for it was now long since I
had seen a library.

Ned and his mother led the way to a small room opening out
of a larger one that smelled very much like an apothecary-shop.

524 PAUL RINGWOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Jan.,

" My studio," explained Mrs. Link, waving her handkerchief
in the direction of the much-smelling room, that was possessed
of a pier-glass and a great number of bottles on shelves.

" We have no bound books," said Mrs. Link, calling my at-
tention to the contents of the smaller room, " but we have the
choicest works, such as may be procured in the cheap libraries."

The choice works were a collection of novels published in
" Seaside " and like editions. Great stacks of them. They were
so frankly proud of their collection, there was so much genuine
simplicity in their pride, that, void of tact as I am, I entered
fairly into their spirit.

" Have you read them all ? " I asked, really in awe of persons
who could have gone through so much fiction.

" Yes, indeed," emphasized Ned. " Haven't we, mother?"

" I am sure Mr. Scott will excuse a mother who may be par-
tial if she says she thinks it doubtful if many yoang men have
imbibed so freely at the fount of knowledge as Edward Link.*'

This speech convinced me that the mother was as fond of a
novel as ever the son could be.

" And now for the picture-gallery," said Mrs. Link airily.

Covering one wall of the room hung a curtain of some red
material. Mrs. Link pulled a cord and the curtain drew back,
disclosing cheap chromos, photographs, and engravings, all in
straw frames. I was beginning to express my admiration when
a picture I saw tied my tongue.

Flanked on one side by an impossible river, on the other by
a truly imaginary landscape, hung a photograph of Nurse
Barnes.

These two innocent persons took my confusion for speech-
less admiration.

" I knew he'd be pleased," said Ned triumphantly.

" I perceived immediately that Mr. Scott has an artist's eye,"
put in Mrs. Link blandly.

Heedless of their remarks, I asked, pointing to the picture of
Nurse Barnes : " Do you know that person ? "

"Just as every one else is," said Mrs. Link complacently;
" taken up with that photograph. Of course I know that lady,
Mr. Scott. She's my aunt, a most respectable old lady in a
most respectable situation. She's housekeeper for Mr. Ring-
wood, a very eccentric person with something the matter with
his eyes."

I knew that Nurse Barnes had kinsfolk in the city whom she
sometimes visited. What if she were on one of her periodical

1889] PAUL RINGWOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 525

visits now ? Scarcely had the thought come to me when, as if
conjured up, Nurse Barnes entered the room.

Late in the afternoon, the dusk was gathering in the room.
Whilst nurse was accustoming her eyes to the gloom she said :
" I've had a good nap, Jenny, an', hearing you all talking, I come
in the Lord be good to me, Master Paul ! " And dear nurse
clutched the back of a chair for support.

Forgetting where I was, I threw my arms, as I had done a
thousand times before, about nurse's neck, and kissing her on
either cheek cried: "Dear nurse! I'm so glad, so glad to see
you!"

And I was g^ad. Not till that moment did I know how
much I missed them all at home.

Ned and his mother stood by expressing their astonishment
in signs. It was only when I caught sight of Ned's puzzled face
that I took in entirely the false position into which I had put
myself.

" Do you know Mr. Scott, aunt? " faltered Mrs. Link.

" No, I don't know no Mr. Scott," said nurse, emphasizing
my assumed name with contempt. " But I does know my dear
boy who I gave suck to when his poor mother was too broke
down."

Ned shook his head and significantly tapped his forehead
with his forefinger. At this nurse, in a passion, flew at Ned and
shook him, exclaiming : " I don't know what my folks left old
England for me to bring up a niece as would have a son as
would say his old aunt was a ninny " Here nurse relapsed into
tears, calling on me to tell her why I had gone away from
home.

Very awkward were the necessary explanations that followed.
No less awkward were Mrs. Link's suggestions when the truth
about myself had been told. "You should let Mr. Guggins
know all about it, Mr. Scott that is, Ringwood ; he is a very
prominent business man ; he might induce your father to shorten
your exile," she said.

It was with difficulty that I persuaded Ned to say nothing at
the store of what he had heard that day. Why, he even wanted
to go and give my father " a talking to," as he expressed it.

Mrs. Link's heart was as warm as her head was light. Show-
ing much delicacy of feeling, she excused herself for leaving me
alone with nurse ; she must see about the tea-table, she said, add-
ing : "You come too, Ned ; I need you." Presently was heard
the clattering of chinaware, and I am afraid that on the strength

526 PAUL RINGWOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Jan,

of my being Paul Ringwood much was done for the tea-table
that would not have been done for Walter Scott.

It was not possible to get from nurse a connected relation of
what had taken place at home after I had left. She knew that I
had been sent away and could but conjecture why. A priest
had called to see my father, and had been refused admittance to
him Father Weldon, I supposed rightly, as was afterwards
told me. My name was never mentioned, not even by Bert, who
was now at home.

"And is it because you are a Cath'lic, Master Paul?" moan-
ed nurse when she had finished her narration. " Why don't you
come back to what was good enough for your saincly mother? "

It would have been wasted time to argue the matter with
nurse. I contented myself with saying that my belief was most
precious to me, the belief of my forefathers, and would have been
my mother's had she known of it.

" As is my bounden duty, with all respec' I say it," said
nurse, " your father is the queerest man ! Who'd believe, he
never setting foot inside a Protestant church, that he'd be so
hard-hearted ! " adding illogically : " I wish to gracious goodness,
Master Paul, I had hold of that priest who's been fooling you.
I'd give him a piece of my mind for bringing a poor innocent
into such a peck o' trouble."

I told nurse that no priest had tampered with me ; I remind-
ed her that it was not the priest who had driven me from home ;
but all was useless. She was a prey to a fixed idea that the
Jesuits had trapped me. It was quite dark when Ned, bearing
a lighted candle, came to call us to tea. A very nice tea; only
nurse abashed me by insisting that I should be served first, and
by her exaggerated accounts of my father's table. Mrs. Link,
too, seemed annoyed, and I am sure was much better pleased
with Walter Scott than, under the circumstances, she ever could
be with Paul Ringwood. With the good intention of hushing
Nurse Barnes' apologies for Mrs. Link's table, I related how
most of my dinners consisted of muddy coffee, dank bread, and
a mysterious compound called meat-balls. Nurse dismayed us
all by bursting into tears, and calling on my absent father to be-
hold the plight his son was in ; drying her tears to abuse the
Pope and the Jesuits.

Every one was very glad, I think, when the time came for me
to go back to my lodging, nurse was so unruly in my presence.

Dear nurse ! We were all in the sunflower passage-way
when she drew me aside into the blue parlor. Pressing a little

1889.] PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 527

roll of money into my hand, she said : " Keep it, dear, for I can't
bear to think of you starving and me in pompishness." Wher-
ever she got it, the word evidently pleased her, for she repeated,
" Me in the greatest of pompishness." Though the money was
refused, I pacified her by promising to let her help me should I
be in need.

" I'm going back home to-morrow," she whispered, "and I'M
tell Master Bert where you are " I had given her my address
at Mrs. Glass'. " I don't doubt he'll come to see you."

When I had bidden nurse good-by Mrs. Link said she hoped
I would come again, and Ned said he would see that I did. He
did, too, and many a holiday I spent at his house, mother and
son most kind to me.

It was a sleepless night for .me, spent in thinking of home, of
my meeting with Bert on the coming day, feeling as sure as was
nurse that he would come to see me. On the following even-
ing, when I returned from work, I found Mrs. Glass on the door-
step waiting for me, her bonnet-strings blown every which way
by the cold wind.

" You're late this evening, Walter Scott," was her greeting.

" Not later than usual," I said.

"Then it's jus' because I an't no patience Come in! " And
taking me by the arm, she hurried me along to my bed-room.

" Them there came 'bout four o'clock, an' this here letter
with 'em," she exclaimed, pointing out two trunks on the floor,
and handing me a sealed envelope.

The handwriting on the envelope I knew to be Bert's, and
the trunks I recognized as two of my father's.

" Read your letter," said Mrs. Glass excitedly ; " an' I, fur
one, hopes it's good noos."

It was undated, and began abruptly, thus : u Father says he
appreciates your going under an assumed name in your dis-
graceful course. Your things would have been sent you long
ago if we had known where to send them. Father says you are
not to write to him, and mind you don't write to me. ELBERT
RINGWOOD."

I must have had an odd look in my face, for Mrs. Glass ex-
claimed, squeezing my hand in both of hers : " What's the matter,
you pore critter? Come where it's warm." I let her lead me to
the kitchen, and seated myself in the chair she set before the
fire.

I think God sent her to me. I told her all, and, simple as her
words of comfort were, they did me good. After supper we

528 PAUL RINGWOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Jan.,

went to overhaul the trunks. In them was every article that
had ever been given me, every article that I had the most shad-
owy claim to, even to a miniature of my mother.

From that night I put aside all hope of a reconciliation with
my father.

* CHAPTER XV [I.

PROMOTION.

I had been brought up in such blind obedience to my father's
behests that I doubt much, had his refusal to allow it been un-
conditional, if I would have become a Catholic at the time I did.
It was in accordance with this blind obedience that I left home
unquestioningly at his command. To this day I am not sure
that I could not have obliged him to support me till I was in a
position lo support myself. Certainly it never entered my head
to attempt any such thing. I could make a living, and, though
it was only with an effort that I suited myself to my work, I am
far from complaining. Having been a witness of much unmerit-
ed, downright misery, my lot seems to me to have been an ex-
ceptionally happy one. I wanted books and time to use them
great and sorrowful wants to a book-lover. But houselessness
and famine are terrible wants.

It was during the time that I was employed at the warehouse
of Guggins that I acquired the habit of doing with but little
sleep. I accustomed myself to an average of five hours sleep out
of the twenty-four. I have been reproached for this habit. How
many foretellings of a premature death, to be preceded by much
bodily suffering, have I listened to! Perhaps mine is an extraor-
dinarily hardy constitution, for I have never known a day's sick-
ness. This good habit, for me, of doing with but little sleep, gave
me time that, obviously, I could not otherwise have had for
study and reading. My routine was to spend a half-hour after
supper in talk with Mrs. Glass, then to my books till twelve or
one; rise at half-past five, hear Mass at St. Augustine's round
the corner, take my breakfast, and be at the store in time, that is,
about seven o'clock.

What bore heavily on me for some time was the petty perse-
cution I underwent from Gormick. Having found out that his
obscenity was the greatest annoyance he could inflict on me,
Gormick took particular pains to indulge his passion for bawdy
talk when I was by, not able, because of my work, to go away.
More than once I had had hot words with him on this score, but

1889.] PAUL RING WOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 529

hot words only provoked him the more. At last something hap-
pened that put an end to Gormick's exhibition of lewdness.

One morning Gormick made a remark to me that I told him
to repeat at his peril. He then applied an epithet to me which
Sir Pandarus of Troy has enriched with a synonym. I doubled
my fist, and a moment after Gormick lay on the broad of his
back among the baskets, his nose spouting blood. I do not
know which astonished me most, my being so muscular or Gor-
mick's getting up without a word and walking off quietly to the
wash-room. Thanks be to our Mother of Purity, Gormick
behaved very decently after that day.

One afternoon, shortly after this occurrence, a very pleasant
surprise came for me. All that day Ned Link had avoided me
in so marked a manner as to make me quite miserable, thinking
that I had in some way given him offence. About four o'clock
Guggins sent a message that he wanted me in his office. Con-
necting this unusual event with Ned's strange behavior, I felt not
a little uneasy as I knocked on the office-door for admission.
When I entered I found my employer, as I found him every
Saturday, seated at his desk in a mooning attitude.

" Well, Scott," he said, " you're doing tolerable, I suppose."

I answered that I hoped so.

" Of course you are," he said dreamily ; "a friend of Martha
Bland couldn't help doing well. You know March? "

Yes, I knew March, a clerk in Ned Link's department.

"He's going away," said Guggins; "I guess you'd better
take his place. You'll get seven and a half a week."

But ought not Ned Link to have the place? I asked ; he had
been in the house longer than I.

Peering at me, Guggins questioned : " What sort of kin did
you say you are to Martha Bland ?"

As I had told him before, I said that I was no kin to her.

" Then it must come from acquaintance with her," he mused
aloud ; " few folks thinks of others first in this world. You
needn't worry, Scott ; Link's all right. He gets eight a week ;
he don't want March's place."

Then there was nothing left for me to do but to thank my
employer, which I did very sincerely, for it was no little thing
for me to have my wages almost doubled.

" You had better go home now, Scott," said Guggins, when I
had finished my speech of thanks, to which he paid no heed,
"and if you see Miss Bland, tell her. She might think I was
forgetting you."
VOL. XLVIII. 34

530 PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Jan.,

To avoid the questioning of ray fellow-clerks, though I would
have liked to tell Ned Link, I went out the back way, almost
running on the road home. What was my surprise when, hurry-
ing up the steps of Mrs. Glass' house, the door was suddenly
opened by Ned Link, his face one broad smile. " Saw you
coming," he said.

" You here, Ned ! " I exclaimed.

" I don't believe I'm a ghost, any way," Ned retorted. "Why
don't you come in ? ''

For I still stood on the door-step, staring dazedly at him.

"Then you know?" I questioned slowly. "That's why you
kept away from me all day ? "

" To be sure it is ; 'fraid I'd let the cat out of the bag. But
come in ! come in ! " said Ned impatiently.

Following him to the kitchen, again I came to a stand-still.
Not only were Mrs. Glass and Miss Bland there, but Mrs. Link
and dear Nurse Barnes.

When nurse had embraced me, and every one had congratu-
lated me, it all came out. It was Ned who had induced Guggins
to promote me. How I shook his hand when I heard this, and
how he patted me on the back, saying all the time, " It's nothing ;
don't you mind.'' Mrs. Link, knowing of it, had sent off for
Nurse Barnes ; and Ned and Guggins had arranged about my
getting off early that afternoon. And now that everything that
was mysterious to me had been made plain, I delivered Guggins'
message to Miss Bland. Straightway she made a beautiful
speech about the constancy of stars, and recited some lines of
poetry which were very gloomy. Miss Bland said that these
verses were the opening stanza of "Camnor Hall." No one un-
derstanding their purport, they failed to impress their gloominess
on our little party, and when Mrs. Link had said that Miss Bland
had a poet's soul we went immediately to eating ham sandwiches
and drinking tea, very fast, for we were to go to the theatre, and
I had to change my store clothes. We wished to be in time to
get good seats, for the play was " Haunted Houses," and, as
every one knows who knows anything about Philiopolis, that
play drew crowded houses.

Nurse Barnes came near making an unpleasant scene at the
tea-table. After staring at me for a while she startled us by
crying out: " Goodness gracious ! he's fat."

Two red spots burned on Mrs. Glass' face, as, bridling, she
said : " Did you think I wus starv'n 'im, Miss Barnes?"

Nurse made profuse apologies, and said she had expected to

1889.] PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 531

find me " wearing." Whatever that may be, it satisfied Mrs.
Glass. When her wrath had subsided she said she " reckoned I
was doin' well."

On the way to the theatre the old Walnut Street nurse told
me that Bert was still with father, who was very unwell. " I do
think it's lumbager, though the doctor he says as it's gout," said
nurse.

" And nothing is said of me ? " I asked.

" Not a mossel of a word," sighed nurse, repeating emphati-
cally : " It can't go on so it can't ; I know it can't ! " seeming to
derive much satisfaction from these asseverations.

A bright starlight night, a sort of beatified slush in the
streets made so by the gleam of the gas-lamps the air full of
melody from the balcony concert at Fox's Casino, a crush of
people before the theatre- doors. Ned, strictly enjoined to get
front seats in the dress-circle, had gone on before. Now he was
to be seen above the crowd, beckoning us to come on, which
we succeeded in .doing after a deal of good-humored pushing.
Once on the stairs leading to the " circle," we were all right.
There we paused for a few moments to breathe and to let the
ladies settle their gowns and straighten their bonnets.

Ned must have been an old theatre-goer, for he had gotten us
seats on the left, not too near the stage. The last time I had
been in a theatre was the night father and I had heard "Faust,"
and thinking of it made me melancholy. Fortunately, I was
seated between Mrs. Glass and Nurse Barnes. These good
women had never been in a playhouse before, they informed me.
Their constant interchange of admiration-notes across me drove
away my sad memories. From the bed- curtain drop to the
frescoed ceiling everything was matter for them to wonder at.
And when Simon Hassler's bald head appeared above the
orchestra, and " Zampa's " overture began I believe "Zampa "
is out of date now ; it is a good overture, however Nurse
Barnes summed up her feelings in an exclamation: "It's ele-
gant ! " and Mrs. Glass replied : " It jes' es, Miss Barnes, a heap
sight better'n camp-meetin'."

Whilst the curtain was up these good souls preserved a de-
corous silence, never taking their eyes off the stage, laughing with
the actors, crying with them. I have not the faintest remem-
brance what " Haunted Houses " is about, but I am sure if
either Nurse Barnes or Mrs. Glass were here they could tell me.
They had the strongest conviction that it was the finest play
ever acted, that never were there better actors than Mr. and

532 PAUL RING WOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Jan.,

Mrs. Charles Walcot! I myself acknowledge a strong liking
for these two delightful people. When nurse said, decidedly,
that "Haunted Houses" was the best thing Shakspere ever
did, and I gainsaid his having written it, Mrs. Glass put in to say,
" Well, ef he didn't write et, he had oughter " ; they burst into a
jolly laugh, sure that I had been logically silenced.

" Well, well, times es changed," said Mrs. Glass, as we sat in
an eating-house over our fried oysters.

" How so, Mrs. Glass ? '' asked Mrs. Link, stirring her coffee.

" I never thort preachers went to sich places es play-houses ;
they didn't when I was a gel," answered Mrs. Glass.

Miss Bland looked surprised. "Aren't you mistaken, Mrs.
Glass?" she asked.

"No, I an't," said Mrs. Glass indignantly. "Where was
yeh eyes, Miss Blan', an' them a-floppin about in white necker-
<chers a-givin' th' big bugs th* bes' pews, jes fur all th f worl' like
et wuz en chu'ch ?"

" Oh ! " gasped Mrs. Link. " They are not ministers ; they
.are the ushers."

" I guess I knows a preacher when I sees 'im," said Mrs.
Glass sulkily.

Fortunately for the peace of our little company, the waiter
at this juncture came in with the custards that had been ordered
as an after-thought. In their distribution ministers and ushers
were forgotten.

Nurse Barnes stayed the night with Mrs. Glass, in order to
'see as much as possible of me next day. She was up betimes
next morning, and nothing would satisfy her but going down to
the store with me to see what kind of a place it was. Its size
proved in some way to be a comfort to her, and I verily believe
that she thought all the cares of the establishment rested on my
shoulders ; for she piously remarked that she hoped I looked
above for strength to support such a responsibility. I think, so
often did she feel for her purse on our way down the street, that
it had been her intention to offer me money as she had done be-
fore, but the sight of Guggins' warehouse put the idea out of
her head.

Nurse wanted me to write to her, but I refused, feeling sure
that my father would not like me to. Several of the salesmen
saw me bid her good-by, and the more curious ones asked me
if the old lady they had seen with me were my mother. I
.answered simply that my mother was dead.

My new position was an improvement on the retail depart-

1889.] PAUL RINGWOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 533

ment. My companions were of a better sort than Gormick and
Flat, and, if not always congenial spirits, it was not their fault.
Never have I come across a more whole-hearted set of young
men than were the clerks in Guggins' shipping rooms.

The months went slowly by, every day my, old home-life be-
coming for me more completely a thing of the past. One day
during this time, the warehouse was shut up, crape tied on its
doors. Mrs. Guggins was dead. I could not help speculating
on a hope I had now, that, after a decent time of mourning had
elapsed, Guggins would reward Miss Eland's constancy by mar-
rying her. When Miss Bland heard of the death of Mrs.
Guggins she said she supposed that it would be proper for. her
to put on mourning ; and the next time 1 saw her she wore an old
black frock, and a black tape about her neck. When I proposed
carrying her condolences to Mr. Guggins she exclaimed: "Not
for the world ! He would not believe in their sincerity. Heaven
forgive me for saying so, Mr. Scott," she continued in a half-
whisper, " but I don't believe he needs condolences ; she led him an
awful life."

After that I did not hear Miss Bland speak of " Charles " for
a long time.

One sultry noonday in July I was standing in a doorway to
get the benefit of whatever air might be stirring, gazing long-
ingly at the green country in the hazy distance across the river,
wishing for the cool seat in the porch at home. There was little
traffic on the river street; the draymen were all at dinner. The
clattering of a vehicle over the cobblestones, where horses were
generally walked, caused me to turn my head. It needed no
second look for me to recognize the approaching carriage as my
father's. I stood stock-still, staring at ihe horses drawing it as if
they were veritable nightmares, not moving till it was pulled up
before the warehouse. The carriage-door was impatiently flung
open, and Bert walked up to me, putting out his hand stiffly.

I told him how glad I was to see him, and wished very much
that Guggins' warehouse was not destitute of a reception-room.

" Paul," said Bert gravely, " father is very ill ; he cannot
speak, but he has made signs that he wants you. Will you go
back with me ? "

My answer was to rush out to the carriage, coatless and hat-
less as I was.

Bert caught me by the arm. " Don't make an ass of your-
self," he said. " Get your hat and coat, then tell the man you
work for that you may be gone a day or so."

534 PAUL RINGWOOD: AN -AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Jan.,

Bert always had a cool head for the proprieties. I ran off to
do as he bade me, making a hasty toilet with the assistance of a
basin of muddy water. This done, I went to Guggins' office to
ask a leave of absence to go to my father, who, perhaps, was
dying.

Notwithstanding my preoccupation, I could not help notic-
ing how much less of a badgered appearance Guggins now had.

" All right," he said, after thinking a moment. " What's his
disease ? "

I told him that I thought it was paralysis.

"Then don't you hurry," he said consolingly. " Folks some-
tirnes hang on for several days with that before getting out."

I found Bert waiting for me in the carriage. Dan was driv-
ing, and after I had warmly grasped his hand he asked : " Home,
Master Paul? "

" Yes," said Bert for me, speaking shortly.

Then Dan banged the door to, jumped up to his box, and
began to thread his way through the drays, now in motion.

The ride was a silent one. I had expected that there would
be much for us to talk about, but the fact is Bert did not seem
to want to talk, and I could think of nothing to say.

CHAPTER XVIII.
AN UNLOOKED-FOR END.

Gazing on the spot where I had turned to look back and
wave my hand to my father at the book-room window, how long
the time seemed since I had gone away from home ! Yet nothing
was changed, save that I had left in the winter when snow was
on the ground, and now the elms shadowed green grass, making
a leafy archway above the gravel drive. There, on the porch,
were the very chairs which father and I had used so many,
many summer days. Some one had left an open book on the
stoop as I had often done. In the dining-room the vases were
still kept filled with flowers as I had kept them, in memory of
mother and partly for the love I have myself for flowers.

Nurse Barnes came running out to welcome me, her eyes
much swollen, as if from weeping. With but a word in greet-
ing, she took me by the hand and led me directly to my father's
room.

He lay on the bed in a loose dressing-gown. Never had he
appeared more handsome than he did then. His face was pallid,

1889.] PAUL RING WOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 535

his flaxen hair smoothed back from his forehead. His palsied
left hand lay helplessly beside him ; his right hand played ner-
vously with the silken coverlet that was drawn over him. His
eyes were fixed on the door as I entered, and by a nervous
twitching of his moustache it seemed he wished to speak. The
doctor by his side made place for me. I caught the living hand
of my father in mine, and he feebly returned the pressure. Not
speaking, I gently wiped the damp from his forehead, and then,
seeing the tears rolling slowly from under his closed eyelids,
wiped them away too.

It was perfectly still in the room, save for the rustle of Nurse
Barnes' gown as she moved about, making little arrangements
lor my father's comfort. Suddenly the veins on his forehead
began to swell, and, with a great effort, he cried out : " Paul,
don't leave me !" Exhausted, he fainted away. The doctor ap-
plied restoratives, and the first thing my father's eyes did when
he came to was to seek mine.

The long summer afternoon dragged on, father alternately
dozing and waking. In one of his waking moments my shabby
clothing seemed to trouble him, for he passed his hand over my
coat sleeve, his eyes seeming to ask the meaning of my shabbi-
ness. A pained look crossed his face as I told him in a low
voice that I was in my working clothes.

Late in the evening nurse brought me tea, which I took
seated at my father's dressing-table. The doctor, who had been
away, came in and took a cup with me. This gave me the
occasion I had been wishing for to ask him if I could hope for
my father's recovery. I begged him to speak plainly, to tell me
the worst.

The doctor had a very full beard, which he stroked medita-
tively, glancing meanwhile at my father sleeping on the bed.

" He may pass away at any moment in his sleep, for instance ;
he cannot recover," said the doctor decidedly.

A moment after I had again taken my station beside my
father. A weary station, shadowed by the arms of a great cross.
He was dying ; no man could help him, but there was God.
What should I do ? If God would only direct me ! It was only
at midnight that I came to a decision. Bert and Nurse Barnes
had fallen asleep in their chairs ; the doctor asleep in the next
room, ready to be called should he be needed. The shaded lamp
was burning low on the dressing-table, and I knew my father
was awake by the restless rolling of his eyeballs. I took his
hand in mine, and, steadying my voice, said ; " Father, they say

536 PAUL RINGWOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Jan.,

you are " I had to stop. How could I have the heart to tell
my father that he was dying ? Nor was it necessary ; instinc-
tively I knew that he understood me.

After a moment to shape my words I began again, speaking
slowly: " Father, do not think that I would pretend to teach
you " Again T paused. I knew this to be no time for
phrasings, and I continued impetuously: " Perhaps, father, you
have never been baptized let me baptize you.''

To my great surprise and joy he pressed my hand in assent.

" Yes, father?" I asked, to make sure ; and the pressure of my
hand was repeated.

With such awe as I have never felt before or since, I filled a
bowl with fresh water.

I was weeping, and my voice was choked, as I said, pouring
the water on his head : " Arthur, if you are not already baptized,
I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Ghost."

It was not done too soon. I heard the rattling in his throat,
and gently raised him as best I could.

"Nurse! Bert! Doctor!" I called. In a moment they
were roused, nurse helping me to hold my father, whose head
rested on my breast.

It was striking half-past twelve when a smile flickered on my
father's face, and he whispered : " Edith ! "

Now, Edith was my mother's name.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

1889.] THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE. 537

THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE.

THOSE of our American fellow-countrymen who were in
Paris or in London during the month of July of this year may,
perhaps, have been present at the meetings held in both capitals,
at the instigation of Cardinal Lavigerie, to protest against the
horrible traffic which is now being carried on in the interior of
the African continent by the Arab slave-dealers, and of which
his missioners are the daily witnesses.

It was natural that the venerable cardinal should address
himself to the sympathies of English and Americans in this mat-
ter. By their heroic and self-denying efforts slavery has been
abolished in the West Indies and both in North and South
America ; and by the zeal of the Anti-Slavery Society in Lon-
don cruisers have been regularly despatched to the African
coasts to arrest the passage of the slaves-dhows and stop the
traffic to Asia from Zanzibar and the surrounding ports. Until a
few years ago, in fact, people cherished the idea that, except in a
few rare instances, slavery was a thing of the past and the
African race was free.

Then came the revelations of Livingstone, of Speke, of Stan-
ley, of Gordon, of Cameron, all eminent men, who had seen with
their own eyes the horrors they describe, and who rudely
dispelled the dream to which we have alluded. But as greater
publicity given to these facts may help to rouse the interest of
some of our readers, we will give a short account of this in-
famous traffic, condemned not only by the head of the Catholic
Church, but by Christians of every denomination throughout the
civilized world.

Twenty or thirty years ago little or nothing was known of
the interior of the great African continent. It was represented
on the maps as a great sandy desert, fatal to Europeans and quite
uninhabitable by them on account of its deadly climate. It has
now been discovered that in the high lands, near the great
lakes, the soil is beyond anything rich and fertile. Four large
rivers irrigate the country, while the great altitude of these vast
table-lands tempers the heat of the sun and makes a residence
there both healthy and agreeable. On the borders of the lakes
Nyanza and Tanganyika the heat of the day does not exceed 32
degrees (centigrade), while the nights are always fresh and cool.
The vegetation is wonderfully luxuriant, and the trees are large
and magnificent. Four crops can be sown and reaped in the

538 THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE. [Jan.,

year, and the consequence was that no part of Africa was so
peopled and so prosperous. Then came the hour of European
exploration, whereby this beautiful and fertile region was dis-
covered by the white men. But by an unhappy coincidence the
path was likewise opened to the slave-dealers, who, guided by
the natives who had accompanied the explorers, soon spread
misery and desolation throughout this once peaceful and happy
land. Their points of departure were Egypt and Zanzibar, and
their nominal traffic was ivory. The heads of these slave trading
expeditions are of a race called " inttis," whose origin is a mix-
ture of Arab and negro blood of the vilest sort. Brutes without
conscience and without pity, infamous for their bestial corrup-
tion and their horrible cruelty, they justify the African proverb :
" God made the whites and the blacks ; but the devil alone
created the inttis / "

To transport the ivory to the sea-coast in a country where
there are no roads bearers were required, and to obtain them
the natives were seized and enslaved. One village after the
other was depopulated and left a heap of ruins. The wretched
inhabitants fled to the woods or to the high maize crops near the
lakes ; the inttis surrounded and set fire to them ; and when,
driven to desperation by the heat and the smoke, they strove to
escape, they were seized and chained, men, women, and children,
and forced to march with their captors.

Then begins a series of cruelties almost too horrible for de-
scription. The slaves are tied in a way which makes walking a
real misery. The men have a fork round their necks which
connects the one with the other, and so they are driven on by
the lash all day in the burning sun. When night comes they are
given a little dry grain called " sorgho " and water, and nothing
else. The " mttis " .then examine which are the most likely to
survive the next day's march, and those whom they find too
much exhausted are felled to the ground with a heavy blow on
the back of the neck from a wooden bar (to save powder and shot),
and left thus to die. One of the missioners of Tanganyika, F.
Guilleme, writes from his station at Kibanga : " Having asked
an Arab how it was that I had seen so many skeletons in the
neighborhood of Oujiji, he quickly replied : ' Oh ! formerly we
used to throw the dying slaves there for the hyenas to carry off,
but this year the number of deaths among them has been so
great that these beasts are disgusted with human food.' '

Thus they march, day after day, month after month, till they
arrive at the slave-market on the borders of Morocco, Tripoli, or

1889.] THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE. 539

elsewhere. If a weary and footsore mother, carrying her child
in addition to her heavy load, lags behind for a few moments
and thus delays the march of the caravan, her infant is torn from
her arms and its brains dashed out before her eyes, while she is
flogged into continuing her painful path. It is needless to say
that not half of these poor creatures arrive at their destination.
But the value of the " animal," as the " metis " call them (which
amounts to between ten and twenty pounds, according to the
age and strength of the slave), amply repays their drivers for the
loss of the remainder. The drain on the already too scanty
population of Africa caused by this abominable traffic is calcu-
lated by Cameron, Gordon, and others at not less than fifteen
hundred men, women, and children every day of the year. The
question before the civilized world is this : Are we to permit a
system which, at the lowest computation, costs annually more
than five hundred thousand human lives ? Cardinal Lavigerie em-
phatically declares that his " conviction is that if some stop be not
put to these frightful excesses, and that speedily, the most beau-
tiful and fertile portion of this great country will, in a very few
years, become a perfect desert.'' Gordon calculated that from
1875 to 1879 the l ss f life i n Darfour and Bahr-el-Gazelle alone
was 81,000, in addition to the slaves exported, who numbered
from 80,000 to 100,000 ; so that in two provinces alone in four
years from 180,000 to 200,000 human beings had either perished
or been carried off into slavery. " But," as he sadly exclaims in
his Letters to his sister, " people care more for their dinners
than they do for anything else, and you may depend upon it, it
is only an active few whom God pushes on to take an interest in
this vast question. What a miserable thing this is ! "

The scarcity of ivory in the neighborhood of the great lakes
now induces the " metis " to content themselves with women
and children ; but the fate of the former, without defence in the
hands of these debauchees, is too horrible for description. Car-
dinal Lavigerie exclaims, when speaking on this subject :

" Christian women ! to you it belongs to make known these horrors
everywhere and to excite the indignation of all the civilized world. Do
not leave your fathers, your husbands, your sons, your brothers in peace
till you have induced them to use all the authority which their position,
their fortune, or their eloquence gives them to stop this effusion of the
.blood of your sisters. If God has given you the talent of writing, employ
it in this cause. You will not find a holier one. Remember that it was
the novel of a woman, Uncle Tom's Cabin, which, translated into all the
languages of the civilized world, set a seal on the deliverance of the slaves
in America."

540 THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE. [Jan.,

But our readers will naturally ask: What is to be done?
What practical use can we make of this new and terrible infor-
mation ? Cardinal Lavigerie takes the same view as General
Gordon, Commander Cameron, and as all those, in fact, who
have a personal and intimate knowledge of the question namely,
the necessity of the employment of a small force of armed men
under the guidance of European officers, for the protection of
the defenceless villagers and for the destruction of the slave-
trade. Already one gentleman has been found to make the ex-
periment. An old French officer of the Pontifical Zouaves, Cap-
tain Joubert, has nobly devoted his life to defend the natives of
Mpala, on the Tanganyika Lake, from the raids of the slave-deal-
ers. He has armed and equipped two hundred or three hundred
of the best kind of negroes, whom he has carefully disciplined,
and in this way has for eight years succeeded in keeping slave-
dealers and sluve-stealers away from his neighborhood. Why
should not other men follow this example? Mr. Waller advised
young men of means, who are continually making expeditions in
Africa to shoot big game, to turn their attention to the slave-
stealers instead. If on the great lakes, and on certain points of
the interior, we had small bodies of men organized as Captain
Joubert has done, we should soon arrive at the suppression of
this infamous traffic. General Gordon suggested the addition
of a small body of light cavalry, to be despatched when tidings
were brought of any fresh raid likely to be made in the neigh-
borhood. These troops would interfere with no existing govern-
ments, for we must remember that this slave-trade is carried on
in spite of the law, which prohibits it in every district. Came-
ron suggests the founding of an order which should consist of
two branches : one comprising those who would be willing and
able to join this crusade in Africa ; and the other who would prac-
tically assist the crusaders by gifts of money, boats, arms, etc.
Of course it would be best if the European states who at the
Congress of Vienna, the Conference at Verona, and the Congress
of Berlin took formal engagements to suppress the slave-trade
wherever their power extended, would themselves organize a
sufficient force, each on their own territory, to put it down. But
if the selfishness of modern governments precludes this hope,
why should not a crusade of this kind be formed, as in old times,
to deliver this glorious land from a worse than Egyptian bond-
age?

In the midst of the moral turpitude, the luxury, and the self-
indulgence which reign in this nineteenth century, whether io

1889.] AT ORDINATION. 54*

Europe or America, would it not be a great and glorious sight to
see voung men come forward, nobly and generously, to devote
their lives, or a few years of it, at any rate, to this object?
Would it not be something for them to feel, when they come to
die, that they had done such a great work for God and for the
souls he died to save ?

We will conclude with the words of Cardinal Lavigerie ad-
dressed to a French and American audience in the church of St.
Sulpice, in Paris :

" It is said in the Acts of the Apostles that while St. Paul was preach-
ing in Asia Minor he saw in a dream a man of Macedonia standing and
beseeching him, saying: ' Pass over into Macedonia and help us.' ' Trans-
tens . . . adjuva nos ! " This is the prayer which, through my voice, the
unhappy African slaves address to you to-day. Christians, cross the sea
which divides us and come and help us. St. Paul at once accepted the
petition and delivered the Macedonians from the yoke of sin. Come, in the
same way, to the Black Country. Come with your strong arms and your
warm hearts, come with your alms and your prayers, and deliver this
people, who are now sitting in the valley of death, and in the still more
horrible shadows of a slavery which is a thousand times worse than death.
Again I cry to you, with all the energy of my old priest's heart: Come
ver the sea and help us ! "

LADY HERBERT.

AT ORDINATION.

MY childhood's dream had grown to fancy, then

It budded into hope within the heat
Of mother's love as flowers grow to meet

The rays that come to kiss them chid me when
I erred, and led me from the ways of men

To angel paths where dewy graces fall,
To temples grand where golden vesture gleams

And music flows in soul-absorbing streams,
Or some deserted shrine 'neath twilight's pall

To feel alone in prayer what heaven seems ;
And long the vales of mystery we trod,

With books, and nearly saw the face of God ;
But now, untrue to all that lovely past,

It leaves me here on Calvary at last.

DENIS B. COLLINS.

Sf. Joseph's Seminary, Troy, N. Y.

542 CATHOLIC DEAF-MUTES OF NEW YORK CITY. [Jan.,

THE CATHOLIC DEAF-MUTES OF NEW YORK CITY.

" To instruct the deaf no art could ever reach,
No care improve them, and no wisdom teach." LUCRETIUS.

No class of unfortunates have benefited more by the Chris-
tian religion than the deaf and dumb. Before our Lord they
were treated with incredible inhumanity, sometimes being forced
on board of hulks in company with incurable cripples and sunk
in the sea. Even by the code of Justinian deaf-mutes are declared
incapable of legally valid contracts. But the church reached out
a protecting hand to them, and when the disturbances of the mi-
gration of the nations began to subside we hear of attempts made
to instruct them. The Venerable Bede tells us that in 685 he met
an instructed deaf-mute. About the same date Rudolphus Agri-
cola, of Heidelberg, in his De Inventione Dialectica, mentions meet-
ing with an educated deaf-mute.

But the first recorded attempt at their systematic instruction
is that of the Spanish Benedictine monk Pedro Ponce de Laon
in 1580. He taught them to speak and read from the motion of
the lips. In 1620 there were two English clergymen engaged in
teaching deaf-mutes at the University of Oxford. The famous
Abb6 de 1'Epee opened the first school for these unfortunates, in
Paris, 1778. Such was the veneration in which he was held that
even the Revolution spared him. He used the sign-language and
probably invented its present method. In the same year Samuel
Heinke opened a school in Leipsic and taught by the oral method.
Since then every civilized country has such schools, and the United
States is not surpassed by any, the State of New York alone hav-
ing six deaf-mute institutions employing the best methods for the
relief of those suffering from this sad infirmity of nature.

Mr. Gallaudet, father of the distinguished Episcopal minister
of the deaf-mutes of this city, opened the first school for them
in this country, in Hartford, Conn. He himself received his
instruction in the sign-language from the Abbe" Sicard, the suc-
cessor of the Abbe de l'Ep6e, and brought with him to America
one of the former's distinguished pupils.

Three methods are used : the purely oral, the sign-language,
and a combination of both, the last, however, being now generally
discarded. The oral method is the most perfect and almost en-
tirely restores the deaf-mute to the society of his fellow-men. It

1889.] CATHOLIC DEAF-MUTES OF NEW YORK CITY. 543

is based upon the fact that dumbness from defective organs of
speech is not found oftener among the deaf than among those
who have their hearing. There are positions of the lips, tongue,
and facial muscles peculiar to nearly every articulate sound, and
as the elementary sounds of human speech are not numerous they
are readily learned by the shape they give the organs used to ut-
ter them. The sight thus may become a substitute for hearing,
and the process is called lip-reading. The teacher manages his
pupil as a mother does a child who has the sense of hearing but is
yet without the power of articulating, teaching his pupil to ex-
press ideas with the sounds he has already acquired. He totally
interdicts the use of the sign-language, whose facility would soon
give it the advantage. By dint of much energy, patience, sharp-
ness of hearing and thinness of lips (so as to give plain examples
of the form of sounds), and much zeal on the part of the teacher,
one year is sufficient to enable the pupils to converse passably
well with each other by the oral method.

Complaints are sometimes heard of the banishment of. sign-
language from dactylological schools; but the Abbe Tarra, of
Milan, a prominent instructor of deaf-mutes, affirms that, without
any exception, all who are capable of learning the sign-language
are also capable of learning to speak. And the result gained, at
no greater outlay, all things considered, is that the pupil talks
like any other man and hears with his eyes.

The causes of congenital deafness are: consanguineous mar-
riages, weak constitution of parents, scrofula, cold and damp
dwellings, ill health of the mother at a certain period of life, and
in a few cases hereditary transmission. The number of the con-
genitallv deaf is not large, certainly not the half of the whole num-
ber of those who are deaf. Very likely many are entered in the
registers as congenitally deaf who have lost their hearing in the
period of infancy, when it was nearly impossible to ascertain the
fact, and the mother is so far from looking for such an accident
as unlikely to cause proper investigation.

The causes of contracted deafness are : scarlatina, measles, pa-
ralysis, fits, cold and damp surroundings, bad treatment, hydro-
cephalus, and other affections of the brain. The immediate causes
of this sad infirmity are the paralysis of the auditory nerve or the
deformity of the organ of hearing. Both defects have been con-
sidered until now as incurable. The proportion of deaf-mutes in
regard to the population varies according to the hygienic condi-
tions of the different countries and their degree of civilization.
They are very scarce among the North American Indians, where

544 CATHOLIC DEAF-MUTES OF NEW YORK CITY. [Jan.,

they do not survive the diseases which produce to'al deafness.
In the United States the ratio is one to eleven hundred.

The Catholics in the Archdiocese of New York numbering
600,000, there should be 546 Catholic deaf-mutes. But if we
consider that they are generally found among the poor, as their
infirmity is mostly caused by diseases arising from the injurious
conditions of their early surroundings ; that they drift into the
large centres of population, where they can more easily better
their condition in life and enjoy the company of their com-
panions in misfortune ; that five of the schools of New York
State are in or near this city, and that the best physicians, who
can often restore hearing, and can, at any rate, save their lives,
are generally found in large cities we must admit that there are
at least seven or eight hundred Catholic deaf-mutes in the Arch-
diocese of New York.

Of this number 200 are in our Catholic schools at Fordham
(girls) and Westchester (boys) under the intelligent management
of a religious order of sisters. About 60 are at Dr. Feet's
school; but I could not ascertain their number at Mr. Green-
berger's school, as they do not register or inquire about the
faith of the inmates. The remainder are scattered in every
part of the city, employed in different arts and trades, etc.

Uninstructed deaf-mutes, though having no clear idea of
God, have a good knowledge of the first principles of natural
morality, which constitutes a certain knowledge of a Supreme
Being, and, as a consequence, have a knowledge of right and
wrong and are responsible to conscience. Hence the church
has always endeavored to give them religious training. Every-
where they are made good citizens, good husbands and wives,
good Christians, and generally very patient in their afflicted and
lonely condition.

Our separated brethren are doing a great deal for the deaf-
mutes of this city as well as for those in all parts of the country.
They have six ministers going from place to place and giving
them religious instruction, without mentioning those stationed
in the different institutions in various parts of the Union. At
St. Ann's Episcopal Church, Eighteenth Street, where the deaf-
mutes come from every part of this city and neighboring places,
there are three ministers, thoroughly understanding the sign-
language, and devoting part of their time to the deaf-mute
mission. They have spacious rooms for the meetings of their
little societies, their library, and for their amusements. I must
acknowledge that all this is a great temptation for our Catholic

1889.] CATHOLIC DEAF-MUTES OF NEW YORK CITY. 545

deaf-mutes to join their church, especially for those who have
been their pupils; for a deaf-mute thinks a great deal of his
teachers. In fact, I greatly fear that the greatest part of our
Catholic deaf-mutes have gone that way, for during the year
I have been here I have not been able to reach more than two
hundred.

Our Most Reverend Archbishop has also done all he could
for that unfortunate part of his flock, especially in founding and
supporting the missiqn under my charge. Helped by his
worthy counsellors and understanding perfectly the question
and his responsibility, he continued for two years to ask for
a member of the community of the Clerics of St. Viator, to
which I belong, and whose vocation it is to evangelize deaf-
mutes.

The archbishop considered that men to whom this work
is a special vocation would be likely to do it well ; members, too,
of a community, and therefore not liable to be shifted from it by
a canonical promotion, who, being brethren together, in case of
death or sickness can take one another's place, and have the
knowledge and experience gained in similar work elsewhere.

G-ood progress has already been made. Last August twenty-
two men and women, who had received at our hands proper
religious training, made their First Communion and were con-
firmed. At the present time, besides those coming to me for
instruction on Sundays, and on week-days after their day's
work, I usually go twice a week to a club-room in Father
Slattery's parish, Carmansville, and give religious instruction to
fifty Catholic young deaf-mute men and women whom Dr. Peet
or some of his able staff of teachers brings to me. Dr. Peet takes
a great interest in this good work of ours and furnishes me
every facility. On Saturday, at two o'clock, ten of Mr. Green-
berger's pupils come to me for catechism at La Salle Institute,
Fifty ninth Street and Sixth Avenue, where the good Christian
Brothers have made me their guest. This instruction I give
orally. All of these young people will, I hope, make their First
Communion and be confirmed next spring, and I doubt not that
all will prove to be good Christians and will much assist my
mission by setting the others a good example.

In the beginning of a mission like this there is a great deal
of work to be, done before we can show any substantial results.
The spirit of darkness does not love it, and will raise up
difficulties and trials all good works are subject to that test
but it was the work of predilection of our Divine Saviour " the
VOL. XLVIII. 35

546 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Jan.,

dumb he made to speak and the deaf to hear " and he was led
dumb and patient to death for us. This mission has been put
under his sovereign patronage. He will take care of it, and
it will continue to be his work of salvation. Meantime I beg
for it the prayers and co-operation of the whole Catholic com-
munity.

ALFRED BELANGER, C.S.V.,

Missionary for the Deaf-Mutes.

TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS.

IT befell the present Talker, in those days of callow imma-
turity of mind which he supposes may come to the inchoate
sage as well as to the more ordinary dullard though he speaks
with undoubting assurance of the latter only to encounter
another, possibly less youthful, certainly not less callow, wan-
derer in the paths of literature. Their aims were diverse, the
Talker being then, as now, bent upon discovery and admiration
pure and simple, the other on " creative art." But how create
from nothing ? How paint without a model ? How reveal secrets
without knowing any ?

Realism in art, as this generation is learning it from certain
French and Russian masters, with the kindly aid of American
and English critics, was only on its way to the birth in those
days. But this neophyte had a private inspiration which, possi-
bly, nothing but some congenital weakness in the intellectual
knees of him to whom it was vouchsafed prevented from placing
American fiction at once in the van on that road. For the in-
spiration appeared genuine ; it had the air of coming straight up
from the nether source of such. Still, as it seemed somehow in-
compatible with the general unfledgedness of its recipient, as well
as with the wholesome, if strict, parental discipline under which
his years compelled him still to squirm, his boasts of what he had
done, was doing, and would do, moved the lighter-minded of his
well-wishers as often. to laughter as to tears. A pair of these
beheld him one snowy afternoon, just on the verge of dusk,
emerging from an underground oyster-cellar, a tin pail in his
hand, it is true, and a most virtuous-looking red woollen com-

i8?9-] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 547

forter about his neck, but still with the familiar and not-lightly-
to-be-cast-off air of mysterious wickedness peering through these
mean disguises. " Halloo!" said one, "there's the great Sylvan-
der! What is he doing down there?" "Possible you don't
know?" said the other. "That must be one of those 'lowest
haunts of vice' he says he frequents. Looks as if he was carry-
ing a pailful of it home to his mother for supper."

It was of Sylvander that the Talker was reminded by Mr.
George Moore and his delectable Confessions of a Young Man
(New York : Brentanos), now in its second " authorized " edition.
Mr. Moore is the author of one or two unrelievedly nasty novels,
constructed on the Zola pattern, but with heavy, English materials
and not any charm of style. His Confessions of a Young Man are
understood to be autobiographic, although the " young man of
refined mind," as he describes the hero, calls himself Edward
Dayne. and so manages to introduce this affecting little tribute
to the merits of Mr. George Moore :

"In England, as in France, those who loved literature the most purely,
who were the least mercenary in their love, were marked out for prosecu-
tion, and all three were driven into exile. Byron, Shelley, and George
Moore; and Swinburne, he, too, who loved literature fo'r its own sake, was
forced, amid cries of indignation and horror, to withdraw his book from the
reach of a public that was rooting then among the garbage of the Yelver-
ton divorce case. I think of these facts and think of Baudelaire's prose
poem that poem in which he tells how a dog will run away howling if you
hold to him a bottle of choice scent, but if you offer him some putrid mor-
sel picked out of some gutter-hole he will sniff round it joyfully, and will
seek to lick your hand for gratitude."

Edward Dayne is by birth an Irishman " of the landlord
class," and by training a Catholic. Hear him discourse concern-
ing those facts :

"Two dominant notes in my character an original hatred of my native
country, and a brutal loathing of the religion I was brought up in. All the
aspects of my native country are violently disagreeable to me, and I can-
not think of the place I was born in without a sentiment of nausea. These
feelings are inherent and inveterate in me. I am instinctly averse to my
own countrymen ; they are at once remote and repulsive. . . . The Eng-
lish I love, and with a love that is foolish, mad, limitless ; I love them
better than the French, but I am not so near them. Dear, sweet, Protes-
tant England, . . . southern England, not the north there is some-
thing Celtic in the north southern England,, with its quiet, steadfast
faces ; a smock-frock is to me one of the most delightful things in the
world, it is so absolutely English. The villages clustered round the
greens, the spires of the churches pointing between the elm-trees this
is congenial to me ; and this is Protestantism.. England is Protestantism,

548 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Jan.,

Protestantism is England. Protestantism is strong, clean, and westernly ;
Catholicism is eunuch-like, dirty, and Oriental. . . . Look at the nations
that have clung to Catholicism : starving moonlighters and starving
brigands. . . . Let us be Protestant, and revere Cromwell."

A page further on comes this:

"Marriage what an abomination ! Love yes, but not marriage. Love
cannot exist in marriage, because love is an ideal ; that is to say, some-
thing not quite understood transparencies, color, light, a sense of the
unreal. But a wife you know all about her who her father was, who her
mother was, what she thinks of you, and her opinion of the neighbors over
the way. Where, then, is the dream, the au dela ? There is none."

But when he says " a wife you know all about her," this
" young man of refined mind " means to be understood strictly
,of a man's own wife. His neighbor's wife ah, that is quite an-
other thing! She is the very dream of dreams, to prove which
he prints a long letter to himself from one which goes to contra-
dict his first thesis, that a man "knows all about " the woman
who bears his name. And then he tells how he read Gautier
and learned joyfully from him that by

" Looking without shame and accepting with love the flesh, I might raise
it to as high a place and within as divine a light as even the soul had been
set in. The ages were as an aureole, and I stood as if enchanted before
the noble nakedness of the elder gods. . . . And I cried with my master
that the blood that flowed on Mount Calvary ne ma jamais baignt dans ses
flats:'

But all this is in the oyster-cellar. The " young man of a re-
fined mind '* does not really tie on his red comforter and get his
stew in his tin pail until he reaches his last chapter and turns to
parley with his "hypocritical reader." You want to know, he
says, why you

" Have been forced to read this record of a sinful life. Soldier, robber,
priest, atheist, courtesan, virgin, -I care not what you are, if you have not
brought children into the world to suffer, your life has been as vain and as
harmless as mine. ... I neither repent nor regret, and a fool and a weak-
ling I should be if I did. I know the worth and the rarity of more than
fifteen years of systematic enjoyment. Everything conspired to enable me
to gratify my body and my brain ; and do you think this would have been
so if I had been a good man ? If you do you are a fool ; good intentions
and bold greed go to the wall, but subtle selfishness with a dash of un-
scrupulousness pulls more plums out of life's pie than the seven deadly
virtues. . . . Admit that you feel just a little interested in my wickedness ;
admit that if you ever thought you would like to know me it is because I
know a great deal that you probably don't; admit that your mouth waters
when you think of rich and various pleasures that fell to my share in
happy, delightful Paris; admit that if this book had been an account of

1889.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 549

the pious books I had read, the churches I had been to, and the good
works I had done, that you would not have bought it or borrowed it.
Hypocritical reader, think, had you had courage, health, and money to lead
a fast life, would you not have done so? ... You who are now turning
up your eyes and murmuring 'horrid young man,' examine your weakly
heart and see what divides us. . . . Humanity be hanged ! Self, and after
self a friend; the rest may go to the devil; and be sure that when any
man is more stupidly vain and outrageously egotistic than his fellows, he
will hide his hideousness in humanitarianism."

And so on, ad nauseam, indeed, but still in a way to make one
reflect that the " weakly heart" of no reader counts for as much
as the " weakly head " of the writer in estimating the repelling
force between them.

The Court of Charles IV. : a Romance of the Escorial (New
York : W. S. Gottsberger) is translated by Clara Bell from the
Spanish of B. Perez Galdos. It is a historical novel, with no-
thing sufficiently romantic either in its conception or its execution
to explain or justify the second half of its title. The time chosen
is early in the present century, when the Prince of Peace, Manuel
Godoy, was still powerful in Spain. The story is supposed to be
told by an ignorant boy, originally page to an actress, afterwards
to an intriguing lady of the court. It is not compellingly inte-
resting in any of its parts few novels pretending to be historical
ever are so and its historical details and explanations are dis-
tinctly tiresome. It is translated into smooth and agreeable
English, and in some of its scenes shows its author's knowledge
of the springs of human nature and his cleverness in making
them subserve the purposes of fiction. There is one virtuous
girl among the female characters, and what little is shown of her
is pleasant. The marquis, too, vain, pompous, empty, yet appa-
rently bursting with his load of imaginary secrets, is languidly
amusing. The book reads like the hack-work of a clever and
capable writer who regards the production of fiction as a pro-
fession, and works at it as he might at law, medicine, or politics
had he chosen either as a means of livelihood. But it does not
suggest to one who makes in it a first acquaintance with Gald6s
any sufficient explanation of the praises heaped upon some of his
other novels.

Dodd, Mead & Co. publish A Gallant Fight, by Marion Har-
land (Mrs. Terhune). It is a most ladylike production, and may
be recommended as certain not to bring the blush of shame to
the cheek of the most innocent. And yet the " gallant fight "
intended by the title we take to be the long struggle kept up by
Mrs. Richard Phelps not to " let on" to him, or to anybody,

550 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Jan.,

that she knows her husband has once been on the verge of un-
faithfulness to her after she had said she would " stake her soul's
salvation on his continued fidelity." She continues this warfare
throughout the greater part of the novel, and is finally victori-
ous in it by means of that great defeat, a point-blank lie. Mrs.
Terhune has not made quite plain what she thinks of this enor-
mous turpitude on the part of Madeline. She paints with vim
the dreadful state of affairs at the time when her heroine touch-
ed this topmost height, was it, or lowest depth? final point,
any way, of her struggle. She gives you the beautiful, detesta-
ble, snaky woman, who has found and preserved and brought to
Madeline's notice, out of sheer, inherent spitefulness, the knowl-
edge of Richard's contemplated but providentially prevented
fall from virtue, and who now wants to use it in a sort of black-
mailing way. Then she draws Richard's horror at the thought
that Madeline knows. Poor fellow ! no wonder his wife took pity
on him, for it affected him like this :

" He shook as in the death-ague. Such extremity of terror as she had
never conceived of rushed into the eyes she held with hers; a greenish
pallor overspread his visage ; his thin fingers fastened on her sleeve ; his
lips writhed, giving forth no sound/'

So, when his tormentor insists on having from Madeline, in
his presence, " a categorical reply to my question, Did you never
read the contents of that envelope?" Madeline says, "Never ! "
Was it victory? Was it defeat? Mrs. Terhune is doubtful.
She is quite sure that it was good " wifehood," yet she says :

"Madeline in this hour knew a deeper depth of degradation even the
lowering of herself to shield him. The salvation of his fair fame, the pro-
tection of her children from befouling scandal, the unspeakable dread of
seeing her husband die under the scourge of detection by so much more
fearful to characters like his than awakened conscience, as they love them-
selves more than others all these things started up before her in the one
instant of recoil from actual and conscious falsehood, and hurled her for-
ward. She had cried to an offended God for forgiveness. He knew the
might of the^ temptation, and, being all-merciful, might assoil her soul.
The blot would be for evermore visible to her. It was a Pyrrhian victory,
with disasters never to be retrieved."

The italics are ours. Mrs. Terhune has told her story in an
interesting way. But there is, as usual in her work, a subdued,
cook-book sort of flavor in it, an atmosphere of tatting and tat-
tling, and crochet work, and aesthetic chromos, and general
primness, propriety, and prettiness, which makes "ladylike "at
once the most comprehensive and descriptive of adjectives for it.

1889] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 551

Pen, by the author of Miss Toosey's Mission and Laddie (Boston :
Roberts Brothers), is a very sweet little English story, well writ-
ten and well conceived. Both the sisters, Pen and little Tre, are
charming, and Sandy and his love-affair enlist from the first a
sympathy which his red hair and yellow-green eyes have no
power to do away with. The book is entirely wholesome and to
be commended.

The Rebel Rose (New York : Harper & Brothers) is an unr
usually good piece of work by an anonymous author. Whether
man or woman is not so evident as it usually is in anonymous
novels, and we confess to feeling more than ordinarily in doubt
on that point. Mary Stuart Beaton, the heroine, and Lady Sax-
on, her foil, are both painted, one would say, from the inside.
Unlike as they are, there are very feminine touches in both of
them. So there are, for that matter, in the men, Sir Victor Cham-
pion, Rolfe Bellarmin, and Lord Saxon. But whether the book
is the production of a clever woman whose native intuition has
been pieced out by experience, and possibly supplemented by
masculine collaboration in the treatment of public affairs, or
that of a good man whose ideals have been more or less con-
sciously shaped by a knowledge of the Catholic ideal, is not
convincingly obvious. The writer is, at all events, no tyro.
He has an easy mastery of all his material, and, though the
story is long, there is little that can be called mere padding
in it.

The scene is laid in London, where the Honorable Mary
Stuart Beaton, a legitimate descendant of the Stuarts, and a very
striking reproduction in face and figure of Mary Queen of
Scots, has come to press her claim to some estates bequeathed
to one of her ancestors but confiscated by the crown. She is
under age, and is attended by an elderly lady-in-waiting, and by
an old friend of her father's, General Falcon, who, in spite of his
years, is madly in love with her and inclined to play the part of
Bothwell to her Mary. She has held a sort of court in Schwal-
benstadt, is addressed as Madame, and gets into one of the Eng-
lish illustrated papers in the character of a Jacobite pretendress
to the throne. She is, in reality, a most charming young girl,
who presently leads into captivity, wholly without intent to do
so, and with no effort save that unconsciously exercised by her
beauty and pure womanly charm, the two men most able to
advance her cause in the House of Commons Sir Victor Cham-
pion, the Liberal leader, and Rolfe Bellarmin, the young head
of a schism in the Conservative ranks known as Tory Democracy.

552 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Jan.,

Nor do these exhaust the list of Mary's suitors. There is also
Lord Stonehenge, young, remarkably handsome, the living head
of a great and powerful family which had never changed its
English homestead or its religious faith since the Conquest.
Mary herself is Catholic, goes to the Jesuit church in Farm
Street, and when she and her quartette of admirers are assem-
bled together at Stonehenge Park they meet there another pre-
tender to a throne, the little Don Jose of Saragossa, his tutor,
Mgr. Valmy, a Jesuit priest, and that ecclesiastic's " chaplain
and private secretary," Dr. Amblaine. Mgr. Valmy 's Catholi-
cism was of the widest range, says the author, and exemplifies the
fact by making him say, concerning the transmigration of souls,
that he has " never thought of the theory of reincarnation as
totally opposed to the divine revelation which we have received.
It would, on the contrary, seem to throw some light upon diffi-
cult problems." And again :

"Men not of his own faith sometimes found fault with his very wideness
of view and his comprehensive, candid tolerance of differing opinion. It
was the arrogance of the Roman churchman, they would have it; he was
so satisfied of the final triumph of his own church that he already regarded
every other human creature as one of the same fold, whether the other
human creature would have it so or not."

Mgr. Valmy, however, has no important part to play in the
story, and, in spite of the prominence given to him and his views
in two or three of its chapters, the space he fills comes as near to
deliberate padding as anything between its covers. But he and
Dr. Amblaine are the only official representatives of any form of
religion who are brought into a singularly full novel which shows
refinement and elevation of sentiment, and for that reason they
become interesting, as indicative of tendency in a writer whom
we do not believe to be Catholic. Reverent he is, however, and
in sentiment religious, and in the delineation of Mary Beaton and
of Lord Stonehenge, especially in the last scene between them, he
has touched high ground. But the novel has much more of poli-
tics than of religious sentiment in it. Of religious doctrine it has
none, and its central pivot is, as it should be, a love-story that of
Mary Beaton and Rolfe Bellarmin. It is not a great novel ; it
allows itself to be laid down without difficulty, although it must
betaken up again with pleasure. But it shows an easy and sym-
pathetic mastery of nearly all it touches, and a keen insight into
human nature in both its nobler and its meaner aspects. It is
written, too, in singularly even and well-bred English, which is
always quite equal to the stress laid upon it by the exigencies of

1889.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 553

the business, the sentiment, or the passion of the moment. And
as all of these, though natural and real, are yet lifted out of the
rut of the ordinary tale of contemporary life and manners, chiefly,
perhaps, by the skill with which Mary Beaton herself and her
would-be Bothwell are invested with imaginative charm, the
book fairly deserves the title of a romance rather than a novel.

Ticknor's " Paper Series of Choice Reading " has been really
enriched by the two October issues, Doctor Ben, by Orlando
Witherspoon, and Mrs. Mary Hallock Foote's John Bodcwins
Testimony. Neither novel is new, each dating back some six or
seven years its first appearance, and the present being the fifth
edition of John Bodewin. Mr. Witherspoon's story is cleverly
told, interesting in plot, and packed full of incident. It is, not-
withstanding, a novel with a purpose, its underlying intention
being to enforce the probably true notion that insanity is, in
absolute strictness, a disease of the body, and therefore to be
cured in most instances by treatment. Mr. Witherspoon, like
most enthusiasts, is at least as vague as he is energetic in the
promulgation of his theories, and if, as he affirms, " the wise ones,
doctors, psychologists, specialists, physicians, and metaphysicians,
are going full tilt towards a land of paradise unveiled by the
doctrine that insanity is sickness'' it seems tolerably certain that
the progress of none of his own readers in the direction of that
Eden will be perceptibly forwarded by the history of Doctor Ben.
Speaking for ourselves, we have got from it not an inkling of
anything likely to benefit a lunatic, except putting him in the
ca.re of a specialist known to be intelligent, scientific, and an
honest hater of those ways with the insane which have made both
public and private asylums for them so often a stench in the
nostrils of the sane. The story, however, stands on its own legs
as a story, and is worth reading.

D. Lothrop Company (Boston) publish, in very handsome
form, a compilation by Rose Porter entitled The Story of Mary
the Mother. There is, we must suppose, some want among our
Protestant brethren to which such a publication is intended to
cater. And that there is, at the same time, a current of feeling
tolerably sure to be adverse to it may be inferred from the
words in which the compiler disowns having any part in the
letter-press of the book save that of selecting and binding
together. It has been " a pleasant task," she says, " and one
on which, I think, the sternest advocate of orthodoxy will not
frown ; for however much we Christians may differ in our
forms of worship, we all unite in the " Apostles' " creed."

554 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Jan.,

The selections are made in the main from Mrs. Jameson's
Legends of the Madonna, supplemented by extracts from the King
James' version of the Gospels, from Mrs. Harriet Beecher
Stowe, Christina Rossetti, and Adelaide Procter, and end with
a not very characteristic poem by Cardinal Newman. It has
ten full-page illustrations, most of them tolerably good repro-
ductions from well-known paintings by Titian, Murillo, Carlo
Dolce, Guido Reni, and others. The book might have been
made more worthy of its subject, its binding, and its fine, thick
paper by more careful proof-reading.

There is some delightful poetry in Sir Edwin Arnold's new
volume, With Sadi in the Garden ; or, The Book of Love (Boston :
Roberts Brothers). The bulk of the poem is original, though
some of its passages imitate the Persian. In form it is a dia-
logue, supposed to take place at Agra, in the garden of the Taj
Mahal, the great tomb raised by Shah Jehan to the memory of
his beloved Persian wife, Arjamand. The speakers are an Eng-
lish Saheb, two singing-girls, and the Mirza Hussein, a Mahome-
tan, who meet by moonlight to listen to

" Sa'di's third chapter of the Bostan there,
That ' Ishk ' which sings of Love.''

Love, in the thought of the Persian poet, as in that of the Eng-
lish one, his translator and imitator, is a very noble passion,
coming from God and leading back to him. "In what market,"
asks one of the singing-girls, " does one buy such love?" And
the Mirza answers her :

" In all the markets, daughter, where they sell

Black snow, cold fire, dry water, and such goods;
For this thing cometh not of golden gifts,
Nor marriage-brokers, nor with bartered hearts,
But is by Kismet and the grace of God,
And bringeth where he will.

" Saheb. And, if He will

That it bring far ?

* Mirza. Then may the Lover learn

Infinite things beyond that thing he sought:
For Beauty is aperfectness of Allah,
Showing Himself; and the Soul seeing this
By vision of the senses, so devised
That flesh must thrill, delighted blood must course,
Heart bound with worship, and glad eyes grow dim
Beholding Beauty Soul, perceiving this,
Hath first the impulse to create in turn

1889.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 555

Whence human crave for household, wife, and child.
Whereby this earth is peopled ; then, past that,
The passion to draw near Heaven's perfectness ;
To lose the Self therein, to live for it,
To win to wonders of the Rose-garden,

To hidden mysteries of Allah's love.
For more than He is glorious. He is dear,
More than almighty, sweet and beautiful. . . .
So led, the Lover hath his man's blood changed
In base hearts little ; in the gentle much
To mildness as of maid, to peace, to grace,
To sacrifice, and amity, and thirst
For manful deeds.''

And to yet larger love wins Sa'di himself in certain of the
poems translated directly from him. As thus :

" It comes to me what a wise ancient told,

How one, with God's love drunk, went lone and bold

Into the waste, and when his sire with anguish
Of separation foodless, sleepless, old

" Reproached him, he replied : ' From that dear day
When He who is the Friend to me did say,

"Mine own thou art!" by God ! no earthly feeling
In this glad bosom found a place to stay :

"'By God! since He His beauty hath made known
All other grace is dream and shadow grown. 1

Nay ! and he was not lost who left his people !
God found him ; and he found his All, his Own !

" Oh, if to God thou hast propinquity,
For no wealth heedless of His service be !

If Lovers true of God shall ask from God
. Aught except God, that's infidelity !

" If thine eyes fix on any gift of Friend, *

Thy gain, not his, is thy desire's end !

If thy mouth gape in avarice, Heaven's message
Unto Heart's ear by that road shall not wend !

"Saheb. I see it is not willed that Love should gain,
Nor pay itself with pleasure, nor sit soft
On this world's carpets, drinking wine of ease.

. . . Learned Mirza! so

Your Ishk comes, by its Persian road of palms
And nightingales, and roses, and soft verse,
To that same Syrian Hill whose slopes austere
Heard our Lord Isa speak : / say to you-

556 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Jan.,

Love ye your enemies ! Be in your love

Perfect, as is your Father, who is Love I

Take no thought for your life: the Kingdom first !

God's Kingdom first ! God's righteousness ! and then

Other things shall be added /''

Some of the episodes in what is, we suppose, Sir Edwin Ar-
nold's original poetry are extremely beautiful. That, for exam-
ple, which tells how the despised singing-girl, Gulbadan, saved
from the jaws of a tigress the baby of the virtuous woman who
had scorned to let her touch it. That, too, which relates the
temptation and the victory of Shah Jehan, and the nobility of
Arjamand. The poem is in all ways a worthy companion to the
Idyls of the King, and we are by no means sure that, re-reading
the latter, we should not give In the Garden with Sadi the pre-
ference. Arnold himself seems to rank Tennyson above Sadi,
yet where has he struck any note so high as this in praise of
love ?

" One to Majnun spake : ' Oh, of noblest lot !
What falleth that to Hayy thou comest not ?

Thy love for Laila, peradventure, passes ;
Thy fancy turns ; thy heart no more is hot.'

14 He heard, the hapless one, and, weeping-, said :
' Good sir, let go my skirt ! Love is not dead !

I have the same heart, sorrowful and bleeding;
Pour not thy salt upon its wounds, still red.

"Thus to be severed is not to forget,
Nor absence fault, when Fate decreeth it.'

Quoth t'other, 'Ah, most faithful one and gentle !
Utter some errand on my tongue to set

" For Laila from Majnun.' He answered: ' Bear
No message in my name to her most dear!

To speak as we were twain, and I not she, 'g:>:!

Is treason : Where she is, /, too, am there !' "

In those lines of the Persian rings an accent akin to one that
echoes from a quarter so remote as Annecy, and from the heart
of a saint. " Rest in the peace and consolation of our Lord,
dear mother," writes St. Francis de Sales to his twin saint, "and
in eight days at most I shall return hither, whence, however, I
think I shall never truly depart so long as God keeps me in my-
self. You yourself know very well that the unity which God
has made is far stronger than all separation, and that distance
has no power over it. So God bless you for ever with his holy
love. It is one heart he has made in us, one in spiric and in life."

r89-] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 557

WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS.

STORY OF A CONVERSION.

WE had at home a room that was a repository for all sorts of odds and ends
of printed matter for which a place could not be found in the library. This
room was a favorite haunt of mine when a boy, and there it was I first formed
an acquaintance with the "Romans" not the citizens of Rome, but the "fol-
lowers of the Pope."

It was in a thin, yellow-covered book, the name of which I forget (to me it
was the " Bloody Book "), that I made these new acquaintances. The frontis-
piece represented Cranmer in the garb of a modern Episcopal bishop, seated
before the fireplace of a humble room, expounding Scripture from an enormous
Bible held on his lap. His audience were a group of cottagers and a lady with
a crown on her head. This lady I knew to be Catherine of Aragon, for the title
of the picture was, "Cranmer explains the Bible to Queen Catherine of Aragon."
How Queen Catherine came to be in a cottage seeking the truth from Cranmer
I have quite forgotten. I think the book did not faithfully follow history. That
Cranmer should go about the country in the garb of a Protestant bishop bother-
ed me considerably. I, a little Episcopalian, knew that our bishop only assumed
his robes in church. As I could not imagine a queen without a crown and royal
mantle, Catherine appeared to me to be as she should be. There were in this
baok a frightfully wicked priest, and a beautiful nun who had been converted
from her errors by the reading of the Bible. The Bible was found with her, and
she was condemned to be " immured " in a wall with a little opening left for her
to breathe through. I am sure of this word " immured," for it tickled my fancy
immensely. The nun would have died of starvation had she not been rescued
by a duke, who then fell in love with her^was brought by her to see the errors of
the Papacy, and then married her. Whether she caused him to repent of this
last step I do not remember. This book deeply impressed me, exciting in my
mind a most Christian hatred of all Catholics, and there is nothing I would have
liked better than to have had the roasting of a priest. For want of a " Papist "
I set about immuring our cat, " to see how it worked.'' Caught at this, I had my
ears boxed and myself immured in a dark closet. My boxi-ng and immuring
also made an impression on me. At the early age of eight I was a martyr for
Evangelical truth as contained in " No-popery ' ' books. During the years im-
mediately following this event my hatred for the Catholic Church, so far from
decreasing, augmented. It did not become more reasonable hatred of truth
never can be reasonable but it gradually assumed a definite shape.

The Episcopal church I attended was moderately " High " ; it would be called
" Low " nowadays. I liked it because " nice " people formed its congregation.
Its services did not please me, and I cared little for the sermons. Still I liked
well enough to go,to church, and loved dearly to go to Sunday-school this
last because of the teacher I had. When I had the unhappiness of losing my
mother I was more drawn to religious things. It was suggested to me that,
now that I was fourteen, I should think of being confirmed. The idea of being
confirmed was most distasteful to me. It appeared to me that our sect was ex-
ceedingly like the " Roman Church," and it would have pleased me better t
have been a Lutheran.

558 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Jan.,

On the Christmas eve of the year on which confirmation was proposed to
me I overheard our Catholic servants talk of the first Mass of the morrow, of
how beautiful it would be and what a crowd would be there. My curiosity was
aroused, and I asked one, if my father consented to it, would he take me along
with him to the Mass. He assented, and I ran off to get my father's permission,
which was gotten without difficulty. Never shall I cease to wonder at the im-
pression that Christmas Mass made on me. The church in which it was offered
is very beautiful. The marble altars were ablaze with light and were adorned
with fair flowers ; the ceremonies were grand and stately. To say that I was
shocked and horrified is to say little of what I felt. I thought the people about
me were the grossest of idolaters. I longed vehemently to denounce them then
and there. I wondered that the lightnings of God's wrath did not cleave the roof
and altar, and strike dead the wicked priests. I felt myself guilty of a heinous
crime in being present there, and had not egress been almost impossible be-
cause of the immense crowd, I would speedily have gotten away from what I felt
to Be an accursed spot. On the way home I was silent and taciturn. I would
say nothing of what I felt, for I had been early taught never to offend our ser-
vants in their belief by word or deed. At home I begged God on my bended
knees never to permit me to put my foot again in a Catholic church.

Confirmation in the Episcopal sect was no longer a difficulty for me. I
could no longer perceive any likeness in Anglicanism to Catholicity. Certainly
there was a great difference between the bare church of St. L.'s and the almost
magnificent sanctuary of St. V.'s. I was confirmed, and, as far as going to
church services went, was a zealous Episcopalian ; for from the time of my con-
firmation I do not think that I missed an Episcopal service of any kind as long
as I remained an Episcopalian.

How and when it was that my feelings in regard to the church began to
change would be very hard for me to say exactly. Probably it was in the Sun-
day-school that the sharp edge of my hatred of Catholic things was blunted.
There I learned Sunday by Sunday the beautiful collects which I did not then
know are prayers translated from the Mass-book. These prayers I became
much attached to, particularly the one for the feast of the Annunciation and that
for St. Michael's day. At Sunday-school my teacher, of whom mention has
been made, instilled in me a greater reverence for Anglicanism and church au-
thority than, perhaps, she at all intended doing. In all probability this good
woman did more towards leading me to the truth than she or I in this life will
ever be aware of. Then, too, a serious reading of the books in the Sunday-
school library did much for me. The greater number of these books were
rather " High." The change that was going on in me first manifested itself on
a certain Easter when I wished our " altar " would be well decked with flowers.
To help further this I procured a basket of^flowers not very fine ones, but they
were really the best I could get and brought them to our minister's wife. I was
delighted next day Easter Sunday to see quite a floral- display in the chancel,
and the flowers brought by me on the very altar itself. A little sacrifice had
been made by me, and that day I could say my prayers ever so much more
fervently.

The communion service had great attractions for me, and it became a source
of sorrow to me that it was not read more frequently at St. L.'s, as I knew it
was at some other Episcopal churches, even daily. Of course I had been taught
not to believe in transubstantiation, yet if what I did believe was not transub-

1889.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 559

stantiation I don't know what it was. If I recollect rightly I did once try to
reconcile the being taught that in communion I received the very flesh and blood
of Christ, and again being taught that it was a grievous error to believe in a
change in the substances of bread and wine. I must have given it up, for when
I became a communicant I finally believed that at the words of consecration pro-
nounced by our minister, whom I now called a priest, our Lord did really come
down on the table we called an altar. My Episcopalian friends were not guilty
of not instructing me; rather, mine was a case of over-instruction.

Believing in the Real Presence, little by little I was won to that phase of
Anglicanism which loves to deck itself in the pilfered garments of the church.
I began to wish for more of what I had once looked down on as vain pomp and
show. All the extreme " High-Church " books that came in my way were read
by me with interest and attention. I became quite learned in rubrics and ritual.
Every Sunday and holyday that I went to service I hoped for the time when St.
L.'s would bloom out into a temple of the genuine " Anglo-Catholic rite."

The books I read told me that I should bow my head at mention of the holy
name, at the Gloria Patri. This I did, deriving much consolation from the
thought that I was doing some little thing to help on " Anglo-Catholicism." This
was the name I now called myself, an " Anglo-Catholic. " Protestantism became
distasteful to me, though in this I was more charitable than I had been in my
hatred of the Catholic Church. That I had " hated with the hate of hell.'' I
pitied Protestants (those who were not of our sect or those who were not Catholics
I called Protestants) because of their blindness to the beauties of the church of
the many-times widower. " Romans " I now pitied for the same reason.
Though I hankered after candles and chasubles, it never entered into my head to
go to a Catholic service. And this, too, when the names of Catholic services
were daily on my lips. I spoke of going to Matins, to Vespers and Compline, of
assisting at Mass. All of which expressions I learned from Ritualistic books. I
knew no Ritualists, no Catholics, nor had I read any book by a Catholic author.

About six miles from home was a Ritualistic temple. I had been promised a
horse and wagon to take me there, but had been put off so many times that I lost
patience, and one Sunday morning started very early to walk to what I called
Mass. It was certainly the most disagreeable walk I have ever taken, through
country lanes so muddy that it was almost impossible to pick my way. With
great care I was able to reach the church, very like a peacock, my upper
raiment spruce and radiant alas for my feet ! Looking down at my mud-
encased shoes, and recognizing the utter impossibility of my cleaning them, I
could have cried not from vanity, but because my feet were not presentable to
a dainty congregation. Whilst I was pondering over my woful condition a
gentleman in a flowing cassock came up and spoke to me so kindly that in a few
moments he knew my little story and the difficulty I was in. With much warmth
he invited me to come with him to his house, and he would have my shoes cleaned
for me. "You are very early," he said ; "it is only a little after nine, and I do
not celebrate till eleven." After my shoes had been given to a servant to be
cleaned, he took me into his study, where there was a table set out with a good
breakfast. I was not a little shocked, and drew back when he insisted on my
taking breakfast with him. My Anglican books had told me that a priest should
celebrate fasting and communicants should receive fasting. He seemed to read
my thoughts, for he said that he was obliged to dispense himself, and that I had
suffered enough mortification from my muddied shoes.

560 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Jan.,

" So sit down and take your breakfast," he said; "you know what Horace
says." I did not, neither did I know what the wit or wisdom of Horace had to
do with the dispositions of a communicant. I felt, however, that it would be im-
polite in me to say so. He was one of the most delightful men I have ever met
with. During breakfast, of which he seemed to think I could not eat enough, he
talked about church ceremonies, church decorations, and priestly vestments,
mixing it all up with quotations from the Latin poets in a most bewildering way
Only once did he touch on doctrine. That was when he asked me what my views
of the " Presence " were. When I told him he said that what I believed in was
the Roman transubstantiation, and that I must pay attention to his sermon ; he
would settle my difficulties. " However,'' he went on, " Pusey seems to teach
transubstantiation, and he has his followers; there may be something in it."
Even then this struck me as being a most unsatisfactory way of settling my diffi-
culties, supposing I had any, which I had not.

The "celebration" was ornate and delighted me. But the sermon! My
friend planted the first seeds of doubt in my mind as to the authenticity of the
prodigious claims of Anglicanism to be a branch of the Catholic Church. It
would be vain here to repeat his contradictory statements concerning our Lord's
presence in the Eucharist. I left the church dissatisfied with myself and with
the sermon, and determined to find out what Anglicanism really taught concern-
ing the Lord's Supper. It may as well be said now that I never did find out,
because of the latitude she allows her ministers and on which she prides herself
so strangely.

Shortly after this adventure I found at home a number of THE CATHOLIC
WORLD that had been loaned my father by a good Catholic gentleman. There
was in this number an article on Ritualism which made me think a great deal.
For the first time I began to realize that the contradictions of Anglicanism can-
not be reconciled. Being able to realize this did not lead me to look to the Catholic
Church to solve my difficulties. It only led me to seek out Ritualistic teachers,
who gave me spiritual Dover's powders that for a time put my doubts to sleep.
My real and only trouble was the teachings of the sect to which I belonged con-
cerning the Real Presence. I was now daily asking the prayers of Mary for me ;
I had my patron saint ; I believed in the Sacrament of Penance ; I believed in the
authority and recognized the necessity of a spiritual head to the church. There
are others who do all these things, believe in all these things, who are like me
as I was then, without a thought of seeking admission to the church.

One summer day I came across another number of THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
I was most unhappy that day, for I was convinced that Anglicanism, as far as it
was plain in anything, had always denied the Sacrament of the altar. I opened the
magazine at a little story entitled, as well as I can recollect, "Our Boy Organist."
It was the story of a boy who played the organ of a Protestant church, who one
Sunday stole away to a humble Catholic chapel. He, too, was a believer in the
loving Presence on the altar. And there, in that humble chapel, as the shep-
herds found Him centuries ago in the manger, he found Emmanuel, God with us.
This is not all of this beautiful story, but it is enough of it to show why I wept
in reading it, and longed with intensest longing to find my way to such a chapel.
Still will it be believed ? I made no move to better my soul's condition other
than a reading of all the back numbers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD I could find.
All this was many years ago, but to this day I cannot forgive myself for my
hesitation in taking the step I knew I was bound in honor and conscience to

1889.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 561

take. I had no doubts ; I wished to believe and believed all that the Catholic
Church believes and teaches. I had never attended a Catholic church but once ;
I have told how unfavorably it impressed me at the time. I knew no Catholics ;
the only things I had read by Catholics, articles in a few numbers of a magazine.

I did go to a Ritualistic minister and told him the state I was in. He said
that he sympathized with me, that he felt precisely as I did. If he could stand
it, could not I ? Ours was a branch of the Church Catholic that had, it was
true, done all in its power to uncatholicize itself. We must live in it, bear with
it, and help to make it Catholic indeed. I told him that I did not any longer
believe Anglicanism to be a part of the Catholic Church. He said that he would
give me a book to read. I shook my head. I had read so many books ; this one
would be of no avail. He was not angry with me for refusing to read his book.
Indeed, I think we were both too sad to be angry about anything. On my way
from his house I had to pass a Catholic church. I went to the other side of
the street and hurried home.

One day, not long after this, God, in his mercy to me and others, sent Father
Hecker to give a lecture in our town. I was, by what seemed to me a mere
chance, present at it. Suffice it to say that of this lecture what burned into my
heart and brain was the stated fact that God's church, and it alone, can make our
country whole ; that that church was offering me countless treasures dared I
refuse them ? I afterwards found that I was not the only one who felt that the
speaker spoke to him alone.

My days of hesitancy were over. I knew myself to have been a coward and
made haste to put myself in the hands of a priest for instruction. Having done
this, I made known my wish to become a Catholic to those at home. Of the
opposition I met with it is better that nothing were said. It made me unhappy,
but it is long since past. Of the happiness that came tome in becoming a Catho-
lic it is impossible to write.

I was baptized, and on a Christmas morning, in the very church where I had
wished to denounce Catholics, at the very altar I had looked for the indignant
lightnings of God's wrath to cleave, I received for the first time the precious Body
and Blood of our dear Lord. Ah ! we who are Catholics, how we are blessed !
Day by day Jesus comes to us with outstretched hands, stays with us, and will
not leave us. And we can speak with him mouth to mouth, even as the dis-
ciples did in the ages long ago. What more can there be for us till that surely
coming day when the veil shall be uplifted and we shall see him as he is ?

THE COMMON SCHOOLS AND CITIZENSHIP.

" Foreign born citizens and citizens of foreign parentage need to be assimilated by Ame-
rica more than we need to assimilate them. Every advantage that has come to them in this
country has come through the absorption of their home-country interests into American in-
terests. They owe all that they are here, that they were not at home, to the public schools
and kindred associational influences. If the American people should attempt to exclude them
from the public schools, what an outcry would be raised ! Every present American interest
would say to them, ' Go, and stand not upon the order of your going 1 ' It will save Boston
more than $200,000 a year to have every child of foreign-born parentage taken from the public
schools ; it will raise the standard of scholarship in the public schools ; it will make many of
the public schools much more refined ; it will greatly reduce the occasions for corporal punish-
ment ; it will enable the city to sell a million dollars' worth of school-houses and school-lots.
It is not from any sense of selfishness that objection is raised to the universal withdrawal of the
Catholic children from the public school. It is simply from a conviction that it is for the best
VOL. XLV1II. 36

562 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Jan ,

interest of these children and the future of our country that America demands that, regardless
of expense, they be kept in the public schools."

The foregoing paragraph is an editorial of the Journal of Education, a
Boston weekly of wide circulation among the teachers of the United States.
The editor, strange as it may seem from this expression of his sentiments, is in
secular matters exceptionally candid and generous; and hence his pen is likely to
do all the more harm, since what he says will be taken by his readers as carefully
weighed in the scales of justice and labelled ad valorem. On the other hand, it
must be taken into account that he writes for, and naturally under the influence
of, a class who, some craftily and some innocently, are erecting themselves into
a party, the self-summoned defenders of national institutions against a chimerical
array of assumed opposition.

The wrong foreshadowed by the ever-busy agitator, and pictured after him
by the apprehensive journalist, was originally photographed from the little world
within the agitator's brain, and never existed but in that fantastic room. It is as
ridiculous as if one should cry out, " A great crime is, I guess, about to be com-
mitted. Say, aren't you the intended perpetrator ? " Let now any champion of
our country's honor sit down a moment, and note when, where, and by whom he
has ever heard it proposed to abolish our public-school system or any pa.rt of it,
or to divide the public moneys or divert any part of them from present uses. I
will cite one instance.

A few years ago serious danger did threaten that system, and justifiable
alarm was raised by the hot and heavy attacks made upon it. The air was thick
with cries for retrenchment, and loud calls were made for the abolition of public
high- schools and of all parts of the school system that were not essential to the
teaching of the " three R's." Had the church been then the enemy of the public
schools, what a golden opportunity was presented her for their destruction ! No ;
she was then, as now and always, in favor of expansion rather than restriction,
and would build high, but build safely, and would lay the foundation of the
" three R's " and all other rudiments of human knowledge in the eternal " fourth
R " religion.

Where are those fiery assailants and would-be destroyers of our public-school
system now ? They are pointing their stained fingers at Catholics, and shouting :
" If we would preserve our national institutions we must look out for them !"
The puniest of all piping cries for an American to utter one that I am sorry to
hear voiced by any " unselfish " journalist or friend of my country is that "as-
similation" is an indispensable condition of citizenship with " us " ; and by " us"
I mean all who happened to get here before a given tally-mark in our brief calen-
dar of a century or two. " Foreign-born citizens and citizens of foreign parent-
age need to be assimilated by America more than we need to assimilate them."
Of course parentage does not mean descent, but rather applies to the children of
actual immigrants ; and all those whose grandparents or remoter ancestors were
pilgrims to this " land of refuge, land of benedictions," are excluded from consid-
eration. This is well; for an indiscriminate assimilation of foreigners would turn
us all into savages, in fact, without the rum and the knavery which we unfortunately
by assimilation gave to the preoccupants of our soil. If the Red Man had known
his advantage and our greed to assimilate all that was his, he would have plucked
up the little plant that grew from the wafted Pilgrim seed while as yet he could.

If we go back to the opening of this century, which is but nine-tenths gone, do
we reach a safe point to decide what is America and who are Americans ? A
strip of land along the Atlantic coast is peopled by a little over five million souls,

i3?9-] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 563

of all races and faiths. The Catholic Church is here, presided over by the patri-
otic and saintly Bishop Carroll. Catholic spirits have helped found our nation.
Pulaski and Montgomery have fallen ; De Grasse is dead ; La Fayette and Rocham-
beau have returned to France ; but the brave " signer," Charles Carroll of Carroll-
ton, and Commodore Barry, " father of the American navy,' 7 and Kosciusko, and
Moylan, and many patriots of their faith who helped win the battles of the new
republic, still live to enjoy its liberties and citizenship. This coast, which by right
of discovery was Catholic, is now in 1800, by settlement and conquest and in the
spirit of its established law, as legitimately and intrinsically Catholic as Protestant.
The new republic guarantees the principle of non-exclusiveness in religion and
race. Her gates are open " to the oppressed of every nation."

Looking beyond her borders, in that year of grace 1800, across the rivers
which Catholic priests and pioneers explored and on whose banks they settled, we
see a territory three and a half times as vast as that of her Eastern seaboard,
while to the south is a peninsula as large as all New England. All this domain
is to be added to her, and all this in 1800 is Catholic possession and no shadow of
prescription lies upon it.

Now, as the five millions grow, chiefly by immigration, into sixty millions, and the
territory is enlarged threefold, where is the compact or the compromise which
stipulates that America is a Protestant land ? Who ha? the right and authority
to recall the benison of our first President : " May the members of your Society
in America, animated alone by the pure spirit of Christianity, and still conducting
themselves as the faithful subjects of our free government, enjoy every temporal
and spiritual felicity" ?

No new Americanism has a footing here. The American name and citizen-
ship are as comprehensive to-day as the Constitution made them. No class,
party, or religion has the prerogative of pronouncing itself American and brand-
ing another class, party, or religion foreign to America. Birth may be foreign,
but entrance into our citizenship cancels birth. Every one of the millions who
have reached our shores since our government was founded comes in his own
God-given rights to dwell here, obeying the constitutional law and protected
thereby. No other assimilation can be demanded of him than that to which he
voluntarily assents ; and such assimilation may be expected, not from antagonism,
but from sympathetic and cordial relations.

" Every advantage that has come to them in this country has come through
the absorption of their home-country interests into American interests. They
owe all that they are here, that they were not at home, to the public schools
and kindred associational influences."

Yes ; that which is peculiarly American we all get in America. We all fled
from oppression, or poverty, or unpleasantness to find relief in America. Is it
not straining the point to say that the benefits we receive all come from the pub-
lic schools or " kindred '' influences ? For example, the right to vote, the better
wages, the larger freedom of intercourse and of conscience do these come specifi-
cally from our schools, or from our laws and mode of life ?

" If the American people should attempt to exclude them from the public
schools what an outcry would be raised !"

Who are " them "? Is it " themselves "? These citizens who have become
so, or whose parents became so, by naturalization may be meant ; but probably
n^t. If so, they also are part of the " American people/'

The contingency probably is either that the American people may exclude

564 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Jan.,

themselves from the schools, or that a " portion" (and a very bigoted portion) of
the American people may attempt to exclude another " portion." Neither con-
tingency is to be feared. The promoters of such strife would be a hopeful (?)
minority, and the immense majority opposed to such injustice would raise a deaf-
ening, cataclysmic outcry.

Yet what could not be openly done may be silently effected. The exclusion
of the religious element will in time effect the exclusion of many children from
the public schools, and not those of one faith only, nor wholly those of recent
immigration. All men of profound religious conviction will come to inquire
how it happens that the " household of faith '' is so uncommon, and that reli-
gious indifference, discourtesy, insubordination, and irritation under restraint have
become so common among children. Instead of minimizing the religious phase of
education, the reaction must come in favor of a permeating religious element in
school life. Hence denominational schools must multiply, unless our public
schools are developed to meet the want. Do our prominent educators think the
problem worthy of serious and timely thought ?

"Every present American interest would say to them, 'Go! ' '

We shall presently find who constitutes " them." But how can every "Amer-
can interest " say "Go," when the public schools in their entirety are the bul-
wark, support, and author of American welfare ?

" It will save Boston more than $200,000 a year to have every child of foreign-
born parentage taken from the public schools; it will raise the standard of
scholarship in the public schools ; it will make many of the public schools
much more refined ; it will greatly reduce the occasions for corporal punish-
ment ; it will enable the city to sell a million dollars' worth of school-houses
and school-lots."

Here we have one "American interest " exclusiveness in three slices, sand-
wiched between two layers of another " American interest '' covetousness.
The money argument has generally been most effective against the improvement
of our schools. They have cost too much for the oppressed taxpayer. What a
tribute to those who will support schools of their own for the sake of such
an education as they think desirable ! The " exclusive '' argument is already
worked so successfully by brokers and landlords, and tenants reciprocally, that
our communities are pretty well classified and stratified. Assimilation is
meanwhile utterly ignored, even as a missionary effort. The " blue blood " of
ancestral standing and the red blood of a newer life flow in different channels.
They do not mix, because their offices are unlike. The former, having attained
to somewhat, demands to be refreshed and to enjoy the rewards of former
hard labor and sore self-denial. The latter comes in with willing heart to take
up the spade and the trowel in this land of good prospects, and push out and up
the works of national progress. In time, as fortune's wheel revolves, this latter
laboring class becomes thrifty and then opulent, and pledges its capital to the
right hand of toil. We cannot say to the poor immigrant, " Go back," because
we need him, and by his help the continent has been spanned with steel, the
interior been populated, and our national resources been developed.

One man, one child, has the same public rights here as another. We have no
privileged class. What one class, party, or sect has been allowed to do is lawful
precedent for another. Individuals may be exclusive, but our school system
cannot be such. Many pupils, fresh from fatherland or mother-country, enter our
schools the models in scholarship, in refinement, and in facile obedience for their

1889] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 565

associates until by contact with " Young- America " they lose some of their pre-
vious grace. There are too many examples of this kind to permit one to remark
that the removal of these children would elevate the character of our schools.

The concluding passage of this editorial limits the force of precedent criti-
cism to the Catholic children, apparently, whether of foreign " parentage " and
recent immigration or of lineage ab urbe condita. The child's " interest " and
the "future of our country " are the " purely unselfish motives " of the " Amer-
ican "par excellence i.e., if our editorial friend correctly represents him. These
suggestions to Catholics, though perhaps not very persuasive or logical, reveal
the fact that their children are wanted in the public schools. Indeed, the anti-
Catholicity which became in the time of the Tudors a political motive was in-
tensified into political ostracism in later reigns, and has several times broken out
in the American body politic, as a sort of European plague, but it cannot rage
long in our republic. Our national system was inoculated against it by the
pilgrim Fathers of all faiths, who put into the life of the young nation this Cath-
olic truth : " God hath made of one all mankind, to dwell upon the whole
face of the earth." Know-Nothingism may break out once in a generation, just
to show how feeble it is and how un-American.

The American public schools are the gift and the inheritance of Catholics
as well as Protestants. The Catholic desire has oft been expressed, "Let us
make these schools worthy of our children and for their highest education, be
they Catholic, Hebrew, or Protestant.'

The Journal of Edztcaizon very well understands this proposition, and that
the tendency of educational thought is towards the discovery of some way to sup-
ply the religious element and not merely technical religious instruction in the
public schools. Why are not the bright and thoughtful writers who are pros-
pecting along this course more fully represented in its columns? The question
is not, " Is the religious element a factor in the education of the times ?'* nor,
" Is it feasible in our public schools ?" but," In what way may it be made feasible
there, to the satisfaction of all Americans?" AUGUSTUS D. SMALL.

LIFE AND TIMES OF ARCHBISHOP CARROLL.*

We have seen a picture by a French artist representing the Egyptian
Sphinx, surrounded by the sands of the desert and enshrouded in the darkness
of night, but with the Blessed Virgin, the Child Jesus sleeping in her arms,
resting between the Sphinx's paws, St. Joseph standing near by and keeping
watch. It occurs to us that this most famous sculpture of antiquity represents
the puzzled soul of humanity questioning the barrenness and darkness of nature,
only to remain in deeper perplexity, as age succeeded age, until the riddles of
human life were answered by the coming of Jesus Christ. This republic is like
the Sphinx to the rest of mankind. It asks questions which the Old World
cannot answer, especially that portion which is traditionally Catholic. When it
assumed its place amidst the nations of the earth it was apparently an attempt to
resume the pagan idea of civilization the all -sufficiency of human nature for its
own destiny. But to the more discerning minds Archbishop Carroll and the
infant church he represented were the mother and child nestling in the arms of
the cold and stony figure of the unreligious republic. Father Seraphin Bandol,

*Life and Times of the Most Rev. John Carroll, Bishop and First Archbishop of Baltimore.
Embracing the History of the Catholic Church in the United States, 1763-1815. With por-
traits, views, and fac-similes. By John Gilmary Shea. New York: John G. Shea.

566 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Jan.,

chaplain of the French embassy, in a sermon preached before the Continental
Congress at Philadelphia on occasion of the capture of Cornwallis and his army,
expressed the sentiment of the Catholic Church perfectly when he said (Life of
Archbishop Carroll,^. 198) that, however worldly-minded men might interpret the
rise and establishment of American liberty, it was to be attributed to a singular
providence of Almighty God, and its true significance could be discovered only
by the aid of a religious disposition of mind :

" It would be equally ungrateful and impious not to acknowledge that the event which
lately confounded our enemies and frustrated their designs was the wonderful work of that
God who guards your liberties. . . . For how many favors have we not to thank him
during the course of the present year ? Your union, which was at first supported by justice
alone, has been consolidated by your courage, and the bond which unites you together has
become indissoluble by the accession of all the States and the unanimous voice of all the
confederates. You present to the universe the noble spectacle of a society which, founded
in equality and justice, secures to the individuals who compose it the utmost happiness which
can be derived from human institutions. This advantage, which so many other nations have
been unable to procure, even after ages of effort and misery, is granted by divine Providence
to the United States ; and his adorable decrees have marked the present moment for the com-
pletion of that memorable, happy revolution which has taken place on this immense continent."

It was the infant Catholic Church of America, whose history is told by Dr.
Shea in this fine volume, which gave at that epoch a decided answer to the per-
plexed minds of observant Europeans. What can the American republic con-
tribute towards the solution of the higher problems of life founded, as it is,
by members of all the rival sects of chaotic Protestantism, or inspired by deists
like Franklin and Jefferson ? The answer is that it can prove that most anti-
Protestant of all truths, that the mere natural man is not totally depraved ; that
he has noble aspirations, is fit to found and rule a civilized state ; that his
natural virtues are the admirable suggestion of the virtues of Jesus Christ, and
that a state which is the outcome of guileless nature must by a law of its being
welcome the supernatural society of the Catholic religion, and its citizens sooner
or later seek and assimilate her supernatural influences. The conspicuous
presence of Archbishop Carroll at the cradle of this new order of man's secular
destiny gives us a clue to the supernatural meaning of the American republic.*

The scope of this volume, embracing Archbishop Carroll and the Catholic
Church in America from before the Revolution till after the last war with
England, furnishes matter of the highest interest to all classes of readers. The
archbishop might be called the Washington of the American Church, and it is
not easy to exaggerate the full significance of such words. Carroll was a great
man. In the natural order he had all the qualities of Washington uprightness
of character, purity of intention, well-balanced mind, steady determination in

* A striking example of his missionary spirit and how far he would reach out to help his
fellow- citizens into the true church is shown in the following extract from a letter to Father
O'Leary. He is speaking of views formerly expressed to an English priest named Berington:
" In a letter to him, and before I had a thought of being in my present station, I expressed a
wish that the pastors of the church would see cause to grant to this extensive continent, jointly
with England and Ireland, the same privilege as is enjoyed by many churches of infinitely less
extent that of having their liturgy in their own language ; for I do, indeed, conceive that
one of the most popular prejudices against us is that our public prayers are unintelligible to our
hearers. Many of the poor people, and the negroes generally, not being able to read, have no
technical help to confine their attention. Mr. Berington's brilliant imagination attributes to
me projects which far exceed my powers, and in which I should find no co-operation from my
clerical brethren in America, were I rash enough to attempt their introduction upon my own
authority " (Life, p. 234).

1889.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 567

pursuit of worthy aims. But he was not called to that^civil or military career in
which he might have rivalled the greatest of our early heroes and have stood on
an equality with his kinsman, Charles Carroll of Carrollton.

It must be said to his credit that his European education did not spoil him.
Men of talent have been spoiled and their usefulness abridged, made almost null,
by fewer years of foreign study than Archbishop Carroll's. Some have asso-
ciated the Catholic faith too closely with the race-traits of the Old World and
have returned with a religion too much European to be entirely Catholic. Some
have been weak-minded enough to lay to the church the faults or weaknesses of
her human representatives in the Old World, and have brought home to America
a fierce animosity against ecclesiastical institutions which are in some sense a
necessary complement of the church's existence. Some American Catholics are
secretly monarchists from an education abroad, and some bend too far in the oppo-
site direction. It is always dangerous to educate a man out of his own country, un-
less he is going to spend his whole life in exile. That it can sometimes be done
with much profit is shown by such cases as Archbishops Kenrick and Spalding,
and especially in that of Archbishop Carroll. He made the full course of the Jesuit
College at St. Omer, entered the society's novitiate, went through the entire
curriculum of its studies, completed by maintaining a public thesis, was professed
in the four solemn vows, taught in the college at Liege, was tutor and companion
to an English nobleman in his travels on the Continent, and was always an
American and a freeman, while always a most devoted Jesuit. One of his letters
to America, describing his sensations at the suppression of the society, is a
touching evidence of how noble a homage a free spirit can pay to a religious
institute the most severe in its rule of obedience ; only less touching than the
archbishop's instinctive desire in his old age to re-enter the society on its
revival under Pius VII. a purpose only reluctantly given up on account. of the
urgent needs of Catholic public life in the United States.

Apropos of his affection for the Society of Jesus, we reproduce Dr. Shea's
extract from a private letter written to the famous Father Arthur O'Leary ; he
is speaking of Clement XIV. and the suppression of the society by that pontiff :

" I find that you are not pleased with my note [printed, we suppose, in the archbishop's
reply to Wharton] on the late pope, and that you think I was mistaken in attributing to him
a time-serving policy. Peace to his spirit and may God have mercy on his soul ; but whatever
allowance charity may wish for him, the pen of impartial history will not join you in
attributing to his public conduct (and to that the destruction of the Jesuits belongs) the virtue of
benevolence. You think that your intimacy with the good Cardinal de Luines gave you
opportunities of information which I had not ; on the contrary, I think that having spent in
Italy the two years immediately preceding our dissolution, and the last of them at Rome, and
mixing in all companies and not being much with my own brethren, I had means of collecting
knowledge which were perhaps wanting to Cardinal de Luines himself ; and I certainly saw
repeated instances of conduct which upon the coolest and most unprejudiced consideration
appear irreconcilable, not only with benevolence, but even with common humanity and the
plainest principles of justice. At the same time I do not take upon me to say that the
whole weight of this misconduct fell upon the pope, unless it be for withdrawing himself totally
from business and trusting his authority to men who shamefully abused it. I hope you will
excuse this liberty ; your writings express a free soul, and I cannot think that you would wish
me to dissemble the feelings of mine. But though I communicate them to Mr. O'Leary, I have
neither ambition to make them public, nor fear to do so if occasion require"^?/^, pp. 233, 234).

The era of John Carroll was full of special providences not only for America
but for humanity ; as well in the temporal order as in the spiritual, no less for the
advancement of civilization as for that of religion. He was himself one of these

568 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Jan.,

providences. It was a special favor from God that Carroll was ours during those
great days ours in his faith and in his love of country, and in his union of both
those qualities. It would have been a calamity if a narrow or a cowardly spirit
had been in his place, or a prelate of little learning or mediocre ability. A bril-
liant light shines from above on that era, lighting up the most powerful figures of
many generations of human history ; among them appears a great American
prelate leading the Catholic community in most hearty and efficacious co-opera-
tion in that struggle which marks the beginning of rational liberty in modern
times. What political institutions could ever look back to such great and, in the
natural order, such good men as were the founders of our free empire of peace?
And it is not boasting to say that Carroll was the peer of the best of them. It
was fitting that such should have been the case. The great supernatural order
of mankind is the Catholic Church ; it was well that it should contribute such a
man as Archbishop Carroll as its exponent in the beginnings of the American re-
public. In him God gave us as the founder of the American hierarchy a thorough
American and a thorough ecclesiastic. He gave the keynote to the harmonious
accord between, the true religion and American politics. He set the example
loyally followed by our leading Catholic minds ever since. The conditions to
he studied where church and state are to be adjusted in their relationships to
each other are not essentially different now. Church and state were at that time
placed upon a basis of harmony by applying philosophical principles to actual
facts ; not by a frantic advocacy of antique methods, or of a state of things which
ought to be in the abstract, or of what emotional or traditional temperaments
might desire all legitimate enough, but barred out of here by the sovereign
rule of providential conditions. Hence if any man wants to know the relation
of church and state in America, let him read this Life. Some of its chapters form
a Catholic gloss upon that famous constitutional clause that Congress shall make
no law providing for the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof.

If we study the mental drift of those days and find it sceptical of revealed
truth and impatient of religious restraint, we are astonished at the amount'of un-
mistakably Christian sentiment infused into our institutions ; we are surprised
that men like Jefferson and Franklin, chief corner-stones of the edifice of our
civil polity, showed so great respect for religious belief and practice, since it is no-
torious that they did not personally share it. Close acquaintance with men like
Carroll a strong bond of friendship in Franklin's case must have had some-
thing to do with bringing about this happy frame of mind.*

We extend a hearty welcome to this History of the American Church in her
heroic epoch. Our earliest impressions of Catholicity on this continent were

* We are not left ignorant of the archbishop's mind as to the position of non-Catholics in
reference to the church. Wharton, an apostate priest, had attacked the church, accusing her
of holding the same narrow views of the dogma, "out of the church there is no salvation,"
which have been recently advocated with such bad judgment and lack of information. The
archbishop replied to him and vigorously repudiated this error, and affirmed that Catholic
theologians do not limit salvation to those in the visible communion of the church : " The
members of the Catholic Church," he writes, " are all those who, with a sincere heart, seek
true religion, and are in an unfeigned disposition to embrace the truth whenever they find it.
Now, it never was our doctrine that salvation can be obtained only by ' those actually in the
communion of the church ' (these words are Wharton's), united in the profession of her faith
and the participation of her sacraments, through the ministry and government of her lawful
pastors" (Life, p. 229).

1889.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 569

derived from the study of John Gilmary Shea's School History of the United
States in the parish school he attended as a boy. That is now many years
ago ; but the proper connection between love of God and love of country
was permanently established in our mind by that little history. The dignity
of the vocation of such a writer as Dr. Shea can, we think, be no better measur-
ed than by the fact mentioned one instance out of tens of thousands throughout
the country. Next to the priesthood itself, it is the highest vocation to which the
Holy Spirit can call a man with competent natural gifts. Such laymen as Shea
are the necessary complement to an organized clergy. Without such men no
religious movement can flourish. And we only hope that Almighty God may
prolong his life till he has entirely finished the course of history of which this is
the second volume. His life is drawing to its close, and yet he labors on. It is
truly admirable to see a man laboring in such a noble cause at a time when
money cannot attract and when the word fame has lost its meaning. We are
persuaded that only the purest motives and an extraordinary grace of God can
explain such a career. When we see a man who expends the intellectual labor
of a long life, trained in the discipline and enriched with the fruits of a finished
education, upon occupations whose reward never could be money or office, or
aught else but the consciousness of well-doing, we say that he is a high-grade
man. The intrinsic excellence of his vocation must first have attracted him :
the discovery of the truth about heroic men, the pointings of Providence in great
epochs, and their publication and defence before the world.

READING CIRCLES.

The communication on Reading Circles which appeared in the last issue of
THE CATHOLIC WORLD has been published .for general circulation in the form
of a leaflet. Copies may be obtained gratis on application to the office of THE
CATHOLIC WORLD. Members of reading clubs and literary societies will find
it to their advantage to direct attention to, and foster a discussion of, the subject.

For obvious reasons, names of places, and likewise names of individuals,
must sometimes be omitted in giving information about books, etc., to correspon-
dents. The avowal that there is need of co-operation among intelligent Catho-
lics with reference to a choice of books will elicit testimony from various places
as to the number who are anxious to do something to supply this need. One
writer sends the following :

" We have just organized a Ladies' Literary Club, composed entirely of Catholics, and are
desirous of reading Catholic literature. We are somewhat at a loss as to what would be the
most profitable plan to pursue, so I write to ask you to suggest a course of reading for us for
the winter. Would also like you to tell us the best condensed history of the Catholic Church,
one suitable for a club study. S. R. E."

An excellent and condensed school history for American readers is that known
as Spalding's History of the Church of God, price $2, published by the Catholic
Publication Society Co. But for the purpose here proposed we recommend the
History of the Church, from its First Establishment to our own Times, by
Rev. J. A. Birkhaeuser, published by Fr. Pustet & Co., New York and Cincin-
nati.

NOVEMBER 26, 1888.

" In the December number of THE CATHOLIC WORLD is an article suggesting the necessity
of Catholic Reading Circles based on the plan of St. Anselm's Society in England, or the
Chautauqua Society or the Agassiz Association in our own country. As you request com-
ments on the matter, permit me to say that I think the plan most commendable. Except in

570 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Jan.,

cities our people have little access to Catholic books, and hence have comparatively little knowl-
edge of Catholic literature. Our people are a reading people ; if the proper subjects are fur-
nished them, they are also a thinking people.

" Right here in this town I can give you examples of dozens of persons who have read
George Eliot, Dickens, Howells, James, etc., and who have never knowingly read one line
from Lady Fullerton, De Vere, Miss Tincker, Mrs. Craven, or any Catholic author. I am re-
ferring to Catholics, not Protestants.

*' A circle such as you suggest would open up a new life to our people ; it would strengthen
both faith and intellect. We certainly lack intelligent Catholics in the United States. By that
I do not mean Catholics who cannot solve difficult problems in geometry or algebra, who do
not know the prominent theories now in vogue about the solar system, who are not able to
talk glibly of transcendentalism and the Concord school of philosophy, who are behind in theoso-
phy, and who cannot discuss the Nirvana. We have too many who know all these things and
yet do not know enough to save their souls. I mean we have not Catholics enough who have
made a study of Catholic doctrine, who know the lives of the great scholars of the church, who
know anything about the schools of the ' Ages of Faith,' who have read Gentilism and other
such works to obtain information about Buddha and Brahma. We have not many Catholics
here in this * Almighty-Dollar-Kingdom ' who can appreciate the superiority of a St. Zita over
a Huxley or a Tyndall.

" Pardon the length of my remarks, for I am very much interested in the dissemination of
Catholic literature. B. E. B."

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

IRELAND UNDER COERCION. By William Henry Hurlbert. Boston and
New York : Houghton, Mifflin & Company.

The present political agitation in Ireland has produced a good deal of
literature of a partisan character. The opposing parties have indulged in
attack and counter-attack of every kind, and in the heat of the debate they
have often lost sight of everythingelse except their own side of the question.
The Nationalists have sometimes represented the Tories as tyrants and no-
thing but tyrants. The Tories again have represented the Nationalists as
rebels and nothing but rebels. On the whole, however, there has been
more argument than abuse, and we find a fair amount of candor at the
bottom of it all. It was reserved for an American, we regret to say, to pro-
duce the most purely partisan and ungenerous contribution to the contro-
versy. For this Mr. Hurlbert's book most undoubtedly is. He is by all
odds the most " offensive partisan " that has yet taken part in the debate ;
and there is only one way of accounting for it. The poor gentleman has
fallen a victim to Tory blandishments and has become altogether more
Tory than the Tories themselves. His conservatism is of the most painful
kind. Everything and everybody^ all the world over that stand for the
masses as opposed to the classes set his teeth on edge. He crosses the
Atlantic from his English paddock to cast a fling at Cardinal Gibbons be-
cause of His Eminence's sympathy for the sons of toil ; he wanders off to
Australia to remind Cardinal Moran of the futility of his efforts to reconcile
certain issues at Rome ; he sneers at the presentation, by His Grace of
Philadelphia, of President Cleveland's jubilee gift to the Pope, and greets
with approval an ecclesiastical friend who calls it " the godless American
Constitution." He even makes fun of the cowardice of his countrymen at
the battle of Bladensburg to please an Irish Tory landlord whose ancestor
was one of the conquering heroes of the occasion.

1889.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 571

It is not to be wondered at that such a man, writing on the Irish ques-
tion, makes himself supremely absurd. He begins by trying to identify the
land-agitation in Ireland with the Henry George movement in New York.
This is his prime point, and he ends by threatening the archbishops and
bishops and priests of Ireland, who are on the side of the people, with the
thunders of the Vatican nay, with the major excommunication. He
heads the long list of his reckless assertions by the statement that there is
no Irish-American of any weight who does maintain that complete separa-
tion from Great Britain is essential to secure Ireland's rights and liberties.

He warns his fellow-countrymen for he considers himself a thorough-
bred American withal that the Irish-Americans and their political affilia-
tions are a downright danger to the republic. He gloats over the action
of the mayor of New York in the matter of the Irish flag, etc. Mr. Hewitt
is in his eyes a typical American, the representative of a great idea and
a growing party in the country. Wonder if he read the returns ? He tries
to play off the dead Irish patriots against the living, and this is altogether
the most sickening part of his performance. All the true friends of Ire-
land he has known are either dead or fretting over their country's ruin in
the Tory camp ; the great mass of the people are rushing headlong into a
state of moral degradation "below the level of savages." All trace of
Christian ethics is fast disappearing from amongst them ; there is scarcely a
fragment of the Decalogue left in the land ! This certainly is alarming
and, strange to say, the keen moral sense of the author enabled him to
detect all this depravity before he entered upon his investigations at all.
Indeed, the visit he paid to Ireland was entirely unnecessary for his pur-
poses ; he could have compiled the book quite as well had he never set
foot in the country. The etching was made before the landscape was seen,
and the little bits of color subsequently supplied did not add to the accuracy
of the engraving. The prologue and the epilogue are interchangeable
negatives.

When he did go over to Ireland to take in the situation we are not sur-
prised to learn that one of his first visits was to Mr. Balfour in Dublin Cas-
tle, and that he found the chief secretary " quite delightful." Nor are we
surprised to hear that he was dined and wined by the viceroy and his
court and the Irish aristocracy generally. And when the purpose of his
visit became known we are quite prepared to see him escorted by lords
and judges, magistrates and county inspectors, and policemen and emer-
gency-men through the country, and entertained by them at every turn.
The few Nationalists he encounters are for the most part either knaves or
fools, but the parson who presides at a Tory meeting which he attends is " a
kind of Angelic Doctor," and Dr. Kane, the grand-master of the Orangemen
at Belfast, whom he had the "pleasure '' to meet, he describes as a "fine-
looking, frank, resolute man " ; and so on ad nauseam.

In view of the select circle in which he moved while in Ireland, we are
not at all surprised when he assures us that he saw " nothing of coercion,
and heard scarcely anything of home rule " there. But we should be sur-
prised beyond measure if any sane man would accept Mr. Hurlbert as an
impartial authority on Irish affairs.

LITURGY FOR THE LAITY ; or, An Explanation of the Sacred Objects connected
with Divine Worship. By Rev. James H. O'Donnell. New York : P. O'Shea.

It has been said that the Ritualists have done much more than Catholics to

572 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Jan.,

present in popular form treatises explanatory of the significance and purpose of
their rites and ceremonies. We may admit the truth of this and find its expla-
nation in the fact that the Ritualist must emphasize forms, since he possesses so
little of the realities of the Catholic religion. With the Catholic this is not so ;
underneath the rite or the ceremony is hidden a meaning greater than its sym-
bol, a significance which touches his heart and his spirit. He may know little of
the meaning of the various ceremonies of the Mass, but the Mass itself as an
act of religion is to him the reality of the most sublime worship of God.

While admitting this, however, we are none the less induced to give the
little book before us the warmest praise. The great truths of our holy religion,
our awful Sacrifice, the wide channels of grace that come to us through the sac-
raments, must of necessity demand and employ ritual and ceremony. The senses
are but broad avenues to man's heart and mind, and so the church has her
liturgy and her elaborate and well-arranged ceremonial. Naturally a knowledge
of the meaning and object of these ceremonies conduces to a better understand-
ing of that truth or aim of which they are the symbols. Hence the author is to
be commended for placing in the hands of the laity a book so well calculated to
achieve this purpose. There are, as father O'Donnell observes, many works
written on these subjects, but they are not cast in a form suited to the generality
of the laity, being for the most part written in Latin, and, even where the ver-
nacular is employed, of too learned and exhaustive a character to be popular.
The clearness, simplicity, and conciseness of this book are its best recommenda-
tions, and will, we are certain, insure its popularity. Our Catholic laity invariably
show great eagerness to acquire information of this character, and though the
phrase is well worn and often meaningless, it is particularly true and appropriate
to say that this book will fill a long-felt want. It is well printed and attractively
bound.

ESSAYS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. By His Eminence Cardinal Wiseman,
late Archbishop of Westminster. With a biographical introduction by
the Rev. Jeremiah Murphv, Queenstown. London : Thomas Baker.
(For sale by the Catholic Publication Society Co., New York.)

Cardinal Wiseman's fame does not rest upon a literary basis, although
his style is always clear and often eloquent. His literary merits would have
secured him readers and a competence, but not a posterity. He is in that
respect eclipsed by the brilliancy of his contemporaries. Macaulay is the
perfection of verbal mechanism, is a fatal attraction to imitators, and for all
that style was first, width and depth and truth secondary, he has both the
air of honesty and real honesty sufficient to make him an English classic.
Newman's style is supreme in English prose, and although inimitable, is
fascinating in the extreme. This fascination is due to the quality of clear-
ness. Not that his style throws light on his great mind, but that it posi-
tively unveils. It is a medium so transparent that you are brought into
contact almost immediate with one of the ablest minds of our age.

Now, Wiseman lacked this highest literary excellence, and, compared
with Newman, that is all that he lacked to make him his peer. Wiseman
plus Newman's style equals Newman. His natural ability was of that
order which assumes among men a monopoly of the term great. His edu-
cation was perfect, and he was a distinguished educator. As a linguist he
was perhaps second only to Mezzofanti, who, indeed, said to him, apropos
of his Horce Syriaca, " You have put your knowledge of language to some

1889] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 573

purpose ; when I go I shall not leave a trace of what I know behind me.''
He was a great Biblical critic, and his essay on the sixth chapter of St.
John has been translated into Latin and made a seminary text-book. He
was a literary critic of a high order, a journalist, a dramatist, and was a
leader in the Shaksperean world. His scientific attainments were exten-
sive, and thoroughly thought out and matured. He was an archaeologist
and a historian. He was a novelist; who that has read his Fabiola will
ever forget him ?

But Cardinal Wiseman was most distinguished as a controversialist,
and did the best service to the church in softening prejudice, convicting
error without the parade or noise of battle and without insult to the van-
quished ; there are no vce vie tis in his triumph. Much of his matter is
antiquated from the very fact that the errors which he combated have been
driven by his efforts from conspicuous place in the battle-field of contro-
versy. He humiliated and defeated Protestantism on the old lines of attack,
without enraging its adherents. Meantime he was an enlightened admin-
istrator and able governor in the church in very critical times times
demanding patience and boldness and a perfect knowledge of the time of
his age and country. In colloquial terms he might be called an " all-around
man " in the various r61es of the highest human endeavor.

This volume contains Cardinal Wiseman's Essays on the Catholic ver-
sions of Scripture in various languages an essay summing up the best
learning on this topic three essays on the parables, miracles, and actions
of the New Testament, two learnedly critical articles on the first chapter of
St. John's Gospel, one on the harmony of ancient and modern Catholicity,
another on the High-Church theory of dogmatical authority, a treatise on
Christian art, and three historical papers on Boniface VIII., the Council of
Constantinople, A.U. 1166, on Christian unity, and one on early Italian
academies. The reader sees that the volume is a valuable one, exhibiting
the versatility of the author and embodying some of his best literary
efforts, while the matter treated is of the same interest to-day as when first
published in the Dublin Review.

The book is excellently got up, the press-work is first-rate, and the
binding handsome and durable.

ST. PETER'S CHAINS; or, Rome and the Italian Revolution. A series of
Sonnets by Aubrey de Vere, LL.D. New York: The Catholic Pub-
lication Society Co. ; London : Burns & Gates.

Aubrey de Vere's poetry is intellectual that is to say, it appeals to a
taste which is dominated by intellectual views. His poetical gifts are not
calculated to produce appeals to human passions, whose gratification, inno-
cent or otherwise, is the object usually sought after by poetry as well as art,
and especially that of the nineteenth century. Mr. De Vere rehabilitates
the ideals of a purer epoch. His devotion to the truth viewed simply
and in an atmosphere of purity of heart is so great that he is willing to
make, or risk making, sacrifice of present fame. Yet, like Wordsworth,
in his willingness to ignore the common methods of securing fame he
wins it. He must have, and has, a large share of admiration from
those whose allegiance is best worth having. He is a genuine poet. He
will stand when others now in greater vogue will have fallen out of notice.
Let the reader listen to the music and let him ponder the deep perception

574 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Jan.,

of truth in the following sonnet, and he will see what we mean by the
above remarks :

CHRISTMAS EVE, 1859.
" This night, O Earth, a Saviour germinate !

Drop down, ye Heavens, your sweetness from above \

This night is closed the iron book of fate ;

Open'd this night the book of peace and love.

On from the Orient like a breeze doth move

The joy world wide a breeze that wafts a freight

Of vernal song o'er lands benumbed so late,

Rivers ice-bound and winter-wasted grove.

Onward from Bethlehem, westward o'er the JEgeaa

Travels like night the starry feast divine ;

All realms rejoice ; but loudest swells the paean

From that white basilic on the Esquiline

Beneath whose roof in sunlight radiance clad

The suffering Pontiff stands to-night not sad."

BOTANY FOR ACADEMIES AND COLLEGES. By Annie Chambers- Ketchum.
Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1889.

This volume is one of " Lippincott's Science Series," and, if we mis-
take not, it will prove the most generally acceptable amongst them. The
subject is full of interest, the treatment thoroughly scientific, and the work
as a whole is a monument of patient labor and systematic condensation. It
is remarkable that such a text-book should have been produced by a
woman; for however great the author's talents, the researches entailed in
the composition of such a work would seem beyond her reach. But love of
her subject, combined with great natural ability and persevering industry,
enabled her to overcome difficulties which at first sight seem insurmount-
able, and to produce a text-book of which the most expert naturalist
might well be proud. In the three hundred and odd pages of this volume
we have the principles that govern investigation into the vast and varied
kingdom of the vegetable world ably developed and practically applied,
and the general results of botanic science fully summarized. With such
a text-book as this in the hands of a competent teacher, there is nothing
wanting to the student who seeks to explore the fairest realm of nature.

In our higher educational course there is no greater want than re-
liable text-books on purely scientific branches; and it is gratifying to
know that this want has been supplied in at least one department. Most
of the text-books in use on such subjects are objectionable in that they
assume as facts many things that are merely theories. Indeed, we
have noticed one such assumption in the present work in regard to the
antiquity of man which we would like to see qualified. When such an
authority as Sir John Dawson insists that there is no evidence which
proves conclusively that man has inhabited this planet for more than
eight or ten thousand years, the statements of geologists of lesser note on
the subject may well admit of qualification. This question, however, is
purely accidental in Mrs. Ketchum's book, and does not detract from its
value as a safe and reliable authority on all that pertains to the beautiful
science of botany, and as such we cordially recommend it to our Catholic
academies and colleges.

The enterprising publishers have turned out the work in excellent
form ; it is filled with most accurate plates and illustrations.

tribute of "Cbe Catbolic Morlb

I DO not propose to write a biographical sketch of
Father Hecker, or to make an estimate of his entire
character and career as a priest. In view of his rela-
tion to THE CATHOLIC WORLD as its founder and edi-
tor, the one specially appropriate side of his public
life for a tribute in its pages to his memory is the
one looking toward the employment of the press in
the service of truth, religion, and morality. I shall con^
fine myself within this limit, but first, to correct mis-
taken statements which have appeared in some newspa-
pers, I will give some of the principal facts in the life
of Father Hecker.

He was born in New York, December 18, 1819, of
German parents, and he died December 22, 1888, four
days after completing his sixty-ninth year. During his
boyhood and early youth he was obliged to assist his
two elder brothers in the humble and laborious begin-
nings of their business, which afterwards expanded into
such large proportions, and did not enjoy many oppor-
tunities and advantages for study. His bent - was en-
tirely toward intellectual pursuits, and he gave himself

572 a

up to the acquisition of wisdom and knowledge with
energy and enthusiasm as soon as the more affluent
circumstances of the family gave him the leisure and
means of doing so. His disposition and aspirations
were deeply religious, but he never joined any sect,
much less intended or desired to prepare himself for
the ministry of any Protestant denomination. His sympa-
thies and associations were altogether with the coterie
of philosophers in Boston who came out from the Uni-
tarians, and who were seeking for a natural religion in
both a speculative and a practical sense. In searching
after this ideal, Father Hecker, as well as Dr. Brown-
son, struck into the rational road leading to the Catho-
lic Church. After his conversion he became a Re-
demptorist, went through the course of preparation for
the priesthood in Belgium, and in 1851, shortly after
his ordination by Cardinal Wiseman, returned to this
country to engage in the missionary works of his or-
der, until 1858. At this period the new Institute of
Missionary Priests of 'St. Paul the Apostle was estab-
lished, over which he presided during the remaining
thirty years of his life.

The peculiar idiosyncrasy of Father Hecker's charac-
ter and career was determined by the mental and spiri-
tual position from which he started in his movement to-
ward Catholicism, and by the line of its direction. It
was not from Protestant orthodoxy of any kind that he
took his departure, or by the historical and theological
inductions and deductions which begin from high-church
or evangelical principles that he arrived at Catholic

573 a

conclusions. Consequently, it was not in that depart-
ment of Catholic polemics that he took a special inter-
est. The great present controversy which is imminent
and of the most vital importance, in his view, was the
one between the first principles of rational philosophy,
rational theodicy, natural religion with its moral code,
and the negations of scepticism tending and striving to
subvert the whole fabric and sink it in the abyss of
nihilism.

What he saw in searching for rational religion was,
first, the insufficiency and incompleteness of the purely
natural order, and the need of the supernatural for its
completion and sublimation. Every form of Protestant
Christianity, from Unitarianism to Calvinism and Angli-
canism, appeared to his mind as in various respects
unequal to the demand of reason for a revelation at
once concurring with and transcending its sphere.
Thus he saw the need for a supernatural religion still
remaining, the demand of reason still imperative, in spite
of all the efforts of Reformed Christianity to answer the
call.

What he saw, besides this inadequacy of either phil-
osophy or dogmatic Protestantism to answer the demands
of our rational nature, was the intrinsic reasonableness
and credibility of Catholic Christianity, its adequate ful-
filment of all the requisites of a supernatural religion.
This was his preamble of faith. It removed from his
mind every obstacle preventing or obstructing a clear
view of the notes of the Catholic Church, the motives
of credibility, the obligation of belief and obedience.

574a

Just as soon as the Catholic faith is sufficiently pro-
posed to any one having the use of reason, the one only
question to be determined is whether the individual to
whom it is proposed will obey or disobey his conscience.
It is a simple question of moral rectitude and good will.
For although it is by a gift and grace of God that one
believes and obeys the revealed truth, the grace always
acts unless free-will resists its influence. Yet there are
many obstacles in the way of this sufficient proposition.
Ignorance is one great obstacle, even in those who are
intelligent and in other matters well instructed. Errors
of education, prejudices, misconceptions of the dogmas
of Catholic faith, are obstacles, and these are very vari-
ous in different individuals and classes. The great pre-
liminary work to be done by preachers and teachers of
the Catholic religion, who aim at the conversion of non-
Catholics, is, therefore, the removal of these obstacles.

The attention of Father Hecker was naturally direct-
ed in a special manner to that great mass of outsid-
ers in whom the obstacles to belief are not found in
opinions and convictions derived from attachment to
some form of Protestant orthodoxy, but in what is called
Liberal Christianity, and the vague, negative mental atti-
tude which tends towards agnosticism.

This great class of people, having little or no reli-
gion, have to a great extent deserted the Protestant pul-
pits ; neither can they be attracted by Catholic preach-
ing. They do not care for distinctively doctrinal or
religious reading. How can they be reached? If at
all, Father Hecker thought it must be by means of lee-

575 a

tures and by literature of an attractive kind, specially
adapted to their habits of thought, their sentiments and
tastes, judiciously tinctured with sound philosophical,
moral, and religious instruction. It is the press which
has the most powerful influence of an intellectual and
moral kind over them. This influence is to a great ex-
tent noxious, anti-Christian, demoralizing, enervating. It
can be counteracted most efficaciously, he thought, by
employing the same powerful engine of the press in the
service of genuine Christianity, pure morality, and whole-
some literature.

Father Hecker wrote and published several volumes
and a considerable number of shorter pieces, always with
the general class above described chiefly in view, and
with the intention of pointing out and clearing from
obstacles the rational road to the Catholic Church
which he had himself travelled. But he also exerted
himself assiduously to stimulate others to write, and to
promote the increase and circulation of Catholic literature.
Although he was personally most interested in that kind
of writing which is adapted to the great body of non-
Catholics who are not orthodox Protestants, yet he did
not fail to encourage and promote other kinds of works
for the instruction and edification of Catholic readers,
the confutation of erroneous doctrines, the proof and
vindication of Catholic truth by all lines of argument
and evidence. Under his direction several volumes of
short tracts, several of longer and shorter popular ser-
mons, and by means of the Catholic Publication Soci-
ety, which he established, a great variety of works of

576 a

miscellaneous character and scope, in several depart-
ments of solid and light literature, were edited and put
in circulation.

The most important and successful enterprise which
he undertook in this direction was the founding and
conduct of THE CATHOLIC WORLD. This magazine is
now in the 24th year of its existence, and must speak
for itself. Whatever its value and influence may be,
such reputation and success as it has attained are pri-
marily and chiefly due to Father Hecker. He was the
chief of the small battalion of about one hundred writ-
ers who have contributed the great quantity of reading
matter composing the contents of its forty-seven vol-
umes. Those who have the control of it at present
desire and hope that it may continue and perpetu-
ate the work which Father Hecker began, within the
limits of its own proper sphere. The work of this kind
to be done in the whole civilized world is immense, and
needs a legion of gifted and learned warriors in the
crusade of truth, in every country where Christianity
can exert any influence on the minds and hearts of men.
One warrior and leader has fallen after a long and ar-
duous campaign. It is devoutly to be hoped that God
will raise up many in the coming age to work in this
country in the same sacred cause, which I think I am
justified in calling the Apostolate of the Press.

AUGUSTINE F. HEWIT.

THE

VOL. XLVIII. FEBRUARY, 1889. No. 287.

THE INDIAN PROBLEM AND THE CATHOLIC

CHURCH.

THE Indian problem continues to attract, and properly, the
attention of the government and of thinking men throughout
the United States. What progress is being made in the matter?
Are the effects gained such as might be expected from the efforts
made and the vast sums of money expended yearly ? These
questions will justify our present consideration of a subject that
to many may seem but a hackneyed one.

The Indian is as yet liitle more than a savage, being at best
in a transition state from barbarism to civilization. He is in the
anomalous condition of being practically deprived of his tradi-
tional laws, customs, and religious forms without enjoying ours.
This condition has continued too long ; his temporal and spir-
itual welfare demands that without further delay the Indian be
led into a state in which progress towards genuine civilization
shall be -secured. Before he became the formal ward of the
nation the Indian had certain laws of his own; and, in addition
to these, the work of early Catholic missionaries had been so
effective that even among heathen tribes many of the precepts
and traditions of the faith had been engrafted on his daily life.
His nomadic state, the more or less generally prevailing warfare
among the tribes, and the necessity of providing for his daily
support by hunting and fishing guarded him to some extent
against idleness and its accompanying vices. The little com-
munities had necessary and strictly enforced laws for their
own government and for protection against external hostil-
ity. No doubt the system was an imperfect one. But its de-
fects were more obvious than its merits. When the government

5/8 THE INDIAN PROBLEM [Feb.,

took matters in hand it struck at the evils it recognized, without,
perhaps, fully realizing the underlying merits of the system ; and.
in the new order of things many customs that were good, at least
under the circumstances, were abolished, and no adequate sub-
stitutes furnished, while hidden evils remained unremedied.

The Indians were now placed on reservations. Their wan-
derings ceased ; hunting and fishing, as a means of subsistence,
gave place to a system of gratuitous supplies of the necessaries
of life just sufficient to allow complete idleness. The evils of
this system were increased by unwise administration. The In-
dian Department at Washington has always shown a desire to ad-
vance the cause of the Indians, but the appropriations asked have
almost always been cut down by Congress, which seems to suf-
fer a fit of economy whenever the Indian is considered. Those
interested in the question have generally not been able to bring
such political influence to bear in Washington as seems specially
needed in the matter of Indian supplies. In addition to this bad
management has too often characterized the distribution of these
supplies at the agencies. Meantime the Indians have not been
practically stimulated to industry. Such theoretical encourage-
ment as has been given has too often been frustrated in the grant-
ing of supplies, as in the distribution of implements, etc. For in-
stance, one man would receive the horse, another the wagon, and
a third the harness, thus rendering them all equally useless. The
purpose of the people to extend the protection of the general
government to the Indians has not yet been realized. No ade-
quate punishments are inflicted for crimes committed by Indians
against Indians. There exists a sort of Indian police court, con-
sisting of three "judges" appointed by the agent, and too often
selected because of their prominence as "chiefs " rather than for
any qualifications for the office. The old men of the tribes are
usually the most determined opponents of all progress, and show
either a stolid indifference or positive resistance to the ambition
of the younger men to secure the benefits of civilization and
Christianity. And 3jet these chiefs are too often the favorite ap-
pointees of the agents, and are generally allowed to retain an in-
fluence that is fatal to the advancement of their people.

Schools have been established in the Western agencies and
in some of the Eastern States to enable the younger Indians to
form civilized habits. The work of these schools is constantly
undone by the fact that at the agencies the children are allowed
to revisit the camps about as frequently as they wish. A few
days of the association of the camp pretty thoroughly root out

1889.] AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 579

the new habits formed or the new tastes acquired in the schools,
and the children almost invariably return with all the old habits
revived and strengthened.

The government desires that missionaries teach the Indians
the truths of Christianity. Now, Protestantism has but little at-
traction for the Indians, save on account of such material gain as
may be had by professing it. This we say without alleging mo-
tives or assigning reasons. And yet under the " Peace Policy "
little encouragement has been given to Catholic priests, welcome
as they undoubtedly are to the Indians ; they have been excluded
from many agencies, while in others they have been only tole-
rated, and this very grudgingly. Corrupt influences have been
exerted against them, on the part not only of the badly disposed
or vicious among the tribes, but, still worse, among many of the
white attaches of the agencies, whose corrupt, dishonest, and often
immoral lives make them anxious to exclude the priest, from
whom they can hope for no encouragement and who might
prove a dangerous reformer. Not ^infrequently have agents
seemed anxious to prove to the Indians that the priest is of no
worth to them, and that his suggestions have little weight;
for they have deliberately ignored such Indians whose character
and good dispositions have led the missionaries to recommend
them for local appointments, and have selected others whose age
or character made them almost certain obstacles to all the efforts
made by the government in their behalf. Thus the civilizing
efforts of the government and the Christianizing efforts of the
missionaries are unhappily hindered and robbed of their proper
effects, and the Indian remains, as before stated, in a nondescript
state of transition, which, unless speedily bettered, will soon prove
itself a state of moral and physical corruption and decay.

The remedy must come quickly, and, to the close observer,
there is no doubt of what it should be. The tribal relation, no
longer a benefit, as to the savage it once was, but a positive ob-
stacle to the advance of civilization, should be broken up com-
pletely. Their lands should be surveyed and allotted to the
Indians in severally. The means to cultivate the land and ac-
quire civilized habits should be supplied freely, judiciously, and
punctually. The utmost good faith must be observed, for under
no circumstances is good faith more important than in dealing
with the Indians. Instances could be named in which notable
progress towards civilized forms has been arrested by the per-
haps involuntary failure of an agent to keep his promises. It
will not do to urge an Indian to supply himself with a house in

580 THE INDIAN PROBLEM [Feb.,

place of his wigwam, and promise him that doors, windows, etc.,
shall be furnished as soon as he is ready to use them and then
fail to supply them, perhaps at the very opening of the winter
season. Under such disappointments Indians have been known
to lose ambition and go back to the wigwam as a more desirable
form of architecture.

With regard to the land to be allotted to the Indians, it
must be said that much of it is suited only for stock-raising.
Now, such men can be expected to become good, practical
farmers only by gradual development; therefore they should
now be supplied with stock, for herding is a form of labor
to which their old habits of caring for ponies have accustomed
them. This would at once make them producers, adding to the
available wealth of the country. The importance of this point has
not been overlooked by the government. Every treaty made
with the Indians records the promise of cattle to be given them
a promise subsequently ignored or very scantily fulfilled. And
the Indian does not readily forget a broken promise. The coun-
try at large was perhaps surprised at the positive stand taken by
the Sioux Indians in their late discussions with commissioners
appointed to treat for the opening of the Sioux reservation.
The secret is to be found in the failure of the government to keep
its previous promises, which naturally made the Indian but little
disposed to listen to further proposals from the same source.
To return to the question of agriculture and stock-raising, we
must insist that competent men should be appointed as instruct-
ors. There is no good judgment in sending from Washington
as " boss farmer " of a reservation a man who has never han-
dled a plough, just as it is monstrous to appoint there as chief
clerk one who cannot write or spell correctly. Ability rather
than political influence should dictate all appointments. The
fact must be faced that but little progress can be made with the
older members of the tribes ; the most that can be expected from
them is that they place no obstacle to the ambition and good dis-
positions of the younger members of the tribe. The importance
and influence of these older members must be broken, their re-
sistance to the progress of civilization must be removed, and the
younger and better-disposed members must be shielded from
these dangerous influences. The general laws of the country
must be made operative on the reservations at once, so far as
possible, and each individual must feel assured of the protecting
aegis or taught to fear the avenging hand of the law, without
favor to any one.

1889] AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 581

Beyond all other human means, the proper care of Indian
children must be provided for. It is useless to give them the
temporary advantage of schools if they be permitted at frequent
intervals to return to their rude family circles in which existing
evils have not been remedied. Too often does the missionary
hear from the older Indians that Christianity may be tried with
the younger ones, but that they themselves are too old lor any
change. Many refuse all aid towards Christianizing and civiliz-
ing their children. Enforced constant attendance at school can
alone exempt the children from these debasing influences, which
sadly uproot the budding plants of virtue in soil that promises
well. A recent occurrence at the Standing Rock Agency may
illustrate the importance of this point. A young Indian girl,
trained in the sisters' school, showed an earnest and persevering
desire to enter the religious life, and really gave strong signs of
a true vocation. She was allowed to visit her mother to obtain
her consent to such a step. This was not only refused, but the
savage parent actually endeavored to sell her child into a slavery
worse than death a horror from which the girl escaped only
by precipitate flight to the safety of the cloister. Children,
therefore, must be kept at school uninterruptedly until, by mar-
riage there, they form new family ties and are prepared to settle
down in a truly civilized and Christian form ot life. Then, with
the progress made among the younger members of a tribe, we
may reasonably hope to see the gradual development of civilized,
Christian communities.

In spite of many obstacles our missionaries have done and are
doing much towards gaining this great object. We begin by
gathering together as many as possible of the better-disposed,
younger members, who, when unmolested, are generally anxious
to avail themselves of their opportunities for material and moral
improvement. Thus withdrawn from bad influences, they are
formed into societies having but few rules, where they frequent-
ly meet each other and receive suitable instructions. They are
not slow, under these circumstances, to adopt civilized habits
and customs, and whole families are thus often prepared for the
sacraments and become good and practical Catholics. They are
then formed into regular societies, whose rules and regulations
are fixed according to the condition and circumstances of each
agency, and which regulate not only their religious habits but
also the general details of their social life, and, in some sense,
take the place of the law not yet established. While no commu-
nity can exist without laws, we have no means of compelling

582 THE INDIAN PROBLEM [Feb.,

obedience, and the only penalty is reproof or expulsion. The
missionary's hold on the Indian arises solely from the faith and
confidence of the latter. But it is certain that very many of the
younger members prove themselves tractable and promising sub-
jects. Removed from evil influences, receiving constant instruc-
tion, aid, and encouragement, associating with those only who
think and act as they do, they will steadily improve, their wills
are strengthened, bad habits are replaced by good ones, they
learn to respect themselves and their families, and, under the in-
fluence of God's grace, they realize and enjoy the benefits of
Christianity and civilization. Thus trained there is but little
danger of their relapse into barbarism, and they soon become
capable of meeting white men on an equal footing.

This desirable and promising work is obstructed by want of
adequate means. A greater number of priests is needed for this
great harvest in which the laborers are at present so few priests
who are not easily discouraged, but who come to stay and who
will realize that their labors and trials, and perhaps their suffer-
ings, may be great, but that their success and reward will be yet
greater. These priests should be assured of a proper support.
Laying no claim to mere luxuries, they should at least be exempt
from anxious cares as to their sustenance, and have at their com-
mand sufficient means to live according to the simple dignity of
their station and sacred character. The necessary expenses of
these missions and societies are great, and are constantly grow-
ing as their sphere is enlarged. No aid can come from the In-
dians, for they have nothing as yet. Government aid cannot be
expected for this specific work. It therefore rests entirely with
the faith and zeal of Catholics to push on and enlarge this great
work. The Third Plenary Council of Baltimore recognized its
importance when it directed that on the first Sunday of Lent in
each year a special collection be held in all our churches for the
benefit of the negro and Indian missions. It is a regrettable
fact that while only two of these annual collections have been
held, the amount of the second collection was materially less
than that of the first. This must certainly arise only from an im-
perfect understanding of the vast importance of the missions
among the Indians. With the kindly aid of the clergy through-
out the land in urging upon the people the need of a living and
most active charity in favor of our home heathens, and of so
many struggling missions among them, it cannot be doubted
that Catholic zeal will provide the means for continuing this
great work of civilizing the Indians and enriching them with
the priceless gift of faith.

1889.] AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 583

The matter is urgent. It will bear no delay. Already the
policy of the general government provides for the extension of
the public-school system to all Indian agencies. Whatever may
be said of such a system in places where the church and good
parents may supply the religious instruction necessary for the
child, we cannot close our eyes to the fact that no such redeem-
ing opportunities of church and home exist for the Indian. To
him a school without religion will inevitably become an irreli-
gious school. The education of his mind without the necessary
training of his heart to the practice of virtue may only increase
his opportunities for evil and so prove a curse to his best inter-
ests. He can be saved from this new danger only by quickly
opening for him schools in which, together with a secular educa-
tion, he may receive proper religious training. When he has
once entered the public school of the reservation we may aban-
don all hope of his future education in the truths of religion.
Our Catholics, upon whose charitable aid this urgent work en-
tirely depends, will surely not remain indifferent to a danger
already very serious, and which may soon be beyond their power
to control or obviate.

In the interest of morality and good order it is vital to en-
force the regulation made by the Indian Department that all the
whites living or employed on the reservation shall be accom-
panied by their families. This rule, so excellent in its purposes,
is construed far too liberally in many cases, according to the
whim or pleasure of the agent. These " hangers-on " often prove
the most serious obstacle to all improvements, for if their lives
and habits are such as merit condemnation they are only too
determined to exclude the light in which they would be scru-
tinized, and to keep out the missionary whose voice would be
raised loud in condemnation. Here is an ample field in which
church and state can join hands, each working in its proper
sphere, but each aiding, encouraging, and making effective the
work of the other.

But in all these efforts it is important to remember that the
work of evangelizing and civilizing the Indians in no manner dif-
fers from similar work everywhere. There is no such thing as
civilizing the Indian race as a wholesale operation, nor is their
conversion to the true faith to be effected as an entire body, any
more readily than such work could be done in any other commu-
nity. The individuality of the Indian is as marked as that of
the white man. There are good and bad among them, well-dis-
posed and evil-disposed. There are many whose naturally good

584 SUNSET BLESSINGS. [Feb.,

lives predispose them to receive the truth and to open their
hearts to divine grace. There are others whose vicious lives and
unrestrained passions render them hard of heart and less suscep-
tible to the operations of grace. Those who oppose the onward
march of civilization and Christianity have their " reasons" for
doing so, even as the infidels and sceptics of our cultured centres
of civilization. And, precisely as in the case of other men, the
Indian must be treated and dealt with on the basis of his own in-
dividuality, and with due regard to all those personal traits and
circumstances that distinguish him from others around him. The
knowledge of this fact may aid in the solution of this great prob-
lem, and may obviate many of the obstacles that have hitherto
prevented larger results in the nation's work for the Indians.

MARTIN MARTY, O.S.B.

Yankton, Dak.

SUNSET BLESSINGS.

THE sun upon the western sky,

Mid-deep in setting, stands :
His beams along the level lie,

And bless it as with hands.
O fingers of a dying day !

Reach onward unto me,
And bless me, ere he pass away,

As ye do bless the lea.

Our days drop downward one by one,

Still fleeing from the night;
But every setting of a sun

Should bless us with new light.
And as the sunbeams from the night

For ever flee away,
So should our souls conserve God's light,

And all our life be day.

FRANK WATERS.

Cornwall, Ont.

1889.] "THE STONES SHALL CRY OUT" 585

"THE STONES SHALL CRY OUT."

RECENT discoveries have borne eloquent testimony to the
accuracy of the Old-Testament records. We all know that the
credibility of the Scriptures has been mainly assailed on three
grounds: (i) that the narratives could not have been written
until long after the period of the events which are so confidently
recorded ; (2) that the art of writing was but little known in
primitive times ; (3) that the style of the Biblical writings pre-
supposes an educatedness which most certainly was not common
to the Eastern world. Now, each of these three objections is
quite groundless. We may go so far even as to affirm that -the
exact opposite of such statements would be very close to the
literal, exact truth. For, briefly, the contemporaneousness of
the writers with their narratives is now proved to bean absolute
certainty (we shall show this in but very few pages). The edu-
catedness of the Hebrews, as of the Egyptians from whom they
separated, was probably superior to that of the mass of modern
Christians. And as to writing, it was as common an art upon
clay or papyrus as it subsequently came to be upon vellum. Let
us take this last point first; for to know how to write must be
evidently antecedent to the composition of intelligible histories.

That writing was known and practised in Judah, at the time
when the Old Testament was being written, is a truth to which
the recently discovered monuments have borne undeniable testi-
mony. Let us remember, to begin with, that the Israelites
" came out of Egypt," where learning and the fine arts had at-
tained to a high standard, and where the civilization was at least
as real as is our own. The scribe was as much honored in his
profession in Egypt, indeed throughout the whole of the Eastern
world, as is the barrister, the savant, the literary man in these
days of much-talked-of education. Long before Abraham there
were grand libraries in the world. These libraries, stored with
books on papyrus or on clay, flourished in all the Babylonian
cities ; they were accessible to the " respectable public," pre-
cisely as libraries are in our own days ; they were catalogued,
classified, and kept in order, as are the books in our great modern
libraries ; indeed, there was no practical difference between the
old treasure-houses of books and those which we proudly call
modern. Such facts prove the educatedness of the ancients,
just as the classics prove Greek or Roman culture, or the news-

586 " THE STONES SHALL CRY OUT" [Feb.,

papers prove modern, popular schooling 1 . Of course, before the
invention of printing, the " circulation " of thousands of copies
was out of the question ; but the reading of books which were
stored in public libraries was not only possible, it was general.

And consider, too, how admirably planted were the Hebrews
that is, after their wanderings were ended for contact with
civilization and enlightenment. Living midway between Assyria
and Egypt, and bordering on highly civilized Phoenicia, they
had opportunities of culture such as may be said to have been
equal to those which are now enjoyed by Europeans. The
Phoenicians were rich, industrious, and aspiring. In the time of
Solomon they must have been masters of many arts which were
contributive to the building of the Temple. Indeed, it may be
doubted whether, without the aid of King Hiram, Solomon could
have completed his Temple. Those masterpieces of art-work
which made the Temple of Jerusalem the wonder-house of both
the ancients and the moderns prove how cultivated were the
habits and the tastes of the contemporaries of David and Solo-
mon and their "allies." And just one word here as to the
Tabernacle : Whence did the Hebrews, in their wanderings, get
the culture, the accomplishments, which enabled them to rear
the beautiful Tabernacle ; or whence did they learn how to
make the " golden calf," and, still more, how to "grind it to
powder" unless they had brought with them out of Egypt a
science and an art such as we, in these last times, have only
ripened ?

To come, however, to some quite modern testimonies, the
discovery of the Moabite Stone, and also of the Siloam Inscrip-
tion, prove that writing and this, too, in difficult forms was an
art that was much practised B.C. 900. The Moabite Stone was a
monument that was erected by Mesa, a contemporary of Achab,
who is called " a sheep-master " in 4 Kings iii. 4. It was discov-
ered twenty years ago by Mr. Klein. The inscription, which is
very long (the last sentences are wanting, owing to a stupid
breakage by modern disputants), begins, " I, Mesa, am the son
of Chemosh-Gad, King of Moab, the Dibonite." The whole
story told by Mesa coincides in every particular with the nar-
rative which is given in the Book of Kings. Both its language
and its characters are identical with those used in the Hebrew
historic records of the Old Testament; or, more accurately, the
dialect differs much less from the Bible dialect than does one
English county-dialect from another. The very phrases seem all
familiar to our ears. The characters belong to a form of the

1889.] " THE STONES SHALL CRY OUT" 587

Phoenician alphabet closely resembling that used by the Jews.
Indeed, the writer of the one might be the writer of the other
but for very slight, super-refined distinctions.

Another discovery, that of the Siloam Inscription, which was
found in Jerusalem itself, shows how the books of the Old Tes-
tament must have been originally written, between the time of
David and the " carrying away into Babylon." This Inscription
was engraved in a rock-cut tunnel which conveyed the water
of the Virgin's Spring to the Pool of Siloam the only natural
spring, by the way, which is now to be found in or about Jeru-
salem. The ten or twelve lines of writing which tell the history
of the excavation prove that engineering was perfectly under-
stood by the ancients so far back as the time of King Ezechias
and that "tunnelling" was worked then as it is worked now
being commenced at both ends at the same time. This same
tunnel (which was 1,708 yards long) is spoken of in 4 Kings xx.
20 and in 2 Par. xxxii. 30. The engraving on the stone is in
the characters used for writing, which shows that the alphabet
employed in Judah was that of a people who read books and
preferred to write in the characters which were familiar to them.
The carefulness of the writing, coupled with the fact that the In-
scription was hidden away in an unapproachable spot, seem to
show that ordinary workmen knew how to write what they
could read, and were educated in a most creditable degree.
And numerous dug-up monuments in Egypt and Assyria testify
to the same important truth. For it is most important, in the
vindication of Bible-story, to know that the ancients were
thoroughly competent for their task, and that readers were
much too educated to be deceived. It was no more possible for
a scribe, say B c. 1000, to palm off fictions on his average con-
temporaries than it would be possible for a popular writer in
New York or in London to palm off fictions instead of truths in
the magazines. Most of the public and private monuments, at
the period we refer to, were covered with inscriptions which
were intended to be read not only by the unlearned but by the
learned ; nor is it conceivable that such inscriptions could tell
lies, nor that " the public" were unable to decipher them. Take
the following curious item as an illustration : A collection of
Egyptian epistles has come down to us unhurt a collection
which had this really scholarly object : to serve as a model for
that special kind of composition which should best be used for
public inscriptions. In the great library of Ninive were many
such fragments. No doubt this great library was founded in
imitation of the numerous public libraries in Babylonia. Nor

588 " THE STONES SHALL CRY OUT:' [Feb.,

was the cataloguing of the books a neglected art. We have not
ourselves reached perfection in the difficult art of cataloguing
(all readers at public libraries bewail this truth!), but the
ancients did their best, and they succeeded in cataloguing at
least some of their collections. Their '' editions," too, were as
well emended as are our own. When we read in the Old Testa-
ment that the scribes of Ezechias made a new edition of the
Proverbs of Solomon, we need no stretch of the imagination to
picture the literary task ; nor can we doubt that this new edi-
tion was shelved in some great library which was intended for
the popular research. It is more than probable that a better use
was made in early times of the opportunities which were
afforded by the libraries than is made in these days, when the
libraries are less frequented than are the theatres, the music-halls,
or even the clubs.

Such reflections are quite pertinent to our more immediate
inquiry the reliableness of the Old-Testament records. We
would lay it down as an axiom that the Scripture records are
reliable, even to the smallest detail of information. We are
under inexpressible obligation to the explorers of buried ruins
to Layard, to Wilkinson, to Rawlinson for having revealed to
us (for it is a kind of revelation) the evidences for the historic ac-
curacy of the Old Testament. Those huge yet artistic copies of
the " discoveries " which may be seen in some of the European
museums and which, in drawings, may be handled in one large
volume, put together by Messrs. Macphail and Pollock Simpson
prove to us that the grand narratives of the Old Testament
were literally, not suggestively, true. How startling, if how
quaint, is the dug-up representation of Adam and Eve and the
Eden apple-tree ; how significant is the Assyrian sculpture of
the Tree of Life ; how real, if how droll, is the sketch of Noe
leaving the Ark, of the Exodus, of the strawless bricks, of the
Jewish captives! In a capital little pamphlet by Mr. Sayce (the
Oxford professor of comparative philology), called The Wit-
ness of the Ancient Monuments to the Old Testament Scriptures,
these historic points are neatly traced and put together. We al-
lude to them here because it would be idle to speak of details
monumental and sculptured details of Bible truths unless we had
before us the general testimony to their acceptance as well as
the general proofs of ancient " educatedness." The point is so
important that we must insist upon it. It is not sufficiently
borne in mind that the Hebrews were a cultured race ; that they
possessed a literary knowledge of the world's story ; that they
were the allies of the most civilized of peoples, as well as the

1889.] " THE STONES SHALL CRY OUT." 589

heirs of past discoveries. They were cultured up to that point
which would render literary imposition as hopeless as it would
be quite without motive. We may therefore proceed to quote
the "monuments" in all confidence. The) 7 are auxiliary, but
they were not needed for demonstration. Egypt and Assyria
have now become material witnesses to truths which were
already morally assured. The long-buried stones have been
dug- up to rebuke the modern impugners of the old faith; the
cities of the ancient world have come forth from their graves to
testify to the truth of the old records.

To any one who has closely studied the " revelations of the
monuments," the " civilization " of Egypt, of Assyria, of Baby-
lonia is as patent as is the civilization of imperial Rome. Sen-
nacherib and Thelgathphalnasar, Nabuchodonosor and Cyrus,
now talk to us quite as familiarly as do Horace or Juvenal ; while
we can trace the very forms of the letters, the characters, in which
the prophets recorded their prophecies, in which Isaias or Jere-
mias " wrote" their thoughts. To go further back, in the four-
teenth chapter of Genesis there is an account of an expedition
against Palestine made by Chodorlahomor, King of Elam, and his
allies of the southern parts of Babylonia. Now, this account has
been rejected by modern sceptics, on the ground that the inva-
sion of so distant a country was practically out of the question
in those early days. But " the monuments " have proved to us
that long before the days of Abraham kings of Babylon carried
their arms as far as Palestine, and even crossed over to Cyprus
and to the Sinaitic peninsula, which one of the Babylonian kings
claimed to have conquered. Bricks are now to be seen in the
British Museum from which we learn, by inscriptions, that Cho-
dorlahomor did conquer Babylonia and that his son became
ruler of Larsa. Further investigations show that Larsa was
" Ellasar,'' and that Eri-Aku was identical with Arioch ; so that,
city for city and personal name for personal name, the account
in the Book of Genesis is now vindicated.

In some store-chambers in Egypt " strawless bricks '' have
been discovered by the indefatigable explorer, M. Naville, who
remarks that we may see in these strawless bricks the work of
a bitterly oppressed people when the order came, " Thus saith
the Pharao, I will not give you straw."

As Egypt declined the kingdom of Assyria grew. It was
with Assyria, a good deal more than with Egypt, that the later
history of the Israelites had to do. The inscriptions on Assyrian
monuments prove the accuracy, the exactness, of the Bible
account of Assyrian conflicts with Israel and Judah. It would

590 " THE STONES SHALL CRY OUT'' [Feb.,

be impossible in this short article to do more than make al-
lusion to a very few of the points of the agreement. Thus,
it has been objected that the great Assyrian monarchy was
not likely to have troubled itself greatly about the petty powers
of Judah and Israel. On the contrary, the " monuments " have
now proved to us that, from the time of Jehu downwards, the
Assyrian kings were almost perpetually in relation, sometimes
friendly and sometimes inimical, with the people of Samaria and
Jerusalem. The names of personages spoken of in the Old Tes-
tament are found inscribed on Assyrian monuments of the same
date. Even the tribute-bearers of Jehu can now be seen in the
British Museum, sculptured on an obelisk which was brought
by Sir A. H. Layard from the ruins of Calah, in Assyria. These
tribute-bearers carry bars of gold and silver, and they wear
fringed robes reaching down to their ankles.

The successes of Jeroboam II. are monumentally explained in
the same way. The operations of Thelgathphalnasar are detailed
with much exactness in his annals, and are in precise accord with
the details of the Old Testament. The true chronology of the
Israelite and Jewish kings has been cleared up at last by Assy-
rian records. It has been discovered that the Assyrians reckon-
ed their time by the names of public officers changed each year ;
and lists of these public officers have been found, so that we can
now fix the dates from B.C. 909 to the close of the Assyrian
monarchy. The tenth chapter of Isaias long a bone of conten-
tion from the difficulty of reconciling historic items has now
been completely cleared of every difficulty. The particular in-
vasion of Judah and the capture of Jerusalem, referred to in the
tenth and twenty-second chapters, have been " monumentally "
proved to be accurate. Among the clay books of Ninive are
the most exact, lengthy accounts of many a conflict between the
Assyrians and the Hebrews ; and even the very omissions in the
clay books are shown to have been suggested y the humbling
facts which are recorded in the Old Testament. And just a
word as to the Babylonian Empire : it rose upon the ruins of the
Assyrian Empire, and Jerusalem was destined to fall by the hand
of a Babylonian, not of an Assyrian, conqueror. The monuments
now confirm for us the truth of the Bible statements ; they
amplify the whole history of Cyrus ; and they further make it
certain that the writers of the Bible narratives were contempo-
rary with the facts which they record, so far as all the disputed
details are concerned.

The relation of the Old Testament to the New is of supreme,
indeed of final, importance. If the prophecies were the product

1889.] " THE STONES SHALL CRY OUT.'' 591

of a later age than the assumed one, there is an end of their
value, of their inspiration. The monuments have proved that
the prophecies of the "major" prophets were all written at the
times which have been ascribed to them. Space does not permit
us to quote the proofs. It is in the minuteness of details that the
best proofs are to be found ; and this minuteness needs close
stud}' for its unravelment. It is certain that there is no study, in
the way of Biblical evidences, which is so certain to repay the
earnest, patient student as the study of those dug-up witnesses
from the buried nations of the East which have come to life again
to assure us of Bible-facts. Nor is it creditable to the modern irr-
pugners of the old faith that they utterly ignore the living witness
of the old stones. Conscious, indeed, of the surpassing importance
of such testimony, they have sought to lessen its obvious force by
showing that the apocryphal books notably the Book of Tobias
and the Book of Judith are " most certainly utterly wrong on
historical points." Such an evasion is not honest, for this simple
reason: that Jewish writers who lived in the days when Persian
power had gained ascendency had no chance of consulting the
monuments of the old contemporaries. Greek writings, Greek
fictions, were their authorities; so that, historically, they were
very liable to be wrong. We are not saying that they were
wrong ; we are not debating it ; we only say that their " history "
is not " the point." We are speaking now of those "canonical "
books which all Christians have always accepted ; and of them
we have the literal vindication. And it is certainly curious that,
while the growth of modern discovery has lessened the credit of
Greek historical writers, it has illumined, it has illustrated, it has
verified the historical statements, and even the allusions, of the
Old Testament. It is the fact of the Biblical writers being the
contemporaries of the described events which gives to their
writings the personal interest of observers as well as the absolute
certainty of perfect accuracy. So, too, it is the fact of the pro-
phets prophesying "antecedently " a fact which the discovered
monuments have now established which gives to those prophe-
cies a determined signification, such as any doubt in regard to
date would render impossible. That difficulties must always re-
main as to points of chronology in the Old Testament is a matter
of course which no critical student would wish to question; but
enough evidence has been forthcoming to remove every real diffi-
culty, such as appertains to authenticity or genuineness. The
stale objections which used to be drawn from classic writers have
been utterly quashed by the (new) material witnesses ; the only

59 2 Ho w SHALL WE TEACH MORALITY? [Feb.,

difficulties now remaining being insoluble from their very nature,
which is intellectual or spiritual, but not critical.

Briefly, that we may make this short paper at least didactic
in point of argument if not of treatment, let it be repeated that
the discovery of the ancient monuments of Egypt, of Assyria, of
western Asia proves the minute (not only the general) Scrip-
tural exactness; proves the prevalence of the habits of reading
and of writing in times antecedent to even Abraham ; proves the
fidelity of the narratives of the Old Testament on points which
had been forgotten by classic writers (notably, take the recovered
remains of the Hittite empire); proves the existence of grand
Babylonian libraries; proves the truth of the "picture" of Ori-
ental society as it is presented by the Old-Testament writers;
and proves, above all, the contemporaneousness of the writers
with the events which they familiarly recorded. So that it may
be safely affirmed that people who want to disbelieve have a
harder task than those who want to believe ; and that people
who want to believe need really no exercise of their faith, so far
as the historic groove of Scripture evidence is concerned.

ARTHUR F. MARSHALL.

HOW SHALL WE TEACH MORALITY?

No one has yet dared to affirm that moral training for chil-
dren is unnecessary, or that the state should assume an attitude
of indifference towards virtue and vice. Differences of opinion
exist as to the ways and means best adapted for the teaching of
morality, but there is now becoming manifest a general agree-
ment among Christian denominations that the most improved
methods of the modern educator should be utilized in favor of
the soul's higher aspirations. The good citizen, the reliable mer-
chant, the incorruptible official holding a place which demands a
lofty standard of conduct, are personifications of moral convic-
tions. Great is the demand for men of this type, and the supply
is not regulated entirely by the demand. The same is true in
the domestic circle. Progressive civilization has not yet pro-
duced too many good husbands and exemplary wives. The
moral virtues, prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, are
incorporated as parts in a whole, and take concrete shape in the
great characters of every nation. Experience shows that these

1889-] HOW SHALL WE TEACH MORALITY? 593

noble moral qualities are not of spontaneous growth. There is
a process of evolution in each individual which is variable and
dependent on external as well as internal causes.

Earnest men of all denominations are asking, What are the in-
fluences which make for morality ? Is it separable from religion?
Can children at school be improved by positive moral teaching
as they are improved in their knowledge of arithmetic, or should
the whole burden of teaching morality be assigned to parents
and the church to which they belong?

In answer to these questions a large amount of valuable evi-
dence has been collected during the past two years by the com-
missioners appointed to examine into the working of existing
laws and the present condition of facts relating to elementary
education in England and Wales. Three large blue-books have
been sent to Parliament containing stenographic reports of the
testimony given by one hundred and fifty-one competent wit-
nesses. A liberal allowance of time was granted ninety-five
days for the taking of the testimony, and fifty-one days for the
preparation of the final report. Documentary information was
obtained through the diplomatic agents from various foreign
countries, also from the United States and the British colonies.

The discussions between the commissioners and the repre-
sentatives of the various denominations touch on the vital points
of the religious, question in . schools. As Parliamentary blue-
books are not widely circulated, it will be more interesting to
make extended quotations than to attempt a condensation.
Rev. Robert Bruce, M.A., D.D., a Congregational minister at
Huddersfield, was questioned concerning the objections of Non-
conformists to the recognition given in the present educational
system to the work of denominational schools.

"CANON GREGORY. Do the members of the Church of England paj
school-board rates in Huddersfield ? Of course they do.

"Are the rates heavy? They are pretty heavy.

"Are the church schools rated? are the buildings rated? Yes, all
schools are rated 7 that is one matter we complain of.

" Then you first mulct the church people of the rates, then you mulct
their schools, and then you complain of them because they have not
sufficient money to spend on their schools ? I do not do that.

"I thought that the great burden of your comp*laint about church
schools was that there was not sufficient money to fit them properly?
Yes ; but I do not mulct the church schools of any money. If you ask my
opinion, I think that no elementary schools ought to be rated for any
purpose.

"Do the church people like the system in Huddersfield, or do they
grumble at having to pay the money ? I dare say some of them grumble.
VOL. XLVIII. 38

594 How SHALL WE TEACH MORALITY? [Feb.,

" Do they not feel it to be a gross violation of religious liberty to have
to maintain schools of which they entirely disapprove? I am not aware
that they do.

" Have you heard many say so ? Possibly a few.

" Is it not a great hardship that people who think that the top and bot-
tom of education ought to be founded upon and upheld by religion should
have to support a school from which religion is excluded ? Religion is
not excluded from our board schools.

" It is as nearly as possible, is it not? You have only a little sham ?
There is no sham about it ; I was there only a few days ago, and I never
saw a more impressive service anywhere.

" Is it not an obvious thing that those of us who believe in religious
education should feel that it is a gross violation of our religious liberty
that we should have to maintain schools of which we entirely disapprove?
I do not think so at all.

" You think it is right for us to be coerced, but wrong for you ? I would
not coerce anybody.

" But you coerce church people to pay for board schools of which they
disapprove ; you say that is right, but that it is wrong to coerce people who
disapprove of denominational schools?

"If religion is separated from secular instruction upon jthe week-day,
is not a child very apt to grow up with the idea that religion is a thing for
Sundays, and has nothing to do with the other six days of the week ? No,
I do not think so.

" Is not that a very common feeling in England ? I am afraid it is, even
with those who go to a day-school and a Sunday-school too; it is sadly too
common.

"Are the parents of the Huddersfield children, do you think, able to teach
them religion ? I think that many of them are.

" Do you think that they do teach them religion ? I am afraid not ; they
trust very much now to the Sunday-school teachers.

" How long do the children attend school on Sundays ? An hour and a
half in the morning and an hour and a half in the afternoon.

" Do they all come both times? There is a very large attendance.

"What is the average attendance? Would it be 70 percent.? About
that, I think.

, "That is a very short time in which to instil religious truth into the chil-
dren's minds, is it not ? I think it is long enough."

Evidently the Rev. Robert Bruce never made careful obser-
vations in an afternoon Sunday-school. It is with the greatest
reluctance that boys especially can be urged to attend regularly.
From the boy's point of view there are many reasonable objec-
tions. The Sunday dinner has the most attractive bill of fare,
and the consequent mental condition is not favorable to hard
study. Besides, papa is generally very benignant on that occa-
sion, and if a boy is allowed the choice he will generally enjoy
the home comforts in preference to Sunday-school. Teachers of
experience recognize that the best school work can be done in

1889] HOW SHALL WE TEACH MORALITY? 595

the morning-, and for this reason the tirst lesson of the day is
arithmetic, because it is difficult to learn. Certainly the short
time allowed to instil religious truth into the minds of the
children at the Congregational Sunday-school at Huddersfield
would not be sufficient for any important branch of secular
study.

In response to further questions the same witness continued
to answer broadly but not clearly in stating his dim perceptions
regarding the basis of moral teaching and the limits of the in-
tuitional system.

" REV. DR. MORSE. As to the moral teaching given in board schools,
upon what basis would you rest it ? On the moral law written on the human
heart and conscience.

"Would you think it justifiable to enforce the performance of moral du-
ties by any reference to religious sanctions ? I very much question that in
reference to a day-school.

" Would you rest it upon an intuitional system of morals ? Yes. ' First
that which is natural, and afterwards that which is spiritual.'

" You say a natural system of morals ; is that equivalent to what we may
call the pagan system of morals taught by the Greeks and Romans ?- No.

"What is it more particularly? where does it come from? With the
progress of human society the natural conscience has considerably in-
creased in power and in vividness of conception.

"The ethical teaching which you would recognize is not Christian
ethics? I recognize Christian ethics, certainly. If I were teaching my
children I should teach them so.

" Do you mean in your official capacity ? Yes.

" In board schools you would teach natural morality and not Christian
morality ? I would teach morality, as far as I could.

" But it is essential that you should lay stress upon the basis of what you
are teaching? I do not think it is necessary.

"Not in teaching morals? No.

"Not in teaching a system which is intended to restrain evil-doers?
That can be done by the ministers or clergymen on Sunday, and by Sunday-
school teachers, and by parents."

Cardinal Manning, who was present as a member of the Royal
Commission and listened to the foregoing evidence, decided to
assist the inquiry. He directed the attention of the witness to
some facts often conveniently ignored even in the United States
namely, that the government was not first historically in the
field of education ; that parents felt it a duty of conscience to seek
education, and asserted the right to choose the methods and con-
trol the system established by their own voluntary efforts. In
this matter parental responsibility was the motive which urged a
Christian people to secure for their children schools in which the

59$ How SHALL WE TEACH MORALITY f [Feb.,

doctrines of the Christian religion, as well as other studies, should
be taught. Before the year 1845 tne r 'S nt of parents and the
conscience of parents were the motive and rule of education in
England.

When the state came in to claim a supreme right to compel
the education of children it was bound to make provision
for the conscience of parents, inasmuch as the whole system of
the government is founded upon the most profuse recognition of
freedom of conscience. To this lucid statement Rev. Robert
Bruce replied :

" I do not see that; it can provide what, in the conscience of the state,
it thinks that the parents should comply with.

"CHAIRMAN. Are you quite sure that the state has got a conscience?
It ought to have.

"CARDINAL MANNING. lam coming to that, but for the present I mean
to say this : Given compulsion, there must be a provision made for the con-
science of parents; if not, the state would compel parents under penalties
to do that to which they conscientiously object. Therefore my first ob-
jection against a universal school-board system would be that it violates
the whole basis of our commonwealth. I said the contrary ; that the pres-
ent system compels me and a number of other Nonconformists to pay for
the teaching of the Roman Catholicreligion and the teaching of the Church-
of- England religion, and that it violates my conscience in compelling me to
pay for it.

" To that I should make two objections ; the one is, that the money of
the state does not go to teaching religion in our schools. How can we
know that ?

" I believe that I can affirm that. The very long experience that I have
had now of forty and more years in schools would tell me so, because the
money* that is received from the state does not suffice even for the secular
part of the teaching; it would not pay the stipend of the teachers, and it
would not provide the house in which it is taught; so that the teaching of
religion in a denominational school is thrown entirely upon the managers.
There is a contract between the government and the denominational
schools, whereby the government purchases the three R's (I will say for
brevity) at a sum certainly much less than that for which the government
could institute and maintain schools for that purpose. Therefore my

* Elementary education, as now established in England, is sustained by money from three
sources the parliamentary grant, local resources in the form of rates, subscriptions, or endow-
ments, and school fees. For the year 1886 the total income for the maintenance of all elemen-
tary schools, including voluntary contributions from all sources, was ,"6,827,189, of which
^"2,866,700 about 42 per cent. came from the central government. Considered with reference
to the individual scholar, the annual government grant per head has recently been computed as
17*. 2 l / 2 d., to which were added 22.5-. ij^rf. from local taxation and fees, making a total of 1-
igs. qd., which is equal to $9 44 in our money. These figures do not include the cost of build-
ings, repairs, etc. Between the years 1860 and 1886 the average salaries of teachers have been
considerably increased. A principal's salary is now ,132 ; assistant teachers, according to rank,
receive from .60 to .90.

1889] HOW SHALL WE TEACH MORALITY? 597

first answer would be that the money of the state does not go for religious
teaching. But it would seem to me that you admitted that natural
morality might be taught in schools? Yes."

" Do not you admit that there is natural religion ? Yes.
" Is not the state bound to maintain natural religion and morality for
instance, the existence of God, and that he is a lawgiver, and that his laws
are the great outlines of the obligations of man? Surely no state can exist,
unless it becomes atheist, without recognizing the obligation to teach nat-
ural religion and natural law? Is the state obliged to teach everything
that is true ?

"I am certainly of opinion that the state is bound to teach both natural
religion and natural law. I do not think so, because I should say that
there are certain truths in astronomy which the state is not bound to teach,
but astronomers.

" I do not call astronomy either religious or moral. I was speaking of
things that are true.

"I am confining my argument distinctly to things religious and moral.
I am trying to reach the principle upon which the system which you are
proposing the universal school-board system can rest, and I must say
that I can find none. I believe it to be unjust, and I will tell you why : It
would assume for the state a supreme power contrary to the right of con-
science in parents. Now, the first natural right, we know, in parents is the
right of choosing the education of their children, and the teachers of their
children, and the companions of their children, and it would seem plain that
the state cannot assume to itself the supreme right of controlling that.
I do not think they should control it.

" On what ground could such a claim be founded ? Does it exist in nat-
ural law ? The right of parents exists in natural law. Is this claim on the
part of the state to be found in natural law? I do not think that either de-
nominational schools or board schools exist in natural law.

"Am I not right in saying that, even according to the law of nature,
there is a natural religion and a natural morality, and_that man, as man,
comes under those two obligations? Yes.

" And therefore the education of man, as man, in the order of nature
alone, leaving Christianity out of sight, must be controlled by those two
great laws. Man must be formed in the knowledge of natural religion and
morality; and it seems to me that the board-school system does not do
that. I should take the objection that clergymen, Independent ministers,
and Roman Catholics sometimes do interfere with the right of the parents;
they take the responsibility oft the parents.
" Nobody can do that. But they do it.

"I think not. I have had cases of parents sending children to school,
and ministers of some church coming and saying they must not do it.

"There may be particular cases where some persons misconduct them-
selves, but I am speaking of the system. So am I.

" By our law at this moment the denominations are permitted to form
schools freely under the control of the department under inspection, and
all conditions necessary; but they are left entirely free to form a school
which shall be Congregationalist or Catholic. There, as it seems to me, is
no interference with the conscience of parents, because they are not bound

How SHALL WE TEACH MORALITY? [Feb.,

to send their children there. But we are not allowed to do that under the
present system.

" How so ? Because we are told that if there is sufficient accommodation
in the church school we shall not have any other school in the district.

"Wait a moment; 1 am going to make a concession to you. I quite
admit that there are residual difficulties to be found all over the country.
Again and again you have said in evidence that the small schools of the
country are often very inefficient, and I have a very strong feeling that
when Nonconformists are scattered over the country, and are unable to
form schools of their own, there is very'great hardship in compelling them
to attend the parish national school; and I also feel that my own people
would be compelled in the same way, and I object to it strongly. But that
does not touch the system ; these are residual difficulties, I admit, but it
appears to me your remedy erects the residual difficulty into the rule for
the whole land. I object to that. The system ought to be based upon its
own proper principles, and those residual difficulties dealt with afterwards.
I want a system in which the Roman Catholics, the Protestant Church,
and Dissenters may all work amicably together, as men believing in what
is good, as we do in our Board, and as the members of this commission do.

"That would bring in natural religion and natural morality, and also
Lord Norton's general Christianity, and that would raise immensely the
system of board schools ; but you said, I think, that if the parents neglect
their duty the state may come in to protect the rights and interests of
children ? In some instances, but it is a very delicate question.

" I entirely agree with you, and nobody knows better than Lord Nor-
ton, who has been laboring all his life nearly in industrial schools, that
industrial schools really are penal upon bad parents, because their children
are put into industrial schools and the parents are made to pay. Yes.

"That seems to me an exercise of the protective right of the state,
which is justifiable on principle, namely, that when parents neglect their
duty and children are abandoned, then the state might come in ; but giv-
ing up that category of bad parents, which you do, I contend that the state
has no right to come in over all other categories of good parents. What
is the value of that religion to those parents ?

"To the individuals none, but in the system it is supreme. Why would
not such a system as this satisfy you : that the state should give to all
those who are ready to found and maintain schools without asking them
what they are in religion ? And I would say even this, let there be a cate-
gory of the Church of England, the Congregationalists, the Wesleyans, the
Catholics, and the Agnostics, if you like, and secular board schools; I will
reduce the board schools to a category, and let the state freely give sup-
port to all ; that would be but fair. It would seem to me that then we
ought not to be tied down to one source only of public money, as the vol-
untary schools at this moment are only paid out of the Consolidated
Fund; and, as Lord Norton said, any want of efficiency in voluntary
schools may be fairly traced to their want of funds compared with the
abundant wealth which is in the hands of the school board derived from
two sources of public money. I would deal with all alike ; you would not
object to that ? I wish all to be put on one level. I want a system in
.which the teacher may be either a Roman Catholic, Protestant, Dissenter.

1889-] HOW SHALL WE TEACH MORALITY? 599

or Nonconformist, and where the children shall never be asked questions
about religious beliefs ; where they shall be meeting together as brothers
and sisters; and if there is anything further to be taught, let the clergy-
men or ministers teach it.

" I must object to that ; that is a mixed system ; it is the system of
common schools in America, and in America there is a very wide-spread
and powerful reaction on the part of the parents for what is called 'the
home ' against the common-school system. We believe that to be the only
system that will preserve our education. I will only ask you.one question
more. I believe that there was never a claim on the part of the state to
educate the citizens of the state, except in Athens, and that it was adopted
in the first French Revolution, from which I believe the present theories
in England have derived themselves; and I do not know of any law in
which the parental right has not been recognized as supreme, unless it be
forfeited in the case of abuse or neglect; and therefore I object to the
board-school system in toto upon the ground that it is founded upon a
principle which I must say, with all respect, is heathen I use the term
classically. You do not agree with that? No ; I want to see a system in
which we can all work harmoniously together. I sit myself in the school
board in Huddersfield by the side of the Roman Catholic priest, and we
are very good friends; and I do not see why the children should not do
the same in school."

With classical propriety it may be said that the Rev. Robert
Bruce seems unable to distinguish between the Christian and the
pagan standard of education. In this respect he is typical of a
large class of people in the United States. The charge reason-
ably made against them is that they profess to be satisfied with
very imperfect results in religious instruction, and unjustly ac-
cuse of a want of patriotism those who try to point out their
error. We Catholics have no desire to disturb the friendly rela-
tions existing among American citizens when we assert our con-
victions as to the teaching of Christian morality. It is a subject
on which we are entitled to form an opinion and to express it
vigorously. The good work done in Catholic schools for secular
education demands recognition officially and financially as long
as the state collects taxes for school purposes. It is false Amer-
icanism, and was condemned by the founders of the republic, to
establish by law a system of education which imposes taxation
without representation.

THOMAS MCMILLAN.

6oo A MEDIEVAL BARON AT HOME. [Feb.,

A MEDIEVAL BARON AT HOME.

THE writers of historical novels and romances have much to
answer for. They have deeply impressed the popular mind
with an utterly misleading picture of the life of the middle ages.
Their barons and knight-errants, stately dames and beauteous
damsels, are the accepted types of the men and women of five
centuries ago. Most people have been gradually persuaded into
the belief that desperate combats, sieges, and sackings, hair-
breadth escapes and blood-curdling adventures, were the ordi-
nary, every-day events of the far-off times, when, as a matter of
fact, some of the most beautiful works were executed that human
minds ever conceived and human skill realized. Those who
talk as if the middle ages were all strife and rapine seem to for-
get how much evidence we have, in mediaeval buildings, books,
and works of art, that there were long periods of peace and
security without which such things could never have come into
existence. Storm and strife there was, no doubt, but after all not
so very much more than there is in our own time. But wars
were more localized than they are now ; for one day of battle
there were a hundred days of peace, and when we get a real
sight of one of the men of the middle ages he seems a very dif-
ferent character from our old friends Fitzurse, De Bracy, and
Bois-Guilbert, who swagger so grandly and fight their way so
fiercely through the changing scenes of Ivan/toe.

M. Hagemans, a Belgian antiquary, gives us such a real signt
of a French baron of the fourteenth century in a little volume,*
in which he has published for the first time the accounts kept
day by day from 1327 to 1329, by the clerk or steward of the
Seigneur Jean de Blois at the castle of Chateau-Renault in the
west of France. Jean de Blois belonged to a family which was
connected by marriage with the royal house of France. Among
the guests that he entertained at Chateau-Renault on January 2,
1327, was Margaret de Valois, the sister of King Philip ; and one
of his own nephews was among the most wealthy men of the
time. Yet the accounts kept by his clerk, " Master Colin," show
that he lived at a very moderate rate, and, although he was gene-
rous, open-handed, and anything but parsimonious, the big men

* Vie domestique (fun seigneur chdtelaindu moyen &ge d'apres des documents originaux
inidits. Par G. Hagemans, ancien membre de la Chambre des Representants. Antwerp :
Plasky.

1889.] A MEDIEVAL BARON AT HOME. 60 r

of our own day, the railway kings and the successful capitalists,
would consider such an expenditure as that of the lord of
Chateau-Renault to be penury itself. To quote M. Hagemans'
book :

" The total expenses for one hundred and eighty-one days that is, for a
term of six months amount to 277 livres, 8 sous, 9 deniers, equivalent in
intrinsic value to 3,329.25 francs, or, taking into account the modern value
of money, 19,975.50 francs say 40,000 francs for the year [/.<?., about $8,000
or ;i,6oo sterling!] Assuredly this was not very much for an establish-
ment organized like that of Jean de Blois, who had his chaplain, clerk,
squires, guards, sergeants-at-arms, huntsmen, cooks, butlers, pantlers,
grooms, messengers, footmen, torch-bearers, fishermen, maid-servants in a
word, a very numerous household to board and lodge, besides at least
twenty horses in his stables."*

It is true, adds M. Hagemans, that Jean de Blois was a bachelor.
But, though he had neither wife nor child, there were at least
seventy people in his service at Chateau-Renault, besides the
poor, to whom he was always very liberal. And the account-
books show that he treated his household well and paid his
workmen and subjects a fair wage. He was able to do so much at
so small a cost because, although some things were quite as dear
as they are at present, most of the necessaries of life were ex-
ceedingly cheap, and many of them were pwoduced on his own
lands in sight of his castle-walls.

The daily consumption of bread was 240 loaves of five French
ounces each, equal to about 75 pounds, or about a pound of
bread for each person in the castle. Wine probably the thin
wine of the country was the ordinary drink, and of this 82 pints
a day was the average allowance. The price was about 75 cen-
times a pint rather dear for vin ordinaire. The accounts show,
indeed, that wine of all kinds was rather high-priced, as also were
salt and fish, but bread and butcher's meat were very cheap.
Meat there was in abundance. On January 2, 1327, when the
seigneur of Chateau-Renault entertained the king's sister and a
number of other guests, the accounts show that he had provided
for their entertainment two oxen, six sheep, four deer, and a
hecatomb of fowls, ducks, geese, capons, rabbits, and hares.
There were a thousand loaves of bread and 240 quarts {litres) of
good wine not a large proportion of drink to such a mighty
feast. It is, however, to be noted that all this was not for a
single repast, but for an entertainment that lasted at least two

* To an English reader, accustomed to accounts kept in , s., d., it is interesting to se*
these accounts of 1327 kept under the same heading, though of course in the old book libri,
soldi, and denarii mean something different from " pounds, shillings, and pence."

602 A MEDIMVAL BARON AT HOME. [Feb.,

days. The whole feast cost, in the money of to-day, a little over
2,800 francs (say about $560). No such banquet could be given
nowadays for the money.

All through the season of Lent there was no meat on the table
at Chateau-Renault, not even on Sundays. If we turn to the
accounts for the Lent of 1329, we find at the outset, in the mar-
gin, this note in quaint old French : " Ci commence le harang de
karesme achter" " Here the Lenten herring begins to be bought."
This liarang de karesme, or Lenten herring, appears to have been
the price de resistance of the bill of fare at the baron's table for
forty days, Sunday and Monday. About 75 salt herrings were
eaten daily, one fish for each person in the castle. By Easter
3,000 had been bought and consumed, at a cost of 524 francs.
Now and then some other fish was provided for the sake of
variety " poisson de festanc de Motion," fish from a neighboring
pond, but not many of them ; " quarpes " and " braimes" our old
accountant calls them, the carp and bream of to-day. We hear
also of lampreys and eels, eels that cost 53 francs each ! and which
M. Hagemans suspects to have been themselves a kind of lam-
prey ; but this costly fare was not in Lent. Nor was it possible
to vary the Lenten diet with eggs. They were strictly forbidden,
and from Ash-Wednesday to Easter not one was brought into
the castle ; but the accounts show that if eggs disappeared from
the table there was a greatly increased consumption of onions,
perhaps by way of compensation. Onions, indeed, appear to
have been the principal vegetables used at the castle table.
Peas, it is true, appear in the accounts in considerable quantities,
but they are meant for horses, not for men, for we find them
classed under the head of marcJiaucerie* that is, stable matters.

It would seem, then, that Lenten fasting and abstinence were
well observed at Chateau-Renault. Alms-deeds were not for-
gotten. Indeed, they had their appointed place in the daily
routine of the castle, not in Lent only, but all the year round.
Each morning, when the drawbridge was lowered for the day,
the first visitors to enter were eight poor men who came to re-
ceive the leavings of yesterday's meals probably no scanty alms
in a household kept up on such a scale. And besides the leav-
ings, strictly so called, they were given portions specially set
aside for them by the master of the house in a vessel that was
placed for the purpose on the dining-table, and they had also

* Marchaucerte meant literally what belonged to the department of the martclial i.e., tb
an who looked after the horses. In country villages in France and Belgium the word mart-
ckal is still used in this original sense, and suggests anything but dignity.

1889.] A MEDIEVAL BARON AT HOME. 03

two sous a week in money. Two sous seem a small sum for
eight people, but the equivalent money of to-day would be about
seven and a quarter francs, so that each poor man had nearly a
franc a week ; and M. Hagemans reminds us that in those days
people did not smoke tobacco or drink absinthe out of their
pocket-money. Besides these daily alms something was always
found for passers-by who came to beg for help at the castle.

Poor people " on the tramp " were not the only chance visi-
tors who went away from Chateau-Renault with their purses
replenished by the visit. In the autumn and winter wandering
minstrels would come for a day to enliven the old castle and
amuse its master with their songs or feats of dexterity. Thus,
one Friday, November 13, 1329, a" menestrel quijonet d'oiseaux"
a man who travelled with some performing birds exhibited them
in the castle-hall, and the account-book shows that the baron
gave him ten sous, rather more than seven dollars, for his after-
noon's work. A few days after another minstrel came and play-
ed on a cornet, but he only got half the amount that was paid to
the man with the birds. On the very same day " un povre clerc"
a poor scholar, asked for and received hospitality at the castle.
He sang in the chapel during service, and when he went his way
next day he had two francs and a half from the baron to help
him on his journey.

The accounts show that the master of Chateau-Renault was
just as well as generous. One day his hounds in pursuit of a
hare rushed across the low roof of a hut belonging to a poor
woman and completely demolished it. A miserable shed it
must have been to give way under such a shock. Next day's
accounts show that full compensation was paid for the damage.
Every service done in connection with the household was duly
noted and paid for, and the scale of wages appears to have been
a high one considering the purchasing power of money. The
accounts also show that whenever presents were received from
neighboring seigneurs the servants who brought the gift were
not allowed to go away empty-handed. Thus, a man who
brought a present of some capons received a ponrboire of eight
deniers, about half a dollar ; while two carters who had the good
fortune to bring two casks of wine from the Dame de St. Cire
received a sum equal to no less than five and a half dollars for
their trouble. Open-handed without being extravagant, the
lord of Chateau-Renault evidently held that a gentleman should
not be shabby or mean-spirited about money. Though the least
item of expenditure was carefully noted each day, there was

604 A PLEA TO MARY. [Feb.,

nothing miserly about the Seigneur Jean de Blois. The ac-
counts which record his daily expenses, gratuities, and alms re-
veal the fact that he now and then risked and lost a little money
at play with his friends. But his heaviest loss was only thirty
francs, or about seven dollars, so that our old friend could hard-
ly be called a gambler.

Throughout the accounts give the impression of a peaceful,
settled state of affairs, in which the daily life of the chateau ran
on, varied by no greater event than the entertainment of a noble
guest or a visit to some neighbor's house at a distance. The
fire and fury of the historical novelist is conspicuous by its ab-
sence. The record is one of prudent economy, justice, and gene-
rosity, which does high honor to the memory of this old baron
of the "dark ages." Assuredly he was no oppressor of the
poor ; rather he used his modest fortune so that the peasants who
dwelt within sight of the towers of Chateau-Renault had good
cause to hold their seigneur's name in benediction.

A. BILLIARD ATTERIDGE.

A PLEA TO MARY.

O MARY, Mother! white of heart and soul
Bendirrg in rapture o'er the Heavenly Guest,
Whom thou didst harbor in thy stainless breast

With joy undimmed by shade of future dole

Bend now from Heaven, if thou rememberest

How the heart's anguish slips the will's control;
For there are babes o'er whom no mother bends,
And there are hearths no fireside angel tends,

Blank spaces that ho earthly gifts mruy fill.

But if thy Heart its tender pity sends

Into those homes, no babe is motherless,
No hearth is desolate: the joyous thrill
That Christmas-tide did to the stable bring

Can girdle all ihe world at thy swtet will ;

Thou and thy B.ibs each vacant sp >t can fill,

Draw love-reft hearts to tenderest sheltering.

MARGARET H. LAWLESS,

1889.] BLESSED CLEMENT HOFBAUER, C.SS.R. 605

BLESSED CLEMENT HOFBAUER, C.SS.R., APOSTLE

OF VIENNA.

IF the biography of a great secular character gives new zest
to our efforts and seems to realize our dreams of perfection, how
much more should the history of a favorite saint stimulate us
to great and noble deeds! And there are few whose lives con-
tain more valuable practical lessons of holy living than that of
Blessed Clement Maria Hofbauer, whose beatification was cele-
brated by a solemn triduum from October 15 to 18, 1888, in the
old church of Maria-Stiegen in Vienna.

But before outlining this wonderful man's career I wish to
say a few words about the times in which he lived. The period
of his apostolate begins in 1785 and ends in 1820. During this
period the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars kept
European society in a state of almost continual fermentation.
Before the outbreak of the great convulsion in France the false
doctrines of Gallicans and Jansenists had already begun to un-
settle the religious faith of the clergy, rulers, and people in
many parts of Europe. Febronius and men like him were
also at this time actively propagating error in Germany and
Austria. The so-called " progressive tendencies" of the age had
found in the son and successor of Maria Theresa a blind ad-
herent. When Joseph II., after the death of his pious mother
in November, 1780, became sole ruler of the empire, he intro-
duced a series of impious laws which have since borne in Austria,
at least, the name of " Josephinism." The theory that the state
has the right of supervision of worship, that it should divorce re-
ligion from education and attend only to making a man a citizen,
was, under Joseph II., practically applied in Austria. As a result
the direct intercourse of the hierarchy with Rome was forbidden
altogether, and the imperial embassy at Rome was the only channel
through which communication with the Holy See could be had,
and the pope's authority restricted exclusively to what the state
chose to consider " religious matters." Whatever came from
Rome required the "placet regium" before it could be promul-
gated. The state legislated on marriage ; the bishops were
instructed that under the new order of things they had au-
thority to give the dispensations previously reserved to the
pope. The expulsion of religious orders was followed by a
wholesale confiscation of their property, and no less than seven

606 BLESSED CLEMENT HOFBAUER, C.SS.R. [Feb.,

hundred cloisters, convents, monasteries, and abbeys were secu-
larized within eight years. The education of the clergy was
taken out of the hands of the bishops; seminaries controlled and
superintended by the state became the only nurseries for priests,
who, unfortunately, frequently learned to look only to the state
for favor, and if they became its willing tools their preferment was
sure to be rapid. Such small matters as the ringing of the church-
bells and the ornamentation of altars were also subjects of state
regulation. ' With the church in a crippled condition, it can
be readily understood to what an extent indifferentism was spread
among both clergy and people, and the decay of faith resulted
naturally in great laxity of morals.

These few remarks will enable us to form some idea of the
general condition of that period, and I am forced to make two
observations upon it. First, unbelief, lack of faith, was the main
defect of that era, and so God willed that " faith," strong, pure,
and immovable, should be the means of recalling Christians to
his service, and the bearer of this heavenly weapon was to be
our saint. Secondly, those who were bent upon crushing out be-
lief were the great and powerful, while the instrument chosen by
God to frustrate the work of those in power was a powerless,
penniless peasant, only an apprentice to a baker.

Let us see who this man was and what he did. He was born
in Tasswitz, a village in Moravia, on December 26, 1751. His
parents were poor, respectable, and pious people. When six years
old his father died and left his mother a widow with six
children, of whom he was the youngest. One day his good
mother, leading him up to a crucifix and pointing to the figure of
our crucified Lord, said to him : " Look up and see who your
Father now is ; be careful to walk so as to please him." He heard
and obeyed those words, for from that time his life presents an
unbroken record of sanctity. During the nine years following,
which he spent at home, there was a daily increase in his love for
God, which was manifested by his great assiduity in prayer and
penance amid a life of the hardest toil for one of his years. He
was a model of obedience, which is an excellent test of Christian
virtue. Family circumstances at length brought about a disso-
lution of his home associations, and it became necessary for him
at the age of fifteen to rely solely upon himself. He accordingly
apprenticed himself to a baker in Znaim, a small city not far from
Tasswitz, and served afterwards in the same capacity in a monas-
tery near Bruck, where he found in the abbot a friend, through
whose kindness he was permitted to attend the Latin school at-

1889.] BLESSED CLEMENT HOFBAUER, C.SS.R. 607

tached to the monastery. After the abbot's death his yearnings
towards union with God induced him to live as a hermit in a
small hut in the vicinity of Tasswitz; but Josephinism soon com-
pelled him to give up this manner of life, and we find him in his
twenty-seventh year in Vienna working as a poor, humble baker.
He felt clearly a religious vocation, he was most anxious to pre-
pare himself for the priesthood, but he believed that God knew
best how to order all things, and, with firm reliance upon the
divine will, he bore his fate with never-murmuring resignation,
willing to use his own worSs only what, when, and how
God willed. While in Vienna he became acquainted with Peter
Kunzmann, also a baker, poor like himself, and pious ; and the
two, though without means, following an ardent wish of their
hearts, set out on foot on a pilgrimage to Rome, where they re-
ceived the sacraments, and returned greatly strengthened in
faith because of the wonderful way in which God had helped
them to make the journey not only safely but without money.
Shortly after their return Pius VI., deeply distressed at the de-
plorable state of religious affairs in Austria, concluded to visit in
person Emperor Joseph II. His Holiness arrived at Vienna
in March, 1782. This visit, as is known, was a total failure.
During the stay of the Holy Father, Clement Hofbauer, in the
midst of a crowd of people, received the papal blessing, and that
grace inspired him to visit once more the Eternal City. So
he undertook the weary journey again, and, having arrived at
Tivoli, he determined to try again his vocation as a hermit. He
accordingly went to the bishop of the place, Barnabas Chiara-
m >nti (afterwards Pope Pius VII.), and requested episcopal sanc-
tion to live in the diocese of Tivoli as a hermit. After carefully
examining the applicant and satisfying himself that Clement was
one whom God had selected for some great work, the bishop not
only granted his request, but in person invested him with the
habit. The future apostle then retired to a solitude, where he ac-
quired that close communion by prayer with his Master which
continued all through his life, and this was what prepared him to
overcome all his future difficulties in after-life. Here, after some
months, he learned that it was not God's will that he should live
apart from the world in prayer and contemplation all of his days,
but that he would be called soon to a more active service, to harder
trials and sufferings among men ; so he retraced his steps to
Vienna, where he applied himself again to his trade and to study.
His poverty proved, of course, a great stumbling-block and pre-
vented him from studying as he would have liked to do. Never-

6o8 BLESSED CLF.MENT HOFBAUEK, C.SS.R. [Feb.,

theless he never complained, as we know from the celebrated
ex-Jesuit, Albert Diesbach, whose acquaintance he made at that
time, and who familiarized him with the writings of St. Alphon-
sus Liguori, whose congregation he was soon to adorn. From
the profound and varied knowledge which Clement Hofbauer
possessed at this time it is generally believed that he received
wisdom from above, but undoubtedly he thus acquired much of
it.* After a time there came to him once more an inspiration to
visit the tomb of the apostles, and he communicated his desire to
a friend named Hiibl, who lay just then sick in a hospital, inviting
at the same time this friend to join him. " How can I," said
Hiibl, " since I am sick and have no money ? " But the man of God
knew belter. "For the first " (the health), he said, "God will
provide ; and for the means, I." And his faith proved that he was
right; for God did indeed restore Hiibl's health, while kind
friends enabled Clement Hofbauer to carry out his part. So the
two made the pilgrimage to Rome on foot, and, having arrived
there late one evening, took lodgings near Santa Maria Maggiore's,
and resolved, before retiring, to visit on the next morning that
church whose bells they should first hear. In this way the}' were
led at daybreak to the church of San Giuliano, where they found
a very devout community of priests assembled at their morning
meditation. When they left the church they asked a boy out-
side what congregation of priests that was, and the boy replied :
" Priests of the Order of the Most Holy Redeemer; and you will
be among them." These words impressed Clement Hofbauer deep-
ly ; he went to the superior the same morning, opened his heart,
and that master of souls, recognizing the vocation of the inquirer,
offered him admission into the order. On the next day his friend

* We extract the following incident from the excellent life of Blessed Clement by " a
member of the Order of Mercy" (Cath. Pub. Soc. Co., 1877): "On Sunday during High
Mass it began to rain heavily. The hardy Moravian (Clement), who could sleep as sweetly
beneath the stars as on a comfortable bed, cared as little for rain as for sunshine. . . . But
seeing three ladies in the porch, whose dress and mien proclaimed their exalted rank, hesitating
to brave the rain-storm and quite unattended, he politely stepped forward and asked whether
he could be of any service in procuring them a carriage. His offer was accepted ; the ladies in-
vited him to dnt'e home with them. Something in his frank, modest demeanor irresistibly attract-
ed their sympathies. They plied him with questions who he was, what he was, whtnce he came,
how he supported himself. The eldest, with rare discernment of spirit, stirred his soul toils
very depths by the suggestive question: 'But perhaps you desire to become a priest?' 'I
do ! ' cred the delighted baker, beginning to see gleams of hope ; and he took the whole party
into his confidence on the spot, saying frankly: 'My most ardent and constant desire from
infancy has been to become a priest, but I have always been too poor to finish my course of
study.' ' Your education shall be finished at our expense,' said the eldest lady." Thus, by an
act of simple politeness native to his manly heart, Clement at thirty-four years of age was en-
abled to finish those studies which were indispensable to the fulfilment of his sublime vocation.
The name of the sisters who had the honor of assisting him was Maul. EDITOR.

1889.] BLESSED CLEMENT HOFBAUER, C.SS.R. 609

Hiibl, whom he had brought so providentially to Rome, applied
and was also admitted. But as they were both foreigners, well
advanced in years, some of the fathers in Naples were by no
means pleased with their reception into the order. But fortu-
nately the founder, St. Alphonsus Liguori, who was still alive
though no longer superior, overcame that opposition by saying
in a prophetic spirit : " God will not fail to increase his glory by
these two Austrians from across the Alps." Both received the
habit on October 24, 1784, and began without delay their novi-
tiate. Owing to their pronounced vocation, their great zeal and
exemplary virtues, as well as their mature age, they were allowed
to take their vows on March 19, 1785, and ten days later the
Bishop of Alatri ordained them priests. As soon as their theo-
logical studies had been finished both asked to be sent north,
and, as they had from their entrance into the congregation been
destined for the German missions, their request was willingly
granted. So Father Clement Hofbauer, now in his thirty -fourth
year, enters upon that apostolic career which was to make him
so famous.

In the fall of 1785 the two Redemptorists arrived at Vienna,
at a time when Josephinism was at its height and the suppression
of religious orders and confiscation of church property was being
carried on with the utmost vigor. To think then of establishing a
new religious order was, of course, out of the question ; so Father
Clement and his companion put themselves at the disposal of
the Prefect of the Propaganda, who accepted their services gladly
for the Polish mission, because the Archbishop of Mohilev had
lately received permission from Empress Catherine II. of Russia
to get priests to attend to the spiritual wants of the Catholics in
Poland. Equipped by their superiors with authority to receive
novices, establish houses, etc., Father Clement and Father
Hiibl set out for Warsaw, the capital of Poland. Near Vienna
they had to cross the Danube, and on the boat a hermit attracted,
naturally enough, Father Clement's attention. He was rejoiced
to find in this hermit his old friend Kunzmann, who had accompa-
nied him on the first visit-to Rome and who was just returning
from a pilgrimage to Cologne. Kunzmann became Father Clem-
ent's first novice and went on with them to Warsaw.

When they arrived at this city they presented themselves to
the papal nuncio, who received them with open arms and installed
them at once in the church of St. Benno, with the adjoining
house for a residence. The three had between them only three
thalers (about $r.8o) in money, while the church, having been un-
VOL. XLVIII. 39

6io BLESSED CLEMENT HOFBAUER, C.SS.R. [Feb.,

occupied a long time, had nothing but bare walls and stood sadly
in need of repairs, and the house was filthy, unfurnished, and so
dilapidated that water was dripping from the ceilings. The situa-
tion was anything but cheerful. Yet Father Clement, instead of
being depressed or disheartened, gloried in the prospect of suffer-
ing hardship for his Master, and knew by his boundless faith
not only how to inspire confidence into his companions but to
render them anxious to emulate his example. Consider that it
was necessary for them to know Polish besides German, and it
will be seen that the building up of St. Benno's was fraught with
such difficulties that only a truly heroic faith could overcome
them. But Father Clement Hofbauer's confidence in God was
too great to be in any way affected by this apparently hopeless
condition of affairs. When poverty pressed them to the wall, as
it did only too often in the beginning, he would pray hard and
long before the tabernacle, and say, " Lord, now it is time to help,"
and help in one way or another was always vouchsafed to their re-
liance upon God. It would lead us too far to give the history of
St. Benno. Suffice it to say that before long the church was re-
paired and properly ornamented. Meanwhile the attendance at
all the services steadily increased, and the fame of the Bennonites,
as they were called, spread even beyond Poland. And how
was all this accomplished ? I reply unhesitatingly, by Father
Clement's marvellous faith.

In order to provide the means wherewith to do so, he went
out begging himself all through the city, firmly believing that
God would not abandon him in that work. So on one day he
entered a restaurant where some rough-looking characters were
playing cards; he approached them and begged for some alms for
his orphans. One of 'them, however, enraged at the sight of
a priest and more so at the request, spit in his face. Father
Clement, firmly believing he would get alms if he went to
work in the right way, quietly wipes his face and says, perfectly
undisturbed : " That was for me, sir; but now give me something
for my orphans." Such humility disarmed, of course, even the
hardened gamblers, and they gave him -liberally. This is one out
of many cases illustrating the way in which Father Clement knew
how to suffer.

In 1793 Father Clement was made vicar-general of his order
with full powers for all countries north of the Alps. Requests
came from Germany to establish the order there and help build up
a decaying faith. Requests for missions in Poland and Bulgaria
came also. And to all Father Clement knew how to respond.

1889.] BLESSED CLEMENT HOFBAUER, C.SS.R. 611

While still at the head of St. Benno's he founded one house at
Jestetten, on Mount Thabor, another at Tryberg, a third at Baben-
hausen, while all through Poland his missionaries restored reli-
gion among the people. Such was his success at St. Benno's that
in 1796 he counted 48,000 communicants, which number had in-
creased to over 104,000 in 1807. Their work in Germany, it
should not be forgotten, was accomplished in times which were
anything but favorable. For the higher clergy in Germany, led
by Dalberg and Wessenberg, was almost in open revolt with the
papal authority ; the so-called " punctationes " drawn up by Fe-
bronius had received the signatures of three archbishops of
Cologne. Others, including the Archbishop of Salzburg, had
added their names also. It required, therefore, great courage to
appear as a missionary, who could not help displeasing the most
powerful church dignitaries. Unfortunately houses established
in Germany had a short duration, because the government? inter-
fered and expelled the Redemptorists. A similar fate, through
the misfortune of war, finally awaited St. Benno's also.

On June 9, 1808, the fatal decree for the expulsion of the Re-
demptorists from St. Benno's was signed at Pillnitz, and on June
20 it was executed. Father Hiibl had died in 1807 a blow
which Father Clement had felt very much ; now came this still
harder trial. As if they were so many criminals, Father Clement
and all the fathers, novices, and lay brothers were hustled rudely
into carriages and transported under military escort to a fortress.
The indignation of the people, when they found out that their
fathers had been arrested, assumed such alarming proportions
that the marshal had to appease them by a proclamation. Still
St. Benno's was kept closed and the exiled Redemptorists con-
tinued to Kiistrin, in Brandenburg, which fortress had, by the
terms of the treaty of Tilsit, remained in the hands of the French.
After a month's confinement there orders were issued to disperse
each one to his home. So Father Clement took affectionate
leave of all his co-laborers and proceeded with a lay brother to
Vienna. Many hardships befell the two during the journey, and
the lack of passports on arriving in Vienna caused the police au-
thorities to imprison Father Clement for three days as a suspi-
cious character. But that undeserved ignominy only gladdened
his heart.

Now begins that glorious career of Blessed Clement Hof-
bauer in the capital of Austria which was to end only with his
death. Many changes had taken place in Vienna. Joseph II.
was dead, also his successor, Leopold II. Francis I. now sat on

612 BLESSED CLEMENT HOFBAUER, C.SS.R. [Feb.,

the throne, no longer, however, as Roman-German, but only as
Austrian emperor, a monarch really good, pious, and possessed
of many excellent qualities. On May 13, 1809, the French en-
tered Vienna. As Napoleon had suppressed the Redemptorists
everywhere, and Father Clement Hofbauer was known to be
their vicar-general, it was necessary for him to live in the utmost
retirement. He found an old friend in Abbate Luigi Virginio (an
ex-Jesuit), the director of the Italian church (Minoriten-Kirche),
who was very glad to have his assistance in pastoral work.
When this good priest had been carried off by a contagious dis-
ease, contracted while attending wounded French soldiers in the
hospitals, his successor, an old and feeble priest, confided to
Father Clement most of the duties of the parish. During four
years he labored in that church, reviving faith, reintroducing
approved Catholic devotions, preaching in his own plain but
wonderfully effective way, making himself the true friend of all
in need, whether young or old, ever ready to obey a call to a
sick-bed or death-bed, edifying all by his zeal, piety, and devo-
tion, so much so that his reputation reached the ears of the then
Archbishop of Vienna, Count Hohenwarth. This prelate was a
good and holy man, who lived most simply and gave his whole
revenue to the poor ; but he was hardly one who could fight
with energy the Josephinism which still lurked among many of
his clergy and people. The administration of the diocese was
almost wholly entrusted to his chapter of canons, many of whom
were the offspring of Josephinism and owed their position solely
to their uncatholic principles. It was therefore a difficult under-
taking to revive the true spirit of faith ; still the archbishop
always proved himself a true friend of Father Hofbauer.

In 1813 the position of confessor and chaplain to the convent
of Ursuline nuns became vacant, and Archbishop Hohenwarth
offered it to Father Clement, who gratefully accepted the charge.
He rented for himself a room in a building not far from this con-
vent. A bed, wardrobe, study-table, prie-dieu, crucifix, picture
of the Blessed Virgin, and a few chairs were his stock of furni-
ture. While dwelling in this humble lodging he carried on his
most wonderful apostolate. The church attached to the convent
and now under his care was in a deplorable condition in every
way, exteriorly and interiorly, and what Father Clement most
deeply regretted was that it had no people in attendance. For
years no sermon had been preached in it except at Christmas,
Easter, and Pentecost. Pastoral letters had been issued against
solemn Vespers, processions, rosary devotions, and the like as

1889.] BLESSED CLEMENT HOFBAUER, C.SS.R. 613

calculated to foster superstition among the people, and all pious
confraternities and societies were then still forbidden by ecclesi-
astical authority. Soon, however, all the Masses, services, and
sermons which belong to a well-regulated church were estab-
lished by Father Hofbauer, and in a short time the Ursuline
Church became the most popular and best attended in Vienna.

His unvarying daily routine while confessor to the Ursuline
nuns deserves to be briefly recited. At three o'clock in the
morning he always arose, and, after prayer and meditation, went
in all kinds of weather to the church to hear confessions, because,
he said, the early morning was the only time that laborers and
poor people had at their disposal. He went from the church to
the convent to minister to the spiritual wants of the nuns ; then
until ten, and, if necessary, until half-past eleven, he sat in the
confessional to hear his penitents of higher rank. After that he
said Mass, recited the Litany of the Blessed Virgin, and then
took his breakfast, which was sent over from the convent and to
which he generally invited some poor friends. He never allowed
any one to serve at table, but waited himself on whosoever was
there. The afternoon was devoted to sick-calls, visits to churches
where the Blessed Sacrament was exposed, and to the confes-
sional, and in the evening there were gathered in his room a
company of students and others whom he had won over to
a devout life. He was, as Cardinal Rauscher testified in the
process of beatification, during the whole day engaged in God's
service. Often he spent whole nights among the sick and went
directly in the early morning to the confessional. The learned
professor of the university, the Freemason, the Jew, the atheist,
the poor servant, and the high-born lady all came to him for
counsel, and none went away without a consciousness that his
compassion for the sinner was excelled only by his power to
discover at a glance the heart's sore place, on which he always
sought to pour the balm of God's mercy. This man, whose
words were sustained by actions, produced necessarily on the
minds of all the greatest effect. People felt that what he said
was true; his utterances carried conviction, and sometimes faith
and hope, because he was himself filled with faith, hope, and
charity. The indwelling grace of God imparted to him a mag-
netism which it was hard to resist, and those who knew him
looked upon him as a saint.

The Catholic Church in Austria, as we shall now see, owes its
continued life to him. How far Father Clement's influence ex-
tended, how anxious he was to further the unity of the church,

614 BLESSED CLEMENT HOFBAUER, C.SS.R. [Feb.,

and how ably he defeated the schismatic efforts of Wessenberg
during the Congress of Vienna, is shown clearly from the follow-
ing facts. On November 27, 1814, a draft for a "reform of the
church in Germany " was handed in by Wessenberg, the main
features of which were absolute independence from Rome
under a local primate in short, a national German church,
with national, provincial, and diocesan synods, to be entrust-
ed with the administration of everything under regulations
made by the State confederation.- Humboldt, Prussia's represen-
tative, Count Miinster (Hanover), Count Rechberg (Bavaria),
Baron Plessen, Baron Gagern, and the Dean of Miinster, Count
Spiegel, warmly supported the establishment of a state church.
Helferich, Dean of Speier, and Baron Wamboldt, Dean of Worms,
were the accredited leaders of the Catholic Church, and these
two, principally the former, relied entirely upon Father Clement's
advice and assistance in defeating this scheme. The prevention
of a schism has, it is true, been attributed to the influence of
Frederick von Schlegel, Schlosser, Zacharias Werner, Baron Pilat,
and Councillor Adam Miiller. But all of these were converts of
Father Clement, and contributed only indirectly to the defeat of
Wessenberg's proposition. It was Father Clement who, as spirit-
ual counsellor of the Crown -Prince Louis of Bavaria, prevented
through him any action on the part of Bavaria, and thereby frus-
trated the whole project, as Bavaria's action was decisive in
the matter. Dalberg's ultimate conversion and separation from
Wessenberg were also due to Father Clement's indirect influence
upon this unfortunate prince of the church. It is therefore Father
Clement's honor to have rendered at a critical period the church
of his country the most important service, and one of far-reaching
consequences. Cardinals and nuncios frequently consulted him
on grave questions. Blessed Clement, through his humility and
piety, possessed a far deeper insight into the most complicated
affairs than those who by education, position, and experience
might be supposed much more competent in matters of that
kind.

Blessed Clement also revived Catholic literature in Vienna.
The translations of the works of St. Alphonsus Liguori and other
good Catholic authors, as well as the establishment of a week-
ly paper, Die Oelzweige, were his work, and all that was done
through the press by his illustrious converts was due to his com-
prehensive conception of religion and of the duties of a priest.
He furthermore persuaded Klinkowstrom, a convert of his, to
establish a school for the education of the sons of the nobility.

1889] BLESSED CLEMENT HOFBAUER, C.SS.R. 615

During the sixteen years of its existence four princes, fifty-nine
counts, and twenty-three barons received their education there,
many of whom occupied later very high positions and became
famous, and of all the two hundred and ten pupils two only aban-
doned the truly Catholic way that had been taught them in this
institute. After Klinkowstrom's death, in 1832, it was discon-
tinued because no one could be found to take his place.

Clement Hofbauer, great and holy as he was, did not escape
envy, calumny, and persecution. The greater his popularity, in-
fluence, and success, the more anxious his enemies appeared to
be to injure his work. Numerous attempts were made to
have him expelled from Austria by the authorities, but they were
always unsuccessful. These unjust proceedings only won him
favor in the end, for on another occasion he was reported as
preaching sedition to the people, and hence forbidden to preach.
Sunday came and he ascended the pulpit as usual, read the Gos-
pel, turned to the packed congregation, and said : " I cannot
preach to-day, because I must practise obedience, but at Mass I
will ask the Holy Ghost to tell you what I intended to say."
Being arraigned before the ecclesiastical tribunal, he was interro-
gated: " What is your name?" " When and where were you born?"
"What religion do you profess?" etc. Father Clement rose,
bowed politely, and said : " Hier ist nicht gut sein " (It is not good
to be here), and withdrew, much to the astonishment and discom-
fiture of the ecclesiastical court. The only one whom this dig-
nified conduct thoroughly convinced of the entire innocence of
Father Clement, and the absolute groundlessness of the charges
preferred against him, was the venerable Archbishop Hohenwarth,
who rose and said : " He acts' like an apostle, shakes the dust off
his feet, and leaves," and therewith that matter was ended.
These repeated failures, however, instead of opening the eyes of
his enemies, only enraged them all the more, and they tried now
through a high court-officer to obtain from the emperor an order
of expulsion, but that effort also failed.

The emperor, having been informed of them, expressed to his
confessor a wish to do something for this good priest who had evi-
dently been wronged. On learning that Father Hofbauer had but
one wish namely, to be permitted to establish the Congregation
of the Most Holy Redeemer in Austria the emperor issued or-
ders from Rome that Father Hofbauer be instructed to lay before
him the rules of the order, how it could be established, etc., etc.
Francis I. received Father Clement most graciously and promised
to grant the permission, if, on examination, nothing objectiona-

6i6 BLESSED CLEMENT HOFBAUER, C.SS.R. [Feb.,

ble could be discovered in the rules of the order. At last Father
Clement's greatest desire was to be fulfilled! Such, however, was
his humility that after the audience he said : " A great honor
awaits me; now I would like to die." And that request was
granted by Heaven to him who" did not seek honor but shrank
from it, who felt happy when he was reviled and glad when he
suffered, whose whole life had been, as it were, hidden with God.
He had predicted that he would die before the congregation
would expand, but that then it would spread, because, as he said,
" he could do much more for his brethren before God than while
alive." On the eve of the day when the Redemptorists were to
be established in Vienna, after a short illness accompanied by
terrible suffering, which he bore with heroic fortitude and without
a word of complaint, he expired. His death occurred on Wed-
nesday, March 15, 1820, at noon. In the morning already the
agony had set in, and those nearest and dearest were assembled
round the bed of the patient sufferer, watching him breathlessly.
The noon hour came and the Angelus bell rang in the church not
far off, but none of those present seemed to hear it. Not so
Blessed Clement ; with a last effort he summoned his remaining
strength, said in clear and audible tones " Do pray ; the Angelus
is being sounded," fell back, and left this earth to meet his re-
ward above. As St. Alphonsus had died on a Wednesday dur-
ing the Angelus bell, so also did Blessed Clement Hofbauer,
deservedly called the second founder of the order. Eye-witnesses
have declared that his funeral was the most touching, most
solemn, and most numerously attended that had ever been seen in
Vienna. Eight young men, some of whom belonged to the aris-
tocracy, bore the coffin. The alumnus of the archiepiscopal
seminary attended in a body, though no one knew by whom the
order was given. The gala carriages of the nobility were there,
and the poor in countless thousands.

Though the odor of sanctity perfumed his life, death brought
out most clearly the greatness of Vienna's apostle. Less than fifty
years after his demise, viz., on February 14, 1867, Pope Pius
IX. issued the order for the introduction of the process of beati-
fication, the first steps having already been taken in 1864; and
though a decree of Innocent XI. requires that ten years elapse
between the receipt of the acts of the " processus ordinarius " and
the beginning of the apostolic process, this decree in the case of
Blessed Clement Hofbauer was suspended by the Pope's own
order. The general congregation of cardinals delivered its opin-
ion on November 23, 1875, and after the lapse of the customary

1889.] MADEMOISELLE AKGELIQUE. 617

six months, viz., on May 14, 1876, the papal decree of beatifica-
tion was issued.

To talk about the inner life of this beloved servant of God is
beyond my power. He was always too humble to talk about
himself, but his every action reveals a character great and noble,
a mind as comprehensive as his heart was full of charity, and
above all there shines out the mighty virtue of faith, by means of
which he fought as with an irresistible weapon.

A. DE GHEQUIER.

Vienna, Austria.

MADEMOISELLE ANGELIQUE.

AN ALMSHOUSE IDYL.

JAMES TOWNLEY had been in Paris and the rest of Europe so
long that his friends began to look on him as a foreigner. When
he came to New York the visit to his native city almost seemed
a condescension, and the men at the club thought Townley a
very cosmopolitan sort of fellow for being at ease and seeming
to quietly lapse into the ways of the town with which he had
been unfamiliar for years.

Soon after leaving college Townley went abroad, and he was
so well content that he remained for five years knocking about
the different Continental cities where there was most life. Town-
ley Pere supplied the sinews of war in the shape of checks,
and Townley Junior enriched different tradesmen and hotel-
keepers on the Continent with his good American money. He
found it entertaining enough. He was a cheerful young man
who did not require a rich and select diet of thought, provid-
ed incidents were sufficiently varied to make the round of daily
life interesting. He had the great gift of finding content in the
things which were attainable. Never did his mind spring soar-
ingly into realms of rarefied thought, nor was his healthy heart
given to sinking into harassing depths. He wrote an occasional
letter to some of his friends who lived in New York, and was
fond of consorting with New-Yorkers who went abroad.

When his father died a comfortable little lump of money
went to the son. He continued to distribute it abroad, and
showed no violent yearnings for a return to his native soil. So it
was with a little surprise that Mr. George Ramsay, a Union

618 MADEMOISELLE ANGELIQUE. [Feb.,

Club man, found this letter addressed to himself one fine May
morning :

" PARIS, May, 18 .

" DEAR RAMSAY: How are you getting along? Haven't heard a word
from you for three months. But if you didn't write for ten years I should
be sure a letter would reach you at the Union Club. You are too fond of
your old New York to leave it for any length of time, and, of course, so
long as you stay there you will always think that the best part of life is
that which you put in behind the club windows. Is it just as much fun as
ever to look out on Fifth Avenue and see the world go by ?

" I think you will have the doubtful pleasure of having me sit there with
you pretty soon. I'm a little tired of knocking round over here. That is
an awful admission, isn't it ? When I tell you that I think of doing a little
something over in America in the way of business you will be still more
paralyzed. Of course I don't know anything about business, but nobody
does until he learns, and I don't see why I may not learn. Anyhow, that is
my scheme now. I seem to be working backward when I tell you next
that I find that I have run through a good deal of money and want to re-
coup myself a bit. I am not in straitened circumstances, you understand,
but I simply feel that I am spending money and that it is giving out. So I
am coming over there to make some more.

"I have a funny thing to tell you. Don't let Bradlej r know, or he will
think I am losing my senses. Perhaps I am. This is the thing, anyhow.
Two months ago I went to a theatre where they were having a ballet.
There was a dancer there that took great hold of me. There was such a
sweet, winning dignity about her. You may laugh. I know it sounds ab-
surd. After I left the theatre I dropped in at a neighboring caff. It was
a half-Bohemian place, but of the better sort. Several fellows were in the
place, and at one table there was a party of four rather noisy men who had
been drinking. Soon after I entered two girls came in and went to the
only disengaged table, which was across from the one where the lively
crowd was sitting. One of them was my interesting young danseuse.
They sat down quietly and ordered a bottle of vin ordinaire and a ragout or
something.

"When they were served they ate with a good appetite and evidently
enjoyed their meal. The girl who had attracted my attention at the theatre
was even more taking off the stage than she was on it. There was a frank,
good-natured air, blended with a brisk kind of independence and a sweet
suggestion of sympathy and tender feeling in her face. Her companion
was one of the dancers or actresses at the theatre, I suppose, and they had
dropped in after the play to have a bite.

"The two girls interested me. They seemed to be so good-natured, and
somehow they gave me a very domestic feeling by the way they ate their
supper. They were so modest, although cheerful and chattering away to
each other. The meal seemed a recreation for them.

" The boobies at the other table began to busy themselves with the girls
soon after they were seated, ogling them and making quite audible remarks
about their appearance. The girls could not help noticing this and were
somewhat annoyed by it. This interested me still more, because the ac-

1889-] MADEMOISELLE ANGELIQUE. 619

tions and talk of the fellows, though free and easy, was the sort of thing
that one supposes ballet-dancers and actresses to have no particular aver-
sion to.

" Finally one of the quartette, a beastly Frenchman with crinkly mous-
tache and a conceited smile, called the garden and told him to serve the
young women with a bottle of champagne. When the waiter brought it the
elder of the girls, the one I had noticed in the theatre, told him to take it
away, that they would get their own wine.

"This was still more interesting! A ballet-girl declining champagne
from an admirer! The fellow got up from his table and coming over said
in a killing way : ' Will not Mademoiselle Angelique do me the honor to
drink wine with me ? '

" ' No. I do not wish for any wine, monsieur,' said the dancer.

" 'Oh ! but mademoiselle will not be so cruel. You will take one glass,
at least, from my bottle, just to become acquainted. Come, now, that's a
darling.'

" 'Monsieur, I do not want your wine nor your company. If you will
have the goddness to leave us alone it will be the best thing you can do.'

" ' Ah ! mademoiselle,' the fellow said, leaning over, ' how can I leave you
alone when you are so pretty ? '

"All this is rot and rubbish to tell you. But I wanted you to under-
stand my part in the business. Mademoiselle's eyes flashed. She looked
at the man straight and said indignantly, and with a natural dignity that
should have driven him off:

" ' You brute ! have you nothing better to do than come and amuse
yourself by worrying two girls ? Go! Leave us ! If not,' she added, no-
ticing me and seeing my interested attention, ' I will beg this gentleman
to protect us from your annoyances.'

"I felt pretty disgusted with the smirking, conceited ass of a fellow, for
the girls had done absolutely nothing to provoke or encourage such atten-
tions, but had behaved very properly and had been enjoying their modest
repast thoroughly till he came to make it unpleasant for them. I hadn't
the faintest wish to make myself a spectacle over a ballet-dancer, as you
may imagine. But, no matter whether it sounds silly or not, I felt respect
for the girl a respect, mark you, that did not prevent my mouth from
wanting to twist a little into a grin at the thought of my quixotically es-
pousing the cause of a ballet-girl whom I didn't care a button for. But I
did care a button for the something that shone through the girl with a lu-
minous reflection of that human or divine element in man which always
touches the quick of a decent fellow-creature.

" I stepped over and said, I think rather coolly : ' Monsieur will please
to remember that mademoiselle is now under my protection.'

' Her first glance was at him to see how he took it. It was a curious
look, there was such a sort of surprised impersonal curiosity in it. It
seemed to say : ' There ! what are you going to do now ? '

''The Frenchman glowered at me angrily. Then he laughed as only
that sort of a Frenchman can. and said brutally: 'Of course, mademoi-
selle belongs to the class which selects its protectors as they come. You
are welcome to her.'

" I paid no attention to him. He bounced back to his table. I took a

620 MADEMOISELLE ANGELJQUE. [Feb.,

seat at the table where the girls were. ' Since mademoiselle has done me
the honor to make me her guardian, I may sit here and escort her home,
may I not? ' I said with half-mockery and half-respect.

" By Jove ! Ramsay, what do you suppose she did ? She was visibly af-
fected ; the moisture rushed to her eyes. Then she controlled herself and
said to me calmly :

" ' Monsieur, if honesty is a claim to a man's respect, you should show
me respect. You have acted like a true man. Do not make me regret
that I should have asked your assistance.'

" I felt only respect, as I answered with earnestness : ' Mademoiselle, pray
believe me that I offer my services with the truest feeling. You have been
enough worried by that brute. I do not wish to add a straw to your vexa-
tion. If you would prefer that I should not escort you home, I will not
urge it. Though, I confess, I should feel better myself to know that I had
at all contributed to your unmolested passage thither.'

" She smiled a bright, healthy smile. The real respect of my tone acted
on her like a tonic. Ramsay, I know you are laughing there in the window
of the Union Club, and thinking me an awful fool when you read this. But
I cannot help it. The girl impressed me by her honest, unaffected way.
I did go home with her, and she told me her story.

" Her mother was the only thing she had in the world. After her father
died the poor farm where they lived had to be sold. They could not brook
staying in the village as menials. So they came to Paris on the proceeds
from the sale of their farm, and the young girl had to adopt the stage to
support her mother, who was dying of a cancer or some of those horrible
things which make life ghastly.

"Well, Ramsay, I made it a point to find out if the girl was playing me
a bluff game. She wasn't. At the theatre they confirmed mademoiselle's
report of her ways of doing, and sneered at her stupid stiffness. The other
dancers hated her for her virtue. And I saw the sick mother in their lodg-
ings, au quatrieme, in an obscure Paris quarter.

"I took an interest in the girl. I believe I have said that once or twice
before. She was continually developing traits that left me breathless.
Such frankness, such knowledge of things, such a simple cleanness with
such a practically loose life for she was not finical in the least this
ensemble fascinated me. I have been quite devoted.

"I told her last week that I was going to go back to America. She
heard me without any sign of emotion.

" ' You have been very kind to me, monsieur. I thank you ! '

" She held out her little hand. Ramsay, when I attempted to kiss her
she shrunk back. ' No, monsieur, do not ! ' she said, with that confounded
simplicity of her's. So I shook her hand again, and that is the last I shall
ever see of Mademoiselle Angelique.

" You will see me in New York in a month. Keep your eye on the
stock-ticker and let me know where I may invest a little money profita-
bly. Au plaisir, Monsieur Jean. JAMES TOWNLEY."

Ramsay was quite content to have Townley corne back to the
club window and be a comfort to him by his sympathetic idle-
ness. But Townley, really meant to do something, to go into

1889-] MADEMOISELLE ANGELIQUE. 621

business, and got Ramsay to tell him of some of the men that
knew most about it. In this way he was introduced to two or
three iellows who were in banks and brokers' offices on Wall
Street. They advised Townley and gave him "tips " on stocks.
The tips did not always bring in large returns, and Townley be-
gan to think he was not going into business properly.

One day he came to the Union Club in the afternoon. Ram-
say almost pressed his hand, he was so glad to see him. Ramsay
also was mildly excited. He used to stretch back in his chair
and look at the ceiling when he was excited.

" Old man, I've got the opening for you. All you've got to
do is to put some money into it, and then a lot of money will
come to you. Isn't that what you want?"

" Having the money come in to me is what I want ; there is
no doubt about that," said Townley. " What is the scheme ? "

" Why, there is a Jew fellow who knows all about money and
stocks and things, and he wants to start a financial paper. He
will do everything. All you will have to do is to get half the
money that comes in. It's sure to pay. The man has done it be-
fore and knows all about it. Of course, he needs an office and
printing and things, and you would have to put in the money for
that. But you will get it all back in a few months, and then you
will have the rest pure gain."

Ramsay was quite out of breath with such a long speech.

" Well, there is no harm in seeing the fellow and having a talk
with him. Can't you ask him to dinner here to-morrow? "

" Oh ! my dear boy, I couldn't really ask him here, you know.
We'll take him to Delmqnico's. Wouldn't have anybody think I
knew him for the world."

" Well, invite him to Delmonico's and introduce him to me,
and then you can go, and I'll talk it over with him," said Town-
ley.

The Jew proved to be of the pumice-stoned order, all the
Semitic features being softened down. The nose was thin and
aquiline, but did not droop very much at its extremity, and his
eyes were black but not beady, and his complexion was an olive
verging on sallowness, but was not greasy. And then he really
knew a lot about how much everything was worth, and, still bet-
ter, could tell like a prophet what it was going to be worth a
month ahead, and how to make anything they took hold of get
up right away and become suddenly precious.

He had suffered a reverse out in Rio, because somebody had
lied to him and not paid money, so that he had to give up things

622 MADEMOISELLE ANGELIQUE. [Feb.,

just as they were booming. But he could put some money into
the scheme and would undertake the whole management, while
Townley should have half the profits if he would supply the rest
of the capital.

The sum he mentioned as necessary was about all Townley
was worth. But it was a sure thing. In six months they would
be getting rich on it. There were one or two papers in the
field, but they did not meet the wants which this would supply.

It looked very feasible. Cohen talked calmly and with a quiet
air of confidence and experience that moved Townley. Besides,
there could not be a better proof of Cohen's assurance than his
putting in all his own money. " So if it goes up, I go up too,"
he said laughingly to Townley.

So that middle-aged young man put up nearly his whole for-
tune, which* was not so very great now. In three months Cohen
called for more. Expenses were greater than he had expected.
An office had been taken in Broad 'Street, handsomely fitted up,
and various specious channels for the outflow of cash were pre-
sented by that worthy. But Townley had no more, and three
weeks later Cohen told him in his calm way that they were
running the paper at a loss and must stop unless they could get
more money. They couldn't, and in a fortnight Cohen told him
they must give it up.

" But my money ? " said Townley.

"And mine?" said Cohen with the calm of philosophic resig-
nation. " It was a beautiful scheme, and if you could only have
put in five thousand dollars more it must have succeeded. If
you can't, we will have to let the thing go and only have experi-
ence as a profit.''

This was not exhilarating. There was a mean sense on Town-
ley's part that the son of Israel had gulled him, but there was no
proof. So he started in with a rich experience but no cash as the
outcome of his business. He had hard work in getting anything
to do. Partly because he didn't know how to do much of any-
thing. The difficulty of acquiring money was brought home to
him for the first time in his life. It fretted him dreadfully. He
finally got a position on a newspaper at a low salary. It was all
he could do.

Ramsay had refused to lend him anything with an unembar-
rassed alacrity which was another experience for Townley. He
moved into a hall-room on Seventh Avenue, and dropped out of
sight of his friends altogether. He had a rich uncle who had a
son, but he was too proud to appeal to him, and he doubted his

1889.] MADEMOISELLE ANGFLIQUE. 623

success if he did ask for help. He was always a little behind his
salary, for economy was an occult art to him. Yet he kept up a
cheerful front and worked as faithfully as he knew how. But it
was hard, and ev.ery day it got harder. He did not care to make
new friends, and he would not see the old ones since he could
not meet them without an inevitable drain on his slender
purse.

One day he was crossing Fifth Avenue. A stage was passing
up and behind it was a hansom. Coming down was a heavy
victoria. The hansom cabman turned in just as Townley got
between the stage and the victoria. The lady in -the latter
shrieked, and the next moment he was crushed between the
wheels of her carriage and those of the hansom.

He fell to the ground in dreadful pain and with every nerve
quivering. The lady had him placed in her carriage, and he im-
proved the opportunity to faint. When he came to he was in
St. Luke's Hospital suffering from sharp interior pains. He
could not move without the greatest agony, and the doctor told
him to lie as quietly as possible.

After he had suffered for a week, one day the lady who had
been in the victoria rustled in. She inquired after his health.
He told her he suffered but was improving. She remarked that it
was all that horrid cabman's fault, and she had got his number,
and he could hold him to account. She asked after his means
and resources. Townley said he had none then. She said :
" You must let me pay for this week in the hospital, my good
man, and I am sure you Will have no difficulty in getting to the
Island as soon as you are well enough to be moved, and you can
stay there till you get better."

Townley groaned. He told her civilly that she must pay
nothing for him, that he could not permit it. What a curse it
was to be stricken down like this ! He had only two dollars in
the world !

He got the nurse to write to his uncle and tell him the state
of things very fully. His uncle replied promptly that he would
pay his hospital expenses, and hoped he would have sense enough
to keep from being run over again, for he could not undertake to
support him for life.

Townley waited till he got well enough to walk, which was
not for two weeks more. Then he wrote a letter to his uncle
and, almost in the words of the Apostle Peter, bade his money be
to him for his damnation. After that he crawled slowly down
through the healthy, well-dressed crowds on Fifth Avenue and

624 MADEMOISELLE ANGELIQUE. [Feb ,

made his way to a low brick building on the corner of Eleventh
Street and Third Avenue.

It was the office of the Commission of Charities and Correc-
tion. The building was pretty well filled by women with babies
and slouchy men. He had to take his turn in the line that filed
by a window where a man, partially bald, sat asking questions
and giving little slips of paper to the unfortunates who rehearsed
their woes to him. A policeman with a sharp nose and a blunt
manner stood at the opening, and hustled them along and
prodded them to a prompt response to the questions.

" I have no money. I am incapacitated for work for the
present, and have absolutely no one from whom I can seek as-
sistance," said Tovvnley in a hard voice, but with a feeling like
death on him.

He had to answer several questions which the man put to him
in a brusque, business sort of way, and with the manner of a man
to whom charity is a profession and the exercise of it a liveli-
hood.

Then he was directed to go to the pier at East Twenty-third
Street and take a boat for the Almshouse on Blackwell's Island.
As he came out of the door he stopped fora moment and uttered
an involuntary groan. He dragged himself up to the pier, and,
with his head swimming, got on the boat. His whole soul re-
coiled, and only his will drove him onward. It was fate. The
exertion of the long walk had set his nerves tingling, and as he
looked at the blue dancing water of the river he thought whether
it were not nobler, more wise, and sweeter far to use the little
strength he had to fling himself in and sink down into the cool
depths. But his soul recoiled somehow from the thought of
dealing with his own life so summarily.

The summer breeze played about his throbbing temples, but
in his bitterness it seemed to him as if it did so because it must
play even on the brows of the poor if it played at all, and the
smooth, soothing sail was embittered when he remembered that
he was being taken to the refuge the city afforded to its paupers.
By a sudden turn in his fancy's movements he thought of Made-
moiselle Angelique and her courage in bearing all the burdens of
poverty. " She was more generous than Ramsay," he thought.
Somehow the thought soothed him. She had been so bright
and cheerful amid her toil and insult, and with that poor, cancer-
cursed mother to support, to whom she brought home the harvest
she gathered by her " many twinkling feet."

But the boat had arrived at the little pier on the island. A

1889.] MADEMOISELLE ANGELIQUE. 625

dark stone building with small barred windows, a pile uninterest-
ing and gloomy in its whole length, breadth, and thickness, faced
him as he landed. Was that the place? Happily, it was not.
That was the penitentiary, and Townley thought with galled feel-
ing that human justice sent men to prison for their misdeeds and
Heaven might be sending him to the Almshouse for his. His
head was throbbing violently and his limbs shook with weakness
as he landed, and oh ! how his soul sickened at the trial ! But it was
only that or death, and self-inflicted death. The other he would
have joyfully welcomed. He and the others who had come to
share with him the municipal charity of New York were taken
half a mile, it seemed to him, further up the Island. The Alms-
house did not prove so very forbidding, but it was with as ense
of satisfaction that he reflected he should not partake of its hos-
pitality very long. There was such a sinking in his soul that he
felt it would have its influence on his physical being.

A large man with a commonplace sort ol face and bearing re-
ceived him, and his name .was entered in a book. Then he was
told where to go, and he left the small room and returned to the
sunshine a pauper!

He walked languidly to a bench which was placed at one side
of the grounds, and, sitting down on it, leaned back and watched
the swiftly running stream. His thoughts were like wormwood.
He could not work, and there was not a soul to whom he could
apply for help! That is, he could not bring himself to apply to
any one of those from whom any help could be hoped. He
would die sooner than ask alms of his uncle again. Die? He
would endure this, which was worse than death. And after all,
what use was it? He would only run in debt., and stave off the
evil hour a few weeks longer, perhaps. Why did not Providence
arrange for such cases as his by letting death come to the soul
spent, weary, and broken by the heat of the day?

It seemed so like a dream. If it had not actually occurred to
him it. would not have seemed a possibility to his mind. A few
months ago independent and living for his pleasure ! And now,
reft of money and friends, a pauper in the Almshouse in New
York.

He felt as if he were in a dream. His temples throbbed so,
and the figures about him moved like phantoms of another world,
and he could not realize who or what they were. They looked
dejected and were silent, but still seemed to take an interest in
things.

A woman, bare-headed and with keen black eyes deep-sunken
VOL. XLVIII. 40

626 MADEMOISELLE ANGELIQUE. [Feb.,

in her head, came up to him. She had a shawl around her
shoulders. She spoke in a high, shrill voice to him, twitching at
her shawl :

" You must excuse me. But I thought you would like to
know that the political situation calls for me. They can't get
along without me. It is my songs that can save the country.
George Washington, the Father of the Country, loves my songs,
and yet these stupid creatures laugh at them. Would you like
to hear my campaign song ?"

Poor Townley looked at her without answering. Did they
have the insane in this place, too? The woman seemed hurt that
he took no interest in her, and shaking her head, as if to say,
" He doesn't know my worth either," hurried off. He sat look-
ing at the water and hearing his head throb till it seemed as if
there was machinery within his skull that was working at ran-
dom. The green banks of the opposite shore were blending in a
strange way with the water, and people seemed to be walking in
it and he was whirling along somewhere.

When he opened his eyes he saw several small beds in the
room, covered with pale blue counterpanes, and the sun was com-
ing in brightly at the window and falling on the wooden floor.
He was in a bed himself near the window, and at a little table by
his side, pouring something carefully into a tumbler, was Mad-
emoiselle Angelique !

She was quite preoccupied with what she was doing. When
she had poured out the proper amount into the tumbler she
added some water and a little sugar, stirred it up with a spoon,
and set it on the table. Then she glanced around at Townley,
and found a pair of blue eyes languidly fixed upon her.

She gave a start, but at once recovered herself.

" You must not talk or fret yourself, my friend. You have
been ill, and are going to do nicely now. I am here to take care
of you. Will you not take this medicine that the doctor left for
you? and it will make you feel much better."

" Where am I ?" said Townley, and his voice sounded so thin
to him.

" There," said Mademoiselle Angelique, bringing him the
tumbler with the medicine, " drink that and sleep a little, and
then we will talk."

She raised his head from the pillow and held the glass to his
lips. He slowly drank it, and thought the taste was not very
nice. But how weak he felt, and so weary and light-headed !

1889.] MADEMOISELLE ANGELIQUE. 627

"Now, "said Mademoiselle Angelique, as she put the glass
back upon the table, and coming to him again pressed her cool
little hand for a moment on his forehead, "you will be nice and
quiet, won't you? If you don't, then all the trouble of taking
care of you will be made of no use. Go to sleep, will you ?"

Townley nodded his head faintly, and she slipped away. He
was too weak to do anything at trying to make out why she was
here and where he was. So he turned over and was soon lost in
slumber.

When he awoke again the sun was fainter in the room
and the clouds were red and golden over behind the houses
of the city. Mademoiselle Angelique was at his side. She was
sewing at a blue-and-white-checked apron, and looked bright
and contented. Perhaps the apron recalled to Townley where
he was. He had seen them on some of the old women pottering
about the place.

" Mademoiselle Angelique," he said in his faint voice.

" Well, Monsieur Townley?" she answered, letting her hands
drop on her lap and looking at him with her good-natured, kindly
eyes.

" Am I not in the Almshouse ?

" Yes, monsieur. We are in the Almshouse," she answered
with a smile. " But we won't be here very long. We will get
out when we get well. What are a few days here ? Nothing."

"I may never get well," said Townley sadly. "How came
you here?'' he continued after a moment's pause.

"Ah ! monsieur, my poor mother died a month after you left
Paris. I could not endure living there after she had gone to
heaven. So when I received an offer for America I was glad to
come here. But it was a little lonely," she went on, still with her
cheerful intonations. " I was at your Niblo Garden. And then
I fell sick and could not dance. My money went in paying for
the doctor and medicine, and so I had to ask them to send me
here. I was neat and healthy, so they got me to look after the
sick. And one day you were brought here a week ago, out of
your mind. I was very glad to have the pleasure of waiting on
you, monsieur, for I have not forgotten your kindness to me in
Paris. But you must not talk much now. I am your nurse and
you must mind me, or they will say I do not know how to care
for the sick." She smiled so cheerfully, and with a playful, ca-
ressing air.

"Mademoiselle, I am a ruined man. I have lost all my money,
and then I got hurt in an accident and had to come here/' said

628 MADEMOISELLE ANGELIQUE. [Feb.,

Townley slowly and with a weary air. " It would be better if I
were to die and end it all. But we cannot die when we want
to."

" O monsieur ! do not talk in that way. We will get strong.
The Island is a fresh, pretty place, and the air is good. We will
get strong and then leave here. Do not lose courage. You have
made one more cheerful by being here, but we will get out soon.
You must be very nice and take care of your poor health. All
will go well now."

Mademoiselle nodded her head in the most hopeful, reassuring
way, and began sewing again on her blue-checked, apron. Town-
ley felt a pang as he saw the cheeriness of her old self-sacrificing
spirit.

After that they had many talks together. She would bring
the papers and read them to Townley, and would talk to him in
iher brisk, cheery way. She was a great comfort to him.

" Mademoiselle," he said to her one day, " I was thinking
'to-day that I have only one friend in the world. Do you know
who it is?"

" If monsieur has only one, then I surely know, because I know
that I am and shall always be the sincere friend of monsieur."

" Yes. You are the one I meant. Why do you take such
good care of me ?"

" Because you are sick and must be looked after," said Mad-
emoiselle Angelique simply. " I am only too glad to show any
^kindness to monsieur. Did you not help me in Paris?"

Townley found great support in his humble companion.
There was something fine in his nature that roused him to a high
pitch of regard for this young girl, who had been stricken harder
than himself, he thought. She was in a strange land, and had al-
ways worked hard and faithfully and modestly. Then he was
touched deeply by her sunny brightness. He was very weak and
she was as unremitting and tender in her attention to him as if
she had been his sister.

" Mademoiselle, if I get well and am able to go out from this
wretched place, you must let me help you," he said to her.

"We will help each other when we get free. You must
hurry and get better," she answered with a bright smile.

One morning she seated herself by his side and opened the

daily paper to read to him. He could sit up now, but was still

weak. She read the European news, and then the interesting

portions of the rest of the paper. The scandal and the murders

she omitted.

1889.] MADEMOISELLE ANGELIQUE. 629

" They cannot do us any good," she said in regard to subjects
of this kind. " I can pity poor girls on the stage if they go
wrong. There is so much temptation. But these ladies who
have homes and iamilies, and forsake their husbands and little
children pah! I have no excuse for them."

She ran her eye down the paper, making remarks as she was
doing so. Finally she exclaimed : " Oh ! if that good fortune
could only have come to you, monsieur!" Then she read the fol-
lowing news-item from the paper:

" BUFFALO, May, 18 .

" Mr. William P. Fowler, the well-known merchant of this city, died
yesterday of rheumatism of the heart. The sad occurrence was made
doubly afflicting by the death only three days ago of his son, a promising
young man, in business with his father. It is thought that his son's death
had a great deal to do with that of Mr. Fowler. The deceased had no
family except his son George, and his large fortune of several hundred
thousand dollars will go to relatives in New York."

" I hope they deserve their good fortune, don't you, mon-
sieur?" asked Mademoiselle Angelique.

" Yes. Will you not let me have the paper. You need not
read any more now. I am tired, mademoiselle."

That evening a well-known lawyer came to the Almshcuse.
He had been summoned by a note from Townley. They had a
short conversation together. Then the lawyer went away, rub-
bing his nose.

Two or three days after Townley had a bad turn in his sick-
ness. The doctor told Mademoiselle Angelique that this was a
very dangerous thing, because he was too sick to stand another
siege. The poor girl redoubled her care and affectionate inter-
est. But there was no change for the better.

One day he awoke from a brief slumber, and opening his eyes
saw Mademoiselle Angelique sitting with her back to him at work
on the blue-checked apron. There was a strange movement to
her pretty shoulders and back that puzzled him. The deft needle
would shoot out and be put in again with quick regularity, but
there was this tremulous little quiver to the back. It was ex-
plained to him a moment later, for mademoiselle took the coarse
old apron and, burying her face in it, shook with low sobs. She
was crying her poor heart out on the pauper's blue-checked
apron \

She was very quiet about it, not wishing to disturb him, but
there was a listless droop to the graceful figure and an abandon
to her sorrow that showed she was yielding herself unreservedly
to the luxury of weeping.

630 MADEMOISELLE ANGELIQUE. [Feb.,

Suddenly she wheeled about to see if Tovvnley was awake, and
he had just time to close his eyes and assume the appearance of
profound sleep. His hand, thin from his sickness and as white
as a woman's, was lying on the coverlid near the edge of the bed.
A moment later he felt a light, warm breath upon it, and then such
a delicate, timid pressure of soft lips. Then he heard a long sigh.

He kept up his pretence of sleep for several moments. Then
he made some restless movements like one whose slumber is being
disturbed. He heard mademoiselle hurriedly trip out on tip-toe.
He realized that she did not wish to let him see her swollen eyes.

Townley's lawyer came to see him a few days later, and, after
he had talked for some time, Townley signed his name to a paper,
and he went away after some very respectful adieus. Townley
seemed much better after this visit.

" Mademoiselle, you must not let me die," he said to her when
she came in. " I have changed my mind and do not want to die
now."

" If monsieur could see himself he would not talk of dying,"
said Mademoiselle Angelique, looking at him with interest. " You
are much better to-day. I am so much stronger myself that as
soon as you are well enough not to need a nurse I am going to get
some position, and then I can help you, monsieur, till you get
perfectly strong and well so as to leave here."

" You mean that you will take your hard-earned money and
spend it on me ?" said Townley, with his eyes fixed on her
strangely.

" Oh ! it will be little" things till you are well and can get
around. Monsieur should have oranges and a little good wine
when he is getting better."

" You are very good, and I thank you," said Townley sim-
ply.

The next day he was much better, and ate his food with rel-
ish, and wanted to sit up. Mademoiselle watched him as inter-
estedly as a mother could have done. Her face brightened over
the signs of his improvement, and she was as gay as a lark.

" Mademoiselle Angelique," said he, ''I am going to get well
very rapidly now. 1 feel it. Are you glad?"

" Need you ask that?" said the girl. "Am I not your nurse,
and did I not tell you to get well?" She smiled joyously.

" As soon as I get well I am going to leave this vile place, and,
mademoiselle, I hope to get married. I am going away to som<
European city, if I do, and live there."

" That is good, monsieur," she said brightly, though a shadow

1889.] MADEMOISELLE ANGELIQUE. 631

as light as a breath of air had darted across her face for a
moment.

" Are you glad I am going to get married ?" said Townley,
looking her straight in the eyes.

" Certainly I am glad," said she, though her lip gave a little
twitch. " Anything that is going to make you happier pleases
me."

" Do you not want to know the name of the girl I wish to
marry ?"

" If monsieur cares to tell me," she answered quietly.

" Her name is Angelique," said Townley.

" Angelique?" said mademoiselle. "It is a pretty name; I
trust she will be a good wife to you."

" Angelique," continued the sick man slowly, " will you do
something to please me?"

" Ah ! monsieur, surely. Have I forgotten your goodness to
me in Paris?"

"Then put your arms around my neck and kiss me."

The hot blood surged so into her cheeks, and such a look of
pain crossed her face, that he almost relented.

" Do not ask me to do that, monsieur. You are jesting. It is
not like you." She spoke calmly, though her bosom was heav-
ing.

" But you kissed my hand the other day," said Townley.
" Why did you do that when you will not kiss me now?"

" I did that because I feared you were going to die, and I I
felt sad at the thought of it," she answered, with her face aglow,
but looking him steadily in the eyes with her calm firmness.

''Will you not kiss me when I tell you I love you?" said
Townley.

"O hush! monsieur. Have you not just told me you love
another and wish to marry her?" said she reproachfully.

" No, I did not say another. I said there was a young wo-
man I wished to marry and that her name was Angelique. You
are the one." And Townley reached his hands out and grasped
hers tenderly.

"You love me!" said Mademoiselle Angelique. Her face
seemed transformed in the sudden rosy glow of happiness that
bathed it, and her beautiful form seemed to grow into firmer,
more exquisite curves, as though some magic elixir had been
sent coursing through her veins. She stood motionless, radiant
in her new joy, looking at him with such an eager simplicity.

" Yes, my dear little friend, I love you," said Townley qui-

632 MADEMOISELLE ANGELIQUE. [Feb.,

etly. He stretched forth his weak arms toward her with a pa-
thet'C tenderness in his eyes.

The girl burst into a flood of tears as she leaned forward and
gently clasped his head in her hands. He folded his arms about
her and held her close while his lips sealed the covenant of love
on her sweet mouth. It was the keenest, most restful happiness
to them both.

Then the girl raised herself, the tears glistening on her long
lashes, and her lips parting in irrepressible smiles.

" Now you must get well in a hurry, and I shall work for you,
and you shall have your oranges and your wine," she said play-
fully.

"Listen, and I will tell you what we shall do. Just as soon
as I am well enough we will leave this horrible place. Then we
will get married and sail for France. We will go to your old
village, if you like, and stay there for a while, and then we will
wander about, living only in bright, cheerful places."

" I do not care where I live so long as I live with you," said
Angelique. " But we will do whatever you wish, dear, as soon
as we get money enough."

" Isn't three or four hundred thousand dollars enough to start
on?" said Townley roguishly.

" Yes. When we have that we will go at once," said Mad-
emoiselle Angelique cheerfully.

" We have got that now. We are the richest paupers in this
Almshouse," said he, smiling.

"What do you mean?" said the young girl curiously, as she
picked up the blue-checked apron from the floor.

" I mean that you read me of my uncle's death a few weeks
ago in the paper. This man named Fowler, who died in Buffalo,
and whose son had died a few days before him, was my uncle,
Angelique, and his large fortune has come to me. I have seen a
lawyer, and everything has been settled. So get me well as soon
as you can, and we will go away, giving orders for the paupers
to have a grand dinner in honor of our wedding. We will get
married, and will see if money and health and love cannot make
us happy."

The girl had listened with such a grave, sweet smile, sitting
with her hands clasped in his. But as he finished a.soberer look
came upon her, and with, some hesitation she said, firmly and
sorrowfully :

"Monsieur, are you sure that this is right? In Paris you
were with the best people. Now that you are rich again, your

.] MADAME UYOUVILLE. 633

place is there. Do you think I shall never shame you as your
wife?"

" Shame me ? Yes, shame me that I am not good enough for
you," said Tovvnley, grasping her hands anew. " Friends ! You
are the only friend I have in the world ! I would not have
got this uncle's money could he have made a will. Are we not
enough to each other to get along without any one else? Dear
heart ! you have the refinement that comes from a beautiful na-
ture, the tact which is born of the most delicate goodness, the
repose of a wonderful simplicity and modesty and dignity.
Many a lady has not these, and one who has is a lady. I would
not fear to have the proudest dame in the world meet you as my
wife. Love will come to the aid of these sweet qualities in you.
No; do not fear. I shall never be ashamed of you, Angelique."
And he drew her willing head down till their lips met.

JOHN J. A BECKET, PH.D.

MADAME D'YOUVILLE.

" And the second commandment is like to this, Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself."

IN the autumn of 1737, some five-and-twenty years before the
conquest of Canada by the English, a woman, young in years,
whose earthly beauty was chastened by the marks of recent suf-
fering borne with Christian fortitude, her slender figure clad in
the sombre widow's costume of the day, and her whole demean-
or suggestive of the profoundest interior recollection, threaded
her way alone through the streets of the growing city of Ville-
Marie, Montreal. For nine successive days, regardless of the
sudden and unpleasant changes which mark the Canadian au-
tumn weather, and still less mindful of the vagaries of her own
health and spirits, she moved with striking regularity through
the same thoroughfares and to the same strange destination,
which her biographer tells us was the grave of a dear and deep-
ly mourned friend.

Those were stirring times for the French colonies; and in the
agitation which the unsettled state of Europe and the uncertain
condition of their own country created, men could think or
speak of little else than the probable outcome of the crisis
through which they were then passing, and the immediate ef-
fects it would produce upon their own private fortunes; even

634 MADAME D'YouviLLE. [Feb.,

the women and children took an unwonted interest in the events
of the hour, and talked of the Spanish succession and the troubles
in New England with as much zest and relish as their present
descendants discuss the fashions and follies of a more peaceful
period. Amid such intense preoccupation it is not to be won-
dered at that a sad-looking and solitary female should pass un-
noticed and undisturbed by the motley crowd of loud-voiced
loyalists and others who elbowed one another carelessly as they
sauntered about the city. What fellowship had such a crowd
with one lone woman ? They were busy with their loyal specu-
lations, planning and plotting for their country's welfare, and
swearing eternal allegiance to the throne of France, or concerned
with selfish schemes for private gain. And she if they had
thrown away a thought on her, they would have said she feasted
upon her own petty personal griefs and selfishly nursed her own
paltry sorrow rather than lend her affections and energies to the
cause of the common good ! Griefs and sorrows, indeed, she had
without number.

Born in 1701 of a distinguished French family, in the village
of Varennes, near the island of Montreal, she was early deprived
of her father, and, being the eldest of a family of six, had to share
the mental worry and distress into which her widowed mother was
thrown by the unexpected loss of her husband, who left her in
very straitened circumstances to provide for their destitute fam-
ily. It is true that they were the possessors of extensive lands, but
as these had not been tilled, and could not be made profitable with-
out a vast outlay of money, they were practically more of an en-
cumbrance than a benefit to their owners. M. de Lajemmerais,
the father of this unfortunate family, had been, like most of the
able-bodied men at the time, engaged in the Indian wars, which
kept him away from his home and left him no time wherein to
project or execute the least improvement on the lands which
the government had given him. After his death, however, and
upon the touching representation of his family's condition made
to the Marquis of Vaudreuil, the then governor-general, by some
influential iriends, the widow was granted a pension which,
though small and utterly insufficient to cover the most necessary
expenses, was still of great assistance to her in her difficulties.
Mademoiselle de Lajemmerais, the subject of our sketch, was also
sent by some kind friends to the Ursulines at Quebec, where she
received her early education and made her First Communion.
When she returned to her mother's house it was to assume the
greater part of the domestic responsibilities, and to give an ex-

1889-] MADAME D'YouviLLE. 635

ample of untiring patience and industry to her younger brothers
and sisters. Those who knew Mademoiselle de Lajemmerais at
this period of her life attribute to her all those qualities of body,
of mind, and of heart which are universally conceded to be the
elements of the most perfect success in the social world, and, with
her advantages of birth and breeding, she was well fitted to adorn
the most exclusive salons of the day.

Good women were not more plentiful then than they are
now, and the- divine economy which rules all things to its own
purposes so moulded the tastes and inclinations of this favored
child as to make one proposal of marriage out of many which
were tendered to her more pleasing than the rest, and in 1722,
just as she had attained her woman's estate, she was wedded to
the envied suitor, M. Frangois D'Youvilie. He was a remark-
ably handsome man, also of gentle birth, and her equal in every
exterior advantage. But, for all these promising aspects, her
marriage was a most unhappy one. She was soon weaned of the
hollow vanities of the world if, indeed, she had ever been de-
ceived by them. Her biographer tells us that she was never for
a moment wanting in the affectionate devotion and fidelity which
should characterize a wife's attitude to her husband, and, though
she was ill-repaid for this scrupulous fulfilment of her duty,
nothing could make her alter her relations with the man she had
promised to love.

Those who have written the life of Madame D'Youvilie seem to
me to hurry over this chapter of her history with unpardonable
haste. In my humble opinion she was no greater in after-years,
when she had scaled the steep heights of asceticism and paved a
way to heaven for countless numbers of her fellow-mortals, than
she was in the unquiet atmosphere of her unhappy home. She
tried with heroic courage to make a Nazareth of that home,
to which pious design her ill-chosen husband refused his indis-
pensable co-operation. The story of this great woman's untiring
self-sacrifice as a wife, her religious adherence to the principles
and practices of her faith, and her unswerving fidelity in the per-
formance of duties made distasteful and humiliating by the bru-
tal unresponsiveness of the very one whom she so lovingly and
patiently served, should be told and retold, should be read and
reread, until some portion of the great courage with which she
was inspired shall have penetrated the wives and mothers of our
day.

If Madame D'Youvilie was long afterwards so humble, so for-
bearing, so self-annihilating in the golden sunset of her years, it

636 MADAME D'YOUVILLE. [Feb.,

was, likely enough, because she bore the trials of her married
life, that scorching, blistering noonday of her existence, with
such courage and patience. It was an unwooded and unwatered
desert to her, where no grateful shade of reciprocated love broke
the cheerless sameness of the dreary days, where flowers grew
not, where birds sang not, where that mutual encouragement and
undivided sympathy which make melody in wedded hearts the
whole day long were totally unknown. Even allowing for exag-
geration on the part of her biographers, it cannot be doubted
that she bore this wear and tear of soul and body with a resigna-
tion which was all but Christ-like and an uncomplainingness
which it is not too much to say was only truly womanly.

When the soul of this chosen disciple had been fire-tried, and
she had turned of her o\vn choice from the distractions which the
world offers its votaries in lieu of holier consolations, to the ex-
haustless treasury of love from which thenceforth she was to
draw the courage necessary for the accomplishment of her ap-
pointed work, the persecution which she had so nobly suffered
ceased with her husband's unexpected death. For eight years,
an interminable period to those who "count time by heart-
throbs," she had borne the bondage of her marriage-vows.
Providence had blessed this otherwise accursed union with two
lovely sons.

In the Vie de Madame D'Youville we learn that it was under
the salutary and stimulating direction of M. Le Pappe de Lescoat,
of the Order of St. Sulpice, that the precious seed of divine char-
ity, which had been so roughly planted and harrowed in by adver-
sity, began to bring forth a harvest. She soon commenced to
visit the poor and the sick. Her presence diffused a soothing
odor in the hovels of the poor and in the close air of their sick-
rooms. She also busied herself about the prisons of the city of
Montreal, speaking words of patience and stirring up despairing
hearts to courage and hope.

M. de Lescoat, with the privilege of a holy soul, foresaw the
great things which this woman's charity would work, and
smoothed the rugged road through which she had to pass with
wise and pious counsels, guiding her in all her undertakings
with the light of his own saintly inspirations. But it was the
will of God that she should weave her laurel crown unaided,
and when her good director had given a steady impulse to her
labors he was called away to a better world. Left thus to her-
self, Madame D'Youville might well have chosen to continue
alone in the blessed apostolate upon which she had just entered

1889-] MADAME D'YOUVILLE. 637

as a permanent rule of life for her single self. To go about a
growing city and exercise the more important works of corporal
and spiritual mercy, instead of following the perfectly legitimate
pursuits which her worldly station offered, was an act of moral
heroism as great as it is rare. She could have worked out in this
way the certain salvation of her own soul, and contributed
largely to the eternal welfare of many others. This is what the
Lord reserves for many heroic souls. It is a beaten track. But
Madame D'Youville had all the qualities fitting her to become a
pioneer in the spiritual world and a foundress of a community de-
voted to the charities mentioned above. There were arid wastes
in the very city in which she lived, and there were moral nomads
in the crowded streets about her, too many by far for her unaided
efforts to succor, but she hoped to gather companions about her who
might, under her fostering care and guidance, make of the outcast
a thrifty and even saintly people. A suspicion of this had taken
possession of her mind, and it was by the intercession of her for-
mer friend and director, whom she revered, and justly, as a saint,
that she hoped to discover whether such an undertaking would
be pleasing to God and profitable to her neighbor. So she un-
dertook that solemn novena which I mentioned in the opening
sentences of this sketch, and chose the grave of her departed con-
fessor as the shrine from which she offered her humble and sin-
cere petitions.

The result was most gratifying to her devout soul and most
beneficial to the country which has the honor to claim her as its
own. Neither were her charitable designs formed any too soon.
The sound of distant cannon filled the air already, and all the
horrors of war were casting their hideous shadows over the land.
And, furthermore, shameful abuses of power, widespread corrup-
tion of morals, and almost universal decay of religious sentiment,
often the immediate precursors of war, had all been holding high
carnival in the colonies for some time previous to 1760; and the
poverty which prevailed among such classes as held menial offices
under government was extreme, for those who filled the more
responsible positions had few scruples about consigning to their
own extravagant use what was intended to pay such underlings,
and dealt out promises in the most prodigal profusion when gold
and silver were wanting. The luxurious living of the military
and other high officials was not without demoralizing effects,
which were even harder to remedy than the results of their dis-
honesty. The troubles of the times, the prevalent vices of the
people, and the sure prospect of war and its concomitant misfor

638 MADAME D'YOUVILLE. [Feb.,

tunes, its maimed and wounded victims, appealed most touch-
ingly to the charitable energies of Madame D'Youville.

It is not possible in a short sketch of this nature to dwell upon
the trying and discouraging issues of this great woman's first at-
tempts to organize a community whose lives should be devoted
to the exercise of charity. It usually happens, by what seems an
inexplicable paradox, that success in such undertakings is des-
tined to come out. of many failures ; and Madame D'Youville's
enterprise was no exception to the rule. Her perfect confidence
in the ultimate triumph of so salutary a scheme was at length re-
warded, and the men who had ridiculed her Christian ambition
for those were profane times and many hearts had been turned to
stone were finally won over to her, and were eager to see her and
her handful of devoted followers, who had shared her many dis-
heartenments, installed in the General Hospital of Montreal. This
institution had been built and maintained by the charity of a few
laymen, but its usefulness had been comparatively insignificant
until it passed into the able hands of Madame D'Youville and the
community of Gray Nuns which she founded. Her career as
foundress of this most useful order is not unlike the lives of other
saints for, though she has not been raised by the church to the
honors of canonization, no one can read the story of her great
deeds and not feel satisfied that she enjoys in heaven the title
which has not yet been given her on earth. Hence I shall not
dwell on her private devotions, her gifts of prayer, her austeri-
ties, the many lights granted her by the Holy Spirit, further than
to say that her life was redolent of those notes of sanctity which
are denominated heroic. From the day that the General Hospital
was entrusted to her care its fruitfulness of charity increased
and multiplied visibly and wonderfully. Addition after addition
was made to the original building according to the exigencies of
the work, and its scope was extended. The portals of the edifice,
which at first were open to aged and infirm men only, soon began
to admit women also, then invalids of every kind, finally lunatics,
persons afflicted with incurable diseases, foundlings, and orphans.
That so many and such truly deserving cases could be received
and accommodated in the one institution was due mainly to the
economy and excellent management of the foundress, who, having
sent her two sons abroad to be educated, could devote her whole
time and attention to her works of mercy. The last class of un-
fortunates who found a refuge and a home with Madame D'You-
ville were those of her own sex who, weary of their lives of sin,
sought her kindly protection and encouragement, and were not

1889-] MADAME UYOUVILLE.

denied it. It may be asked, How did she raise the necessary funds
for ail this? The two resources which enabled Madame D'You-
ville to persevere in her mission were industry and prayer, upon
both of which she never failed to draw when assailed by difficul-
ties of one kind or another; and it was no unusual experience for
her to find her pockets, which she had emptied of their last far-
thing to feed the hungry or clothe the naked, mysteriously sup-
plied with money when another pressing occasion demanded it.

When the long-threatened war broke out at length the holy
foundress came to the rescue of the wounded with the same
cheerful generosity with which she had given herself to kindred
works of mercy. When the famine, the almost inevitable at-
tendant of war, began to desolate the country, Madame D'You-
ville, although herself and her community suffered from it in no
slight degree, exerted herself anew to bring what relief she could
to those who were dying of want ; and to this end she restricted
herself and her community to the coarsest possible diet, and even
of that they partook most sparingly. Meantime she had been
forced into debt, and how she ever managed, in the face of her
many and great discouragements, to discharge them is one of the
mysteries of the Providence which enriches the poor in spirit.
And how she extended from year to year the accommodations
necessary for those who applied for admission to her institution,
how she fed them and lodged them, and maintained throughout
all a cheerful disposition, as though her task had only been an or-
dinary one, is something which is not easy to explain by natural
reasons, especially when we consider that, when the war was
over and Canada had passed under English rule, she suffered
very great losses, among others the refusal of the French govern-
ment to pay a just claim which she held against it for a large
amount of money. It happened, too, that various kinds of work
which her community had done for the public officials was with-
drawn, and that several wealthy patrons upon whose generosity
she had often relied had removed to France or elsewhere. But
she was always courageous, ingenious in expedients, especially
trustful of Divine Providence.

One of the rewards of her extraordinary charity was the long
life which Madame D'Youville enjoyed and the happiness of see-
ing gathered about her a goodly number of zealous co-laborers in
her glorious cause. Young women of high birth and princely
fortunes joined her and became penetrated with her holv spirit,
so that she was enabled to train and educate according to her
own heart those whom she should leave behind her to propagate

640 MADAME UYouviLLE. [Feb ,

the good work now fairly started. Her motherly solicitude for
those who had rallied round her standard, the pious precepts and
examples which she gave them during her long and useful life,
are venerated traditions among her children to this day. Her
death, which occurred in the seventieth year of her age and the
thirty-fourth of her religious profession, filled the hearts of her
devoted community with grief and cast a gloom over the entire
city which had for so many years been the scene of her saintly
labors. She had the unique consolation before dying of seeing
her two sons elevated to the priesthood and all her temporal
concerns disposed of to her entire satisfaction. When she died
there were eighteen professed sisters in charge of the hospital,
some of whom distinguished themselves later as superiors of the
community, exhibiting in an uncommon degree many of the
virtues and much of the wisdom which had characterized the
administration of their saintly and illustrious foundress.

The prosperity of the General Hospital had steadily in-
creased from the day it had been transferred by letters-patent
of the King of France, dated 1753, to the care of Madame
D'Youville and her little family of eleven co-operators. After
her death her protection seemed as visibly present as before it,
and those who had known and loved her in her lifetime and been
the objects of her tender solicitude could hardly convince them-
selves that she had gone from them, or that death had separated
her from them except in appearance, or that she was any way
less concerned than before in the interests and holy ambitions
which they had so long held in common.

Under the English government Madame D'Youville's com-
munity thrived even better than it had done under the old
regime. Until 1840 the Gray Nuns restricted their labors to the
city of Montreal, where the ever-increasing population added
year by year to their self-imposed duties; but as their number
had steadily increased they began, about the date mentioned, to
colonize. A detachment of sisters, four in all, repaired to St.
Hyacinthe, and there founded a branch institution which served
precisely the same purpose as the mother-house. Four years
later a similar detachment set out for the Red River of the
North, and the following year, 1845, saw four more on their way
to Bytown (Ottawa), while five others went to Quebec. Accord-
ing to statistics published in the Minerve the 22d of this month
(November, 1888), the mother-house in Montreal has now no
less than thirty-four establishments under its immediate control ;
these are managed by 406 professed nuns, 57 novices, and 15

1889.] MADAME UYOUVILLE. 641

postulants. The St. Hyacinthe branch, the first to leave the
parent institution, with its succursal at Nicolet, owns twelve
establishments, which contain 165 professed religious, 22 novices,
and 14 postulants. The Ottawa branch, which has identified
itself with the highest grades of useful and ornamental education,
both in Canada and the United States, has control of thirty estab-
lishments, and comprises in all 278 professed sisters, 42 novices,
and an equal number of postulants. Finally, the sisters of Que-
bec, including Rimouski, have erected twenty-four establish-
ments and have 231 professed nuns, 18 novices, and 40 postulants.
Altogether the number of professed Gray Nuns is about 1,080, of
novices 141, and of postulants 88. They have 102 establishments,
which extend over twenty-three dioceses in Canada and the
United States, and contain no less than 1,500 aged and infirm
persons and 3,000 orphans, and the children receiving instruction
in their schools form a total of about 19,000. All this, together
with a thousand-and-one charitable actions which are not recorded
under any special head, constitute the entire sphere of labor of
Madame D'Youville's successors. In the wilds of the far North-
west the Gray Nuns are valiant missionaries, sharing with the
Oblate Fathers the hardships and glories of that terrible apos-
tolate. They have penetrated even into those frozen regions
where, amid untold difficulties, they labor faithfully and fruit-
fully, true disciples of the Master they have chosen to serve.

In 1897 this splendid community will celebrate the one hun-
dred and fiftieth anniversary of its incorporation. Whoever
chooses at that time to take a retrospective glance at the his-
tory of Canada cannot fail, in noting her extraordinary progress
within the last two centuries, to give credit to the nobly unselfish
efforts of this great body of heroic women.

We have had our own share of brave soldiers, of scholars,
philosophers, poets, legislators, social reformers, and religious
enthusiasts ; we have even had an unusual privilege for a coun-
try so young as ours our martyrs; we have raised monuments
to the memory of our distinguished patriots and others; but I
should like to know where is the braver soldier, the more useful
scholar, the more practical philosopher, the sweeter poet, the
wiser legislator, the more successful social reformer, the sincerer
enthusiast, the more patient martyr, or the more loyal patriot
than these noble women, the children of the immortal Madame
D'Youville? Time and talent and money have been generously,
but often fruitlessly, expended since these quiet workers entered
the Master's vineyard, by men who have loved their fellow-
VOL. XLVIII. 41

642 OMNI A A UTEM PROBA TE: Q UOD BON I M EST, TENE TE. [Feb. ,

creatures with a merely human love, and wished in that spirit
to lessen their burdens of sorrow ; but if their truly meritorious
undertakings have often proved abortive, it is purely and simply
because philanthropy rashly attempted what charity alone can
achieve. If the condition of human society can ever be im-
proved and its tone exalted, those only who make a religion of
their brotherly love can bring about such a happy result. Those
who love poor, sinful humanity well enough to sacrifice home
and friends and every worldly prospect in life to devote them-
selves to the care of the hungry and the naked, the sick and the
suffering, to bringing back the lost sheep to the fold and to
the Shepherd, all in a spirit of the kindest solicitude and with
the most merciful consideration for the weakness of our nature,
are the best friends of civilization as well as of religion. To in-
struct the ignorant in those things which serve man's temporal
interests without menacing his eternal welfare, to befriend the
homeless and the outcast, to patrol the dark byways and hiding-
places of vice, and snatch women and children from a fate worse
by far than death, and to do it all for the pure love of their
immortal souls, is the highest vocation known to sanctity. It
was the vocation of Madame D'Youville and is that of her com-
munity. K. MADELINE BARRY.

Ottawa, Canada.

"OMNIA AUTEM PROBATE; QUOD BONUM EST,
TENETE." i Thess. v. 21.

MASTER ! all else for use, Thou for desire :
Thanksgiving for the good, but thirst for Thee !
Up from the best, whereof no man need tire,
Impel Thou me.

Delight is menace, if Thou be not by ;
Power a quicksand ; fame a golden jeer.
Oh ! yet on earth bid no true heart deny
Earth's boons are dear !

Keep me of these, though lover, server, friend,
Austere, alone, wed only to Thy call ;
And first, while lord of all that life can lend,
Thy fool, Thy thrall.

LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY.

1889.] PAUL RING WOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 643

PAUL RINGWOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

CHAPTER XIX.
"THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL."

THE next morning, or rather the same morning early, I
wrote to Mr. Guggins, letting him know of my father's death.
The doctor had seen to all the immediate preparations for the
funeral, and now I put on my hat to go to Father Weldon. No
one was stirring when I let myself out the front door, and I was
reminded of the mornings when I had crept out to go to Mass,
fearful of disturbing any one. Never again could I disturb my
poor father. And now I felt the consolation amidst sorrow a
Catholic has, of praying for his dead. Lights were burning on
our Mother's altar, and, as I knelt near it, I was glad to see that
the priest beginning Mass was vested in black, and I recognized
his voice as that of Father Weldon. When he turned for the
" Oremus " I felt that he knew I was there, for he paused a
moment as if at a loss what to do next. I was right in thinking
so. Mass ended, he whispered to his server, who came out of
the sanctuary to me, leaving the priest to go from the altar alone.

Ducking his head, the server whispered : " The father says
you will come right away to the sacristy."

The message had been so quickly delivered and obeyed that
Father Weldon was still in his alb when I entered the sacristy.
I would have' waited till he was unvested, but he came towards
me holding out both his hands. " Paul," he said. " I did not
want you to slip away from me again. Sit down there," point-
ing to a chair, " and when I have made my thanksgiving we
shall have breakfast together, and you will tell me the meaning
of your staying away from me all this time."

So glad was I to be with one who would understand my
mingled joy and sadness that I did not let go his hands till I had
said, " Father died at midnight ; and before he died he let me
baptize him."

The priest's voice trembled and his eyes were moist as he
ejaculated : " Praise be to God ! " Without another word he
went on unvesting, and when he knelt on a fald-stool I knelt too ;
and I think that morning our thanksgivings were much alike.

" I cannot stay for breakfast," I said, as we left the sacristy.

644 PAUL RING WOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Feb.,

" I will come later in the day to see you. What brings me this
morning is to ask, Should not my father be buried as a Catholic ? "

" Tell me how he came to let you baptize him," said the
priest. In as few words as possible I not only told him that,
but also how I had been sent for by my father. " You believe
he meant it, don't you, Father Weldon?" I asked, meaning my
father's wish for baptism.

"As I hope for heaven," said the priest solemnly, "I believe
that your father died a true Catholic. Why, Paul," he continued,
a tender smile lighting up his thin face, "every day the little
orphans whom he benefited prayed for this; many Masses have
been said for this intention. And have not you, too, prayed for it?
Could his charity and ours be lost ? Faith, Hope, and Charity ;
but the greatest of these is Charity. The Heart of Jesus burns
with love ; could it be deaf to us?" Heretofore he had spoken
as one exalted out of himself. Now, slowly, he continued speak-
ing as one who speaks of ordinary facts. " This conversion of
your father does not surprise me. I believe that it has been
coming on for a long time, much longer than he himself had any
idea of. Sometimes, when a little seed is planted, we do not see
it slowly sprouting forth, but suddenly the warm sun after
winter brings it out. And so it was with your father ; the light
of another world brought to bloom, suddenly, the seed God's
love had long ago put in his heart." It will matter very little to
his soul, Paul, whether I am permitted to officiate at his funeral
or not. You can propose it to your brother, and if he objects,
do not make difficulty. All the same, I will say Mass for your
father, and what more could I do if I conducted the funeral? "

I promised to do as he bade me ; then hurried home, fear-
ing I should be missed, perhaps be needed. Early as it was,
and late as every one had gone to bed, I found the breakfast-
table set and Bert waiting for me in the darkened parlor.

"Couldn't you -stay away from the priests one day?" he
asked when, in answer to his question as to where I had been, I
told him I had been to Mass.

" I hardly thought you would be up so early," I answered
mildly.

" Pshaw ! " Bert ejaculated. " I suppose they're trying to
make a priest but of you."

Letting this pass without remark, I said : " Tell me some-
thing about father, Bert; how was he taken sick? "

"I fancy it was you killed him," answered Bert; "he was
never the same after you ran away."

1889.] PAUL RING WOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 645

" You know I had to go, Bert," was my answer.

"I know nothing of the kind," retorted Bert. " I know that
you made a fool of yourself not that I should find fault with you
for that. When the priests find out there's no prospect of your
having a cent to call your own see how they'll send you about
your business."

" You wrong a body of men about whom you know nothing ! "
My temper was getting the better of me.

" Bother the priests ! " exclaimed Bert. Heaving a sigh, he
continued : " I couldn't wish father back; what was his life? He
could scarcely see, and I never suited him as well as you did.
Would you believe it, Paul, he often told me that you were
worth a hundred of me?"

Then father had been sorry to lose me.

" Maybe I shouldn't say it," Bert went on confidentially, " but
father was a trifle selfish "

"Stop, Bert!" I interrupted, "you don't know what you're
saying ; you don't mean it. 3 '

He reddened and cried out : " It's enough to provoke a saint !
You making all the mischief you could, keeping me out of col-
lege, making poor father unhappy, and now you must set
yourself up as a model son and teach me how to speak of my
father. You're a sneaking hypocrite, Paul Ringwood ; that's
what you are ! "

The thought, and it alone, of God's great goodness to my
dead father held my tongue. For fully five minutes I did not
speak, and when I did it was with a yearning to my brother that
I said : " Bert, we are twin brothers ; do not let us quarrel "

"Bother!" interrupted Bert. "I'm not angry with you.
Let's see if breakfast is ready."

Breakfast was not ready. Nurse Barnes said that she was
waiting for Mr. Mole, who had been telegraphed for and was
expected by the next train. Our waiting did not bring Mr.
Mole. And now that I come to think of it, I do not know why
we should have expected Mr. Mole an exceedingly well-to-do
gentleman past his prime to sacrifice his sleep in order to take
breakfast with two youths, dne of whom would be on his hands
for some years to come. We all of us had such an exaggerated
opinion of the importance' of the Ringwood family that it quite
put us out when he did not present himself the moment he was
expected. Bert grumbled that, had father been alive, Mr. Mole
would not have kept him waiting. I was anxious for his coming,
for I meant to speak to him before I spoke to Bert concerning

646 PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Feb.,

the funeral. It was nigh noon when he arrived, decorously neat
in white flannel, black cravatted, his face appropriately sorrowful.

" My dear young- gentlemen, this is a sad meeting indeed,"
he said, taking a hand of each of us; adding a pious afterthought :
" The golden bowl is broken, the silver cord is frayed " or
words to that effect.

He must have been a charming man to persons who like to be
flattered. For everything that had been done he had a word of
praise. At luncheon he won nurse's heart by his hearty com-
mendation of her whipped cream, prepared by her own hands.
There is this to be said of persons of Mr. Mole's disposition :
they are a deal easier to get along with than are those who make
a merit of saying exactly what they think. For some reason or
other Bert had left me to keep Mr. Mole company, and I em-
braced the opportunity given me of letting him know my desire
that father be buried with the rites of the church, and my rea-
sons for so desiring.

As was quite natural, he expressed great surprise at my
communication. " The most astounding thing I ever heard of! "
he exclaimed. "You had witnesses to what you call your
father's conversion ? " putting the question sharply.

"No," I answered, "every one was asleep, and when I
aroused my brother father was dying."

Striking at a troublesome fly with his handkerchief, Mr. Mole
said : " All worthless in the eyes of the law."

" But," I said surprisedly, " it is not a question of law. I
merely ask you to get my brother's assent to my father's being
buried with Catholic rites."

" If you have any idea of contesting your father's will you
had better put it out of your head," said the lawyer, speaking in
his mildest tones.

Bewildered, for I did not understand what he was driving at,
I asked : " Why should I wish to contest what my father thought
right to do?"

" For several reasons. First and foremost, your father has,
and he had a perfect right to do so, left all he possessed to your
brother. You may be egged on to ask the law to rectify what
some people may call an injustice. Be warned ; the law won't do
it. Had he been converted by the pope himself to your reli-
gion which, by the way, is a very good one ; personally I have
nothing against it the fact still remains, he died without ex-
pressing a wish that his will be altered; or, if he did, you have
no witnesses to prove it," he added tentatively.

1889.] PAUL RING WOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 647

I was so innocent of the villany he supposed me capable of
that even now I did not understand him. " Please speak plain-
ly, Mr. Mole," I said ; " I don't know what you mean."

Laughing good-humoredly, he asked, " Have you ever
thought of being a lawyer? You would make a good one."

Not noticing his question, I said earnestly : " I wish you
would tell me whether or not you will help me with my brother
about the funeral ; I would like to have it settled before he
comes in."

" Look here," he said familiarly, " if you sign a paper resign-
ing any claim you may imagine yourself to have to your father's
estate because of what you call his conversion, a very doubtful
thing at best, I myself will get a priest for the funeral."

Understanding him now, prudence was thrown to the winds
and temper got the best of me. I refused to sign any paper of
his preparing, and when I indignantly cast from me his accusa-
tion that I was making a tool of my father's conversion for the
advancement of myself I fear my language implied that I
thought Mr. Mole a blackguard.

He patiently heard me out, then said : " Don't think of being
a lawyer ; you are too hot-headed. For five minutes you have
been abusing me, whilst I have been making up my mind to do
all I can to aid you in having your father buried as you wish,
even to getting the College of Cardinals here, if possible."

I felt too miserable and defiant to be at all amused by his
coarse attempt at wit. Helping himself to a piece of cake, the
lawyer ate it, then went to the window, where he shook out the
crumbs from his handkerchief. A moment after I saw Bert
coming through the garden towards the house.

Unnaturally sharp and suspicious, I asked : " Has my
brother kept himself out of the way that you might talk to
me as you have ? Was that a signal for him to come back to
the house? "

" I'll be frank with you," said the lawyer. " Your brother
did think it best for me to sound you as to what your intentions
are regarding your father's will."

It was bad enough for this man to thhik me mean and con-
temptible, but for my brother! It was unbearable.

Bert was in the room almost as soon as the lawyer had fin-
ished speaking. Going up to him, I said : " You have wronged
me so much by what you have thought it possible for me to do
that I do not know how to forgive you. How could you, Bert,
how could you ? "

648 PAUL RING WOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Feb.,

" Naturally, it will be hard for you, Paul," he said shame-
facedly. " I am sorry if I have offended you."

Hardening my heart, I would not look upon his apology as
sufficient to palliate the guilt of his having thought so meanly
of me.

" There is something you can do," said the lawyer to Bert,
" to show your good-will towards your brother; he wishes your
father to be buried as a Catholic "

" But he wasn't one," interrupted Bert, much astonished.

It was the lawyer, not I, who told Bert of my father's con-
version. " There can be no objection to a priest doing all that
is necessary for the burial," he said, after he had given a garbled
account of father's baptism.

" If you say so, Mr. Mole," said Bert, " I don't care. Go
ahead, Paul ; do as you think best."

With no desire to criticise my brother, this concession he
made to my wishes, because of the manner in which it was made,
strikes me as not being much of a concession at all. He was in-
different as to what was done with father dead ; can indifference
concede ? Had he but taken some interest in the matter ; had
he not, he so young, been filled with the idea of possessing the
goods father had left behind ! In justice to our parents, if either
my brother or I had a love for or pride in mere money, it was
not taught us by them.

I sent word to Father Weldon, at the same time asking him
to come to the house that afternoon if possible. Late in the
afternoon Mr. Mole sent for me to the book-room. When I
entered the room he did not stop the writing he was engaged
in, but raised his hand to enjoin silence. I seated myself in an
arm-chair, and when he had finished writing, after carefully
wiping his pen, he turned to me and asked: "Have you sent
for a priest? The funeral will take place to-morrow morning,
you know."

I told him that I was expecting Father Weldon every moment.

" Very good ! " he ejaculated, rubbing his hands cheerfully.
" And now, how about your clothes ; have you a suit to wear
to-morrow?"

I had a suit at Mrs. Glass's, but had forgotten to send for it.
Irritated that he should be the one to remind me, I said: " Did
you send for me to ask that?"

" My dear young, man, excuse the comparison, but there real-
ly is something of the porcupine's nature in you. I did not
send for you to talk over your wardrobe, but now that you are

1889.] PAUL RINGWOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 649

here I may as well say that your brother has put his at your dis-
posal." Having ended his speech, the lawyer leaned back in his
chair, beaming complacently on me.

" I am very much obliged to my brother," I answered curtly.

Mole laughed and said: "Not much love lost between you,
eh?"

Blushing, I said : " You are mistaken if you think we are not
attached to one another what is it you want me for?" I inter-
rupted myself to ask.

" You and your brother being minors, I have sent for some
of your father's old friends to be present at the opening of the
will. Unfortunately, I am placed in a very awkward position,"
he said, speaking slowly. "Your father has appointed me to
take charge of the estate and to act as Elbert's guardian till he
attains his majority. Were it not for the interest I take in El-
bert, I would not, at my time of life, assume such a responsibil-
ity. Let me be candid. There is another reason for my so
burdening myself. I have a family, and you, who are a man of
the world, know how expensive a family is in these days of vain
show." He paused to let " the man of the world " absorb his
flattery, and " the man of the world " was well disposed to assent
to whatever the flatterer said. " You know," the lawyer con-
tinued, " this will of your father's leaves you entirely in the cold.
Your brother's college expenses are to be paid out of the estate ;
and, as he has besides a very handsome allowance, he may be
willing to help you."

" No," I interrupted energetically, " I have work and very
good wages ; I need no one's assistance."

" A very laudable spirit," said Mole ; " and, to tell the truth,
I do not think Elbert will put it to the test ; his habits are ex-
travagant, and I fancy he will need all he can lay his hands on."
After a short pause he continued : " Of course, you know that
your mother has left you a sum of rnoney which you cannot
touch till you are twenty-one. By that time, with the accumu-
lated interest, it will be a very tidy sum indeed."

I was saying that I knew all this when our conference was
broken in upon by Nurse Barnes, who announced in a frightened
way that there was a " Roman priest " down-stairs wanting to see
Master Paul.

I got up from my chair to go to Father Weldon, but the
lawyer stopped me to petition, " Would you object to having the
father shown up here?"

I hesitated a moment, then sat down and asked nurse would

650 PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Feb.,

she please have Father Weldon shown to the book-room. Af-
terwards Father Weldon told me how much surprised he was
by the warm welcome Mr. Mole gave him. They had met be-
fore, when the lawyer had not been so gracious to the priest.
Mole spoke for some minutes of the pleasure it would give him
to see the rites of the old faith performed over my father, speak-
ing of father as he would have spoken of one known for his
Catholicity. He somewhat contradicted this when in the course
of conversation he told Father Weldon that, because of the of-
fence I had given father, I had been left portionless.

" And now, Father Weldon," said the lawyer, when all the
arrangements for the religious services at the burial had been
made, " the tax, honorarium, or fee, what may it be ? "

" There is nothing to pay," said the priest coldly, taking up
his hat. The lawyer reddened. When Father Weldon was
leaving it occurred to me that, as I had to go to the city for
some decent clothing, I might as well go then, Father Weldon's
way home being my way to the station.

" Now, Paul," said the priest, as we went down the drive
under the shade of the elms, " you must tell me about yourself.
Where have you been? What have you been doing? Why in
the name of common sense have you kept yourself hidden from
me? Did you not believe me to be your friend?"

" Father ! " I cried dissentingly.

" This morning I purposely abstained from questioning you ;
we have a good half-hour before your train comes ; now begin,"
he commanded gently, giving me an encouraging pat on the
shoulder.

Though I was telling him all that had occurred since the day
of my baptism, my mind would wander to things of long ago.
How well I remembered the lane leading to the station, the
path through the fields, the bridge across the Wingo. No wish
had I for the past to return. Only the feeling came over me
that I once had when looking at a photograph of myself when
I was ten years old a feeling of intense pity, pity not for my-
self, but for an abstraction. When I had finished my little story
Father Weldon said severely : " Paul, your going away without
seeing me was very wrong. You were afraid I would think
that you came to beg me for help ! I do not admire pride,
and yours is the pride of one with little reason.' 5

I knew he condemned me for my own good, and a little,
perhaps, because I had not leaned on him for support; he felt
hurt.

1889.] PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 651

" You like the work you are doing- ? " he asked.

" I do not think that I am fitted for business," I faltered.

" You are not speaking frankly," he said in an abrupt way ;
"you should always give straightforward answers."

I looked up at him and smiled.

" Well," he interrogated, " have I said anything witty ? "

" I thought that priests did not believe in straightforward-
ness," I said with mild malice.

" So they say," he responded, disposing of them by a snap of
his thumb. " I suppose you don't like your work ; is that it ? "

" Mr. Guggins has been so kind to me that I am ashamed to
say that I don't like the store ; it seems so ungrateful of me," I
answered.

" Very possibly ingratitude is mingled with your reasons for
not liking your work," he said. I could not complain of any
want of frankness in Father Weldon. " Have you thought of
anything that you would like ? "

We were standing on the platform before the station when
he put this question, and the rails of the track were humming.

" Yes ; but I don't know that I could do it," I answered
musingly.

" What? shilly-shally ! Yes, you can, to perfection," said the
priest. " Out with it, Paul, the train is coming round the bend."

" I have often thought, if I am not too young, that I would
like to teach."

The train was steaming up before the station as, pressing my
hand, the priest said : " After to-morrow, Paul, we'll talk it over ;
we have the same thought. Courage ! " he added in a half-whis-
per, " God is good."

Psywsh ! t and the train was off.

CHAPTER XX.

A FINAL FAREWELL TO HOME.

" Well, Walter Scott ! a nice upset you give me an' Miss Blan'
las' night!" exclaimed Mrs. Glass when she had let me into the
house. It was only then that I remembered to reproach myself
for not having sent her a message letting her know that I would
be away.

" I am very sorry, Mrs. Glass," I began, when she interrupted
me to say : " I knows all about it, you poor thing! I hadn't no
res' las' night, no more had Miss Blan', an' thes mornin' she writ

652 PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Feb ,

to your boss to know was you sick or what, en up he comes his-
se'f, an' seen Miss Blan', an' tells her; an* I'm that sorry for you,
Walter Scott " ; and the good old soul began to whimper over me.

Whilst I packed my little valise Mrs. Glass cooked me some
supper ; and whilst I ate what she had prepared she was kind
and sympathetic in her ways rather than in her words, for she
spoke but little. I saw that there was something on her mind
which she wished to tell me, and, more to relieve her than from
curiosity, I accused her of concealing something from me.

" There be something, Walter Scott," she acknowledged,
" but thes es no time fur sech things."

It was only after a little coaxing that she said : " Well, I may
be wrong, an' agen I may be right, but to the bes' uv my knowl-
edge uv critters' ways Miss Blan' an't agoin' to die Miss Blan'
ef she lives thes year out."

" She will be Mrs. Guggins number two ?" was my not re-
fined interrogation.

" En lor she may, but en hes haht-strings she's number one,
sure's you* bohn," said Mrs. Glass with decision.

I said, as indeed I was, that I was glad that after so long a
separation Mr. Guggins and Miss Bland were to be made one.

When I took up my hat to go to the train Mrs. Glass again
shed tears. " Afteh Luke kicked the bucket," she said euphuis-
tically, " I never thought es I'd miss no one agen ; but I've been
thet lonesome sence you lef ! " And she paused, quite over-
come.

Enjoying keenly the sensation of being missed, I said some
words meant to be consolatory, and then started down the
street. Before I had gone many paces I heard a light foot-
step tripping after me and a voice calling softly, " Mr. Scott!"
It was Miss Bland, a handkerchief tied about her head, a small
paper parcel in her hand.

" I wanted to tell you that I feel much for you," she said
breathlessly ; " 1 knew you were here, because Mrs. Glass had
a fire in the range. I was just coming in when you left.' 5

Thanking her, I apologized for having to leave her immedi-
ately, for it was quite time that I was at the station.

" I do not wish to detain you, Mr. Scott," she said, and hesi-
tated.

I looked inquiringly at her, and she went on, at the same time
offering me the paper parcel : " I did not know your father ; it is
a liberty, but here are a few flowers Mr. Guggins brought me;
will you have them, Mr. Scott?"

1889.] PAUL RINGWOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 653

There were many flowers on my father's coffin, but I found a
place among them for Miss Eland's offering-. In gaining my
brother's and Mr. Mole's consent to my father's having a Chris-
tian burial I thought that all trouble concerning the funeral was
at an end. But I reckoned without my host the host of my
father's kin. They had been in awe of father during his life-,
time. Though his house was free to them, never by word or
deed had he shown the least confidence in them. Frankly and
fairly, I think his contempt for them was unbounded, save for
our poor relations, and no one of these last came to his funeral.

Had Bert and I chosen to have our father buried with pagan
rites I am convinced that our kinsfolk would have made not the
slightest objection. The novelty might have caused them an
agreeable fluttering. But with Catholic rites! I was the one
attacked. I had imposed on Bert's good-nature; was I not
afraid of turning my mother in her grave? I cared nothing for
what they thought, if they had but left me in peace to pray for
my father's soul. Had not Mr. Mole interfered I don't know
what these people would have done in their unreasonable anger,
the more unreasonable in that scarce one of them had a particle
of even such religion as pertained to their several sects. In a
speech remarkable for its brevity the lawyer told them that, as
Elbert Ringwood's guardian, the sole trustee of his estate, he
must insist on the arrangements already made for the funeral
being carried out.

This speech did not satisfy any one, but it had the desired
effect of silencing a meddlesome set of people. Some of them
would not remain for the service, but, in spite of all defections,
the church was well filled when the funeral Mass began.

Father was laid in the little God's-acre of our own, where
my forefathers for generations rest, in a little plot of ground
Father Weldon had blessed.

A lonesome house it was that Bert, Mr. Mole, and I returned
to. I went up to the deserted book-room that I was never again
to see. Lovingly I felt the backs of the books, as time and again
father in his blindness had done. It was in the drowsy time, be-
tween two and three of a summer's afternoon, that Nurse Barnes
found me seated in my old chair, the chair in which I had so
often sat to read to father.

"Come to my room, Master Paul," she said; "you will get
sick, all alone here."

So we went to nurse's room. How well I remember that

654 PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Feb.,

cloudless summer afternoon ; we two seated at the open win-
dow, the soft breeze weaving the flickering shadows cast by the
elms on the ground below ; her kind face framed in a white
cap-frill, her snowy hair folded back. She was going away from
the old home, she said, as well as. I. My father had done nobly
by her, and besides, she had the savings of years. She would
live with her niece, Mrs. Link, " and that'll be a change for me
at my time -of life." And the tears rolled down her cheeks. As
we talked together she tried to induce me to take a part of what
she said was a fortune for her. I was glad that she was so kind,
glad she had offered it to me, although I could do nothing but
refuse.

Sitting on a low stool at her feet, I laid my head, for I was
weary, on her lap. And, big fellow as I was, nurse crooned over
me the very ditties she most likely had sung to Bert and me
when we were babies. The shadows were long, and in the west,
behind the Gothic tracery of the elm-branches, gleamed a grand
cathedral window, and the swallows were coming back to their
chimney homes when I told nurse it was time for me to be get-
ting back to the city.

"You will stay the night here; now do, Master Paul," she
pleaded.

" I will," I promised, " if Bert wishes."

My brother offered no opposition to my going away. He
would soon return to college, he said, and he supposed I would
have to get back to work. I said something about coming back
to spend the day on the following Sunday.

" If you have a mind to, all right," he said ; " but I fancy
you'll be bored, I'll have so much to attend to."

He whistled softly when I told him that there was something
I would like him to give me. " It is a book, Tennyson's Holy
Grail?' I said, biting my lip hard. I wanted it because it was
almost the last book I had read to father.

He appeared to think it odd that I should want it, but went
himself to the book-room to fetch it. Then I bade him good-by.
He was a handsome, curly-headed youth that day. When I saw
him again he was a man, and how changed ! After a very
gloomy parting with nurse, I got my valise, and, late as it was,
started out to see Father Weldon.

1889.] PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 655

CHAPTER XXL

ST. LUKE XIII. 13.

Father Weldon was walking in the garden attached to the
pastor's house, enjoying the long summer twilight. Seeing me
coming, he advanced to meet me, saying : " I hardly expected
you at this hour, Paul." I drew back a little, and he added:
" But I am very glad to see you, for just at this moment I am
free. What are you doing with your valise ? Have you left
your brother already ? "

" I don't think my brother wants me at the house." Only to
him could I have acknowledged this. He said nothing to it, only
quickened his pace for a few moments.

"Now, Paul, what makes you want to be a teacher?" he
asked abruptly and smiling kindly.

Hesitatingly I answered : " I'm sure I don't know, father."

"A very good reason indeed," he said with gentle irony.

" If I taught I'd have time to study ; is that a good reason ?" I
asked, laughing uneasily.

"As good a reason as any that men generally have for embrac-
ing a state of life," he retorted.

If this was not encouraging, what he next said did much to
hearten me. " I could get you a position that should suit you if
you are called to be a teacher ; one should have a calling to be
one," he said.

" Try me!" I exclaimed. " I'll get along."

The priest smiled. "A few days ago," he said, " I received a
letter from the rector of a college inquiring of me whether I
knew of any one who could supply a vacancy made in a low class
by the death of its teacher."

The thought of my teaching in a college overwhelmed me.

" Father !" I exclaimed, " I was never inside of a college in
my life."

Then took place the following catechisra, Father Weldon
catechist :

" Can you read and write ?"

" Yes."

" Construct an English sentence ?"

(A slight hesitation, then decidedly) : " Oh ! yes."

" Practise patience ?"

"A little." (Very hesitatingly said.)

" Know your fractions ?"

656 PAUL RINGWOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Feb.,

" I have studied algebra." (The extent of my mathematical
knowledge.)

(Severely): " Don't shilly-shally. Know your fractions?"

(Answer given with an inclination to pout): "Yes."

(Abruptly) : " Which is the greater, a cent and a half or fif-
teen thousandths of a dollar?"

(Surprisedly): " They're the same."

" What part of speech is love?"

(Defined with an air of Now I have you !) : " It depends upon
what work it has to do. It may be a noun, verb, adjective,
interjection."

" When can you be ready to start for Cecilsburg? There's no
great hurry ; you are not needed before the first of September."

" If I fail ?" I said, drawing a long breath.

"Paul! Paul! cannot you keep to. the point? Answer my
question." Father Weldon said this with a twinkle in his eye
that belied the frown on his brow.

" I will have to warn Mr. Guggins," I said thoughtfully.

" You won't answer my question, eh ? Can you be ready by
the last week in August?"

"Yes; that is"

" Let it be yes ; don't qualify it," interrupted the priest. " On
the 25th of August I have to go to Cecilsburg; you can come
along, and I'll introduce you to Father Lang. You will have
a class to prepare for the college proper. What are you think-
ing about now ?" he stopped to ask.

Reddening, I tried to put him off by saying carelessly, " Oh !
nothing, father."

" And a very comprehensive subject nothing is. Come, out
with it, Paul !" he commanded.

" To tell the truth, father," I said, and he smiled as I said it,
" you were so slow about baptizing me, and in a matter of no
importance, comparatively, you are so so peremptory."

" My child," he said seriously, " I was slow because it is so
serious a thing admitting an outsider into Christ's fold. Still
more serious is it when the outsider is a minor. Besides, Paul,
our orphanage was deeply in debt to your father. When I
thought of the poor little children and of how much suffering
your conversion might bring upon them, I confess I hesitated
what to do. You know, do you not, that on the day you were
sent from home your father remitted the whole debt ?"

I nodded my head, and he continued : " Is it surprising, then,
that I am peremptory in helping you to congenial work?"

1889.] PAUL RING WOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 657

I was about to answer him when a bell rung, and Father
Weldon insisted on my going in with him to supper.

" Paul," the priest said when I was leaving for the train,
" here is a little volume I want you to keep and read often," slip-
ping a little book into my hand. I thanked him and promised
to do so, going away with his blessing warming my heart.

On the platform of the station, under a lamp, I opened the
volume to see what it could be. It was a New Testament. Open-
ing its pages carelessly, I read, without the words conveying any
definite meaning to my mind: "And he laid his hands upon her,
and immediately she was made straight and glorified God."

CHAPTER XXII.

I RETIRE FROM BUSINESS.

I told none of my plans for the future to Mrs. Glass, waiting
till I had spoken to Mr. Guggins. She expressed a great deal
of surprise when I spoke of returning to my "work on the mor-
row. " Not but what it's p'r'aps the bes'; frettin' never did do
no good, nohow," she said reflectively.

Ned Link gave me a warm welcome back to the store. " I
can feel for you," he said ; " I know from experience what it is
to lose a father." Adding what quite destroyed the worth of his
condolence : " It's just as well my father is dead ; he most wore
my mother out with trouble."

At noon he came for me as usual to go to dinner with him.
But to-day I wished to see my employer, and so I told Ned. He
left me, a disappointed look on his face, and 1 went to speak
with Guggins.

Knocking at the office door, a thin, piping voice called out:
"Come in!" When I had entered the same voice asked:
" What you want?"

Looking down, I saw seated on the hearth-rug by the fireless
grate one of the oddest little beings I have ever laid my eyes
on. The little creature had its arms folded about its spindle
legs, its chin resting on its knees. The head was so much too
large for its wasted body that the thought struck me that the
child, tired of carrying such a load, had taken its present posture
to rest itself. A closer inspection revealed that the poor thing
was woefully humpbacked, that it had beautifully shaped hands
and feet.

VOL. XLVIII. 42

658 PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Feb ,

As soon as I could recover from my surprise I said that I
was looking for Mr. Guggins a strong suspicion in my mind
that it was his little boy. This suspicion was confirmed by what
the child said next. " Pop's out. Take a chair," he com-
manded, rolling his eyes in the direction of an arm-chair.

I did so, and the child continued: "He's gone to get me a
banana. Do you like bananas ? "

I answered that I did, pretty well, while I stared at the mis-
shapen creature, unable to take my eyes off him.

He was not at all disconcerted by my want of politeness.
He was dressed in white flannel sailor shirt and blue knicker-
bockers. So neatly and prettily was he dressed that it is no won-
der he thought I gazed from admiration.

" You like this shirt ?" he asked, rubbing his chin against its
bosom.

Of course I said that I did, when he informed me: "Ma
didn't make it ; my ma's dead." Adding in a comically doleful
tone : " She didn't know you."

I could not help but wonder if he connected his mother's
death with the fact that she did not know me.

" Ma," he continued, " was always nagging ; pop, he never
complained ; but I tell you she tried my patience."

In dumb show I expressed some genuine astonishment.

" Pop," the child went on, " took me to see Miss Bland. Do
you know her ?"

I answered that I did, adding some words in her praise.

He summed up the worth of my praise by : " You're a friend
of hers. I an't got anything against her. She slobbered over
me, and pop, he cried. I guess she'll be my new ma. Some
one's got to be ; it's all sixes-and-sevens up at our house. She
an't strong-minded, is she ? "

I answered that to the best of my knowledge she was not.

" Guess we'll have breakfast regularly then," the child said
meditatively. " Most times pop had to go to the cupboard and
get a cup of milk himself. I'd have some too when it wasn't
sour. When it's sour it makes me sick."

A strange picture presented itself to my mind's eye a man
of Guggins' known wealth breakfasting off of a cup of sour milk
served by himself. " Why didn't he go to an eating-house?" I
asked.

" You must be a silly ! " exclaimed the boy. " How could
he? Ma wouldn't let him when he tried to. She said he wasn't
to waste her money. What's your name ? " he asked abruptly.

1889.] PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 659

" You ought to have introduced yourself. Mine's Walker. I'm
named after Doctor Mary Walker. Ma said she's the greatest
woman ever lived."

Apologizing for my want of breeding I introduced myself.

"Walter Scott? That's a pretty good name," said Walker
Guggins with the air of a connoisseur in names. " Who gave
you that name? "

I was about to say my sponsors in baptism when I recollected
that it would be a lie, so told him truthfully that Mrs. Glass
had.

" She might have called you Saul," said Walker. " There's a
Saul Scott out at the Ridge stuffs birds and things. He stuffed
our dog. Is he your father ?"

I was disclaiming all kinship with the taxidermist when Gug-
gins came in with' a bunch of bananas in his hand. I rose from
my chair, but he said : " Keep your seat, Scott ; I want to see
you. How do you like my clerk, Walker?" he asked, turning to
the poor little deformity.

" Pretty well," said the child not very flatteringly. " Will
you have a banana, Walter ?" he asked, insisting on my taking
one, afterwards offering them to his father. I fully expected to
see him eat greedily of the fruit, for his eyes had been devour-
ing them. Instead of doing so he carefully wrapped them in an
old newspaper.

" I thought you wanted them, Walker," said his father re-
proachfully.

" I'm going to give them to Bob Sturt," said Walker.

Guggins stooped and unaffectedly kissed his child's forehead.

" Bob Sturt," he explained to me, a slight tremor in his voice,
"is lame. He lives up an alley back of our house; he and
Walker are great friends.''

He seemed to have forgotten that he wanted me, for, after
folding some loose papers on his desk, he asked : " You have
something to tell me, Scott ?"

I was nervous about telling him because, though I knew that
I was useless in his warehouse, still it did seem ungrateful to
want to leave him as soon as something else offered itself.

" I'll be no loss to you, Mr. Guggins," I said when I had
finished my story. " I'm worthless in the department you were
so kind as to promote me to."

"I believe you're right," he said candidly. "I'm not com-
plaining of you, mind, but I've had an^eye on you. You want to
do your work well, Scott, but your heart an't in it. For a man.

65o PAUL RING WOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Feb.,

to be thorough he's just got to be set on what he's doing, and if
it an't your nature to be set on business I'm not going to com-
plain of you. I was thinking of something else for you, but it's
no use talking now."

" Yes ?" was all I could think of saying.

" Miss Bland," said Guggins, " and she's always correct in her
opinions, tells me you are fond of books, and we thought that
you might take Walker in hand."

As he seemed to expect me to say something I asked, glanc-
ing at Walker, who was all in a heap on the hearth-rug, sound
asleep : " You wished *ne to teach your son, sir?"

" That's it. Walker's got no taste for study, though he's fond
of reading. I don't want him pushed, neither. I thought you
might take him on easily, but I expect Miss Bland will have to
do it."

I impulsively told him that rather than disappoint him I would
do as he had wished.

" No, no," he said, "you take what's been offered you ; but I
tell you what you might do. Give up the store now and do
what you can for Walker, if it's only to keep him company, till
you go to Cecilsburg. I'll see you're well paid for your
trouble."

I told him that I would be very glad to do what I could for
his son, but that besides his paying my board I could take noth-
ing. All that he said to this was that he supposed that he knew
his business better than I did.

It was then settled that for the rest of the day I was to go
back to my lodging and on the morrow begin to teach Walker
at Mr. Guggins' dwelling.

After leaving the office I hunted up Ned Link to tell him my
news. " I don't know anything about your toney colleges," he
said; adding dolefully: "Won't I miss you, Walt? You bet I
will !"

So contrary are we by nature that when I went out of the
warehouse, never to enter it again, I felt sad and sorry to leave it.

HAROLD DIJON.

TO BE CONTINUED.

1889.] THE IRISH LEADER. 66 1

THE IRISH LEADER.

OUR day is essentially a day of one-man-influence, to coin an
unwieldy word, in politics as well as in many other things, the
civilized world being dominated by half-a-dozen great person-
alities as it has, perhaps, never been dominated before. In Ger-
many the great chancellor stands and overlooks his empire and
his world, and sees his enormous power affecting those outside
its immediate influence, like circles of the sea that, once being
disturbed, go widening, it may be, to the other side of the world.
Mr. Gladstone, in England, has survived that other over-master-
ing personality of Lord Beaconsfield, which has not been re-
placed. It is magnificent how those born kings of men will
shove aside with half-mock humility the merely conventional
kings and queens and hold the power which should be theirs,
while cap in hand they bow before the right divine of the con-
venient lay-figures which serve to fill that sentimental relic, a
throne. Here in Ireland we too are in the hands of one man,
and with no distraction of another to whom to pay even conven-
tional reverence, and I think most of us are rather proud than
otherwise of our one-man-rule and our one-man-allegiance.

Mr. Parnell, as a leader, has all the qualities which appeal to
us. We Irish are no democrats. The great wave of democ-
racy from your shores has only swept us and has not gathered
us in. We cling to old faiths and old sentiments. The artistic
side of us is susceptible, and loves birth and beauty, culture and
charm, and the more if we ourselves are not endowed with all
these things. It is a feeling as different as possible from mere
vulgar worship of external advantages ; the one possession
which sways us not at all is the possession of wealth. So the
Irish gentry have had many chances, but they were untaught
and unteachable. All the other revolutionary movements we
have had they could have led and controlled ; indeed, stray re-
cruits from their ranks did, in nearly every case, lead the forlorn
hope of the people. And it has come to pass that this first dem-
ocratic movement in Ireland has been led also by one from the
ranks of the privileged classes. A self-made, self taught man

662 THE IRISH LEADER. [Feb.,

created the movement ; he was wise enough then and generous
enough to place the reins of it in other hands. In other ways
Mr. Parnell impresses us as we would be impressed. He springs
from no roystering gentlefolk like those in the last century, who
drank and gambled, and barricaded their rickety castles against
duns and bailiffs ; who were adored by their tenantry and " hail,
fellow, well met" with every one of them, grinding them withal
often as unmercifully as their roturier successors, pocket-en-
dowed, who sent them packing with the operation of the Encum-
bered Estates Act. The record of Mr. Parnell's ancestry is one
of grave honors and integrity. His great-grandfather, Sir John
Parnell, well styled "the incorruptible," chancellor of the ex-
chequer in the last Irish Parliament, fought steadily against the
Union, resigning the office he had held, with its honors and emol-
uments, for seventeen years. His son Henry, afterwards created
Lord Congleton, stood by his side in the struggle, and later was
one of the foremost advocates and champions of Catholic Eman-
cipation, as indeed he was of all measures for protecting the weak-
ness of the minority against the strength of numbers. In the
width and thoroughness of his desire for reforms he might well
be named a Radical ; he advocated the abolition of the corn
laws, the extension of the franchise, voting by ballot, and, curi-
ously enough, the abolition of flogging in the army and navy,
over which some fierce fights were to be fought at a time when
his grand-nephew's party had as yet scarcely emerged from the
obscurity of babyhood. O'Connell's letters have many allusions
to him, breathing of trust and dependence. After holding many
positions of honor in the government of the day he was secre-
tary for war in Lord Grey's administration of 1832, and pay-
master of the forces in Lord Melbourne's administration he was
created first Baron Congleton in 1841. Henceforward the for-
tunes of the elder branch of the family belong to the dominant
country. Mr. Parnell's father, Lord Congleton's nephew, was a
man of whom little has been written. His time was a pause in
the history of a family whose destiny it has been and is to make
history. One only hears of him in his native county of Wicklow
as just and generous beyond his class, as a squire who, in the
bitter need of '48, had some such conception of the duties of his
place as his English brethren, to their honor, usually have ; in
Ireland there exists no such kindly relation. For this his name
is honored and beloved among the Wicklow peasantry. This
good gentleman, Mr. John Henry Parnell, made the departure of

1889.] THE IRISH LEADER. 663

while on a tour in America with his cousin, Lord Powerscourt
falling in love with and marrying an American lady, Miss Delia
Stewart, daughter of Commodore Stewart of the American
navy. It will be seen that many causes were at work in the
making of this man. Mrs. Parnell brought into her family the
American qualities the rapidity, the thoroughness, the some-
what iconoclastic contempt for antiquities, the nervous force, all
of which must have been in direct opposition to the more easy-
going and conservative qualities of her husband. The boy, born
in 1846, was the fourth son of the marriage and the second sur-
viving. As opposing qualities were at wr>rk in his education, he
was only six years old when he was packed off to his first school
at Kirk Langley, in Derbyshire. It is a tradition of the Irish
gentry that the sons must be English-educated, so that they
shall be only Irish-localized after all, though such a motive could
scarcely be present in the mind of Mr. Parnell's father. The al-
most inevitable ills did not result here. After Kirk Langley
the boy passed into the hands of a private tutor at Chipping
Norton, near Oxford, where he remained till he entered Trinity
College, Cambridge, at the age of eighteen. But there were
deeper causes at work to make him "kindly Irish of the Irish,"
despite his Saxon fostering. The waxen tablet of the child's
mind had been scored with writing which was to deepen and
widen as he grew to manhood. Wicklow County, in which
Avondale, the home of his ancestors and his own inheritance, is
situated, has more to endear it to Irishmen and women than its
extraordinary beauty. It is a mountainous country, and its sons
are fed with the air of freedom as only mountaineers are. A
lovely country with gracious valleys and lakes to make the earth
full of detached pieces of heaven, with woods green and golden,
and mountains black and purple and azure and rosy gray ; all of
it lovely, down to the sea-marshes that the tide fills twice a day,
coming in from the sea, lapping and encroaching on the land's
barrier of thin sand. In this garden of Ireland strange scenes
have been enacted ; this has been the theatre of a drama which
it quickens the blood to think of, for this was the main stand-
point of the rebels of '98. Other counties bore their meed
honorably, but here the fight raged most furiously and lasted
longest. Did it not take Lake and his twenty thousand soldiers,
to quell it at last? The peasantry are full of reminiscences of
that time ; scarcely one you will meet, farmer or peasant they
are not many degrees removed has not had an ancestor who

664 THE IRISH LEADER. [Feb.,

was hung or pitch-capped in those evil old days. In the peace-
ful valleys between the chains of hills where, indeed, " quiet
reigns," what between eviction and emigration and the other
resources of legalized war one shall see in the midst of a
ploughed field an oblong mound covered with the greenest and
velvetiest of grasses ; a grave this will be, not of one but of
scores, and held sacred with all an Irish peasant's reverence for
the blessed dead. The future leader's childish ears heard many
a grewsome story. The gate-keeper at Avondale had been
" out " in " the rebellion." Mr. T. P. O'Connor tells us a horri-
ble story, which Mr. Parnell remembers to have heard from this
old man's lips : how a rebel was sentenced to be flogged to
death at the end of a cart ; how the interpretation put upon the
sentence by Colonel Yeo, the officer commanding the troops,
was that the flogging should be upon the man's stomach instead
of his back ; how he was so flogged from the mill to the old
sentry-box in Rathdrum, the nearest town to Avondale, shrieking
in his agony on the name of his tormentor till he died all this,
with more horror than I have dared to tell, the child heard. The
story bit deep in his heart and his imagination.

Avondale, Mr. Parnell's home, lies inland, half a score of miles
from the wash of the waves. It is a large, square, gray man-
sion, little ornate, and at present somewhat lonely and forgot-
ten. The scenery in this particular part of Wicklow is soft and
smiling. Rathdrum is a clean and dainty little town amid the
most pleasant surroundings. The house, where many a pilgrim
comes, stands on an ascent, with its woods behind it ; it has a
central hall like a baronial castle, and with drawing and bed
rooms which are spacious and eyrie enough to merit the style
of state apartments. In front its bay-windows look on the
loveliest of valleys, green and velvety pastures sloping to a
silver river; a little to the south is the Meeting of the Waters,
the marriage of the Avonmore and the Avonbeg, which Moore
commemorated in not unworthy verse.

Here, after he had left Cambridge, Mr. Parnell lived the life of
a country gentleman for some quiet years, shooting, fishing, hunt-
ing, cricketing, holding the honorable positions of trust among
his fellow-men, the magistracy, the shrievalty, and such like,
which can seldom have been so fittingly bestowed. There was
no sign at all of the upheaval which was to disturb those placid
conditions. A congenial life enough, one thinks, remembering
Mr. Parnell's taste for sport, his affection for animals, his prac-

1889.] THE IRISH LEADER. 665

tical and administrative mind, which would probably find as
much to do and be done on the small stage of an average estate
as on the stage of the world's history, where now he lives his
hour.

The thing which came to stir the fountains of his being in
those quiet years was the execution, in November, 1867, of Allan,
Larkin, and O'Brien, "the Manchester martyrs," an event which
awoke in more hearts than his this latent Irish feeling. We are
told that this had a deep and abiding effect on the young man
just returned from Cambridge, where no doubt he had had to
endure the hearing of many insults to his mother-country, for in
Fenian days men's hatreds reached a pitch which we have little
conception of now. However, as yet he made no public de-
parture to show the faith that was in him, though his mother
and he did not oppose her crammed their roomy old town-
house in Upper Temple Street, Dublin, from garret to basement
with refugee Fenians. It was 1873, and he had travelled two
years in America, when the Home-Rule League was founded
with all manner of high hopes and high aspirations, which in a
few years were to dwindle to do-nothingism. Mr. Parnell was
among the first to join the League, and adhered to it while it
crept on to its decadent days. He was one of those, like the
late A. M. Sullivan, the late John Martin, Mr. Alfred Webb,
and others, whose leaven did much to redeem the uselessness of
the body. The leader at that time and for years after, Mr. Isaac
Butt, was, as a leader, a veritable roi faineant. An Irishman of
the old type, handsome, lovable, brilliant, genial, a dashing
spendthrift, a bon camarade, a gentleman down to the finger-tips,
an optimist who never looked beyond the morrow of all others
the most unfit man to lead a revolution not to be made with
rose-water. This revolution was not, however, on the horizon,
or was there as a cloud no bigger than a man's hand, when Mr.
Parnell entered public affairs. This was a year after he had
joined the Home-Rule League, when he was selected to fight
Colonel Taylor for the representation of County Dublin. His
first appearance on the platform I have often heard described by
an onlooker. It was at a meeting of the electors in the Rotunda.
The young candidate had been announced with all the fiery and
ornate eloquence of which A. M. Sullivan was master. He had
made an excellent impression by his election address, in which,
with charming modesty for so young a man, he had recalled the
memory of Sir John Parnell's services as a guarantee for his

666 THE IRISH LEADER. [Feb.,

own trustworthiness. The meeting was prepared to give him
the most delighted of welcomes. He made his way to the plat-
form, stood up slight and tall, and with that curious refinement
of face and figure which belongs to him ; every one saw that he
was overcome with nervousness. He looked from side to side
with grave, brown eyes well-nigh clouded with shy terror, made
one or two efforts to speak, and broke down miserably, and
finally, despite all encouragement, relapsed into silence. He
was defeated at this election, but was returned the following
year for Meath on the death of John Martin.

I should need far more space than a magazine article if I
were to strive to give in anything like detail the events of the
eventful following years. There was the formation of the new
party of action in the House of Commons, at first consisting
only of Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar, recruited later by Mr.
O'Connor Power and Mr. O'Donnell. The tactics of the young
party vexed as sorely the soul of the old leader, who was steadily
and surely being elbowed aside, as did the war-words of the
Young Irelanders the heart of O'Connell. While at home there
were three years of bad harvests coming to precipitate the in-
evitable, in the House of Commons Parnell and his little fol-
lowing suffered obloquy and insolence and contempt, which
must have galled sorely one proud heart; fought tooth and
nail, with tenacity, with courage, with industry, with magnifi-
cent endurance. Then, with the worst of the bad harvests,
with the people starving and hopeless and desperate enough to
make good war material, came Michael Davitt out of prison, and
the Land League was established. Mr. Parnell was chosen
leader in Mr. Butt's place, the old man vacating only to die, and
after this, for the Irish landlords, " the deluge." If you would
read the story of the movement down to the present day get
Mr. T. P. O'Connor's Parnell Movement, where it is all told
with verve, with brilliancy, with sustained interest. My desire is
but to give some idea of Mr. Parnell the man. Here is how Mr.
William O'Brien describes him as he found him in his shooting-
lodge among the Wicklow Mountains, an out-of-the-way place
far from the haunts of men:

" Mr. Parnell was still on the hills with his gun and dogs when we ar-
rived towards dusk, but he presently came in in his simple mountain dress,
the plain cap for which he used to reject all bright-tasselled smoking-
caps in Kilmainham on his head, a white silk handkerchief knotted round
his throat, his strong boots reaching to his knee, his pale face bronzed and

1889.] THE IRISH LEADER. 667

tanned with exercise. . . . His manner was full of gentle simplicity as he
dismissed his dogs and gave me that quietly affectionate and earnest wel-
come which speaks so eloquently.

" The place was a paradise of simple rest, and when I remarked, 'This
is a change from London,' the reply, ' A change very much for the better,'
came from his heart. Cincinnatus when he tended his cabbages had never
a rougher home than the Irish tribune, or relished it more keenly. The
room in which we were was a big, whitewashed, bare place. A small round
table in the centre was covered with a white table-cloth, a>turf fire leaped
in the fireplace, a cupboard near at hand contained a few glasses and
bottles ; these, with an occasional chair, made the inventory of furniture
in the uncurtained, uncarpeted chamber. A bedroom, just as simply pro-
vided, for himself, and one for a stray visitor, made up the suite. Yet the
place was delightfully comfortable when the shutters were closed and the
candles lighted, the fire stirred, and the simple, hearty meal set out on the
snowy table-cloth. What with the mountain air and the seeming impossi-
bility of obtaining hospitable fare in such a solitude, the contrast between
this cozy, firelit circle and the eyrie mountains outside, now gloomy with
night, our supper was one of the most enjoyable I have ever tasted. Mr.
Parnell's charm as a host is the sense of socialism, so to speak, or comrade-
ship in the enjoyment of common property, with which he inspires his
guests. The common impression of him, that he is rather practical than
romantic, is in a sense true. The book on the window-shelf is a treatise on
trigonometry; on its open leaves there is a sheet of note-paper on which he
has been drawing diagrams ; he has to interrupt our chat to confer with an
engineer about some works at Avondale which are to relieve his turbine
from winter floods, and to the smallest detail he is able himself to direct
the operation. But you should see him in his beloved Wicklow to know
how utterly they misread him who fail to see that his inmost thoughts are
tinged with a deep and romantic enthusiasm. He is never tired of talking
of the rebellion in Wicklow, of its scenes and personages, of Holt and
Michael Dwyer. Aughavanna, where we were, was the focus of the great
struggle. A neighboring farm-house (Martin Byrne's) was the scene of
Holt's most hairbreadth escape, as told in his memoirs. Behind the hills
whereon Mr. Parnell has his grouse-shooting extend, range beyond range,
the mountains over Glenmalure and the Glen of Imaal, where Michael
Dwyer for years led the soldiers an ignominious dance. All these things
the Irish leader chats of in his mountain barrack, sitting opposite his turf
fire. . . . Another thing that one could not fail to note was the simple,
undemonstrative sympathy existing between him and his mountain neigh-
bors. They are all ' Paddy,' 'Tom,' and ' Mary ' no tinge of slavishness
.on the one side or of patronage on the other. . . . He spoke with special
interest, knowledge, and sympathy of the agricultural laborers, winding up
with : ' I am a bit of a socialist in this matter. I don't think we at all ap-
preciate the importance of labor.' "

I have to apologize for the unwarrantable length of this
extract, which I give as affording a valuable glimpse of the per-
sonality of a man the veil of whose inner life is seldom lifted-

668 THE IRISH LEADER. [Feb ,

Another testimony which shows us Mr. Parnell in a lovable, if
slightly eccentric, light is that story of Mr. T. P. O'Connor's,
telling how the leader calmly stood up, amid the deliberations of
his party on some important occasion, and retired to feed his dog,
whose dinner he had for the time forgotten. His affection for
animals is great, and I have heard that he suffered keenly when
the mutilation and killing of animals in Ireland was laid at the
door of his organization. As a matter of fact, such outrages were
very much fewer and less atrocious than was represented ;
nothing so bad, for instance, as the record of an English week,
and the perpetrators of such outrages should be, from the very
nature of things, beyond human control and human sympathy.
Another quality of the leader's, and one which is perhaps the
secret of his undisputed leadership, is his tolerance. A schismatic
of his party must be very obstinate before he is excommunicated.
Mr. Parnell will examine his views or his difficulties ; will do
his utmost to meet them or to combat them ; will, in fact, do all
things except quarrel with his lieutenant, unless that lieutenant
choose to willingly separate from him. He is a religious man
while making little parade of it ; it is a conviction, perhaps, of a
divine mission which has enabled him to surmount dangers and
difficulties till he has placed his cause and his party in their
present hopeful position. He has received popular adulation
which might make many a great man t$te monte'e, and has re-
mained grave, simple, sincere, quiet almost to coldness though
the fires may burn within. I have seen him at some of his great-
est moments in that wonderful triumphal procession of his on
an October Sunday in 1881, when

''The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway,
The church-spires flamed, such flags they had."

An ominous quotation, did you say ? yet scarcely ominous for
this patriot, though in Dublin streets Henry Grattan dear and
venerable name ! was stoned by the populace. One of the secrets
of Mr. Parnell's power over this people is, I think, his unlikeness
to them, one of the expressions of which is a quietness and- aloof-
ness which might even be taken for indifference if it were not
so much greater a quality. An incident like the Kilmainham
Treaty, so called, which, however wise and expedient, was scarce-
ly "understanded of the people," would have probably laid low
a leader more of the people and more intimate with them ; but

1889.] THE IRISH LEADER. 669

the excitable Celt is simply silenced in face of a strong leader
who wraps himself round with invisibility and seems scarcely to
heed whether the mob be battering at his gates or be waiting to
crown him. I saw him also at the banquet where the people's
rich and generous tribute, ^"40,000, was presented to him, when,
save for some betraying color, he was as impassive as the Sphinx.
Now and again, at rare intervals, his passionate feeling breaks
bounds, as once in the House of Commons in the old days, when
he had been stung and goaded to no common degree. He turned
pale, with that white heat of pallor which makes the Irish leader's
anger a sight to be remembered. " I care nothing," he said, "for
the opinion of this House and this people, but the country and
the people I do care for trust me and believe in me." I do not
profess to give the words literally ; but I do not remember any
other public profession of affection for the people he leads. He
never feeds the Celtic love of approbation by word or deed.
Curiously, as Mr.William O'Brien says, the practical and romantic
are en wrought in him, but the dreamer and the man of action
come into no conflict ; rather does the one work out the dreams
of the other and make them real. In lesser things than the
making of a nation is he a man of affairs. At his beautiful home
of Avondale one shall hear, through the singing of birds and the.
rippling of water, those sounds of man's industry which here
under wide skies seem but to fill a pause in the music of nature.
There is the whirring of a saw-mill and the sound of the stone-
hammer from quarries where they are delving out stone paving-
setts for the Dublin streets. Looking at the man, one must give
him credit for that strain of imaginative dreaminess without
which your man of action may be an iconoclast after all. He is
the most distinguished man I have ever seen in looks ; his build
slender and tall, his clear features, his grave and searching
eyes, his light brown hair and beard, fine and silky, such as goes
always with a refined nature all have an ineffaceable stamp of
distinction. I think I never felt this more than when looking at
a large photograph of some public ceremony, where his head
stood out almost startlingly distinct and distinguished amid the
faces of lesser men a prince, one would have said, or some such
thing, only that man's princes are seldom enough nature's princes.
Here is a man, however, who looks his sovereignty. And when
he. speaks the charm is not broken. It is beyond all things an
educated voice ; clear, incisive, with just that delicate slowness
of intonation which tells that a man comes from a leisured race.

670 THE VISION OF BEATRICE. [Feb.,

His public speaking has grown to be admirable, a very fitness
of speech in what it says and leaves unsaid. Undoubtedly a great
man, and to us happily as great a deliverer as Moses was to God's
people in Egypt.

KATHARINE TYNAN.

Clondalkin, Co. Dublin,

THE VISION OF BEATRICE.

A TRANSLATION, IN THE ORIGINAL TERZA RIMA, FROM THE 3 1ST
CANTO OF DANTE'S " PURGATORIO."

WHILE fed my soul upon the nourishment,

Desire for which still lives, not unenhanced,
Yet satiate ; joy and wonder in them blent,

The other three angelic maids advanced
With mien that evidenced their high degree.

Approaching, these to their own carol danced
In graceful circles, filled with heaven-born glee.

Thus sang they: " Turn, O Beatrice! thy face
Divine toward him, thy faithful one, who thee

To view hath journeyed many a toilsome pace ;
To our united supplication lend

Thine ear, that he may, in this hallowed place,
His hungering gaze, unaw'd and lingering, bend

Upon thy Second Beauty, which a veil
Now hides from him, who cannot comprehend."

Divine effulgence ! Who, with cheek all pale
From dwelling in Pierian shades, or stained

Howe'er his genius in that spring, would fail
Not in the bold endeavor, though heart-strained,

In words to limn thee as thou seemedst to be
When, 'neath the ringing heavens, with beams unwaned,

Thou didst reveal thy loveliness to me ?

SAMUEL BYRNE.

St. Paul, Minn.

1889-] How THE BLIND SEE. 671

HOW THE BLIND SEE.

As we pass a busy street-corner a timid man, with outstretched
hand or rusty tin cup, modestly appeals to us to " help the blind."
A few blocks further on we meet another who, the more surely
to attract our attention, has lifted upon his shoulder a trembling
dog whose smothered whine tells of his longing for a firmer foot-
hold. Just opposite a third sightless man is vigorously scratch-
ing three rasping fiddle-strings or pulling and squeezing painful
squeaks and groans out of a wheezy concertina. The musician
and the sad-faced man with the dog are mute. On their breast,
however, hangs a painted cry to " Help the Blind." The help
these poor men seek is that of a cent or a nickel. If we do not
always give them one or the other it is either because we have
become used to the appeal or because we have doubts as to the
actual blindness of him who so deferentially asks our alms, or
because our sympathies are so large that a small coin would
not adequately express them.

The street appeal for help might lead one to think that the
blind are necessarily helpless. Yet they are not. This or that
blind man may be ill, or burdened with years and an empty
pocket, and thus need charitable aid; or he may be untrained,
without any trade, and then indeed dependent on society. Should
this be the case society must bear the blame, for the blind man,
if he have no other radical infirmity, can earn his own living. He
has intelligence, four senses at least, the command of his limbs,
and ambition. Give him the chance and he will show you that
he was not created solely to be a beggar, and that he values as
much as you do independence gained by intelligent labor. His
powers are greater than you give him credit for. The help he
wants is a fitting education, and that society owes him and itself.

It is more than likely that the poor fellows we just passed
were brought up in the old fashion ; for only recently have civil-
ized communities come to look upon the blind as fitted for better
things than butts or beggars. How the ancients dealt with them
we do not know ; but where men with eyes were not counted as
of great price, it is probable that eyeless men were killed with a
weapon more material than kindness. Though the law of charity
insured them a livelihood in Christian times, there is no record
of any systematic attempt to serve the blind until, in the year
1260, Saint Louis established the Hospital of the Quinze Vingts,

672 How THE BLIND SEE. [Feb.,

or Three Hundred, in Paris. There he housed that number, not
of blind Crusaders, as you will read in the books, but of poor
blind Parisians, giving them a chapel and providing for their re-
ligious instruction ; and that they might be above want if they
would, he gave them the sole right of gathering alms at the doors
of the larger churches. The good king's example was quickly
followed in other countries, and many were the confraternities of
the blind founded through public or private charity. As so often
happens when a new way to do good is discovered, too many
rushed in to " help the blind." The confraternities grew fat,
fought with each other for bequests and perquisites, and in time
drew upon themselves ill-will and neglect. Where there were no
confraternities the blind had to beg or play the fool. They chased
pigs or were innocently led into stick-fights with other blind men
who were as innocent as themselves, or were marched about
in ridiculous processions all for the amusement of the tender-
hearted townsman or the simple, joyous rustic. Only late in the
last century was any serious thought given to their unfortunate
condition, or any intelligent effort made to deal with them as
though they were intelligent beings.

Why were the blind so long neglected ? Doubtless on ac-
count of a widespread notion that the eye played a more import-
ant part in our education than it does in fact. Ask a number of
your acquaintances whether, if they were forced to choose, they
would be made blind or deaf-mutes. The majority will declare
that they value their sight more than hearing or speech ; and vet
Louis Vidal, the blind sculptor, claims that all a man's eyes are
good for is to keep him from running into a wheelbarrow. A
moment's reflection will convince us that the greater part of our
knowledge comes to us by hearing and touch, not by vision. Our
experience of form is an experience of touch rather than of sight.
To the child neither outline nor shadow convey a definite idea of
real form. He learns to distinguish round from square and
hollow from solid by touch ; and with the aid of the same sense
the blind man gains a definite idea of form and therefore of mass.
The eye is of little use in measuring distance or height. If it
were the Great American Showman would be compelled to cut
off at least one foot from the Russian giant and the performer
on the trapeze would wholly take away our breath.

Sight helps to limit the other senses. We are so busy seeing
what we can see without studied effort that we neither taste nor
smell nor feel as we might if we were blind. The blind man
having no sights to distract him cultivates to a high degree the

1889.] How THE BLIND SEE. 673

senses he has; and circumstances aid him by compelling him to
train himself in many ways that to us seem useless because we
have eyes. Many of our actions are quite independent of our
sight. They are purely mechanical, automatic in a sense. Such
are walking, running, climbing, eating. There is no reason why
the blind man should not perform any of these actions with as
much freedom and certainty as we do. Indeed, if you enter an
asylum you will see the blind children racing along the halls and
running up and down stairs at a speed not surpassed by a young-
ster with the best of eyes. The famous English politician, Faw-
cett, postmaster-general under Mr. Gladstone, was blind. Still
he rode horseback. Nor is he the only blind man who enjoyed a
canter. Campbell, an American, a blind man who devoted him-
self to the instruction of the blind, not only made a habit of riding
but did what few seeing men care to do walked up Mont Blanc,
where no doubt he saw as much as some far-sighted men who
have made the same journey. If a blind man knows a room he
will find not only the door but the knob with little if any hesita-
tion. He can tell you the green from the red chair; he has felt
the stuffs and the chair-backs. The blind woman cannot see the
needle's eye, but she can thread a needle as quickly as you can
with her tongue and lips. She can knit the finest lace; the in-
tricacy of the pattern will not trouble her.

Every one can understand that a blind man's hearing will be
acute. As a guide his ears serve him quite as much as his stick.
His trained ear detects and analyzes every sound, however
faint. Hence it is that he so delights in music. No one wholly
enjoys a great work, be it a Mass, or symphony, or concerto, or
an aria, with his eyes open unless Nature put cotton in his ears.
Not only does the blind man appreciate the beauties and refine-
ments of sound, but he readily learns the science and art of
music. The want of eyes does not lessen the aesthetic faculty.
He is as sensitive to the beauty of words, ideas, imagery as of
sounds. By himself he cannot enjoy a painting or an engrav-
ing or a photograph, but he may delight his soul to the full
with things carved, or sculptured, or modelled, or stamped a
binding, a coin, a vase, a "statue, a gem, or vessel, or panel.
Blind Nicholas Saunderson not only admired and collected
Grecian coins, but he was so expert that he could feel a false
coin from a true. If all the collectors who have eyes were as
expert, failures would be more frequent in the coin business.
Giovanni Gonelli the blind man of Gambassi who died in
1775, not only appreciated sculptured things, but was himself a
VOL. XLVIII. 43

674 How THE BLIND SEE. [Feb.,

sculptor. He was studying his art when, at the age of twenty,
he lost his sight. Loving beautiful form he tried to realize it,
though he could no longer see it. A marble statue of Cosmo I.
came in his way. He admired it, and feeling it carefully, pa-
tiently, he made a copy of it in plaster. Ferdinand of Tuscany
was so pleased with the work that he sent Gonelli to Rome to
continue his studies. There he made a famous plaster statue of
Urban VIII., and gained a reputation by his successful portrait
busts. He also modelled many good terra- cottas. If any fortu-
nate pilgrim to Florence, as he leaves the Pitti Palace or the
Uffizi, will turn into the Via Porta Santa Maria, just opposite
the Ponte Vecchio, a few steps will bring him to the church of
San Stefano. There he may see four statues by the blind man
of Gambassi.

In our own day we have a blind sculptor who has made a
reputation Louis Vidal, the man who spoke so slightingly of
the eyes we value so much. Vidal was born at Nimes, in 1831.
He studied under the famous Barye and under Rouillard. In
1861 he took a medal of the third class. He is a sculptor of ani-
mals, and the variety of his work shows that he has studied well
without eyes. One of his works, a panther in bronze, is at the
Orleans Museum. The Museum of Nimes owns another bronze,
a bull. A gazelle that he modelled in wax belongs to Baroness
Rothschild. Looking over the list of works you will see the
wide range of his studies a lion, a tiger, a stag, an English
horse, English cob, African gazelle, a Java tiger, cow and calf,
and dogs and goats. Should we ever have a blind sculptor
and let us hope we may if he be a man of quick sensibility, it
will not be safe to let him feel our great works of art. Imagine
him as he fondled the Brunelleschi dome of our Walter Scott in
the Park, or the noble draperies of our William H. Seward, or
the twice- martyred Abraham Lincoln, or that loveliest, dearest,
pas-seul "Angel of Bethesda " ! Let us pray that our blind
sculptor be not a passionate man unless he carry a sledge-ham-
mer with him !

The beginnings of all things are misty, uncertain. The story
is that Valentin Hauy, a Frenchman, was the first man to un-
dertake the systematic education of the blind. And yet it is
certain that there were educated blind men long before Hauy.
Peter Pontanus, a Fleming famed in his day, lost his eyesight
at three years of age. He made himself a learned man, by what
methods I cannot say. His own country was not big enough
for him ; so he went to Paris in 1500 and there opened a school

1889] How THE BLIND SEE. 675

and taught the belles-lettres. He published works on poetry,
grammar, and rhetoric. How did he learn to read and write?
Then there was Gian Paolo Lomazzo, the Milanese painter and
poet, philosopher, astrologer, and mathematician. He became
blind at the age of thirty-three. When he died in 1592 he was
fifty-four years old. It was a dozen years after his misfortune
that he published the Treatise on Painting. Two years before his
death the Idea of the Temple of Painting appeared. Lomazzo's
works are of value to-day, and are helpful to the history of art and
the study of the practice of the masters. How did Lomazzo con-
tinue his studies after he had lost his sight ? To pass over many
other educated blind persons, there was Mademoiselle Paradis,
a Viennese woman and a contemporary of Hauy. She was an
accomplished musician who read music by a system of notation
devised by herself. In geography she was especially well versed.
A blind man taught her Weissenburg, a German, who first con-
ceived the idea of making maps in relief. Who taught Weissen-
burg what he knew ?

Here we are back again to Valentin Hauy ! Valentin was
the brother of the more famous Abbe" Rene Just Hauy, the
founder of the science of crystallography. It was in 1771 that
the Abbe de l'Ep6e made up his mind to devote his life and
fortune to the education of the deaf and dumb. Valentin Hauy
became interested in De l'Ep6e's work. One night he went into
a Parisian cafe" chant ant y and there he found the crowd amusing
itself by guying a troupe of blind singers who had been gathered
in from the highway, in order that their rough voices and odd
grimaces might make them ridiculous. Hauy's heart was
touched. In pain he left the house, and then and there he
resolved that he would help the blind. He was acquainted with
Mademoiselle Paradis, who lived in Paris at the time. She read
music, you remember. How did she manage it? By an ar-
rangement of pins in the form of letters. Did this suggest any-
thing to Hauy ? No one knows. All we know is that he set to
work, thought out a method of instruction, and then sought a
subject to practise on. By profession a teacher of languages,
Hauy had experience as well as good will. At one of the Paris
churches he had noticed a blind beggar of more than ordinary
wits. This boy, named Lesueur, he took home with him, and
the new system had its first test. It was a success.

What a happy day that was, not only for Hauy and little
Lesueur, but for all the unborn blind ! The day is not far back
just one hundred and four years ago. Hauy gained patrons

676 Ho w THE BLIND SEE. [Feb.,

and opened the " Institution for Blind Youth," which still ex-
ists. Within a few years he had a trained band of singers and
musicians. Twice Louis XVI. listened to the blind chorus and
orchestra at Versailles and the Tuileries. Then came the days
of Liberty and Equality and Fraternity, and the guillotine, and,
worse than all, assignats. The state had assumed the guardian-
ship of the institute ; but the blind boys and girls fared none
the better. Assignats make better fuel than food. The institute
closed, and poor Hauy was as homeless as his pupils. He went
to St. Petersburg, and there founded a similar institute in 1806,
and later on he helped to found still another at Berlin. In
1817, broken in health and almost destitute, he returned to
"France, where he died in 1822. Hauy's good work had imme-
diate results. In 1791 an institute was established in Liver-
pool. In point of time this one ranks second to the Paris house.
To trace the history of the various foundations would not help
our purpose. All that we need to know is that there are to-day
in every country of Europe, and in America, asylums where
the blind are taught, and taught well.

The first requisite of a method for teaching the blind by way
of books is, of course, an alphabet, or, rather, a type. As the
blind man sees with his fingers, you must give him a type that
he can feel. This was plain to Hauy, so he set about printing
books with raised letters. He used the type known as script. If
you will look at this word ^f^^, which is printed in "script,"
and then picture it to yourself in relief, you will see that Hauy's
pupils had no easy time learning their alphabet. And how
about the musicians? For he also invented a system of raised
musical notation. Imagine yourself trying to feel all the ins
and outs of a page of a primer, or a spelling-book, or a cate-
chism, or even a good novel printed in raised script! How-
ever difficult it was to learn by means of Hauy's type, the blind
did learn in that way, and indeed many learn to-day by methods
quite as primitive. Up to 1830 there was no great advance in
the methods of printing. Some books were printed in ROMAN
CAPITALS. The letters being larger than Hauy's presented
more surface to the finger, but the curves were bothersome, and
it took a deal of time to travel over a word. In 1834, Gall, of
Edinburgh, made a serviceable change in the form of the
Roman capitals, replacing the curves by angular lines. A Ger-
man, whose name escapes me, but who was long connected with
the Philadelphia institution, adopted a system of capitals and
small letters in combination. Lucas and Frere in England in-

1889.] Ho iv THE BLIND SEE. 677

troduced an alphabet made up of Roman letters and a kind of
shorthand. In Germany they adopted and still use Roman
capitals, formed not of lines but of small dots. A book printed
in any of these raised types is agreeable to look at much more
agreeable than our black-and-white page but any one can see
that a blind man's learning will be rather limited as long as he is
dependent on such expensive and voluminous works. A few
lines of this page of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, printed in raised
Roman capitals, would fill the page ; and this number of THE
CATHOLIC WORLD printed in blind-man's type would be as thick
as a volume of an encyclopaedia. If these clumsy and costly
types are still in use in England, Germany, Italy, and America,
it is only because it is hard to change whatever has been once
fixed.

As it was a Frenchman who made the first type for the blind, so
it was a Frenchman who made the first blind-man's type. Louis
Braille was born in 1809. His father was a harness-maker, and
Louis began to help him when only three years old. In his
tenth year he injured his eye with an awl and became blind.
He was sent to the Paris Institute, where he studied music and
became a skilful performer on the piano, cello, and organ. In
1827, after having held the place of organist in several Paris
churches, he became a professor in the house where he had been
a pupil. There he taught until 1852, when he died. We would
not be blind but a man may do more good without eyes than
with them. Braille at the harness-maker's bench could never
have done what the blind Braille did. He saw the defects of
the alphabets in use, and set about devising a new one. He
succeeded. Then he applied his new method to the system of
musical notation ; and, last of all, he perfected a system of writing.
Before Braille a blind man might learn to read, but he could
not easily correspond with his friends, or take notes, or compose.
A friend, Foucault, improved Braille's system, and together the}'
perfected what is known as the Braille-Foucault system. How
did Braille go to work ? He cut clear of our types, and made a
new written language whose signs were raised dots. By vary-
ing combinations of six dots he expressed all the sounds repre-
sented by our alphabet. Every letter had an equal space. The
letters followed each other from left to right, as ours do. But
the dots which represented a letter were arranged in longitudi-
nal spaces of uniform length. At most there were two columns
of dots to a letter, and yet the blind man had to go slow. He
could not be sure of a letter until he had felt over a whole

678 How THE BLIND SEE. [Feb.,

space, up and down, for there might or might not be a dot at
the bottom of the column.

Braille's dotted language was far ahead of the scripts, Roman
capitals, and other types in use. It was not perfect, but it was a
great help to the blind. They learned to read in less time than
by the old methods. And as the new alphabet was more com-
pact, and more easily printed, books for the blind grew in
number and diminished in size. The saving was at least one-
third. Having aided the blind man in reading, Braille now
taught him to write. Here is a sheet of paper. On it he puts a
brass plate, cut up into regular spaces. With a point made of
bone or metal or wood he presses on the paper, indenting each
space with the dots which represent this or that letter. He
works from right to left. When his correspondent receives the
letter he reads it from the reverse side. There the dots are all
raised, and he feels out the letters from left to right. Braille's
method was adopted in France, but notwithstanding its evident
advantages it made little progress elsewhere.

During the last sixty years Americans have shown great
interest in the education of the blind. To-day we lead the world
in attending to their instruction. New York has not been
behind-hand ever since Dr. Akerly first took up the work in
1831. To a New-Yorker, Mr. William B. Wait, Superintendent
of the New York Institution for the Blind, we owe a new system
of printing, writing, and musical notation, which corrects the
defects of Braille's system and still further simplifies the edu-
cation of the blind. Mr. Wait's language, like Braille's, is a
language of raised dots. Braille's dots were arranged in longi-
tudinal spaces ; Mr. Wait's are combined in horizontal spaces.
In Braille's language there were as many as six dots to a sign. In
Mr. Wait's five is the limit for the small letters, and among the
capitals there are only three signs of six dots H, X, and Z. Mr.
Wait's system is in every way simpler than Braille's. The signs
are more compact; the distinction between the capital and small
letters is simple the addition of a single dot and the reader
can feel all the dots of a letter simultaneously. Many teachers
maintained and still hold that the blind person can only receive
by touch a single impression at a time. Just as if some one
should claim that we saw but one letter at a time. Mr. Wait's
experience taught him that the blind man can mentally combine
a number of distinct impressions into a whole instantaneously.
His alphabet- has determined this fact.

But Mr. Wait's system is especially simple by reason of an

1889.] How THE BLIND SEE. 679

ingenious adaptation of his alphabet to certain well-known
peculiarities of our language. You have seen a printer's "case."
Some of the boxes are filled with types; in others they are com-
paratively few. If you will look over the case you will find that
the printer has more " e" and "t" types than any other. Why
so ? He has found by experience that these are the two letters
he is oftenest called upon to " set up." After e and t come a,-i,
n, o, and s ; then c, d, f, 1, m, p, r, u, v, w, and y ; then b, g, j, k,
and q, and, last of all, h, x, and z. To the letters most frequently
met with I shall give the simplest sign, said Mr. Wait, and so
" e " and " t " are each represented by one dot, the batch
beginning with "a " by two dots ; the next batch by three dots,
the next by four, and the last by five. You see how much the
blind man has gained. Mr. Wait's method of writing is like
Braille's. He uses a wire point and brass tablet ; but the divi-
sions are spaced horizontally to suit Mr. Wait's alphabet. The
blind man may punctuate if he will. Mr. Wait has supplied him
with signs. In 1872, with the assistance of Miss Babcock, a teacher
of the blind, Mr. Wait brought out a simple, practical system of
tangible musical notation. It is a thoughtful, thorough, ingenious
piece of work. Take a look at it. You will be interested whether
you are a musician or not. Thanks to Mr. Wait, the blind man
may to-day study harmony and the science of music with much
less labor than of old.

A child born blind should be educated in a special manner
from birth. And so a child blinded at an early age should at
once be put under the care of teachers skilled in training the
blind. Experience shows that the bodily constitution of those
born blind is relatively weak. Hence from the first moment of
life they should be cared for, not as if they saw, but with intelli-
gent consideration for their bodily weakness, their blindness, and
their special mental and moral character. They are, in a sense,
beings different from us. Their disposition, tendencies, traits of
mind are necessarily qualified by the fact of their having only
four senses. This special organization and character should be
recognized promptly ; otherwise the blind child is unfairly treat-
ed. It is pleasing to watch the child with eyes as he struggles
to learn something of the world around him. But this pleasure
is small compared with that to be gained from an experience of
blind children who are feeling their way into life. Here are the
youngsters. They have a lump of modelling clay before them,
and, alongside, a number of children's toys but carefully made
toys a chair, a table, a cooking-stove, a coal-scuttle, a vase, a

68o How THE BLIND SEE. [Feb.,

pitcher, a basin, a rabbit, a turtle, a crab. Watch the faces of
the children as they feel the forms of this or that toy ! They have
it! See them transfer their impression to the clay ! When they
have done with the table or the pitcher or the rabbit the
counterfeit would be quite as good as you could make.

Observe the two little girls who are modelling a stove. Their
models are equally advanced. They are feeling the grate.
Each has a finger running over the bars and down into the
spaces. Their fingers meet, cross each other, race to the last
bar, return ; the face of the younger brightens with a smile of
satisfaction, enjoyment ; she sees it all, and something is won
something new. " Oh ! isn't it perfectly lovely ! " she exclaims to
her little neighbor. Now she is pressing and shaping the clay,
hastily, that she may prove to herself that she has learned a good
many new facts. Go in among the big boys and girls ; they
will astonish you. They read fluently, and spell test words, and
show no want of clearness of mind in defining. When you enter
the arithmetic or the geography or the physics room you see
how defective our education is, not only in the matter of touch
and hearing, but, above all, in that of memory. A blind man's
memory must be trained highly, and unquestionably it can be
more variously and easily trained than ours. He has not to
remember things seen. The blind man's powers of concentra-
tion and analysis are also greater than ours.

Have you ever heard a class of blind boys and girls stand an
examination in mental arithmetic? They would make a bank
book-keeper ashamed of himself. There have been blind men
who made a name as mathematicians. There was that Nicholas
Saunderson, the very one who was such a good judge of coins.
He was born in 1682 and died at the age of fifty-seven. When a
year old he took the smallpox, and came out of it blind. How
he was educated I have been unable to learn, but in his twenty-
ninth year he had so far distinguished himself as to be chosen to
succeed Whiston as professor of mathematics at Cambridge. In
1728 the university conferred upon him the degree of LL.D.
He was a close friend of Halley and of the great Newton. He
published a Method of Fluxions, and left unpublished many valu-
able papers connected with his studies, as well as an unfinished
scheme of a language for the blind. But, to come nearer home,
we have a distinguished mathematician, a blind man, living and
working among us. Mr. Louis B. Carll, of Columbia College,
published several years ago a Calculus of Variations that has
been made a text-book at Harvard as well as at Columbia. John

1889.] How THE BLIND SEE. 68 1

B. Herreshoff, the Bristol boat-builder, may not be as great a
mathematician as Saunderson. Our fast steam-yachts prove, how-
ever, that Herreshoff can calculate nicely, and that his finger-tips
are fairly sensitive. He has not seen, with his eyes, since he
was fifteen.

Before strangers with eyes the blind, generally, are not them-
selves. This is especially true of the women. Unknown to the
company you study a room-full. They are natural, unrestrained ;
but let your presence be known, and all freedom is gone. The
blind cannot see each other, and, therefore, can be unreserved in
each other's presence. But they are sensible that you can see
each one of them. Therefore, each one's pride or vanity shows
itself at once. They shift their limbs and expressions. The
women nervously feel the folds of their dresses, the breast-pin,
the watch-chain. They move the feet to the right, to the left, in,
out ; something may be amiss. When you study the facial ex-
pression of the blind it becomes evident to you how much our
looks depend on our sight. Without the looking-glass there
would be fewer "sweet smiles," "speaking faces," "pretty
laughs." As the blind boy or girl have no way of telling them-
selves what combination of muscles best suits their profile and
contour, they trust wholly to their nerves to record their feel-
ings and their nerves cheat them.

We are still struggling to find out the best method of educat-
ing ourselves. It is certain that many of the pedagogues who
have foisted systems upon us worked with their eyes shut. Per-
haps it was our misfortune that they were not wholly blind ! To
a blind man we may owe our deliverance from the monstrous
thing called "primary education." However this be, the blind
are not neglecting the blind. A Frenchman, Maurice de la Siser-
anne, who became blind at the age of nine, has done much to
help his fellows. The son of an artist and a man of means, he en-
joyed rare advantages, and he has used them well. The greater
part of his life has been devoted to a scientific study of the blind
and to their improvement. He has enlarged their literature,
formed a circulating library for them, and amended the Braille
alphabet. Recently we have word of a book in which he is to
give his experience and his suggestions. When we are finally
educated out of the Zola novel we may read more books that will
help ourselves and interest us in the well-being of those less for-
tunate than we are.

Here we have had so many things to do building churches,
orphan asylums, hospitals, and schools that some one had to

682 CHURCH Music AND CECILIA N Music COMPARED. [Feb.,

wait uncomplainingly. Our blind did the waiting 1 . I have called
attention to the peculiarities of the blind man's moral nature.
For him there is a need of a religious training suited to this
nature. What does for us may do for him ; but he should have
a training better suited to himself. He is entitled to that; we
owe it to him or to God. When we have done everything else,
some generous men or women will give the money for a Catholic
Blind Asylum. Nowadays the blind man who is not a musician
or a tuner makes baskets or brooms or ropes, or turns wood.
He will do better things if we put our wits with his in a serious
effort to "help the blind." Our Catholic asylum will be a suc-
cess from the start. Think of its patron ! St. Louis, the first to
show loving care for the blind. Of course he was a king; but,
then, remember he was a saint, and all the saints are true demo-
crats. JOHN A. MOONEY.

CHURCH MUSIC AND CECILIAN MUSIC
COMPARED.

THE October (1888) CATHOLIC WORLD contains an article
from the pen of the Most Reverend F. Janssens, Archbishop of
New Orleans, entitled " Church Music: Its Origin and Different
Forms." If I venture to make a few remarks on some points of
this article, and to speak at some length on the so-called Cecilian
music, I am prompted by no other motive than by a high appre-
ciation of genuine ecclesiastical music, and by the fear of mis-
interpretations which might be, and I may add have been, made
to the above article.

After having given a brief sketch of the early history of
church music and its most prominent form, the Gregorian chant,
the author winds up with the following words:

" Gregorian chant thus belongs to the infant days of musical art ; we
admire it for its simplicity and a certain solemnity, which the flavor of
antiquity has imparted to it. Some of its compositions, especially the
Requiem Mass and some of the hymns, many of which date from a far
later period than St. Gregory the thirteenth and fourteenth century are
truly grand, impressive, and majestic; but the greatest portion of the
Gregorian chant lacks harmony and melody."

Is it only the " flavor of antiquity " which imparts solemnity
to the Gregorian chant? or is it not rather its intrinsic worth
and beauty ? The learned Dom Pothier says in his book on
Gregorian chant : " These melodies are so far beyond compari-

1889.] CHURCH Music AND CECILIAN Music COMPARED. 683

son that the ancient Christians did not hesitate to look upon
them as the work of divine inspiration, and there can, indeed, be
no doubt that they interpret the sacred words better than the
best compositions of modern musical art. For they express most
accurately the thoughts and sentiments of the church, and elicit
more profound, more solemn, and holier emotions in the soul of
man. Though, on account of their forms, which for centuries
have ever remained the same, they may appear rather strange at
first sight, yet for him who has learned to appreciate and under-
stand them they will soon be a source of joys of a superior
order/' These testimonies could be multiplied to any extent by
referring to the most distinguished musicians of all times (cfr.
Magister Ckoralis, translated and enlarged by Bishop Donnelly,
p. 14).

It is true " the Gregorian chant belongs to the infant
days of musical art," and the rapid progress of this art, which
marks especially the last three centuries, is certainly to be
acknowledged. But has musical art ever invented more beauti-
ful, more solemn, and more devout melodies to replace the
Gregorian chant in the divine service? Never. While the
church, therefore, does not dispute the progress of musical art,
nor exclude its influence from her divine worship, she neverthe-
less gives her own peerless chant the preference ; and she does
so, not only on account of its traditional sanction, but because
she finds nothing in modern music, with all its remarkable
development, to compare with her own. Many admirable works
of sculpture and painting belong to the infant days of these arts,
and yet they have always been and still are the patterns of our
modern artists. In a like manner the strains of Gregorian
melody will ever remain the pattern of our modern composers
of sacred music ; and those who do not study this pattern will go
astray and will compose music which, from an artistic point of
view, may be called masterpieces of musical art, but are utterly
unfit for use in the church. Moreover, let it not be forgotten
that the composition of melodies suitable for the divine service
requires not only the knowledge of art, but above all a pious
heart, a heart that is thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the
church and her sacred liturgy.

" But the greatest portion of Gregorian chant lacks har-
mony and melody." Lacks harmony ? Of course it does ;
and not only the greatest portion of Gregorian chant, but
every note of it lacks harmony, because it has been conceived
without harmony as pure melody. I presume that it is meant

684 CHURCH Music AND CECILIAN Music COMPARED. [Feb.,

by these words that Gregorian chant is incapable of being
harmonized for the -sake of organ accompaniment. Moreover,
the so-called faux-bourdon compositions of modern and ancient
musicians show that the Gregorian or Cantus firmus admits of
an harmonious arrangement. The church, however, seems to
regard the organ accompaniment of the Gregorian as a super-
fluous accessory, or even as an impediment to her chant, since,
according to the latest (1886) edition of the Cceremonial Episco-
porum, it is forbidden to accompany the celebrating priest. But
no musician of note has ever maintained that the greatest portion
of Gregorian chant is without melody. Out of the numerous
testimonies of musical experts I quote only the words of the
Cistercian writer, Maurice Vogt :

"These fixed, measured, emphatic, sublime, true, chaste, free-breathing,
beautiful, and truly holy melodies have been composed by holy men. This
song eschews the court of the prince, and never enters the concert hall or
music saloon ; it ventures within the Holy of Holies and abides there. No
one has ever sought to drive it out of the church of God, unless he did not
belong to the church of God. This music has ever commanded honor and
esteem, because, like a queen, she sets up her throne in the temples of the
Most High, and with a clear voice makes herself heard when the preacher
is silent in the Sanctuary " {Magister Choralts, pp. 18 and 19).

Melody consists of two constituent parts modulation and
rhythm. Modulation is the proper arrangement of successive
tones; rhythm, their proper measure and accentuation. The
former may be called the body ; the latter the life-giving soul of
the Gregorian chant. Now, if the performer of the chant cares
about nothing else than to strike the notes correctly, he takes
away the very soul of the chant, and presents its corpse to his
wearied hearers. Here lies the source of all prejudices against
the sublime music of the church. No wonder, therefore, that it
is abandoned by the majority of our choirs, and replaced by
worldly and operatic airs, by sentimental and frothy pieces of
music, which our lady-singers are wont to call "awful nice and
sweet." It is but too true, as the archbishop says : <: Gregorian
chant was sung in cloister and monastery, but it was not much
relished by the people in the parochial churches." Oh! who has
taught our people to prefer poisoned candy to good and sub-
stantial food? And who will undertake the difficult task to
remove the poison and make them relish again the healthy food
of the Gregorian ? Let every one answer the first question as best
he can ; the answer to the second is: The St. Cecilia Society has
undertaken the task, and, with the help of God, and aided by the

1889] CHURCH Music AND CECILIAN Music COMPARED. 685

blessings of the head of the church and the support of the
bishops, it has produced, and will continue to produce, satisfac-
tory results. The Gregorian chant stands foremost on the pro-
gramme of the St. Cecilia Society ; and speaking of Cecilian music,
we mean, in the first place, the Gregorian chant, the music of the
church par excellence.

Passing from the Gregorian chant to figured music, Arch-
bishop Janssens remarks :

" It is said that the Council of Trent intended to pass some severe can-
ons against the music then in vogue, but just at that time Palestrina com-
posed his church music, which, though entirely unlike the Gregorian, was
received with such favor as to prevent a strict legislation on the part of the
council."

History tells us that some prelates of the Council of Trent
were in favor of having all figured music banished from the
church, and expressed their opinion on the matter in a prelimi-
nary discussion. Others, however, among whom was Pope Pius
IV. himself, voted against too strict measures. The consequence
was that in the twenty-second session the following moder-
ate decree was passed : " Let all music which, either in the
organ parts or in the vocal, contains anything lascivious or im-
pure be banished from the churches, in order that the house of
God may appear and be truly called a house of prayer." One
question, however, remained to be answered, viz., What was to
be understood by the term " lascivious music" ? The twenty-
fourth session of the council was to give the final decision on this
point. Meanwhile, the delegate of Emperor Ferdinand I. of Ger-
many, who had received intelligence of what was to be proposed
to the council, made his report to the emperor, and received the
following answer : " I should wish very much that the so-called
figured music be not excluded, since it often elicits pious senti-
ments" (Optavit, ne cantio quamfiguralem appellant, excluderetur, cum
s&pe sensum pietatis excitet. Pallavicini, Hist. Conc.Trid., iii. p. 249).
Thereupon the council passed no further decrees on music, but
insisted that provincial synods, which were to convene every
three years, should attend to the proper manner of singing at di-
vine service. (Cetera, qua ad debitum in divinis officiis regimen
spectant, deque congrua in his canendi sen modulandi ratione . . .
synodus provincialis pro cuiusque provincice utilitate et moribus, cer-
tam cuique formulam prcescribet. Sess. XXIV., cap. 12). How
promptly this injunction of the Council of Trent was carried
out we learn from the acts and decrees of the various councils
contained in the Collectio Lacensis,

686 CHURCH Music AND CECILIAN Music COMPARED. [Feb.,

Only after the Council of Trent had adjourned in 1563 was
Palestrina drawn into the matter. In a " Motuproprio" of
August 2, 1564, beginning with the words "Alias nonnullas consti-
tutiones" Pope Pius IV. appointed eight cardinals to attend to
the enforcement of the decrees of the council. Two of these,
Cardinals Vitellozo Vitelli and Charles Borromeo, were appointed
a special committee on church music. Besides, eight distin-
guished singers of the papal choir were summoned to the meet-
ings of the cardinals. In a short time the following points were
established: first, that Masses composed after popular airs were
not to be tolerated ; secondly, that the inserting of unauthorized
words in the sacred text should be forbidden ; and thirdly, that
only motets with authentic words should be permitted. The
fourth point, which had reference to the intelligibility of the sa-
cred text, caused somewhat greater difficulties. It was during
their discussions on this point that mention was made of Pales-
trina, who by his " Improperia" and the so-called Hexachord
Mass had become famous among musicians. Charles Borromeo
summoned the great master of musical art before him, spoke to
him of the honorable task with which the committee had en-
trusted him, and requested him very urgently " to use all his ef-
forts, lest the pope and cardinals withdraw their protection from
figured music." Thus a pope and an emperor, a saint and a mu-
sician of great genius, co-operated to give figured music a per-
manent place in the house of God. We can easily imagine that
Palestrina, who was not only a man of genius but also a man of
prayer, took the greatest pains to compose masterpieces of mu-
sical art and music worthy of the house of God, and thus justify
the confidence which Cardinal Charles Borromeo had placed in
him. Asking for light from above in the prayer Domine, illumina
oculos meos ! (O Lord, illumine my eyes !), he wrote three
Masses, one of which has become especially famous as the " Missa
Papse Marcelli." The success was decisive ; the committee of
cardinals declared " that they could not find a cause to make a
change in church music ; that the singers, however, should always
be cautious to select similar music for the divine service as that
which they had just heard." In these words the authorized
committee sanctioned and recommended that style of music, which
indeed was not invented but perfected by Palestrina, and for
this reason may be rightly termed the Palestrina style.

Furthermore, the music of Palestrina is said to be "entirely
unlike the Gregorian," while it is acknowledged by competent
authorities that the Gregorian is the foundation of Palestrina's

1889 ] CHURCH Music AND CECILIAN Music COMPARED. 687

music. And how could it be otherwise? It was Falestrina who,
upon the injunction of Pope Gregory XIII., commenced the vast
work of the revision of the Directorium Chart according to the
oldest and best codices of the Vaticana. How could Pales-
trina compose otherwise than in the spirit of the Gregorian, in
the study of which he was engaged all his life? It is true Pales-
trina's music is unlike the Gregorian inasmuch as the rhythm is
that of figured music, but the spirit and the melody are either the
same or analogous. The words of the Cistercian Maurice Vogt,
whom I quoted above, in reference to plain chant are almost
verbally repeated by the historian Ambros in reference to the
Palestrina style: "It is no music for the concert hall or the
musical academy ; . . . it is music for the church, for divine ser-
vice, for the ecclesiastical year with its feasts and seasons, with
its days of sorrow, consolation, joy, solemnity, thanksgiving, and
adoration" (Ambros, iv. 58).

And what does the St. Cecilia Society think of this style of
music? All its distinguished critics consider it second only to
the Gregorian chant. From the very foundation of this society
the music of Palestrina and contemporaneous composers has been
duly appreciated, and its use by their exertions much more
widely extended than at any previous period, not excepting the
times of Palestrina himself. All Cecilian composers of distinc-
tion have made the works of the old masters their favorite
study before they ventured to publish their own compositions for
divine service. At every general convention of the St. Cecilia
Society the names of Palestrina and composers of his school or
spirit have appeared on the programme. Their works have been
performed with so much taste and accuracy as to charm all hear-
ers and make them fully appreciate this style of music. At nine
general conventions the American St. Cecilia Society performed
seventy-six pieces composed by twenty-five different representa-
tives of the Palestrina style. And nowadays a piece or a Mass of
Palestrina is looked upon as the very ideal by a Cecilian church
choir ; to sing Palestrina's music well means the same as to have
attained the highest degree of perfection in figured church mu-
sic. To achieve this is again the work of the St. Cecilia Society.
If, then, the Palestrina style received its name from the fact that
Palestrina perfected it, and not because he introduced it into the
church, why should not the St. Cecilia Society be entitled to call
Palestrina's music Cecilian music? There is scarcely any doubt
that but for the unceasing endeavors of the St. Cecilia Society
the very names of Palestrina, Orlando Lasso, Vittoria, Anerio,

683 CHURCH Music AND CECILIAN Music COMPARED. [Feb.,

Croce, Handl, Hassler, Suriano, Casciolini, and many other old
masters would be known only to the curious student of church
music.

Speaking of Cecilian music in particular, the archbishop says :

" The same council (/'. e., the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore)
refused to entertain a motion made by a few bishops, to give the council's
recommendation to the so-called Cecilian music. Neither the Council of
Trent nor the Council of Baltimore, approved by Rome, desired to enforce,
not even to recommend, any particular kind of figured music; they only
specified what kind of music should not be tolerated in the churches."

In regard to the refusal of the Council of Baltimore to give
its recommendation to the Cecilian music, I beg to ask whether
it was proposed to recommend Cecilian music or the American
St. Cecilia Society? For Cecilian music has virtually, though not
nominally, been recommended in unmistakable terms. But it is
said that the approval of the society was refused on account of an
article on " Obedience to the Pope " which was published in
the Echo, a musical monthly edited by the president of the
American St. Cecilia Society. The language used in this article
was rather plain, and perhaps offensive, too, if a layman had
written or dictated it. But it seemed and still seems to be an
unknown fact that a bishop wrote the article, and that, conse-
quently, the editor of the Echo could not very well refuse to pub-
lish it even if he had wished. Be this, however, as it may,
Cecilian music has been virtually recommended by the Third
Plenary Council of Baltimore. For the council recommended
Gregorian chant, and this is Cecilian music in the first place, as I
have shown above. Secondly, the council indirectly recom-
mended the Palestrina style, because it complies with all
requirements of ecclesiastical music contained in the decrees of
the council; and Palestrina's music is Cecilian music. Thirdly,
the council recommended the music of the Cecilian catalogue,
because all that is contained in this catalogue has been
thoroughly examined by competent musicians and pronounced
to be in accordance with all ecclesiastical regulations, and to
contain nothing profane or sensuous, nothing that might suggest
worldly pleasures or draw the attention of the faithful away
from the divine service, nothing that could be regarded as
incompatible with the dignity of the house of God and the
august sacrifice of the Mass. And this music of the Cecilian
catalogue, be it composed by members of the St. Cecilia Society
or not, is Cecilian music in the strict sense of the word.

A few remarks on the Cecilian catalogue of music will not be

1889.] CHURCH Music AND CECILIAN Music COMPARED. 689

out of place here. There exists in the St. Cecilia Society a com-
mittee of referees, who are appointed to examine all the music of
modern composers who wish their compositions to be placed on
the catalogue of the society. The conditions on which a piece
of music is admitted are such as to keep out of the catalogue
everything that does not fulfil the requirements of the chuich
(cfr. Thalhofer's Liturgy, p. 537). Again, the competency of the
men who belong to this committee has been tested by their own
works. Now, I ask, is it not more reasonable that those who
cannot depend upon their own judgment in selecting suitable
music for the church should be guided by competent musicians
and experts in liturgy, rather than be left to select at random?
" Therefore," says the Provincial Council of Milwaukee, " we
wish that a commission be appointed to draw up a catalogue of
sacred music " (Cone. Mt/w., p. 47). Similar decrees have been
passed by several other councils (cfr. Coll. Lac.) v. p. 359). The
measures taken by a few bishops of our country confirm our
hope that decrees like the above-mentioned will not remain a
dead-letter. The St. Cecilia Society has long ago appointed
such a commission, and its work is exceedingly beneficial in all
countries where the society has spread.

To give a brief resum6 of what we have said about ecclesi-
astical music, the term Cecilian music is to be defined as follows :
it comprises all those forms of music which are in accordance
with the principles of the St. Cecilia Society, and as the said
principles of the St. Cecilia Society are an exact copy of the
laws and regulations of the church regarding ecclesiastical
music, we are justified in saying that ecclesiastical music and
Cecilian music are entirely equivalent terms.

C. BECKER.

Seminary of St. Francis de Sales, Milwaukee, Wis.

VOL. XLVIII.-T44

690 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Feb.,

TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS.

Orthodox, by Dorothea Gerard (New York: Appleton & Co.),
is the story of how Rudolph von Ortenegg, the friend and com-
rade of the supposed narrator, Lieutenant Zultowski, of the Aus-
trian army, "fell into the hands of the Jews, and the experience
he gained therefrom." Besides Rudolph and Zultowski there
are but three figures which occupy prominent positions on the
narrow stage: Surchen, the worldly-wise, free-thinking, emanci-
pated little Jewess of twelve years; her beautiful sister Salome,
who is "orthodox "only through fear and superstition ; and
their father, Berisch Marmorstein, dealer in bones and skins,
and strong with the full strength of a fanaticism based on
undoubting faith. Rudolph, the only child of a father too
much engrossed in tracing his family pedigree to pay any
serious attention to his son, has spent all his boyhood and
early youth in a sort of mediaeval fortress somewhere in
the depths of a pine forest, having no associates save an
old servant who gave him riding lessons, and some pious monks
living in a Dominican monastery on the other side of the forest,
who taught him to read and to pray. It is the abbot who one
day wakes the Count von Ortenegg from his dreams with the
news that his only son is "showing symptoms of a monastic
vocation," and who coincides with the dismayed father in the be-
lief that the young fellow should be sent out of the woods and
"shown the world." A commission in a crack regiment is forth-
with obtained for him, and he repairs to its headquarters at Gora-
tyn, a large Polish country town with a great deal of agreeable
society in the neighborhood. Here he becomes intimate with
Zultowski, who says of him :

" ' We knew about Ortenegg's monkish propensities, and I think we were
all half prepared to receive him with civil derision, and to be very funny
indeed on the subject of cowls and hairshirts. But when he appeared
he was so different from what we expected, and so supremely uncon-
scious of our little jokes, that their brilliant points recoiled in a some-
what flattened state and unaccountably fell to the ground. We all agreed
that he was ridiculous, and his notions of life simply laughable.; yet all the
time we were rather proud of him, if only as a curious specimen of an abo-
rigine. He was by far the most serious-looking young man I had ever
seen. There was something stern and silent, like his own pine forests,
and something forcible and vigorous about him, like the mountain torrents
of his home. By degrees I took him under my protection and attempted to

1889.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 691

remodel his views of life, but it was not long before I discovered that the
task 1 had undertaken was about as hopeful as might have been the en-
deavor to pull up oak-trees with my hands and to plant ornamental shrubs
in their stead. His innocence was something appalling; it was as bad as
that of a school-girl. He was ignorant of the simplest rules of social inter-
course ; he would not talk unless he had something to say, he would not
laugh unless he was amused, nor say thank you unless he felt grateful, nor
admire a thing unless he found it pretty. It was pitiable ! Of common
practical sense he was completely deficient; in fact, I soon discovered that
upon most subjects under the sun he was a raving idealist/' 1

The subject on which the friends differed soonest and most
radically was that of the Jews in Poland. Ortenegg took up the
cause of the despised race at once, and carried his convictions
even to the point of flatly contradicting his captain across the
supper-table on the strength of them. " What makes you es-
pouse the cause of the filthy Hebrew?" Zultowski asks in de-
spair. " Are you an Israelite in disguise ? "

" ' No, ' said Ortenegg, ' I knew nothing about Jews, and cared less, un-
til I came here.'

'"And since you came here their extreme cleanliness and honesty
have won your affection ? '

"'Since I came here their extreme wretchedness and misery have
awakened my pity. I don't want to stand by and see anything trampled
on or, at least, I want to know the reason why it is trampled on ; and I
can't get any. When I ask, ' Why do you abuse them ? Why do you cuff
and beat them? ' you say, 'Because they are Jews.' As though 'Jews'
and ' scum ' and ' dust ' were just different words for one identical thing.' "

Zultowski attempts to show him that in Poland such is really
the case that the Jew gets no mercy because he shows none ; be-
cause he has two consciences, one for his fellow-Jew and another
for the hated Christian ; because, at least when he is orthodox,,
there rages in his veins a fanatical hatred of the baptized which
amounts to a disease. He is not even satisfied with hating the
Christian ; he hates his own species for not hating him enough.

"The so-called ' rational' Jew of modern times is a horror to the ortho-
dox bigot simply because he is not anti-Christian enough, because it some-
times occurs to him that what would be black dishonesty toward a fellow-
Hebrew can scarcely be spotless integrity when practised toward a Chris-
tian."

All this, and more, Zultowski reiterates in vain. Rudolph
is incapable of believing that any man can be honestly
convinced that dishonesty, so it be practised on principle, is

692 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Feb.,

" more pleasing to the Almighty than the sacrifice of a dozen
fat oxen." For himself, he is "always on the side of the under
dog." He will treat Jews precisely as he treats Christians.
"And they will treat you as they treat Christians exactly," re-
torts Zultowski. " Well, may you never know better."

The story of his " getting to know better " is briefly but
powerfully told. Though the writer is a woman, Zultowski
goes through his narrative in a curt, concise, military fashion,
giving essentials only, but those in a way which suggests pre-
cisely what is necessary to the imagination, while conveying the
sense of reserved strength and fuller knowledge. Through the
cunning of little Surchen, whom he has befriended at a pinch,
Rudolph is shown Salome, whose beauty is the cause why her
father keeps her carefully secluded until he is ready to give her
in marriage. Rudolph has seen three women in his life; one
was lame and deaf; one looked like a turkey-cock, and beat her
grandchildren ; one was young but fat, and squinted into the bar-
gain. Salome, who has no wish to see him, who avoids him with
pertinacity, who never answers a word he addresses to her, never-
theless subjugates him at once. But it is not until he has lought
& duel to avenge an insult offered her that she softens far enough
to listen to him. When she does he endeavors to convert her.
" I know," says Zultowski of their frequent meetings, " by the re-
marks which Ortenegg dropped, that religion was actually the
chief subject of their conversation, and therefrom 1 concluded
that he still honestly believed his interest in the beautiful Jewess
to be no more than a mystic interest in her soul." Hence, when
Rudolph one day proposes to his friend to accompany him to
Salome's father, of whom he means to ask consent to her baptism
as a preliminary to their marriage, Zultowski is aghast. " You,"
he shrieks

" Vyou, the Count von Ortenegg, the only son of your father, the last of
your line, propose to offer yourself as a husband to the daughter of a Jew-
ish dealer in bones, the sister of a Jewish tailor? You, who have the world
before you? Ortenegg, say that it is not true say something. Don't
look at me so ! Don't smile don't sigh ! What does it mean ? You are
driving me<out of my senses with terror !'

" It means that I cannot do otherwise. It means that it is stronger than 1

.am. Yes, all you say is true. I have the world before me, and I am going to

do without the world ; I have got a hundred ancestors at my back, and I

am going to bring on their race what they would have feared more than

extinction.; I have got an old father, and I am going to break his heart.

Do you think these are joyful thoughts ? Do you think it is so very much

easier for me than for any other man to ruin himself, even if only in the

1889.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 693

eyes of society? Do you think that if I had been able to tear that woman
out of my heart I would not have done so? What do you suppose this
last week has been to me? Look at my face.'

" I looked as he told me and stepped back, shocked by the revelation. It
was not only that he had tost more flesh than I should have thought pos-
sible in so short a space ; but there was a heavy shadow beneath his eyes,
and cruel lines ploughed about his mouth, which but a few weeks back
had been as unmarked as that of a boy, . . . ' I will have nothing to do
with it!' I cried. 'Why did you ever come here? Anything would have
been better than this. I wish, oh ! I wish that you had become a priest ! '

" ' Perhaps it would have been better,' said Ortenegg rather sadly ;
' but I shall never be a priest now. I want you to understand me, Zul-
towski. I know that what I am going to do is rather a terrible thing, and
I only do it because the other course seems so much more terrible. I love
this woman, I have gained her love, and I cannot do without her.'

"'Ortenegg,' I broke silence at last, I don't know on what impulse,
' you have cheated the world of a very fine spectacle by not being born a
villain. If you did not happen to be a good man, the devil himself would
not have been your match.' ''

The Jew bone-dealer rejects Ortenegg's proposition, at first
with incredulous horror ; then, when he sees reason to believe
that Salome has actually been willing to renounce her religion,
he frightens her into submission. Seeing no other way, and
prompted by little Surchen, who thinks it too stupid to lose such
a bargain of a brother-in-law, Rudolph runs away with Salome,
and takes her to a Franciscan convent, where the nuns are to
instruct her for baptism. There, on a day, Berisch, her father,
Rudolph, and Zultowski find themselves together. The old man
is apparently sick unto death. He acknowledges himself beaten,
he is willing to relinquish his daughter, he consents to her bap-
tism and her marriage, but, for heaven's mercy, let him take her
back with him that she may be married from her father's house
and save both herself and the count the shame of this elopement.
The plea touches the sore spot in Rudolph's upright, candid
nature. He has loathed the expedient to which he has resorted,
and though warned in a dream, and also by a note from Surchen,
and spite of the dumb despair in the eyes of Salome, whose fear
of her father half paralyzes her, he yields her on the Jew's oath
to deal fairly by them. He never sees her again, for in a day or
two Salome is married to Lammle Blauweiss, dealer in old
clothes. When he recovers from the sickness which mercifully
strikes him down, Rudolph says one day to his friend:

'" I have been puzzling my head and I cannot come to any conclusion.
Is it that Berisch Marmorstein is a very bad man, or is it only that he is a
very good Jew?' 'He is Orthodox,' answered Zultowski. 'That is the
only key I can give you to the puzzle.' "

TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Feb.,

What became of Rudolph? He threw up his commission,
and a year later entered upon his novitiate in the Dominican
monastery.

Without any aid from incident, and with very little pretence
to style even that little being- of a sort to make one wish there
had been none Miss Parthenia Antoinette Hague has produced
a very readable and entertaining account of life in Southern Ala-
bama during the civil war, which she calls A Blockaded Family
(Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin Co.) The author,
a Georgia girl, taught a school on a plantation near Eufaula
throughout the conflict, and she recounts with an almost Defoe-
like simplicity the straits to which our Southern brethren we
here use that word as preachers usually do when addressing a
packed congregation during the first week of a mission were
reduced, and the expedients to which they resorted to escape
them. Her book leaves much the same kind of impression as
would the imaginary adventures of a houseful of women wrecked
on a desert island, but still anxious to keep up not merely the
decencies of life, but the little luxuries of personal adornment
and pleasant home surroundings. How to supply sufficient food
and necessary clothing was the first question to be answered by
a community which had hitherto relied chiefly on cotton as a
means of exchange, and now found no market for that staple.
Naturally, they set about planting cereals and vegetables, and
met with great success. It was only when the new crops ri-
pened, and needed that further care for which few or no facilities
existed, that trouble set in. One woman whose husband and sons
were in the army, and who had managed to raise a fair supply of
wheat for home consumption, flailed it by sitting down within
striking distance of a barrel which she whacked with one sheaf
after another, the grains falling on her quilts and coverlets, which
had been arranged to catch them. That done, she spread her
sheets on the ground and poured the wheat upon them in a
steady stream, the wind fanning it for her. Another, left at
home with five small children to care for, contrived little
wooden mauls for those who had strength enough to wield
them, and then, laying her sheaves in a great trough used ordi-
narily for salting pork, and arming herself with a heavy stick,
she and the babies beat out the grain. But these and such as
these were mere necessary labors, and though Miss Hague gives
them their due share of space, she is most entertaining when she
begins to dilate upon the innumerable contrivances which she
and others had recourse to in the effort to make becoming

1889.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 695

clothes out of home-spun, home-woven, and home-dyed wool
and cotton ; how to make new hoop-skirts from old ones, hair-
oil from rose-leaves and lard, dress-buttons from thread, wood,
and home-made pasteboard, and ornamental fans, "difficult to
single out as not imported," from the wing-feathers of geese and
pea-fowls. Thirty dollars Miss Hague says she was offered for
one such fan as soon as it was completed. Confederate dollars
we take it, though, through patriotism or forgetfulness, she
omits to say so. Later on she supplies a measure of the value of
that medium of exchange which is rather comic. "A brother-
in-law of mine," she says, " who became bare as to pants, and had
no way of getting any in his then distressed state," cut his army
blanket in two with his penknife. Then, sharpening a stick, he
poked holes through each edge at convenient distances, and manu-
factured one leg of his " pants" at a time by passing ravellings
through these holes, and tying them together. Then he fastened
them round his waist with a string, and wore them until he met
an extravagantly well-supplied comrade who had not merely one
good pair on, made in the usual commonplace way, but another
half-worn one under his arm. " These my brother-in-law bought
of him for four hundred dollars," and they did him service on
the farm for some time after the war was over. One of her own
brothers had an even more expensive pair as times went, for be-
ing reduced to such a pass that he could " scarcely make a decent
appearance on the road, much less appear in his own settlement,"
a fellow-soldier gave him a long-hoarded silver dime, which was
exchanged without difficulty for a presentable pair at the next
farm-house. The war being then just about over, a bushel-basket
full of Confederate scrip would have been a small inducement in
comparison.

Aroer (New York : Catholic Publication Society Co.) is the
story of a vocation, not merely to the faith, but to the religious
life. It is by the author of Uriel and Lady Glastonburys Boudoir.
It is admirable in tone and tendency, as well as agreeably written
and thoughtful. The characters, too, especially that of the hero-
ine, are sketched in with fine and delicate touches. To a certain
class of readers we should recommend it as sure to be interest-
ing and suggestive. Still, it belongs emphatically to that class
of reading which is covered by the remark: "For those who
like this kind of thing, this is exactly the kind of thing they like."
The book is a true book, but true to that nature which has its
term in the supernatural, and which appeals, therefore, to a
sixth sense which is lacking to the rank and file of novel-readers.

696 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Feb.,

Like Norbertine in this story, before her ears were opened to
understand the voice that had been whispering to them all her
life, they do not know that " there are other romances besides
those of the world, and that the history of every religious voca-
tion is a romance more thrilling and more beautiful than any
love-story that ever was written ; why should I be afraid to say
it ? It is a love-story the wooing of the soul from all eternity
to the highest of all imaginable loves."

T. Y. Crowell & Co. (New York) publish a new and authorized
translation from the unabridged Russian manuscript of Count
Tolstoi's What to Do, a garbled version of which was issued last
year. It is more curious than profitable considered as a disserta-
tion on existing social evils and a suggested panacea for their
cure. That it is full of true things goes without saying, since
no one with eyes to see and a heart to feel can behold the mise-
ries of the poor, thrown up against the gilded background af-
forded by the ostentatious luxuries of the rich, without begin-
ning to pour forth a burden of "woes'' like those of a minor
prophet, if he open his lips at all. The earlier portion of
the book, in which the author relates his experience among
the poor of Moscow, beginning in 1881, is full of interest. He
tells of his first surprise at finding that " to beg in the name of
Christ," in the streets of that city, was a punishable offence ; then
of his interviews with different beggars, and his ill-success in get-
ting some of them to accept work when it was offered ; then of
the easy way in which his friends laughed off the matter when
he tried to bring home to them the state of things which his
personal researches in the poorer quarters of the city brought
to light; finally of the incessant clamor which his conscience
kept up concerning his own duty in the matter, and the result
to which he finally arrived in consequence of obeying it. While
on his way to this result it became necessary for him to investi-
gate the causes of the poverty and oppression for which he be-
lieves himself to be the first to have discovered a remedy ; the
first, that is to say, since our Lord Jesus Christ, whom he be-
lieves to have laid down a doctrine on the subject identical with
his own, but misinterpreted by His accredited followers until his
own new recognition of it. These causes are money not the love
of money, but money itself; cities, governments, church-Chris-
tianity, " positive science," and " art for art's sake." The object
of every one of these things he asserts to be the freeing of cer-
tain classes of men from manual labor by forcing others to do it
for them. He finds the church, the state, the scientists, and the

1889] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS.

artists all evil and pernicious, though in different degrees, the
two latter seeming to him the worst because they boldly claim to
be their own end ; they grasp knowingly, in the avowed character
of freebooters, common goods, to which their predecessors pre-
ferred claims whose justice has been sometimes universally,
and at all periods widely, acknowledged. He says :

" Every justification of one man's consumption of the labor of others
while producing none himself . . . always consists in these two assertions:
First, we take the labor of the masses because we are a peculiar people,
called by God to govern them and to teach them divine truths ; secondly,
those who compose the masses cannot be judges of the measure of labor
which we take from them for the good we do them, because, as it has been
said by the Pharisees, ' This multitude which knoweth not the law are
accursed ' (John vii. 49). . . . The justification of our time, notwithstand-
ing all apparent originality, in fact consists of the same fundamental asser-
tion : First, we are a peculiar people, we are an educated people, we further
progress and civilization, and by this fact we procure for the masses a
great advantage ; secondly, the uneducated crowd does not understand
that advantage we procure for them, and therefore cannot be judges of it. 1 '

Now, he goes on, there was some reason, or at least plausi-
bility, in the claims of emperors and popes, for if they them-
selves, and the people with them, believed in their divine call-
ing, they could plainly show how and why they ought to control
labor. But as for positive science and art, like the cataloguing
of different species of insects, for example, or the painting of
nude women, who recognizes the utility of such labors save the
men who pursue them solely for their own pleasure? The
priest, the statesman, has at least an answer to give to him
who inquires the reason for his existence,

"but the men of science and art do not consider it necessary to shel-
ter themselves under a pretence of usefulness. They assert that their
activity is the most necessary for all men, and that without it all mankind
would go to ruin. They assert that it is so, notwithstanding the fact that
nobody except themselves either understands or acknowledges their ac-
tivity, and notwithstanding the fact that, according to their own defini-
tion, true science and true art should not have a utilitarian aim."

Elsewhere he says that men have from the beginning been
in search of the true secret of life, and have made slow advances
all the time, in spite of the various deceits which have thrown
themselves across their path, insisting that there was no need
of struggle and that the inequalities of condition were a part of
the very law of life.

''There existed the awful old deceits of the church ; with dreadful strug-
gle, and little by little, men got rid of them ; but scarcely had they done so

698 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Feb.,

when in place of the old deceit arose a new one a state and philosophi-
cal one. Men freed themselves out of these, too. And now a new deceit,
a still worse one, springs up in their place the scientific one. This new
deceit is exactly such as the old ones were ; its essence consists in the sub-
stitution for reason and conscience of something external ; and this ex-
ternal thing is observation, as in theology it was revelation.

There is some very acute thinking in the critical portion of
this book ; it has a curious naivete" and sincerity. One recalls
the dialogues of Plato as akin to it in manner, with Diogenes,
perhaps, for chief interlocutor. One feels that Tolstoi despises
observation too much, that he has not extended his own very far
beyond the rim of the tub to which he invites those who in-
quire, What Must We Do to escape from the morass whose
slime we also feel and see? To us even your tub seems sinking
in it. You tell us that in manual labor, pursued by all men, lies
the sole hope of salvation ; that we must abolish money, aban-
don cities, resist no evil, even the evil of rebellion and wilful ignor-
ance in our own children, and that when we all do this which,
obviously, we never shall all do the great problem of the ages
will be solved. Meantime, for those of us who are so uneasy un-
der the present burden of the time that we are ready to follow
any prophet who can promise sensible alleviation for our private
share of it, what is to be the result for us when we have given
away one of our two coats, when we have emptied our own slops,
when we have dug our own potatoes and made our own boots?
The question is a natural one, since if it is by an extension cf our
personality that we learn compassion, it is by that also that we
intrench ourselves in selfishness. What will it profit me to aid
my brother, especially when I must sorely inconvenience myself
to do so?

Well, answers the Russian seer, if you are rich who ask, you
will have better health, you will be kinder, you will have an eas-
ier conscience, and, when a good many of you have followed my
example, the rest will gradually fall into rank, and so we shall
escape that dreadful danger of a social rising and anarchy which
now menaces on all sides. Is that all? goes on the inquirer, pre-
suming him not to have gone away sorrowful, like the rich
young man in the Gospel who put the same question to Him
whom Tolstoi' calls his Master, but to be ready to say with St.
Peter : " Behold, we have left all things and have followed
Thee. What shall we have therefor ?" Shall we possess life ever-
lasting? No, answers Tolstoi, this life is all. If the Master
seems to promise that, he must have been misrepresented. The

1889.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 699

kingdom of heaven is, as He said, within you. Come and help
clean the sewers, so that your brethren shall not have to do
all your dirty work for you, and you will find it. Your hands
will be harder and filthier, but your back will be stronger and
your heart lighter. Now, that in little is the sum of what
Count Tolstoi' has learned and teaches, and one does not hope-
fully anticipate a throng of rich young men, or lazy old ones, to
sell all and follow him to the practice of it.

Mr. Healy Thompson, to whose untiring pen English-speaking
Catholics already owe so much, has indefinitely increased their
obligations by his latest and most important work, The Life and
Glories of St. Joseph (London : Burns & Gates. For sale by the
Catholic Publication Society Co., New York). It is constructed,
as he says in his preface, with materials gathered from various
quarters, but principally from a recent dissertation by Canon
Vitali, published at Rome in 1883. The first ten chapters of the
volume are almost literally translated from the pages of Vitali,
and great use has been made of them throughout. Mr. Thomp-
son also draws from P. Josef Moreno's Spanish treatise on the
Virtues and Privileges of St. Joseph, issued at Seville in 1788,
besides availing himself of the visions and revelations of St.
Bridget and other contemplatives. His work, nevertheless,
remains distinctively his own, having a certain indescribable
character of solidity, fulness, lucidity, and unction which we
have learned to expect in all that comes from his hand. He
treats the theology of his subject at length, and it forms, without
question, the most interesting and suggestive portion of a work
in which nothing is unsuggestive or unfruitful. The chapters
entitled "Joseph included in the order of the Hypostatic
Union," "His Marriage decreed in Heaven," "The Betrothal,"
and "The Paternity of Joseph" are especially worthy of study.
So are those on "The Subjection of Jesus," "Joseph's Interior
Life of Prayer and Contemplation," and the two which imme-
diately follow them.

The devotion to St. Joseph is one of those which, while they
can be shown to have existed in the church from the first, have
come more and more prominently forward during the last five
hundred years. In our own century it has taken a surprising de-
velopment, and one which has the peculiarity of seeming to owe
most of its strength to the sentiment of the general body of the
faithful. For three centuries the tide of popular devotion to him
has been mounting, and it does not yet seem to have reached its
height. When Gerson preached before the Council of Constance

700 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Feb.,

on the prerogatives of St. Joseph his feast was only locally and
partially observed. Sixty-seven years later, in 1481, Sixtus IV. ap-
pointed it to be kept by the whole church ; in 1621 it was made a
feast of obligation. Pius IX., urged by the entire episcopate,
who in their turn had been petitioned on all sides by the Catholic
laity of the world, declared him Patron of the Universal Church
in 1870, having eight years earlier set the example of publicly in-
voking him before the Apostles Sts. Peter and Paul. At present
his cultus exceeds that paid to any saint, excepting our Lady. It
is a devotion whose roots go deep, striking into the very myster-
ies of the Incarnation and the Hypostatic Union. It is double-
sided, natural and mystical at once, and in both aspects dear and
fruitful to the adorers of the Word made Man. That it should
attain its complete development in this age, which is more and
more recognized as that of the peculiar ministration of the Holy
Spirit, is significant and Providential. The earthly type of the
Eternal Father, "whom no man hath beheld at any time"; the
most hidden and interior of the saints and the great patron of
hidden souls ; the virgin spouse of Mary, dearer to her, as she
herself declared to the Venerable Olier, than anything in heaven
or earth except her Son, has waited long, is still waiting, for the
complete manifestation of his glory, because the fulness of time
for him has not yet come. " What remains for us to do," asks
Canon Vitali, " that Joseph, our most powerful patron, should in-
terpose for us, for our families, for the Catholic Church, for the
entire world? One thing for us, and one for our holy mother
the church. We, by true love to Jesus, by sincere devotion to
Mary, by the practice of Christian virtues, by filial tenderness
and frequent exercises of piety toward St. Joseph, must render
ourselves worthy of his special protection. . . . Then our holy
mother the church will certainly be neither reluctant nor slow to
declare that Joseph is in dignity and glory superior, next to
Mary, to all the angels and saints, thus placing Joseph in his
true position, always and immediately close to his spouse, with-
out any exception, in the public prayers, sacred rites, and most
holy Sacrifice." Already, in the prayers ordered by the present
Pope to be said after each Mass, this juxtaposition, this pre-
cedence to the apostles, has publicly taken place, as doubtless it
had long done privately in many quarters.

1889] WITH READERS AND, CORRESPONDENTS. 701

WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS.

A CHAIN OF CONVERSIONS.

I must preface my remarks by saying that, as most of those who are described
herein are still living, fictitious names of persons and places will be substituted
for the real ones ; with this exception every word is true.

We were a happy little party of young men and boys who used to meet on

Friday evenings at No. 69 Prince Street, in the city of A . At No. 69 was the

boarding and day school of the Ritualistic parish of (I shall say) St. Alban's.
The head-master, whom I shall call Mr. Mountain, was a layman who wished to
found an order of teaching-brothers like those in the Catholic Church. He met
with little or no encouragement, however, and it is just as well that he did not,
because otherwise he might never have had the time to consider, as he has since
done, his duty of submitting to the Church of Christ.

The boys of the school were about twenty, all told. A number were English-
born like Mr. Mountain, and several of them were his wards. Two or three
clergymen besides myself I was an Episcopal minister were always considered
as belonging to the little coterie who gathered there once a week to eat apple-
dumplings, play games, and enjoy an hour or two of interesting conversation. Our
chat was often about the Catholic Church and her claims, and I am sure that at
that time each one of us was in the best of faith in holding our errors, and had the
truth been presented then very likely would have been too much blinded to have
recognized it. It is of the conversions which have followed among us since that
time that I propose to write.

My own was the first. Owing to certain difficulties it was decided to close the
school, and Mr. Mountain and his wards, with a number of other boys, went
to the West and began ranch-life. I was thus deprived of their congenial and
pleasant companionship and thrown on myself far more than I had been before,
and, owing to the prayers and Masses which were being constantly said for me,
I received the great grace to become a Catholic about six months after our school
was closed. I say nothing of the details of my own conversion, as it was the
ordinary dreary road through Ritualism which has lately been well described in
this department of THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

There was a poor Irishwoman who used to come to the school every week to
scrub, and I have since learned that she, seeing our feeble efforts to be Catholics,
devoted herself to praying for our conversion. There were many others of the
same class the poor, servants, laboring men, and others who were acquainted
with us ; these faithful children of God, of whom such a multitude are members
of the Catholic Church, were greatly interested in our struggles toward the light,
and offered up many prayers for us. The poor old scrub-woman is since dead,
but, in the words of one who knew her, " No doubt she is rejoicing in heaven
with the angels of God at the conversion of those for whom she prayed so much
on earth."

A few weeks after I had been received into the Catholic Church I had the
happiness of visiting the Threshold of the Apostles, in company with one of the
young men from the school. He was the second convert. He received the grace
in this way : One evening we were discussing religion, and I remember that he

7O2 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Feb.,

was very bitter against the Pope and Infallibility. " How," said he, " can a man
of himself teach me all truth ? "

" He cannot," I replied, "but in this case the Holy Father is promised the
assistance of the Holy Spirit, and speaks not of himself, but of the Spirit of God,
who speaks by him."

" I don't believe it," he answered, "and it is because he has claimed such a
blasphemous power that God has punished the Bishop of Rome by allowing the
Italians to possess the city."

Seeing that there was no use of any further words on the subject, I said :
" Very well, let us end our discussion right here. I believe, and you do not.
You are going to see him whom you have abused to-night in his own city, a captive
in his palace. I hope you will not have so bad an opinion of him when you
return after to-morrow's ceremony."

The next morning, after rising early and donning the customary dress-suit
required, my friend went away shortly after breakfast. I heard Mass as usual
and prayed to the blessed Mother of God for the conversion of him who was so
bitter against the church. It was the festival of the Coronation of the Holy
Father, celebrated in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican.

At lunch those of our boarders who had been at the function were enthusias-
tic in their admiration. All were agreed that they had been wonderfully im-
pressed. " But what was the cause of this great impression ? What made it all
so grand ? "

" Oh ! it was the peacock fans," cried one. " No, it was the way in which the
Pope was carried in his chair," said another. " I think the music had more to do
with it than anything else," remarked a third. And a fourth was of the opinion
"that it must be the way they dress the Pope with the tiara and vestments."

It was quite amusing, and at the same time not a little disgusting, to listen to
these absurd reasons for the great impression which had been produced on these
sightseers. But happening to look at the face of my young friend, I saw that he
shared my feelings in no small degree. I was surprised. We had agreed to go
and visit the catacomb of St. Domatilla in the afternoon. So we provided a good
supply of candles and, taking a carriage, started off. " Well, what impressed
you the most this morning ? " I asked, imitating the flippant tone of those people
who had been discussing the subject.

" Please don't ! " he answered. " I believe that Leo XIII. is the Vicar of
Christ." He then went on to tell me that after the Mass, when the Pope was
being carried out, the procession stopped fora moment, and that the Holy Father,
being close to him as he knelt, had looked down into his face and blessed him.
" Yes, he blessed me ; he looked into my eyes and blessed me !"

Oh ! how proud he was of that blessing. A few months after, having been
duly instructed, he was received. This was convert number two from our circle
of school friends. Number three was destined to be the head-master himself,
Mr. Mountain.

About six months before I became a Catholic, as already related, the school
was closed, and Mr. Mountain and several of the older boys moved to one of the
States in the far West to engage in ranching. There, after about three years, Mr.
Mountain at last made up his mind to do as we had done, and late in the fall of
the year he rode on horseback over eighty miles to be received. When he ar-
rived the priest of the station had gone, leaving word that he was to be away
for a month, and the poor man journeyed back again to wait till the winter was

i8?9-] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 703

over. Then he went to the capital of the State, and there made the act which he
had been waiting to make so long.

Among the number who used to meet at "69 " was a young man of twenty,
who went West about a year after Mr. Mountain and lived a short distance from
him, and whom I will call Harry. Meantime, the friend of my travels in Europe
joined Mr. Mountain at his ranch. Harry was one of the liveliest and best-na-
tured of all the boys, full of life, wit, and at the same time possessing the rare
quality in persons of his temperament of not giving offence by his antics. The
same fall he was stricken down with fever, and it came to the time when he was
called to leave this earth. My friend of the Roman experience was by, and to
him Harry said : " I want to be a Catholic, as you are ; I want to become a Ro-
man Catholic now that I am dying." And so the waters of baptism flowed over
his soul, and he went to join the band of intercessors in heaven. He is number
four.

The fifth one was the " little boy " of the school, and one who was considered
almost too frail for this world. But years work wonders with children, both in
body and soul. He lived with Mr. Mountain, and now rides his horse with the
best of them and does his day's work with the stoutest. But, better still, he has
written me that he could not rest until he had come to us. And so last June he,
as the crown of a long and tedious journey, received baptism.

These three our old head-master, my Roman convert, and " the little boy "
now live together, and, although miles from any priest and without the opportu-
nity of frequenting the Sacraments, yet they are faithfully trying to sanctify
themselves.

Our prayers have reached around the world, and we have no doubt but that
they had their part in obtaining the conversion of one who, though not of our
little band, yet was indirectly connected with us, and whose conversion has set
the tongues of many of his sect to wagging.

So I have tried to show how Almighty God answers prayer. Our humble
Catholic friends begged our conversion of God and we were converted. We have
persevered, not only in the faith, but in praying for the conversion of the other
members of our little circle, and we have won glorious victories. The work is
not yet done ; it still goes on, and I hope some day to be able to chronicle the con-
version of all of our school and many of the friends and relations of the boys.

And now, Deo gratias ! I beg the prayers of all who may read this sketch
for those of our friends of " 69 " who are yet in darkness, that their good fortune
may be to soon come to the light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

SACERDOS.

THE EDUCATION OF THE SOUTHERN NEGROES.

The census of 1870 counted 4,880,009 negroes in the United States. The
census of 1880 made their numbers at 6,580,793. At that ratio of increase,
the colored people in this country at the present time must be about 7,750,000.
More than six-sevenths of these millions live in the sixteen States of Alabama,
Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Missis-
sippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia,
West Virginia, and in the District of Columbia. The forthcoming report of the
United States Commissioner of Education, which is for the year 1886-87, esti-
mates that there is a school population among this multitude of colored inhabi-
tants of 2,200,000.

704 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Feb.,

What are those States doing for the education of these children ?

They have provided about 19,000 public schools primary and grammar in
which about 1,110,000 boys and girls are trained in the three R's during an
average period of four months in the year. Besides, they support a number of
high schools and normal schools. But, as these institutions are conducted by
Protestants for Protestants, under Protestant auspices, they may be numbered
and classed with the denominational schools.

What, then, are Protestants, as such, doing for the education of these chil-
dren ? They are managing 34 normal schools, in which there are 281 teachers
and 6,207 students ; 46 institutions for secondary instruction, in which there are
270 teachers and 9,854 students ; 18 universities and colleges, in which there are
206 teachers and 4,846 students ; 23 schools of theology, in which there are 100
teachers and 1,260 students ; 4 schools of law, in which there are i6teachers and
loo students ; 3 schools of medicine, i school of pharmacy, and i school of den-
tistry, in which there are 22 teachers and 208 students. The most active workers
for the negroes of the South are the Methodists and the Baptists. The Presby-
terians come next, and the Episcopalians and the Congregationalists follow ; but
all the sects contribute to the Protestant propaganda among the colored people,
and even such small denominations as the Campbellites (Christians) and the
Quakers (Friends) have schools of their own for them.

The Protestant schools for higher education are beginning to exert a mighty
influence on the colored people of the South. They are constantly moulding
13,000 young men and women, and every year they send out a small army of
teachers, preachers, lawyers, doctors, musicians, leaders in politics, etc., etc.
These instructed negroes leaven the mass of their race, and stamp on their
neighbors the impression that has been made on them. They serve to elevate
their kin and to spread among their companions a desire for education, and the
.places left vacant by them in these institutions are forthwith taken.

The intelligent, industrious, and progressive negroes in the South appreciate
the work that Protestants are doing for their uplifting. They are grateful to
their friends, and eager to avail themselves of the opportunities of instruction
open to them. As Dr. Robert A. Reynolds, who received his medical education
at Shaw University, Raleigh, N. C., said in his graduating oration last June :

" In the rapid and wonderful development of higher schools of learning among the col-
ored people, the success already attained is unrivalled in the history of any race. Through the
liberality of Northern friends and philanthropists, school after school has been founded all
over this broad Southland, and we venture to say that our race, at the end of twenty years, is
in the possession of better educational advantages, in almost every department of sound learn-
ing and scientific knowledge, than the early settlers of this country enjoyed at the close of
two centuries of earnest toil and persistent efforts in the cause of higher education."

And, truly, these Protestant institutions are well equipped for the work before
them. Take, for instance, Biddle University, at Charlotte, North Carolina,
which I visited a few days ago. It has a beautiful site, on an elevated plateau
overlooking the town. It owns fifty acres. It has a magnificent college build-
ing, which cost $40,000, and other structures dormitories for the students and
residences for the professors which, with the land, make its real estate worth
about $75,000. It is supported by the Presbyterian Board of Missions for Freed-
men, with headquarters at Pittsburgh. It has a faculty of 10 professors, 9 of
whom are white men and 6 of whom are ministers. Its president, Rev. W. F.
Johnson, D.D., was for a number of years a missionary in India. It has a theo-

1889.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 705

logical, a collegiate classical and scientific a preparatory, an elementary Eng-
lish, and an industrial department. The course of instruction in Biddle's
theological department is outlined in its prospectus as follows :

Junior year : Hebrew Grammar, Genesis ; Theology Hodge's Outlines ;
Greek Exegesis Pauline Epistles ; and Sacred History. Middle year : Hebrew
Grammar Psalms ; Systematic Theology Hodge's ; Greek Exegesis Pauline
Epistles ; Church History ; Homiletics Broadus. Senior year : Pastoral Theol-
ogy ; Greek Exegesis Pauline Epistles ; Hebrew Exegesis Isaias ; Church
Government, Presbyterian Law Hodge. Weekly exercises in sermonizing are
begun in the Junior year, and continue throughout the course.

The curriculum in the collegiate department may be inferred from this sum-
mary of the studies : Classical course Freshman year : Latin Virgil, Grammar,
Prose Composition ; Greek Anabasis, Grammar ; Geometry ; Outlines of History;
Book-keeping. Sophomore year : Latin Horace, Tacitus' Germania ; Greek
Homer, Memorabilia ; Geometry ; Natural Science Physics, Botany. Junior
year : Natural Science Physical Geography, Astronomy ; Greek Plato, Pro-
metheus Vinctus, New Testament ; Mathematics Plane Trigonometry, Spheri-
cal Trigonometry, Surveying; English Classics. Senior year: Mental Philoso-
phy Haven's; Logic McCosh's; Evidences of Christianity; Science and
Religion ; Moral Philosophy Alexander's ; English Literature ; Political Econ-
omy ; Civil Government ; Zoology ; Chemistry. There is also a scientific course
of four years, which gives the student an excellent general education with the
exception of the Greek and Latin classics.

In the industrial department the young men are trained in various handi-
crafts printing, carpentry, mechanical drawing, etc., etc. All the boarders are
required to work at manual labor at least one hour a day, " in order to preserve
health, keep the buildings in order, and improve and beautify the grounds." There
is no charge for tuition. The boarders pay eight dollars a month for subsist-
ence. The day scholars pay four dollars and fifty cents a year for incidentals.
Not only is education given free, but candidates for the ministry and other young
men of promise also receive aid towards their support while making their studies
during the eight months which constitute the scholastic year. Last year Biddle
had 179 students 12 in the theological, 46 in the collegiate, 52 in the preparatory,
and 69 in the elementary English department. Of its graduates 21 have become
preachers, 22 teachers, i a missionary in Africa, and 6, having completed the
collegiate course, are studying for the ministry.

The two other colleges for colored students in North Carolina Shaw Uni-
versity (Baptist), at Raleigh, and Livingstone College (African Methodist
Episcopal), at Salisbury both admit to their classes young women as well as
young men, and the girls, many of whom expect to become teachers, are taught
dressmaking, cooking, and other domestic arts, as well as the usual literary
branches of study.

Through its one hundred and thirty academies, normal schools, and colleges
in the South Protestantism is getting a firm hold on the negroes. It is religious
error that has opened the fountains of intelligence to the blacks, and, by instruct-
ing its youth, hopes to control the future of the race.

Now let us ask what are Catholics doing for the education of these children ?

In the sixteen States and District of Columbia under consideration we have,
as a set-off to the 51 Protestant colleges, universities, and schools of theology, i
seminary, not, alas ! for the training of colored teachers and priests, yet for the
VOL. XLVIII. 45

706 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Feb.,

education of missionaries who shall swear to minister exclusively to the negroes
as their fathers and servants ; opposed to the 80 high schools and normal schools
supported by Protestants, we have i academy for colored girls ; and side by
side with their 19,000 primary schools, we have about 90 parochial schools scat-
tered over the South, and varying in numbers of pupils from 30 to the 400 who
attend St. Francis Xavier's School, Baltimore. In two or three of the Northern
States Kansas, for example we have a few parochial schools, and, besides the
institutions mentioned, we have four orphan asylums for colored children.

Wisely the fathers of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore ordered that a
collection should be taken up annually in all the churches under their jurisdic-
tion for the benefit, partly, of the negroes in the United States, for unless the
Catholic Church labors for their conversion in the days of their spiritual, mental,
and material destitution, how can it hope to save them when they are given over
to heresy by conviction, by lapse of time, and by ties of gratitude ?

L. W. REILLY.

A PROTESTANT MISSIONARY PROBLEM.

In the October (1888) number of THE CATHOLIC WORLD I quoted the
testimony of Sir Willian Hunter, a zealous Protestant, as to the superiority of
Catholic over Protestant missions, and now I propose to give the observations
of Canon Taylor, a prominent Church-of-England divine. Writing in the Fort-
nightly Review of last October, he says :

" I believe our (Protestant) methods are not only unsuccessful but altogether wrong. We
must return to those methods which were crowned with such marvellous triumphs in the cen-
turies which saw th*e conversion of the Roman Empire and of the Northern nations. The
modern method is to hire a class of professional missionaries a mercenary army, which, like
other mercenary armies, may be admirably disciplined and may earn its pay, but will never do
the work of the real soldiers of the cross. The hireling may be an excellent hireling, but tor
all that he is only a hireling. If the work is to be done we must have men influenced with the
apostolic spirit, the spirit of St. Paul, of St. Columba, of St. Columbanus, and of St. Xavier.
These men brought whole nations to Christ, and such men only, if such men can be found, will
reap the harvest of the heathen world. They must serve, not for pay, but solely for the love of
God. They must give up all European comforts and European society, and cast their lot with
the natives, and live as the natives live, counting their lives for naught and striving to make
converts, not by the help of Paley's Evidences, etc. . . . The best preachers are not our
words, but our lives; and our deaths, if need be, are better preachers still. We must hc4d up
the spectacle of devoted lives to enable the people to understand the first elements of the Chris-
tian faith.

" General Gordon, in one of his last letters, has told us the same hard truth. Writing
from Khartoum, he says in his trenchant style : ' There is not the least doubt that there is an
immense virgin field for an apostle in these countries among the black tribes. But where will
you find an apostle ? A man must give up everything, understand everything, everything !
No half or three-quarter measure will do. He must be dead to the world, have no ties of any
sort, and long for death when it may please God to take him. There are few, very few such.
And yet what a field ! ' And General Gordon, a zealous Puritan Protestant if there ever was
one, found none but the Roman Catholics who came up to his ideal of the absolute self-devo-
tion of the apostolic missionary. In China he found the Protestant missionaries with com-
fortable salaries of ^300 a year preferring to stay on the coast, where English comforts and
English society could be had, while the Roman priests left Europe never to return, living in the
interior with the natives, as the natives lived, without wife, or child, or salary, or comforts, or
society. Hence these priests succeed as they deserve to succeed, while the professional Pro-
testant missionary fails. True missionary work is necessarily heroic work, and heroic work can
only be done by heroes. Men not cast in the heroic mould are only costly cumbrances."

i8?9-] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 707

When I was quite a small boy and still a Protestant I chanced to hear a
C^ngregationalist lay -preacher discoursing from the pulpit on the life and mis-
sion of Francis Xavier. I was actually spell-bound by it. The service of Jesus
Christ from that hour became in my mind invested with a beauty and glory that
was irresistible.

We ought to be attracted rather than repelled by a lofty ideal ; for what
stronger argument could there be for the divinity of a religion than to find that it
requires such a type of vocation for its missionaries as Mr. Taylor would have ?
" The servant is not greater than his master," and if the Son of God was what
the church declares him to have been, his missionaries must be something like
him.*

The failure of such missionaries as Canon Taylor describes is well estab-
lished, easily understood, and General Gordon's pious offence at it is not to be
wondered at.

Dr. Taylor speaks again on this subject in an article in the Fortnightly for
last November, treating among other questions that of the celibacy of mis
sionaries :

"The missionaries of the Church Missionary Society (Church of England) as a rule
marry young ; they are offered salaries, pensions, and provision for their wives and chil-
dren. . . . Whether missionaries should be celibates or married men is a difficult question,,
and there is much that may be said on either side. In favor of matrimony it is urged

" i. That a woman's influence is needful for teaching girls. It is replied that this influence
can be as well or better exercised through sisterhoods.

"2. That missionaries feel lonely and want society. It is replied that brotherhoods of
men living in community are much more effective than isolated missionaries.

" 3. That scandals are prevented. It is replied that the serious lapses from morality which
we have lately had to deplore have not occurred among celibates, but among married mission-
aries and widowers. . . . Doubtless the celibacy of the Roman Catholic missionaries affords an.
explanation of the small cost at which their missions are conducted, and probably also of their
comparative success. All the great apostolic missionaries the pioneers of missionary enter-
prisewere celibates. St. Columba, St. Columbanus, St. Aidan, St. Chad, St. Gall, St. Pau-
linus, St. Boniface, St. Methodius, and St. Francis Xavier were celibates. The greatest of
them all, St. Paul, gives a sufficient reason for his own practice : ' He that is unmarried careth
for the things that belong unto the Lord, how he may please the Lord ; but he that is married
careth for the things that are of this world, how he may please his wife.' "

It is all very well for Canon Taylor to point out the advantages of voluntary
poverty and chastity in the missionary, but it is quite another thing to get it put
into general practice. It runs counter to the whole Protestant system of religion.
The few among Protestants who advocate and practice these virtues which the
writer so extols are only viewed by the mass of their brethren as " Romanizers. "
Celibacy among Protestant missionaries will not work, as a rule. If the mis-
sionaries as a class have got to give up wife and salary to get the heathen into

* It is said that the heroic Gordon, so feelingly referred to by Canon Taylor, loved in his
last days often to repeat the following lines from Newman's Dream o/Gerontius ;
" JESU, MARIA ! I am near to death,
And Thou art calling me ; I know it now.
Not by the token of this faltering breath,
This chill at heart, this dampness on my brow ;
(Jesu, have mercy ! Mary, pray for me I)
'Tis this new feeling, never felt before,
(Be with me, Lord, in my extremity !)
That I am going, that I am no more. "

7o8 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [F&b.,

heaven, then the heathen must die without the hope "of heaven ; that is the long
and short of the whole question. We sincerely wish that instead of clinging to a
system of religion which from its very beginning has lowered the sublime stan-
dard of Christian excellence in the ministry to nothing but the ordinary rule of
those who must serve Christ encumbered with worldly ties these would-be
zealous apostles to the heathen could behold the divine life and unity of the
Catholic Church. The Universities Mission, a society which in the spirit of the
Oxford High-Church movement has been of late years conducting missions ac-
cording to the rules of chastity and purity as practised by Catholic missionaries,
is brought forward by Canon Taylor as an example of Protestant success, and I
do not question the truth of his statements regarding it ; at the same time the
great obstacle which it has to encounter is the lack of unity with the Catholic
Church, together with its isolation from the vast majority of its own communion
on account of fundamental differences in doctrine and practice. The adoption of
its principles and methods by other Protestants would involve the renunciation of
what was the main-spring of the Reformation, and, even if this were done, the
great essential of unity would be wanting, a deficiency equivalent to that of an
artery severed from the heart.

Rival churches and rival missionary societies are a great hindrance to the
spread of the Gospel. This is universally admitted by those who have studied
and weighed the question. If all the time, energy, and money which are sacrific-
ed by the competing sects were only applied by a united body of Christians for
one object, how different would be the results ! If the Kingdom of God on earth
were a house divided against itself, its defeat would be certain. Now, while to
some this may appear to be the case, the divine unity of the church has been un-
questionably proved, as it could be in no more practical way, by the continued rise
of new sects and their constant warfare against her. This opposition will con-
tinue, in all probability, while the world lasts ; but we know that unity can never
be destroyed, nor the true Gospel ever fail to be preached throughout the whole
world. H. H. WYMAN.

READING CIRCLES.

From widely separated cities and towns of the United States have come let-
ters approving the formation of Catholic Reading Circles. One young lady has
gone to work in a most practical way by visiting the public libraries in the vicin-
ity of her home to make inquiries as to the number of Catholic books accessible.
In many places there is a library revenue from the public funds, and those in
charge are quite willing to allow due recognition to the claims of Catholics when
mrged with propriety and vigor.

" MILWAUKEE, Wis.

" I visited the State Historical Library, and found about three dozen works by Catholic
writers, possibly more, but at any rate a small proportion ; nearly all showed evidences of use.
Are not such people desirable to reach ? If Catholics would occasionally recommend Catholic
works, their influence would be far-reaching. J. E. P."

"URSULINE CONVENT, St. Martin's, Brown Co., Ohio.

" In the December issue of THE WORLD I note with great pleasure your appeal to the
Catholic public to form a Reading Circle. It would undoubtedly be the means of untoM good,
and I beg to offer you our humble cooperation among our pupils of to-day and of past years in
.any way that may be suggested.

" Assuring you of our earnest prayers for your success in bringing about this good work,

" SISTER M. URSULA, Superior."

1889.] WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 709

We esteem very highly this generous offer of assistance from St. Martin's
Academy. It has many illustrious names among its graduates. To show the
need of having our educational institutions engage in the work under considera-
tion, we may quote the practical and suggestive advice which Provost Wenham,
the honorary secretary of St. Anselm's Society, gives in a recent letter on " Cur-
rent Literature and its Dangers," addressed to the superiors of our principal
colleges and schools. He thinks, and very justly too, that the only safeguard
for Catholic youth of both sexes and all classes, who on leaving school are al-
most inevitably exposed to the danger of pernicious books, consists in their
having been previously trained, with a special view to this temptation, to take
care of themselves. Homes are the best means through which a judicious taste
in literature can be excited and encouraged ; but schools also can do a great
deal towards this object if they possess a good general library of sound works,
and teachers able and anxious to direct their young, impressionable pupils in the
courses best adapted to their different necessities in life. St. Anselm's Society,
through Provost Wenham 's pen, asks for the cooperation and assistance of the
leading schools in combating the present danger, and of suggestions as to the
most efficacious means of doing so. The entire letter argues powerfully though
indirectly that "every Catholic is bound to do what can be done to make litera-
ture beneficent, and to use the development of education to religious and moral
ends.''

" BUFFALO, N. Y.

" We have been wondering, my friends and I, whether, as it seems to embody one of her
pet schemes, the article on Reading Circles in THE CATHOLIC WORLD was not from the gifted
pen of Miss Eliza Allen Starr, who is well known and well loved in Buffalo. It seems to me
that with energetic and talented women at its head, and surely we Catholics possess plenty
such in every American city, a Catholic society on the same level ought to more than fill the
place of such bigoted institutions as the ' Chautauqua Summer School ' and the Boston
' Society for the Encouragement of Home Studies.' M. L. S."

" ALEXANDRIA, LA.

" READING CIRCLE : With great pleasure I saw a notice in the December number of CATH-
OLIC WORLD of a proposed Reading Circle for the benefit of those wishing to improve them-
selves. It would fill a want I have felt deeply for several years. Thinking my experience
might be an encouragement to the movement, I will trespass on your time and give some facts
regarding my life which will show how much good might be done by a work of this kind if well
managed and conducted with economic views, so as to meet the wants of the rich and poor.
By the death of a daughter educated in a Canadian convent, my mother, myself, and three
children were led by the grace of God to know the truth and become members of the one fold
and sheep of the one true Shepherd. Since then all the family save two have been admitted into
the true church. At the time of our conversion myself and daughter were readers in the Chau-
tauqua Circle. We found, though a most excellent plan, it would not do for Catholics, as all
historical matter was so conducted as to leave out everything Catholic possible, and the rest so
obscure that the dark side alone of their place in the world could be known, save by those suf-
ficiently well read to detect their errors, and they of course had very little use for the guidance
of the circles. I am anxious to become a member, and think there are quite a number here
who would join at once. I suppose those at a distance, like ourselves, would have to form
branch circles, subject to the direction of the central body. M. J. W."

" DETROIT, MICH.

"It is easy to conceive of the immense amount of good that might be tffected by the pro-
posed ' Reading Circles.'

" Even in my limited experience I have often been asked questions concerning the selection
of books to reader to purchase which would be answered by the proposed 'guide lists.'
Many persons are induced by canvassers to buy books that are of no use, perhaps even of in-

7io WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Feb.,

jury if read, who would be glad to pay the same amount for good books if they only had the
means of ascertaining their character.

" The main consideration in carrying out the plan seems to me to obtain the right person or
persons to manage the circles and decide on the books. An impartial and bold course is requi-
site, as well as a competent judge of historical, scientific, and literary merit. H. F. B."

" MILES, MICH. 1

" I have so often wondered at the indifference of Catholics for their own literature. Among
a good deal that may be of indifferent merit there is certainly a large amount of a very superior
quality. H. H. T. "

" HARTFORD, CONN.

"I have had many opportunities to join Reading Circles, but have always refrained from
doing so because I disliked, for personal reasons, the social element of many, and because
others were connected with churches of various denominations.

"Catholic literature is expensive and beyond the reach of many of our people. I am a mem-
ber of the Library Association, but am unable to get any current Catholic literature or

obtain any Catholic magazine in the library's reading room. Such obstacles as these would be
overcome by the Catholic publishers allowing a liberal discount on their books, as other pub-
lishers allow to the Chautauqua and to the Teachers' National Reading Circle. I sincerely
trust that the plan proposed by THE CATHOLIC WORLD will succeed, and I know God will bless
those who are instrumental in furnishing advice and assistance to those in want of the same.
I shall be very happy to become a member if my slender means will allow it. M. F. C."

" BOZEMAN, MONTANA TERRITORY.

"Seeing a notice of a plan to further the reading of good Catholic literature I wish to
know what that plan is. The article I refer to spoke as if the idea was for the benefit of
young women, but I do not see why such a plan would not be of benefit to me. W. J. W."

This young man in Montana will get all the information about Reading Circles
if he reads THE CATHOLIC WORLD regularly, and he is quite welcome to utilize it
for his own benefit. At present the chief object is to gather suggestions in re-
gard to the needs of young ladies who are anxious for their own self-improve-
ment. Each one interested in this inquiry should send at least a short note
written only on one side of the paper to the office of THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
Just now it is desirable to know how many can be relied on to become active
members. There are many places yet to be heard from, especially the cities and
towns where parochial libraries have been established. Much good can be done
by persistent efforts to secure a larger supply of- Catholic books in public libra-
ries. Some reliable statistics on this point will show what recognition is given to
the works of Catholic writers.

We announce with pleasure that a very competent person has agreed to per-
form gratuitously the duties of corresponding secretary for the Reading Circles.
It has been decided, also, that every one desiring to be enrolled as a member should
send ten cents in postage-stamps to assist in defraying the expense of printing
and circulating the first list of books to be recommended, which is now being
prepared. Correspondents are requested to name books of fiction by Catholic
American writers ; give a short synopsis of each book, and by whom it was pub-
lished. Write only on one side of the paper.

READING CIRCLES.

1889.] NE w PUBLIC A TIONS. 7 1 1

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE NUN OF KENMARE. An Autobiography. Boston : Ticknor & Co.

This book is an autobiographical scold at Catholic prelates in Eng-
land, Ireland, and America because they would not believe that its writer
had a genuine vocation to found a religious community. Now, it is very
hard to ask either prelate, priest, or layman to believe that a person is
gifted with the graces of a founder on that person's mere claim of them,
backed by some formal words of commendation from the Holy See.
Meantime it is preposterous for her to say that she is injured by the re-
fusal of a bishop to give her place in his diocese. Foundress or no found-
ress, she must win her way by merit and not by lofty pretensions alone.
It is also preposterous for her to resign her office of foundress by printing
in the daily papers a letter to Leo XIII. giving up the mission he (as she
claims) allowed her to assume, and which the perversity and general bad
conduct of his bishops, as she alleges, prevented her from carrying out.
We think the effect of it all will be that she will establish herself, not as a
foundress in the Catholic Church, but as a garrulous old person in a brief
scolding match with the Catholic press. She seems a very self-conscious
and headstrong character, who had apparently done much good in Ireland
during the last famine and let the world know of it after the manner of
those who get their reward in this world ; in her autobiography are printed
many pages of newspaper puffs of the Nun of Kenmare.

She is an Englishwoman, her name in the world being Cusack, and
she was received into the church in 1858, having been a member of an
Anglican sisterhood. She entered a convent of Poor Clares at Kenmare,
in the west of Ireland, and during her twenty-one years of residence there
wrote several books, most of them useful though none of them of con-
spicuous merit. In 1881 she left that convent, having, as she claims, re-
ceived her dispensation, and some time afterwards began to pose as a
foundress. In several places she was received by the bishops with a
welcome which did not anywhere compare in heartiness with their fare-
well. Zeal, energy, enterprise, and kindred virtues she doubtless had in
some degree, or she could not have had the favor even for a limited time
of the men whose names she is able to produce in commendation of one
or other of her works of charity and religion. Nor is it necessary to say
that there is no truth whatever in the complaints she makes, for she has
not been privileged to deal with angels, but with men and women. She has
met the human side of the church, and has not been able to show it an
angelic side of her own nature. But she leaves you to infer that she was
always right and the ecclesiastical authorities always wrong. She is all
wrought up with a burning sensa of wrong because she has failed in dis-
criminating between the Catholic religion and the Catholic official. But
the upshot of her career as a foundress, as told in this book, is that she
came to grief with everybody; and the discreet reader will be likely to
conclude that everybody came to grief with her. Whatever may be

NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Feb.,

the pros and cons of any particular difference between her and the pre-
lates whom she accuses, this much is certain she is about as unlike that
unique character in religious history known as the foundress as possibly
can be. ' ..1

Perhaps this book will do harm. There are some pretty hot para-
graphs of abuse of bishops in it, and some despicable attacks on the whole
body of the Catholic clergy. These last are, we more than suspect,
made up of the slanderous whispers of drunken priests and other clerical
vagabonds, who, having been degraded and expelled from their dioceses,
purchased her favor or fed her envy by their scandalous gossip. So we
may expect that some use will be made of the book by the enemies
of the Catholic religion, and that its author will figure for her brief remain-
der of life as an escaped nun of the more genteel class. But the book is
rambling and disconnected, not very interesting, and evidently the out-
come of a long campaign of hard pounding with Catholic church digni-
taries.

After reading this autobiography we feel rather more than doubtful
whether or not the Nun of Kenmare ever had a soundly established in-
tellectual conviction of Catholic truth. Like others who have had diffi-
culties with their ecclesiastical superiors, and have appealed from them to
the profanum -vulgus, whether from the public rostrum or in the secular
press, she seems never to have gained a true notion of the right of the
church to pass laws and to appoint officers to execute them, a right which
is divine and supreme, and to be obeyed and respected accordingly, a
right which is the best safeguard of Christian liberty. Her entering the
Puseyite convent, then the Catholic Church, afterwards the Poor Clares'
convent, then opening her own convent at Knock, and finally her "found-
ing an order," are all only specimens of the " many plans '' which occupied
her distracted and turbulent career, and which are spoken of by one of
the American prelates whom she soundly berates for advising her to go
home to her old convent.

The following passage, we deeply regret to say, indicates a falling away
from the faith : " When I first was received into the Roman Catholic
Church I was taught, as all Catholics were taught then, that the church
was infallible ; that when the Apostles said, ' It seems good to the Holy
Ghost and to us,' they spoke collectively, as the church did then. . . .
What a change from this dogma to the present teaching of the same
church ! No longer do you hear, ' It seems good to the Holy Ghost and
to us,' but the cry is, ' It seems good to the Holy Ghost and to meS
The voice of the church is practically lost in the voice of a single man ''

(p. 17).

There are other passages not a few which give not unreasonable
ground for suspicion of apostasy.

FROM WORLD TO CLOISTER; or, My Novitiate. By Bernard. London:
Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. (New York : The Catholic Publication
Society Co.)

Several books have been written describing the mode of life of religious
orders, some (like that of Steinmetz) in a hostile spirit.-others of so senti-
mental a character as to repel the more sensible reader. The present work

1889.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 7 1 3

is by far the best of the kind which we have read. Its author when he
entered the novitiate was a man of mature years, one well acquainted
with the world, interested in all those subjects for which men of educa-
tion care literature, art, politics. He entered after full deliberation, know-
ing what he was about; he was no sdured or disappointed man (in fact, he
had been fairly successful), but he had weighed the things of the world
in the balance of the sanctuary. He did not look upon the monastery as
a spiritual refuge or hospital, but as a place which offered to him the
opportunity of making to God the most complete sacrifice of which man is
capable.

The life in the novitiate is consequently described by one who is able to
sympathize with those who have been brought up under nineteenth-cen-
tury influences, and who in addition has no small literary skill. The style
is so clear and simple that the reader will never be able to forget this
picture of a life which is being passed in the very heart of London.

The following extract (perhaps somewhat too long) will give an idea of
the character and spirit of the work:

"On Thursday nights we had nocturnal adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, and this was
one of the most enjoyable customs of the community. . . . The hours of watch were allotted to
the religious, . . . each taking his turn. . . . We novices seldom entered the church, which was
open to the congregation, and then perhaps only on Sunday for some procession. What a con-
trast between such an occasion and this midnight watch ! Then the building was closely
crowded by a fashionable, idle, highly dressed congregation, brought thither mainly by the
luscious music, the pretty pageantry, or mere curiosity to see the monks. The air was heavy
with perfume, the ear filled with the sweet sound of the chanted litany or the grand tones of
the organ in the Salve Regina. As we paced slowly round we had on such days to stand a
running fire of curious, sometimes impertinent, and mostly unsympathizing gazers, or to listen
to whispered sneers from Protestants who, having paid their entrance, thought themselves jus-
tified in criticising as at a theatre. Now all was still and hushed ; I was the sole occupant of
the holy place, and I was kneeling before its Lord and Master, in whose honor it had been
built. Gazing at the Blessed Sacrament enthroned on high, with heart uplifted in prayer, the
moments flew swiftly by. Occasionally the silence was broken by the rattle of a hansom cab
conveying some belated reveller home, or a lumbering market-garden van would roll slowly by.
Once I remember the air seemed to grow thick with eager cries of ' Fire ! ' and the fire-engine
galloped by with a noise like thunder ; then all was still again until the shouts of a drunken
man or the grim rebukes of the police again disturbed the watcher. But all this was momen-
tary, and over and above all shone the Blessed Sacrament on high. Think of the contrast :
But a few yards beyond lay great London, in the full tide of pleasure, folly, dissipation, and
vice ; theatres, music-halls open, balls and routs in progress, its streets frequented by the gay,
the profligate, and the rogue seeking his prey. It was a temple of pleasure where sacrifice was
being offered to the god of this world, and in which might be seen nearly all that was lovely, or
costly, or rare, or luxurious, or mean, or base ; while here religion had erected a throne for her
God, before whom bent one simple monk, praying for his own sins and those of the thousands
who never pray for themselves. The moments sped swiftly by. By degrees the calm beauty of
the scene would steal into my soul, the awful Presence be more fully realized, so as to leave no
room for doubts and fears and difficulties. Why could it not go on for ever ? It seemed so
hard to think that in a few minutes life's burden must be taken up afresh, the rugged side of
Thabor descended, and the struggle with the realities of life once more commenced as before.
And yet not quite as before ; for if it be that ' no man approaches a fire without carrying away
some heat,' so may I hope that the remembrance of that midnight vigil would recur again and
again through the week, bringing thoughts of peace and encouragement to persevere to the end.
But at length the clock would strike the hour and I would depart to thread the dim corridors
and summon the next watcher."

In our opinion this work will serve a higher end than merely to gratify

NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Feb.,

curiosity. There is much well-weighed advice on the vocation to the reli-
gious life, and on the spirit by which those who enter upon that life must
be animated. Perhaps the requirements of the author are somewhat
severe, more severe than theologians of great authority would justify.
Every one, however, may profit by his advice, and although some of his
remarks may be thought to be in bad taste, on the whole we think that the
effect of the work will be to increase the esteem and reverence for the old
orders which is due to them for their great services in the past.

NOUVEAU MANUEL DE CHANTS LITURGIQUES traduits en notation mod-
erne, avec rhythme precis suivis de 39 motets en musique pour saluts
etc., a 1'usage des Eglises, des communantes religieuses, des colleges et
des ecoles. Par 1'Abbe C. Bourduas, Ptre., Maitre de Chapelle a la
Cathedrale de Montreal. Montreal : Eusebe Senecal et Fils.

Some few months ago Father Young, in an article contributed by him to
this magazine, made a definite offer to introduce congregational singing in
any church desiring it. He then very properly argued that the first efforts
should be directed toward establishing the singing of English hymns by the
people. At the same time he gave an assurance that they could soon be so
far instructed as to take an active part in singing all that is now generally
sung by our church choirs at Mass and even at Vespers. The hope of re-
deeming such a promise would practically depend, of course, upon there
being a manual at hand in which all those portions of the liturg)' would
be set in simple, easy notation. Such a work, the result of no small labor,
did not to our knowledge exist, and he was about beginning the pre-
paration of one when the present little volume came under notice, just
issued at Montreal, and which in many respects fulfils all the requirements
of such a manual of liturgical song as our people need, at least as begin-
ners.

The reverend editor has followed the notation of the edition of the Roman
Gradual and Antiphonarium, so called, "of Montreal," copied in great part
from ancient and reputable French editions. It has been used solely in the
Paulist church of this city since Gregorian chant was first introduced there
eighteen years ago. Take it all in all, we are acquainted with no edition
more satisfactory for present use, although, like many other modern edi-
tions, it is lacking in much that is beautiful and artistic through the abbre-
viation and alteration of phrases; suffering from them, though not to an
equal degree as other modern editions. It can be said to be as good as
any in use. When we shall have exercised ourselves in it for a generation,
and begotten a better race of vocal artists, we may then hope to study and
execute the magnificent chant of the Benedictines, edited by the greatest
chant savant now living, Dom Pothier, O.S.B., as found in their Graduate
recently issued in superb style by the house of Desclee, Lefebvre et Cie.,
Tournay, Belgium. Any one wishing to examine that work should also
peruse Les Melodies Gregorzennes, by Dom Pothier, expressly composed
as explanatory of the chant, its origin, rhythm, etc., etc.

The chant in the present little volume has been translated into modern
notation with the invariable use of the G clef on a staff of five lines. Like
all such attempts that have hitherto come under our notice, it fails, in our
judgment, to convey equally well with the old Gregorian notation that

1889.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 71$

which is chiefly sought in such a translation, viz. : a better idea of the true
rhythm of the chant melody. It will serve those who are already ac-
quainted with the proper movement, and we suppose the author counted
upon this general knowledge among the people of Canada, for whose use
the Manual has been especially prepared ; but if this translation were placed
before one as yet wholly ignorant of chant, such a singer or player would
make sorry work of these charming, flowing melodies, since he would be
naturally led to observe the comparative length of the notes as used in
modern music.

The author recognizes this difficulty in his excellent and instructive
preface when he says, apropos of the rhythm of syllabic chants :

" It is extremely important to introduce into one's singing of chant all those varied shades
of expression without which one will never succeed in giving its true character to the musical
rhythm, which demands not only a correspondence between the musical rhythm and the rhythm
of the sentence in general, but also the rhythm of each particular word. Plain chant
in its syllabic melodies should be a truly solemn declamation of the text. This is why the fig-
ures of the notes can hardly be of any other service than to designate the intonation, the
rhythm being furnished by the language."

In the use of this Manual, therefore, care must be taken to avoid any-
thing like counting time or a strict observance of the comparative length
of the minim, the crotchet, dotted crotchet, and quaver as will be found
printed.

The book contains a full set of Gregorian Masses, all the psalms and
hymns for Vespers and Compline, various prayers for daily private devo-
tion, at Mass, the Way of the Cross, etc. Thirty-nine excellent motets are
also given for use at Benediction and special occasions, chiefly harmon-
ized, as we are glad to see, for four equal voices. Being so set they will
be very useful for both colleges and convents, where, for lack of such ar-
rangements, and not unfrequently for lack of sufficient musical education,
one hears now and then musical morceaux of this character sung by equal
voices which are arranged for soprano, alto, tenor, and bass, producing the
most shocking effects.

If an edition of this useful church-chant manual could be prepared with
the text in English it would, of course, be more likely to meet with a gen-
eral sale in the United States and England. There will be a demand for
such a work before many years. A forthcoming volume of accompani-
ments for the use of organists is announced as in press.

PEARLS OF A YEAR. Stories from The Xavier. New York : P. J. Ken-
edy.

The students of St. Francis Xavier's College have published a collec-
tion of short stories titled Pearls of a Year, taken from the last year's
numbers of their college monthly, The Xavier. This little handful of
pearls that they have gathered and strung together has made a very pretty
necklace of jewels and is a chain of silvery gems. It consists of thirty-one
stories in seven different departments of literature. Each distinct com-
position is unique in itself, each bead of pearl has its own peculiar veins of
color. The first group contains six beautifully written biographical stor-
ies, four in prose and two in poetry; the second of ten well-told stories of

716 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Feb.,

adventure; seven interesting literary essays, two snatches of secular
poetry; three beautiful scriptural poems, and these are three jewels of
gold. There are two devotional compositions in poetry, and, lastly, an art
essay headed " Our Lady in Art."

THE ILLUSTRATED CATHOLIC FAMILY ANNUAL FOR 1889. With Calendars
calculated for different Parallels of Latitude and adapted for use
throughout the United States. New York: The Catholic Publication
Society Co.; London : Burns & Gates.

The twenty-first year of its publication is the witness of the usefulness
and popularity of this Annual. A comparison of its first issues with the
one now before us makes it clear, besides, that with its years it has steadily
increased in general excellence; new and important features have been
added, and in the illustrations alone it has generally kept pace with the
present demand for work of a high order of merit. We say generally, for
in the present Annual, though it contains in its illustrations some work
of rare ability, notably so in the portrait of General Sheridan, some of the
cuts are decidedly below the average in fidelity and good workmanship.
The American engraver is without a superior, in the opinion of many he is
without a peer, and such portraits as those of Archbishop Alemany and
the Countess of Desmond, such cuts as those descriptive of the Grande
Chartreuse, are far from being creditable specimens of his art.

Still these defects are more than counterbalanced by the number of
good engravings, and by the excellence and variety of the reading-matter.
There is a well-written and well-condensed account of the Pope's jubilee,
embellished with a fine, full-page portrait of Leo XIII. Mr. Maurice Egan
has placed an Irish legend within a setting of his pleasing verse, and there
are brief but interesting sketches of the Cathedral of Burgos, the Grande
Chartreuse, the Leaning Towers of Bologna, Moyne Abbey, and the
Church of St. Mark at Venice.

But the special excellence of the Annual and the feature that has con-
tributed most to its popularity is found in the number of its biographical
sketches of prominent Catholics, lay as well as clerical, and those of our
own day as well as of the past. The Annual for 1889 has in this respect
maintained its past reputation for the terseness and clearness that have
been characteristic of these sketches. They include the lives of such
churchmen as Archbishops Alemany, Lynch, Lamy, and Plunket, of Las
Casas, of Thomas a Kempis, of Cardinal Lavigerie and his work for the
abolition of the African slave-trade; of such prominent laymen as the late
John R. G. Hassard, of General Sheridan, Ferdinand Gagnon, and many
others. In this one feature alone the Annual is worth more than its
price.

THE TRAINING OF THE TWELVE; or, Passages out of the Gospels Exhibit-
ing the Twelve Disciples of Jesus under Discipline for the Apostle-
ship. By Alexander Bulmain Bruce, D.D., Professor of Apologetics
and New Testament Exegesis, Free-Church College, Glasgow. New
York : A. C. Armstrong & Son.

The Apostles are here dressed up in Presbyterian clothes, cut and made
in the real Knox fashion ; but the men are made to fit the dress, not the

1889.] NE w PUB Lie A TIONS. 7 1 7

dress to fit the men. Together with these clothes they also have wives,
with the exception of St. Paul, who is allowed to remain unmarried for the
consolation, we suppose, of Presbyterian bachelors. Fasting gets the usual
cold welcome of antique Protestantism, ritual observances are described as
a putrid carcass breeding " spiritual pestilence"; nevertheless, the impor-
tance of Sabbath sanctification is duly set forth. Good works are styled
"counterfeit coins which will not pass current in the kingdom of heaven."
All the labors of the ascetic to save his soul will turn out to be so much
rubbish to be burned up, and if he be saved at all it will be " so as by fire."
This is the first instance that we have found of a Presbyterian who taught
the doctrine of purgatory.

In commenting upon the words, "Thou art Peter," etc., and " I will
give to thee the keys," etc., the author exclaims : " What a gigantic system
of spiritual despotism and blasphemous assumption has been built on
these two sentences concerning the rock and the keys ! How nearly by
their aid has the kingdom of God been turned into a kingdom of Satan ! "
In fact, if the plain meaning of these words be not the real meaning, then
is Scripture of better use to professors of exegesis than to honest seekers
after truth.

THE NEW SAINTS OF 1888: St. John Berchmans, S.J.; St. Peter Claver,
SJ.; St. Alphonsus Rodriguez, S.J., and the Seven Founders of the
Servites. By Rev. Francis Goldie, S.J.; Rev. Father Scola, S.J., etc.
New York, Cincinnati, Chicago : Benziger Bros.

THE BLESSKD ONES OF 1888 : B. Clement Maria Hofbauer, C.SS.R.; B.
Louis Grignon de Montfort ; B. Egidius Mary of St. Joseph, and B.
Josephine Mary of St. Agnes, O.S.A. Translated from the German
of Rev. Hermann Koneberg, O.S.B., by Eliza A. Donnelly. New York,
Cincinnati, Chicago : Benziger Bros.

These are short sketches of blessed souls whose lives have added a
special glory to our Lord Jesus Christ, and their recent elevation to the
altars of the church is a marvellous proof of her never-failing sanctity.
These little volumes. are well printed and tastefully bound.

CONQUESTS OF OUR HOLY FAITH ; or, Testimonies of Distinguished Con-
verts. By James J. Treacy. New York and Cincinnati : Frederick
Pustet & Co.

This book is a compilation of choice pieces from the writings of distin-
guished converts to the Catholic faith. Mr. Treacy has made, it seems to
us, a good selection of topics, and has left few of the better known con-
verts unrepresented. The volume is useful in more ways than one. Many
of the selections might be learned by heart few of them are lengthy by
students of English style, and some would furnish excellent matter for elo-
cutionary exercises. The editor's previous compilations are of similar use :
Catholic Flowers from Protestant Gardens, Tributes of Protestant Writers
to the Truth and Beauty of Catholicity. But we think their chief value
to consist in this : from such selections one gets those very aspects
of Catholic truth which attract men from without; one discovers the com-
binations of colors and of form which first cause the earnest seeker to say,
How beautiful is the Catholic Church ! If we would lead honest men to

7 1 8 Ne w PUB Lie A TIONS. [Feb ,

the truth we must acquire a facility of putting ourselves in their place.
We must understand both theij weaknesses and their virtues ; and these
Testimonies are of assistance in doing so.

READINGS WITH THE SAINTS. Compiled from their writings for the use of
Priests, Religious, and Christians in the world. By a Priest of the Diocese
of Clifton. London : Burns & Gates ; New York : The Catholic Publication
Society Co.

The author of this little volume has grouped together many extracts from
the writings of the saints, presenting to the public a beautiful bouquet of the
choicest flowers from the garden of the Lord. They are pleasing to the eyes
and their perfume is exquisite. Knowledge has been displayed in the culling
and skill and taste in the arranging of this nosegay, and it will be a source of joy
to him into whose hands it comes.

EUCHARISTIC GEMS. A Thought about the Most Blessed Sacrament for every
day in the year. Compiled from the works of the Saints and other devout
writers on this great mystery. By Rev. L. C. Coelenbier, O.S.F., chaplain
to the Franciscan Convent, Taunton. New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago :
Benziger Brothers.

Several compilations of a somewhat similar character to the one here men-
tioned have been published recently, but we venture the opinion that none of
them can serve as practical a purpose as this. Devotion to the Blessed Sacra-
ment is, we need not say, a characteristic of solid and enlightened piety. There
are many many of the laity too, thank God ! who, next to the Sacraments, ow^e
much of their strength in temptation, their consolation in affliction, their peace,
their courage in the strife of this mortal life, to their daily visit to our Lord in the
Tabernacle. For many who are in the habit of making this daily visit a book of
some kind is a necessity to stimulate appropriate thoughts and affections, and
hence there are several approved manuals for this purpose. This little volume
of Euchartstic Gems is of such a character, and is therefore of much practical
utility to those- who are in earnest in their efforts to live a life of union with God.
There is a different thought for each day in the year, taken from the writings of
the Saints, and though often brief, none the less full of spiritual nourishment.
The book is tastefully bound and printed.

THE PACIFIC COAST ALMANAC FOR 1889. San Francisco : Diepenbrock
Bros. & Doeing.

We have seen this almanac for the first time to-day, though this is the second
year of its publication. The publishers show much commendable enterprise and
g'ood taste in its arrangement and general appearance. There are several of
these Catholic annuals published in different parts of the country, but this im-
presses us as being one of the best. There is much variety in its pages; the illus-
trations are nearly all in mono-tint and are very well done, the biographies are
well selected, though for the most part their interest is local, and the literary mat-
ter in general shows good judgment in its selection. It is a matter of regret that
the proof-sheets were not read with a little more care.

In the home these annuals are very useful as reference books for information

i8?9-] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 719

on subjects of interest to Catholics. They have well-arranged calendars, they
provide a reliable record of contemporary history, and they add something of
local interest to the reading matter of the family circle.

BOOKS RECEIVED.
Mention of books in this place does not preclude extended notice in subsequent numbers.

THE OSCOTIAN. A Literary Gazette of St. Mary's College, Oscott. The Jubilee of 1888.

London : Burns & Oates ; New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co.
ST. PATRICK : His Life, His Labors, His Heroic Virtues, and the Fruits of His Labors. By

Very Rev. Dean Kinane, P.P., V.G., Cashel. With a Preface by His Grace the Most

Rev. Dr. Croke, Archbishop of Cashel and Emly. First edition. Dublin : M. H. Gill &

Son ; New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co.
SERMONS AT MASS. By the Rev. Patrick O'Keefe, C.C., Borisoleigh, Archdiocese of Cashel,

author of Moral Discourses. Third edition. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son ; New York :

The Catholic Publication Society Co.
THE RIVAL CLAIMS OF CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. By Very Rev. Thomas Kelly,

P.P., Castlecomer. Dublin : M. H. Gill & Son; New York: The Catholic Publication

Society Co.
THE SACRED HEART ALMANAC FOR 1889. Philadelphia : The Office of The Messenger of the

Sacred Heart.

THE LIFE OF RAPHAEL. By Herman Grimm. Translated, with the Author's sanction, by
'Sarah Holland Adams, translator of Grimm's Goethe and Literature, Meyer's 1 he Monk's

Wedding, etc. Boston : Cupples & Hurd.

THE IDEA OF GOD. By Paul Carus, Ph.D. A Paper read before the Society for Ethical Cul-
ture at Chicago, 1888. Chicago : The Open Court Publishing Co.
FACETTES OF LOVE : FROM BROWNING. Being the Introductory Address at the Opening of

the Browning Society of the New Century Club of Philadelphia, November 12, 1888. By

Dr. Daniel G. Brinton, one of the Vice- Presidents of the Society. Philadelphia: Wm. F.

Fell & Co.
FIAT Lux 1 ! ! Sullo Stato Materiale e Morale-Religioso d'ltaliani Sbarcate a New York

in Questi Ultimi Anni. Cause e Rimedi. New York.

AALESUND TO TE^TUAN. A Journey. By Charles R. Corning. Boston : Cupples & Hurd.
LIFE OF ST. JEROME. By Mrs. Charles Martin. London : Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.; New

York : The Catholic Publication Society Co.
SLAVERY IN AFRICA. A Speech by Cardinal Lavigerie. Made at the Meeting held in London

July 31, 1888, presided over by Lord Granville, former Minister of English Foreign Af-
fairs. Boston : Cashman, Keating & Co.
CATHOLIC WORSHIP. The Sacraments, Ceremonies, and Festivals of the Church explained

in Questions and Answers. By Rev. O. Gisler. Translated from the German by Rev.

Richard Brennan, LL D. New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago : Benziger Bros.
MANUAL OF CONFIRMATION. Containing Instructions and Devotions for Confirmation

Classes. In two parts. By P. J. Schmitt, Rector. New York : Joseph Schaefer.
MISSIONS D'AFRIQUE (d'Alger) sous LA PROTECTION DE NOTRE DAME D'AFRIQUE. Bulletins

Mai-Npvembre, 1888. Paris : A la Procure des Missions d'Afrique.
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POEMS : RELIGIOUS AND MISCELLANEOUS. By William J. McClure, Rector at Barrytown,
N. Y. New York : J. W. Pratt & Son.

72O NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Feb., 1889.

FIRST STEPS IN READING. In four parts. Part I. By Martha A. Pease. Chicago : S. R.
Winchell & Co.

GUIDE TO ROME. Translated from the Trastevere Dialect. By Joseph A. Ely. Rochester,
N. Y.: H D. Bryan.

THE POEMS OF EMMA LAZARUS. In two vols. Boston and New York : Houghton, Mifflin
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THE TEACHING AND INFLUENCE OF ST. AUGUSTINE. An Essay with particular reference to
recent misrepresentations. By James Field Spalding, Rector of Christ Church, Cam-
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CORRESPONDENCE OF DANIEL O'CONNELL, THE LIBERATOR. Edited, with notices of his life
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Toronto, 1836-1857. A Paper read before the American Catholic Historical Society of
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lar No. 5, 1888. Washington : Government Printing-Office.

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Associate Professor of History in the Johns-Hopkins University. With authorized
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Colleges, Washington and Lee University, and Virginia Military Institute. Washington :
Government Printing-Office.

THE

CATHOLIC WORLD,

VOL. XLVIII. MARCH, 1889. No. 288.

MORAL THEOLOGY AND MONOPOLIES.

A MONOPOLY, or what is in substance the same thing, a
Trust, is defined to be the sole right or power vested in one, or
in a few, of selling any given object. It is either legal or pri-
vate, according as the right is, for reasonable cause, granted by
public authority ; or is gained by the private endeavor of one
individual, or by the joint operation of a few. In monarchical
governments this right is conferred as a privilege upon certain
parties by the royal authority for the public good, or for the
purpose of collecting a lawful tribute from merchants. We
are not asserting that such privileges have been always judi-
ciously bestowed by princes, or that, when given, they were
never abused. We are merely stating the point of view from
which right legislation did not condemn, but approved them ;
to wit, their creation was propter bonum publicum by reason of
the public good.

In free and democratic America, as no such power of con-
ferring privileges is vested in any individual, monopolies have
been brought about by combinations of individuals, .who, uniting
great administrative abilities with large capital, have purchased
for themselves the sole and exclusive power of selling certain
articles of merchandise. Hence, whether deriving from royal
concession or owing their origin to private wealth, enterprise,
and shrewdness, all monopolies or trusts essentially agree in this,
that they constitute a power residing solely with one man, or one
small body of men, of selling any given article. Let us suppose
" monopoly" to go better with " monarchy" and " trust" to com-
port more decently with the government of a free, sovereign, and
independent people. But, before proceeding further, be it men-
tioned that a " corner" may be made either upon rare and valua-

722 MORAL THEOLOGY AND MONOPOLIES. [Mar.,

ble articles of luxury, or upon the common necessaries of life.
Desirous of being practical, we confine our remarks strictly to
the latter. Considered in the abstract, there is nothing wrong
in American citizens by industry, energy, and tact winning
for themselves the sole and exclusive sale of any article, be it
even one of the necessaries of life. But the vital question yet
remains : Within what limits must individuals or corporations
so circumstanced fix the price of their merchandise, in order
not to offend either the precept of justice or that of charity? ^

To that class of minds which makes the letter of the statute
book the measure of right, and which esteems no man a thief
who, by whatever means not technically illegal, amasses wealth,
my attempt to discover limitations to the prices demanded by
monopolists may seem both astounding and absurd. But if there
be such a thing as a just or an unjust price, which no one denies,
it must be definable by some criterion ; and, if applicable to indi-
viduals, we see no reason why it should not be equally applied to
monopolies, legal or private. Men may be as much responsible
for injustice perpetrated by combinations of which they are
members as for what they do as single individuals. So far as
personal responsibility is concerned, the proposition that corpor-
ations are soulless, is no less an absurdity than that Jay Gould
or any other individual is soulless. If Texas train-robbers form
" trusts" to seize upon the United States mail, it does not shield
them individually from the rigorous punishment of the law.
Each one is personally responsible for the whole guilt chargeable
to their united and corporative rascality and bound to at least
a pro rata restitution. We see no plausible reason why any ex-
emption from this rule should be extended to moneyed monopo-
lists, whensoever they go beyond the limits of commutative
justice.

Nor can the exorbitant prices extorted by " trusts " be jus-
tified upon the plea of what is called the law of supply and de-
mand. For it is evident that that principle presupposes the
interaction of another factor, namely, honest competition. This
factor eliminated, the whole problem is falsely stated. But it is
the essential nature of monopolies to suppress this essential fac-
tor. No monopoly can be .formed till competition be crushed
out. Corruptio unius, generatio alterins the death of one is the
life of the other. The plea, therefore, is groundless, and hence
the same criterion must regulate the price of objects for cor-
porations as for individuals. What that criterion is we shall
see after producing the following conditions laid down by St.

1889] MORAL THEOLOGY AND MONOPOLIES. 723

Liguori as essential to the moral integrity of monopolies. I
cite him as standing at the head of modern moral theologians :

" Dico I. Monopolium legale licitum est, modo cum justo pretio fiat.
Ratio est, quia ob justam boni publici causam Princeps illud ceu privile-
gium, vel ad tributum a mercatoribus exigendum, concedere potest.

"Dico II. Monopolium privatutn illicitum est in sequentibus casibus :

" i. Si mercator impediat fraude vel mendacio ne alias merces adver-
tantur, ut ipse merces suas carius vendat cum communi detrimento.

" 2. Si unus vel pauci merces omnes emant ut deinde illas carius ven-
dant " (S. Lig. n. 815). Apud Gury, De Monopolio.

" I say first : Legal monopoly is licit, provided the price be just. The
reason is because a prince may for just cause of public good cede it either
as a privilege or for the purpose of exacting tribute from merchants.

" I say secondly : Private monopoly is illicit in the following cases :

" ist. If a merchant impede by fraud or by falsehood the importation of
other merchandise for the purpose of selling his own too high, to the
common detriment.

" 2d. If one or a few (merchants) buy up all merchandise, in order af-
terwards to sell it at too high a price."

Three conditions are therefore absolutely necessary to the
establishment of a just monopoly. First, it should not be detri-
mental to the common good; second, it should not be brought
about by fraud or by falsehood ; third, the price should not be
too high. We believe these conditions are sufficiently plain,,
reasonable, and just. It is the intention of government to pro-
mote the common good ; whatever, therefore, defeats this end is
an enemy to society, and ipso facto calls for governmental cor-
rection. No honest man will contend that in the formation of a
monopoly either fraud or deceit is admissible ; since in no cause,
howsoever good, does the end justify iniquitous means. We must
enter into a somewhat more lengthy exposition of the third re-
quirement. What is a just or an unjust price? Be it remem-
bered that we are not treating of the rarer articles of luxury, but
of such objects of trade as belong to the necessaries of life, and
of whose value, therefore, a correct judgment is to be found
among the great mass of the people. We say, then, that the price
of an article is either legal or natural ; legal, where it is deter-
mined by law ; natural, where it corresponds to that value which
the common estimation of the people places upon it. So far as
we are aware there are no legal prices in the United States. The
current estimation in which the people hold any given thing
determines its. natural price. This varies with varying circum-
stances. When the supply is scarcest and the demand greatest,
we have the highest price ; vice versa, o-r when the supply is

724 MORAL THEOLOGY AND MONOPOLIES. [Mar.,

greatest and the demand least, we have the lowest price; while
the value which rises or falls between these two extremes is
denominated medium price. Let us now put a case. A few
capitalists form a monopoly and make a "corner" upon flour.
They have the exclusive sale of the whole of that article in the
entire country. They agree not to sell flour but for the highest
price: meaning by highest price not that which the " corner "
begets, but that which existed before the formation of the mo-
nopoly. Do such capitalists sin against justice ? St. Liguori
holds, as a more probable opinion, that they do not. Because to
sin against justice the price must be unjust. But it is admitted
that the price, though the highest, is just. No injustice is there-
fore done, and, as a further consequence, such capitalists are
under no obligation of restitution. But in answer to the ques-
tion, Do they sin against charity? the holy doctor replies in
the affirmative :

" Quia, licet charitate non obligeris ad vendendum infra summum pre-
tiurn, videris tamen obligari ad non dissuadendum aliis, ne minori pretio
vendant. Ita licet charitate non tenearis ad eleemosynam tali pauperi
erogandam, prohiberis tamen alios dissuadere, si qui earn largiri volunt"
(S. Lig. ibid.)

" Because, even though you are not bound by charity to sell below the
highest price, none the less it seems that you are bound not to dissuade
others from selling at a lower price. Just as, though you are not bound to
give alms to such and such a pauper, you are, however, forbidden to dis-
suade others from so doing if there be any who are willing to bestow it. 1 '

This applies to the monopolists in the above case, because
they mutually dissuade each other from selling their goods
at more reduced figures, all having agreed to sell only for the
highest

In the solution of the above, or a similar case, St. Liguori cites
another opinion of theologians who hold that said monopolists
do sin against justice. He calls this opinion probabilis i.e., based
upon solid grounds. But we have stood for liberty, and given
them the benefit of the most liberal view of casuistry. It is a
monopoly brought about by no fraudulent or deceitful means ;
the prices fixed are not above the highest market rates, its prin-
ciples are exempt from the onus of restitution ; notwithstanding
all which, we yet find them charged with sinning against the
precept of charity, and that by one of the profoundest and most
liberal doctors of the church. Every Catholic knows what that
means. It means that he can purchase damnation to his soul as
readily by sins against charity as by sins against justice, and that

1889.] MORAL THEOLOGY AND MONOPOLIES. 725

though he be freed from the duty of restitution to man, before
God he shall answer to that other precept : Thou shalt love
thy neighbor as thyself.

We are now in a position to steal a glance at the so-called
"trusts" or monopolies in the United States. That they uni-
versally sin against charity is the least that can be said against
them, and, for such as accept the maxim of soulless corpora-
tions, no doubt the least thing taken into consideration. Men
often countenance under the shadow of a corporation what they
would repudiate as individuals. That they are injurious to the
community at large, are detrimental to the common good, we
have seen triumphantly asserted by many, and successfully de-
nied by none. When the people have appealed for remedy to
the general government, the advocates of trusts would make
believe that monopolies are merely private enterprises, and, as a
consequence, national legislation against them would be an in-
fringement of personal rights. But evils which affect the com-
mon weal are no less public evils because they proceed from
private individuals. It is by their effects, not by their origin,
that they must stand or fall. A streamlet bursts forth in
Minnesota, but the Mississippi swells into national importance
long before reaching the Gulf of Mexico. The proper object for
government legislation is all that domain of commerce between
citizens of States which concerns the whole country, whatever
be its source. Nor do we understand how monopolists dare
minimize themselves into individuals, it being an established fact
that they wield a power to which not only States, but, as -in
the case of the whiskey trust, the national government has been
forced to submit; and they control treasures that would enrich
an empire. More than half the wealth of the United States is
under monopolistic control.

If we now inquire by what means these combinations, trusts,
corporations, or, to call them by a more generic name, monopo-
lies, are brought to a solid footing, we cannot exculpate them
from either fraud or deceit. When they cannot suck minor
competitors into the same vortex of iniquity as themselves, they
do not hesitate to undersell them by an enormous depression
of price, for the sole purpose of crushing out honest competi-
tion. Thus the business, the fortunes, the prospects of many are
wholly destroyed, to make way for their own unparalleled ex-
tortions. Where men seem utterly regardless or ignorant of the
precepts of morality ; where the doctrine that might constitutes
right is carried to the bitter end ; where no law of conscience,

726 ' MORAL THEOLOGY AND MONOPOLIES. [M ar "

but only selfishness and avarice stand between the rich, who are
few, and the poor, who are many : to us it is impossible to per-
ceive how clear-headed and honest writers doubt whether gov-
ernment should interfere. The plea of private right is a false
pretext. No man has a private right to inflict public injury.
Whenever they clash, private good must yield to public good.

That our de facto monopolists levy unjust prices the most
casual observer cannot but know. Once masters of the situa-
tion, they consider themselves bound by no commercial law in-
dependent of themselves. As a consequence, the people at large
cannot procure absolute necessaries of life but by paying twice
the amount of the highest price existing before the "corner."
Fortunate, too, may they esteem themselves if they are robbed
to no greater extent. Let us illustrate. During the present
season the whole South has been wrought up to a high pitch
of indignation against the so-called "Jute-Bagging Trust." A
brief notice of this may serve to disclose the boldness of enter-
prise, the extent of power, and the far-reaching effects of similar
conspiracies. Ab uno disce omnes.

We presume it is well known by all classes of readers that the
entire cotton crop of the South is pressed into bales of from four
to five hundred pounds each, and, being so pressed, is wrapped
in what is called jute bagging. The raw material of this stuff
comes from India, and is manufactured in this country. Fifty
million yards are said to be the amount required each year for
the entire cotton crop of five or six million bales. This supply
of- bagging is manufactured by some six or seven industries in
the North, arid before the formation of the trust was sold at the
live-and-let-live prices of from seven to ten cents per yard. Thus
seven was the lowest and ten the highest just price established
by honest competition. With ingenuity to discover the means,
and money to aid their enterprise, a few capitalists formed a
combination and actually or virtually purchased every one of
the jute-bagging manufactories and all the raw material. Hav-
ing gained complete control of the fifty million yards of jute
bagging, till then considered absolutely necessary for the sale of
cotton, they raised the price of this necessary article from seven
to ten cents per yard to the exorbitant sum of about fifteen cents,
or nearly fifty per cent, above the highest pre-existing value.
If successful, this scheme means an unjustifiable tax of about two-
and-a-half million dollars by private individuals upon the entire
South, equal in area to almost one-half of the Union. Compared
with the immense profits resulting from other combinations,

1889.] THE NEGROES AND THE INDIANS. 727

whose name is legion, this amount sinks into insignificance. The
entire horizon of commerce is clouded by these gigantic frauds.
There are your Standard Oil Company, your Whiskey Ring,
your Western Union Telegraph Company, your " corners " on
flour, on sugar, on coffee, and on whatever else offers a hope of
stupendous gain. Brought about by fraudulent and deceptive
means, rising above the control of local or State laws, spreading
beyond the interest of a few, obstructing the common good
of the whole country, they have ceased to be matters of in-
dividual right. They have risen to the importance of national
evils and should be met by national legislation.

C. A. OLIVER.

Scranton, Miss.

THE NEGROES AND THE INDIANS.

" THE empire of the Catholic Church is a continual con-
quest." This saying of Cardinal Newman is exemplified in the
growth of the church in this country. Year by year she has
had to enlarge her tents in order to make room for the ever-in-
creasing number of her children. Churches, schools, institutions
for every work of mercy are flourishing on all sides. And in
order to accomplish all this the clergy and people alike have de-
veloped a generosity and enterprise worthy of the cause. But
slight attention, in consequence, seems to have been paid to such
works of zeal as were not in some sense local ; such, for instance,
as the propagation of the faith among heathen nations, and espe-
cially the conversion of the people of our own land which differ
from us in race the Indians and the negroes.

Now, however, the church of America seems to be entering
on a new era an apostolic era. She is wakening up to the
millions of souls at our very doors whose imploring voices call,
"Passover and help us." In enacting decrees relative to the
propagation of the faith among the Indians and negroes of the
United States the Fathers of the Third Plenary Council display
a determination to do much more for those so sadly neglected
peoples than has hitherto been attempted. In regard to the ne-
groes, the council exhorts the bishops of the South to found
churches and schools for them, and to seek for missionary priests
inflamed with zeal for souls to labor in that untilled portion of
the Master's vineyard. Directors of seminaries are urged to fos-
ter vocations to the negro missions. Religious communities who

728 THE NEGROES AND THE INDIANS. [Mar.,

glory in their call to break the Bread of Life to famishing souls
are exhorted to cheerfully second the bishops in carrying on this
apostolic work. Lastly comes the decree that in all the dioceses
of the country on the first Sunday of Lent, yearly, a collection
shall be taken up, the proceeds to be devoted to the missions
among the negroes and Indians. A commission composed of the
Archbishop of Baltimore and two other bishops receives this
money and distributes it to the hierarchy, to be used for the
objects intended ; the distribution being made at a meeting of the
commission held in July of each year. The bishops present state-
ments setting forth the number of negroes and Indians in their
respective dioceses, how many are Catholics, how many churches
and schools are used by them, what are the hopes of fu:ure suc-
cess, etc. Thus accurate knowledge is obtained of the present
state of the church's work among our unevangelized races. This
article aims at giving a correct summary of this information,
together with pertinent reflections.

The first collection after deducting the money sent, as pro-
vided by the council, to the Association for the Propagation of
the Faith amounted to $74,558 30.* A large sum ? By no means :
a very small one; less than a cent each from our 8,000,000 Cath-
olics. A large fund to work upon? Certainly not; for it could
only allow a trifle over a cent for each of the 7,000,000 negroes,
to say nothing of the claims of the Indians. More dioceses asked
help for the Indians than for the blacks, and as there is more
missionary work actually in progress among the former, they
therefore received more help. Small as the sum was, it proved
a God-send to the poor bishops who have to depend upon it for
churches, schools, etc., for both races.

Taking up the colored work first, we find over ninety Catho-
lic schools for colored children now flourishing in the eighteen
dioceses of the South, many of which were built and many more
are supported, at least partially, by this fund. In the schools
teachers belonging to communities are chiefly Sisters of St. Fran-
cis, St. Dominic, and St. Benedict, Sisters of Mercy and of Char-
ity, Sisters of St. Joseph and of the Sacred Heart, and the two
colored sisterhoods, viz.: the Oblates, of Baltimore, and the Sisters
of the Holy Family, at New Orleans. No Catholic brotherhood
has charge of a colored school. God bless them ! those noble-

* The total amount received for the Colored and Indian Missions from the collection of
i$88 is $74,558 30. Since January i, 1888, $2,408 77 have been received to be put to the
credit of the collection of 1887, making the total amount for that year $81,889 01. Thus the
first year's collection was much greater than the second year's.

1889.] THE NEGROES AND THE INDIANS. 729

hearted women who devote their lives to the care and training
of the little ones of Christ whose parents, for the most part
brought up without any notion of home and its sacred mean-
ing, are unfit to mould the immortal beings entrusted to them.
Would that these heroic souls would find many and generous
emulators among their countrywomen ! And there is little doubt
that the apostolic spirit, already beginning to stir the hearts of
our young men, is all aglow among the Christian maidens of the
land.

Quite a number of the schools are conducted by lay teachers
whose zeal is great and praiseworthy ; they are chiefly in places
where sisters cannot be had. The sisterhoods meet with great
success in colored school work. These gentle souls seem to have
learned perfectly how to reach the hearts of the little ones and
how to please their parents. Writing of this influence, Bishop
Fitzgerald, of Little Rock, says: " Parents and children, though
they are almost all non-Catholics, are devoted to the sisters."
His schools as, in fact, all the colored schools, whatever the faith
of the children's parents may be are to all intents and purposes
Catholic; for Catholic text-books are used, the catechism is
taught, and daily prayers are said. In confirmation of this the
following extract from the Bishop of Galveston's letter is given :
" We feel gratified at the success of our schools, and we are cer-
tain that a great good is to be done by this work. The poor col-
ored people are grateful for the interest taken in them. The
sisters engaged in teaching have cheerfully given their services
gratis."

Father Chasse", chancellor of the Archdiocese of New Or-
leans, in his statement to the commission says : " There are one
hundred and sixty thousand negroes in this diocese, nearly all
baptized Catholics. But for various reasons, especially for want
of early religious instruction, the majority of them are lost to
the church. What we need most here is the establishing of
Catholic schools to counterbalance the evil effects of the free
public schools. Some progress has already been made in that
line, and had we the means to push on the good work, each par-
ish could have a free parochial school for the colored children.
Could this be done, we certainly would have an immense number
of children, born of Catholic parents and baptized Catholics,
who now attend the free public schools and later on join the
Methodists or Baptists. Race prejudice, although decreasing
and disappearing, still exists, especially in country parishes.
. . . The poverty of the great majority of our white Catholics

730 THE NEGROES AND THE INDIANS. [Mar.,

makes it quite impossible for the pastors to have free colored
schools. And yet without such schools these children will in all
probability be lost to the church."

Ever since the war the various Protestant denominations have
been exceedingly active, not only in Louisiana but all over the
South, in missionary work among the blacks, while we Catholics,
drawing- our cloaks around us like the Scribe and the Levite in the
parable, silently passed on, leaving the half-dead Ethiopian to his
must it be said ? kind-hearted Samaritan. As a result of these
non-Catholic efforts, fully one hundred high-schools alone, sup
ported by Northern Protestants, flourish in different parts of the
South. Some of them, too, are enormous in point of numbers,
v.g., the Clafiin University of South Carolina, built by and named
after a Mr. Claflin of Boston, had during the scholastic year 1886
-1887 965 scholars, a number exceeding by about 50 the aggre-
gate attendance at the three Catholic colleges of New York
Fordham, Manhattan, and St. Francis Xavier. Two Protestants
of Connecticut, John B. Slater and Damd'Hand, have given a
million each as a fund for the normal and industrial training of
colored boys, and to-day (Dec. 19) the papers announce a gift
of one thousand acres of land in the State of Kentucky to Wil-
berforce Colored University, Oberlin, Ohio. Is it not high time
for us to emulate this example by, at the very least, contributing
generously to the annual Lenten collection, which is intended to
furnish the sinews of war in this struggle for souls to the impov-
erished and sparsely-settled dioceses of the South ?

We must remember that outside of Maryland, Kentucky, and
New Orleans over ninety per cent, of the negroes do not belong
and never have belonged to the Catholic Church. Among them
the work is truly apostolic. Hence, to bring them into the true
fold are the bishops erecting churches, starting schools, and
looking out for missionaries. Of the 650,000 negroes in Virginia
about 500 are Catholics ; that is, out of every 1,300 negroes but
one is a Catholic. At present six Catholic schools are at work
in the Diocese of Richmond, of which nearly all the scholars are
not only children of non-Catholic parents, but are for the most
part not even baptized.

In 1887 the Sisters of Charity opened a colored school in Pe-
tersburg with an attendance of sixty, all non-Catholic and unbap-
tized children. They were soon preparing a number of them for
baptism. The Richmond school has been in existence for the
last four years, and it has been so fruitful in converts that St. Jo-
seph's colored congregation has grown steadily in membership

1889.] THE NEGROES AND THE INDIANS. 731

until it is now an assured success. Quite a notable proof of this
is the consoling- fact that on the second Sunday of last Advent six-
teen adults were baptized in this church. In his application for
help Bishop Keane writes as follows: " The allowance so kindly
given us last year has been expended in supporting priest and
sisters in Richmond, commencing the erection of our industrial
and normal school-house, in supporting the school at Keswiclc, and
also the school at Petersburg. We would need more than we
can dare hope for in order to accomplish the work that ought to
be done this year in Norfolk, in Charlottesville, in Union Mills, and
in Gordonsville, besides carrying on the work already in exist-
ence. We cannot, therefore, hope to carry all to completion, but
we will begin and go as far as we can that is, as far as kind
Providence and his agents will supply us with means to go."

In the same strain write all the bishops of the South. They
are fully sensible of the responsibility of providing the means of
salvation for those ,millions of freedmen to whom the Catholic
Church is verily a sealed book. But, like the children of Israel,
they find it hard to make bricks without straw. If this impor-
tant work is not done, the whole Catholic body in America shall
bear the blame, inasmuch as we neglected to supply them with
the means to carry on their projects of zeal. The bishops, more-
over, agree that to effect lasting results it is necessary to begin
with the children and train them up in Catholic schools. As the
twig is bent the tree is inclined. If the children are well ground-
ed in the knowledge of Catholic faith, they can be relied on to
persevere. As for adult converts, they cannot be expected in
any great numbers, nor can they generally be so confidently de-
pended on to persevere, as it is difficult to properly instruct
and ground them in the faith.

The children, with innocent hearts and minds yet fresh and
free from erroneous notions, are the best material for the forma
tion of converts. There are more than a million colored children
in the Southern States who never darken the door of any school-
room, for the simple reason that there are no schools within their
reach. The parents, as a rule, are anxious to get some schooling
for the children ; nor would they hesitate to send them to Catho-
lic schools if there were any in the vicinity, even though the}' felt
certain that the children would thereby become Catholics. The
colored people generally have much less prejudice and human
respect than the whites, and as they are naturally a religious peo-
ple, they instinctively feel that their children will be all the bet-
ter for attending a Catholic school. A large share of the funds

732 THE NEGROES AND THE INDIANS. [Mar.,

placed at the disposal of the Southern bishops by the commission
goes towards the founding of schools. But the number must ne-
cessarily depend on the amount of money they receive, and so
far this has been too limited to accomplish much. We notice
among- the works proposed by the bishops for this year some
twenty-five new schools.

The number of Catholic colored churches does not exceed
twenty in the whole United States, and they form a circle around
the outskirts of the old slave States, the churches in Richmond,
Va., and Lexington, Ky., being the only two in the heart of the
South. There are, however, many congregations in the South
composed mostly of colored Catholics. Eight of the twenty
churches are in the charge of the Josephite Fathers, who bind
themselves by vow to work exclusively for the negroes. The
Benedictine Fathers have several colored missions under their
care. Bishop Becker writes as follows to the secretary of the
commission : " The Benedictines have done .nearly all the work
lor the colored here for some years past. They own the Islands
of Hope and Skidavvay by deed in trust for the purpose of edu-
cating the negro youth. The order spent, through the late ven-
erable Arch-abbot Wimmer, $10,000 on the place. They kept
two, and at times three, priests there, and the same number of
brothers. The Jesuit Fathers are also laboring for the colored
both in Macon and in Augusta, where they get no remuneration
for their services. We have now a colored orphanage which is
growing, alas! too rapidly. The Sisters of St. Francis in Augus-
ta have about twenty-five girls in their care, and we are doing
what we can in Washington, Atlanta, Brunswick, Savannah, and
elsewhere for the colored folks. I am most willing and anxious
to aid the poor colored folks with all my might and main. We
must try to build one, or even two, more churches. for them in
Savannah. With every desire to have zealous clergy engage in
this work, and with a wide field of action (800,000 colored people)
and every favor for intrepid missionaries, I remain, yours, etc."

Bishop Haid, O.S.B., the recently consecrated Vicar- Aposto-
lic of North Carolina, in writing to the commission for funds to
enable him to spread the faith among the 540,000 colored people
of his vicariate, says : "Up to the present but little could be ac-
complished, yet we have a neat brick church and school near the
abbey, and Father Moore also has a school for colored children
in Wilmington. We must endeavor to get schools at Charlotte
and other places where we can best reach the colored people.
Every effort will be made to spread the faith among them, and,

1889.] THE NEGROES AND THE INDIANS. 733

aided by God and your generosity, \ve hope much good may be
done."

Father Gross, V.G. of North Carolina, a true missionary of
the apostolic type, writes thus to the commission : " These poor
people are at the very door of the great Catholic dioceses of the
United States. Perhaps it is because they are so near that they
have attracted so little attention. No\v, at least, it is time for us
to begin to do something for them. We have no time to lose.
The Northern preachers are fairly gobbling them up. I have
watched the plans of the Protestants. They start a school with
a religious mission attached, and they succeed in this way in
securing the colored people. Fine talk will not help the cause.
Money and hard work are needed to carry on the missionary
work."

These words need no comment. Bishop O'Sullivan, of Mobile,
in his report to the commission deplores his want of priests to
work for the negroes of his diocese. "Owing lo the want of
means and scarcity of priests willing to work for the colored
people, the hopes for success in the immediate future are not
encouraging. But if we can establish schools it will be a step in
advance, and we may then hope for good results when the Lord
sends us missionaries."

There are 650,000 colored in the diocese of Mobile ; 2,500 of
them are Catholics, and the rest have hardly any religion at all.
What an immense harvest of souls all ready for the reapers !
Shall we in the North fold bur arms and expect the clergy of the
South to do this work? But there are not even priests enough
to attend to the Catholics of the South. Bishop O'Sullivan de-
clares that the colored Catholics, 2,500 in number, along the Gulf
of Mobile are losing the faith because he has no priest to send
to them. This scarcity of priests is felt everywhere in the
South ; therefore, if the negroes are to be evangelized at all it
must be done immediately.

Apostles are needed entirely devoted to the work men not
afraid to live in the huts, eat at the tables of the negroes, and
make themselves all things to them for Christ's sake. A stupid
race prejudice, as strong among Catholics as Protestants, must
be faced and lived down. The apostles of Christ have no caste
to lose and nothing to fear socially in their work, for the Catho-
lics of the South will appreciate their heroic generosity.

Says Archbishop Janssens : "Our priests everywhere in the
Southern States are devoted to their duty, and willing also to
work for the colored people as well as for the whites. But the

734 THE NEGROES AND THE INDIANS. [Mar.,

work for the one and for the other is quite different, and it is
almost impossible, a few cases excepted, as far as my experience
goes, to do much good for the salvation of the negro whilst en-
gaged in the ministry for the whites. Again, most all the South-
ern dioceses stand greatly in need of priests to keep up the work
that has already been established and needs to be continued ;
consequently, it is next to impossible to obtain priests willing
and possessing the necessary requisites to devote themselves to
this peculiar work."

In the State of Florida there are 1,200 Catholics among a
negro population of 150,000. For his work Bishop Moore, of St.
Augustine, asks of the commission aid to build a church in his
cathedral city and another in Jacksonville. Quite a number of
colored schools flourish in this diocese, and are regarded there,
as elsewhere, as the main reliance for permanent success.

The Bishop of Nashville has over 400,000 negroes in his dio-
cese, comprising the State of Tennessee, of whom but thirty are
Catholics. He thus writes to the commission : " I expect to en-
large the school in Memphis and to open a new one in Nash-
ville, also to procure suitable locations for churches and schools
in both cities. . . . Our only hope lies in the education of the
youth. The beginning in Memphis has been very promising.
That school, as well as the one we purpose opening in Nash-
ville, will, I trust, at no distant day form the nucleus around
which colored congregations will gradually grow up and be
firmly established."

The Bishop of Covington gives an interesting account of the
progress of the good work in his diocese. He is at present
erecting a substantial brick building in Lexington, Ky., to serve
the twofold purpose of church and school for the colored people.
And for all this he has to depend on the allotment he gets from
the commission, whilst he hopes that St. Joseph's Seminary for
the Colored Missions, Baltimore, may ere long be able to send
him missionaries.

God grant that this seminary, so long talked of and now at
last established, may meet the hopes and expectations of the
Southern bishops ! Many regard it as the one thing needed for
the evangelization of the colored race. Thus writes the Bishop
of Wheeling: "It is safe to predict that this seminary, sanc-
tioned, fostered, and blessed by the American hierarchy, and
generously sustained by the alms and prayers of the pious faith-
ful, will prove to be the commencement of a systematic effort for
the conversion of our colored brethren and, under the providence

1889.] THE NEGROES AND THE INDIANS. 735

of God, the most effectual means of bringing thousands of that
race to the knowledge, of our holy church and to a share in
the priceless treasures of redemption."

At all events, the humble beginning of St. Joseph's Seminary
is the most essential step yet taken towards securing a large and
steadily increasing body of " priests who will consecrate their
thoughts, their lives, and themselves wholly and entirely to the
services of the colored people " (II. Cone. Bait.)

The signs of the times are truly encouraging. They point to
a great and steady cultivation of the immense mission-field of the
South, in which as yet but few furrows have been turned up
by Catholic ploughshares. One's heart is stirred by emotions of
mingled pity and love when looking at the vast colored popula-
tion, in considering that not more than one-half of the 7,000,000
negroes ever received the waters of regeneration in any form of
baptism. Four millions of them belong to no church, profess no
creed. Although living amid Christians, they are as alien from
Christianity as the dyed bodies nature gave them are from those
of their white fellow-countrymen. In many cases Voudooism
and kindred superstitions make up the sum and substance of
their worship. And, moreover, they dwell in the South the
stronghold of Protestantism where the Catholics, outside the
large cities, may be compared, in the words of the prophet, to
the few grapes left on the vines after the vintage. If, then, the
colored people, naturally religious though they be, become not
Christians, it is we Catholics of the North who shall be held
responsible for their loss. Men and means are needed ; apostles
far more than money apostolic men and women.

If we now turn from the negro of the South to the Indians of
the West and Southwest, we find the same consoling evidences of
the church's efforts in behalf of Christianity and civilization.
From the discovery of this continent the church has ever mani-
fested great zeal for the salvation of the Indians, and the records
of her Indian missions form the most glorious pages of her his-
tory in America. But never before has she had so many labor-
ers in the field as in our own day. Many of the teaching orders
of women have now charge of the schools of the various mis-
sions, thus laying the foundations of permanent Christian com-
munities. Here, even more than elsewhere, the school is the
nursery of the church ; the latter cannot prosper without the
former.

From the reports of the bishops we gath'er that there are

736 THE NEGROES AND THE INDIANS. [Mar.,

81,690 Catholic Indians in the United States,* who have ninety-
five churches for their exclusive use, and seventy-five priests
working- exclusively, or nearly so, for their spiritual welfare.
During the year 1887 there were 2,481 baptisms, of which num-
ber 433 were adults. The greatest number found in any one
diocese are 40,000 Catholic Indians in the Vicariate of Browns-
ville, Texas. Extremely poor and unable to support churches
and schools, the spiritual condition of those Indians of the South-
west, as set forth in the appeal to the commission for funds, is
truly pitiable.

The following is from the report of Father Juvanceau, the
superintendent of Catholic schools in New Mexico :

"The work of Christianizing the Indians can be accomplished
only through the medium of education ; to this point Archbishop
Salpointe has given special attention. Eleven schools are now
in operation among the Indians. We have in this archdiocese
about 35,000 Indians ; 12.000 belong to so-called civilized tribes,
whilst the other 23,000 are almost entirely wild and ignorant.
Up to the present time it has been materially impossible to do
anything for these Indians, although we are well aware that
they would be willing to receive missionaries among them.
The number of priests is entirely inadequate to the work, and
the diocesan resources are so limited that no serious good can be
accomplished. Wnilst his grace the archbishop is striving gen-
erously with his small means to keep up schools among the In-
dians, he has to contend against the efforts of the Protestant
sects who are trying to plant, with no less energy, the seeds of
error in our pueblos. We ask for help to carry out our plans
of education among our red brethren. . . . The report of the
presbytery held in Santa Fe in December, 1886, stated that a
demand for $100,000 had been made to the Board of (Protestant)
Home Missions, to be expended in New Mexico."

Mutatis mutandis the above might be truthfully reported of
many other dioceses as well as of Santa Fe. Everywhere the
bishops express the same solicitude for the Indians and deplore
their want of resources to carry on the work of evangelization.

Bishop Brondel, of Montana, states that in his diocese there are
10,000 Indians, of whom 4,000 are Catholics, who are cared for by

*The late Mrs. General Sherman, in her article, " Catholic Missions" (CATHOLIC WORLD,
October, 1884), gives the number of Catholic Indians as 106,000, Protestant Indians 15,000 ; and
the total Indian population of the United States, exclusive of Alaska, as 259,244. Estimated
Indian population of Alaska, 50,000.

1889.] THE NEGROES AND THE INDIANS. 737

eleven sons of St. Ignatius. The bishop writes: " My plans for
the future must depend greatly on the amount of funds that are
forthcoming. What was received last year from the commission
was but a drop in the bucket to assist in the superhuman efforts
to establish new Indian missions. All the Indians will become
Catholic with God's grace, if we have men and means to carry
on the work."

Of the 18,000 Indians in Washington Territory 6,000 are
members of the church, for whom ten priests labor, mostly
Jesuits, having fifteen churches. The zealous bishop of that
place writes as follows : " It would not be hard to convert many
of the Indians who are yet infidels or Protestants if we had more
priests, and with them means. It is, therefore, to be hoped that
the commission will help us to Christianize and educate the In-
dians of our diocese."

Dakota, with its Indian population of 30,000. has proved to
be a most fruitful missionary field under the fostering care of
Bishop Marty. There are seventeen priests, twelve churches,
and twenty-six schools for 4,100 Catholic Indians. The bishop
says : " All will become Catholics if we can reach and teach
them. Of those who shall be lost we must admit: sanquis eorum
super nos."

The Vicar-Apostolic of Idaho has 1,345 Catholic Indians out
of a total population of 4,325. " The greatest difficulty," he says,
" is to obtain zealous priests and pecuniary means ; but I hope
with the assistance of God and the help of generous Catholics
to provide missions for every tribe in my jurisdiction in the
next few years." We might multiply quotations did space per-
mit. But these will suffice to give some conception of what is
being done, and to show how much more could be accomplished
if Catholics would take greater interest in the missions.

But the Indians are dying out, people say, and there is no
sense in spending money on them. We answer that although
some few tribes are gradually disappearing, still the total Indian
population does not decrease. As a matter of fact, the Indians
are on the increase, and are bound to go on increasing if the
United States government continues to pursue its present policy
with them. They are, on the whole, fairly treated, and the gen-
eral government affords the different religious denominations
of the country ample encouragement and aid whenever ai d
wherever they begin to work for the welfare of " the nation's
wards." True, the peace policy . inaugurated by President
VOL. XLVIII. 47

738 THE NEGROES AND THE INDIANS. [Mar.,

Grant in 1870 was unjust and unfair to the Catholic missions.
But it is now practically dead, and so Catholic missionaries are
no longer restricted in their zealous labors. They may build
schools wherever they wish, and, once the school is up, the gov-
ernment steps in and pays a regular quota for the education of
every child in attendance. This amount goes a good way
towards the support of the Catholic Indian schools.

Are, then, the Indians and their descendants for countless gen-
erations to come to possess the priceless treasure of Catholic
faith? The answer rests with ourselves. If by our alms and
our prayers we come to the rescue of those devoted mission-
aries who give their lives for the salvation of the poor Indian,
innumerable souls will be saved which without our co-operation
will inevitably be lost. It is not unusual to hear hard things
said against the Catholicity of Italy and France. But these
two nations keep the apostolic fire brightly burning ; so much
so that we have been assured that in one year one hundred stu-
dents left for the foreign missions from a single French pre-
paratory seminary, while to-day four thousand Italians are in
the vanguard of the Lord's army among the heathens of Asia
and Africa.

The following anecdote, related by the Bishop of Salford at a
public meeting on behalf of his college, illustrates this point:

"Last year [1886] I passed through Holland on my way to
Rome, and I heard that a little missionary college had just been
established on the borders of Holland, of which a German priest
was the head. I went to see his humble establishment humble
indeed it was and I spoke with him upon its origin. I said :
' Well, you are a man of spirit ; for while you Germans are being
persecuted at home, you are establishing a college for foreign
missions.' ' Yes,' he said to me, ' this thought occurred to me :
it occurred to me that perhaps one of the reasons why we Catho-
lics of Germany are now going through so terrible a persecu-
tion is that hitherto we have done nothing for the heathen.
We have administered to our own wants, and we have forgotten
those abroad who had none to minister to them ; and,' he added,
' I think that one of the best ways of obtaining the grace of God
upon Germany, and of removing persecution, and of consolidat-
ing the Catholic Church in our midst, is to perform a great act
of faith and to establish here, where we can, on the borders of
Holland, a German foreign missionary college. We shall show
thus, even in the midst of sufferings and persecution, that we

1889.] THE NEGROES AND THE INDIANS. 739

really love our Lord and desire to propagate his name to the
farthest bounds of the world.' I asked him, ' Have you dared to
expound this theory in going about Germany as you have done?'
' Yes,' he said, ' I have spoken of it openly everywhere, and peo-
ple seemed to think there was a great deal of truth in it.'
" Well,'' continued the bishop," this conversation again suggested
to me that motives of self-interest as well as of gratitude should
urge us also to do all that we can to spread the faith. ..."

Useless regrets avail nothing; the negroes are among us and
of us ; so, also, are the Indians. Our duties in their regard have
been told us in no uncertain sound by the Fathers of the Third
Plenary Council, who have shouldered this work of evangeliza-
tion, making it their own. They became responsible in ordering
the collection, the reasons for which they thus give : " We have
done this through a deep sense of duty, and we trust that our
noble-hearted people will not regard it as a burden imposed on
them, but as an opportunity presented to them of co-operating
in a work which must be specially dear to the heart of our
Lord. The divine commission to the church stands forever:
Go, teach all nations: preach the Gospel to every creature ; and
every one who desires the salvation of souls should yearn for its
fulfilment, and consider it a privilege to take part in its realiza-
tion. The more we appreciate the gift of faith the more must
we long to have it imparted to others. The missionary spirit is
one of the glories of the church and one of the chief character-
istics of Christian zeal."

. We have an unbounded confidence in our Catholic people,
who know too well the worth of the true faith to be careless in
offering it to others. Nor will this collection injure local works.
Listen to Cardinal Manning:

" I think I hardly need to answer the reckless or selfish objec-
tion which is often made that we must look at home, and that if
we send our alms abroad there will not be the means of doing
the work of the church at home. I think if we are to be dwarfed
and stunted and chilled by such worldly arguments as these the
earth under our feet will be barren and the heaven will be
stayed that it give no dew. I am confident that in the works of
our Master and in the tillage of his kingdom the more spiritual
husbandry there is, and the more ploughs there are going to turn
up the furrows of the field, the more pledge and promise we
have not only of an abundant harvest, but of an abundant bless-
ing ; and that if we give freely, He will not be outdone in gener

740 LENT. [Mar.,

osity, and that by giving our utmost we shall lack nothing. . .
It is because we have need of men and means at home that I am
convinced we ought to send both men and means abroad. In
exact proportion as we freely give what we have freely received
will our works at home prosper and the zeal and number of our
priests be multiplied."

In the welfare of the negro race the Holy Father has mani-
fested a marked interest, especially by his letter on slavery on
the occasion of the emancipation in Brazil, and by sending $60,-
ooo to Cardinal Lavigerie to help in putting down the Arabian
slave-trade. To encourage the faithful of the United States, he
has granted a plenary indulgence, to be gained on the day the
collection is made for the negroes and Indians by all who com-
ply with the usual conditions of receiving the sacraments, and
also pray for the propagation of the faith and the intentions of
His Holiness.

LENT.'

'TwAS Lent. A sad soul in a desert land was wandering lone ;
While sad, at intervals, across the sand came wail and moan.

" Sweet Christ, too much I faint is Lent !"

The scorching wind rang out its discontent.
Till, lo, a voice from heav'n: " Canst suffer not with Me?
Then come. Who suffered sore releases thee."

'Tis Lent. We, pilgrims in a desert land, know grief and fear,
Thou pitying Christ. Oh, through the burning sand draw Thou
a-near !

'Give us of strength to keep the fast :
Thy voice from heav'n vouchsafe to us at last
When sight us fails : " The feast is ready. See !
Beloved, well hast thou kept Lent with Me."

LUCY AGNES HAYES.

Boston, Mass.

1889.] THE ANTISEMITIC MOVEMENT IN EUROPE. 741

THE ANTISEMITIC MOVEMENT IN EUROPE.

THE Antisemitic movement, though hardly ten years old un-
der that name, has thrown a mass of publications on the market
among the authors of which we encounter the learned Catholic
priest, the professor of theology, the lawyer, the atheist, men of
all creeds and of no creeds, and hence also a correspondingly
great disparity of opinions as to the intrinsic merits of the whole
question. Mr. August Trefort, the late Minister of Education in
Hungary, condemns, for instance, the movement not merely as
unchristian and uncatholic, but as anti-social and communistic.
He says, with a great deal of force, " An appetite after Jewish
property will necessarily be followed by an appetite after the
property of the Catholic bishop and the Catholic count." Dr.
E. Diihring, an exceedingly learned scientist, though an avowed
atheist, asserts that " the Jewish question would exist even if all
the Jews turned their back upon their own religion and em-
braced one of the prevailing creeds, or if religion were abolished
altogether." This much, however, is quite certain, that the large
majority of writers take great pains to emphasize the non-reli-
gious character of the agitation. The word " Antisemitic," in
point of fact, has been chosen by the leaders of the movement
for the express purpose of indicating the absence of the religious
element as one of the causes of its existence. When we bear in
mind that the Jews are the only representatives of the Semitic
race in Europe, it is, of course, at once apparent that Antisemitic
means anti-Jewish and nothing else. It seems to us, however,
that the studied effort to eliminate altogether the religious ele-
ment from the discussion, and to represent the movement either
as purely social, or purely political, or purely economic, leads to
much confusion of ideas. It is quite true that nothing even
faintly resembling a religious persecution forms part of the issue,
but it is equally true that the Jewish faith, in its effect upon soci-
ety, morality, and political economy, furnishes the one and only
key to any real understanding of the whole difficulty. On that
ground, and on that ground alone, can it be truthfully said that
sooner or later the Antisemitic question is bound to become an
international question.

After these few preliminary remarks we will now proceed to
look at some facts and figures. The total number of Jews, ac-
cording to the most reliable statistics, does not exceed six or

742 THE ANTISEMITIC MOVEMENT IN EUROPE. [Mar.,

seven millions. The bulletin of the Geographical Society of June,
1885, gives the following distribution: Europe, 5,407,600; Asia,
245,000; Africa, 413,000; America, 300,000; Australia, etc.,
12,000 total, 6,377,600. It appears, therefore, that the actual
number of Jews scattered among the 328,000,000 of Europe's
population forms a very small percentage of the inhabitants of
that continent. And the distribution of the Jews in Europe,
according to more recent statistics, assigns to Russia 2,798,000 ;
Austro-Hungary, 1,644,000; Germany, 562,000; Roumania,
400,000; European Turkey, 70,000; Netherlands, 82,500; France,
49,500; England, 46,000; Italy, 35,400; all other countries, 26,300
total, 5,713,700.

These figures confront us with really startling facts. In the
first place, no more than about six hundred thousand Jews live
among forty-one millions in the German Empire, and yet a
strong Antisemitic movement exists there, where they form, in-
deed, a numerically insignificant fraction of the whole popula-
tion. In the second place, in Germany, the strongest and, in
point of education and culture, perhaps the most advanced com-
monwealth of Europe, the movement has gained more strength
than anywhere else. In Austria the case as regards the abso-
lute percentage of Jews is less startling, for we notice a million
and a half leavening the thirty-nine millions of its peoples. Still,
while they are even there a decided minority, the movement
lacks neither intensity nor force, and if there is any justification
for it at all it would at all events be less surprising in Austria
than in Germany, for the following reason.

The Jews of Russia, numbering nearly three millions, live
almost exclusively in the southeastern European provinces of
the great Slav despotism, contiguous to the frontier of Austro-
Hungary. Since the Russian government has taken measures
to prevent this centralization and to distribute them in more equal
proportions over the vast dominions of the czar; since, more-
over, they are restricted, under Russian rule, in their choice of a
calling in life; and last, but not least, since only five per cent,
of their children are admitted into the higher schools, which
percentage applies also to the children of baptized Jews for sev-
eral generations, they find themselves, as it were, pushed across
the frontier and thus threaten a considerable increase in the
contingent of Jews in Austria. This danger, and it is an immi-
nent danger, renders the Antisemitic problem in Austria at once
more serious and less incomprehensible than elsewhere. In Ga-
licia (Austrian Poland) the Jews even now form one-ninth of the

1889] THE ANTISEMITIC MOVEMENT IN EUROPE. 743

population of the province, viz., over 450,000 in five millions ; in
Lemberg and Krakau, the two largest cities, over thirty per cent.
In Hungary, where a hundred and fifty years ago hardly any
Jews were found, they began to swarm in as soon as the edict of
toleration was issued in 1782. In 1785 over 75,000 were already
counted, and at present over 600,000 are credited to Hungary
and the dependencies of the Hungarian crown. The rest of
Austria contains about one-half a million.

With these figures before us it would seem as if the outright
numerical preponderance of other nationalities would suffice to
render the need of any anti-Jewish movement almost absurd.
Anthropological and biotic considerations will, however, offer evi-
dence of a character which bids us form a very different opinion.

The Jews and the Gipsies have often been compared as the
two races which furnish in anthropology the most interesting
objects. The purity of race, the sameness of feature, of form,
of structure, of character, appears traceable much longer in them
than in any other known race. The Jew of to-day is the Jew of
a thousand, of two thousand years ago; he is the identical Jew
that left the first historical record of the race behind. So, too,
with the Gipsy. But apart from this continuity of race, from
the tenacity of inherited custom and an aversion to learn agri-
cultural pursuits, there is nothing common between the Jew
and the Gipsy. The former knows how to accommodate him-
self to surroundings and circumstances; the latter remains in
proud, stolid self-consciousness, ever the same. The Jew, active,
seeks gain everywhere and in everything, and strives with untiring
energy and at every sacrifice after wealth ; the Gipsy, lazy and
inert, gives no thought to the to-morrow. The Jew endeavors
to acquire civic rights and to found hearth and home; the Gipsy
remains hopelessly nomadic. The Jew learns with facility the
language of the country he lives in, the Gipsy preserves his Ro-
mance language ; the Jew hopes for a universal reign, the Gipsy
knows that no future awaits him.

Biotically the Jew is likewise a unique phenomenon. Cli-
mates which to Arian races would be destructive do not seem
to affect him. The Jews acclimatize better than any other nation,
and, where prosperous, they propagate more rapidly and show
greater longevity, irrespective of climate, than Arian nations.
At the same time they thrive best where they are comparatively
few; for in Russian Poland and Galicia, where they are most
numerous and hence compelled to live among themselves, the
Jew lives in filth, in squalor, and in poverty. Trading among

744 THE ANTISEMITIC MOVEMENT IN EUROPE. [Mar.,

themselves evidently does not pay ; like parasites, they need
others, not of their faith, to prosper on.

But there is one trait of character in the Jewish race which is
historic and undeniable, and which, more than any other factor,
explains the Antisemitic movement. The Hebrews, the chosen
people of old, possessed even in pre-Christian times an ineradi-
cable propensity to worship Mammon. The selling of the birth-
right was a bargain, and they have bargained ever since. The
Mosaic law and the prophets bear witness to this trait of charac-
ter. And when in the fulness of time the God-Man came upon
earth to convert the Jew into a Christian, what does history tell
us? He walked among them doing good; he was explicit in his
teaching that God and Mammon were two masters whom no one
could serve at the same time ; he bade them seek the kingdom
of heaven first and what was the result ? They who were taught
by the divine lips of our Saviour not only rejected Christianity
as a nation, but they crucified its Founder and cried: His blood
be upon us and upon our children. That curse has followed them
ever since. The history of the Jews from the beginning of our
era is the literal fulfilment of the punishment that overtook them
then and there in verification of the prophecies. The destruc-
tion of Jerusalem by Titus was followed by the dispersion of the
Jews. They ceased to exist as a nation with a home. They be-
came homeless wanderers all over the globe; ever since they are
the ubiquitous and perpetual living witnesses of the truth of
Christianity. Doomed to be strangers whithersoever they
should go, they are still strangers wherever they are found now.
Popular phraseology has stigmatized the homeless nation as the
" wandering Jew." The Jew of to-day is still the carnal Jew
who looks for a temporal Messiah to raise his people to the sum-
mit of human greatness and reward his followers with earthly
goods. Unable to form a nation in a political sense, the Jews
form now everywhere a nation.withina nation, with a more clear-
ly defined object in view, better organized, and more compact
than any Arian race. All nations by an intuition have but one
way of naming Jews. They may be born in England, in Ger-
many, in France, in the United States, or anywhere else; we
never hear or read about Jewish Englishmen, Jewish Germans,
Jewish French, Jewish Americans, but only of English Jews,
German Jews, French Jews, American Jews. Thus the com-
mon sense of all nations has known how to describe a phenom-
enon that discloses to us a means of understanding what the
Antisemitic movement means.

1889.] THE ANTISEMITIC MOVEMENT IN EUROPE. 745

Nor is this all. Let it not be forgotten that a money-con-
sideration induced Judas Iscariot to betray our Lord ; for if the
accusations of the world against the Jews during nineteen cen-
turies had to be expressed in one word, no better condensation
could be made than " money." Money! money! money! is the
reverberating echo of every century. As a people they were
never given to agricultural pursuits. The petty money-lender,
the usurer, the pawnbroker they are, not only proverbially but
in reality, mostly Jews. Any occupation which implies bodily
labor or promises no return strictly in money they shrink from
with a sort of instinctive aversion. In sculpture, in painting, in
art Jews are rarely found, and hardly ever attain to prominence ;
and when it comes to the art of war, since Christendom began
history has forgotten to record the great general who was a Jew.
<; Sint ut sunt aut non sint" applies to them with singular ap-
propriateness. Nor have they been able, in a moral sense, to rise
above the level at which they were in Roman times. If the great
Roman historian Tacitus calls them " projectissima ad libidinem
gens" he expresses with classic brevity merely wherein the most
prominent vice of the modern rich Jew consists. And if he says,
" Apud ipsos fides obstinata, miser icordia in prompt u, sed adversus om-
nes alios hostile odium " (Among themselves they maintain strict
fidelity and a ready generosity, but towards all others a fierce
hatred), he characterizes their clannish holding together, their un-
scrupulousness in the acquisition of wealth, their propensity to
consider the faults and weaknesses of non-Jews as legitimate
pasture-ground. Historians now explain the persecutions of the
Christians in the early centuries by pointing out how easy it was
in those days to ascribe the crimes of the Jews to Christians, be-
cause Christianity originated in Judea. Be that as it may, many
of the so-called religious persecutions of mediaeval times are at
any rate reducible to a rough sort of self-defence against the ne-
farious practices by which the Jews, even as a suppressed social
element, knew nevertheless how to make themselves hated.

Hungary of the present day offers an example well worth the
earnest consideration of the civilized world. The village-inn-
keeper is invariably a Jew. In him the poor peasant finds a man
who generously gives him credit, who caters to his passion for in-
toxicating drink, who in lieu of money is satisfied with a portion
of the harvest of his fields a man who, as the debt increases, takes
only a mortgage on land and property. He looks upon the Jew
as a benefactor. But some day he awakes to discover that he has
not only become the slave of a destructive vice, but that he is

746 THE AN TI SEMITIC MOVEMENT IN EUROPE. [Mar.,

bankrupt and his family ruined, and that the land he once owned
has become, at fifty per cent, of its value, the undisputed legal prop-
erty of his quondam benefactor. Nor is the peasant the only one
who falls a prey to the insinuating arts of the Jew. Many noble-
men could tell sad tales. That the Jews have accomplished the
ruin of Poland is a historical fact. They own the noble's land,
the castle, the silver, the plate, the furniture in it, and if the owner
still lives there he does so only on sufferance. The life-blood of
the nation that gave them shelter and food being sucked out, the
Polish Jew is reduced to thrive upon the Polish Jew not a lucra-
tive business, judging from the condition in which he is encoun-
tered there. Appearances indicate that the fate of Poland awaits
Hungary. Already do the commerce and trade of this rich coun-
try lie in the hands of Jews to a very large extent, while the press
is nearly altogether in their hands.

This picture, which is by no means overdrawn, explains to us
why it was that the murder of the girl Esther at Tisza-Eszlar in
Hungary in 1882, and the subsequent sensational trial, revived the
false accusation of ritual murder which had been framed in pre-
vious centuries against the Jews and led to violent outbreaks, such
as the burnt ruins of Duna-Szerdahely, the revolts in Krakau,
the troubles among the students in Gratz and in various parts of
the monarchy.

The official statistics of crime in Prussia throw upon this sub-
ject a strange light. Between 1870-1878, 6,430 cases of perjury
were tried by jury before the Prussian courts. Considering the
percentage of Jews in the population, the proportionate figure
would have been 85 ; but instead of 85, 219 of the accused were
Jews. For falsification of documents 6,378 cases were tried ; 82
should have been the percentage of Jews, while their actual num-
ber amounted to 289. Fraudulent bankruptcy furnishes the most
significant item : of 1,129 cases, 268 concerned Jews, as against 15,
which should have been their proportion. In crimes which re-
quire a certain amount of courage Jews rarely appear on the
docket. It is permissible, therefore, to draw the inference that
the criminality of the Jews extends principally over such offences
the perpetration of which requires cunning, perversion of truth,
and calculating unscrupulousness, where the possibility of escap-
ing the law is not excluded, but depends on the degree of ingenu-
ity of the transgressor. The acquisition of money and the acqui-
sition of power go hand-in-hand. The Jews, therefore, possessed
themselves at once of that most powerful instrument for directing
public opinion, the " Press." The Austrian press goes under the

1889.] THE ANTISEMITIC MOVEMENT IN EUROPE. 747

name of "Rabbiner presse," because all important papers are owned
or controlled by Jews and devoted to the promotion of the inter-
ests of the Jewish race. The German and the French press are
almost in the same position. The late Sir Moses Montefiore is
credited with the utterance, " Until all newspapers of the world are
in our hands, our reign remains a phantom of the brain." It is a
handful of Jews that shapes public opinion in Europe and directs
it into channels suitable to their own purpose. The revolutions
of 1848, the divorce between religion and education, and the elimi-
nation of religion from the school, the rise of Socialism in its vari-
ous forms all this has not taken place without the active stirring-
up of public feeling, without the systematic misrepresentation of
the truth, without the persistent and able advocacy of false doc-
trines by means of a press in the hands of Jews. The Jews are the
allies of the Freemasons ; their ulterior objects are the same. For
this reason has Catholicity been singled out by the Jews as the
most implacable enemy of "progress," just as Freemasonry also
wages against that stronghold of truth an uncompromising war.

The opinion is not unfrequently entertained that the atti-
tude of the Church of Rome towards the Jews must be blamed
for the transmission of the peculiar characteristics and propensi-
ties of Jews, and that the prohibition of marriage between Jew and
Christian preserved the nationality of the Jews. But this is not
the case. Granting that the action of the church has lessened the
mingling of Jews with other nations, the principal and only cause
of the purity of the Jewish race consists in the religious aversion
of the Jew to seek a wife outside of his own race. Judaism is es-
sentially exclusive, for, even where no barriers are erected be-
tween Jew and non-Jew, the statistical evidence shows in an
overwhelming manner that the Jew does not amalgamate with
other nations.

What the Jews consider their own mission is no secret.
When Cremieux, the grand-master of the French Freemasons,
formed in 1860 the " Alliance Israelite," the circular sent out
on that occasion contained the following passages: "The Alli-
ance is neither French, nor Swiss, nor German, but Jewish and
universal"; "Our nationality is the religion of our fathers";
"We live in foreign lands and cannot take interest in the chang-
ing fortunes of these lands"; " Catholicity, our enemy of cen-
turies, succumbs struck on the head " (frapp? h lattte}] "The
day is not far distant when the riches of the earth will belong ex-
clusively to the Jews." These are the objects of the organiza-
tion called into life for " beneficial purposes." The organ of the

748 THE ANTISEMITIC MOVEMENT IN EUROPE. [Mar.,

Jews in Vienna, Die Neuzeit, in its issue of September, 1883, con-
tains the following :

, " We, the professors of Judaism, who on account of our experience and
our history, on account of our trials and sufferings, are far in advance of
all other peoples in ethics, we have to educate them, that at least a part of
the Christians may be lifted up to the moral plane on which the Jews have
for a long time already been."

There is no uncertain sound in these words.

From what has been said so far it is self-evident that the Jew-
ish question, culminating in the Antisemitic movement, offers
very grave problems, socially, politically, and economically. No
nation, no government can stand idle and see the wealth of the
people gradually but surely concentrating itself in the hands of
a race hopelessly alien, and they cannot allow the ruling power to
be used for furthering the advantages of a foreign element ; they
cannot tolerate this foreign element to become master, and those
who gave to it food and shelter to become slaves. Yet if the
Jews are dangerous corrosive elements of civilized society, they
are so because of their religion, as we stated in the beginning.

When Schopenhauer (in Parerga, 133) says:

" It is an error to consider the Jews as a religious sect, but when, to
favor this error, an expression borrowed from the Christian Church is ap-
plied, viz,, ' the Jewish Confession,' it becomes an expression not only to-
tally incorrect but calculated to mislead. Jewish nation is correct. Their
religion is the tie that binds them together, the^6>// de ralliement, the bat-
tle-cry, the sign of recognition,''

he really asserts what we contend for, and agrees practically
with H. Naudh, who observes (in Die Juden und der deutsche Staat) :

"The state dare not ignore the moral code of a foreign, peculiar reli-
gion. Their religion is a direct declaration of war against all other na-
tions and is peculiar to the race. To be a Jew means to put one's own ad-
vantage against the whole world in a hostile manner, to recognize no
moral law towards others, except the gain of Israel. If the German state,
therefore, is the personification of the German nation, then the Jews living
in Germany are as little part of the German state as the tapeworm of the
patient in whom he lives. They are German-speaking Jews, but they are
not Jewish Germans. "

Here the religious element appears positively asserted as the
one cause that necessarily alienates the Jew from all other na-
tionalities. In that sense is also to be understood the following
passage from Ernst Freiherr v. d. Briiggen's work, Russland und
die J-uden :

"Towards the Christian, the Christian society, and the Christian state

1889.] THE ANTISEMITIC MOVEMENT IN EUROPE. 749

there exists no moral obligation for the jew. A Jew who has stolen is
hardly less esteemed on that account by his own, except he is caught and los-
es the gain. Honor is weighed against gold ; he who has money has esteem,
nobody asks after his honor. In its position and influence the Israelitic
people display the character of an aristocracy of birth that does not rest
upon ownership of land and privileges, but upon movable capital (money)
and intelligence (more correctly, smartness and unscrupulousness). The
spirit of union among this aristocracy is immense, their energy in protect-
ing the common interests of the race worthy of admiration. The Jewish
question is, therefore, not one of religious toleration. Whoever holds that
opinion is either ignorant or uses toleration as a pretext. It is not faith
but civilization that separates us from the Jews. The Jewish question is a
question of civilization (erne Cultiirfrage}."

If the absence of morality in Jews towards non-Jews, and
their union against all other nations, render them dangerous,
then, we take it, the faith inculcating these principles is the
kernel of the question. Now, Judaism rests in our days upon the
Talmud, whose compilation was made early in our era, about 350.
It divides itself into two parts, the " Mishna," containing the
Mosaic tradition, and the "Gemara," containing the explanation
and interpretation of the former. Comparatively little has been
known about the Talmud until modern research dived into the
mysterious depths of this code. The " Schulchan aruch," an ex-
tract from the Talmud, is better known and more accessible to
the student. It is, of course, impossible to do more than faintly
outline this moral code. The concurrent testimony of all who
have investigated this -subject, even Dr. Kopp (a lawyer of no
mean ability, who in the lamous lawsuit of Dr. Rohling, a Catho-
lic priest, against Dr. Bloch, a rabbi, acted as counsel of the
latter), justifies the assertion that the ideas of moral and immoral,
right and wrong, in the Christian sense are altogether wanting.
What is unlawful towards a Jew is not unlawful towards the
Gajim (non-Jews). If some fervent Antisemitics have been car-
ried away by their zeal to torture the only passage in the Tal-
mud that possibly could be taken as a formal approval of ritual
murder into such a meaning, they have hardly advanced their
cause, for the theory of bloody rites among the Jews appears
pretty well exploded. But that the Jewish creed of to-day pre-
sents us with a code of superlative and exclusive egoism, having
in view the attainment of universal sway by means of grasping
the wealth of all nations in the firm grip of this race, no one
can deny. Dr. Adolf Wahrmund states very concisely, " The
Jews consider themselves the representatives of humanity par ex-
cellence]' and the same opinion is reiterated in many different

750 THE ANTISEMITIC MOVEMENT IN EUROPE. [Mar.,

forms by the ablest writers on both sides. It is, after all, but the
old story, naturam si expellas furca, tamen usque recurret. As
long as the Jew remains Jew in his heart, in his conviction, in his
aspirations, the formal change of religion effects no real change.

The facts with which our times have to deal bear out all that
we have said. Whether we look at Wall Street in New York,
or the " Bourse" in Paris, the " Borsen " in Berlin, Vienna, and
elsewhere, we observe everywhere the typical faces of the Jews
among those who raise and inflate values and tighten or loosen
the money markets of the world. The aggregate money power
of the Jews all over the world is something incredible. In all the
leading banking institutes of the world Jews hold the reins. The
power of the Rothschilds, the Bleichroeders, and a host of others
is so great that modern governments are practically dependent
upon them in their foreign policy. Such a state of affairs is quite
serious, and it promises to become more so. The United States
also offers a lesson worth studying in this respect. In 1832 12,000
Jews are enumerated, in 1870 78,000, and in 1877 " the Board of
Delegates of American Israelites " reports their number as 300,-
ooo, of whom 50,000 live in New York. In 1844 New York pos-
sessed four synagogues: in 1873 the number had grown to forty-
four. When Longfellow, commenting upon the inscriptions on
the tombstones in a Jewish cemetery of Rhode Island, wrote,

" The very names recorded here are strange,
Of foreign accent and of different climes :
Alvarez and Riviera interchange

With Abraham and Jacob of old times,"

he vvas probably not aware how much he said in these words of
the ubiquitousness and continuity of the Jew. The tone of a
press acknowledged to be in the hands of the Jews offers, of
course, no light upon this subject. But the fact that in the par-
liaments of Germany and of Austro-Hungary Antisemitic parties
are forming indicates that the masses, as such, have taken hold of
the movement. Their dumb sense of suffering from something
from which the government ought to protect them begins to
take shape and form. In some districts an Antisemitic credo is
exacted from the candidate before he can obtain a single vote.
As yet the power of the Jews in both parliaments, where they
furnish the most skilful leaders and advocate apparently only
the cause of the masses, is unshaken. But their efforts to deceive
the credulous meet no longer with the same success. Leagued,
as the Jewish cause is, to that of the Freemasons, the govern-

1889-] THE ANTISEMITIC MOVEMENT /.v EUROPE. 751

ments are confronted by a task so great and so delicate that its
difficulty cannot be overrated.

Were the Jews surrounded on all sides by people whose lives
practically demonstrated the elevating-, purifying, and sanctifying
influences of genuine Christian virtue and genuine Christian
faith, their conversion would offer little difficulty. But in the
modern so-called Christian state it is difficult to see how any leg-
islation can be enacted against the Jews as Jews. For on what
basis can it stand ? Will you persecute the Jews because they
know how to trade on the weaknesses and faults of those not of
their faith ? Because they are rich and getting still richer? Be-
cause they know how to acquire and to hold power ? It is plain
how difficult a question is here offered for settlement. Again,
the Jews have not been free until this century. That love for
fellow-man which Christ so much enjoined upon his followers has
not been for centuries extended to them. Almost the only pro-
tectors they found in the middle ages were the popes, who of-
fered them an asylum and shelter until the storm blew over.
Besides, there are Jews who in uprightness of character, in integ-
rity, in charity and purity of life offer examples worthy of imita-
tion to many so-called Christians. They acquire knowledge, and
many a Jew is in point of culture and learning above his Chris-
tian fellow-man. Many Jews are aware of and deeply deplore
the failings of their own nation, and, though Jews by feature and
descent, are in no sense Jews any longer. All this complicates
the problem. Nor is it surprising that the Jews are the main
supporters of Freemasonry ; the social outcast reached naturally
out for an institution where he was not treated as such, and
where he found, or, at all events, hoped to find, that social equality
for which he struggled in vain for centuries. As far, then, as the
Jews are Freemasons they are necessarily, in any state where
they are, a living menace to society, to state, to government, as
they are to the human race itself. But where they are simply
Jews, inoffensive citizens of another creed, offensive only because
of their national inability to live otherwise than as parasites, there
in a truly Christian state an Antisemitic movement appears in the
light of an anomaly. For a Christian government conscious of its
duty to do in a social way what God's church has been, is doing,
and will continue to do in a spiritual way, namely, to "gather all
into one fold," should not find that task fraught with insuperable
difficulties. A. DE GHEQUIER.

Vienna, Austria.

752 WANTED: SENSATIONAL PLEACHING. [Mar.,

WANTED r SENSATIONAL PREACHING.

" WHY Protestant pews are tenantless is a question very of-
ten asked nowadays. The answer is that the preacher fails to
amuse or interest. He fails to do that which caterers to the pub-
lic amusement contrive to do to ' draw '; and then he makes up
his mind that the world is going to the devil because it will not
come around to hear him. . . . As a rule, the modern Pro-
testant pulpit discourse, when it is not shockingly irreverent, is
nothing if it be not a tastefully prepared essay on the most sen-
sational topic of the hour. The more extravagant the subject,
the larger the crowd. The sale of the pews is regulated by the
sensationalism of the preacher."

Every word true. In fact, every word of the whole splendid
article, "Creeds, Old and New," in a popular magazine for Au-
gust, 1888 whence I make these quotations is true, besides be-
ing instinct with life and suggestiveness. But as to sensational-
ism, there are of course sensations and sensations; and I con-
tend that not all "extravagance," "topics of the hour," "sensa-
tions," and efforts to " draw " are to be deprecated.

Many of our Saviour's discourses were on topics of the hour ;
and his sermons were accompanied by events that produced a
great sensation. When he fed the five thousand by miracu-
lously multiplying the few small loaves and fishes he caused
a greater sensation than any of us have ever witnessed. And
when he sat a guest at the table of the Pharisee, and the peni-
tent woman came in and cast herself weeping at his feet, to
wash them with her tears and wipe them with her hair wasn't
that a sensation ? And when he went into the house of Jairus
and said to the dead girl, " Maiden, arise!" and she arose must
not that have produced a sensation? Picture a great funeral
taking place in one of our large cities ; picture a missionary
priest meeting the procession and telling the pall-bearers to stop
quite likely that would produce a sensation such as we don't
often have nowadays. And suppose the priest, approaching the
bier and looking upon the dead, should say in thrilling tones,
" Young man, arise !" and the young man should arise isn't it
probable a sensation would ensue?

Now, since our Divine Teacher deigned to follow up his in-
structions by occurrences wonderfully sensational, why may we
not wish modern preachers to do likewise? If there is anything

1889.] WANTED: SENSATIONAL PREACHING. 753

which this nineteenth century abhors (and in this respect we do
not much differ from other centuries), it is tameness and same-
ness. Deliver us from the bore and the "chestnut," the trite
saying and the worn-out platitude. Freshness is what we ask ;
and, of all institutions, that which has the least excuse for lack of
freshness is the true religion.

Whenever our Lord spoke it was to say something that had
never been said before. Whenever he preached, his hearers
heard wondrous news that no man had ever heard before. No
wonder the whole nation ran after him, as the envious and
spiteful Scribe deplored. No wonder that the two apostles in
afterthought recognized him because, " Were not our hearts
burning within us while he spoke to us in the way?'' Ah ! hu-
man nature is pretty much the same now as it was then. The
nation runs after what is new and strange. It is rare that we
ever see in a life-time even one such marvel as our Lord's con-
temporarie's were witnessing daily. What an amazing event
were we to attend a wedding where, all unexpectedly, the water
should be turned into wine ! What an unexampled astonish-
ment were we to see a man, dead and buried for three days,
come forth alive from the tomb! How speechless our surprise
were we to see such events as the miraculous draught of fishes,
the walking on the waves, the curing of the leprous, the blind,
the paralytic, the possessed ! Could we ever stop talking about
such things ? Wouldn't each one of them cause a tremendous
sensation ?

Well, nowadays as then there are opportunities for seeing
the wonderful in our religion. Nowadays no more than then
is there reason for making religion a humdrum affair, common-
place and wearisome. It is, a painful and unnecessary fact that
often the Sunday sermon is less interesting than the Sunday
paper. These newspapers teem with suggestive items and thrill-
ing incidents, and where a preacher makes use of them to bring
his text home to us, he is sure to have a wide-awake and atten-
tive audience.

Our writer says, " The more extravagant the subject, the
larger the crowd." Well, yes, of course ; and why not? It is
impossible to be too extravagant in religion. The extravagance,
the sensation, may be wrong in kind but not in degree. Now,
since it is a part of human nature to enjoy the extravagant, the
wonderful, the surprising, why should we not expect to find that
enjoyment within the universal province of religion ? within the
world-wide kingdom of God upon earth ? The preacher who

VOL. XLVIII. 48

754 WANTED: SENSATIONAL PREA CHIN c. [Mar.,

fails to show that religion is the most extravagant (in the higher
meaning of the word), most wonderful, most surprising of all
topics, whether new or old, fails, fails utterly in his mission.
What more extravagant than for a man to say that he will give
his flesh to be eaten and his blood to be drunk by the people?
What more extravagant than for a priest to say that he would
destroy the temple and in three days rebuild it? What more
extravagant than for a missionary to say that he had come upon
earth, not to bring peace but a sword? What more sensational
than for a learned divine to plait him some whips and, with un-
disguised wrath, whip all misbehavers out of church?

In our own times there are the wonders of Lourdes, Knock,
La Salette ; the marvels of Louise Lateau, M. Dupont, the
Cure d'Ars, Dorn Bosco, Father Drumgoole; the soul-stirring
heroisms of Fathers Damien and Conrady ; the disgraceful out-
rages daily occurring in France, Italy, Ireland, Russia, China,
India; the extraordinary calumnies, injustices, ignorance, and
ferocious hatred of the Protestant press ; the proud and wonder-
ful- facts concerning the growth of Catholicity in the United
States ; the touching life of our present captive but glorious
Pontiff. Oh ! what a poor memory, what a dull appreciation,
what a weak capacity for narrative must he have who, with all
this wealth of facts, fails to have new, live, and interesting topics
of the day for his Sunday sermon.

We are all familiar, ad nauseam, with the old pictures and old
jokes about the preaching parson and the blissfully nodding con-
gregation. But it's nothing to laugh about. It is a scene not
confined to Protestant assemblies. And of all the sins which the
Gospel preacher can commit, I think the putting his congregation
to sleep is one of the worst. It is like an abominable lie. It de-
ceives, grossly deceives people into believing that religion is in-
vented chiefly to make folks miserable, or put them to sleep in
church.

I once heard a suggestive dialogue between a delicate girl
and an older friend. "Now," said the latter, " if you wish to
become healthy, follow my advice, and every morning take a
pleasant stroll before breakfast." " Oh ! yes," replied the other
cheerily, " I'm trying that now, and it has done me good already.
I go to seven o'clock Mass, and it's a walk of about twelve blocks
in all." " Oh, no, no !" frowned her adviser, " that is not what
I meant. That'll never do. You go to church, you kneel down,
you begin to think about your sins, you get melancholy and
your walk does you no good." Unfortunately, I cannot now

1889.] WANTED; SENSATIONAL PREACHING. 755

recall the rest of the conversation, nor whether the girl tried (a
herculean task, by the way) to disabuse her friend of that false
impression; but enough is given to illustrate the too popular
belief that religion is intended only to remind us of our sins and
" make us melancholy."

A great factor which might make for or against this decep-
tion is the Catholic press. As a rule, our Catholic papers are
(thank Heaven !) bright, cheering, and readable. But there are
some that still think it a duty to be dull and doleful. Week after
week, column after column, their kindly disposed and long-suf-
fering subscribers are treated to such effusions as this :

" A NIGHT THOUGHT.

" Memory is all we can call our own. Cherished memories of dead
days, how holily sacred ! To-night a sadness steals o'er me ; a desire is
eating my brain. Alas ! the future to me, a burning cloud, a wandering
comet, a dark and rolling surf.

" Time, swift Time, wail ! Time ancient, still in thy prime. The waste
of life must flow, and I am passing away, without a friend, or hope, or
cheer. Passing away, no brotherly hand to guide me across the chilling
stream. Oh ! for one drop to cool my scorching brain, a kindness to soothe
the pain. Here, so far from my childhood's home ; thence, for long, no
word has come. Fame and learning mock; I'm weary of the glitter and
show, and " Columbia again,'' the wail that haunts the ocean main."

Suppose (a supposition inadmissible except for argument) that
some intelligent worldling should read this extract, what would
he naturally think? " Why," says he to himself, "what is the
difference between religion and whiskey, after all? Whiskey
leads to ' snakes,' I know, but religion leads to this sort of
thing. I believe I'd just as lief choose the 'snakes.'' And
who can blame him ? In the secular papers he finds gayety and
good humor, whereas the " wails," the " dead days," the " scorch-
ing brains," etc., of the Catholic paper must suggest to him
some delirium tremens ideas.

Fortunately, however, such Catholic papers are rare, and daily
growing rarer. We have cause to be proud of almost all our
Catholic papers. Not on them rests any blame of disaffection
to religion. \

With regard to the unfortunate Protestant minister who fails
to " draw" our writer is correct. That minister is a total failure.
But is not the Catholic priest "who fails to draw" also a total
failure ? Isn't it his duty to draw ? What sort of a fisherman is
he who fails to draw ? And what is a priest if he be not a fisher-
man " fishing for men," as our Lord commanded? Of what use is

7$6 WANTED: SENSATIONAL PREACHING. [Mar.,

he at any rate as a minister of the Word if he preaches to
empty benches? Why, a preacher's first necessity is to " draw."
Yes, certainly, to draw. None understand this better than the
Anglican ministers. They are a suave and honeyed set. They
cultivate a soothing voice, an amiable aspect, a persuasive man-
ner, and gentle speech. Were it not for their delicious amiability,
why, the Anglican Church would not flourish another year.
They are, to be sure, mere imitations of the truth, and, as the
chromo is usually more highly colored than the genuine article,
their suavity is perhaps rather excessive. Nevertheless, it all
goes to show how necessary is the " draw " system. The An-
glican pastor has a tremendous war to wage. He fights be-
tween two fires. Most of his congregation hate everything
Catholic, while his " historic church " hates everything Protes-
tant; and very adroit must he be to succeed between these two.
'He could not succeed at all but for his " sweetness " and his
.power to " draw."

Yes, and if sweetness is so powerful to draw, harshness is
equally powerful to repel. One unnecessarily harsh word from
a religious person in authority often does more harm than fifty
fine sermons can do good. The devotee whose face says, " Stand,
aside, I am holier than thou " ; the daily Mass goer who has
such a temper that she can never keep a servant ; the catechism
teacher wh'o doesn't know how to smile; the saintly director
whose confessional is deserted because penitents are so afraid
he'll "fire"' them ; the frequent communicant who is so snappish
that her very friends enjoy her absence ; the religious teachers
whose pupils learn to hate the school term ; the pious man who
is a bear to his own children these are they who effectually
don't "draw," and don't try to draw, and never will draw, souls
to Christ or to his church.

There seems a need of some means to draw men into an active
and hearty co-operation with religious movements. Why is it
that the laity show such apathy towards questions that have lar
more intrinsic interest than politics have ? Recently the news-
papers reported the incident of a young lady's lecture before a
Protestant literary association of Chicago. In the Ave Maria s
notice of it the lecturer is called a " stanch and enthusiastic
Catholic." Those words produced something of a qualm in my
mind. "Stanch and enthusiastic" yes, that is doubtless true.
There is many a stanch and enthusiastic Catholic among our
American women of note. But how about our men ? Thank
Hea.ven ! the number of practical Catholic men is not small. But

1889.] WANTED: SENSATIONAL PREACHING. 757

also the number of "stanch and enthusiastic" Catholic men is
far from large. We have galore of stanch and enthusiastic
Democrats, galore of stanch and enthusiastic Republicans, and
even quite enough of stanch and enthusiastic Mugwumps.
But where do we find enthusiasm for religion?

During successful missions the men come to the fore quite
manfully ; also at Easter, and sometimes at Christmas. But it is
not much of an exaggeration to say that usually the great body
of the faithful seems made up of women. Who is it that line
the Communion rail Sunday after Sunday? Women, not men.
Who is it that crowd the confessionals Saturday after Saturday ?
Women, not men. Who is it that go, with steadfast courage
and patient endurance, to sit out the musical fatigues of High
Mass? Women, not men. Who is it that at evening services,
daily Mass, processions, and almost all public ceremonies, make
up the crowd? Women, not men.

A satisfactory solution of this problem is devoutly wished.
To say that it is merely because women are always better than
men is hardly adequate. Given equal opportunities, and the
average man is as good as the average woman. A nearer ap-
proach to the true explanation lies, perhaps, in the fact as sug-
gested by " Layman" in THE CATHOLIC WORLD of April, 1888
that the laity have no voice or part in ecclesiastical functions.
That "woman's voice must not be heard in the church" may
be no barrier to her devout interest therein. But with men it is
different. God made man dominant and woman subject. Nat-
urally, man likes to govern, and, naturally, takes no interest in
that in which he has no voice. Throughout the world the supine-
ness of Catholic laymen is noteworthy. Sincere and steadfast
though their faith may be, it is not active. Look at France, Italy,
Austria ; how little they show of activity, of aggressiveness,
even of defensiveness. And right here in our new France our
Louisiana in this supposed-to-be Catholic city of New Orleans,
see how a handful of Protestants comes in and saddles upon us
the Godless public school. See how tamely the Catholic people
submit to it, some sending their children to receive a non-Cath-
olic education, others paying a double school-tax without pro-
test.

See how persistently Catholics support Protestant literature.
How artlessly they thus build up their enemies' forts ! How
thankfully they accept and pay for papers, magazines, pictorials,
etc., which revile their church ! The Protestant who subscribes
for a Catholic periodical is hard to find. But where would non-

758 WANTED: SENSATIONAL PLEACHING. [Mar.,

Catholic weeklies and monthlies be without their large Catholic
patronage. Look at the fine library of our Tulane University
an institution supported partly by endowment and partly by
taxation. Its shelves are well stocked with admirable works
upon the " Errors of Popery/' the " Abominations of Rome," etc.,
and never a book of defence by a Catholic. And in this our city
does not stand alone. How account for this seemingly unac-
countable apathy among us?

This is the age of democracy ; and perhaps it is through dem-
ocratic ways and means that the church shall henceforth rule
over us. Perhaps every man is to be given, in some measure, a
voice in church functions, and even in some departments of
church polity ; a right, not only to listen but to talk back, to ques-
tion, to discuss, to suggest. Better live agitation than dead apa-
thy. Better warm partisanship, rousing debate, than the dull,
cold indifference too generally shown by Catholic men.

St. Paul's words are: " Let women keep silence in the churches,
for it is not permitted them to speak, but to be subject. . . .
But if they would learn anything, let them ask their husbands at
home/' Thus the embargo on the tongue is evidently not for
the husbands. On the contrary, the husband is the one who is to
enlighten his inquiring spouse. And how can he enlighten her if
he himself have no more privilege in the church than his spouse
has? If in St. Paul's day husbands did instruct their wives, the
order of things is reversed in our day. For many are the pious
and intelligent wives who instruct their husbands ; but where are
the pious and intelligent husbands capable of instructing their
wives? Might not the case be different were husbands (and
prospective husbands) encouraged to do more than " keep silence,
speak not, and be subject" in the churches? encouraged to do
more than merely listen, as their wives are permitted to do?

It is widely believed that religious home-instruction is wo-
man's peculiar duty. The idea of man's undertaking it seems
ridiculous. That shows how far we've gone wrong in this mat-
ter. Everything moral is supposed to depend on " woman's
influence," and it is the subject of much written "gush.' 1
" Woman's Influence," " Woman's Mission," etc., are the great
themes for sentimental moralists.

On Sundays I sometimes observe the beaus and belles on
their way to church. Arrived there, the beau lifts his hat and
bows, smiling radiantly. The belle responds, smiling rather
faintly. Then she goes into the church and he goes elsewhere.
"Ah!" say I to myself, "behold the influence of woman, the

1889.] WANTED: SENSATIONAL PREACHING. 759

mighty influence of woman ! It leads man to the church door.
Oh ! potent woman, there is an influence around the corner
which, in spite of you and of the Sunday law, leads man from the
church door and into the bar-room door."

Not that woman has no influence : such a statement were
absurd. But her influence is weak against that mighty triple
alliance, "the world, the flesh, and the devil" (the taste for
whiskey and beer being largely classed under " the flesh"). Only
one influence can successfully cope with those three, and that is
the influence of the Catholic Church. He who feels not that in-
fluence is a prey to the world, the flesh, and the devil, and wo-
man's influence can avail him little. The " devout female sex "-
yes, the phrase is stereotyped now. But if woman's influence
be what it is claimed, how comes it that she, being so devout,
lets man remain so indevout? She has had a fair chance and
has done her part, I think, and still " the devout male sex " has
not yet become stereotyped to any great extent.

If all mothers and wives were what they should be, perhaps
men would become the devout male sex. Yet it is not pleasant
to think of a man's attending church only because his good
wife asks him, or his fond mother coaxes him, or his dear sister
persuades him. No, I like to think of every man's going there
of his own free will. Any other kind of church-going isn't likely
to last long. Woman's influence over man may be great, but
man's influence over himself ought to be greater. It is the part
of effeminate literature to unduly exalt woman's power. Wife-
hood and motherhood what hallowed names they be ! How
they have been wreathed into poetry and breathed into song,
painted, dramatized, etc. But we don't poetize rnuch about
fatherhood, and as for husbandhood, why that doesn't euphon-
ize at-all. I sympathize with the little song which pleads :

" Oh ! sing me a song of my father,

And tell me the reason, I pray,
That you always sing songs about mother
And a word of dear father ne'er say.''

Maternity, indeed, is high, but paternity is higher. Woman
may help to save man, but his salvation does not, should not
depend upon her. Alas, poor woman ! How comes it, if her
power be so great, that she has grown dissatisfied ? How comes
it that she is trying to push herself into new spheres ? trying to
rival the lawyer, the tradesman, the drummer, the book agent,
the salesman ? trying to sit beside man even in the councils of

760 WANTED: SENSATIONAL PREACHING. [Mar.,

the nation? No stronger refutation of "woman's great influ-
ence" than the complaints made by woman suffragists them-
selves.

Therefore it should not be thought nor taught that woman's
piety will necessitate man's. No ; God's method of saving man
doesn't seem to be through woman's influence. The man who
enters heaven will get there by an act of his own will. And the
man who enters religion effectually must do so by an act of his
own will not because of some one else's will. Opposed to this
idea I may be told of those wonderful women, the Teresas,
Catherines, Monicas, whose influence has lived through ages. I
acknowledge it, but contend their greatness was not because
they were women, but because they were saints. If the world's
upward progress is always to depend on the virtue of wives and
mothers only, and not on that of husbands and fathers also, that
progress will continue to be rather slow. " If there be a good
mother, all will be well," say the effeminate writers, thus making
the mother responsible for everything. But the sentiment is
false, fair sounding though it be and hallowed by age. The
father's responsibility is equal if not greater. After all, what is
woman's influence against whiskey, or gambling, or club life, or
hoodlumism, or politics, or war, or scepticism, or labor strikes?

No ; religion alone can save man from himself, can shield him
from his enemies. The good wife can work marvels ; yes, truly.
But the good husband can work greater. It may be said that
woman is more religious than man because she is naturally better
than he. The truth is, she is better because more religious.
Hence, man also, in order to become better, must become more
religious. 'That is the only way. The church must lay hold of
him ; and not indirectly through woman's influence, however
good that may be, but directly through his own will. And the
great question is, How is this to be brought about? How is the
church to make men assemble in her interests as densely as they
do for baseball or politics or trade conventions ? " Layman "
says it will be through a return to liturgical observances, con-
gregational singing, church music, church prayers, and, above
all, church conferences between and among the clergy and the
laity.

A great difficulty here looms up, an almost insurmountable
obstacle, viz.: the paucity of priests. Overworked as they al-
ready are, what time have they to start new movements? What
time even to study oratory or to cultivate eloquence? What
time to read up on questions of the day and get abreast of the

1889.] WANTED: SENSATIONAL PREACHING. 761

age? And the priests of the future are likely to be no less over-
worked. Our zealous pastor once said, using, as he often does,
very quaint illustration : " Do you expect to have good priests?
Do you think God is going to send you good priests as he sends
down the rain from heaven? Then you are mistaken. Priests
don't come down upon, they arise from, the people. Priests are
to the people what cream is to milk. If the milk is rich, there
will be rich cream. If the milk is poor, there will be no cream.
And, just the same, if the people are good, they produce good
priests. If the people are bad, they produce no priests or bad
ones." I go a step further and say, If all the womenfolk be good,
and even very good, but the men-folk indifferent, the outlook
for priests is very poor. The need for more priests is urgent.
But there is another need which goes before, and must first be
supplied the need of devout and- instructed men. Vocations
for the priesthood are not likely to come out of a community
which consists chiefly of the " devout female sex."

Sometimes in church, when listening to a good sermon and
hearing the priest say " my brethren," and " beloved brethren,"
and "dear brethren, 3 ' I, noting the crowd around me, say in-
wardly : " Ah, no, good father, say not ' beloved brethren ' ; say,
rather, ' beloved sisteren.' ' Now I want to ask, Must this state
of things last always? Is it God's design that the faithful be
" mostly women "? Can it be his purpose to thus perpetuate the
church, designedly deprived of masculinity, in order thereby to
show how he can " confound the strong by the weak, and the wise
things of this world by the foolish " ? Perhaps so. And we
must humbly bow to his decree. But it is no sin to hope that
such is not his decree ; to hope that a better time is coming for
the men, when their torpid spirituality will be revived by means
of congregational singing, liturgical praying, and new old ways
of church conferences a better time which will make numer-
ous " stanch and enthusiastic " Catholics among men as well as
amon'g women, and will employ all sanctioned means to " draw"
and to make religion a " topic of the olay," and even thereby to
create "a sensation."

May we not, in fact, long for a sensation of this kind ? May
we not wish that the rulers of the church would put a stop to
the fancy choir with its wearisome solos, amorous duets, super-
fluous Am ens ^ and other long-drawn-out reiterations, and for ever
forbid that lullaby of a Veni with which the choir tries to soothe
us to sleep before the sermon? May we not hope and pray that
the rare spectacle of crowds of men attending to their religious

762 MORN AND NIGHT. [Mar.,

duties will cease to be rare among us ? Were not the Crusades
a sensation in their day? also the conversion of Constantine and
his army ? the re-union of the Eastern Churches with Rome? the
defeat of the Turks at Lepanto ? Who of us would not exult at
similar sensations in our day ? For example, at the restoration
of the Pope's temporal power, or the healing of the Greek
schism, or the freedom of Catholic Ireland, or the repentance of
heretical England, or justice to Poland, or a great influx of en-
lightened Jews ? Tremendous sensations, all or any of them.
But the faithful at large now take so little interest in church his-
tory, either present or past, that these wondrous events are not
likely soon to happen.

How to arouse that interest, how to make all Catholic men
believe that religion consists not in inward holiness alone, but in
outward zeal also, is the end towards which, as one small factor
in many great movements, this mildly sensational article is con-
tributed. M. T. ELDER.

New Orleans, La.

MORN AND NIGHT.

SOME morn : my ear will catch the note

Of first-come stranger bird
Fluttering its way to nesting,
With little hints from here and there

Closing in its faith
Of Spring ; and, resting high
Above the bare despair of verdure,

Its song I'll hear.

Some night : across the desert of my doubt,
O'er troubled thoughts, like wind-vexed sands,

A star will shine;
Its flame of living light
Will fire the sands to glowing white,

Nor burn the feet that press them ;
On the illumined path I'll find the way,

My being breathing brightness.

ANNIE Cox STEPHENS.

1889.] THE TRUE SITE OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. 763

THE TRUE SITE OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.

WITHIN the last fifty years a number of books, pamphlets, and
magazine articles have appeared in which the sites of the holy
places in Jerusalem are represented as unauthentic and fictitious.
It is asserted that these holy places have been invented by lying
priests for the sole purpose of making money out of the faithful.
Especially has the place of the sepulchre of our Lord Jesus
Christ been an object of every sort of attack by unbelievers and
Protestants. A cyclorama has been lately on exhibition in the
city of New York which has for its subject the crucifixion of
our Divine Redeemer. The position of the cross, however, is
not correct ; and as an article in a recent number of the Cen-
tury Magazine undertakes to defend this fictitious site, I have
thought well to say a few words in aid of the truth on this ques-
tion.

Dr. Edward S. Robinson was, I believe, the first to doubt the
authenticity of the holy places as fixed by immemorial tradition.
Then followed a Mr. Howe and a Mr. Thompson, and, lastly, Mr.
Lawrence Oliphant, with a whole host of others, from Dean
Stanley down to the obscure person who "explains" the cyclo-
rama alluded to above.

Mr. Charles S. Robinson has the hardihood to assert "that
nobody has ever answered the arguments of such scholars as
Dr. Edward Robinson and Dr. William M. Thomson." Now,
these words show either mendicity of intellect or mendacity of
intention. Either this gentleman imagines that all the literature
on this subject is in English, and is ignorant of the works in
other languages, or else he knowingly suppresses this fact,
which, to say the least, is not right.

I have before me as I write Les Saints Lieux, by Mgr.
Mislin, in three large octavo volumes ; M. Poujoulat, in two
volumes ; Rev. P. de Riviere, in one volume ; and I can lay my
hands on half a dozen others, each of whom has triumphantly
refuted " the arguments which have never been answered."

The method of argument of our adversaries has been so well
described in a little gem of a work called The Lectures of a
Certain Professor that I cannot forbear quoting the passage:

" If you are engaged in an argument (a very profitless engagement, by
the way), and if you are anxious (as most people are) for victory rather than
the truth, you should proceed thus : Let me suppose you have in your favor

764 THE TRUE SITE OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. [Mar.,

some isolated fact (these can be found on any side of any question). Make
this your minor premise ; then take a general proposition and wrap up your
conclusion in it, and make it your major. You say you can't prove your
general proposition ? Of course you can't. But you can do what will serve
your purpose equally well ; you can preface it thus : ' Every one who is not
a born idiot knows,' or ' It is admitted by all who have studied the subject
minutely,' or 'The profoundest philosophers agree,' or some such humbug,
and in nine cases out of ten no one will dispute it. Some will feel a per-
sonal interest in proving that they are not idiots, and others will be anx-
ious to pretend that they are quite au coitrant with the philosophers. None
of them will have sufficient time to analyze a big generality, and if any
sensible person amongst them make an attempt to do so, why, he will ap-
pear dull and stupid, and the argument will be miles away on other
grounds before he overtakes it ; and if he does come up with it, you can
put him down loftily by remarking : 'That was settled half an hour ago to
the satisfaction of everybody ' ; and ' everybody ' (the fools) will say you are
right, and your opponent and common sense will be nowhere."

All things must be subjected to the searching light of modern
criticism, says the sceptic. But of what value is that criticism
which begins its search with a prejudiced mind, determined to
find what it likes and pass by as not found, and not to be found,
what it dislikes? Those who have attacked the authenticity of
the Holy Sepulchre have proceeded in this manner. They have
set to work to disprove the value of the testimony of those who
for eighteen hundred years have witnessed to the truth of the
location. They tell us the reasons ; listen to them: "The su-
perstitious reverence paid to the places," " The imposture of the
holy fire on Holy Saturday," " The grave of Adam," " The taw-
dry hangings and altar shrines" such are the principal reasons
for seeking elsewhere for the holy places. These reasons are
born of passion and prejudice, of envy and jealous}', and hatred
of the Catholic religion. Can a man in such a frame of mind
be expected to examine any subject fairly ? We accuse all those
who attack this subject of one or the other of these motives.

Their test of the value of a witness is the length of his cloth-
ing. Let the poor man be a priest, a monk, and at once he is set
down for an ignoramus, a liar, an inventor of all sorts of ingeni-
ous devices to make money out of the people by fraud. In other
words, if he wear a cassock it is merely " monkish tradition " ;
but if he be celebrating Mass, then it is " disgusting and degrad-
ing monkish superstition."

So, having denied that the site of the Holy Sepulchre is au-
thentic, and having found one to suit themselves, brand-new,
they ask us to prove that their site is the false one, when they are
bound to prove that theirs is the true one. So far not a shadow

1889] THE TRUE SITE OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. 765

of evidence is there to show their Calvary to be true. It is all
the merest conjecture. " The place looks like a skull " ; therefore
it follows that all the world has been mistaken until these nine-
teenth-century American and English wiseacres came to correct
the error. What a pity Mr. Robinson and Mr. Oliphant and
the rest were not on hand when St. Helena came to Jerusalem.

Mr. Howe, in his "orderly argument," has six points which
he says must be maintained. First The place was outside
the walls (Hebrews xiii. 12; St. Matt, xxvii. 31-32; St. Mark
xv. 21 ; St. John xix. 16-17). This, of course, is true. Second
It was nigh to the city. Of course it was. Why adduce this
point? Third It was popularly known as the place of a skull,
Golgotha or Kranion. Quite true. Fourth It was obviously
nigh to one of the leading thoroughfares. This is not proven
from the texts adduced. Fifth The spot was conspicuous.
Sixth It was near sepulchres and gardens. But the alleged text
says simply there was a new sepulchre in the garden. Now,
every one of these points is and has been maintained by Catholic
writers. With all these points agrees the present and true site
of the sepulchre of our Lord. And in the light of the dis-
coveries of ancient walls of Ezechias and Jonathan within the
past four or five years, which exclude the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre from the city enclosure, I do not see that Mr. Howe's
six points have any value for his argument.

And now what is the testimony of the monks and priests
which is so carelessly cast aside as unworthy of credence? We
must go back to the time of St. Helena, who cleared away all
the profane idols and heathen temples which desecrated and de-
faced this place. We find St. Macarius pointing out the tradi-
tional site. Now, he was the bishop in direct line from St. James,
and therefore it is certain that he had a sound tradition of the
place and'a true one. For if there was anything which Easterns
of that time held precious it was the places and things which
had witnessed with mute but certain evidence the persons whom
they concerned. A spot called back a sure and certain transac-
tion ; and when we consider that these people had no other means
of keeping the record except as they read it in places and told it
in traditional story, we are compelled to acknowledge that such
evidence is good. Can we, then, for a moment suppose that to
the bishops of Jerusalem for two hundred and fifty years the
site of Calvary was unknown and forgotten? It would be absurd
to think it. These are the facts quoted from Mgr. Mislin's great
work :

766 THE TRUE SITE OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. [Mar.,

" We have seen that after the death of Jesus Christ St. James the Less
was made Bishop of Jerusalem. When the time came to flee, as announced
by Jesus Christ (St. Matt. xxiv. 16), the Christians, under the charge of their
Bishop Simeon, called the Brother of the Lord by St. Matthew, betook
themselves beyond Jordan to wait until the anger of God had passed, and
returned after the departure of Titus to take possession of the ruins of Jeru-
salem and the tomb of the Saviour. They were the guardians of the holy
places during the times of persecution ; and the fact which proves that the
post was dangerous, but not on that account abandoned, is that during the
lapse of thirty years that is, after the death of St. Simeon to the reign of
Hadrian there were thirteen bishops of Jerusalem, all of whom were con-
verts from Judaism. Again, we find fourteen bishops mentioned in the
history of Eusebius until the time of St. Narcissus, about A.D. 195. To
assert that these bishops, who dwelt uninterruptedly in the Holy City,
and that the faithful under their care lost the memory of Calvary, is not
only to show that one does not understand their religious sentiment, but
also to ignore evidence."

Are we, then, to suppose that Eusebius, St. Cyril, St. Helena,
St. Macarius, and all the rest were deceived ? And were they
deceived in the miracles which attested the authenticity of this
holy place? Must we not, in justice to the intellect and learn-
ing of the people of that day, admit that they were quite as
capable of detecting- fraud and imposture as we of. the present
day ? Is Plymouth Rock a fraud, a deceit of some of the inhabi-
tants of that old Puritan town, because to-day it is sixty feet
above high-water mark and not at the edge of the sea, as it was
in 1622 ?

Again, if this site was a fraud, as Mr. Robinson would have
us think, how is it that the heretics of the same age say noth-
ing about it ? They are silent ; and had it been as these modern
critics say, we may be sure they would have spoken.

We assert also that the site was marked by a pagan temple to
Venus, and there is a coin lately described by Mr. G. Williams
which demonstrates the fact, as well as the testimony of contem-
porary writers who assert the same.

Again, perhaps our enlightened critics will tell us how St. Ma-
carius managed to deceive the whole world. How is it that no
one suspected his veracity ? We can account for it only by the
fact that there was no deceit practised at all. If St. Macarius
had been a deceiver, Eusebius of Caesarea would have soon found
him out, for, as is well known, he was not on the most friendly
terms with him.

This is the method of argument. Mr. Robinson has taken an
isolated fact ; it is that a certain rock near Jerusalem looks like
a skull. Then he has asserted the general proposition that the

1889.] THE TRUE SITE OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. 767

ancient site of Calvary is fictitious because it does not answer
certain conditions, fixed more or less arbitrarily by himself and
those of his mind. And then on these wholly insufficient prem-
ises he expects sensible people to draw a senseless conclusion.
He cannot prove his general proposition, and indeed he does not
consider it worth while to prove it, as he prefaces it with the as-
sertion, " Everybody who is not superstitious knows." For he is
well aware that this will cause most people to accept it, as they
will not wish to be classed among- the superstitious. And then
when any one comes along with an analysis of his general propo-
sition and proves it false in each and every particular, all he has
to say is, " Everybody admits what you deny ; it has been settled
long ago." And the multitude, who have a limited capacity to
digest even a magazine article, will revolt at the sight of a book
in several volumes to demolish their champion ; and so untruth
will flourish for a time, and learning, research, and truth will
have to stand back.

Now let us turn to the " brisk rehearsal " of Mr. Howe's ar-
gument. Of the new site Mr. C. S. Robinson says: ''No one
will ever have to make crooked pictures and distort circumvalla-
tions in order with such a site to meet this text : ' Wherefore
Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with -his own blood,
suffered without the gate.'" We know perfectly well that the
true site of the Holy Sepulchre was without the walls at the
time our Lord was crucified, and that twelve years later it was
enclosed within new ones. Mr. Robinson's remark about " dis-
torting circumvallations," etc., reflects on the Jews who built the
wall after the crucifixion, not on any one else. The place was
nigh to the city. The real site was far nearer than the fictitious
new one of Mr. Howe and Mr. Robinson.

And how can they assert that this " skull shape " must have
remained so for centuries? Why, if it were so well known, did
it lose its name to be renamed by a couple of dilettante explor-
ers? Again they say, " It may have been called by the name
' skull.' ' So it may not. And as a matter of hard fact, it was
not, is not, and will not be by Christians and scholars generally.
If this place had been as strikingly like a skull as the " Profile "
in the White Mountains is like a man's face, it is strange indeed
that no one noticed it before. They admit, these explorers, that
there is no evidence that this place ever bore such a name. But
some place did. Sunday-school scholars are taught by their
teachers in popular commentaries to give two reasons for calling
the place Golgotha, because it was shaped like a skull, or be-

768 THE TRUE SITE OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. [Mar.,

cause there were skulls there. Then they assert that both these
things are true of the new site. But it has not been proved that
this new site was skull-shaped in those days. Two thousand
years make strange changes in the earth and its conformations ;
and it remains for them, Mr. Howe and Mr. Robinson, to prove
that this place is just the same now as then.

" The passers-by, etc." But what does this prove for our ad-
versaries. Nothing; -because the true site of Calvary is just
outside the ancient Gate of Judgment by the highway. And
the true site could not have been any less conspicuous than the
false one which Mr. Howe and those of his way of thinking
maintain. The gardens in the vicinity of the Holy Sepulchre
were still in existence when St. Cyril of Alexandria was living.

There is one particular thing about the sepulchre of our
Lord which, though it may not directly prove that this spot is
Calvary, yet it may be added as a confirmation of all the incon-
testable proofs which have never yet been refuted. This is the
rent rock. Mr. Maundrell.an English gentleman who was a Uni-
tarian, became a Catholic by the study of it. " For," said he, " I
have long studied the physical sciences, and I feel certain that
the fissures in this rock cannot be possibly traced to any natural
causes. An ordinary earthquake might have broken up the
rock, it is true, but the cracks would have been made in a differ-
ent sense. They would have followed the lay of the various
veins or strata, and have been largest in those places where
the strata were narrowest or weakest. This is how we always
find the breaks in such rocks as have been displaced and
broken by means of earthquakes. But here it is far otherwise.
The rock is transversely divided. The opening cuts straight
through in a most strange and inexplicable way. It seems
therefore to me to be a clear proof of some supernatural and
miraculous intervention ; for which reason I thank God for hav-
ing led me hither to contemplate this monument of his won-
drous power a monument which can leave no doubt of the div-
inity of Jesus Christ" (Mgr. Gaume).

Now, why was the place called " The Skull/' as Mr. Robin-
son calls it? The rabbinical traditions tell us that here was the
grave of Adam, and that after the flood the sons of Noe divided
Adam's bones and that Sem buried here the head of Adam.
This is the reason assigned, and this tradition, whether founded
on reality or delusion, has been handed down from the times of
the Jews and certainly cannot be called an invention of Christian
priests. Tertullian, Origen, St. Basil, St. Epiphanius, St. Atha-

1889.] THE TRUE SITE OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. 769

nasius, St. Ambrose, St. Chrysostom, St. Augustine, St. Cyprian,
Theophylact, Euthymius Zigabenus, Rabbi Moses Ben Cephas,
St. Germanus, and many others, all speak of it as an authentic
tradition in their day. And though St. Jerome once discredits
it, he does later withdraw his positive opinion on the subject.
And, lastly, we find several of the converts whom he had in-
structed writing of the same tradition and expressing their be-
lief in it, which they would not have been likely to do had St.
Jerome not come to believe in it aJso. Here, then, is a great
array of authorities for the truth of this strange and ancient rea-
son for calling this place the " Place of the Skull."

Again, it is certain that on this spot Abraham was thought to
have offered up his son Isaac, the type of Him who in after times
should offer himself to his Father on the same spot for the sins
of the whole world. St. Augustine, in his City of God, book
xvi. ch. 33, says: " Jerome the priest writes .that he has learnt
from the ancients of the Jews that it is beyond doubt that Isaac
was sacrificed on the same spot where Adam was buried and
where Christ was crucified."

You may search from end to end of the statements of our
sceptics and not find one single proof worthy the name adduced
for any of their assertions. They speak of " the absurd site,"
but they never condescend to tell us why it is so. They deny
that the city walls were ever inside the site of the Church of the
Holy Sepulchre, yet they never undertake to prove this. What
is the reason? Why do they not attempt some adequate proof
of their assertions? Perhaps it is because such an attempt
means the proving that some of the most venerated personages of
Christian history were impostors and others after them were lit-
tle better. It means the discrediting of all the sources whence
we derive the history of the three hundred years after Christ.
Meantime, the most learned and respectable Protestant and Cath-
olic investigators, who have been on the ground and have studied
the question, have acknowledged, some willingly and some per-
haps unwillingly, that the unbroken tradition of the Christian
Church of Jerusalem is true.

And until each particle of evidence is taken up separately
and disproved this tradition shall stand. But there is no likeli-
hood whatever of these men going into this question scientifi-
cally. They have hearing enough without it. When such a
ridiculously stupid article as the one in the November number
of the Century is taken and printed what need for any de-
fence?

VOL. XLVIII. 49

770 THE TRUE SITE OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. [Mar.,

The authors are well aware that on such recondite subjects
the vast majority of their readers have no knowledge, and so
they say what they please, hoping that no one will be the wiser.
And if any one who does know anything on the other side of
the question shall venture to say a word, then they will quietly
ignore him.

The whole thing in their eyes amounts only to this: "The
tradition which asserts these places to be what they are is un-
tenable, for those who hold it are superstitious and credulous,
and so were all who have handed it down. Besides, it is so en-
crusted with fictitious miracles that we are compelled to deny
it, because miracles do not happen."

Facts, history, documents, tradition both oral and written,
and monuments attest the authenticity of the place ; and if we
doubt these things we must lay ourselves open to suspicions of a
sceptical state of mind and one both illogical and irreligious.

It cannot be denied, then, that the Church of the Holy Sep-
ulchre stands on the very spot where Christ was crucified.

A. M. CLARK.

1889.] PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 771

PAUL RINGWOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

CHAPTER XXIII.
WALKER GUGGINS.

MRS. GLASS was made very unhappy by the news that I was
soon to leave Philiopolis. " I a'mos' wish you'd never come
here, Walter Scott/' she said ; " I was use' to bein' by m'self, an'
now I hev t' begin all over ! " It made no difference to the
good-hearted woman that I was not in a talkative mood. She
talked straight on, only she spoke more than was usual of her
dead, her husband and her son. How many, many stories had
the poor widow to tell me of them !

The work of instructing Walker Guggins caused me no un-
easiness. There was something so like, yet unlike, in the child-
hood of the deformed boy and my own boyhood that I felt
drawn to him in a manner that to Miss Bland was quite unac-
countable. Walker had certainly told me the truth about his
lather's house. It sadly needed some one to look after it. Ex-
pensively furnished, its furniture was going to ruin. The first
thought I had on entering the room into which a pert maid
admitted me was, how much the windows needed washing.
" You'd best keep from them curtains, young man," the maid
advised when I went to a window for fresh air. It was sound
advice, as I presently learned from the experience I had of these
three things : a disagreeable smell, an itching sensation, and the
sight of an insect whose name is not for ears polite.

When Walker came to me his first greeting was to call me
out of the room. " We won't stay there," he said decidedly ;
"that's the Downtrodden's meeting-room; when meeting was
long they used to sleep there."

" What kind of a family are the Downtroddens ? " I asked.

"They an't a family," Walker enlightened me, " they're only
women ; they just pitch into the men. The Downtroddens
wanted to have meetings here after ma died. They sent an old
woman in curls to pop. She was awful sweet on him till pop
said they couldn't meet here no more. Then you ought to
heard her! She went out on the pavement and lectured. She
said pop had killed ma. Pop had to send her out five dollars ;
then she went away. Is your Mrs. Glass a Downtrodden ?"

772 PAUL RING WOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Mar.,

I answered that indeed she was not. Walker said that was
a good thing, and I agreed with him altogether. As we went
up a broad staircase to the second story, Walker said hospitably :
" Pop says you're to eat here. Will you have something to
eat now?"

Having had my breakfast but an hour before, I thanked
Walker and said I believed not.

' When you want anything just say so. We don't have regu-
lar meals here. When pop and me want dinner cook goes to
the eating-house round the corner to fetch some. Cook says
it's economical that way ; better cooked, too. I guess she an't a
very good cook." I could not help thinking that a high degree
of culinary excellence was not needed in Mr. Guggins' kitchen
if the cook had no cooking to do. This thought was kept to
myself.

We had now entered a large room having a bedstead in one
ccrmr, and an abundance of easy-chairs placed hap-hazard, to-
gether with a collection of books on a low table.

" This is my room," Walker informed me. " It's a good room
for me, for when I knock against things I can't hurt myself.
When I knock my hump it makes it sore."

In a pitifully serious way he put his hand behind him and
softly patted the disfiguring hump. When I came to examine
the furniture more closely I understood what he meant by its
being a good room for him. The chairs were all of bent-wood
carefully padded with cushions of down.

" What are you going to teach me first? " Walker demanded
when we were seated.

" I hardly know. Perhaps we had better begin by your tell-
ing me what you have studied," I suggested.

" I never studied anything but reading," answered Walker ;
" I'd like to learn maps."

" Geography ? " I said. " Why are you so anxious to learn
geography ? "

" Did you ever read Gulliver's Travels f " he asked.

"Oh, yes! " I returned, surprised that he had read them.

" I want to study maps to find the places he went to. I'll get
pop to take me there some day," said Walker.

When I had somewhat recovered from the astonishment into
which he had thrown me I exclaimed : " There are no such
.places, Walker."

He looked at me incredulously. " I guess you don't know,"
phe said.

i8?9-] PAUL RING WOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 773

In as simple a way as I knew how I explained to the child
the meaning of Gulliver. A useless waste of breath. The
inimitable air of truth in the dean's greatest writing had too
completely deceived him for any words of mine to shake his
faith. He sighed and was lost in thought, whilst I pondered
what next to say. About to propose geography for its own
sake, the words were stopped on my lips by Walker asking
energetically, " Do you know anything about dogs? "

Answering him in the affirmative, he said : " Please tell me
something about them. We've got a stuffed one ; he was a very
good dog before he had to be stuffed. Some people would be
nicer stuffed. They didn't stuff ma. I don't believe they know
how in this country. I saw a stuffed man at the museum. He
didn't look as nice as our dog. The man at the show said he'd
kept right well for over three thousand years. Sometimes the
men at shows don't tell the truth. I think that man did, for the
stuffed man was brown and all dried up. He said it was a
mummy."

I entered into a little history of mummies, to which he lis-
tened very patiently. When I had finished he said : " Now will
you please tell me about a dog ? "

Not deeply read in dog-lore, I told him about the famous
dog of Montargis, about the still more famous dogs of St. Ber-
nard. The last interested him deeply. When I had ended he
said thoughtfully : " If dogs go to heaven, they'll go. Ours
went. He bit Miss Glowser. She's the woman pop gave five
dollars to. I guess it was right to bite her. Ma beat him, but
pop gave him chicken when ma wasn't looking."

We talked on a while longer, and then the pert maid who
had admitted me announced dinner, which Walker and I took
together. A very good dinner it was, and after it was eaten, it
being late, I left my friend Walker, promising to return on the
morrow.

On my way home I met Miss Bland carrying a bundle of
what appeared to be dry -goods. She seemed to be very glad to
see me, expressing much pleasure when I told her I was just re-
turning from a visit to Walker Guggins. I offered to carry her
bundle, but she hesitated before handing it to me.

" I know I can trust you, Mr. Scott," she said sentimentally.
" No one knows it but Mrs. Glass, and she will keep it secret.
Mr. Scott, Mr. Guggins and I are to be united in the fall."
Adding apologetically : " I trust you won't think us precipitate ;
the poor little boy needs a mother's care."

774 PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Mar.,

I assured Miss Bland that I thought the step she and Mr.
Guggins were about to take was the right one. " No one who
knows the circumstances can think otherwise," I said de-
cidedly.

" I told Mr. Guggins you would approve," said Miss Bland,
"and he said these are his very words, Mr. Scott 'Of course
he'll approve. Hasn't he acted like a Solomon all through,
Martha? Just see how he did up that business of my sending
you that basket.' I have that basket yet, Mr. Scott." And Miss
Bland simpered at some pleasant thought that she had in her
mind.

It astonished me very much to hear that my opinion had
been thought of, but I was yet to learn how much Mr. Guggins
did think of me.

CHAPTER XXIV.
I LEAVE PHILIOPOLIS.

In less than a fortnight after I had begun to give Walker his
desultory lessons, taught in an original way, it was announced
to me that Mr. Guggins was going to live at a hotel and that
Walker was to stay at Miss Eland's house, where in future my
lessons were to be given. The very valid reason given for this
separation of Mr. Guggins from his home and child was the
cleansing and repairing his house had to undergo.

Never was a house-cleaning more needed. From Walker's
frequent recurrence to events that had taken place in the life-
time of the late Mrs. Guggins I judged that lady to have
been what some people would call a " psychological mystery."
Walker affirmed that his mother had been strong-minded, and
certainly her house was dirty enough for me to believe it. And
yet she was a woman who had done a great deal of sewing.
This anomaly puzzled Walker very much. " Ma used to say,"
he told me, " that she was working her fingers to the bone. For
what did she sew, then ? You ought to have heard her lecture.
She just ramped up and down, and the more she hollered the
more them women clapped and knocked umbrellas. It used to
make pop sick. When I'm a man I'm going to have a man's
rights meeting. Won't that make the women just raging ? Ma
said sewing's slave's work, and she sewed all the same." And
Walker lapsed into silence, seeking, perhaps, an 'answer to his
own query. From my' after experience in teaching I know that

1889.] PAUL RINGWOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 775

Walker was apt to learn whatever touched his imagination. In
arithmetic I doubt if he ever progressed beyond the first four
rules.

Miss Bland, who now was always with some bit of myste-
rious sewing, was pleased to bring her work into the room where
I held my perfunctory class. Holding Guggins' intellect in
high esteem, I think one of her reasons for being present at
Walker's lessons was that she herself might learn something, or
at least furbish up what knowledge she already possessed. If
she had any such idea I am sorry for her disappointment.
Sometimes Mr. Guggins came to take tea with Miss Bland. I
was always invited to these tea-drinkings, and always attended
when I discovered that they would have considered themselves
slighted had I stayed away.

So the days passed and were as dreams, till at last the time
came when I was to bid farewell to Philiopolis for ever. It
caused me no pang whatsoever to go away from the city's dreary
monotony, sorry as I was to leave the few friends I had. On
the 24^h of August Mrs. Glass gave a dinner in my honor, the
guests Mrs. Link, Ned Link, Nurse Barnes, Miss Bland, Mr.
Guggins, and Walker.

Although Mrs. Glass was the giver of what Miss Bland
called the banquet, Guggins sent a brace of birds, a ham, and the
wine; Nurse Barnes, a great cake; and Miss Bland, fruits and
vegetables. All day there was a trotting back and forth to the
bake-house at the corner, and many of the neighbors were bitten
by envy at the sight of the good things going into the house of
Glass. One maiden lady across the way talked loudly from a
second-story window to a neighbor about the extravagance of
some folks, winding up with a lecture on household economy.
Before nightfall a rumor had spread that there was to be a
wedding at our house. When Mrs. Link arrived a chorus of
children cheered her loudly as the bride. But when Miss
Bland, well known in the neighborhood, came, in all the glory of
a gray silk gown, Mr. Guggins escorting her, the fickle chorus
cheered her likewise.

Barring the fact that I felt a little gloomy at the thought of
the morrow's parting, and that these good-hearted friends were
truly sorry to lose me, the entertainment in my honor passed
off right merrily. Nurse Barnes, it vs true, put us out for a little
while. Mr. Guggins had proposed my health in a speech in
which he expressed his confidence that I would be an honor to
the Jesuits, whom, his dictionary informed him, were a body of

776 PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Mar.,

learned men, likewise cunning and crafty. Getting entangled
in his speech, Nurse Barnes, who was listening intently, began
to whimper and cry out that her Master Paul was in the graps
(grasp?) of the Inquisition, and why didn't the government
put a stop to such carryings-on ? Fortunately, the mention
of the Inquisition reminded Mrs. Glass of Fort McHenry, and
she gave us in fine style the story of how she had been lodged in
jail. Her story set us all a-laughing, and the maligned Jesuits
were forgotten. After dinner I made Miss Bland happy by ask-
ing her to give us " Cumnor Hall," which, after a little pressing,
she did most tragically. Walker was frightened by it, and made
not a little suspicious of Miss Bland.

" I guess she's a Downtrodden," he whispered to me; " that's
the way they ramp."

I whispered the assurance to him that no Downtrodden
would care for Miss Bland's way of ramping. When he had
said " Honest! " and I had repeated " Honest " after him, he was
made more comfortable, saying he guessed that I knew.

About eleven o'clock our little party broke up. There was
no final parting save with Guggins and Ned Link. The women
all said that they would be at the station to see me off. On the
doorstep, as Guggins grasped my hand in farewell, he whispered
in my ear that if I ever needed cash to let him know, and that I
was to say nothing about the parcel Walker would hand me on
the moirow. When I began to thank him, he suddenly dis-
covered that there was no moon, and hurried Miss Bland off
under the pretence that it was threatening rain, though never
was there a more beautiful night.

Ned Link's parting, for a young American, was very original.
He made me feel very foolish by putting an arm about my neck
and kissing my cheek. He had a good heart, Ned Link; never a
warmer one, and all the success he has had in life he deserves.

On the following morning the breakfast of Mrs. Glass and
myself was a very lugubrious meal.

" I declar' to goodness, I takes no more boarders ! " ex-
claimed Mrs. Glass as she poured out my coffee. " This yere
partin' es too much fur an old woman. Did I put sugar en thet
coughy, child ? "

I nodded that she had, and choked myself in a vain endeavor
to swallow my emotions and, my fried ham.

" Now I'm goin' fur to put on my duds ; ef you wants more
conghy the's plenty en th' pot." And Mrs. Glass hurried out of
the room to hide from me that she was crying.

1889.] PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 777

It had been arranged that Father Weldon was to meet me at
the station, and in my ignorance I did not know how he would
take it meeting so many females come to see me off perverse
females, so far as a priest was concerned.

In a wonderfully short space of time Father Weldon made
friends of these good women; joked with Mrs. Glass, was atten-
tive to a rhapsody of Miss Eland's, listened to a vapid utterance
of Mrs. Link concerning a painted panel in the waiting-room,
and, strangest of all, won Nurse Barnes' heart by the genuine in-
terest he showed in me, so unworthy of a thought of his.

Walker had given me the package a roll of money Gug-
gins had spoken of, and was now watching Father Weldon very
earnestly. Drawing a long breath, he assured me in a whisper
that the priest was a pretty good man. " I don't know any
other priest,'' he went on to say ; " I guess he's the only one
Miss Bland ever saw, too. She was afraid to speak to him ; she
an't now. Ma wouldn't have been afraid. She wasn't afraid
of anything. I wish he'd have known ma. I don't know ; ma
scared the minister ; she might have scared him. He's thin, and
I guess he an't strong. What'd he done, do you think, Walter,
if ma had hit him with a parasol like she did the minister? 5 '

I replied, as gravely as I could, that I rather thought Father
Weldon would have had her put in the lock-up.

" Do you ? " interrogated Walker, eying me earnestly.

" Indeed I do,'' I said decidedly.

Then Walker very seriously shook hands with Father
Weldon, and told him his "pop" would be very glad to make
his acquaintance, and Miss Bland exhibited much maidenly con-
fusion as she begged to be permitted to say that any friend of
Mr. Ringwood's, but particularly Father Weldon, would be wel-
come at Mr. Guggins' mansion.

" She's Mr. Guggins' intended," Mrs. Glass explained to the
priest in a very audible whisper.

Ding! ding! ding! twelve o'clock! "All aboard for Cecils-
burg! " shouted and echoed ; a rolling of belated trucks, a hur-
rying of many feet, and we start to board our train. A final
shaking of hands all round, the dong, dong of a monotonous bell,
and, as I gazed through blurred eyes on my friends, the train
steamed out of the station.

" Now, Paul," said Father Weldon, " I have my office to say ;
have you anything to read?"

" No," I answered, " but I'll think."

He smiled, and think I did. Not with a brave heart, for I
was seriously asking myself, " Am I fit to be a teacher?"

778 PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Mar.,

CHAPTER XXV.
MANRESA PLACE.

" It will not do to suppose that the interest of a memoir de-
pends on its writer having been concerned in great affairs."

Were it not for a belief in this saying, many chapters back
this autobiography would have been given up in disgust. It has
been difficult in the foregoing chapters not to add when what
had to be told was dull and commonplace, to use decided colors
when the picture called for but neutral tints. And will not the
temptation be reversed when the one picture is reached where
scarlet hues should predominate?

Manresa College, where I was to spend many years, is part of
the block called Manresa Place, on Cecil Street, one of the prin-
cipal streets of what Englishmen say is the most English of
American towns, Cecilsburg. I take this to be a euphemistic
way of putting it that Cecilsburg is rather slow. All the same,
it is the most delightful of provincial towns. The college is a
five-story brick building of no particular architecture, having a
portico upheld by Ionic columns. It adjoins a church, the beau-
tiful interior of which scarcely condones its ugly exterior.

Father Weldon and myself were admitted to tjie parlor by
a lay-brother, who left us to call Father Lang, which he did by
ringing a bell. Each of the fathers had his signal, one bell, two
bells, and so on. The more bells a father had, the less import-
ant was his office. Father Lang had one bell. There were
three parlors, separated one from the other by glass partitions,
and again from a corridor by other partitions of glass. The
only wall was the one on the street, and it had large windows,
so that the parlors looked like a conservatory denuded of its
flowers.

Father Weldon was saying something to this effect when a
tall, slender, and handsome priest entered the room, and I was
introduced to Father Lang. Though he showed himself very
genial, taking me to luncheon, afterwards to my room, doing
many little kindnesses besides, he did not succeed in putting me
at my ease. My conscience twitted me with being an impostor.
What right had I to set up for a teacher? A dullard, at best a
sciolist. Not that I called myself the last. I doubt if the word
was then in my vocabulary. Several times I was on the point
of acknowledging to Father Lang my incapability, but the
thought that it was best to give myself a trial caused me to hold
my tongue. This may be said, that there is no reason to believe

1889.] PAUL RING WOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 779

that my boys have cause for sorrow that my teaching powers
were given a trial.

What teacher is there who does not remember his first day in
class? The awe with which he sees before him the lads he is to
mould. No two alike, save in the one thing to do as little work
as possible; all pretty much of a mind to annoy the poor peda-
gogue, always provided that the pedagogue be fool enough to
let himself be annoyed. If the lads could but see the teacher's
heart in his mouth, and the rascals sometimes do ! When they
do, then that teacher, if he knows what is best for himself, had
better fold his tents and seek other battle-fields. On the one
before him he will be ignominiously routed.

With a feeling like that of sea-sickness I took my stand be-
fore my Solomons in embryo. Exteriorly passive, I was afraid
of my own voice, which is stentorian. Fortunately, long years
of self-repression had made of me an arrant hypocrite, and I was
able to hide my heart.

How the day dragged ! How the boys watched my every
movement ! How very still they were ! No one troubled me.
When the day had ended I could have canonized those boys.
Since then there has been no recurrence of this disposition to
canonize.

Sitting in my room I pondered over the nigh miraculous
fact to me, that I was a disciplinarian, Looking up, my eyes
caught my face in the glass. The crease between my eyebrows
was very visible. "That's it!" I exclaimed to myself; "the
boys could not brave that frown." Whether I was right or
wrong in my conjecture I do not know ; but from that day to
this a boy has never caused me fear.

In time I got to like my work. Teaching never became a
pastime for me. It always remained work, hard, ungrateful
work, though not more ungrateful than other works are, it
seems to me. We are not prone to look for gratitude in men ;
why look for it in the boy ? If boys were grateful, then would
gratitude be the commonest of all virtues, for the old saw says,
"As the twig is bent so is the tree inclined." One most excel-
lent quality boys have is that thev readily understand that your
urgency for them to work is for their good.

Should any young teacher read this autobiography, let me
humbly recommend him never to use the rod more than orice a
year, and then but on one individual. In all my years of teach-
ing it has been used by me twice. Never punish if it can be
avoided. Many teachers give lines to learn, lines to write.

780 PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Mar.,

Give them very seldom, and never to commit to memory.
Learning- lines is but a method of making boys hate the great
authors. Always keep a boy after class till the work he has
neglected is finished. Let him understand that this is not pun-
ishment, for it is not. A man is hired to work on Monday.
He fails to do his work. Is he punished if he is obliged to do it
on Tuesday? No! Believe in your heart that your boys are
souls of honor and yet capable of any iniquity. Let your boys
believe that you think them angels, never forgetting yourself
that there are two kinds of angels. Never watch; see every-
thing. Seldom praise ; never scold. Chide sometimes. Show
displeasure rather by silence than by words.

Five years passed by like a dream. It was a pleasant, peace-
ful time, nothing to roughen the smooth path I was treading.
In a time so blank of events as almost to be forgotten one man
stands out clear and distinct. He is a priest. A truer friend
than he has been to me man never found. There are vain, self-
sufficient men who call him hard and rigorous! Hard and rig-
orous ? Yes, to himself. But to others mild and gentle as the
spring-tide sun after storms. He is tall, my father, riot bent
though aged, and white his hair; the kindliest smile ever on
lips that never a harsh word troubles. A frame worn and
wasted from fasting ; for, his own obligation finished, he begins
anew, that for others he may do atoning works. O Father
Clare! when for us two this little breathing space is over may
my cleansed self be with you, to join with you in the an-
thems that never cease before God's white throne !

From time to time I had letters from Mrs. Guggins, giving
me news of my friends in Philiopolis. Twice during vacation
I had paid them a visit, and once during the Christmas holidays
I acted as " best man " at Ned Link's wedding. The only hap-
pier persons than myself at the wedding were the groom and
pretty Mattie Smith, whom he married. The last thing I have
to recall of those five years is of a letter from Ned, telling me
with most proper and ill-concealed pride that he was the father
of a little boy whom he and Mattie have called Paul.

CHAPTER XXVI.
ADDITIONAL WAGES.

The school year was but eight days old ; there were twenty-
four lads before me to be my study, and my mind wandered as I

1889.] PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 781

dictated for a spelling exercise the following lucid sentence :
" Wilson met but three sound and healthy specimens of colum-
bine in Louisiana."

Tick, tock went the old clock in the corridor as the first boy
to finish repeated the dictation. Slowly he read : " Wilson ate
but three thousand healthy specimens of crocodile in Louisiana."
And then this lad of rampant imagination gazed about him, in
cherubic innocence as to the cause of the laughter he had given
birth to.

My hand was raised to signal silence, unnecessarily. There
was of itself a sudden hush, and then some one cried: " Mr. Ring-
wood, Hethering's fainted." Hethering was a sickly -looking boy
who had come to class but the day before.

Telling the boys to stand aside, I raised him in my arms and
carried him into the corridor where there was a current of air,
one of the boys running to fetch water, another to my room for
a flask of bay rum. When I had bathed Hethering's forehead
with the bay rum he opened his eyes and, gazing vacantly before
him, called faintly, "Mamma!"

It is an enigma why a school-boy can never hear a mate call
on his mother without a smile. And now a relieved smile rip-
pled over the faces of the lads grouped against the wall.

"You don't know me, Hethering?" I said, bending over the
white face resting on my arm.

He looked up at me and, smiling patiently, said : " You're my
teacher. I'm not very well ; hadn't I better go home?"

No doubt he had; so I sent for the vice-president, who, with
a brother, took Hethering home in the college hack.

About three weeks after this event Father Lang called me to*
his room. He was a busy man, not given to wasting words, so
straightway began to speak of what I had been summoned to
hear.

"You remember little Hethering ?" he asked abruptly as I
took the chair to which he motioned me.

The sick boy had altogether passed from my mind ; it was
only on hearing his name that I recollected the scene in class.

" I hope he is better," I answered.

Father Lang drew a long breath. " He will never be better,"
he said. " His mother cannot believe that, poor soul ! She
wishes the boy's studies to go on."

He paused and, striving to interpret his thoughts, I said :
"You wish me to be very easy with him in regard to his exei-
cises and lessons? "

782 PAUL RINGWOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Mar.,

" He will not return to class," said Father Lang. " What I
wish or, rather, his mother wishes it is that you go to him every
day for an hour, say from five to six. On Thursdays " Thurs-
days were holidays with us "you "can go earlier. It will pay
you very well. I'd prefer your going to any one else I could
recommend, one of 'Ours* being out of the question." By
" Ours " Father Lang meant one of his order. I was not averse
to an addition to my wages, but a feeling arose within me that it
would be better for me not to accept the charge. Seeing me
hesitate, Father Lang mentioned the wages I would receive,
stating a sum sufficiently large to startle me. At the same time
my vanity was hurt because he seemed to think that the ques-
tion of money was causing my hesitation.

" I was not thinking of the money," I said shortly.

" If you were not, young man," said Father Lang decidedly,
"let me tell you that you should have been."

This was common sense, and had the effect on me of a sudden
dash into cold water.

" Why do you hesitate ? " asked the priest.

"Just so," I made answer.

"Humph!" he ejaculated. Then in a confidential tone: "It
is this, Ringwood : tutor this boy and ^you not only do Mrs.
Hethering a favor, but myself as well. It will do you good, the
walk to and fro; you shut yourself up too much."

My mind was made up. I told Father Lang that I would
take charge of Harry Hethering's studies, that my additional
wages would be welcome to me, for I needed many books I
could ill afford to buy. As I was prejudiced in favor of reading
jfrom books of my very own, for one in my circumstances the
sum I yearly spent on divers publications was not small. It is
true that I had what now amounted to ten thousand dollars in
government securities. But this sum, left me by my mother, I
would not touch, principal or interest.

" I do not think you will regret this step," said Father Lang.
" And now," he continued, " perhaps I had better tell you some-
thing of these Hetherings ; you know nothing about them ?"

I gave my head a negative shake, and he went on : " As you
will most likely find it out, I'd better warn you that whilst Mrs.
Hethering has a charming character, her husband is well, not
so charming. You look annoyed. You will have nothing to do
with him, and in all probability you will not meet his wife half
a dozen times in a year."

As I was to have no dealings with the man, I was not particu-

iS?9-l PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 783

larly interested in what Father Lang was saying. Seeing me in-
attentive, the priest threw out his hand, palm upward, and, with
a little shrug of his shoulders, said : " You may hear much of
what I have to tell you from others, but I want you to know the
truth."

" Mrs. Hethering, is she an elderly person ?" I asked.
"She is not old," Father Lang returned absently. Then,
speaking his thought aloud, "Who could have believed Tom
Hethering would turn out so ? "

The father lapsed into silence for so long a time that at last I
rose to leave the room, when he motioned me to keep my seat.
"I have not told you about the Hetherings," he said. "Mrs.
Hethering was not seventeen when she married Hethering. He
is a Protestant rather, he has no religion whatsoever and as
Ethel she was Ethel Pyne was indifferent to him, Father Clare
did all he could to prevent the marriage. If Ethel was indiffer-
ent, her parents were not. The Pynes are a Virginia family, and
the war had left them poor. They came to Cecilsburg to live,
how and on what is known only to themselves. To make a long,
story short, they quarrelled with Father Clare and then had little
difficulty in bringing about Ethel's marriage. She did not dis-
like Tom Hethering ; indeed, she rather liked him, and then he
was to do such noble things for her father. To be just to him,
he did do noble things for Pyne bought up the mortgages on his
plantation and gave him a round sum to start on. Before the
first year of their wedded life Hethering had tired of his wife.
That year the boy you are to teach was born prematurely. In
a fit of half-tipsy passion Tom Hethering had frightened the
mother, and the child was born, a sickly baby, the mother scarce-
ly living. Little by little it leaked out till it became a common
scandal that I would not be justified in repeating but that 1 wish
you to know the truth. His friends say Ethel is not a patient
wife. She is ; patient, too, under moral wrongs that make her
endurance heroic."

Father Lang spoke in low, even tones unconcernedly, as one
might say, " 'Tis pleasant weather" ; but when he had finished
he turned his face away, and his hands trembled as he put some
books in order on his desk.

MV interest had grown, and I now felt for Mrs. Hethering
that negative sort of pity one feels when the story is told of the
distresses of people in far-away lands.

" When am I to give the first lesson?" I asked after a mo-
ment.

784 PAUL RINGWOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Mar.,

" To-morrow," he said thoughtfully. Rising, he took my
hand in his. " Do all you can for the little boy, Ringwood ; he
is his mother's only earthly comfort."

This time the priest spoke with emotion ; and earnestly I
promised to do my utmost.

That afternoon I took occasion to let Father Clare know of
my new work. When I had told him he placed his hands on
my shoulders and gazed long on my face, so long and ear-
nestly that I smiled uneasily when he removed his hands and
sighing said : " You are very young, very young."

" But, father," I cried indignantly, " if I was old enough five
years ago to teach a class, surely I am now competent to teach
one sick boy ! "

Taking my hand in both of his, he said, his voice trembling :
" God bless you, my child, God keep you ! "

For the first time in my life Father Clare annoyed me. 1
could see no reason why he took my news so solemnly.

"You are displeased, Paul?" he said tentatively. He al-
ways addressed me by my Christian name.

Reddening, I blurted out something about my always hav-
ing had success with my classes.

" Who questions that, Paul? " he said. " There is a wisdom
you have not yet ; it may come ; it does not always bring hap-
piness with it."

What that wisdom was I would have asked him, but some-
thing in his face forbade me.

CHAPTER XXVII.
PAUL RINGWOOD IS ACCUSED OF A WISH TO BE ANALYTICAL.

Never was anything begun with a worse will than this teach-
ing of Harry Hethering. In homely phrase, my ways were
" set." Dinner over at four in the afternoon, my custom was to
indulge in a book and a smoke. Now the smoke would have
to be hurried, the book put aside altogether. It was slpppy
weather, a drizzling rain was falling, and it was just such a day
as a bookworm loves between four walls. In a bad humor I put
on a light overcoat, got out my umbrella, and went down to the
portico to wait for a car. The Hetherings lived out on Charles
Street, and the car would take me by their door.

The dwelling into which I waited for admittance was of
brown stone, spacious, very modern with its plate-glass windows

1889.] PAUL RINGWOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 785

and absence of shutters. A solid, ugly building, eloquently stat-
ing the fact that it was built of dollars.

"Is you the poffessor who am to teach Master Harry?"
asked in a confidential tone the man-servant who admitted me
into a wide hall.

Firing up, I retorted that I was not a professor, sulkily add-
ing that I had come to teach " Master Harry."

"Excuse me, sah," said the black, offering to help me off with
my overcoat. " You's expected, sah ; please walk right in here,
sah, and take a cha'r."

Somewhat mollified, I followed him to a small parlor opening
out of a large one and into a conservatory. Opening one of
the top blinds a fraction of an inch, the negro left me to let Mrs.
Hethering know, he said.

In the bad humor I was in it seemed to me that I was kept a
long time waiting. Meditating on my imaginary misery, I was
roused by the rustle of a dress across the tiled hallway, and
suddenly arose to my feet as a woman entered the room a
woman whom I took to be a girl, so youthful was her white face.
Her pale yellow hair was simply drawn back, lying in a thick
coil low on a shapely neck. She wore some sort of a gown of
grayish stuff, plain and without a bit of color to reliev% her
whole colorless self.

Extending her hand, she touched mine with the tips of her
fingers, my face flushing as she did so.

"You are exceedingly welcome" referring to my card in
her hand " ( Mr. Ringwood, if you can but help my poor Harry,"
she said in an even, trained voice. I could not control the start
I gave when she announced herself as Harry Hethering's mo-
ther, the mother herself was so like a child.

Then she told me that she did not wish her son pushed in
his studies; she only desired him not to lose what he already had.
Proposing to take me to Harry's sitting-room, I bowed ungrace-
fully, and it was not until we were in the boy's presence that 1
remembered I had not spoken a word to his mother.

When my acquaintance with Harry had been rather awk-
wardly renewed his mother said : " Robert, the servant who
opened the door for you, has been told to show you in future to
Harry's room. Should you need anything, simply ring the bell."

Not waiting for me to speak, she sank on her knees beside
Harry's invalid-chair, and, putting her arms about him, whis-
pered in his ear some mother's tenderness. Then rising, she
bowed coldly to me and left the room.
VOL. XLVIII. 50

786 PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Mar,

I had not said a word to her ; my surprise was too great. A
novice in women, I could not attempt an analysis of my feelings.
She was so surprisingly childish in face, so womanly and self-
possessed in all she said and did. It is an old similitude, that of
the girl the bud, the mother the full-blown flower. Well, when
she knelt beside the boy I had seen the bud bloom into the
flower.

" Harry," I said foolishly, as I took a chair beside him, " was
that your mother ? "

For answer Harry burst into a ringing laugh. There was a
hurried step in the passageway, and Mrs. Hethering came hastily
into the room, her face pale and frightened. When she looked
on laughing Harry her face flushed and she faltered : "I thought
there was something amiss with my boy."

Harry had not remarked his mother's alarm and, still laugh-
ing, he cried : " What do you think, mother? "

" That my son appears to be very happy," she said, smiling
and smoothing back his hair.

" Mr. Ringwood wants to know if you are my mother ! " the
boy exclaimed in his thin, clear voice. %

She drew herself up coldly and, without noticing me, said:
" That's right, Harry, be just as jolly as you can," and again left
me alone with the boy.

" You should not have told your mother that," I said indig-
nantly, angry at the boy's thoughtlessness, angry at what I
called inwardly Mrs. Hethering's satanic pride. " What must
she think of me ! " I ejaculated, not to Harry but to myself.

He gazed thoughtfully at me and said : " I don't believe
mother thinks of you at all."

The way in which this was said would have been insolence
from an older person ; coming from him it could but be set
down to childish frankness, a well-deserved blow to my vanity
so fairly slapped in the face.

The lesson if what we went over could be called a lesson
was badly given. A nervous feeling that Mrs. Hethering was
hovering about the passageway clogged my speech. This feel-
ing received confirmation when, on leaving Harry, I saw the
tail of a gray gown whisked behind the partly closed door of a
room near his.

On the whole it had been a very unpleasant afternoon.
Though I had no clearly defined views of the mistress of the
house I was leaving, one thing was plain to me I did not and
could not like her. She had treated me with something akin

1889.] PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. ['787

to contempt, yet I kept on thinking of her, though such think-
ing- annoyed me, and though I made large generalizations de-
rogatory to women in order to put her out of my mind.

The following afternoon, as I was leaving the college to go
to Harry, a coup6 drove up, and a lady whom I recognized to
be Mrs. Hethering let herself out, hurriedly passing me on the
college steps. I raised my hat, and she bowed distantly. Her
face had a troubled look on it, and involuntarily I turned to
gaze after her, but one of the columns supporting the portico
hid her from view.

Harry was very glad to see me and very proud of the little
task he had prepared. There was something so lovable about
the boy that I could not wonder at his mother's fondness for
him, a fondness that amounted to a passion.

It was not long before the position of tutor and pupil was
changed to that of brother and brother. I began to take as
much interest in the state of Harry's health as in the progress
he made in his studies. I never saw his mother, and Harry,
not from lack of love and pride in her, I felt sure, never men-
tioned her name. When the winter came on his health visibly
improved, and the boy was getting much stronger. I remarked
to him that his mother must be very glad of it.

" Mother is very glad " he began, and then stopped.

Had his mother forbidden him to speak of her to me ? Un-
reasonably irritated, it was on the tip of my tongue to ask him,
but, fortunately for the preservation of my puerile dignity, my
tongue was held.

One Thursday in December Father Clare came to my
room.

" Do you know what I have come for, Paul ? " he asked after
he had been warmly welcomed.

No, I had no idea, I told him.

" I have come to say good-by," he said.

" Good-by ? " I faltered.

" Yes, I am going away this afternoon."

" But you will come back soon?"

He smiled as he said : " Well, six or eight months is not a
long time. Yes, I shall come back soon."

It was a long time to me, however. " Whom will I go to
when I'm in trouble? " I asked despairingly.

"What are your serious troubles, Paul?" he asked with
gentle irony.

As my troubles were but trifling annoyances, I had nothing

788 PAUL RINGWOOD : AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [Mar.,

to say to this. He was going to give retreats and missions, he
told me. As my lamentations continued, he softly rebuked me,
saying with truth that I could not expect him to give up his
work for the sake of a young man who at least in years had
passed the age of reason, leaving it in doubt whether I had at-
tained reason.

After a while I said abruptly : " There is something I have
been wanting to say to you for a long time, but have been
ashamed to."

" Don't say it, Paul, if you are ashamed to," he returned,
laughing at me.

" If I were a woman," I said with contempt, " that would
make me tell you. It just happens, though, that I do want to
tell you. I think that Mrs. Hethering has forbidden Harry to
speak to me of her."

Father Clare was not laughing now. " What makes you
'think so ? " he asked.

I gave him my reasons, and they appeared to me to be very
igood ones. When they were told I said: "I have never seen
her but once since the first day I went to her house. One day
'I saw her going into the college ; she seemed to be in trouble,"
I added parenthetically.

" Can you think of no reason why Mrs. Hethering does not
see you ? " he asked.

" No, I cannot," I answered, beginning to sulk. Father Clare
seemed to be putting me off.

"Then neither can I," he said.

I lightly struck the table with the back of my hand.

" I am not satisfactory, eh, Paul ?" he asked.

My answer was candid if not polite. " No, you're not, fa-
ther."

" Let me put a question," said the priest kindly. " Do you
go to give lessons to Mrs. Hethering or to her son?"

" To Harry, of course ; but "

" Stop a moment, Paul," Father Clare interrupted. " Be so
good as to tell me why Mrs. Hethering should see you."

"There is no reason; but why forbid Harry to speak of
her?"

" I don't know that she has," he said.

"You think so."

"Paul.! Paul!" exclaimed Father Clare, "must I give you an
analysis of Mrs. Hethering's motives? She is a free agent, free
to act as she pleases. If ever you take it into your head, Paul,

1889-] PAUL RING WOOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 789

to write a novel, do not let it be an analytical one. You will
make a failure of it."

" I doubt my ability to write any kind of a novel," I said
moodily.

" Don't be cast down about it," he said, smiling ; " novels are
not wanting."

Again I struck the table with my hand.

" If I were not going- away, Paul, I might afford to be angry
with you. You must have me analyze Mrs. Hethering's motives
for not being talked about to so sublime a personage as Mr.
Paul Ringwood." He had been smiling, now he spoke very
gravely.

" You know that the relations existing between Mrs. Hether-
ing and her husband are not happy ; cannot you imagine her
fearing that her son would innocently speak of unhappy scenes
between his father and mother? The day you speak of having
seen her come here, apparently in trouble, there had been one of
those unhappy scenes. Are you ashamed of yourself, Paul ?"

"Yes, father," I answered, humble enough now.

We were silent for a moment, and then the silence was
broken by the college bell calling the community to the mid-day
exam en.

" This was to have been good-by, Paul," said Father Clare,
rising from his chair, "but suppose you come with me to the
station?"

I was very glad to, and later in the day, as we stood on the
platform at the station, Father Clare said, holding my hand in
farewell : " I have been thinking of what you said of Mrs. Heth-
ering. Do not seek reasons for what she does. She is the un-
happiest of women, and it would not make her less unhappy if
she knew her son's tutor was inquiring into her actions. This
is meant kindly, Paul."

I was sure of that ; and as the train took away my friend I
was perfectly willing to renounce all interest in Mrs. Hether-
ing. HAROLD DIJON.

TO BE CONTINUED.

79 THE PALESTRINA MYTH. [Mar.,

THE PALESTRINA MYTH.

IN the great church of St. Peter in Rome there is a tomb
upon which one reads the simple, unique, and most worthy in-
scription, " PRINCEPS Musics." It is the resting-place of the
world-renowned Palestrina. There is not a history of music
that fails to give some account of him. Any oration or essay of
which music is the theme would be considered as incomplete
without some laudatory allusion being made to this master of
the divine art. It matters not that the historian, orator, or
essayist has probably never heard any of his compositions, nor
could give the least intelligent criticism of either the matter or
style of his works ; he will discourse you by the page or by the
hour upon the unequalled genius and inimitable harmonies of
this truly great artist.

It may appear cynical on my part to say it, but I have been
forced in the course of my limited experience to remark that it
is seldom one hears such unqualified praise bestowed upon an
author, especially by those who evidently know little or nothing
of his writings, that a grave suspicion does not arise as to the
motive prompting such over-generous eloquence ; to say nothing
of a doubt presenting itself whether all the facts alleged in cor-
roboration of their judgment be indeed so far beyond all criti-
cism or question as those panegyrists appear to be just a little
too anxious to make out.

At any rate I must confess that the presence of such a sus-
picion and doubt in my own mind has led me to scrutinize the
truth of certain commonly cited facts concerning Palestrina,
which I could not fail to observe were invariably brought for-
ward and appealed to in favor of a theory about the ecclesiasti-
cal sanction and approval of what passes for church music to-
day among certain historical and musical essayists ; a theory
otherwise sadly lacking, as I have always thought, any solid
artistic or moral argument to sustain it. It was plain that in
almost every instance it needed but little penetration to perceive
that the writer or speaker had a brief in hand, and found the
well-known historical assertions a thousand times repeated and
quoted in every language concerning Palestrina and his works
to be most serviceable evidence in making out his case or in
justification of his course of action. The case to be made good,

THE PALESTRINA MYTH. 791

or the course of action to be justified, as set forth in their brief,
is simply this: the use of music in church during the divine
offices other than the immemorially authorized liturgical chant
is both proper and desirable. Preferring it as being more
agreeable to his own taste he uses it, and determines to en-
courage its use in the church of which he is pastor, or it may be
the organist. He has occasion to express his preference pub-
licly and argues in its favor. Palestrina was a writer of church
music, the prince of all church musicians. All the world ac-
cords him this honor, Rome has written it upon his tomb, and
listens in the persons of her pontiffs and prelates to the singing
of his wonderful harmonies. He innocently supposes that the
church music of which Palestrina was the composer is identical
with what we now call church music, and he conveys the like
impression to the minds of his hearers. Now follows the recital
of the litany of, assumed historical facts, the sum and substance
of which I may give as follows :

This way. I. On account of acknowledged prevailing and
scandalous abuses arising from the use of figured music in
churches the Council of Trent had passed, as some say, or was
about to pass, as say others, a decree banishing all music of this
character from the divine offices. But, at. the request of Pope
Marcellus II., Palestrina composed the monumental musical mass
known ever since as the " Missa Papse Marcelli " ; after hearing
which on Easter Sunday A.D. 1555, as more than one writer tells
us, the pope and the fathers of the council were so captivated
that they withdrew their opposition ; and either refused to pass
the condemnatory decree, or they annulled it. So that, thanks
to Palestrina Vivat in (Sternum! the cause of modern con-
certed music was saved ; and not having been condemned or foi-
bidden by the Council of Trent may, therefore, be sung in
churches ad libitum, at least of any bishop.

Or, put it this way. 2. As the progress of all art, and espe-
cially of the art of music, has been ever dependent upon the
patronage of the Catholic Church ; and as the Council of Trent
threatened the extinction, or great retardation of the progress, of
modern music by an adverse decree against its use in churches,
Palestrina was raised up by Divine Providence (pious thought
begotten of its father the wish !) just in the nick of time to save
such a disaster ; and the council,* convinced by hearing his

* Dr. Burney, a celebrated English writer and authority on musical matters, writes " The
Pope and Conclave '' ! which would be like one saying: " the husband, his widow, and their
orphan children."

792 THE PALESTRINA MYTH. [Mar.,

music, if it did not officially approve of such music in churches,
it at least tacitly agreed that it was suitable, and so has deserved
the gratitude of all musicians and lovers of music to the end of
time for not refusing to sanction its use. No, not that precisely,
since sanctioning its use was not on the bill, but for abstaining
from teetotally excluding it, which was on the bill.

Who is there that has perused any treatise or history of
music, or listened to any discourse apropos of the subject, to
whom the above is not almost as familiar as the Gospel, and of
whose truth he is not almost equally certain? Whenever there
have been some pretty strong arguments adduced to show the
inadequacy for its purpose or the liability to dangerous excesses
and irreligious abuse of which modern as well as ancient con-
cert music has been justly charged, who has not witnessed the
casting of this old reliable " church-music " sheet-anchor; and,
if not comforted thereby, has not at least felt the anchor draw,
nullifying all his efforts to row in a contrary direction towards
the haven of a reform quite as much to be desired as it appears
difficult to reach to-day as in the time of the Council of
Trent ?

Again and again this legendary, mythical story of Palestrina
(as I shall presently prove it to be) has been brought out and
confidently relied upon to bolster up the otherwise weak and
often silly pleas of personal taste, and betimes the pitiable and
unworthy argumentum ad crumenam, in support of the use of so-
called church music, side by side with numerous pastorals, in-
structions, and circular letters to their clergy issued by the
bishops long before the Council of Trent, and continuing to ap-
pear year after year in every Christian land to the present hour,
inveighing against abuses arising out of use of it, counselling
and urging reforms, accompanied not infrequently with threats
of censure unless the decree which was, in fact, passed by the
Council of Trent was better observed, viz.: "Ad ecclesiis vero
musicas eas, ubi sive organo, sive cantu lascivum aut impurum aliquid
miscetur, . . . (prdinarii locorum) arceant, tit domus Dei vere domus
orationis esse videatur ac did possit " (Let the bishops take care
to exclude from the churches all musical compositions, whether
for organ or for voice, in which anything lascivious or impure
is mingled, so that the House of God may both truly appear
and be called the House of Prayer). Most of these ecclesias-
tical admonitions advert to, and make loud lamentation over,
the neglect of the solemn divine offices of the church by the
people a neglect directly traceable to the persistent use of

1889.] THE PALESTRINA MYTH. 793

modern music at Mass and Vespers music which by its very
nature, as most eminent musicians contend, is sensually sug-
gestive, and is also in almost every instance unintelligible to
the mass of people, both in musical form and in the words,
and therefore unconsciously harmful and openly wearisome
-and distasteful to them. I do not hesitate to add that if the
people were really competent to understand the music, and
could hear the words distinctly as sung in many of our mod-
ern churches, High Mass and Vespers would soon be per-
formances by priest and choir without audience.

I have proclaimed the " Palestrina story," as we have read it
in histories of music, and heard it again and again in essays, ora-
tions, and sermons, to be a myth. Let me open my budget of
proof with preliminary assertions, that the case may be plainly
before us.

ist. Pope Marcellus II. never had the intention to reform
abuses in church music, neither in the council, nor by instruction
of the council, nor of his own motion. He never heard the
" Missa Papae Marcelli " nor the other masses by Palestrina so
much praised, and therefore he was not affected by them one
way or the other. There was no session of the council at all
held during the pontificate of Pope Marcellus. The whole
story, in so far as it regards that pope, is false. A few facts will
clearly substantiate the foregoing statements.

The Council of .Trent was opened under Pope Paul III.,
December, 1545, who was succeeded at his death, November 10,
1549, by Pope Julius III. After holding sixteen sessions the
council adjourned in 1552, and did not reassemble for ten
years. During these first sessions Marcello Cervino (the future
Pope Marcellus II.), a priest and cardinal, was a member of the
Committee on Reform, but the subject of music was not brought
up either in commission or in the council. Some allusion to it
would certainly be found in the records if it had been. If this
priest had been so anxious about reform of church music, as
many authors assert, he certainly would have had it put down as
one of the articles. About this period Palestrina was one of the
singers in the pope's chapel in Rome, one of the last on the list,
and there is no evidence that he ever was in Trent. That Pope
Marcellus never heard any of the celebrated Palestrina masses,
either as priest or pope, will be shown further on.

Julius III. died in 1555, three years after the adjournment
of the council, and the priest, Marcello Cervino, was elected
pope April 9, 1555, the Tuesday of Holy Week. On Wednes-

794 THE PALESTRINA MYTH. [Mar.,

day he was consecrated bishop and crowned pope, and at-
tended all the solemn and exhausting services which followed,
not omitting one, as the pontifical chapel-masters, Giovanni Fir-
mano and Luigi Branca, testify in their daily journal of events,
and say, " Ut in hebdomada sancta et proximis diebus sanctis
ipse possit suum officium in servitio Dei exercere. 5 ' The fa-
tigue consequent upon his personal attendance at all the cere-
monies overcame him, and he fell ill on the 2Oth of April, and
died ten days after, having reigned only twenty-one days.
Aside from other positive proof to be brought forward, it must
be evident that the story of the great anxiety of Pope Marcel-
lus to reform church music, of his being persuaded by Pales-
trina to suspend his judgment until he could compose a mass
in good style, of Palestrina's actually writing such a mass,
which he would have to do, with rehearsal, between Wednesday
of Holy Week and Easter Sunday/and of the fathers of the
council, no longer at Trent (taking, probably, a limited express*
vestibuled train from all the different parts of the world to come
to St. Peter's on Easter Sunday), listening to it all this jumble
of impossibilities proves, I say, this part of the Palestrina story
to be a myth, the occurrences related being evidently impos-
sible.

2d. If Pope Marcellus did not hear the celebrated mass named
after him, neither did the fathers of the council, either during
the sixteen sessions between 1545 and 1552 nor during the remain-
ing sessions between 1562 and its close, December 4, 1563. It is
not probable that the fathers of the council, except the few liv-
ing in or near Rome, ever heard of Palestrina, who was dis-
missed from the qffice of pontifical chapel singer under the suc-
cessor of Pope Marcellus, Paul IV., because he broke the rule by
getting married, and does not reappear in history again until the
pontificate of Pius IV., under whom the council reassembled.
He was then appointed chapel-master of the Liberian basilica,
and never had any further position in the Vatican.

The only point in the oft-repeated story of the Council of
Trent and Palestrina which appears to be true is that many of
the bishops were tired of, disgusted, and scandalized at the
abominable fancy concerts which, sometimes under the most pro-
fane titles and often with sacred and love songs mixed to-
gether, were paraded in the divine offices of the church, just
as many other bishops to-day complain of a similar state of
things. They certainly thought of making some reforming
decrees, and after discussion of the subject in commission the

1889.] THE PALESTRINA MYTH. 795

decree Ab ecclesiis, already cited, was approved on the I4th of
September, 1562.

It must not be forgotten, also (although this is carefully over-
looked by the Palestrina story-tellers), that on the 23d of Sep-
tember another decree was passed requiring the bishops to see
that Gregorian chant should be taught in seminaries. The late
glorious Pontiff Pius IX. carried this out to the letter when he
required the chant to be taught in the Seminario Pio to the ex-
clusion of all other kind of music: " Cantus Gregorianus, omni
alio rejecto, tradetur " (Tit. 5 de Studiorum ratione).

The same transmitters of myths have also carefully suppressed
the fact that if the fathers of the Council of Trent finally agreed
to refrain from positively inhibiting all other music but chant, it
was plainly not the result of their better judgment as to what was
unquestionably the best in all respects, nor because they were in-
fluenced by hearing masses by Palestrina (not yet written), but
was in a great measure due to the pressure brought upon them
by the Emperor Ferdinand, who, like all kings and potentates,
appears to have relieved the tedium of attendance at Mass and
other divine offices by the enjoyment of splendid concerts of
music given during these solemn functions. When his ambas-
sadors reported the danger that the prohibitory decree might
be passed, he hastily wrote a letter, of date 23d August, 1563,
begging the fathers to " consider that as figured music, even
though it may be judged harmful by some, was, in his opinion,
very often useful to excite devotion in many persons, and would
they therefore be pleased to not interdict it."

In those days kings and emperors had a finger in the church
pie to a degree not now deemed credible. If dear old Josh
Billings were alive he would probably say something both
wise and witty on the depth of the impression a king's finger can
make on the dough, when he makes up his mind to help the
church cook make the church pie.

It was one of the many deplorable instances where the civil
power has interfered to hamper the free expression of ecclesiasti-
cal authority and right in matters where the church is and ought
to be supreme.

It was, then, the gentle (?) solicitations of an emperor, and not
the force of the majestic and religious harmonies of masses not
yet composed by Palestrina, that had so much influence with
the fathers of the Council of Trent towards inducing them to
abstain from condemning all concert music outright as unfit for
use in church.

79 6 THE PALESTRINA MYTH. [Mar.,

Now we can go on more intelligently with the history of
facts concerning the events which led to the composition of the
" Missa Papas Marcelli " and others by Palestrina.

It seems that in the twenty-third session, held nth Novem-
ber, 1563, in the chapter xii., De reformatione, the fathers
summed up their regulations about the due and proper order to
be observed in church offices : " Cat era qua ad debitum indivinis
officiis regimen spectant, deque congrua in his canendi sen modu-
landi ratione . . . synodus provincialis pro cujusvis provincice utilitate
et moribus, certain cuique formulam pr&scribet. Interea vero cpis-
copus non minus quam cum duobus canonicis quorum unus ab
episcopo, alter a capitulo eligatur in us, qua expedire videbuntur,
poterit provider e. ' '

The council was determined that some action should be taken
at once by the bishops, and trusted that the provincial synods
would duly regulate matters. One more session was held, and
the great, immortal Council of Trent adjourned, Pius IV. being
then on the pontifical throne.

This pontiff was exceedingly fond of music, and used to take
the singers of his chapel with him into the country to sing be-
fore him at and after meals. Whether he was one of those per-
sons who are disposed to regulate the " castera quae ad debitum
in divinis officiis regimen spectant, deque congrua in his canendi
seu modulandi ratione " according to the personal preferences
which come under the guidance of what they are pleased to call
" taste," cannot probably be known, though from what has just
been said it is not unlikely, and one writer says that his musical
preferences had to be taken into account; yet we must give him
credit for making no delay in carrying out the decree of the nth
of November cited above.

In the beginning of 1564 the pope appointed a congregation
(i. e., a committee) of eight cardinals, among whom were num-
bered the celebrated Michele Ghislieri (afterwards St. Pius V.),
the pope's own nephew, Charles Borromeo (afterwards the re-
nowned saintly Archbishop of Milan), and Cardinal Vitellozzi, a
skilled musical amateur, and confided to this committee the
charge of regulating the matter of church music in Rome, where
it seems things were in a pretty bad state. Cardinal Viteilozzi,
being the musician, was made president of the commission, and
he and Charles Borromeo were deputed to conduct the pre-
liminary examinations. All were of one opinion that the music
then in vogue was unfit and disgraceful. If music was to be
allowed at all new music must be written.

1889.] THE PALESTRINA 'MYTH. 797

Vitellozzi and Borromeo applied to the chorus of the ponti-
fical chapel for a sub-commission of eight musical experts, to
whom the project of suitable musical compositions might be sub-
mitted. The names of these musicians, as given in the manu-
script journal of Hoyeda for the year 1565, were: Antonio
Calasanzio, Federico Lazisi, Giovanni Ludovico Vescovi, Vin-
cente Vicomerato, Giovanni Antonio Merlo, Francisco de Torres,
Francisco Soto, and Christiano Hanneyder.

The name of Palestrina does not appear, since the experts
were all chosen from the papal chapel, and Palestrina was now
maestro of the Liberian basilica.

The following conditions were laid before the musical sub-
committee regulating the character of the new sacred musical
compositions, if such could be composed. It was forbidden :
ist. To sing different words at the same time, whether in motets
or masses. 2d. To introduce profane or lascivious melodies, or
imitations of such. 3d. To employ any words not taken from
the liturgy.

By the first of these conditions it was understood that hear-
ing distinctly what was sung was the chief point to be gained.
The cardinals evidently made a capital point of this, for they
brought the committee of musicians before them and examined
them on this head. The musicians replied that they did not
think it possible, except in short motets ; but to write musical
compositions for the Gloria and Credo in which the words could
be distinctly heard was not possible because of the fugues and
imitations requisite to be introduced ; which musical figures con-
stituted precisely the distinctive character of harmonized music.
To deprive it of these resources would be to destroy the music
itself.

Now, it happened that Cardinal Borromeo was the arch-priest
of the Liberian basilica, where Palestrina was maestro, and Vitel-
lozzi was also his personal friend. Both were well acquainted
with his compositions, consisting of various motets, antiphons, and
masses. They cited his " Improperia " for Good Friday and the
quartets of his mass, " Ut, re, mi, fa, sol, /a," as being instances of
musical religious compositions in which the words could be
heard. But the Vatican musicians stuck to their opinion, and
the cardinals were then induced to call in Palestrina and con-
fide the work to him. He accepted the task, betook himself to
prayer as well as to musical work, and by April of the succeed-
ing year, 1565, a year and four months after the council had
closed at Trent, he had composed three masses to be exhibited

798 THE PALESTRINA MYTH. [Mar.,

on trial before the commission. Hoyeda, the pontifical secre-
tary, in his MS. thus writes : " Saturday, April 28. To-day, by
order of his eminence the Cardinal Vitellozzi, we were assem-
bled in the palace of his eminence to attend the singing of cer-
tain masses, and judge if we could hear the words distinctly as
their eminences desire."

The last one of these three masses sung was the now renown-
ed "Missa Papas Marcelli," but not then so named, nor indeed until
long after, when King Philip II. of Spain, who, having construct-
ed at Madrid a magnificent chapel royal, and wishing to provide
for it not only splendid and costly vestments, but also rare and
exquisite music, such as'might be worthy for kings to hear and
enjoy at Mass, music which should be dedicated first of all to
his own majesty of course, and afterwards to the Majesty of
God, suppliantly besought, after the manner of royal beseech-
ings, the great artist Palestrina to write some masses for the
special use of his grand chapel, and among which he would like
to have a certain mass, meaning the one not yet named so far as
he knew, but which all agreed was the champion mass of the
day. But Palestrina was too loyal an Italian to put the name
of a foreigner, though a king, upon his chef d'ceuvre, and al-
though he wrote and dedicated other masses to the king, and
enclosed a copy of the gem of all with the others, he took care
to inscribe this one with a dedication to Pope Marcellus, then
dead more than ten years. King Philip could not well take of-
fence at this offering, for in those days a pope was in many re-
spects looked upon as something more than a king. Palestrina
knew perfectly well that the one mass dedicated to the late pope
was worth all those he dedicated to the king, and more ; but,
with an ingenuity and finesse of expression in which the Italians
surpass all nations, he adroitly complimented the king apropos of
those dedicated to himself without even mentioning the name of
Pope Marcellus. In his letter to the king he writes : " Gravissi-
morum et religiosissimorum hominum secutus consilium, ad sanc-
tissimum missse sacrificium novo modorum genere decorandum
omne mecum studium, operam industriamque contuli. Hos in-
genii mei conatus non quidem primos, sed tamen feticiores, ut spero,
tuse majestati potissimum dicandos existimavi." (The italics are
ours, and the words thus indicated undoubtedly merit this quali-
fication.)

It does not come within the purpose of this essay to repeat
the encomiums justly paid to these musical compositions of the
Prince of Music, or the approving verdict passed by the pope

1889.] THE PALESTRINA MYTH. 799

and the cardinals (not pope and council) after hearing the third
one rendered on the I9th day of June following in the Sistine
Chapel. The conditions required by the commission were de-
clared to be sufficiently fulfilled, and the endorsement by the
pope certainly gave encouragement to others to compose masses
in similar style, and thus a true measure of reform was accom-
plished, an extraordinary measure indeed, considering the
scandalous and irreverent state of things which had hitherto
prevailed.

I think, however, I have proved beyond question the mythi-
cal character of the Palestrina story as related by so many his-
torians, lecturers, essayists, and other apologists for the use of
concert music at the divine offices of the church ; I now further-
more proclaim as wholly unwarrantable and fallacious the com-
mon inference drawn therefrom, even supposing the alleged facts
to have been true, or as might be drawn from the actual ap-
proval of these works of Palestrina by Pope Pius IV. and the
cardinals, viz.: that the success achieved by the great artist re-
sulted in saving modern concerted music from practical extinc-
tion, or gave to it any remarkable impulse tending to its present
astonishing progress. This is, indeed, one of the principal
strands in the cable of the popular " church-music " sheet-anchor
upon which the utmost reliance has been confidently placed. I
propose in a few words to cut that also.

Any one who knows anything of the tonality and musical
form of these masses of Palestrina and of his imitators immedi-
ately succeeding him, as also of all music of his time and of a
previous date, knows that what we call modern harmonized music
does not owe either its existence or its development to the music
written in the style called alia Palestrina. The best proof would
be to listen to one of these productions. Every one would im-
mediately declare it to be to them a new experience and as sound-
ing verv odd and antiquated, and as certainly not being modern
music. They could not probably tell you why they so judged it.
But there are good reasons.

First of all, every learned musician knows that modern music
is essentially different from the music called alia Palestrina in
tonality and rhythm, and so dissimilar in harmonic treatment as
to convince the most ordinary listener that it is cast in quite
another mould, while the musical philosopher will tell you that
from a moral point of view the latter is as distinctive from the
former as a cowled and hooded monk is from a modern dude, or,
if you will, a gentleman in full evening dress. Musical scientists

8oo THE PALESTRINA MYTH. [Mar.,

also are aware that the tonality of our modern music is the result
of chromatic modulation, introduced (and not without violent
protest, as introducing the very devil into music) by Claudio
Monteverde, who was born the same year (1565) that Palestrina
composed his great masses.

All modern music is written in either the major or minor
mode, with free use of modulation by means of the " diabolus in
musica" i.e., bringing the fourth and fifth degrees of the gamut,
into relation with the seventh, compelling the resolution upon a
new tonic from the sensible or leading tone, which, combined
with the employment of the chromatic scale, soon gave rise to
the use of soft, luxuriously enervating, dissonant harmonies so
characteristic of our modern compositions.

All serious writers have shown how this innovation upon the
fundamental principles, both ethical and aesthetical, of musical
art produced a perfectly new tonality, introducing a novel spirit
which eminent musical critics like F6tis, D'Ortigue, Danjou, De
Laprade, Coussemaker, Lemmens, Gounod, and others have not
hesitated to stigmatize as unchaste and even devilish, by which
terms they mean not only that the vilely impure sentiments of
the heart find through it an easy means of expression, as it cer-
tainly can excite such degrading emotions, but that it is also
rarely free from the charge of giving impressions which we call
worldly, passionate, emotional, often exhibiting a reckless break-
ing through of those bounds of chaste reserve and refined
self-respect and self-restraint which is ever the mark of pure,
high-born nobility and gentle breeding. The same writers all
equally recognize the contrary to be the spirit of the old eccle-
siastical tonality, and have accorded to it the qualifications
of chastity, modesty, guilelessness, and intellectuality. They
speak of it as wanting in the tendency and even the ability
to excite morally unhealthy sentiment. Some writers on the
philosophy of music have also regarded the spirit of the
ancient tonality as one which inspires and expresses the humble
sentiments of faith, hope, and love of the divine, and proclaimed
the spirit of the modern tonality to be that of doubt, despair, and
infidelity.

The poet is the seer. He grasps by intuition the truth which
the philosopher can only reach by long and laborious discursive
reasoning. I commend to my readers the perusal of a re-
markable, and to my mind most truly appreciative, poem on
Chopin by Celia Thaxter in confirmation of this. I think one
would be quite safe in asserting that if the fathers of the Coun-

1889.] THE PALESTRINA MYTH. 80 1

cil of Trent could now rise from their graves and reassemble,
they would unhesitatingly denounce the greater part of music
heard in our churches to-day as " lascivious and impure," and
not all the solicitations of every king and emperor combined
would be able to prevail against their anathematizing decree
forbidding its use.

Now, in what modes are Palestrina's three masses composed ?
Certainly not in either the modern major or minor modes, for
the very good reason that such modes were not known in his
day. Musicians in his time knew only the ecclesiastical modes,
eight in number, of Gregorian chant. Therefore his masses, as
indeed all that he ever composed, are written in the tonality of
Gregorian chant.

The first of the three celebrated ones of history is in the
third and fourth modes, the second in the seventh mode, and the
" Missa Papas Marcelli," the third in order, in the eighth mode.
All are written for six voices, although not the same in parti-
tion.

As a fact, therefore, his music would be only agreeable and
intelligible, and I venture to add, even devotional, to him who
loves and understands Gregorian chant ; and every word of
praise bestowed upon his works redounds to the inimitable and
untarnished glory of the true, divine melody of the church, of
which, indeed, Palestrina's music may be said to be a harmonized
application and illustration in its prodigious fecundity and in-
exhaustible wealth of sacred melody, in which characteristics,
despite the contrary opinion of some unlearned critics, it is
judged by all distinguished musicians, Catholic and non-Catholic,
to be vastly richer than any music ever yet composed, or ever
likely to be composed, in the modern tonality.

The very contrary to the supposition of these apologists is
the case. It is modern music as we have it, becoming more and
more intoxicatingly beautiful and deliriously impassioned every
day, that has been almost the death of the tonality upon which
the ever-glorious chant and the wonderful works of Palestrina
depend for life. Modern music has been the greatest possible
enemy, therefore, to both these far superior systems of melody
and harmony. We gaze upon these monumental works as upon
the deeds of giants, as indeed they are ; but why, I ask, have
there been no giants of like stature born in the realm of that
music which, its apologists claim, owes a debt of gratitude to
him who, if he could hear it, would deride its puny proportions
and reject its impassioned modulations as unholy? Let these
VOL. XLVIII. 51

802 THE PALESTRINA MYTH. [Mar.,

critics tell us why the race of such colossal geniuses died out
with the gradual neglect of the study and execution of Gre-
gorian chant and of the works of those who wrote only in its
tonality.

I unhesitatingly say that if we can show no equal or rival to
Palestrina or other contemporary of his, nor to a John Sebastian
Bach, one of the last of those mighty artists who took their
inspiration from the ecclesiastical tonality, it is the fault, the
whole fault, the grievous fault of the universal reigning influence
of the comparatively weak, barren, and sensual music based
upon the new modern tonality, and I found my assertions upon
the arguments of the most profound musicians of this and previ-
ous centuries.

I, moreover, thus supported, add that had it not been for the
complete social and artistic revolution t)f the debasing Renais-
sance with the birth of modern music, we would now be un-
doubtedly enjoying and able to comprehend the results of a true
progress of that divine chant, and of the heavenly music of Pal-
estrina, which it inspired, to say nothing of a like progress in
the expression of other arts, instead of standing, as we do, gap-
ing open-mouthed, wondering at, and ignorantly pretending to
criticise what we feel in our inmost souls is utterly unapproach-
able by any efforts of ours, and what is in fact beyond our intel-
lectual grasp.

Let our over-generous panegyrists of Palestrina, who are so
pleased with the modern concert church music and so ready to
condemn that about which they know so little, put these facts
and considerations into their pipe and smoke them. At any
rate, good people all, historians, orators, essayists, discoursers at
church-organ openings, and whosoever desires to point his
moral or adorn his tale with a rhetorical allusion to Palestrina,
the greatest Gregorian chant harmonist whom the world has
yet seen, please to take notice : No reliance to be placed upon
the old and formerly serviceable " church-music " sheet-anchor,
all about Palestrina and the Council of Trent, because the facts
now known will sever the cable.

ALFRED YOUNG.

1889] ST. THOMAS BECKET. 803

ST. THOMAS BECKET.

IN our undergraduate days some of us found a saying of
Pugin that he invariably entered every ancient English church
on which he chanced, never failing to find some novel and in-
structive feature in even the simplest village fane to reward him.
We acted on the suggestion, and unearthed many architectural
gems and curiosities in our rambles around Cambridge. For in-
stance, in a most unpromising little rural temple in the de-
corated style we came on a grotesque mural representation or
caricature of a bishop, with the letters " S. TOMAS," of varying
size and pattern, grouped around the head. The vicar told us
that this painting had been lately exposed by the removal ot
some wainscoting, possibly placed there in the times of the civil
troubles to protect the saint from Cromwellian iconoclasts ;
though how it survived the age of the Tudors is a mystery. Of
course the toes of the bishop were turned in, the joints any-
where, the face expressionless and inane, and as a work of art it
was, as Balzac says of some one else, " as much like a man as a
goat with a nightcap on is like a girl." However^the rude
fresco suggested some considerations. This Archbishop of Can-
terbury had been represented in English history as a worldly,
ambitious man, who, when sated with luxury and indulgence,
suddenly commenced a career of turbulent and ungrateful op-
position to his royal friend and benefactor, which not unnatural-
ly terminated in his death. The inference was that our ances-
tors who made a hero of such a personage must have been a set
of unreasoning numskulls hard to match in the annals of stu-
pidity.

He was born on the 2ist of December, 1117, St. Thomas' Day,
in the comparatively peaceful times of the third Norman sover-
eign, and, regardless of snow and wintry blasts, was taken out
the same day after Vespers to be baptized. The house where
the parents of Thomas resided was in Cheapside in the city of
London, on the site where Mercer's Hall now stands between
Old Jewry and Ironmonger Lane. However, the Cheapside of
the twelfth century had few points of resemblance to the crowd-
ed, bustling thoroughfare now connecting St. Paul's with the
Mansion House, though names of neighboring streets recall
usages extinct long ages gone. Cheapside was then a wide, ir-

804 ST. THOMAS BECKET. [Mar.,

regular space, a bog in winter, a Sahara in hot seasons. On the
north side were scattered the sheds or booths of traders, not all
unlike the frame houses of a mushroom " city '' in the far West ;
the " Poultry " at the eastern extremity marks the spot where
the cockney housewife in old times cheapened a Michaelmas
goose or haggled over a capon, and Scalding Alley hard by is
also suggestive. Of course the well-known romance of Thomas's
parentage must be mentioned : how Norman Gilbert and his
" varlet " Richard, going to the Crusades, were captured by the
Saracens and kept in durance vile by a certain emir or admiral
for one or two years. Of course the emir's daughter must
needs fancy herself smitten with the prisoner, and offer to liber-
ate him if he would make her his wife. " Mr. Becket," how-
ever, as Alban Butler calls him, was not a lady's man, and pre-
ferred to wait till he and his servant ould contrive their own
escape. But he found it easier to get rid of the Saracen fetters
than of the Saracen lady. It was evidently leap year ; at any
rate, one fine morning there was the damsel in outlandish attire,
with a queue of tag-rag at her heels, shouting out his name all
down the London streets. Of course, in a town no larger than
Denver he was bound to hear of it, and in high dudgeon handed
over the fair (or swarthy) Eastern to a hard-featured old gossip
of his acquaintance and consulted the bishop. He recommended
baptism and marriage, and Gilbert with admirable docility as-
sented. The lady was baptized " by six ^bishops " (though the
chronicler fails to state how they managed it), and married to
Gilbert outright. Matrimony under constraint evidently did
not prove attractive to him, for the day after the wedding he
experienced an uncontrollable craving to revisit Syria, and, leav-
ing his bride in charge of Richard, departed from home, taking
care not to return for several years. However, within the
year Mrs. Becket gave birth to Thomas, and found herself
with an establishment and baby, if not a husband. This story,
proving that independent ladies flourished seven centuries
ago, unfortunately fails to satisfy that grim sceptic, modern
criticism.

What appears fact is that Gilbert and Matilda his wife were
members of the Anglo-Norman colony in whose hands all the
wealth and influence of the kingdom then lay ; that the father
was a flourishing London merchant, and at one time sheriff, port-
greeve, or vice-comes of the city (for as yet there was no lord-
mayor), and that they were worthy folk and generous. The
picture of Matilda weighing her son on his birthdays against

1889] ST. THOMAS BECKET. 805

food, clothing, and other alms for the poor, one would not wish
to sacrifice; and he was betimes placed at one of the three
schools which were attached to the three chief London churches.
We see the child then passing Bow Church (some parts of
which, in spite of the great fire, still remain under the striking
building of Wren) on his way to school, and on holidays joining
with his mates in cock-fighting, tilting at the quentin and ball, or
in the winter gliding on bone skates over the frozen wastes at
Moorfields. Later he was placed in charge of Robert, head of
the Regular Canons of Merton in Surrey, and with him he main-
tained an intimate, lifelong friendship. Thus his youth was pass-
ed with the Cheapside dwelling as his headquarters. The citi-
zens had hardly yet commenced the erection of stone houses, the
neighboring forests supplying an abundance of building material,
albeit rather inflammable, so that it was said that but for fires
and drunkenness London would be a comfortable place of resi-
dence. Poor Gilbert's means were largely invested in house
property, insurance companies as yet were non-existent, and he
had the mortification in his declining years to see most of his
wealth go up in smoke. Yet his old friends stuck to him, and
we find a wealthy Norman kinsman and soldier, Richier de
1'Egle, frequently calling in for young Thomas and taking him
off hunting or hawking.

He finally proceeds to the celebrated University of Paris,
and returns when of age to close the eyes of his parents. After
a year in the old home a relative, Osborn Witdeniers (a fam-
ily now extinct, " Eightpence " not occurring as a surname in
the Post-Office Directory), gave him employment as clerk to
the Court of London, and he had the advantage of three years'
business training which must have proved of ultimate service.
He is now twenty-five years of age, and in the turbulent reign
of Stephen, the country in the agony of a contested succession
and torn by civil strife. " God sees the wretched people," says
the Saxon chronicle, " most unjustly oppressed ; first they are
despoiled of their possessions, then butchered." However,
Thomas belonging to the conquering race, which " high-met-
tled" the Dano-Saxon plebs, would not suffer much personal
inconvenience from this, and we now find him in a country
nobleman's household as keen as any other Norman gentle-
man in hawking. " Alas ! " says he in later times, " he who had
charge of the birds has now custody of the sheep." We find him
one day, when hawking, falling off his horse into a mill-race be-
tween Mill Hill and Ware, to the north of London. The miller,

806 ST. TJJOMAS BECKET. [Mar.,

not knowing- of his mishap, chances to stop the mill-wheel in
the nick of time, and he is fished out none the worse for his duck-
ing. This passed for a miracle at the time.

The influence of a relative now obtained him entrance into
the household of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the leading seat
of learning in the kingdom. Theobald was himself a kinsman of
the Beckets; at any rate the archbishop and Gilbert were natives
of the Norman village of Thierceville and well acquainted, and
members of the prelate's household had been amongst the visitors
at the Cheapside house in the old days. Behold, then, Thomas,
with his servitor, Ralph of London, on their horses, leaving the
capital behind them and entering the great northern forest that
stretched from the Thames to the Fens. They had not far to
go, for Harrow is but ten miles from the capital, and now two
lines of rail take one there in half an hour every few minutes.
The school for which it is celebrated, and which with the royal
foundation of Eton takes precedence in common esteem of all the
English schools, was net founded till four centuries later ; but
Harrow-on-the-Hill, or Harewe atte Hulle, where the arch-
bishop's manor was situated, must always from its elevated posi-
tion have been a conspicuous object. It was a very ancient pos-
session of the See of Canterbury. Though the present hand-
some edifice, with its tapering spire, is not more than five hundred
years old, it contains the columns of Lanfranc's building erected
three centuries earlier, and the west door is evidently Saxon
work. In those early days, when the primeval forest for. the
most part was untouched, the wealth of the land consisted in
great measure in large herds of hogs, which subsisted on the
mast of the oak and beech forests and supplied a coarse subsist-
ence to the people. Here and there were clearings around rude
wooden dwellings, as now in Arkansas and the backwoods' in
Canada, and the extensive fen country teemed with fish and fowl.
So to Harrow Thomas betook him to try his fortune, and the
roads must have been but indifferent, for he only reached the
village late in the evening, and thought it more seemly to put up
at the inn than to disturb the inmates of the palace at so late an
hour. He was already in minor orders, and is described as slim
and of great height, pale and dark, with a long nose, cheerful,
keen, winning in manner and frank, but with a slight stammer or
hesitation in his speech. The landlady, it is said, had a dream
about him which pointed to his future eminence. Thomas now
became an earnest student ; his education hitherto had been
somewhat desultory, but, finding himself behind his comrades in

1889.] ST. THOMAS BECKET. 807

literary attainments, he hastened to overtake them, which the
native vigor of his intellect enabled him to speedily accomplish.
The archbishop's court was a sort of school of the higher clergy,
all, of course, of the ruling Norman race ; so here Thomas made
the acquaintance of many of his future associates or opponents,
amongst others of Roger du pont d'Eveque, the future Arch-
bishop of York, who even thus early was a determined antago-
nist, and on two occasions contrived to bring about the dismissal
of Thomas from Harrow. We find him, however, rising higher
and higher in the favor of Theobald and accompanying him on
an embassy to Rome, and the assiduous scholar afterwards ob-
tained permission to study canon law at Bologna, the most cele-
brated university for legal knowledge in Europe at that period ;
thence he proceeded later to Auxerre. He was now a deacon,
but possessed of a number of benefices, St. Mary-in-the-Strand,
the provostship of Beverley, and many other appointments; he
was also given the archdeaconry of Canterbury, a post worth
.100 a year, then a considerable sum, and ranking next to the
bishoprics and mitred abbeys. This system of pluralities is a
distinctive feature of mediasval English church life.

Thomas now rendered a very important service to Henry,
afterwards king, and son of the Empress Maud, advising Theo-
bald as to a suitable settlement of the crown and proceeding for
him to Rome in Henry's interests. It was arranged that Stephen
should retain the crown for life and be succeeded by Henry. The
king, however, very naturally endeavored to put aside this com-
pact, and to obtain the coronation of his son Eustace. The ques-
tion was solved by the death of this prince, speedily followed by
the demise of his father, and the crown passed quietly to Henry
II. in 1154, he being then twenty-one years of age, vigorous in
mind and body, powerful in his territories, not only of England
and Ireland, but also of Normandy, Poitou, and Aquitaine, and
determined t-hat there should be one authority, and one only, in
his dominions, and that himself. A strong hand was the neces-
sity of the times ; during the two decades of civil strife nume-
rous castles had arisen throughout the land, where the barons,
kings in their own neighborhood, tortured and despoiled their
hapless tenantry. These abodes of tyranny Henry razed to the
ground, the Flemish and other foreign adventurers he expelled.
And now he sought for a capable lieutenant to aid him in his
measures of reform, and gratitude, personal liking, the arch-
bishop's commendations, all pointed the same way; and Thomas
of London, nearly double the king's age, became chancellor and,

8o8 ST. THOMAS BECKET. [Mar.,

after Henry, the most powerful person in four kingdoms. He is
now again in London, maintaining a state nearly equal to the
king's, for no request of his is refused, and benefices, sinecures,
pensions are showered on him in profusion. The chancellor
has a numerous retinue, hundreds of knights, troops of serving-
men; many sons of nobles are entrusted to his keeping, and even
Henry, the king's son. His display is lavish, his hospitality un-
bounded ; besides the tables placed for the guests in his hall,
rushes or hay are strewn on the ground to seat the knights who
cannot otherwise find space, and, after them, crowds of hum-
bler folk obtain admittance and are regaled on the remains of
the repast. We have a picture of the king occasionally riding
into the hall, leaping off his horse, and draining a horn of wine
to his chancellor on his way to the chase, or vaulting over the
table and seating himself at the board by the side of his friend.
Again, the pair are riding through the London streets one bitter
winter day, their attendants behind at a respectful distance.
The king points to a thinly-clad beggar : " Would not a cloak be
well bestowed on that poor, shivering wretch?" And on the
chancellor assenting, the king replied : " Then, as you say it, I
will give him yours!" A struggle ensues, the two nearly un-
horsing each other in their efforts, to the amazement of their
followers, and finally the handsome scarlet and gray mantle of
Thomas is conveyed to the shoulders of the mendicant, the
chancellor being of course speedily supplied with another by
one of his people. If the king, however, once clothed a London
beggar, we are not to imagine he showed any great regard for
the citizens. They considered themselves as nobles and indeed
their city even then was of considerable importance but Henry
never forgot their treatment of his mother Maud, and his hos-
tility was a decided disadvantage. As an instance of his re-
sentment, a messenger once came to him with unwelcome com-
munications ; he had the luckless man's fingers forced into his
eyes till the blood flowed, and hot water poured down his
throat. In his rage the king became like a wild beast, roared,
growled, foamed at the mouth, tore his clothing, and rolled on
the ground. In spite of these occasional outbursts of violence
common to all the early Norman kings of England, Henry was or-
dinarily a just and temperate monarch ; the land under him felt a
sense of security unknown since the days of his grandfather. It
is to be remarked that the king enforced the surrender of the
crown lands weakly given up by his father to the barons. He
held, as did the archbishop later of the demesnes of his see, that

1889.] ST. THOMAS BECKET. 809

a life-tenant had no power to alienate possessions designed to
adequately support the dignity of his office.

Henry, bent on consolidating the power of his family by
every available means, thought of "a French matrimonial alliance,
and entrusted its execution to Thomas, for foreign affairs was
especially the province of the chancellor; besides, what diplo-
matist more fitting than he whose subtle statecraft had been so
eminently exemplified by the success of the negotiations which
resulted in peacefully placing the crown on the head of Henry ?
We see, then, Thomas setting out for Paris with congenial state
to arrange the betrothal of Henry, the king's son, to Margue-
rite, the daughter of Louis. The children were but five and
three years of age, but thirteen years later the marriage actual-
ly took place. Those were the palmy days of Thomas of Lon-
don ; he journeyed with two hundred gay attendants, knights,
esquires, sons of nobles, the ttite of his country ; the entire cor-
tege must have been one thousand strong. Eight wagons con-
tained clothing, chapel furniture, and presents. Brave show
was there of horses, hawks (the chancellor's special delight),
and hounds ; monkeys were perched on led horses, and grim
mastiffs, for which Britain had always been famous, guarded
every wagon. And so the brilliant array proceeds in joyous
sort through the Anglo-French domains and then enters the
French territories. In passing through the towns and villages
the English youths sing their national songs, the Frenchmen are
duly impressed, declaring that if such be the chancellor, his
master must be indeed a potent seigneur. Louis gave orders
at Paris for ample supplies to be provided for the English em-
bassy, but Thomas' emissaries had forestalled him and bought
up all available stores. At the French capital the officer of
Henry surpassed himself in generosity; a cloak to one, a charger
to another, a hawk to a third, gained him adherents on all sides ;
nothing was spared, he carried all before him, and his mission
terminated to the satisfaction of all. But Henry and Louis
were often at war. Thus, in 1159 we find Henry at war with
his suzerain and besieging his castle at Toulouse, which would
doubtless have yielded had the advice of Thomas been taken,
who in full armor appeared at the head of his seven hundred
knights and panted for the assault. After this we find the Arch-
deacon of Canterbury leading twelve hundred knights and four
thousand others, and supporting them six weeks at his own
cost, himself unhorsing a French knight and taking his charger
as a prize. Fighting churchmen form a conspicuous feature in

8io Sr. THOMAS BECKET. [Mar.,

mediaeval warfare, leading their tenantry into the field, and even
if they scrupled at shedding blood, seeing no harm in braining
an adversary with a mace ; even as late as Flodden we find the
Archbishop of St. Andrews, with two other bishops and two
abbots, amongst the Scottish slain.

At the time under consideration Nicholas Breakspere, the only
English pope, better known as Adrian IV., died and was suc-
ceeded by Alexander III., who eventually canonized St. Thomas.
Soon after, in 1161, the aged Archbishop Theobald died, lament-
ing his inability to see again the king whom he had been instru-
mental in placing on the throne, Henry being at the time in
Normandy. And now the king thought the hour had come for
consolidating the whole power of England under his own rule ;
this had been his constant policy, and he had speedily abated the
pretensions of the barons, to the great satisfaction of the people,
who remembered the troubles consequent on divided authority
in the previous reign. He now hoped to reduce his other
powerful rival, the church, by placing at its head his favorite
minister as successor to Theobald. When the mitre was
offered to the chancellor he declined it, saying that were he
archbishop he should feel it his duty to oppose the king in many
matters, with the result of changing their present friendship into
estrangement. The king, however, would hear of no refusal,
but Thomas did not yield till the pope advised him to do so.
So, in 1162 the king gave leave for the election of Thomas to the
See of Canterbury. On Whitsunday he was made priest, and
bishop the following Sunday, by Henry, Bishop of Winchester,
brother of Stephen, and one of the most prominent persons in
the kingdom. As the king was still in his French possessions,
the new archbishop did homage to the young King Henry, his
pupil, now eight years of age.

Thomas now commences an entirely new manner of life,
which must have proved very painful at first. Besides being
archbishop and metropolitan of all England, he finds himself
abbot of the Benedictine monastery of Christ Church, Canter-
bury, for at the time every cathedral in England except Lon-
don and Salisbury had its monastery attached. He accordingly
rose at two for Matins, then washed the feet of thirteen poor
men, presenting each with a piece of money and attending them
at breakfast. He then devoted himself to study of the Scriptures
with his constant attendant, Herbert of Bosham ; afterwards he
took a little repose, and one hundred poor men were served
with a meal. At three he dined in hall with the monks, having

1889.] ST. THOMAS BECKET. 811

no music, and causing some pious book to be read by one of
his attendants ; the soldiers and retainers were seated at another
table, so far removed as not to be disturbed by the reading,
which would not interest them, and the poor were served
elsewhere. To the latter he also gave a tenth part of his
income. The prelate did not at first discontinue his rich
clothing, which gave offence to some, and he subsequently
adopted the use of the black cappa with lamb's wool which had
been worn by the Canons of Merton, of whom he had been a
scholar. He found on trial that the frugal fare of the monks im-
paired his health and unfitted him for his work, so he drank wine
as St. Paul counselled Timothy to do, "not much, but the best
obtainable." Thus, also, he gave offence, for it is impossible to
satisfy everybody, and we hear of an ill-conditioned fellow cen-
suring him at his own table for his delicate fare and provoking
the retort, " Brother, methinks you take your beans with more
appetite than I do my pheasant." He wore a hair shirt and
drawers, of which no one knew anything but his confessor and
his body servant;. to say nothing of such extraordinarily early
rising. Over his black robe he always wore a surplice and stole,
to be ready to duly exercise his ecclesiastical functions wher-
ever he might be, and it is said that when on his journeys people
came to him for confirmation he did not, as the other bishops,
perform the rite in his saddle, but always dismounted.

Later he resigned the chancellorship, to the king's annoy-
ance, but the zealous man determined to address himself solely
to ecclesiastical functions. In 1163 we find him crossing in
great state from Romney to Gravelines to attend the Council of
Tours, at which seventeen cardinals were present, besides one
hundred and twenty-four bishops and four hundred and four-
teen abbots. St. Thomas lodged in the king's palace, and' at
the same time restored the young king to his father. On his
return to England we find the archbishop consecrating the
important abbey of Reading, the remains of which may now be
seen from the railway. Then he, with twelve other bishops,
performed the translation of the remains of Edward the Con-
fessor, who was now canonized. The body was perfect after an
interment of one hundred years, with long, gray beard, clothed
in a golden robe with purple shoes, and having a golden crown
on the head. The king and some of the leading nobles placed
the body in the tomb in Westminster Abbey, where it now lies.
Henry was now growing estranged from his former favorite.
He had not been pleased at the resignation of the chancellor-

8 12 ST. THOMAS BECKET. [Mar.,

ship, and when the archbishop commenced recalling grants of
church-lands which had been made by his predecessors on
the same grounds as the king had reclaimed the alienated
crown- lands he was still more offended. Then Thomas opposed
an arbitrary tax, declaring that neither he nor his tenants
would pay it to the royal officers. This was the first time the
king's right to tax had ever been questioned, and it is no wonder
that the conduct of this twelfth-century Hampden thoroughly
enraged the monarch, who swore " Par les oitz Deu " (by God's
eyes) that he would be obeyed. These strained relations be-
tween the heads of the church and the state were brought to
a focus at the council at Westminster, the king's desire being
to establish one uniform law for the whole realm. In Saxon
times the bishop and earl in each county had sat together,
jointly adjudicating on all cases whatsoever, but since the Con-
quest church courts had sprung up, withdrawing many per-
sons from the jurisdiction of the king's judges. Speaking of
these times, Hallam says :

" To resist had indeed become strictly necessary, if the temporal gov-
ernments of Christendom would occupy any better station than that of offi-
cers to the hierarchy. . . . From that time [the twelfth century] it [the
ecclesiastical power] rapidly encroached upon the secular tribunals, and
seemed to threaten the usurpation of an exclusive supremacy over all per-
sons and causes. The bishops gave the tonsure indiscriminately, in order
to swell the list of their subjects. This sign of a clerical state, though
below the lowest of their seven degrees of ordination, implying no spiritual
office, conferred the privileges and immunities of the profession on all who
wore an ecclesiastical habit and had only once been married. Orphans
and widows, the stranger and the poor, the pilgrim and the leper, under the
appellation of persons in distress (miserabiles persons), came within the
peculiar cognizance and protection of the church ; nor could they be sued
before any lay tribunal. And the whole body of crusaders, or such as
meVely took the vow of engaging in a crusade, enjoyed the same clerical
privileges.''

We will now quote from the same authority as to the nature
of the royal prerogative at the period we are considering:

" It was not a sanguinary despotism. Henry II. was a prince of re-
markable clemency, and none of the Conqueror's successors were as
grossly tyrannical as himself. But the system of rapacious extortion from
their subjects prevailed to a degree that we should rather expect to find
among Eastern slaves than that high-spirited race of Normandy, whose
renown then filled Europe and Asia. The right of wardship was abused
by selling the heir and his land to the highest bidder. That of marriage
was carried to a still grosser excess. . . . Men fined for the king's good
will ; or that he would remit his anger ; or to have his mediation with

1889.] ST. THOMAS BECKET. 813

their adversaries. . . . The right of general legislation was undoubtedly
placed in the king, conjointly with his great council, or, if the expression
be thought more proper, with their advice. So little opposition was found
in these assemblies by the early Norman kings that they gratified their
own love of pomp, as well as the pride of their barons, by consulting them
in every important business. But the limits of legislative power were ex-
tremely indefinite. New laws, like new taxes, affecting the community,
required the sanction of that assembly which was supposed to represent
it, but there was no security for individuals against acts of prerogative
which we should justly consider as most tyrannical. Henry II., the best of
these monarchs, banished from England the relations and friends of Becket
to the number of four hundred. At another time he sent over from Nor-
mandy an injunction that all the kindred of those who obeyed a papal
interdict should be banished and their estates confiscated. The statutes
of those reigns do not exhibit to us many provisions calculated to maintain
public liberty on a broad and general foundation."

These lengthy quotations from a master have been judged
advisable as enabling the reader to form his own conclusion as
to the just division of praise and blame between the two parties
to this long dispute; of course I speak of its legal aspect. The
leading demands of Henry were that offending clerics should be
degraded by the church courts and then handed over for punish-
ment to the civil power, and that the " royal customs " should be
maintained. It was averred that, as the ecclesiastical tribunals
only dealt out mild punishments and never inflicted a capital
sentence, many misci eants failed to obtain their deserts and
several cases were cited, as, for instance, that of a cleric who
had seduced a girl and murdered her father, practically with
impunity. The bishops were unanimously of opinion that the
royal demand should be acceded to, with the exception of the
primate, who maintained that it was manifestly unjust to punish
a man twice for the same offence. As to the vaguely described
" royal customs," the bishops promised to observe them, with
the equally vague reservation, "saving their order," thus
thoroughly exasperating the king.

Another bone of contention was the king's practice of keep-
ing benefices vacant that he might enjoy their revenues. Several
sees were at this time unfilled Lincoln, for instance, had no bish-
op for seventeen years together. When Thomas had been chan-
cellor he and the king had tried to obtain an undertaking from a
bishop designate that he would retain from the revenues of his
see merely sufficient to maintain himself and his household,
handing over the residue to the king, to be spent by him "as
the Lord should put it into his heart," a suggestion which the
churchman indignantly repelled. Thomas had a conference
with the king at Northampton which was barren of results, but

8 14 ST. THOMAS BECKET. [Mar.,

afterwards at Woodstock he yielded at the suggestion, real or
pretended, of the pope and cardinals, and was partially recon-
ciled to Henry. Then followed the celebrated conference in the
first month of 1164 at the royal palace of Clarendon in Wiltshire,
where the archbishop promised to observe the "royal cus-
toms," but afterwards refused to sign and seal a document to
that effect. He thus failed to satisfy the king, and was bitterly
reproached by his attendants for his complaisance. He repent-
ed of what he considered his fault, and sent to the pope at Sens
requesting absolution, refraining the while from performing
ecclesiastical functions.

The archbishop vainly strove for a peaceful settlement, his
wishes and those of the king being diametrically opposed, and
he was refused access to his royal master at Woodstock. He
now made a futile attempt to cross the Channel and meet the
pope. In October he met the king and his council at North-
ampton. The upshot of this council was that open war was
declared against the primate. Though on his elevation to the
episcopal bench all claims the crown might have had against
him as chancellor had been cancelled, yet now all sorts of de-
mands were put forward, as much as thirty thousand marks be-
ing asked for on various pleas. He was, moreover, found guilty
of high treason, and, fearing for his life, he made his escape at
night by a gate of the city which by some negligence was un-
guarded, and, accompanied by a few lay brothers of the White
Canons of Sempringham, himself attired as one of them, rode
through the rain and darkness to Grantham and then to Lincoln.
We then find him at Boston, thence passing by water to Haver-
holme, always journeying by night and staying in houses of St.
Gilbert's order. After enduring many privations he reached
one of his own villages on the coast near Sandwich, which is but
eight miles from Canterbury, there found a boat, and embarked
for the Flemish coast three weeks after his flight from North-
ampton. On the same day the bishops, sent by Henry to state
his version of the quarrel to the pope, also embarked. Thomas
landed near Gravelines, and then passed by St. Omer, travelling
on foot with three lay brothers who addressed him as Brother
Christian. Henry was much enraged against the Sempringham
Canons for having assisted the fugitive, and tried in vain to
extort an oath from St. Gilbert, their head and founder, now
seventy-three years of age, that he had not supplied the arch-
bi^hop with money. Though he might truthfully have com-
plied, the old man refused, thinking that such a concession

1889.] Sr. THOMAS BECKET. 815

might imply that to assist St. Thomas was a crime, and such
was his reputation for virtue that his refusal incurred no pun-
ishment. For private reasons Thomas had little clemency to
expect from the Count of Flanders, and he was glad to reach
French territory unmolested. Here, in spite of the adverse re-
presentations of Henry's embassy, he was received with con-
sideration by Louis, who possibly was not averse to dealing a
side blow at the English king. Thomas was joined in France by
Herbert of Bosham, his Welsh cross-bearer, and others of his
household, and with them reached the pope at Sens at about the
same time as did the emissaries of Henry. The latter failed to
persuade the pontiff that, as Thomas had taken needless alarm,
he should admonish him to return to England ; and after en-
joying the papal hospitality for three weeks the archbishop ac-
cepted an invitation to the Cistercian monastery of Pontigny in
Burgundy, where he and his attendants remained in seclusion for
some years. So enraged was Henry at this that he banished
the relatives and friends of the prelate and his adherents to the
number of four hundred, first binding them on oath to personally
appear before the prelate, hoping that the sight of their misery
might constrain him to return. A few escaped on payment of
heavy fines, but the suffering incurred by the majority was very
great, neither age, sex, nor condition being considered, so that
some expired, whilst others, more fortunate, were supported by
the charity of the King of Sicily and various other princes.
Thomas, meanwhile, remained at Pontigny, devoting himself to
study and assisting in the field-work of the monks. But in 1166,
Henry having threatened vengeance on all the Cistercian houses
in his realms if Thomas continued in one of their monasteries, he
thought it right to leave Pontigny, and we next find him at
Vezelay. About this time he is said to have had a vision of his
mode of death.

The pope now appointed him legate to England, and he
writes three conciliatory though fruitless letters to Henry, who
had about this time some negotiations with the emperor and the
anti-pope; Thomas also excommunicated the Bishop of London
and other English adherents of Henry. We next find him at
Sens, where he resided in the palace of Louis for several years
and lived on his bounty. There were several conferences with
Henry, and at length they appeared to be reconciled. It being
held unsuitable to ask a king to promise generous treatment to
a subject on oath, Louis suggested that Henry should give
Thomas the kiss of peace, but this on one ground and another

816 ST. THOMAS BECKET. [Mar.

was always evaded. But the pope advised the primate's return
to England, and towards the close of 1170 he resolved to
obey, though he told Louis he was going to his death, in which
that monarch agreed with him. So he landed at Sandwich and
proceeded to Canterbury, being welcomed with every demon-
stration of delight at the port, on -the road, and in the city it-
self, where the inhabitants came out to meet him in silks, gay
clothing, and festal attire. However, he soon began to experi-
ence court opposition. Henry was in Normandy, but his re-
quest for an audience of the young king at Winchester was
denied. He journeyed to London, but was ordered back to his
diocese.

We then find him at his house at Harrow receiving the
abbot of St. Albans. The rents of his lands were still col-
lected by the royal officers and appropriated to the king's
use. So things went on, the primate living as of old with
the Christ Church monks, till on Christmas day he preached
a sermon in the cathedral from the text, " Peace on earth
to men of good will." After expatiating on this theme for a
time, he went on to say that there was no peace for men of evil
will, and there and then pronounced sentence of excommunica-
tion against several bishops and others, amongst them Nigel
de Sackville, who had been made rector of his church of Harrow
in his absence, and Robert de Broc, Nigel's vicar, who had on
his journey insulted the prelate by causing the tail of one of his
sumpter horses to be cut off. The excommunicated persons
quickly repaired to the king in Normandy, complaining of the
treatment they had received, which naturally drew forth some
violent expressions from Henry, who said he should never enjoy
any peace so long as this turbulent upstart lived. Four knights,
taking this as a hint, at once set out for England, and, travelling
by various routes, met at the castle of Saltwood near Canter-
bury. Their names were Reginald Fitzurse, Tracy, Richard de
Bret, and Moreville. Having placed some of their followers at
various points of the town to prevent interference, they came to
the palace and found the archbishop, who had just dined, seated
on his bed conversing with some monks. They sat down on the
floor, at first abstaining from speech, but afterwards using insult-
ing expressions, saying they had come on the king's behalf and
demanding the restoration of the excommunicated persons.
They then retired to put on their armor, and the monks and
Thomas betook themselves to the church, where it was already
half-dark and where Vespers was being chanted in the choir.

1889.] 5 T. THOMAS BECKET. 817

Some were for barricading the building, but the prelate said he
would never consent to the conversion of his church into a fort-
ress ; others were for concealment, and there was general terror
and consternation, the only person whose nerve was steady
being Thomas, who bade them be quiet, and behave like
men. " All monks are cowards," said he.

Soon the four knights, with Randolph de Broc and one
attendant, appeared armed with their weapons, and some
workmen's axes and tools which they had snatched up in
the cloisters where repairs were in progress. They entered
the church and loudly asked for the archbishop, and he came
forward, standing near the altar of St. Benedict, on the left-
hand side of the upper part of the church and near the
choir, to which he was probably proceeding to place himself
in his chair. An altercation then commenced, the dauntless
prelate from his lofty stature towering above his opponents.
Moreville, the mildest of the four, merely kept back the
people. The bishop reproached his adversaries with their
conduct towards him, as they were "his men," they having
sworn fealty to him when he was chancellor. They answered
that they were the king's men, and acknowledged no other alle-
giance. They then attempted to drag him from the church, but
holding firmly to a column he maintained his ground, and in the
scuffle one of the knights was thrown down. Only three of his
friends were now with Thomas ; Herbert and his cross-bearer he
had in the morning despatched over sea for safety. Robert, his
old tutor of Merton; Edmund Grim, a Saxon clerk from Cam-
bridge, and William of Salisbury alone remained. A blow
was now aimed at the head of the prelate ; Grim broke the
force of the stroke with his arm, which was nearly severed.
The martyr was brought to his knees by the blow notwith-
standing. Another 'cut took off the crown of his head where
he had been anointed, and so he was done to death, deserted
at the last by all his friends. De Broc, who had been a
cleric, with his sword point removed the brain from the skull on
being reproached with having struck no blow. The conspira-
tors performed no further act of violence, contenting themselves
with ransacking the palace and removing such plate and valua-
bles as they could find, and flinging the bishop's hair-shirts con-
temptuously on the ground.

As soon as the monks found that there was no violence to
fear, they crept stealthily back from the roof, crypt, altars,
and other recesses where they had been skulking, and ap-

VOL. XLVIII. 52

8i8 ST. THOMAS BECKET. [Mar.,

proached the remains of their late master. They found him
lying- on his face before the altar of St. Benedict, his robes
not disarranged and his countenance serene, marked by but
one stream of blood which had coursed over it. Lights
were brought and they proceeded to strip the body, his sur-
plice and canon's black robe with lamb's wool being removed ;
beneath this were several lamb's-wool garments which the saint
had needed for his health. It now appeared that he had been
a man of spare figure, his apparent bulk being due to his
numerous garments. When the monks discovered the cowl
on the person of their late master, which he had received
from the pope, they were filled with joy ; he had been then,
after all, a monk like themselves. But this was nothing to
the hair-shirt reaching to his knees, which they then beheld,
and the hair-drawers "seething like a pot" with vermin. He
had indeed been a holy man. This last sign of austerity was
doubtless in accordance with the spirit of the times, but the
state of the saint's garments does not say much for the effi-
ciency of "Brun son vaslet " whose duty it was to wash
them.

So the church was barricaded, and these pious though feeble
persons, four score of whom had not the spirit to resist the onset
of two or three swashbucklers, spent the night in hysterical de-
votion by the remains of their late master, who, had they num-
bered among them one Friar John to lay about him with his
sorb-apple-tree staff, had been alive amongst them now. The
body was hastily concealed, the church for nigh a year was bare
and desolate, and it was not till two or three years later that
Prior Richard of Dover was elected to the vacant see. The
murderers, according to a legend, fled to Knaresborough, in
Yorkshire, whence, after a year, they repaired to the pope, who
sent them on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, soon after which
they all died. There are, of course, some vile puns on their
names: Fitzurse, a regular bear's cub, and so on. Actually,
they were all back at court within a year or two. Moreville
held influential appointments in the north, where he died at an
advanced age in the time of King John ; the sword which he
bore at the murder is said to be now at Brayton Castle, the
property of Sir Wilfred Lawson. The others came from the fair
county of Somerset. Fitzurse is said to have crossed to the
Emerald Isle and founded the McMahon family, the name of the
-Somerset branch of the family eventually changing to Fisher.
Salford Bret, in the same county, still bears the name of Richard
the Breton. The Tracy family are still in Gloucestershire, Lord

1889.3 Sr. THOMAS BECKET. 819

Wemyss and Lord Sudeley (known for his great experimental
jam factory and fruit farm) being descendants of the slayer of St.
Thomas. The farm of Woollacombe Tracy, on the coast of
North Devon, is said to have been his retreat for a while after
the murder. He went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and
gave the manor of Daccombe, in Devon, to the church of Can-
terbury for the support of a monk to say Masses, and this prop-
erty still belongs to the chapter of that cathedral. William
Courteney, the grandson of Tracy, founded in 1210 the Priory of
Woodspring, near the Bristol channel ; it was dedicated to St.
Thomas, and some of Bret's descendants endowed it with lands.
In a church some three miles off and formerly connected with it
was discovered in 1852 in a hollow in the wall a crumbling
wooden cup containing blood. It is probably that of St. Thomas,
hastily concealed in the time of Henry VIII. ; it has been placed
in the Taunton Museum.

Henry, on hearing of St. Thomas's death, was much dis-
tressed ; refrained from food, abstained from society, and even
neglected his affairs for some time ; he also sent an embassy to
assure the pope that he had had no part in the murder and to
express his grief at the occurrence. A great number of miracles
are said to have been worked at Canterbury and elsewhere im-
mediately after the murder, and two of the monks were fully
occupied in drawing up a chronicle of these occurrences. Grim,
whose arm had been wounded in trying to defend the head of St.
Thomas, after a year of futile doctoring bound his arm in a
bandage soaked in water in which was an infinitesimal quantity
of the saint's blood, and was soon healed. We also hear of the
restoration to health of numerous fever-stricken, palsied, blind,
and paralyzed folk. But the most remarkable case of all is one
narrated by Alban Butler of a man who, having stolen a pair of
gloves, was condemned by the water ordeal, whereat his eyes
were dug out and several of his members cut off. However, on
invoking St. Thomas, the lost parts were restored. We hear also
of a monk crossing a bridge over the Thames, but cautiously dis-
mounting and driving his horse before him. The poor animal,
however, fell through a hole in this wonderful erection, and.
dangled over the water holding on by his forequarters. The
monk wept and addressed himself to the Blessed Thomas, when
the horse stood before him again on the bridge. " And now,' r
writes he, " the Lord hath put a new song in my mouth." So
the martyr was canonized within eight years of his death, and his
shrine began to be much frequented. Henry himself in 1174,
being in distress from the rebellion of his sons, the hostility of

820 ST. TJ/OMAS BECKET. [Mar.,

the Scottish king, and the threatening aspect of France, landed
at Southampton and made the Canterbury pilgrimage, walking
into the city in sackcloth, his bare feet lacerated by the cobble-
stones. At the shrine he made rich offerings, remaining there all
night prostrate, and being scourged by the bishops and monks,
who now had their revenge. No wonder we next hear of the
monarch as sick in bed in London. The conspirators at this
time ceased their hostility, and William the Lion of Scotland
was taken in a mist in the North at the very time of Henry's
penance. Henry was much impressed by this coincidence, and
so was William, who always remained convinced that his capture
was due to St. Thomas's influence. Five years later Louis of
France ventured himself in his rival's dominions to pray at St.
Thomas's shrine for his son Philip's health, and was at a loss at
which to marvel most, his son's recovery or his own immunity
from seizure. What a temptation to Henry! With Louis and
William he might have commenced a museum of kings. So for
ages the roads to Canterbury were crowded with pilgrims, who
returned with leaden vials containing water in which some
blood of the saint was said to be diluted. Of this Henry had
drunk at his pilgrimage.

When Stephen Langton was archbishop and Henry III. a
child occurred the translation of the remains of St. Thomas.
The festival was celebrated with such lavish expenditure that
the See of Canterbury was long after burdened by the costs in-
curred by fountains of running wine, free hay and straw for
all on the road from London, and the entertainment of hosts of
guests. The king, the papal legate, and some score or more of
bishops attended, besides nobles, abbots, and crowds of pilgrims.
After this jubilees were celebrated every fifty years, the last one
being in 1520. There were four places of pilgrimage in the
cathedral: the place of the martyrdom, the first resting-place of
the remains, the place where the head was kept, and the altars
west of the shrine. The Black Prince, whose well-known effigy
is in one of the west windows of Westminster Abbey, left by will
in 1376 some rich hangings, "a servirdevant 1'autier ou Monseig-
nour Saint Thomas gist et a 1'autier la ou la teste est et a 1'autier
la ou la poynte de 1'espec est," the sword spoken of being the one
broken at the murder. The shrine was constantly being enriched
by costly offerings and was one of the most gorgeous in Europe.
Finally, Henry VIII. brought Thomas, some time Archbishop of
Canterbury, to trial for rebellion against his lawful prince, and
he, having been found guilty, was sentenced to be burnt and his
ashes scattered abroad, which was forthwith done ; also his pos-

1889.] ST. THOMAS BECKET. 821

sessions were confiscated to the crown. Sixteen men could
hardly carry the huge mass of gold and jewels from the church,
and the handsomest stone, the gift of a king of France, Henry
took and stuck on his thumb in a ring. There is a bull of Paul
III. treating of these doings.

As to the family of St. Thomas, many of them, doubtless, re-
mained in their continental exile. We hear of Rohese, a sister
of the martyr, in great poverty, applying to Henry at the time
of his Canterbury pilgrimage for assistance, and receiving from
him the rent of a mill for maintenance. Another sister, Mary,
was Abbess of Barking. A third sister, Agnes, with her husband,
Thomas Fitz-Theobald de Heili, converted the old house in the
East Chepe (or market) into a hospital, calling it St. Thomas
Aeons, z>., Acre in Palestine. In the time of Henry VIII. this in-
stitution was, of course, surrendered to the crown; the Mercers'
Company then obtained it by purchase, and there now stands the
magnificent hall of the company. It has been said that the Irish
Butlers of Ormonde are descended from Agnes. A couple of
centuries after the martyrdom we find two of the saint's kin, the
Blessed John and Peter Becket, Augustinians, at Fabriano; the
church where their bodies lie there is called by their name, and
their festival is celebrated on the first day of the year. There
were great numbers of relics of the saint in England, but they
were made away with in the sixteenth century. Till lately St.
Thomas's vestments were used on his festival in the church at
Sens, the tallest ecclesiastic being selected to wear them and he
being forced to pin them up.

It has been the fashion in England to follow many ancient
authorities and aver that St. Thomas was a restless, turbulent,
ambitious man, of great ability, doubtless; but that he owes his
fame as a saint not to what he did but to what he suffered, and
that for such suffering he had only himself to blame. A recent
writer in that excellent magazine, The Boys Own Annual, shelter-
ing himself behind the D.D. which he appends to his name, pro-
pounds this view to his youthful and confiding readers in a
shallow little paper. True, we do not have bishops swarming
with vermin, wriggling painfully in hair-shirts, and inflicting self-
castigation in these days. But the words of Lord Lyttleton,
written over a century ago, would appear to be worthy of notice :
" This man " (St. Thomas), " was the most extraordinary of the
age he lived in, and from the singularity of his character (to
which there are few parallels in the history of mankind) deserv-
ing the notice of all ages." CHARLES E. HODSON.

822 THE DIVORCE QUESTION. [Mar.,

THE DIVORCE QUESTION.

THE divorce question : this is certainly one of the most seri-
ous and important of the problems presented to us now. And
it is one which cannot well wait for a solution ; it demands its
answer more and more urgently every day, and nowhere so
much as here in America. Marriage, as a permanent state of
life, seems to be almost ceasing to be even an idea among the
masses of our people, so numerous and so slight are the causes
for which it can legally be dissolved. It matters little whether
the form observed in entering on it be solemn or not ; it is not
so practically to those who know that the courts will readily
grant a release from it, unless they also are convinced that there
is a power and a law above that of the courts which those courts
cannot set aside. Such, of course, is the case with Catholics;
there are few among us so poorly instructed in their faith as
not to know that, according to its teachings, what God hath
joined man cannot put asunder; few, indeed, who will presume,
after having once entered on what they understand to be a valid
marriage, to make a similar contract with another party unless
they have a reasonable assurance that the former one is dead.
Yet even Catholics can be found who will venture on marriage
with persons who have been divorced, under the impression, as
it would seem, that marriages outside the church are not really
joined by God.

But this which we say of Catholics cannot be said of any
other large body of our people. More or less, no doubt, the
same idea may prevail in other Christian denominations; indi-
viduals may be as strongly convinced of it as we are. But the
absence of any authoritative religious teaching outside the
Catholic Church, and the principle of private judgment intro-
duced at the Reformation, have forced Protestants in general to
resort in this as well as in other practical matters to the only
tribunal left to them, that of the state.

For in matters of this kind an authority of some kind is
plainly necessary. That one person should dissent from another
as to some purely dogmatic question involves, as a rule, no im-
mediate inconvenience; they may agree to differ, and leave their
differences to another world for settlement, so that matters of
religious belief are usually considered in modern times as having

1889.] THE DIVORCE QUESTION. 823

no special effect on one's ordinary life. This is not actually the
case, for there is really no matter of faith which does not have
its effect in determining our actions; still, its influence is more
remote, and the world generally can tolerate divergence here.
But when it comes to a point like this private judgment can no
longer serve as a law-giver or an interpreter of God's law ; it
concerns others besides the two parties themselves whether their
marriage is to stand or be broken, and some judge must deter-
mine it whose decision will be respected.

So the state has come to be the arbiter ; but every one, how-
ever sincere a Protestant he may be, must see that great incon-
venience must come and has come from this jurisdiction of the
state over marriage. For whether a couple are lawfully and
validly married or divorced ought to be, at least as all Christians
look at the matter, a fact absolutely ascertainable and entirely
independent of the location in which they may happen to be. If
not, we are reduced to one of t'vvo alternatives, either of which is
sufficiently painful, namely, either that the most lax law anywhere
prevailing in the civilized world must be the standard for the
rest of it, or that polygamy becomes practically possible. If
one nation, for instance, makes marriages of first cousins invalid
while another does not, the stricter law avails nothing, unless it
refuses to recognize such marriages entered into in the other
country, and treats at least its own subjects thus married there
as being in a state of mere concubinage ; for, if it recognizes
them, its law can be evaded by the mere expense of a journey.
But if it does not recognize these marriages, it evidently must
allow the parties whom it regards as unmarried to marry others
on its own soil, unless it takes the' illogical course of punishing
as a crime an act committed outside of its own jurisdiction and
conformable to the laws of the place where it occurred. This
would be paternal government, in which the present age does
not believe ; so that the case reduces to that which has been
stated, either that the stricter law amounts to little or nothing
(at least for the wealthy), or that a man can have two legal
wives, or a woman two legal husbands.

The same may be applied to the case of divorce. One nation,
perhaps, grants divorces on very easy terms; even mutual con-
sent may practically be deemed sufficient. Other nations must
either recognize this as valid or refuse to do so. If they refuse,
a man thus divorced has still his former wife in their territory,
but may have another in the land where the easy law prevails.
If, on the other hand, they recognize this easy law, their own

824 THE DIVORCE QUESTION. [Mar.,

stricter ones cannot be enforced, unless, as before, we suppose
them to have a paternal government which follows their sub-
jects wherever they go, in which case they may indeed forbid a
second marriage or deny its validity on their own soil ; but of
course this makes their recognition of the foreign law incom-
plete.

Now, all this, which is still mainly theoretical as far as differ-
ent nations are concerned, has become an actual fact in these
United States. Foreign nations do not as yet easily grant
divorces unless the parties applying have really become per-
manent residents in their limits ; still, there is no real inter-
national legislation on the subject, and they may do as they
please ; the matter would not make a casus belli. But the differ-
ent commonwealths making up our Union do not stand so much
on ceremony. Our migratory habits make it necessary that all
rights of State citizenship should be easily acquired, and it is
extremely easy, in this matter of marriage and divorce, for one
even who is really an inhabitant of any one State, and who has
no intention of permanently settling elsewhere, to avail himself
of the laws of some other State which may be more convenient
for his purpose than those of his own. That this is continually
done is notorious ; and the consequences deduced above from
diversity of legislation on this matter are real facts among us.
The tendency on the whole is toward the alternative of accept-
ing the code of the easier State ; but we are still often driven
to the other. To quote Judge Bennett (The Forum, January,
1887): "Owing to this diversity of divorce laws, a husband
who has obtained a divorce in one State on trivial grounds, and
which in some States will be regarded as valid, in others not,
may marry again, and with his new wife and children travel
through the United States, and in some places his new relations
will be considered legal and proper, while in others he will be a
bigamist, his new wife a paramour, and their children illegiti-
mate."

There is no need to go into details on this matter. It is not
a matter of detail or of statistics ; neither can the condition of
things be remedied by any patchwork or half-way measures.
And it is manifestly one which is from its very nature pro-
gressive from bad to worse. So that it is not at all surprising
that the demand for an amendment to the Constitution
making divorce a matter of national legislation is becoming
general.

That this would be of great service there can be no doubt-

1889.] THE DIVORCE QUESTION. 825

It hardly seems that there can be two sides to the question ; the
most ardent adherent of State rights must surely be willing here
to waive theories concerning the good of the State, however well
grounded they may be, for the sake of preserving the State itself.
For States and nations have their basis in the family ; they have
never had any other, and certainly few of us believe that they
ever will have. But the family itself is directly attacked by the
prevailing and rapidly increasing facility and frequency of di-
vorce ; any legislation tending to strengthen it is, then, for the
State's good.

But supposing a constitutional amendment made, and a
divorce law passed acting -with uniformity through the country,
will it be satisfactory ? Of course the present legal uncertainty
of marital relations will be removed, except in the somewhat
unpractical cases in which foreign countries may be concerned ;
and if the law is like that of the stricter States, much will be
gained for the stability of the family. But will it really remove
all difficulty?

There is no reason why it should fail to do so for those who
believe in the power of the nation to make laws of this kind.
Those who do not, of course, cannot accept its decisions, except
for matters of property and inheritance. Catholics, of course,
are among this number, and indeed constitute its greater part;
our difficulties certainly will not be removed by any law that
the nation or any State may make, but any law which makes
legal divorce less easy will make things easier for us. We can-
not, then, in theory approve of national legislation any more than
of State legislation on this subject, but we can nevertheless be
glad of any change which makes the actual results of such legis-
lation less disastrous.

All other Christians will no doubt in this agree with us.
There is little danger of any law being made so strict as to
exceed what any believer in Christ's authority would consider
to be warranted bv his words, or by any other teachings of
Scripture. But would they have a right to be logically satisfied
with it any more than we?

Let us look at the case in what we may call its logical aspect.
Christians believe Christians, that is, in the sense just above
given that the words, " What God hath joined together let no
man put asunder," are final and decretive. The troublesome
questions for them must then be, ist, What hath God joined?
2d, When does God put it asunder? Or, in other words, what
constitutes a true and valid marriage, and in what cases God

826 THE DIVORCE QUESTION. [Mar.,

himself will annul it, are the points which touch and must touch
the Christian conscience. Yes, what constitutes a true and valid
marriage and what hath God joined are one and the same ques-
tion for Christians. We are assuming nothing unwarranted
here, though it is not directly taught in the words of Christ
which we have quoted. That every true marriage has the divine
' sanction no Christian doubts.

It is a matter, then, of the law of God. What makes a true
marriage is a thing for him to determine. What are the degrees
of relationship within which, for instance, he forbids it and
makes it invalid? Can a woman's second marriage be valid,
even though her former husband should have been away for a
long time and supposed to be dead, if he really is still alive?
Many questions like these can be asked. Who i^to answer
them ?

Shall we say that the law of the land can do so ? This may
seem reasonable enough. The law of the land certainly has a
right to speak in the name of God, and it does so speak ; and it
is only because it does that it commands our obedience. All
authority, parental, social, ecclesiastical, national, is from God,
as St. Paul tells us. If we lose sight of this, as too many unfor-
tunately do, we only obey for fear of the consequences of dis-
obedience, or because we ourselves wish to secure the end for
which the law was made, or for the sake of order and good ex-
ample. The law of the land, it may seem, can then so speak
in this matter as it can in others, that of property, for in-
stance.

But when we come to examine more thoroughly we find a
difficulty in this particular matter of marriage which does not
exist elsewhere. The law of one nation confers possession of
some article by inheritance or in some other way on a particular
person. Of course this is subject to the interpretation of the
courts ; but when the case has been carried to its last appeal we
submit to the final judgment as having really divine authority,
not because we suppose it to be necessarily in accordance with
the eternal principles of justice, but because we believe that God
has given to nations power to dispose in this way of the property
of the individual citizen for the sake of order and peace. There
is no danger that the same property will be decided to belong
entirely to two different persons within the territory of the law's
jurisdiction ; and even in the case of conflicting national laws,
as in matters, for example, of patent or copyright, there is no
essential incongruity in a thing belonging to one man in one

1889.] THE DIVORCE QUESTION. 827

place and to another in another. But in the Christian point of
view there is such an incongruity in a man's being the husband
of one wife in one place and of another in another.

What has been said as to the determination of the requisites
for true marriage of course applies equally well to the interpre-
tation of God's law on the subject of divorce. The law of a
nation can deprive a man of property, and we submit to its deci-
sion as authoritative ; we can respect it as having a divine sanc-
tion, even should it not be recognized elsewhere ; and we can
respect elsewhere the contrary decision as well. But we cannot,
if we are Christians, believe that a man can in one country be
divorced in the sight of God from one wife and have another,
and in another country return to the one whom he left.

The only logical solution of the difficulty is, therefore, the one
of which Catholics are in possession. The only way to have
thoroughly satisfactory marriage and divorce laws is to have a
law-making power for them the jurisdiction of which is world-
wide. And the only way to get at the divine law on this im-
mensely important subject is to have a court which can interpret
it, not necessarily with infallibility, but without appeal, so that
all who believe in the legitimate authority of this court (or
divine authority, which is the same thing in the Christian view)
shall be able to act with a clear conscience in accepting its
decisions.

We have just implied a distinction between a law-making
power and a power to interpret the law of God, and that these
should be, and are with us, vested in the one central and world-
wide authority. A few words of elucidation will, perhaps, not
be amiss.

In the matter of marriage, as in others, the Catholic Church
claims to act in this double capacity; first as a law-maker, and here
her power only affects those who are within her jurisdiction
that is, those who by baptism have been admitted into her pale ;
and secondly as an interpreter of the divine law, which exists
entirely outside and independent of her own law-making power,
and, of course, affects others as well as Catholics, the Turk or the
Buddhist as well as the Christian. It is in virtue of this power,
for instance, that the church pronounces polygamy to be against
the law of the New Testament for any one, whether Christian or
not.

Now, for her own subjects the church has a full code of law
on the matter of marriage. Of course, like any other code of

828 THE DIVORCE QUESTION. [Mar.,

law which amounts to anything, it is not thoroughly understood
by any except those who study it professionally ; it establishes a
considerable number of impediments invalidating marriage, not
only on account of consanguinity, but for many other reasons.
Every impediment which it establishes can, of course, be re-
moved, either in general or in the individual case, by the supreme
authority in the church, and this power is often delegated more
or less extensively to bishops and other subordinates. These im-
pediments give no difficulty to any conscientious Catholic con-
templating marriage, but of course make it necessary for him to
consult a clergyman some time beforehand, as any man of com-
mon sense would consult a lawyer before taking any important
step of which he did not fully know the legal bearings.

Again, acting in her other capacity as interpreter of the di-
vine law, the church also informs the faithful about that law as
it affects either their own capacities for marriage or those of
other people outside her limits; she tells them, for instance, that
divorces have no more power to break up a true marriage out-
side her fold than inside, and warns them against marrying per-
sons thus divorced a true marriage ; for, of course, a marriage
which is not true or valid may be apparently broken up with the
consent of the church, though her tendency is always rather to
remove the invalidating cause and make the apparent marriage a
real one.

'For Catholics desiring to act in accordance with the law and
teaching of the church, and informing themselves about it in
time, it is evident that the whole difficulty about marriage which
arises from the diversity of legislation disappears. We need not
run against the varying statutes, or avail ourselves of them, it
we do not choose. Of course, we do not expect the world in
general to accept our views on this matter ; but it furnishes a re-
markably good illustration of the weakness and inconvenience
(to say the least) of the Protestant doctrine of private judgment,
applied, as it must needs be, for want of an authoritative tribunal,
to matters of morals as well as of faith. Here is a case which will
not wait till the next world for decision ; Christians, at least, be-
lieve there is an essential right and wrong in this matter, which
mere human law cannot make or unmake, and to which
human law ought to conform. But how shall we find out
what it is ? Scripture is vainly called to aid ; doctors disagree
as to its meaning, and their conclusions only become more wide-
ly divergent by discussion, till at last faith in Scripture itself be-

1889.] THE DIVORCE QUESTION. 829

gins to waver ; and meanwhile the evil we are trying to remedy
daily grows worse and worse.*

And if any one looks at the matter without prejudice, he also
will easily see, in this as in other subjects, the absurdity of the
idea that the possession of an authoritative tribunal fetters and
paralyzes the human mind; with precisely as much reason one
might say that the Supreme Court of the United States, or of
any other country, and the legislature which makes its laws,
paralyze the legal mind and destroy all possibility of legal dis-
cussion and investigation. It is by such discussion and investi-
gation that conclusions are attained in the Catholic Church as
well as in the state; but were there no possibility of arriving at
any definite conclusion, the motive for investigation would be
gone, and it is only by tribunals and legislatures that conclu-
sions can be definitely reached. So far, then, from there being in
the church any more than in the state a damper on intellectual
activity, they are a most efficient and necessary stimulus to it.

. However, we are not writing polemics just at present and
will let this train of thought drop here. To revert to the prac-
tical subject under consideration, it is plain enough that uniform
national legislation on this matter of marriage and divorce would
simplify matters for us, and be welcomed by us as a great boon,

* A recent work, Marriage and Divorce, by Ap Richard, M.A. (Chicago and New York :
Rand, McNally & Co.), furnishes an apt illustration of this. The author addresses an English
audience, and treats the subject of divorce at some length from a religious point of view. His
conclusions are worthy of attention.

" (i) To sum up, then, we say, first, . . . that our present laws and popular sentiments
on some points relating to marriage are not truly in accordance with that authority on which
they are professedly based, namely, the teaching of Scripture.

" (2) With regard to the question of polygamy, although we do not advocate any general
adoption of this practice especially among Englishmen yet we assert as a matter of fact
that it is not condemned in principle or prohibited, even in the Gospel writings ; and therefore
that in some particular cases, such as desertion, insanity, penal servitude, and perhaps some
others, the injured party might properly be allowed to remarry, either with or without a for-
mal divorce preceding. And furthermore, that this practice not being condemned in the
Bible, we ought not to condemn it on religious grounds, in other nations or races of men who
choose to allow it.

"(3) With regard to divorce, we say that there is no positive law in the Bible which
makes the bond of marriage indissoluble nothing more than strong personal exhortations to
that effect. That this permanent union of man and wife cannot be justly insisted on as a
Christian duty, except in a church where the principles of church discipline are faithfully and
effectually maintained a condition which is grossly and manifestly wanting in the Church of
England at the present time.

" (4) That the church and the state have distinct duties and functions to perform in rela-
tion to these questions in which religious principles are involved : the church to teach and main-
tain its own doctrines and discipline among its own members ; the state not having any com-
mission to teach or enforce religious dogmas, but only to maintain such fundamental principles
of religion and morality as are generally accepted by the people, as being essential for the
general welfare, and such as do not trespass on the due liberty of conscience of any indi-
viduals."

830 ON ST. PETER'S DENIAL. [Mar.,

though it would not be so complete and satisfying as to our Pro-
testant fellow-citizens. It would also obviously go far to insure
the stability of the marriage bond and the sanctity of the family
in the nation at large, and that is as much an object of interest to
us as to any others who enjoy the advantages of our national
laws and institutions. And we should regard it as being, in a
certain sense, a step in the right direction, as making a legislation
which should be uniform everywhere, uniform over a very con-
siderable part of the world, and that part, moreover, in which
we are more immediately and strongly interested.

GEORGE M. SEARLE.

ON ST. PETER'S DENIAL TO THE SERVANT-MAIDS,
AND HIS SINKING IN THE WATER.

St. Matthew xxvi. 69-71 ; Ibid. xiv. 30.

HE sank like all who leave his ship :
To women's tongues he dared disown
His Master. Both the shafts are thrown,

Yet faith receives no shock.
All women can from ready lip
Though love's own bow let swiftly slip,
With aim unerring, taunts that wound ;
But never was the woman found
Who had the art to cast a Stone,
Nor yet was water ever known

To float a solid Rock.

ALFRED YOUNG.

1889.] PUCK'S TRICKS ON COL. INGERSOLL. 831

PUCK'S TRICKS ON COL. INGERSOLL.

41 Up and down, up and down,
I will lead them up and down."

Puck, in Midsummer Nighfs Dream, iii. 2.

COL. INGERSOLL'S religious or irreligious tilts are among the
most prominent features in recent American periodical litera-
ture. As on many former occasions, his admirers have been de-
lighted by his dazzling arts ; his opponents, no doubt, have been
astonished by his novel controversial gladiatorship, and the on-
lookers fascinated by his reckless daring. All, however, must
have approved the spirit which, according to his own declara-
tions, animated the distinguished disputant. He would not
" seek in any way to gain a victory over truth." " He loads the
dice against himself who scores a point against the right." " In
this spirit, having in view only the ascertainment of the truth,"
he meets his adversaries. Surely no writer could have a nobler
aim, and surely no well-meaning man can hesitate to aid him in
realizing it. This, indeed, is the sole purpose of the following
pages. Col. Ingersoll, we are convinced, will welcome heartily
our attempt to assist him in our humble way to achieve his great
end.

We may as well state at once that this paper will not deal
with Col. Ingersoll's religious controversies. We are concerned
with the truth of his historical statements. Historical truth,
surely, is as sacred to Col. Ingersoll as religion. Yet up and
down his articles, published in the October and November num-
bers of the North American Review, some spirit of mischief let
us, with Shakspere, call him Puck has scattered historical
errors. It would be absurd to assume that Col. Ingersoll, who
is so positive about man's future, should be in the dark regard-
ing his past. The self-appointed champion of truth, we must
suppose, is incapable of gross negligence in verifying his state-
ments. Evidently these mistakes are the work of another's
hand. Puck seems to have come when the colonel was asleep
and to have sown cockle in his historical wheatfield, and, as
usual, the cockle has thriven better than the wheat.

To point out and refute all the historical errors in the arti-
cles referred to is not possible; besides, it would be tedious.
Some statements are so general that it would require volumes to

832 FUCK'S TRICKS ON COL. INGERSOLL. [Mar.,

refute them ; some so vague that it would take an essay to define
their precise meanings ; some are such skilful tissues of truth
and error that it would need a treatise to unravel the truth from
the error. All these we leave aside. There is a fourth class of
statements, however, erroneous like the rest, but definite, so that
a few words will suffice to point out their falsity. Some of
these we shall lay before our readers, for space will not allow
our treating even all of these.

I. We read on page 402 : "Thousands of 'saints' have been
the most malicious of the human race." Here we learn to know
Col. Ingersoll in a new role, that of a profound hagiologist. It
is edifying to imagine the colonel spending his leisure hours in
the perusal of " thousands " of lives of saints. Unfortunately,
Butler's Lives of the Saints, in twelve volumes, one of the largest
works of the kind in a modern language, does not contain
" thousands '' of lives of saints, " malicious '' and good-na-
tured. It includes about one thousand seven hundred named
saints. Of many of these little is known except the names. Who
would charge Col. Ingersoll with being the author of the asser-
tion quoted above ? He is a shrewd lawyer, not a poet. He
was writing an argument, not a Fourth-of-July oration. He
knows that extravagant hyperbole defeats itself before a jury as
intelligent as the readers of the North American Review.

II. " The Catholic Church all the years of its power preferred
magic to medicine, relics to remedies, priests to physicians "
(p. 404). Col. Ingersoll has no doubt consulted the EncyclopcE-
dia Britannica, article "Medicine." There he has found that the
Benedictines practised medicine, not magic, when there were no
other physicians; he has found that they improved the science
and introduced new remedies, e.g., cassia. In Denifle's History
of Meditzval Universities, one of the most scientific works on
the subject, he has read that the popes established or approved
of numerous universities, with medical faculties, in many of
which theology was not taught ; he will call to mind, for instance,
Montpellier, Pisa, Toulouse, Heidelberg, Vienna, Prague, Paris,
Bologna, and many others. In Virchow (Hospitaeler und Laza-
rette, pp. 15, 16) he has learned that Innocent III. covered a great
part of Europe with "real hospitals for the diseased and weak."
Had the church preferred magic to medicine and relics to rem-
edies, it would never have established these medical universities
and hospitals. Col. Ingersoll did not need to have this pointed
out to him ; he is too clear-headed.

III. " It [i.e., the church during the years of its power] hated

1889.] PUCK'S TRICKS ON COL. INGERSOLL. 833

geologists " (p. 404). The ancients called Aristotle the father of
zoology and Theophrastus the father of botany. We moderns
know that sciences grow, and are seldom born full-armed, like
Minerva from the head of Jupiter. Yet that the few geological
facts known before Werner (1780) and Mutton, and the wild
speculations upon them, were not scientific geology we must
assume the learned colonel to know full well. Anybody else
can find them in any cyclopaedia; e.g. t Chambers's, article " Geol-
ogy." Werner was the first to establish regular stratification.
Paleontology, without which geology is scarcely in a tadpole
state, is at most as old as the century. " It was reserved to our
century," says Pictat (Fattontologie, pp. 10, 11), " to give a philoso-
phic basis to paleontology, and consequently to elevate it to the
rank of a distinct science." The learned colonel will at once
think of the great Cuvier as the man to whom this was mainly
due. But surely to assert that the church in the middle ages,
when the science of geology was not yet born, hated geologists
is a joke that the scientific colonel could not perpetrate. That
must be Puck's joke.

IV. "It {i.e., the church during all the years of its power]
persecuted the chemist" (p. 404). " Chemistry," says one of the
most illustrious French chemists, Prof. Adolphe Wurtz, "is a
French science. It was founded by Lavoisier of immortal mem-
ory. For ages it had been nothing but a collection of obscure re-
ceipts, often fallacious, used by alchemists and afterwards by
iatrochemists. . . . Lavoisier was at once the author of a new
theory and the creator of the true method in chemistry (History
of Chemical Theory, p. i). The science of chemistry, therefore,
dates back to the end of the eighteenth century, and the period
since the French Revolution is surely not included in what Col.
Ingersoll calls the years of the church's power. So the church,
it seems, performed the miracle of persecuting non-existent chem-
ists.

V. " It [the church] opposed every discovery calculated to
improve the condition of mankind " (p. 404). Our learned colonel,
it is presumed, is well acquainted with the history of the discov-
ery of America. As a historian, an American, and a philosopher
he will not deny that it " was calculated " to benefit mankind. Of
course he knows that to Fray Juan Perez, prior of La Rabida,
and to Cardinal Mendoza Columbus owed his success at the
court of Isabella, and that without the aid of those churchmen
Columbus might never have discovered the New World. The
mariner's compass was discovered during the middle ages, a dis~

VOL. XLVIII. 53

834 PUCK'S TRICKS ON COL. INGERSOLL. [Mar.,

covery that has wonderfully improved the condition of mankind.
Col. Ingersoll knows full well that the church never opposed its
introduction. Why should she ? The printing-press was an in-
vention of the fifteenth century; that it has benefited mankind
the colonel will surely not dispute. Yet prelates and priests of
every degree were the first to patronize the early printers and
to spread the invention, as Col. Ingersoll has read in Janssen's
Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, vol. i. p. 13, or elsewhere. Here
are three discoveries which the church did not oppose and
which the erudite colonel will admit have been controlling
factors in modernizing the world. We might mention others,
but these suffice. Col. Ingersoll cannot have been ignorant
of them ; besides, both he and most men outside of Bedlam
know very well that no institution which opposed every discov-
ery calculated to improve the condition of mankind could have
so greatly influenced the destinies of so large a part of mankind
for the past fifteen centuries.

VI. " When Christianity was established the world was ig-
norant, credulous, and cruel. The Gospel, with its idea of for-
giveness, with its heaven and hell, was suited to the barbarians
among whom it was preached" (p. 409). The Gospel, as all ex-
cept the most ignorant are well aware, was first preached tind
spread among the Jews, the Greeks, the Hellenized Orientals, and
the Romans. Could Col. Ingersoll call the Greeks and Romans,
who worshipped the Zeus or Jupiter whom he prefers to the
Christian Jehovah, barbarians?

VII. We now come to a point of especial interest. On
p. 411 Col. Ingersoll quotes a lengthy passage from Draper's
History of tJie Intellectual Development of Europe. The passage is
enclosed in quotation marks and ascribed in due form to Dr. Dra-
per. We shall lay before our readers in parallel columns the
first lines of the original and of the citation :

DR. DRAPER (p. 280). COL. INGERSOLL'S QUOTATION.

"The Duke of Nepi compelled "Constantine was one of the vi-

some bishops to consecrate Con- cars of Christ; afterwards Stephen

stantine, one of his brothers, as IV. was chosen. The eyes of

pope, but more legitimate elec- Constantine were then put out by

tors subsequently, A.D. 768, choos- Stephen, acting in Christ's place,

ing Stephen IV., the usurper and The tongue of the Bishop Theo-

his adherents were severely pun- dorus was amputated by the man

ished ; the eyes of Constantine who had been substituted for God.

were put out; the tongue of the This bishop was left in a dungeon

Bishop Theodorus was amputated, to perish of thirst."
and he was left in a dungeon to
expire in the agonies of thirst."

1889.] PUCK'S TRICKS ON COL. INGERSOLL. 835

The picture speaks for itself. Critics would say this is not
quoting but garbling an author, an offence of which Col. Inger-
soll ought surely to be incapable. He would "not seek in any
way to gain a victory over truth." " He has in view only the
ascertainment of the truth." And then does he not tell us in
epigrammatic language that " He loads the dice against him-
self who scores a point against the right"?

VIII. From a comparison of Draper's Draper with Inger-
soll's Draper it appears, first, that Constantine was not a " vicar
of Christ," but a usurper ; second, not that Stephen put out
Constantine's eyes, but that they were put out. They were
put out by a captain named Gratiosus, the head of the Roman
party, as we read in Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom, vol.
ii. pp. 318, 319. It is unnecessary to remind the learned Col.
tngersoll that Gregorovius is a historian of undoubted author-
ity, a Protestant, and by no means an admirer of the Papacy.
On the civil history of the popes during the middle ages there
is, perhaps, no greater authority, for whilst completely at home
among modern writers who have dealt with his subject, he has,
wherever he could, had recourse to the original sources. Of
Theodorus Gregorovius tells us that he was imprisoned with Con-
stantine by the same Gratiosus.

IX. " His [Leo lll.'s] successor, Stephen V., was driven igno-
miniously from Rome/' This does not agree with the accounts
of historians. According to Gregorovius, vol. iii. pp. 35-37,
Stephen, on his election, made the Romans swear fealty to Louis
the Pious, and shortly thereafter set out in person to France to
obtain Louis' ratification of his election. He crowned that mon-
arch emperor, returned to Rome, and died within three mouths
after his return.

X. "There was an ecclesiastical conspiracy to murder the
pope [John VIII.], and some of the treasures of the church were
seized, and the gate of St. Pancrazia (sic) was opened with false
keys to admit the Saracens. Formosus, who had been engaged
in these transactions, who had been excommunicated as a con-
spirator for the murder of Pope John, was himself elected pope
in 891 " .(p. 411)- According to Gregorovius (iii. p. 186, 187) the
Roman nobles, laymen all, who favored a German instead of a
French emperor, were hostile to John VIII., and were charged
with conspiring against him and Charles the Bald. The return
of John to Rome forced these men to flee ; they robbed the
Lateran and other churches, opened the gate of St. Pancratius
by night, and took refuge with the margraves of Spoleto aud

836 PUCK' s TRICKS ON COL. INGERSOLL. [Mar.,

Camerino. The pope charged them with the design of deliver-
ing Rome to the Mahometans who were plundering the Cam-
pagna. " That they had a treasonable understanding with the
Saracens is unlikely," says Gregorovius, "and Formosus cer-
tainly must be acquitted thereof." Formosus, whom Gregoro-
vius calls a holy man, eminent for talent and learning, had
favored the sons of the Emperor Louis II. against Charles the
Bald, and thus drawn on himself the displeasure of the pope,
as both Gregorovius and Von Reumont say. He fled from his
See of Portus, and John VIII. summoned him before the same
synod before which the Roman nobles were to appear. For-
mosus, failing to appear, was excommunicated for conspiring
against the pope. But in the pope's murder Formosus had no
hand, for John VIII., if murdered at all, was murdered by his
own relatives (Gregorovius, iii. p. 214).

XI. "Boniface VI. was his successor" (p. 411). Boniface
was a usurper. For "the Romans had placed Boniface VI. by
force on the chair of Peter," says Gregorovius (iii. 235). " His
name was not struck off the list of popes, though the council of
John IX. in 898 declared that he was no pope" (Gregorovius,
1. c., foot-note). Neither Von Reumont, Geschichte der Stadt
Rom (i. p. 218), nor Hergenroether, KirchengeschicJite, count
him among the popes.

XII. Sergius III. "lived in criminal intercourse with the
celebrated Theodora, who, with her daughters Marozia and
Theodora, both prostitutes, exercised an extraordinary control
over him " (p. 412). This and several of the following state-
ments are based on the historical work called Retribution
(Antapodosis], by Luitprand of Cremona. The purpose of this
work was, according to the Protestant Wattenbach, whom Col.
Ingersoll knows to be one of the foremost authorities on the
middle ages, " to pay back all who had been kind or hostile to
him according to their deserts" (DeutscJilands Geschichtsquellen,
p. 264). Besides, " in his eyes all women seemed to be strum-
pets " (Gregorovius, 1. c. iii. 298). The statements of this
Luitprand were accepted without sufficient critical examination
by the Catholic Church historians Baronius, Mansi, a,nd Mit-
tarelli, whilst Protestants like Leo, Schlosser, and Wattenbach,
as well as the great Catholic scholar Muratori, have recognized
that his testimony is not to be relied on. " Duret," says Gre-
gorovius (1. c. p. 261), " has shown up his errors, and he is fol-
lowed by F. Liverani." Now let us hear Gregorovius on Ser-
gius III. : " The church historians, especially Baronius, have

1889.] PUCK'S TRICKS ON COL. INGERSOLL. 837

cursed his memory as that of a monster ; his share in the suit
against Formosus, his violent elevation to the Papacy, the in-
timacy wilh Marozia, daughter of Theodora, with which the his-
torian Luitprand charges him, are the bases of this judgment.
It might be more favorable, perhaps, if we had a clear knowl-
edge of that period, and Sergius, who amidst its storms remained
pope for seven years, may be regarded as a man of force " (1. c.
p. 257). On page 269 Gregorovius expresses his opinion that
Sergius III. was a relative of Theophylactus, the husband of
Theodora, and really the civil ruler of Rome; this relationship,
he is inclined to think, gave rise to Luitprand's story of criminal
intimacy between Sergius and Marozia. We have seen who the
elder Theodora was. Marozia, her daughter, was the wife of
Alberic I., the conqueror of the Saracens on the Garigliano, and
successor of Theophylactus as master of Rome; of the younger
Theodora little that is certain seems to be known. Gregorovius
sums up his judgment on these women as follows: "In the
diminished circle of the Roman world we must not look for a
new Messalina or Agrippina in Theodora and Marozia, but
must regard them as ambitious women of great intelligence and
courage, passionately fond of pleasure and power, and full of
craft" (1. c. p. 271). On page 297 he pronounces the story that
Sergius III. was the father of John XI. by Marozia unproven.
Hence we conclude, ist, that Sergius did not live in criminal
intercourse with Theodora, as Draper says; 2d, that Marozia
and Theodora were not prostitutes in the ordinary, meaning of
the word; 3d, that Gregorovius knows nothing of these women
exercising any extraordinary control over Sergius III., whom he
describes as a man of great energy but of little spirituality.

XIII. " The love of Theodora was also shared by John X.
She gave him the archbishopric of Ravenna" (p. 412). Let us
hear Gregorovius (iii. p. 261): "The past of John X. is partly
involved in dark rumors, the origin of which is doubtful. They
are found among the stories of the Lombard Luitprand, who
was not born until John's pontificate, and whose frivolous char-
acter lessens the credibility of many of his statements. He re-
lates that Archbishop Peter of Ravenna often sent his presbyter
John to Rome on church business, and that this one here be-
came the paramour of a noble Roman lady, Theodora. After
being advanced to the See of Bologna he became archbishop of
Ravenna on Peter's death ; but the passionate Theodora called
him from distant Ravenna to Rome and made him pope." Now,
Duret, in Kopp's Geschichtsblaetter aus der Sckweiz (vol. i. p. 13),

838 Fucjfs THICKS ON COL. INGERSOLL. [Mar.,

has shown that there was no Archbishop Peter of Ravenna at
that time, that John succeeded Kailo in the See of Ravenna in
905, and became pope in 914; whilst in Luitprand Theodora
puts him in St. Peter's chair shortly after his appointment to
Ravenna, her passion not permitting her to leave her lover at
so great a distance as Ravenna. J^uitprand is also astray on
the pope whom John succeeded. No wonder, then, that Gre-
gorovius decides that it is not quite certain that John was Theo-
dora's lover (1. c. p. 263). "John," says Gregorovius (I. c. p.
272), " was no servile favorite of women, but proved himself an
independent, nay great, man, so that he surpassed in warlike
fame his predecessor. John VIII. took the affairs of Italy into
his hands like John IX., and became without question the first
Italian statesman of his time."

XIV. " Marozia inclined to attribute him [John XI.] to her
husband Alberic, whose brother Guido she afterward married"
(p. 412). Guido, Margrave of Tuscia, was not the brother of Al-
beric, Marozia's first husband, but the step-brother of Hugh of
Provence, afterwards King of Italy (Gregorovius, lii. 291-300).

XV. "John XIII. was strangled in prison" (p. 413). Com-
pare Gregorovius with this: "John XIII. crowned Theophamor
as empress April 14 (972), and at the same time married her [to
Otto II.] before an assemblage of German, Italian, and Roman
nobles, whereupon splendid festivals were celebrated. . . . After
these festivals the imperial family left Rome to return to
Germany, and soon after John XIII. died, on September 6, 972."

XVI. "Boniface VII. imprisoned Benedict VII., and starved
him to death." In Gregorovius (iii. p. 393-5) we learn, ist,
that Boniface VII. was not a pope, but an anti-pope; 2d,
that not he but the Romans, at the instigation of Crescentius de
Theodora, threw Benedict VII. into prison; 3d, that Benedict
was not starved but strangled to death.

XVII. "Pope John XVI. was seized, etc." (p. 413). Pope
John XVI. was not pope at all, but the anti-pope of Gregory V.
(Gregorovius, 1. c. iii. 435 ff.)

XVIII. " Benedict IX. put up the Papacy at auction, and it
was bought by a presbyter named John, who became Gregory
VI. in the year of grace 1015" (P-4t3)- Of this transaction
Gregorovius (1. c. iv. 48 ff.) gives the following account: "Bene-
dict IX. saw that he must abdicate. Bartholomew, Abbot of
Grotta Ferrata, persunded him to do so, but he shamefully sold
the Papac}* like merchandise for money. For a considerable
annuity, consisting chiefly of the English Peter's pence, he re-

1889] PUCK s TRICKS ON COL. INGERSOLL. 839

signed the Papacy by a formal contract to John Gratian, May
I, 1045. John Gratian, or Gregory VI., with daring
courage, perhaps understood by the fewest of his contempor-
aries, disregarded the canon. He bought the Papacy to take it
from the hands of a criminal, and this remarkable man, who in
these terrible times was looked upon as an idiot, was perhaps a
man of an earnest, magnanimous spirit. ... He had the will
to save the church, that required, and shortly after received,
thorough reform." This account is substantially the same as Von
Reumont's and Hergenroether's. It will be seen that there is
no question of putting up the Papacy at auction, though it is
true that Benedict IX. was led to resign only by the written
promise to pay him an annuity after his retirement.

In two and a half pages of matter quoted from Dr. Draper
we have drawn attention to eleven serious errors, and we might
point out several more. At this we are not surprised. But we
are surprised that Col. Ingersoll, who in his law practice would
certainly not call a toxicologist as an expert on machinery, nor
an alienist as an expert in chemistry, should call a 'distinguished,
superannuated chemist and physicist as an expert on history.
It would not be creditable to his shrewdness, and we are inclined
to see here again the fine hand of Puck.

XIX. In the November number of the North American Re-
vtfcv, on page 508, we read as follows: "Giordano Bruno had
ventured to assert the rotary motion of the earth ; he had
hazarded the conjecture that there were in the fields of infinite
space worlds larger and more glorious than ours. For these
low and grovelling thoughts, for this contradiction of the word
and the vicar of God, this man was imprisoned for many years.
But his noble spirit was not broken, and finally, in the year 1600,
by the orders of the infamous vicar, he was chained to the
stake.'' In the eighth volume of Symonds' History of the
Italian Renaissance (p. 168 if.) is the substance of the charges
on which Bruno was tried before the Venetian Inquisition.
Among them we find such as the following : " The doctrines of
the Trinity, the miraculous birth of Christ, and Transubstantiation
were insults to the Divine Being. Christ had seduced the peo-
ple by working apparent miracles. So, also, had the apostles."
" He did not believe in the punishment of sins, but held a doc-
trine of the transmigration of souls and of the generation of the
human soul out of refuse. The world he thought to be eternal.
He maintained that there were infinite worlds all made by God,
who wills to do what he can do, and therefore produces infinity."

PUCK' s TKICKS ON COL. INGERSOLL. [Mar.,

" Indulgence in carnal pleasures ought not to be reckoned
sinful." "Certain gross details," says Symonds, commenting on
these charges " (the charges, for example, of having called Christ
a tristo who was deservedly hung, and of having sneered at the
virginity of Mary), may possibly have emanated from the
delator's own imagination. Bruno emphatically repudiated
these, though some passages in his philosophical poems, pub-
lished at Frankfort, contain the substance of these blasphemies "
(p. 170). The accusations, as recited by Symonds, contain no
charge that Bruno taught the rotary motion of the earth. Nor
is he accused of teaching the existence of " worlds larger and
more glorious than ours'' ; he is said to have taught the infinity
of worlds, a very different thing, as the learned colonel no doubt
is fully aware. "At the very end of his examination he placed
himself in the hands of his judges, 'confessing his errors with a
willing mind.' acknowledging that he had ' erred and strayed
from the church,' begging for such castigation as shall not
' bring public dishonor on the sacred robe which he had worn/
and promising to show a noteworthy reform and to recompense
the scandal he had caused by edification at least equal in magni-
tude." Such was the attitude in 1^91 of the man " whose noble
spirit was not broken," as the historical colonel says. In 1592
Bruno was extradited by Venice to Rome, and for seven years
we hear no more of him. Then he was tried before the Inquisi-
tion at Rome. All the documents relating to this trial, including
the sentence, are preserved in the archives of the Inquisition,
but they have never been published. Signor Berti attempted to
get at them, but failed; the Jesuit Father Previti made a like
attempt and failed, as may be seen in the very interesting article
on the "Ultimate Fate of Giordano Bruno,'' in the October
number (1888) of the Scottish Revieiv. But as the colonel states
the reasons of Bruno's condemnation so positively, we must
assume that the Inquisition granted him favors it had refused
to the Jesuit, or that Puck has again tricked his unfortunate
victim. Twice, certainly, has the colonel slipped in his rhetori-
cal and pathetic word picture of the doom of Giordano. Is he
right in his third statement, that Bruno was burnt at the stake?
Symonds says he was burnt ; so does R. C. Christie in MacMil-
lans Revieiv, 1885; but the writer of the article in the Scottish
Review, mentioned above, who had more and safer information
than either Symonds or Christie, gives a Scotch verdict. As an
expert on evidence, the colonel will find the article very inter-
esting reading.

1889.] PUCK'S TRICKS ON COL. INGERSOLL. 841

XX. ''Before the establishment of Christianity the Roman
matron commanded the admiration of the known world. She
was /m- and noble" (p. 513). Now let us consult the greatest
authority on Roman law and history, Professor Mommsen:
"Always and of necessity women belonged to the house, not
the state, and in the house they were subject, the daughter to
the father, the wife to the husband, the fatherless girl to her near-
est male relatives.", "The father not only enforces the strictest
discipline among his family, but he has the right and the duty to
judge them and to punish them in life and limb according to
his discretion." " As long as the father lives his subjects (wife
and children) could possess no property of their own, and, there-
fore, could sell it only by order of the father, and not dispose of
it by will at all. In this respect wife and children stand on the
same line as slaves " {History of Rome, German edition, pp.
58-59). "The husband has the power of correction and punish-
ment, not only in marriage with manus, but in each kind of
marriage" (Becker's Callus, p. 156). "The Roman wife has
no company of her own; her husband's friends are hers also;
but she does not share the enjoyments of the men, and especially
to drink wine is unbecoming to her." " When she goes out in
the proper garb of the wife, the stola matronalis, which, how-
ever, she does not do without the husband's permission, nor
without being accompanied, she is sure of respectful treatment"
(Marquardt, Privatlcben der Roemer, p. 57-59). Such was the
liberty of the Roman matron.

But we must stop. Our space, but not our material, is ex-
hausted. In conclusion, we desire to express our sincere sym-
pathy with the victimized colonel. It is a sad fate for a keen
lawyer to be made to pose as an extravagant ranter, for a lover
of truth to appear as the disseminator of falsehood; for a champion
of right to seem to have taken unrighteous liberties with the
testimony of a friend ; for a jurist to slip up on one of the most
notorious points of the Roman law. We sympathize with the
colonel and denounce. Puck, that rascal and trickster. We ad-
vise all controversial gladiators to beware of him. For our-
selves, we promise the victimized colonel, should we ever meet
the wicked imp, to remind him at once of the colonel's epigram,
" He loads the dice against himself who scores a point against

the right.''

CHARLES G. HERBERMANN, LL D.

842 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Mar.,

TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS.

IF it contained less landscape-painting, fewer moonlights and
starlights, not more than half so many pages, in short, of poetic
but somewhat mannered description of external nature, The
Despot of Broomsedge Cove (Boston and New York: Houghton,
Mifflin & Co.) would be a very good novel. As it is, the most
conscientious reader's effort to follow the fortunes of two very
agreeable people, Teck Jepson and Marcella Strobe, is likely to
resolve itself into a series of less and less regretful skips through
night-scenes, rain-storms, "skies splendidly aflare," and mountain-
sides covered with "a monotony of summer greenth," in order
to get at the real and vivid human interests upon which these
pretty things are huddled in cloying profusion. One gets to
feeling that pad is pad, be it never so decorative, and to reflect-
ing upon the patness with which the Websterian definition of
one variety of it, "Some soft, flat material for writing upon,"
applies to nearly every other. The delicate and charming sense
of humor which Miss Murfree shows so often when she is dealing
unaffectedly with her "even Christian," makes one wonder the
more that a mere sentiment of incongruity should not now and
then have power to stay her facile hand from such gorgeous but
irrelevant scene-painting. The mind grows fatigued with the
constant jerks to which her manipulation of the picturesque sub-
jects it, and ends by refusing to leave its prosaic but humanly
interesting fellow-creature for the sake of "glistering" stars,
"acrobatic grasshoppers," "trumpet vines a-blooming scarlet,"
"clouds that in their silent shifting illustrate an infinite gradation
of neutral tints between pearl and purple," "gallant winds a-
blaring all their bugles," " great white stars, pulsating in some
splendid ecstasy," or any other artificial fly of that description,
full of color, indeed, but unsucculent and empty. Nature is an
environment, not a goddess; it is a hint, a suggestion, not the
fruitful and tender mother that the art of to-day seeks to trans-
form it into. For the most part, the soul takes from it only what
it takes to it which is the reason why Miss Murfree's uncouth,
Anglo-Saxon, unpoetic mountaineers fail to fit into a landscape
which, albeit native to them, becomes under her treatment of it
purely personal and subjective. Considered as mountaineers,
they are entertaining and sufficiently well defined. They have
their proper place, and not more than their just dimensions, in a

1889.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 843

story which of itself is so brief, and so slenderly supplied with
plot, incident, or large issues, that it would have gained im-
mensely in strength had its "art-properties," which consist for
the most part of brilliant pigments of adjectives, that is, and
adjectival nouns been courageously sacrificed to form. Miss
Murfree has so much talent, and she uses it so purely and to
such wholesome ends, that one would like to see her beginning
to apply. the priming-knife to its excrescences, to see her lopping
off her mannerisms and her tricks of pretty speech, full of sound
and color but signifying nothing of importance, and settling
down to the true business of the novelist the study and delinea-
tion of men and women and their interaction on each other's
souls. The hand that drew Marcella and little Mrs. Strobe, the
scene in which Clem Sanders proposes and meekly accepts his
snubbing, and the domineering, just-souled Teck Jepson, from
his first appearance to his last, wastes its proper energy ; and
will be likely to lose something of its natural reward in turn-
ing aside so often to the irrelevantly picturesque. Silas Marner
would be a better model for Miss Murfree than A Princess of
TJmle. At present she is too "artistic" for the purpose of real,
enduring art.

Houghton & Mifflin also bring out in two handsome volumes
the poetical remains of Miss Emma Lazarus, who died in New
York late in 1887, still young, yet not, as it seems to us, at an
untimely moment for her fame. Her talent, which was unusual,
but fuller of distinction than of promise, developed very early.
The first collection of her poems was published when she was
seventeen ; none of the verses contained in it seems to be repro-
duced in the volumes now issued. She was writing for the New
York Ledger by the time she was eleven, when the little Sal-
lie M. Bryan, now Mrs. Piatt, was another of the youthful pre-
cocities admitted to its columns. At the age of twenty-one she
published Admctus and other Poems, which gained admiring rec-
ognition in literary circles, and marked, we think, her highest
achievement in the technique of her art. The verses of that
period showed her to possess an exquisite ear for melody, a
severe sense of form, a critical though assimilative taste in read-
ing, and a pure, refined, entirely feminine soul. They showed
no more than that, unless one adverts more specially to her al-
most uniformly happy choice of words, and her instinctive avoid-
ance of that snare of fine epithets which so often does duty as
good writing. Neither her themes nor her treatment of them
was as a rule original ; though we except the poem called Epochs,

844 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Mar.,

which produces the effect of autobiography. She selected clas-
sic or romantic subjects, and dressed them up with a skill and a
choice of details which allows the result to be ranked with the
work of Morris and various other versifiers of more or less re-
nown, and not easily distinguishable from theirs. For she struck
no new note of feeling, she had no new vision of the realities
which underlie, words and sometimes wear them thin with their
sharp edges. Nor did she ever gain one. She was a Hebrew
by race, and in the latter years of her life the persecutions which
the Jews underwent at the hands of Russia kindled in her a fire
which she took to be Hebraic. But it was hardly that or if it
were, it was not, at all events, the prophetic ardor of the Miriams,
the Deborahs, the Annas of a people who were still the chosen
of God. Some of the lyrics she wrote at this time take " The
Banner of the Jew." for example ring admirably to the ear, but
it would have needed only the faintest little suspicion of humor
in their author to make them take the slight variant in tone
which would have kept the reader's sigh of sympathetic indig-
nation from verging so closely on a smile. The Jew, as a Jew, as
the convinced and faithful adherent of a law which has been ab-
rogated, and the seeker after a sign which has been given and
rejected, is a dead issue at the close of the nineteenth century of
the Christian era. When his race suffers now from ignonince,
greed, or superstitious fury, as it was doing, and not in Russia
alone, at the time when Emma Lazarus found the inspiration for
her latest work, it is anachronistic, to say the least of it, to nurse
a factitious sympathy for his outworn creed and try to mix it up
with the natural and genuine feeling which the case demands.
Humanity suffers in his person, but it is a humanity which God
has assumed and so given a value beyond its own. It was, we
must believe, a deeper spring than that of race, deep- as that
rightfully and inevitably lies, which was really touched in Enjma
Lazarus. Until 1881 she had cared little for her own people;
her religious training appears to have been vague, and it was
certainly not coercive in its influence. As late as 1882 she was
inclined to accept Lord Beaconsfield as a typical Jew. She
liked, and was admitted into, society of a kind which Jews are
rarely found in, and all her tastes led her to cultivate pagan or
romantic ideals and to neglect those distinctively Hebraic. And
when her humanitarian ardor flares up and she calls for "a mil-
lion swords to wave " nineteenth century Jewish swords be it
remembered for the salvation of their oppressed brethren, one
feels that the effects of that neglect are hardly yet outworn.

1889.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 845

Her most serious work, so far as purpose goes, is the " Dance
to Death," a long, five-act tragedy of the thirteenth century, de-
scriptive of the burning alive of all the Jewish inhabitants of a
German town on a false accusation of poisoning the wells It is
an element of that distinction in her talent of which we have al-
ready spoken, that she wrote nothing which does not permit it-
self to be read with a certain pleasure. But in this tragedy her
premeditated intensity of feeling has the effect of all deliberately
premeditated things in art. And her technique falls off, her
rhythm has a halt, her choice of words is less happy than it was.
"The Spagnoletto," spite of the painfulness of its last scene, is
better work than this, true in feeling, and more agreeable in dic-
tion, as well as at least ten years earlier in time.

From the same publishing house we have received The
Chezzlfs, by Lucy Gibbons Morse, and a little volume of selec-
tions on the general topic of old age and its consolations, made
by Margaret E. White, and entitled After Noontide. The first is
a pleasantly written story for young people of all ages, narrat-
ing the adventures of Challey and Bob Chezzle, during their stay
at the seaside with Captain Coffin, while their mother was ab-
sent in France, in attendance on a sick brother. In addition to
the small boys just named there are several other children in
the book, notably a little French cousin of the Chezzles, who
learns her English chiefly through the medium of the slangy let-
ters of the boys to their mother; and a deaf-mute, who is one of
their playmates while they are domiciled with Captain Coffin.
The mute is handled with considerable pathos. The story is
entirely wholesome in tone and likely to interest young read-
ers.

After Noontide is composed of brief extracts from one hun-
dred and thirty different authors, ranging from Job to the name-
less writers of a "newspaper extract" and an "old letter."
Apparently it is intended as a sort of hand-book, a vade mecitm for
those who have begun the downhill journey of life, and seek to
reassure themselves against the fear that death may prove to be
something more than a mere imaginary line between their pres-
ent narrow but dear existence and one which shall be wider and
fuller, but drawn on the same general lines. Very few of these
excerpts relate to the physical aspects of age and the cares likely
to prolong life in moderate comfort beyond its ordinary limit.
The centenarian M. Chevreul is once quoted in reference to his
habits in eating, and the example of Cornaro, who at the age of
one hundred still retained his senses, his vigor, and his fine

846 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Mar.,

voice, is also adduced as a proof of the good effects on the bod-
ily health of abstinence in point of diet. But for the most part
the craving for immortality, and the natural and philosophical
grounds for the hope that life and individuality in some manner
survive the great change, are embodied in the utterances of the
writers quoted. They show a good deal of religious feeling, but
very little that is Christian in the sense that it sounds the note of
assured hope, based on faith in Him who " brought life and im-
mortality to light." The authors cited most frequently are
Longfellow, Holmes, the Unitarian Orville Dewey, William
Mountford, James Martineau, and Theodore Parker. Holy Job
supplies two sentences, King David one, King Solomon one,
and The Preacher two ; while from the second book of Macha-
bees the account of the constancy of Eleazar in the face of death
is given. But of the New Testament writers St. Paul alone
bears witness to his faith and trust, and that but once.

The note struck most often is resignation, as in this from the
German work known as The Layman s Breviary :

" Consider ! thou canst not do otherwise
Than as earth's order wills, and all thy wails
Only torment thyself !"

And again, from Amiel :

" My liberty is only negative. Nobody has any hold over me, but many
things have become impossible to me, and if I were so foolish as to wish
for them, the limits of my liberty would soon become apparent. There-
fore I take care not to wish for them, and not to let my thoughts dwell on
them. I only desire what I am able for, and in this way I run my head
against no wall, I cease even to be conscious of the boundaries that en-
close me."

The late Frederick VV. Robertson has something to say more
suggestive than this of Christian hope for the next life, less sug-
gestive of an animal tied to a post and careful not to gall his leg
by going to the end of his tether. He writes :

" It is a mistake of ultra-spiritualism to connect degradation with the
thought of a risen body ; or to suppose that a mind, unbound by the limita-
tions of space, is a more spiritual idea of a resurrection than the other.
The opposite to spirituality is not materialism, but sin. The form of matter
does not degrade. For what is this world itself but the Form of Deity,
whereby the Manifoldnes~> of His Mind and Beauty manifests, and wherein
it clothes itself. It is idle to say that the spirit can exist apart from form.
We do not know that it can. Perhaps the Eternal Himself is more closely
bound to His works than our philosophical systems have conceived. Per-
haps matter is only a mode of thought.''

" Perhaps " that is the keynote of it all. The little book

l88 9-l TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS.

847

contains some suggestive and some beautiful passages, and will
doubtless find its way to many a sick-room destitute of more
substantial comfort. But to those who are Christian in some-
thing more than name, who, however commonplace in other re-
spects, have this, at least, in common with the martyrs of all ages,
that they realize the supernatural side of Christianity with some
approach to intensity, it could be of little or no importance.

Last Chance Junction (Boston : Cupples & Hurd) is by Mrs.
Saliy Pratt McLean, the author of Cape Cod Folks, and, like
that notorious novel, it has gone through several editions. It is
not worth reading, being vulgar by essence alike in its conception
and execution. If it has a redeeming trait we have failed to find
it. Still, it is not technically immoral.

Roberts Brothers (Boston) bring out a volume of Sunday-
school Stories, attributed on the title-page to the Rev. Edward
E. Hale, but in reality the work of seven or eight different
writers, some of them members of Mr. Kale's own household.
They are all unsigned, the authors having an inclination to find
out whether any so perceptible difference in their work existed
that Mr. Hale's own would be promptly disentangled from the
mass by the discerning critic. Our own discernment fails to find
any notable difference between the tales. They are all on a very
even level of unexciting and monotonous goodiness, which we
should think would prevent a great rush being made for them
by the average Sunday-school scholar. Two of the stories intro-
duce Catholic missionaries in a very amiable and pleasing way,
and with an evident and commendable intention to be fair to
them and their work. The book, considered in the character
which it assumes, as a series of tales illustrative of Gospel les-
sons, is another peculiarly apt instance of that lack of the super-
natural sense in matters professedly religious to which we have
already alluded as peculiar to certain varieties of Protestantism.

Harper & Brothers (New York) have issued a cheap reprint
of The Countess Eve, by J. H. Shorthouse, the author of John
Inglesant. It is a singularly exquisite piece of literary work-
manship, but the title of novel, which is given it, seems some-
thing of a misnomer. Its keynote is thus struck in its opening
passage :

"In the science of sound there are partial tones, which are unheard, but
which blend with the tones that are heard, and make all the difference be-
tween the paltry note of the poorest instrument and the supreme note of a
violin. So, in the science of life, in the crowded street or market-place or
theatre, or wherever life is, there are partial tones, there are unseen pres-

TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Mar.,

ences. Side by side with the human crowd is a crowd of unseen forms
principalities and powers and possibilities. These are unseen but not
unfelt. They enter into the houses of the human beings that are seen, and
for their coming some of them are swept and garnished, and the last state
of these human beings is radiant with a divine light and resonant with an
added tone ; or, on the contrary, it may be that, haunted by spirits more
wicked than themselves, the last state of such beings is worse than before
subject to a violence and tyranny abhorrent even to themselves ; im-
palpable and inevitable, as it would seem, even to the confines of despair."

Mr. Shorthouse develops this theme at no great length his
story may be read aloud within two hours and with extreme
delicacy and precision of mere phrasing, but yet with a vague-
ness which the reader feels to arise from a lack of definite grasp
of it on the author's part rather than on his own. For we can
hardly suppose him to wish to imply that human beings are
mere instruments, more or less carefully fashioned, with more or
fewer notes according as the original design of their Creator
has been marred by heredity, and chiefly adapted to be played
upon by superior and purely spiritual forces, either " malefic," as
Mr. Shorthouse invariably says, or beneficent. Yet that is about
the sum of what one gathers from the story of the actor, Felix la
Valliere; his friend the musician, Claude de Brie; the Countess
Eve; her husband, the Comte du Pic- Adam ; and the Abbess.
In the view of Mr. Shorthouse men and women seem to be mere
puppets, moved to action by beings of whose existence they may
remain nearly or quite unconscious during life; with but one
real possession of their own, a will, which committed sin may en-
feeble to helplessness, and but one aid, prayer, which sin, again,
may almost incapacitate them from employing. There is a sense
in which such a thesis might be plausibly sustained, but as Mr.
Shorthouse puts it, the human spirit is reduced to a practical
nonentity, a mere capacity for being turned hither and yon by
invisible forces, having no real option of its own, and yet clothed
with undivided responsibility and an infinite capacity for eter-
nal joy or eternal pain. La Valliere is not unlike Donatello in
The Marble Faun. He is represented as a highly sympathetic
nature, the sport of his impulses, a born actor to whom actual
life is not more real or more vivid than that of the stage, to
whom "not only was moral law unknown, as it seemed, but
physical law seemed also uncertain and insecure, so that nothing
that could have happened in the world of sense would have sur-
prised him, and he was an avowed believer in Mesmer and the
fashionable cabalistic diablerie of the day." On the occasion of
his first visit to the Count and Countess du Pic-Adam, made in

1889.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 849

company with his friend De Brie after a play in which he has
sustained a chief part, while somewhat more excited by wine
than usual, he sees a shadowy figure, which gradually takes
firmer shape and the dress of a French abbe", whispering into
the ear of the Countess Eve. This apparition is visible to none
but himself, but on his speaking of it to the count, after madame's
departure from the salon, the husband finds nothing incredible
in his statement. He says :

" I do not know whom you may have seen. I saw no one but ourselves.
But there are other things than ourselves constantly around us the re-
membrance of other days, the effects of past actions, the consequences of
past sins, the trail, taint, poison of committed sin."

De Brie, also, "to whom God. had given the faculty of purity,
and training had given the winsome grace of an ideal life," finds
no difficulty in crediting La Valliere's story. He simply re-
marks :

"The wonder is, not that you saw him, but that we, all of us, see so
little. The whole of nature is ensouled. There is no such thing as matter,
as material existence. Everything is instinct with the nature of God, or of
the enemy of God. . . . We have entered into a new life. The old
centuries slumbered in a shadowy dream-life, a life of the unseen and of
the soul. They had the truth, but they did not know it: we know it, but
have lost its possession. 1 have often thought, but to-night it comes upon
me with an irresistible certainty, that you are in yourself at once the em-
bodiment of both of the mystical life of the past centuries, and of the
material life of to-day. You have the ignorant instinct of the past towards
the unseen and the ideal ; and you have the animal instinct of the present,
untrammeled by the new-born conscience and responsibility which, in
most men, stands in the way of the moral abandon which is necessary for
the magnetic union with the unseen. . . You always remind me of
those old Greek natures, half-human, half-fay, to whom belonged the
secrets of nature and of the sky, of the elements and of the spirit world
pure animals such as we see among us now, our dogs and falcons, the
creatures of their training and circumstances, but how perfect of their
kind!"

And again :

"He is nothing in himself,'' he thought, "he is nothing but a lovely
mask. This highly strung, sympathetic nature, this magnetic tempera-
ment, this careless, happy, Greek conscience and unshackled will and
purpose, confined by no scruple, bounded by no law to what fell use
might it not be put? How perfect and beautiful an instrument and
dwelling-place for a malefic spirit to use and to inhabit!"

Just what origin, what meaning Mr. Shorthouse consciously
assigns to the tempter whom, he has thus clothed in the external
habit of a French abb6, though, as he says, " the expression of its
VOL. XLVIII. 54

850 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Mar.,

face was such as no French abb6 no, nor any other man had
ever displayed," we confess ourselves puzzled to decide. He is
a " malefic spirit," born, apparently, of a youthful, sensual sin on
the part of the Count du Pic-Adam, and now engaged in luring
the innocent, virtuously-minded but unloved Countess Eve into
the repetition of a similar sin with La Valliere. Neither she nor
the actor are represented as moved by their own natures or
their proper desires they become the sport of the tempter, he
by reason of his facile surrender to a perfectly recognized lure
whose end he knows, she in unsuspecting innocence, without
a thought of sin. The sin is never committed, the tempter is
foiled, but no thanks for that is due to the conscience or free will
of either of those he seeks to dupe. The count, who, twenty
years before, had supposed himself to become, as the result of
a moment's mad delirium, the cause of the suicide of the girl he
loved, recognizes her living, in the person of an abbess, who
holds up a crucifix and seems to puzzle him less than she does
the reader by solemnly declaring, " God in his unspeakable pity
has had mercy upon us, and has utterly abolished the whole body
of sin." The italics belong to Mr. Shorthouse. While this
scene is going on, La Valliere is making his way to the private
garden of the Countess Eve, known as Paradise, whence she has
promised to ride out with him and "see something of life." She
is faithful to the minute of her tryst, but some contradictory
emotions cause a slight delay and alteration of La Valliere's
route, so that she opens the door before he comes. " No finite
understanding," says Mr. Shorthouse, "can realize to the full
what the delay of these few moments meant." What they made
room for was that the countess, having opened the garden door,

" the moment that she passed the threshold, she saw It for the first
time. It was only for a second. All the power of hell, all the glamour
and delusion and sorcery at the command of the Prince of Evil, were ex-
erted at the moment to recall the false step, to cancel the sight ; but it
was too late. She had seen, by the power and light of God's conscience in
a pure spirit. She had seen, at the moment of a fatal error, the face of

committed Sin."

So she goes back into Paradise, and when La Valliere arrives
he finds her there en tableau with her husband and De Brie, with
"a radiance of the wondering joy and escape of deliverance upon
her lips, and within her eyes ; but through the meshes of her
chestnut hair, and across the gleam of her violet eyes, an appall-
ing, mystic light, the singe and glow of the flame of the pit."
And in front of this trio stands the abbess " like an archangel of

i8?9-] WITH READERS AND. CORRESPONDENTS. 851

God," the crucifix, that turned its flashing light every way, in her
uplifted hand. And " fear not," she says mysteriously concern-
ing the shadowy abbe ; " he will return no more. The sin wJiich
gave him birth, which kept him in existence and gave him his malefic
power, is abolished and blotted out ; for by this sign, the sign of the
Crucifix, than which none other shall be given while the world
endures, Death and Hell are cast into the lake that burns for
ever."

But it is an old fashion with Mr. Shorthouse, as those who
remember John Inglesant will know, to make his imaginary re*
ligious of both sexes more than a trifle mysterious in their ways
and utterances, at least to the apprehension of his Catholic
readers. They, at least, are without all question puppets, obey-
ing no law of any known being save the fancy of their creator.
How, by the way, one would be glad to know, did the nuns be-
longing to the convent of this oracular abbess happen to be
singing at Vespers on a Sunday in spring, first the antiphon
" Missus est Gabriel angelus" which belongs solely to Advent and
Lady-day, and afterwards that beginning with '"Magnum hoeredi-
tatis mysterium" which is in use only from Christmas to Candle-
mas?

WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS.

PADRE AGOSTINO.*

Padre Agostino seems to be that desideratum of the present age in
Europe, a powerful exponent of religion who does not arouse the hatred
of the masses. He assails vice and is tolerated, nay applauded, by even
the vicious; it is because he knows how to stir into living fire the smoul-
dering embers of faith in the sinner's bosom. He vigorously attacks, con-
demns, and anathematizes materialism and scepticism, and yet sceptics
and atheists are drawn to hear him ; they have, all unconsciously, a little
implicit religion left in their souls, and his noble eloquence has made it a
living force in them. He is a sound adherent of the rights of the Holy
See, and yet loves his country and awakens a religious interest in the
hearts of even the Italianissmi. Perhaps his power is due to the fact that he
does not parade too conspicuously the weeds of mourning for the dead
past. He is aided, too, by the positive view which he takes of religion.
He seems willing to try every spirit and, distinguishing reason from aber-
ration, he shows that even the wildest aspirations may be in some sense

* Selections from the Sermons of Padre Ago?tino da Montefeltro. Edited by Catherine Mary Philli-
more. New York : James Pott & Co.

852 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Mar.,

realized, if only entertained in a religious spirit. " My friends," he cries
out to the vast throngs of Italian men, " your great desire is to press
onward, to advance in every sense of the word. Well, then, in the name
of the faith of our fathers, I say to you, forward ! "

The positive side of religion, or the good things it gives to men, is ever
progressive and always bears the aspect of progress. The negative or re-
strictive side of religion that is to say, the evil things it forbids men
ministers indeed to the elevation of the soul, but it does so only indirectly,
and it does not bear the appearance of elevation and is too often unduly em-
phasized. One not seldom comes across good men who will characterize all
religion by those virtues which merely clear the field for the divine hus-
bandry. Padre Agostino dwells on the positive good of religion ; the exer-
cises of penance and the painful burdens of life are made to appear as they
are, the means to the end, which is union with God in all joy.

His method is philosophical in its general lines, but popular in its
treatment of topics. He makes copious use of figures of speech, which do
not seem out of place in discourses pitched in so high a key. He is essen-
tially Italian in temperament and in manner, as Lacordaire was French,
though as an orator these selections do not entitle the Italian Franciscan
to so high a rank as that of the great French Dominican. He may rather
be compared to Father Tom Burke, without his verbiage and humor. We
have a presentation of the essential truths of religion in picturesque form,
yet with great directness and clothed in language extremely sympathetic,
altogether calculated to reach and possess a great variety of minds and all
grades of intelligence. He evidently possesses much power over his
hearers, owing in great part to his unaffected sympathy with the people.
He is a man of the age. His tears for the old order of things in Italy, if
he sheds any, are for the ancient faith and manliness and purity and
bravery and charity of his race. He is a man of the times, but a Christian,
and gives evidence of a vocation to be an apostle.

The topics treated in these selections make this little book of value for
Lenten courses of sermons God, the soul, its immortality, the purpose of
life, the family, human suffering, hope, the observance of Sunday, liberty,
the working classes.

NEWS FROM THE SCIENTIFIC CONGRESS.

The Bulletin of the Permanent Committee of the International Scientific
Congress of Catholics for January announces the publication of the first volume
<rf the Report of the Congress of 1888. The second volume will be ready next
April, the tw.o volumes containing from 1,300 to 1,400 pages large octavo.
The first volume, besides introductory documents, contains the communications
read in the sections of religious and philosophical sciences, with an account
of the oral discussion. The following are the pieces published. In the re-
ligious sciences: i. A fragment of the Babylonian Ritual, A. Loisy; 2. The
religion of ancient Egypt and the foreign influences affecting it, J. Rcbzeu; the
Book of Wisdom, J. Corluy; 3. Biblical genealogies, De Broglie ; 4. Archaisms
in the Pentateuch, J. Graffiti.

In the philosophical sciences : i. Spencer's doctrine of evolution, J.
Gmezner ; 2. Evolutionist ethics, A. dc Margerie ; 3. Pessimist Metaphysics,
Charles Huit ; 4. Synthetic judgments a priori, T. J.O'Mahony ; 5. Whether

18890 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 853

the principle of causality is an analytical or an a priori synthetical proposition,
A. de Margcrte ; 6. Grounds of the notion of causality, E. Dcmet de Verges ; 7.
Origin of language, Roiissdot ; 8. Speech and language, Dr. A. Ferrand ;
9. Christian Philosophy promoted in Hungary by Leo XIII., J. Kiss; 10.
Matter and form in view of modern sciences, A. Farges ; u. The reform of
cosmology, A. Hernandez y Fajarnez ; 12. Plato and the mediaeval period,
Charles Huit ; 13. Organism and thought, J. Gardair ; 14. The a priori argu-
ment for the existence of God, A. F. Hewit ; 15. Definition of the absolute, A.
Braun. Three of the essays are in Latin, the rest are in French.

Preparations for the Congress of 1891 have been begun. Besides the long
list of questions proposed before the first Congress, only a few of which have
been couched, the commission will propose new ones on special matters which
are at present the most interesting. Some of these are indicated in the Bulletin.
The text of the Vulgate, the Syriac and Coptic versions, the chronology of the
apostolic age, the apocryphal gospels, the Apocalypse, the Old Testament pro-
phecies in view of modern exegesis, are topics proposed for examination in
sacred science. There are also a number of questions m political economy.

Those who wish to obtain copies of the Report of the Congress should ad-
dress Monsieur J. Guieu, Paris, Rue de la Chaise, 20.

READING CIRCLES.

From the information already obtained it may be affirmed as positively true
that the works of Catholic writers en subjects of general interest are rarely fcund
in public libraries. We request our correspondents to inquire persistently into
the reasons for this state of things. If there is a deliberate policy of ignoring
the literary treasures of Catholic origin, the sooner we know it the better.
Readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD will need no introduction to the distin-
guished writer of the following letter :

" NEW YORK CITY.

" I am delighted to see that at last a clear, decided mind has suggested a much needed,
timely, practical movement for the encouragement of good Catholic reading and writing.
The plan, as sketched in the circular on Reading Circles, evidences a full, thoughtful knowledge
of Catholic needs pressing needs. ' If properly organized and carefully conducted' the ' Read-
ing Circles ' must have a wide influence for good, not on young ladies only, but also on men,
young and old, many of whom ' know very little of the writers of their own religion, or the
place of excellence these writers have attained.' Instead of gratifying or nourishing ourselves
at our own well filled tables, we contentedly feed on the husks of the prodigal and call our
sad meal a feast.

" The idea of the ' guide lists ' promises to benefit publishers as 'well as readj(g. He^e it
is. especially, that every one can see the care with which your admirable plan has been thought
out. Why should not the publisher be helped as well as the reader ? As it is, putting aside
the ascetic work, the publisher lacks any safe means of gauging his public. We have no way
of telephoning him what we are ready for. The 'guide list' will serve as a publishers' ther-
mometer as well as a readers' barometer. The readers will know when to come in out of the
rain, and our publishers will be able to tell the exact temperature on an abnormally cold day
and the point above zero at which we really begin to warm up. We shall have better books
with the 'guide lists,' better in the quality of intellectual material, better in the way of book-
making however good that may be now, and cheaper.

'I see the ' Reading Circles' creating readers and writers and encouraging, aiding our
publishers. As it is, the American Catholic literary man has no field other than Potter's
field. The writer cannot work, let alone live, without a public. At present the Catholic
writer is forced to become a colorless, lifeless litterateur, or else to follow false gods, become

854 WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. [Mar.,

un-Catholic, wallow in the muck of realistic popularity. The evil is greater than we think
a positive evil, and one worth expense and sacrifice and zealous work to remedy. Every
thinking Catholic will hail your movement as the first one to give the Catholic writer hope of
having a little home in a promised land, where he may securely tend the vine and olive and
uproot the noxious weed.

" By all means let the scope of your idea be wholly democratic, including all women, if not
all men, and writers of every land. Let the ' Reading Circles' know all our good writers of
whatever nationality. These are times for the largest brotherhood of Catholic thought. We
cannot know each other too well, whatever be our geographical or linguistic limits. As Ameri-
cans we shall be satisfied only with the best. Do not fear for the American writer. All he
asks is a fair field. Give him a reading public, and he will hold his own in diverting or edu-
cating American Catholics and in preserving the traditions of a noble English literature.

*' Not only will the ' Reading Circles' and the 'guide lists' help Catholics, but they will
serve our American society at large. The public library will learn to know us better than it
does. We shall be recognized not simply as readers, but also as the owners and makers of a
good, honest, healthy literature ; a literature characterized by a just sense of art and by a
high aim, clean as well as modern, and covering every branch of literary composition.

"And our schools, convents, colleges will not the 'guide lists 'serve them also? In the
school the ground-work of a sound appreciation of the value of good reading should be laid.
To instil the sense of reading as a duty, and to make it a pleasurable habit, is one of the most
important requirements of the most primary education. The ' guide list ' should be, and
doubtless will be, a valued school-teachers' guide.

" There are ten millions of us, they say. Were there only a single million we should show
more real intellectual life than we do. Is there any one who will dare say that we have not
the material of a reading public ? With our colleges scattered all over the land, it would be a
shame if we had not the material for writers, competent and justly ambitious to contend with
the vicious talents that so powerfully master the thought of our day.

" Surely you may count on the success of your good undertaking. You deserve encour-
agement from all classes of men and women. And you will have encouragement, if for no
other reason, because you have chosen the right moment to plant 'a grain of mustard seed.'
Buge! JOHN A. MOONEY."

" ROCHESTER, N. Y.

" If I can do aught in this vicinity to encourage the plan for Catholic Reading Circles
I will gladly do so, as I heartily approve the suggestion, particularly for the working-
girls. E. G."

" HELENA, MONTANA TERRITORY.

" I was much pleased and interested in an article I saw in last week's Catholic Stntinel
about Reading Circles. Such a society is very much needed here. I suggest that the society
be social as well as literary. I will most gladly do anything I can for the success of such a
circle. . M. A. C."

" BUFFALO, N. Y.

" Being much interested in the proposed plan of Reading Circles, I would venture to call
attention to the ' Society for Studies at Home," the secretary being Miss A. E. Ticknor, 41
Marlborough Street, Boston, Mass. I have been a member of this society, the only fault of
which is the non-Catholic spirit of the instruction. The plan of studies, however, is far supe-
rior to the Chautauqua Society, the members advancing individually, not in clashes. I desire to
show my active interest in the society, and my services are at the disposal of the Circle in any
capacity within my ability. My studies with the Boston society included the dawn of history
(iron, stone, and bronze ages ; also Egyptian history), and this winter embraces the art
course, particularly the period of the Renaissance. J. L."

" M , N. Y.

" My letter but feebly expresses the great interest I feel in having Catholic li'erature more
widely circulated among our people. The diffusion of Catholic reading matter is truly an
' apostolic work.' I hope that the seed sown by THE CATHOLIC WORLD may flourish and
bring forth fruit. The seed is good if the soil be not barren.

WITH READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. 855

"Why confine the Circle to women ? Perhaps it is the better plan, for if the next genera-
tion of mothers are truly Catholic, the sons and daughters will be all right.

" The fact that such men as Brownson, McMaster, and others of the laity, and Hecker,
Hewit, Kenrick, and others, have been children of the church ought to command the attention
of all thinking people. A Catholic young man, who reads the newspapers of the day and calls
himself intelligent, said to me a short time ago that no one yet had answered Ingersoll. The
young man had never heard of Father Lambert and others who have recently answered Inger-
soll's questions, to say nothing of the answers by the fathers to the heretics in the first cen-
turies. B. E. B."

" I read with pleasure the article on Reading Circles.' The idea is a grand one. Here in

we have at least ten or twelve Catholic young lady teachers in our schools, all graduates of

the high-school, excellent young ladies, bub. having no knowledge of Catholicity except what was
taught them in many instances by uneducated parents. They are Catholics simply because
their parents are, like the boy that was a ' Dimocrat bekase his daddy was.' These young
ladies could draw around them many others, and excellent results would follow. We have no
Catholic schools ; hence the more need of a ' Reading Circle." If you will be kind enough to
send me all the necessary information I will make an effort to organize a circle.

41 C. H. S."

4< CINCINNATI, OHIO.

44 1 desire to lend my heartiest co-operation to the plan of forming Catholic Reading
Circles. But why should the membership be limited to young women ? It is true that they
have more reading time than men have, but in most of our larger cities there are now either
formed or being formed societies for young men lyceums, dramatic clubs, social clubs, etc.,
under the auspices of pastors or of sodalities. Why not include these young men in the charity
of the founders of the Reading Circles ? Another way to build up these Circles is to solicit the
aid of the convent academies. Let young girls become interested in a course of instructive
reading during (say) the last year at school, and they will be more likely to continue it than if
they were initiated only after leaving school. But this plan, as I said, can only be carried out
with the co-operation of the academies. I do not think it would interfere with the course of
study.

41 For the benefit of those among us who are ignorant of the work of the St. Anselm
Society could you not give a short account of its methods and their results ? J. C. W."

The foregoing letters, coming as they do from different places and represent-
ing more than one class of society, indicate most clearly the need of organized
effort on behalf of Catholic literature. Such letters are interesting and in-
structive, and are especially valuable as showing existing realities in actual life.
A prominent editor, after listening to one of these letters, said : "That letter is
significant, and should do more to encourage the work proposed in these Read-
ing Circles than a long article by a clergyman or a professional writer."

For the information of some of the correspondents it may be stated that the
writer of the first communication on the subject of Reading Circles published in
the December, 1888, CATHOLIC WORLD had in view chiefly the needs of her own
sex. With special delight she will read what others have to say for the young
men. The movement is still .in the formative period, plastic enough to be
adjusted to all who come within range of its influence, whether they live in the
United States or in Canada. Let us hear what action the young men wish to
take in the matter. They have the same opportunity of sending letters which
has been granted to others. Write only on one side of the paper, and address let-
ters to the office of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, 6 Park Place, New York City
Department Reading Circles.

856 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Mar.,

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

Owing to the space taken up by the Index several notices of new publications must be
held over until our next issue.

SAINT THOMAS ET LA PREDESTINATION. Par E. C. Lesserteur, Ancien
Professeur de Theologie. Paris: Lethielleux.

This is a book for theologians only, and to these of the greatest value,
one which we cannot too strongly recommend to their attention.

The paramount authority which St. Thomas has obtained, and which
has been so much augmented by the recent instructions from the Holy See
in respect to the use to be made of his works in teaching philosophy and
theology, make it a matter of the highest importance to ascertain his gen-
uine doctrine. A certain school of theologians have assumed the name
of Thomists, and claimed for their particular opinions the sanction of the
Angelic Doctor. These opinions are not generally accepted or taught;
yet they have been quite commonly supposed to have been really taught
by St. Thomas, and there has been some anxiety awakened lest the defer-
ence justly due to his authority should involve as a consequence the
recognition of the claims of this so-called Thomist School to be the ortho-
dox and Catholic school, par excellence. Very able authors e.g., Libera-
tore, Franzelin, Schrader, etc. have strongly combated this claim, and
very recently, in respect to one most important question, viz : physical pre-
determination, Cardinal Pecci has satisfactorily proved what has been
heretofore asserted and proved, that it is an invention of Bannes and not a
part of the system of St. Thomas.

The most capital topic of controversy is Predestination. This is hand-
led by Lesserteur in a most thorough manner. The doctrine of St. Thom-
as is presented directly from all the works in which the topic is handled.
Side by side is placed the theory deduced from the writings of St. Thomas
by the class of theologians of whom Bannes and Billuart are the represen-
tatives.

According to this latter theory, the first intention of the creation, and
of the supernatural order into which it is elevated, is the manifestation
of the divine goodness. By an antecedent will God prefers, in itself con-
sidered, to manifest his goodness by the final beatitude of all angels and
men. But, considering all things, especially that the greater perfec-
tion of the manifestation of his goodness and the higher beauty of
order in the universe requires the exhibition of the divine justice, God
wills and decrees to bring only a certain number to beatitude, who are
predestined to glory and prepared for it by special and infallibly effica-
cious graces. The rest of mankind are permitted to sin without final
repentance by their own free-will, though not deprived of sufficient grace
to secure their final salvation by a right use of their freedom. The just
receive the reward of their merits in eternal glory, sinners the retribution
of their demerits in eternal punishment. God is glorified by the manifes-
tation of his goodness under the aspect of benevolence and mercy, and
also under that of justice ; and the universe, also, is perfected in order and
beauty, as an image of all the divine perfections.

1 889.] NE w PUBLIC A TIONS. 857

The salient point in this exposition is : that predestination is antecedent
to all foreknowledge of the free acts of men.

Lesserteur presents an exposition of the doctrine of St. Thomas which
is entirely different from this.

The chief point of difference is in respect to the will of God to manifest
his justice. Our author asserts and proves, that God does not will to mani-
fest his justice, for its own sake, and in his first intention. By his antece-
dent will, God wills to give beatitude to all angels and men. He also wills
that they should merit this beatitude, gives them grace to enable them
to do it, and predestines to salvation all who make due usage of this grace.
The ordination of sinners to glorify his justice is consequent upon the
foreknowledge of sin and demerit. The predestination of the elect is also
consequent upon the foreknowledge of their good use of free-will and
grace.

In our opinion, it has been fairly proved in controversy, that the dis-
tinctive opinions of a certain school should be regarded as having Bannes
for their principal author, and not St. Thomas. We consider that this is a
great gain to theological science. The system maintained by Bannes and
Billuart is one which presents a weak side of defence against Calvinism
and Dsterminism. It obscures the great doctrines of the universal love
of God to his creatures, his sincere will to save all men, the freedom of the
human will, and the sufficiency of the grace which is conceded on the part
of God and offered to all. It is most desirable that this theory of a par-
ticular set of quite modern theologians should be relegated to the region of
obsolete opinions. We desire most heartily that the genuine theology and
philosophy of St. Thomas may prevail, and in order that it may, that it be
cleared of extraneous and incongruous adhesions which mar its symmetry
and beauty.

This is not a mere matter of contention for victory in the arena of meta-
physical and theological polemics. It is one of practical moment, con-
cerning the salvation of souls. In this age of atheistical tendencies it is
imperatively necessary to vindicate the goodness of God by proving that
disinterested love is the only motive impulse of his creative act and his
sovereign providence. The one great aim of those who preach the Gospel
is to convince and persuade men that they can save their souls if they
will, and that God is ready to give them grace and final perseverance if
they will use the means in their power. The doctrine of St. Francis de
Sales and St. Alphonsus, who are not only theologians but Doctors of the
universal church and apostles, gives us a much better basis for persuading
men to love God because he has so loved them and the world, than the
theories of Bannes and Billuart, notwithstanding the respect which is due
to these distinguished and able theologians and their school. We are con-
vinced that the doctrine of these two great saints, which is also the com-
mon doctrine held and taught in the church, is the genuine doctrine of St.
Thomas.
LIFE OF ST. JEROME. By Mrs. Charles Martin. London : Kegan Paul,

Trench & Co.; New York: The -Catholic Publication Society Co.

This does not pretend to be a complete biography of St. Jerome, but
rather a sketch of his life made after what seems a fair study of materials
readily accessible to the public. Such a sketch is made with no great diffi-
culty as far as collating the matter goes, for the saint's life is revealed in

858 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Mar.,

its minute details by his copious correspondence, extending over the
whole of his public career and revealing his traits of character as well as
chronicling events with both accuracy and fulness. The authoress
acknowledges her indebtedness to French writers. French literature is
copious on nearly all topics, and on none more so than the great heroes of
the early ages of the church.

St. Jerome was one of those saints who, while in a high state of supernat-
ural perfection, retained some traits of ordinary human nature. In char-
acter he was militant, tenacious of his rights, easily aroused to indignation at
wrong doing, inclined to push an adversary to the wall though he deemed
his adversaries the enemies of religion and not always averse to mingling
personal invective in his polemical writings. He was a strong man, and his
strength was sometimes pitiless. It was as well his misfortune as his glory
that he was endowed with an immense capacity to love; this gave him
many hours of misery. For he saw the empire and city of Rome, which
he loved with patriotic fervor, rotting slowly inwards towards the seat of
vitality; finally saw its degenerate armies swept away by Alaric's hordes
and the great capital of the world taken and pillaged. He saw, too, the
fatal tendency of many minds, some of them leaders in the religious world,
to adopt heretical views, for he was almost contemporary with Arius, and
Pelagius was in Palestine sowing the seeds of error before St. Jerome's
death. His hardy spirit sprang to the defence of the truth with fierce, if
even sometimes with indiscriminate, zeal, and his polemical treatises and
epistles are luminous witnesses of the orthodox faith of the church, and
are at the same time the product of an intelligence of the first order culti-
vated to the highest degree. Nevertheless, though always right in his
doctrine he was not always charitable, or even just, to his opponents, how-
ever sincerely he meant to be so. He was a hot champion of the church
and faith of Christ, but more than once he smote his brethren, mistaking
them for enemies. We are not a little surprised, therefore, to find this Life
always siding with him in his disputes. It is more than doubtful if Origen
was really the " arch-heretic," the "heresiarch" the authoress so confidently
calls him. Pope Leo in one of his encyclicals expressly leaves open the
question of his orthodoxy, and the most recent, perhaps the most satisfac-
tory, study of his works rehabilitates him as a sound Catholic father of the
church. Nor was John of Jerusalem altogether wrong ; and even Rufinus
has a standing in court and a fair chance with his tremendous but
most bitter antagonist. Yet if we must criticise, and we wish to do so em-
phatically, the blind partisanship of this Life, we do not wish the reader to
think that its main purpose is defeated by this defect. The chief purpose
of th>3 book is to show St. Jerome's relation with St. Paula and her com-
panions, and it has succeeded in doing so admirably ; in fact, it is a joint
life of both St. Jerome and St. Paula.

For this rugged nature, austere, penitential in the extreme, exacting of
himself, and no less so of others, was the foremost guide of women in the
paths of perfection which his age produced. He stands out conspicu-
ously, it is true, as possessing a wonderful gift of discerning and express-
ing the truth, and most of all as the greatest exponent and interpreter of
the written word of God who ever lived. But nearly his whole private life
after he had passed middle age was spent in some sense in the company of
devout women. In those stormy times the instinct of Christian sanctity

1889.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 859

impelled men and women to the land of the tenderest Christian memories
and to the neighborhood of those two cities of all others the most sacred,
Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Thither the forebodings of the ruin of civiliza-
tion in the West, the symptoms indicating that society, corrupt to the core,
was about to collapse, the aspect of Christianity itself everywhere walking
amidst the defilements of a paganism by no means extinct, everywhere in
deadly conflict with heresy all this drew the aspirations and, in a multi-
tude of cases, the footsteps of the choice spirits of the West to Egypt and
the Holy Land, to the caves and monasteries in which the peace of
heavenly contemplation could be securely enjoyed.

How St. Jerome co-operated with St. Paula and her daughter, St.
Eustochium, in the establishment of a monastery of Western women at
Bethlehem is extremely interesting and is well told, from the first stir-
rings of the Holy Spirit in these courageous souls till they and their direc-
tor were called to their eternal reward, their bodies laid beside the place
where the Babe of Bethlehem was born. They united there beside our
Lord's crib the East and the West, the solitude and austerities of the East-
ern deserts and the activity of the Romans. The authoress gives us an
appreciative and sympathetic narrative of all this, sketching the two sides
of St. Jerome, the rough-riding knight-errant in fierce conflict with all
opponents of Holy Church and the tender friend, the wise director, the
patient instructor of devout women.

These brilliant and learned women, to whom the great commentator
dedicates some of his best-known works, are an appropriate study for our
own day. The mission of women has become much wider than ever
before, and it is doubtless in accordance with the intimations of Providence
that a higher education is being commonly given them. We thank Mrs.
Martin for her book and wish it a wide sale, recommending it especially to
those who in training women for the world follow the lines mainly of
social conventionality ; they may learn from its pages to take broader views
of the moral and intellectual fitness of the sex for the various avocations
of life.

SURSUM CORDA. A Manual of English Hymns and Prayers for the use of
Catholic Schools and Choirs. Benziger Bros.

This appears to be chiefly a collection of hymns (words only) gathered
from some ten or more hymn books, in which they have already been pub-
lished with accompanying music, reference being made under the title of
each hymn to the music book from which it is taken.

BOOKS RECEIVED.
Mention of books in this place does not preclude extended notice in subsequent numbers.

PERSONAL MEMOIRS OF P. H. SHERIDAN, GENERAL UNITED STATES ARMY. In two
volumes. New York, 3 East i4th Street : Charles L. Webster & Co. Price, $6.

THE HISTORY AND FATE OF SACRILEGE. By Sir Henry Spellman. Edited in part from two
MSS., revised and corrected, with a continuation, large additions, and an introductory es-
say. By two Priests of the Church of England. A new edition, with corrections, additional
notes, and an index, by Samuel J. Eales, D.C.L. London : John Hodges. (New York,
Cincinnati, and Chicago : For sale by Benziger Bros.)

IL VALORE DEL SILLABO. Studio" Teologico e Storico del P. Carlo Giuseppe Rinaldi, B.C.
D.G. Con Appendice di Document!. Roma : Presso 1'Amministrazione della Civiltb
Cattolica.

MARY OF NAZARETH. A Legendary Poem in Three Parts. By Sir John Croker Barrow,
Bart., author of "The Valley of Tears," " Towards the Truth," and other poems. Par*
I. " Dignare me laudare te, Virgo sacrata." London : Burns & Oates ; New York : The
Catholic Publication Society Co.

86o NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Mar., 1889.

CONTEMPLATIONS AND MEDITATIONS ON THE HIDDEN LIFE OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST

According to the method of St. Ignatius. Translated from the French by a Sister of Mer-
cy. Revised by Rev. W. H. Eyre, S.J. London : Burns & Gates ; New York : The
Catholic Publication Society Co.

DREIUNDDREISSIGSTE GENERAL-VERSAMMLUNG DES DEUTSCHEN ROMISCH KATOLISCHEW
GENERAL-VEREINS in den Ver. Staaten von Nord-Amerika gehatten in Cincinnati, O. .
2, 3, 4, und 5, September, 1888. Milwaukee : Druck des " Columbia."

HOFFMANN'S CATHOLIC DIRECTORY, ALMANAC, AND CLERGY LIST. Quarterly. For the year
of our Lord 1889. Fourth Annual Edition, containing complete reports from all the
Dioceses in the United States, Canada, and Newfoundland, with an addition containing
the Vicariate-Apostolic of the Sandwich Islands. Milwaukee : Hoffmann Bros.

BULLETIN OF THE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION, College of Agriculture, Cornell
University. III. November, 1888. Ithaca, N. Y. : Published by the University.

THE WAY OF INTERIOR PEACE. Dedicated to Our Lady of Peace. By Father Von Lehen,
S.J. Translated from the German by a Religious. With a preface by His Eminence Car-
dinal Gibbons. New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago : Benziger Brothers.

EDUCATE THE WHOLE CHILD. Objections to Parochial Schools Answered. By Rev. L. P.
Paquin, Pastor of St. Simon's, Ludington, Mich. Reprinted from the Michigan Catholic,
of Detroit. Manistee, Mich.: Advocate Print.

ARTIFICIAL PERSONS. A Philosophical View of the Law of Corporations. By Charles T.
Palmer, B.L. Preparatory remarks by Dr. Paul Carus. Chicago: The Open Court Pub-
lishing Co.

THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF THE RT. REV. JOHN MCMULLEN, D.D., First Bishop of Daven-
port, Iowa. By Rev. Jas. J. McGovern, D.D. With an Introduction by the Rt. Rev. John
Lancaster Spalding, D.D., Bishop of Peoria. Chicago and Milwaukee : Hoffmann
Brothers.
JNTEMPERANCE AND LAW. A Lecture. By the Most Rev. John Ireland, D.D. New York :

Published by St. Paul's Guild, sgth St. and gth Ave.

-SCIENTIFIC TEMPERANCE IN SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES. Annual Report of the Woman's Chris-
tian Temperance Union. By the national and international Superintendent, Mrs. Mary H.
Hunt. Boston : W. S. Best.

POEMS. By Alexander Pushkin. Translated from the Russian with Introduction and Notes
by Ivan Panin. Boston : Cupples & Hurd.

THE LIFE OF THE BLESSED MARTIN DE PORRES, a Negro Saint of the Third Order of St.
Dominic in the Province of St. John the Baptist of Peru Translated from the Italian
by Lady Herbert. New York : The Catholic Publication Society Co.

VERSES FOR THE STATIONS OF THE CROSS. By the Rev. Albany J. Christie, S.J. Londom :
The Catholic Truth Society.

ROSARY VERSES. Selected from* The End of Man, By the Rev. Albany J. Christie, S.J.
'London: The Catholic Truth Society.

WHAT TO DO IN CASES OF ACCIDENTS AND EMERGENCIES. The symptoms in each case and
how to treat them on the moment. With a list of the principal poisons, their remedies
and antidotes. Designed for family and general use. By Joseph B. Lawrence, medical
and surgical nurse. New York : J. H. Vail & Co.

METHODS OF TEACHING ARITHMETIC IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS. By Larkin Dunton, LL. D. ,
head-master of the Boston Normal School. Boston : Eastern Educational Bureau.

THE CHAMPIONS OF AGRARIAN SOCIALISM. A Refutation of Emile de Lavelye and Henry
George. By Rev. Victor Cathrein, S.J. Translated, revised, and enlarged by Rev. J. U.
Heinzle, S.J., President of Canisius College, Buffalo, N.Y. Buffalo : Peter Paul & Bro.

MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE ; An Inquiry into the Moral, the Practical, the Political, and the Re-
ligious Aspects of the Question. By Ap Richard (M. A. Cantab.) With appendixes by
Prof. David Swing and others. Chicago and New York : Rand, McNally & Co.

ST. ALPHONSUS' PRAYER-BOOK. A Complete Manual for Pious Exercises for every Day, every
Week, every Month, every Season of the Christian Year, and for all the principal circum-
stances of life. By Rev. Fr. St. Omer, C.SS.R. Translated from the French by G. M.
Ward. New York, Cincinnati, & Chicago : Benziger Bros.

THE IMMORTAL; OR, ONE OF THE "FORTY." (L'Immortel.) By Alphonse Daudet. Chi-
cago and New York : Rand, McNally & Co.

LEAVES FROM ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM. Selected and Translated by Mary H. Allies. Edited
with a preface by T. W. Allies, K.C.S.G. London: Burns & Gates; New York: The
Catholic Publication Society Co.

CHARACTERISTICS FROM THE WRITINGS OF ARCHBISHOP ULLATHORNE. With Biographical
Introduction. Arranged by the Rev. Micflael F. Glancey, late of St. Mary's College, Oscott.
London : Burns & Gates; New York: The Catholic Publication Society Co.

CHURCH ARCHITECTURE. Twenty-one Plates showing Elevations, Perspective Views, and
interior Views of low and moderate priced Churches, including miscellaneous church details.
By Adolphus Druiding. With a preface by Very Rev. Dr. Otto Zardetti, V.G. Chicago :
A. Druiding.

THE LIFE OF ST. IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA. By Father Genelli, of the Society of Jesus. New
York, Cincinnati, and Chicago : Benziger Bros.

J* 1 ^

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