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V 



1 




THE 




CATHOLIC WORLD. 



MONTHLY MAGAZINE 



OF 



GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. 




OCTOBER, 1894, TO MARCH, 1895. 



NEW YORK : 

THE OFFICE OF THE CATHOLIC WORLD, 

120 WEST 6oth STREET. 



1895. 




Copyright, 1895, by 
VERY REV. A. F. HKWIT. 



THE COLUMBUS PRESS, 120 WEST 60iH ST., NEW YORK. 



CONTENTS. 



Adirondack Winter Scene, hn. (Frontispiece.) 

Advantages attending the Investigation 
of Catholic Truth, Of the. Wil- 
liam C. Robinson, LL.D., . . 468 

Ancient Mammals and their Descen- 
dants. William Seton, LL.D., . 401 

Bonaparte and the Moral Law. John 

/. O'SAea, . . . . . 698 

Brief of Leo XIII., . . .', ., 577 

Catholic Charities under the Microscope, 116 

Catholicism in Scandinavia. {Illustrat- 
ed.) Most Rev. Francis fanssens, 
D.D., 586 

Christmas in Cloudland, A.. (Illustrat- 
ed. ) By John /. O'Sfiea, assisted by 
the following contributors : Mari- 
annt Kent, " Pepita Casada," Doro- 
thy Monckton, and Marie Louise 
Sandrock, . . . . . 354 

Church of St. Olaf, Stockholm. 

{Frontispiece. ) 

Church in Armenia, The. (Illustrated.) 

Right Rev. Paul Terzian, D.D., 212 

Church vs. The State in the Concerns 
of the Poor, The. Rev. M. O'Rior- 
dan, Ph.D., D.D., D.C.L., . . 145 

Columbian Reading Union, The, 140, 286, 
43Q| 573i 7 l6 > 8 56 

Consecrated Mission of the Printed 

Word, The. Margaret E.Jordan, 489 

Count de Mun : Leader of the Catholic 
Republican Deputies. (Illustrat- 
ed.) Eugene Davis, . . . 345 

Critics Criticised, The. Rev. R. M. 

Ryan, ....... 690 

Death of St. Bruno. {Frontispiece.) 

Disestablishment of the Church of Vir- 
ginia, The. William F. Carne, . 108 

Doctor Charcot and his Work. (Illus- 
trated.) William Seton, LL.D., . 798 

Dual Ownership of Land in Ireland a 
Myth, The. Rev. George McDer- 
mot, . . . . . . . 251 

Editorial Notes, . . . 139, 428, 572 

Encyclical of Leo XIII. to the Bishops 
of the United States. Very Rev. A. 
F. Hewit, D.D., . . . .721 

Fra Angelico. {Illustrated.) Sarah C. 

Flint, 454 

Glimpses of Life in an Anglican Semi- 
nary. (Illustrated.) Rev. Clarence 
,A. Walworth, 88, 199, 321, 477, 599, 783 

Glimpses of Lourdes. {Illustrated.) 

Alba, 237 

Greater Gladness, As by a. Kathryn 

Prindiville, ' . . . . . 209 

Gregory the Great and the Barbarian 
World. (Illustrated.) Rev. T. /. 
Shahan, D.D., .... 507 



Here and There in Catholicism. Henry 

A. Adams, . . 232, 433, 621, 739 

Hillwood Christmas Ball, The. Mrs. 

M. E. Henry-Ruffin, . . . 291 

History of Marriage, The, . . . 682 

Hoffmann's Studio, In. (Illustrated.) 

Mary Catherine Crowley, . . 653 

Humanism of Peter, The. K. F. Mul- 

laney, ...... 439 

Immoral Use and Sale of Intoxicants. 

Very Rev. A. F. Hewit, D.D., . i 

Infanticide practised in China ? Is. {Il- 
lustrated.) A. M. Clarke, . . 769 

Irishwoman's Rosary, An. Magdalen 

Rock 83 

Italian Harvest Scenes. Henrietta D. 

Skinner, ...... 227 

Lesson of "The White City," The. 

Very Rev. A. F. Hewit, D.D., . 73 

Men of Letters and Early Training. W. 

R. C tax ton, ..... 259 

Missionary Experiences on the Cleve- 
land Plan. Rev. Walter Elliott, . 

409, 546, 666 

Modern Iconoclast, A. Mary Angela 

Spellissy, 744 

Neglected Mission, A. {Illustrated.) 

Dorothea Lummis, .... 175 

New Publications 714 

New Hedonism, The. S. M. Miller, 

M.D., 13 

Noble Arab Martyr, A. M. /. L., . 415 

Normandy, From. (Illustrated.) V. 

A. C. I., . . ' . . . .100 

Pastoral Letter of the Bishops of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church. 
Very Rev. A. F. Hewit, D.D., . 830 

Pharaohs of British Rule, The./0An 

/. O'SAea, 51 

Pictures of the Galway Coast. (Illus- 
trated.) Marguerite Moore, . .727 

Pierre Loti. Mary Josephine Onahan, 191 

Poet's Romance, A. Walter Lecky, . 673 

Prince of India; or, "Why Constanti- 
nople Fell," The. (Illustrated.) 
Rev. Charles Warren Currier, . 306 

Prince of Scribblers, A. Vincent D. 

Rossman, 806 

Professor Huxley's Admissions. Rev. 

William Barry, D.D., . . 181,333 

Proposed Agnostic Amendment to our 
State Constitution, The. Rev. 
Thomas McMillan, .... 267 

Pullman Strike Commission, The. 

Rev. George McDermot, C.S.P., . 627 

Question of Reconciliation between 
Church and State in Italy, The. 
William /. D. Croke, . . . 579 



CONTENTS. 



Ready to Strike But When and 
Where ? (Illustrated.} S. Mil- 
lington Miller, M.D., . . -535 

Review of Father Tanquerey's Special 

Dogmatic Theology. Very Rev. A. 

F. Hewit, D.D., . . . .611 
Road to Lourdes, On ttyj. (Frontispiece.} 
Rome via England. Marion Ames 

Taggart, 636 

Scope of Public-School Education, The. 

Right Rev. J. L. Spalding, D.D., 758 
Sir John Thompson. (Illustrated.) 

J. A. /. McKenna, . . . .816 
Talk about New Books, 124, 276, 419, 562. 

704, 842 



Tennyson and Holmes: A Parallel. 

(Illustrated.} Helen M. Sweeney, 521 
Three Lives Lease, The. Jane Smiley, 445 
Tubingen and its Catholic Scholars. 

(Illustrated^ Rev. George F. X. 

Griffith, 23 

Unhappy Armenia. (Illustrated.) 

John J. O'Shea, . . . -553 
Unrecognized Genius, An. Marion A. 

Taggart, 3 8 

Virgin of Lourdes, The. (Frontispiece.} 

Visit to the Monastery of La Grande 

Chartreuse, A. (Illustrated.} Ch. 

Chailtt-Long, 59 

Vocation of Ida, The. L. W. Reilly, . 158 



POETRY. 



Alma Mater, To my. Rev. f. B. Tabb, 226 
Alone. Charlotte Grace O'Brien, . 107 
Birth of Friendship, The. James 

Buckham n'5 

Catharine Seyton. Alba, . ' . -37 
Christ's Masterpiece. Bar net Told- 

ridge, 768 

Coliseum, The. Right Rev. J. L. 

Spalding, 72 

Contrasts. Rev. William P. Treacy, 841 
Convent Garden, In the. S. Alice 

Raulett, 665 

Daybreak. Charleson Shane, . . 344 
Dulce in Utile. Paul O'Connor, . . 625 
Durham Candles. Leuise Imogen 

Guiney, 332 

For Thee the Joys that cross the Tide. 

Edward Doyle, .... 598 
" Gloria in Excelsis Deo." S. M. 

Oovey, 320 

Gobhan Saer, The. Rev. George Mc- 

Dermot, 121 



"I Will Gather Me Sticks." (Illus- 
trated.) P. J. MacCorry, . . 475 
Joy in Heaven. Magdalen Rock, . 198 
Leo 'X.lll.Jtalph Adams Cram, . . 805 
Lights of Home, The./eanor C. 

Donnelly, 12 

March. Walter Lecky, .... 782 

Mendicant, The. P. /. MacCorry, . 180 

New Year, The. Albert Reynaud, . 672 
Ode to St. Thomas Aquinas. Mary T. 

Waggaman, 795 

Rev. Father Maurice, C.P. Helen 

Grace Smith, 503 

Sceptic, The. Mary T. Waggaman, . 453 
Songs Unsung, Two. M. E. Henry- 

Ruffin, 266 

Suffering Souls, The. W. /. O'Reilly, 258 
Venerable Bede, The.mma Playter 

Seabury, 444 

Venite Adoremus. John J. O'Sfiea, . 289 

W. S. Lilly, Esq., To. Walter Lecky, 87 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



Annals of the Georgetown Convent of 
the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin 

Mary, 7 io 

Belief in the Divinity of Jesus Christ, . 130 
Bible. Science, and Faith, . . . 135 
Brehon Laws, The, .... 568 
Catholic and Protestant Countries com- 
pared in Civilization, Popular Happi- 
ness, General Intelligence, and Mo- 
rality, 562 

Children of Charles I., The, . . 133 

Distinguished Irishmen of the Sixteenth 

Century, I2 6 

Final Report on the Catholic Educa- 
tional Exhibit, World's Columbian 
Exposition, Chicago, 1893, . . 128 

Flowers of Mary, 134 

Fourteen of Meaux, The, . . .565 
Happy, Hours of Childhood By the 

Seaside, j-j^ 

Herald Sermons, 7 I2 

Hints on Preaching, .... 284 
Humor of Ireland, The, . . . 853 
La Stigmatisation, 1'Extase Divine et les 
Miracles de Lourdes: reponse aux 

libres-penseurs, 569 

Lectures on Biology, .... 281 



Life of St. Philip Neri, Apostle of Rome, 131 

Life's Decision, A, . . . . 277 

Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey, D.D., 847 

Life of Mary Monholland, . . . 709 

Meditations for all the Days of the Year, 426 

Melodies in Mood and Tense, . . 566 

My Lady Rotha, 276 

Napoleon Romances, The, . . -133 
New Light on the Bible and the Holy 

Land, 282 

Odes of Horace, The, .... 421 

Orchids 124 

Quatre Portraits de Femmes, Episodes 

des Persecutions d'Angleterre, . . 564 
Selections from the Poems of Aubrey de 

Vere, 704 

St. Paul and his Missions, . . . 423 

St. Thomas's Priory, . _ . . . 137 

Stories of Old Greece, .... 854 

Things of the Mind, .... 421 

Trilby, 279 

Truth and Reality of the Eucharistic 

Sacrifice, The, 842 

Watches of the Sacred Passion, with 

Before and After 852 

Wedding Garment, The, . . . 135 

Wilson's Cyclopedic Photography, . 128 




DEATH OF ST. BRUNO. (See page di.} 



THE 





VOL. LX. OCTOBER, 1894. No. 355. 

IMMORAL USE AND SALE OF INTOXICANTS. 

BY VERY REV. A. F. HEWIT, D.D. % 

HAVE a hereditary interest in the Cause of 
Temperance. Intemperance prevailed alarm- 
ingly, and was increasing in New England and 
the Middle States, at the beginning of this 
century. The habitual use of intoxicating 
liquors as a beverage w,as common among the 
most respectable and religious classes, includ- 
ing the clergy. All at once, about the year 1830, a panic 
seized on a large number of the more zealous and devoted 
members of the churches in view of the strides which the vice 
of intemperance was making, and there was a crusade preached 
against liquor which was very successful in bringing about a 
great reformation. Moderate drinking was vehemently attacked, 
as the principal cause of the excesses of intemperance, and 
total abstinence from spirituous liquors was the remedy pro- 
claimed as the only one efficacious, and as not only advisable 
but necessary, as an ordinary rule. The intoxicating drinks 
which were in common use at that time were strong, distilled 
liquors, particularly New England and Jamaica Rum. Imported 
wines were found only on the tables of the rich. The only 
other drink made use of extensively, especially by farmers, was 
cider. No kind of drink was denounced at the beginning of 
the Temperance Reformation, as dangerous when taken in 
moderation, except " ardent spirits " ; and the sale of such 
liquors in retail for use as an ordinary beverage was the partic- 
ular kind of traffic condemned as morally unlawful, and not to 
be tolerated in a Christian professor. 
VOL. LX i 

Copyright. VBRY RBV. A. F. HBWIT. 1894. 



2 IMMORAL USE AND SALE OF INTOXICANTS. [Oct., 

My father was the principal preacher of this Temperance 
Crusade in America and England, and was honored with the 
title of "Apostle of Temperance" before Father Mathew ap- 
peared on the scene, and merited this glorious title. 

I am happy to remember that during my missionary career of 
fifteen years I waged an incessant war against intemperance, and it 
is known to all that the Paulists have ever been foremost in the 
crusade against this base, venomous, and deadly dragon, whose 
breath poisons the air which so many unhappy creatures inhale. 

No longer able to contend as formerly against this monster 
by preaching, I wish, nevertheless, to cast one more javelin at 
him. I am happy to see that a host of valiant combatants 
have arisen to carry on this holy crusade. And it is matter for 
congratulation that the representative of the Holy Father has 
animated their courage and strengthened their arms, as well as 
stricken terror into the hearts of their opponents, by his appro- 
bation of the opportune legislation of the Bishop of Columbus. 

I have no intention of treating at large or at length of such 
an extensive and complex subject as the morality of the liquor- 
traffic and the use of intoxicants as a beverage. 

I shall restrict myself for the most part to the narrow 
limits of that den of the dragon which I venture to call by the 
vulgar name of " whiskey-shop " ; and to those who are therein 
engaged in getting money or wasting it, by the sale and con- 
sumption of ardent spirits. The more genteel and general 
terms by which all the business of manufacturing and trading 
in liquors can be designated are too ambiguous to be service- 
able for my purpose, without a great deal of definition and 
circumlocution. In London there are " gin-palaces." Similar 
places in New York are called " saloons " ; but as there are 
many most respectable and genteel apartments of a quite differ- 
ent sort, not devoted to drinking purposes, called by the same 
name, and the resorts I have in view are in general more or 
less wanting in respectability, I prefer to call them by a 
name which tells exactly what they are, viz., " whiskey-shops." 
In New England the name of these places used to be " grog- 
shops," or " rum-shops." If those who keep " saloons " find 
these terms opprobrious, why is it ? " Shop " is certainly a re- 
spectable word; why should "grog-shop," " rum-shop," "whiskey- 
shop," have a worse sound than " barber-shop," " candy-shop," or 
" carpenter-shop " ? Evidently, because rum and whiskey have 
caused a vast amount of degradation and misery, when abused 
by excessive drinking, and because so many of the shops where 



1894-] IMMORAL USE AND SALE OF INTOXICANTS. 3 

these liquors are sold and drank are centres of drunkenness. 
Those who profess that they carry on the traffic in liquor in a 
respectable way, consistent with the precepts of morality and 
religion, if their plea is reasonable and just, have no cause for 
taking offence at the opprobrium which is cast upon those who 
are the refuse and scum of their trade. If they are sincere in 
their professions, if they really have the cause of religion, 
morality, and social order at heart, let them join in the 
crusade against intemperance and whiskey-shops, and .do their 
best to clear the skirts of their trade from the disgrace which 
has stuck to it, by being dragged through the mud. 

Most assuredly, I will not propose any doctrine which can 
be called extreme or fanatical. I do not condemn the drink- 
ing, sale, and manufacture of spirituous liquors, much less of the 
fermented and malt liquors, as in their nature immoral and sin- 
ful. There is nothing immoral in the mere act of drinking a 
glass of brandy or whiskey, or in the habit of using such 
drinks regularly, with due moderation, unless there is some cir- 
cumstance therewith connected which attaches to it an immoral 
character. There is nothing essentially and intrinsically im- 
moral in the wholesale and retail traffic in spirituous liquors. 
To make it immoral, there must be something in the manner 
or circumstances of the traffic which attaches to it a vicious 
quality ; it must be infected by some deadly or noxious ingredi- 
ent, like a river polluted from a cess-pool. 

There is nothing immoral in selling revolvers and cartridges. 
But if, in certain circumstances, this traffic were chiefly with 
men who were bent on homicide or resistance to the law, or if 
it were carried on in violation of laws made to regulate and 
restrict the use and sale of firearms, for the preservation of the 
public peace, it would become criminal. 

There is nothing immoral in playing cards or billiards, even 
for money, yet, as every one knows, gambling is, in point of 
fact, one of the most dangerous and ruinous of habits, and the 
places where it is carried on have been very appropriately 
called " hells." The lottery is not in itself immoral. Neverthe- 
less, it has become practically such an evil, that it has been 
thought necessary to make it illegal. 

The whole question of traffic, especially retail traffic in 
intoxicating liquors, must therefore be considered, not merely 
in the abstract, but in the concrete ; not merely in its con- 
stant and universal aspects, but also in those which are vari- 
able in different times and places, and which are particular. 



4 IMMORAL USE AND SALE OF INTOXICANTS. [Oct., 

It is a great mistake to make the practical standard and 
rule for the application of moral principles 1 which are alway 
and everywhere the same, identical, in respect to the liquor- 
traffic, in this country and in all other countries. 

The condition of a country where pure native wines and 
pure beer are abundant and in common use, and gross intern- 
perance is not a prevalent vice, is different from that of our 
own country. I will not digress, however, from my chief and 
indeed only point, viz., that the whiskey-shops which exist and 
thrive in such great numbers in our own country are a nuisance, 
and that they ought to be the chief objective point of attack 
in the crusade against intemperance. The city of New York, 
from the days of its Dutch founders, has held a bad eminence 
in the number of its retail stores for the sale of liquor. At 
present, we are told that there are some seven or eight thousand 
of what in polite language are called " saloons," and above forty 
thousand in the State. No matter what plea the apologists of 
the saloons may put in, in behalf of those which they claim to 
be conducted in a way which does not offend against religion, 
morality, or the social order ; no one can deny that many of 
them belong to the class of low, disreputable whiskey-shops. 
They are the resort of habitual and occasional drunkards, and 
hard drinkers. Drinking to excess is mostly carried on in these 
places by the majority of the men, especially of the laboring 
class, who are addicted to this vice. In most cases, it is there 
that sober young men begin to go the downward road which 
leads to destruction. The worst of these dens are vile beyond 
description. Every policeman, and every priest, whose duty has 
ever required him to look into these haunts of iniquity of a 
Saturday evening, knows by his own observation what most 
decent people can only know through hearing or reading ; un- 
less, unhappily, they see in the degradation and ruin of their 
own relatives and friends the effects of resorting to " saloons." 

The same condition of things exists all over the country. 
Parish priests everywhere find the evil influences which tend to 
demoralize their people, to resist and thwart their own pastoral 
labors, centred in the whiskey-shops. Missionaries find the 
great obstacle to the success of missions in these same strong- 
holds of vice and sin. Great numbers of the victims of intem- 
perance are brought to conversion and reformation. Many whis- 
key-shops are broken up. It is to be feared that a considerable 
number of those who have been reformed relapse after a time. 
Some who have shut up their shops reopen them after their 



1894-] IMMORAL USE AND SALE OF INTOXICANTS. 5 

virtuous resolutions have evaporated, and new wolves are always 
prowling around and breaking into the sheepfold. In the war- 
fare of parish priests and missionaries against sin, of course, 
they must wage it against all sins and all vices. But one of 
the chief objects of assault is intemperance, which is not only 
in itself a gross and destructive vice, but the parent of many 
other sins, and the cause of many miseries, not only to those 
who indulge in it, but to others also, and is a loathsome ulcer 
on the social body. 

It is evident that some kind of control and restriction in 
the liquor-traffic by the law is not only right and proper, but 
necessary. For instance, the law requiring saloons to be closed 
on Sunday, is one which must be approved by all who have 
any moral sense. All good citizens ought to observe and to 
support it. It is scandalous for those who make a profession 
of being Catholics to violate or evade it. Besides this, the 
whole moral authority of the church concurs with the civil au- 
thority in forbidding this gross abuse and disorder. 

The reformation of abuses in connection with the traffic in 
liquor by legislation and by all kinds of moral influence must 
be admitted by all to be most desirable, whatever differences 
of opinion there may be about particular methods and measures. 
A " Public-House Reform Association " has been lately formed 
in England, which a writer in the London Spectator of July 21 
says " all reasonable men will hail with enthusiasm." 

In regard to the whiskey-shops, which I have attacked in 
this article, it is my opinion that their very existence is an 
abuse ; that they are incapable of any reformation, and that 
the temperance reformation which is so very necessary among 
the most degenerate class of our Catholic people requires that 
they should be abolished. I mean by this, that all Catholics 
who keep such places should be persuaded to abandon the busi- 
ness. The church has no power to compel them to do so. The 
law may use coercion, but there is reason to fear that it only 
drives the disreputable traffic to hide in holes and corners, and 
that those who wish to do so, will get drunk, and run the risk 
of arrest. Prohibitory and coercive legislation, where there is a 
large class of the population given to habitual and even intem- 
perate drinking ; and a great number of persons, with small re- 
gard for either law or morality, bent on making an easy living 
by selling liquor to them ; is a difficult matter, and the execu- 
tion of laws after they are made is still more difficult. Only the 
moral influence over those who are in the habit of drinking and 



6 IMMORAL USE AND SALE OF INTOXICANTS. [Oct., 

those who are engaged in selling liquor, which is strong enough 
to keep them from violating the moral law, is powerful enough 
to effect a real reformation. A general and strong public opin- 
ion which makes the immoral abuse of liquor, and the' immoral 
traffic in it, odious and disgraceful, is much more efficacious 
than legislation. And it is this public opinion which alone can 
give adequate support to legislative measures, however wise and 
prudent they may be. 

It is a lamentable fact that a great number of Catholics, by 
external profession, are engaged in the liquor-trade. This is a 
great evil, and a great scandal. But, such being the case, it is 
specially incumbent on the bishops and clergy to bring to bear 
all the moral power of the church against the baleful and im- 
moral power of the party which is devoted to the interests of 
the liquor-traffic. It is impossible to draw a line of sharp de- 
marcation separating the class of retail liquor-dealers whose 
manner of carrying on their business deserves condemnation as 
immoral, from the more respectable members of the trade who 
can be exempted from this censure. The trade thrives chiefly 
on intemperance. Its customers are chiefly those who are given 
to immoderate drinking. Besides, there is a great traffic in 
spurious, adulterated, and deleterious drinks. If the general use 
of intoxicants were confined to the consumption of pure and 
genuine distilled, fermented, and malt liquors by moderate 
drinkers, the retail traffic would be reduced to a relatively small 
compass, and the wholesale trade and manufacture would be 
diminished in proportion. The business can be carried on with- 
out sin, but its dangers and temptations are great. The trade 
is in ill odor on account of the great scandals and moral evils 
in which it is implicated, especially in this country. The Third 
Plenary Council of Baltimore has counselled all Catholics to 
keep out of it, or to abandon it ; if they would obey this ad- 
vice, a great incubus would be removed from the shoulders of 
the Catholic pastors, a great obstacle in the way of the Tem- 
perance Reformation would be shoved aside ; and the moral 
welfare of the whole community would be essentially promoted. 

The leaders and advocates of the liquor-trade can take an 
attitude of defiance toward ecclesiastical authority if they choose, 
but they will only bring disgrace upon themselves and stir up 
the valiant warriors against the venomous dragon of intemper- 
ance to more zealous and persistent combats. It is of no use 
for these gentlemen to try to assume a haughty port, and as- 
sert their consequence as a numerous and wealthy body of Cath- 



1894-] IMMORAL USE AND SALE OF INTOXICANTS. 7 

olics ; having in the circle of their upper ten social and politi- 
cal influence, and the power to aid or to damage the Catholic 
cause. They will not extort any greater degree of toleration 
than they deserve. Such a plea is utterly vulgar and base. It 
puts the Catholic Church and religion on the level of a politi- 
cal party, or a merely secular society, like one of the kingdoms 
or republics of this world. All history shows to what an ex- 
tent the members of the Catholic Church, both ecclesiastics and 
laymen, have degraded her sacred character, and left, to future 
ages a legacy of scandal, by trafficking in holy things, and defil- 
ing the sanctuary with their worldly merchandise. 

The external splendor and prosperity of the Catholic Church, 
the human and worldly outside, in its best and most honorable 
aspect, is only an inferior environment, a shell, within which her 
vital force, her soul, sanctified by the Divine Spirit, has been 
active and working for the spiritual and moral good of mankind. 
Her true mission is to make men virtuous and holy, and thus 
to fit them for heaven. If she tolerates a multitude of sinners 
mixed up with the just in her communion, it is only in the 
hope of converting and reclaiming them. It is not in splendid 
ceremonies, celebrations and processions, in noble institutions, 
grand churches, crowds of the great and rich thronging her tem- 
ples, that her true glory consists. It is in the number of her 
children who are living virtuous and holy lives, and the crowds 
of penitent sinners who surround her confessionals. All outside 
means and measures are valuable only as contributing to the 
fulfilment of the one purpose which alone has true worth, the 
interior work of the salvation of souls. ' 

In carrying on this work, since one most essential part of it is 
to wage war upon all sin and vice, one chief duty of the priest- 
hood, in which all good Christians are bound to aid them, is 
to labor zealously for the suppression of intemperance and of 
that kind of traffic in liquor which is its principal proximate oc- 
casion. 

I come now to the consideration of the Total Abstinence 
movement as a means of reformation and a remedy for the vice 
of excessive drinking. 

No instructed Catholic can maintain the proposition that 
total abstinence is a rule of universal moral obligation. Never- 
theless, it may be a moral obligation for certain persons, a rule 
to be earnestly counselled for many others, and as a voluntary 
practice of self-denial it is praiseworthy in all except those to 
whom it would be injurious. At certain times and in certain 



8 IMMORAL USE AND SALE OF INTOXICANTS. [Oct., 

countries, it is the most efficacious remedy for the prevalent 
vice of intemperance. That celebrated and truly apostolic priest, 
Father Mathew, accomplished a wonderful reformation in Ire- 
land, for which he received the warm encomiums of the most 
eminent men in Ireland and England. He did this great work 
by means of the total-abstinence pledge, and it is hard to see 
how any less drastic remedy could have been efficacious. 

The other great temperance reformation accomplished in 
this country was also brought about by preaching and adopting 
the rule of total-abstinence from the use of ardent spirits as a 
beverage. Later on, all intoxicating drinks were included by a 
certain portion of the reformers, who have carried their principles 
to a great extreme, and whose positions I have no time to dis- 
cuss. The effect of this temperance reformation was deep, ex- 
tensive, and lasting. The habitual use of ardent spirits has 
been to a great extent abolished among the more reputable 
classes of the American people. The use of wine, on private 
tables and in social banquets, has been much diminished, es- 
pecially among the professed members of the churches. Intem- 
perance in the higher walks of life, among those who have a 
social reputation to keep or lose, has been forced to hide itself 
behind private doors. It would be a great mistake to suppose 
that the ravages of this vice have been confined to the laboring 
and poorer classes, or to those who resort to the haunts where 
inebriates are gathered together to indulge in drinking to excess. 

Men and even women moving in the upper circles, even the 
highest, have been tainted by it, often to the serious injury, 
sometimes to the ruin, of their prospects in life and their do- 
mestic happiness. Intemperance has made victims of statesmen, 
professional men, literary men, sad to say, clergymen, both 
Catholic and Protestant. Frequently it has been the highly in- 
tellectual, the gifted, the cultivated, the promising, the amiable, 
the choice specimens of humanity, who have slid down the slip- 
pery hill of dissipation and have finally come to grief at the 
bottom. Some have become sots ; some have literally drank 
themselves to death ; some have been killed in drunken brawls ; 
and others have committed suicide. The temperance reforma- 
tion has not put an end to this miserable chapter in the sad 
history of human misery. The demon of intemperance is still 
luring victims from all ranks in society to their ruin. 

The practical question we have in hand is : What means and 
remedies are potent and efficacious enough to be employed suc- 
cessfully in counteracting this deadly moral epidemic ? 



1894-] IMMORAL USE AND SALE OF INTOXICANTS. 9 

For a considerable number, that is, for all who have become 
enslaved to a habit of intemperance, total abstinence, at least 
for a long time, is morally necessary, and the only means of 
effecting a permanent reformation. For a much larger class, 
who are exposed to many temptations, total abstinence is the 
most perfect safeguard and therefore to be most earnestly re- 
commended. For boys and youths, the same reasons which are 
such a strong motive for recommending total abstinence as a 
safeguard have a double force. And as for all others, who have 
no special need of taking any pledge for their own safety, their 
enrollment in the ranks of the great Total Abstinence Union, 
or some similar society, is most praiseworthy, and a great en- 
couragement to those who need the powerful influence of ex- 
ample and association to keep them sober and steady. The 
principal society has sixty thousand members. Those who are 
enrolled in separate local societies, or in those confraternities 
whose rule is less strict, may amount to forty thousand more. 
Besides these, great numbers are continually taking the pledge 
singly from priests in all the parishes where Irish Catholics 
abound. The English army in India, whose infantry regiments 
are largely composed of Irishmen, has a Total Abstinence So.- 
ciety embracing twenty-two thousand members, very few of 
whom are ever brought before a court-martial. This noble ad- 
vanced guard of the army of the sober and temperate deserves 
our praise, our thanks, and our encouragement. Its moral influ- 
ence cannot well be measured, and the high ground which it has 
taken and fortified is the strongest of all the barriers which 
resist the encroachments of our deadly enemy intemperance. 

Abstinence from the use of ardent spirits as an habitual bev- 
erage is to be most strongly urged upon all, even those who 
have no special need of guarding themselves from the tempta- 
tion of drinking to excess. The quantity of these strong drinks 
which can be taken without injury is so small, that they are 
unfit for social purposes. It requires so much self-control to 
keep within the strict bounds of moderation, the allurement of 
the habit is so subtle and strong, leading gradually to excess, 
that total abstinence from their use, except in a quasi-medicinal 
way, is the only safe general rule, especially in the conditions 
of social intercourse actually existing among a large portion of 
our people. 

Again, it must be most emphatically urged upon all, espe- 
cially young men, to keep away from saloons and to shun the 
company of the dissipated and reckless, as much as possible. 



io IMMORAL USE AND SALE OF INTOXICANTS. [Oct., 

The dissipated and reckless are capable of reformation, if they 
will cease to frequent the scenes and the company where their 
principal temptation lies. For the men who make their living 
chiefly from the custom of the intemperate, there is very little 
hope that any kind of religious and moral influence will have 
any great effect upon the majority of them. They have a seared 
conscience, and whatever outside show of religion they may 
keep up from their traditional habits and from human respect, 
is practically worth as little as the devotions of Italian brigands. 
They may still have a vital spark of faith under the ashes in 
which their souls are buried, and fear may drive them to seek 
reconciliation with God at the end of life ; but during life they 
are not and cannot be good Christians. I am speaking now of 
those who carry on the liquor-trade in such a way that it is a 
proximate occasion of mortal sin to themselves and others. 
Even if they receive the Last Sacraments and Christian burial, 
that gives no assurance of their salvation. 

As for those who profess to carry on the business of selling 
liquor in strict accordance with the principles and rules of mo- 
rality and religion, I waive the question of the justice of their 
glea, and take them on the ground of their own professions. 

They claim to be respectable and value highly their own 
social standing, and that of their families. They demand consid- 
eration as good citizens and good Catholics, liberal and gener- 
ous toward the church and toward religious and philanthropic 
undertakings. 

I wish to propose a few questions to this upper class of 
liquor-sellers, including all saloon-keepers who claim the right 
to belong to it. These questions are for them to answer "frank- 
ly to their own consciences, and to the Lord who will judge 
them at death and on the Last Day. 

Is it not true that there are many such " whiskey-shops " as 
I have described, deserving the denunciation I have pronounced 
against them, with the support of the best public opinion of 
the country? 

Would these respectable gentlemen wish that their sons, and 
.the young men who are to marry their daughters, should fre- 
quent or avoid saloons and the company which is to be found 
in them ? 

Do they, or do they not, lend their influence, singly or in 
association, to sustain an obnoxious liquor-trade, and resist the 
crusade of the clergy and of the best citizens of the republic 
against intemperance? 



1894-] IMMORAL USE AND SALE OF INTOXICANTS. n 

Can they, without any qualm of conscience, ask of God, 
when they assist at Mass and offer their morning prayers, to 
bless and prosper their daily business and traffic ? Can they 
hope that they are serving God, gaining merit, and preparing 
their souls for heaven, as well as making money, by the trans- 
action of their worldly affairs ? 

Those who resent exclusion from office or membership in the 
Society of St. Vincent de Paul and other religious confraterni- 
ties, are they free from all complicity in the causes which pro- 
duce the poverty, degradation, and misery which the above- 
mentioned society is laboring to relieve ? 

Can they make the intention, every morning, to offer up all 
the actions of the day in union with the intentions of the Sa- 
cred Hearts of Jesus and Mary and the Apostleship of Prayer? 

I repeat here what I have said already, that the primary 
and only essential object of the church is to make men virtu- 
ous and religious, and that the real strength and glory of the 
church is in her virtuous members, who are good and practical 
Christians. The sanctifying work which the church is capable 
of accomplishing has always been hindered and is now hindered 
by the negligence and the misdeeds of unworthy and bad 
Christians. At the present time, in this country, one great ob- 
stacle to the religious and moral influence of the church on 
the American people is the immoral use and sale of liquor by 
those who belong externally to her communion. It is of vital 
importance that we should contend with all our might against 
this evil. 

I will close this article with the grave admonition addressed 
by the Fathers of the Third Council of Baltimore to all who 
are engaged in the sale of liquor : 

" WE ADMONISH, FINALLY, ALL THOSE OF OUR LAITY ENGAGED 
IN THE TRAFFIC IN INTOXICATING LIQUORS TO REFLECT SERI- 
OUSLY WITH HOW MANY AND GREAT DANGERS AND OCCASIONS 
OF SIN THEIR BUSINESS^ ALTHOUGH NOT IN ITSELF UNLAWFUL, IS 
SURROUNDED. LET THEM CHOOSE SOME MORE HONORABLE WAY 
OF GAINING A LIVING IF THEY CAN. BUT, AT LEAST, LET THEM 
ENDEAVOR WITH ALL THEIR MIGHT TO REMOVE THE OCCASIONS 
OF SIN FROM THEMSELVES AND OTHERS. . . . IF, HOWEVER, 
THROUGH THEIR GUILTY CAUSE OR CO-OPERATION RELIGION IS 
DISGRACED AND MEN ARE LED ON TO RUIN, LET THEM KNOW 
THAT THERE IS AN AVENGER IN HEAVEN WHO WILL CERTAINLY 
INFLICT ON THEM MOST GRIEVOUS PUNISHMENT." 



12 



THE LIGHTS OF HOME. 



[Oct., 




THE LIGHTS OF HOME. 

FROM stranger scenes, at eve returning, 

I trod the paths belov'd of yore ; 
And, in the cottage-windows burning, 

The welcome tapers hailed once more. 
With fiery tongues they seemed to say : 
" Dear wanderer from far away ! 
Though long and late thy feet may roam, 
We bid thee cheer ! 
Joy, peace are here, 
Where shine the friendly lights of home ! " 

Ah ! then I raised mine eyes (o'er-flowing 

With happy tears) to heaven's blue; 
And, in God's palace-windows glowing, 
I saw his tapers shining too ; 

His stars, that sang with rapture strong : 
" Dear exile, who hast wandered long, 
We greet thee from this glittering dome ! 
Joy, peace divine 
Are here, where shine 
The lights of Love's eternal Home ! " 

ELEANOR C. DONNELLY. 





1894-] THE NEW HEDONISM. 13 



THE NEW HEDONISM. 

BY S. MILLINGTON MILLER, M.D. 

* 

" When I am nothing but a drift of white 
Dust in a cruse of gold, and nothing know 
But darkness and immeasurable night." 

ARTHLY pleasure is naturally the only paradise 
of the disbeliever in immortality. " Let us eat, 
drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die ! " 
The doctrine of " conditional immortality," which 
is preached to-day, in more or less detail, from 
some able pulpits, teaches that those who are unsuccessful in 
the struggle ; those who have " sown to the flesh," shall reap 
first corruption, and then Nirvana. None of the eloquent ad- 
vocates of this exclusive Aidenn which the soul may realize by 
its own intelligent development, or lose by its own deliberate 
delinquencies have illustrated their doctrine by examples. They 
have not stated whether immortality is open to heathen who 
have " outsoared the shadow of their night," or limited to 
those only who have enjoyed the teachings of Christianity. They 
have not discriminated for or aga'inst the illustrious disbelievers 
of Christian ages. 

Comparing those who preceded with those who have en- 
joyed Christian education, shall we take it for granted that it is 
the same " vital spark " which is condemned in the case of this 
obscure priest to a life spent in alleviating the sufferings and 
cheering the horrible depression of a colony of lepers in some 
island of the Pacific, and exalted in the case of that " searcher 
of the skies " into a cloudless span of days spent in intimate 
communion with 

"The splendors of the firmament of Time"? 

That Hipparchus consumed his immortality in watching stars 
and milky ways, and has now, for ever, sunk into an eventless 
rest, with all his yearnings unsatisfied ; while Father Damien as- 
cended at once into that august company of "angels and arch- 
angels"? Was the spirit of David Livingstone in dim eclipse 
during his allotted earthly term of years, which were spent in 
unselfish alleviation of the sorrows and misfortunes of his fel- 
low-creatures, and has it now risen upon an eternal morning ? 



i 4 THE NEW HEDONISM. [Oct., 

Did the inspiration of Alexander the Great bask for thirty-three 
years in the matchless glory of unbroken conquest, and then 
disappear in the night of time never to rise again? Are these 
distinctions happily chosen, or are all these bright spirits now 
without blot, and are their thrones all 

" . . . built beyond mortal thought, 
Far in the unapparent " ? 

The doctrine of " The Development of Immortality " is a 
satisfactory and reasonable attempt to illumine our ignorance 
just in so far as it is Catholic in its application, and crowns the 
lives of all the great with immortal days; rewards with an un- 
alloyed existence hereafter all those illustrious dead who have, 
according to their lights, fulfilled with untiring energy the con- 
stant promptings of their noblest thoughts. But it will be a 
hopeless " Slough of Despond " if it is intended to consign the 
pure genius of Socrates to everlasting darkness, while it properly 
raises the sweet spirit of Phillips Brooks to the highest heaven. 

The present " Vanity Fair " of the social, intellectual, and 
religious world is aptly illustrated in a material way by Lord 
Macaulay's verbal etching of the condition of affairs in England 
after the Great Rebellion : " Boys smashing the beautiful win- 
dows of cathedrals ; Quakers .riding naked through the market 
place ; Fifth Monarchy men shouting for King Jesus ; agitators 
lecturing on the tops of tubs on the fate of Agag." 

Verily there is nothing new under the sun. The old dis- 
coveries, and the time-honored theories, are unexpectedly shaken 
into view in the mental kaleidoscope. The longer they have 
been hidden away out of sight, the more attractive they naturally 
at once become as intellectual playthings. 

The Reformer, or Iconoclast, swollen and puffed up with the 
importance of his divine mission, and relying upon the ability 
of his genius to recreate something better and more permanent 
out of the ashes of what he has burned down, addresses the 
Hermes of his message in much the same grandiose terms that 
Fletcher puts into the mouth of Arbaces: 

" He shall have chariots easier than air, 
Which I shall have invented ; and thyself 
Thou art the messenger shall ride before him 
On a horse cut out of an entire diamond, 
That shall be made to go with golden wheels, 
I know not how yet." 



1894-] THE NEW HEDONISM. 15 

The Evangelist of Hedonism (Greek edont, pleasure) died 
just twenty-two hundred and fifty years ago Aristippus of Cy- 
rene, in Africa. He was, very naturally, a cosmopolite. Wan- 
dering about from place to place, he reached Athens, and found 
at once a magnet in Socrates, whose school he joined, and re- 
mained in attendance on the lectures until its founder's death in 
399 B.C. His teachings differed in many respects from those of 
his famous master. He had also brought with him from his na- 
tive city habits of luxury and ostentation which contrasted 
strangely with the homely and temperate career of Socrates. 

The life of Aristippus is the best exemplification of his prin- 
ciples. True temperance, according to him, consists not in ab- 
staining from pleasure, but in being able to enjoy it with moder- 
ation. He therefore indulged freely in good living, rich clothing, 
splendid dwellings, and the society of the accomplished hetcera. 
But, while enjoying all these pleasures, he was thoroughly his 
own master, and never allowed them to destroy his equanimity 
or overleap his self-control. As he had attained to the condition 
of happiness under all circumstances he could relinquish pleas- 
ure at any moment. His principal efforts were directed towards 
enjoying the present moment, and driving dull care away. The 
object of life, according to Aristippus, is the attainment of 
pleasure, which must be positive and real ; not merely the ab- 
sence of pain. By pleasure, Aristippus meant immediate grati- 
fication the pleasure of the moment real happiness consisting 
in a succession of moments of intense pleasure. An action 
which gave rise to pleasure he regarded as good, irrespective of 
law of any kind. He was yet compelled to admit that some 
actions, which give immediate pleasure, entail more than their 
equivalent of pain. This ground he regarded as the conventional 
distinction between right and wrong. Man must not, however, 
give himself up to pleasure as a slave ; he must be superior to 
it. True happiness can, therefore, only be attained by rational 
insight, prudence, or wisdom. Only through this prudence, which 
is in truth virtue, can man make a proper use of the good 
things in his power, and free himself from those superstitions 
and violent passions that stand in the way of happiness. Through 
this wisdom we are enabled to preserve the mastery of pleasure, 
to rise superior to past, future, or even present happiness, and 
make ourselves independent of circumstances. True freedom of 
soul, real self-sufficiency, is reached by the exercise of wisdom, 
and by mental cultivation. 

The attainment of happiness by a wise choice of pleasures 



!6 THE NEW HEDONISM. [Oct., 

and by moderation is not at all a bad rule of life, though far 
from comprehensive. 

Although the new Hedonists are not "clothed in purple, 
and crowned with flowers, and fond of drink, and of female lute- 
players," they propose to have just as good a time intellectually. 
Mr. Grant Allen Fortnightly Review, March, 1894 appears to 
be the Great High-Priest of the order, and one scarcely knows 
whether to be charmed and fascinated with the wealth of his 
illustrations and their amazing beauty, or surprised at the slim 
logical basis which they afford for his conclusions. In describ- 
ing his theories I shall largely use Mr. Allen's own words. 

According to this expounder, the new motto is not " Be 
virtuous and you will be happy," but " Be happy and you will 
be virtuous." The "pig-philosophy" of the ascete, and the 
" devil-philosophy " of Carlyle and his followers, are alike dis- 
tasteful to him. He recognizes only two theories of human 
action that pleasure or pain are the sole guides of all volun- 
tary acts ; or that one or more superior beings who hate 
pleasure and love pain created the world, and desire that all of 
their creatures shall suffer more or less abundantly. 

Swinging to and fro by hooks drawn through the muscles of 
one's back at some East Indian festival, or casting one's self be- 
neath the wheels of Juggernaut, or walking with sharp flints in 
one's shoes, or wearing a hair-shirt of penance in some Spanish 
monastery, are alike rejected by Mr. Allen as proper or neces- 
sary conditions for entering into glory hereafter, though Mr. 
Allen and Omar Khayyam seem to be one in the belief that 
there is no such thing as glory, or anything else for that mat- 
ter, in the hereafter. The omnipotent being who "sends yin 
to heaven and ten to hell a' for his glory " comes in, of course, 
for small praise. 

This new Hedonist, indeed, considering the calm and 
emotionless way in which he sneers at the existence of a God, 
and misstates his attributes, resembles much the sang froid of 
that precocious child who is said to have amused the leisure 
hours of Sir Walter Scott : 

" She was more than usual calm, 
She did not give a single damn." 

The possibility of the doctrines of this new Utopia being in 
any way "less pure, less noble, less ideal, and less beautiful 
than Christian ethics," is dismissed as hardly worth consideration. 



1894-] THE NEW HEDONISM. 17 

Mrs. Sarah Grand, one of the "Shrieking Sisters" of the 
sect of modern social Revoltees, proposes to raze the entire 
earthly mansion of man, whose moral corruption is so hopeless- 
ly pronounced as to have nothing in it worth saving palaces 
and hovels, sanctuaries and dens of vice, are to be alike clean 
swept away. They were raised according to " Man's Idea," 
which has been weighed in the balance and found wanting. 
The new social fabric is to be after " Woman's Idea " par 
excellence, and neither the " cow kind " nor the " scum kind " 
of woman is to have a hand in the work. 

In the same way Mr. Allen seems ready to demolish our 
childhood's Heaven, and all that therein is. He intends to 
manipulate this new Hedonistic broom and, a la Mrs. Partington, 
sweep out every bit of the glory, all the angels, and the King 
himself, without a snivel. 

M. de Puimorin, who could not read and was taunted by 
M. Chapelain with the fact, retorted : " Qu'il n'avoit que trop 
su lire, depuis que Chapelain s'toit avis de faire imprimer." 
In much the same spirit we may exclaim that we have, with 
much difficulty, been able to see now that these new-fangled 
ideas have demolished all obstructions. 

These are samples of the preachers " who will set forth the 
new Hedonism in all its beauty and purity, and will contrast it 
with the ugly and soul-starving features of existing morality." 

Like the Red Cross Knight, they think they are doing 
battle for Fidessa and her injured beauty, instead of righting 
for the false and loathsome sorceress, Duessa. 

A " woman's right woman " suggested to Mr. Allen " Self- 
development is greater than self-sacrifice " as a proper motto 
for the new religion, and he is so much pleased with the 
oracle that he proceeds to do some very entertaining " sleight 
of hand " with it. " The ascetic greed implies a diabolical 
origin for the cosmos." " God so made us 'and put such in- 
stincts in us that to gratify them is wrong, and to crush them 
is right ; to be happy is wicked, while to be miserable is right- 
eousness." " If others could be happy without the need for 
our sacrificing ourselves, we should all be gainers." 

In reading the tales of Jules Verne one never knows where 
science ends and romance begins, and vice versa. It has been 
found, I believe, that this shaking together of truth and false- 
hood produces a general appearance of truth. If any of my 
readers ever cross in a train a closed bridge over a river in 
which twenty feet of solid wood-work alternate with one foot 
VOL. LX. 2 



1 8 THE NEW HEDONISM. [Oct., 

of opening, they will be surprised, if the train's speed is con- 
siderable, to find that the constant view of the river afforded 
to the eye is not appreciably interfered with, although the 
ratio of blank wall to really unobscured view be twenty to one. 
In much the same way it has been discovered by dialecticians, 
and Mr. Allen is scarcely less gifted than Plato in this respect, 
though far less candid, that a mixture of twenty parts of non- 
sense with one part of truth is a fair solution for the average 
individual. This solution is to be labelled " Truth : to be well 
shaken before taken" 

" Self-development " Mr. Allen believes to be an aim for all, 
and I think we fully agree with him that we should be con- 
stantly watching out how we may make ourselves stronger, 
saner, wiser, and better. That our limbs and wind be sound, 
that we create a mens sana in corpore sano. That we be well 
educated, and free, and beautiful. That each man be as tall, 
and supple, and well knit, and robust as possible, so that he 
may transmit the same very desirable physical perfections, un- 
tainted, to his descendants. That every woman be as thorough- 
ly developed in physique, and as universally fitted as possible 
for the bearing of children. That it is good for the typical 
man to find and marry such a woman, and for the typical 
woman to find and marry such a man. That the best possible 
auspices under which a child can be born into the world is as 
the child of such parents. That each man and each woman 
hold their virility and femininity in trust for humanity, and that 
to play fast and loose with such a trust is fraught with danger 
for the state and for future generations. 

Furthermore, there is just the same need for spiritual, intel- 
lectual, and aesthetic development. The highest possible point 
of human achievement should be reached in every direction. 
This includes getting rid of superstitions, dogmas, fears, vague 
terrors (shibboleths, in fact, of all descriptions). It includes a 
thorough knowledge of animal, plant, and human life; of the 
heavens, the earth, and the things that are under the earth ; of 
institutions and laws. We should each arrive at a consistent 
theory of the universe for ourselves. 

That we should struggle to diffuse a wider taste for poetry, 
music, art, and household decoration. That literature, poetry, 
painting, sculpture, and the beautifying of life by sound and 
form and word and color are among the most important tasks 
of civilization. So far so good. We should be in thorough ac- 
cord with Mr. Allen in nearly all he says. 



1894-] THE NEW HEDONISM. 19 

But now he substitutes the twenty feet of blank wall, through 
which he expects our eyes, filled with the great bright light of 
all the high and noble thoughts with which he has been filling 
us, to penetrate without any break carrying along with them 
the same happy view. 

Religion is the shadow of which Culture is the substance. The 
one pretends- to be what the other is in reality. 

I am not going to mark the lintel and door-posts of this 
statement with blood, for I am sure that Time, that Abaddon, 
or Destroying Angel, will not pass it by without destruction. 

Mr. Allen does not believe that Christianity is the sole bar 
which prevents us from wallowing in the filth like swine, and 
that to be rid of Christianity would be fraught with some serious 
moral peril for the race. If we consent to do without 'religion 
he thinks that the new Hedonism will supply its place, and that 
we will be no more badly off than the Fijian without his can- 
nibalism. The emancipated man is in need of naught to take 
the place of superstition. 

And now Mr. Allen proceeds to show " how the germs of every 
thing which is best in humanity took their rise from the sexual 
instinct." And he supports this proposition by a wealth and 
beauty of illustration which is truly bewitching. The subject is 
considered from the different stand-points of the plumage of 
birds, the colors of flowers, the songs of birds, their lyric, poetic, 
and dramatic faculties, their sympathies and domestic affections, 
and finally he comes to love itself, and shows how man and wo- 
man are both most beautiful in the season of the plenitude of 
their powers of reproduction. How all social pleasures, sprightly 
conversation, gay wit, the conscious blush of youth, dancing and 
dining are all ministers of love. 

How love animates all our poetry and literature and art 
Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet, Heloise and Abe- 
lard, Faust and Marguerite. How the beauty of the female 
form divine has given us half our painting and three-quarters 
of our statuary. 

" Filch away from external nature," Mr. Allen says, " what 
it owes to the sex instinct, and you will have lost every bright 
flower, every gay fruit, every song-bird, every butterfly, every 
wearer of brilliant plumage ; filch away from human art what it 
owes to the sex-instinct, and you will have lost the best part 
of our poetry, the best part of our romance, the best part of 
our painting, and all but the whole of our sculpture." 

Mr. Herbert Spencer has shown that music derives its origin 



20 



THE NEW HEDONISM. [Oct., 

from the emotional tones of ordinary speech in moments of 
the profoundest sexual excitement. Darwin believes song to 
have been acquired by man for the purpose of charming and 
alluring his mate. The period of song decays with the period 
of reproductive power. Take away sex from a play and all the 
interest is gone. 

The most of the " lowest " passions, so-called, has been made 
by the Dantes, Petrarchs, Shelleys, Keatses, Rosettis, De Mus- 
sets, George Eliots, Goethes, Rousseaus, Liszts, Brownings, Mere- 
diths, Hardys, Swinburnes. Milton wrote, " Whatever hypocrites 
austerely talk of purity, and place and innocence "; Walt Whit- 
man proclaimed "the equal honor and dignity of all our mem- 
bers and all our functions." 

"Our Maker bids increase; who bids abstain 
But our destroyer, foe to God and man." 

Asceticism surrounds sex with gross and vulgar images; He- 
donism with all graceful and elevating associations. 

This opens the way to Mr. Allen's final and main point, 
" The Marriage Question." Alas, alas ! so this sacred rite is one 
of the good customs which is corrupting the world. We had 
hoped that, like the " Old Lady of Threadneedle Street," it had 
grown so old and well-established as to be able to exist in spite of 
abuses. Like Pierre de Rousard, we shall have nothing left but 
" wine, a soft bed, and a bright fire." They have not only 
changed the Hymnal in the Episcopal Church, and substituted 
new tunes for " Rock of Ages," " Guide me, O Thou great Je- 
hovah ! " in place of those old airs " for ever echoing in the 
heart and present in the memory," but marriage too is to be 
changed, and some substitution made more suitable to the de- 
mands of the age ! 

Aristippus spent his leisure in the pleasing society of the 
prominent hetcera of Cyrene, and Mr. Allen does not propose to 
sell himself for a night or for a lifetime into a loveless union. 
He proposes as the very ultimate and supreme tenet of his creed, 
" The moral obligation to fatherhood and motherhood on the part of 
the Noblest, the Purest, the Sanest, the Healthiest, the Most Able 
among us" 

Saint Felix writes : " Esprit humain, que tes ailes sont vives 
et audacieuses ! Comme tu sais fendre les brouillards et les 
aquilons de la terre ! il te faut la region sans borne. Quel aigle 
te suivrait dans ta course capricieuse. II te plait de toucher le 



1894-] THE NEW HEDONISM. 21 

sommet du Caucase, et tu poses a 1'instant sur la plus haute 
aiguille de ses glaces ternelles . . . mais, plus souVent, avide 
d'avenir, tu visites les temps qui ne sont pas encore, et, dans ce 
loitain, tu fais 1'univers a ta fantasie. . . . Esprit de Thomme 
6 malade en delire, telles sont ta puissance et ta faiblesse ! tout 
embrasser, d'un dsir et ne rein etreindre cependant ! Voir 1'im- 
possible et ne toucher qu'a la miserable r6alit ! Ah, mieux 
vaudait mille fois la mort que cette vie d'impuissance, s'il ne te 
restait, pour refuge, la region haute et sereine ; la region de la 
sagesse." 

What will be the general verdict upon the new Hedonism 
as outlined by Grant Allen ? Religious and moral considera- 
tions aside, it will be regarded as amazingly attractive, but as 
not practical for humanity in its present miscellaneous condi- 
tion. Perhaps some of those who reach these generally inac- 
cessible heights of thought have wondered that the beneficent 
Creator, whom Mr. Allen does not include in his cosmogony 
(possibly for this very reason among others equally as good), 
should have tolerated so many stupid, ugly, unromantic, and 
utterly cloddish and soulless inhabitants of his universe, if not 
as a fly-wheel to the marvellous machinery of the collective 
social mind and heart. How fortunate it is that we are not 
all set on fire by the possibilities of some magnificent painting 
whose essential thought sweeps through our blood like wind- 
swept flame, stirs the highest minds to their profoundest depths! 
How wise it is that there are some of us who do not demand 
the richest and rarest mental and emotional food as a sine qua 
non of conscious existence! How more than accidental it is 
that all men are not Raphaels, or Shaksperes, or Irvings, or 
Tennysons, or Cabanels, or Burkes, or Napoleons, or Aristotles ! 
There can be no one great without its thousand littles ; no one 
soarer in the infinities of the azure without his thousand grovel- 
lers in the dust and dirt and slime of more than hopeless medi- 
ocrity. 

Mr. Allen has produced a masterpiece of dialectics, but his 
theories, if introduced into every-day life, would turn the whole 
herd of swine, whom he despises, but who form the bulk of 
humanity all the same, down some steep place into the sea. 

Nor is his own personal achievement substantial : 

"The highest mounted mind," he said, 
" Still sees the sacred morning spread 
The silent summit overhead. 



22 THE NEW HEDONISM. [Oct., 

" Will thirty seasons render plain 
Those lonely lights that still remain, 
Just breaking over land and main? 

"Or make that morn, from his cold crown 
And crystal silence creeping down, 
Flood with full daylight glebe and town ? 

" Forerun thy peers, thy time, and let 
Thy feet millenniums hence be set 
In midst of knowledge dreamed not yet, 

" Thou hast not gained a real height, 
Nor art thou nearer to the light, 
Because the scale is infinite." 

A little child, whose parents and relatives had gone on 
Christmas day to attend a meeting and help along some charity 
or other, was heard to pray " that God would raise up a society 
to take care of 'philanthropists" families." Have these formu- 
lators and evangelists of the new Hedonism in its fullest blood- 
red flower taken any steps to establish a society for the care 
of the children and households of the " Sisters and Brothers of 
Marriage Reform " ? 

Mr. Andrew Lang (referring to the English) says that " a 
hundred years ago we were a cruel but also a humorous 
people." Will a hundred years hence find us "despising all 
things, making use of all things, and in all things following 
pleasure only " ? 

In the midst of all this turmoil and destruction, this throw- 
ing down and undermining of dear old institutions without 
even granting the barest detail of what is to take their place, 
one yearns for the intellectual calm of Horace and the pastoral 
beatitudes of Virgil, who "numbers the glories of his land as 
a lover might count the perfections of his mistress." 

" Me nee tarn patiens Lacedaemon, 

Nee tarn Larissae percussit Campus opimae, 
Quam domus Albaneae resonantis 

Et praeceps Anio, ac Tiburni lucus, et Uda 
Mobilibus pomaria rivis." 




1894] TUBINGEN AND ITS CATHOLIC SCHOLARS. 23 



TUBINGEN AND ITS CATHOLIC SCHOLARS. 

BY GEORGE F. X. GRIFFITH. 

'O many readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD the 
title of this article may be in the nature of a 
surprise. For have we not been wont to asso- 
ciate the name of this little " nest " amid the 
Swabian Alps with a scholarship anything but 
Catholic ? " The Tubingen School " has been a familiar acquain- 
tance to every reader of Scriptural works, big or little, for the 
past fifty years; nevertheless the writer confesses to a lurking 
suspicion that many scholars who can talk learnedly of its " ten- 
dency-theories " and the rest have but little idea of the actual 
surroundings whence these have emanated for good or ill. There 
is a very general impression abroad that by the " Tubingen 
School " one means some sort of institution where scholars re- 
sort for the exclusive study of exegesis something similar to 
our Johns-Hopkins or a university annex for specialists. 

The mistake is most pardonable from any one not familiar 
with German universities and their conditions, differing as they 
do in so many points from anything we are acquainted with. 
But in this exclusive arrogation of the title " Tubingen " by the 
Protestant faculty of this ancient university there is an implied 
injustice to the older faculties of law, and medicine, and natural 
sciences, not to speak of the faculty of Catholic theology, one 
and all its fellows and peers at least, both before and since the 
period of the Evangelical faculty's rise to fame. 

The university, whereof these various learned bodies are 
component and, it may well be added, harmonious parts, was 
founded a little more than ten years before Columbus made 
that record voyage -of his. The thin pamphlet, which contains 
the names and residences of the present generation of dwellers 
in this quiet town, is prefaced by a chronological summary of 
" notable " happenings since the founding of their historic Stadt. 
Let me imitate the chronographer of our city directory, and 
make a big leap over a period of some three hundred years. 

LIBERALITY IN GERMAN EDUCATION. 

Every German university is state-supported ; its general pol- 
icy is dictated by a royal commission, while the professors re- 



24 TUBINGEN AND ITS CA THOLIC SCHOLARS. [Oct., 

ceive their final appointment from the crown. It is, therefore, 
all the more to the credit of those concerned that the Protes- 
tant ruler of Protestant Wiirtemberg should have been one of 
the first to reinstate a faculty of Catholic theology within the 




THE ANCIENT UNIVERSITAETS STADT, TUBINGEN. 

university walls, and in such near neighborhood to what was 
even then the most famous of Protestant faculties, for Baur was 
already a power in the land at this date, and had had, of 
course, his predecessors, whose teachings had paved the way for 
the far-trumpeted achievements of the " Tubingen School." 
Our long leap has landed us at the threshold of the nineteenth 
century, a critical period for Catholic learning in Germany. 
Napoleon and revolution had been playing havoc with princi- 
palities and kingdoms all over Europe, and nowhere more than 
in Southern Germany. One result of these many changes in 
the olden maps had been King Frederick's acquisition of certain 
Catholic territories, thus extending the boundaries of little 
Wiirtemberg. (The reader is begged never to make the mistake 
which came under my notice the other day in a religious re- 
view; the writer and editor alluded to Wiirtemberg instead of 
Wittenberg University as Luther's Alma Mater. The kingdom 
has enough to answer for without this responsibility being added 
to her sins in those bad Reformation times, which we have 



1 894.] 



TUBINGEN AND ITS CATHOLIC SCHOLARS. 



gladly skipped over.) In his zeal for the welfare of his new 
Catholic subjects and their fellow-believers among the old ones, 
good King Frederick had seen fit to found a brand-new " Catho- 
lic University" in Ellwangen. But these same changes of 
boundary lines had necessitated a reassignment of dioceses ; an 
emissary had been despatched to Rome for this purpose, but 
before his arrival there Pope Pius VII. was a prisoner, and the 
necessary formalities had to be ordered by the nuntius in Stutt- 
gart, who called upon the primate to act " by virtue of his 
plenipotentiary powers, Sede pontificia impedita " * This new or- 
der of things ecclesiastical left the infant " university," with its 
handful of scholars, too far from the centre. These were hard 
times, too, for the monarch and his people ; and books were 
dear, hence the library suffered. 

Even in these good old times your conservative grumbler 
did not fail to put himself in evidence. Rather let our priests 
perish in ignorance than fraternize with the foes of our faith ! 




THE CASTLE'S OUTER GATE. 

And when they were assured that their bishop with his council 
had the entire regulation of studies, discipline, everything save 
the finances, in their hands, the answer came that all this was 
but a deep-laid scheme of the minister of state (who chanced to 

* Funk : Die katholische Landesuniversitaet in Ellwangen, p. 6. 



26 TUBINGEN AND ITS CA THOLIC SCHOLARS. [Oct., 

be a man of an agnostic turn of mind), his end being "to 
smooth away all confessional differences and bring about a sort 
of religio-political amalgama." * Happily neither the wishes nor 
the apprehensions of this party were attended to, and the new 
faculty of Catholic theology was a success from the very out- 
set in its. new quarters. 

A DISHEARTENING OUTLOOK. 

I have spoken of the opening of our century as marking a 
crisis in German ecclesiastical circles. The Rev. Dr. Schanz in 
his contribution to the work on German universities compiled 
for the World's Fair,f has described the low state of theological 
learning at that date ; while a certain young student, then liv- 
ing and destined to become himself one of the founders of the 
new Catholic learning, has left us an even sadder picture of the 
several institutions he frequented in his travels in pursuit of 
solid Catholic wisdom. " Superficiality in the matter and methods 
of teaching, dogma a poor farce, church history devoid of solid 
foundations and made interesting only as a histoire scandaleuse, 
while the whole study and literary activity of the clergy was 
confined to the flimsiest liturgical, pastoral, and moral casuistry, 
without a thought for the defence of the fundamental truths of 
Christian faith and life.":}: Yes, it was among such surroundings 
that the gentle and revered author of the Catholic Symbolik laid 
the foundations of his own great knowledge ; but all were not 
made of that sturdy stuff which enabled Moehler to rise supe- 
rior to his intellectual environments. The philosophical idol of 
the times was Professor Hermes, of Miinster, and " the great 
majority of Catholic teachers in Prussia were his disciples :" 
his semi-rationalistic principle intelligo, ut credam, with all that 
was peculiar to his teachings, met their fate at the hands of 
Gregory XVI. in 1835, but it was many a day before his ad- 
herents desisted from inculcating his errors. In this historic 
combat our Tubingen scholars proved stout soldiers in the ser- 
vice of the Holy See. 

But this is not the darkest side of the picture. In the church, 
as well as in the world, when education is on the decline, the 
moral standing falls with the ebbing tide. " In Catholic Frei- 
burg, the professor of moral theology, in his public lectures, 
contended against virginity and celibacy. Father Kuenzer, rec- 
tor of Konstanz, in conjunction with Professor Fischer of Lu- 

* Ibid., p. 29. f Die deutschen Universitaeten, Asher & Co., Berlin, p. 256 et seq. 

| Moehler' s gesammelte Schriften, Doellmger, p. 178. Schanz, loco citato, p. 258. 



1894-] TUBINGEN AND ITS CATHOLIC SCHOLARS. 27 

cerne, founded an ' Anti-celibacy Society.' . . . When, in 
1819, the candidates for the priesthood in Rottenburg received 
the news that a bill had been brought before Baden's Chamber 
of Deputies to prohibit celibacy in the church, the report was 
greeted with ringing cheers." * 

GREAT PIONEERS IN THE NEW MOVEMENT. 

Remembering all this, what does Professor Schanz mean by 
telling us that the first thirty years of this century were a 
season of seed-sowing, destined by God's grace, to grow to a 
great harvest, and preparing us for the brave victories which 
stirred the Catholic world from '30 to '60? A cursory glance 
at the array of names, now each with a niche in Catholic 
literature, will be enough to satisfy us that his figure but 
barely states the truth. " Ah, those names ! " I seem to hear 
the English reader sigh ; " without a nearer knowledge of what 
they really stand for, how can one ever remember those 
foreign-sounding names." -Well, let us at least make the effort, 
seeing that a trifling difficulty like this should not hinder us 
from knowing something of those who have done yeoman's 
duty for the cause of Christ. In a never-to-be-forgotten talk it 
was my privilege to have with Cardinal Manning, that practical 
and far-seeing saint urged that it was the Catholic student's 
bounden duty to avail himself of the stupendous labors of these 
giants of Catholic letters. "They stand for us as road-breakers," 
said his eminence; "if we fail to profit by their achievements, 
we shall deserve to fall." 

BEGINNING OF "THE HIGHER CRITICISM." 

The scouts and pathfinders were up and doing in those 
early days and Tubingen was training its own contingent. To 
Professor Drey, who came with his few students from Ellwan- 
gen, must be given the credit of endowing the new Catholic 
Faculty with that impulse which has made all its afterwork 
bear a peculiar individual stamp. His preference for the 
apologetic method has been justified in the event and, to my 
thinking, furnishes the reason for all future developments, as 
following naturally along the line. The Evangelicals and Radi- 
cals, then and there, were no more disposed to listen to scho- 
lastic theses and syllogisms than are our countrymen just now ; 
they belonged to a " philological-historical " or what is now 

* Hergenroether's Handbuch der allg. Kirchengeschichte, ii. 849. Woerner bei Gams, p. 
it, and Moehler, /. c. p. 177. 



28 TUBINGEN AND ITS CA THOLIC SCHOLARS. [Oct., 

called the "higher" School of Criticism, and they demanded 
mostly facts. " It is our shame, sons and priests of the 
church," says the Abb6 Le Camus, "if we do not, in the name 
of Science and in every field, confound and crush these bluster- 
ing braggarts. But to do this we must needs modify the pro- 
grammes of our ecclesiastical studies, just as at certain intervals 
the military tactics of our armies are modified."* Just so, it 
was not the hope of finding the old arquebuses and flint-locks 
of their revered ancestors which prompted Dr. Drey and his 
colleagues to ransack the old castle (now become the University 
Library), but rather to polish and sharpen their more modern 
weapons in the armory of philological and patristic lore. That 
mental restlessness, which was one heritage of the French Revo- 
lution, was now showing itself in an eager desire on the part 
of Protestant scholars to reconstruct their edifice of beliefs ; 
but the restoration of any earthly building necessitates a tear- 
ing down of certain parts, and when once your thorough-going 
German iconoclast starts in on this- process he rarely knows 
when or where to stop. Thus it came about that before the 
rising light of his generation in Protestant Germany, Professor 
F. C. Baur of Tubingen, had gotten ready to rehabilitate, he 
had pretty well obliterated the very foundations of our docu- 
mentary evidence for Christianity. Not alone the New Testa- 
ment canon, but all patristic writings of the first centuries, were 
being examined by his "School," under the search-light of his- 
torical and philological criticism ; the genuine was to be ac- 
knowledged, the doubtful rejected, and the position of all to.be 
defined anew. The Protestant Professor Holtzmann, in his 
Introduction to the study of the New Testament,f the most 
popular work of its kind to-day in Germany, and, owing to its 
impartial spirit and admirable order, an invaluable hand-book 
for any student of Protestant "variations" in this field of criti- 
cismthis high authority tells us that inspiration and revelation 
are not so much as mentioned in the writings of these 
"pioneers" of Protestant Bible study. Baur's ground-principle 
of criticism for the Gospels and Epistles is " the presence or 
absence of any decided literary 'tendency' on the part of their 
respective authors." All writings displaying any such tendency 
must be regarded with suspicion by the impartial historian ; and 
with this canon of criticism established to his satisfaction, Pro- 
fessor Baur proceeded to prove that St. Mark's alone of all the 

* La Vie deN.-S. /.-C., pref. to 2d ed. p. xiv. 

t H. J. Holtzmann, Lehrbuch der historisch-kritischen Einleitung, 3d ed. p. 186. 



1 894-] 



TUBINGEN AND ITS CATHOLIC SCHOLARS. 



29 



Gospels could lay claim to be an unprejudiced narrative, while 
of the Epistles only four (Romans, the Corinthians, Galatians) 
could stand his fearsome test.* What, then, was this unfortu- 
nate "tendency" whose damaging presence bore so heavily 
against the integrity of Holy Scripture? Baur termed his sys- 
tem "The Positive Criticism," since it professed to "handle its 
subject-matter objectively, examining it with the sole idea of 
discovering what 
the author meant, 
not what his fol- 
lowers in after 
days have held to 
be his meaning." 
The "tendency" 
which he brought 
to light was " a 
party-spirit ani- 
mating the ad- 
herents of Peter 
and Paul," and 
one is fain to 
smile now when 
recalling the sen- 
sation which his 
positive discovery 
created in its 
day ; for this Co- 
lumbus of early 
church history 
lived to see his 
positive results 
flouted by friends 
and foes alike, 
till in the race for 
fresh novelties 
Gottingen Uni- 
versity won the day and the fame of the " Tubingen School " was 
a thing of the past. One of his best-known disciples (Volkmar of 
Zurich) pained the master by carrying his good work of " recon- 
struction " several steps further in the direction of infidelity, leav- 
ing us without even the incomparable Mark ; since the Swiss pro- 
fessor felt assured that all four Gospels were "purely Tendenz- 

* Iloltzmann, loco citato, p. 163. 




FAIR AS THE FLOW OF NECKAR BENEATH THE CASTLED HEIGHTS. 



30 TUBINGEN AND ITS CA THOLIC SCHOLARS. [Oct., 

schriften," containing not a Life of our Lord, but rather four 
contradictory histories fabricated to suit the tastes of certain 
unfriendly communities, embodying merely an apology for the 
party-strifes and dogmatic developments of the various "sec- 
tions " of the one Holy Catholic Church ! The four above- 
mentioned Epistles of St. Paul, together with three letters of 
St. Justin, are, he held, the sole Christian documents which 
antedate the year 150 A.D.* Hilgenfeld, another of Baur's 
pupils, started out with the rebellious legend " Tendency no 
longer the one and only test ! " and with his " literary-historical 
method " managed to replace three of the Epistles thrown out 
by his teacher (First Thessalonians, Philippians, and Philemon).f 
But it would be impossible here to barely enumerate the 
divagations of these learned men. One after another their 
theories appeared, only to be overturned by the latest new- 
comer. The leaders of Evangelicalism of to-day, like Ewald 
and Harnack, would be considered conservatives by the early 
Tubingen School of Theology. The first-named contended for 
the authenticity of the four Gospels, while the latter, probably 
the most popular Protestant professor of our day, declares that 
Baur's supposititious tendency "Jewish Christianity versus Pa- 
gan Christianity" is misleading and historically false.;}: 

CHRIST CRITICISED OUT OF EXISTENCE. 

We all know what use Strauss and R6nan have made of all 
these " positive " results. Bruno Bauer (a very different man 
from F. C. Baur) created an even more startling sensation than 
had his homonym by his radical utterances, which caused him 
to be dubbed the critical Herostratus of our day. Both the 
humanity and divinity of our Blessed Lord are left in doubt 
by this critic of the very " highest " class, and thus the impulse 
of the Tubingen School continues to work out its legitimate re- 
sults in Protestant Germany. 

CATHOLIC DEFENDERS AT TUBINGEN. 

And yet, as has been stated, the general tendency to de- 
structiveness and iconoclasm has been checked ; and for this it 
must be owned by all sides that Catholic scholarship, however 
often overlooked and slighted, should be awarded the lion's share 
of praise, while the Catholic professors of Tubingen, past all doubt, 

* Volkmar: Religion /esu (1857) and Geschichtstreue Theologie (1858). 

t Hilgenfeld : Einleitung in das neue Testament. 

I Harnack: Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, i. 250, 2d ed. Holtzmann, p. 183. 



1894-] TUBINGEN AND ITS CATHOLIC SCHOLARS. 31 

deserve to be ranked among the foremost and first of these 
defenders of our Faith. The Tubingen Quartalsckrift, a quar- 
terly theological review founded in 1819, was the earliest to 
take advantage of the Apostolate of the Press, and its seventy- 
five volumes furnish a conclusive proof of its contributors' right 
to the position I have claimed for them. The lamented Moehler 
was one of the first writers for its pages, and in his s genius we 
recognize the prototype and ideal of all his successors. In the 
field of speculative apologetics he brought forth every treasure 
from the storehouse of the church, and proved himself an oppo- 
nent with whom the critics of the " Tubingen School " were forced 
to reckon. There is no more fascinating personality in the 
history of modern theology than that of this young man alas ! 
too early taken from us so saintly, so deeply learned in 
widely different branches. Small wonder that his lectures were 
attended by students of all creeds, and that his ever-growing 
popularity awoke a storm of opposition from the intolerant. 
Nor is it to the credit of the mighty Baur that he should have 
lost his temper and his cause in the controversy which the 
publication of Moehler's Symbolik aroused. Scholars from all 
lands were proud to call the latter master ; a mere list of their 
works in very various departments of learning would be enough 
to prove the catholicity of this ideal teacher's mind. Hefele, 
the church historian ; Kuhn, the celebrated professor of dogma 
in* Tubingen, with his fellow-laborer Staudenmaier 'of Freiburg 
University, all received their inspiration from Moehler's lectures ; 
while in the field of exegesis we find such names as Haneberg, 
Reithmayr, Reischl, and Schegg in the list of his avowed dis- 
ciples.* 

VITAL IMPORTANCE OF LINGUISTIC STUDIES. 

But what about the weapons Professors Drey and Welte, the 
famous Hebraist, and their successors were forging for this mod- 
ern warfare ? They are all implicitly contained in the definition 
Professor Schanz has given us of apologetics : " As dogmatic 
theology is the science of Dogma, so apologetics is the science 
of Apology ; that is to say, it is the scientific vindication of 
divine Truth, and of the Rule of life that has been given for 
all ages and all nations." f Now, to vindicate the position of 
the Church and Bible in the twofold realms of reason and 
history, the theologian must needs dispute the grounds with 

* Werner : Gesch. der kath. Theologie seit dem Trienter Koncil^ passim. 
t A Christian Apology, i. 10. Eng. ed. 



32 TUBINGEN AND ITS CATHOLIC SCHOLARS. [Oct., 

these new foes foot by foot, fighting them with their own 
arms. Hence since the new school of critics had begun to 
weave their airy fortresses on philological bases, our champions 
were forced to look to their linguistic resources. Thus it came 
about that Tubingen students have always held such high 
place as authorities in Hebrew and Greek ; none but the 
original texts have ever been used in the classes of Scripture 
or patrology, a practice which would be impossible were it not 
for the four years' thorough training in both languages which 
the ecclesiastical candidates receive in their preparatory course. 
In philosophy the student is made familiar, not only with Plato 
and Aristotle, but what is more important for his future use- 
fulness as a controversialist with Kant and Hegel and their 
modern compeers. In moral theology either Linsenmann's or 
Hirscher's admirable work is typical of the Tubingen Catholic 
school from which they emanated; in dogma Professor Kuhn 
managed to preserve some of the same charm which had made 
his master, Moehler, famous, while at the same time displaying, 
in his lectures and printed works, a more orderly method and 
closer reasoning than any writer of his day. But, above all, 
their students were urged to look to the history of God's king 
dom on earth, to begin at the beginning and study the first 
years of the Holy Catholic Church in the New Testament and 
the works of the first Fathers ; then indeed they would have 
something tangible whereby to test the " tendency-theories " of 
their foes. In this field what prodigies of erudition have been 
accomplished by Monsignor Hefele and his sons in the Faith. 
The breadth of that beloved bishop's learning is fairly astonish- 
ing ; not only in patrology did he extort praise from all parties 
by works dealing with the whole range of patristic subjects, 
from the Epistle of Barnabas to the sermons of Chrysostom, his 
activity covered the entire territory of ecclesiastical develop- 
ment, and in his masterpiece, A History of the Councils* he 
accomplished a herculean task. Well may his successor assert 
that " hardly any work of recent times has left so deep an 
impress on the literature of its own class "f as did this monu- 
ment to the memory of the departed scholar. Hefele's name is 
quoted in non-Catholic works with a respect which is tendered 
only to men of the very first rank. In his life the University 

* The German edition of Hefele's Konziliengeschichte is in seven volumes, the French 
translation in twelve. Clark's English edition, unfortunately, was not continued beyond the 
second volume. 

tVon Funk, Theol. Quartalsch. i. 1894, p. u. 




THE REV. PROFESSOR PAUL SCHANZ, D.D. 
AUTHOR OF "A CHRISTIAN APOLOGY." 



THE REV. PROFESSOR VON FUNK, CHURCH 
HISTORIAN. 




THE REV. PAUL KEPPLER, D.D., PROFESSOR OF 
MORAL THEOLOGY AND SACRED ELOQUENCE. 

VOL. LX. 3 



THE REV. PROFESSOR VON KOBER, D.D., 
DEAN OF THE FACULTY. 



34 TUBINGEN AND ITS CATHOLIC SCHOLARS. [Oct., 

of Edinburgh made him one of the few foreigners to be hon- 
ored by a degree from this Scotch Presbyterian school. 

PROFESSOR SCHANZ'S POSITION. 

Doubtless it will have occurred to the reader that in all this 
these Catholic professors had but anticipated the recommenda- 
tions contained in the Holy Father's late Encyclical on Bible 
Study. But in one direction circumstances had obliged them 
to adopt a system the opposite of that recommended in Leo 
XIII. 's noble utterance. Instead of making dogma the founda- 
tion of their intellectual edifice, they were forced to regard it 
as the apex of a pyramid resting on the terra firma of natural 
science and philology and history. The career of one of 
Tubingen's most famous teachers will illustrate how this came 
to be the case. Dr. Paul Schanz began his professorial work in 
the Gymnasium (as the fitting schools are here called), where he 
speedily made a name for himself in botany and astronomy. 
His original work in these branches earned him a call to the 
national university, where he at once became prominent among 
the pupils of Dr. Aberle, the famous professor of exegesis, who 
entrusted him with the publication of his manuscript notes ; * 
and hence the chair left vacant by the master's death reverted, 
naturally enough, to his most promising disciple. During those 
years of activity in his new work, Professor Schanz published 
his four-volume Commentary on the Gospels, which won for him 
high rank among German exegetical scholars, as well as the 
appointment to the chair of dogmatic theology and apologetics, 
a position which he now holds. He needs no introduction to the 
English reading public, since his greatest work, A Christian 
Apology, has been gladly welcomed in all quarters in its English 
dress. I have summarized the steps in his earlier career merely 
to demonstrate that whether or not the system here be the 
best, it has at least borne fine fruit. For without just that 
thorough grounding in the natural sciences our author could 
scarcely have produced this triumph of his riper years. 

PROFESSOR FUNK AND HIS WORK. 

Of the other scholars of the church, now living and actively 
working in Tubingen, Professor von Funk is perhaps the best 
known to readers in foreign lands, but before speaking of him 
and his work a prefatory word of caution seems to be in 
place; for there is something so striking and commanding in 

* Aberle-Schanz, Einleitung in d. neue Test. 



1 894.] TUBINGEN AND ITS CATHOLIC SCHOLARS. 35 

this scholar's individuality, that people seem prone to lose 
their cool-headedness in speaking for or against him. In this 
peculiarity he reminds me not a little of Matthew Arnold, a 
very different man truly, but in so far like our Professor of 
Ecclesiastical History and Patrology that he often excited very 
deep admiration or bitter opposition, even while himself plead- 
ing for a dispassionate consideration of his subject in hand. 
Some one has said that there is no writer so aggravating to his 
adversaries as the man who confines himself to hard facts, if 
only he know how to handle them. Indeed I am tempted 
to assert that all such as regard the Apostle of Sweetness and 
Light as " a prig and a dogmatizer," will in like manner mis- 
conceive Professor von Funk. This much is granted by all, 
that in his branch he has proved himself a worthy successor of 
his master, Hefele.* His edition of the Apostolic Fathers is 
now oftener quoted than those of older men. His vindication 
of the Ignatian Epistles, and kindred works, may fairly be 
termed epoch-making, while the hand of a typical German 
scholar is visible in his revision of the text of the " Apostolical 
Constitutions," a labor of love which has forced him to make 
many visits to the Vatican, Constantinople, and other libraries 
of the world, for the purpose of comparing ancient codices. 
This and his text of the Teaching of the XII. Apostles has re- 
ceived well-merited recognition from such men as Bishop 
Lightfoot, while the orders he has received from European 
sovereigns as well as Rome are a tangible proof of his position 
in the world of letters. Finally Dr. von Funk has been elected 
once President or Rektor and again as Prorektor of this uni- 
versity, a proof that a Catholic scholar is sometimes honored in 
his own country, even though that country be largely of an- 
other creed. 

'A BRACE OF WORTHIES. 

It will be sad news to all Catholic alumni of Tubingen, of 
whatever faculty, when the report reaches them that Professor 
Keppler is to leave Wiirtemberg in obedience to a higher and 
most flattering summons from the national University of Baden. 
In all circles, from the royal court, where he has ever been a 
persona grata as confessor to the heir presumptive, down to the 
citizens' social club of Tubingen, his presence has always been 
felt as an honor to* his hosts. As preacher and professor he 

* His Hand-book of Church History, now in its second edition, is a work no German read- 
ing Catholic can afford to be without. For practical arrangement, as well as absolute 
reliability, I know of no short history comparable to it. 



36 TUBINGEN AND ITS CATHOLIC SCHOLARS. [Oct., 



has the faculty of winning hearts, a characteristic which will be 
apparent to any reader of his works, notably his treatise on our 
Lord's last Prayer in St. John's Gospel * for, like Dr. Schanz, 
this professor of moral theology is a many-sided man, and in 
Scripture studies, as well as in ecclesiastical art, has done 
work which I can only describe as sui generis. His latest book 
of travels in the East will be eagerly read by his admirers in 
America, as well as in Germany.f 

Last but by no means least, in public estimation and private 
worth, comes the tall form and noble, white-crowned head of 
the Dean, the senior of Tubingen's Catholic faculty. Professor 
von Kober is a type of the robust and doughty Wurtembergers 
who have done such great service for the church. He carries 
his seventy-three years so well that we may hope to keep him 
long with us before he receives that highest summons to the 
celestial court, where he has laid up unfading treasures, not alone 
by his profound work in the realms of canon law, but by the prac- 
tical example of a Christian life. 

Space will not permit of even a cursory notice of the work 
now being done by the younger generation of scholars, who, 
like Professors Belser and Vetter and Saegmueller, have already 
won their spurs in the literary arena, or, like Doctors Riech 
and Merkle and Koch, whose time is all absorbed in prepara- 
tion for the responsible positions their talents have destined 
them for. But lest it appear that this short and uncritical re- 
cord of men and books gives evidence, on the writer's part, of 
a too damaging "tendency" to superlative praise thus robbing 
it of all right to credibility, according to the theories of the 
Tubingen School let me point out certain existing weaknesses, 
not of the men but of the ecclesiastical system of education 
here in vogue. 

DRAWBACKS AT TUBINGEN. 

I, at least, find here daily cause for thanksgiving to God that 
we American Catholics have no dealings with government that 
the line of demarcation between church and state is likely to 
be ever more sharply drawn. This is not the place to enlarge 
upon the evils which here beset the path of the bishop and 
his aids in the administration, and especially in the ordering 
of the pecuniary affairs of the students for the priesthood. The 
resulting complications are truly distressing, -and, from one point 
of view in particular, work the greatest harm to the whole 

* Keppler : Unseres Herrn Trosf, 1887. 

t Wanderfahrten und Wallfahrten im Orient, Freiburg, 1894. 



1894-] CATHARINE SEYTON. 37 

clergy. No wonder that kindly Bishop Hefele complained most 
bitterly of this, the worst hindrance in the way of procuring 
suitable, and only suitable, subjects for the priesthood. 

Another desideratum, according to many I am not sure my- 
self whether the evil is so great, if indeed it exists at all is a 
more coherent and complete philosophical training. Long be- 
fore the Encyclical of 1879 we find Tubingen scholars who are 
past-masters in Thomistic methods. That the Wurtemberger 
student of this day does not get the " simon-pure " article may 
perhaps be granted, for the admixture of a working knowledge 
of what modern thinkers are teaching cannot fail to be of use to 
him in his after-life. By their own candid and unpartisan ex- 
position of whatever they touch upon, these Catholic philoso- 
phers of Tubingen have at least proven themselves in touch 
with what is best in the modern spirit that love of honesty 
and that impatience of whatever bears the stamp of prejudice 
and unfair play which is, I repeat, the most encouraging symp- 
tom of our times. 





CATHARINE SEYTON. 

BY ALBA. 

{ 

"True," replied Catharine; " there is, indeed, no bar across the door. ; fjut tlie'fe ai 
t"he staples in which the bar should run ; and into these I have thrust mine arm,' ifke^fc tirte- 
tress of your own, when, better employed than the Douglasses of our day, she defended the 
bed-chamber of her sovereign." Vide " The Abbot." 

|ADY, away! 'Tis in vain you declare 

That the proud blood of Douglass will brook no 

denial. 

If Black Archie himself, with his riders, stood there 
And demanded admittance, I'd venture the trial. 
Ye have robb'd our sweet Queen of her realms and her power, 
And shut her up here in your desolate tower ; 
Yet her word to obey ev'ry Seyton is bound, 
Though her prison-walls only may echo their sound. 

When she sat in her glory in Holyrood gray, 

They were traitors who guarded, and rebels who knelt ; 

And what save misfortune could wait on her way 

While she trusted in hearts where no truth ever dwelt? 

But now, though of kingdom and crown ye've bereft her, 

One heart full of honor and faith ye have left her ; 

And while that heart beats, be she captive or free, 

Obeyed and defended Queen Mary shall be. 



AN UNRECOGNIZED GENIUS. 



[Oct., 




AN UNRECOGNIZED GENIUS. 
BY MARION AMES TAGGART-. 

LOW, broad hill, rising gently against a sky golden 
and shimmering in the splendor of the sun, which 
had sunk just to the hill-top. Waving shadows 
of trees, lengthening south-easterly down the hill- 
side, etched darkly on the billowy grass, flecked 
with the pink heads of the clover. This is what we saw as the 
train came to a standstill, and we looked out of the windows 
on the west, gathering up our belongings, preparatory to leaving 
the car. On the east the station, a two-story frame building 
painted brown, bearing a sign upon its front upon which the 
name " Silsby " shone in black letters on a white ground. The 
platform ran along the width of the station ; upon it sat a long 
baggage truck, upon which again were seated long men, in 
various attitudes expressive of languid interest in arrivals. 

As we descended upon the platform one of the longest of 
th men, he who had adorned the nearer handle of the truck, 
arose and came toward us. His features partook of his elongat- 
ing tendency, and his hair was drab and sleek, hanging in little 
clumps, which looked as if they had both inherited and been 
environed by pomatum. A straw hat was firmly placed on the 
back of his head, showing no more idea of moving in our honor 
than its owner had of requesting it to rise. 

"Boarders for Mis Ellis's?" he inquired, standing directly 
across our path. 

We acknowledged our identity, feeling the acknowledgment 
rather superfluous, since we were the only persons quitting the 
train at Silsby. 

" Thought so," he said, turning on his heel. " Follow me ; 
the hosses is over here. The boy will bring up your trunks." 

We walked across the platform around the corner of the 
station, followed by the gaze of all the loungers. " Pen," whis- 
pered Nan to me, "at last I know what it is to be before the 
public." 

We found " the hosses " attached to a venerable vehicle, and 
our guide bade us " git in," as he walked to the animals' heads 
to unfasten them. Depositing our bags and umbrellas under 



1894-] AN UNRECOGNIZED GENIUS. 39 

the seats, we obeyed, and, turning westward across the track, a 
few feet below the station, began slowly ascending the hill which 
had been our first glimpse of Silsby. 

As we rose and looked down on either hand an exclamation 
of delight escaped us both. "Like it?" inquired our driver, 
gazing toward us over his left shoulder. " Most folks does. 
From New York, ain't ye?" 

We did not deny our birthplace. 

" I ain't never been to New York," continued the loquacious 
driver. " Been to Boston and Springfield, an' when I was a 
boy uster visit down to Bangor. Pretty hustlin' kinder place, I 
expect. Ain't much uster country, I s'pose ? " 

We explained that we spent our summers in the country. 

"Yes?" he said; "queer how some folks does keep a-goin' ! 
Well, most folks likes Silsby. I s'pose 'tis real pretty; but I 
kinder git uster it. There was a Universalist here one time ; 
didn't b'lieve there was 'n hell, everybody went to heaven ; 
now, he said he thought anybody 'd git uster anything. Said 
he guessed in a few thousand years he'd be uster hell ; but I'd 
know. I think there's some things nobody gits uster. Now 
there's Mis Ellis, her you're goin' ter board with ; she no need 
to keep boarders ! " 

He made an admiring pause for comment. "No?" we asked. 

" No-o-o," he said, shaking the negative out in the long 
shake of his head. " She's got one of the nicest farms in 
Silsby. Tain't Silsby, though; it's North Silsby." Another 
pause. 

" North Silsby ? " we repeated interrogatively. 

" Yes," our driver said. " That's Silsby where the deepo is, 
and Silsby Centre's back o' that. Our place's over to North 
Silsby. We don't generally say nothin' 'bout it to summer 
boarders when they write, 'cause it mixes 'em up ; and Silsby's 
the post-office, so it's really all one thing. Silsby Four Corners, 
that's over on the other road, five miles from here ; that's an- 
other place. 

"Yes, Mis Ellis, she's got a mighty nice farm, an' she's en- 
terprisin' that's what Mis Ellis is, enterprisin'. She no need to 
take boarders, but she gits dreadful lonesome. Mr. Ellis he 
died ; an' her daughter she died, but she wa'n't never very strong ; 
an' then Sam, her only boy, he was a big, strong feller, an' he 
fell an' was killed jest fell outer a cherry-tree an' broke his 
neck. Pickin' cherries he was. Jest called down, ' Ma, d'ye 
want a big branch ? ' when down he come. Mis Ellis she's 



40 AN UNRECOGNIZED GENIUS. [Oct., 

lonesome. She says that Universalist didn't know what he wus 
talkin' 'bout. Says she don't care so much 'bout brimstone; 
but lovin' somethin' and losin' it, an' wantin' it eternally, that's 
hell ; an' she says she guesses we wouldn't git uster that. An' 
she's right ! " 

" Here we be," added the driver, as we turned into the yard 
of a spotlessly clean white house, the whole place eloquent of 
some one who was indeed " enterprisin'." 

A tall, thin woman in black calico received us. Her face 
was heavily lined, and the grief of which we had heard was 
written there ; but her aspect was kindly, and she showed us 
into a large room on the ground-floor, so shining in its painted 
set, yellow floor, and braided rugs that we exclaimed delight- 
edly. 

Mrs. Ellis had been watching us narrowly, and her face 
lighted up as she saw our pleasure. "Like it?" she asked, just 
as the driver had done. "If you're one mite lonesome or timid, 
an' would rather be upstairs, you can have the room above's 
well as not, but I like this better, an' I sleep right back of this 
myself; but, land sakes! there ain't a thing to be afraid of in 
Silsby. Here comes the boy with your trunks." 

We assured her that we could not ask for anything bet- 
ter than the room she had selected, and turned to see "the 
boy," who, to our great amazement, proved to be nearly sev- 
enty years old, and was helped in his task by our whilom 
driver. 

" Set them right down here, Lemuel," Mrs. Ellis said to the 
latter, who by telegraphy conveyed the order to the perfectly 
deaf " boy." " I presume you're surprised I should call him a 
boy," Mrs. Ellis remarked as they departed, " an' I guess it 
does sound ridic'lous ; Miss Miranda she laughs about it, but 
he was a boy when my father took him, an' we got in the way 
or rather they did ; I wasn't born. Now you lay off your 
things, an' supper's ready when you are. I wonder if Mary 
Frances filled your pitcher?" 

She crossed the room and looked to see. " Yes, she did ; 
but, good land ! there's a spider fell in. I'll get you fresh." 

We stopped her, saying we did not in the least mind the 
spider's temporary misfortune. Mrs. Ellis fished him out on the 
leaf which she tore from the almanac, and deposited him, with 
his legs sadly drawn up, outside the window. 

" Well, I'm glad you're not nervous," she said, turning ap- 
provingly toward us. " Of course he ain't hurt the water a 



1894-] AN UNRECOGNIZED GENIUS. 41 

mite; now, spiders are clean, but flies! Well, 'f there's one 
thing I abominate it's flies." Her face flushed as she mentioned 
the offenders, and she walked toward the door rigidly. Here 
she turned and faced us. "You both Catholics?" she asked. 
Nan gave me a stealthy glance ; we had felt before the penalty 
of this disclosure. It is not pleasant to shock people, nor to 
be regarded as abnormal, if not monstrous, even by one's land- 
lady, and though the mistake be hers. ^ 

" Yes," we said together. 

"Wanter know!" exclaimed Mrs. Ellis. "As I wrote you, 
you'll have to drive over to Silsby Four Corners to church ; that's 
the nearest. Miss Miranda she's the only Catholic round here, 
but there's some in Silsby Centre and the Corners. Miss Miran- 
da she turned Catholic twenty years ago, when she wasn't much 
above twenty years old. I often asked her how she come to 
think of it, but she never exactly told me. She said a book 
set her on. 

" If you'd applied for board to Mis Biscombe, an' asked 
'bout the Catholic church, as you did me, I guess she'd a told 
you she hadn't any room. But, land o' mercy ! Mis Biscombe's 
first husband was a minister, an' she kinder feels the welfare of 
the whole community on her shoulders ; that's to say, the moral 
welfare she ain't over an' above generous. But I don't feel to 
Catholics as she does, an' I don't see how any one can who 
knows Miss Miranda, for she's well, I hardly know what Miss 
Miranda is in one way, nor what she isn't in another. I'll take 
you over to-morrow, 'f you're not too tired ; she'll be delighted 
to see any of her persuasion, an' she don't have any too much 
pleasure, the blessed little soul. I told her I'd bring you. 
Well, come out when you're ready; I'll put supper on." 

She closed the door, and Nan and I were left alone. Nan's 
eyes were big and her cheeks glowing. I always find a new 
reason for my love for Nan, and when she looks like that I am 
sure what I admire in her is her enthusiasm. 

" Pen," she said, " it is all too good to be true." 

" Wait for supper," I remarked, my role being that of 
balance-wheel. "If she cooks as she cleans we are fortunate in- 
deed. But who is Miss Miranda?" 

" Oh, I don't know ! " sighed Nan from the depth of the 
great wooden rocking-chair, " but she is evidently another treas- 
ure, and only think of the stories and poems you will write 
here in this beauty, and with such human material, and of the 
sketches I shall make ! Who wants supper ? " 



42 AN UNRECOGNIZED GENIUS. , [Oct., 

But we were both hungry none the less, and soon found our 
way into the big dining-room, looking onto the sunset, and re- 
dolent with such a supper as left nothing to'be desired; and 
we sank to sleep that night grateful to the good angel that led 
our feet to Silsby. 

It was late in the forenoon of the next day that Mrs. Ellis 
asked us if we felt like driving over with her in the afternoon 
to see Miss Miranda. 

"Mrs. Ellis," I cried, "do tell us who is Miss Miranda?" 

Mrs. Ellis settled herself comfortably, rocking to and fro, and 
stroking her gingham apron. " Well," she began, " there's lots 
to know of her, but there's not much to tell. Mr. Maitland, 
her father, he was a minister here, an' her mother she was from 
Boston ; real good family there, they say ; he met her there, 
an' married her. Mr. Maitland he was an awful nice man, an' 
a great scholar, but he never could do much more'n get along ; 
he had a real nice little place, but, dear me, I guess Mis Mait- 
land she bought it with her money. Folks thought Mis Mait- 
land was shiftless, but I guess she never knew what 'twas to 
feel well, an' she wa'n't brought up to work the way she had to. 
They had two children, Ferdinand an' Miranda." 

" Oh ! " we cried, as a light broke in on us. 

"Yes, Shakspere, ain't they? I know folks was kinder 
scandalized at a minister naming his children out 'f a play, but 
he set everything by Shakspere, an' his books was more to him 
than the real world. Well, Ferdinand, they thought he was 
just wonderful, an' he did seem real bright and likely, but I 
never could see that his sister wa'n't full as bright. But Mr. 
Maitland he thought Ferdinand was a genius, an' he raised him 
according. He never did anything round, but his father kep' 
him at his books, an' taught him all kind 'f languages, an' Fer- 
dinand began writin' poetry. Well, sometimes I think children 
do do that ! I know my Sam he wrote a piece about the colt 
gettin' out 'f the pasture. How one day, the colt ran away, an' 
he ketched holt, an' somethin' 'bout the colt. I can't repeat 'em, 
but I've got 'em, an' they're real nice. 

"Well, Ferdinand, he was a genius, so folks said, an' while 
he was bein' educated for that part, why his mother died, an' 
when the children were twenty an' sixteen Mr. Maitland he 
died too. 

" Well, it took 'bout all the money they had to get Ferdinand 
through college. He couldn't get a scholarship for all he was 
so smart. I never could jest see why, but Miss Miranda says 



1894-] AN UNRECOGNIZED GENIUS. 43 

it was because to get one you have to grind, an' geniuses can't 
grind. Well, that may be, but geniuses' sisters can. Miranda, 
she applied for the district school, an' got it, an' she supported 
herself while Ferdinand was at college, an' left their father's 
money for him. When he graduated he wrote the poem, 
an' you never see a girl so proud as Miranda. She was 
twenty then, an' a prettier girl you couldn't find in a day's 
journey. 

" Well, Ferdinand came home an' settled down here, 
because he said he could write poetry here's well's anywhere, 
an' he was goin' to be a poet. So Miranda she taught school, 
an' he wrote poetry, an' someway or 'nother 'twant any of it 
published. Miss Miranda says it's because it's too fine for this 
coarse world, an' some day, when Ferdinand's dead, they'll wake 
up to recognize his genius, but it'll be too late ; she says that's 
always the way. Be that's it may, she began writin' too, 
little stories an' verses, an' things for children, an' she sent 'em 
to the papers, an' they took 'em paid for 'em too. I asked 
her once why she- wasn't a genius jest's much's her brother, 
but I never see her so vexed. ' It's very different,' she says, 
' Mis Ellis,' says she. ' Mine are jest nothin' 's mere rhymes ; 
his 're poetry.' Then she read me some of his, an' I s'pose 
they were grand, ' cause I couldn't understand a word, but hers 
are real simple, an' some 'f 'em make me cry. Well, she 
wrote, an' she kep' school, an' then she gave up the school an' 
jest wrote, an' she's supported 'em both, an' kep' their little 
home over their heads. Ferdinand's her idol, an' he's got all 
he can do to be it, an* a genius. I guess he's even given up 
writin' now ; says he's done enough for fame, an' an ungrateful 
world deserves no more. So that's all there is to tell 'bout 
Miss Miranda ; you'll see more'n I can tell you. 

" Sometimes her story makes me think of the stories my 
father used to tell. He was a sea captain, an' used to tell us 
children 'bout the mirage. Sometimes I think that's the way 
with Miss Miranda. Sailin' along down below's her real 
brother, lazy an' selfish, though I kinder hate to say it because 
I know how 'twould hurt her 'f she could hear. An' up in the 
clouds she sees the other brother, the one she think's she's got, 
a great poet, an' one she's glad to slave for. Well, I s'pose 
she's jest one 'f the lovin' kind that's got to cling to somethin', 
an' she's never had the time to think of the best kind 'f love, 
nor children, though how she does love 'em ! 

" Well, that's Miranda's story, an' 'tain't much to tell, but it 



44 



AN UNRECOGNIZED GENIUS. [Oct., 



always seemed like a good deal to me. I'll take you over to 
see her to-day 'f so he's you're ready to go." 

Nan's big gray eyes were luminous. " Oh," she said, " how 
we shall love her ! " 

"Yes," said Mrs. Ellis turning back, stiffened by her excess 
of emotion " yes, I guess you're her kind." And Nan and I 
felt breveted. 

We drove that afternoon to see Miss Miranda. The road 
was beautiful, shaded all the way by big elms, oaks, and chest- 
nuts, and bordered by blackberries and elderberries in full 
blossom, and little shimmering, applauding birches. The dis- 
tance was not great; we found that driving there was unneces- 
sary, the ceremonial only of a first call, and we many times 
walked over the same shady road through the varying tints of 
the happy summer in which we learned to know and love Miss 
Miranda. The house was pointed out to us before we reached 
it, a cozy little white nest, overhung by entirely dispropor- 
tioned trees. 

A slight, girlish figure in a white muslin, with moss-rose 
buds thrown over the ground-work, came out of the door, and 
ran with a peculiar lightness down the steps. "There's Miss 
Miranda," said Mrs. Ellis, turning to nod to her, and at once 
continuing to tie her horses. 

We thought that she must be mistaken, for this little woman 
looked hardly twenty-five. She was not more than two inches 
over five feet in height ; her abundant hair was a warm brown, 
shining in the sunlight, and was brushed softly back from a 
delicate, pale face, lighted by big eyes, and smiling, .sensitive 
lips. But as she came down the path we saw the lines around 
the eyes and lips that showed that her girlhood had only been 
preserved by the innocence and sweetness of heart that made 
her father's choice of name rather prophetic and appropriate 
than droll, as it had struck us before we had seen her. 

" Miss Miranda, I'll make you acquainted with Miss Pene- 
lope (she pronounced it Penny-lope) Huntington and Miss 
Anne Hovey," said Mrs. Ellis, doing the honors. 

Miss Miranda took a hand of each in one of hers. " I am 
so glad you have come," she said, turning up the box-bordered 
path, still holding us like a floral link, such as we made when 
children. " I hoped you would be here this afternoon, but I 
told myself you would surely not come so soon." Her voice 
was soft, yet had a thrill in it to which one's pulse responded 
indeed it was love at first sight for Nan and me. 



1894-] AN UNRECOGNIZED GENIUS. 45 

" I hope you like Silsby," she went on, as we were seated 
on the big porch. After we had assented, she continued : " I 
am very glad. I think it lovely, but then I have almost never 
seen anything else. Sometimes I feel that I need not regret 
my humdrum life, for the soul of all beauty is in any beauty, 
and when I read of Italy and pictures and music, it is to our 
hills and sunsets and the birds I have to come for their 
interpretation ; and if the meaning lies here, the beauty must 
too. Don't you think one only finds one's self repeated every- 
where ? " 

"Yes," I said, of whom she had asked the question. "But 
the sibyl who can read the revelation of a leaf could surely be 
ravished if the scroll were unrolled." 

Miss Miranda turned to me eyes that were wistful. " I am 
not always so contented," she said. " I only said sometimes 
I felt so. I am not satisfied always." 

" No one is always," broke in Mrs. Ellis, who had been 
listening in a stiff silence that I learned afterward meant con- 
tent with the trend of talk. " There's nothin' satisfied on 
earth, I b'lieve, but a cow, an' she's got all she needs. But 'f 
anybody wants somethin* more'n a cud it's more'n likely to be 
out of reach." 

Miss Miranda laughed a little sadly. " We are all reaching 
out, Mrs. Ellis," she said, " except your cow. I sometimes 
think ' the touch of nature ' that makes us kin is the touch of 
pain. Here is Caliban," she added, as a big brindle, thorough- 
bred dog came swinging up onto the porch. " If you know 
me you must know Caliban. I hope you don't mind dogs?" 

" I am very fond of them, and so is Pen," said Nan. " But 
Miss Maitland Caliban f " 

" Yes," said Miss Miranda blushing. " I named him to com- 
plete our trio my brother is Ferdinand. It was the ugliest 
puppy eyes ever rested on, worse even than now, and so feel- 
ing it appropriate all round, I called him Caliban. But I have 
regretted it ever since, for my monster has developed into a 
monster with every noble quality ; his only defects are physi- 
cal, and calling him Caliban has forced me to live in an apolo- 
getic attitude toward him, and it is very trying to feel apolo- 
getic toward one's dog." 

We made arrangements for driving to church together on 
the following Sunday, and left Miss Miranda standing under 
her big trees, the petals of syringas fallen on her dress, look- 
ing as young and lovely as the first Miranda decked with 



46 AN UNRECOGNIZED GENIUS. [Oct., 

shells. Big, kindly Caliban wagged his tail as we drove away 
from the first chapter of our summer idyl. 

" Why, Mrs. Ellis, she is the loveliest thing I ever saw," I 
broke out as soon as we were beyond hearing. 

" H'm ! " ejaculated Mrs. Ellis, jerking the reins in stern 
satisfaction. " Don't talk yit." 

It was late in July, and our acquaintance with Miss Miranda 
had grown into a friendship. Accompanied by Caliban we ex- 
plored the dark, fern-grown woods and the whole smiling coun- 
try side. Miss Miranda knew the note of every bird, the name 
of every leaf, arid she poured forth to us the wealth of her 
poetic fancy, her humor, and her intimate knowledge of books 
and nature. She told us, too, of her brother with tears in her 
eyes spoke of his unappreciated genius; but of herself she said 
little, "because," she told us, "there was nothing to say." Be- 
tween the lines of her brother's story we read her own little 
pathetic life history, the negation hardest to bear, borne how 
gladly and cheerfully! 

Of course by this time we knew the gifted Ferdinand. When 
we met, Miss Miranda told him that I wrote for the magazines 
and Nan illustrated my little verses and stories. 

"Charmed, I assure you," he said, "to meet fellow-artists. 
My career has been unknown to the world, working like the 
river that tunnels below ground. You are fortunate in having 
your poems recognized by an obtuse world." 

I hastened to assure him that my verses were not great 
poems, none too large for the world upon which they were 
launched. 

" Ah, indeed ! " he said. " Like my sister's, perhaps. She 
has really a pretty fancy, and a certain facility in rhyming ; but 
she never mistakes her work for poetry. I sometimes think it 
was well that her gift was a little talent, and not the divine 
afflatus, for after all one must live, and the Muses reward not 
their votaries materially, while Miranda's little nothings are re- 
ceived." The air of superiority with which he uttered these 
words made my fingers tingle with a shrewish desire to pull 
his long locks, but Miss Miranda listened admiringly. 

After he had gone she read us some of his poems : long, te- 
dious effusions, polysyllabic, verbose, with vast suggestive titles 
having no connection with subsequent lines, though the thought 
of each poem was hard to determine, being hidden under a tor- 
rent of words, "rattling reverberatory," as he would have said, 



1894-] AN UNRECOGNIZED GENIUS. 47 

for he dearly loved alliteration. Nan said the feeble idea of the 
verse was like a field-mouse squeaking on the battle-ground of 
Waterloo, quite drowned in the roar. And then Miss Miranda 
showed us her little sketches, and verses done for children, such 
dainty, exquisite verse that we were enchanted. 

Nan and I discussed it going home. I was rigid with indig- 
nation at the lazy, selfish man for whom this gifted little wo- 
man had slaved all her life. " How could she, with her humor and 
taste, be imposed upon by such a bombast of words?" I asked. 
" She might have been called Titania as suitably as Miranda." 

"But isn't it lucky she is deceived?" asked Nan. "Think 
how she would suffer if she saw the ears ! " 

"Well, it is wicked," I answered, "and I feel that for jus- 
tice's sake I want to set it right." Nan stopped short. 

" For kindness' sake, Pen," she cried, " never say that ! I 
think where one is inspired to do anything for justice's sake, 
one would better put helm hard a-lee, or whatever it is, and 
sail in the opposite direction." 

" Don't be afraid ; it's only a desire," I answered. 

We agreed that Miss Miranda must have written other and 
different things, which she had never shown to any one, and we 
promised ourselves the discovery of them. 

Very shyly the dear little woman admitted our conjecture, 
and finally we obtained the coveted sight of them. There they 
were, her hidden dreams and fancies ; not for children, as her 
known work was; no, but tender little love stories, and verses 
as exquisite as her own fragrant life and personality. 

" I never felt love," she said, blushing very much, " so I 
have no right to speak on such a subject." 

" Ah, that doesn't matter," I said indifferently, fearing to 
betray much feeling lest she dimly guess the plot Nan and I 
had laid. " After all the talk of ' realism and idealism,' what 
we like is the ideal, and fortunately in love the ideal is the 
true. May we take these home to read quietly, if we promise 
to return them safely ? They seem lovely, but I would rather 
talk to you now." 

Miss Miranda did not object and we carried them off in 
triumph. Nan and I sat up all night copying the best of them, 
and then I accomplished my act of treachery. I sent them to 
the editor of The Acropolis, a friend of mine, telling him the 
history of our discovery. And I think even my first story was 
not committed to the mail with greater trepidation, nor the 
reply awaited more anxiously. 



48 AN UNRECOGNIZED GENIUS. [Oct., 

It came at last, filling me with delight. The praise of Miss 
Miranda's work was all we could desire ; it was accepted, and 
more requested. 

Nan and I did not sleep that night very much. We planned 
how to tell Miss Miranda in the morning, we wondered how 
she looked when she was very glad, and we talked about the 
winter, saying that she should come to us in the city, leaving 
her brother in Mrs. Ellis's care. We would introduce her to 
people who were, as Mrs. Ellis said, "her kind," and for once 
she should be thoroughly appreciated, and enjoy herself. 

" Think of showing her the pictures and the big buildings ! " 
said beauty-loving Nan. 

"Oh, and think of taking her to hear Wagner! Just imag- 
ine her face as she listens to Lohengrin, and catches Elsa's 
story, or hears an orchestra ; or do you think she will like 
Italian opera better ? " I cried. " Oh, I hope they will sing 
everything this season! And just imagine that lovely soul, that 
became a Catholic, and stayed one, up here in the Silsby Four 
Corners church, and has managed by her poetic insight to get 
the beauty of the services with only her missal, and that un- 
speakable choir imagine her in the New York churches ! " 

We rose early, in a tumult little calmed by our few hours' 
sleep, and betook ourselves early to Miss Miranda's tiny white 
house. 

We had planned all sorts of ways of .telling her the glad 
tidings, and imagined all sorts of things she would do and say, 
but as usual we none of us followed our programmes. 

We handed the letter from the editor of The Acropolis to 
Miss Miranda, and bade her read it, and we watched her 
changing face in trembling silence. For a moment it was trans- 
fused with joy, and then, to our horror, she burst into violent 
weeping. 

We knelt on each side of her, incoherently begging her par- 
don, until she grew calm enough to speak. " It's not that," 
she sobbed. " You were very good to do it, and it was no 
liberty ; I am very grateful ; but my poor Ferdinand ! It is so 
unjust. He sent his poems to The Acropolis long ago, and they 
were refused there." 

I was at my wits' end at this unexpected point of view, but 
Nan put her arms around her. 

" Dear Miss Miranda, it is because of influence," she said. 
" You know your brother had none, and you know too that, 
though we think every word that the editor said is true of 



1894-] AN UNRECOGNIZED GENIUS. 49 

your work, after all Pen is his personal friend, and of course 
that made him read what she sent attentively. If she had sent 
your brother's poems he would have read those too, but proba- 
bly they were never read at all when they were sent by an un- 
known youth, so long ago. So it was perfectly just, after all, 
and you must be glad in this good fortune with all your might. 
We'll have your brother's work printed for private circulation 
this winter when you come to see us. That is the best 
way to manage with such work as his, for then no sordid con- 
sideration is mixed up in it, and you would like that better." 

My pretty Nan ! She coaxed Miss Miranda into her view 
of the matter, and we had a dinner of jubilation after all, to 
my intense relief, for I had begun to fear that I had broken 
Miss Miranda's, unselfish heart. 

The dear little princess walked about in a dream for a 
week, and then she wrote the loveliest little poem of all she 
had ever done, and we got her to send it to The Acropolis in 
her own name, which she did affrightedly, and her delight 
knew no bounds when that too was accepted. 

It helped Miss Miranda greatly to enjoy her modest success 
that her brother did not mind at all, as she had feared he 
would. She exalted his unselfishness and nobility of soul, but 
Nan and I knew that even to his career he was indifferent ; 
that his life was an epic called Dolce far niente. 

We turned all our attention then to luring Miss Miranda 
into acquiescence to our plans for her pleasure in the winter. 
We should probably never have succeeded, though ably 
seconded by Mrs. Ellis, and having won Ferdinand's indolent 
consent to closing the house and boarding with that good soul, 
had it not been for Nan's happy thought of having her 
brother's poems printed for his friends, which we represented 
required her personal supervision and editing, only to be done 
on the spot. 

So she promised to come to us in December for not less 
than two long months, and from the time that we won the 
promise we would sit under the strong pines, and build castles 
of such future delights that dear Miss Miranda would put her 
little hands over her ears and shake her head, declaring such 
happiness could never be for her. But we knew it was to be, 
and she looked so pretty as she listened to our enthusiastic 
pictures that when we were in our room again Nan would 
wonder if among all the congenial friends to whom we were to 
display her, the real Ferdinand, the princely lover, might not 
VOL. LX. 4 



50 AN UNRECOGNIZED GENIUS. [Oct., 

present himself tardily, 'tis true^ but in time to bring joy to 
this maiden princess. But I shook my head over Nan's 
romance. To my mind she must be beloved by all, but live in 
her spiritual world of innocent sea-dreams, weaving beautiful 
fancies, Miss Miranda to the end. 

And so came September, and the day of parting. We 
found that we could hardly have borne to leave North Silsby 
were it not that Miss Miranda was to follow us so soon, and 
that we had planned to return to Mrs. Ellis's spotless hospitality 
spotless in every sense when June should come again. 

" Well, I'm dretful sorry to see you goin'," that kind 
woman said, as she pressed upon us knobby bags of apples, 
and unexplored hampers full of her famous cooking. " But 
'twon't be so long till summer again, an' 's long 's you've got 
to go to get Miss Miranda to see you, an' hear all that music, 
an' everything you've been talkin' 'bout, why I declare I ain't 
sorry one mite you're goin'." So saying, she furtively wiped 
away a tear with her gingham apron, and waved it to us as we 
drove past the white- washed stones of the carriage-way. 

We looked long and lingeringly back from the car-windows 
at the green hill, beginning to turn brown and red under the 
September tints of its blackberry vines and sumach, the yellow 
golden-rod waving on its crest, behind which we knew lay the 
farm, and the little Maitland house, in each of which we were 
followed by loving thoughts as the train whistled in the hollow. 
We fancied that we could see Lemuel driving slowly back over 
the hill, as he had driven us on our arrival, only now his 
honest heart was rent with the sorrow of parting, and we 
believed that Caliban, who had escorted us to the" station, 
shared the feeling. 

" It has been an idyllic summer," sighed Nan, turning from 

the last glimpse of Silsby, "and I am thankful for every 

moment of it. We are richer by a friend than when we came, 

and we have known an unrecognized genius. Only, Pen, which 

" do you suppose it was ? " 

" Why, Ferdinand, of course," I answered promptly. " It 
can't be Miss Miranda, because, you know, The Acropolis has 
accepted her poems and stories, and she is to come to New 
York this winter to be petted and lionized. There's no doubt, 
Nan, at all that Ferdinand is the unrecognized genius." 




1894-] THE PHARAOHS OF BRITISH RULE. 51 

* 

THE PHARAOHS OF- BRITISH RULE. 

BY JOHN J. O'SHEA. 

IFTEEN years ago the House of Lords, the non- 
representative branch of the British Legislature, 
fully aware of its responsibility for what it was 
doing, drove Ireland to the verge of civil war. 
By its refusal to pass the Compensation for Dis- 
turbance Bill, passed by the Lower House at the instance of 
the late Mr. Forster, then chief secretary for Ireland, it precipi- 
tated a crisis in that country whose developments were hardly 
less grave than those of a revolutionary outbreak. The strain 
of dealing with it proved too great for Mr. Forster, and cer- 
tainly undermined his health and hastened his demise. Mr. 
Forster was an eminent man in many ways, a philanthropist 
and a great promoter of the cause of education. His loss to 
the Liberal party was momentous. Had he but exhibited the 
same firmness in dealing with the obstructive Lords as he did 
in his subsequent ineffectual struggle with the forces their obsti- 
nacy called into evil activity, he might have been the means of 
averting many miseries and preserving his own life to the full 
measure of its public usefulness. 

It was to no purpose that the House of Lords then held out 
against the demands of the Liberal party. They were soon 
compelled by the irresistible logic of events to pass measures 
far more revolutionary in their character, for the relief of the 
suffering Irish agriculturists, than that which they rejected in 
1879. By the agrarian legislation of subsequent years they were 
coerced to recognize for the first time the startling principle 
that the tenant cultivator of the soil was a partner with the 
landlord in the ownership of the soil, rendered so by the value 
of his labor expended on it and the value of the improvements 
he had made in his buildings and the condition of the cultivable 
land. 

But the defeat of the landlord representatives did not stop 
there. Its consequences were not confined to the economic 
condition of Ireland merely. A formidable agitation sprang up 
amongst the Scotch cottier tenants, and it was not allayed un- 
til Parliament had passed what is known as the Crofters' Act, a 



52 THE PHARAOHS OF BRITISH RULE. [Oct., 

measure of relief far more effectual in its spirit and operation 
than anything enacted on behalf of Ireland. Under this act the 
commission created to settle vexed questions of rent and tenure 
was empowered to wipe out .arrears of rent and fix the boun- 
daries of commonage lands, which the landlords had been gra- 
dually filching from the tenants contrary to immemorial custom. 
Arrears in many cases amounting to five and six years' rent 
were swept away at a stroke of the pen, and reductions of a 
very substantial character in the rent were in every case de- 
creed. The mountain pastures which had been taken from the 
tenants were restored, and the tranquillity of the country there- 
by placed on a permanent basis. 

By what fatuous principle the ruling power in England is 
guided in discriminating between the cases of Ireland and Scot- 
land it is hard, save on racial grounds, to divine. It is certainly 
remarkable that no violent opposition to the ultra-radical measure 
of land reform for Scotland was offered by the House of Lords, 
and hardly less so that it was passed by a Tory government. 
These facts point, by inductive reasoning, to the sinister inten- 
tion of the dominant class in British politics to maintain tranquil- 
lity in Great Britain, even at a sacrifice of cherished privileges, 
in order that no internal difficulties may interfere with a settled 
policy of repression toward Ireland concurrently with the main- 
tenance of a condition of political inequality. 

A calm review of the recent transactions of the Upper House 
must strengthen the belief that this nefarious design underlies 
the policy of the territorial oligarchy, and that it has been de- 
liberately adopted to frustrate the natural effects of the benefi- 
cent legislation of the Liberal party. When Mr. Gladstone 
abolished religious ascendency in Ireland, and conferred upon 
the people of that country the right of vote by ballot, he 
opened the flood-gates for a wave of reform which must follow 
its course as surely as the tides. Ireland was then a century 
behind England in the march of progress, but since that time 
she has sprung forward with leaps and bounds. The Home 
Rule Bill was the logical outcome of a condition which pre- 
sented the anomaly of an apparent equality in political freedom 
between the people of Ireland and the people of Great Britain, 
which in its real working left the will of Ireland powerless to 
effect any amelioration in her hampered and humiliated posi- 
tion. Mr. Gladstone foresaw that, once he admitted the people 
of Ireland to this nominal equality, the practical barrenness of 
the change must soon become apparent, whenever the voice of 



1 894.] THE PHARAOHS OF BRITISH RULE. 53 

Ireland's parliamentary representation was drowned at St. Ste- 
phen's. It was no easy task to convert the people of England 
to his view that this anomaly must, in justice and in wisdom, 
come to an end. 

Events have marched rapidly in that direction. The historic 
close of Mr. Gladstone's long public career by the passing of 
the Home Rule Bill forms a parliamentary episode more strik- 
ing than anything presented by the British Legislature since 
O'Connell's rejection of the insulting Abjuration oath. If the 
aged statesman fulfilled the day-dream of a great career by this 
fitting epulotic to the scars of ages of wrong, the House of 
Lords proved true to its own hoary traditions. Only for the 
privileges of its own caste was it ever known to make a stand 
on principle ; and, often as it has had to pass perforce the meas- 
ure which it had before rejected, it is still undismayed in its 
self-imposed task of obstruction. It dismissed the Home Rule 
Bill in a burst of scornful laughter. In a similar homeric way 
it treated the measures of reform for England, notably the Em- 
ployers' Liability Bill and the Registration Bill, passed by the 
present Parliament. And now it completes its task of frustrat- 
ing the whole work of the Parliamentary year by rejecting, with 
greater scorn than it showered on the Home Rule Bill, the 
great measure which the ministry proposes for the ultimate 
pacification of agricultural Ireland, the Evicted Tenants' Bill. 

It is curious to observe that while some of the leading 
English papers commented on the rejection of our Tariff Bill 
by the Senate as the act of a corrupt body legislating in the 
interests of its own members, not one of any note took heed 
of the enormity of the House of Lords' action. Here is a 
legislative body, every member of which is an owner of land, 
not only taking part in corrupt legislation, but actually defying 
the representatives of the people to legislate for the good of 
the state at large. Here is corruption on a gigantic scale, yet 
no journalist on the other side of the ocean can see anything 
in it to raise his ire on high constitutional grounds. If ever 
there was a clear illustration of overlooking the beam in one's 
own eye whilst crying out over the mote in a neighbor's, it is 
surely this. 

One of the provisions of the Great Charter upon which the 
English Constitution rests is that "no man shall be a judge in 
his own cause." What is the difference between judging and 
legislating? Nothing more than between the minor and the 
major premises of a proposition. The one process is the off- 



54 



THE PHARAOHS OF BRITISH RULE. [Oct., 



spring of the other. Parliament makes the laws upon which 
judges pronounce. Here, then, we behold a whole house of 
Parliament sitting in judgment in their own cause, and giving 
judgment, moreover, in their own favor! 

Oliver Cromwell is said to have entertained a great con- 
tempt for Magna Charta. He could not trample it more effect- 
ually under foot than the House of Lords is now doing. Yet 
the English press is silent under the outrage, and can see no 
corruption anywhere but in the American Senate. 

To form an intelligent idea of the situation now created in 
Ireland by the action of the House of Lords, it is useful to 
look at the salient facts. A recent Parliamentary return gives 
the number of farms from which tenants have been evicted 
since 1879 as r >375- We may assume that each farm represents 
a family; and the average family in Ireland comprises five 
persons. This gives us a total of 6,875 persons dispossessed. 
Although a considerable proportion of these have either emi- 
grated or got back somehow on their farms, the preponder- 
ance lies with those who are still under temporary shelter in 
the neighborhood of their old homes. Of the moral effect 
of the presence of so large a number of discontented per- 
sons, smarting under the sense of a cruel wrong, we may judge 
from the fact that so many as 119 of the farms made vacant 
by their eviction are untenanted and run to waste. These are 
described in the report as derelict farms. The dispossessed 
tenants cling together, for the most part, where their holdings 
are situated on large properties, such as the Massereene estate, 
the Lansdowne estate, the Clanricarde estate, and others of that 
class. It needs no great imagination to show how formidable 
an element of danger to the country lies latent in the aggrega- 
tion of such a large number of incensed and outraged people 
outraged in the fact that the Land Courts, by their repeated 
decisions in cognate cases since their eviction, have demon- 
strated that they only made a stand for bare justice. It is 
because the Evicted Tenants' Bill proposed that landlords must 
restore these tenants on the terms fixed by the Board of 
Arbitration that the House of Lords rejected the measure so 
ignominiously. They seem to forget that in clinging around 
the land from which they have been ejected these tenants are 
only stubbornly holding on to what they consider, and rightly 
consider, their own property. They have an equal stake with 
the landlord in the soil. This is the law of the land now, and 
they are manifestly within their right, although it may not have 



1894-] THE PHARAOHS OF BRITISH RULE. 55 

been the law when they were turned out, in demanding that 
the landlord, under cover of the law, shall not be allowed to 
rob them of their just and equitable right. 

In the speech delivered by the Marquis of Salisbury, when 
he moved the rejection of the measure, there was an additional 
aggravation. It is an unfortunate habit of that nobleman, from 
which his sense of responsibility as a former and possibly a 
future prime minister cannot restrain him, to indulge in bitter 
and biting remarks toward those whom he regards as political 
opponents. This unbecoming habit renders him at times as 
formidable to his friends, or rather those who are on his side 
in politics, as to his antagonists. The late Lord Beaconsfield 
and he could never agree, and their wordy rencontres often 
took a very acrimonious turn. It is only a few years since he 
described the people of Ireland as comparable only to a nation 
of Hottentots. It is a deplorable piece of fortune that a person 
with the tongue of a Thersites should at such a juncture be 
the leader of the opposition in the House of Peers and at the 
head of the Unionist party in Great Britain. 

Only one large feature is lacking to make the historical 
parallel between the close of the session in 1879 and the. pres- 
ent position complete. In the former year the shadow of 
coming famine was projected darkly over the country ; the past 
couple of years in Ireland have been periods of comparative 
prosperity. But in 1879 there were no large bodies of evicted 
tenants in the country, as there are now. So that in point of 
potential danger to Ireland's peace the present state of the 
agrarian trouble there is much more minatory than the crisis 
which called the Land League into existence. 

Of the merits of the case as between the evicted tenants 
and the landlords, the general public may not have more than 
a hazy idea. That the tenants have been evicted owing to their 
inability to meet excessive rents, to put the matter in a nut- 
shell, the casual observer who has not studied the question, no 
doubt, believes. Whilst this broad proposition covers the ques- 
tion as a whole, the special circumstances of its application 
must be studied if a knowledge of the real iniquity of the case 
is desired. Such a knowledge is hardly to be got save by a 
study of the question on the ground and from the lips of the 
Irish tenant-farmers, but those to whom this course is not open 
may find some help in the current official literature of the sub- 
ject. A Parliamentary Commission sat all last spring and sum- 
mer inquiring into the modus operandi of the agricultural tribu- 



5 6 THE PHARAOHS OF BRITISH RULE. [Oct., 

nals in Ireland, and from the majority report we get a few lead- 
ing facts which help to throw light on the subject luridly 
enough. The report declares that the rents fixed by the courts 
between 1881 and 1885 are excessive, in the light of existing 
conditions. It adds that the present system of determining a 
judicial rent is costly and tedious, and that tenants should not 
be compelled to pay extra rent on their own improvements. 
The reasons which led up to the latter recommendation are 
well illustrated in a case cited by Mr. Healy in the course of 
the debate on the second reading of the Evicted Tenants' Bill 
in the House of Commons. The report is worth preserving. 
Mr. Healy said : 

" I take this case not from the files of any Nationalist news- 
paper. I take it from the files of the Irish Land Commission, 
produced by the head of that court, and I ask this house to 
say whether it is reasonable to expect Irish tenants, evicted or 
non-evicted, to remain patient under these circumstances. A 
man named Patrick Moore held eight acres under Mr. Villiers 
Stuart, formerly a member of this house member for Water- 
ford. Moore held eight acres on a mountain which, according 
to the report, was five hundred and fifty feet above the level 
of the sea and exposed to the sea. The rent he was paying 
was only twopence an acre. He was paying for his eight acres 
sixteen pence. He reclaimed this holding. He built on it a 
house, cow-house, a boiler-house, a piggery, and a stable, and 
he reclaimed seven acres of land from the original heath and 
furze. What was Patrick Moore's reward ? The landlord first 
raised his rent to i%s. 9^., although there is a clause in the 
Irish Land Act which says that no rent shall be allowed or 
made payable on tenants' improvements. He had expended, 
according to the evidence, on this holding a sum of 210. He 
and his predecessors in title had been working the land since 
1826, and during that time not a copper of expenditure was 
made by the landlord. This clause which says that no rent is 
to be allowed or made payable on tenants' improvements is 
construed by the Irish Land Commission as if the word ' no ' 
was omitted, so that it is made to read that rent shall be 
allowed and shall be made payable on the tenants' improve- 
ments. Accordingly, the landlord having raised the rent to 
iSs. yd., the tenant applied for the benefits of the Land Act." 

Mr. Healy then proceeds to tell of Patrick Moore's case 
going from court to court until it was finally decided on. 
What the final decision was Mr. Healy tells as follows : 



1894-] THE PHARAOHS OF BRITISH RULE. 57 

"On November 23, 1893, the sub-commissioners fixed on 
the holding a rent of i8.y. gd., which before the land act had 
been \6d. Was the landlord satisfied with that? Nothing of 
the kind. Here is the sub-commissioners' official report : 

" ' The position of the farm is exposed to the sea. The en- 
tire holding was evidently a poor wild mountain, and will 
require continuous outlay in the shape of labor to prevent its 
going back to its normal state of furze and heath.' 

" And with that statement before them the Chief Land Com- 
mission on appeal raised the rent from i8.y. gd. to 30^., and 
ordered the tenant to pay the costs ; that is, the landlord's 
costs." 

J.t may be thought that the case here cited is an exceptional 
one. The very contrary is the fact. Wherever the process of 
reclamation and improvement went on upon the land, such 
action of the landlords was the rule almost invariably. The 
writer has gone over the estate of the landlord above referred 
to, and seen some of the patches for which such exorbitant 
rent is demanded. The hovels in which many of the wretched 
cultivators dwell are not good enough to shelter pigs. 

In the ranks of the ministry there appears to be some hesi- 
tation as to the line of policy to be pursued in face of the 
rejection of the ministerial measure. Although Lord Rose- 
berry's speech on the debate in the House of Lords conveyed 
an impressive warning to the peers on the dangers they were 
incurring, the subsequent conduct of Sir William Harcourt, 
when challenged in the Lower House to state the intentions of 
the government, showed plainly that there was a want of har- 
mony on the ministerial benches. Mr. John Morley subsequent- 
ly pacified Irish members somewhat by a more satisfactory 
declaration. But the feeling aroused in Ireland is intense ; and 
herein lies the danger and delicacy of the situation. In playing 
the game of bluff which they are most unquestionably doing, 
the Lords, whilst they have many chances of losing, have at 
least one of success. If they can but provoke the Irish into a 
state of semi-rebellion, then the game is in their own hands 
without any question. The extreme party in Ireland will take 
the place of the party of constitutional methods, and all the 
old dreary tragedy of secret conspiracy, coercion, treachery, and 
wreck of noble lives be enacted over again. 

This, then, is the hour of trial for the Liberal party. It is 
not easy to take a sanguine view of its adequacy to the strain. 
Bereft of the great name of Mr. Gladstone, it loses an influence 



58 THE PHARAOHS OF BRITISH RULE. [Oct., 

that in itself was victory-compelling. But even the loss of 
great leaders has not prevented the gain of many a glorious 
battle. If only those who take up the command keep cool, 
close up the ranks, and struggle still toward the goal, the 
disaster may be retrieved. But a ministry which is only half- 
hearted is not the ministry for such a crisis as that which has 
now arisen in the affairs of Great Britain and Ireland. 

Perhaps the people the democracy of Great Britain have 
not as yet realized the full meaning of the issue which the 
Lords have raised. If they have, they exhibit a most extraor- 
dinary torpidity over the question. Only one public meeting, 
up to the time of writing, had been held in protest, and this 
by no means of the magnitude which such an occasion might 
have prescribed. They do not seem to understand that the 
whole system of representative government is at stake. Per- 
haps when they have grasped this important truth, they may 
act in such a way as to show they are not insensible to the 
value of constitutional rule. 

All through the long Parliamentary session, the Irish Na- 
tional party in Parliament worked assiduously with the Liberal 
party in carrying measures of reform for Great Britain. Their 
support was unflagging. Without their aid not one great mea- 
sure would have been got through. It is to their unprecedent- 
edly close attendance that the British people are indebted for 
the most beneficial budget ever passed. To them, in fact, the 
Liberal party owes its existence. If that party and the people 
do not stand up loyally in defence of their faithful allies, 
they will disappoint all the believers in the better qualities of 
the Anglo-Saxon. 




LA GRANDE CHARTREUSE, 



59 




A VISIT TO THE MONASTERY OF LA GRANDE 
CHARTREUSE. 

BY CH. CHAILL^-LONG. 

HE Monastery of La Grande Chartreuse is situ- 
ated in the centre of a chain of the Alps 
known as La Grande Chartreuse ; calcareous 
mountains the periphery of which is about one 
hundred miles, bounded north and east by 
Notre Dame de Myans from Chapareillan to Chambery; north 
and west by the valley of the Giers-Mort from Echelles to 
Voreppe, and south and east by the valley of the Isere from 
Voreppe to Chapareillan. The principal summits of this huge 
mass, Chamchaude, Grand- 
Sure, Petit-Som, and Grand- 
Som, are covered with snow 
and ice during eight months 
of the year, and for the re- 
mainder are green with sombre 
forests of pines, among which 
grows a rare and luxuriant 
flora. Under the shadow of 
Grand-Som (2,033 metres alti- 
tude above the sea-level), in a 
valley (977 metres) studded 
with stately trees, stands the 
monastery, accessible to the 
world below and beyond by 
three routes : the Col de Porte, 
Col de Cucheron, and Saint- 
Laurent-du-Pont. 

The monastery was founded 
by Saint Bruno in June, 1084. 
Saint Bruno, although born in 
Cologne (1035), was educated 
in Reims, and was considered 
as a Frenchman by his con-' ST. BRUNO. 

temporaries, who named him 

Bruno-Gallicus. Chosen archbishop by reason of his great tal- 
ents and learning by the pope, Hugues de Die, Bruno shortly 




6o A VISIT TO THE MONASTERY [Oct., 

after resigned his high office, and having first distributed his en- 
tire fortune among the poor, he retired to the solitude of the 
cloister. Failing to find either at Molesme or Seche- Fontaine 
the absolute seclusion which he desired, he set out with several 
companions to seek the counsel of Saint Hugues at Grenoble. 

THE DREAM OF ST. HUGUES. 

" Now about this time," so says the tradition, " Saint 
Hugues had a dream in which he saw seven stars, which fell at 
his feet and rising crossed the mountain deserts and fixed them- 
selves in a place called Chartreuse. Hugues then perceived 
seven angels who proceeded to erect a building in the solitudes, 
upon the roof of which appeared the seven mysterious stars. 
The bishop on awakening sought to learn the signification of 
his dream, when suddenly Bruno and his companions (seven in 
all) entered, and falling at the feet of Hugues, prayed that they 
might be directed to build a convent in some desert and 
secluded spot. ' I know the place. God has chosen it, and I 
will establish you there in his name,' cried Hugues ; and accord- 
ingly he led Bruno and his companions to the desert of La 
Chartreuse, where, on the spot where now stands the chapel of 
Saint Bruno and that of Notre Dame de Casalibus, Hugues ex- 
claimed : ' Here is the spot which I saw in my dream, here 
the angels built, here the seven stars which appeared upon the 
roof ; those stars, they are you, Bruno, you and your com- 
panions ; build here.' ' 

St. Hugues having arranged for the construction of a con- 
vent, blessed its founder and returned to Grenoble. It was 
thus, according to the legend, the Order of the Chartreuse was 
created and the first monastery constructed. 

THE ORIGINAL CHARTER. 

A fragment of the original charter reads as follows : 
" The holy and indivisible Trinity having given us grace in 
his pity to think of our welfare, and reflecting upon our exist- 
ence here below and how fragile is this life which escapes in 
spite of us, and is passed in offending God by our sins ; we 
have resolved, poor slaves of sin that we are, to snatch our- 
selves from the hand of eternal death ; to this end, and in 
order not to be crushed under the weight of bitter regrets in 
this world and the next, and also not to find in the miseries of 
the present life anything but the commencement of the pains 
and griefs of eternity, we exchange our perishable riches for 



1894-] OF LA GRANDE CHARTREUSE. 61 

treasures which will never disappear, and we buy at small cost 
an eternal heritage. For this reason we concede to Maitre 
Bruno and freres who accompany him, seeking a solitude to 
reside and execute the affairs of God : we concede, we say, to 
them and their successors for all time a vast desert whose 
limits are herewith marked. I, Humbert de Miribel, have made 
this donation conjointly with my brother Odon, and all the 
persons who may have rights therein." 

DEATH OF ST. BRUNO. 

Saint Hugues exacted as a condition to this donation and 
to recall the benefits conferred by the church of Grenoble upon 
the order, that each year the Chartreuse should contribute to 
the bishop and the cathedral fifteen small rolls of butter and 
one quintal (too pounds) of cheese. 

Saint Bruno was not left long in the enjoyment of his 
coveted repose. In the commencement of 1090 he was recalled 
to Rome by Pope Urbain, and charged with the foundation of 
the Order of Chartreux of Colubria, where he died on October 
6, noi. On the Rotuli, or death-roll, which according to cus- 
tom is circulated among the orders, Saint Hugues caused to be 
written of Bruno as follows : 

" Bruno, vir religione scientiaque famosus, honestatis et 
gravitatis ac totius maturitatis quasi quoddam speculum homo 
profundi cordis." 

Seven times the faith and tenacity of purpose of the Char- 
treux were tested by fire and water. The first time on January 
i, 1132, when the convent was crushed beneath an avalanche of 
snow which buried in their cells seven monks ; 
an incident which confirmed indelibly in the 
monastic mind the legend of the ever mysteri- 
ous seven stars and the seven angels in the 
dream of Saint Hugues. The chapels of Saint 
Bruno and Notre Dame de Casalibus, although 
adjacent to the convent, were untouched by the 
avalanche, and still remain as sanctuaries of 
prayer and pious pilgrimage. The arms of the 
order, composed by the Reverend Pere General 
Dom Marten in 1233, affirms the perpetuity of the order, and 
a cross planted upon a globe surrounded by seven stars bears 
the device : Stat Crux dum voivitur Orbis the stars recall the 
origin of the order, and the cross, the symbol of penitence, 
will stand while the globe exists. 




62 



A VISIT TO THE MONASTERY 



[Oct., 



MASSACRES BY THE HUGUENOTS. 

In 1521 the Order of the Chartreux numbered 206 
branches in Europe. During the religious wars of the sixteenth 
century 39 monasteries were suppressed and sacked or burned, 
and the monks driven from their cells or massacred. The 
Huguenots in 1562 burned La Grande Chartreuse, but, notwith- 
standing a long period of plagues by pestilence and by fire, the 
order was successfully maintained, and at the close of the 
seventeenth century numbered 200 monasteries, 2,500 monks, 
1,300 converts, and several hundred nuns, the whole under the 




THE iMONASTEhY IN 1676. 



supreme direction of La Grande Chartreuse. From 1778 to 
1784 the Emperor Joseph decreed the suppression of 24 monas- 
teries. In 1-790 the number had been reduced to 122. 

DRIVEN OUT BY THE REVOLUTION. 

A decree of the National Assembly of France dated Sep- 
tember 13, 1792, obliged the Chartreux to quit La Grande 
Chartreuse, and seek asylum in the convents of Germany, Swit- 
zerland, and Italy. In 1816, after twenty-three years of exile, the 
surviving members of the order were permitted to return by the 
government of the Restoration, since when the monastery has 
become the property of the state, which grants certain privi- 
leges to the Order of the Chartreux. 

The actual monastery was completed in 1686, under the 



1894-] OF LA GRANDE CHARTREUSE. 63 

regime of the Reverend Pere Dom Innocent Le Masson. The 
architecture is simple, massive, and majestic, and its gray and 
stately outlines seem clothed in a sort of solemn grandeur 
which accords with the severe and austere life within. 

The best route from Chambry to La Grande Chartreuse 
runs by rail to Saint-Bron (forty-five minutes), and thence by 
diligence a ride of four hours to the monastery by reason of 
the steep ascent. From Saint-B6ron the road enters a deep 
gorge and climbs the precipitous mountain-side, under whose 
overhanging ledges, in the abyss below, flows the river Giers, 
which, strangled within its narrow limits, breaks in noisy cas- 
cades over the boulders which obstruct its course. The road 
passes through the famous Gorges des Chailles ; the quaint vil- 
lage of Les Echelles, and finally Saint-Laurent-du-Pont, with a 
population of two thousand souls, but which in 1367, during the 
black pest which ravaged all Europe, acquired the pseudonym 
of Ne"mos, from the fact that not one soul was left alive in the 
village. Saint-Laurent-du-Pont is the key to the Grand Char- 
treuse, and is situated on .the left bank of the Giers-Mort and 
at the foot of the steep mountain which we are to ascend. 
A road on the right leads to Curriere, the ancient Chartreuse 
monastery, which now serves as an institution for the deaf and 
dumb under the direction of the freres Gabriel. 

Fourvoirie, on our left, stands at the entrance of what is known 
as the Desert, and consists of a number of buildings, saw-mills, 
and the laboratory and depot of the celebrated Chartreuse liqueurs, 
the importance of which may be determined by the amount of 
production, one million three hundred thousand litres having been 
sold in the year 1890. The proceeds are applied to the expense 
of maintenance of the order and its almost unlimited charities. 

The entre"e of the Desert, through which one must pass to 
reach the monastery, is grand and impressive. Near the ruins 
of a primitive fortress, known as the Porte de la Jarrette, a mag- 
nificent waterfall, called the " Cascade du Logis," marks the point 
from which the road was constructed as far as the Pont Saint- 
Bruno in 1715 by the Chartreux road. The road is hewn from 
the mountain-side, often out of the solid rock which projects in 
many places over the brawling river below, which may be faintly 
heard from the depths as it breaks and foams into countless 
cascades of unsurpassed beauty. The Pont Saint-Bruno, which 
traverses the Giers, is a model of symmetry and elegance, and 
was constructed in 1495 by Jean Ode, a Chartreux monk. 

Twenty minutes distant from the bridge stands a curiously 



6 4 



A VISIT TO THE MONASTERY 



[Oct., 







(i.) OLD MILL ON THE GIERS. 
(4.) CLOISTERS. 




(2.) THE RIVER GIERS. (3.) ENTRANCE TO DESERT. 
(5.) THE CHAPEL OF ST. BRUNO. 



1 894.] 



OF LA GRANDE CHARTREUSE. 




(i.) GENERAL VIEW OF THE CHARTREUSE. (2.) THE Pic D'AIGUILLE. 

(3.) FRONT VIEW OF THE CHARTREUSE. 
VOL. LX. 5 



66 



A VISIT TO THE MONASTERY 



[Oct., 



shaped rock named Pic d* Aiguille, forty metres high, on the 
summit of which an iron cross has been erected. The road 
passes through several tunnels bored through the solid granite, 
and over the entrance of one of these an inscription declares 
that from that point to the convent the construction (1854-36) 
is due to M. Eugene Viaud, sub-inspector of forests for works of 
public art. Still skirting the mountain-side the road curves 
finally to the left and dividing, the left arm ascending by a pre- 
cipitous way practicable only to pedestrians, the right describes 

a half- circle, crosses a small 
bridge, and suddenly, as if by 
magic, we find ourselves in full 
view of the convent, dominat- 
ed by the snow-clad summits 
of Grand-Som. On the right 
of the entrance to the monas- 
tery stands the Chapelle-des- 
Dames, where a daily service 
is recited by a Chartreux pere 
and where ladies have the 
privilege of attending. The 
Hotellerie-des-Dames is situat- 
ed a hundred yards distant, 
where ladies receive hospital- 
ity, the hostelry being under 
the direction of nuns from 
Grenoble, who remain during 
the summer season. The Cha- 
pelle-des-Dames and the hos- 
telry mark the limits of lady 
visitors, the privilege of enter- 
ing the monastery being ab- 
solutely denied to the fair sex 
by the rules and regulations 
of the order. 

It was a hot, sultry afternoon in'August, 1892, that we arrived 
my friend and myself at the convent, and having knocked 
at the gate we were received by a Chartreux frere, who con- 
ducted us across the court, in which were two large basins which 
contain the water brought by pipes from the fountains of Saint- 
Bruno near by. At the door of the monastery the frere confided 
us to the care of a servant, who, conducting us into the office r 
a large, low-ceilinged room, demanded our t names ; inquiring if we 




THE LADIES' CHAPEL. 



1894-] OF LA GRANDE CHARTREUSE. 67 

desired to remain for the night. Such being our intention, we 
were informed that the pere prior would assign us cells after the 
customary visit at four o'clock. 

Formerly visitors were required to register their names in an 
album kept for this purpose, and curious indeed it would be 
if one could glance at the long list of distinguished men who 
have made pilgrimages to La Grande Chartreuse. Here came 
Petrarch, the illustrious poet, to visit his brother, a Chartreux 
monk, in 1352'; St. Frangois de Sales, in 1618; Jean Jacques 
Rousseau, in 1695 ; and Chateaubriand, in 1805. 

The government of the Chartreux is monarchical rather 
than communistic. The general-chapter is supposed to be the 
supreme power to which the reverend pere general is subject, 
but inasmuch as this officer is the head of the chapter, he in 
fact, and not the chapter, is the lex suprema. 

The office of reverend pere general is elective, as well as a 
number of inferior offices: the pere superior, pere prior, etc., all 
of whom are elected by the chapter, in which all members of 
proper age or service in the order are electors. The order is 
divided into priests and laymen, peres and freres, monks and con- 
verts (or novices). Besides these there is a class known as donnes, 
who are not bound by the usual vows, but who give themselves 
to the order on a simple contract. They perform the necessary 
labor or secular business of the order, wear a costume of 
brown color, shave their beards but not their heads, and in- 
habit the lodges on the right of the entrance to the con- 
vent. 

Latin is the official language of the order, and this fact 
alone creates an aristocratic community. The greater number of 
converts are young men who, having completed their education, 
know little or nothing of the world. 

The costume of the monk is of white wool, cut somewhat 
after the model of the tunica talaris of the Romans, bound at 
the waist by a belt of white leather, from which hangs a chap- 
let. Over the tunic the cuculle, or scapulaire, is worn, surmounted 
by the capuchon, the coiffure of the ancient Gauls. Thus clothed 
the prostrate monk kisses the altar, and places thereon his 
cedule of profession, signed only with the cross, for henceforth 
he has no name, and, though living, he is now for ever dead to 
the world. 

We were now conducted to the Salle du Chapitre, where, as 
its name implies, are held the meetings of the general chapter, 
the object of which is to pass rules and regulations and main- 



68 



A VISIT TO THE MONASTERY 



[Oct., 




(i.) THE REFECTORY. (2.) THE CHAPTER HALL. 

(4.) THE CHAPEL OF ST. Louis. 



(3.) LIBRARY. 



1894-] OF LA GRANDE CHARTREUSE. 69 

tain the order in its ancient usages. The salle is ornamented 
with forty-nine portraits of the generals of the order, and at the 
extreme end stands a statue of Saint Bruno executed by the 
sculptor Foyatie, and in the adjoining room a tableau by Le- 
sueur, representing the death of Saint Bruno. 

From the general chapter we passed into the Chapelle de 
St. Louis, so-called in honor of Louis XIV., who, following the 
initiative of Charles V. of France, in 1370 founded at the Grand 
Chartreuse a chapel upon condition that a daily Mass should 
be recited for himself and the queen ; subscribing to this object 
four thousand florins. Charles VI., 1413; Louis XL, 1469; Hen- 
ri III., 1576; Louis XIII., 1630; and Louis XIV., 1682, each 
confirmed by letters patent the foundation of Charles V., and 
donated considerable sums for the maintenance of the chapel 
and its ornaments. 

Our guide now conducted us to the library, which contains 
twenty thousand volumes. In the early days the principal oc- 
cupation of the occupants of the cloister was the copying and 
correcting the text of manuscripts ; but the invention of Guten- 
berg changed this, and the monks have since turned their at- 
tention to printing of books as well as writing them. The 
library not only contains ecclesiastical works, but the classics of 
Plato, Cicero, Socrates, and Aristotle may be found side by 
side with Pascal, Bossuet, and Montaigne. Quitting the library 
we passed into the cloister, a colossal gallery 215 metres in 
length by 23 metres in width, and which receives the light of 
day from 113 windows. On the east side of the cloister 36 
doors lead to the cells of the monks, on the sides of which, 
piercing the massive walls, are small windows or doors, through 
which servants pass food to the hermit whose solitude is not to 
be broken. 

Our guide opened the door of an unoccupied cell with a 
pass key, inviting our attention to the curious lock, or vertevelle, 
being an exact copy of the lock used in the original construc- 
tion of the monastery. Within we found ourselves in a narrow 
gallery, which we were told serves the monk as a promenade 
when the cold of winter prevents his exercise in the garden 
attached to each cell. Ascending a stairway, on which there is 
planted an iron cross, we entered the cell, the first part of 
which formerly served the monk as a kitchen, but which is now 
unused, the chapter having concluded to cause the hermits' food 
to be prepared in the general kitchen, that more time might 
thus be devoted to meditation and solitude. Next to this piece 



A VISIT TO THE MONASTERY 



[Oct., 




VIEWS ON THE GlERS AND BRIDGE OF ST. BRUNO. 



1894.] 



OF LA GRANDE CHARTREUSE. 



is a small division which contains a table and chair and is used 
as a study, and next is the sleeping-room, the bed or berth being 
enclosed in a sort of cupboard, a mattress filled with straw and 
covered with coarse linen. 

Descending a narrow stairway we found ourselves in a cell 
where the monk saws the wood necessary to heat his cell in 
winter, and as well a carpenter's bench with tools, which serve 
him both for physical exercise and mental relaxation. The cells 
in the middle ages were founded by the charitable or the peni- 




A MONK'S CELL AND HERMITAGE. 

tent, upon condition that the inmate should recite prayers each 
day for his benefactor, and it is thus they are maintained at 
the present time. From the cloister we were taken to the 
cemetery, where nameless crosses of wood or stone marked the 
narrow graves of the monks. 

The Chartreux, if asked if solitude, which is the cardinal 
point of their order, is not contrary to human nature, will re- 
ply in the words of Montalembert in Les Moines d* Occident: 
" Who has not understood that it is good to reserve at least 
some corner of the world, away from the revolutions, agitations, 
and jealousies of ordinary life, to bless and venerate the Creator? 
Who has not dreamed of a future where, for one day at least, 
he may say to himself with the prophet : ' Sedebit solitarius et 
tacebit ? '" 



72 THE COLISEUM. [Oct., 




THE COLISEUM. 

RIGHT REV. J. I,. SPALDING. 

COLISEUM! ruin vast and strong, 
Defiant still, spite power of time and fate, 
Thou boldest well thy solitary state 
Amid new worlds that idly round thee throng : 

And through the centuries thou dost prolong 
The majesty of Rome, her mighty weight 
Of will, upraised above the little gre'at, 

And quick to punish all who did her wrong. 

But I behold, cold and indifferent, 

Unmoved by awful sternness of thy face, 

Heedless of all the memories which have lent 
To thy unyielding form a tender grace : 

For thou art but the shameless monument 
Of the fierce strength of an unloving race. 




1894-] THE LESSON OF " THE WHITE CITY" 73 

THE LESSON OF "THE WHITE CITY." 

BY VERY REV. A. F. HEWIT, D.D. 
SECOND PART. 

'HE First Part of this article left off with the 
question : What is there in Modern Civilization 
which brings it into conflict with the great 
movement of Liberty ? This movement was ex- 
plained as a struggle of the people to become 
free to possess those earthly goods which make life worth living. 
The principle was laid down that the true welfare of a nation 
is the welfare of the whole number of its individual members. 
Also, that this welfare consists in the aggregate of the virtue 
and happiness of this multitude. That civilization which was 
represented by the " White City " was accused not of essential 
evil in its elements but of a short-coming, on account of which 
a certain warfare is waged against it in the name of liberty, a 
warfare which some foreboding prophets of evil to come pre- 
dict must become internecine and irreconcilable. 

I left my readers to find an answer to the question pro- 
posed, for themselves. I have concluded, however, to attempt 
to give them the answer which I did not promise. 

In a word, the whole answer is summed up in this state- 
ment : The Modern Secular and Material Civilization which I 
have in view, lacks that moral and religious element, force, and 
vital principle, which alone can give it power to dominate and 
direct the great popular movement of the age in the civilized 
world. The civilization of Christendom is the creation of the 
Catholic Church. The popular movement against slavery and 
every form of servitude under despotism and oppression origi- 
nated in the Catholic Church. But a fatal schism has separated 
the Church and the World, Civilization and Christianity ; has 
divorced science, literature, politics, secular progress, from faith 
and religion. All have become, not indeed absolutely and 
totally, but in a large measure tending toward increase, un-, 
Christian, even anti-Christian, except in so far as the great 
lump still remains leavened with what it has formerly absorbed 
and still retains of the elements thrown into it at the beginning. 
That disastrous cataclysm miscalled the Reformation, though not 



74 THE LESSON OF " THE WHITE CITY:' [Oct., 

the beginning or the completion of this deplorable schism, was 
the principal explosion which rent Christendom and interrupted 
the development of the grand work of human redemption 
through the Catholic Church. The catastrophe of the French 
Revolution was its logical sequel, followed by the devastating 
career of Napoleon, the degeneracy of Continental Protestant- 
ism, the rise and progress of infidelity, the atrocious invasion 
of Rome, the anti-Catholic, anti-Christian crusade in all its 
monstrous shapes ; the hideous social maladies and miseries of 
modern states ; and that dreadful portent of anarchism which is 
now threatening the destruction of both liberty and civilization. 
The governing powers in France and Italy are the responsi- 
ble authors of that anarchism which has raised its venomous 
head and is striving to wind its deadly coils around them. 
They have sown the wind and are reaping the whirlwind by 
their war upon religion. They are more worthy of execration 
and punishment than the wretched assassins upon whom just 
vengeance has fallen. I do not meari by this, that M. Carnot 
is to be classed with Cesario Santo. Nor will I single out 
among historical characters of the past three centuries, any 
names of sovereigns, statesmen, ecclesiastics, or authors in phi- 
losophy and literature as worthy of special reprobation, though 
I could easily do so without any violation of historical justice. 
The schism is no mere disruption of ecclesiastical order, like 
the Greek schism. It is a violent separation, leaving a chasm 
between the church and the world. In the original Christian 
civilization, Church, State and Society, were closely united as 
parts of one whole. One theory, one idea, one principle domi- 
nated over all. Modern civilization has abandoned this archi- 
tectural idea for another, totally opposite. This modern idea 
recognizes nothing beyond material and secular good as the 
object of all political, social, and individual striving, as the chief 
end of man and all human development. If this material and 
secular good which governments aim at were the welfare of all 
the people, there would not be so much reason to complain. 
But it is otherwise. What is aimed at chiefly, is national 
aggrandizement. Thus the interests and aims of the distinct 
nations of Christendom are made to clash with each other. 
.They are brought into conflict. Instead of a happy family of 
allied peoples, bound together in Christian fellowship and 
brotherhood, there are hostile and warring powers, and all 
Europe is turned into a collection of armed camps, the trade of 
every citizen is to be a soldier. The greatness of each nation 



1894-] THE LESSON OF " THE WHITE CITY:' 75 

is principally in its army and navy, and upon these its re- 
sources are lavished. Thus the welfare and happiness of the 
people are sacrificed. Italy presents just now the most signal 
example of the ruin which is brought upon a people by the 
effort to keep up a large army and navy. It has not even 
'brought to the Italian kingdom that imaginary good which is 
called glory. The army was defeated at Custozza, and the 
iron- clad fleet was annihilated by a squadron of Austrian 
wooden frigates at Lissa ; and these disgraces have not been 
-counterbalanced by .equal successes elsewhere. The people have 
been impoverished and brought to misery, and the nation to 
the verge of bankruptcy. 

The modern battle-ship is one of the master-pieces of 
modern science and art. The Indiana, for instance, is one of 
the proudest boasts of our national achievement. We must re- 
.gard it with wonder and admiration, as a trophy of human skill. 
It is a wise and necessary policy to create a navy composed 
of battle-ships, cruisers, and other vessels of the best quality ; 
to perfect our coast-defences ; and to put our army on such a 
footing that the government may have an adequate military 
force at its disposal. But this very necessity of defending our- 
selves against destructive violence and preparing engines of de- 
struction for our enemies, is a proof of our defective civilization. 

All the great national efforts to extend civilization among 
the half-civilized and barbarous nations have for their motive 
to increase the political and commercial power of the several 
Christian nations, and to open new avenues of wealth to their 
traders and manufacturers. Their enterprises are good and 
useful, and to a certain extent philanthropic. They have done 
a good work in breaking down the barriers which shut these 
.peoples in, in protecting Christians from violence and murder, 
and in beginning a crusade against the horrible and cruel slave- 
trade, which we may hope to see carried on until Africa is 
entirely delivered from it. Indirectly, this movement of civil- 
ization serves the cause of Christianity. It opens the way to 
apostolic missionaries. It is not, however, a Christian move- 
ment, although many of its agents are personally governed by 
Christian motives and principles. There is much zeal and 
generosity in Christian nations, but it is not national, and the 
nations, as such, do not aim at propagating the gospel. It is 
much if they are merely indifferent and not actively hostile to 
missionary operations. At home, some governments have done 
all in their power to enslave or destroy the church, and to 



76 THE LESSON OF " THE WHITE CITY." [Oct.* 

uproot Christianity from the minds of the people. Every- 
where, there is a party which outruns the governing policy in 
its hostility to religion, and to this party belong all extreme 
radicals and anarchists. 

It is a plain and palpable fact that the union between 
church and state which existed throughout Latin Christendom 
in the Middle Ages has passed away. There have been in the 
modern period relations between the two powers, and concor- 
dats ; and these have been to a great extent prejudicial to the 
church. Now, however Christian the people may be, there is 
no state which is, as a state, strictly and properly Christian, 
notwithstanding the fact that many Christian principles, espe- 
cially in ethics, are embedded in the laws and traditions by 
which the political and social order is regulated. The church 
and the state are in their nature distinct, and each one is 
autonomous. Their union in the Christendom of the Middle 
Ages, under the spiritual sovereignty and temporal presidency 
of the Popes, grew up naturally, and was not merely advanta- 
geous but necessary to the development of the new civilization 
which followed the fall of the Roman Empire and the conver- 
sion of the barbarians. The temporal dominion of the Pope 
grew naturally around his spiritual sovereignty, as the human 
environment of a divine institution, resting for its legitimacy, in 
so far as it was a direct power, on the concessions and the 
consent of sovereigns and states. It is not surprising that 
when the two orders, the spiritual and the temporal, were so 
intimately blended, they should be confused in the dominant 
Catholic idea and public opinion. The events which preceded, 
accompanied, and followed the Reformation, causing the schism 
in Christendom, generated a vast cloud of smoke which over- 
hung the battle-field of contending parties. Only very gradu- 
ally has the new position and policy of the Roman See and 
the Catholic Church in face of the modern state and modern 
civilization become clear, apparent, and well defined. Naturally, 
there was a powerful instinct of conservatism, and an effort to 
bring back the old state of things, which was manifested in the 
policy of St. Pius V. toward England. Even now there are, 
perhaps, some theorizers of the closet, who look back regret- 
fully to the mediaeval period, and dream of a retrograde move- 
ment in that direction, as the only alternative of a headlong 
downward course toward the abyss of final ruin. Nevertheless, 
we may affirm positively, that in the sphere of doctrinal teach- 
ing and of practical policy, the dominant Catholic authority has 



1 894.] THE LESSON OF " THE WHITE CITY" 77 

no disposition or intention to assert the dependence of the 
state upon the church, or any divine right of ecclesiastical do- 
minion over it. Less than anywhere, is there any such disposi- 
tion in the hierarchy and the intelligent leading laity of the 
Catholic Church in America. We are content with the total 
separation of church and state, and with the freedom enjoyed 
by citizens and associations, leaving us at liberty to propagate 
our religion, and to educate our youth. We are content that 
all Christian sects; Jews, and in general all associations which 
do not conspire against the laws, should enjoy equal liberty. 
Precisely on this ground of our American principles, we 
denounce and condemn the effort to make our government 
discriminate in favor of infidels, rationalists, and secularists, and 
show itself hostile to all other sects. The state is incompetent 
in spirituals. It has no right or power to decide which is the 
true church or what is the true Christian doctrine. It is not 
the mission of the state to teach philosophy and theology, to 
preach the gospel, to convert sinners and unbelievers. But it 
is within the mission of the state to suppress crime, to promote 
the political, civic and social virtues, to ameliorate the condi- 
tion of the suffering classes, and to watch over the education 
of the youth who are to be entrusted with the right of suffrage, 
so far as that is necessary to secure their receiving the instruc- 
tion needful to make them fit for the position of citizens in the 
republic. All these things fall within the general scope of the 
right and duty of the state to provide for the common weal in 
temporal things, to protect the rights of all individual subjects 
of the state, and to punish those who invade them. 

Now, all churches which teach the great truths of natural 
religion, inculcate good morals, insist on honesty, obedience to 
the laws, fidelity to the conjugal, parental and filial obligations, 
patriotism, industry, temperance, etc., are powerful aids to the 
state in its proper office. All colleges and schools which train 
up men and women for their various and useful occupations are 
likewise serviceable to the commonwealth. Hospitals, orphan- 
ages, asylums, and other charitable institutions are of vast 
benefit to the country. Because these are conducted by minis- 
ters or members of a religious society, because the special doc- 
trines and practices of some particular church are also taught, 
this is no reason why the state should withhold any kind of 
.protection, support, or aid which can be lawfully and wisely 
.granted to any similar institutions, which are purely secular and 
.are called non-sectarian. 

Our great republic must find its vital force and strength in 



78 THE LESSON OF " THE WHITE CITY:' [Oct.,. 

morality. The only sufficient basis of morality is in religion,, 
the only possible religion for America is Christianity, and the 
only pure and perfect embodiment of Christianity is the Catho- 
lic Church. I do not deny the existence of virtue in many who 
are not professing Christians. I do not deny or wish to be- 
little the good which is in the Protestant churches. I am con- 
vinced that only the Catholic religion can supply what is want- 
ing to our civilization. But its work can only be done by con- 
vincing and persuading the minds of our people of its truth, 
and by infusing into them principles of faith, piety, and virtue. 
What is true for us is substantially true for all other 
civilized nations. And as for the heathen, they are not to be 
converted by governments, soldiers, or traders, but by mission- 
aries. Happily, our missionaries in Africa and elsewhere, of 
whom Cardinal Lavigerie is an example, are equal to the apos- 
tolic heroes of ancient times who adorn the annals of the 
church. They want nothing from the governments except the 
protection and countenance which is given to other subjects 
engaged in the work of civilization and in carrying on their 
legitimate business. Formerly it was the Pope and the Em- 
peror, in England the King and the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
yoked together in theory though not always in fact, to draw* 
the great wain of the state. Hereafter it must be the Pope 
and the People, but the Pope in a purely spiritual capacity 
without any temporal sovereignty,* as the Universal and Infal- 
lible Teacher of faith and morals ; the People as the source of 
the legislative and executive authority lodged in the hands of 
their representatives and delegates. If the nations are to be- 
come Christian, it must be by the regeneration and reformation 
of the people, through the doctrine and law of Christ pro- 
claimed by the church. If they are imbued with Christian 
principles, they will make the laws conform to Christian moral- 
ity, of their own free will, under no ecclesiastical coercion. 
Let all become good Christians, and conscience reign supreme 
in all human affairs, and Church and State will still remain dis- 
tinct, each confined to its own proper sphere, but both in har- 
mony, and the result a complete Christian civilization. The 
Catholic Church, alone, can, if not hindered by some insur- 
mountable obstacles, accomplish this result. If it does not at 
least make a sufficient approximation to this result to save 
society from utter ruin, the alternative is a rush of the popular 
movement, undirected and uncontrolled, into the chaos of anarchy. 

* There is no reference here to the political principality of the Pope in Rome, which is- 
entirely another question. 



1894-] THE LESSON OF " THE WHITE CITY." 79 

In that civilized world which has been rent from the church 
by the great schism, there are other obstacles to a reconcilia- 
tion besides those already mentioned. 

A great number who profess to be Christian teachers and 
advocates look on a return to the Catholic Church as a return 
to a prison and to enslavement. They boast of their reforma- 
tion as an emancipation of the human mind from the fetters of 
dogma and law. 

A greater crowd of philosophers have broken all the fetters 
which Protestant Orthodoxy and even Protestant Latitudinarian- 
ism has endeavored to fasten by human authority upon those 
who have broken the bonds of divine authority. 

A much more formidable band of sophists have erected a struc- 
ture of infidelity and atheism on the basis of the physical sciences. 

Polite literature has been perverted into another potent and de- 
structive instrument of warfare against Christian faith and morals. 

The nations have been widely and deeply corrupted by irre- 
ligion and immorality, and the eighteenth century was perhaps 
the most degenerate age which the world has seen since the 
advent of Christianity. We have inherited the legacy of misery 
bequeathed to us by the foregoing centuries, and the worst part 
of it is that disorganization of the whole social order which has 
produced pauperism ; the moral and physical filth of the great 
cities ; the precarious condition of a great mass of working- 
men ; and an alienation between the higher and lower classes 
which threatens to become a state of permanent hostility. 

If we seek for the causes of all the disasters and dangers 
damaging and imperilling civilization, the chief one must be 
found in the neglect of duty and the abuse of power and 
privilege by those who have borne rule and been possessed of 
the largest share of wealth, the aristocracy of the nations. 
Justice requires the confession that the ecclesiastical aristocracy 
has a share in this responsibility, much more by neglect of duty 
and worldliness of life, than by any positive abuse of spiritual 
and temporal power. 

The evil principle which has been at work in all classes and 
departments of Christian civilization, is a practical estimate of 
the value of earthly life, which, reduced to theory, is a false 
and fatal doctrine. It is materialism and secularism. It looks 
on the possession of material and worldly goods as the chief 
and only end of life and effort. It ignores the immortal soul 
of man, the future life, and God. Reduced to a metaphysical 
and logical theory it is atheism. The small number who pos- 
sess a large share of this worldly good worship it as a god ; 



8o THE LESSON OF " THE WHITE CITY:' [Oct., 

they strive to seize on the greatest amount of wealth attainable, 
disregarding and even oppressing the majority who are poor. 

The spread of knowledge among the people, the awakening 
of their minds, their increased share in government, the general 
democratic movement, have naturally aroused them to reflect on 
the vast disparities in social conditions. Alienation from re- 
ligion, still more the spread of positive infidelity, leaves them 
nothing to hope for and to strive for except the goods of this 
present life. Naturally, they are discontented with their un- 
equal partition and the possession of much the largest share by 
a small number, many of whom pass all their lives in pleasure 
without doing any good to the commonwealth or to their fellow- 
men. Whenever their opportunity to earn the necessaries and 
common comforts of life is rendered precarious and their con- 
dition even becomes miserable, they are easily roused to in- 
dignation against the wealthier classes. The effect of material- 
istic and secularist doctrines is to excite them to a rivalry and 
a struggle with those whom they regard as enemies and op- 
pressors, for the prizes of life. Here is the actual and the im- 
pending strife. 

Now, the equal distribution of wealth is a vain dream. Pov- 
erty cannot be abolished, the earth cannot be made an Eden, 
in which all can enjoy an easy life and possess a genteel com- 
petence. It is true that destitution, misery, the squalor and 
filth of the human sewers and cesspools which are the disgrace 
and the curse of our modern civilization, are abnormal and in- 
tolerable evils which ought to be abolished. A remedy ought 
to be found for the depression of the laboring class below their 
just level, and for their precarious condition. All who wish to 
lead a decent, honorable, virtuous life, with a secure enjoyment 
of all that is necessary to make them happy and self-respecting, 
ought to be enabled to do so. All the helpless ought to be 
amply provided for. The worthless and vicious ought to be 
put under the restraints of strict and well-administered laws. 
All who have power and influence, intelligence, education, and 
wealth, ought to do all in their power to promote the welfare 
of the commonwealth and the people. All classes ought to 
place the fulfilment of their duties before the claiming of 
their rights and the advancement of their interests. The rich 
have much more need to learn this lesson than the poor. If 
they will not learn it, they have reason to fear that they will 
be forced to do so, by a discipline more severe than agreeable. 

It is a religious and moral reformation which is first of all 
necessary, in order that economic and philanthropic efforts for 



1894-] THE LESSON OF " THE WHITE CITY" 81 

ameliorating the condition of the working classes may be suc- 
cessful. The Catholic Church can accomplish this reformation. 
It may be asked why did not the Catholic Church prevent 
the evils which call for this reformation ? Did it not prove to 
be a failure? It is often said that Christianity is a failure. 
With just as much reason it may be said that the Redeemer has 
failed and that the Creator has failed. In order to judge this 
case of impeachment, it is necessary to determine what God 
undertook to accomplish by the creation, what Jesus Christ un- 
dertook to do by the redemption, what the Catholic Church un- 
dertook, or rather what the Holy Spirit undertook to accom- 
plish through her instrumentality. In the creation of man, Al- 
mighty God chiefly intended to glorify himself by bringing a 
multitude of men to supernatural beatitude, including in the 
number of those for whom the attainment of this end was made 
possible on conditions, all the offspring of Adam. By the re- 
demption, the Son of God undertook to restore to all men the 
forfeited opportunity of gaining their supernatural destination, 
on different conditions. It was no part of the divine intention 
in creation or redemption to fulfil the ultimate purpose of bring- 
ing a multitude of men to beatitude, independently of their 
voluntary and free concurrence and co-operation with divine 
grace. The Creator did not fail in his work, when Adam fell ; 
it was Adam who failed to do his part. The Redeemer has 
not failed in his work, because a multitude of the redeemed have 
failed to comply with the conditions of salvation. The Holy 
Spirit, in making the Catholic Church his instrument for the 
sanctification and salvation of men, did not intend to institute 
a mechanical and magical agency, efficacious without respect to 
the free concurrence of men. A multitude have been and will 
be sanctified and saved through the church, which has existed 
in various forms, as the patriarchal, Jewish, and Christian Church, 
during all ages. The work of the Father, the Son, and the 
Holy Spirit has not failed, but will be fully consummated in 
the kingdom of the heavens. The divine ideal has never been 
fully realized in the ecclesiastical and civil history of Christen- 
dom. The failure has been *in men, whether ecclesiastical or 
civil rulers, or the people. Notwithstanding this failure, the 
promises of God have been fulfilled, are now being fulfilled, and 
will be fulfilled in the future. It must be remembered that we 
have been looking at the dark side of civilization, and that 
there is a bright side which might be presented. AH the good 
there is in Christendom, higher than that which is merely ma- 
VOL. LX. 6 



82 THE LESSON OF " THE WHITE CITY:' [Oct., 

terial and secular, has come from the Catholic Church, even 
though existing in a state of external schism from Catholic 
communion. All baptized Christians who have the divine vir- 
tue of faith belong to us by virtue of a bond which has not 
been broken, and if their faith is informed by the love of God 
they are spiritually united to the soul of the church, from which 
all those members of the body of the church who are living in 
mortal sin are separated. 

M. de Champagny, in his Ccesars of the Third Century (vol. 
iii. p. 485, et seq.), has said : " More and more decidedly^will two 
things confront each other, leaving in obscurity all that lies be- 
tween them. On one side atheism the most cynical and radical ; 
on the other Christianity the most practical. To make a deci- 
sion and take part with one or the other will be a matter of 
necessity, no middle position will any longer be tenable." 

All who conscientiously and cordially take the side of Chris- 
tianity, notwithstanding imperfect conceptions of its doctrines, 
un-Catholic prejudices, and their state of ecclesiastical separa- 
tion from Catholic unity, may be regarded as co-operators with us 
in one common and sacred cause. The Parliament of Religions 
was a signal exhibition of the approach toward more amicable 
relations among all those who, although separated from each 
other by dogmatic differences which admit of no compromise, 
are nevertheless united in one great principle, that a morality 
based on religion is the only palladium of a nation. So, also, 
all honorable, patriotic, and philanthropic men, who sincerely 
desire and endeavor to promote the welfare of the people, to 
remedy social miseries, to ameliorate and elevate the condition 
of the working and the poorer classes, are our coadjutors, and 
deserve our sympathy and co-operation. It is our firm and un- 
changeable conviction that the Catholic religion is alone ade- 
quate to the great work of regeneration and reformation, of im- 
provement and elevation which is needful to make modern civ- 
ilization truly Christian. The only power which the Catholic 
Church can exercise on the nations in bringing about this re- 
sult, is spiritual, intellectual, and moral. The degree and extent 
of its actual success in the future depends on the free-will of 
men, co-operating with the grace of God. They can have the 
reign of Christ if they choose. Otherwise, there is nothing to 
be awaited but the triumph of Antichrist and the final confla- 
gration, of which the burning of " The White City " is a type. 
The church is immortal and will never be conquered. The only 
question is, What will become of the world, between the pre- 
sent day and the Last Day? 




1894-] AN IRISHWOMAN'S ROSARY. 83 

AN IRISHWOMAN'S ROSARY. 
BY MAGDALEN ROCK. 



ERE is the story of Lady R 's conversion, just 

as Father Conway, a missionary of twenty-five 
years' experience, tells it : 

I had just returned to London after ten years' 
experience of colonial life, and while giving a 

mission there I met Father H . He was a convert, young 

and of noble family, yet he and I became remarkably good 
friends in a short time. 

We were walking together one spring morning in the direc- 
tion of Kensington when Father H said: 

" I have to call on Lady R . Will you come with me ? " 

I shook my head. "I don't know the family; but I will 
wait here for your return." 

" No, no," the young priest said. " Lady R is a convert, 

and she is never so delighted as when a missionary calls on 
her. So come along." 

I went with him, and in a few minutes I was introduced to 
a stately, pleasant-voiced lady, who greeted me very kindly. 

" Now," and Father Conway smiled a little, " I am not in 
the habit of staring at ladies, but I suppose I did so then, for 
after a few minutes Lady R remarked with a smile : 

" Father, you seem to be admiring some of my jewels." 

" No, indeed, your ladyship," I responded, " but I am won- 
dering very much why you wear an Irish bog-oak Rosary among 
your gems." 

" Oh ! " the lady cried eagerly, " that's the missionary that 
converted me and many others." 

I looked my surprise. 

"Yes; may I tell you the story? It is not very long." 

" It will give me great pleasure to hear it," I replied, and 
Lady R commenced : 

" You must know that the R family were among the most 

bigoted known, and my ideas concerning Catholics were cer- 
tainly vague. Ignorance and idolatry were among their failings 
I had been taught, and both my husband and myself were 



84 AN IRISHWOMAN'S ROSARY. [Oct., 

careful not to allow a Catholic into our service or about our 
children. This, I suppose, became known, and many stories 
false and mischievous found their way to our ears. One day 
tny maid entered in some excitement the room where I was. 

" Oh ! your ladyship, look what I have found." 

"What is it?" 

" It is one of those horrible Popish idols " ; and she held 
forth these very beads you see. 

"Really; and where did you find it?" 

" At the lodge gate, and Mrs. Parr says it belongs to an old 
Irishwoman who comes each day to sell water-cresses." 

" I carried the Rosary to the drawing-room, where Lord R 

and his youngest sister were, and while we were laughing over 
the superstitions and practices of Rome some callers were 
announced. The Rosary was duly inspected, and at last my 
young sister-in-law exclaimed : 

" Let us have the old woman up to-morrow, Letty ; it will 
be such fun." 

" I assented readily to Clara's whim, and after some slight 
demur my husband gave his consent. The two ladies were 
invited to witness the scene we expected to enjoy, and one of 
the servants was instructed to bring the old woman to the 
house from the lodge in the morning. 

" Well, at an unusually early hour we were all again assem- 
bled. Harry had entered completely into the spirit of the fun, 
but I was in my heart thinking how easily we might convert 
the poor, ignorant creature. 

" Here she comes," my husband cried, and we crowded to 
the window to see a small, tidy-looking old woman walking 
beside our tall footman, and evidently talking and protesting 
vigorously. 

"An" what does the lady want wid me?" we heard her 
exclaim ; and a giggle went round the hall where the servants 
were collected. 

The footman opened the door. He had brought the old 
woman so far, but further she would not come. 

" Go in there to that grand place wid my muddy boots, is 
it? Bedad ! I won't then. Sure the lady can come here, and 
say whatever she has to say." 

" No, no, my good woman ; come in," I said, advancing to 
the door. " We don't wish to harm you." 

She made an old-fashioned courtesy. 

" Harm me ! Sure what would any one harm me for ?" 






1894-] AN IRISHWOMAN'S ROSARY. 85 

" Certainly not ; but come in ? " 

With some persuasion she did so, and then I said : 

" My good woman, you have lost something." 

"Troth, then, an' 'tis little Molly Feenan has to lose, ma'am." 

" Oh ! but you have. You have lost your god." 

" Lost my God ! The good God Almighty forbid ! An* what 
do you mane at all?" 

" Don't be excited, Mrs. Feenan. You have lost an idol, 
one of the things you Papists worship ; this, in fact," and I held 
out the Rosary. 

"Och! did ye find my bades? Well, God reward you, 
ma'am ; that's all I can say. An' 'tis greatly obliged I am to 
ye for thim." 

" Stop, pray. Don't you know it is sinful and wrong to 
worship idols, my good woman ? " 

" But I don't worship idols " ; and Mrs. Feenan drew herself 
up. " It was Father Mahoney God give him the light of 
heaven this day ! that taught me to say my Rosary, and taught 
me the manin' of it, too." 

I smiled pityingly, and said : 

"You should read your Bible, my poor creature, and not be 
tyrannized over and befooled by your priests." 

Mrs. Feenan had forgotten her timidity, for she laughed. 

" An' sure I can't read at all, ma'am, but I know as much 
of my religion as many that can." 

" Pray tell us." 

She had been drawing the big black beaqfs through her fin- 
gers. 

" I know right well that 'tis laughin' at me ye are ; but 
here's what the bades teach, here's what I read from them "; 
and with uplifted voice and brightening eye she began : 

" Ye see that crucifex. Well, when I look at that I think how 
Jesus died for me on Calvary; I think of all his wounds an' 
sufferin's, an' I say : ' Sweet Jesus ! keep me from vexin' you ! ' 
Och, ma'am ! sure if ye had the likeness of a some one ye loved 
of a dead child maybe wouldn't ye love it as I love this ? " 
and she kissed the cross. 

" Then ye see that one big bade an' the three small ones. 
These tell me there is one only God, an' in that one God there 
are three Persons. An' ye see there are six big bades in all 
and one medal, that minds me of a tabernacle. (Maybe ye 
don't know what a tabernacle is. It is a place in our church 
where the Blessed Sacrament is kept.) Well, the six bades an' 



86 AN IRISHWOMAN'S ROSARY. [Oct., 

one medal mind me that there are seven sacraments, an' one of 
these is greater than them all. That's the Holy Eucharist." 

A deep stillness had fallen on us, and Clara had drawn near 
the old woman. 

"An' these six bades mind me, too, that there's six com- 
mands beside those of God that I must keep"; and she sang 
them out, and paused to gain her breath. 

"An* then the Rosary itself consists of fifteen mysteries in 
honor of the Mother of God: five Joyful," and she repeated 
them ; " five Sorrowful," and she repeated them ; " and five Glo- 
rious," and her voice rose in these last. 

" An' when I am goin' about tryin' to earn my livin' in hon- 
esty, I say the Joyful mysteries ; and on a bad day, when I'm 
wonderin' maybe how I'll get my supper, I just repeat the Sor- 
rowful mysteries, and say to myself : ' Mary Feenan, what sig- 
nifies your bit of trouble? Sure one day it will all end, and God 
give ye grace to end well.' An' when I've done bravely 'tis as 
little as I can do to keep sayin' the Glorious mysteries over an' 
over in honor of her who is the Mother of us all. An' there's 
the way I pass my days." 

This was not as we had arranged. My friends were listening 
respectfully and attentively, and I was inclined to follow the 
example of my sister-in-law, who was crying softly. 

" There, we've had enough of this," whispered my husband. 
" Give the woman her beads and some money, and let her go." 

None of us cared to speak of what we had listened to, but 
I wondered if that was the religion I had been taught to de- 
spise. I saw Mary frequently afterwards, and she gladly gave 
me her cherished Rosary when I asked her for it ; and at last 

there came a day when I begged Father to instruct me 

for baptism. 

When I was received into the church I told my husband. 
He was angry more angry than ever I saw him but I waited 
and prayed, and after a few weeks he said : 

" Go to your church, if you must, and the children and I 
will go to ours "; and thus the time passed, till one Sunday I 
said to him : 

"Come with me to-day, Harry"; and he yielded, and before 
a year ended I had the unspeakable happiness of seeing my 
seven children and their father received into the one true church. 

" So you always wear the Irishwoman's Rosary ? " I asked 
after a few moments. 



1 894.] 



To W. S. LILLY, ESQ. 



87 



" Always, father ; and frequently at ball or levee some lady 
of my acquaintance will come to examine my jewels. 

"O Lady R , such strange stones! Do they come from 

India?" 

" No, not from India." 

" And are they very valuable ? " 

" Oh, very valuable ! They have been worth millions to 
me." And when I have her curiosity fully aroused, I tell this 
story as I have told it to you ; and so you see the Irishwoman's 
Rosary still works good. 



TO W. S. LILLY, ESQ. 

NE sultry, sleepy summer day, 

When even soothing zephyrs slept 
And bees in shining droves held sway 

O'er sweating maple-trees, while crept 
From crackling clay the insect throng 

In diverse form and rainbow hue 
The gnarl'd roots of trees among, 

To quaff the lurking drop of dew ; 
Upon the burning yellow grass 

I lay, when she of auburn tress 
Thy volumes brought and said, "You'll pass 

A pleasant hour, nor love the less 
Lilly, who can all shams deride, 
To- show that fools the age may guide." 




WALTER LECKY. 




88 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Oct., 



GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 

BY REV. CLARENCE A. WALWORTH. 

CHAPTER VI. 

Further Missionary Aspirations, " Crazy Richmond." Tyng's Lecture. 
Ward's " Ideal of a Christian Church." Meditation. Private Retreats. 
Parish Missions. 
I 

HE reader of this series of reminiscences will 
already have seen that the missionary question 
opened a large field of hope, doubt, and anxi- 
ety to myself and to other Anglican students 
within the seminary and outside. The attrac- 
tion to such work was especially strong in minds progressing 
towards Catholic faith. During my second year's course at the 
seminary I made acquaintance with a very peculiar sort of per- 
son, an Episcopalian minister of the diocese of Rhode Island, 
whom I frequently met at a house near the seminary where I 
boarded. It was the Rev. James C. Richmond. He was dis- 
tinguished by the sobriquet of " Crazy Richmond " from his 
brother, who was, if I remember right, an officiating clergyman 
at Manhattanville. This James Richmond had a sort of roving 
commission in Rhode Island, and loved to carry the title of 
missionary. On learning that I was president of the missionary 
society at the seminary and much interested in missionary en- 
terprises of every kind, he urged me to join with him in doing 
something with the neglected poor in New "York City. On 
Sundays, when going to a Sunday-school attached to Nativity 
Church, near the East River, I frequently passed through 
Tompkins Square, where a large number of poor people loved 
to gather on all Sundays and holidays of leisure to find fresh 
air and amusement. Richmond had heard me speak of this. 
To his quick intelligence and eager activity it suggested an 
opportunity to labor among the poor. He would conduct the 
services of the church and preach in the open square, while my 
part would be to lead in the singing. I would very willingly 
have engaged in an enterprise of this kind if I had felt more 
confidence in Mr. Richmond's prudence, and had not feared that 
our movements might come to clash with the authority of 
Bishop Onderdonk. Upon this he offered to apply to the 



1894-] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 89 

bishop for permission, although he did not seem to think it 
necessary. 

This application and its result is incidentally recorded in a 
pamphlet published in 1845, during a melee of pamphleteers who 
rushed into print after the memorable trial of Bishop Onder- 
donk. This pamphlet is entitled Richmond's Reply to " Richmond 
in Ruins" In this publication Mr. Richmond had occasion to 
refer to two visits made by him to Bishop Onderdonk, and 
says: 

" He [the bishop] has also mingled my call upon him July 4 
with another call in August or September, which I made after 
a conference with Clarence Walworth in reference to my duty 
of preaching in the German language to the churchless and 
almost Godless Germans that assemble around Tompkins 
Square. On the last visit I said not a word that could be tor- 
tured into an implication of a shade of a wish to ' return to 
his diocese.' On the contrary, after saying that I was desirous 
of preaching to the Germans, and felt that I was bound to do 
so by my ordination vow, ' to seek for Christ's sheep that are 
scattered in this naughty world,' and that it was not through 
duty, as I previously told C. W., but for courtesy that I waited 
on him, having already not only a privilege but an obligation 
thus to officiate, with the consent of the nearest rector or rec- 
tors ; he asked, on my reference to the Catholic Oak, what 
was there accomplished. 'My friend, if you are doing so much 
good in Rhode Island, why not remain there ? ' I replied : ' I 
intend to do so ; but having one spare Sunday, I thought it 
would be best to help you and begin here ; then the people 
who wish to talk can spend as much of the winter as they 
like in discussing the merits of the movement, and the ques- 
tion of my sanity, pro and con, and by next summer they will 
be tired of the talk, and when I come again it will be an old 
story, and the ice will have been effectually broken, and the 
way prepared for others.' He wittily replied, ' I am afraid, my 
friend, it would freeze over again this winter.' I waited a mo- 
ment, weighing and appreciating the bon mot y and then replied 
nearly thus, in my stupid way : ' Bishop, the ice is of long 
standing ; the neglect of the poor is old and crusty, and do 
you not think by breaking it up once now, the new ice would 
break more easily next summer ? ' 

My recollections accord very well with those of Mr. Rich- 
mond above given, except in two or three particulars. The 
Germans in the vicinity of Tompkins Square were not at this 



90 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Oct., 

time destitute of church privileges. There was a Catholic 
Church near by the square, on Third Street, with preaching in 
German. Those who frequented the square were by no means 
all Germans. To many English was their native tongue, and I 
think that nearly all the crowd could speak it, and were em- 
braced in our intentions. I think, also, it was not intended to 
confine ourselves to one Sunday. This, of course, could do 
but little good. The bishop refusing permission, of course our 
project failed. 

It is not really necessary to the purpose of these reminis- 
cences to say anything more here of Mr. Richmond. Neverthe- 
less, having been once introduced, it may not be too much of 
a digression to add one passage more from this same pamphlet. 
It develops still more the peculiar character of the man. It 
shows somewhat his idea of himself and his consciousness of 
the light in which he stood in the eyes of many others. It 
shows also the light by which he surveyed his critics and esti- 
mated the value of their opinions : 

" My ' erratic peculiarities ' I gratefully admit, and thank my 
stars that I am not so humdrum as most other people, who 
walk with pious care in their forefathers' steps, just as some 
farmers always plant their potatoes in the old way because it 
was good enough for their grandfathers." 

I have never since this occasion, so far as I remember, been 
called upon to take part in any religious services conducted in 
the open air, except at the laying of some corner-stone or 
monument ; or when in some parish, at the beginning of a 
mission, it was thought necessary to speak to a crowd in the 
street and invite them to services in the church ; or when at 
its close a memorial cross was erected in the open air; or 
when soldiers on their way to war were gathered in camp to 
hear Mass, make their Communion, and listen to preaching. I 
have dwelt, perhaps, a little too much on this Tompkins 
Square project, and on the figure of this peculiar man. I have, 
however, an excuse for it. It will be necessary for him to 
appear again in the course of these reminiscences in matters of 
deep import to the Chelsea Seminary, to the New York diocese, 
and to Anglicanism generally. 

The agitation which pervaded the air at the time of my 
seminary course, and which was at its highest height at that 
time, was fed from many sources, and reached to every 
Anglican circle. It was fed by every new tract which issued 
from Oxford ; by the British Critic, which was the principal 



1894.] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY, gi 

organ of the Tractarian movement ; by the Lives of the Early 
English Saints, and by other volumes of books and published 
sermons for and against the movement ; by every attempt to 
engraft some Catholic practice into Anglican worship ; and by 
every attempt on the part of authority, either civil or ecclesias- 
tical, to stifle the movement. All these things reached the 
seminary and became subjects of eager discussion. , It was a 
contest between old sleep and new life. It could not be kept 
out of any society instituted at the seminary. I recall to mind 
an instance where our society for the encouragement of foreign 
missions divided itself into high and low church partisans, the 
question being whether a certain sermon or lecture delivered in 
the Church of the Ascension, before the society, should be 
published by it or not. The lecturer had been the Rev. Dr. 
Tyng, a prominent clergyman of that day. A motion had been 
made and carried at one of the regular meetings of the society, 
that the reverend doctor should be asked to furnish the manu- 
script of his lecture for publication. Some of the members who 
had been absent were dissatisfied with this, and a new meeting 
was called to reconsider the matter. A few words will suffice 
to explain the cause of dissatisfaction, and of the contest which 
ensued. 

Dr. Tyng was a very prominent and talented low-churchman. 
This alone would not have been enough to constitute a diffi- 
culty in publishing his lecture. It happened, however, that 
there was a vacancy at this time in the bishopric of Pennsyl- 
vania, and Dr. Tyng was known to be a candidate for the 
office. His lecture had been quite free from anything that 
savored distinctly of evangelical low-churchmanship. Consider- 
ing the peculiar atmosphere which prevailed at the seminary 
this was not to be wondered at, but a thing which excited 
much remark was that the reverend doctor had assumed a certain 
high-church tone in some parts of his lecture. This was looked 
upon by many as an insincere bid for support in his preten- 
sions to the mitre, and the majority of ouf students, who were 
either Tractarians or at least high-churchmen, were not willing 
that the seminary should seem to lend any endorsement to the 
man. 

At the second and special meeting of the missionary society, 
called as above stated, the attendance was unusually large. A 
motion was offered, if I remember right by Dr. Everett, to 
rescind the action of the regular meeting. An eager contest 
ensued. The low-churchmen were in the minority, but, led by 



92 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Oct., 

Harwood, they showed a great skill in endeavoring to protract 
the debate, which was very animated, and to prevent any 
decisive vote being taken before adjournment. The high-church- 
men were equally determined, equally skilful, and equally 
watchful. I have reason to remember this contest very well. 
I was president of the society at the time, and it was my first 
experience in ruling troublesome points of order in a sharp 
contest. It seemed to me as if all the discordant elements that 

are combined in Anglican- 
ism had broken their com- 
promise and had gathered 
into that one room where 
our meeting was held, while 
it had become my duty to 
bring the confusion back to 
order. The Rev. Dr. Ever- 
ett, however, now rector of 
the Church of the Nativity 
on Second Avenue, was the 
spirit which really presided 
at the meeting. He man- 
aged the forces of the ma- 
jority, pressed his motion 
to a decisive vote, and so 
the matter ended. The lec- 
ture was not printed. 

A few of the members 
of this society not only felt 
strongly interested in for- 
eign missions, but actually 
looked forward to a mis- 
sionary life for themselves. 
REV. WILLIAM EVERETT. This interest, however, had 

not^been originated by any- 
thing going on in the Anglican Church, nor did it find there 
any serious encouragement. I do not know of any seminarians 
of my time that ever entered into the missionary field. All the 
life that existed in Episcopalianism was concentrated in a strug- 
gle to keep itself alive. All really earnest hearts anxious to be 
engaged in gathering abandoned or neglected souls into Christ's 
fold were driven about wearily from hope to hope, not willing 
to sink back into despair, and yet not knowing where to settle. 
Surely, they argued, that great church to which we belong must 




1894-] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 93 

somewhere have a heart corresponding to the pulsations which 
we feel. 

It was such a time as this and such a juncture of circum- 
stances that saw the appearance of Ward's Ideal of a Christian 
Church. 

The book itself did not appear until the close of my second 
year at the seminary, namely, in June, 1844, but much of the 
substance of the volume had been published during that year 
in the British Critic, of which both Ward and Dr. Newman 
had been editors. 

The numbers of the 
British Critic had always 
been eagerly welcomed 
by Tractarian students 
at the seminary, until the 
violent opposition excited 
by it in England brought 
it to a sudden stop. 

We did not all of us 
find time or means amidst 
our studies to read these 
numbers of the British 
Critic, but McMaster, 
Everett, and a few others 
of the higher classes did. 
I have already given in my 
Reminiscences of Bishop 
Wadhams a letter of Ar- 
thur Carey's, written from 
his lodgings in Charlton 
Street, a few lines of 
which I will repeat here. 
Carey says to his friend 
in the Adirondacks: 

" McMaster is now sitting by my side ; he has just come 
down from the seminary, and is now reading to me out of the 
October number of the British Critic." 

In my mind's eye I seem to see him now, with those large 
young eyes beaming with intelligent interest at Ward's disclo- 
sures in regard to Catholic meditation and Catholic mission work, 
with a smile on his lips at McMaster's more emphatic ebullitions 
of delight. 

It is well known that Ward's Ideal not only led to its 




REV. ARTHUR CAREY. 



94 GLIMPSES OF LIFE iff AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Oct., 

author's public condemnation by the authorities at Oxford, but 
was the culmination point at which Tractarianism broke down, 
and after which a crowd of converts, both in England and 
America, came fluttering into the ark. This makes it necessary 
for me to revive the memory of this book and give some idea 
of its contents. 

The principal significance of Ward's Ideal, and that which 
made it so intolerable to its adversaries, was that it was so 
pointedly practical. It represented the Roman Catholic Church 
as full of practical piety, and, on the other hand, represented 
the English Church as lost in a lifeless formality. For brevity's 
sake I shall confine myself to such parts of this remarkable work 
as touch upon the care due from the Christian Church to her 
candidates for orders ; how such a church must train them to 
piety, virtue, and Christian perfection, and how she needs must 
hold them to their daily duties as ministers of religious worship, 
instruct and animate them in the work of saving souls, and par- 
ticularly the souls of those who are the most destitute and aban- 
doned. 

With abundant quotations from recognized works, this as- 
pect of the Roman Catholic Church is exhibited by Ward, and 
the absence of similar provisions in the English Church is point- 
ed out : Meditation, to make the truths of religion more vivid ; 
constant examination of conscience, that sin may not be passed 
over or forgotten ; occasional retreats, as a fresh start after 
neglect ; the literature of ascetic theology and hagiology to 
stimulate in the service of God by example and precept ; the 
confessional for pardon and direction ; moral theology to save 
priests from caprice, and give them the benefit in advising their 
penitents of the experience of the Corporate Church, here, says 
Ward, are the spiritual weapons of the Church of Rome; and 
where, he asks, can we find their counterpart in England? 
(William George Ward and the Oxford Movement, by Wilfred 
Ward, pp. 279 and 289.) 

Mr. Ward does not content himself with general declarations 
in favor of such practical work among Roman Catholics. He 
gives an account of the actual Rule of Life carried out in a French 
Ecclesiastical Seminary, as furnished him by the rector. Such 
a rule of life will be nothing new to Catholic readers. They 
may find it interesting, however, as showing how plainly this 
fearless Anglican divine shook the red scarf before the eyes of 
John Bull. John, of course, received it as a bitter taunt, but 
not a few of John's children were pained to the heart by it, 



1894-] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 95 

and grieved over it as those grieve who gaze upon graces for- 
feited. 

The French rector divides this rule of life adopted in his 
seminary into eighteen points of practice. For brevity's sake I 
will content myself with merely naming the most of these 
points. These are : vocal prayer at half-past five in the morn- 
ing, followed by meditation ; after this the holy sacrifice of the 
Mass; visiting the altar where the Holy Eucharist is kept, and 
praying before it for a quarter of an hour each day ; a spiritual 
reading each day from some book of piety ; reciting the chap- 
let that is, a third part of the rosary ; a religious discourse 
spoken every evening by the superior to the whole community, 
called the Spiritual Conference. The day is finished by evening 
prayer said in common. The prayers then recited are the Lord's 
Prayer, the Angelical Salutation,- the Apostles' Creed. Confession 
of sinfulness is made by a prayer called the Confiteor ; then 
acts of faith, hope, and charity, and of contrition, are made. 
Prayers are then offered up for the dead. In conclusion, the 
superior gives out the subject for next day's meditation. The 
rule advises the students k to fix their thoughts upon it just be- 
fore going to sleep, and as soon as they awake. 

Twice in the course of the day, when assembled in the 
chapel, during a pause in the prayers a private examination of 
conscience is made by each one. The first is made at noon, 
just before meal-time, and is called the particular examination 
this means an examination as to the progress made in some vir- 
tue specially proposed by each for his own acquisition, or in 
conquering some vice proposed in the same way for correction. 
A more general review of conscience for the day is made in the 
evening. 

Each student is required to read a chapter in the Holy Scrip- 
tures twice in the day. It would be a departure from the ob- 
ject intended by the rule to spend this time in reading to im- 
prove one's self in learning, or to satisfy one's curiosity. The 
motive here proposed is the quickening of the heart. 

It is scarcely necessary to mention prayers at rising and get- 
ting into bed, before and after meals, at the ringing of the An- 
gelus, at the beginning and ending of classes, pious aspirations 
at the sound of the clock, etc., which are common not only to 
ecclesiastical seminaries but to all Catholic colleges and convent 
schools. 

Mr. Ward quotes his French informant as stating that the 
superior of a seminary must keep his door open to the students 



96 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Oct., 

at all times. He must " cease to be a man of study. He must 
give up the notion of being a learned man, otherwise he will 
not be able to do the good which the diocese expects of him." 

I also pass over what the good rector says in regard to the 
confessions and communions of the students and their selection 
of a spiritual director. Our Tractarian students at Chelsea, 
particularly those belonging to the missionary society, were 
more specially interested at this crisis in what the good French 
rector said to Mr. Ward about the practice of meditation and 
spiritual retreats, as used at the seminary. These naturally 
lead up to that great surprise which the Ideal of a Christian 
Church brought to us, in its account of the " giving of missions." 

The most important spiritual exercise noted by the French 
rector in the list furnished by him to Mr. Ward, as inculcated 
upon the students by rule, is mental prayer or meditation. 
This, indeed, is found in all Catholic seminaries. The rector 
speaks of it in the following terms : 

" Mental prayer, or a meditation ; in which the student first 
bows down in adoration before God, acknowledging himself un- 
worthy of keeping himself fixed in his divine presence, and call- 
ing upon the Holy Spirit to help him in his meditation. He 
then enters on the consideration of the subject proposed for 
meditation, all the while frequently entering into himself, by 
acts of humiliation, by making good resolutions, and one special 
good resolve for that very day." 

These meditations, with some vocal prayers before and after, 
are made in the chapel and last half an hour. At the semina- 
ries of St. Sulpice they continue for an hour. This matter of 
meditation requires some further explanation. Protestants are 
not easily made to understand what Catholics mean by medita- 
tion. And Catholics who have never been Protestants do not 
know what Protestants mean when they use that word. Among 
Catholics prayer is generally distinguished into two kinds, oral 
and mental ; but oral prayer is not always uttered according to 
a prescribed form of words. As a general rule Protestants, 
whether in public or private prayer, do not follow any set form 
of words, except when they repeat the Lord's Prayer. Angli- 
cans, indeed, follow a ritual in public worship, and the Com- 
mon Prayer Book contains a form of prayer for family worship. 
The general rule, however, is to follow the lead of their own 
thoughts when praying. Their prayers, indeed, are not medita- 
tions. A good memory for thoughts and phrases, coupled with 
a certain degree of pious excitement, is all that is necessary to 



1894-] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 97 

furnish a facility for vocal prayer. Nay, more than this, prayer 
may be purely mental in the sense of being inarticulate, and 
yet not constitute meditation considered as prayer. When a- 
Protestant minister is said to pray extempore, it simply mean* 
that he is preaching to his hearers over the divine shoulders, 
Whatever claim it may have to be called mental prayer, it is> 
by no means meditation. At best, it is only fervent oratory. 
No doubt private and silent prayer among Protestants does of- 
ten reach to true prayer of mind and heart. I am not aware, 
however, that it ever takes that form of systematic study dur- 
ing a set time which is called meditation in the " Exercises " of 
St. Ignatius, and can be taught to students in a seminary or a 
convent, or to novices in a religious order. 

When, during my course at the seminary in Chelsea, I read 
Mr. Ward's Ideal of a Christian Church, and what the French 
rector wrote to him concerning mental prayer, I was unable to 
understand how it could be systematized and taught. I under- 
stood it better when, a little later, on my way to the Adiron- 
dacks with Bishop Wadhams, then a deacon of the Episcopalian 
sect, we had for fellow-traveller on the Champlain Canal a young 
Catholic priest recently ordained in Ireland. We questioned him 
very closely upon this subject, and, although not apparently a 
man much given to seclusion or meditation, he was able to give 
us a very satisfactory account of what he had been taught in 
regard to the nature of meditation and the means of practising 
it profitably. The substance of what he told us may be found 
thoughtfully and beautifully presented in Addis and Arnold's 
Catholic Dictionary, now a familiar book among Catholic Amer- 
icans : 

" Meditation in its narrower and technical sense may be de- 
fined as the application of the three powers of the soul to 
prayer the memory proposing a religious or moral truth, the 
understanding considering this truth in its application to the in- 
dividual who meditates, while the will forms practical resolutions 
and desires grace to keep them." ..." The method given 
by St. Ignatius in his exercise is that generally recommended 
and used, at least till the person who meditates forms a method 
of his own." 

In truth it may be said that the more thoroughly the habit 
of mental prayer is acquired the less necessity for the use of 
method. The "points" selected for meditation become shorter; 
a single verse of Scripture, a single stanza of a familiar hymn, 
or indeed a single line or expressive word, furnishes to the soul 

VOL. LX. 7 



98 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Oct., 

all the matter needed to start with. A thousand cumulative 
thoughts cluster around it, the fruit is soon ready to be 
gathered, holy affections of the heart are sooner reached ; holy 
purposes and resolutions grow up so spontaneously that all 
thought of method is cast away. The hour or half-hour ceases 
to be long, until meditation is abandoned for other duties with 
regret. 

I do not stop here to introduce the idea of contemplation, 
where all process of reasoning ceases and is lost in a sort of 
passive beholding, a high grade of prayer to which only a few 
Christians reach. 

The French seminary rector quoted in Ward's Ideal supposes 
the nature and purpose of meditation to be well understood, 
and gives us only the methods to be adopted in order to make 
it successful and fruitful. A habit of spiritual reading is neces- 
sary as the more remote preparation for it. This furnishes the 
mind with material for thought. To bow down in silence, to 
call to mind the presence of God, and to invoke the Holy 
Ghost, are the immediate steps to be taken when beginning 
this kind of prayer. St. Ignatius intensified its power and ex- 
tended its influence over souls by introducing his system of 
spiritual retreats, in which an entire month was given to soli- 
tude and meditation. This time is now often shortened to a 
week, or even three days. These meditations, moreover, were 
systematized into an admirable series, so arranged that each 
meditation should naturally lead up to another. The soul is 
made to consider by turns and progressively the object of its 
being, its destiny, its sins, the punishment due to sin, the 
remedies provided through the mercy of God, the means of 
sanctification through his grace, until at last in this sacred soli- 
tude the soul is brought forward to the highest desires for 
union with its Maker, to the strongest resolves to live for the 
glory of God alone. 

The Catholic Church is furnished with a large number of 
priests who have trained themselves by long study and careful 
experience to guide others through these spiritual exercises, as 
St. Ignatius trained his first companions in the order which he 
founded. 

Finally St. Vincent de Paul began his work of popular mis- 
sions in country parishes for the benefit of the poor, and es- 
pecially those most destitute of instruction and spiritual succor. 
This new form of domestic missionary work has now grown to 
be almost universal in the Catholic Church, carrying everywhere 



1894-] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 99 

into the bosom of her fold in a rational way, and with a deep- 
er and fuller power, a reformation of morals and a quickening 
of spiritual life which the wild emotional efforts of Wesley 
and Whitefield could not bring about. These missions, regarded 
in the light of the means and methods employed and the 
effects produced, may be considered as the natural outgrowth 
of spiritual retreats. The large audiences gathered cannot be 
brought to the same solitude and silence, but much of retire- 
ment from the world is practically involved in their constant 
attendance at the church. They cannot meditate as in more 
private retreats, but an unusual amount of reflection is involved 
in listening to so many daily sermons and instructions, and 
taking so much part in prayer. Skilful missionaries consult to- 
gether upon the order of subjects to be introduced. The con- 
fessional shows how far the good seed sown has produced good 
results and what is still most wanting, and both the order of 
preaching and the special way of treating each sermon may be 
varied accordingly. In fine, the method of " giving missions " 
has grown to be a peculiar science and holy art unknown out- 
side of the Catholic Church. 

All the above is introduced in this place as belonging to 
these reminiscences of a Protestant seminary at a most momen- 
tous period. We seminarians at Chelsea were all of us more or 
less interested in a great attempt to galvanize Anglicanism. 
Ward's new book introduced us to Romanism, so called, as fur- 
nishing the best practical ideal of a true Christian Church. 
One prominent sign of its vitality lay in its wonder-working 
custom and method of giving missions. His book gave a de- 
scription of a mission furnished to him by a prominent Roman 
Catholic, with most interesting details of its purpose, plan, and 
effects. It was a new light. Mr. Ward's book is not accessible 
to me at this moment, and perhaps it is not necessary at this 
time to introduce any extracts from it. Suffice it to say that 
for the most part the conduct of these missions is left to mis- 
sionaries reared in convents. To this circumstance is due in 
some degree the fact that many of us students, when looking 
forward to our own career in the ministry, were led to associate 
monasticism with our aspirations to a life of missionary labor. 

(TO BE CONTINUED.) 



ioo FROM NORMANDY. [Oct. 




FROM NORMANDY. 
BY V. A. C. I. 

SHOUT to the horses, a crack of the whip, and 
we are off ! 

Dieppe, with its busy quays, hotels, and villas, 
is soon left behind, and before us stretches the 
unwavering line of the grand route along the cliff. 

Although so near, the Channel is lost to sight, excepting 
now and then when an occasional valley crosses our path and 
grants a glimpse of waves dashing on the shore. For a moment 
the road abandons its direction and zigzags down to the village 
nestling under the protecting hillside, then mounts again by like 
easy degrees upon the further slope. 

Once more it seems to extend without end over the level 
country, through miles of cultivated fields where the colza has 
just been harvested. 

Already new ground has been made ready for the next 
year's crop, and men, women, and children are engaged in 
transplanting young shoots, thrusting their wilted stalks into 
the soil with but a single touch, and leaving them apparently 
dead. Knowing that upon their survival depends the harvest 
of the following year, we anxiously ask if they do not water 
the plants. With surprise and a shadow of reproof in her 
tone one of the women replies : " C'est le bon Dieu qui les 



arrose 



Far away upon the horizon lie irregular bands of blue, 
which lose their atmospheric color as we draw near, and gradu- 
ally assume the proportions of groups of tall, slender beech- 
trees, sheltering beneath their lofty canopies old chateaux and 
peasants' cottages. 

Large flocks of sheep, guarded by faithful dogs, graze upon 
the plain, while the old shepherds patiently knit their time 
away, resigned to the monotony of their lot. 

Again the grating of the brakes upon the wheels, the sway- 
ing of the carriage from side to side as we turn sharp corners, 
tell us that we have begun the descent into another valley. 
This time we stop to change horses, entering the courtyard of 



102 FROM NORMANDY. [Oct., 

the inn with a louder cracking of whip, and a noisier rattling 
of wheels over the rough pavement. 

Confusion reigns. Men and women, waiters and maids, run 
hither and thither gesticulating and wrangling in shrill, loud 
voices, and not until a wedding party, the cause and object of 
their excitement, emerges from the house and merrily moves 
away is quiet restored. 

We see their gala dresses swing around the corner of the 
narrow street, and later catch another glimpse as they dance 
across the meadows and ploughed fields, where the bride's 
white satin slippers may become quite soiled and worn, thus 
insuring her great good luck in life. 

The scenery becomes more varied. Picturesque ravines break 
the monotony. We pass through hamlets where the cottages 
are protected by high banks of earth, hiding all but their 
thatched roofs. Beech-trees robbed of their lower branches 
bear their crests proudly aloft, and hold fast between their 
naked stems great heaps of rape. The empty pods are sere, 
and rustle mysteriously in the breeze. 

On the broad acres where the wheat has just been harvested 
a crowd of women, boys, and girls is assembled. They dispose 
themselves at regular intervals, and at the signal " Allez ! 
glanez ! " fall to work with a will, pouncing upon every spear 
of grain like a hawk upon its prey. The sparrows must look 
elsewhere for food, for scarcely a kernel is left upon the ground 
when the gleaners have done their work. But the thank-offer- 
ings placed by the peasants upon the many Calvaries along the 
roadsides make partial amends to the birds, who do. not hesi- 
tate to profit by them. The offering of these bunches of grain 
is the last act of the service which takes place early in the 
season. Then the cure, preceded by a long procession of 
children, little girls decked with flowers, boys and priests, bears 
before him, beneath the tarnished dais upheld by white-robed 
acolytes, the Sacred Host, invoking the divine blessing upon 
the lands of his little flock. 

Now a wider valley spreads before us, and descending to 
the level of the water, we follow the sea wall between the 
massive portals formed by the chalky cliffs that rise on either 
side. Midway between them is the " falaisette," and in the nar- 
rower vale thus formed lie the chalets and the cottages of X . 

The chalets are perched about the hillside in capricious 
fashion, wherever a pretty view of sea or country offered, leav- 
ing the retired and sheltered nooks for the peasants' homes. 



1894-] FROM NORMANDY. 103 

Their thatched roofs border the road that winds its way from 
the shore back to the more inland villages. 

The hamlets are small, a few poor, dingy little cottages, 
generally overgrown with a charming confusion of ferns, moss, 
and vines, while here and there a climbing rose has braved the 
thickness of the mildewed straw, and dared to peep into a 
dormer window. Gaily-colored flowers grow about the door- 
ways, but fail to carry their sunshine inside, and the damp 
earthen floors and scanty furniture afford but meagre comfort. 

The peasants seem to have few ideas beyond those of gain- 
ing their daily portion of coarse bread, but from an artist's 
stand-point they are admirable as we see them gathering sea- 
weed on the shore, launching a fishing-boat, casting a seine, or 
working in the fields. 

Quite above the village, on the cliff, stands a tiny group of 
cottages clustered about a chateau. Another village two or 
three kilometres away boasts its chateau too, a grand one, with 
a Renaissance portico, and more than that a ghost ! Every 
village has its chateau ; X alone in that respect is incom- 
plete. It has no chateau, no titled patron, and no ghost. 
But yet, though wanting these, it has an object of pride and 
reverence, the centre of converging paths worn smooth and 
hard by feet of admirers and of worshippers the church. 

The centuries of consecration to God's service seem to have 
left their impress upon the building itself, until it reflects some- 
thing of the divine character. 

Standing in the village below, it towers above us like a sol- 
emn warning, and we bow before the unwavering Judge of 
mankind. From the height of the cliff we look down where it 
rests confidingly in the heart of the hillside, and we know it is 
the type of the loving Friend and Brother of humanity ; while the 
sweet peace borne away in the souls of those who have wor- 
shipped within its walls bears witness to the truth of the Spirit. 

Old Time has laid a loving hand upon the crumbling 
masonry, and the mildewed stone and plaster make music for 
the eye, their color blending with harmonies of form in clus- 
tered pillar and in Norman arch. The heart is softened and 
breathes forth a warmer, deeper prayer. Here come the faith- 
ful, at mid-day or at even, and, kneeling a moment in the sweet 
peace of God's presence, lay aside their burdens and refresh 
their souls. Near by, stands the " presbytere," which in the 
peasants' eyes must seem a grand house, for its roof is of 
slate. Not a vine conceals its uncompromising squareness, and 



104 FROM NORMANDY. [Oct., 

not a bit of lichen or of moss relieves the monotony of its 
newness. Here the cur6 leads his peaceful life, attended by a 
doting sister, whose happiness consists in serving him. What- 
ever aspirations his parish work cannot meet are satisfied by 
the flowers he loves to paint, for at heart he is an artist. 

The cur is always glad to show his work, the old bell-ringer 
tells us ; and he adds, in an undertone, even more glad to part 
with it for a consideration. 

We enter the garden by the tiny gate in the high stone 
wall, thereby disturbing a flock of sedate hens and turkeys en- 
joying a siesta upon an old well-curb. Their angry cackling 
gradually subsides as we pass on between the peach and pear 
trees to the house. 

That the cur6 loves the flowers we know without asking, for 
a profusion of roses frames the doorway, shedding their per- 
fume throughout the little parlor. The sister patters across the 
painted brick floor in her noisy wooden sabots and disappears, 
bidding us ere she leaves be seated upon the straight-backed, 
comfortless chairs. Spotless cleanliness prevails. The pervading 
quiet is oppressive. At last the silence is broken by the en- 
trance of the cur, whose broad smile beams a welcome upon us. 

With simple pride and undisguised pleasure he brings forth 
his pictures and displays them one by one. Here some com- 
mon field flowers, there a cluster of regal roses, and again a 
study of humbler vegetable life. 

They are admirably painted, and we wonder why he has been 
content to remain thus unknown to the world in this far-away 
corner. 

We are about to ask the reason, but something in his 
reserved manner forbids. Then we recall the church, the 
beauty of its interior, and remember that to him is due all 
praise for saving it from the desecrating whitewash that has 
ruined many neighboring churches. 

Doubtless his ambition is satisfied by this deed accomplished. 

There is yet one picture to show. Hesitatingly, timidly, he 
uncovers it to our gaze as something almost too dear for 
vulgar eyes. With tenderest care he turns it that the light 
may fall to its best advantage. We see but a careless bunch of 
luxuriant asters. A moment passes. The expected word of 
admiration is spoken. Then the cure adds in a voice full of 
emotion, as if speaking of a dearly beloved child: "This was 
exhibited at the Salon, my ' Queen Margarets.' " His eyes 
seem to caress the canvas as they fondly trace the outline of 



1894-] FROM NORMANDY. 105 

the petals through light and shade across the whole surface ; 
" this one I cannot sell." 

We venture no questions, and, thanking him for his courtesy, 
take our leave. 

The old bell-ringer is impatiently awaiting us. He is more 
than ready to satisfy our curiosity. Yes, he has known the 
cur since boyhood, and a useless boy they thought him too, 
dreaming his time away instead of studying ; but to study he 
was forced, for his father had destined him for the church. 

Into the church he accordingly went, but that step could 
not banish the dreams, quench the thirst for fame, nor keep his 
fingers from the brushes. 

Ere his college days were over the hours of recreation were 
spent in painting, and in secret he tried to work out by 
patience and experience the lessons he could not gain through 
a master's help. 

The budding hopes of greatness began to swell in his heart 
the heart that should have been fixed on theological problems. 
The little flaw grew apace, becoming more ominous when the 
"Queen Margarets" hung upon the Salon walls. 

His zeal for the church began to wane, while the fire of am- 
bition burned fiercer. Often he was reproved for his lack of 
fervor, but penance failed to remedy the evil. 

A year passed. The season for exhibitions had again opened 
in Paris. Diligently, in solitude and in secrecy, had he worked 
during that twelvemonth ; but he had worked fruitlessly, hoped 
madly : the jury of admission found the painting unworthy a 
place upon those famous walls. 

Deep down behind the grand stairway in the Palace of 
Industry, among heaps of rubbish and other rejected pictures, 
it was waiting, dishonored and unnoticed, until such time as its 
owner should take it away. 

The tide was stemmed. Once again his life was consecrated 
to the interests of Holy Church. 

With renewed and redoubled zeal, and truly penitent, he 
strove to atone for his fault. Among the poor and needy 
he became the ready helper and friend, entering into his work 
with an earnestness undreamed of before. 

When quite free from all duties and obligations of his little 
parish, only then wouid he retire to the quiet of his atelier for 
an hour among his dearly beloved brushes. Never again did he 
vie with the world's criticism nor seek for worldly honor, but 
to those who wished them he gladly sold his paintings, that 



io6 



FROM NORMANDY. 



[Oct. 



their earnings might go to lessen the sufferings of the poor. 
One cherished canvas alone he could not part with the 
" Queen Margarets." 

Only by continuous plying of questions do we glean the 
whole story from the old man. For his part, he says, he sees 
no great beauty in the curb's pictures ; neither does he think he 
has done well in removing all the gay tinsel hangings, plaster 
ornaments, and many-colored paper flowers that enlivened the 
church ; but " chacun a son gout " it matters little to him, 
and he can pull the old bell-rope as well, day in and day out, as 
he has done, and, please God, will do for many a year to come. 

With an abrupt adieu he leaves us at the gate, for the sun 
is setting and he must hasten to the church. 

As our faltering footsteps turn away amid the deepening 
shadows the voice of the Angelus resounds through the still 
twilight, descending upon us like a benediction. Our hearts 
respond : " Let those who will have their chateaux and their 
glory, but to this village leave its cure and its church." 





ALONE. 

BY CHARLOTTE GRACE O'BRIEN. 

" Ami encore aveugle et brisant ma prison." V. Hugo. 

Y God! how shall I speak to Thee 
Of that which is, and is to be ? 

Of that which is gone by? 
Of hopes that lived and grew and fell ? 
Of love and its unnamed spell ? 

Of life that lives to die? 

Thou seest my life what it is now 
Cut off from men, a leafless bough 

No child, no love, no strength. 
What hope is there on which to rest? 
What love to turn to and be blest ? 
Only the grave at length. 

Only! O God! that "only" may 
Mean life and love and glorious day. 

God ! what a tale is there ! 
Hid in that foul, forbidding cloud 
What ecstasy of life may shroud 

Its outlines brave and fair. 

I barely hope, I stand at gaze, 
Bewildered by the unshaped maze 

Of life and death and thought. 
I know that life is sad : is death 
But the cessation of our breath ? 

Is it all things or naught ? 

Is it God's light? or is it rest? 
Proves it our Christ, or the mad jest 

Of brute life-bearing man ? 
Man who might be brute and die 
When weary of brutality, 

But now nor dares nor can. 

Silence ! My heart holds hope still safe, 
Tossed though my life may be a waif, 

Flotsam and jetsam on a shore 
All bare and wild and bruised with storm, 
Worn out it lies a worthless form, 

Haply a prison door. 




io8 DISESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH OF VIRGINIA. [Oct., 



THE DISESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH OF 

VIRGINIA. 

By WILLIAM F. CARNE. 

HE actual, real church cannot be disestablished. 
It was founded upon Peter, with the declaration 
of its Divine Architect, " On this Rock I will 
build my church, and the gates of hell shall not 
prevail against it." But simulated churches which 
men establish they can also disestablish. " I made you," said 
the virago Elizabeth to an Anglican bishop of her establish- 
ment, "and by G I will unmake you." 

The church of Virginia was a man-made church. No 
martyr's blood had made the soil fruitful for the Master. No 
old men like Father Jogues had lifted there to heaven 
hands mutilated for Christ. No young man like Rene Goupil 
had pressed into the wilderness to die for the cross. 

Civil power established the Virginia church. In the March 
session of the General Assembly of 1624 its foundations were 
laid. It was enacted 

" That there shall be in every plantation where the people 
use to meete for the worship of God a house or room seques- 
tered for that purpose, and not to be for any temporal use 
whatsoever, and a place empayled in, and sequestered- only for 
the buryal of the dead. 

" That there be a uniformity in our church, as neere as may 
be to the canons of England, both in substance and circum- 
stance, and that all persons yeild readie obedience unto them 
under paine of censure." 

Under the same enactment absence from church on any 
Sunday was to be punished by a forfeiture of a pound of 
tobacco; it was ordered that no man dispose, of any of his 
tobacco before the tithes of the minister be satisfied, and that 
one man in every plantation collect the tithes out of the first 
and best tobacco and corn ; that whoever should disparage a 
minister without proof should " not only pay 500 Ib. waight 
of tobacco, but also aske the minister so wronged forgiveness 
publically in the congregation." The ecclesiastical jurisdiction 
of the Assembly was also exercised in the making of a canon 



1894-] DISESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH OF VIRGINIA. 109 

"that the 22d of March be yearly solemized as a holliday"; 
and the suspension of all other holydays of obligation " betwixt 
the annuntiation of the blessed Virgin and St. Michael the 
Archangell." 

The Assembly had before this, at its first session in 1719, 
directed that all ministers in the colony should preach and 
catechise every Sunday, and that all persons should attend 
church, and that such as bore arms should bring their pieces, 
swords, powder, and shot, but no church-making was then at- 
tempted. The Virginia church was established by the legisla- 
tion of the General Assembly of 1724. From that time until 
1776 parishes were established by act of Assembly, lands were 
provided as glebes for the residence of the ministers, churches 
were built by public assessments in tobacco notes, and vestries 
elected who supervised the parson, as well as poor. 

All this had been done by laymen, under clerical influence 
certainly, but in it the clergy, as such, took no direct part. 
Clergymen when they came over brought with them generally 
faculties or licenses from the Bishop of London, and were ap- 
pointed to parishes by lay officials. The Bishop of London had 
designed at first Rev. Mr. Temple, and afterwards -Rev. James 
Blair, to be a sort of vicar-apostolic, who took the unepiscopal 
name of commissary. 

There were thirty-seven Anglican clergymen in Virginia, 
when in the spring of 1719 Mr. Commissary Blair attempted 
an organization by calling them in convention at Williamsburg 
on the 8th day of April of that year. The convention was at- 
tended by twenty-five clerics, and proved, indeed, a Comedy of 
Convocation ; for the first question which Commissary Blajr, in 
the name of the Bishop of London, proposed to the Assembly 
was, whether any of the members present knew of any minister 
that officiated in the colony without episcopal ordination ? 
Whereat twelve of the clergymen present said that in their 
opinion it was doubtful whether Commissary Blair, himself, had 
episcopal ordination or not. Eleven thought his ordination 
was valid, and one, Mr. Sclater, suspended his judgment. It 
appears that Mr. Blair had been ordained in Scotland. Rever- 
end Hugh Jones objected that Mr. Blair's certificate, although 
signed " Jo. Edinburgen," a Scottish bishop, certified " that 
Mr. Blair had been ordained presbyter, and that it should have 
been priest " (sic]. 

The convention, however, proceeded to reply to all the 
bishop's inquiries and to draft a letter to him. All were agreed 



i io DISESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH OF VIRGINIA. [Oct., 

upon one paragraph, viz. : " The people in general are averse to 
the induction of the clergy the want of which exposes us to 
the great oppression of the vestries, who act often arbitrarily, 
lessening and denying us our lawful salaries." 

Says Campbell, writing in his History of Virginia of this 
time, " It was an age when the state of religion was low in 
England, and of those ministers sent over to Virginia not a 
few were incompetent, some openly profligate ; and religion 
slumbered in the languor of moral lectures, the maxims of 
Socrates and Seneca, and the stereotyped routine of accus- 
tomed forms. Altercations between minister and people were 
not unfrequent ; the parson was a favorite butt for aristocratic 
ridicule. Sometimes a pastor more exemplary than the rest 
was removed from mercenary motives or on account of a faith- 
ful discharge of his duties. More frequently the unfit were re- 
tained by popular indifference. The clergy, in effect, did not 
enjoy that permanent independency of the people which proper- 
ly belongs to a hierarchy. The vestry, a self-perpetuated body 
of twelve gentlemen, thought themselves ' the parson's master,' 
and the clergy, in vain, deplored the precarious tenure of their 
livings. The commissary's powers were few, limited, and dis- 
puted ; he was but the shadow of a bishop ; he could neither 
confirm nor ordain ; he could not even depose a minister. Yet 
the people, jealous of prelatical tyranny, watched his feeble 
movements with a vigilant and suspicious eye." 

So the church of Virginia continued. It was composed of 
the General Assembly and the vestries, who employed clergy- 
men that had licenses from the Bishop of London. Its visible 
head was the governor, and its invisible head a king or a 
queen beyond the sea.* 

In this condition of affairs the Presbyterians, Anabaptists, 
and other Dissenters who exercised their religion under the 
toleration-laws, began " New Light " revivals that, continued 
from time to time, carried off, not only all the most emotional 
but many of the most pious, to the non-conforming churches. 
The vestries in many parishes were parsimonious in providing 

* The mandament of one of the prefects of the English curia to the chief of the Virginia 
church would hardly be considered orthodox now, even by the broadest churchman. Ben- 
jamin Franklin tells that when Mr. Commissary Blair was arguing at. the English court in 
favor of an appropriation for the founding of William and Mary College, " he represented 
that it was intended to educate young men to be ministers of the gospel, and he begged Mr. 
Attorney-General Seymour to consider that the people of Virginia had souls to be saved as 

well as the people of England. ' Souls ! ' exclaimed the imperious Seymour ; d your 

souls ! Make tobacco.' " 



1894-] DISESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH OF VIRGINIA, in 

for the church services, and the ministers careless and some- 
times rude. A combination of these evils afflicted a parish in 
Prince William County, whose church was near Haymarket, not 
far from Bull Run. It is related that at that church there was 
but one book of common prayer in the chancel. The custom 
was for the minister to read the versicle, then hand the book 
over the pulpit-top to the clerk below, who would read the re- 
sponse and hand the book back to the parson ; and so continue 
this exchange until the service closed, parson and clerk doing 
the work of battledores with the book, as a shuttlecock, between 
them. It happened during the " New Light stir " that a large 
number of the people became Anabaptists. On Sunday, when 
the minister as usual began service, read his part, and stretch- 
ing his hand down from the pulpit suspended the book below, 
no one took it. " Whar's the dark?" said he. " Jined the 
Baptists," cried a voice in the scant congregation. " The h 
he has," responded the minister drawing up the book. " Then 
I'll be parson and clark like a double-potato " ; and he com- 
pleted the service according to law.* 

Amid scenes of which this incident is a striking, though for- 
tunately an unusual illustration, the church of Virginia pro- 
ceeded on towards its fall. The Dissenters supported their own 
ministers, and besides paid tithes to the clergy of the Establish- 
ment ; but, as the tithe was largely in tobacco, they made a 
quiet boycott by making as little tobacco as possible ; so that 
Beverly says : " 'Tis observed those counties where the Pres- 
byterian meetings are produce very mean tobacco, and for that 
reason can't get an orthodox minister to stay among them." 

The church of Virginia lived by tobacco ; and the failure of 
the crop of 1756 came very near to putting an end to the 
church. Each parson was entitled to a tithe of sixteen thous- 
and pounds of the best tobacco, which was ordinarily rated at 
2d. per pound. In 1756-8 the scarcity of tobacco raised its 
price to 6d. and even to &/. per pound. The Assembly in 1758 
made a " readjustment," and declared that tobacco taxes might 
be commuted in moneys at the rate of 2d. the pound. The 

* The New England Congregationalist must think twice before he smiles at the old Vir- 
ginia clergy. Lyman Beecher's biography tells that "just after his settlement at Litchfield, 
Conn., there was an ordination in a neighboring town. The Consociation found at the 
house of the new pastor a sideboard set out with decanters with all the liquors then in vogue, 
with water, sugar, and pipes. The reverend gentlemen took a drink all round as soon as they 
came in," and continued drinking until the ordination, and after it was concluded. The 
sideboard, with its spillings of water and sugar and liquor, looked and smelled like the bar 
of a very active groggery. Then they smoked and were hilarious. The Consociation, if not 
drunk, was clearly fuddled. The society or church paid for the treat. 



ii2 DISESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH OF VIRGINIA. [Oct., 

clergy held a riotous convention, and appealed to the king. 
Sherlock, Bishop of London, wrote denouncing the act of 1758 
as "manifestly tending to draw the people of the plantations 
from their allegiance to the king." The king disallowed the 
act. In the year the act had been passed thousands of colonists 
had not raised one pound of tobacco; ruin stared the country 
in the face, and "the legislature was obliged to issue money 
from the public funds to keep the people from starving." Amid 
this destitution some of the clergy sued for their tobacco, or 
its value at %d. per pound. At Hanover Court-House Rev. Mr. 
Maury was about to get judgment for his tithes, when Patrick 
Henry, then scarcely more than a beardless boy, made his first 
speech against the parsons, carried the jury with him, and the 
jury overruled the king. William Wirt has told the story with 
classic elegance. That Hanover jury began the disestablishment 
of the Virginia church. The parson's case was decided in 1763. 
Very soon church matters were dwarfed by the exigencies of 
the questions which grew out of the relations of the colony to 
Great Britain. The stamp act, the tax on tea, and the like, took 
all the attention of the community. The church of Virginia 
had never had a firm hold on the people, and its grasp weak- 
ened year by year, until at last the Assembly, which had in 1624 
established the church by the enactment " that there be unifor- 
mity in our church, as neere as may, to the canons of England," 
disestablished in 1776 by the enactment "that all laws which 
render criminal the maintaining any opinions in matters of re- 
ligion, forbearing to repair to church, or the exercising of any 
mode of worship, or which prescribe punishments for the same, 
shall henceforth be of no force or validity in this commonwealth," 
and that all Dissenters should be free of all levies for support- 
ing the church. 

Singularly enough the Assembly did not, for some years, 
seem to recognize what it had done. It evidently had in view 
the continuance of tithes to be paid by others than Dissenters 
towards maintaining some sort of church, " as it now is or may 
be established." The ministers and vestries in possession were 
allowed to keep their churches, glebes, books, plate, and orna- 
ments, and to tithe those who did not choose to declare them- 
selves Nonconformists; but in 1779 all laws granting salaries to 
ministers or authorizing the vestries to levy tithes were repealed. 
This cleared away every vestige of the state-church, but left the 
ministry and vestries in possession of the glebes, etc., which had 
belonged to the church of Virginia. These gentlemen were 



1894-] DISESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH OF VIRGINIA. 113 

still in possession of this public property when in 1784 they, 
clergy and vestrymen, on their own petition, were made cor- 
porations, each under the title of "the ministry and vestry of 

the Protestant Episcopal Church in the parish of ." At the 

same time all acts as to fasts, festivals, catechisms, etc., were 
repealed. It had been expected that the Baptists, Presbyterians, 
Quakers, etc., would also become incorporated in the same way, 
and take the power from the state to tithe their own members. 
A bill had been carried to its second reading in the Assembly 
of 1784 which provided for "the establishing of a provision 
for teachers of the Christian religion." A tax was to be laid 
on all persons subject to tax, and the money raised was to be 
appropriated by the vestries, elders, or directors of each reli- 
gious society, for a provision for a minister or teacher of the 
Gospel of their denomination ; or the erection of church build- 
ings. Quakers and Mennonites were also provided for. 

While this plan was under consideration Washington wrote 
to George Mason as follows : " Although no man's sentiments 
are more opposed to restraint upon religious principles than 
mine are, yet I must confess that I am not among the number 
of those who are so much alarmed at the thought of making 
people pay for the support of that which they profess if of the 
denomination of Christians, or declare themselves Jews, Ma- 
hometans, or otherwise, and thereby obtain proper relief. As 
it is, I wish the bill had never been introduced, and could die 
an easy death." 

And it did die an easy death, still-born. The Presbyterians 
and Baptists had no thought of allowing the Episcopalians to 
succeed the state church and retain the precedence, property, 
and position that the old law had created for the Established 
Church. They bided their time and attacked the right of the 
new Protestant Episcopal Chvch to own the glebe lands, which 
had been bought by taxes levied on the whole community. 

Meanwhile those Catholic principles of public law, which 
Calvert had exemplified in Maryland, came to possess the pub- 
lic mind, and Thomas Jefferson gave them, in the "Act for Es- 
tablishing Religious Freedom," their first authoritative utterance 
in Virginia. They were not new. They are as old as free will. 
Fenelon had laid them down years before as guides for the 
reign of Bonnie Prince Charlie when "the king should come to 
his own " in England. The similarity of the utterances of the 
Archbishop of Cambray and of the Governor of Virginia is so 
remarkable that I give them in parallel columns : 
VOL. LX. 8 



1 14 DISESTABLISHMENT OF TEE CHURCH OF VIRGINIA. [Oct., 
FENELON, 1745- JEFFERSON, 1785. 

No human power can reach " Whereas Almighty God hath 
the impenetrable recess of the created the mind free; that all 
free will of the heart. Violence attempts to influence it by tern- 
can never persuade; it serves poral punishments or burdens, 
only to make hypocrites, or by civil incapacitations, tend 
Grant civil liberty to all, not only to beget habits of hypoc- 
in approving everything as in- risy, and are a departure from 
different, but in tolerating with the plan of the Holy Author 
patience whatever God toler- of our religion, who, being Lord 
ates, and endeavoring to con- of both body and mind, yet 
vert men with mild persuasion ; " chose not to propagate it by 
therefore, etc. coercions on either, as was in 

his almighty power to do ; " 

therefore, etc. 

The established church of Virginia was dead. Administra- 
tion on its effects alone remained. The new Protestant Episco- 
pal Church corporation claimed to be its heir. Born of a free 
father and a slave mother, it seemed willing to accept the max- 
im of the slave code, "The child takes the mother's condition," 
and most of the effects of its mother became its inheritance. 
The Baptists did not want her baptismal fonts, the Quakers had 
no use for her surplices, nor the Presbyterians for her books 
of common prayer; so these were left with the Episcopal cor- 
poration without controversy. The Dissenters were attached to 
their own meeting houses, consecrated by persecution. Besides, 
the churches of the Establishment were, in most cases, in a ruin- 
ous condition, and often not worth the cost of repair. So Dis- 
sent made no claim to the churches, but the Dissenters were 
not .villing that the Episcopal corporation should take the glebes. 
They demanded that land bought with public money should be 
held for the use of the public. For twenty years this claim 
was denied by the civil government. Catholics took no part in 
these contests. A few families at Alexandria, Norfolk, and else- 
where were all who held, in the rising commonwealth, to Peter's 
faith. The contest over the glebes continued at every session 
of the General Assembly during the last twenty years of the 
eighteenth century. 

;< The crisis," writes Rev. Dr. Hawks, endorsed by Bishop 
Meade, "came at last, and on the 1 2th of January, 1802, the leg- 
islature passed the law by virtue of which the glebes of Vir- 



1 894.] 



THE BIRTH OF FRIENDSHIP. 



ginia were ordered to be sold for the benefit of the public. 
The warfare begun by the Baptists seven-and-twenty years be- 
fore was now finished. The church was in ruins and the tri- 
umph of her enemies was complete." 

Yes, the king's church was in ruins. Had, indeed, the gates 
of hell prevailed against the church ? Not so. The choirs of the 
little Catholic congregations which had sprung up at Alexandria 
and at Norfolk were already chanting at Vespers : " Dominus a 
dextris tuis confregit in die irae suae reges. Judicabit in nationi- 
bus, implebit ruinas." 



THE BIRTH OF FRIENDSHIP. 




BY JAMES BUCKHAM. 

S when the soft-reminding touch of morn 
Lights on the lids of rosy boyhood, sealed 
By sweet and dreamless slumber all night long ; 
He stirs at last, and lifts his happy arms 
To clasp the sun, and sky, and air, and all 
Restored delights in passionate embrace : 



As when a mountain-climber, all aglow 
With hot midsummer thirst, seeks out a spring, 
And plunging lips and forehead in the cold, 
Unstinted crystal, drinks, till hands relax 
That grip the mossy rock, and all his veins 
Are soft and cool with the unfevered blood : 



As when before some biting icy blast 
A poor wayfarer, tost on trackless mere, 
Benumbed, despairing, sees a sudden light 
Flash o'er the waste, and hears the low of kine, 
And warms for joy of cozy ingle nigh ; 



Such, unto me, the rapture long reserved 
Of heart's communion with a noble friend ! 



n6 CATHOLIC CHARITIES UNDER THE MICROSCOPE. [Oct., 




CATHOLIC CHARITIES UNDER THE MICROSCOPE. 

HATEVER the motives which have really ani- 
mated the gentlemen who lately led the assault 
upon the system of Catholic charities in New 
York, all who are interested in those noble insti- 
tutions have much 'reason for thankfulness for 
their action. The spirit of Persecution often proves to be a 
blessing in disguise. In this particular case it has been con- 
jured up only to slink back into its dark abode abashed and 
humiliated before the shining wand of the spirit of Truth. 

The plague of our free government is the ever upspringing 
crop of doctrinaires who think they can make a good system 
still better. The theorists who would hand us over bodily and 
mentally to the care of the state are not less an evil than the 
individualists who want the whole field of human action, un- 
trammelled by any governmental check whatever, for their en- 
ergies of acquisition. To what class belong the sticklers for 
rigid principle who have been moving in this matter of chari- 
ties, it is not necessary to inquire. Their motives may be un- 
selfish ; the rigid spirit of Brutus, ready to sacrifice even their 
own flesh and blood on the altar of strict constitutional justice, 
may have animated them. But the fact that the lictor's axe 
must fall heaviest on the homes which Catholic charity has pro- 
vided for the outcast and the unfortunate, remains to testify 
trumpet-tongued against them. Seemingly their intention was 
that of the anarchist anxious only to destroy, caring nothing 
what was to take the place of that which had been cast down. 
The practical strain in the American character runs through 
it like a coal-bed in a mass of rock. It was inevitable that the 
pick of the explorer should strike this vein when he had got 
deep enough. The American Constitution is nothing if not prac 
tical, for it is the reflex of the American mind. And when the \ 
representatives of the leading State were asked to give a bias 
to the Constitution by cutting off the support heretofore given 
to those homes wherein the ministering angels of Catholic charity 
tend, it was the practical view which at once presented itself 
to the minds of those charged with the responsibility of recom- 
mending changes. They gave no decision until they had satis- 
fied themselves of the soundness of their advice. They went 



1894-] CATHOLIC CHARITIES UNDER THE MICROSCOPE. 117 

and saw for themselves ; they looked closely into the working 
of the obnoxious charities ; they studied the tables of receipts 
and expenditure, and compared them with those of institutions 
maintained by the State alone. Many of them went, like the 
prophet Balaam, briefed, as it were, to curse, but compelled by 
the power of conscience and truth to bless instead. In all the 
history of enterprises whose currents were turned awry by the 
logic of events, there is nothing to compare with the outcome 
of this investigation. The turning of the tables is, in fact, dra- 
matic in its completeness. 

The crisis was grave. Men eminent in standing had been 
got to sanction the movement against the charities by a strain- 
ing of arguments. A supersensitive regard for the principle of 
impartiality and non-favoritism had been led into the mistake of 
looking at dereliction of duty and the cruelty of abandonment 
as the only solution of a painful difficulty. A religious test was 
sought to be enforced as a condition of State aid, where the 
Constitution is distinct in the disavowal of religious discrimina- 
tion. It was sought to make the Charities Commission of New 
York an inquisitorial tribunal with formidable punitive powers. 
And this startling innovation was to be effected under the pre- 
text of respect for the sacredness of the principle of neutrality. 
Blindfold Justice was asked to fling her sword into her own 
scales, like the Gaul of old, while successful Bigotry croaked out 
" Vae victis ! " 

All that eloquence and earnestness could do to make the 
worse appear the better reason was done. No one can deny 
that the case for injustice was well presented. If specious ar- 
gument and spurious constitutionalism could have won the 
cause, the fires of the Catholic charities might soon burn low. 
The Rev. Mr. King earned his fee by his zeal and address in 
sophistry. If white could be argued into black, he and the 
other gentlemen who appeared for black would have turned 
alabaster into ebony. But the eloquence was not all on that 
side. The case made for the charities by Messrs. Coudert and 
Bliss was impregnable in its logic. As a citizen of the Repub- 
lic not brought up in, but won over by, the Catholic faith, Mr. 
Bliss took his stand upon the constitutional right of those who 
by misfortune were rendered dependent on charitable aid to be 
protected from the application of any religious test as a condi- 
tion precedent to the gaining of relief. 

There was very little of Solomon's experimental method 
about the judgment of the committee. Nothing was taken on 



ii8 CATHOLIC CHARITIES UNDER THE MICROSCOPE. [Oct., 

hearsay; circumstantial evidence was by no means necessary. 
Its members had eyes to see, and ears to hear, and tongues to 
question withal; and they determined to use them. A delega- 
tion started out to investigate the whole system of Catholic 
charities, in their actual every-day operation. Some of them 
started out prejudiced against the charities, but all started out 
with the honest determination to give fair play and acknowledge 
the truth, whatever it was. The exhaustive nature of the in- 
quiry and the painstaking and conscientious manner in which 
it was conducted showed that, in electing Mr. Edward Lauter- 
bach as the chairman of the delegation, the committee made 
sure of the best service at its command. The report which ap- 
pears over his signature is a businesslike document. Its findings 
are of a remarkable character. After recapitulating briefly the 
heads of indictment, the report goes on to point out that 

" No demand of the character referred to, for a change in 
the methods which have prevailed in regard to the poor and 
needy, seems to have come from any of the great host of men 
and women in this State whose devotion to charitable work and 
whose familiarity with all the details have been the greatest." 

Having recited the holding of the inquiry the report goes on 
to say : 

"As a result of these investigations, the committee is of the 
opinion that the public has received adequate return for all 
moneys paid to private charitable institutions ; that the expen- 
ditures made have been, in most instances, far less than if the 
institutions had been conducted by the public ; that the religious 
training which is insured for the young by the methods now 
pursued is of incalculable benefit ; that the care of those in private 
institutions is better, in most instances, than that received in those un- 
der control of public local officers, and is, at least, as good and fully 
on a par with the institutions, fewer in number, directly under the 
control of the State itself ;* that the public moneys expended 
under the prevailing methods are supplemented by the expen- 
diture of enormous sums from private sources; that to a large 
extent the buildings and accessories of these organizations have 
been supplied at private cost, and that the method, upon the 
whole, is certainly the most economical that can be devised, 
and will be still more economical when some comparatively 
trifling abuses, such as the too long retention of inmates or 
laxity in their admission, shall have been remedied. 

*This passage is not italicized in the original. ED. 



1894-] CATHOLIC CHARITIES UNDER THE MICROSCOPE. 119 

" If the amendments proposed by the earnest people who sub- 
mitted them were carried out to their legitimate conclusion, and 
if the partial support from public sources to orphan asylums, 
foundling asylums, and kindred institutions which are neces- 
sarily under denominational control, were withdrawn, it is to be 
feared the State itself, or its civil divisions, would be called up- 
on, at infinitely greater cost, to endeavor to perform a service 
which it could never adequately render, and which would tend 
to deprive the orphan, the foundling, the sick, and other unfor- 
tunate dependents upon charity of the advantages afforded 
through the aid of thousands of volunteers, many of whom now 
devote their lives, without compensation, to co-operation with 
the State in this, its noblest work, inspired thereto by praise- 
worthy religious impulses, and which bring to these institutions, 
not the perfunctory service which would be rendered by paid 
public officials, many of them qualified only by political service, 
but a sincere devotion of officers, directors, managers, and 
subordinates engaged in their work as a labor of love and 
not for emolument." 

Total disseverance between the State and all sectarian institu- 
tions sound well, but have those who raised the cry looked into 
the possibility of maintaining the change in every contingency? 
What have they suggested as a substitute for the obnoxious in- 
stitutions in case of widespread calamity and public danger ? 
Nothing. On this point the report goes on : 

" Probably the noblest, sectarian charities in the world are 
hospitals in the city of New York. They are supported entirely 
by private sectarian contributions and endowments, but they 
extend their benefits without regard to race, creed, color, or 
religion. In former years they occasionally required and re- 
ceived local assistance, which, however, at present they do not 
require or receive, but the occasion might arise, at any moment, 
calling for the use of these hospitals by the city for public pur- 
poses, and the establishment of contractual relations between 
the city and some one or more of these institutions. If the 
prohibitory amendments were adopted such arrangements would 
become impossible, and the city would be deprived of what 
might be an indispensable facility in its charitable work. 

" The proponents of the amendments against which your 
committee reports in substance, point to the constitutions of 
other States as establishing precedents in their favor. But the 
situation of the Empire State, and especially the Empire City, 



120 CATHOLIC CHARITIES UNDER THE MICROSCOPE. [Oct., 

is unique. They are called upon to render charitable work not 
only for those born within the boundaries of the State, but for 
hundreds of thousands coming to us from every nation, from 
every clime, and from every other State. Should the ability to 
continue the methods heretofore employed be terminated, it 
would be impossible for us to cope with these burdens. 

"These conclusions have been arrived at by your committee 
not hurriedly, but only after the most patient examination of 
the whole subject, both generally and in its details ; an examina- 
tion which, while it served in the case of some few of the mem- 
bers of the committee to strengthen existing impressions, in the 
case of the majority of the committee cause the adoption of 
these opinions despite contrary views which had been entertained 
before investigation." (Official Document No. j-p.) 

Besides the public institutions of the State and city, a num- 
ber of orphan asylums are supported by local funds, and to 
these, as well as to private families of different denominations, 
the local authorities send a large number of helpless children, 
to be maintained and educated in their own faith out of the 
local funds. Were the proposed amendment on sectarian chari- 
ties adopted, it would be unlawful for the local authorities to 
continue this salutary practice. The orphans sent to these in- 
stitutions thereafter would then be somewhat in the position 
of prisoners held in places of confinement, in which, while they 
would be fed and clothed, they would be deprived of all chance 
of religious training ; in other words, compulsorily brought up 
as pagans. Would this be in accord with the spirit of Ameri- 
can liberty and the American Constitution ? 

Liberal-minded people of all shades of belief will be gratified 
by the finding of the Committee on Charities ; had the Commit- 
tee on Education only taken similar pains to inform themselves 
on the subject of their inquiry they could hardly, supposing them 
all to be equally conscientious and fair-minded as the Committee 
on Charities, have arrived at the recommendation which stands 
in their name. They propose to cut off from State aid all 
schools connected with denominational institutions ; thus placing 
the Constitutional Convention in a self-stultificatory position. 
If the recommendations of the convention be scheduled and 
codified before presentation to the public, this anomaly must 
stand out strikingly. No constitutional body can afford to make 
itself ridiculous by trying to pull in opposite directions like the 
teams in a tug of war. They must pull all together, or not pull 
at all. 



1894-] THE GOB HAN SAER. 12 [ 

THE GOBHAN SAER. 
BY REV. GEORGE MCDERMOT. 

[IN Irish legendary lore this personage has the place, to some extent, that 
Mercury holds in the oldest Hellenic myths. But the Gobhan is a Prometheus 
as well as a Mercury. Even to this day structures of extreme antiquity are 
ascribed by the Irish peasants to the Gobhan Saer. In these verses I make him 
one of the Tuatha de Danaans, the most illustrious and civilized of the Irish 
races, and who, the old chroniclers tell us, possessed almost unlimited magical 
powers. By means of their incantations they sent a storm on the Milesian fleet 
as it approached the Isle of Destiny, but some more potent spirit guarded the 
fortunes of those whose descendants were to bear a part so wonderful and touch- 
ing in the history of European civilization. The Danaans next wrapped the 
island in Egyptian darkness, and it took " our great forefathers," as Moore calls 
them in the most exquisite of the melodies, three days to find the shore. In the 
battle that followed the Danaans moved all the elements to fight for them, but 
nothing, of course, could resist the valor and fortune of their enemies. In their 
despair the kings and magi changed themselves into fairies, in which shape they 
have had the satisfaction of employing a capricious, but not always an unami- 
able, hostility to their conquerors for the last four thousand years. I suppose it 
was only the common people that were slaughtered or enslaved.] 

INDUCTION. 

I saw the greatest Danaan king, and last, 

'Mid rocks that travail'd nature bore in pain : 

He stood a phantom from the ages past, 
With eye and hand uplifted o'er the main 

That far below its angry surges ca">t, 

And claimed as his that desolation's reign. 

It must have been a dream, that solitude 

And phantom standing 'mid the rocks so rude. 

But clear as light I saw the witness-scars 

Which knowledge writes on faces of the wise ; 

And clear against the moon the mountain-bars, 
And clear the lustre of his musing eyes ; 

As though he knew all things beneath the stars 
And changes endless of the circling skies. 

I knew him then; and now I'll tell his tale, 

An echo from old time a sigh, a wail. 

LEGEND OF THE LAST DANAAN. 

In Erin once there lived a wizard old 

Into whose heart, 'twas said, the gods had sent 



I22 THE GOB HAN SAER. 

Profoundest wisdom ; so he could behold 
All thoughts, all times, as through a curtain rent. 

His beard like a white torrent downward roll'd ; 
His form, as one bends o'er a lyre, was bent 

By age, and shaken, as by wind or flame, 

With purposes like waves that on him came. 

Each glen and hill is of his life a page ; 

Unknown his race, though in the city long 
He'd lived a seer from a forgotten age 

Amid the wrecks strewn by the seasons strong 
In their triumphant course an archimage, 

Who wonders wrought undreamt in poet's song. 
He rais'd the city-walls and towers on high ; 
He laid the bridge where the swift waters fly. 
He led the blanching torrent from the height 

A captive serving at the city's heart ; 
He fix'd the rod that draws the lightning's flight, 

Else winged with ruin, from the cloud apart ; 
The pillar tow'r he built, to watch at night* 

The firmament above him like a chart ; 
And read the destinies of kingly men, 
In tranced stars that circled o'er him then. 

He was from forth the mighty Danaan kings, 
Those magians deep whose spells had pow'r on all 

On land and sea, and on the inmost things 
Which the great mother hides within her pall : 

And hence they sent the wind upon its wings 
To sink th' invaders and their galleys tall. 

But all in vain. Next raising up a cloud, 

They covered all the land as with a shroud. 

In vain ; for the invaders gain'd the shore. 

Next on them fell fierce arrow-flights of rain ; 
The thunder mingled with the ocean's roar, 

And lightning, earth-created, flash'd amain. 
But the Milesians, fortunate still, bore 

All down, and piled up pyramids of slain. 
Yet on the Danaan Kings they had no pow'r, 
For these to fairies changed in that sad hour: 

* One of the theories about the round towers is that they were sun-dials (gnomons) and 
astronomical observatories. It is quite needless to say that this theory has been completely 
refuted by Dr. Petrie. 



1894-] THE GOB HAN SAER. 123 

Save him who stands in the eclipse of time 
Half light, half shadow called the Gobhan Saer. 

And forty centuries have struck their chime 
Since his strong spirit cast its spell in Eire, 

And made her rise, amid the lands, sublime, 
With glory's radiant crown upon her hair; 

For, led by love's transforming alchemy, 

He taught his foes the arts that keep men free. 

By knowledge all a nation's power is bought, 
While ignorance precedes it to its doom ; 

Thus why he show'd the arts his fathers brought 
From Tyre* the dyes, the cunning of the loom; 

And how the secret of the arch he'd caught \ 
From the bow radiant o'er the morning's gloom ; 

How on a frame of wood he stretched the strings 

That ravish when the summer sea-wind sings. 

And kindness is a greater king than fate, 

And stronger love than the all-conquering bier ; 

Still on good deeds the deathless ages wait, 
So thus lives still the memory of the seer 

In whom was love a greater power than hate. 
And when night drives the chariot of the year 

His deeds by peasant firesides still are told, 

As once in halls in Erin's age of gold. 

And sometimes when the earth is in a swoon, 
When stars wink in the spaces of the sky, 

And hangs like a white lamp the midnight moon, 
Making men dream that something weird is nigh : 

From haunted rath a wild, melodious tune 

Comes sobbing, throbbing, like a banshee's cry. 

Then all may know the Gobhan Saer's at hand, 

Lamenting o'er the well-beloved land. 

*The Danaans were supposed by some to be Phoenicians, but they were men of "fair 
hair and large size " according to others. They were, perhaps, Celts of another period. 

t Strangely enough, the arch seems to have been used in Ireland before it was known 
anywhere else in north-western Europe. The arched stone fort is of very great antiquity 
certainly long before the Danish invasions, which only began in the eighth century. Those 
who ignorantly attributed such works to the Danes, did so from confounding the Danaans 
with those barbarians. No antiquarian now makes such a mistake. The Danes were, how- 
ever, in the opinion of Laeing, greatly superior to their Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic conquer- 
ors in knowledge of the arts of life in the Viking times. But Laeing seems to go too far on 
account of his contempt for the swinish propensities of the English and Germans. But Eng- 
land undoubtedly owes an inestimable debt to her Norman-French conquerors. In connec- 
tion with this it is right to add that the Normans in Ireland always called themselves Norman- 
Irish, never Anglo-Irish, and that in England, before the reign of Edward I., the Normans 
never called themselves Anglo-Normans, but Frenchmen or Normans simply. 




As a writer of short tales Miss Lelia Hardin Bugg 
has hitherto been known to the public ; she now 
challenges its verdict in a different role. The more 
ambitious attempt is in reality the easier of the 
two ; for every one who has trod the weary road 
of literature knows that the real art of the novelist is shown in 
the quality of the work which is concentrated because circum- 
scribed. The writer who can produce one of those literary 
cameos which catch the interest and sway the imagination 
despite of itself performs a feat, and the ability to do so ought 
to be equal to the task of writing a more leisurely and beaten- 
out story of equal brilliancy. Miss Bugg has an excellent outfit 
for the literary road. She possesses the two useful qualities of 
wit and sympathy ; power of observation and ability to convey 
her analysis* clearly she also reckons as part of her kit. Yet 
many will prefer to read her, we venture to say, in her briefer 
efforts than in the novel Orchids* which she has just published. 
For purposes of general classification, novels may be roughly 
divided into two kinds those which aim at presenting an 
artistic picture of life, and those which give us its tragedy or its 
comedy just as it .occurs, without any harmonious " equities," 
to use a legal metaphor. There are many gradations and 
subdivisions in these two orders, of course ; but every novel 
dealing with mundane life comes under either heading. Orchids 
belongs to the former class, and its shortcomings are in the 
"equities" of the story, its excellences in the detailed treatment. 
The central figure in the tale is a woman. The conception 
is well worked out ; in the flesh and in the spirit the model of 
womanhood is faithfully copied, with those weaknesses of 
worldliness and those elevations of heroism of which some are 
capable. A character to whom such loftiness as she is made to 
show was possible should not be unequally matched. It is cer- 
tainly as true as anything we know that this is one of the para- 

* Orchids. By Lelia Hardin Bugg. St. Louis : B. Herder. 



1894-] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 125 

doxes of life. Women of such a type are frequently met with, 
bestowing the priceless treasures of an unselfish love and sacri- 
ficing everything in life upon and for very worthless objects. 
But the dramatist will not select such ridiculous and inexplica- 
ble opposites for dramatic purposes. The personality to engage 
a woman's soul to the point of renunciation of everything for 
his sake must have some transcendent qualities of mind if not 
of person a man of noble parts or magnificent ambitions. 
There is no adequate reason visible in this novel why Margaret 
Clayton, the American heiress, should have fallen in love with 
the English nobleman, Lord Parkhurst. There is, on the con- 
trary, the strongest reason why she should, if she were a high- 
minded woman, scorn him, since his original motives in seeking 
her affections were mercenary and his real love for her only 
incidental. The lord's pecuniary embarrassments prevent him 
from marrying, save for the purpose of preserving the fam- 
ily acres, and when Margaret Clayton gives up her fortune 
to save her dead father's memory from disgrace, he takes 
leave of Margaret, instead of having the manliness to re- 
nounce the acres which were now in reality the Jews', and 
saying " Love against the world ; I shall go and work for our 
living." That Margaret should seek consolation in a convent is 
not too preposterous a consummation, considering that she 
figures as a Catholic ; but it is not the climax of the modern 
American love-story of real life. But Margaret Clayton is not of 
the fin de siecle type of American girl by any means. 

The chord of the romance is the tragic lesson of the inevit- 
ableness of the Nemesis of evil deeds. It is the fraud by which 
Margaret Clayton's father became rich which bears the train 
of consequences that involves her heart's ruin, besides inflicting 
direful miseries upon others. This is sure ground, and much 
can be made of it by any writer of ordinary skill. The author 
of Orchids has not transcended the limits of every-day experi- 
ence in her application of the time-worn principle. The only 
thing novel is the voluntary sacrifice by the heroine of all her 
money in satisfaction of a very nice scruple of conscience. It 
is only when she has done this, and in consequence been dis- 
carded by her lover, that she becomes religious. Up to this 
point she shines as a society butterfly merely. In the case of 
a young lady who had not been trained in a Catholic convent, 
this might not be startling ; but as Margaret Clayton is pic- 
tured ( as having had that advantage, her worldliness is incon- 
sistent and unnatural. 



I2 6 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Oct., 

It is ill-judged of Miss Bugg, in fine, to anticipate the 
criticism of her work which her publishers specially invite and 
at which she becomes sarcastic. It is the duty of the press to 
criticise books proffered to the public, and it is good for an 
author to know what the critics think. The public who read 
are, after all, the tribunal of public resort, and they will judge 
between the critic and the author. Thi* fact, any reflecting 
author ought to know, is a wholesome deterrent upon malevo- 
lent criticism. And, furthermore, were it not for the criticism 
which a work receives, favorable or otherwise, it would have 
very little chance of ever reaching the tribunal of public appeal, 
to any remunerative extent. 

In a recent magazine article Mr. J. A. Froude announces the 
discovery that it is only great people who make any impression 
on history, and the mass of men and women who lead common- 
place lives pass away and nobody minds. Perhaps a more use- 
ful function for such writers as he would be to correct this ten- 
dency of an unjust eclecticism, by searching out the work of 
the commonplace people and leaving the Alexanders and the 
Hannibals rest content with the glory they already enjoy. The 
world is beginning to read history upon a new scheme. It has 
discovered that commonplace people have had quite as much 
to do with the making of history as the heroes whom Mr. 
Froude and Mr. Carlyle worshipped, only somehow nobody 
ever thought it worth while to chronicle their doings. The cur- 
rents of the ocean are never seen ; it is only the vast billows 
which splash against heaven that excite our awe and admiration. 

From time to time Mr. Froude has written a good deal 
about Ireland, yet it never struck him to write about the com- 
monplace priests and obscure friars who furtively lived there 
during the long winter of the penal days. And yet he might 
with advantage to his own chances of post-mortem fame have 
done so, for these commonplace persons influenced the fortunes 
of the country and the course of British affairs there not a 
whit less forcibly than the sword of Cromwell or the policy of 
Pitt. There are other hands, fortunately, quite as capable of 
performing the work, willing and eager to rescue from oblivion 
the memory of the heroic men who fed the flame of religion 
and patriotism in those abysmal days. The Rev. Edmund 
Hogan, S.J., has begun the work,* and, since it is too vast a 

* Distinguished Irishmen of the Sixteenth Century. By the Rev. Edmund Hogan, S.J., 
Fellow of the Royal University of Ireland, Royal Irish Academy, Todd Professor of the 
Celtic Languages. 



1894-] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 127 

one by far for any one pen, it may be hoped that others may 
be found in time to imitate so worthy an example. 

It is chiefly with members of the Jesuit Order who minis- 
tered in Ireland during the Elizabethan period that this first of 
a series of books deals. In time, no doubt, the learned author 
will take up the story of other priests, and distinguished lay- 
men, too, perhaps, who co-operated with them in the mainte- 
nance of the old religion in Ireland. He has had the advan- 
tage of studying the personal correspondence of the subjects of 
his memoirs, and the value of these documents as authentic his- 
torical material will be readily recognized. In truth the letters 
quoted throw a wonderfully vivid light on the political and so- 
cial condition of Ireland in Elizabeth's time, such as cannot 
easily be found in any other sources. It is a singular circum- 
stance that whilst the Catholic clergy were being hunted to death 
by the government, they were in many places actively engaged in 
the good work of restoring public order and converting many men 
driven to outlawry by the measures of the government into the 
ways of honesty and moral living. The picture of active persecu- 
tion of the Catholic population at the same time gives a vivid 
idea of the ordeal through which the country passed, and the 
indomitable spirit in which the priests and their flocks faced 
the bitter situation. It is a stirring record, and one without 
any parallel since the days of the Roman Empire. 

There are sixteen sketches embraced in this volume, fifteen of 
the subjects of which were members of the Society of Jesus 
namely : Fathers David Woulfe, Edmund O'Donnell, Robert Roch- 
fort, Charles Lea, Edmund Tanner, Richard Fleming, John How- 
ling, Thomas White, Nicholas Comerford, Walter Talbot, Flor- 
ence O'More, Thomas Filde, Richard de la Field, Henry Fitzsi- 
mon, James Archer, William Bathe, and Christopher Holly- 
wood ; also Brother Dominick Collins of the same order. The 
latter was one of those who were in the Castle of Dunboy 
when it was seized by Carew; he fell into the hands of the 
English, and was hanged, drawn, and quartered. 

There is no work we are aware of which gives so startling 
a picture of the horrors of the Elizabethan period in Ireland 
as the letters contained in these biographical sketches. The 
perils of privation, of imprisonment, and torture which the Irish 
priests faced, too often to succumb to, recall the Church of 
the Catacombs. 

The perfidy of the foe who lay in wait for them was not 
the least conspicuous of his savage characteristics. It was quite 



I2 g TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Oct., 

habitual to invite the Irish chieftains to friendly conferences 
and banquets, on the pretext of amity, and whilst they were 
feasting to cause them and their retainers to be massacred. At 
one time it was announced that any priests disposed to leave 
the country would be provided with ships to sail away to what- 
ever place they wished to go. Forty Cistercians and two Do- 
minicans thought to avail of this favor to get over to France, 
and they were taken on board a man-of-war. When out at sea 
they were all thrown overboard. The captain and crew were 
imprisoned for a while for the crime, but were shortly after- 
wards rewarded ; and for a similar act of atrocity committed 
in 1644 an English captain received the thanks of Parliament. 

It is not alone upon the troubled affairs of Ireland that these 
absorbing records throw light. Some of the priests mentioned 
were engaged in military chaplain duty with armies of the 
Catholic powers, and they give descriptions and details of many 
events, in the course of their correspondence, which have no 
small historic value. A thrilling sketch of the battle of Prague, 
for instance, is found in the letters of Father Henry Fitzsi- 
mon, and it is accompanied by a graphic sketch of the distin- 
guished soldier the Duke of Bucquoi, who commanded the 
Catholic forces in the campaign in Bohemia in 1620. 

The learned author and compiler of these memoirs has laid 
the justice-loving portion of the world under a deep obligation 
in rescuing the memory of those sublimely heroic men from 
the haze of ignorance regarding them which the studied neglect 
of prejudiced historians had flung over the theme. It is not alone 
the style in which the work is done, but its thoroughness, so 
far as materials were accessible anywhere, that renders it an in- 
valuable addition to a Catholic library. 

A very serviceable book for photographers is that of Pro- 
fessor Wilson.* The publisher is a recognized authority on 
everything connected with the art, and the diagrams and expla- 
nations with which his dictionary abounds leave no. point in all 
its range, down to the very latest discovery, untouched. 

A great enterprise carried to a successful completion finds a 
fitting record in the Final Report on the Catholic Educational Ex- 
hibit at the World's Columbian Exposition. f Now that the 
great Exposition is a thing of the past and a memory merely, 
it is consoling to know that we have at hand for practical pur- 

* Wilson's Cyclopedic Photography. New York : Edward L. Wilson, 853 Broadway. 

Frnal Report on the Catholic Educational Exhibit, World's Columbian Exposition, Chi- 
cago, 1893. Chicago : Rokker-O'Donnell Printing Company. 



1894-] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 129 

poses the substantial record of the work done by our great edu- 
cational establishments and the triumphs won by their apt pu- 
pils. The report which finally closes this important chapter in 
education is a comprehensive document. It deals with details 
no less than principles, and carefully classifies and categorizes 
the work done by every diocese. It gives a minute and con- 
secutive history of the movement, from its inception to its 
close ; and the impression which a study of it leaves on the 
mind of the reader is that of wonder at the conscientious man- 
ner in which all the details are carried out. 

The report is addressed by Rev. Brother Maurelian, F.S.C., 
the secretary and manager of the exhibit, to the Right Rev. J. 
L. Spalding, D.D., Bishop of Peoria, in his capacity as Presi- 
dent of the Board of Directors, and it opens with an introduc- 
tion by the bishop, acknowledging the document and containing 
at the same time a remarkable tribute to its value and impor- 
tance. We know that Brother Maurelian modestly disclaims the 
credit to which he is entitled for his herculean labor in con- 
nection with the exhibit. The Bishop of Peoria, who has borne 
the chief burden of the direction of the work, knows how much 
of its success was really owing to 'the painstaking zeal of the 
secretary and manager, and he bears frank testimony to what 
he and many others have recognized. The Holy Father, under 
whose cheering auspices the exhibition was begun, has had pho- 
tographs of the whole presented to him and a statement of the 
work, and has been pleased to express his high approval of it 
all. Bishop Spalding dwells on the excellent effect which the 
bringing together of the work of so many schools must have 
upon the teachers, in the comparison of methods and the en- 
couragement to exertion which the sense of fellowship and as- 
sociation must have upon many teachers working in remote and 
secluded places. The moral effect which the magnitude and 
beauty of the great display has had upon the public mind, ac- 
customed to look upon the Catholic education as something 
superficial, shallow, and unpractical, must have been great. 
Some notion of it may be gleaned from the many opinions of 
the press and special reports of various institutions quoted in 
the Final Report. 

A balance-sheet is appended to the report. This shows that 
close on forty thousand dollars were subscribed for the purposes 
of the exhibit, and of this only two hundred and ninety two 
dollars remained unexpended at the close. Only about one-third 
of the United States' dioceses sent exhibits, but liberal subscrip- 
VOL. LX. 9 



I30 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Oct., 

tions were forwarded from the bishops of the unrepresented dio- 
ceses in furtherance of the work. 

Large photographic views of the exhibit, in every part, have 
been prepared ; and these, we are glad to learn, are to be pub- 
lished in instalments, together with descriptive letter-press. We 
have no doubt they will be widely welcomed and carefully treas- 
ured by all the schools which have borne a part in this great 
Catholic enterprise. 

Absolute atheism and infidelity is not the really formidable 
obstacle to the spread of God's light and truth. The greatest 
stumbling-block is the inert mass of semi-doubt and semi-belief. 
Those who accept so much of divine revelation as suits, and 
reject what they do not agree with, form the majority of the 
stubborn enemies of God. Under whatever name or form it is 
disguised, this rationalism is the deadly weed, omnipresent and 
ubiquitous, whose trailing roots threaten death to the fair har- 
vest of faith. The rationalism which admits much of the truth 
of the Gospel and yet denies the divinity of the fons et origo 
of the Gospel, Jesus of Nazareth, is the most crass and perverse 
of all. This divinity which they impugn is the corner-stone of 
the church, yet these fatuous reasoners believe the church can 
stand when they pull that corner-stone out and leave a vacuum 
in its stead. What incredible self-deception ! 

Of the nature of the divinity itself, it is little wonder that 
the human mind should find itself powerless when it endeavors 
to grasp the meaning ; faith and reason are alike impotent in 
the face of that unfathomable mystery. But of the claim to 
divinity of the Redeemer of the world how any one can doubt 
who believes in the rest of the New Testament, it is amazing 
to contemplate. 

It is to encourage rather than to strengthen the belief of 
his proteges that Pere Didon has written his lectures on the 
Divinity of our Redeemer.* His own ardent faith in it is of a 
kind not to be easily described. It is a passion with him, so 
to speak, which glows through every sentence of the book he 
dedicates to the pupils of the schools of Albert le Grand, La 
Place, and Lacordaire. We would commend this work, for its 
style no less than its contagious enthusiasm, to the alumni of our 
own colleges. It is marked throughout by that emotionalism 
in feeling conjoined to precision in statement which is charac- 

* Belief in the Divinity of Jesus Christ. By the Rev. Father Didon, of the Order of St. 
Dominic. London : Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. ; New York, Cincinnati, and 
Chicago : Benziger Brothers. 



1894-] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 131 

teristic of the French school, but the tone is chaste and sub- 
dued, as becomes the solemnity of the subject, all through. In 
fine, whether as examples of earnest expression of an irresisti- 
ble belief, or a classic grace of style, these lectures deserve a 
place amongst the literary treasures of the day. 

The Congregation of the Oratory occupies so unique a posi- 
tion in the process of Catholic recuperation, that its story de- 
serves a place apart from the general ecclesiastical chronicle. 
Our own times have been the witness of the singular intellec- 
tual conflict which resulted in its triumph in England, at a mo- 
ment when the Catholic light in that country flickered appar- 
ently in its last feeble struggle for life. Reflection on its rise 
and progress brings home most forcibly to our mind, not alone 
the fact that a Divine power watches over the course of Christ's 
barque in time of storm and stress, but that in the selection of 
instruments and opportunities there is a special adaptation of 
men and means to the intellectual thought of each particular 
period of crisis. There is nothing in the natural course of mun- 
dane affairs to call forth such saviours of the faith, as there is 
so frequently in the great political crises which produce patriots 
and heroes. The times get out of joint, and when they are at 
their lowest moral level it has always been found that men, 
animated by the spirit of God, appeared and changed the whole 
drift of the danger by sheer force of personal character. St. 
Philip Neri was one of the most prominent examples of this 
supernatural law. 

It is with great gratification we welcome the appearance of 
a second edition of Cardinal Capecelatro's Life of St. Philip 
Neri* The cardinal's work is held in high estimation, inas- 
much as it is one which follows the modern style of biography ; 
that is, the style "of painstaking research on all obscure points, 
rather than the older way of dwelling upon particular phases or 
periods. This was the fault of two previously existing biogra 
phies of St. Philip namely, those of Gallonio and Bacci. Their 
value cannot be minimized, so far as they go, as what they 
wrote is the record of what they saw and knew as contempo- 
raries and intimates of the extraordinary subject of their me- 
moirs. But in this work we have the consecutive narrative of 
St. Philip's life, from the beginning down to the wonderful end. 

The period embraced in this mortal span covered most of 
the sixteenth century, and was made memorable by the growth 

* The Life of St. Philip Neri, Apostle of Rome. By Alfonso Cardinal Capecelatro. Lon- 
don : Burns & Gates ; New York : Benziger Brothers. 



TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Oct., 

132 

of the singular movement known as the Pagan Renaissance 
This extraordinary craze had its culminating point, or rather at- 
SnedTs maximum of force, during St. Philip's Ufc It differed 
from the Neo-Platonic movement of the early centuries of Chi 
adty in the fact that it was an absolute recoil from Chris- 
anity instead of an honest attempt of philosophic paganism to 
reconcile itself with the new tenets, as Neo-Platomsm in genera 
eems to have been. The formidable character of this assault 
upon Christianity may be inferred from the fact ^at it pene- 
trated even to the Vatican, and caused the writings of the Gree 
philosophers to be regarded as of higher value than even the 
sacred Scriptures! The author cites proof of this amazing fact 
in the correspondence of Cardinal Bembo, secretary to Pope 
Leo X Writing to his friend, Cardinal Sadolet, this dignitary is 
found advising him to give up the study of St. Paul's Epistles, 
lest "their barbarous style" might injuriously affect his own, 
and study the Greeks instead of the Scriptures. When deca- 
dence had penetrated so near to the heart of Christianity, it was 
little wonder that the extremities should suffer from atrophy. 
It was hardly to be wondered at that Protestantism found such 
a time favorable for its propagation. 

But if the danger was great the resources of the threatened 
citadel were greater still. Intellect met intellect, and in the 
struggle that intellect which placed its hope in divine grace 
triumphed over that which stood only on the ground of ancient 
philosophy. What a galaxy of great and glorious names glitter 
on the records of the church in those days ! Teresa, Catherine 
of Genoa, Cajetan, Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, Philip Neri, 
Charles Borromeo these are only a few of the more illustrious 
ones. Whilst the giant mind of Ignatius Loyola bent itself to 
the task of assailing the foe outside the gate, it was the still 
more onerous mission of St. Philip to reorganize the forces with- 
in. Both operations proceeded simultaneously, and St. Philip's 
was destined, under God, to be crowned with complete success. 
This second edition of Cardinal Capecelatro's work does not 
appear a day too soon, the first having been published a good 
many years ago. The translation into English has been made 
by the Rev. Thomas Alder Pope, M.A., of the Oratory, Bromp- 
ton. An excellent tinted copper-plate engraving of St. Philip's 
bust, from an old painting, is given as frontispiece. 

A symptom of the reappearance of the Napoleonic fever is 
the republication of a number of Alcxandre Dumas' works re- 
lating to the Consulate and the First Empire. The series em- 



I 

1894.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 133 

braces The Companions of Jehu and The Whites and the Blues* 
each of which may be regarded as veritable romance of his- 
tory, or rather history pure and simple with a glamor of thin 
romance wound about it. These works are useful. They help 
to light up a period about which many conflicting views have 
been put forward, and give us some idea of what the great 
actors on the stage of the Revolution were really like in the 
flesh, and not as they appear in the concave mirrors of Car- 
lyle's prodigious descriptions. At the same time these books 
must be taken quantum valeant. They are essentially Dumas- 
esque in their style theatrical, galvanic, lay-figurish, and dime- 
novelish. It is to be noted that this edition is embellished 
with many choice plates and is turned out in handsome blue 
and gilt covers. 

We have got past the days when the story of Poor Cock 
Robin was thought the sort of literature to amuse the juvenile 
mind. It is better, after all, to rouse the sympathy of young 
minds by recitals of the vicissitudes and heroism of real fellow- 
creatures than chimerical beings. Mrs. Clark's book telling of 
the fortunes of The Children of Charles I.\ is one eminently 
suited for young readers. The sorrows of " Charles the Mar- 
tyr " and his unhappy but heroic queen and their children are 
more real than the " sorrows of Werther," and even the chil- 
dren of republican fathers and mothers may derive more 
advantage to their feelings by the recital of them than they 
would from anything appealing to a false sentiment for things 
purely imaginary whose unreality is known to both story-teller 
and listener. This book is nicely brought out and is embel- 
lished by photographs of Vandyke's portraits of the chief char- 
acters and other pictures. 

The association of the most exquisite flowers with devotion 
to the Blessed Virgin is a natural thought. Flowers are the 
most wonderful examples of God's power and perfection in the 
work of material creation, and a figure therefore, in some sense, 
of the ineffable loveliness and spiritual beauty of his chosen 
Maid. It is not wonderful that we seek to show our ardent 
admiration for this flower of fallen humanity by laying the 
fairest flowers of our gardens on her altars, or that poets and 
preachers should find in them the happiest illustrations of their 

* The Napoleon Romances : The Companions of fehu. The Whites and Blues. With 
The She-Wolves of Machecoul and The Corsican Brothers. By Alexandra Dumas. Boston : 
Little, Brown & Co. 

t The Children of Charles I. By Mrs. C. S. H. Clark. Baltimore : John Murphy 
& Co. 



TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Oct., 

conceptions of her sublime attributes. One of the most charming 
pieces of Marian anthology that we have seen is the series c 
addresses by Father Louis Gemminger, delivered at Ingolstadt 
in May, 1858. This work has gone through four editions in 
German, and it is now rendered into English by a sister of 
Benedictine Order, under the title Flowers of Mary* 
vout reader will find in this rare collection a very large number 
of flowers which have been connected with the veneration of 
the Virgin, either emblematically or by tradition. These ad- 
dresses of Father Gemminger are not only models of devotion 
to God and our Lady, but their literary style is also charming. 
They afford a rare spiritual treat, and the independent character 
of the chapters enables the work to be taken up in a spare 
moment and laid aside for future use, without any loss of con- 
tinuity, and leaving a delightful feeling of mental refreshment 
as the immediate effect. Gratitude to the good sister who has 
provided us with this excellent stimulus to devotion is the feel- 
ing that must actuate every reader. 

Two little books for young children may be specially com- 
mended ##/// Hours of Childhood and By the Seaside.^ They 
are devoted to short stories suited to very little people, and 
whilst the style of these is simple, the incidents they relate and 
the lessons they convey are at once human enough to hold the 
juvenile intellect and striking enough to be impressive. They 
are from the pen of a lady who seems to know how to write 
for children. 

One of the most useful contributions to the literature of the 
movement for union in the churches is a little pamphlet just 
issued by the Catholic Truth Society, Worcester Conference, 
under the title Infallibility. The Rev. Thomas F. Butler, the 
author, puts his case in such a way as to make it clear to the 
meanest intelligence. Only such minds as do not desire to be 
convinced of error can refuse assent to the argument he makes 
for the principle of inerrancy as an indispensable element in 
the Christian Church. The tone and temper of the plea must 
commend it powerfully. It breathes throughout of charity and 
fraternal persuasion, such as becomes men engaged in serious 
argument on the most vital business of their lives. An exten- 
sive circulation of this admirable brochure cannot but be pro- 
ductive of great benefit to doubting souls. The pamphlet is 
published at the Messenger office, Worcester, Mass. 

* Flowers of Mary. By Rev. Louis Gemminger. Baltimore : John Murphy & Co. 
t Happy Hours of Childhood. By the Seaside. By a member of the Order of Mercy. 

i Vrvrb- P rVCV,.> 



New York : P. O'Shea. 



1894-] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 135 

One of the " Catholic National Series " of the Messrs. Ben- 
ziger is especially commendable. It is called The New Fifth 
Reader. The selections embrace some of the best compositions 
of recent years, in poetry and prose. Some fine engravings 
are interspersed. An excellent little volume of Bible Stories for 
Little Children is also issued by the same enterprising firm. An 
illustrated volume of Bible History, by the Bishop of Cleveland, 
Right Rev. Dr. Gilmour, deserves a special word of c'ommen- 
dation. 

Pranks, a farcical comedy, by Mr. and Mrs. Me Hardy 
Flint, is a little bit of fun intended for the amusement of 
convent-school pupils. It is lively and full of harmless pleas- 
antry. An Elocutionist selected by the same authors, for school 
recitations, displays excellent taste in choice of subjects. The 
publishers are George Philips & Son, Fleet Street, London. 

The most difficult thing for any one short of a mystic is to 
picture the future existence, and this is the task which the 
author of The Wedding Garment * sets before him in this strange 
rhapsody. Of one thing there appeared to be no doubt in his 
mind : that persons entering the next world carried with them 
there much the same sort of ideas, the same appetites, passions, 
likes and dislikes that agitate them on this mundane orb. 
Many grotesque things are put into the book, and some rather 
disgusting ; some of these seeming to be allegorical, others 
satirical, of things in the author's cognizance. In his idea the 
place where these supramundane things occur is a sort of 
intermediate world between the spiritual and the physical. 
Whether the work be entirely satirical or merely aimless fancy, 
we cannot say ; but amid the preponderating silliness there are 
occasionally some pretty bits of sentiment and fancy. 



I. SCIENCE AND SCRIPTURES.f 

The topics treated of in this volume are of very great im- 
portance, and of very great and wide interest at this present 
time. Treatises on these topics written in a plain, popular 
style, and within a reasonably small compass, so that they are 
suitable for general use, are of very great utility, and are few 
in number. Those who write on such topics need to have 
special and rather uncommon qualifications. In the first place, 

* The Wedding Garment. A tale of the life to come. By Louis Pendleton. Boston : 
Roberts Brothers. 

t Bible, Science, and Faith. By the Rev. J. A. Zahm, C.S.C., Professor of Physics 
in the University of Notre Dame, author of Sound and Music, Catholic Science and Catholic 
Scientists, etc. Baltimore : John Murphy & Co. 



I3 6 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Oct., 

a writer must be well acquainted with the scientific subjects of 
which he treats, and know how to discriminate between science 
and scientific hypothesis. In the second place, he must be well 
acquainted with theology, and know how to discriminate be- 
tween Catholic doctrines and opinions of Catholic authors. In 
the third place, he must have a spirit of docility and reverence 
toward that doctrinal and disciplinary direction of ecclesiastical 
authority which is a secure even when it comes short of being 
an infallible rule, and the strongest safeguard against specula- 
tions which if not directly heretical are erroneous or temerarious. 
A writer, however well intentioned he may be, who is wanting 
in any of these qualifications, and who lacks the consummate 
prudence which is required in order to guide inquirers safely in 
paths which have not been explored and surveyed before the 
present generation, may fall into serious mistakes. He may 
restrict or enlarge too much the bounds of free opinion. He 
may pass off mere opinions for Catholic theology, or baseless 
speculations for science. He may err by servility toward theo- 
logical or scientific authority, or by impertinence. There are 
some very forward advocates of Catholic liberty who have fal- 
len into this last fault to a very marked degree. In either case, 
it may happen that a work written for explanation or defence 
of some parts of the Catholic religion, will be a nuisance, and 
do more harm than an openly infidel or heretical attack. 

We look on Father Zahm's volumes as a veritable god-send, 
because they are both theologically and scientifically sound. He 
is bold and unhesitating in his statements and arguments, but 
only where he is sure that his ground is tenable. Respectable 
and trustworthy authors have gone over every part of it before 
him, and he has followed in their footsteps. This is just what 
intelligent and inquiring Catholics need, namely, a guide who 
can be trusted as safe, so that they need not fear to be led 
astray from faith and orthodoxy. We can recommend Father 
Zahm as safe. 

His first volume is a defence of the Catholic Church against 
the accusation of being indifferent or even hostile to science. 
The scope of the present volume is to make it clear what the 
faith does really teach in regard to the origin and history of 
the world and the human race. This being done, what is be- 
yond and outside of this teaching is an open field, wherein the 
important and interesting questions relating to cosmogony, 
geology, astronomy, chronology, and physics may be discussed 
by scientific and historical methods and decided according to 



1894-] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 137 

the same, In different and even opposite senses, without preju- 
dice to orthodoxy, the church remaining perfectly neutral. The 
great interest manifested at the Summer-School in Father 
Zahm's Lectures shows how eager a great many of the laity are 
in seeking instruction in this class of subjects, and how compe- 
tent Father Zahm is to give it. 



2. STAFFORD CATHOLICS.* 

Mr. Gillow, to whose labors we are indebted for the Biblio- 
graphical Dictionary of English Catholics, has in this volume 
given what may be called chips from his work-shop in illustra- 
tion of the history of a single parish (or, as it is called, a 
mission) from the time of the Reformation up to our own days. 
He has devoted the same unwearied and evidently loving labor 
to this smaller volume as to the larger work a work which we 
regret to say is still unfinished. It is hard to estimate the 
amount of research involved in tracing out and discovering the 
genealogical record of the priests and benefactors of the 
mission in the accurate way in which Mr. Gillow has performed 
the work. It may be worthy of note and will certainly be in- 
teresting to our readers to learn that while of most of the 
priests Mr. Gillow gives us the family tree, of the priest who 
seems to have been of the greatest service to the mission, who 
built the present church, and who won the warmest affections 
of the people the late Canon O'Sullivan the only ancestral 
record as given by our author is that "he was a native of 
Ireland, [who] when but three months old had the misfortune to 
lose his father, a farmer of the middle of one of the southern 
counties." 

This will, we believe, be found an interesting record by others 
than those who are locally interested in the town and mission 
of Stafford. It is in small a history of the Church in England 
from and during the days when to be a priest involved the 
serious risk of being disembowelled while still alive such was 
the fate of the second missioner who served St. Thomas's Priory 
to our own happier times when the present servant of the 
mission is summoned to the councils of the Prince of Wales, 
not indeed, it is true, for spiritual but for musical advice. To 
conclude in Mr. Gillow's own words: "And now, after three 
centuries of oppression, by every form of persecution that 

*St. Thomas's Priory; or, The Story of St. Austin's, Stafford. London: Burns & 
Gates, limited (New York : Benziger Brothers). 



I3 8 NEW Boojfs. [Oct. 

human ingenuity could devise, what a marvellous change has 
come over this country! Is it the effect of a new leaven, or 
rather the return of the prodigal to ' the days of our fathers ' ? 
The nets of Peter are again let down. Narrow prejudice and 
extreme ignorance are fast giving place to ingenuousness and a 
sincere desire of enlightenment. Half a century ago there was 
hardly a bell in England that could be rung from a Catholic 
church to call its congregation to divine worship. Thrice a 
hundred years intervened ere toll from turret and steeple called 
to the ancient service the sole one of old. Now from number- 
less Catholic churches peal forth sweet chimes, and over the 
land hundreds of bells like St. Austin's daily send forth their 
summons : 

"When mirth and joy are on the wing, 

I ring; 
To call the folks to church in time, 

I chime ; 
When God requires of man a soul, 

I toll." 

"The gloom is lifting, gleams of pure brightness are spread- 
ing. May we not hope, therefore, that our well-loved country is 
once more to see the splendor of the day, and to rejoice in the 
radiance of the true Faith in the one fold ? " 



NEW BOOKS. 

CASSELL PUBLISHING Co : 

(Sunshine Series.) / Forbid the Banns. By Frank Frankfort Moore. A 
Wild Proxy. By Mrs. W. K. Clifford. Edleen Vaughan. By Carmen 
Sylva (the Queen of Roumania). List, ye Landsmen. By W. Clarke Rus- 
sell. Parson Jones. By Florence Marryat. Lottie's Wooing. By Barley 
Dale. New Light on the Bible and the Holy Land. By Basil T. A. 
Evetts, M.A. Under the Great Seal. By Joseph Hatton. All Along' 
the River. By M. E. Braddon. The Medicine Lady. By L. T. Meade. 
A Superfluous Woman. 
B. HERDER, St. Louis : 

A Practical Commentary on Holy Scripture. By Frederick Justus Knecht, 

D.D., Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Freiburg. 
OPEN COURT PUBLISHING Co., Chicago: 

Fundamental Ethics. By Dr. Paul Carus. 
LONGMANS, GREEN & Co.: 

My Lady Rotha. By Stanley J. Weyman. 

One Hundred Years of Business Life, 1794-1894 (W. H. Schieffelin & Co.) 
is tr cord of one of the most eminent and successful business houses in New 
York, forming an excellent centenary souvenir. It is embellished with portraits 
its chief personages, from the founder down to the present partners 




THE waning cause of French monarchy has suf- 
fered a heavy reverse by the death of the Count de 
Paris. This event took place on September 8, in 
England. Personally the deceased gentleman was estimable in 
the highest sense, but politically he was a dangerous enemy to 
the peace of France. His unfortunate intriguing with the notable 
General Boulanger went very near to plunging the country 
into the horrors of another civil war, and the effect of the 
danger has been to make the French people still more embit- 
tered against all forms of monarchical government and to 
strengthen the barriers already raised against its revival. By the 
people of the United States, however, the prince was held in 
different estimation. He had lived long amongst them, and had 
lent his sword to help the Union. When the war was over, he 
proved his literary skill by giving the world the best history of 
the great military struggle that had been written. In private life 
he bore the reputation of an honest and a blameless man. For 
such the world always finds use, if it can dispense with princes. 



The Italian government at last seems disposed to cry peccavi 
and do penance for its monstrous crimes against the Papacy. 
Manifestations of this disposition have been witnessed of late, 
so strikingly as to rouse the attention of the whole world. A 
couple of speeches recently made by Signor Crispi openly 
advocated an alliance between the church and the civil power 
for the repression of anarchy, and it is reported that his private 
secretary has had an audience of Cardinal Rampolla, the Pope's 
secretary of state. Furthermore, the King of Italy has signed 
the exequaturs of bishops to territory in Africa and other places, 
although he had previously declined to do so. All this points 
to the well-nigh complete collapse of the " Kingdom of Italy," 
and its tardy recognition of the only force which can save it 
from total destruction. 



i 4 o THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [Oct., 



THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 

WITHIN the past year the list of associate members in the Fenelon Reading 
Circle of Brooklyn, N. Y., has increased to the number of two hundred. 
From the report of the president, Miss Anna M. Mitchell, kindly sent for publica- 
tion in this department, as well as from outside sources of information, we have 
no hesitation in declaring that the plan of work adopted has been most success- 
ful. It serves to give another proof that no uniform course of reading can be 
devised that will be universally accepted, owing to the different needs and oppor- 
tunities of favored localities. The members of each Circle should never be 
exempted from the task of doing some share of the thinking about plans for their 
own self-improvement. We commend the following report of the Fenelon for its 
value to other circles. 

The line of reading done by the active members during the year covered the 
eleventh and twelfth centuries. Having heard so many deprecatory allusions to 
the " Dark Ages " we thought we would endeavor to throw a little Catholic 
light upon them. We took the pontificate of Gregory VII. as our starting point. 
A list of books of reference was furnished by our spiritual director and the 
members selected at will the ones they preferred to read. Three papers treating 
Of the most important historical and biographical events under consideration 
were assigned for preparation during each month. The subject of Investitures 
under Gregory VII. led us to an examination of this subject under Henry II. of 
England. During the winter months we had papers prepared on the following 
subjects: Henry IV., Countess Matilda, Gregory VII., Feudal System, William 
the Conqueror, Henry II. of England, Thomas a Becket. This will give some 
idea of the historical and biographical ground covered during that time. The 
rise of the cathedral having occurred during the eleventh century, we decided to 
devote the spring months to the artistic and literary events of this period. This 
led to the preparation of papers on the cathedrals of Canterbury, York, West- 
minster, Notre Dame, and Rouen, while the literature was treated in papers on 
the transition period of the English language and Geoffrey Chaucer. 

The lecture course was arranged so as to have a special bearing on the line 
x>f reading. These lectures took place the first Tuesday of every month, at what 
is known as our monthly tea. In November the Rev. M. G. Flannery gave a 
strong impetus to our reading by his lecture " An Introduction to the Study of 
'Gregory VII." In December the Rev. Dr. O'Donohue, of Brooklyn, treated as 
his subject " A Plea for the Study of St. Thomas." In January. Mr. John Malone 
gave a very interesting lecture on " The Catholicity of Shakspere," which he 
interspersed with recitations from the great dramatist. In February we made 
somewhat of a departure from our line of reading in order that we might cele- 
brate the ter-centenary of the death of Palestrina. Professor Bernard O'Donnell, 
of Brooklyn, gave us a very interesting lecture on " Palestrina and Church Music," 
assisted by a quartet of picked voices from Brooklyn choirs. In March Dr. 
George Herbermann, of the College of the City of New York, gave us a scholarly 
discourse on " The Universities of the Middle Ages," and in April the Rev. 
Arthur M. Clarke, C.S.P., aroused considerable enthusiasm for Hildebrand by his 
lecture on " A great Pope of the Middle Ages." In May the lecture course 
closed with a concert arranged under the musical direction of Dr. Walter 



1 894.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 141 

O'Brien, of Brooklyn, assisted by some of the leading artists of Brooklyn and 
New York. 

The advisory committee, with the co-operation of the president, made all ar- 
rangements for the lectures and the entertainment attending them. The work 
is systematically divided among the three members comprising this committee* 
One member has special charge of the literary programme for the business meet- 
ing which takes place the third Tuesday of every month. At these meetings the 
programme is disposed of first, the spiritual director presiding and answering all 
questions having a theological bearing. Then the president disposes of the busi- 
ness before the meeting. I would like to say, right here, that I think that the 
members of our Circle have benefited very much by our method of disposing of 
business in a parliamentary manner. I have observed, with much satisfaction, a 
great growth in this respect during the past year. It is a lesson that women 
need very much to learn ; namely, how to economize the time and strength that 
is often wasted in useless discussion. When the business of the Circle is con- 
ducted on parliamentary lines they soon learn that the greatest good of the great- 
est number must be considered, and the will of the majority must rule. Petty 
personal prejudices are thus allayed, and the supersensitiveness, so characteristic 
of women, is sufficiently cured to enable them to look at things with the broader 
view which characterizes the transactions of men. Such a result, although desir- 
able, we cannot hope to accomplish all at once. In " The Fenelon " it has been 
of slow but sure growth, and I would recommend it to the attention of other Cir- 
cles as proving the unquestionable benefit to be derived from a constitution. 

A notable feature of our lectures has been the attendance at them of several 
non-Catholics. The lectures requiring no admission fee, the members are urged 
to invite Protestant friends, and we have had occasion to believe that our Circle 
has been the medium of much good work in this respect. Father Clarke has 
pertinently asked : " What are we doing for non-Catholics ? " Catholics do not 
sufficiently realize that they have a duty to perform in disabusing the minds of 
people outside the church of erroneous ideas which it is often not so much their 
fault as their misfortune to hold. We have heard such remarks as these made to 
members of our Circle at the monthly lectures : " Do you mean to tell me that 
these are all Catholics ? Well, I will admit that I,have been very much prejudiced,, 
but it is because I have never met any Catholics like these." It is evident from 
this that the Reading Circle can be made not only a source of good to its mem- 
bers, but a medium of missionary work to those outside their pale. If the lead- 
ing motive is made an intellectual one, and the standard is kept high, we may be 
sure of commanding the respect and admiration of thinking Protestants. 

A famous professor in one of our leading colleges has recently said that the. 
thing that this generation needed most was enthusiasm. I would add to this 
earnestness of purpose ; for many of the Reading Circles that have met an early 
death have started out with no lack of enthusiasm ;' but there has not been 
sufficient earnestness of purpose to continue the work month after month in spite 
of the petty obstacles that may arise. The history of the world teaches us that 
those who have reaped the greatest intellectual benefits are generally those 
who have had to pursue their studies under the most adverse circumstances. 
The fact that difficulties arise in the organization of these circles should not dis- 
courage those who are anxious to benefit by them. To systematic organization 
and tenacity of purpose among the members may be attributed much of the . 
success that has made the year just closed an eventful one for the Fenelon, 
Reading Circle, of Brooklyn. 



,42 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [Oct., 

The following letter from a devoted friend was written to the members of 
the Ozanam Reading Circle : 

As I cannot be with you in person this evening, to atone, in a measure, f( 
my absence I will put down some points here in an informal manner which may 
serve as an introduction to the work you hope to accomplish together during 
the season. You have now had eight years' experience by which to judge the 
plan and purpose of the Circle, and I think you will agree with me that it has 
stood the test. We may not have realized all that we had hoped to do (what 
human effort does?), but we can look back to some actual achievement, and, 
what is better, we feel justified in promising ourselves a fruitful future. 

That to know what we ought to have and to be willing to devote 
thought and labor to getting it is the secret of success, is a plain way of put- 
ting a truism. Still I think a good many people are in the dark as to what is 
really desirable, especially in the way of those refinements and accomplish- 
ments of life which help to make us attractive as well as useful in the world. I 
think it is the good fortune of your society to have no pretentious mission. 
You do not propose to astound the public. You want, first of all, to improve 
yourselves ; and then, it may be, incidentally to entertain your friends ; to ex- 
press your thoughts in speech or writing naturally, and without the pretence 
of more knowledge than you really possess ; to give the proper utterance and 
expression to those masterpieces of literature which are best brought home 
to us when they are read or recited, not for mere elocutionary display but to 
bring out the beauty and the inspiration they contain such, I take it, is what 
you are striving to be able to do. 

The purpose of your Circle makes necessary a certain unity of sympathy 
and taste among its members ; but, at the same time, no severe standard should 
be set up to bar out from your Circle those who, in good faith, seek admission. 
Culture is a much-abused word, but in its best sense it implies gentleness and 
tolerance rather than exclusiveness. Let us always remember that, however im- 
perfect they may be, our tastes and sympathies can be educated and developed, 
and even should that development reach no further point than to teach us the 
art of listening, of giving our attention to what is worth attending to, that in it- 
self is a desirable acquirement. 

And let me here upon this very point descend to particulars. The habit of 
serious, receptive attention is one the importance of which I would strongly 
impress upon your Circle. It is a duty we owe ourselves, as well as those who 
speak, read, or recite to us, to listen without distraction and with a positive ele- 
ment of sympathy. Nothing will bring out the best work from a speaker or so 
effectually create the right impression in ourselves as will this bond of sympathy. 
How often do we discomfort those who seek our attention, and bore ourselves, 
because we forget this. And I am naturally led just here to another point and 
recommendation. Our minds go wandering from the grandest utterance of the 
grandest thoughts. We look at the speaker, at the musician ; not that our eyes 
must be directed towards the source of the sounds, but that nothing may come 
between our mental vision and the pictures which the speaker or musician can 
bring up before us. If our minds yawn, so to speak, we are bothered with dis- 
tractions and ennui. If we could realize perfectly how intimate is the relation 
between mental and physical conditions, I think a great many problems, especi- 
ally in the art of expression, would be made clear to us. On this point and 
others akin to it I hope we will be able to bring to bear practical illustrations in 
the course of our meetings. 



1894-] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 143 

I do not want to claim too much, but I really think that the Ozanam Reading 
Circle, in its essential features, has been a pioneer in a new field. Let all the 
members, to the full extent of their abilities and opportunities, do what they can 
to further its interests and I feel assured that the Circle can be made a perma- 
nent power for good, in its own proper sphere. 

* * * 

As briefly noticed in the mid-summer issue of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, a 
memorial meeting in honor of the late Brother Azarias was held on May 17, at 
Washington, D. C. 

Since that time the addresses and letters read on the occasion have been col- 
lected by Rev. Brother Fabrician, President of St. John's College, and come to 
us in the form of an admirable little volume, dedicated as " an inspiration to 
Catholic educational institutions to encourage in life and honor in death Catho- 
lic men of letters." 

The introduction to the work is from the vigorous pen of the Rev. John 
Talbot Smith, and consists of a short life-sketch of the gifted Azarias, followed 
by a number of papers from men prominent in education and letters, each occu- 
pied with some special phase of the great author's character, forming one of the 
most beautiful tributes and brilliant expositions of germ-thought. 

We must read a great deal in these days if we would glean even a little 
knowledge. Books are made ; we read them. We sigh a little and pass them 
from our hands. " Words, words, words." Then we pick up another and 
repeat the process, and so on ad infinitum ; so that we are relieved when we do 
come in contact with a healthy group of ideas, really sound and pure and good, 
projected to us, as it were, from a skilful setting of concise and accurate lan- 
guage. 

It is seldom that more has been said in an equal number of pages than in the 
present publication. This fact is mainly due to three reasons. That each writer 
was a master-hand in the theme assigned him ; that the themes themselves were 
of their nature very broad, and that each paper was limited to ten minutes. 

" There came," says Brother Fabrician in his preface, speaking of those who 
took part in the memorial, "the Right Rev. J. J. Keane, D.D., the worthy head 
of our system of Catholic education in this country ; secular education sent its 
highest representatives, Commissioner W. T. Harris and the late Commissioner 
John Eaton. The far-famed Woodstock was present in the person of its gifted 
son, the Rev. Thomas J. McCluskey, S.J.; and the secular clergy voiced its senti- 
ments in the philosophical paper of Rev. P. B. Tarro, while Catholic laymen of 
letters spoke most eloquently in Dr. A. J. Faust and Colonel R. M. Johnston." 

To those of us who were present at the memorial, and whose privilege it also 
had been to be in attendance at the Catholic Summer-School, there was some- 
thing of a strange melancholy pleasure in the words and presence of Colonel 
Johnston. It will be remembered that during the closing week of the second 
session at Plattsburgh, when in turn we laughed and were sad with Colonel John- 
ston, he was succeeded immediately after each lecture by the lamented Azarias ; 
and to many of us, on this account, the wonderful personality of the one was in- 
timately associated with the profound scholarship and endearing characteristics 
of the other. Indeed, even while the closing words of Colonel Johnston's address 
at Washington were still full in the hearts of his hearers, swaying them like 
sweet, sad music, it seemed as though the dear Azarias must be at once forth- 
coming. But he did not come ; and who is there among us that will fill his place, 
now that the scenes of his life-work can know him no more ? 



I44 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [Oct., 1894. 

Bulletin No. 28 of the Regents of the State of New York contains the report 
of the Thirty-second University Convocation, which includes a most i 
timate of the writings of Brother Azarias from the pen of Dr. John A. Mooney. 

* * 

An extra number of the Catholic Reading Circle Review will be issued, con- 
taining a complete report of the third session of the Catholic Summer-School 
of America, on Lake Champlain. This report will be very valuable as a souvenir 
and for reference, containing, as it will, a detailed account of the proceedings. 
In the interest of the Summer-School we request aid of the Reading Circles in 
the dissemination of this report. Price, twenty-five cents a copy. Send orders 
at once to Warren E. Mosher, Youngstown, Ohio. 

In a letter received from one of the most successful workers in the Reading 
Circle movement this passage is found : 

" To mention the Catholic Summer-School is to recall one of the pleasantest 
memories of my life. The season, the place, the surroundings, all contributed 
much to the happiness of those who enlisted as students under its banner. But 
more than anything else, the beautiful spirit animating every one on every occa- 
sion tended to make the stay in Pittsburgh enjoyable. In fact such was our 
measure of enjoyment that pleasures at home seemed rather dull, and city out- 
looks very tame in comparison. The absence of such a thing as a clique or class 
distinction was marked, and consequently on all sides were found the most ge- 
nial companions. Each one seemed to have put aside, for the time being, per- 
sonality, and made it a point to be ready on every occasion to further the 
general good. 

" Such a feeling, I dare say, was due as much to the surroundings as to any- 
thing else, for wherever we might look in the neighborhood o'f Plattsburgh we 
found no inharmonious element. Such was the charm of the place that it is 
difficult to choose points for description, for each successive day its beauties 
grow on one, and the memory of it becomes sweeter. It is a spot that must be 
seen to be appreciated. 

" Whether we recall the pleasant drives around Cumberland Head, or to 
Fredenberg Falls, or the delightful trips on the far-famed Lake Champlain 
to Ticonderoga, Burlington, and Bluff Point, our thoughts and expressions are 
only those of praise and gratitude ; praise of all the natural beauties, so near and 
yet so far until the Summer-School brought them within our reach of enjoyment; 
gratitude for kindness which made such a possession possible and dispelled an 
amount of ignorance regarding the many advantages of this fair land. 

" Of the beauties in this Adirondack region in particular it may be said they 
never cease ; for whatever the day in summer, let it be one of sunshine or storm, 
there is spread before the observer a perfect feast of delights. . The great ex- 
panse of lake studded with beautiful islands, the quiet village with the river 
gliding by its side, and the grandeur of the mountains, with the smiling valleys 
between, are pictures which once seen are not easily forgotten. 

" To those lovers of nature anxious to enjoy all her varying moods, to those 
desirous of obtaining rest for mind and body fatigued after a year's hard work, 
as well as to those eager to enlarge their fund of knowledge by attending the 
lecture courses, no invitation can be extended which will prove more cordial, 
once it is accepted, than that which the Summer-School extends when inviting 
them to strengthen mind and body in the charming country that surrounds Lake 
Champlain." 




THE VIRGIN OF LOURDES. (See page 237.} 



THE 




VOL. LX. 



NOVEMBER, 1894. 



No. 356. 



THE CHURCH vs. THE STATE IN THE CONCERNS 

OF THE POOR. 

BY REV. M. O'RiORDAN, PH.D., D.D., D.C.L. 



HERE are three elements in hu- 
man life, without taking account 
of which it would be absurd to 
consider the condition of society 
for any practical purpose ; name- 
ly, riches and poverty, human suf- 
fering, and human passions. Rich- 
es and poverty have always been, 
and ever shall be during our pre- 
sent life, and the contrast will al- 
ways be a temptation to human 
passion, spurring those who have 
not to envy those who have. 

The true socialism is that which 
can institute a concordia discors be- 
tween rich and poor. The church 
has done that both by word and by deed. On the one hand it 
teaches patience to the poor by making them feel the full value 
and meaning of life, by submitting the motive of a reward in the 
next life for privations patiently borne in this, by giving the world 
the example of men who, when they might be rich, remained poor 
of their own accord in order to be more conformed through life 
and in death to Him who " became poor for our sakes." But 
whilst it gives the poor motives to suppress temptations to dis- 
content which human passion might awaken, it draws a clear 

Copyright. VBRY REV. A. F. HBWIT. 1894. 
VOL. LX. 10 




I4 6 THE CHURCH vs. THE STATE IN [Nov., 

distinction between the poverty that must work and the misery 
that is left to starve. It encourages industry and gives a model 
of labor in the religious orders of such Christian heroes as St. 
Bernard and St. Bruno. 

NEW PAGANISM AND OLD. 

One of the first social results of the church's mission amongst 
men was to remove from the workman the brand of dishonor 
with which paganism had marked him. The dignity and the 
rights of labor are the creation of the church ; its lot was dis- 
grace and slavery in that civilization which was created by the 
prototypes of those who are the apostles of naturalism to-day. 
Let it not be said that the failure of paganism as a social mainstay 
is no argument in favor of the church as against the state. In 
what does a modern state divorced from Christianity differ from 
old paganism ? In nothing that I can see unless that its bor- 
rowed plumage makes it more conceited and ungrateful. It 
has indeed one advantage, but not of its own making ; that 
is, its Christian tradition, which is not yet quite gone, though 
it is fading fast. The church revived social order by infusing 
new principles into the pagan world, and formed the Christian 
state. The state has, like the prodigal, gone out from its mo- 
ther's home and is wasting its Christian heritage. But it is not 
all spent yet, and the little that is left gives it its only advan- 
tage over the paganism of old Rome. Like all the wilful and 
wayward, it ignores that. But let us eliminate the work of the 
church in the world, and we have left but the mere natural so- 
ciety of the old paganism running parallel on the same plane 
with the mere natural society of the new. When it has run its 
course, the extreme necessity of self-preservation will complete 
in it the life of the prodigal, will force it to rise and return 
home in misery, gasping for the breath of charity and truth, as 
the old paganism did when the Saviour came. 

THE CHARITY OF THE CHURCH AND THE ALMS OF THE WORK- 
HOUSE. 

For the poor, whom illness or old age left without the 
means to live, the church founded institutions which, unlike our 
modern work-houses, they thought it no shame to enter, because 
they were the sanctuaries where the poverty of Christ was ven- 
erated in his poor. But we shall see this more in detail further 
on. On the other hand, the church taught the rich, likewise, 
that " all flesh is grass "; and, moreover, that property has its 
duties. The full meaning of noblesse oblige has never been so 



1894-] THE CONCERNS OF THE POOR. 147 

thoroughly realized as it was in the Christian converts of apos- 
tolic times. In the mind and spirit of the church the ownership 
of wealth is not so absolute that it may be lawfully hoarded 
and used without any reference to the community in which it 
has been made. In the ages of faith Catholic charity filled a 
place in society which the "laws " of modern economists cannot 
explain. They did not write libraries on political economy as 
we do now ; the fact is, they devoted so much of their time to 
good works that they had little time left for talking and for 
theory. Of course, we who, in this age of reason, have reduced 
social economy to a science could provide for the poor by 
much better methods than they had that is, if we liked. 
But we don't ; and that makes a difference. Those whom ad- 
versity drives into work-houses somehow feel as if tainted by the 
disgrace all through life. Their thoughts become transformed ; 
their spirit is bent or broken ; they feel that they have lost the 
frankness which they had retained even through the time of 
their greatest need, and that they can never raise their heads 
again. Whatever be the reason of it, that is the fact. Perhaps 
our scientific economists have a " law " to explain it. 

INHUMANITY OF THE PAGAN SYSTEM. 

The writer of an essay on " Pre-scientific Socialism," in a 
joint work on Socialism, Capital, and Labor, which was published 
in London in 1890, says: "The current of the social move- 
ment in the Roman Empire was considerably changed by the 
introduction of Christianity. Its Founder laid, in fact, the foun- 
dation stone of a new society, where the slave and freeman, 
the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, were placed on 
a footing of equality, where mutual affection of the human 
brotherhood, devotedness to the common cause from a principle 
of love, forms the moral basis of the social edifice. It produced a 
silent revolution by means of ideas, the church became the libera- 
tor of the oppressed classes and the chief organizer of the new 
society, curbing passion and pacifying the feuds of a rude social 
order, making out the patent of liberty and the nobility of labor." 

What a contrast to the social methods of human nature left 
to itself ! Paganism had quite another way of providing for the 
poor; it was, as Chateaubriand says, "infanticide and slavery." 
No doubt there is enough good left in human nature to give 
to the world individuals of great natural benevolence. But that 
is not enough to save society ; it is too uncertain and incon- 
stant. The church reduced charity to an institution ; the care 
of the poor was made a public concern, not dependent on the 



I4 8 THE CHURCH vs. THE STATE IN [Nov., 

wavering philanthropy of individuals. The great difficulty it 
had to meet was not in securing the condemnation of the un- 
natural treatment from which the poor had suffered ; for, to 
those at least who had become converts to the faith, an abuse so 
unnatural should appear evident as soon as it was pointed out. 
The difficulty lay rather in devising such a. system of relief as 
would embrace all manner of deserving distress. Were it not 
for the charity with which it had imbued the faithful, it were 
vain to tell the wealthy that they were bound to provide for 
the poor. Without the church no state system of compulsory 
taxation was possible, with its influence no such compulsion was 
necessary. The faithful saw the duty, and they did it ; they 
saw the need, and they relieved it. We think that quite an 
easy matter now that the taxpayer has become used to such 
claims ; but it was otherwise before the charity of the faithful 
was moved by Christian teaching. 

NECESSITY NO VIRTUE. 

But, it may be said, even in states which have become de- 
christianized benevolent institutions continue to be supported. 
Quite true, but their foundation is due to the church, and their 
continuance by the state was more a matter of necessity than 
of choice, as we shall see presently when we come to deal with 
the origin of the English " poor-law." The laicized hospitals of 
Paris, on the testimony of even infidel physicians, are an in- 
structive object-lesson on what the philanthropy of economists 
means in reality, however fair it may appear on paper. How is 
it that the Roman Republic, with its warriors, its orators, its 
statesmen, its architecture whose beauty surpasses the power of 
modern art, its constitution the wisdom of whose laws we study 
at present, its aqueducts, theatres, and temples how is it that 
we find no trace in its ruins, no provision in its laws, for a 
single hospice for the poor ? The Sempronian laws were but 
the work of two brothers ; they arose rather from love of the 
state than from love of the poor ; some of them were evidently 
mere moves in the game of selfish popularity ; others, such as 
the corn-laws, proved fatal to the public peace and were a 
fertile source of demoralization for those in whose behalf they 
were ostensibly devised. A single institution of charity such as 
sprang up like mushrooms with the rise of the Christian state 
we look for in vain from those wise old Romans who were able 
to subdue, and knew how to govern, the world. Had not the 
tradition of Christian principles and practices lived on in states 
now ruled without reference to God, would they do a whit 



1894-] THE CONCERNS OF THE POOR. 149 

better in the interests of the poor and the weak than the 
Romans did ? We have no warrant that they would, whilst 
there are many reasons for thinking that they would not nay, 
that they would do worse. 

RELIGIOUS ASYLUMS IN THE EARLY CHRISTIAN TIMES. 

From the earliest times of the church institutions of charity 
have been established for the infirm and the poor. When the 
church was, so to speak, in the Catacombs and had not a juridi- 
cal existence in the eye of the Roman law, it was not possible 
for its charity to do much ; but it was not idle. Amongst the 
duties of. the deacons was a work similar to that which is done 
at present by members of the St. Vincent de Paul Society. 
Every diaconia was a centre of philanthropic activity. One of 
the canons of the Council of Chalcedon, which orders that the 
cleric in charge of the Ptocheia (asylums for the poor) should be 
subject to the authority of the bishop of the place, declares 
that the decree is "according to the tradition of the fathers." 
This council was held in A.D. 451, and it appeals back to the 
" tradition of the fathers " respecting the government of 
asylums for the poor. 

HOSPICES UNDER THE FRANKISH KINGS. 

Whilst the barbarians, who were becoming masters of the 
Western Empire, were undergoing the process of conversion to 
Christian faith, principles, and habits, the church was alive to 
the insecurity of those institutions which had been founded 
under her patronage. Hence we find a canon of the Council 
of Orleans (A.D. 549) confirming the foundation of a hospice 
erected in Lyons by King Childebert, making provisions for its 
proper administration, and censuring any attempt to turn its 
endowment from its purpose as a " homicidium pauperum." 
In each parish there was an organization to look after the 
wants of the poor and of all who needed consolation and 
relief. To this a canon of the Council of Tours (A.D. 566) re- 
fers, which orders that each parish should take care of its own 
poor, lest they should become mendicants and vagabonds. 

AMELIORATION OF PRISON CRUELTY. 

Equal care was taken of those who were confined in prison. 
Until times quite recent state punishment was purely vindic- 
tive, took no account of prevention, and ignored the possibility 
or value of reformation. But, from the earliest times, the 
church recognized the wise maxim prcestat cautela quam medela 



I5 o THE CHURCH vs. THE STATE IN [Nov., 

which since the time of Howard has been learnt by states- 
men. One of the duties of the archdeacon, or the provost of a 
diocese, was to visit the prisons every Sunday, and see that any 
wants of the inmates consistent with their condition were 
supplied. In the middle ages, attached to the monasteries and 
the colleges of chapters were hospices for giving hospitality to 
pilgrims and relief to the poor. As all those institutions of 
public charity were established under the inspiration of the 
church, the bishops in each diocese had authority over their 
administration. The Council of Vienna ordered bishops to see 
that the hospices were not mismanaged, and the canon law had 
decreed penalties against administrators guilty of mismanage- 
ment. 

THE CHURCH ABOLISHES SLAVERY. 

What has been said is but a mere skeleton sketch of the 
remedies which the charity of the church had for the ills of so- 
ciety, as contrasted with those two nostrums of naturalism in- 
fanticide and slavery. It would be too long to trace the charity 
of the church in the gradual abolition of slavery. From the 
first it exercised its influence in that direction ; decrees to that 
effect ran through all the canon law. Of course actual manu- 
mission had to await its opportunity, but it came in time. 
" Nothing is more beautiful than the rise of this Christian civili- 
zation. When slavery began to melt away ; when fathers with 
horror cast from them the power of life and death over their 
children and their slaves, as a thing too hideous for Christian 
men ; when husbands renounced the power of life and death 
over their wives ; when the horrors, and injustice, and abomi- 
nations of pagan domestic life gave place to the charity of 
Christian homes, then the world was lifted to a higher sphere. 
And this new Christian world was the germ of modern Europe. 
The popes laid the foundations of a world which is now pass- 
ing away a Christian commonwealth of nations, though they 
never cease to destroy it." That is Cardinal Manning's descrip- 
tion of the influence of the church on society.* Under feudal- 
ism a mitigated form of serfdom existed. The serf was said to 
be addictus glebes ; that is, he could not transfer his services 
from one property to another at his will, and remained attached 
to the property in case of transfer. But early in Saxon times 
in England that class had definite rights and privileges of their 
own. The amount of service due from them became early limited 

* The Four Great Evils of the Day. Lecture III., " The revolt of society from God," 
p. 86. 



1894-] THE CONCERNS OF THE POOR. 151 

by custom ; indeed, in some respects, they were better off than 
free laborers, for the master had to defend them and to pro- 
vide for all their wants. In the fourteenth century arose the 
farming class in England. The rise of the free laborer came 
about the same time ; the laborer was no longer bound to one 
spot or one master, but was free to hire his labor to whatever 
employer he chose. By the end of the fourteenth century, over 
a great part of England, the lord of the manor had been re- 
duced to the position of a modern landlord. 

THE RISE OF THE GUILDS. 

Whilst these changes were going on the spirit of the church, 
so essentially social, led to the formation, for all trades and 
manufactures, of societies which included masters and men. 
These began to be formed as early as the eighth century, and 
developed by degrees. Through them were regulated amicably 
all those questions which are now so fruitful in dissension be- 
tween employer and employed. In their organization guardians 
were appointed to see that men were properly provided for by 
their masters. They were first of a religious character ; their 
rules were based on religious principles. The common condi- 
tion of membership was " to work well and honestly," and any 
misconduct forfeited the privilege of membership. The church 
in forming these did not leave masters and men to settle all 
matters separately, as two classes with divided interests, each for 
itself. Masters and men were blended together in common 
guilds, with a common interest and fellowship. So favorable 
has the church been to association, so opposed to isolation. 
The law of the land did not meddle with their working any 
more than by enforcing among the members the engagements 
they had made, just as at this day penalties levied by by-laws 
are recoverable at common law. In these two characters the 
old guilds entirely differed from our present trades-unions. 

CHARITY OF THE MONASTERIES. 

The wealth of the monasteries also afforded a refuge and a 
help to working-men. By the canon law they were bound to 
distribute a third to the needy ; but they voluntarily did a great 
deal more. In the common feeling, and in fact, their property 
was held in trust for the poor. When workmen were unable to 
obtain fair terms from employers, they had help and protection 
through the charity of the monasteries. But a jealous genera- 
tion came which envied her endowments, which she shared with 



, 52 THE CHURCH vs. THE STATE IN [Nov., 

the poor, and hated the power which she used for their pro- 
tection. When the spirit of covetousness was in the hearts of 
rulers, it was inevitable that they would assail church and poor 
together ; that they who coveted the property of the church 
would grudge the wages of the poor ; that they who would 
cripple her power should seek also to enslave those in whose be- 
half she used it. And it happened just so. It is a curious and 
telling fact in English history that at the time when the first 
formal legislative encroachments on the church took place, we 
find records of the first legislative oppression of the poor. The 
first statute of mortmain directed against religious houses^ in 
England to prevent their acquiring land was passed in the reign 
of Henry III. The statutes of mortmain, though directly af- 
fecting the religious houses, indirectly bore upon the poor, and 
affected the rate of wages; because, the more the resources of 
the religious houses were crippled, the less relief could be dis- 
pensed to the poor, and the less able they would be to enforce 
favorable terms of wages. 

THE BEGINNING OF REPRESSION. 

It was not long, however, till direct legislation was turned 
against them, and precisely in tthe reign in which was passed 
the first act against the Holy 'See. Henceforth we find in the 
laws of England acts against " valiant beggars and sturdy vaga- 
bonds," these vagabonds and valiant beggars being the result of 
the legislative spirit which now saw the need of repressing 
them. An act of the reign of Edward III. decrees "that every 
man and woman able in body, and not having of his own 
whereof he may live, if he be required to serve, shall be bound- 
en to serve him who shall so him require, and take only the 
wages which were accustomed to be given in the places where 
he oweth to serve, in the twentieth year of the king's reign, or 
the five or six common years next before ; and if any such 
man or woman, being so required to serve, will not the same 
do, he shall be taken and committed to the common gaol, 
there to remain in strict keeping until he find surety to serve." 
It was further enacted " that no man pay or promise to pay 
any servant any more wages than was wont to be paid in the 
twentieth year of the king's reign " ; moreover, " that workmen 
shall be sworn to use their crafts in the manner they were 
wont to do in the said twentieth year ; and if they refuse, they 
shall be punished by fine and ransom and imprisonment, at 
the discretion of the justice." 



1894-] THE CONCERNS OF THE POOR. 153 

THE BLACK DEATH. 

These justices were precisely those who were personally 
interested to keep the rate of wages and the price of handi- 
crafts low. The Black Death had destroyed half the popula- 
tion. The dearth of hands left the corn unharvested and the 
cattle untended. The laborers met the demand for their ser- 
vices with a refusal to work any longer for the former rate of 
wages. Hence the crisis between the laborers and their em- 
ployers which culminated in the insurrection of Wat Tyler. 
After the suppression of the Tyler insurrection it was enacted 
that the statutes of the laborers and the craftsmen be firmly 
kept and holden, and that there be stocks in every town for 
the punishment of such as should violate said statutes. 

A REVOLUTION IN AGRICULTURE. 

Stock-farming began now to supersede husbandry, arable 
land was changed into pasture. A single herdsman had 
charge of a range of land on which many a ploughman was 
once employed. The husbandman by degrees disappeared ; 
lambs* gambolled over their roofless tenements; parks, war- 
rens, and wild grass stretched over wide demesnes. We find 
an act also against " unlawful orders made by masters of 
guilds, fraternities, and other companies." These societies had 
long been recognized by law, and were allowed to regulate the 
rate of wages. Why, then, are they now on a sudden harmed ? 
Evidently because they did not see their way to regulate 
wages on a basis conformable to the " discretion of the jus- 
tices." 

LICENSED MENDICANCY. 

In the reign of Henry VIII. it was enacted that nobody be 
allowed to beg without a license from a justice of the peace, 
" and if any do beg without such license, he shall be whipped, 
or set in the stocks three days and nights upon bread and 
water," and a vagabond " taken begging shall be whipped, and 
then be sworn to return to the place where he was born, and 
there put himself to labor." These seem on the surface to be 
very wise laws, and they contain an implication of their neces- 
sity moreover. They should certainly recommend themselves to 
any one who would not wish to see a country overrun with 

* These inoffensive animals devoured the men, wittily remarks Sir Thomas More in 
Utopia. 



I54 THE CHURCH vs. THE STATE IN [Nov., 

" valiant beggars " and " sturdy vagabonds," if the circumstances 
under which they were enacted and the tenor of the laws 
themselves did not remind one that a workman was exposed 
"to have the upper part of the gristle of his right ear cut off," 
or " the letter F in token of falsity burnt in his forehead " as 
the result of not subjecting his ways to the " discretion of the 
justices." What the effect of all these enactments was we can 
learn from the fact that they were mostly repealed in the reign 
of Queen Mary, and from the wording of the following enact- 
ment of her reign also " weavers have complained at divers 
times that the rich and wealthy clothiers do many ways op- 
press them ; some by employing persons unskilful, to the decay 
of a great number of artificers which were brought up to the 
said science of weaving; some by giving much less wages and 
hire than in times past they did." Evidently the " Reforma- 
tion " did not mean reformation of wages for the workman. 

FRUITS OF THE SUPPRESSION OF THE MONASTERIES. 

It has been pretended that the promotion of industry was 
the purpose of the confiscation of the monasteries. " From that 
moment," says Montesquieu, " the spirit of industry and com- 
merce was established in England."* Historical truth would 
say: "From that moment Henry VIII. filled the royal coffers and 
bribed his abettors from the plunder of the poor." When a 
royal robbery is perpetrated on the patrimony of the poor under 
cover of utilizing ecclesiastical wealth, there have always been 
some profound economical motives for it. That is always the 
way; but, as Balmez justly observes in this connection: "A 
prejudiced mind will see what it wants, whether in books or in 
facts." f Even though trade and commerce were extended by 
those acts of Henry, which is not the case, the extension was 
dearly bought. What was extended, however, was the despotic 
power of the king, which made it possible for him to rob the 
people of their ancient faith. The social changes which suc- 
ceeded the Black Death, followed by the Wars of the Roses, left 
the power of the old nobility broken ; and a new race of men arose 
in their place, the creatures of the king, grasping adventurers 
whom he easily made his willing tools by paying them out of 
the wealth of the monasteries which they helped him to sup- 

* L* Esprit des Lois, livre 23, chap. 29. 

t European Civilization, chap. 33. It has been sought to spread the belief that the mo- 
nastic charities encouraged laziness. But that implies a very stupid supposition : namely, 
that ecclesiastics were not able to distinguish the deserving poor from tramps. For many 
reasons they were much better able, I should think. 



1894-] THE CONCERNS OF THE POOR. 155 

press. Let it be well borne in mind that the church property 
was the accumulation of the voluntary offerings of private indi- 
viduals for the relief of the poor; the king had no claim on it. 
Let us hear an unprejudiced and competent witness on how the 
poor fared before and after the power of the church was crushed 
and the monasteries suppressed. 

PROTESTANT TESTIMONY. 

James Thorold Rogers * calls the fifteenth century the " gol- 
den age of the English laborer." He says, moreover, that " The 
monks never regarded their property in any other light than as 
held for the support of religion and of the poor. The purpose 
for which the monastic property was diverted from its possessors 
and given to the king, is stated to be 'that his highness may 
lawfully give, grant, and dispense them or any of them at his 
will and pleasure to the honor of God and the wealth of this 
realm.' It was further enacted that on the site of every dis- 
solved religious house the new possessor should be bound, under 
heavy penalties, to provide hospitality and service for the poor 
such as had been given them previously by the religious foun- 
dations. The repudiation of these rights of the needy by those 
who became possessed of the confiscated property is one of 
the greatest blots on our national history. It has caused the 
spoliation of monastery and convent to be regarded as the ris- 
ing of the rich against the poor." 

Henry George writes : t " The church lands defrayed the 
cost of public worship and instruction, of the care of the sick 
and the destitute " ; and he holds, therefore, with every true 
and dispassionate historian, that the confiscation of these church 
lands at the time of the Reformation was a robbery really per- 
petrated on the poor. Mr. Hyndman, a London socialist, is 
stronger still. He says : " That the influence of the Catholic 
Church was used in the interest of the people against the domi- 
nant classes can scarcely now be disputed. Catholicism in its 
best period raised one continued protest against serfdom and 
usury, as early Christianity had denounced slavery and usury 
too." 

He shows \ that Henry VIII. used the church property to 
conciliate those who sided with him, that the wealth which the 
church had used for the poor came into the hands of grasping 

* Six Centuries of Work and Wages. 

t Progress and Poverty, p. 267 ; see also pp. 270, 370. 

\ Principles of Socialism. 



, 5 6 THE CHURCH vs. THE STATE IN [Nov., 

upstarts and conscienceless courtiers, that poverty and vagran. 
cy increased because the poor were deprived of the church lands 
their last hope of succor." In another work the same au- 
thor writes words which are well worth quoting at some length. 

He says : 

" The relations of the church, the monasteries, and the clergy 
to the people were most noteworthy from every point of view. 
There is nothing more noteworthy in the history of the hu- 
man mind than the manner in which this essential portion of 
English society in the middle ages has been handled by the 
ordinary economists, chroniclers, and religionists. Even sober 
writers seem to lose their heads, or become afraid to tell the 
truth in this matter. Just as the modern capitalist can see noth- 
ing but anarchy and oppression in the connection between the 
people and the feudal nobles, as the authors who represent the 
middle-class economy of our times, the Protestant divines whose 
creed is, the devil take the hindmost here and hereafter, fail to 
discover anything but luxury, debauchery, and hypocrisy in the 
Catholic Church of the fifteenth century. It is high time that, 
without any prejudice in favor of that church, the nonsense 
which has been foisted onto the public by men interested in 
suppressing the facts should be exposed. It is not true that 
the church of our ancestors was the organized fraud which it 
suits fanatics to represent it ; it is not true that the monaste- 
ries, priories, and nunneries were receptacles for all uncleanness 
and lewdness ; it is not true that the great revenues of the 
celibate clergy and the celibate recluses were squandered in 
riotous living. The church, as all know, was the one body in 
which equality of conditions was the rule from the start."* 
Again : " It is certain that the abbots and priors were the best 
landlords in England, and that, so long as the church held its 
lands and its power, permanent pauperism was unknown." f 
Again : " The lands of the church were, at the accession of 
Henry VIII., of an extent of not less than one-third of the 
kingdom. But they were held in great part in trust for the 
people, whose absolute right to assistance, when ia sickness or 
poverty, was never disputed. What useful and even noble func- 
tions the priests and monks, friars and nuns fulfilled in the 
middle-age economy has been stated in the last chapter. 
Universities, schools, roads, reception-houses, hospitals, poor- 
relief, all were maintained out of the church funds. Even the 
retainers who were dismissed after the Wars of the Roses were 

* Historical Basis of Socialism, p. 14, et seq. \ Ibidem. 



1894-] THE CONCERNS OF THE POOR. 157 

in great part kept from actual starvation by the conventual es- 
tablishments and the parish priests. Not a word was heard 
against them in high quarters until Henry VIII. wanted to form 
an adulterous, if not an incestuous, marriage in the first place ; 
and to get possession of this vast property, in order to fill his 
purse and bribe his favorites, in the second. As to the whole 
infamous plot, from beginning to end, it is enough to say that 
the heroes of the business were Cranmer and Cromwell, the vic- 
tims More and Fisher. The manner in which our middle-class 
history has been written is evidenced by the strenuous attempts 
to whitewash the pander and the rogue, and to belittle the 
philosopher and the patriot." * 

STATE DEGRADATION OF POVERTY. 

That illustrious Frenchman, Augustin Cochin, in a very able 
pamphlet published in i854,f judiciously divides legislation for 
the poor in England into four periods: ist. From conversion to 
Christianity to fourteenth century ; 2d. From the fourteenth cen- 
tury to the Reformation; $d. From the Reformation to 1834; 
4th. From the creation of the Poor-Law Board onward. I had 
intended to follow out that division in order to set forth the con- 
trast between the condition of the poor when the Catholic 
Church had power in England, and their condition under the 
selfish despotism which set it aside. After the Reformation, so 
fast did the faith and charity of the wealthy decline, and so 
dangerous had become the discontent of the poor, that the 
government had, in its own defence, to intervene at last and 
do something. Hence the Act of Parliament, 5 Elizabeth c. 3, 
which made poor-relief compulsory and gave England a Poor 
Law for the first time. But, the old church system cherished 
the dignity of the poor ; the poor-law system has pauperized 
them. The truth is, as I have shown, poor-relief was originally 
the creation of Christian charity ; and what was a necessary 
agency to create it must be a necessary agency to preserve it 
in its true sense. A rate levied under compulsion for the poor 
by state naturalism, and administered according to the cast-iron 
rules of expensive red-tapeism, brings them bread at the cost of 
their dignity. It feeds but degrades them. 

* Ibidem, p. 30, et seq. \ Lettre sur retat du panperisme en Angleterre. 




THE VOCATION OF IDA. [Nov., 



THE VOCATION OF IDA. 

BY L. W. REILLY. 
I. 

HE lovers had quarrelled. The trouble between 
them was so trivial in itself as not to be worth 
specifying. Either he fancied that she had 
slighted him for clever Mr. George Lester, of 
whom he was somewhat jealous, or she imagined 
that he had shown some needless attention to pretty Miss 
Elaine Joyce, whom she was tempted to dislike. It was some- 
thing of this sort, a trifle of misjudgment that should have 
been set aside by means of a soft answer. But instead of this 
the chiding, which had been begun by one or the other of them 
without any intention of making a formal rebuke or leading to 
a scene, had brought on denial and recrimination, one hot word 
being followed by another and another still more fiery, until 
Ida, taking the token of her betrothal off her finger, laid it be- 
fore Edward on the little onyx table at which he was sitting, 
and said : 

" There is your ring, sir." 

Edward stood up as she came towards him from the sofa, 
not divining what her purpose was, a look of expectancy in his 
eyes as if hoping that her womanly tact was about to find a 
way out of the discord. When, however, he understood what 
her act implied, his face grew pale. He stood quite still, both 
hands grasping the back of his chair. For a full minute he re- 
mained motionless and silent, not knowing what to say or do. 
Then he drew a long breath and said slowly and with evident 
effort to control himself : 

"Do you mean to break our engagement, Ida?" 

" I do," was the quick reply. 

"For good and all? " 

"Yes, sir; no man shall talk to me as you have. If he 
would do so before marriage, what could I expect afterwards? 
This ends it for us." 

He looked at her sharply, doubtingly, sadly, wistfully, but 
seeing no hesitation in the flashing eye, no uncertainty in the 
set lips, he picked up ^the ring, slipped it into the pocket of 



1894-] THE VOCATION OF IDA. 159 

his vest, made a bow to her as he passed her on his way to 
the parlor door, and said : 

" I wish you a good evening, Miss Powers." 

She simply returned his bow. 

Then he took his hat and cane from the rack, opened the 
hall door, and departed. 

She listened intently to the noise that he made as he left 
the house, every nerve on edge, still on fire with resentment at 
what he had said. " He's gone," she murmured. Then she 
thought that she heard him coming up the steps again and a 
pleased expression began to drive the pain away from her coun- 
tenance. She strained her ears to catch the sound of his ring 
at the bell how well she knew his double pull ! but no, her 
heart had tricked her. " He's gone for sure," she whispered. 
Then a mighty feeling of desolation and darkness, of loneliness 
and coldness came upon her ; the things in the hallway seemed 
unsteady, and she caught at the newel of the staircase to keep 
herself from falling to the floor. Even while her senses seemed 
to be leaving her she caught the odor from a bunch of lilacs in 
the vase upon the hat-rack, which, so she strangely fancied in 
a flash of thought, spread a pungent, strong, and cooling aro- 
ma about her. How often she thought of it afterwards ! How 
lasting appeared the scent ! But the faintness soon passed off. 
It was followed by another flush of anger as she recalled all 
the details of the falling-out, and the reproof that she had re- 
ceived stood out in her mind like words writ in flame. 

" I'm glad that he's gone," she muttered bitterly. 

II. 

Her joy at Edward's abrupt departure was not apparent that 
evening, however, to the other members of the Powers family, 
because she retired at once to her own room on the plea of a sick 
headache. Alone, she could do nothing but go over and over 
that foolish quarrel. She tried not to think. She attempted to 
read a novel, but her eyes passed along the lines of letters and 
she understood not a word of all she saw. She picked up the 
waist of her best blue dress, in which there was the beginning 
of a rip under the left arm ; but she hadn't the will to mend it. 
She put it over the back of a chair, went to the bed and lay 
down. " Why did it all happen ? What have I done ? Is this 
the end of my dream ? Will he come back ? " These questions 
she asked herself and these she answered in a hundred ways, 
until exhaustion came and restless sleep. 



,6o THE VOCATION OF IDA. [Nov., 

Nor was her gladness visible the next day when she came 
down to breakfast with swollen eyes, and there moped notwith- 
standing her resolution to be so nonchalant that no one should 
suspect that aught was amiss. And when her mother exclaimed : 
"Why, Ida! what in the world is the matter with you? You 
look as if you had lost your best friend ! " she burst into tears, 
got up from the table without tasting food, and fled to her 
own apartment. 

There Mrs. Powers found her half an hour afterwards, and 
there, without going into particulars, she made confession that 
she and Edward had quarrelled and that she had given -him 
back her engagement ring. 

" Oh, never mind, you foolish girl ! " said the mother en- 
couragingly. " Edward will be around again this evening, you 
may depend upon it, and then you and he can ' make up ' and 
be happy again." 

But no Edward called that evening. Mr. Lester appeared, 
however, arrayed as usual in stylish garments and immaculate 
linen, and was slightly taken aback when informed by the house- 
maid that Miss Ida was " not at home." It would not do to 
announce that she was not well, for the news might get to Mr. 
Ewirig's ears, and she would not for her life let him know that 
she so longed for his company that his absence had made her ill. 

Day followed day, yet her lover did not come back. She 
could not stand the separation much longer, she thought, when 
at the end of a weary week he did not return, and at times 
she caught herself considering how she could, while guarding 
her self-respect, make the first advances towards a reconciliation. 
"If he stays away much longer," she said to. herself, "I shall 
die or go mad." Poor thing ! she did not then know the full 
bitterness of the chalice of grief that she was to drain, nor how 
very much the heart of a woman can endure without breaking. 

" Ida must have driven Edward away without hope," said Mrs, 
Powers to her husband late on Sunday night ; " yet it is pain- 
fully evident that she loves him, and I know that his heart was 
full of affection for her. Something ought to be done to put 
an end to this miserable misunderstanding of theirs. It is kill- 
ing her, and he, too, must be suffering. Couldn't you see him 
by chance, as it were, down town?" 

I could, of course; but these storms had better be let set- 
tle themselves without outside interference. Ida has not yet 
gone into a decline, and if Edward is as fond of her as you 
say he'll not give her up for a trifle." 



1894-] THE VOCATION OF IDA. 161 

The next day Ida was shocked when her brother William 
brought home the news that he had heard from young Joe Ew- 
ing to the effect that Edward had left for parts unknown the 
morning after his last visit to her. He had written a note to 
his parents stating simply that. his engagement with Miss Pow- 
ers was at an end, hoping that his father would get a trust- 
worthy assistant in his place, and announcing that he was going 
away until he had learned to forget. He implored them not to 
worry about him, as he was Christian enough not to do what 
would afflict or shame them, and man enough to earn a living 
for himself anywhere. He said, in conclusion, that he would 
not write home until he had conquered himself, unless he should 
fall sick, so that so long as he did not write they might be 
certain that, physically at least, all was well with him. 

Ida had read in novels of somewhat similar disappearances, 
but had never before encountered one in real life. In fiction the 
heroine always falls insensible when she hears of her lover's 
flight, and forthwith is seized with an attack of brain fever. 
But Ida did not collapse in this fashion. She did, indeed, lose 
color for a moment and felt as if benumbed by an inward chill, 
and, later, she languished in spirits somewhat. But being a re- 
solute and healthy young woman, with a good appetite, she 
went about her daily ways pretty much as if nothing unpleas- 
ant had happened to her somewhat subdued in manner, but 
still bright of eye and rosy of cheek and the little world 
about her knew not how acutely she was suffering. One person 
only was allowed to enter the sanctuary of her heart and note 
how sorely she was wounded her sympathizing mother. Every 
one else blamed her, possibly because she was present in the 
light while Edward was in the darkness of an unknown where- 
abouts ; yet none but herself and her lover were aware of the 
details of the quarrel, as she was loyal to him even in their es- 
trangement, neither accusing him to others nor permitting them 
to pass an unfavorable judgment upon him. Mr. Ewing's kin 
especially were hard and cold to her. Without any evidence 
they laid the fault on her, and they took occasion to let her see 
that their feelings towards her had become unkind. 

As man forsook her, Ida turned to God for comfort and 
support. He would not misjudge her. He would take care of 
Edward and bring him back safe. Her first great grief softened 
and humbled her, and led her often to the throne of grace in 
prayer. 

VOL. LX. II 



l62 THE VOCATION OF IDA. [Nov., 

III. 

When information of Edward Ewing's departure from home 
was spread throughout the circles wherein he moved, various 
comments were passed upon it. . The opinion of the majority 
of his acquaintances found expression in the observation of Clem 
Barclay : " There's as good fish in the sea as ever were caught, 
but if I had hooked the fish that was to my taste and it got 
back to the water, I wouldn't run away before I had tried the 
virtue of more bait." Then he added : " But if I had my choice 
I'd take for my helpmate Miss E. J. And now, you mark my 
words Ed Ewing will come back from a three months' vaca- 
tion, cured of his recent infatuation, and we'll all be invited 
to his wedding with Miss Joyce." 

Notwithstanding this prediction, month succeeded month, 
and still no tidings of the absconder were received by his peo- 
ple. He had gone out of their world completely. Where he 
was, what he was doing, how he was getting along, they knew 
not. After waiting four months, his parents advertised in the 
daily papers of all the large cities offering a reward for infor- 
mation concerning his whereabouts, and they had a description 
of him sent to the police authorities throughout the whole 
country. Still, nothing was heard of him. They were worried 
almost beyond endurance, and poor Mrs. Ewing's health failed 
visibly, while her husband's hair grew still more gray. Yet 
were they consoled by Edward's assurance that as long as they 
did not hear from him they might be certain that all was well 
with him so far as health was concerned. 

" Keep up your courage, mother," said Mr. Ewing one day ; 
" the Lord will protect Ed for us. He always was a good boy, 
and I feel sure that he'll turn up all right." 

But hope deferred maketh the heart sick ; it is hard to keep 
up courage in the face of persistent disappointment. 

When a year and a half had passed away without any news 
of Edward, all but three of his friends gave him up as gone 
for good his parents and Miss Powers. " He met some ill 
fate," said some persons. " He must have committed suicide," 
said others, who forgot that he was a Catholic and that Catho- 
lics do not kill themselves. " He'll never be heard of again, 
even if he be alive," quoth more. 

Ida could not bring herself to believe that he was dead or 
that he would not return some day. She was persuaded, how- 
ever, that ;he must have lost all love for herself. Otherwise, 



1894-] THE VOCATION OF IDA. 163 

she reasoned, he would have come back and tried to make up. 
She no longer censured him. All her upbraidings were for her- 
self. She had been too hasty, too sensitive, too resentful, 
too repelling. She had cast him off. She had returned to 
him his ring. She had said that the estrangement was final. 
No matter what had gone before, it was she who had 
broken the engagement. " Mine was indeed the fault," she 
sobbed. 

But, after all, what was the use of deciding who was the 
more to blame ? The past was past. The engagement was as 
if it had never been. Edward had vanished. Her dreams of 
earthly happiness were at an end. Why couldn't she die ? 
There was nothing for her to live for and the grave was very 
peaceful. 

" O God ! " she prayed many a night, " please let me die 
soon." 

She did not then say " If it be according to thy will," 
No, she thought only of her own misery and selfishly longed to 
escape from it. 

" Merciful God ! " she kept ejaculating in secret, " please let 
me die." 

IV. 

But her day had not yet fallen. And at last Time, the 
healer, began to soothe her pain. As the romance of her 
life receded further and further from among actualities, it be- 
came to her like a dream. She could hardly realize at times 
that it had all been real. Then the present claimed her atten- 
tion and constantly pressed the past still farther out of sight. 
The future, too, demanded some consideration. What was she 
to do with her existence ? She could not go on to the end 
with a handkerchief up to her eyes. There must be a work for 
her to do. Her neighbors were busy with their destiny. What 
was to be hers ? The world had not stopped still because 
Edward Ewing had chosen to disappear. " There were great 
men before Agamemnon," and afterwards also. The prize that 
Edward had lost and abandoned seemed goodly to others. 
Mr. Lester, for instance, continued to be a frequent visitor at 
the Powers' home, and called as often there as Mr. Barclay did 
at the residence of the Joyces. So did other friends of the 
family who might be supposed to have matrimonial intentions. 
So that, as might be expected, it came to pass that Miss 
Mollie Talbot told Miss Grace Ewing in great confidence that 



l64 THE VOCA TION OF IDA. [Nov., 

she had heard Mrs. Northwood assure Mrs. Heilman that Mr. 
Lester and Miss Powers were betrothed. 

Just about this time Ida went to her confessor to ask his 
advice about her future. She felt a strange peace come over 
her as she entered the plain parlor in the pastoral residence, 
with its uncarpeted floor, its old-fashioned hair-cloth furniture, 
its three pious pictures, and its crucifix. It seemed so unworld- 
ly, so unobtrusive, so comfortably homely! It was like its 
owner, dear old Father Shryver, who had baptized her, taught 
her her catechism and given her her First Communion. As she 
sat down on the wide sofa she gave a sigh of relief her anx- 
ieties would leave her and her way be made plain to her, she 

hoped. 

Soon the priest appeared. After mutual greetings and some 
polite inquiries he took a chair near her sofa, and she made 
haste to broach the subject that had taken her to his door. 
What should she do with her life? 

"What would you like to do with it?" he asked. 

" I hardly know, father. I have thought much and prayed 
much, but the light is not clear." 

" Why not marry some one else ? " 

He knew, of course, about the broken engagement, and 
there was no need to mention who the " else " referred to. 

Ida only shook her head. 

" Lately," she said, " I have been seriously considering the 
idea of becoming a sister. The more I have studied it the 
better I have liked it. My wish for marriage is dead. Now I 
should prefer to deny myself in order to be of use to others. 
What do you think? " 

He was an old priest and a shrewd reader of character. He 
was inclined to doubt that she had a vocation to a convent 
life. Still, experience had taught him that human nature can- 
not be judged off-hand, and that man cannot limit Providence 
to set methods in its operations, nor determine in advance pre- 
cisely how the Holy Ghost shall work for the sanctification of 
souls. So, although he did not at once share her conviction, 
he would not take the responsibility of discouraging her from 
aspiring to lead a life of heroic virtue, for she had, as he knew, 
many of the sterling qualities that go to the make-up of a 
good religious. Accordingly he answered : 

" Possibly the Lord let what has happened occur in order 
to show you your way to himself. Who knows? The human 
heart is often deprived of creatures in order that it may turn 



1894-] THE VOCATION OF IDA. 165 

to the Creator. Yet in all my experience I never knew of but 
two cases in which young women called to the counsels were led 
to the convent through a disappointment in love. It is a rare 
occurrence. Still it has occurred and you may prove an 
instance of it. However, take time to pray. Week after next 
there is to be a special retreat at St. Mary's Academy. I'll 
get you permission to attend it, if you like, and you can take 
those nine days to find out the will of God in your regard. 
What do you say ? " 

Now that she had come to the bridge, however, Ida wanted 
to cross immediately. Having let her secret thoughts find vent 
in words, she was eager to go on to action. She was crest- 
fallen at Father Shryver's hesitation in approving her purpose of 
entering the cloister. However, she admitted to herself that 
she was not quite ready to go at once and that her participa- 
tion in the retreat would prepare her family for her departure, 
in case she should feel herself called away from them. 

All this passed through her mind like a flash, so that with- 
out any discourteous interval of silence she responded : 

" I thank you for the suggestion, father, and shall be grate- 
ful to you if you'll obtain the Rev. Mother's consent for me 
to make the retreat." 

V. 

Out of the retreat Ida came fully determined to be a nun. 
Her "Angel Guardian" at the academy was delighted with her 
decision. That impulsive and warm-hearted religious had an 
awful horror of that unknown country that she called " the 
world," and then she felt sure that such a good, bright, 
amiable, accomplished, and energetic young person as Miss 
Powers was, coming from a large and well-to-do family, would 
be a welcome accession to any community. 

" Oh ! you'll be happy, never fear," she said to her ; " I feel 
sure you will, just as I am." 

The missionary who gave the retreat was less enthusiastic. 

"You have chosen the better part," was his comment. 
" But it is not all sunshine in the convent, nor is perfection 
reached when the habit is assumed. You'll have plenty of 
trials there. That is the way of the Lord. Those whom he 
loves he refines by temptation, troubles, and darkness and dry- 
ness of spirit. And the closer he draws his chosen souls to him 
the more he exacts from them, the heavier he lets the cross 
weigh on them, the further he takes them up Calvary. 



i66 



THE VOCATION OF IDA. [Nov., 



However, my child, he will be with you and will not suffer you 
to be tempted beyond your strength supported by his grace. 
Have courage, be generous, and trust him. Besides, you'll have 
two years to make up your mind definitely. In that space 
you can see the life of the counsels thoroughly and study your 
own aptitude for it. If you be not suited for it, the door will 
be open for you ; whereas if you are indeed called and per- 
severe to the end, you will receive the reward promised in 
Holy Writ a crown of eternal life. May God bless you ! " 

A fortnight later, Miss Powers, having bade good-by to her 
friends, entered St. Rose's Convent. After three months of 
probation as a postulant she was clothed with the holy habit 
of a religious and received the name of Sister Mary Paul. A 
great throng was present at her reception. Many of her own 
kindred and the nearest members of the family of Mr. Ewing, 
now reconciled with her, together with a concourse of social 
acquaintances, besides some pious and some curious strangers, 
crowded the chapel at the function. She looked radiant in her 
bridal robes. The altar was brilliant with lights and beautiful 
with flowers. The music was sweet, devotional, and thrilling, 
although the sisters gave a French tone to their pronunciation 
of the Latin of the hymns. The instruction, delivered by 
Father Shryver, was short, stirring, appropriate, and full of the 
spirit of faith. After the new novice had retired to an inner 
apartment and donned the habit, with the white veil, she looked 
like a saint, gentle and innocent, joyful and modest, dead to 
the world yet abounding in peace. 

One thought disturbed her during the reception. There 
were lilacs on the altar, big bunches of white and purple 
blooms that scented the whole chapel. When their perfume 
first reached the novice on her entrance it nearly took her 
breath away. It brought back, like a flash of light passing 
through her memory, her quarrel with her lover. " O God ! " 
she prayed, "take care of Edward and bring him safe home to 
his own." Then she forced her thoughts away from him to the 
great step that she was about to take herself in the service of 
God. 

After the ceremony the new sister received in the convent 
parlor the tearful felicitations of her friends. She was flushed 
with excitement. After about one hour spent with her they 
bade her good-by. 

" What a foolish girl ! " exclaimed Mrs. Northwood on her 
way home from the reception, speaking to Mrs. Boatner, like 



1894-] THE VOCATION OF IDA. 167 

herself a non-Catholic, " to bury herself in that nunnery while 
she has health, youth, beauty, money, and everythin' good to 
live for. Even if Edward Ewing has gone, there's lots and 
lots 'd be glad to have her. Now there's Mr. Lester, who " 

" H-sh-sh ! " broke in Mrs. Rexford, who is one of those 
dear old souls who may take privileges without offence ; " don't 
touch the Lord's anointed, Mrs. Northwood, if you please. Let 
us leave Ida in the hands of God. He has guided her where 
she is. There is work for her there, work for humanity, a 
useful, noble, and unselfish career before her in the field of 
education or in some one of the other charities of her order. 
Let her follow her vocation in peace." 

VI. 

In all the duties of her convent life the new novice was 
most fervent. She endeavored to be exact in the observance 
of all the rules and to follow the customs of the house. She 
aimed to be moulded into the shape of the perfect religious. 
She tried hard to put the past behind her, out of sight, of out 
mind, out of memory, beyond recall. But she did not succeed 
very well. At times, in seasons of consolation, she fancied that 
she had triumphed. Then she felt in her soul a flame of love 
for God. Bowed before the tabernacle or prostrate in her own 
cell, she desired to be all in all to Christ, and she longed to do 
and suffer for his sake. On such occasions she was inclined to 
echo, if she thought of it at all, her old statement : " I'm glad 
that he's gone ! " At other times she was depressed in mind, 
discouraged, moody, sad. It was not simply spiritual aridity 
that she endured. That comes to all who aim at perfection 
to saints as well as to ordinary Christians, to religious oftener 
than to the devout in the world. She had, on such occasions, 
a disgust for the routine of the convent. She was beleaguered 
by bitterness towards all at home. She was disposed to be 
impatient, curt, rude. Her heart was troubled in its hidden 
depths. At such periods she almost hated herself for having 
conceived the idea of being called to the cloister. 

These fits of peace and disquiet kept alternating with each 
other with an eccentric regularity only the spells of discontent 
came back more promptly and lasted longer than the others. 

Sister Mary Paul was not so happy in the convent as she 
had expected to be. Was this because she had left a portion 
of her heart behind her in the world ? Anyway she was kept 
too busy with vocal prayer, meditation, spiritual reading, study, 



jgg THE VOCATION OF IDA. [Nov., 

and manual labor to have time to mope. Her new confessor, 
Father Drury, the chaplain of the novitiate, was studying her 
vocation, and, until he should reach a conclusion, he bade her 
reject all doubts concerning it as possible temptations from 

below. 

The mistress of novices was kind to Ida, encouraged her to 
do her best to imbibe the religious spirit, and strove to exer- 
cise her in the virtues of her state. But at the end of six 
months she went to the Rev. Mother and said : 

" After examining closely the character, disposition, gifts, and 
graces of Sister Mary Paul, I do not believe that she has a 
religious vocation. She is pious and of good will, docile and 
ready enough for mortifications, yet I fear that she is not 
called to the life here." 

"That is my own judgment," said the Rev. Mother slowly, 
putting down her pen on her desk as she spoke and folding her 
hands before her. " Yet I am so fond of her personally, and 
her family have been such good friends of ours, that I have 
been slow to accept my own opinion. Indeed I have prayed 
more over her case than I was going to say, over all the 
others. What does she think about it herself ? " 

" She is still undecided, but more and more she inclines to 
believe that she has no vocation. Nevertheless she is afraid to 
make another mistake, and so she is more and more harassed 
in mind." 

" The poor child ! my heart feels for her. Well, let .us con- 
sult Father Drury, who ' 

There was a knock at the door. It came from the sister 
portress, who had gone up to announce that the reverend 
chaplain was down-stairs in the parlor, and had asked for the 
mother superior. 

"Come down with me," said Mother Agnes to the mistress 
of novices, " and we'll see what his reverence thinks." 

Down they went. After passing the courtesies of the day 
and listening to the business that had brought the father to 
the convent, the mother superior asked him what his judgment 
was concerning the vocation of Sister Mary Paul. 

"She is not called here," he said emphatically. "She knows 
it herself. For after my Mass this morning, which I celebrated 
in honor of the Holy Spirit to obtain light for her and at 
which she received Holy Communion for the same intention, I 
asked her ' Yes or No ' at the sacristy door as she came in to 
put away the vestments, and she answered' No.' " 



1894-] THE VOCATION OF IDA. 169 

"I'm so sorry!" exclaimed the mother superior. 
" And so am I," echoed the mistress of novices. 
" God's will be done ! " replied the priest. 

VII. 

Later in the day Sister Mary Paul was summoned to the 
Rev. Mother's room. Together they studied the question of 
her vocation. Together they reached the conclusion that her 
place was in the world. 

" My way is all dark again ! " the poor child cried. " I had 
hoped that it was clear and straight for the rest of my days. 
All I can see now, however, is one step ahead this is not my 
place and I must go away from it. I am happy enough here. 
I know well that no one is perfectly happy on earth, and, if 
my vocation were sure, I'd be satisfied to stay here to the end. 
What I cannot understand is, Why did God permit me to 
make the blunder of coming here, to be deceived or rather to 
deceive myself into the belief that he wanted me here? Did I 
not pray to be enlightened, and has he not said 'Ask and you 
shall receive ' ? Did I not ask to know his will ? Why, oh ! 
why did he let me come here if I must go away again ? " 

Then she broke down and cried, covering her face in the 
ample folds of her habit. 

The afternoon sun was streaming in the window and fell 
half way across the mother's desk, leaving her in the shadow 
and glorifying the bent figure of the grieving novice. The 
clock on the mantel ticked loudly. A cart, driven by a colored 
boy, went rumbling down the street outside. 

"My dear sister," said the superioress slowly, "you must 
not judge the Almighty. He does what is best in what is 
purely his, and he turns to good what we do amiss. He may 
have had a special object in bringing you here. You may live 
to see that this was a favor, a great grace, to be sheltered in 
this quiet haven for nine months. Who knows what temptations 
might have come to you in the world during that period ? Who 
can tell what you would have done in your disturbed condition 
of mind ? You might have accepted some offer of marriage 
that would not have been good for you, or you might have 
otherwise taken some fateful step that would have defeated the 
plans of the Lord. Be sure that he loves you. He has en- 
dowed you with a sterling character and a heart of gold ; he 
has enriched you with graces ; he has given you a fine educa- 
tion ; he has favored you with excellent parents ; he has lav- 



I70 THE VOCATION OF IDA. [Nov., 

ished blessings upon you. Have confidence in him. Believe 
that he had a wise purpose in view in sending you here, or in 
allowing you to come here of your own accord in the belief 
that you were obeying him. You will have your reward for 
obedience. Besides, your time with us has not been lost for 
this world or the next. You have been trained in piety, have 
learned to know yourself, have been taught to meditate, have 
measured the world with the principles of eternity, have gone 
through a course of good reading, have had the science of the 
saints made easy and practical, etc. Your soul has been 
showered with graces. Altogether you have received a strong 
impulse upward and onward that ought to raise you all through 
the rest of your life and land you safe in heaven when you 
die." 

The novice was no longer crying. She had uncovered her 
face, but her eyes were still cast down. 

" But what will the world say when I quit the convent ? " 

" Have you been in it six months and still care for the gos- 
sip of Mrs. Grundy?" 

" I would not care for that if I were to stay in it, but I 
must go out and face the talk." 

" Offer that trial up to Him who suffers it to fall upon you. 
So you'll take the sting out of it and make it meritorious for 
you. But what can be said ? Your acquaintances will all know 
that you leave of your own accord, bearing our love and 
esteem. Those among them who love you will say : ' She's a 
sensible girl to come out as soon as she discovered that she 
was not called to the life there.' Those among them who are 
not fond of you well, what can they say? People will talk, 
but what do you care for their chatter ? Besides, my dear, the 
world is not so much absorbed in your affairs as you think it 
is. There will not be so much gossip as you imagine. And it 
will not last. Moreover, you are doing nothing singular. You 
remember Sister Nita and Sister Celestine. They tpo returned 
to their homes when they found out that they had no vocation. 
And there wasn't even a nine days' sensation about them. Dry 
your eyes and go to the chapel to assure our dear Lord that 
you are contented to do his will whether he lifts you up or 
casts you down, whether he shelters you in a cloister or sends 
you to carry the light of a Christian life out into the world. 
Tell him that you will do whatever he wants you to do. Be- 
sides, you are not going to leave us in a hurry. You will 
stay for a week or two yet, to write to your parents and make 



1894-] THE VOCATION OF IDA. 171 

your preparations. In fact, I don't know that I can give you 
up even then, for I love you dearly." 

As she spoke the last words the superioress got up from 
her chair and went over to Ida and kissed her on the forehead. 

VIII. 

Two days after that conversation a letter and a cablegram 
reached the home of the Powers. The letter was from Ida. It 

said : 

CONVENT OF ST. ROSE. 

MY DEAR PARENTS: After a nine months' experience of life 
in the convent, after earnest prayer, and after consultation with 
the superiors here, I have reached the conclusion that I have 
no vocation for the religious life. This conviction has brought 
me great grief. I hope that it will not also give you pain. 
But my heart is not here. What shall I do ? Would that I 
had work that would make me forget the past, or, since that 
cannot be, that would turn my sorrow into a blessing for 
others. I cannot write more now. Come to me soon. 

Your suffering daughter, IDA. 

The cablegram was from Mr. George Lester. It said : 

Rio DE JANEIRO. 

Found Edward Ewing petty officer steamer San Francisco 
here ; enlisted assumed name in China when advertised in 
New York May letter next mail. GEORGE LESTER. 

The letter came within a fortnight. It announced that Mr. 
Lester, while walking in the streets of the capital of Brazil, 
had encountered a " blue jacket " whom he instantly recognized 
as Edward Ewing. The latter seemed delighted to meet him, 
and beset him with questions, asking him about every one at 
home, especially of his own folk, of Miss Powers and her 
family, and of other close friends. He told how he had gone 
to New York to escape thought in the mad whirl of that city, 
had not been able to get work at once and feared the strain 
of a new anxiety, had wandered across the Brooklyn Bridge a 
few days after his arrival in town and, without knowing where 
he was going, had strolled down to the Navy-yard. The sight 
of the government ships had suggested to him the project of 
enlisting as a common marine under the name of Robert 
White. He had been with the South Pacific Squadron for two 
years, had been at all the South American ports, in Chinese 



THE VOCATION OF IDA. [Nov., 

i/z 

waters back to Hawaii, and finally to Rio de Janeiro, and 
would soon sail for the United States. He had won his way 
up one step. The two friends had spent the day together. 
Mr. Ewing was astounded to hear of Miss Ida's entrance into 
the convent. He had finally said that, seeing that she was not 
to marry him, he was glad that she was not to marry any one 
else. He added that he had abandoned all thoughts of 
marriage for himself and intended to devote himself to a sea 
career. Then followed a long and humorous description of life 
in Brazil, ending with: "But I'm tired of it all and homesick, 
and will be back, D. V., about the time that Mr. Ewing reaches 
port. By the way, he begs that no hint of his whereabouts or 
intentions be given out, as he desires to come unannounced. So 
tell no one, if you please, but Mrs. Powers and Sister Mary 
Paul, whom he is willing to trust as well as yourself, unless his 
father or mother is sick." 

" Well, this is news and more of it ! " exclaimed Mr. Powers 
when he had read the letter. 

The day after Ida had sent word to her parents that she 
wanted to see them, they hurried to the convent, consoled her, 
had an interview with the Rev. Mother, and made arrange- 
ments for the return home of their daughter. She came out 
the day that Mr. Lester's letter was received. She was anxious 
to have the ordeal over and be once more among her own. 
The trial was not so hard as she had feared. Father Shryver 
was among the first to call, not waiting for her to pay -him a 
visit and after hearing her story, he said : " You did right, my 
child; welcome home!" 

IX. 

In May the San Francisco arrived in New York harbor. 
Two days later Edward Ewing startled his family by appearing 
unannounced at the dining-room door just as they were all as- 
sembled for dinner. It was almost too much for his dear old 
mother, who thought at first that it was his wraith, and, utter- 
ing a cry, sank fainting in her chair. Joe was the next to see 
him. " My God, it's Ed ! " he cried, jumping up from his chair 
to grasp his hand. But Edward had rushed to his mother, 
lifted her up, taken her in his arms, and laid her on a sofa, 
kissing her face and taking her hands in his. He had no greet- 
ings for any one while she was unconscious. Soon she revived, 
however, and then there were welcomes and handshakes and 
questions without end. 



1894-] THE VOCATION OF IDA. 173 

Edward was amazed and delighted when he learned that 
Miss Powers had returned from the convent. He had not 
intended to call on any friends for a day or two, " to get 
rested," so he had said, " and acclimated once more to civilized 
and home surroundings." But as soon as he knew that Ida was 
near and free to see him, the old flame sprang up in his heart, 
where it had been smouldering all this while. He resolved to 
call on the Powerses that very evening. 

Ida expected him. She had been told that he had been 
found, but only on the day after her return. The news seemed 
to lift up her spirits. Perhaps Providence meant them for each 
other after all. So she scanned the papers closely for news of 
the San Francisco. She saw the report of its arrival. Was it 
by intuition that she felt that Edward was near her the day 
that he reached home ? Anyway she was expecting him. All 
that afternoon she was listening for his double-ring. 

When he did come to the door, wearing a lilac spray as a 
boutonniere, Ida was somehow there to open it herself. She had 
wondered to herself all day how she would receive him, and 
had settled that she would let the maid announce him formally 
and keep him waiting a reasonable time before making her ap- 
pearance in the parlor ; but it happened that a fire-engine had 
gone clanging by the door and she had looked out to see where 
the fire was, when around the opposite street-corner came Mr. 
Ewing, and just as she regained the vestibule he stood beside 
her. 

"Ida!" 

" Edward ! " 

The many months that had intervened between the night of 
the quarrel and the night of the reconciliation were blotted 
out. The future was not considered. The present was joy su- 
preme, the joy of two hearts that God had intended to join 
together, separated for awhile but now once more, after many 
sorrows and much uncertainty, happily brought together again. 

The whole family were charmed with the bronzed and 
bearded traveller, who had so much to relate of adventures on 
land and sea, and whose very presence seemed to bring sunshine 
into the house. 

Father Shryver overflowed with affectionate greetings when 
Edward called on him the next day. After a long and delight- 
ful chat the priest asked : 

" When is the marriage to be ? " 

"What marriage?" 



174 



THE VOCATION OF IDA. [Nov. 



"Yours." 

" If you had asked me yesterday morning I should have re- 
plied, Never. Now I can only say that the date has not been 
fixed by Ida." 

"Thanks be to God you have come back to her, for both 
your sakes," said the priest. " I will not scold you for hiding 
so long, for what's past is past and beyond recall. But you 
were made for each other ; you will help each other to save 
your souls. Matrimony is a great sacrament, and men and wo- 
men' are as truly called to it as they are to the altar and the 
cloister." 

Clem Barclay seemed to be the only one of all Edward's 
acquaintances that was not pleased with the way things had 
turned out. Whether he was sorry that his prophecy had not 
proved true, or that he wanted to cast sheep's eyes in the di- 
rection of Ida himself, or that, even with Mr. Ewing out of the 
race, he could not persuade Miss Joyce to reciprocate his admira- 
tion for her, no one ever found out ; but he was heard to mutter : 
" There's as good fish in the sea as ever were caught, but I don't 
seem to have the right sort of a hook on my line ! " 

When the Rev. Mother of St. Rose's Convent received the 
cards of invitation to the wedding (which, by the way, is to 
take place to-morrow, with Mr. George Lester as groomsman 
and Miss Elaine Joyce as bridesmaid, strong influence at Wash- 
ington having secured Mr. Swing's discharge from Uncle Sam's 
navy), she wrote to the bride-elect a loving note full of good 
wishes, ending with: "The married state must have its saints. 
In it I am certain you will be holy as well as happy. In it 
you have found your true vocation." 




ITS WALLS ENCLOSED TRACTS OF VINEYARD AND ORCHARD, OF FIG AND OLIVE. 




A NEGLECTED MISSION. 
BY DOROTHEA LUMMIS. 

HE historians of the past had their frank pre- 
judices, their amiable bitternesses, their patent 
partisanships. It is doubtful whether the his- 
torian of Mary meant to be just to Elizabeth. 
Even the historian of to-day, with his modern- 
ity, his all-sidedness, and his intentional realism, has his fashion, 
his idiosyncrasy, his whim : sets a feast here, allows a famine 
there. Always is the story-teller the slave of his temperament, 
and sees through its glass but darkly. 

Thus it happens that in the wide field of the world there 
are neglected corners, whose story is but lightly recorded and 
whose present is by men forgot. Of the wonderful pictur- 
esque past of California this land of the sun whose rich story 
yet awaits its adequate chronicling, there remain witnesses 
which, though silent, yet speak the Missions. 



176 



A NEGLECTED MISSION. 



[Nov., 



On the slope of the fecund foot-hills, protected by the 
battlemented mountains, or midway on the plain between sea 
and hill, they rise, gray, ruined, majestic, fighting the disin- 
tegrating forces of frost, of rain, and of tropic sun, with insati- 
ate patience and constancy. Did not each arch and tower grow 
in the face of daily danger, consecrated in blood and fostered 
by a million prayers? 

Modern research in archaeology has obliged history to recon- 
struct on far more just and kindly lines the conquest of this new 
world by the old ; but even so it could only be by danger and 
by death that those of Spain might win for themselves and call 
their own this lotusland, so soft, so smiling, so like home. 

It was neither gold nor the lust of dominion that sent the 
priest always in the van, but the strong desire to show these 
dark, unwilling natives the one true God. To the courage, the 
constancy, and the frequent martyrdom of the Padres was due 
the real conquest. On these gentle figures, men of learning and 




THE RUINED WALLS OF ADOBE. 



of humanity, content with danger and rejoicing in hardship, 
teaching and practising honesty and good faith, should shine the 
white halo of the holy, for these were the real Conquist 'adores. 

There is a strange intensity in useless and belated sympathy. 
One may live stolid years within the very horizon of a moving 



1 894-] 



A N-EGLECTED MISSION. 



177 



spectacle only at last to be most keenly awake to its pity and 
its pain. 

As the " poor islanders " have left Stratford-on-Avon to the 
American traveller, so the dwellers in California have left their 
missions to the sometimes untender mercies of the tourist, whose 
distinguished regard has proven enervating rather than tonic. 




IN THE DAYS OF ITS PRIME ITS BUILDINGS WERE MILE-LONG. 

The writer, though fain to stand with those who make for 
righteousness, must cry peccavi : I too have sinned. For, riding 
upon a day in June up the warm blue valley of San Fernando, 
she has visited her young peach-trees, and hung lovingly over 
each new leaf on fig and vine ; then turning her back, returned 
as she came, when a few shimmering miles away, like a patch 
of gray upon the valley's verdure, lay the ruins of the Mission 
of San Fernando, its soft Angelus lingering faintly on the 
wind ; a voice searching and plaintive surely to a soul not 
buried in base problems of profit. 

The Mission of San Fernando Rey one of that marvellous 
chain seven hundred miles long, reaching from San Diego to 
Sonoma was founded in 1797 in honor of Ferdinand V., King 
of Castile and Aragon. 

They made no mistakes in location, the old padres. " Walk- 
ing barefoot over those thorny miles, possessed with a burning 
desire to baptize, longing only to preach the everlasting gospel, 
VOL. LX. 12 



I7 g A NEGLECTED MISSION. [Nov., 

they yet knew where the land was good, where the wild grapes 
grew, where there were roses which reminded them of those 
that in their youth they had seen in the braids of the maids of 
old Castile." 

The Mission of San Fernando was built after the death of 
Padre Junipero Serra, but his spirit was vital still. The aro- 
ma of his prayers sanctified its walls, for it was believed by his 
brethren that his soul was with God as soon as it passed from 
the pale lips moist with the oil of the last Sacrament. 

In the day of its prime its buildings were mile-long, and its 
far-reaching adobe walls enclosed tracts of vineyard and orchards 
of fig and olive. Behind were the guardian mountains inter- 
posing a lasting barrier to the winds of the great Mojave 
desert, fiery hot at noon and frosty at midnight. Before lay 
the forty-mile slope to a horizon whose curling fogs and salty 
savors hinted of the unseen sea. To-day, between two sudden 
slopes of the Sierra Madre range, a long and dusty highway 
leads down and down twenty miles to the City of the Angels. 
Her bustling capitalists have achieved the land about and be- 
tween ; and their yearly encroachments reach the very doors of 
the deserted Mission. Nay, more ! for the central room of the 
one building yet holding together is transformed into a modern 
kitchen ; and where once the priests held daily service the slant- 
eyed Celestial reigns supreme over his pots and pans. The 
consecrated bell that once rang only for prayer, or tolled for 
the dying, now answers to his ribald tattoo as he calls to din- 
ner the workers in the neighboring fields. 

In this central building there is still soundness of viga, and 
resistance in roof and wall. The shadow of the arches still 
cuts an unbroken line across the sunny floor of the long 
portal. But the great chapel behind has fought a losing battle. 
Through wounds and gashes on every side, the enemies of rain 
and wind pour in ; the broken vigas whiten in the long sun of 
summer, and the graves of the saints within lie deep under the 
unregarded wreckage. 

Beyond, on the quiet northern side, is a forlorn little breadth 
of grave-yard, its impudent weeds faintly trampled by the 
infrequent feet of the mourner, and under the straggling 
shadow of the gaunt eucalyptus shines out incongruously the 
white-washed railing and tawdry flowers of a new-made grave. 

Stretching away still farther north, their gray trunks lost in 
the tall barley at their feet, are the old, old olive-trees, turning 
the rippling silver of their small oval leaves upward at every 
vagrant breeze. And among them, standing alone, are three 



1 894.] 



A NEGLECTED MISSION. 



old palm-trees, who long ago came a-visiting from the South, 
their plumed heads tousled and frayed by the rushing trade- 
wind from the ocean. 

Time had served the olives kindly had not some ignoble 
creature cut and deformed them, that forsooth the tourist might 
take home a slice of them on which some provincial dauber 
had drawn an infamy in ink. Sorely gnawed by the tooth of 
time and engulfed by the rampant weeds, the walls appear only 
here and there to mark the confines of the former demesne. 




THEIR YEARLY ENCROACHMENTS LEAD TO THE VERY DOORS. 

Two miles away lies the wee town of Fernando, through 
which rush the trains of the great Southern Pacific Railroad. 
Sometimes the solitary figure of a painter or " camerist " is seen 
crawling, encumbered with paints or plates, along the wide 
white ribbon of the highway, bringing back some bit of canvas 
or of film that has caught and kept the tender purple or warm 
brown that rests on the crumbling adobe, or the long, dignified, 
gracious line of the tiled roof sunk, as it were, into the blue 
opacity of a noon sky. 

Thus the Mission of San Fernando lies starving in the midst 
of plenty. The poorest child of the Catholic Church may have 
a priest and a hasty prayer, but in the hour of her defeat ard 
death San Fernando Rey is left alone. 



i8o 



THE MENDICANT. 



[Nov.. 




THE MENDICANT. 
BY P. J. MACCORRY. 

I MET her to-day on the 

street, 
The child of wan Penury's 

race, 
And the scourge of the wind 

and the sleet 
Had stricken the bloom 

from her face. 
And her lashes were dripping 

with tears, 
And hunger had palsied her 

feet, 

And her hand stretched be- 
seechingly out 
When I met her to-day on 
the street. 

I passed her to-day on the 

street, 
Unheeding her tremulous 

tone ; 
And my footsteps were careless and fleet, 

In some selfish conceit of my own. 
And I paused not to gladden her heart, 

Nor deign her a morsel to eat. 
Christ's mercy recoiled 'neath the smart 
When I passed her to-day on thej^street. 

It is not the things that I do 

That shall haunt me when night's speeding on]; 
It is not the deed I shall rue, 

Nor the word howso idle and wrong ; 
It is not so much for the thought 

That my eyes dare not lift to the sun ; 
But rather the wrong I have wrought, 

In the actions by me left imdone. 




1894-] PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S ADMISSIONS. 181 

PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S ADMISSIONS. 
BY WILLIAM BARRY, D.D. 

I. THE CERTITUDES OF SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY. 

DO not imagine that Catholics are likely to be 
moved by arguments which Professor Huxley 
employs, or the eloquence with which he adorns 
them, in his collected anti-Christian Essays lately 
given to the world.* But I am strongly of 
opinion that those among us who are called to the chair of 
teaching, should read, mark, learn, and answer them. It has 
often been my fate to listen to disputations in form, syllogism 
following upon syllogism, in which the very subjects handled 
by Professor Huxley were dealt with on the lines of mediaeval, 
or, at best, of seventeenth century procedure. And I have no 
intention of denying that the distinctions taken were often as 
well-founded as they were subtle, or that in pure metaphysics a 
sound conclusion is available for all time. But the difference is 
simply astonishing, as regards effective force, between objec- 
tions derived from dead heresiarchs, and those urged by a 
living and a famous man, whose competence in his own depart- 
ment is universally admitted, while the freshness, energy, and, I 
had almost said, the turbulent good faith which give an edge 
to his rhetoric, must surely tell upon the least interested or the 
most indolent of his readers. Such an opponent is worthy of 
the attention which he has aroused among English champions 
of Christendom, like Mr. Gladstone, Dr. Wace, and the Duke 
of Argyll. His polemic, barbed with epigram and sarcasm, 
though, on the whole, not ill-tempered, has made no little stir 
on our side of the Atlantic nor less, perhaps, in America. 
And I repeat my conviction that Catholic masters of apologet- 
ics should not allow it to pass unchallenged. It is Professor 
Huxley's view that he has made an end, argumentatively speak- 
ing, of the Christian Evidences. Is it not, then, a duty incum- 
bent on those whom he assails, to meet his positions, explain 
where he has gone astray from the facts and right reason, and 

* Essays upon some Controverted Questions. By T. H. Huxley, F.R.S. London and 
New York : Macmillan. 1892. 



1 82 PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S ADMISSIONS. [Nov., 

demonstrate that he has left the Christian Evidences un- 
touched ? 

A MAN OF HARD FACTS. 

All this cannot be done without reading his pages carefully, 
and allowing every sound statement in them its full weight a 
large task, and calculated to lead us into many fields, historical, 
scientific, and metaphysical. Sure I am, however, that it ought 
to be done; for the precise influence which Mr. Huxley wields, 
and the proof to which he makes his appeal, are of a kind to 
which the English temperament is singularly amenable. Mr. 
Huxley is, so to speak, a Paley in the service of anti-Christ. 
There are, in his composition, no ideal elements ; he cares little 
for poetry, despises sentiment, and asks with an air of trium- 
phant disdain, when confronted with Mr. Gladstone's cloudy 
battalions, "What are the facts?" Of course, he has a perfect 
right to do so. We must come to the question of the facts, 
sooner or later ; although much depends on how we approach 
them, when they are confessedly of so personal and sacred a 
nature as those on which the truth of Christianity is founded. 
I should be the last in the world to deny that Paley's request 
for evidence is to the point, and the method by which he 
undertakes to test it valid so far as that method goes. 
Whether it will go the whole length he supposes I take to be 
a different, and a still more momentous, consideration. But, 
within its own limits, evidence is evidence, and the want of it 
conclusive, not against the facts alleged, but against those who 
profess to ground themselves on motives of credibility which 
will not bear examination. 

EVEN-HANDED JUSTICE. 

The most popular of these articles will be, no doubt, those 
which deal with the story of the Gadarene swine, Hasisadra's 
Deluge, and the days of Genesis. Nothing seems easier to 
handle than details of history old or new, in which neither 
abstruse scientific knowledge, nor still more abstruse metaphys- 
ics, are demanded at the hands of the general reader. But, 
for all that, the key to Mr. Huxley's volume and its true inter- 
pretation must be sought elsewhere. I will allow him to be de- 
structive, on condition that he does not destroy himself in the 
process; but if he should prove to be "hoist with his own 
petard," I cannot put much faith in his engineering. The prin- 
ciples upon which he defends science against universal scepti- 



1 894.] PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S ADMISSIONS. 183 

cism for he does and must defend it, or what becomes of his 
authority ? are those by which alone he is entitled to make out 
a case in opposition to Theism and the Christian Evidences. It 
is required that he be consistent with himself. He must not 
play fast and loose with his own method. Should it turn out 
that in substituting Agnosticism for a belief in God, he is 
either not logical or not thorough-going that he takes away 
with one hand only to give back with the other, I say that his 
argument breaks down and its value is naught. The Caesar to 
which he appeals is demonstrative, adequate, and " legal " evi- 
dence. To that Gesar he shall go. If such evidence, and such 
alone mere, explicit logic is the one way of arriving at 
" objective reality," or the truth of things, and if every other 
way is uncertain, doubtful, and condemned by science as super- 
stition, and if, when all this has been granted, science itself 
survives, then Professor Huxley may go on to overthrow the 
superstition of Christianity. But if adamantine logic, as explicit 
as you please, cannot by logic justify its own existence, or prove 
its methods to be valid, or carry conviction to the intellect 
except by the aid of something else which is not logic, the 
controversy must be transferred to another ground and takes 
an aspect far less favorable to Agnosticism and anti-Theism 
than Mr. Huxley imagines. Although there is a specific differ- 
ence between physical science and religipus knowledge, conse- 
quent on the difference between their objects ; yet in one point 
of method, and that the most important of all, they agree. It 
is a point which Mr. Huxley has not overlooked, nay rather, 
which he expressly and repeatedly concedes. And to my 
thinking, it carries the whole argument with it. I will endeavor 
to make this as clear to my reader as it is to me. 

THE REALITY OF SCIENCE. 

Not long ago, in the pages of this Review, I contended that 
" either science is a dream or religion is true." The ground 
which I shall now take as common to Mr. Huxley and those 
who like myself believe in inductive methods is that science is 
no dream, but a revelation of " objective reality." Mark the 
phrase, for it is the Professor's own ; and, when he says " real- 
ity " he does not mean delusion. He means that which cer- 
tainly is, and is certainly known to be. " Objective reality " is 
the highest truth to which we can attain ; it is that which is, 
and with which all our investigations are concerned. And 
"science" aims at it, and, what is more, secures it. In regard 



1 84 PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S ADMISSIONS. [Nov., 

to science, as to the reality which it discloses, the author of 
the Essays would assuredly be looked upon as a Dogmatist by 
David Hume. Granting that "laws" are not "agents" but "a 
mere record of experience," and that " force " is no more than 
"a name for the hypothetical cause of an observed order of 
facts," it is still manifest that Professor Huxley takes his 
experience of those facts to be real. I say nothing here of 
substances, entities, quiddities, or anything but the experience 
on which all scientific statements are thought to be founded. 
This it is which constitutes their " objective reality," this alone 
distinguishes them from the idle play of the imagination and 
gives them the certitude to which they lay claim. If science is 
not " objectively real," what is it ? But real it is, and objective 
it is so much so that Professor Huxley would have us be- 
lieve that it furnishes the " only sure foundations " for " right 
action." 

LOGIC AT FAULT. 

Science, accordingly, is not a dream ; but, this volume tells 
me, Religion is ; for Religion does not attain to an objective 
reality, nor can do so. It is a sentiment, an aspiration, rooted 
in the " deep-seated instinct " which impels the mind " to per- 
sonify its intellectual conceptions." The most our Professor 
can say for it is that it turns a symbol into an idol. By means 
of science we come into contact with real objects ; while theol- 
ogy, which is but a " science falsely so-called," is enamored of 
chimeras and feeds upon illusions of its own creating. How 
must we proceed, then, if we wish to deal with it rationally? 
We must ask it for its proofs, and decline to accept a single 
one of its assertions until these are forthcoming. The princi- 
ple of Agnosticism in a nut-shell is " in matters of intellect 
never to affirm that conclusions are certain which are not 
demonstrated or demonstrable." By the " rigorous application 
of this single principle" the genuine Agnostic may be known. 
In other words, logic is, not only the test, but the limit of 
truth. And Theism cannot stand that test, nor can the Chris- 
tian Evidences. They have no means of satisfying logic ; and 
the least we are bound to do under the circumstances is to 
decline assenting to the propositions which are put forward by 
theologians for our acceptance. 

SCIENCE DEMANDS FAITH, BUT ONLY FOR SCIENCE. 

Then, it would seem right to conclude that science and 



1894-] PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S ADMISSIONS. 185 

religion differ in this way, viz., that science is logically certain 
and religion logically uncertain. The source of certitude is in 
the process, apparently, under which religion breaks to pieces. 
And there is no other principle of certitude in matters of intel- 
lect besides logic ; for, if there were, perhaps religion might be 
thereby sustained, even when it could not appeal to syllo- 
gisms. I am pretty confident that such will be the inference 
drawn by most of Mr. Huxley's readers. Science, logic, certi- 
tude, on the one hand so they will argue to themselves and 
religion, want of logic, and incertitude, on the other. But in 
thus arguing, they will have reckoned without Mr. Huxley. 

Will it be believed that the ultimate source of that gen- 
tleman's certitude is, not logic, and still less " legal evi- 
dence," but faith faith as unqualified as the most extreme 
superstition could demand, and wholly beyond the jurisdiction 
of the syllogism or the rules of argument ? There can be no 
mistake about it. Professor Huxley glories in his faith, and 
states it in precise terms. " It is quite true," observes this 
champion of explicit logic and adequate proof, " that the ground 
of every one of our actions, and the validity of all our reason- 
ings, rest upon the great act of faith " the italics are mine 
which leads us to take the experience of the past as a safe 
guide in our dealings with the present and the future. From 
the nature of ratiocination," he goes on to say, " it is obvious 
that the axioms upon which it is based cannot be demonstrated 
by ratiocination." But, he adds, " it is surely plain that faith 
is not necessarily entitled to dispense with ratiocination because 
ratiocination cannot dispense with faith as a starting-point." 

SCIENCE DESTRUCTIVE OF AGNOSTICISM. 

No, I grant that it is not so entitled. But let us see where 
we are in this remarkable transformation-scene. What is faith ; 
what are its powers, and prerogatives, and limits ; how it is re- 
lated to logic, and by what kind of necessity the intellect is thus 
made its subject and follower ; these questions seem to spring 
up around us at the touch of Mr. Huxley's enchanted wand, and 
we find ourselves in a new world. Is faith, and not logic, the 
last guarantee of science ? One " great act of faith " Professor 
Huxley admits, with an unwilling mind, I fancy. But he does, 
and it must be a legitimate source of certitude, or else there is 
none. Let us inquire, then, whether this be the only act of 
faith admissible, remembering that upon it the whole " objective 
reality " of science depends. Faith and certitude, so it would 



1 86 PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S ADMISSIONS. [Nov., 

appear, instead of excluding one another, have turned out, when 
we consider them closely, to be the same thing. On what 
grounds, I ask again, does Mr. Huxley submit himself to this 
" great act," which is the starting-point, not only of all science 
but of all experience? Not, he candidly answers, by reason 
either of experience or of demonstration. And yet all our knowl- 
edge of objective reality that is to say, of truth as existing 
outside of us depends on this faith which cannot be demon- 
strated. Agnosticism is shattered from the beginning by so 
large and formidable a concession. For it is manifest, I say, 
that all the so-called " demonstrations " in which science indulges 
are thus, according to Professor Huxley, conditional on the 
truth of a principle that can never be proved ; the conclusions 
of all its reasoning derive their strength from the premises, and 
of these the great major sentence is so far from being demon- 
strated that it is not even demonstrable. Is it true, then, that 
we arrive at our knowledge of things by a single method only? 
Or is there not another method, no less certain than explicit 
ratiocination, although utterly different from it ? And if Agnos- 
ticism means, and may be summed up into, the recognition of 
one method and the denial of any other, what becomes of Ag- 
nosticism on this showing? 

FAITH VERSUS INTUITION. 

Let us be quite clear. Professor Huxley talks of one " great 
act of faith," viz., belief in the uniformity of nature. How great 
an act of faith it is, has been dwelt upon, in his usual nervous 
and forcible language, by David Hume, who has no difficulty in 
proving that the connection between past and future on which 
we rely when making our scientific prognostics cannot be in the 
facts taken by themselves, but must be in some principle which 
goes beyond simple experience. And in so contending he is 
undoubtedly well-warranted, as a little reflection (to say nothing 
of Kant and the metaphysicians who have followed him) will 
show. But what I desire to lay stress upon is the immense 
number of "acts of faith," over and above that which regards 
the uniformity of nature, implied and admitted in Professor 
Huxley's recognition that the logical process, or ratiocination, is 
valid, and is dependent for its validity upon principles that, 
from the nature of the case, cannot be proved. He may call 
them by what name he pleases ; but, if anything is evident, it 
is that, according to him, the whole universe of reasoning, like 
the whole universe of facts, is founded upon " faith," and not 



1894-] PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S ADMISSIONS. 187 

upon " demonstration." For myself I prefer to describe the 
necessary implications of knowledge and experience as " intui- 
tions," reserving the word " faith " to another faculty of our 
minds. About terms, however, we need not quarrel. The point 
in discussion is whether, by the very make and constitution of 
our intellect, we are not compelled to pass beyond logical proof 
to that which can be proved in no logic, and yet must be taken 
as true if we are to move a single step. Professor Huxley has 
granted it. And we are at once led on to consider " faith " or 
" intuition " as having its own power, range, and efficiency as a 
source of knowledge in other departments besides logic. 

UNCERTAINTY EVEN IN FIRST PRINCIPLES. 

Thus, then, our Agnostic, meaning to tie us down to one 
method, and thereby to make an end of theology and, in fact, 
of religion altogether cannot help admitting for his own pur- 
pose the faith he has so abundantly scorned. He believes in 
" Nature," and declines to believe in " Supernature." But he 
comes to Nature by faith, exactly like the benighted multitude 
who by faith have attained to a knowledge of God. Were he 
a consistent Agnostic, resolved to grant nothing which is not 
" demonstrated or demonstrable," he could, in the end, grant 
nothing at all, and must remain dumb for want of self-evident, 
though indemonstrable, first principles. Where " Nature " is 
concerned, I have said, Mr. Huxley is a Dogmatist. And what 
will he answer when his favorite Hume observes that " no phil- 
osophical Dogmatist denies that there are difficulties both with 
regard to the senses and to all science ; and that these diffi- 
culties are in a regular, logical method, absolutely insolvable " ? 
Is it enough to say, as he does, that " if nothing is to be called 
science but that which is exactly true from beginning to end, I 
am afraid there is very little science in the world outside mathe- 
matics"? Why, not even mathematics can dispense with the 
" great act of faith," which in pure geometry does not mean a 
belief that the future will be like the past (for when have we 
had experience of perfectly straight lines and perfect circles?), 
but that certain axioms and postulates regarding space are neces- 
sary and universal truths. Hume insists, again, on the insuper- 
able difficulties which attend first principles in all systems ; the 
contradictions," as he deems them, " which adhere to the very 
ideas of matter, cause and effect, extension, space, time, mo- 
tion ; and, in a word, quantity of all kinds, the object of the 
only science that can fairly pretend to any certainty or evi- 



i88 PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S ADMISSIONS. [Nov., 

dence." Such are the mathematics to which Professor Huxley 
points as the pattern-science ; and I would ask him whether its 
first principles must not be included in the " act of faith " which 
seems likely to reduce the " demonstrable " parts of knowledge 
to quite a secondary and subordinate position ? Is it not plain 
that the consistent Agnostic ought to be a thorough-going scep- 
tic ? That he who requires an explicit reason for everything, dis- 
tinct from the things themselves (which is the only pertinent sense 
of " demonstration " in these essays), will find himself condemned 
to a regressus in infinitum, and never arrive at any foundations 
of science or beginning of action ? Professor Huxley maintains, 
with every possible variety of asseveration, that the science he 
has acquired is real knowledge, objectively valid and subjective- 
ly true. Yet, in the last analysis, it reposes, by his own candid 
admission, on faith, and nothing else but faith. Why, then, may 
not religion repose on faith also? And what becomes of the 
single method of arriving at the truth ? 

A MYSTERIOUS INNER POWER. 

We have, therefore, according to Professor Huxley, a power 
within us, as a constituent part of our intellectual nature, by 
which things neither demonstrated nor demonstrable are certain- 
ly known to us. Nay, it is the source of every certitude, and, 
in Wordsworth's noble language, "the master-light of all our 
seeing." Take that power away, and our knowledge would sink 
into a heap or a drift of mere sensations, without connection, 
or scope, or solidity. The particular certitudes of which we boast 
are simply an outcome of those first general certitudes when 
applied to details, without which no science could for a moment 
exist. The logical faculty, dealing with conclusions, comes 
second. The faculty which deals with premises, which ascertains 
and secures them, comes first. It affords, not by reasoning but 
by some altogether different process, the foundation on which 
all Dogmatism, not excluding Professor Huxley's, is at length 
compelled to rest itself. We cannot prove that it is valid, with- 
out taking it for granted ; but, unless we do take it for granted, 
nothing whatever can be maintained against the assaults of the 
sceptic. Aristotle has distinguished it as the faculty, or habit, 
of first principles. And inasmuch as it contemplates self-evident 
truth, and holds within itself the guarantee of certitude, we shall 
do no lesser faculty wrong in calling this, which is the light and 
strength of all the rest, by the name of Intellect or Reason. 



1894-] PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S ADMISSIONS. 189 

NAMES NO SUBSTITUTE FOR THINGS. 

Ought we to call it "sentiment," perhaps? But "sentiment" 
does not involve " objective reality " ; and, as we have seen, 
Professor Huxley teaches that " the validity of all our reason- 
ings " must be referred to the " great act of faith," in which he 
discerns the ground of science. Shall we say that science, at 
last, is no more than sentiment ? We know this to be a false 
and even absurd proposition ; are we not driven, as an alternative, 
to hold that " faith " wherever it means the " faculty of first 
principles" includes and guarantees their self-evidence? More- 
over, is it not manifest that Agnosticism must be limited as soon 
as we perceive that there are ranges of truths not demonstrable, 
and yet certain, in mathematics, in physics, in logic, in biology 
and why not in Religion ? Finally, though we granted our 
absolute powerlessness to " demonstrate " the great first princi- 
ples on which Theism rests, and from which Natural Theology 
has been derived and to some extent enlarged into a system, 
with conclusions depending on axioms and postulates of their 
own, we should not be allowing thereby that religion was- mere- 
ly a sentiment, but likening it in its origin to science, and there- 
fore not taking from its lawful influence upon our intellect. 
The pertinent inquiry is not whether the axioms of Theism are 
" demonstrable," but whether the mind is necessitated, by their 
self-evidence, to affirm them. Professor Huxley, in words which 
I have already begun to quote, goes far towards allowing that 
it is. " I suppose," he tells us, " that so long as the human 
mind exists, it will not escape its deep-seated instinct to per- 
sonify its intellectual conceptions. The science of the present 
day is as full of this particular form of shadow-worship as is 
the nescience of ignorant ages. The difference is that the phil- 
osopher who is worthy of the name knows that his personified 
hypotheses, such as law, and force, and ether, and the like, are 
merely useful symbols, while the ignorant and the careless take 
them for adequate expressions of reality." If his quarrel with 
theologians is simply a protest against their making human lan- 
guage the measure of Divine perfections, he need only turn to 
St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, or St. John of the Cross, 
and he will discover that no terms of his can equal the energy 
with which they put from them so impious and unphilo- 
sophical a fancy. But there is a great deal more to be said. 
Professor Huxley, having announced to us a faith which is 
toto calo removed from mere subjective sentiment which, in fact, 



PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S ADMISSIONS. 



[Nov., 



is the ground of science, the assurance of objective reality, and 
beyond the assaults of logic declares next that there is noth- 
ing within the compass of his knowledge whereby he, or any 
one else, can be constrained in good reasoning to deny those 
principles and events which make up the sum of religion, natural 
or revealed. He allows, not for argument's sake, but in earnest, 
the abstract possibility of miracles, the reasonableness of prayer, 
and the doctrine of final causes. When Spinoza defines God as 
the absolutely infinite Being, that is, a substance consisting of 
infinite attributes, Professor Huxley observes that " only a very 
great fool would deny, even in his heart," the God so con- 
ceived. It appears to have escaped him that " infinite attri- 
butes " must include personality, intelligence, and will or some- 
thing still higher than these. But the Professor's religious ad- 
missions cannot be exhausted in an article. My succeeding 
paper will aim at enumerating some of them in detail and draw- 
ing out their significance. 




1894-] PIERRE LOTI. 191 




PIERRE LOTI. 

BY MARY JOSEPHINE ONAHAN. 

Novelist of Nature. His Uncertain Life and the Frankness of his Adventures. 
His Exquisite Style. First of Sea Painters. 

: T has been sometimes lamented that those who 
have adventures cannot write of them, and those 
who write of them seldom have them. There is, 
however, a class of moderns, chiefly novelists, for 
adventure is the raw material of the novelist, 
against whom no such lament can be urged. They have tra- 
velled the earth from corner to corner, they have inhaled the 
invigorating winds of the North, of Iceland, and the Land of 
Eternal Day ; they have sunned themselves in the languid heat 
of the tropics, amid the tunics and turbans of India, or alone 
in Africa's sandy deserts. They, above all others, have those 
two heritages of the modern novelist, the seeing eye and the 
willing pen. It is almost a new element in literature, this wide- 
ly travelled human. No need to tell of the young Irishman 
who penetrated the Merv Oasis, and, having been made king of 
one of its savage tribes, tells us of his adventures in language that 
glows with the life of the Orient. Edmund O'Donovan is but 
one of a thousand. It is scarcely necessary to mention names ; 
it would be easier to specify exceptions. Among English writers 
are Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mallock, and a host of 
others. Among French pre-eminent of all stands Pierre Loti. 
In him more than in any other are combined opportunity and 
gift in a unique degree. 

Loti's life is as will-o'-the-wisp like as the name he has 
adopted. Though his books have been descanted upon by many 
French critics and a few English ones among the latter long- 
winded Henry James and though recently elected a member of 
the French Academy, the facts of his life are hard to come at. 
This much, however, is known ; his musical Polynesian name, 
signifying a flower, is not his own, but is a reminiscence of 
Tahiti, the delicious isle where he spent many months, and of 
which he has sketched an outline in most delicate and dreamy 
colors, with a love-tale for the heart of it. It is said to have 



I9 2 PIERRE Lori. [Nov., 

been given him by the natives on account of his excessive shy- 



ness. 



In the language of mortals he is Monsieur Jules Viaud, a 
native of Saintonges, and of purest Huguenot descent. Like 
Lessing at Kamentz and Carlyle at Ecclefechan he was brought 
up in an atmosphere of severity and rigor, with the Bible heroes 
for a standard of emulation. The dreamy, solitary boy " did not 
want to grow up," we are told ; loved his mother with a French 
intensity of language, hated school, and got his Aunt Claire to 
do his lessons for him. The butterflies and birds were his friends, 
and many an hour he spent roving the woods while his Latin 
and Greek were neglected. 

What Loti's religion is now it would be hard to say perhaps 
that chapter, like the one on snakes in Iceland, would of neces- 
sity be blank. From the dedication of one of his books, his mother 
is evidently a Christian, and he speaks in glowing terms of her 
patience and gentleness with a wayward son. He himself is a 
pagan of the pagans, yet giving evidence at every page that he 
was at one time a Christian. How he lost this faith of his 
fathers no one can tell ; that he has lost it no one can doubt. 
There is nothing more pathetic in all his books than that closing 
paragraph of Jean Berny : 

11 O Christ of those who weep ! O Virgin immaculate and 
calm ! O all ye adorable myths and legends that nothing can 
replace, that alone sustain the childless mother and the mother- 
less child, and give them strength and courage to live on when 
joy is over, that make our tears less bitter and bring us hope 
and cheer in the last dark hour, blessings rest on ye ! 

" And we whom ye have abandoned for evermore, let us bow 
our faces in the dust and kiss with tears the traces of those 
footsteps which have passed for ever from our ken." 

This is, indeed, exquisite sadness. 

But to return to his childhood. His masters, piously nick- 
named "the -Bull Apis" and "the Great Black .Monkey," dis- 
gusted him with learning. Going to church seems, alas and 
alack! to have disgusted him with piety. He preferred his un- 
cle's gray parrot, Gaboon, which talked and probably swore 
in some negro dialect. As long as he might frame his own 
visions while reading the Bible, and could taste the sweetness 
of the quiet evening prayer at home, he was safe and his thoughts 
were Christian. But when he went to church it seemed to him 
that preacher and congregation were given over to intolerable 
dulness and the hollowest of formalities. If there were guid- 



1 894-] PIERRE LOTI. 193 

ing hand to direct the youth aright which seems a bit doubt- 
ful he flung it impatiently aside. He had once dreamed of 
being a missionary, for, like many another who has since bro- 
ken with family traditions to join the Church of Literature, he 
had been destined, as the Scotch say, " to wag his pow in a 
pulpit "; but as he grew older he gave up this dream, over- 
whelmed, as was Amiel, by " la conscience de la vanit des 
prieres, et du neant de tout," which is another word for Leo- 
pardi's doctrine " 1'infinitta vanita del tutto." 

This is one explanation of his loss of faith ; another, per- 
haps, may be found in his love of De Musset. 

Loti's elder brother had gone on a voyage round the world 
and sent home many brilliant descriptions of the tropics. To 
him may be assigned the chief personal influence that made 
Loti a lover of the sea, and overcame his intense devotion to 
the home life. But above all Tahiti had furnished his brother's 
pen with its magic. There he had lived, much in the style of the 
Englishman of Rarahu ; there his hut of leaves and branches 
was still standing when Loti himself set foot upon the island of 
Moorea, ten years later. To this brother Loti applied at the 
age of fourteen for a letter of admission to the Naval Academy. 
For the rest of his life we must turn to his books, which are 
in most instances the record of his own varied experiences in 
strange lands and waters. When told in the form of diary, they 
are travels ; weaved together by a plot, novels. The sea that 
wooed him in his youth wooes him still in his maturity, for he 
is now an officer, at last accounts a lieutenant in the French 
navy. The sea was his earliest bride ; from the frankness of his 
adventures she seems to have been the only one that has ever 
claimed his fidelity. 

If, in the words of Lessing, "the style is the man," Pierre 
Loti's many sins of omission and of commission may, perchance, 
be forgiven him. For Loti's style is an exquisite style, a style 
as fresh, as limpid, as silvery as the cool waters of some en- 
chanted fountain that steals silently through luscious woods, re- 
flecting all the shadowy lights of heaven. He is the novelist of 
Nature, for he has lived close to Nature's heart. It is a French 
passion, this passion for fine writing, this enthrallment through 
the witchery of words, and with Loti it is predominant of all. 
His pen, like Aaron's rod, has been made to blossom, and its 
tiniest bud has about it the iris-hued glory of an unseen 
power. 

Doubtless the greatest of his books is that prose epic of the 
VOL. LX. 13 



Ig4 PIERRE Lori. [Nov., 

sea, An Iceland Fisherman, a romance pure and simple. There 
is no analysis in it, there is no sermonizing. It is merely the 
unpretentious telling of the love of a young Breton maiden for 
a sturdy Iceland sailor. Brittany with its wave-washed, wind- 
swept coast, with its Pardons, crucifixes stretching their arms on 
every hillside as though crying to Heaven for justice ; Brittany 
with its gorse that never fades, and its sea that is never stilled, 
is pictured for us with perfect simplicity, with perfect direct- 
ness, for Loti's art is the art of the etcher. His lines are few, 
direct, and telling. He holds the key to perfect speech, for he 
gives " to every word its import and to every silence its mean- 
ing." 

Loti has been called the " Painter of the Sea," and the title 
none can gainsay him. He revels in it as a creature born to 
the waters ; he knows its moods, its smiling bosom, its relent- 
less depths. In the opening paragraph of An Iceland Fisherman 
he describes for us the staunch little fishing-smack La Marie 
bobbing upon the waters of the great northern ocean, its oily 
cabin, the six rolling sailors spinning yarns of their adventures 
upon the land, while the little statue of the Virgin, rather anti- 
quated and painted with very simple art with its blue mantle 
and yellow robe and the artificial roses nailed to the shelf, 
looks down upon them, " the Virgin who had listened to many 
an ardent prayer in deadly hours." In a paragraph we have all 
this, the sense of safety and of security, the human lives guarded 
by the few bits of board, and then the bigness of the contrast, 
infinity, fate : " Outside lay the sea and the night." 

Here is one of his descriptions : " It was daylight, the ever- 
lasting day of those regions, a pale dim light resembling no 
other ; bathing all things like the gleams of a setting sun. 
Around them stretched a colorless waste, and excepting the 
planks of their ship, all seemed transparent, ethereal, and fairy- 
like. The eye cannot distinguish what the scene might be : 
first it appeared as a quivering mirror which had no objects to 
reflect ; in the distance it became a desert of vapor ; and 
beyond that a void, having neither horizon nor limits. Yann 
made out thousands of voices (in the huge clamor of a storm in 
Northern seas), those above either shrill or deep and seeming 
distant from being so big : that was the wind, the great soul of 
the uproar, the invisible power that carried on the whole thing. 
It was dreadful; but there were other sounds as well, closer, 
more material, more bent on destruction, given out by the 
torment of the water, which crackled as if on live coals. And 



1894-] PIERRE LOTL 195 

it grew and still grew. In spite of their flying pace, the sea 
began to cover them, to eat them up, as they say ; first the 
spray, whipping them from aft, then great bundles of water 
hurled with a force that might smash everything. The waves 
grew higher and still crazily higher, and yet they were ravelled 
as they came, and you saw them hanging about in great green 
tatters which were the falling water scattered by the wind." 

Yann, the hero, a sturdy lion yet untamed, and Sylvestre, 
the youth, pure-hearted as a girl, dreaming of the far-off 
Breton coast as, with the winds of Iceland piercing their cheeks, 
they draw in the heavy-laden nets, are real vignettes in litera- 
ture. Gaud, too, is beautifully drawn ; perhaps better as the 
wife than as the maiden, something of the strength, the whole- 
souled womanliness of Milton's Eve in that young soul, the 
new-made wife " affrighted yet not afraid." There is realism 
in Loti, in many of his works far too much, trenching often on 
entire animalism, but in the best of his works there is no 
touch which can offend the pure-minded. Something of the 
whiteness, the virgin strength of those Iceland cliffs, is reflected 
upon this idyl of peasant love. In An Iceland Fisherman 
Loti is as pure-hearted as his own Breton peasants, as Millet's 
tillers of the soil whom they so much resemble. 

Henry James says that George Sand draws peasants as they 
are ; Loti as he thinks them to be. The distinction seems 
scarcely well made, for there is no peasant in all the pano- 
ramas of George Sand as true, as life-like as the pathetic 
figure of old Granny Moan pleading that she may not trop bien 
comprendre when she is told that her grandson has died on the 
ship homeward bound. One does not soon forget that bent 
figure tottering along the road, childless, hopeless, loveless, 
hooted at by the children as a drunken creature, and sleeping 
in her hut the " frozen sleep of old age." Equally real is the 
young wife, Gaud, waiting upon the cliff, straining her eyes into 
the distance, her slim figure and tear-dimmed features outlined 
against the gray background of the sky, watching for her 
husband to return from that grim-visaged Iceland, monster of 
the North, who has clutched him and will not let him go. We 
feel the throbs of that breaking heart, we look through the 
eyes of a quivering woman. The whole book tastes of the salt 
of the sea. The end is told as the rest is told, simply, quietly, 
perfectly : 

" Yann never came home. One August night out there off 
the coast of Iceland, in the midst of a great fury of sound, 



I9 6 PIERRE LOTI. [Nov., 

wer-e celebrated his nuptials with the sea with the sea who of 
old had been his nurse. She had made him a strong and broad- 
chested youth, and then had taken him in his magnificent man- 
hood for herself alone. A deep mystery had enveloped their 
monstrous nuptials. Dusky veils all the while had been shaken 
above them, curtains inflated and twisted stretched there to 
hide the feast ; and the bride gave voice continually, made her 
loudest horrible noise to smother the cries. He, remembering 
Gaud, his wife of flesh, had defended himself, struggling like a 
giant against this spouse who was the grave, until the moment 
when he let himself go, his arms open to receive her, with a 
great deep cry like the roar of a bull, his mouth already full 
of water, his arms open, stretched and stiff for ever. 

"And they were all at his wedding all those whom he had 
bidden of old, all except Sylvestre, who, poor fellow, had gone 
off to sleep in enchanted gardens far away on the other side of 
the earth." 

His other works may be regarded as dainty, delicious 
aquarelles or pastels ; this is a canvas swept over with bolder 
brush. "A great writer," says Delille, " Loti is not; an admi- 
rable writer he is. Of course his merits are not without their 
corresponding defects. The tremulous refinement of his sensi- 
bilities can degenerate into something very like hysteria. The 
delicious tenderness of his emotion occasionally becomes 
lachrymose. And last and worst, the troubled ardor of his 
passion verges dangerously upon disease. One can discern all 
this clearly enough, but one is not careful to enlarge upon the 
theme. Why fasten and feed upon the unsound spots of a 
genius, if one belong not to the school of critical ghouls?" 

At the risk of incurring Monsieur Delille's displeasure one 
must at least touch upon Loti's faults. 

In view of the perfection of Loti's Iceland epic it is a pity 
that unstinted praise cannot be given to his other works, but 
the truth is, that when Loti flung away the plank of Chris- 
tianity it was inevitable he should drift into murky seas. 
Carlyle tells us that indifference is the only atheism. In this 
sense Loti is indeed an atheist. He is, as some one says, a 
sponge absorbing all experiences with equal frankness and with 
an equal sense of irresponsibility. Madame Chrysantheme is a 
tale of Japanese life, perfect as a picture of what may be per- 
ceived by the senses, bewildering in its entire ignoring that 
there can be anything above them. It makes one realize the 
truth of the saying : " Loti understands the souls of places, but 



1894-] PIERRE LOTI. 197 

not the souls of men." He gives us the soul of Japan, dreamy, 
weird, and strange, with its grotesque gods and monstrous 
phantasies, but he nowhere gives us the souls of men and 
women ; or if he does, the colors are so strange as to be lost 
upon eyes un-Japanese. Perhaps no foreigner, not even Loti, 
can overcome this feeling of aloofness from the inner heart of 
the East. The moicsmes, with their huge sashes, small piercing 
eyes, and reddened lips, are not real women rather they seem 
to have stepped from off a fan. And as for the hero's adven- 
tures among them (Loti himself, it is said), as Henry James 
remarks, " We scarcely mention achievements of this order in 
English." 

It is indeed a little difficult to take him seriously in this 
aspect at all. One is almost tempted to exclaim, as that sad 
fellow Lamb did on a similar occasion apropos of the morals of 
a French play at Covent Garden : " Is it not bad enough to 
be bothered with morals in real life? Must we be pestered 
with them also in fiction ? " For Loti's frankness in this regard 
is quite overwhelming. What his idea of purity is it would be 
quite hard to say indeed, from his later novels it may be 
questioned whether he has any at all merely a thing of 
latitude and longitude. Entirely apart from the sphere of 
morals, and judging him merely as to his art, the mistake is a 
fatal one. His style inevitably loses, for he has done away with 
the greatest art factor in the world, the sense of contrast, 
Evil. It was said in contempt, but it may be repeated in all 
earnestness, " Sin owes half its witchery to the stern teachings 
of Christianity." Loti has discarded Christianity ; the only 
result achieved is that his paganism is uninteresting animalism. 

Rarahu, a tale of Tahiti, is another evidence of Loti's one 
desire to change his skin, and, as a French critic says, "his pre- 
ference is almost always for a dusky one." Rarahu is luscious 
as a summer in the tropics and about as enervating. Of his 
Roman d'un Enfant he himself says : " It is the journal of my 
great Unexplained Melancholies, and of occasional pranks by 
which I attempted to distract myself from them." 

If he had brought to his other works the same purity of 
heart, the same at least sympathy with faith, as in An Iceland 
Fisherman, he might be hailed as the greatest of modern novel- 
ists. But like his English prototype, Mallock, he has turned his 
back upon the higher light and is following the light o' love of 
sense. Like Mallock he has become an Epicurean fatalist, greet- 
ing all things with the sigh " Ce nest que $a." 



198 



Jo Y IN HE A YEN. 



[Nov., 



" As far as he is concerned," says one writer, " Christianity 
might never have existed except in so far as it has given an 
impetus to art. . . . For him the Cross has disappeared and 
only the Crucifix remains, picturesque in its solitude, high upon 
a Breton sea cliff." 

Apostle of the school of impressionism, high-priest of the 
school of despondency, Pierre Loti is one of the most tantaliz- 
ing figures on the literary horizon. One can but wistfully 
ponder what he would have been had he kept his soul on the 
heights pictured for us in his idyl of sea-blown Brittany ; had 
he while wooed by the sense-world not lost sight of the 
spirit-world ; had he, in other words kept the style of the 
prince of modern word-painters that he is, and made it pure 
and strong and great by the faith of his ancestors which he 
has lost. 

Alas that the beauty of earth should blind one to the 
beauty of heaven ! 



JOY IN HEAVEN. 

BY MAGDALEN ROCK. 

N Heav'nly courts the joy-bells sweetly ring, 
And angel voices join in triumph strain, 
The jasper walls re-echo their refrain ; 
Before the great white throne the censers 

swing, 

As seraphs bend in homage to their King. 
And close by Mary's side a cherub train 
Repeat her praises o'er and o'er again 
In silvery tones, clear and unfaltering. 

And she, that golden city's crowned queen, 
Whose slightest wish unnumbered saints 

obey, 

Is glad at heart, and Heav'n is glad to-day, 
Because on earth a sinner who had been 
An enemy for long to her dear Son 
In humbleness and tears has penance done. 





1894-] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 199 

GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 

BY REV. CLARENCE A. WALWORTH. 
CHAPTER VII. 

Slowness of the Movement Romeward, Over-Hasty Attempts to Crack the 
Protestant Nut. Dunigan, Baker. Phinney. Moehler's " Symbolism." 
Lives of the Early English Saints. 

ATHOLICS whose attention had been called to 
the novelties brewing at our seminary must have 
thought it very strange that it took us so long 
to find out where the truth lay and to embrace 
the whole Catholic faith, worship, and church 
with one confiding hug. It needs but a short argument to 
show that only the Catholic body has true unity and that 
variation is the very law and life of Protestantism. This ought 
to be enough to bring them all into the true fold by a short 
and easy process. Men who think thus, however, think so very 
superficially. In real life the best and most earnest minds are 
not accustomed to travel by these short cuts. An extensive 
horse-breeder and trainer once said, in answer to a question of 
mine: "Horses, sir, are very intelligent animals, and when they 
see an old charred stump on the roadside they know very 
well that it's nothing but a stump. But you see they are very 
cautious creatures ; nature has made them so, and they don't 
know at first sight what is behind the stump." 

It was the same thing with many of us at the seminary. 
We soon got used to discussions about the church. We soon 
learned to understand that Christ instituted a visible church, 
organized a tangible and approachable body. That church he 
officered himself, giving it not only a complete doctrine to 
transmit, and sacraments furnished with grace, but also a 
divine mission, or right to act in his name. This right, we 
understood, could only be transmitted by that church and in it. 
This mission or divine current of jurisdiction is interrupted by 
schism and ceases to flow into a severed member. All this was 
pretty much understood by the more advanced Tractarian 
students at the seminary, and yet they were by no means pre- 
pared to leap at once into the ancient church. Other questions, 



200 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Nov., 

profound and precious, lay before them still unsolved. Let me 
here refer to an incident which occurred at some time during 
my second year at the seminary, precisely when I cannot 
remember, which exemplifies how hard it is for Catholics " to 
the manner born" to understand the perplexities and needs of 
a Protestant outsider searching for the truth. 

I went down-street one day to Dunigan's bookstore. He 
kept at that time, if I remember right, far down in Broadway, 
or possibly in William or Nassau Street. I inquired for 
Moehler's Symbolism. He said to me (I think it was Dunigan 
himself) : 

" I don't think it is Moehler that you want." 

" What then do I want ? " I returned. 

" The right book for you," he said, " is Bossuet's Variations 
of Protestantism." 

" No, sir. You are mistaken. The variations of Protest- 
antism have been going on since Bossuet died, and perhaps I 
know of many variations that he never heard of." 

" Ah," said he, " I think I understand you. What you need 
is Milner's End of Controversy. That's something quite re- 
cent." 

" No," I persisted, " I do not need Milner either. I read it 
through and through, and feel no call to refer to it any more. 
I know its contents pretty well and have gathered much truth 
out of it, but it is not the end of controversy for me. I have 
other questions to solve and deeper ones. What I -want is 
Moehler's Symbolism" 

He gave me a compassionate smile, but found the book for 
me and I took it home to my room in the seminary. It 
proved to be a treasure indeed. I think I learned of the ex- 
istence and contents of this book from some reference or re- 
view of it in the British Critic. It had made a deep impres- 
sion on Dr. Newman's mind. 

Protestants are not heathens ; far from it. .Their reasons 
cannot be reached by the same easy and simple means which 
suffice for the ignorant heathen. When the Christian revelation 
is fairly presented to the heathen mind, their ignorance has so 
little to show in opposition that they are more ready to em- 
brace it trustfully and in its entirety. The obex, or obstacle, to 
truth presented by their simple superstitions is a comparative- 
ly small one. The Protestant mind, on the contrary, however 
cultivated, is by no means simple, nor in the same sense 
ignorant. It is nearer the truth to say that they know too 



1894-] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 201 

much. They are oftentimes, to quote St. Paul, " more wise 
than it behoveth to be wise." Their minds are too much pos- 
sessed with things that are not so. The obex which they pre- 
sent to Catholic truth is 'something multitudinous, complex, 




over-refined. It is so engrafted, so commingled with their 
pious emotions, so closely webbed and interwoven with all their 
past thoughts and memories, that they mistake prejudice for a 
rational conviction. True doctrine "in a nutshell" is not 
truth presented in a form in which they can receive it. The 



2O2 



GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Nov., 

attempt so frequently made thus to present it, and settle the 
whole question at once, is well illustrated in my memory by an 
anecdote from the experience of Father Baker, the Paulist, 
which I have from himself. During the time when he was 
stationed as rector at St. Luke's Church, Baltimore, a priest 
rang the bell at his door and asked to see him. He presented 
no card and gave no name. Baker's sister, who opened the 
door, noticing this and not liking the exterior make-up of the 
visitor, whose language and style of dress were something new 
to her, was somewhat alarmed and disinclined to introduce him 
to her brother's room. This, however, she did. He took his 
seat and immediately opened the purpose of his visit. What he 
said was substantially as follows : 

" I have heard of you, Mr. Baker. I understand that you 
have strong inclinations toward the Catholic Church, but you 
remain still in doubt. I can prove to you in a few short words 
that she is the only true church. Now listen to me attentively 
for a moment. See here ! The church is necessarily one, for 
Christ her founder is one, and he only made one. Keep that in 
mind. Now then: the church is also holy, for Christ made her 
so, in order to sanctify the world. Keep that in mind also." He 
then proceeded in like manner to show that the true church 
must be Catholic and apostolic. After this, in the same brief 
manner, he went on to prove that only the Roman Catholic 
Church bore these four marks of being the true one. Father 
Baker listened in silence to what he had to say, but was -quite 
surprised to see the good father rise after completing this short 
argument ; a hearty shaking of hands followed, and satisfied 
with this the enthusiastic visitor withdrew, feeling that he had 
finished his job. He was a good man and a most exemplary 
priest. He belonged to a class of men to be met with every- 
where. Wadhams and I heard of him during the course of this 
year, or the winter of the next, while among the Adirondacks. 
McMaster had been visited by him in his retirement at Hyde 
Park, and had been highly pleased by him, for this priest had 
seen much, and there were few places in the United States which 
he had not visited ; he knew something of everything. He 
came to me shortly after I became a Catholic and proposed to 
me a variety of good devotions. I did not care to be ham- 
pered with too many things all at once, and in this I was sup- 
ported by the counsel of a wise director. Such men do not 
generally bring about many healthy conversions. But if treated 
wisely and gently by their superiors, and not trusted with the 



1894-] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 203 

management of difficult matters, they may do more good than 
wiser men with less worthy motives. 

I fear to have set down too strong an example to illustrate 
well the point I would present. Many Catholics even with bet- 
ter regulated minds often make serious mistakes when under- 
taking to lead converts into the church. 

The false maxims to which Protestants have become accus- 
tomed may be digested and generalized, and so briefly stated 
as to find room in a nutshell. That nutshell, however, they will 
never acknowledge. They know that in their hearts there is a 
religion deeper, truer, and more solid than that nut holds. You 
may crack that nut before their eyes, but they do not feel hurt 
by your vigorous hammer. 

A little more than three years after leaving the seminary at 
Chelsea I happened to be in Birmingham, England. The Rev. 
Dr. Phinney, of Oberlin College, was there at the same time 
preaching ; I had got acquainted with him some six years ear- 
lier when in the United States. I admired the man and felt 
much attached to him. Another gentleman, whose acquaintance 
I had made in America, was also in Birmingham at the same 
time ; this was Baron Schroeder, a highly educated Catholic 
layman from Germany. He persuaded me to go with him on a 
visit to Dr. Phinney at his lodgings. Dr. Phinney and his wife 
received us both very cordially and we had a long and pleasant 
interview. A good part of the time was spent in amicable con- 
troversy. I was, of course, but a novice in theology. The 
baron was a well-educated scholar, especially in philosophy. 
Professor Phinney, intellectually far superior to either of us, was 
not only an eloquent and powerful preacher, but an expert in 
doctrinal discussion. I only introduce this visit here to illus- 
trate what I have said, that Protestantism, if it be understood 
to comprise all that constitutes the religious life and belief of an 
earnest Protestant, cannot be reduced to the compass of a nutshell. 

" Gentlemen," said the good doctor in the course of conver- 
sation, " I am not prepared to say that I hold no religious er- 
rors. Some of these may possibly be important errors. One 
thing, however, I cannot allow myself to admit. To allow that 
I do not understand the Christian religion in its substantial and 
essential features is a supposition from which my whole soul re- 
coils." 

I give Dr. Phinney as a type of an earnest and intelligent 
Protestant. There was a vast amount of belief in him. No 
nutshell could cover it. 



204 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Nov., 

Moehler had studied well the age in which he lived. He knew 
the Protestant mind. He knew that it could not be captured 
by a single syllogism, and that a few texts establishing church 
authority are seldom sufficient to bring an educated Protestant 
to the true faith and into the true fold. Moehler devotes his 
book on symbolism not only to these but to all the doctrines 
which belong to religious faith and worship. He treats of the 
attributes of God, the nature of man, man's relations with God, 
the nature of grace, etc. He compares together carefully the 
acknowledged symbols of Protestantism and Catholicity, and 
presents both in their real light to religious souls who wish to- 
live by the true law of spiritual life. Such Protestants are the 
only ones that come to the Catholic Church, or at least that 
come to stay. Catholic polemics in our day must learn new 
texts of Scripture, glean new maxims from the Christian fathers, 
and provide new fish-hooks and more efficient bait. So far as I 
know of, no convert of the Chelsea Seminary was brought to 
the door of the Catholic Church either by Milner's End of Con- 
troversy or Bossuet's Variations, strong though they be. 

The general spirit which characterized that seminary was, to> 
the best of my recollection and in my opinion, a good one. 
There was a value attached to sound doctrine, and very little 
attached to the idea that " it makes little difference what a man 
believes, if only he be sincere." Dogmatic theology that is to 
say, the science of presenting religious truth in its true aspect 
and in its proper relations with other truths stood high in honor 
there. I cannot remember that I ever heard dogmatic theology 
spoken of respectfully until I came to the seminary at Chelsea. 
Religion and all that is worth knowing about religion is gener- 
ally supposed by Protestants to come to one as Santa Claus 
comes to the children, while they are not looking out for it, 
but asleep. 

Our Tractarian students at Chelsea ranked high among the 
others as diligent scholars, and this gained for them favor with 
the professors, the majority of whom were by no means Trac- 
tarian. It is not to be wondered at that students of this stamp 
when once introduced to Moehler's Symbolism, should become 
fascinated with it. It was not a book which professed to teach 
Catholicity in six easy lessons which should avoid all necessity 
of investigating farther. It did not profess to furnish an all- 
sufficient egg which should develop itself and required no brood- 
ing to bring it to a development. Moehler takes up the whole 
of Catholic doctrine, yet article by article. The external marks 



1894-] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 205 

of the true church, which prove her right to teach, are not 
omitted. The doctrines which she teaches are also all brought 
forward and have their own distinct grounds to stand upon. 
The acknowledged councils of the church with her canons and 
decrees when cited are given in her own words, not fearing to 
commit her to her own declarations. Side by side with these 
are placed the doctrines of the Protestant reformers, expressed 
in their own words. The Anglican Church, with her symbols 
or formularies of doctrine and worship, is placed side by side 
with the Roman Catholic, as the queen in " Hamlet " is made to 
look first at the portrait of her husband and then upon the face 
of her crowned paramour 

" Look here, upon this picture, and on this." 

Moehler understands well the effect necessarily produced up- 
on a fair mind by two faithful portraits thus distinctly presented 
in their own dress and with their own native features. Then 
the beholder with a genuine conviction may say of the true 
king 

"See, what a grace was seated on this brow," 
while the other has little but his clothing to present, and stands 
" A king of shreds and patches ! " 

a mere show of apostolical succession, without any rightful in- 
heritance of divine mission, holding forth a Common Prayer 
Book which comprises in one cover a jumbled jargon of doc- 
trine. 

Moehler's Symbolism did more to lead me to a comprehensive 
knowledge of the Catholic faith and -to take the final step of 
entering the Catholic fold than any other book. I have always 
preferred it above all others as a book to lend to thoughtful 
and studious Protestants. 

I have perhaps said enough to show what doctrinal vitality 
that is, what eagerness to know the real truth existed among 
Episcopalians at the time included in these reminiscences, and 
was perhaps more focused at our seminary than anywhere else in 
America. It would be a great oversight to make no mention of 
a spirit still more precious and vital which I found kindled there 
and which must account for many conversions to the faith. 
Arthur Carey was the chief centre of this flame, as he was the 
chief leader in the inquiry after truth. His residence at the 



206 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Nov., 

seminary occupied a period of four years, including one year 
during which, being too young for ordination, he kept his old 
room, mingling as freely with the students as a secluded life of 
study and prayer like his would allow. Every one was glad to 
know him, even those who looked upon him as all the more 
dangerous from the very fact of his being pious, sincere, and 
virtuous. His sayings about religious topics of the day were re- 
peated about among us from mouth to mouth, as the last words 
would be cited that came from Newman or Dalgairns. Not all 
were disposed to follow his opinions, but no one could afford 
to be ignorant of what he thought and said. It cannot reason- 
ably be doubted that at the bottom of the Tractarian move- 
ment there lay, not merely a demand for pure and Catholic 
truth but also for a holy life. The spirit of high and dry 
churchmanship did not preside at the seminary. It was, no 
doubt, the real spirit of Anglicanism, but it was as unpalatable 
to Tractarians as it was to Evangelicals, and more so. 

In this state of things it was impossible that books emanat- 
ing from Oxford, and showing the new kindled piety which 
breathed there, should not find free circulation at the seminary. 
Keble's Christian Year lay here and there upon the tables of 
those who loved poetry. Soon followed the Lyra Apostolica, to 
which Keble, Newman, Hurrell Froude, and many other leading 
spirits of the " Movement " contributed words burning with 
piety and often radiant with the truest poetry. Faber was 
better known at that time as a romantic poet, but he was re- 
cognized " as one of them," and as such found a few readers 
amongst us. But a greater charm than any of these possessed 
was to be found in the Lives of the Early English Saints. This 
was a series of biographies written by Anglicans of the Oxford 
school, and was a most influential element in its great move- 
ment towards real Catholic truth and life. The series was con- 
fined to English saints. There was wisdom in this restriction. 
It took into account English national prejudice by showing 
lives of sanctity lived on English ground. At the same time 
an honest presentation of English sanctity in early times 
would be sure to show how little it looks like modern 
Anglican piety, and how distinctly it presents itself associated 
with the doctrines, worship, and austere practices of the Church 
of Rome. The writers of these lives did not propose, nor in- 
deed consciously intend, to lead their readers to relinquish their 
own communion and unite with the Roman Catholics. What 
they proposed is well stated by Wilfrid Ward in his book en- 



1894-] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 207 

titled William George Ward and the Oxford Movement (chapter 
vii. page 142). He says : 

" The love of Rome and of an united Christendom which 
marked the new school was not purely a love for ecclesiastical 
authority. This was indeed one element ; but there was another 
yet more influential in many minds admiration for the saints of 
the Roman Church, and for the saintly ideal as realized especi- 
ally in the monastic life. We have already seen how this 
element operated in Mr. Ward's own history. Froude had 
struck the note of sanctity as well as the note of authority. 
He had raised an inspiring ideal on both heads ; and behold, 
with howevef much of practical corruption and superstition 
mixed up with their practical exhibition, these ideals were 
actually reverenced, attempted, often realized, in "the existing 
Roman Church. The worthies of the English Church even 
when sharing the tender piety of George Herbert or Bishop 
Ken fell short of the heroic aims, the martial sanctity, gained 
by warfare unceasing against world, flesh, and devil, which they 
found exhibited in Roman Hagiology. The glorying in the 
cross of Christ which is the key-note to such lives as those of 
St. Ignatius of Loyola and St. Francis Xavier, while it recalled 
much in the life of St. Paul, had no counterpart in post-Re- 
formation Anglicanism." 

As early as the long vacation at Oxford of 1842 the idea 
suggested itself to the mind of Dr. Newman of getting out 
this series of the Lives of the English Saints, and immediate 
measures were taken to secure writers and prepare for publica- 
tion. The first of the series reached our seminary, I think, in 
the winter of 1843 a d '44, during my second year's course. I 
have no complete list by me of the saints comprised in this 
series, but it included the Life of St. Stephen Harding, founder 
of the Cistercians, which involves much of that of his disciple, 
the great St. Bernard, St. Austin of Canterbury, St. Woolstan, 
St. William, St. Paulinus, St. Bega, St. Gilbert, St. Richard and 
his family, and Legends of Hermit Saints, some of these writ- 
ten by Newman himself. 

These biographies were couched in language more or less 
watered to suit Anglican ears ; but no daintiness of style nor 
dilution of matter could conceal the fact that the early English 
saints were utterly unlike Anglicans of the present day. In his 
Apologia pro Vita Sua Dr. Newman gives us his motives for 
starting this new enterprise. 

" I thought it would be useful," he says, " as employing the 



208 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Nov., 

minds of men who were in danger of running wild, bringing 
them from doctrine to history, and from speculation to fact ; 
again, as giving them an interest in the English soil and the 
English Church, and keeping them from seeking sympathy in 
Rome, as she is; and further as seeking to promote the spread 
of right views." 

This plan, however, for holding back earnest and truth-seek- 
ing minds from the necessary consequences which attach to 
truth, could not and did not work. Scarcely had his project 
taken wing than he was forced to write to a friend : " Within 
the last month, it has come upon me that, if the scheme goes 
on, it will be a practical carrying out of No. 90 ; ffom the char- 
acter of the usages and opinions of ante-reformation times." 

So indeed it was. Like No. 90, it forced matters onward 
to a crisis both in England and America. It did more than 
this. It led many eager minds to a more special consideration 
of monastic life as combining in its bosom a special grace for 
self-purification and perfection with a zeal for missionary labor. 
St. Stephen Harding, of Citeaux, was the model of a monk to 
whom the whole world had nothing to offer. St. Bernard, his 
great disciple, carried out from Citeaux a burning heart to 
which the world of souls was always appealing. 

In the next chapter I propose to show how the admiration 
for monasticism thus aroused led ardent souls among the Chel- 
sea graduates and students to projecting monastic institutions 
in their own church and actually experimenting in them. . 

(TO BE CONTINUED.) 





1894-] As BY A GREATER GLADNESS. 209 



AS BY A GREATER GLADNESS. 

BY KATHRYN PRINDIVILLE. 

[HE was going to write a novel. Not an ordinary 
story of the loves and lives of commonplace 
people, but a beautiful record of high aspirations 
that would lift souls above earthly pleasures and 
rarefy the mental and moral atmosphere of its 
readers, who would include, of course, the intelligent of the 
globe. Incidentally it was to render her name brilliant before 
humanity ; primarily it was to reform the world. 

She did not decide at once on a novel, but spent many 
weeks debating how best to deliver her wonderful message of 
regeneration. The most heroic manner, and therefore most 
alluring, was to compose a marvellous philippic in the style of 
Demosthenes, so forcible it would convince a sceptic, so elo- 
quent it would move a stone. 

" Men of America ! " her appearance pacing her room would 
be majestic, "seize your opportunity. Cast aside the dark ban- 
dages sordid wealth lays on your eyes. Lift up your heads 
and see beauty, truth, and virtue, ready to be your inspiration 
to a higher life, and through you to guide mankind to the 
noblest preparation for eternity." She never could advance a 
second theory, for her heart would beat uncomfortably fast,* 
and the glowing eyes, overleaping her words, would rest on a 
vision where brotherly love and contentment made the men of 
America a world example. 

The President, whose prosaic nineteenth century attire would 
be changed in some vague but becoming fashion into flowing 
draperies imparting a benign aspect to his countenance, would 
wonderingly inquire for the author of this happiness, and a 
timid, graceful girl, gowned in white, would step forward and 
bow gently. She tried to imagine what she would answer 
when the President exclaimed in surprise at the youthful appari- 
tion. She wanted to be at ease, but as every effort failed to 
concentrate attention on a suitable reply, she resolved to trust 
to the moment's inspiration. 

Unfortunately for the philippic, a domestic disturbance 
caused her to admit reluctantly that the time was not yet ripe 
for her eloquent plea. She had unconsciously acquired a dog- 
VOL. LX. 14 



2IO 



As BY A GREATER GLADNESS. [Nov., 



matic tone to her voice which rather nettled her spirited 
brothers, and slightly ruffled the family serenity; but as it did 
not seriously interfere with comfort, they laughed and left her 
alone. But when the cook requested an interview with the 
mother of the family and stormily announced her intention of 
leaving because of " Miss Mary's interferin'," it was another thing. 

" Sure, mum, I never was used to havin' folks pokin' around 
me kitchen, and tellin' me what to do and what not to do. I 
don't pertind to be a saint, mum, but I know me own business, 
which is more than some others do." 

That doomed the philippic. The boys were especially fond 
of that cook, and rallied to her support with a vigor that sent 
Miss Mary to her room dissolved in tears but secretly satisfied 
to suffer for principle. All great apostles of reform were per- 
secuted and misunderstood, and it was only a sign she was con- 
sidered worthy the cause she would never renounce ; only, perhaps, 
another way would suit better the intolerance of the age. So 
the philippic never reached the President, but the cook remained. 

She was rather subdued for awhile, unable to seize the 
right vent for her brain energy. Disconnected plans floated 
through her mind, but they were unsatisfactory illusions not 
combining the two essentials of her scheme, Redemption of 
humanity and Self-glorification. Once in a while the ruling 
passion would overcome timidity, but a check was finally 
placed on all philanthropic eccentricities and turned her inclina- 
tions emphatically towards the romance. 

Going into church one afternoon, she discovered the lady 
next her ready to enter the confessional with her gloves on. 
Now that was against the rubric of the sacrament and must not 
be tolerated. She fidgeted about, ostentatiously pulled off her 
own gloves, and covertly watched the effect. It was useless. The 
lady never noticed the hint, and therefore must be told her duty. 

Miss Mary was naturally retiring in disposition, and it re- 
quired a stout buckling on of the armor of faith before she 
could turn and point out the delinquency, and her confident 
words were weakened by the low, faltering voice. 

" Won't you please take off your gloves ? It is against the 
rule of the church to wear them." 

The surprised neighbor turned and leisurely surveyed the 
embarrassed individual beside her, and a smile of cynical amuse- 
ment accompanied her laconic answer. 

" I prefer to keep them on." 

The hot blood surged through Mary's frame, and she re- 



1894-] As BY A GREATER GLADNESS. 211 

gistered a vow in her inner consciousness to approach people 
only through their emotional and intellectual veins, as duty was 
a word unacknowledged. So the novel had its conception and 
kept its author's attention away from family faults. 

It was rather difficult to start this wonderful story. Her 
mind was a confused medley of many plots, none of which ex- 
actly filled requirements. The general scheme was fascinatingly 
vague, and while she waited in delighted expectancy for 
thought to crystallize, she occupied time in creating snatches of 
conversation, describing bits of scenery that never lay on sea 
or land, collecting copious extracts of others' noble thoughts, 
arid dreaming dreams of a complacent future. 

One thing only was definitely settled. In all the upheaval of 
design and custom the beautiful heroine never lost her graceful 
serenity, never faded her golden hair, never wrinkled her 
broad, low brow. Nameless and alone in that sea of disturb- 
ance, she was the anchor securely chained to the author's 
jubilant hopes. 

The hero was as illusive as the plot. Whether to redeem a 
society man's society vices by the purity and virtue of Ameri- 
can womanhood, or to elevate, educate, and humanize a son of 
toil by contact with feminine morality, culture, and charity ! 
It was difficult to decide his environment ; so mentally photo- 
graphing him tall and dark, she resolved to await mental de- 
velopment. There was no definite hurry. The people would 
be as much in need of reformation next year as to-day, and 
would as eagerly hail the new apostle and the new doctrine. 

She passed six months in dreamy unconsciousness of the 
lapse of time, during which the opening sentence of her novel 
became as changeable as the color of the hero's eyes. Then 
she heard a sermon. The first words were lost on an inatten- 
tive spirit, but a single sentence darted through her ears and 
branded itself on mental consciousness in letters of fire : 

"If you would become a saint, do the common things of 
life uncommonly well." 

The summons reverberated through her being for two days 
"The common things of life uncommonly well" then she 
slowly took up the fragmentary novel, read its manifold evolve- 
ments carefully, held the papers hesitatingly a moment, then 
lingeringly tore and retore the long shreds. She thoughtfully 
fingered the little mound of white scraps, then quietly deposited 
.it in the waste-basket, locked her writing-desk, put away some 
books and opened her room door. 




THE BISHOP PONTIFICATING. 




THE CHURCH IN ARMENIA. 
BY RIGHT REV. PAUL TERZIAN, BISHOP OF TARSUS AND ADANA. 

HE first evangelist of the Armenian nation was 
the Apostle Thaddeus. He converted a portion 
of the people, and the work begun by him was 
completed in the third century by the Armenian 
evangelist, St. Gregory, called " The Illuminator." 
Since that time Armenia has remained steadfast in the faith 
which by the special favor of Divine Providence she received. 

St. Gregory, after having baptized the Armenian king, Cri- 
toedes, and all his people, returned to Rome accompanied by 
the king, that the latter might make his submission to the See 
of St. Peter, the supremacy of which over all the Christian 
churches he recognized. The conferring of the pallium by the 
Supreme Pontiff, St. Sylvester, on the patriarch, was the means 
of attaching the Armenians most warmly to the august head of 
the universal church. The prayer which St. Gregory composed 
for the continuance of these sentiments, when he was at the 
point of death, is still extant. 

In the fifth century an unfortunate schism arose, however, 
to mar the effects of the good work. The religious distractions 



1 894.] THE CHURCH IN ARMENIA. 213 

of the time and the obstinacy of some of the Armenian hier- 
archy eventuated in a revolt from the authority of the Holy 
See, which carried a portion of the nation along with the se- 
ceders. A considerable number, however, remained faithful. 
These, our Catholic ancestors, showed an admirable constancy 
under many protracted and bitter persecutions at the hands of 
their schismatic countrymen, which lasted in various forms 
down to the beginning of the present century. Their constancy, 
under imprisonment, stripes, and exile, was the means of win- 
ning over many schismatic Armenians to the true faith. 

THE HOLY SEE AND THE ARMENIANS. 

The Holy See has taken the deepest interest in the fortunes 
of the faithful Armenian Catholics. It has conferred upon them 
many signal marks of its regard. Several of the sovereign pon- 
tiffs have distinguished themselves by their solicitude for the 
welfare of these persecuted Catholics, who at the beginning of 
the present century only numbered a few thousands. Since then, 
thanks to the generosity of the Catholics of Europe, many new 
missions have been started, and the building of new churches 
and school-houses has proceeded on all sides. Young men desirous 
of joining the priesthood are sent to the college of the Propa- 
ganda in Rome, and the college in Armenia founded and en- 
dowed by the present illustrious Pontiff, and named after him, 
receives those who prefer to remain at home. The princely 
generosity and affection which Pope Leo has shown in this 
matter proves that he regards the Armenians, amongst all 
Oriental peoples, with singular affection. He desires, evidently, 
to secure the return of the stray sheep to the fold ; and we, 
Armenian Catholics, pray without ceasing for the prolongation 
of his life. 

So well educated now is our comparatively small community 
that it is far more influential, by comparison, than the three 
millions of schismatic Armenian Christians. Year by year the 
condition of these miserable people becomes more deplorable. 
The number of dioceses is steadily diminishing. European civ- 
ilization, as it penetrates the East, produces disorganization 
amongst them. 

They do not any longer recognize the obligation of Catholi- 
cism to stand up as the defender of Christian religion ; yet they 
prefer it to Protestantism, unless in extreme cases. This I will 
show by the following reasons : 



214 



THE CHURCH IN ARMENIA. 



[Nov., 



j. THE MOVEMENT AND TENDENCY OF NON-UNIAT ARMENIANS 

TOWARD UNION. 

The movement toward Catholicism is an incontestable fact. 
To prove it there is one reason most convincing, and embracing 
all the others. This is the number of conversions effected dur- 
ing the past fifty or sixty years, and the continued growth of 
such conversions from year to year. Since the time when our 
communion received an official and hierarchical status separate 
from the non-Uniat Armenians (a comparatively short time as 
things move in the East), we have had created in our patriarch- 
ate sixteen dioceses and more than two hundred thousand souls 
converted to the Catholic faith. Thus, before 1850, the diocese 
of Adana, as well as many others, had no existence. In all the 
vast extent of Cilicia there was not a single Catholic, as it is 
generally known, who was not tainted with schism. About that 
time a holy bishop named Paul came from Egypt and, at the 
request of many Armenian Catholics, settled down at Adana. 




BISHOP OFFICIATING AT HIGH MASS, WITH TWO ASSISTANT PRIESTS. 

He rented a house and immediately began to quicken the dor- 
mant faith of the Catholic population. In a short time he had 
the happiness of converting many families. Tarsus was the 
second city to which he paid a visit ; Jt was in 1854. Lis, the 
most interesting city in the province, was also converted later 



1894-] THE CHURCH IN ARMENIA. 215 

on. In 1876 the most important city of the Cilician highlands, 
Hadjine, where American Protestantism had much influence, 
and had founded missions and schools, was selected as a place 
for missionary work, and the only hospitality at first found was 
the shelter of a hill, and since then a wretched barrack. In 
this place, for want of better quarters, divine worship is still 
carried on, with a congregation of about four hundred families, 
all converts. Many more towns and villages have asked for 
Catholic missionaries, but owing to lack of resources no priests 
have yet been appointed to those places. To myself it has been 
vouchsafed, thanks to the generosity of benefactors, to re- 
ceive the recantation of more than a hundred and fifty Arme- 
nian families ; but unhappily I have not been able to go 
to all. 

It must be confessed that at the outset we met with enor- 
mous obstacles in those missions, and our efforts were often 
fruitless. We Catholic missionaries often turn out to be the 
objects of misrepresentation, and we suffer much accordingly. 
The strict schismatic Armenians hold themselves aloof, fearing 
that the Catholic missionaries wish to effect a union in order 
to get the Latin rite, of which they are ignorant, adopted, and 
so cause them to lose their national character, of which their 
language and their religious ritual are such striking marks. But, 
seeing that the Armenian Catholics scrupulously preserve their 
rites and their national tongue, the schismatics perceive they 
have been premature in this conclusion. By the same evidence 
they find they are not in the true path of faith, and, un- 
easy in this condition, they desire to be put in the way of sal- 
vation. 

The gravitation toward union is as real and tangible as all 
the sufferings which our missions have endured, and which, in 
the inscrutable ways of Providence, they still endure. Many 
missions in my diocese had been long without a priest and with- 
out schools ; and down to the present some are in the same 
state of neglect for want of means; yet, despite the most rabid 
persecution, a goodly number of converts remain firm in the 
faith. In the East the priest is looked upon as a necessary ad- 
junct to the family, and is entrusted with all their confidential 
affairs. When a member is sick or in affliction he is ready to 
succor and console them by day or by night. Our converts have 
had to endure this privation. They are obliged to seek a priest 
in some very remote place, in the hour of their need. Yet, de- 
spite all these obstacles, they remain constant, and the move- 



2I 6 THE CHURCH IN ARMENIA. [Nov., 

ment toward union continues. Since to become a Catholic in- 
volves the recognition of the Pope as the spiritual head of the 
universal church, the non-Uniat Armenians are not able to 
ignore, nor yet able to deny, the supremacy of the Roman pon- 
tiffs. That doctrine is clearly set out in our hymns and ritual, 
and these are the same as those used by our separated breth- 
ren, which they chant every day in their churches. Moreover, 
the writings of St. Gregory the Illuminator, his entire teach- 
ing, based upon the unity of the church, cry out from the 
past even to-day to draw all the faithful into the one fold of 
the universal church. 

Again, through want of discipline and system the bishops and 
priests of the schismatic church are sunk in crass ignorance and 
deplorable indifference. Through being cut off from Rome, 
which is the source of the sciences, of order and discipline, the 
focus from which intellectual and moral illumination radiates, 
they sink deeper and deeper into spiritual and moral degra- 
dation. Under the jurisdiction of teachers incapable of 
guiding, their flocks show all the inertness and uncertainty 
of a crowd without leader or object. My heart was filled 
with dismay on finding, during one of my visitations, that 
many Armenians, sick of the attitude of the schismatic bishops 
and priests, had become Mussulmans seven years before. Their 
language was full of maledictions against those bishops and 
priests, rapacious wolves who devoured without pity the in- 
nocent sheep and lambs of the fold of our Shepherd, Jesus 
Christ. In each of my journeys I passed several days with 
those unhappy people, praying with and preaching to them, to 
atone for the sin of hating those hirelings. Little by little I 
succeeded in bringing them back. 

But what shall I say of the ecclesiastics themselves who, 
separated from the Catholic Church, are fallen into every kind 
of misery? Here, in the town of Lis, there is a wretched man 
who, from being a schismatic bishop, has gone over to the Ma- 
hometans ! Imagine my feelings to find this man coming to visit 
me without a particle of shame. (In those missions I have 
neither servants nor doorkeepers, nor secluded apartments, so 
that everybody can come in without danger of being turned 
away.) What do I see ? A man with a Turkish turban on his 
head, and who bears at the same time an episcopal character! 
Ah! in that moment I almost forgot myself. I fain would 
reason with him a little, but speech failed me ; I did not know 
what to do ; I involuntarily covered my face with my hands 



i8 9 4.] 



THE CHURCH IN ARMENIA. 



217 



to hide my tears ; I could think of nothing on account of my 
grief. After a little I retired to another room, that I might weep 
my fill. There is nothing for the Armenians to do but to secede 
from such degraded clergy and become good Catholics ? They see 
the vast difference between them and the Catholic clergy. They 
see the latter well educated, pious, active, zealous, given to the 
practice of every virtue, well disciplined, devoted to the instruc- 
tion and the sanctification of the people. They perceive their 
churches are well kept, the religious ceremonies preserved in all 
their purity, the rite and the national language not only ob- 
served but cultivated and embellished. They behold the good 







PRIEST OFFICIATING AT MASS. 

behavior of the children, their careful instruction, in religious 
as well as intellectual matters, which the Catholic schools give 
their pupils. They cannot help making a comparison, and are 
forced to confess that the Catholics are on the true road, and 
that they themselves are in error. They feel that they are 
branches cut off from the trunk, and that they never can pro- 
duce any fruit, for they are deprived of the life-giving sap. 
Hence there is a general predisposition toward union. 

We sincerely hope that, before Protestantism seizes upon 
this unhappy country, the good God may vouchsafe us the 
means and the power, through pious benefactors, to win over 
the stray sheep. 



2I g THE CHURCH IN ARMENIA. [Nov., 

There is another condition which tends towards union. The 
Armenians are poor. God has not blessed those rebellious 
children with riches. The schismatic Armenians, whose actual 
number is about three millions, for many years have been so 
impoverished that they are unable to maintain their clergy 
decently. So they witness the gradual ruin of their nationality 
by misery, and their religion by Protestantism, whose progress 
for the last fifty years has been considerable. 

I do not wish to speak here of the political motives which 
tend continuously towards union. These motives are powerful 
and are daily growing stronger. But it is sufficient to say that 
it is impossible for the schismatic Armenians to preserve the 
status quo. They must either reject Protestantism, which would 
destroy their national character, or embrace Catholicism, by 
which they can preserve everything dear to them. The latter 
is the easier course for them, since in becoming orthodox 
Catholics they cannot be set down as making any change in 
their religion, because they will have the same belief, the same 
language, the same rite and usage, the same ornaments, the 
same books so that if a schismatic entered any one of our 
churches by chance he would find no difference, save in the 
references to our Holy Father the Pope, in the ritual of the 
Mass and the other offices. In becoming Catholics they would 
only change their bishops and clergy ; and in that case, as they 
are well persuaded, in place of a selfish and corrupt clergy, they 
would have a body of priests who, although poor, would be 
entirely devoted to their spiritual welfare. They realize, in 
fine, that they would be most happy under a clergy who re- 
spect the civil government of the country, since to an ignor- 
ant and incapable priesthood are to be attributed so much of 
their misery and the ruin of their best interests. 

And why, then, some one will ask me, are not the Ar- 
menians Catholics? What are the obstacles in the way? This 
brings me to the second point. 

II. THE OBSTACLES WHICH PREVENT THE UNION DESIRED BY 
OUR HOLY FATHER POPE LEO XIII. 

In the first place, after having considered the reasons set 
out above, we are persuaded that all the Armenians will after a 
little time become Catholics and be brought t(5 the union de- 
sired by our Holy Father. This belief it is that makes us 
redouble our efforts, support the most trying privations, and 
work under all sorts of inconvenience and annoyances in our 



1894-] THE CHURCH IN ARMENIA. 219 

visitations. But, alas ! the fruits of our labor are not commen- 
surate with the toil; conversions are made slowly and with 
difficulty. 

It would be tedious to enumerate all those obstacles in 
detail, but there are some which must be attributed to the 
imprudence of our Catholic missionaries in styling the non- 
Uniats schismatics and heretics, and inculpating them in the 
errors of past centuries ; they drive away those unhappy Chris- 
tians by such rude treatment. There are others who, believing 
that the Oriental rite is incompatible with Catholic faith, en- 
deavor to impose upon those Christians the Latin rite, and 
compel them, if not expressly, at least by implication, to re- 
nounce their own ritual, to which they are ardently attached. 
Once they are brought to believe that they are compelled to 
change their rite by the adoption of Catholicism, it is most 
difficult to persuade them to the contrary. Here are two 
formidable obstacles which operate to prevent the union de- 
sired by our Holy Father, in the Church of the East. He 
counsels the missionaries to proceed with prudence ; and to the 
Orientals he confirms the rites which have existed in their 
church from apostolic times ; he enjoins them to guard these 
rites in all their purity. The letters of the Sovereign Pontiff 
have borne fruit, and the good work goes on. Little by little 
the fears of the Armenians are being removed, and we hope 
that during his glorious pontificate Leo XIII. will have the 
happiness to see what he so ardently desires realized. 

Coming to material obstacles, poverty and want of means 
are conspicuous at the outset. The Oriental bishops, cut off 
from all other sources of income, are only allowed from 2,000 
to 2,500 francs per annum by the Propaganda to meet all the 
expenses of their maintenance and travelling, etc. They are 
compelled to live in a style hardly befitting the dignity of the 
episcopacy. During my own pastoral visitations I have to 
travel in the most rigidly economical style ; often with no vehi- 
cle, but only the horse or the ass on which I am mounted, 
with the proprietor for company. We are at the same time 
hard pressed very frequently to provide food and drink for the 
missionaries, because the honorarium of a franc for each Mass 
is the insufficient allowance. 

Amongst other expenses of a mission are the following : 

The missions are. carried on amongst the poorest class of 
the population, because this is the class most steeped in ig- 
norance and most in need of instruction. In these cases the 



220 THE CHURCH IN ARMENIA. [Nov., 

bishop is bound to provide out of his own pocket the state 
expenses of getting registered as an independent religious 
community the population whom he has released from the 
oppressive authority of the schismatic bishop. It should be 
known that in the East every bishop is recognized by the 
government as the head of the local commune, and has con- 
siderable power under the privileges accorded him by the 
sultan, by means of which he may provide for the protection 
of his flock against possible violence on the part of schismatic 
neighbors who may think their interests imperilled by the 
change. 

Then, again, there are the expenses of maintaining the local 
chapel and the school and the emoluments of the school-teachers. 
For the miserable barrack wherein we are compelled to adminis- 
ter the sacraments, and which becomes suffocating when filled 
with people, we have to pay a high rent. Sometimes the 
crowd is so great that we are obliged to administer the sacra- 
ments in the open air. What a humiliating spectacle before our 
Protestant friends! So, too, with regard to the presbytery and 
the school-house. So small are these buildings that frequently 
the bishop, the priest, the school-master, and the domestic are 
obliged to carry on their respective duties all in the same com- 
mon room ! I assure you that during five years' missions in 
another station I have been obliged to make the room which 
served me for a kitchen at times serve also for the sacred 
purposes of religion. These things are all great obstacles to 
our success as missionaries, because whilst we are driven to 
such extremes, the Protestant missionaries are lodged in 
splendid houses, are building commodious schools, paying 
liberal salaries to teachers, and rearing fine churches. 

Let me give you an example. Last winter one of my 
priests was celebrating Mass in a temporary chapel, and in the 
middle of the service he was obliged to pause for awhile 
in order to sweep away the snow which had fallen upon 
the altar. His hands became almost frost-bitten from the 
operation, so that he suffered much pain for several hours. A 
fierce keen wind was blowing at the time, and the congregation 
were shivering with the cold. Sometimes it blew out the tapers 
on the altar. The rigor of the seasons at times here would 
tax the endurance of the hardiest Christians of the early ages. 

In my own church of Adana, which I cannot dignify by the 
name of a cathedral, I have had to change the site of the altar 
several times in order to escape the torrents of rain in wet 



1 894.] 



THE CHURCH IN ARMENIA. 



221 



weather, or the little avalanches of clay from the sides of the 
hill under which the church is built. Owing to the wretched 
state of the roof, I fear that the edifice will one day be ruined 
by a storm. It was at one time a store-house ; now it has to 
serve the purposes of a church. 

Our people, it will be admitted, deserve the highest praise 
for the manner in which they bear these trials : but it is not in 
human nature to endure for ever. Hence some places have 
remained without churches for the past twenty or thirty years. 
As at Hadjine, at Tarsus, at Char where the people, 
after many sacrifices, have been able to get their children 




PRIEST READING THE GOSPEL. 

educated, and some families have been won over to the 
Catholic faith, all but these are wavering at the sight of 
the wealth and the splendid churches of the Protestants, 
and the liberality with which they are supported, contrasting 
so strongly with their own poverty and squalor. One year, 
for example, during a mission at Char, the inhabitants, 
owing to scarcity of food, were in extreme danger, and the 
Protestants, on hearing it, very promptly sent them very gener- 
ous help by a native messenger. But as for the Catholics, 
more numerous by far than the Protestants, I myself, in order 
to avoid the expense of hiring a messenger, carried their con- 



222 THE CHURCH IN ARMENIA. [Nov., 

tributions, which only amounted to two hundred francs, as com- 
pared -with about two thousand francs which the American 
minister alone subscribed to the Protestant fund. What a 
humiliation for us Catholics ! 

But it is not this difficulty or that humiliation which 
troubles us, because we know by experience that the influence of 
the ceremonies to which the Armenians are attached is very great. 
After the monetary relief which Protestant bounty, out of its 
abundance, had sent, was exhausted, Protestant principles were 
sought to be introduced with no less celerity. It was with the 
infant population that the experiment was tried, because when 
religious bias is implanted in childhood it is likely to remain 
fixed in most cases. It is here the greatest obstacle is found, 
in the want of Catholic schools and churches, and the 
failure of the seminary to furnish native missionaries of the 
Catholic rite. It is for this reason that, with all my poverty, 
since I arrived in this diocese I have opened eight schools in 
different places ; I have brought the nuns to teach the children. 
These schools I maintain only with the greatest difficulty. I 
share my table and home with five seminarians, for the purpose 
of training them for the priesthood of the same rite, in order 
that they may in time take a good part in the spiritual work 
of this extensive diocese. 

I have said "priests of the same rite," because there .are in 
the East many missionaries of different orders in the Latin rite 
Jesuits, Franciscans, Capuchins, etc., largely supported by the 
generous help of France. They are diligent, well educated, 
exemplary, virtuous, and saintly in their lives; but for all that 
they are not successful. The experience of a quarter of a 
century proves to me that the reason they are not able to 
make any conversions is that they are not of the Oriental rite. 
And if in a few places they are able to win over some families 
to the Latin rite, it produces a sinister effect upon their 
neighbors by raising the suspicion that Catholicism will one day 
destroy their nationality; and this drives them away. It is to 
remove this obstacle that the Holy Father prays the Holy 
Spirit may direct that the conversion of the East may be 
effected by Oriental priests. To this end he encourages us in 
our labors, he solicits the pious benevolence of the outside 
faithful in our aid. We trust that the fervent Catholics of 
America, and more especially those devoted to St. Paul, may 
help us to carry on the work of St. Peter, by holding out 
a helping hand to our impoverished missionaries who labor in- 



1894-] THE CHURCH IN ARMENIA. 223 

cessantly to bring back to the fold of Christ his wandering 
sheep. 

III. IF THE NON-UNIAT ARMENIANS BECOME CATHOLICS, THEY 
DO NOT REQUIRE ANY CHANGE IN RlTUAL, CEREMONIES, 
VESTMENTS, OR USAGES. 

It is to the blessing of identity of ceremonies we owe the 
continual conversions ; it is by the same blessing I have been 
enabled to get hold of the one schismatic church in my dio- 
cese during the past few months. Half the population are now 
converted to Catholicism; but there was no local building fit to 
celebrate the holy mysteries in, and the severity of the weather 
would not permit of holding service in the open air always. In 
those circumstances the happy thought struck me to send for 
the key of the old church, which had been closed for a very 
long time. Everybody came to assist the Catholics through 
devotion, the schismatics through curiosity. I celebrated Mass ; 
I preached to the people, speaking of the desirability of union 
of the churches, and of the aspiration of the great Pontiff, Leo 
XIII., waiting -with open arms to give all Christians the kiss 
of peace. Fortunately there is over the main altar a painting 
of St. Gregory the Illuminator, and I was able to give a brief 
sketch of the life of that venerable saint who in the third cen- 
tury of the church recognized the infallible authority of its head, 
Pope Sylvester. On leaving the church, far from raising any 
difficulties, the schismatics declared that they did not see any 
difference between Catholicism and their own belief. 

The identity of usages and ceremonies, then, is a powerful 
source of attraction to the schismatic Armenians. To give the 
readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD a notion of our ceremonies 
and sacred vestments I have had some groups photographed 
and sent with this article. 

The first picture shows the Armenian bishop pontificating, 
with two deacons who wear stoles crossed diagonally over their 
chests, and are accompanied by two choir-boys. You perceive 
the ornaments used in the Armenian Mass the fanlike instru- 
ments borne on either side of the celebrant serve two purposes ; 
they are used to keep flies away from the chalice, and attached 
to each plaque are little bells which tinkle from time to time 
during the sacred ceremony. These instruments have been in 
use from the first ages of the church in Armenia. 

The second group shows the bishop officiating at High Mass, 
with two priests assisting. : 



224 



THE CHURCH IN ARMENIA. 



[Nov., 



In the third picture is shown the Armenian priest celebrat- 
ing Mass, holding the doctor's staff, according to the Armenian 
rite. 

In the fourth picture the priest is reading the Gospel. 

The fifth group shows the costumes of our choristers. Among 
them are placed two boys robed in the costume of the coun- 
try. 

Our offices and ceremonies are marked by many most ex- 
pressive and beautiful prayers, in which the blessing of Catholic 
unity and the welfare of Catholic rulers and our clergy, and the 
exaltation of the Church, are many times fervently besought. 
The expression of perfect faith in the Real Presence of our 
Lord upon the altar is also emphasized throughout. We pro- 




CHORISTERS PRACTISING. 

claim our attachment to the living faith of the ancient church, 
and our love for the beauty of the church which is the spouse 
of Jesus Christ, which exists for the salvation of the world. 
The language of our prayers is most poetic and beautiful, re- 
minding us of the celestial kingdom of which this life is but the 
portal. Amongst many others I wish to send you the words 
of one which we always chant after the first offertory, whilst 
the celebrant incenses the congregation and prepares to enter : 
"Au tabernacle de la saintte, au lieu de rendement de grace, 
a la demeure des anges, au lieu d'expiations des pches des 
Jiommes." The chanters continue: 



1894-] THE CHUKCH IN ARMENIA. 225 

" In unison with this divine offering, assembled in the holy 
temple to celebrate the sacraments of thanksgiving with odori- 
ferous incense, we sing our canticles before the altar of the holy 
Sacrifice. Vouchsafe to receive, O Lord God, the prayers, the 
incense, the myrrh, and the cinnamon we offer thee, and to 
preserve in holiness those who offer them, that they may 
always serve thee without ceasing. Through the intercession of 
the Holy Virgin deign to receive the supplications of thy 
ministers. 

" Thou, O Christ, who by thy precious blood hast glorified 
thy church in heaven and on earth thou has given us here the 
teachings of the apostles, the prophets, the holy doctors. 
United here to-day with them, the priests, the deacons, the 
choristers, the clerks, offer their prayers, their songs, and their 
incense before thee, like Zachary of old. Deign to receive these 
our prayers, mingled with this incense, as the sacrifices of Abel, 
of Nocy and of Abraham. By the intercession of the heavenly 
powers guard, we beseech thee, thy holy church. 

"Rejoice, O daughter of light, Holy Mother Church, with 
thy children of Sion ! Adorn majestically, O glorious spouse, 
this altar luminous with the light of heaven ! Anoint the ever- 
lasting sacrifice, consummated for the conciliation of the Eter- 
nal Father, by which in expiation for our sins Christ offers his 
precious Body and Blood. For the accomplishment of his holy 
Incarnation, he granted the remission of sins to that out of 
which he built his temple." 

I cannot now occupy any more space with the prayers, 
whether of the Mass or of the other offices, which express and 
excite the fervent devotion of the people. I will conclude with 
the last prayer of the celebrant, chanted as he stands with 
arms outstretched and elevated, before the benediction, at the 
end of the Mass. He prays as follows : 

" O Lord God, who blessest all those who bless and glorify 
thee, bless and preserve those who hope in thee ! Give life to 
thy people ! Bless their heritage, guard them in the unity of 
thy church. Purify all those here who are blessed in the 
beauty of thy house. We glorify thee for thy divine power. 
Abandon not those who hope in thee. Give peace to the 
whole world, to thy church, thy priests, to all Christian princes, 
their children, and their people. For all blessings and all 
graces which are showered upon us are from thee, who art the 
Father of light ! To thee be glory, power, and honor now and 
for ever and ever. Amen." 
VOL. LX. 15 



226 



To MY ALMA MA TER. 



[Nov., 



This charming prayer cannot be recited or listened to with- 
out tears, because herein is supplicated that union of the 
church so desired by our Divine Redeemer and his glorious 
vicegerent, Leo XIII. May heaven grant me the consolation 
of seeing it fulfilled in all Armenia, and especially in my own 
diocese, the land of St. Paul, in which you take so lively an 
interest ! 

The very reverend head of the Congregation of St. Paul has 
given me great support, and sends me a list of benefactors who 
have contributed most generously to the object I have in view. 
I hope, by working with additional zeal, I may be able to ex- 
pend the money sent, to the last farthing, to the honor of God 
and the glory of his church. Let me say one word to them 
in person : One day the thousands of souls saved through your 
bounty will render thanks to our heavenly Father ; they will 
bless you without ceasing, because you have ransomed them 
from the slavery of schism by your munificent alms. A thou- 
sand blessings be yours, O men of good will ! May blessed 
Paul, by his intercession, obtain for you the fullest measure of 
prosperity, spiritual and temporal, and accord you the conver- 
sion of America from end to end, for which you labor so 
earnestly ! For this will be raised daily to heaven all the pious 
hands in my poor diocese, all those of the children in our 
schools. 




TO MY ALMA MATER. 

GIVE thee all, as thou hast given to me : 

Whate'er I have, 'tis thou that makest it mine ; 
Nor richer thou for this my debt to thee 
A beggar's boon, a gift already thine. 

JOHN B. TABB. 




1894-] ITALIAN HARVEST SCENES. 227 

ITALIAN HARVEST SCENES. 
BY HENRIETTA DANA SKINNER. 

EW tourists ever spend a summer in Italy, yet 
if one would know anything of the customs and 
characteristics of the people of that country it 
is in summer, among rural and mountain popu- 
lations and along untravelled ways, that one 
should study them. 

It is during the early harvest season, in the midsummer 
days of late June, that we get some of our pleasantest glimpses 
into peasant life. Following a habit which during the turbu- 
lent middle ages was a necessity, the peasantry still, for the 
most part, live clustered together in little fortified towns on 
the hill-tops, descending daily into the fields and groves below 
to till the farms and cultivate the vines and fruit-trees. Their 
life is thus more social and cheerful than is common among 
our farmers, who, scattered about on isolated farms, at greater 
or less distance from their neighbors, often lead lonely and 
cheerless lives. But the Italian peasants live in close contact, 
knowing each other's joys and sorrows, sharing each other's la- 
bors and merry-makings. 

These little high-perched, picturesque towns, approached on- 
ly by steps cut in the side of the hill, or by winding paths for 
foot-passenger or donkey " donkey-towns," we used to call 
them are very healthy, having fine air and natural drainage. 
Each, no matter how primitive and inaccessible, has its large 
parish church in the centre, with the big, shady public square 
in front where all their gatherings are held social, religious, 
or political its communal " palace," its free school and library, 
and its village band. The steep, irregular streets are paved 
solid with enormous cobble-stones, worn by centuries of donkey- 
hoofs. The houses are low and roughly built of stone and stuc- 
co, and are, like the peasant himself, invariably dirty and pictur- 
esque without and as invariably clean and tidy within. A little 
shrine adorns the outside and a few bright-colored flowers bloom 
in the window. 

If the peasant is at home you may enter his cottage with- 
out hesitation or formality and be sure of a royal welcome. 



228 ITALIAN HARVEST SCENES. [Nov., 

He does not ask you whence or why you come or who you 
are, but immediately gives you the best chair by the best cor- 
ner of the enormous chimney, and offers you the best of his 
simple fare. You may be a prince or a wealthy foreigner, but 
the peasant is undisturbed in his gentle hospitality. There is 
no false shame or obsequiousness in his manner. He takes his 
seat near you and enters at once into friendly conversation, ob- 
serving perfect deference to his guest but without constraint or 
servility. The people of Italy are thoroughly permeated with 
the democratic spirit of their religion ; hence the exquisite cour- 
tesy and consideration that we find between all ranks, prince 
meeting peasant on grounds of confidence and friendly familiar- 
ity, without thought of condescension from one or presumption 
from the other. 

The peasant host quickly makes the stranger at home. The 
women and children gather about and take part in the conver- 
sation with cordial, fearless grace and intelligence, and one and 
all are hospitably anxious to contribute in some way to the 
well-being and happiness of the uninvited guest. 

But if the stranger has happened to stray into the village 
by day during the harvest season he will find it almost deserted. 
A few old women sit in the street in front of their doors with 
distaff and spindle or loom, spinning flax or weaving. A few 
decrepit old men watch the pigs and hens, a few little toddling 
children play about them in the sunshine. But all the able- 
bodied men and women, young boys and girls, are at work in 
the distant fields and vineyards and groves. Even the babies 
are there, for the young mothers take them strapped in baskets 
and, while at work, leave them to sleep in the shade near by. 

The summer working day begins with the first streak of 
dawn. Soon after three in the morning the inhabitants of the 
little town repair to the parish church, where the harvest Mass 
is said and a blessing on their labors invoked. They are all 
gathered there, men and women, young and old, and the dusky 
building rings with their devotional hymns and canticles. No 
Italian congregation is thoroughly happy until it sings. Their 
hymns are many and sweet. They put everything into rhyme 
their prayers, their devout aspirations, the stories of the Gospel, 
the simple teachings of the " Christian doctrine," as they call 
the catechism all are turned into graceful couplets and sung 
to simple, catchy tunes which even the tiny children know from 
their cradles. Many of their little rhymes are touching and 
pretty, full of childlike faith and love. They are very affection- 



1894-] ITALIAN HARVEST SCENES. 229 

ate, if one may say so, with the " Blessed God," as they al- 
ways call him. 

The harvest Mass is over in about twenty minutes, and the 
people then start down the hillside in merry groups, the young 
people laughing and singing and running races, the older ones 
following more sedately with their implements, the young 
mothers carrying their babies, the little boys driving the 
donkeys, the little girls trotting behind, bearing poised on their 
heads the dinner-pails containing the frugal meal of corn-bread 
and cheese, salt fish, and the thin, sour wine of the country. 
On reaching the fields, the groves, and the vineyards, all turn 
cheerfully to work till seven o'clock, when they rest a few 
moments for breakfast, and then labor again till noon. They 
divide into bands, working at different employments, and these 
bands sing almost incessantly during their work, answering each 
other back and forth in alternate strophes. Their field-songs 
are almost invariably sacred in character psalms and canticles 
of praise to God ; hymns to the Sacred Heart of the Saviour, to 
the Madonna, to St. Joseph, patron of the laboring man ; or 
rhyming stories from the Old Testament and legends of the 
Child Jesus, and of the saints. Some charming examples of 
these legends and field-songs have been given us by Miss 
Francesca Alexander in her exquisitely illustrated volumes The 
Roadside Songs of Tuscany, edited by Ruskin. The supply of 
verses to their songs is practically inexhaustible, for besides those 
that they have gathered from many generations of hymn-singing 
ancestors they are continually adding new ones of their own. 
Some one singer is noted for his power of improvisation and 
will from time to time interpolate a new verse, which those 
near catch up and repeat after him till soon every one in the 
field is singing it. Of love-songs we hear little during the work- 
ing hours, but when the hour of noon rest comes, and the sun 
is blazing hotly down, the peasants leave their work and gather 
in groups under the shade of the trees to eat their simple meal, 
the older ones among them repeating favorite legends of knight- 
ly adventure, while chosen singers sing strophes of the old 
love poetry, handed down by oral tradition from the minstrels 
and troubadours of the thirteenth century, and as fresh and 
new to-day as six 1 hundred years ago, so little does the heart of 
the generations change. 

But the noon meal is soon over, the day is hot and the 
singers are weary. They divide again into groups, the men and 
boys going off to one end of the field, the women and children 



230 ITALIAN HARVEST SCENES. [Nov., 

to another, and, stretching their limbs in the shade, all take a 
long noon-day nap. About three o'clock they start up and go 
to work again, lingering till half an hour after sunset, when the 
bells ring out from the belfry of the convent perched on the 
height above them. From a more distant summit other bells, 
faint and far off, answer sweetly, and from their own village 
church the noisy little bells clang joyously. It is the Angelus, 
the call to evening prayer, the Ave Maria, as they call it there, 
and all work is dropped, they bend their heads, cross them- 
selves reverently and repeat the words of the Evangelist, which 
tell of the Angel Gabriel announcing to the blessed maiden 
Mary that she is indeed blessed among women unto all genera- 
tions, for she is the mother of Him who shall save his people 
from their sins, the Eternal Word made flesh, Emmanuel, God 
with us! 

And now they wend their way slowly up the hillside. 
Tired? Yes, for the moment, no doubt, as they seek their 
cottages, where the evening meal has been carefully prepared for 
them by the aged grandparents. But no one would guess, art 
hour or two later, that weariness had ever kept company with 
them. The evening meal passes in social talk between young 
and old, three and often four generations gathering round the 
humble board, after the patriarchal fashion of the hills. The 
household work is then attended to and the children laid in 
bed, saying their little rhyming prayers, and even as sleep steals 
over them folding their hands and murmuring: 

" Nel bel Cuor di Gesu che mi ha redento, 
In pace mi riposo e mi addormento."* 

The older children and grown people then leave their cot- 
tages and, as night closes in, gather once more in the old church 
to lift their voices in the evening litanies and the prayer for 
the dead, and to receive the benediction. Then, passing out 
again, they all assemble on the public square, now flooded with 
the light of the harvest moon, and the merry-making begins. 
The older men and women sit about on benches or stand in 
groups gossiping and chatting sociably ; the younger men engage 
m friendly contests at bowls, pitching quoits, or a game with 
balls and rackets not unlike tennis; the youths and maidens 
dance tirelessly for hours to the music of violins, guitars, and 
tambourines, while the younger boys and girls play merry games 

*On Jesus, my Redeemer's, loving Breast 
In peace I lay me down and take my rest. 



1894-] ITALIAN HARVEST SCENES. 231 

resembling many played by our own boys and girls, except that 
they are invariably accompanied by rhythmic song, and that 
under the shadow of the Apennines " King George and his 
troops " become Hector and his Trojans, Charlemagne, Orlando, 
and the Knights of the Round Table, or Saladin and his Paynims, 
and the " tug of war " becomes the siege of Troy, or the storm- 
ing of Acre. Among these peasant children the heroes of Vir- 
gil and Dante and Tasso come to life, and the American child's 
game of " stage-coach " becomes the wanderings of JEneas or 
the adventures of Tancred, while " going to Jerusalem " is trans- 
formed into a tournament, where knight after knight with glo- 
rious mien and high-sounding title is made to bite the dust of 
shame, and he who remains victor of the field is crowned by 
the Queen of Love and Beauty. Even in their games of " for- 
feits " the chivalric idea prevails. The little peasant girl gives 
her knight a task to perform to redeem his pledge and win her 
favor, and when he performs it to the satisfaction of the by- 
standers they call upon her in chorus to reward the faithful 
knight and atone for her own severity by doing homage to the 
blushing hero and kissing him upon the cheek : 

" Far la penitenza ! 
Dar la riverenza ! 
Dare un bel bacino ! " 

Such tender rewards, however, are confined to the games of 
children, for the notions of decorum are very strict among these 
mountain people. The dances of the young men and maidens 
are an instance of this. Anything in the nature of our round 
dances is unknown. There the maidens dance hand-in-hand, 
the youths opposite them, and there is much passing back and 
forth and in and out, much saluting and curtseying and cutting 
of pigeon-wings, much laughter and merriment, but never once 
does the youth so much as touch the hand of the maiden who 
is his partner in the dance. Yet with all the distance between 
them they seem to understand each other very well. They 
marry young, these mountaineers, and are in every way encour- 
aged and helped to do so. 

At intervals during the merry-making the village band plays 
amid great applause. All are apparently forgetful that they 
must be up at three o'clock on the morrow to begin another 
day of labor, and it is nearly eleven o'clock before the laughter 
and music and dancing cease and the moonlit town is once more 
wrapped in silence. 




232 HERE AND THERE IN CATHOLICISM. [Nov., 



HERE AND THERE IN CATHOLICISM. 

BY HENRY AUSTIN ADAMS. 

T.A PROTESTANT STRONGHOLD. 
3 

HE whirligig of time has treated the traveller in 
Europe to many a curious and unaccountable 
bit of the unexpected. 

So one has but half an eye to the relations 
of things in general and to the exquisite per- 
spectives called in time " history," the odds are that a few weeks' 
quiet browsing almost anywhere in Europe will result in un- 
dermining more than one old misconception as to men and 
meanings. 

Given a Catholic eye and an American bringing up, and the 
chances are that in every corner of the old world one is likely 
to meet something not down in his authorized guide book. 

It shall go hard but the cocksureness and " common-sense " 
of our oracles, who know it all, will get a set-back like enough 
to cause us to do more thinking in the future at first hand, and 
to swallow what we see in the paper and the history and the 
accepted authorities generally with a copious admixture of salt. 

Of course nobody need go into the Catholic countries of the 
Continent unprepared for the worst. Do not one's Prescott, 
one's Motley, one's Irving, drop a grand oracular phrase or two 
on which your whole pack of tourists, essayists, and preachers 
have been ringing the changes ad nauseam ever since ? 

Assuredly nobody can justly blame the "authorities" if his 
optimism suffers a shock in atheistic France and licentious Spain. 
Should one so far transcend his laid-down itinerary as to stroll 
from his inn at, say, five in the morning to the village church 
over the hills there, to find it full of men and women actually 
intent upon assisting at the adorable Sacrifice (just as though it 
were still the middle ages), surely one must not blame the au- 
thorities for failing to notice a thing like that. Five o'clock is 
early of a morning. 

Again, one turns from the " effete," " priest-ridden," naughty 
countries of the South toward the magnificent, enlightened 
states in the north of Europe, fully prepared to find men there 



1894-] HERE AND THERE IN CATHOLICISM. 233 

either emancipated from belief and leading sober, scientific lives 
of thought (very unlike French unbelief, which is wicked), or 
else holding a pure, reformed, and rational Christianity in one 
or other of the mutually destructive but collectively Protestant 
bodies. True, in America there are immense churches, colleges, 
dioceses, filled with sturdy Germans stoutly maintaining that 
they are Catholics. Where did they come from ? By rights 
they should be either learnedly proving God an untenable hy- 
pothesis over their rational beer, or else praising so much of 
the Divine in Christ as the latest advices from Tubingen declare 
can be proved from the up-to-date New Testament ! 

I was thinking about these things very early last Easter 
morning as I stood at the top of the majestic flight of steps 
which sweep up to the Briihl Terrace in Dresden. 

Before me lay that striking picture of the " Platz " teeming 
with historic associations, the central, splendid crown of the 
Saxon capital. 

Away to the right, from the very foot of the steps, stretched 
the sturdy Augustus Bridge, whose massive arches had felt and 
survived the thunders of Napoleon's cannon. And over it now 
from the Neustadt side of the Elbe, in the fine bracing air, 
were pouring the people churchward. 

On the right, and beyond the bridge, the Royal Theatre 
was the first of the stately circle surrounding the Schloss Platz 
a solid and splendid pile, the home of the deepest and best 
in music. 

Next, the fagade of the Zwinger swept far across the broad 
square ; to me, at that moment, meaning only one thing the 
Sistine Madonna of Raphael. Yes, there it is in its lonely sub- 
limity in the little room at the extreme right-hand side. This 
Easter sun now must be falling upon it through that last high 
window there. 

At the left of the now thronged Platz the long, irregular 
outline of the group of royal palaces completes the architec- 
tural background of the picture, while the heights beyond the 
city, the sparkling, dashing current of the river, and the dim, 
blue, distant hills, heighten the nameless beauty. 

And here, quite in the centre of the noble setting, rises the 
dark, vast mass of the court church. Innumerable heroic statues 
of the saints, set upon pinnacles and gables, vividly animate the 
otherwise too ponderous pile. 

A lofty German tower that tapers in successive stages to a 
cross-capped shaft ; and a belfry full of bells instinct with life. 



234 HERE AND THERE IN CATHOLICISM. [Nov., 

Not hidden bells, not bells that toll lugubriously for a faithless 
cult ; but bells that clang and sing and fairly leap into the air 
without. Bells rung by vigorous German arms, proclaiming Ger- 
man faith. 

The multitudes surge in the square below, and fill the vast 
old fane to overflowing, this Easter day, eight distinct times be- 
fore the service of the day begins. And this is Dresden ! The 
capital of Saxony, the very hot-bed of the Reformation ! One 
rubs one's eyes. And now a flourish of trumpets, and a re- 
newed commotion among the people. A dozen richly capari- 
soned carriages with attendant guards sweep into the Platz. 
They bring the various members of the royal family. 

The good old king with his beloved queen has gone into 
the church over the little covered bridge connecting with the 
palace. 

One asks, " Is not this king, this family, the successor of 
those electors of Saxony to whom the Reformation owed so 
much? And is not this Saxony, with its Leipsic University 
and its countless advanced schools of science and philosophy, 
the very home of German unbelief ? " Certainly. 

But all is not down in the guide-book, and history has two 
ways of getting itself written, but only one way of getting it- 
self made and that is this way. 

Lacking only three years, the rulers of Protestant Saxony 
have been Catholics for two centuries ! Stout old Augustus the 
Strong, of Saxony, on becoming King of Poland embraced the 
religion of that long-suffering but never apostate land, and his 
descendants have not only continued to believe and practise 
that faith, but have in every way defended and extended it in 
their anomalous position as Catholic sovereigns of an intensely 
Protestant people. Not, however, until as late as the Peace of 
Posen, in 1806, was the Catholic religion raised to an equality 
(legally considered) with the Lutheran which to this day re- 
mains the " state " church. 

The Catholics of certain portions of the kingdom have been 
benefited, as occasion has arisen, by such agreements as the 
Peace of Prague in 1635 (a quarter of a century before the king's 
conversion), but having ever remained in a minute numerical 
minority the graces of steadfastness and reality have been con- 
stantly illustrated by them. 

Here it is Easter Day in the year of grace 1894, and im- 
mense multitudes of earnest, highly-educated men are joining 
with their revered old soldier-king and charitable queen in 



1 894.] HERE AND THERE IN CATHOLICISM. 235 

celebrating, in honor of the Resurrection, the awful Sacrifice of 
the Mass! The place, the conditions, the almost unaccountable 
strangeness of it all, draws from one used to look for historical 
meaning in passing events the exclamation : " Can this be trans- 
piring in the most non-Catholic country and in this most scep- 
tical decade of a faithless century ? " 

Albeit it was two hours before the grand Pontifical Mass 
was to begin, I found my only chance of hearing it at all 
was to be packed along with hundreds of others in the 
spacious corridors connecting the many chapels with the nave. 
The nave, its broad galleries and immediately abutting chapels, 
were crowded by a kneeling or standing mass of devout people. 

After the sermon, which was delivered before Mass, I was able 
through the good offices of a guard to gain a kneeling spot 
within sight of the high altar and its superb " Ascension," by 
Mengs. 

From my new position I was also able to see the king and 
queen and some of the royal family, whose bearing throughout 
the services was most quiet, intent, and humble. 

I confess that the hour of waiting was for me one of watch- 
ing rather than prayer. 

The night before, at the house of Baron von K., I had been 
seriously informed that " their majesties and the Bohemian 
tramps have religion all to themselves." I looked about me. 
My nearest neighbors were two English lads in Eton jackets 
and in the charge of a tutor. All three, better employed than 
I, were absorbed in their Vade Mecum and Rosaries. Every- 
body else near me was German. Two professors from the 
Polytechnic knelt three seats in front of me. At my right a 
venerable old Saxon and his flaxen-haired grandson whispered 
the Litany of the Saints the old face looking up, up, up, as if 
into those of the saints themselves, and the boy's pure, sweet 
lips breathing an irresistible bitte filr uns pray for us to every 
blest one whom the old man saw. Soldiers in gala dress; neat, 
highly-scrubbed mechanics ; farmers with a five-league tramp to 
their credit that very morning. All these were there, but in a 
small minority to those in spectacles and ill-fitting black coats 
too manifestly declaring them learned and poor in all save 
brains. Row after row of students spent one good hour at 
prayer to my own knowledge this Easter last past anyhow. I 
dwell upon the men purposely. There were, of course, women 
innumerable, but not on our side of the church, for they are 
divided from the men in public worship. 



236 HERE AND THERE IN CATHOLICISM. [Nov., 

This arrangement has the advantage, at least, of enabling 
the questioner to observe how far Catholicism has lost its grasp 
upon the virile mind of the Teutonic races. So weak is its 
grasp upon masculinity that on several succeeding Sunday 
mornings I have noticed not more than five hundred men 
standing in aisles, chapels, vestibules, assisting at a Low Mass 
for which a thousand or two only of their brothers had been 
fortunate enough to secure seats ! 

D r . W , a biologist and agnostic, expressed the opinion 

that our children would see the German peoples either Catho- 
lic or faithless. " You, of course, doctor," I said, " expect them 
to become faithless." 

" Not at all, not at all Germans have too much heart : 
they are in love with God." It is true. Pick up the little 
books of devotion, watch these spectacled worshippers, and you 
will find der Hebe Gott in very deed the object of a quaintly 
beautiful childlike love. 

The king is a Catholic of this type, and is a living barrier 
to prejudice against the faith. 

The brilliant record that he made before Paris in 1870, and 
the largeness and vigor of his policy in the trying times since 
the formation of the empire, have gained for him the personal 
devotion of his people, while his clean, true life, and the warm, 
humane, uplifting influence of his court, have compelled men 
to respect the faith he cherishes. ,, 

To the unspeakable regret of Saxony, King Albert has no 
children. His crown will, therefore, pass to his brother, Prince 
George, and to his sons, of whom there are several. The 
eldest, Prince Frederic August, will in all probability soon 
bear the grave responsibilities of government. He is, of course, 
a Catholic, and his fair young wife, already hailed as their 
future queen, is gracefully endearing herself to the good Saxons 
by a life of practical religion and kind deeds. A brother of 
the future king, Prince Max, has still more closely bound the 
interests of the throne to the church by devoting his life (an 
earnest and gifted one) to the holy priesthood. 

Thus has the God of destiny parried the blows of the 
electors, and Saul once more is found among the prophets ! 
At the heart of historic Protestantism and modern unbelief 
the old faith is proclaimed and believed on of men. A rem- 
nant, ever growing, has not bowed, and will not bow, the knee 
to Baal. 



i8 9 4-] 



GLIMPSES OF LOURDES. 




GLIMPSES OF LOURDES. 
BY ALBA. 

;N this day of almost universal travel few who are 
likely to read these pages have not already seen 
for themselves the far- famed Rock of Massabielle, 
together with the little town of Lourdes, nestling 
among the less ambitious slopes of the Pyrenees, 
while the loftier summits look down on them from a distance. 
If the traveller has visited Lourdes in the spirit of a Catho- 
lic pilgrim, rather than in that of an American tourist, the vision 
of the splendid basilica with its spire of white lace-work and its 
joyous peal of bells, of the extensive surrounding meadows, fra- 
grant with the perfume of the newly-cut hay, of the musical 
chants of the numerous pilgrims gathered together from all parts 
of the world, will revive impressions that ought to be imperish- 
able. But it is not of these we would speak. It is of the ap- 
paritions themselves, bearing, as they do, so directly upon the 
supernatural, and of the witnesses on whose evidence our belief in 
the apparitions is founded. We may observe in passing, that 
M. Zola, who made it his first care to examine the only " ex- 
planation " ever attempted by hostile opinion, rejected it with 
contempt, and forthwith proceeded to look into the account au- 
thorized by the church, of which we now give the substance : 

On Thursday, February 12, 1858, Bernadette Soubirous, a 
peasant girl of fourteen, the child of very poor parents, went 
with her younger sister and a companion to gather firewood on 
the banks of the river Gave, near the rock of Massabielle. A 
small canal flowed between them and the ground they desired 
to reach, where the branches were most plentiful. This the two 
younger girls crossed ; but Bernadette, whose health was frail> 
hesitated at sight of the chilly water. Finally, having concluded 
to cross, she stooped down to take off her shoes, when a sud- 
den gust of wind caused her to look up. Not a twig was stirr- 
ing ; the air was still, and she stooped a second time. Again 
the puff of wind swept past her toward the rock in face of 
which was the Grotto now so famous. Surprised, she looked 
toward the grotto; and, within a niche hollowed out in the 
upper part, she beheld a resplendent light, in the midst of which 



23 8 GLIMPSES OF LOURDES. [Nov., 

stood a Lady of wonderful beauty, arrayed in veil and robe of 
snowy white, with cincture of blue. On her bare feet, which 
rested on a branch of eglantine that extended across the niche, 
bloomed two roses of golden color, and in her hand she held a 
long rosary of white beads linked with gold. Bernadette, as- 
tonished, could not believe her eyes, and rubbed them to assure 
herself she saw aright. The Vision smiled benignly upon her ; 
and then a feeling of awe took possession of the child. She 
drew forth her beads, and kneeling down tried, but vainly, to 
sign herself with the cross. The Lady then signed herself with 
the golden cross attached to her chaplet, and began to pass the 
beads through her fingers, though her lips moved not. Imme- 
diately the little girl signed herself, and proceeded to recite 
the Ave Maria. The Lady motioned her to approach nearer, 
but Bernadette was afraid, and did not stir. Then the Vision, 
still smiling, disappeared. 

Bernadette, full of amazement, left the Grotto to seek her 
companions, and questioned them ; but they had seen nothing. 
On reaching home she made known to her mother what had 
occurred ; and the mother, naturally alarmed, and fearing un- 
hallowed influences, forbade her to re-visit the Grotto. On the 
Sunday following, however, some little girls, urged by curiosity, 
prevailed on the mother to revoke her prohibition ; and about 
noon the children went to the parish church with a little bottle 
which they filled with holy water, and then took their way to 
the Grotto. Again the Lady appeared, surrounded, as before, 
by a brilliant light. Bernadette took the bottle and threw the 
holy water several times at the Apparition, telling her to ap- 
proach nearer if she came on the part of God. The Vision 
smiled yet more sweetly as the holy water fell on her feet ; 
and, coming nearer, bent down towards the child with ineffable 
serenity and benignity. Bernadette fell on her knees, and taking 
her chaplet began to pray, her countenance transfigured, her 
eyes fixed upon the Vision. Before evening all the town was 
astir with the news. 

On the second day afterward two women went secretly to 
the Grotto before sunrise. Bernadette was already there, as was 
also the Vision. One of the women, thinking it might be a soul 
from Purgatory, gave to the little girl some paper, pen, and ink, 
which she had brought, and bade her ask the Lady to write 
her name and the reason of her coming. The Lady smiled 
and said : " What I have to say to you does not need to be 
written. Do me the favor to come here every day for fifteen 






1894-] GLIMPSES OF LOURDES. 239 

days." Bernadette promised, and the Lady continued : " I can- 
not render you happy in this world, but I promise to do so in 
the next." Then the two women bade the girl ask whether they 
also might come to the Grotto ? "I wish it," replied the Lady. 
" I desire that many may come." 

During the next fortnight Bernadette went every day to the 
Grotto, and only twice did the Lady fail to appear. She, how- 
ever, appeared on three subsequent occasions, making eighteen 
apparitions in all. The wonderful news soon spread through 
the adjoining country, and every day witnessed a larger and 
larger crowd of spectators, till at length several thousands 
gathered around the Grotto and watched the child. As the 
Crowd is the first witness we would cite, it may be as well to 
take a look at its component parts. It included not alone 
friends and relatives of the little girl, inhabitants of the town 
and neighborhood, peasants from distant villages and valleys ; it 
included also travellers from many parts of France, to which 
the news was quickly wafted ; the saintly Abb6 Peyramale, cure 
of Lourdes ; government officials, newspaper men, and persons 
of all conditions. It was not a credulous crowd. While "some 
believed " like the Jews in presence of the miracles of our 
Lord others sneered, and most doubted and suspended judg- 
ment. On what they saw all were agreed ; but on what it all 
meant there was great diversity of opinion. This was what they 
saw. 

They saw Bernadette kneeling, a lighted taper in one hand, 
her chaplet in the other, and her eyes fixed upon the niche. 
Presently they observed a slight thrill or movement, then her 
face became transfigured, extraordinary -beauty and a look of 
supreme happiness irradiating her usually ordinary features, 
while the look she directed towards the niche became so inten- 
sified that the bystanders said to each other " She sees." 

Then they saw Bernadette arise in her ecstasy and go to- 
wards the lower part of the Grotto, where, making with her 
finger a little hole in the earth, she with some difficulty gath- 
ered in the hollow of her hand a small quantity of muddy 
water, which she drank and with which she wetted her face. 
This was towards the middle of the fortnight ; but on sub- 
sequent occasions she did the same, and as the water accumu- 
lated she found no difficulty. 

On Easter Monday, April 5, the crowd beheld a great won- 
der. Bernadette, absorbed in her Vision, placed the lighted 
candle on the ground before her, and clasped her hands uncon- 



240 GLIMPSES OF LOVRDES. [Nov., 

sciously over the flame, which, during the space of a quarter of 
an hour, played through the fingers and between the palms. A 
medical man, one Dr. Dozons, was present ; and, after the child 
came to herself, he examined her hands. They were perfectly 
uninjured. The following is his testimony in the case : 

"Astonished at this strange fact the undisturbed holding of 
her hands above the flame I made sign that no one should 
interfere ; and taking out my watch I observed her perfectly 
during a quarter of an hour. At the conclusion of her prayer 
Bernadette arose, and, as she prepared to leave the Grotto, I 
detained her a moment, and asked her to show me her hand. 
I examined it with the utmost care. On no part could I find 
the slightest trace of burning. I then suddenly passed the 
flame of the candle under her hand, when Bernadette withdrew 
it quickly, saying ' You are burning me ! ' 

The crowd continued to pour towards the Grotto, and per- 
sons prayed there constantly. But the civil authorities, in order 
to prevent a " superstition " taking root, at the instance of the 
minister of worship boarded up the entrance, and forbade all 
access under pain of fine. Many went all the same; there 
were no end of prosecutions and judicial condemnations, the 
which bring us to our second witness Bernadette herself. 

Contemporary free-thought, as our author observes, has made 
every effort to represent the little shepherdess as a hallucinte, 
or, failing that, as an impostor ; working out, with the assistance 
of the cure, a stupendous fraud from motives of interest. Thanks 
to the more hostile element of our crowd the civil authorities 
the questions both of the girl's sanity and of her disinterest- 
edness were placed beyond a doubt. Our author says : 

" From the time of the first apparitions the police tried by 
intimidation to prevent Bernadette from returning to the rock. 
They threatened her and her parents with imprisonment, and 
subjected them to a strict surveillance. Bernadette, the poor 
feeble child of fourteen, calm and courageous, defeated their 
precautions and braved their threats. She went in spite of men 
where God called her. 

" Hostile opinion accused her of playing off a sacrilegious com- 
edy in order to extort money, or to obtain notoriety. It tried 
to make out that she was cataleptic, that she was visionary ; 
and later on the police tried to arrest her on this pretext. They 
were but miserable calumnies. The candid, simple child was 
incapable of deception. She never accepted either money or 
gifts, despite the temptations of her poverty; and it had to be 



i8 9 4.] 



GLIMPSES OF LOURDES. 



241 



acknowledged that her brain was healthy, and her imagination 
perfectly regulated and serene. 

" If Bernadette had been interested, she might have chosen 
on one of the smiling slopes she climbed with her little flock, 




and facing her beloved Grotto, a poetic corner on which to 
build a house where her old mother would have come with her 
to enjoy the grand spectacle of the basilicas arising at her or- 
VOL/LX. 1 6 



242 GLIMPSES OF LOURDES. [Nov., 

der, and these long files of pilgrims gathered together at her 
voice. That house would have become itself a place of pil- 
grimage. Great ladies would have given gold by the handful 
for a wooden chaplet she had passed through her fingers. Car- 
dinals and bishops would have knelt, as did Monseigneur Du- 
panloup, at her feet, to beg from that shepherdess hand the 
benediction of a saint. And in the evening, when the sun 
empurples with his last rays the Pyrenean peaks, she could 
have admired the thousand tapers of the torchlight proces- 
sions, and heard the mountain echoes reverberate in melodious 
tones the simple history of the apparitions. Any one playing 
a part in so vast a comedy would have played it out to the end." 

Instead of that, in 1866, after Bernadette had seen the com- 
mands of the Lady carried out, and her own mission accom- 
plished, she withdrew to hide herself in religion ; not in one of 
the splendid communities which rose up around her beloved 
Grotto, any one of which would have been proud to call her 
superioress, but among the Sisters of Charity of Nevers, many 
and many a league from the home she was never to see again. 

The Abb Peyramale, who was very rigorous in his investi- 
gations and very slow of belief, but who, after being fully satis- 
fied, carried out the magnificent work of the basilica, has also 
come in for his share of misrepresentation. Yet truly, as our 
author says, it was rather his interest to have discredited the 
Vision, since to him as to Bernadette was the Lady's promise 
made " I cannot make you happy in this life, but I promise to 
do so in the next." It was fully verified. After the commis- 
sion of ecclesiastics and scientists appointed by Monseigneur 
Laurence, Bishop of Tarbes, to investigate thoroughly both ap- 
paritions and miracles, had pronounced them genuine ; after the 
seal of authority had been placed on them; after the churches 
were built, the pilgrimages instituted, and the pope, " yield- 
ing to the luminous evidence" had commanded to be crowned in 
his name the statue of our Lady of Lourdes, the Abb6 Peyra- 
male, who had wielded the laboring oar through all, came in 
for no sort of temporal reward. Nor did he desire any. When 
sounded as to his acceptance of a bishopric, he absolutely de- 
clined ; and when the title of monseigneur was bestowed on 
him he never showed himself in the garo it entitled him to 
wear. The only outside object which he sought was the restor- 
ation of his dilapidated parish church ; and he never could at- 
tain it. His remains are buried within its ruins. 

It may be asked, " Why could not the Queen of Heaven and 



1894-] GLIMPSES OF LOURDES. 243 

Earth, if she it was, make Bernadette and the Abb6 Peyramale 
happy both in this world and the next ? She said ' / cannot /' 
That is strong. Surely she could if she would. What hindered 
her ? " We answer Unbelief. As says our author : 

" M. l'Abb6 Peyramale become Bishop of Tarbes, and ven 
crated during life as a saint ; Bernadette carried in triumph by 
the pilgrims of Lourdes, and her family, formerly poor, now rich 
and opulent, Free-thought might well have said, ' You see ! 
Self-interest guided it all. Monseigneur Peyramale wished a 
mitre ; Bernadette, the ovations of a delirious crowd ; her rela- 
tions accomplices of the priest and the girl desired the white 
bread of riches instead of the black bread of misery.' In place 
of that we see the priest saturated with disillusion, the voyante 
the last and least among her poor sisters, and the family without 
a sou wherewith to buy a shroud for the mother of her who 
has made Lourdes." 

On the 25th of March, Bernadette, in obedience to the cure', 
pressed the Lady to make known her name. The recital in Ber- 
nadette's own words, as repeated to our author by a nun of Nev- 
ers, is so beautiful, and so important in its bearing on a dogma 
of the church, that we cannot do better than give it verbatim : 

" M. l'Abb6 Peyramale had threatened never to receive me 
again, and to prevent me making my First Communion, if I did 
not insist upon the Lady at least telling who she was. Three 
times I had besought her to give her name, and three times she 
had answered merely by a smile. At last, one day, I per- 
ceived by the expression of her face that she was going to tell 
me her name. 

" ' I am the Immaculate Conception,' she murmured, turning 
her beautiful eyes towards heaven. 

" On hearing these words, which I did not understand, the 
idea came to me to say to the Lady 

" ' Then you are not the Blessed Virgin Mary ? ' 

" I had pronounced the first three words of my phrase when 
the apparition disappeared. I felt very sorry, for I ivas per- 
suaded that she who called herself the Immaculate Conception was 
not the Virgin Mary. I thought it was a soul from purgatory 
who had actually borne that name during life. Another pain 
was in store for me. The crowd surrounded me, and every one 
demanded 

"'Well, has she given her name?' 'Yes,' I replied, feeling 
ashamed. 

"'Is it the Blessed Virgin?' 'I do not know.' 



244 



GLIMPSES OF LOURDES. 



[Nov., 



"'How! You do not know!' said twenty witnesses at 
once. 'What did she say?' 'I don't remember.' 

" Immediately the expression of their countenances changed, 




SIDE VIEW OF GROTTO AND CHURCH OF LOURDES. 

(By permission of Catholic Family Annual.) 

and I remember very well to have heard one of our neighbors 

say Parbleu ! I have always said it. She is making fun of us.' 

"I did not tell a lie in saying that I had forgotten the 



1 894.] GLIMPSES OF LOURDES. 245 

name of the Lady. I remembered Immaculate, but not Concep- 
tion. Monsieur Peyramale awaited me on the Place de l'glise 
and twenty times I was on the point of returning home, fear- 
ing his anger. However, at some yards from the Grotto I 
thought I remembered that the Lady had said Concession, or 
Concerion. I kept on repeating these two words Immaculate 
Concession or Concerion in order that I might not again forget 
them. After a moment, I bethought me that the Virgin had 
said Conception. This word appeared to me the true one ; and 
all the way to the Place de 1'Eglise I said Immaculate Concep- 
tion Immaculate Conception. 

" The crowd had already preceded me ; and the cure, noti- 
fied of what had taken place, had gone back furious into the 
sacristy. I went in, all trembling. The first words of M. Pey- 
ramale were these ; I have never forgotten them, and never will : 

" ' Bernadette, if you continue to mock us, I will let the 
commissary of police put you in prison.' I looked at him 
astonished. 

" ' You are playing off the naive',' he continued. ' I have just 
heard that the apparition you pretend to see at Massabielle has 
told you her name, and that you don't remember it.' 

"'Yes, M. le Cur ; but I was afraid of making a mistake, 
so I said nothing to those who questioned me.' 

" ' Once and for all, is it the Blessed Virgin ? ' 

" ' I don't think so, M. le Cure 1 . It is the Immaculate Con- 
ception.' 

" The Abb6 Peyramale, who was very red, became suddenly 
very pale, and in a trembling voice said 

" ' Who taught you that word ? ' 

"'The Lady.' 

" ' You never heard it before ? ' 

" ' Never, M. le Cure.' 

" ' You may go home. I want to be alone. Come back to- 
morrow morning after my Mass.' 

"Crossing the Place de 1'Eglise I was again surrounded by 
the crowd 

" ' Well, have you remembered the name of the Lady ? ' 

"'Yes,' I replied. 

" ' What is her name ? ' 

" ' The Immaculate Conception.' 

" The crowd received this answer with shouts of laughter, 
and all declared it was the first time they had ever heard these 
words pronounced. 



24 6 GLIMPSES OF LOURDES. [Nov., 

" Next day I was sent for by the Commissary of Police, M. 
Jacomet. My first thought was ' Assuredly M. l'Abb< Peyra- 
male has put his threat in execution. He is going to have me 
imprisoned because my answer, faithfully rendered, has proved 
to him that I am not telling the truth.' M. Jacomet received 
me with a smile on his lips. 

" It is time to tell the truth,' he said to me several times. 
'We will not disturb you, but you must tell us the truth.' 

" ' Yes, sir,' I answered. 

" ' The Lady spoke to you yesterday ? ' 

" ' Yes, sir.' 

" ' And she said ? ' 

"'I am the Immaculate Conception.' 

" ' What does that mean the Immaculate Conception ? ' 

" ' I don't know, sir.' 

"'You never heard that name pronounced in the church?' 

"'Never.' 

" ' We shall see about that. Have you your prayer-book 
with you?' 

" ' No, sir.' 

" ' Go and bring it.' 

" I ran home, and brought back my prayer-book. The com- 
missary examined it, and returned it to me after a quarter of 
an hour. M. 1'Abbe" Peyramale told me afterwards that M. 
Jacomet looked through it to find the words ' Immaculate Con. 
ception,' which were not to be found in the books of that time. 
An inquest was immediately opened at Bartres and Lourdes, in 
order to know if those who frequented the church knew the 
words ' Immaculate Conception.' The inquest revealed the 
ignorance of the faithful. It had also another object. They 
wished to know if in the church of Bartres or that of Lourdes 
there were any statue of the Virgin clothed like the Lady of 
Massabielle. They only found clumsy statues like the Spanish 
Madonnas. 

" ' But, after all, where did you see a costume like that of 
the Lady ? ' demanded M. Jacomet. 

" ' Ah ! sir,' I replied, ' nowhere. And if I had seen such a 
costume, I swear to you it would have been impossible to have 
seen a countenance like that of the Lady.' 
" ' Who was she like ? ' 

" ' Like no one on earth.' " 

This account from the lips of the voyante herself seems to 
us to carry a weight of testimony which leaves nothing to be 



1894-] GLIMPSES OF LOURDES. 247 

desired. Nevertheless, we will put on the stand our third wit- 
ness the Fountain. 

It was attested by all the shepherds of Lourdes and its vicin- 
ity that previous to the apparitions no well or spring of any 
sort existed in the Grotto. Like that of Bethlehem, it was used 
as a place of shelter for both shepherds and flocks during the 
heavy storms which often overtook them ; but the lack of water 
was found a great inconvenience. A shepherd named Davis at- 
tested his having spread the straw on which he slept over the 
very spot where the water now flows. When it first appeared 
it was thick and muddy a fact which did not escape the cynics, 
whose very sneers have served to substantiate its supernatural 
origin. 4< Tell your Lady," they would say to Bernadette, " that 
if she wants to give us a fountain, she had better give us clear 
water, and not a mud-puddle." " Don't trouble yourselves," the 
child would reply. " The water will clear faster than you wish." 
The authorities employed the services of an expert to ascertain 
whether there was any sign of a secret spring in the rock ; but 
none could be found. Then those who believed began to sur- 
mise that the water, miraculously produced, must be miraculous 
in its effects ; and this brings us to our last witness the Mira- 
cles. 

It would be impossible, within our limits, to enter in detail 
upon the cures wrought at Lourdes, or by its water. Our au- 
thor does so very circumstantially, giving the names and ad- 
dresses not only of scores and scores of persons cured, but also 
of the medical men most of them infidels who certified to 
their desperate and incurable ailments. It is not pleasant read- 
ing. In order to make the cases clear he has to enter upon 
very repulsive details ; and the picture presented calls forcibly 
to mind what must have been seen in Judea when they gath- 
ered around our Lord, the blind, the lame, the paralytic, all 
who had any infirmity, that he might heal them. We shall 
only notice a few facts, and then wind up with two miracles, 
one wrought on the body, one on the soul, for miraculous 
conversions are among the wonders of Lourdes. 

The miracles that take place are not, as our author wittily 
remarks, attested by monks in the state of ecstasy. Under one of 
the arches of the Church of the Rosary is the Hall of Attesta- 
tion, which, during all the season of the pilgrimages, is in the 
hands of medical men, most of them free-thinkers, who, as 
may be supposed, make their attestations under pressure of 
necessity rather than of good-will. These medical men are of 



248 GLIMPSES OF LOURDES. [Nov. 

all countries and of all creeds or no creeds. There are doc- 
tors from England, from Belgium, from America, Protestants as 
well as Catholics, with a large majority of no religion. Any 
doctor who wishes to do so may attach himself to the bureau, 
and examine the cases. On one occasion a Jewish doctor and 
a Freemason at that presented himself at the hall, and begged 
as a favor to be allowed to examine the so-called miracles. "A 
favor ! " they said, " why, my dear fellow, you are at home 
here. Our motto is, ' Open the door and walk in without 
knocking.' " In point of fact nothing is done sub rosa at 
Lourdes ; everything is open and above-board. 

Another thing. Although among the multitude of cases 
many nervous diseases . are cured, none of these are allowed to 
be registered. However signal they may be, they are resolutely 
refused a place among the recorded miracles. Persons, therefore, 
who try to make out that the effect of the charming climate 
and exhilarating spectacle upon the nervous system of the pa- 
tient is the real source of the cures are " left out." Fine cli- 
mate and exhilarating spectacles have little power over cancer- 
ous wounds, paralyzed limbs, and contorted spines. 

When the water of the miraculous fountain began to flow 
freely it naturally, as we have said, occurred to the people of 
Lourdes that it more than probably possessed miraculous power. 
A poor quarryman named Louis Bouriette, who had lost his 
sight twenty years before through the explosion of a mine, 
came to the Grotto, and, praying to the Blessed Virgin, bathed 
his eyes with the water. Instantly he recovered his sight ; the 
right eye, which had been grievously wounded by a fragment 
of stone, being restored to perfect health. This was the first 
miracle wrought through the water of Lourdes. 

The following is of a different kind ; we will give it in the 
words of our author: 

" One day a priest approached us in the Grotto, and point- 
ing out in the midst of the crowd an old man who was kneel- 
ing piously with arms crossed, Question him,' he said ; ' we call 
him the miracul/ of the Virgin's Smile.' 

"We approached the pilgrim in question M. le Comte de 
Bruissard and with the best grace in the world he related to 
us his history. 

' I was,' said he, ' at Cauterets at the time they were talking 
so much about the apparitions. I believed no more in the ap- 
paritions than I did in the existence of God. I was a debaucht 
and, what is worse, an atheist. Having read in a journal of the 



250 GLIMPSES OF LOURDES. [Nov. 

country that Bernadette had, on the i6th of July, beheld an 
apparition, and that the Virgin had smiled, I resolved to go to 
Lourdes out of curiosity, and to take the little voyante in fla- 
grante delicto in lying. 

" ' I went to the house of the Soubirous, and found Berna- 
dette on the door-step, mending a black stocking. She ap- 
peared to me rather vulgar, yet her saddened features had a 
sort of sweetness. At my request she related to me her appa- 
ritions with a simplicity and confidence which struck me. Then 
I said to her, ' How did she smile, this beautiful Lady ? ' The 
little shepherdess looked at me with astonishment ; then, after 
a moment's silence 'O sir!' said she, 'one must be of heaven 
to reproduce that smile.' 

"'Could you not reproduce it for me? I am an unbeliever. 
I do not believe in your apparitions.' 

" ' The face of the child clouded, then a severe expression 
passed over it. 

" ' Then, sir, you think that I am a liar ? ' 

" ' I felt myself disarmed. No ; Bernadette was not a liar, 
and I was on the point of going on my knees to beg her par- 
don when she said 

" ' Since you are a sinner, I will reproduce for you the 
smile of the Virgin.' 

" ' The child slowly arose, joined her hands, and smiled a 
celestial smile such as I have never seen on the lips of the 
most seductive of mortals. I saw her countenance illuminated 
by an inexplicable light. She continued to smile, her eyes 
turned towards heaven, while I knelt down before her con- 
vinced that I had seen the Virgin's smile upon the counte- 
nance of the voyante. 

' Since then I bear within me, in the depths of my soul, 
that divine smile. It has dried many tears. I have lost my 
wife and my two daughters, yet it seems to me I am not 
alone in the world. I live in the Smile of the Virgin.' " 




1894-] THE DUAL OWNERSHIP OF LAND IN IRELAND. 251 



THE DUAL OWNERSHIP OF LAND IN IRELAND 

A MYTH.* 

BY REV. GEORGE MCDERMOT. 

the i6th of April last the House of Commons 
appointed a Select Committee to inquire into 
and report upon the principles and practice of 
the Irish Land Commissioners and county court 
judges in carrying out the fair-rent provisions of 
the Land Acts (among other matters referred to them) and to 
suggest such improvements in law or practice as they might 
deem desirable. 

The committee consisted of seventeen members. The 
Unionist party had a majority of one, if Mr. T. W. Russell 
were to vote on party lines, but throughout he voted against 
his party. All sections of the house were represented. Even the 
few Parnellite members had their representative in Mr. Clancy. 
Mr. Morley, the Irish secretary, in accordance with the etiquette 
in such matters, was elected chairman. I am particular in 
mentioning these circumstances, first, because that committee is 
destined to be historic and to leave behind it far-reaching re- 
sults, and second, because it will be subjected to the fiercest 
criticism ever turned upon a similar body. 

I have no hesitation in saying that no committee since the 
trial of election petitions was handed over to the judges has 
produced such evidence in a portion of its members of the 
superiority of party and class interests to duty and principle 
as this exhibits in the action of the minority. I am sure they 
are all honorable men every member of Parliament is " an 
honorable member " so I can only conclude that, where Irish 
tenants are concerned, the prejudices of class and the claims of 
party are paramount to every other consideration. 

Lest there should be any misconception as to the nature of 
the agrarian question of Ireland compared with that of England, 
I may say that there is not a feature in common between them. 
The traditional and historic character of the tenure of occupiers 
in both countries is as wide asunder as the poles. The 
English tenant began as a serf of the soil without one shred, 

* Report of the Majority of the Parliamentary Committee on the Irish Land Acts. 



252 THE DUAL OWNERSHIP OF LAND [Nov., 

one particle of right except the will of his lord. Afterwards, 
when contracts of tenancy replaced the old servile relation, the 
farm was let to the tenant fully equipped as a going concern, 
as a hotel might be let, or a public house, or furnished lodg- 
ings. In Ireland, the tenant as one of the sept had an in- 
alienable title in the tribal lands. There might be a readjust- 
ment of boundaries or a new allocation of the tribal lands 
whenever the death of a holder without immediate heirs took 
place. This may have been inconvenient and at times oppressive, 
but the right to a holding somewhere in the district remained 
to the disturbed occupier. He was not at the mercy of a 
master who could drive him off the lands or retain him as he 
wished. This was the historic memory which the clansmen 
carried with them when the lands passed into the hands of the 
Cromwellian and Williamite adventurers. 

Moreover, they received nothing from the Cromwellian or 
Williamite landlord but the permission to live upon the land 
and pay for the privilege. They had no homes, no farm build- 
ings. It was the wild common of nature on which they might 
sit down, marry, brood, and die, provided they paid rent, and 
that the landlord did not care to chase them off. Then the 
morasses began to be drained, and the mountain summits to 
change the gray of their granite for some tint of the verdure of 
the valleys ; farm buildings and steadings, such as they were, to 
dot the country side, fences and hedge-rows to give a peaceful 
and comfortable aspect to landscapes which for a half-century 
had known nothing but the marching of hostile armies and the 
desolation caused by the fires which they kindled. 

To the general statement just made, I shall add one or 
two facts which will help in emphasizing the distinction be- 
tween the status of English tenants and that of Irish tenants. 
The estate of the predecessor in title of the Marquis of Bath 
and another in the County of Monahan was worth only 200 a 
year in the reign of James I. It yielded in 1868 more than 
50,000 a year. It consisted at the earlier period of swamp 
for the most part, in which the tenants had as their associates 
the coot and other water r fowl. Mr. Trench, who examined the 
estate-books as agent, testifies that during the whole of the 
period every improvement was effected by the tenants.* 

I found a somewhat similar state of things on the estates 
of the London Companies in Derry when, as judicial investiga- 

* This is the author of a sensational book called Realities of Irish Life; and any state- 
aent m favor of tenants can be trusted, for he is an Eminently hostile witness. 



1894-] IN IRELAND A MYTH. 253 

tor of arrears, I had to inquire into the condition of their 
tenants. The rent of holdings had been increased between the 
beginning of the present century and the time I sat 1882-3 
in some cases by more than twelve times the rent at the for- 
mer period. When the London Companies entered on their 
possessions, about the year 1610, the estates, including the valu- 
able fisheries, did not realize more than 1,800 a year, more than 
half of which came from the fisheries. In 1880 the rental was 
160,000 a year, while the income from the fisheries had not 
increased beyond the figures of 1610. In other words, estates 
which produced a rental of less than 900 in 1610 yielded 
160,000 in 1880, and that without one particle of expenditure 
from the absentee landlords who guttled and guzzled it in 
their civic celebrations. 

That these enormous advances in rent during so short a 
period were not exceptional must be gathered from the fact that, 
while the whole rental of Ireland in 1729 did not amount to 
2,000,000, it stood in 1875 at the respectable figure of 
15,000,000. The agricultural rental, or rather income, did not 
amount to this sum because cities and towns must be ex- 
cluded but it went very considerably beyond 13,000,000 
very nearly to 14,000,000. Then again, the rental of 1729, to 
which allusion has been made, included a proportionally higher 
return from towns and cities in the earlier year. 

When, therefore, men like Mr. Lecky, Mr. Chamberlain, and 
other leading exponents of the Unionist cause, represent the 
Irish tenants as the spoiled children of legislation, while Parlia- 
ment has behaved like a stepmother to English tenants, the 
reader can estimate the value of their statements. There is no 
parallel between the circumstances of the two classes. The im- 
provements were all made by the Irish tenant, in no instance 
by his English brother. At once one sees, independently of 
any other consideration, that the former had an equitable inter- 
est in the land which owed most of its value to him perhaps 
all its value to him. 

It was the policy of the successive acts which constitute 
the Land Code to give to this equitable interest a legal sanc- 
tion and authority. The object of the select committee was to 
ascertain how far they have succeeded. 

From the report of the majority it appears that the total 
number of fair-rent applications disposed of by the Land Com- 
mission, by the county courts, and by agreement from the pass- 
ing of the act of 1881 to March 31 last was 354,890. Of these 



THE DUAL OWNERSHIP OF LAND [Nov., 

the total number of fair rents fixed was 294,654. The Land 
Commission courts fixed 157,178, the county courts 15,537, and 
102,902 rents were fixed by agreements between the landlord 
and tenant lodged with the Land Commission or the county 
courts. By section 40 of the act rents can be fixed by arbitra- 
tion, but there were only 37 dealt with in this manner. 

The report says : " It is worthy of notice that in these 37 
cases in which rents have been fixed by arbitration, the average 
reduction was 30.7 per cent., or one-half higher than the average 
reduction on the total rental dealt with by the courts and by 
agreements, which was 20.8 per cent." 

The fact certainly is significant. It goes to prove that the 
landlords preferred to have recourse to the courts, and that the 
agreements were made under pressure put upon the tenants. 
That this was the character of the agreements will appear more 
clearly by and by. 

With regard to rents fixed by the Land Commission the 
average reduction by chief commission and sub-commission taken 
together was in the case of yearly tenancies 21.2 per cent. The 
average reduction in the county courts was 23 4. or 2.2 more 
than the corresponding reduction given by the Land Commission 
courts. The average reduction made by agreements has been 
17.7. It can be inferred that these agreements were not volun- 
tary ; that, in point of fact, the tenants were compelled to enter 
into them, either because they feared protracted litigation and 
its attendant expense, or that they stood in some way within 
the landlords' power. 

The report says : " There is to be observed a still more re- 
markable difference between the reductions made in rents fixed 
by agreement and those settled by arbitration. As we have 
noted, the average reduction made by agreements lodged with 
the Land Commission was 17.7; . . . but the average reduc- 
tion was no less than 30.7 in cases of rents determined by arbi- 
tration." 

It goes on to point out that more than two-thirds of the 
agreements were made from the year ending August, 1882, to 
that ending August, 1885. In those years the reductions in the 
courts were much smaller than in subsequent years and down to 
the present time ; and then proceeds : " The evidence given be- 
fore your committee as to the course of prices and the cost of 
production between 1881 and 1885 have been since 1886, and are 
at the present time, materially excessive." 

The report next calls attention to a paper handed in by Mr. 



1894-] IN IRELAND A MYTH. 255 

W. F. Bailey, legal assistant commissioner. It furnishes examples 
of fifty cases in his district in which agreements had been made 
between landlords and tenants within the period from 1882 to 1887, 
but the agreements, not having been filed as required by rule, 
were not binding between the parties, and the tenants came in- 
to court to have fair rents fixed in 1893 and 1894. "The re- 
sult demands particular attention," the report justly observes. 
The old rents in the fifty cases had amounted to 790. The 
reductions made by agreement amounted to 142, leaving the 
rents as agreed upon 648. When the tenants came into court 
the 648 was further reduced by i6S, bringing down the judi- 
cial rents to 480. "Thus, after an average reduction of 18 per 
cent, had been made by the agreements, a further reduction of 
20 per cent, was ordered by the court." 

A similar paper was handed in by another legal assistant 
commissioner and printed as part of the evidence. It was 
only owing to the omission to file these agreements the court 
was able to intervene; but the incidents shed a flood of light 
on the real character and value of the voluntary agreements be- 
tween landlords and tenants fixing fair rents. 

From the passing of the act of 1881 the landlords did all 
they could to render its provisions nugatory. Possessing wealth 
and social influence, they had every advantage over their needy 
and humble opponents. The social influence operated in a sub- 
tle but powerful manner. If assistant commissioners reduced 
rents with boldness they were denounced in the landlord press, 
which is supposed in England to reflect the opinion of the loyal 
portion of the community. They were held up among their own 
class as favorers of the refractory and dishonest masses who 
were endeavoring to escape from their legal obligations by terror- 
ism. It appears that the sub-commissions upon the whole were 
very free from the stigma of aiding the * tenants, and must be 
deemed to have exercised their judicial functions in the very 
teeth of the principal act, in order to assign to the landlords a 
great part of the interest of the tenants. 

In this connection I shall quote from a very suggestive 
paragraph one or two points which will tend to illustrate some 
of the means by which a statute, intended to be greatly ameli- 
orative of the state of the agricultural population, has done so 
little to bring about the improved condition of the tenants and 
as a consequence the public tranquillity expected from it. " The 
system of rehearing on all questions of value is one of the 
causes which, in our opinion, deter tenants from making appli- 



256 THE DUAL OWNERSHIP OF LAND [Nov., 

cation to have fair rents fixed." It gives the grounds for the 
opinion, and I think the bare statement of them justifies it. 

The rehearing it is right to explain is something in the 
nature of an appeal from a sub-commission court to the head 
commission. All the evidence given in the court below and 
any other evidence that may be forthcoming is to be received. 
In an appeal strictly so-called, the reception of additional evi- 
dence would not be allowed. Both parties should make their 
case before the court of first instance, so far as evidence, and 
stand or fall by it. But the head commission was in reality a 
court of first instance and not a court of appeal, so that the 
person in the situation of respondent might be in the dark 
concerning the new evidence he had to meet. 

What the report then states as leading to the opinion ex- 
pressed above is that the system of rehearing "entails grievous 
delays, it protracts uncertainty ; it imposes heavy costs, oppres- 
sive to a humble class of suitors ; it necessitates expenditure 
out of all proportion to the practical result." This is a very 
severe judgment on this very important part of the practice 
and procedure under the act of 1881. It is hardly too much to 
say that the effects cited would be enough to defeat the policy 
of the act. Reading the provisions of the statute, you see that 
the legislature intended that rent is to be fixed on an inquiry 
which should take into account the tenant's improvements and 
the value of his interest in the holding, and that no rent should 
be payable either on these improvements or that interest. 
This would seem to be clear enough. The improvements made 
by the tenant (and "tenant" included his predecessors in title) 
were to be his own property. If, as on the Draper's Company's 
estate in the County Derry, a rental of 5,000 a year in 1808 
grew to 16,000 in 1845 by the labor and expenditure of the 
tenants, one would suppose, if the provision cited were then in 
force, a tenant paying 16 a year rent would be entitled to 
have it reduced to 5 a year. But the Land Commission, 
according to its method of estimating the tenant's right, would 
only reduce it to about 12 i6.y. 2d. 

There is clearly some flaw here both in the act and its 
authoritative interpretation later on I shall point out what the 
flaw is but I desire to give the grounds as stated by them- 
selves the committee had for concluding that the system of 
rehearing deterred tenants from applying to have fair rents 
fixed. "The rents fixed by the sub commissions in the 19,655 
cases subjected to rehearing amounted to 431,398; the net 



1894-] IN IRELAND A MYTH. 257 

result of the rehearings was to increase this amount by 1,282, 
or only 0.2 per cent." 

It is estimated that the appeals from county court judges 
and the rehearings from sub-commissions cost 250,000. If we 
allow 28,000 to the appeals, a liberal allowance as their pro- 
portion, it will be found that to gain an addition of one-fiftieth 
to the rent fixed a cost was incurred which would be almost 
excessive if the rent were doubled on the rehearing. It must 
be clear from this that the Irish landlords were resolved to die 
hard, and that their tenacity was not without its effect on their 
kinsmen and allies in the service of the Land Commission. 

The leading case of Adams vs. Dunseath, decided, by her 
Majesty's Court of Appeal, on appeal from a judgment of the 
Land Commission, laid down that the interpretation of the enact- 
ment, " no rent is to be allowed ... in respect of the tenant's 
improvements," was that the tenant is entitled to an annual per- 
centage of indefinite amount on his outlay in making the im- 
provement, but that any remainder of letting value due to his 
improvement is to be divided between him and the landlord. 
The very complex code which is interwoven with the act of 
1 88 1 may have made that the correct meaning of the words 
above. In that decision unquestionably a minority of the 
judges of appeal, strong by great legal learning and ability, held 
that this recondite and mysterious meaning was not the true 
one, but the words were to be interpreted in their ordinary 
sense. 

But one thing appears in favor of the tenant from the above 
decision, namely, that whatever residue over and above the out- 
lay on his improvements there was should be shared with the land- 
lord. That is to say, the remainder of the letting value result- 
ing from his improvements beyond the percentage on the cost 
of making them was to be divided, according to the discretion 
of the Land Commission, between him and the landlord, regard 
being had to the interest of the landlord and tenant respec- 
tively. 

The committee find, though " this judgment, delivered in 
1882, has been the law since then and is now the law, and 
during the interim of twelve years has been binding upon all 
administrators of the Land Act," that the practice is to give the 
landlord, after allowing the tenant a percentage on his outlay, 
any remainder of letting value due to the tenant's improve- 
ments. Several of the official witnesses proved this practice ; and 
that it is the practice is abundantly clear from the basis on 
VOL. LX. 17 



2 5 8 



THE SUFFERING SOULS. 



[Nov., 



which the rent is fixed that rent which an outsider having no 
interest in the holding, no right of any kind in it, would pay for 
the use and occupation. 

Yet Irish landlords and their champions were for ever talk- 
ing of the confiscation of their property, the iniquitous legisla- 
tion by which their tenants were forced upon them as partners. 
It is now put beyond all question that the practice which has 
grown up in the Land Commission court has made the dual 
ownership a myth, that all that the complicated machinery of 
the Land Code has secured to the tenant is the dubious advan- 
tage of perpetuity of tenure as long as he is able to pay a 
rack rent for the land which he has virtually created. 



THE SUFFERING SOULS. 

BY W. J. O'REILLY. 

!HOSE souls who for themselves 

can naught beseech 
From Him the Mighty One, 

the sinner's friend, 
Ask us, to whom His ear He deigns to 

lend, 
That we this month remember our friends 

each ; 
Who though not lost, yet Heaven forbade 

to reach 

Until, as Holy Church doth now com- 
mend, 

The Christian's humble prayers to Hea- 
ven ascend ; 
To quench the wrath that now those souls 

doth bleach, 
And send them spotless to the King of 

kings ; 
Where, humbly bowing, each some friend recalls ; 

Ah, yes ! a friend who oft for him did pray 
To Jesus Sov'reign Master of all things. 
And now, in turn, before his Lord he falls, 
Entreating for this pilgrim on the way. 





1894-] MEN OF LETTERS AND EARLY TRAINING. 259 



MEN OF LETTERS AND EARLY TRAINING. 

BY W. R. CLAXTON. 



: T is an opinion, generally entertained, that what a 
man is bred to, is what he will best do ; and, 
however true this may be in other cases, there is 
one class of men whose career seems to show 
that the rule is not of universal application. 

Confining our attention to Great Britain, and selecting only 
a few examples, we find the very remarkable fact that, of her 
many men of letters, scarcely any of them started out in life to 
be a poet, a novelist, or an historian. For the most part these 
men, to whom every reader of English owes an unpayable 
debt of gratitude, commenced their adult career as soldiers, 
lawyers, clergymen, or doctors. And, what is no less surprising, 
most of them adopted literature because of unmistakable 
failure in their several professions. 

Chaucer was a soldier and man of affairs ; and not until he 
was about sixty years of age did he write the Canterbury 
Tales. He had held public office ; he had been confined in 
prison for political reasons ; and it was only after abandoning 
the course of life that he seemed destined, in his young days, to 
carry on to the end of the chapter, that he gained his true 
goal in literature. 

Shakspere does not seem to have been an eminent success 
at his father's highly respectable trade, to follow which he was 
brought home from school. 

" Rare Ben Jonson " soon grew weary of his stepfather's 
useful employment, and tried his luck as a soldier in the Low 
Countries. Next he appeared as an actor, and that not suc- 
ceeding, he retired from the stage, to enrich it with his " Every 
Man in his Humour." 

Sir John Suckling, whose verse about the feet " like little 
mice" must mike him the object of every gallant's gratitude, 
was both a soldier and politician. 

Spenser was one of the few who seem to have felt the 
divine afflatus from early life, and was allowed to follow his 
proper bent from the time that he entered Cambridge. 

Bacon's fame rests, not upon the lawyer but upon the 
philosopher. Law, in conjunction with politics, was the means 



260 MEN OF LETTERS AND EARLY TRAINING. [Nov., 

used for gaining lucre, much of it the filthiest. Literature was 
the one disinterested affection of his life. "Libraries," as he 
says, " are the shrines where all the relics of the ancient saints, 
full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are 
preserved and repose." If, only, he had worshipped exclusively 
at those shrines! 

Hakluyt was a clergyman, but it is not as a preacher that 
the world knows him. One might think, from reading his 
volumes, that all his life had been spent in voyages. 

Camden was a school master, but how little of his reputa- 
tion is due to the Greek grammar that he prepared for his pupils. 

Hobbes, after leaving Oxford, became tutor to Lord Caven- 
dish, but it was not from such occupation that he conceived 
the opinions professed in the Leviathan. 

Burton, as rector of a country parish, would probably never 
have been known. It was only by that quaint old volume, The 
Anatomy of Melancholy, that he made his name to occupy a 
place in the memory of his countrymen, and of all lovers of 
original conceits. 

Milton, even in his university days, was distinctly a man of 
letters. And yet until he had reached his fiftieth year, when 
he began Paradise Lost, he was more of a Puritan baiting the 
pope and prelacy, and a republican denouncing royalists, than 
devoted to his muse. 

Dryden seems to have started out in life a writer, and to 
have never attempted to pursue any other calling. 

But the list of Britain's lords of the pen need be extended 
no further; for, as it was with these early ones, so it has been, 
except in rare cases, with their successors. The men that have 
done most to glorify the English tongue have entered upon 
life with far other, and more economical, aims than the enlight- 
enment and happiness of their kind. 

How did it happen that those who had the control, in 
infancy and early childhood, of her poets, her historians, her 
novelists, her philosophers in a word, her men of letters, failed 
to see that in these children England had a treasure, in com- 
parison with which all her material wealth was nothing worth, 
so that their intellects might have been allowed to expand 
without any let or hindrance ? 

Or, was it only because of the absence of success that 
attended their efforts in the various professions and trades in 
which they first sought to gain a living, that these men them- 
selves became conscious of their power ? 



1 894.] MEN OF LETTERS AND EARLY TRAINING. 261 

Whatever be the true explanation, the fact remains that, 
notwithstanding the untowardness of their early surroundings, 
they finally became the pride and glory of the race. 

Difficult as it is, and from the nature of things it ever must 
be, to discover in the earliest manifestation of an infant's intel- 
ligence just what he or she is best fitted to become, surely 
careful and minute observation, having this single end in view, 
cannot fail to detect at least some slight indication of what 
the child is most prone toward in the life of the intellect. 

That most extraordinary and oft-quoted example of definite 
intellectual training, begun in earliest childhood, John Stuart 
Mill, shows what apparently unlimited results can be achieved 
in this direction. 

James Mill seems to have thought that the normal human 
intellect, if taken in hand early enough, may, like modeller's 
wax, be moulded into any desired form, and as he wished his 
son to be a philosopher, like himself, he conducted the child's 
education so as to attain that end. 

The experiment succeeded, but, for all this, the whole course 
of Stuart Mill's intellectual life goes far to show that, if only 
by a lucky accident, the discipline to which he was subjected 
was on the lines laid down by nature. What effect such an 
education attempted, say, on Goldsmith would have had, is a 
question more easily asked than answered. Assuming that the 
treatment accorded to Stuart Mill was, at most, an undue 
strain, but always in the right direction, of course the result 
attained, if a like education were attempted upon a less gifted 
child, would not have been nearly so satisfactory, and indeed 
would probably have been fatal. 

One thing, however, in the strange case seems clear, and 
that is that, given a child with a marked predilection for some 
one form of intellectual activity, a vast deal can be done to 
develop it beyond what it would ever arrive at if left to itself. 

Perhaps such a forcing process would be less successful if 
applied to a child whose imagination dominated his reason, 
because, on the one hand, of the danger of making the creatures 
of his fancy seem too real, or, on the other, of producing con- 
fusion among the inhabitants of his imagination. While the 
power of the intellect seems to be well-nigh unbounded, that of 
the imagination must always be limited by the data of the 
senses. Hence, not only the kind, but the degree, of training 
that would be helpful to one " born " a philosopher, would be 
harmful to one " born " a poet. 



262 MEN OF LETTERS AND EARLY TRAINING. [Nov., 

This all goes to show what immense care should be taken in 
the direction given to the first human manifestation of the 
infant, even if it shows nothing more. 

But a something full of interest is, that each of these great 
writers of England, whatever was his life, whether joyful or 
sad, was not made like any other man, through mere similarity 
of environment or occupation. 

Hakluyt and Burton were equally clergymen, but there is 
very little, in common between the writer of the travels and 
the author of the Anatomy of Melancholy. 

Indeed, in no essential particular is it possible to trace 
similarity of effect from mere apparent similarity of cause, in 
any of the great writers. That there was always present some- 
thing hidden, working with or against what is open to the 
sight in their several careers, is just as evident as that each 
one's activity took on a form different from that of his fellow- 
laborers in the field of literature. 

That something, by whatever name it be called, is what 
made each one himself. 

It is that which made Milton the author of Paradise Lost, 
and Pope the author of the Essay on Man. 

Neither of these two very conspicuous examples of peculiarly 
English poetry has anything in common with the other, except 
that they are both addressed to the head, rather than to the 
heart, of humanity. 

In certain external aspects, however, there was much -alike in 
the early life of Milton and Pope. Each of them began to 
write in the morning of his youth, and each of them was a 
serious student during those years when most boys are much 
more bent upon mischief than upon books. 

But for all this, how different was their work, and their purpose ! 

That humanity is plastic to a marked degree there can be 
no doubt; but, in spite of this, certain individual men seem to 
be independent of their surroundings. However genius may be 
defined and defined it has been over-much in its essence it 
must surpass all attempts to measure it, because in its essence 
it transcends the comprehension of the would-be definer. Even 
if one genius try to discover wherein consists the distinguishing 
greatness of another, he must fail in his effort, for the reason 
that no genius is one of a body of men that can be classified, 
but is a complete whole in himself. Were it otherwise genius 
would be nothing more than exceptional talent, in any depart- 
ment. At most, the common run of mankind can only re- 



1894-] MEJV OF LETTERS AND EARLY TRAINING. 263 

cognize the existence of a certain something, in a few of their 
fellows, that rises high up above the level upon which they 
stand, and which eludes their most eager and searching gaze. 

We ordinary mortals can see what these exalted beings do, 
but we cannot hope to see how they do it. 

To return again to the question how an exceptional child 
should be treated, in the first revelation that he makes of him- 
self, is to present a very difficult problem. 

If it be no easy task to know how to best direct the 
awakening intelligence of a child merely gifted beyond the 
average of children, how almost, if not quite, impossible it is to 
do aught than harm to one that is of a different, and entirely 
superior, order of humanity. To attempt even to direct such 
an intelligence seems, in itself, almost an absurdity, as being 
like an effort of a dwarf to support a giant. If, then, a parent 
could, without prejudice, be assured that his child were truly a 
genius, it seems that the best he could do for his future 
would be simply to supply whatever the child's mind and 
heart craved. But the trouble is that the parent generally has 
some prejudice where the child is concerned, and therefore his 
best intentions lead him to adopt a course of training that may 
be most harmful. 

Luckily, as genius is so far superior to the highest talent 
as to be even unmeasurable by it, so it is so superior to its en- 
vironment as to rise triumphant over it, in time. The chief 
cause for regret is that genius may be delayed in displaying it- 
self by unfavorable conditions, but this seems almost inevitable. 
If a very young lad display unusual interest in, say, history, 
not for its stirring events but for its record of humanity, or 
if he show a decided love for any of the material sciences, it 
may be safe enough to supply him, during his youth, with stan- 
dard works upon the subject that engrosses him, for in the case 
of history, and the material sciences alike, the subject is con- 
fined to facts of experience. When, on the other hand, the 
youth shows a predilection for metaphysics, whether in the 
moral or mental order, it is far more difficult to determine how 
best to supply what is most fitting ; and this is true because, 
while metaphysics have a distinct human bearing, and therefore, 
like the other sciences, have to do with objects of experience, 
their principal subject is eternal and absolute truth. Indeed, 
without metaphysics, history and the material sciences except 
in so far as one should confine itself to a simple narration of 
human actions, and the other to a simple statement of the re- 



264 MEN OF LETTERS AND EARLY TRAINING. [Nov., 

suits of observation and experiment would be impossible. Hence 
it would seem that to guide aright the studies of a youth, in the 
former department of knowledge, would be a much easier task 
than an effort to the like end in the latter. 

As for the budding poet, unless a parent would risk the 
chance of making of his son a mere imitator of one of the mas- 
ters' melody or versification, it would require the most careful dis- 
crimination in the choice of models to be placed in the lad's hands. 

As in all other departments of the world of letters, the 
poetic genius could, and would, rise triumphant over his un- 
toward circumstances, but the mere poet of talent might be 
crushed by undesirable training. 

If Pope had been less great than he was, it seems probable 
that he would have become a mere imitator by his delight in 
Dryden. Even as he was, he often used the melody of his fa- 
vorite as a tune for his own verse. 

When one considers how unconsciously the thoughts of others 
come to be accepted, often, as one's own thoughts, it certainly 
behooves a parent with an exceptional child to take care that 
he be not brought into very frequent contact with the works 
of any particular writer; lest, by intimacy with and fondness 
for the author, the child imbibe so much from him as to crowd 
out whatever of originality he may have. 

Without any hope to solve the problem of what is the best 
training to give a child of promise, it seems at least probable 
that one step in the right direction would be diversity of read- 
ing, in the scope of his special gift. Whether, on the other hand, 
this even diversified specialization of training might not tend to 
weaken the other faculties than the one exercised by it, is a 
question worthy of serious thought. Perhaps if it were pursued 
during only the first few years of the child's intellectual activity 
and then discontinued, to be followed by a more general course 
of instruction, the results would be, on the whole, satisfactory. 

Much, of course, would depend upon the child himself. If 
he were a genius, then he would surmount any and every un- 
favorable condition ; but if he were only gifted above others, a 
mistaken treatment applied to him might result in his complete 
undoing. 

After the years of childhood have passed the boy necessarily 
must, in very great measure, be left to himself. But just then 
will he probably be most affected by the training of his childhood. 

Whatever direction his mental activity has been given, in its 
awakening, it will probably pursue, and then will begin to 



1894-] MEN OF LETTERS AND EARLY TRAINING. 265 

appear the poet, the philosopher, the historian, or whatever else 
he may have in him. 

After all, it may be that the best thing to do with a child 
that seems to be exceptional is to treat him as though he were 
distinctly commonplace. For, as we have already noticed, the 
great men of letters in all their manifestations, so far at least 
as England is concerned, were for the most part, as children, 
treated as though they were of no special value. 

Is it possible, then, that the neglect, the hard rubs, and the 
other seemingly adverse luck that accompanied them in their 
outset, were so many means necessary to the development of 
their greatness ? 

Who knows? If this be so, then the father that has a child 
apparently superior to other children, instead of trying to nur- 
ture and encourage the child's talents, would do well to treat 
him as though he were quite like ordinary children. Many men 
whose work in letters has made them famous have done some 
of the best of it under stress and strain, and this seems to af- 
ford some ground for belief in the spur, not only for horse 
but man ; and yet one cannot help the feeling that peace of 
soul is necessary for the best effort of the soul. 

It is impossible to say what effect other circumstances than 
his own would have upon any man ; and so one cannot tell 
how far the particular experience of any individual has contri- 
buted to his essential self. 

Shakspere, in his way ; Newton, in his, seem so far above 
the heads of ordinary humanity, that one almost hesitates to 
speculate as to the possibility of their being greater than they 
were if they had had a different environment. 

And yet when one considers how many writers there have 
been and are, and of them how comparatively few have added 
much to the real intellectual or moral treasures of the race, one 
can scarcely refrain from wishing at least that of the many the 
greater number had been prevented from wasting their own 
time on that for which they seem so ill fitted, and the time of 
the many readers who peruse books simply because they fall in- 
to their hands. 

Complaint is often made that, relatively speaking, so few 
persons read anything ; but the truth appears to be that most 
persons read too much, and think too little. It is not venturing 
much to say that if all the readers of trash were to be enrolled 
in an army they would present an alarmingly large proportion 
of the whole population. And the very reason that so much 



266 Two SONGS UNSUNG. [Nov., 

trash is read is precisely because most men abhor to think. 
What they crave is mere excitement of their imaginations, 
whether it be induced by intoxicating liquor or intoxicating 
print, for equally, in each case, the result is produced without 
mental effort. 

In this day of societies for the prevention of so many other 
things, why is there none for the prevention of pseudo men of 
letters ? 




TWO SONGS UNSUNG. 

BY M. E. HENRY-RUFFIN. 

IRING me a song from out thy harp," she said 
Unto the wordless poet, musing there ; 
Yet not a chord rose on the waiting air, 
Nor song uplifted as the maiden pled ; 
But lower bent the grave, denying head, 
Worshipping the lilies on her brow, with ne'er 
A blossom crushed their perfume everywhere 
About the life, through aisles of lilies led. 
How could his notes, with all their power, bring 
The beauty of those lily-laden days, 
The incense of those lily-guarded ways ? 
So let his harp its reverent silence sing, 
Knowing its best and purest music could 
Not reach her high, white grace of maidenhood. 

" Strike from your harp a song ! " the wanton cried. 

The poet sounded all his strings ; but still 

No harmony along the chords would thrill. 

And when he all its hopeless discords tried, 

He laid the jarring instrument aside. 

She lightly laughed : " You use your art but ill ; 

And cannot e'en a little moment fill 

With melody." The poet only sighed, 

To miss from off her brow the stately flower; 

While rose around her all the poisoned breath 

Of lilies broken or sin-crushed to death. 

" My harp was silenced by your maiden power 

Not sweet enough to sing you then, I vow; 

Nor sad enough to sing you, woman, now." 




1894-] THE PROPOSED AGNOSTIC AMENDMENT. 267 



THE PROPOSED AGNOSTIC AMENDMENT TO OUR 
STATE CONSTITUTION. 

BY REV. THOMAS MCMILLAN. 

ROFOUND students of social science recognize 
the dangers that threaten the peace and welfare 
of the commonwealth from the alarming growth 
of anarchy. Only a very small number of those 
devoted to the investigation of modern sociology 
attempt to seek out the causes for this increased strength of the 
dangerous classes. A rudimentary study of the question should 
convince any candid mind, honestly seeking for evidence, that 
the anarchist can easily gain adherents for his wild theories 
wherever the teaching of the Christian religion is unknown. In- 
tellectually there is a close kinship between the anarchist and 
the agnostic. The latter, so far as he can be induced to make 
any affirmation, endeavors to show that as God is unknown or 
unknowable, rational beings are exempted from the study of re- 
ligious truth. Hence the efforts of the church in maintain- 
ing teaching agencies for the promulgation of the Gospel are 
of no value in his estimation, and should be opposed in every 
enlightened country. The prevalence of such a theory among 
the discontented toilers who bear the burdens of the day pre- 
pares the way logically for the anarchist. Religion is his most 
formidable obstacle ; it is removed out of sight from the domain 
of thought by the agnostic. 

In a recent volume one of our most accomplished Catholic 
writers shows very plainly that " the state is not a machine 
dealing with dead matter. It is an organization of living men, 
in many of whom the hopes and the fears with which religion 
is concerned supply the mightiest and most masterful motives 
of their lives. The security and order of the state are the con- 
ditions of civilized life. It is manifest all history teaches the 
lesson that religion, more than anything else, makes for or 
against that security and order. It is the greatest instrument 
of union or division. It maybe either peace or a sword" (The 
Claims of Christianity, by William Samuel Lilly, p. 230). 

By the hasty action of the majority of the committee on 
education in the New York Constitutional Convention, endorsed 



268 THE PROPOSED AGNOSTIC AMENDMENT [Nov., 

by the final vote of its delegates, an important victory has been 
gained for agnosticism. Henceforth, should this amendment be 
adopted by the vote of the people, the teaching of " any de- 
nominational tenet or doctrine" renders "any school or institu- 
tion of learning " liable to examination or inspection. The 
school which is guilty of such a heinous offence wholly or in 
part, directly or indirectly, is to be deprived of any hope of 
compensation from public taxation, regardless of the conscien- 
tious convictions of its patrons, or the value of its instruction 
in the secular branches of knowledge. Any institution of learn- 
ing under denominational control, no matter how distinguished 
may be the citizens exercising this control, is to be assigned 
to a place unworthy of notice. This proscription against every 
denomination is to be a new duty for the Empire State, which 
is empowered to act as supreme judge of the essential requi- 
sites of a tenet or doctrine. 

It is safe to say that not one of the delegates of the conven- 
tion, even among the numerous learned lawyers who took part 
in the discussion, claimed to have a complete knowledge of the 
mysterious ramifications of the agnostic amendment. Certainly 
no intelligible explanation has been given for the use of the 
word " or " eleven times in a condensed statement proposed as 
a luminous declaration of the separation of church and state. 
Nothing akin to this new declaration of what the State must 
do can be found in the records of previous legislation on this 
subject. As a curiosity in legal literature it is here presented 
for inspection. 

THE PROPOSED AMENDMENT. 

"Article IX. Sec. 4. Neither the State nor any subdivision 
thereof shall use its property or credit or any. public money, or 
authorize or permit either to be used, directly or indirectly, in 
aid or maintenance, other than for examination or inspection, 
of any school or institution of learning, wholly or in part under 
the control or direction of any religious denomination, or in 
which any denominational tenet or doctrine is taught." 

During one stage of the prolonged discussion there was a 
most vigorous condemnation of section four from delegates be- 
longing to different Protestant denominations: the vote was 
sixty-eight to seventy-one in favor of its acceptance. At a crit- 
ical point of the debate while this vote was going on President 
Choate aroused the fears of unwary delegates by announcing in 
explanation of his vote that he had discovered " the rankest sec- 



1894-] TO OUR STATE CONSTITUTION. 269 

tarianism " in a motion proposed by delegate Cassidy, whose 
religious preference is for the Baptist Church. No one would 
expect from a Baptist " the rankest sectarianism." Then the A. 
P. A. spectre was introduced by President Choate in these words : 
" There are those who believe I am not one of them that 
a great foreign hierarchy is attempting to extend the influence 
of its religion and its power over the institutions of this State." 
One thing particularly noticeable in this and other utterances 
from President Choate regarding the foreign element of our 
population was the gratuitous assumption that nothing else but 
his narrow view would be tolerated by the people of New York 
State. Before the people or any of their representatives can 
form a just judgment, they need all the evidence on this ques- 
tion accurately presented. 

A STATE-MADE CHURCH. 

Mr. Gilbert gave utterance to a strange medley of opinions 
evidently prepared for the higher instruction of clergymen hav- 
ing little to do except to draw large salaries. While admitting 
that Mr. Gerry was right in saying that irreligion leads to an- 
archy, he seemed quite sure that the people of his district could 
teach obedience to God, obedience to the Constitution, and 
obedience to law better than any existing denomination. He 
has no misgivings on the matter because his plan is as broad 
as "the great sky above," not requiring "figures or details." 
These are his words : " I maintain this proposition, namely, that 
there should be religious instruction in the schools of the State 
of New York. What do I mean by religious instruction as ap- 
plied to schools? I will tell you exactly what I do not mean. 
I do not mean anything that is sectarian or denominational." 
He did not state whether the existence of God and the Ten 
Commandments would be ruled out, because taught by every de- 
nomination of Christians. What Mr. Gilbert really wants is a 
new nullifidian sect which shall be unlike all others in having 
his personal approval and the authority of the State. 

Mr. E. R. Brown reminded the convention that many reli- 
gious academies, founded by the churches, " have been the bea- 
con lights in the rural districts of the State of New York for a 
hundred years, controlled by Methodists, controlled by Baptists, 
controlled by the Presbyterians very largely, controlled in some 
instances by the Roman Catholics." 

Mr. McDonough contributed to the discussion valuable sta- 
tistics, prepared by an official of the Regents, showing that the 



2/o THE PROPOSED AGNOSTIC AMENDMENT [Nov., 

school laws of Ireland, England, Scotland, Germany, France, 
Austria, Belgium, Hungary, and other countries of Europe, as 
well as Canada, contained just provisions for religious training 
by the various denominations. He made clear the fact so often 
ignored with malice aforethought, that nowhere has the State 
been requested to pay for religion. Public funds are devoted 
to paying the expenses of teaching reading, writing, arithmetic, 
and other secular branches prescribed in the course of public in- 
struction. Christians worthy of the name desire the glory as 
well as the burden of making known the saving truths of the 
Gospel. 

IT IS AGAINST ALL RELIGION. 

He continues in this strain, after announcing that politically 
he has been a life-long Republican : 

"What have the churches of this State done to the people 
that would lead us to think them so wicked that we should con- 
demn them in the Constitution ? What offence, I say, have they 
committed? Are you afraid of your liberties? Are you afraid 
if children are educated in the religion of their parents that they 
will destroy your liberties ? You are aiming here at religious bod- 
ies and religious bodies only. Why, three years ago, one of the 
most eminent gentlemen of this State, who was a candidate for 
the nomination for governor, was turned down in a Republican 
Convention because he had written against religion. Now you 
propose to enact here an amendment in the Constitution that 
is an attack on all religious bodies. Why, if you said there 
should be no State aid in any schools in which socialism is en- 
couraged, that there should be no State aid in any school in 
which nihilism is encouraged, or in any school in which anarchy 
is encouraged, and you embodied that in a proposed amendment 
to the Constitution and went to the people with it, every one 
in the State would say that your work amounted to a condem- 
nation of anarchy, of nihilism, of socialism. What do you do 
now? You go to the people and say: 'Not a dollar of aid to 
any school in which religion is taught.' That is a condemnation 
of religion. 

" Your proposed amendment says that no money is to be 
appropriated for ' institutions ' of learning wholly or partly 
under the control or direction of any religious denomination, or 
in which any denominational tenet or doctrine is taught. Any 
denominational tenet or doctrine ? Very well ; take away the 
distinctive doctrines of the Baptists, take away the distinctive 



1894-] TO OUR STATE CONSTITUTION. 271 

doctrines or tenets of the Methodists, take away the distinctive 
tenets of the Presbyterians, of the Episcopalians, of the Catho- 
lics, etc., and what have you left? What will schools teach? 
They will teach a state-made religion. It is a union of the 
church and state, instead of a separation." 

THE ECONOMIC VIEW. 

He puts the argument from an economic point of view in 
this way : 

" There are in the common schools of this State, according 
to the census of 1890 I take the United States census 
1,042,160 children. There are in public schools not common 
7,810. There are in private schools, exclusive of parochial, 
77,000. There are in parochial schools of this State 119,242 
children educated. Of these, the Baptists have 1,991, the 
Catholics 108,152, the Lutherans 8,620, the Methodists 2,312, 
the Presbyterians 848, Protestant- Episcopal 3,736 ; all others, 
3,147. Now, there are 108,000 Catholic children, about one- 
tenth as many as are in all the common schools of the State, 
educated in parochial schools, without costing this State one 
penny. Of these, there are 40,000 in New York City. It costs 
thirty dollars per head to educate a child in the common 
schools of New York City per annum. The Catholics educate 
40,000 of them without costing the State one dollar. That is 
$1,200,000 a year that the State is saved. If they had to erect 
buildings for these 40,000 children, the City of New York 
would have to build at least thirty new school-houses, and with 
the enormous cost of property there, these school-houses would 
cost on a fair estimate $3,500,000. The annual interest on this 
sum is $175,000 at five per cent, interest. There is a saving, 
then, on interest, of $175,000. Outside the City of New York 
the 68,000 children educated, at fifteen dollars per head, would 
cost $1,020,000, and to provide them with school-houses would 
cost $1,000,000, the annual interest of which, at five per cent., 
would amount to $50,000 more ; so that there is a total annual 
saving to the public by these parochial schools of $2,445,000 ; 
and Catholics ought to have credit for that. They are giving 
this to the State of New York. They are paying their taxes 
for the public schools also, and they do this for conscience' 
sake." 

The final vote which sanctioned the educational amendment 
in the Constitutional Convention was the brief triumph of a 
majority not well informed on the facts of the case. It is to 



272 THE PROPOSED AGNOSTIC AMENDMENT [Nov., 

be desired that the verdict of the people condemning it will 
give new courage to those who still hope, amid pessimistic wail- 
ings, for the triumph of justice and intelligence in establishing a 
common-school system broad enough to safeguard the interests 
of the State, and to utilize the volunteer forces under denomi- 
national control. 

IT IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL. 

The Constitution of the United States plainly sets forth as 
one of its basic principles that " No religious test shall ever 
be required as a qualification to any office or public trust 
under the United States. 

" Congress shall make no laws respecting the establishment 
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. 

"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall 
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United 
States." 

The first article of the Constitution adopted by New York 
in 1777 contains these words: "The free exercise and enjoy- 
ment of religious profession and worship without discrimination 
or preference shall for ever be allowed in this State to all man- 
kind." 

PROTESTANTS ALSO CONDEMN IT. 

Some indications of the strong arguments urged by Mr. 
Cassidy, whose religious convictions are not at all with the 
Catholic Church, together with two notable letters from eminent 
Protestants, will furnish evidence of a clear grasp of first princi- 
ples by earnest minds outside of the Catholic Church. 

" I am opposed to this amendment as proposed by the com- 
mittee on education," Mr. Cassidy says, " because I believe it to 
be unconstitutional, a surrender to bigotry and fanaticism, and 
at war with the generally accepted doctrine of separation of 
church and state. It merely seeks to outlaw .some of the 
agencies in the State, because of their religious character. The 
principle involved in the separation of church and state is that 
the State, of right, exists merely for civil ends ; that it should 
have nothing whatever to do with religion ; that it should make 
no inquiries of its citizens, servants, or agents whether such 
and such religious tenets are held by them or not. 

"The State ought never to consent to run with the blood- 
thirsty dogs eager to chase down their religious prey. Churches 
are not exercising the most deadly influences in government 



1894-] T OUR STATE CONSTITUTION. 273 

to-day, and yet from the manner these A. P. A. dogs are 
barking you would think that no other influences for evil could 
equal them. 

" A church, though primarily a religious body, is also a civil 
corporation. And the State may make grants to it for civil 
reasons the same as to a purely secular organization. For 
instance, if the State advertises for the use of a room or build- 
ing, and the church offers one, the State may vote money to 
the church for the use of that room or building the same as it 
would for the use of a room in a railway depot. So, if the 
State makes grants to other parties for the shelter of the aged, 
poor, and orphans, or for giving instruction in geography, 
mathematics, and other secular branches, it may also make such 
grants to a church, asylum, or school, just the same as to one 
under purely secular control. For in that case the State is deal- 
ing with the church, not as a religious but as a civil organi- 
zation. When a church-school renders the State a secular 
service by giving secular instruction, it may be given grants 
from the Regents' funds, just the same as any purely secular 
school. 

" If a church-school renders the same secular service as a 
non-religious school, why should not the State make a grant to 
the former as well as to the latter? This amendment, however, 
proposes that the State shall establish a ' holy or unholy ' in- 
quisition, and shall hear and entertain charges that such and 
such doctrines are taught, and if such charges are proved, that 
such and such action shall be taken. 

"The State, which exists merely for civil ends, has no more 
right to inquire into ,the religious character and teachings of 
school corporations than into the religious character and teach- 
ings of an individual. The State has nothing to do except 
with the civil character of a citizen, and it has nothing to do 
with the school except with its civil character and the nature of 
the secular instruction given therein. As the State could not 
rightly refuse a pension to a soldier because he belongs to a 
church or taught certain religious doctrines, so it cannot rightly 
refuse a grant to a school corporation on any such grounds. 
As the State would have no right to inquire into the religious 
tenets or teachings of a man who is a candidate, so it has no 
right to inquire into the religious character of a school." 

Professor Norman Fox, chairman of the Board of Trustees 
of Cook Academy (Baptist) and of Rochester University, in a 

VOL. LX. 1 8 



274 THE PROPOSED AGNOSTIC AMENDMENT [Nov., 

letter read before the convention puts the same argument in a 
cogent way. He says : 

" The amendment is urged in the name of the separation of 
church and state. In fact it violates that principle. The sepa- 
ration of church and state implies that the State exists merely 
for civil ends and that it has nothing to do with religion. 
Now, as the State should not make a grant to a school simply 
because it is a religious school, so it should not refuse a grant 
on that ground. As the State has no right to inquire as to the 
religious character of a candidate for the position of post- 
master or brigadier-general, so it has no right to inquire as to 
the religious character of a college which is a candidate for an 
agricultural college land grant or any other such State subven- 
tion. The State should judge of a school purely on its civil 
and secular character, simply on the character of its secular 
teaching. If it also teaches religion and denominational tenets, 
that is a thing of which the State should take no cognizance 
whatever. This amendment proposes that the State should 
institute an 'inquisition' and find out whether a school asking 
a grant does or does not teach this or that religious or ecclesi- 
astical tenet. . . . " 

Another letter from Professor A. C. Hill, a Protestant of 
Protestants, and one of the foremost educators of the State, 
says that "there are many schools 'wholly or in part' con- 
trolled by religious bodies that are now doing educational work 
in the State. Most of these teach no peculiar religious dog- 
mas, but are engaged in strictly educational work. A majority 
of their trustees are by their charters required to belong to 
some particular sect or church, and from. this fact come within 
the class referred to as 'partly under the control of religious 
denominations,' and are therefore shut out from State aid. 
These schools are doing no inconsiderable part of the educa- 
tional work that would otherwise fall to the State to do, at 
small cost to tax-payers. They are doing no harm, but are 
rather giving a moral and religious tone to education in the 
State. Why then should such schools be singled out and thus 
discriminated against in the matter of State appropriations? A 
corporation, the majority of whose members are agnostics, 
atheists, or even anarchists, may establish schools and not come 
under the ban of the proposed constitutional enactment. The 
Masonic order, a farmer's club, or any other corporate body 
may found schools for which State aid may be granted; why 
should corporations composed of Christians or Jews alone be 



1 894.] 



TO OUR STATE CONSTITUTION. 



275 



prohibited ? The measure is an infringement upon personal 
liberty, a step toward union of church and state, an intro- 
duction of a negation of religion into our State Constitution." 

The letter of Professor Norman Fox in its entirety has 
intrinsic merits sufficient to claim the attention of honest 
minds. It has been honored by the editorial censure of the 
Independent, which rarely presents to its readers the best evi- 
dence in favor of Christian education. When it is a question 
of deciding what belongs to Christ in the training of a child 
and a future citizen, the Independent is a most unreliable guide ; 
it encourages a most dangerous form of indifferentism, con- 
demned by the most enlightened thinkers among non-Catholics. 
During the five months while the Constitutional Convention 
was in session, as well as long before, many of the opinions 
endorsed by the Independent clearly favored the advance of 
secularism. In an editorial notice of the work of the conven- 
tion in its issue of September 30, 1894., these words are found : 
" The most important of these amendments are those which are 
designed to prevent hasty and ill-considered legislation." To 
be consistent the Independent should have inquired from profes- 
sional educationists what was done in advance by the conven- 
tion to prevent hasty and ill considered legislation on the school 
question, before praising the report of the educational com- 
mittee. 




-V 




A MUCH greater mastery of the novelist's art is 
shown in Mr. Stanley J. Weyman's latest work, My 
Lady Rotka* than in its predecessors. It is not so 
much the chronicle of a single person's sayings and 
doings amongst a certain number of other persons 
more or less artistically arranged as this author's preceding no- 
vels chiefly were. It still partakes of that character, neverthe- 
less, and may be regarded as a sort of panoramic novel ; but it 
contains more of the arrangement and prevision of a connected 
and compacted story. 

Mr. Weyman always makes his chief character tell the story 
in the first person singular. This literary arrangement offers the 
advantage of imparting greater force and vraisemblance to the 
work of fiction, and in the hands of a perfect master of style, 
who understands all the different chords of human feeling, must 
lead the delusion to the point where the fiction line melts into 
the horizon of reality, on the converse of the principle of the 
modern cyclorama, where the aim is to confuse the unreal per- 
spective with the actual foreground. But the disadvantage it 
involves almost counterpoises this at least when an author in- 
tends to write stories as long as he can get a ready market, 
He is driven to try to be versatile in his imaginary egomets, 
and this, as in the case of many actors, is too great a demand 
upon his intellectual resources. The make-up in all Mr. Wey- 
man's story-tellers is somewhat different in A Gentleman of 
France and Under the Red Robe but slightly so but the inner 
man is identical. And so it is in the case of the teller of this 
story, My Lady Rotha* favorite domestic, half woodman, half 
major-domo, one Martin Schwarz. His mental fibre in love and 
war is of the same pattern as that of the two supposititious 
Frenchmen. 

This literary peculiarity, however, will not strike the reader 
who takes up this book on its own merits. It is an able tale 
in many respects. The period at which it is laid is not often 

* My Lady Rotha. By Stanley J. Weyman. New York : Longmans, Green & Co. 



1894-] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 277 

chosen by modern novelists. No one of note has touched it, 
if our memory be not elusive, since the days of the primordial 
six-novels-a-year writer, Mr. G. P. R. James. It is the period 
of Gustavus Adolphus and the Thirty Years' War. 

Mr. Weyman is no superficial reader. He has evidently 
pored over the history of his periods well, and mastered many 
details of geography and topography, as well as of national cus- 
toms and the Zeitgeist of each particular epoch. He is conscien- 
tious in his treatment of details, and his language is clear-cut, 
apt, and vivid. Hence his pictures of battle and perilous ad- 
venture, such as abound in this story just a trifle too much for 
many tastes, are such as hold the reader's interest well. He is 
no more bigoted than the usual run of Protestant authors. 

The character of Lady Rotha, a German gentlewoman of the 
petite noblesse, is modelled on the severe classic ideal, rather than 
on the actual Teutonic type. She is a mixture of Portia and 
the Countess of Derby in the Roundhead days. She is a more 
sensible woman than most women of reality, for she rejects a 
handsome and brave young noble, but who sometimes gets 
drunk, for a husband in favor of a warrior who is not hand- 
some and is not young. 

The book has an interest and a value, however, altogether 
outside its doubtful claim as a novel. It gives an impressive 
idea of some of the horrors of the great continental struggle of 
the seventeenth century, and as good a notion of some of the lead- 
ing characters of a portion of the drama as may be derived from 
careful study. The theme is sombre, if exciting at times, and 
the treatment is not calculated to lighten the effect. In this 
respect the historical novel is usually a failure ; and it was only 
by bringing the lighter qualities of the Celtic mind to its ser- 
vice that Sir Walter Scott made it a success. 

A piece of strong secondary evidence of the progress of the 
Catholic movement in Great Britain may be recognized in the 
growing demand for the literature of the great Oxford seces- 
sion. This literature is working its way on the British intellect 
slowly but irresistibly, even as the diamond drill cuts through 
the solid rock. It is a peculiar literature, the distinguishing 
marks of which are solidity, sobriety, and the earnestness begot- 
ten of the belief of immortal issues depending on the force and 
lucidity of words. One of the most notable books of this litera- 
ture is the narrative entitled A Life's Decision* in which the 

*A Life's Decision, By T. W. Allies, K.C.S.G. Second edition. London: Burns & 
Oates, Ltd. 



27 8 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Nov., 

whilom Ritualist English clergyman, Mr. T. W. Allies, gives his 
reasons for his spiritual metempsychosis. It is worthy of note 
that although the author has published other works of a kindred 
character, bearing more or less directly on the same subject, a 
second edition of this particular work is now called for and has 
been issued. 

It is impossible to avoid being struck with the evidently pro- 
vidential feature in the Oxford movement, from the course of 
Mr. Allies' narrative. His own mental Odyssey furnishes a 
curious example of the working of a great external force in the 
inchoate phase of that wonderful new departure. His life had 
been aimless up to the point of his encountering a great 
sorrow, the nature of which is not indicated in his disclosure. 
He had, like many other Englishmen of means and leisure, led 
a wandering life, untroubled by any doctrinal views, and being, 
indeed, rather nebulous, as it would appear, about religion or 
doctrine of any kind. When this great sorrow fell upon him it 
gave his thoughts a bent toward God. As Mr. Allies himself 
says, he had come back from travel perfectly irreligious, 
desirous of distinction, arid with self for his only idol ; but all 
this was changed by the chastening hand of affliction. His first 
movement was toward Anglican orders, yet, after having 
entered the diaconate, he confesses that his mind was entirely 
unformed in religious views. Of two things he had a horror in 
early life the Catholic religion and theology ; yet he was 
driven as by an irresistible destiny, step by step, to study the 
one until he could not help but embrace the other. Socially he 
was a rather friendless man, for those comrades he had known 
at Oxford in his school days had been lost sight of in the 
course of his subsequent wandering life. Hence, when the 
period of his spiritual struggle came he had no one to advise 
him, and this isolation he deplores as a misfortune, as it ap- 
pears to him now that it was a matter of chance into what 
school of theological opinion he should drift. Yet it is plain 
from Mr. Allies' own narrative that there was nothing of chance 
in it, as he was being drawn by an invisible hand to Catholic 
modes of thought and Catholic belief, even when he himself 
had no suspicion that such was the case. 

Later on the writer knew Newman and Ward, and other 
leading Tractarians, and the growing light which was breaking 
over their minds at last revealed itself to his. 

It was not until he had been for thirteen years an ordained 
minister of the Anglican Church that Mr. Allies gave up for- 
mally his connection with that establishment and was received 



1894] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS* 279 

into the bosom of the true fold by his friend, Dr. Newman. 
The story of his progress, step by step, each step being de- 
bated strenuously for and against, is an interesting piece of tes- 
timony. It involves, necessarily, a review of the entire eccle- 
siastical position during the long period which it covers, not 
only in England but in France and other countries where na- 
tional sentiment in church matters found itself in antagonism 
with the broad universalism of the church. The correspondence 
of the reverend author with many of the leading figures in these 
controversies is not the least interesting feature in his work. 
The book may be studied usefully in connection with the other 
narratives of the period, for its individuality of thought as well 
as for a piece of close logical reasoning in the following up of 
gradually unfolding doctrinal and theological premises. 

Fr. Pustet & Co. have issued another edition of Suffering 
Souls* that excellent manual of devotion for those who weep 
and hope for their dead. The work in its original form was by 
the Right Rev. Monsignor Preston, and it has been enlarged by 
the Sisters of the Divine Compassion. 

Mr. Du Maurier helps us a little in the discussion about the 
pure and the impure in art, by the publication of his novel of 
Trilby* He gives us a good many glimpses of the inner life 
of the Bohemian crowd who make the pursuit of art an excuse 
for a life of irregularity and frivolity and unrestraint. These 
glimpses, so far as they relate to Paris, are not by any means 
overdrawn ; any one who knows the quartier latin will admit that 
they err on the side of tenderness to its repute. There is al- 
ways a fierce outcry whenever shocked sensibilities make a pro- 
test against the^degradation of art by linking it with mere sen- 
suality. The atmosphere in which the artist lives, it is claimed, 
is transcendental ; neither he nor his models are conscious of 
any wrong. It is only in the spirit of truth and love of the 
beautiful that the sacrifice of modesty is made ; or rather, the 
apparent sacrifice, for it is claimed that when the fences of 
modesty are thrown down a ring of delicate and chivalrous spiri- 
tuality hedges in the votaries of art far more completely and 
effectually than the conventional canons and institutions of a 
coarse and evil-minded civilization. They become dead to ordi- 
nary feeling, and in fact completely metamorphosed, for the time, 
by the operation of a sublime chalybeate influence of some in- 
definable but universally admitted kind. The author gives us 
his own word for it, that " nothing is so chaste as nudity." 

* Trilby : A novel. By George Du Maurier. New York : Harper Brothers. 



280 



TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Nov., 



Trilby ought to help a full disillusionment on this subject. 
It is confessedly the record of the author's own experience of 
the artistic and musical set amidst which he moved for many 
years. Those of us who have got any personal knowledge of it 
in our travels are constrained to admit the truth of the picture. 
The patter of the studios, the banter, the flashing wit, the 
easy indifference to outside opinion, the makeshift existence, 
the wild gaiety of the life, are all faithfully mirrored in those 
brilliant and audacious pages of Trilby. 

It is difficult to find any standard in English letters by which 
to measure the workmanship of Mr. Du Maurier. It is ebullient 
in humor and just stops short at times of being extravaganza. 
Whenever the author is at a loss for a phrase he appropriates 
a good line from a poet or other authority and runs it into his 
own sentence as part and parcel of it. This is a trick of the 
tribe whom the story satirizes, adopted more from a force of 
habit than for lack of wit of their own. Sometimes the reader 
is almost inclined to imagine the author is laughing at him. 

There is not so much of a story in Trilby as there is in 
Vanity Fair. It is a creation merely around which to group a 
series of satires upon men and women and opinions and habits 
such as the author found them in the peculiar vocation which 
he followed for so many years. A caricaturist is always naturally 
on the look-out for the foibles of human nature, and whatever 
instinctive qualities of detection he has had from nature to aid 
him become sharpened by training and the necessity of finding 
foibles where to other eyes they might be hidden. Religion, 
amongst other things, comes in for its share of scorn at the 
satirist's hands. One of his characters Little Billee delivers 

f 

himself with very great effect against the shortcomings of Chris- 
tianity and the absurdities of Scripture narrative. The way in 
which Little Billee puts these things is, of course, only the result 
of an imperfect early training and a prolonged sojourn in the 
atelier of M. Carrel. 

Trilby, the heroine, is the personification of wronged model- 
hood, perhaps. She seems to be the result of a study of several 
characters, a strange amalgam. She is not virtuous, until the 
discovery of a pure love opens her eyes to the fact that posing as 
a nude model for a school of ribald students is indelicate, and 
immorality of conduct sinful. But she behaves nobly after she 
makes the discovery. She gives up the lover who has wrought 
her conversion because his mother points out how marriage with 
him would blight his career, and in her affection for the friends 
of her model days she is steadfast to the last. But she falls 



1894.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 281 

under the evil influence of a great musician, and a great brute, 
named Sveganli, and he hypnotizes her into becoming not only 
a great singer, although she had no musical ear, but his most 
devoted slave. Cases of magnetism of this sort are not un- 
known ; but the secret influence is generally fear ; here it is un- 
specified ; and, with all his loathsome repulsiveness, Trilby is 
portrayed as actually made to love this fellow. A character like 
Sveganli must have existed sometime and somewhere in the 
modern musical world, for Marion Crawford, in his Roman Singer, 
seems to have struck on him too. 

Trilby is a tragedy of rare power, lighted up with innumer- 
able flashes of tender pathos and fine touches of human sympa- 
thy. Its defect is that it minimizes the deadly effects of sin 
and shame on the most beautiful of all God's works the wo- 
man's heart in youth, and by gilding over an evil state of 
things in art makes the average reader a sympathizer with the 
profane and licentious conditions which in some parts of the 
world surround it. 

There appears to be something in the nature of the new 
" science " which, like the insane root, makes those who feed 
on it pugnacious and aggressive, if not demented. Some of its 
disciples seem to go out of their way to pick quarrels. Some 
go trailing their philosophical coats up and down the world, evo- 
lution cudgel in hand, inviting all who do not agree with them 
to tread on its tail. Aggressiveness towards the believers in a re- 
spectable origin, however, is not always accompanied by obtuse- 
ness to the amenities of scholarly society ; and herein we find 
an eminent scientist, Dr. R. W. Shufeldt, forming an unenviable 
precedent. A work of his on biology * bristles like a chevaux- 
de-frise with provoking polemics, and these are ushered in with 
a string of epithets about heretics, fagots, and the Inquisition 
which suggest an assiduous course in A. P. A. science rather 
than the calm search into the pages of nature. 

Professor Shufeldt was lately invited by Bishop Keane to de- 
liver a course of lectures before the students of the Catholic Uni- 
versity. He says he felt gratified at the invitation, and, although 
not a Catholic, he hastened to accept it. He affects to be sur- 
prised that a Catholic University wants to know anything about 
science. Almost at the outset he sounds a note of battle, be- 
ginning with that not altogether original old bogey known as the 
Dark Ages, whose trade-marks are supposed to be ignorance, 

* Lectures on Biology. Delivered before the Catholic University of America. By Dr. R. 
W. Shufeldt. Reprinted from The American Field, Chicago, New York, London. 



TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Nov., 

superstition, and monkish iniquity, in which formula the professor 
most profoundly believes. From this spring-board he quickly 
got on to the familiar vantage-ground of "the inquisition, the 
fagot, and the stake" as the merciless persecutors of science. 
These remarks were not received with enthusiastic applause, it 
seems, and Professor Shufeldt is painfully impressed with the 
want of good manners shown by Catholic papers in not giving 
his erudite discoveries in full. It may be that they had no ad- 
equate appreciation of such truths as this: "As to how long 
man has existed upon earth as man geologists are at variance 
in their opinions," or this profounder conclusion: " Many of 
our most competent living biologists are of the opinion a be- 
lief shared by myself that we are as yet in absolute ignorance 
of the causes which have led to the origination of living matter." 
" We are utterly in the dark," went on Professor Shufeldt, "about 
the origin of life." When we consider what a vast amount of 
learning was employed by this gentleman to arrive at this sapi- 
ent conclusion, we cannot share his wonder that the auditory of 
the Catholic University were no more convinced by his reason- 
ing than they were impressed by his politeness. The tone in 
which he refers to the subject in the introduction to this resume 
reminds one of the astonished victim of similar ill-treatment who 

asked : 

" Perhaps it was well to dissemble your love, 
But why did you kick me down stairs ? " 

The science of biology, if we follow the professor, makes 
many demands upon study, and its claims go as far as religion 
does over the origin and the end of man. But so far as its 
conclusions go, according to him and all the other recognized 
authorities, they are no better than those of the much-maligned 
dark ages. It gives no comfort to the seeker after truth ; it 
seems powerless to affect our civilization or to eliminate in man 
the primordial rudeness of the being who walked about in a 
suit of woad. 



I. THE HOLY LAND IN SCRIPTURE.* 

This is one of many works now fast multiplying in every 
language on a portion of the domain of archaeology that, of all 
others, most interests the civilized world. The countries bor- 
dering on the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea, and ex- 
tending inwards as far as the Persian Gulf, have engrossed the 
attention of mankind from time immemorial. They stand out 

* New Light on the Bible and the Holy Land. By Basil T. A. Evetts, M. A. 



1894-] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 283 

in bold relief in every historical retrospect, whether pertaining 
to sacred or secular studies. In the former, for over twenty 
years, they have more than ever attracted attention, owing to 
the wonderful discoveries of priceless archaeological treasures in 
Persia, Asiatic Turkey, and Egypt. Nothing like them in ex- 
tent, variety, and intensity of interest were ever before found, 
so much so, indeed, that savants of every country feel under a 
kind of necessity to turn aside or, at all events, to take time 
from other pursuits to investigate them. The defenders of re- 
vealed religion and its opponents feel themselves more specially 
constrained to do so ; for facts are here brought to light that 
cannot be gainsaid by either, and that have momentous conse- 
quences for both. The Bible narrative was not only called in 
question by the latter, but the persons and places referred to 
in it were said to be mythical. Not only was it declared that 
some of the narrators and writers did not exist, but it was 
proved (f) that the art of writing was not discovered at the 
time the earlier portions are said to have been written ; that it 
was entirely unknown, at least in the country of some of the 
scribes, and so forth. Of all of this and much more the Assy- 
rian, Egyptian, and Phoenician tablets, monuments, and inscribed 
cylinders now being unearthed thousands of years after their 
execution are a complete refutation. But they will effect 
more than this, much as it is. For the vast majority who cling 
the more loyally to the Written Word of God, the more it is 
impugned by sceptics, whether they be hypercritical philoso- 
phers or philosophical critics, have light thrown on obscure 
passages by these new witnesses that surpass the clearest illu- 
mination of the best commentators. Indeed, it is only by them 
that one can read aright many hitherto obscure passages of 
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Nehemiah, Esther, Kings, and other 
portions. Hence it is that each exhumation of Assyrian, Phoe- 
nician, and Egyptian monument is welcomed by an ever-widening 
circle of religiously interested people, as well as by the more select 
circle of professional archaeologists. Works treating of them 
find a ready sale ; and, happily, those lately published are so 
interesting as to add immensely to the already well-established 
wish for such literature. 

Amongst the latest and best is that by Mr. Basil T. A. 
Evetts, M.A., entitled New Light on the Bible and the Holy Land, 
by the Cassell Publishing Co., N. Y. Mr. Evetts's connection 
with the Assyrian Department of the British Museum afforded 
him exceptional advantages for such special work. The result of 
his study and research he clothes in such simple and beautiful 



284 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Nov., 

language as brings it within reach of all, and insures both inter- 
est and delight to his readers. Whilst doing full justice to all 
the various explorers amongst whom Catholic missionaries have 
been conspicuous he wisely avoids all appearance of being a 
controversialist or special pleader, letting the facts speak for 
themselves, as they do most eloquently. One who peruses them 
calmly and dispassionately can come to but one conclusion, namely, 
that so far as these monuments give testimony, it is all in most 
striking vindication of the Hebrew Scriptures' accuracy, and against 
the critics who declared them in error because many names quoted 
corresponded not with those of the historians, and many event- 
ful scenes referred to coincided not with the readings of classic 
history. As far as the cuneiform inscriptions have been deci- 
phered, nothing contradictory of the Sacred Scriptures has been 
found, but a vast amount confirmatory and explanatory, as Mr. 
Evetts points out. 

Of the value of the work for the purpose referred to it must, 
however, be stated that it could be greatly enhanced if it were 
less diffuse, more methodical, and had more illustrations, espe- 
cially in maps, plans, and views of the more remarkable ancient 
works still existing. In reading the description of Persepolis, 
from page fifty-two onward, one longs for them in a special way ; 
as no verbal description could possibly convey an accurate idea 
of such unique remains. An alphabetical index, too, would be a 
most desirable addition. 

No educated person can afford to do without perusing this 
or some kindred work. 



2. THE ART OF PREACHING.* 

Goldsmith, in his essay on the English Clergy and Popular 
Preachers, says that he never read a fine composition under the 
title of a sermon without thinking that the author had miscalled 
his piece. " For," said he, " the talents to be used in writing 
well entirely differ from those of speaking well." 

This distinction is clearly made by the writer of a bright 
brochure entitled Hints on Preaching, which comes before the 
corpus ecclesiasticum with a graceful approbation from Archbishop 
Ryan. 

The desire of the author is to place the fruits of his ripened 
experience before his fellow-priests, to the end that the spoken 
word may attain to the fulness of its power. 

" Be natural," he writes, and this is the keynote of the work 

* Hints on Preaching. By Rev. Joseph V. O'Connor. Philadelphia : Porter & Coates. 



1894-] NEW BOOKS. 285 

the entire tone of which is characterized by simplicity and sound 
sense. 

Within the small compass of the book are found excellent 
suggestions for the care and cultivation of the speaking voice 
and for securing a clear and articulate pulpit delivery. The 
whole range of the preacher's needs is sententiously outlined, 
and tkis by one whose successful public experience outweighs 
much untried theory. 



NEW BOOKS. 

BENZIGER BROTHERS, New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago; BURNS & GATES, 

London : 

A Retreat, consisting of Thirty-three Discourses, with Meditations, for the rise 
of the Clergy, Religious, and others. By the Right Rev. John Cuthbert 
Hedley, O.S.B., Bishop of Newport and Menevia. 

MACMILLAN & Co., New York and London : 

Animals' Rights, considered in relation to Social Progress, with a Biblio- 
graphical Appendix. By Henry S. Salt. Also, An Essay on Vivisection. 
By Albert Leffingwell, M.D. 

THE ART AND BOOK COMPANY, London and Leamington : 

Under the Cress-Keys: A Story of the Pontifical Zouaves. By Wilfrid C. 
Robinson. 

J. T. HYLAND & Co., Chicago : 

Life of Mary Monholland, Sister of the Order of Mercy. By a Member of 

the Order. 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & Co., Boston : 

Childhood in Literature and Art. By Horace E. Scudder. In Sunshine 
Land. By Edith M. Thomas. With illustrations by Katharine Pyle. Fol- 
lowing the Greek Cross ; or, Memories of the Sixth Army Corps. By 
Thomas W. Hyde, Brevet Brigadier-General of Volunteers. Jhe Chase 
of Saint-Casten. By Mary Hartwell Catherwood. 

JOHN MURPHY & Co., Baltimore : 

Life of Blessed John Gabriel Perboyre. Translated from the French. Stu- 
dent's Hand-book of British and American Literature. By the Rev. O. L. 
Jenkins, A.M., S.S. 

D. C. HEATH & Co., Boston: 

Nature Stories for Young Readers : Animal Life. By Florence Bass. 
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York and London : 

Papers of the American Society of Church History. Vol. vi. Edited by 
Rev. Samuel Macauley Jackson, M.A., Secretary. 

LONGMANS, GREEN & Co., New York : 

Gerald Ffrench's Friends. By George H. Jessop. 
CASSELL PUBLISHING Co., New York : 

(Sunshine Series.) Nurse Elista. By G. Manville Fenn. Half Brothers. 
By Hesba Stretton. 



286 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [Nov., 



THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 

AT the Annual Meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Catholic Summer- 
School of America, held on August 9, 1894, it was decided that the Catho- 
lic Summer-School assume the direction of all Reading Circles in this country 
that desire affiliation with it, on the following lines: That the Reading Circles in 
each district be organized so as to form a Central Board composed of representa- 
tives from the Circles ; that from these central boards an Advisory Board be 
formed, which shall act as an auxiliary to the Directing Board ; that this Directing 
Board prepare suitable, comprehensive, and homogeneous courses of reading 
with a view to prepare the members for the work of ensuing sessions ; that these 
Central Boards shall co-operate in the dissemination of Catholic truth as occa- 
sion may require ; that this Directing Board prepare a series of lectures in 
harmony with the course of reading, and suggest certain lecturers ; that the 
official organ of this Summer-School be made to all intents and purposes a 
Catholic educational review for the furtherance of Reading Circles, schools^ 
colleges, and academies; and that the proprietor of the Catholic Reading Circle 
Review be requested to change the name of said review to the Champlain 
Review, the organ of the Catholic Summer-School, devoted to the interests 
named above. The Reading Circle Union will have for its first board of directors 
Rev. Morgan M. Sheedy, Chairman, Pittsburgh, Pa. ; Warren E. Mosher, 
Youngstown, Ohio; Rev. James F. Loughlin, D.D., Philadelphia, Pa.; Rev. 
Joseph H. McMahon, Director of Cathedral Library, New York ; Professor 
George E. Hardy, College of the City of New York. 

In accordance with the foregoing resolution, the following plan of Reading 
Courses for local Circles and individuals is announced by the Directing Board 
having in charge this department of the work of the Summer-School. The plan 
submitted is not as complete in matters of detail as the board intends to make 
it, but it is believed to be comprehensive enough for a beginning. The object 
is to encourage the diffusion of sound literature ; to give those who desire to 
pursue their studies after leaving school an available opportunity to follow pre- 
scribed courses of the most approved reading ; to enable others, who have made 
considerable progress in education, to review their past studies, and, particularly, 
to encourage individual home reading and study on systematic and Catholic 
lines. 

A full course requires four years' study, but members may join for one year 
or longer. The term each year begins October i and ends July i. Special or 
post-graduate courses will be prepared for those who complete the regular 
course. Any person of good character, Catholic or non-Catholic, who is de- 
sirous of truth and self-culture, may become a member of this Reading Circle 
Union. An annual fee of fifty cents shall be paid by each member. This, fee is 
required to meet the necessary expenses incidental to the work, viz.: printing, 
postage, etc., and shall be remitted to the general secretary with the application. 
Applications maybe sent in at any time to Warren E. Mosher, Youngstown, 
Ohio. A membership card will be issued yearly to each member on the pay- 
ment of annual fee. 



1894-] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 287 

The course of reading for the year 1894-95 is as follows : 

1. Church History First five centuries. 

2. Early English Literature. 

3. Science Physics, Astronomy. 

4. Sacred Scripture. 

5. Topics of the Day and Current Literature. 

6. Literary Studies. 

The Course begins with the study of Church History. 

One book only in each study required. The books selected are : 
Church History 

A Popular Manual of Church History, . . . , . $0.60 

Manual of Church History, Vols. I. and II., by Rev. T. Gilmartin 

(Vol. I. only necessary in the Course), 5.70 

History of the Church, by Rev. J. A. Birkhaeuser, . . . 3.00 

History of the Catholic Church, by Dr. H. Brueck, translated by Rev. 

E. Pruente, 2 vols., 3.00 

Allies' Formation of Christendom, Allard's Persecutions, Northcote 
Brownlow's Roma Sotterranea, an account of the Roman Catacombs, compiled 
from the works of De Rossi ; Visit to the Roman Catacombs, cheap edition \ 
Murphy's Chair of Peter; Newman's Athanasius, and Arians of the Fourth Cen- 
tury ; Butler's Lives of the Saints ; Fabiola, by Wiseman ; Callista, by Newman ; 
Dion and the Sibyls, by Keon; Martyrs of the Coliseum, by O'Reilly ; Cineas ; 
or, Rome Under Nero. 
Early English Literature 

Development of Old English Thought, by Brother Azarias, . . $1.25 
Egan's Primer of English Literature, ...... .60 

Brooke's English Literature, .35 

Arnold's Manual of English Literature, Sixth Edition, Revised, . 2.00 

Jenkins's Hand-book of English Literature 1.25 

Philosophy of Literature, by Brother Azarias, . . . . 1.50 

Science 

Balfour Stewart's Physics (required book) .35 

Molloy's Gleanings in Science, 1.75 

The Fairyland of Science, by Arabella Buckley 1.50 

Works in Physics by Ganot, Gage, Wright, Arnott, Steele. 

Brennan's Astronomy : New and Old, i.oo 

Astronomy with an Opera-Glass, ....... 1.50 

Bible, Science, and F^ith, $1.25 ; and Science and Scientists, by 

Zahm, .75 

Sacred Scripture 

Introduction to the Sacred Scriptures, by Rev. John MacDevitt, D.D. 

(required book), 1.75 

Christ in Type and Prophecy, by Rev. A. J. Maas, S.J. ; Preston's Protest- 
antism and the Bible ; The Bible and Belief, and The Written Word, by Rev. 
W. Humphrey, S.J. ; Mullen's Canon of the Old Testament ; Dixon's Introduc- 
tion to the Sacred Scripture. 

Topics of the Day, Current Literature, and Literary Studies will be treated 
of in special departments of the Reading Circle Review. 

The recommendations contained in this outline will serve as an introduction. 
Other courses and books will be announced in a short time. 



288 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [Nov., 1894. 

Circles or individuals that may have adopted other studies for the ensuing 
year than are announced in this course might, nevertheless, add at least one of 
the studies named herein, and thus become members of the large body of readers 
in the Reading Circle Union. 

Books may be ordered from the office of the Secretary, Youngstown, Ohio, 
in sets or in single copies, as required in the order of reading. Orders for books 
will not receive attention unless accompanied by the price. No person will 
receive a discount on books who is not a member of the Reading Circle Union. 
A discount of ten to twenty per cent, will be allowed. The order of study 
recommended is : 

October, November, and December. Church History and Physics. 

January, February, and March. Church History, Sacred Scripture, and 
Physics. 

April, May, and June. Sacred Scripture and Early English Literature. 
* * * 

The Columbian Reading Union has cheerfully welcomed every new force 
working for the extension of Reading Circles. We feel assured that all who 
have watched the growth of the movement as recorded in the pages of THE 
CATHOLIC WORLD since the year 1888 will extend their best wishes to the Read- 
ing Circle Union of the Catholic Summer-School, whose directors have been wisely 
chosen, and are well qualified by past experience for the management of work 
assigned to them. Within the United States and Canada there are vast numbers 
of Catholics who should avail themselves of the advantages for self-improve- 
ment now within their reach. 

M. C. M. 



Contents. 



VF.NITE ADOREMUS. (Pcem.) John J. O'Shea. 

THE HILLWOOD CHRISTMAS BALL. 

Mrs. M. E. Henry-R^lffin. 

THE PRINCE OF INDIA; OR, " WHY CONSTANTINOPLE FELL." 
(Illustrated.) Rev. Charles Warren Currier. 

"GLORIA IN ExcELSIS DEO." S.M.Oovey. 

GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 

(Illustrated.) Rev. Clarence A. Wai-worth. 

DURHAM CANDLES. (Poem.) Louise Imogen Guiney. 

PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S ADMISSIONS. William Barry, D.D. 
DAYBREAK. (Poem.) Charleson Shane. 

COUNT DE MUN : LEADER OF THE CATHOLIC REPUBLICAN 
DEPUTIES. (Illustrated,) Etigene Dams. 

A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. ( 'Illustrated.) 

By John J. O'Shea, assisted by the following Contributors : 
Marianne Kent, " Pepita Casada," Dorothy Monckton, 
and Marie Louise Sandrock. 
ANCIENT MAMMALS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS. 

William Seton, LL.D. 
MISSIONARY EXPERIENCES ON THE "CLEVELAND PLAN." 

Rev. Walter Elliott. 
A NOBLE ARAB MARTYR. M. J. L. 




pf 



THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD, 



VOL. LX. 



DECEMBER, 1894. 



No. 357. 




VENITE ADOREMUS. 

BY JOHN J. O'SHEA. 

ACRED Night! Thy solemn splendor, 
When thy face is calm and tender, 
Fills us with ecstatic wonder 
Day can never give. 



YOL. LX. 19 



Though thy mantle be full sombre, 
Rich its jewels without number, 
Yet as in the tomb their slumber 
Did day for ever live. 

To our eyes all viewless ever 
Jehovah's marvellous endeavor, 
Suns and systems bounded never, 
Still unknown rolled on. 

To thee, more, the favor given, 
Last and greatest of all heaven, 
In thine hours man's bondage riven 
By the new-born One. 

Thine it was to mark the anguish 
Ended of the souls did languish, 
Thine to see the Woman vanquish 
The serpent of the ground. 

Night of nights ! the angels' singing 
Filled the vault with paeans ringing, 
Cowering fiends their flight took winging 
At the glorious sound. 

Copyright. VERY RBV. A. F. HBWIT. 1894. 



290 



VENITE ADOREMUS. [Dec., 

In their tombs the prophets stirring 
Felt the angels' pinions whirring, 
And their souls, to earth recurring, 
Consolation found. 

" Be to God the highest glory, 
Peace to man till time is hoary, 
Love blots out the dismal story 
Of his fall from grace ! " 

Such the canticle outringing 
From the choirs celestial winging 
Gentle shepherds heard, upspringing 
From their watching place. 

And the Magi saw the token 
Of that promise never broken, 
Of that Living Word outspoken, 
In the Star of Hope. 

Wisdom, science, royal station, 
All that warps imagination, 
With their yearning adoration 
Vainly strove to cope. 

Simple faith was yours, O Magi ! 
Choicest gift of heaven had ye 
Ere assurance came to glad ye 
In the Virgin's smile. 

Changed all that with march of science, 
Our wise men now seek alliance 
With the brutes, in bold defiance 
Of that Word the while. 

We this science leave to revel 
In its base ancestral level, 
We who were redeemed from evil 
Thence for evermore, 

With the Magi's hope enchanting, 
With the Magi's love all panting, 
Joining with the angels' chanting, 
Come, let us adore. 




1894-] THE HILL WOOD CHRISTMAS BALL. 291 

THE HILLWOOD CHRISTMAS BALL. 

BY MRS. M. E. HENRY-RUFFIN. 

REAKFAST at Hillwood, the plantation 
home of old Judge Fancher, was a very 
enjoyable meal; and an attractive time to 
meet the cordial family. Hillwood was 
three miles from the capital city of one of 
the Southern States; and the period of 
which I write was in that halcyon epoch 
that still stands luminously in the Southern 
memory as " before the war." It was in the 
full effulgence of a decade before the break- 
ing of the war-cloud. 
At the long table, above the tall silver coffee-urn, rose the 
motherly face of Mrs. Fancher. At the other end sat the old 
judge himself. On either side were ranged six young people, 
four sons and two daughters. Of the sons two had reached 
man's estate : Lawrence, the oldest, tall, stalwart, and thought- 
ful of face ; Joseph, handsome, dashing, and attractive in man- 
ner and appearance. 

Near the dignified old judge sat his oldest daughter, Helen, 
a strikingly beautiful brunette of nineteen. Fred, the seventeen- 
year-old school-boy, and Gertrude, the school-girl of fifteen, just 
home for the Christmas holidays from the college and convent 
on the lower coast, came next in order. Beside his mother sits 
John, the thirteen-year-old " baby " and pet of the household. 
Near the judge, and opposite Helen, is a grave, intellectual 
young man, dark-haired and with keen blue eyes a face Celtic 
of the best type. He is Professor Hunter, the tutor of John 
Fancher and three other young boys of the neighborhood. 

Judge Fancher was an Irishman of the most genial and cul- 
tivated type. When a young, struggling lawyer, just from the 
Green Isle, he had won the affection of the only child of a 
wealthy, aristocratic planter of French descent. His fortunate 
marriage and his own ability soon placed him at the head of 
affairs, social and political, in the prosperous little city. Honors 
were heaped upon him, but he always preserved the same noble 
simplicity of thought and manner. A handsome family grew up 



292 THE HILLWOOD CHRISTMAS BALL. [Dec., 

around him. His beautiful home was the centre of generous 
and refined hospitality. 

"Well, young people," said the judge, " have you decided 
yet what night you will have the ball?" The Christmas ball at 
Hillwood was an event in the social history of the year. 

Helen's dark eyes flashed merrily. " On the twenty-ninth, 
father. We cannot be ready any sooner. This is the twenty- 
second, and the dressmaker only came the day before yesterday." 

" So, with the mantua-maker's permission, it will be on the 
twenty-ninth. Well, you young folks had better write your in- 
vitations to-day, and I will start Gilbert the first thing in the 
morning to deliver them. Ah ! there is Gilbert now." The door 
opened, and a young colored man came in. He handed a bag 
of mail to the judge. 

" The boat was late, sah." 

"All right, Gilbert." 

"Anybody come up from town ?" asks Mrs. Fancher. 

" Miss Lida Carew and her ma done git off de boat, ma'am." 

" Oh, I am so glad ! " cried Helen. " Lida will be here for 
the ball ! " 

Mrs. Fancher looks quietly at Lawrence, as does his brother 
Joseph. Professor Hunter lifts his eyes an instant, then drops 
them nervously on his plate. Everybody is reading his or her 
letter. Fred and Gertrude are chuckling over the merry epistles 
of school-mates left behind. 

"Ah, here is good news!" said the judge, laying down a 
letter written in a delicate hand. " Father de la Croix will be 
up on the next boat ; and we shall have Mass on Christmas 
morning." 

This announcement gives general pleasure. Even Professor 
Hunter, though a Protestant, is politely interested. 

" This just comes in good time," continued the judge, indi- 
cating the letter. " Helen, you must write to the Catholics 
around and tell them we will have Mass on Christmas morning. 
Gilbert can deliver these notices to-morrow, too. An odd com- 
bination," the old gentleman laughed: " invitations to Mass and 
to a ball; but life is made up of just such contrasts." 

The family began to disperse for their various occupations. 
Gilbert was waiting at the gate with the judge's fine horse, 
which the old gentleman rode every day to his law-office in town. 

" Come, father, with me to the smoke-house and the store- 
room till I see what is needed for the party." The judge fol- 
lowed his wife, pencil and note-book in hand. 



1 894.] THE HILLWOOD CHRISTMAS BALL. 

Helen and Gertrude had gone to the library to write the in- 
vitations. Lawrence and Joseph were relieved from duty at 
their father's office, for be it understood the Christmas celebra- 
tion in the old South lasted two, and sometimes three weeks 
shared by white and black alike. Even now it is difficult to 
make the darkies understand that the week preceding and the 
week following Christmas are not seasons of rest and recreation. 

Joe Fancher was busy cleaning his gun. "Mother!" he 
cried, as Mrs. Fancher came back from the smoke-house, 
"make Lawrence come with me. You know I cannot shoot 
enough ducks and wild turkeys by myself." 

Mrs. Fancher looked at Lawrence. 

"You must excuse me, mother; I am going to town to 
help father. He is very busy ; but he would not say so, as he 
did not want to interfere with our holiday. I know he is anxious 
about a case he has, and I have been preparing the papers for 
him." 

"O bother!" cried Joe. "Court doesn't convene for three 
weeks ; and we can work up all the dry old cases before then." 

Mrs. Fancher smiled indulgently at her handsome boy ; but 
a softer light was in her eyes when she turned to Lawrence. 
" Yes, my son, go with your father. He has just turned the 
road ; and if you ride quickly you can overtake him." When 
Lawrence had gone, she turned to Joe. 

"You know, my dear, your brother does not care about 
hunting." 

" I don't know what he does care about," grumbled Joe. 
" He don't care for hunting says he can't bear to kill anything. 
He doesn't like racing, or cards, or even dancing, though he 
can get more music out of a fiddle than any one I ever heard. 
He doesn't even care about the girls. Now, there's Lida Carew, 
the prettiest girl in the county. I know he likes her ; 
nobody could help liking her ; and he treats her as if she were 
Gertrude and talks to her just as brotherly. Now, when I get 
a chance to talk to Miss Lida " 

" I have no doubt you have plenty to say and flirt with her, 
if she lets you. You make love to half the girls in the county, 
but you cannot be so free with Lida. For all that, Joe," she 
added, coming nearer, " I often think there may be something 
between Lawrence and Lida. I know she likes him very much. 
She is very reserved and all that ; but I have watched her 
closely, and I really think she has a decided preference for 
Lawrence." 



294 THE HILLWOOD CHRISTMAS BALL. [Dec., 

" Well, she'll have to propose to old Larry herself. He's 
the best fellow that ever lived. Why Charlie Carew and I are 
as particular what we say before Larry as we are before you 
and the girls. He's almost too good for this world." 

" Hush ! my son," the mother said. " I know you are only 
jesting, but Lawrence is indeed a good man, a good son, and a 
good brother. Brave and full of energy, he is as gentle as a 
girl. Sometimes I wonder what he will make of his life. He 
seems so different from all of you boys." 

" Oh ! Larry will just go on working up father's old musty 
law cases and playing the devoted to you, till some girl asks 
him to marry her; and then he will be the very best husband 
that ever lived in this world." 

Joe was half way down the path when this sentence was 
finished. He called back- to his mother: "I am going to get 
Charlie Carew to come out hunting with me. Professor Hunter 
is helping the girls to write the invitations." 

"O Joe!" cried Helen, running out on the gallery, "if you 
are going to the Carew's, tell Lida to come over and we can 
talk about the ball." 

" All right," replied Joe, shouldering his gun. 

It was a glorious day. Only such a morning as can be 
seen in the South in midwinter. A slight frost that had 
sharpened the early hours had passed off, leaving just enough 
tingle in the air to make walking a delight through the sun- 
flooded fields and woodlands. 

It was a merry party of young folks that set out on Christ- 
mas-eve morning to meet Father de la Croix. The pretty 
study, opening into the long parterres, had been converted into 
a chapel, and was tastefully decorated. Mrs. Fancher's rich 
old laces were brought out to drape the temporary altar. 
Several pairs of massive silver candlesticks, that tradition said 
came from France with Mrs. Fancher's ancestors, were filled 
with wax candles ready to be lighted. 

All the family, except the judge and Mrs. Fancher, had 
started to the landing. Lawrence sat alone in the buggy, while 
the rest of the party went in the large spring wagon. 

" Let's stop and take Lida," said Helen as they neared the 
handsome homestead of the Carews. Here dwelt Mrs. Carew, a 
wealthy widow, with her son and daughter. 

"There's Miss Lida now, in the gallery," said Joe. "O Miss 
Lida! Miss Lida! Hurry up and come with us to the landing 
to meet Father de la Croix." 



1894-] THE HILL WOOD CHRISTMAS BALL. 295 

" Very well ; just wait till I get my hat," Miss Carew re- 
sponded. The young girl vanished into the broad hall and 
presently reappeared. Joe had sprung out of the wagon to 
meet her. Professor Hunter had risen in the wagon ; but seeing 
Joe already on the ground, resumed his seat. The young 
Irishman's eyes were eagerly watching the graceful figure 
flitting down the flower-bordered walk. 

" Lawrence," said Joe, noticing the vacant seat in the buggy, 
"perhaps you would like to take Miss Lida?" He was stand- 
ing by the buggy speaking very softly. A few feet away, Lida 
Carew was almost at the gate. She too noticed the vacant 
place, and for a moment her heart bounded with a happy hope. 

" I am going to bring back Father de la Croix," Lawrence 
said in surprise. " I would not like to ask Miss Lida and then 
not bring her back." 

" Of course, of course ! " Joe answered shortly. Then seeing 
how near she was, called to her cordially : " Come, Miss Lida, we 
must have you with us ; there is plenty of room, and we all 
want you in the wagon." He opened the gate and helped her 
up to her place. A dancing light was in Professor Hunter's 
eyes as Lida took her seat. She seemed to be entirely un- 
conscious of the discussion as to where she was to be placed ; 
but in spite of her cordial greeting to every one, her ready 
answer and amiability, there was an indignant pain at her 
heart, a smouldering light in her deep blue eyes. 

A wonderfully beautiful woman was Lida Carew tall, statu- 
esque, fair with bright golden hair. A manner gracious yet 
dignified, amiable but reserved. Helen Fancher, the sparkling 
brunette, showing in face and manner the brightness of two 
races, shared with the stately blonde the fame of grace and 
beauty far and near. Since they had left their convent school, 
two years before, they had been belles of several counties. No 
sense of rivalry disturbed their friendship. Even the difference 
in religion Miss Carew being a Protestant was only a matter 
of regret to Helen, but so associated was Lida with the Catho- 
lic household that there was no reason for estranging argu- 
ments. That Lida would be a Catholic some day, they all be- 
lieved. In the meanwhile she was like one of the family, and 
in the young girl's own heart was a hope that she might 
indeed become a daughter and a sister of the household ; but 
this hope hung on the word of a grave young man, who treat- 
ed her as a child, and who was as frankly kind and interested 
in her as her own brother. 



296 THE HILLWOOD CHRISTMAS BALL. [Dec., 

The boat had just made the landing. The darkies swung 
out the gangplank, and a small, neat, handsome old French 
gentleman stepped lightly on land. He wore the clerical black 
suit and a wide black hat. The wagon rounded the road and 
the merry occupants hailed him. Passengers and crew began to 
crowd the decks. Greetings were exchanged with the Hillwood 
party. Scraps of city news, plantation items from other land- 
ings, and inquiries for friends made a gay clatter, mingled with 
the orders of the captain and the singing of the boat-hands. 

Father de la Croix looked affectionately at the group in the 
wagon. " I feel like a distinguished visitor. Why, my dear 
children, you have all come to meet me. Miss Lida too! That 
is surely a compliment. And you are all well, I can see." 

It is impossible to put into words the courtly grace of this 
exquisite old gentleman, the type of many a member of the 
old French aristocracy who gave gentle, cultured lives in sim- 
plicity of sacrifice, to found the faith in the South-west. 

"And I am to go with you, my dear Lawrence? Of 
course." One might have noticed that his greeting to Lawrence 
was more affectionate, the pressure of the hand a little longer 
than to the others. 

The drive home through the woods was delightful. The 
postponed breakfast was a real feast of cordial good-fellowship. 
The slaves, all of whom were baptized Catholics, came in after 
breakfast to see their dear Father de la Croix; and it was 
only after Mrs. Fancher, with a peremptory word of dismissal, 
had dispersed servants and children, and had commanded Father 
de la Croix, in her pretty French way, to take his sorely 
needed rest, that the meeting disbanded. 

That Christmas morning Mass made an unfading picture in 
Mrs. Fancher's memory. And it was a beautiful picture too ; 
one to hold sacredly in after years, when the changes of time 
and the inevitable working out of individual destinies made 
such another household gathering impossible. There are such 
precious memories in every household, the remembrance of 
some day when all are gathered around the hearthstone, when 
the family tie is still one, unbroken chain. Then link by link 
it is severed, never to be reunited in this world. How near was 
the breaking of the first link none dreamed that happy morning. 

The sun of the Southern winter came golden through the 
long, lace-draped windows ; and shone on saintly celebrant at 
Mass, and earnest worshippers ; on the handsome, cultured faces 



1894-] THE HILL WOOD CHRISTMAS BALL. 297 

of the Hillwood household ; on the dark, devout faces of the 
negro slaves, who in simple faith knelt beside them. 

At the organ Helen sat and played, while Lawrence's violin 
and Joe's flute added to the gentle harmonies. The simple 
hymns were joined in by all, the negro voices swelling the 
chorus. When the Adeste Fideles was sung all seemed to listen 
while Helen's clear soprano and Lida's rich contralto, with 
Charlie Carewr's tenor and Professor Hunter's bass, rang out the 
glorious old anthem. And how Lawrence played! His violin 
seemed a very soul of worship, a very spirit of prayer. Always, 
to his mother, the central picture in that Christmas morning 
memory was her tall, grave, handsome first-born son. His 
face, then, was one to remember; its expression, as he bent 
over his violin, one to inspire the noblest emotions. 

The news that Father de la Croix would remain until after 
New Year's was a great happiness to the family at Hillwood. 
True, they would not enjoy so much of his society as they 
would like, for there were the scattered Catholics to be visited, 
baptisms to be performed, the little ones instructed, and all 
the arduous duties of a missionary life in a thinly-populated 
country. But the daily Mass was a great privilege to those so 
remote from the frequent offices of the church. Then in the 
evenings there was a delightful fireside gathering, to which 
Judge Fancher and Lawrence hurried back from town, and 
where the conversation of the gentle, cultured old priest was a 
prime attraction. 

The evening of the 2/th came, and with it the Hillwood 
Christmas Ball. 

" Ah ! it is well my good bishop tell me himself to stay 
over New Year's ; otherwise, he think I wait for the party." 

" Why, Father de la Croix, of course you would have to 
stay for the party," laughed Joe. " Why, who else could help 
mother with the salads? She thinks, because you are French, 
you have an inspiration about salads that no one else has." 

"Well, it is true anyway," said the judge, rising from the 
breakfast-table. " I never can get such a salad anywhere as 
you fix, father." 

The old priest laughed merrily. " The bishop, he say so 
himself ; and he tell me that is why I get so many invita- 
tions to the dinners. They want me to fix the salads." 

" And then, in the fever years, father," said Mrs. Fancher, 
" you are worth two or three doctors." 



29 8 THE HILLWOOD CHRISTMAS BALL. [Dec., 

" Oh, yes, madame ! " Father de la Croix laughed again ; " I 
am the nurse, the doctor, the cook ; many things besides the 

priest." 

And so he was; and in this was typical of a class of priests 
found, I believe, only among the pioneer clergy of the South. 
Their superior education and experiences of travel placed these 
priests in the position of advisers in diverse temporal and 
domestic matters, as well as in spiritual affairs. 

Mrs. Fancher and Father de la Croix had arranged the 
tempting salads to their satisfaction. Dozens of hams, wild 
turkeys and ducks, with venison, graced the long tables on the 
galleries. Cakes and various sweets filled in the spaces. 

The handso-ne double parlors, hung with holly and the 
glowing yaupon berry, were brilliantly lighted. The colored mu- 
sicians, some from other plantations, were on a raised platform, 
tuning their instruments. The ebony faces shone with good 
humor. The orchestra was gorgeously arrayed in the largest of 
coats, the stiffest of collars, and the brightest of neck-handker- 
chiefs. 

Lawrence and Joseph were coming out of their room 
on the upper hall. They were in evening dress, and were 
very attractive-looking youths. The carriage was waiting ; for 
Lawrence was going to escort Miss Carew to the ball, and 
Joseph was to do a like duty for Miss Lida's guest, Miss 
Coralie Planche, a pretty French girl from New Orleans. Full 
of the coming festivity, Joe had bounded down the stairs. 

" Wait a moment for me," said Lawrence from the upper 
landing. 

" Well, don't be long," Joe suggested. 

Lawrence went to the pretty room at the end of the hall, 
the one occupied by Father de la Croix. 

" Ah ! my son," the old priest said cordially, laying down his 
breviary, " let me see how you look for the ball. Miss Lida 
will have reason to congratulate herself on her cavalier." 

A few moments passed in pleasant chat, and then the young 
man sat down on the other side of the little table. Half an 
hour passed ; neither noticed the time. Twice Joe called up the 
stairs, fuming at the delay. Another half hour and, could one 
have looked into Father de la Croix's room, he would have 
seen Lawrence Fancher with head bowed down upon the table, 
.listening to the old priest, whose hands rested tremulously on 
the young man's shoulder. A strange solemnity pervaded the 
room ; Father de la Croix's voice was low and earnest, and his 



i894-J THE HILL WOOD CHRISTMAS BALL. 299 

eyes not wholly clear of tears. Lawrence's face was lit with a 
nobility of expression, while his voice shook with strong emo- 
tion as he spoke ; it was a strange prelude to a ball. At last 
the young man rose. 

" God bless you always and ever, and guide you ! " was the 
old priest's parting wish. 

"I am coming, Joe," said Lawrence to the last frantic ap- 
peal of his brother. They entered the carriage and drove off. 
Joe grumbled and upbraided his brother for the delay, but to 
all his reproaches Lawrence was silent. 

It was a pretty picture that greeted them in the Carew par- 
lor. Lida was attired in pale-blue tulle, with silver trimmings ; 
and dark-eyed Coralie in corn-color and black. This night, this 
ball, was to Lida Carew an event of importance. She felt that 
all her hopes were to be blessed or blighted on the issue of this 
evening. So her choice of dress, her manner and her speech, 
were all matters of tender solicitude. 

Several times that gay evening Father de la Croix looked in- 
to the pretty parlors. The young people were gathering all the 
amusement possible out of the dance. Bright and beautiful, Lida 
Carew was exerting every womanly art in Lawrence Fancher's 
behalf. He was cordial, cheerful, and attentive to all his moth- 
er's guests. 

Once, in the quadrille, as Lida crossed over and stood beside 
him, she looked up at him with a bewitching glance. He smiled 
down at her indulgently, as one would to a child ; and the girl 
turned impatiently away. 

" Ah, my poor, dear child ! " Father de la Croix said to him- 
self. " I wish it had only been some other besides my good 
Lawrence. A dear, sweet child she is, and ripe for the faith, if 
this disappointment does not chill her." 

When the musicians went to supper there were loud calls for 
Lawrence to take the idle fiddle. Then such a "Virginia Reel" 
as he played ! No one, with an atom of music in their being, 
could resist that reel. Even the older people joined in, catch- 
ing the spirit of the dance. In the general merriment Profes- 
sor Hunter forgot his timidity in Miss Carew's presence, and, 
taking her hand, led her out to the middle of the floor. Law- 
rence walked up and down with his fiddle. The dancers capered 
merrily, and when it was over every one pronounced that reel 
the best dance of the evening. Lawrence caught Father de la 
Croix's eye several times during the progress of the reel. A 
mist was in the old man's eyes, his gaze full of affection. 



THE HILLWOOD CHRISTMAS BALL. [Dec., 

"My dear, dear Lawrence! How strange are the ways of 
God! This seems the dear boy's place in life, and yet how far 
and how different are his hopes and intentions!" 

The simpler, more healthful life of these young people did 
not tell upon their energies as the more exacting social life of 
to-day tells upon its votaries. So it was but little later than 
usual next morning when the household of Hillwood gathered 
around the breakfast-table. The ball was discussed with great 
zest ; and all united in pronouncing Lida Carew and her guest, 
Coralie Planche, the special belles of the evening. Then much 
good-natured banter was indulged in at Joe's expense over his 
very apparent admiration for the dark-eyed Creole, as also over 
Charlie Carew's devotion to Helen. 

Judge Fancher rose from the table. Lawrence pushed back 
his chair at the same moment. 

"Father, I would like to see you and mother in the library 
for a few moments." 

"Certainly, my son," Judge Fancher answered, going in that 
direction. 

Lawrence drew his mother's hand through his arm and fol- 
lowed his father. A general smile passed around the table, ex- 
cept that it missed Professor Hunter's expressive face. He 
looked down nervously and played with his knife and fork. 

" Lawrence is going to tell his engagement to Lida Carew," 
was the general thought as the trio disappeared. 

Judge Fancher sat down in the roomy arm-chair; Lawrence 
drew up a cozy rocker for his mother. Then he went and stood 
leaning against the white marble mantelpiece. Mrs. Fancher 
looked up a moment at her handsome son. A pang, a mother's 
natural regret, filled her heart. Another love had come in be- 
tween her and her idolized first-born ; but little did she dream 
of the deathless, strong nature of this new love. 

With his characteristic directness Lawrence proceeded at once 
to the matter in hand. 

" Father, I expect you and mother will be surprised at what 
I am going to say ; but, the truth is, the matter has only taken 
a clear, definite shape in my own mind within the last few 
days." 

The old judge smiled slightly at the idea of their being sur- 
prised at what they had so long expected his marriage with 
Lida Carew. 

" Ever since I left college I have had a strong attraction to- 
wards one state of life. Lately it has become more than that. 



1894-] THE HILL WOOD CHRISTMAS BALL. 301 

It is now a great, almost irresistible yearning. It is no sudden 
fancy. I have thought it over well, I have mingled with the 
world ; I have neglected neither my social duties, my professional 
labors, nor my obligations to my family and home. But at the 
end of it all is this great desire. I want to be a priest, if I am 
worthy. I will never be satisfied in any other life. The call 
of God is now so clear in my mind that I could not resist it 
and ever be happy or useful in the world." 

, Lawrence paused. Surprise had indeed overcome both father 
and mother. For several moments not a word was spoken. 
There seemed at first nothing at all to say; then Judge Fancher 
looked anxiously at his son. 

" I thought, Lawrence, it was something of an entirely differ- 
ent nature that you wished to tell us. We have always looked 
to your marriage and your succeeding me at Hillwood and in 
my profession as a matter of course. There is nothing we can 
say against your entering the priesthood. It is a high and holy 
vocation. If you have thought well over it, neither your mother 
nor I can oppose your desire. We had believed, however, that 
you and Miss Ltda Carew might marry, and that you would 
gradually take my place here." 

The father's strong yearning to hold near him this helpful 
son spoke in the earnestness of the old judge's voice. Mrs. 
Fancher was wiping away the tears she could not control. The 
pang she had felt at the thought of his marriage grew greater 
now as she realized that his union with the church meant a 
wider, more complete separation and sacrifice than the forming 
of any earthly tie. 

Lawrence was looking at her intently, anxious for her answer. 

" My dear son," she said, " of course you must make your 
own choice of a life ; but you must let us grow accustomed to 
this idea. It is, indeed, a holy calling, an awful responsibility. 
Think well over it the sacrifices, the labors and hardships of a 
priest's life. Still, if you desire and decide to become a priest, 
we have only blessings to wish you in your new state. Have 
you spoken to Father de la Croix yet ? " 

" Yes ; we talked it over last night. Strange to say, he too 
had taken up the idea that I intended to marry Miss Lida Ca- 
rew. Miss Lida is almost as dear to me as Helen or Gertrude, 
but the idea of marrying her never once entered my mind. I 
do not believe she ever thought of such a thing herself. At 
least there has never been the slightest approach to sentiment 
on my part. I am sincerely fond of Lida. Nobody could help 



302 THE HlLLWOOD CHRISTMAS BALL. [Dec., 

liking her ; and I know she has so many admicers that she does 
not think of me among her lovers." 

" I am sure, my son," Judge Fancher said, " you have been 
perfectly honorable in this regard, as I believe you are with all 
the world. It was just an impression we had formed ; because 
we are all so fond of Miss Lida, and it would have pleased us 
had you married her." 

" Father de la Croix advises me to go to the college and 
make a nine days' retreat, then speak to the bishop. I would 
like to begin my studies at once." 

" Just as you wish, my son. Perhaps you had better not 
come to town with me to-day. There will be so much for you 
to fix up here, and your mother will want you to stay. Are 
you going down on the boat with Father de la Croix?" 
" Yes, sir." 

"Well, you have left all the papers in the Stallworth case in 
such good shape that I will not need you at the office. Besides 
your mother and sisters will want to see all they can of you for 
the next few days." 

No case in court ever gave Judge Fancher such serious re- 
flection as he indulged in for the days that followed. At Law- 
rence's request the whole family had been informed of his wishes 
and intentions. A subdued, solemn air pervaded the house. It 
was almost as if death had entered its sunny portals. Never 
had the kind, thoughtful oldest brother and son seemed as dear, 
as indispensable as now. 

The morning that Father de la Croix and Lawrence rode 
over to the landing they had only Gilbert, the driver, with them, 
for it seemed generally understood that Lawrence would prefer 
a quiet departure. 

The nine days of his absence passed uneventfully at Hill- 
wood, save for one memorable scene between Helen Fancher 
and Lida Carew. They had walked down to the pretty, fern- 
bordered spring, and were sitting under the moss-draped oaks. 
Gently, and with a wealth of sympathy she dared not express, 
Helen told Lida the purpose of Lawrence's visit to the city, 
his retreat at the college, and his probable immediate prepara- 
tion for the priesthood. She knew this fact would be widely 
known in a little while, and she dreaded the sudden breaking of 
such tidings to Lida in some social gathering. 

Never had Helen so loved her, so sorrowed for her friend, 
as she did when the full force of Lawrence's decision broke up r 
on Lida. The hot tears stood in Miss Carew's blue eyes, and 



1894-] THE HILL WOOD CHRISTMAS BALL. 303 

with trembling lips she denounced the church that could so in- 
fluence the sacrifice of its manhood. She upbraided Judge and 
Mrs. Fancher that they could consent to such a sacrifice, and 
scornfully wondered at Helen's acquiescence. 

Helen listened patiently and sympathetically, too greatly 
touched by Lida's grief to resent her criticisms ; and only glad 
that no other listener had heard this first impulsive outbreak. 

By the time the news of Lawrence Fancher's retirement 
from the world had reached the entire circle of their friends, 
Lida had disciplined herself to discuss the matter like any dis- 
interested friend, all the while her heart was full of bitterest 
disappointment. 

There are but few more scenes for me to draw of the happy 
Hill wood household. I linger over them, however; I like to re- 
call that mid-winter twilight, when Lawrence came back from 
his retreat. The family were gathered around the fireside in 
the dining-room, waiting for supper. Looking out of the win- 
dow, Mrs. Fancher saw Lawrence coming up the avenue. The 
others saw him too, but none followed the mother as she went 
out to meet him. At the foot of the broad gallery stairs they 
met. It needed no word to tell the mother's quick intuition 
what the result of that visit had been. She kissed him ten- 
derly, and in her yearning heart she knew she must give him 
up but give him up only to God. Lawrence put his arm around 
his mother and helped her up the stairs, and together they en- 
tered the dining-room. 

His stay at home was short. I like to recall that sunny 
January morning when he stood on the gallery to say good-by 
to family, friends, and slaves. How the darkies wept at the 
thought of losing their dear young master, whom they expected 
to rule over them in his father's place, and who they knew 
would prove a kind, thoughtful master! 

The Carews had come over with the other neighbors ; old 
Mrs. Carew disapproving the whole affair, Charlie wondering at 
such a step for a well-born young man, and Lida hiding the 
wound to her pride and affection under a manner of quiet, 
friendly regret. After Liwrence had left, it seemed as if 
nothing went right in Judge Fancher's office. 

"Mother," he said one evening, after a wearying day, "I 
shall never make a lawyer out of Joe. I wish one of the other 
boys was old enough to take in the office. I think I will leave 
Joe to look after things out here. He really has no taste for 



3 o 4 THE HILL WOOD CHRISTMAS BALL. [Dec., 

law, and now, as Lawrence has gone, Joe ought to learn how to 
manage the plantation, as it will go to him now> of course. I 
only wish I had some one in the office with me. We are over- 
crowded with work." 

Professor Hunter was reiding some letters in a corner by 
the window. He looked up eagerly ; started toward Judge 
Fancher, then hesitated and stopped. 

"Did you wish to speak to me, professor?" the old gentle- 
man asked kindly. 

" I was only going to say, sir, if you would take me in, the 
office, I would be very glad to make myself useful to you. I 
want to study law, but I have no means of doing so; and if 
you would let me read law in your office, under your direction, 
I would do all in my power to be of service to you." 

"Why certainly, professor. You are just the very man for 
the place. I must really let Joe go, for the whole business is 
a terrible grind on him. He is a born planter." 

" John is ready for college I think, judge," said Mrs. 
Fancher, " and he could go with Fred this session." With 
wifely solicitude, she was anxious to make everything easy 
toward giving her husband the help he needed, and missed so 
early in Lawrence's absence. 

So Professor Hunter took Lawrence's place in Judge 
Fancher's office. Talent and industry soon told in his favor, 
and it was not long until he was admitted as junior partner. 
In another direction he strove with all earnestness to take 
Lawrence's place, and that was in Lida Carew's regard. His 
respectful attentions, his worth and ability, all appealed to her 
better judgment. It was not long before the talented young 
Irishman was Miss Carew's accepted suitor, just as Charlie 
Carew was now Helen Fancher's affianced. 

Many long and serious conversations had Lida and her be- 
trothed over differences of religion, and when Charlie Carew, 
a few weeks before his marriage, asked to be received into the 
Catholic Church, Professor Hunter and Lida asked a similar 
favor of Father de la Croix. 

It was a grand double wedding, the bishop coming from 
town with Father de la Croix to perform the ceremony. With * 
them came Lawrence Fancher. After that brief visit he bade 
good-by for ever to the dear old home. None knew the depth 
of the sacrifice, the tenderness of his heart's clinging to Hill- 
wood, as he looked his last on the beloved vistas of field and 
forest, meadow and homestead. 



1 894.] THE HILLWOOD CHRISTMAS BALL. 305 

There is little more to tell, and yet many changes to chron- 
icle in the lives of these young people. One parting glance at 
the group we found at the Hillwood breakfast-table that De- 
cember morning, with apparently no more serious aim in life 
than the success of a Christmas ball. 

The war cloud broke. The South was prostrated; but 
through the darkness the Fanchers bravely worked out their 
individual destinies. 

Joe married the pretty Louisianian, Miss Coralie Planche, 
and ruled over dear old Hillwood, as did Charlie Carew, with 
Helen, over his mother's plantation. These young men had won 
prosperity after the days of weary struggling that followed the 
war. 

In the pretty river-side graveyard sleep the Judge and Mrs. 
Fancher. Fred and John are substantial merchants in the town 
adjacent to Hillwood. 

Out in a far Western city Gertrude wears the black veil of 
a saintly, happy nun, the superioress of her convent. 

In a Northern metropolis, zealous, tireless, eloquent, and 
beloved, Father Lawrence Fancher battles bravely with sin and 
evil. Often as he stands in the pulpit of his stately church, 
stirring hearts and lifting lives with his sacred eloquence, a 
handsome matron, sitting beside her distinguished husband, an 
eminent judge, raises humble eyes to the speaker, and thanks 
God, from a grateful, happy heart, that her once human selfish 
love did not stand in the way of so high a call, so holy a mis- 
sion, as this priest has answered and followed. 




VOL. LX. 20 




THE PRINCE OF INDIA ; [Dec., 



THE PRINCE OF INDIA; OR, "WHY CONSTANTI- 
NOPLE FELL." 

A CRITIQUE ON A RENOWNED WORK OF A RENOWNED AUTHOR. 

BY REV. CHARLES WARREN CURRIER. 

T is now many years since I first became ac- 
quainted with the name of the author of Ben 
Hur. How well I remember the fascination which 
that little work exercised over me, the avidity 
with which I devoured it, its vivid descriptions, 
its thrilling narratives, and the ever-increasing interest it awak- 
ened. Truly, Ben ffur deserves its reputation, for it is a mas- 
terpiece of its kind. In after years a casual glance was cast at 
the Fair God ; but it was not Ben Hur, and the book was laid aside. 
About a year ago the study of the Greek Revolution, the 
one during which Byron ended his life, brought my mind back 
through centuries gone to the period of the Byzantine Empire. 
The Fall of Constantinople ! What a subject for fiction, 
thought I. It seemed to me one that presented a virgin soil to 
the novelist, and I determined to weave its incidents into a 
story which has since seen the light, though, I regret to state, 
with one or two historical inaccuracies of little consequence 
which will be corrected in a future edition. 

I say, that I had supposed the period of the fall of the 
Byzantine Empire to be one greatly neglected by the novelist. 
You may imagine my surprise when, having completed several 
chapters of Dimitrios and Irene, an article in the New York 
World drew my attention to the fact that Lew Wallace had a 
book ready on the very same subject. Of course my interest 
was awakened, and the book had hardly issued from the press 
of Harper & Brothers when I procured a copy of the 'ele- 
gantly bound volumes. I knew and admired Ben Hur, and 
being aware of the fact that General Wallace, as minister to 
Turkey, had possessed ample opportunity to render himself 
familiar with the antiquities of Constantinople, I expected won- 
ders from his pen and a work of historical fiction that would 
even surpass Ben Hur. 

You ask my impressions ? I answer briefly that when I 



1894-] OR, " WHY CONSTANTINOPLE FELL." 307 

compare the Prince of India with Ben Hur, I think of Paradise 
Lost and Paradise Regained. The former is intrinsically immor^ 
tal, the latter will live only on account of the name of it 
author. No ! The Prince of India is not Ben Hur. Its style is 
still the concise, original style of " The Tale of the Christ," 
abounding in figures and sparkling with frequent flashes of 
bright ideas, but its interest, its genius, is not the same. In 
Ben Hur the interest of the reader never flags for a moment ; it 
is kept up from cover to cover with growing intensity. It is 
not thus with the Prince of India. In the latter there are 
some thrilling episodes, it is true, but the narrative is over- 
charged with long-drawn-out discussions, and interest is too 
frequently permitted to wax cold by passages which, to the 
average reader at least, must appear dull. 

And yet the Prince of India has its merit. The author 
shows deep study and a thorough acquaintance with the man- 
ners of Oriental nations, but the too abundant use of foreign 
expressions without a translation proves a source of annoyance 
to the reader, though it may heighten the appearance of the 
author's erudition. 

The work is an historical romance, if you like, but many of 
its principal personages are imaginary, and its most important 
episodes are purely fictitious. In fact, its predominant idea, 
that expressed upon the title-page, " Why Constantinople Fell," 
is a creation of the author's brain. This certainly detracts from 
the merit of a historical romance, and it seems to be at vari- 
ance with the practice of writers of this school, to obscure the 
great facts of history by fiction. If we seek the true reasons 
for the fall of Byzantium, we shall find them in the internal 
decay of the empire, its numerous divisions, the duplicity of 
the Greeks, the aggressiveness of. the Turks, the spirit of Mo- 
hammedan propagandism, and last, but not least, in the slowness 
and apparent indifference of the other Christian nations, but we 
shall not seek them in the influence of the Wandering Jew, nor 
in the love of Mohammed II. for an imaginary Princess Iren. 
The story is based upon a trite and ridiculous legend which 
has repeatedly been told in poetry and fiction, that of the 
Wandering Jew. 

To Christians in general, the reasonings of the Wandering 
Jew, the Prince of India, imply rationalism, deism, and the very 
destruction of Christianity, while to Roman Catholics and those 
of the Greek Church, both united and orthodox, the part acted 
by the monk Sergius is highly offensive. 



THE PRINCE OF INDIA / [Dec., 

The story begins in the year 1395, and we are at once 
introduced to the principal personage, the Wandering Jew, who 
finds the sword of Solomon and a treasure of jewels in the 
tomb of Hiram, near the ruins of Tyre. These he secretes on 
an island of the Sea of Marmora near Constantinople, to make 
use of in an emergency and to defray his expenses. He then 
disappears, and the first book is ended. 

The Wandering Jew being the principal personage of the 
story, as Irene is its heroine, it will be well to pay brief atten- 
tion to the legend which has given him to us. This is first 
mentioned in the thirteenth century, in the chronicle of Mat- 
thew Paris, and is said to have been received from an Ar- 
menian bishop who visited England in 1228. According to the 
legend as it first appears, Cartaphilus was a door-keeper of 
Pilate's palace, who, as Christ was led forth to execution, 
struck him a blow, saying : " Go, Jesus, go on faster ; why dost 
thou linger ? " The Saviour replied : " I go, but thou shalt re- 
main waiting till I return." The unfortunate man afterwards 
became a Christian, and he was baptized by Ananias under the 
name of Joseph. At the time of the crucifixion he was thirty 
years of age ; but whenever he completes a century he loses 
consciousness, and, on regaining it, finds himself once more 
in the full vigor of a man of thirty. It may be that this 
legend had been founded upon one of the many apocryphal 
gospels which existed in the early ages of Christianity. At all 
events, it made a considerable impression, and, at various times, 
even as late as the last century, persons have appeared in Ger- 
many, France, and England giving themselves out as the Wan- 
dering Jew. 

The Prince of India, however, is by no means a Christian. 
After trying his hand at varioas schemes, instigating the nations 
to war and bloodshed, and fomenting the Crusades, in his final 
appearance, before the fall of Constantinople, he turns his atten- 
tion to religion and conceives the idea of uniting the nations in 
a vast brotherhood and a simple creed, expressed by the word 
God. With this plan in his mind, he appears in the second 
book as the Prince of India, having assumed the guise of a 
Mussulman and taking part in the pilgrimage to Mecca, during 
which he makes the acquaintance of an emir of Sultan Amurath 
and a friend of Mohammed II. The Mohammedan nations do 
not appear to him ripe for his plans, and he determines to try 
Christianity, going to Constantinople. The descriptions in these 
first two books are vivid, as they are throughout the narrative. 



1 894.] 



OR, " WHY CONSTANTINOPLE FELL." 



309 




"HE THEN DISAPPEARS." (Page 308 ) 



3 [0 THE PRINCE OF INDIA ; [Dec., 

In fact, the descriptive powers of the author are the principal 
source of attraction in the work. He paints with simple yet 
lively colors. 

Here and there we find a statement or expression with 
which it is impossible to agree. For instance, in describing the 
tomb of Hiram, he writes : " Under the sword were the instru- 
ments sacred then and ever since to Master-Masons a square, 
a gavel, a plummet, and an inscribing compass." Surely such a 
serious author can have no intention, as his words seem to in- 
dicate, of adding a sanction to the ridiculous and unhistorical 
fables of the Masonic ritual. 

The author makes the Prince of India, in one of his mono- 
logues, speak thus : " The knoll on which the Byzantine built 
his Church of the Holy Sepulchre is not the Calvary. That 
the cowled liars call the Sepulchre never held the body of 
Christ. The tears of the millions of penitents have but watered 
a monkish deceit. . . . Fools and blasphemers ! The Via 
Dolorosa led out of the Damascus gate on the north. The 
skull-shaped hill beyond that gate is the Golgotha, etc." Of 
course, if the Wandering Jew were a real person who had been 
present at the crucifixion, these words would command our 
attention and merit our respect ; but, as it is, we strongly sus- 
pect that they express the opinions of the author, who herein 
is not original, but who follows Doctor Robinson against the 
venerable tradition of centuries, and the opinion of Warren, 
Tischendorff, and other learned archaeologists. 

The third book introduces us to the heroine of the story, 
the Princess Irene", a kinswoman of the last Byzantine emperor, 
who resides in the charming palace of Therapia, on the shores 
of the Bosphorus. Here the Russian monk, Sergius, a youth 
whose sentiments and opinions are closely linked to those of 
Irene, comes upon the scene. The latter, while in a boat with 
Sergius, is forced by a storm to seek refuge on the Asiatic 
shore, and she meets with the Prince of India and his adopted 
daughter, Lael, whom a similar circumstance has brought thither. 
Prince Mohammed happening to be at the White Castle in 
disguise, seeing Irene", falls in love with her, and thus another 
and a stronger incentive is added to those he already possesses 
for conquering Constantinople. 

In the fourth book we are brought into the palace of 
Blacherne, where the Prince of India has an audience with Con- 
stantine, to whom he begins to expound his peculiar faith. In 
this book the plot is laid which will, later, culminate in the 



1894-] R> " WHY CONSTANTINOPLE FELL" 311 

abduction of Lael, and, by hastening the departure of the Prince 
of India, finally promote the designs of Mohammed and the 
fall of Constantinople. The religious opinions of Iren and 
Sergius begin to assume definite shape, and the latter falls in 
love with the Jewess, Lael. 

Who is Iren ? Is she an historical character ? 

This question, for lack of more abundant information, I hesi- 
tate to answer either in the affirmative or the negative. The 
author tells us that she was the daughter of Manuel, the illegiti- 
mate brother of Manuel Palaeologus, the emperor ; that he gained 
a naval victory over the Turks off Plati in 1412, that he was 
imprisoned by the emperor, and finally liberated by Constantine 
with his only surviving child, the Princess Irene". That this 
Manuel really existed is certain, that he had children with whom 
he was imprisoned after his victory over the Turks must be ad- 
mitted as equally certain, but that he was ever liberated from 
prison and that one of his children was the Princess Iren, ap- 
pears doubtful. Ducange, in his genealogy of the Byzantine 
families, writes as follows: 

" Manuel Palaeologus, illegitimate son of the Emperor John, 
is especially renowned among writers for the distinguished naval 
victory he gained in a battle with the Turkish Sultan Musa, 
which afterwards became the cause of his ruin. The Emperor 
Manuel fearing lest, elated by this success, he should covet the 
empire, or, as others say, being jealous of the glory of this brave 
man, cast Manuel, together with his children, into a prison in 
which he finally expired after the lapse of seventeen years." 
Ducange cites Phranza* as one of his authorities. There is, then, 
here an important disagreement between the historian and the 
novelist. The former makes Manuel die in captivity seventeen 
years after his imprisonment, that is, in 1429; while with the 
latter we find him still alive in 1448. If such a person as Irene 
Palaeologina had been known to history, Ducange, who has 
made an exhaustive study of the Byzantine dynasties, would 
undoubtedly have mentioned her. He speaks, not only of those 
who were directly connected with the emperors, but also of the 
descendants of the family down to the sixteenth century among 
the Marquises of Montferrat, and of all those of the name of 
Palaeologus whom he was able to find. I have looked in vain 
over these lists for the slightest trace of our Princess Iren6. 
There is mention of several persons of the name of Iren< among 
the Palseologi, but not one of them is the daughter of Manuel, 

* Families Byzantines. 



THE PRINCE OF INDIA ; [Dec., 

the illegitimate son of John Palaeologus. It is true the author 
may. have had sources of information with which I am not ac- 
quainted, and for this reason I repeat that I dare not decide 
the question whether the Princess Irene is an historical person 
or not, though I strongly incline to the negative opinion. 

The article in the New York World which I mentioned in 
the beginning says: "That there was a lady of the name of 
Irene" among the slaves who were added to the harem of the 
conqueror may be accepted as a fact. But not all the historians 
who mention her name agree that she was in any way related 
to the Emperor Constantine. They greatly differ also in the 
stories concerning her fate." This story of Irene is related in Ver- 
tot's History of the Knights of Malta and in Knolle's History of 
the Turks. The former makes her a " young Greek lady of noble 
birth, called Iren<, hardly seventeen years old." Gibbon doubts 
the truth of this stvory, and Von Hammer completely rejects it. 
Taking all circumstances into consideration, it appears to me 
that I am justified in calling our heroine an imaginary Princess 
Irene, for no trace of her is to be found among the Byzantine 
historians, and the legend which appears to have suggested her 
name to our author is extremely doubtful. 

Having disposed of this important question, several of minor 
consequence draw our attention. In the twentieth chapter of 
the third book the Arab story-teller, who is no one else than 
Prince Mohammed in disguise, tells the Princess Irene" that the 
Turkish prince (Mohammed) had had as teachers the best Arab 
professors from Cordova. This is evidently an oversight, for, 
at the period of the fall of Constantinople, more than two hun- 
dred years had elapsed since Cordova had passed from the hands 
of the Arabs to those of the Christians, and its venerable uni- 
versity was then only a thing of memory, for more than four 
centuries had gone by since the flourishing period of the learn- 
ing of that once illustrious city. If any Moorish learning was 
left in Spain, it was to be found only in the kingdom of Gra- 
nada. 

The description in the fourth chapter of the fourth book, in 
which the anchorites are represented as a set of howling demo- 
niacs taking part in the procession of the Pannychides, is an ab- 
surd exaggeration, which can find no verification in the annals of 
monasticism ; for, though the abuse of this sacred state may have 
frequently been ridiculous and sometimes sinful, still we have no 
ground for believing that in the exercise of their religious func- 
tions the monks ever went over even to the state of Methodists in 



1894-] OR, " Way CONSTANTINOPLE FELL" 313 

a stage of over-excitement. There are three kinds of Caloyers, or 
Greek monks the cenobites, the anchorites, and the recluses. 
The last-mentioned never leave their cells, nor does it seem reason- 
able to suppose that they would have taken part in a public 
procession, and I think the same may be said of the anchorites, 
who lead secluded lives in the neighborhood of monasteries. If, 
at the present day, the Greek monks are to a great extent in a 
condition of ignorance and degradation, we must remember that 
for four centuries the weight of Turkish domination has been 
pressing heavily upon their country and their institution, and 
that even the patriarch of Constantinople is practically a slave 
of the Turk. The procession the author here refers to is pro- 
bably that in honor of the Panachia, the Blessed Virgin, which 
took place on the i$th of August and which is described by 
Constantine Porphyrogeneta. But several of the circumstances 
related here do not seem to agree with the procession of the 
Metastasis, or the Assumption. 

We are told in the same book that the Hegumenos of the 
monastery of St. James of Manganese had a son, the young 
devil namely, member of the Academy of Epicurus, who suc- 
ceeded in abducting Lael. This would indicate that the vener- 
able superior of the monastery had been a married man before he 
became a monk. There is no other explanation, with the know- 
ledge in our mind that celibacy is one of the most stringent 
obligations of Oriental monks, as well as of those in the West. 

The differences between the Greeks and Latins are clearly 
set forth with one exception, which the context, however, shows 
must proceed either from a typographical error or an inadver- 
tence. In regard to the procession of the Holy Ghost, the au- 
thor makes the Greeks believe that the Holy Ghost proceeds 
from the Son (vol. i. p. 459) ; but the explanation which fol- 
lows being in contradiction to this statement, consequently shows 
it to have been a slip. I, therefore, attach no importance to the 
inaccuracy. 

A more serious error is that which makes Bessarion retract his 
subscription to the Council of Florence (p. 464), for inciting the 
words of the Greek members of the Council, on their return to 
Constantinople : " We have sold our faith we have betrayed the 
pure sacrifice we have become Azymites," the Hegumen says to 
Sergius, " Thus spake Bessarion ; thus Balsamon, etc." 

What proof is there that Bessarion spoke thus? He was one 
of the few who remained faithful to the council, and in the ser- 
vice of the Roman Church he afterwards filled the highest offices, 



3I4 THE PRINCE OF INDIA ; [Dec., 

being honored with the purple only a few months after the 
Greeks had returned home, namely, in December, 1439, and once 
coming very near being elected to the highest dignity in the 
Church. Bessarion was one of the most highly esteemed car- 
dinals of his day. 

The author also falls into error when he states that the 
Greeks deny the existence of purgatory, and believe only in 
heaven and hell ; for though they do not use the word purga- 
tory, and deny the existence of material fire therein, they 
nevertheless admit a transitory state for certain souls after 
death, and the utility of prayers for the dead, which amounts 
to a belief in purgatory. 

The author is guilty of an unpardonable error in the ac- 
count of the life of St. Anthony which he places in the mouth 
of Demedes, the son of the Hegumenos (p. 471). He makes 
the saint fly from the vision of beautiful women, and follow 
some children of Islam into the desert. The tempting visions 
accompany him all through life; every day and night they 
stand before him for eighty-nine years, in spite of his macera- 
tions. What nonsense! Every student of hagiology in fact, 
whoever has but glanced at the life of St. Anthony, sees the 
absurdity of associating the saint with Islam, which was not 
dreamt of in his day ! St. Anthony died more than two 
hundred years before the founder of Islam was born. That 
the occasion of his flight into the desert was the vision of 
beautiful women is far from the truth, and we have only to 
refer the distinguished author to an authentic life of the saint. 
He need not go to the Bollandists; let him take Alban Butler. 
The saint was occasionally tempted by evil suggestions, but 
they were far from lasting all his life, troubling him at inter- 
vals chiefly in the beginning of his spiritual career, as his bio- 
graphers tell us. 

Another inaccuracy I cannot fail to note, I find (p. 481, vol. 
i.) where the beads, possibly used by Oriental monks to count 
ths number of their prayers, are confounded with the Rosary, 
including its division into chaplets and mysteries, which is en- 
tirely of Latin origin. In fact, the practice of meditating upon 
the mysteries while reciting the Rosary had been recently in- 
troduced by a Dominican friar, Alan de la Roche, when Con- 
stantinople fell, and it is not probable that it was then adapted 
in the East. 

The fifth book gives us the adventures of, and the singular 
change which takes place in the Emir Mirza, who, being sent 



1894-] os, " WHY CONSTANTINOPLE FELL" 315 

by Mohammed on a secret mission to Constantinople, discovers 
that he is an Italian nobleman, becomes a Christian, and falls 
in love with the Princess Iren. 

The sixth and last book occupies itself with the siege of 
Constantinople, the tragic end of Constantine, the last emperor, 
and the marriage of Mohammed with Iren6. The Prince of 
India disappears from the scene by undergoing his fourteenth 
transformation from old age to youth. This book contains 
several passages of striking beauty and interest. 

If now we review the whole story, our attention is again 
drawn to several inaccuracies, and to the consideration of the 
most important personages, namely, Mohammed, the Prince of 
India, Sergius, and Iren6. 

On page 409, vol. i., in the description of George Schola- 
rius, known by his monastic name of Gennadius, the author 
places before our imagination the monk with a Latin tonsure, 
for the band of hair around the scalp is the peculiar Roman 
tonsure, known as that of St. Peter, while the Oriental tonsure, 
or that of St. Paul, consisted in the shaving of the whole head. 
But Gennadius had no right to either tonsure, as he was not 
an ecclesiastic, and Helyot tells us that the Greek monks allow 
their hair to grow, although at the ceremony of their receiving 
the habit a portion of hair is cut off in the form of a cross. 
George Scholarius, having become a monk in the monastery of 
Pautocrator, was elected superior, but he remained a layman 
until after the fall of Constantinople, when, being elected 
patriarch with the sanction of Mohammed, he received orders. 
He is said to have afterwards resigned the patriarchate and re- 
tired to the monastery of St. Podronus, where he died. 

In regard to the patriarch, in following the narrative of our 
author we find him still in Constantinople after the month of 
October, 145 [ (see book v. chap, viii.) ; but this does not agree 
with the facts of history, for the learned Dominican, Father Le 
Quien, in his Oriens Christianus, tells us that the patriarch left 
Constantinople, never to return, in August, 1451. Gregorios 
Mamma, or Melissenus, was the last patriarch before the fall of 
Constantinople, although it is said that after his resignation 
another patriarch was elected by name Athanasius, but Father 
Le Quien denies the truth of this assertion. Gregorios was a 
relative of Duke Notaras, but, unlike him, he remained faithful 
to the decree of Union. The opposition brought against him 
was so great that, according to Phranza, he resigned his office 
and went into voluntary exile. He died in Rome in 1459. 



316 THE PRINCE OF INDIA ; [Dec., 

On page 239, vol. ii., our author puts a grave historical 
error in the mouth of the emperor. When speaking of the 
heresiarch Arius, Constantine asks : " Him the first Constantine 
sent to prison for life, did he not?" Are we justified in sup- 
posing the last Constantine so ignorant of the history of his 
country? The fact is, that Arius was banished to Illyricum, but 
afterwards recalled to Constantinople, where he shortly expired. 

Chapter vi. of the fifth book seems to indicate a rather 
superficial knowledge of the liturgy. About three o'clock in 
the afternoon Mass is celebrated in St. Sophia, the vestments 
of the celebrant are briefly given, and then "the venerable 
celebrant drew nearer the altar, and, after a prayer, took up a 
chalice and raised it as if in honor of an image of Christ on a 
cross in the agonies of crucifixion." This description was evi- 
dently written by one whose familiarity with the ancient litur- 
gies is limited, as both Latins and Greeks who read it will 
easily understand. The same may be said of the disgraceful 
scenes described in the eighth chapter of the same book, in 
which the patriarch- celebrates the Eucharist in St. Sophia. 
The ceremony consists merely in the distribution of the Holy 
Communion, the celebrant, clad in surplice and stole, communi- 
cating himself without celebrating Mass. But what is still more 
strikingly absurd, after communicating himself, still merely clad 
in surplice and stole, the patriarch " blessed the Body and the 
Blood and mixed them together in chalices ready for "delivery 
to the company of servers kneeling about him." The author 
was probably present at a service of the Greek Church, and he 
observed some of the ceremonies he describes, but he, no doubt, 
failed to perceive their harmony. During his sojourn in Con- 
stantinople he might certainly have devoted closer attention to 
the venerable liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. 

In the same chapter the distinguished author falls into a 
serious oversight, contradicting a correct statement he made in 
the seventh chapter of the fourth book. There he truly stated 
that one of the differences between the Latins and the Greeks 
consists herein, that the former use unleavened, the latter 
leavened bread in the Holy Eucharist. Here he makes the 
mistake of attributing the use of leavened bread to the Latins, 
when he writes that a certain party in the church " anathema- 
tized the attempt to impose leavened bread upon orthodox 
communicants as a scheme of the devil and his archlegate, the 
Bishop of Rome." However, this error is evidently not the 
fruit of ignorance, but rather of thoughtlessness. 



1 894.] OR, " WHY CONSTANTINOPLE FELL." 317 

We now proceed to the consideration of certain personages 
of the story and its bearing upon religion. In regard to 
Mohammed, the author draws a favorable and rather pleasing 
picture of the conqueror. He is young, handsome, learned, 
generous, and brave, but these qualities are offset by impetu- 
osity, ambition, superstition, and cruelty towards those who 
resist him. On the whole, the portrait here presented to us is 
more flattering to Mohammed than that drawn by historians 
generally, notably by Gibbon and perhaps Von Hammer. It 
softens his savage features and mitigates his duplicity, while of 
his unnatural and licentious conduct not a trace appears. One 
would almost suspect that there is a tender spot for him in the 
author's heart. 

The Prince of India is what we would call nowadays an 
old crank, and yet not a harmless crank. His restless charac- 
ter is filled with cunning, a burning thirst for revenge, and even 
cruelty. His conduct in abandoning Constantinople in the 
flames he had himself kindled, at the very moment when Ser- 
gius and his faithful Nilo are seeking for the lost Lael, is most 
unnatural, and not at all in keeping with the fatherly love he 
had professed for the young Jewess. But it is especially from 
a religious stand-point that he deserves our attention. His doc- 
trine is entirely subversive of Christianity, and nothing else but 
a mixture of those preached by pantheists, rationalists, Unitari- 
ans, Theosophists, Freemasons, and what not of modern times. 
His arguments, accompanied with a great show of erudition, 
are specious sophistries, well calculated to ensnare the unwary 
intellect. They are placed before the reader, not as the 
opinions of the author, it is true, but as those of the Prince of 
India, yet they contain a subtle poison without a concomitant 
antidote. Argumentations are held against Christianity, the 
Emperor Constantine is foolishly made to admire the wisdom 
of the speaker, and no refutation is given. For this reason, at 
kast, the book on which I have been requested to pass an 
opinion is, to my mind, a dangerous book. Error is subtle, 
and when the refutation is not forthcoming it may penetrate 
deep into the mind. 

In regard to the Princess Iren and the monk Sergius, they 
are nothing more nor less than predecessors of the sixteenth 
century reformers, plus the practices of the Greek Church, such 
as the use of the sign of the cross, the veneration of images, 
and the belief in the Real Presence, though they look upon the 
latter more as a form than as an article of faith. Their creed 



THE PRINCE OF INDIA ; [Dec., 

seems innocent enough, but when explained it is rank Protest- 
antism with an addition of other errors. Hear Sergius in his 
discourse in St. Sophia : " It is well known to you that our 
Lord did not found a church during his life on earth, but gave 
authority for it to his Apostles. It is known to you also that 
what his Apostles founded was but a community. . . . But 
in time this community became known as the church, and there 
was nothing of it except our Lord's creed, in definition of the 
Faith, and two ordinances for the church Baptism for the re- 
mission of sins, that the baptized might receive the Comforter, 
and the Sacraments, that the believers, often as they partook 
of the Body and Blood of Christ, might be reminded of 
him. . . . The three hundred bishops and presbyters from 
whom you have your creeds (Council of Nice) took the two 
articles from our Lord's creed, and then they added others. 
Thus, which of you can find a text of our Lord treating of his 
procession from the substance of God ? Again, in what passage 
has our Lord required belief in the personage of the Holy 
Ghost as an article of faith essential to salvation ? " This is 
what Sergius calls primitive Christianity. What is it ? Unitari- 
anism, a doctrine that would have been rejected as impious by 
those who framed the Confession of Augsburg. 

And this Sergius, who is he ? When he first appears upon 
the scene we are told that he is a deacon of the Russian 
monastery of Bielo Osero, raised to the deaconship by Father 
Hilarion, of whom there is no mention that he is a bishop, 
though we are all aware that only a bishop can confer the 
order of deacon. If Sergius were a deacon in the Russian 
Church, his order would have been recognized in Constanti- 
nople, for the Greeks and Russians were of the same com- 
munion, and yet the Russian monk, though admitted into the 
monastery of St. James of Manganese, is placed among the 
neophytes (newly converted). An absurdity ! Did the author 
mean novices? Even for this fiction there is no ground. But 
we find a still greater contradiction. When Sergius first ap- 
pears we are told that he is a deacon, but at the end of the 
work (p. 574) we read that "Sergius never took orders for- 
mally." From this and other passages, I incline to the belief 
that the author has a very poor conception of the Sacrament of 
Holy Orders, as well as of the nature of the monastic state. 
Whether Sergius were in orders or not, he was at least a 
monk, and as a monk he was bound to celibacy. The monastic 
vows are looked upon as of the strictest obligation both by 



1 894.] 



OR, " WHY CONSTANTINOPLE FELL" 



319 



Greeks and Latins, and among the Russians those who break 
them are punished by perpetual imprisonment, nor can the 
bishops grant a dispensation.* And yet Sergius, in spite of his 
being a monk and a deacon in the monastery of Father 
Hilarion, marries Lael the Jewess, and remains the friend of 
Irene, who is wedded to Mahommed by the very man who 
made him a deacon, Father Hilarion, the Hegumenos of Bielo 
Osero. Some one may understand this transaction. I certainly 
cannot, except by lowering Sergius to the level of an apos- 
tate, and looking upon the Princess Iren and Father Hilarion 
as his abettors ; but it may be that, having simplified their 
creed, they had come to regard monastic vows as a human 
institution of no binding power, as Luther did in the following 
century. 

In fine, though the work, as I have said, possesses merit ; 
though it frequently presents vivid and glowing pictures and 
rivets the attention by interesting episodes ; though most proba- 
bly written in good faith and with no intention to give offence, 
yet it cannot fail to be highly offensive to Christians generally, 
on account of the reasoning of the Prince of India, and to 
Catholics in particular, by the conduct of Sergius the Russian 
monk, and his patroness, the Princess Irene. This is my hum- 
ble opinion of the Prince of India. 

* Helyot's Histoire des Ordres Religieux and Currier's History of Religious Orders, 
" Monks of St. Basil." 






THE light, the light, at last I see the 

light ! 
Where now are all my weak and 

foolish fears ? 

Where now are all my childish, puling tears? 
Where now that vague and apprehensive fright 
That filled my soul with dread I could not 

voice ? 

Vanish'd, all vanish'd, as vanishes the night 
At the approach of morning's glorious light, 
When closed-up flowers open and rejoice. 
So has the blessed dew upon me dropped 
Of God's dear mercy, of a heav'nly calm. 
My long-closed heart has opened, and the balm 
Of Faith hath healed my soul, my cries hath 

stopped. 

My Father's love I feel ; a Father mild 
I trust in Him as should a helpless child. 




AT THE APPROACH OF MORNING'S GLORIOUS LIGHT. 




1894-] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 321 



GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 

BY REV. CLARENCE A. WALWORTH. 
CHAPTER VIII. 

A Protestant Ctteaux in the Wcst.Nashotah Founded on Monasticism. Kip's 
Visit in 184?. The Founders %et Married. St. Mary's Priory in the 
Adirondack*. Episcopalia n Sisterhoods. 
\ 

KE last three chapters show how Tractarian doc- 
trines, so rife at the Chelsea Seminary, acting 
upon a spirit of interior piety and zeal for the 
salvation of souls, and combining both of these 
together in the same bosoms, led on gradually 
to an eagerness to introduce something like monastic life into 
Anglicanism. Americans are a people too practical and enter- 
prising to be much attracted by thumb-sucking saints. Even our 
transcendental pantheists of New England, inclined as they are 
betimes to contemplation and fond of Brahminical lore and 
legends, are not easily disposed to sit dreaming with their backs 
against the trunks of trees until their hair grows into the bark. 
At Brook Farm the stirring motto was 

Hast thou aught to teach, then teach it ; 
Preach it 

Loud and long ; 

Sing it if it be a song. 
Be thou prophet, be thou poet, 
If thou know it, go it 

Strong. 

When Dalgairns's Life of St. Stephen Harding first found its 
way across the water to Chelsea, the sensation it produced was 
intense. St. Bernard was not an Englishman, and his character 
and career could not easily be put forth directly in a series of 
Lives of the English Saints. But St. Stephen, the founder of 
Citeaux, could give his name to a volume which should bring 
forward luminously the career of the great St. Bernard, the 
master spirit of the Cistercian Order. St. Bernard was one of the 
very holiest of contemplatives ; and yet, forced from the seclu- 
sion which he loved by his burning zeal, by the constant needs 
and pressing calls of Christendom, his voice was made to resound 
VOL. LX. 21 



322 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Dec., 

throughout the whole Continent of Europe. He was, in truth, 
the very type of a missionary monk. 

Something ike Citeaux was already existing in the Anglican 
Church of America. It was at Nashotah, in Wisconsin. This 
institute was in reality an attempt, under the name of a mis- 
sionary station, to found a veritable monastery. Its founder was 
James Lloyd Breck, a graduate of the Chelsea Seminary of 1841. 
Associated with him were two of his classmates, William Adams 
and John Henry Hobart. That the intention was to found a 
monastery is evident from a letter, now in my possession, written 
by Breck to Wadhams, October 21, 1842, inviting him to come 
and join them. The letter says : 

" If, dear Wadhams, you conclude to come, remember we re- 
ceive you on the ground of our first principles, which are: (i) 
so long as connected with this institution to remain unmarried ; 
(2) to yield implicit and full obedience to all the rules and regu- 
lations of the body ; (3) community of goods so long as commu- 
nity of purpose ; (4) teaching on the staunch Catholic principles ; 
(5) preaching from place to place on circuits route, mode, etc., 
to be determined by the bishop, or by one authorized by him." 

An earlier letter to the same from Adams breathes the same 
spirit. " Dear brother," he writes, " if you can in almost every 
way deny yourself, can be content to remain unmarried for an 
indefinite period, to live on the coarsest food, to deny yourself 
the pleasure of cultivated society ; then come to Wisconsin." 

As Nashotah, then an object of longing interest to many 
hearts at the General Seminary, grew in a few years to be a 
flourishing institution, though far different from what its foun- 
ders intended to make it, it may be well to give some further 
description of this institute and its locality, in its early days. 
Bishop Kip, of California, visited it as early as 1847. I gather 
the following materials from a pamphlet of his, published at 
that time, entitled A fezv Days at Nashotah. The lands of the 
Nashotah Mission were adjoining those of Bishop Kemper, then 
having charge of the territory in which this mission was included. 
On their first arrival Breck, Adams, and Hobart had assigned 
to them Prairieville, with a circuit of thirty miles around. Af- 
ter nine months they settled at the Nashotah Lakes. Bishop 
Kip thus describes their location : 

' The whole of this part of the country is intersected by the 
most beautiful lakes, so that from a hill a few miles distant 
eleven can be counted in sight, while more than double that 
number can be found in a circle of twelve miles. They are of 
various sizes, the largest being about two miles in length some 



1894-] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 323 

dotted with islands the water perfectly clear, and the shore 
generally a high bluff, rising many feet above the surface. Two 
of these, which approach within a hundred feet of each other, 
and are united by a little brook, have retained the Indian name 
of Nashotah, or Twin Lakes. On the bank of one of them, 
where the shore rises fifty feet above the water, and then spreads 
out into a level plateau, covered with oak-trees standing in 
clumps (an oak opening), are the mission buildings." Across this 
lake and on a small prairie are remarkable Indian mounds, 
twelve feet high. One represents a tortoise, another a serpent, 
another a bear. Large trees grow on some of them, showing 
great age. 

.In 1847, when Kip wrote, the institution had grown from 
the one-story log-house, described in my Reminiscences of Bi- 
shop Wadhams, to eight or ten low wooden buildings, and he 
tells us that " The view from this spot is probably one of the 
most enchanting that the world can furnish." 

Breck, formerly at St. Paul's College, Flushing, L. I., had 
been a pupil of the Rev. Dr. Muhlenberg, whose beautiful 
church on the corner of Twentieth Street and Fifth Avenue, 
New York City, was building in 1843, an< ^ eagerly watched by 
us seminarians. We looked upon the worthy doctor as neither 
low nor high nor dry, but as a true Catholic in our romantic 
sense of the word. He was particularly a favorite among stu- 
dents of the ritualistic type. He was admired then as a poet, 
with a keen taste for church architecture, author of the beauti- 
ful hymn, " I would not live alway," now known also as the 
founder of St. Luke's Hospital, under the care of Episcopalian 
nuns. The Paulists in Fifty-ninth Street have a beautiful cruci- 
fixion by Guido, as a testimonial of gratitude to Father Deshon 
from Dr. Muhlenberg, for helping to guard his hospital during 
the draft riot in 1861. 

Muhlenberg was visiting Breck's institute when Kip was 
there. At that time the washing of the institution was done by 
students for poverty's sake. They had also a baptistery there ; 
i. e., " a flight of steps leading into the water at a convenient 
depth for immersion, where a platform has been placed on the 
bottom." Bishop Kip gives as a reason for this, that many of 
the settlers around were Baptists ; but from what I know of 
Breck, and that strong yearning existing then as now among 
Anglicans for some show of union with those happy Oriental 
Greek churches which practise immersion, they would have done 
the same thing if these modern Anabaptists had migrated 
further westward. Bishop Kip gives us the mode of immersion 



324 GLIMPSES OF LIFE iff AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Dec., 

at Nashotah, which, he says, is different from the way in which 
it is performed among the Baptists (i. e. t more gentetl), where 
the individual is immersed backwards. Here he kneels in the 
water, the officiating priest places one hand behind his head, 
and, taking him at the same time by the hand, bends him for- 
ward till the immersion is complete, and then aids him in rising. 

In addition to the practice of poverty, celibacy, and obedi- 
ence, which, as we have seen, Breck and Adams announced to 
Wadhams as requirements of their institute, the principle at- 
tached to monasticism since the time of the earliest hermits 
and cenobites of the desert, that labor must be associated with 
prayer, was carried out after some fashion at Nashotah as late 
as Bishop Kip's visit. He tells us that during the summer 
vacation, which lasted from the middle of June to the middle 
of November, the studies were suspended and the students 
labored eight hours a day. Many of these were in the harvest 
field, where they were seen by Kip at work. " We found," said 
he, "about a dozen employed in getting in the wheat, on a 
tract which had been cleared and brought into cultivation since 
the mission was established." I find no account of contempla- 
tive prayer as filling up the hours not occupied by labor or 
study, but a routine of life is given in which appear hours for 
chapel service, with days for receiving communion, etc., as in 
ordinary seminaries and colleges. 

This whole mission of Bishop Kemper, with the bishop's 
house and seminary at Nashotah for its centre, was the carry- 
ing out of a scheme to draw Episcopalian emigration and to 
colonize and Anglicanize the emigrants. It much resembles 
Archbishop Ireland's more recent colonization plan for Minne- 
apolis and its neighborhood, and, like that plan, was eminently 
successful. The plan of the Nashotah plant contemplated at 
one and the same time colonization, missionary labor, and 
monastic life. The first two parts of this plan have succeeded 
wonderfully well. The success of the last was very short ; love 
got into the tub and the bottom fell out. 

This Nashotah property was held by the Rev. James Lloyd 
Breck, in trust, for the education of students both theological 
and academical. In 1841 they had one student. This number 
had increased at the time when Kip visited it, in' 1847, to 
twenty-three students. At that time the members of the mis- 
sion had seventeen stations for preaching and lay reading, with- 
in a circuit of thirty miles. The students acted as lay readers 
and catechists among the emigrants of the neighborhood. The 
idea of the three founders was to establish an institution which 



1894-] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 325 

should be essentially monastic. The bishop humored this idea, 
for Breck and his companions were valuable men, and, however 
visionary their special hopes might be, it would have been a 
dangerous thing to discourage them. The letters of Breck and 
Adams from which we have selected short extracts, but which 
are given at greater length in the Reminiscences of Bishop 
Wadhams, show the eager anxiety for celibacy and monastic 
life which reigned in the bosoms of the writers. But the aim 
of Bishop Kemper is better disclosed by his friend, Dr. Kip, 
who writes not only to recommend the institution to the pa- 
tronage of Episcopalians generally, but takes care to excuse and 
explain away certain apparent tendencies to Romanism which 
hover about the place. Dr. Kip writes : 

" One of the most common charges against the institution 
is, that the doctrine of the celibacy of the clergy is inculcated. 
We take, .therefore, this opportunity to deny it. Such is not 
the case. The only foundation for the story is, that a student 
upon joining the institution pledges himself not to form any 
engagement with reference to matrimony during his union with 
it. The moment he is ordained he is, of course, left free to do 
as he pleases. We believe that there is no one acquainted with 
the state of things in some other seminaries of our church but 
must feel that it would be better for the students if they were 
under the restriction of this rule. If there was less visiting, 
there would be more theology." 

Dr. Kip's pleasant way of waving off the charges and sus- 
picions against Nashotah agree as little with my own remem- 
brances of the time as they do with Breck's own letters. I was 
one of several candidates for orders whose missionary aspira- 
tions blending with the love of solitude and a yearning for 
the graces attached to a spiritual life in the cloister drew me 
strongly to Nashotah, and I applied to my father for permis- 
sion to join that institution and finish my studies there. But 
the rumors above mentioned had reached his ears and made 
him hesitate. He consulted Dr. Horatio Potter, afterward 
Bishop of New York, and then rector of St. Peter's Church in 
Albany. Dr. Potter advised him by no means to consent to it, 
as Puseyism reigned there in its worst forms. This ended the 
matter for me. Bishop Kemper utilized the zeal and labors of 
Breck and his Tractarian friends, but all for his own purposes, 
not for theirs. Breck's airy vision soon melted away like a mist. 

Hobart left Nashotah in its infancy to take a wife. Six of its 
early students, finding that its monastic character was nothing 
but a thin garment cautiously tolerated by authority and for a 



326 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Dec., 

present purpose only, broke away from the delusion to unite 
with the Catholic Church. Three of these, McCurry, Graves, 
and Robinson, visited me at St. Peter's Church, Troy, in 1859, 
the time of their emancipation. McCurry, by my advice, at- 
tached himself to the diocese of Albany, and upon his ordina- 
tion was appointed assistant priest in St. John's Church, in Al- 
bany City. A vacancy occurring in the church at Cooperstown, 
he was sent there to supply the place temporarily, and died there. 
He was a most valuable and pious priest. Graves also took or- 
ders in the Catholic Church, connecting himself with one of the 
Wisconsin dioceses. Robinson was rector of the Church of 
the Holy Name of Jesus, at Chicopee, Mass., but within the 
last few months he died. 

Although John Henry Hobart's connection with Nashotah 
was so brief, yet the fact of his being a graduate of the Chel- 
sea Seminary, with a memory still fresh in its halls, when I ar- 
rived there, as a forward Tractarian, the son of an illustrious 
bishop and himself remarkable for high personal qualifications, 
seems to demand further notice in these Reminiscences. I saw 
him and conversed with him only twice. The first time was at 
Saratoga Springs. It must have been, I think, in the summer 
of 1844. My object was to obtain such information as I might 
concerning the community and life at Nashotah. His answers 
to my inquiries impressed me very much in his favor as a young 
man of unusual intelligence, honorable feeling, and refined cour- 
tesy. He spoke frankly of the Nashotah Institute and of his 
former companions, Breck and Adams. His statements concern- 
ing the institute were always highly favorable, and of his friends 
there he spoke with much regard and affection. He did not 
attempt to make the least defence of his act in leaving them. 

"You must not expect me, Mr. Walworth, to offer any ex- 
cuse for my action," he said, " beyond my own weakness and 
instability of purpose. My companions were too noble and 
spiritual for me. Their vocation is a higher one than mine, and 
cheerfully will I recommend this community to any young man 
who can keep pace with such spirits as Breck and Adams, and 
make such sacrifices as they make. So far as I am concerned 
the public will be my judges, and will, no doubt, judge rightly." 

There was a truthfulness and dignity in this frank and sim- 
ple confession of weakness which, to my mind at the time, 
amounted to sublimity. I thought I saw in it a generosity 
of nature which made him worthy of his distinguished father 
and of his noble-minded sister, the convert-wife of Dr. Levi Sil- 
liman Ives, who became more distinguished as a Catholic lay- 



1894-] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 327 

man than he had been as Protestant bishop. He was near kins- 
man, moreover, to Mother Seton, foundress of Emmittsburg, 
the mother-house of the Sisters of Chanty in this country ; a 
kinsman, too, of James Roosevelt Bayley, who died Archbishop 
of Baltimore. Every soul is precious in the eyes of God. Is it 
an ill-directed sentiment to feel sad that a gifted young man, 
so connected with converts to the true church, should have 
died without its pale? His death occurred in 1889. He was 
assistant minister of Trinity- Church, New York City. 

Following Hobart's advice, I visited the Rev. Mr. Tucker, 
now and for many years past rector of Holy Cross Church, in 
Troy, well known as founded through the charity of Mrs. War- 
ren of that city. Tucker was a graduate of Chelsea, well known 
there to us both and thoroughly intimate with Breck and 
Adams. I have no distinct recollection of my interview with 
Tucker except that it was a very pleasant one, and that he was 
well posted in what concerned Nashotah, of which institute he 
was a warm advocate. 

The next time that I saw Hobart was also at Saratoga 
Springs, after I had become a Catholic. He was not at all sur- 
prised, nor did he express the least regret. I myself should not 
have felt the least surprise at that time had I heard of his do- 
ing the same thing, although in such a case, having matrimony 
in view, he would have been obliged, like Dr. Ives, his brother- 
in law, to live as a layman. 

Adams was a better school-master than he was pioneer or 
monk. Breck's deeper spirituality and greater energy were in 
the beginning far more valuable in drawing zealous young Trac- 
tarians to what promised to be a life of mortification, devotion, 
and missionary enterprise. Bishop Kemper knew well how to 
avail himself of such qualities without letting his horse run 
away with him. As time advanced, however, students gathered 
and emigrants fell into line. This brought into greater promi- 
nence and gave more comparative value to the scholarly quali- 
ties and more sedentary habits, of Adams. The institute at 
Nashotah shaped itself more and more to the ordinary wants 
and ways of an Episcopalian seminary and college, while play- 
ing monk became more of a nuisance to all interested parties, 
who really cared nothing for monk or cowl. 

Adams soon took a wife. What special circumstances led to 
this I cannot tell, but it is a fact of history that Cupid smiled 
upon him in the form of his own bishop's daughter. His voca- 
tion became thus settled. He is still a professor at the Nasho- 
tah Seminary, his department being that of Systematic Divinity. 



328 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Dec., 

Mr. E. C. Arnold, a convert, now public librarian at Taun- 
ton, Mass., and once a bookseller at Milwaukee, was quite fa- 
miliar with Nashotah in its early years. I have from him the 
following account of Breck's subsequent career: 

" Adams's marriage to Bishop Kemper's daughter was a great 
grief to Breck, and as he felt unable to cope with the ' married 
influence,' he eventually turned his back on Nashotah and 
started a similar institution at Faribault, Minn. While there 
he paid Bishop Grace several visits,' and we sent him books from 
Milwaukee; but ere long he got entangled matrimonially himself, 
and that put an end to his earlier dreams." 

His last station was in California. He died rector of St. 
Paul's Church, Benicia, in that State. One monument to the 
busy life of this remarkable man is found in the " Breck 
Mission and Farm School," Wilder, Minnesota. 

The only other attempt to introduce monasticism into the 
Episcopalian Church in the United States in which I took part, 
or of which I have any personal recollections, was a scheme 
which originated also at the General Seminary in the City of 
New York. The central figure in this scheme was Edgar P. 
Wadhams, a graduate of the class of 1843, wno received dea- 
con's orders immediately after graduation and was put in charge 
of the whole of Essex County. I suppose I must name myself 
as the second figure in the plan, since I was the only one of 
the cenobites that actually located himself at the proposed 
scene of operations, which was the village of Wadhams' Mills, 
in the old homestead of that family. Our actual community 
consisted of two, Deacon Wadhams and myself. We occupied 
the second story of the house, Widow Wadhams presiding over 
the lower story. Our flat (the convent which we dedicated to 
St. Mary) comprised two large rooms with hall and stairway. 
The room at the south end was the convent kitchen, with a 
bed for my accommodation. The room at the north end, a 
very large one, was at once the larder, general store-room, lum- 
ber loft, and carpenter's working shop. Wadhams occupied a 
small bed chamber on the first floor, there being no place for 
him in the cloister above. Our chapel, to which we had no 
claim except on Sundays, was the village school-house. On 
Christmas we celebrated Episcopalian Mass in Widow Wad- 
hams' parlor, which was richly decorated for the occasion with 
evergreens. We had no other common oratory than the com- 
munity kitchen; the stove, cupboard, dining-table, bed, and 
washstand harmonizing sufficiently well with our simple devo- 
tions. For brevity's sake I may call this our Chapter-House. 



1 894-1 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 329 

Here also Wadhams and I had our spiritual readings when we 
two were alone. Sometimes, however, to please Widow Wad- 
hams, this exercise was held in her kitchen, for she loved to 
assist at these readings when she could, especially when we read 




EDGAR P. WADHAMS AS BISHOP OF OGDENSBURG. 

from the Lives of the Saints. Alban Butler's simple "Lives" 
delighted her especially. On these occasions two of her grand- 
sons, children of William Wadhams, a Presbyterian deacon, as- 
sisted, for they lodged and boarded with their grandmother. 
The kitchen. girl also could not always be absent, unless she 



330 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Dec., 

stayed outdoors. A stranger could not easily have distinguished, 
even in the premises outside the house, between the cloister 
and the world. The cow-house was under the jurisdiction of 
the convent, for Prior Wadhams owned the cow, and I kept 
her apartments clean for her " with my spade and shovel " ; and 
I kept the cow. Prior Wadhams also owned a pony named 
Beni, who was lodged on the other side of the highway, in the 
stable of Deacon William Wadhams. All the other out build- 
ings belonged to Mrs. Wadhams, with all the pigs, hens, ducks, 
geese, turkeys, and doves that occupied or frequented them. 

This location of our monastery was only a temporary one. 
About a mile distant to the northward lay a beautiful tract of 
land, where a large creek, after tumbling down from among the 
Adirondack Mountains, made a wide sweep around an extensive 
farm of meadow backed by woodland, then headed directly for 
the little village or corners named Wadhams' Mills, passing 
close behind our house, to leap over a fine fall and supply 
water for the village mill. Our future hopes were all centred 
in the farm just mentioned. It was the hereditary property of 
our prior. On it we saw in the dim future a noble monastic 
pile giving shelter and seclusion to a cowled community of con- 
templatives, missionaries, scholars, and a thousand other vision- 
ary things of religious dream-land. This vision melted away in 
the next spring-time, leaving nothing but a log hut that never 
received either community or roof. Our monastic pile, if it 
still remains, is only a pile of logs. 

My memory recalls no fruitful experiments among Episcopa- 
lians to found monastic communities of men. Religious com- 
munities of women have had better success. The reader will 
remember that when Dr. Kip visited Nashotah he there met 
the. Rev. Dr. Muhlenberg on a similar visit. It may be that 
the latter had already at that time some enthusiastic predilec- 
tion for monasticism. The first introduction of religious sister- 
hoods amongst Episcopalians in this country that I remember 
was when Dr. Muhlenberg, of New York, put St. Luke's Hospi- 
tal under charge of such women. Similar sisterhoods are now 
not at all unfrequent. A boarding-school for young ladies, 
named Kemper Hall, now exists at Kenosha, Wisconsin, under 
charge of ladies of this kind. They are called the Sisters of 
St. Mary. Other sisters bearing the same title are found at 
Memphis, Tenn. ; Peekskill, N. Y. ; Islip, L. I. ; Rockaway Beach, 
and at six different locations in New York City. These seem 
to belong to one general order, the time of first foundation 



1894-] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 331 

reaching back as far as 1865. Besides these, other Episcopalian 
societies of religious ladies are to be found bearing various 
titles, such as the following : The Sisters of the Good Shep- 
herd, of the Holy Communion, of the Holy Child Jesus, of St. 
John the Evangelist, of SS. Philip and James, All Saints' Sis- 
ters of the Poor, Colored Sisters of St. Mary and All Saints, 
Sisters of St. Martha, of the Holy Nativity, of the Holy Name, 
of St. Monica. They are located at New York, Albany, St. 
Louis, Brooklyn, New Orleans, Baltimore, Louisville, Providence, 
Tyler in Texas, and Fond du Lac, Wis. 

Some of these are branches of conventual institutes of the 
Church of England ; for example, that of St. John Baptist, New 
York ; that of St. Margaret, Boston ; that of All Saints' Sisters 
of the Poor, Baltimore. So far as I know, and as I believe, all 
these sisters are considered as nuns. They wear some fashion 
of religious habit and are not easily to be distinguished at 
sight from Catholic sisters, except that their eyes are not much 
cloistered, and that their gait and walk have not received any 
apparent modification since they put off their secular dress. 
The Church Almanac and Year Book for 1892 exhibits an exist- 
ing and recognized order of deaconesses. What they are I 
cannot tell ; whether they are nuns or not, nor when they first 
became a feature of Episcopalianism. They are specially edu- 
cated to their work, one training-school being in New York 
and one in Philadelphia. A still older one, called the Church 
Home, has existed in Mobile since 1863. 

To what extent the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedi- 
ence are enjoined amongst these Protestant nuns is more than 
I can tell. I remember, however, that when Dr. Muhlenberg 
introduced his Sisters into St. Luke's Hospital it was said that 
their vocation was cemented by vows, and that the vow of 
chastity consisted in an obligation to remain single until it 
should please God to call them to some other state of life. 
One thing should be set down as undoubted ; that no part of 
all this tendency toward the monastic life is an outcrop of 
Protestantism, but must be attributed to the Tractarian move- 
ment. 

(TO BE CONTINUED.) 




DURHAM CANDLES. 
Bv LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY. 

WAS when the rebel Tudor the wells of Joy defiled, 
When greedily on altar gold the new evangel smiled, 
Arose against that ruin the twain in great accord, 
The Percy and the Neville, the young men of the 
Lord. 



The Neville and the Percy, amid the reign's uproar, 
At fall of even entered at Durham minster door; 
Each with a little candle came to the lonely choir, 
And set it up for symbol of his own heart afire. 

" By agony of martyrs, by confessors' exile, 

Twin rays of Faith immortal! live perfect here awhile"; 

" Live," said they, " till the morning, nor let your vigil cease : 

One for England's pardon, and one for England's peace." 

O unto whom may view thee in watchfulness and pain, 
Sad Durham and dear Durham, those warder lights remain; 
But see! they pale, they flicker, they die in the Dawn's increase, 
So nigh are now to England her pardon and her peace. 





1894-] PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S ADMISSIONS. 333 

PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S ADMISSIONS. 

BY WILLIAM BARRY, D.D. 
II. THE END OF ATHEISM. 

HAVE insisted at some length, in this Review, 
that the principles whereby what Professor 
Huxley has termed " Supernature " can be es- 
tablished, are precisely those on which the 
science of " Nature " proceeds and which it takes 
for granted. In other words, if Religion is a make believe and 
a delusion, so is Science. " Nature " and " Supernature " stand' 
or fall together. It is the same identical mind which affirms 
both; and in the last analysis we find ourselves face to face 
with principles per se nota, with inevitable and necessary as- 
sumptions, or intuitive axioms and postulates, whether we deal 
with matter or mind, the mechanical or the spiritual. This, it 
will surely be granted, is a point of the utmost importance. 
For if, at length, it is not bare experience, how cunningly so- 
ever manipulated, but reason affirming its own truths prior to 
any such experience, on which the certitude of our statements 
is founded, the whole aspect of Professor Huxley's " Con- 
troverted Question " undergoes a change, and that of the most 
surprising sort. The boast that science appeals to facts as its 
touchstone, while religion trusts to fancy, can no longer be 
maintained. Both are seen to be products of the intellect, 
equally valid or equally delusive ; and Agnosticism, which in 
practice relies upon physical science to make an end of meta- 
physical, is thrown back on its own resources, these being 
neither more nor less than the old-world cavils of the sceptic 
or the Pyrrhonist. 

SCIENCE STANDS OR FALLS WITH RELIGION. 

Professor Huxley declares, as we have seen, that all science 
and all reasoning start from an "act of faith." But he really 
means by " faith " an affirmation of the reason which is self- 
certified, and which as little needs proof as it is capable of re- 
ceiving any. The power, working on materials furnished by ex- 
perience, which converts these into science, is the human mind 



334 PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S ADMISSIONS. [Dec., 

enlightened by its proper principles. Can' that same power, in 
the strength of those principles, attain to the conviction of 
there being an intellect at work behind the facts of science, 
guiding and shaping them to a purpose, in some way not 
absolutely unlike the fashion of man's dealing with the world 
around him? An Objective Reason and a Rational Purpose- 
do we, or do we not, trace these in the operations of Nature? 
If we do, then Agnosticism has no standing-ground; it is re- 
futed and overthrown. But if we do not, mark the alternative. 
Professor Huxley thinks we shall be left in possession of 
science. I say no ; science will and must follow religion over 
the edge of the pit. For when we have emptied out of Nature 
the Objective Mind which reveals to us the God of Nature, by 
sheer force of logic we must go on to empty out the Subjective 
Mind, though it be our own, to which we are indebted for the 
" principle of uniformity," the " invariable order," and the 
" power of prediction," so constantly invoked as giving to 
science its necessary foundation. All this is implied, even if it 
has not been expressed, in Professor Du Bois Reymond's famous 
utterance that the " instinct of personification," out of which 
religion springs, is as deeply rooted in our nature as the 
" instinct of generalization," out of which science is developed. 
The mind which affirms an order of things, in number, weight, 
and measure, cognizable by the scientific student, affirms per- 
sonality, distinct from its own and indefinitely more powerful 
and pervading, by the very fact that its " order of things " is 
necessarily an " order of ideas " whoso grants that there are 
ideas in Nature, grants intellect, will and spirit, by the same 
stroke. His otherwise blind forces will then have sight in them, 
or else be directed by Him that sees they will become mani- 
festations- of a mind, Dei mventis et videntis, to speak with St. 
Augustine. And man, instead of simply beholding his own face 
in the looking-glass which is all that agnostic science amounts 
to will contemplate, as in the Greek parable, the image of the 
sun in the water, even though the sun itself remain to him invisi- 
ble. But quench the sun, and neither its reflection in the stream, 
nor the man's countenance in the mirror, will be any more ac- 
cessible to sight. The universal darkness which totally eclipses 
religion cannot leave science illuminated. 

COGITO, ERGO SUM. 

And as science fares, so does common every-day knowledge, 
the stuff of experience, which indeed is science at its first stage, 



1 894.] PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S ADMISSIONS. 335 

and easily shown to be one with it in principle. For the sim- 
plest phenomena, the least and lowest act of feeling, and mere 
sensation which endures for a moment, all involve a subjective 
construction not furnished by themselves, and not depending on 
them for its validity. The great " act of faith " to which Professor 
Huxley allows so much, marks in us the presence and the power 
of an ideal element, call it by what name you will. There is no 
knowledge without it ; and in this sense, all we conceive or 
imagine is an artistic product, that which we name Self or Ego 
being the artist. Intellect is an active power, governed by its 
own laws, responsible only to the necessary truths which it 
recognizes and to experience in so far as it has been certified 
by them. Deny that " if there is Thought there must be a 
Thinker," and the book of knowledge becomes so many blank 
pages and a dream without a reality. The Imprimatur which 
gave it a value has perished, and yea and nay have exactly the 
same meaning ; that is to say, they have none at all. 

My argument, it will be observed, is to this effect. Agnos- 
ticism, by the mouth of Professor Huxley, assigns to metaphy- 
sical science at the most an interrogative worth, and maintains 
that it asks unanswerable questions, while to physicial science it 
gives all the positive value of reality, as stating questions and 
solving them by experience. On this I remark that experience 
itself, teste Professor Huxley, is a matter of faith ; and that the 
sceptic who shall choose to impugn that faith, by asking for 
the grounds on which uniformity in Nature is asserted, will be 
acting just as reasonably, and just as unreasonably, as the Pro- 
fessor when he calls in question Objective Intellect since in 
either case, it is the mind's own authority by which the matter 
must be decided, and in precisely the same way. The sceptic 
will be told that if he were as sceptical as he pretends to be, 
he could not even ask a question, for how can he know that 
the question has a meaning ? In like manner, I would ask 
Professor Huxley why he trusts his own mind when it exer- 
cises its instinct of generalization, but sternly declines to trust 
it when, with just the same inevitableness, it exercises its in- 
stinct of personification ? If one is valid, why not the other ? 
Because men have blundered in religion ? Have they blundered 
less in science? I trace up both these instincts to the same 
intellect ; and I affirm that either we must give up all prospect 
of attaining truth, on the ground that we are hopelessly an- 
thropomorphic, or, distinguishing between the right exercise of 
a faculty and its occasional, but not therefore incurable, mis- 



336 PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S ADMISSIONS. [Dec., 

takes, we must accept its self-evident axioms and the conclusions 
drawn from them by accurate logic, as making known to us the 
reality of things. And in so affirming, I believe that it is the 
Theist, and not the Agnostic, who upholds the claims of reason. 
To deny " Supernature," or even to make its existence an 
insoluble enigma, is to be profoundly irrational. What, in- 
deed, is it but to precipitate mind from all things, and Itave 
the world not a system or even a machine, so much as a caput 
mortuum ? That alone which hinders the scheme of nature 
from lapsing into chaos is Mind and not the mind of the ex- 
perimentalist or the observer, who is here to-day and gone to- 
morrow, while his registration of phenomena is fitful, inter- 
mit 1 ent, and most fragmentary, but a Mind co-extensive, to say 
the least, with all space and all time, and viewing, as in one 
comprehensive scene, the beginning, the middle, and the end of 
those myriads upon myriads of details which, turn in what 
direction we may, at once sweep into our vision, dazzling the 
sight and confounding the memory of the wisest. Can we be 
sure of anything, if this is not certain ? And is there a simpler, 
a more obvious and reasonable supposition, or one that the 
facts will more abundantly bear out, than that our experience 
and our knowledge represent intellect answering to intellect 
through the universe, and not merely the echo of our own 
voice, holloing into the void inane ? I can understand the re- 
ligious Agnosticism which transcends knowledge without "deny- 
ing it, which falters and even faints at the Alps rising beyond 
Alps in the realm of science. But how shall we speak in the 
same breath of knowing phenomena and not knowing whether 
the intellectual look they wear is due to our own fatal gift of 
fancy or no? Is not the nescience which doubts of Objective 
Mind the very same thing as subjective scepticism ? Where are 
we to draw the line? Why at "personification," and not at 
" generalization " ? And if all " ideas " stand in a like predica- 
ment, is anything left from this universal shipwreck worth call- 
ing knowledge ? To me it seems that the notion of " phenom- 
ena," or of "Nature," is itself metaphysical; and that, if "sub- 
stance " is to be relegated to the region of the unknowable, 
"accidents" must follow it; while the extremely subjective, 
intellectual, and reflex notion of " experience," is destined to 
share the fate of all such entities and quiddities as depend for 
their validity on the forms of the understanding. In a word, the 
doctrine of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason ought to be no less 
fatal to experience, assumed to be real, than to the a priori 



1894-] PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S ADMISSIONS. 337 

notions, or the " act of faith," on which, by Professor Huxley's 
acknowledgment, that experience is founded. 

UNFAIR AND DISCRIMINATING TESTS. 

But in other phrases and sentences which I have marked 
the Professor undoubtedly does put science and religion on the 
same level, yet in such a way that science is permitted to hold 
by its " symbols," and religion is treated as fantastic and super- 
stitious, though doing no more " I suppose," says our author 
indulgently, " that so long as the human mind exists, it will 
not escape its deep-seated instinct to personify its intellectual 
conceptions." By " personifying," let me observe once more, 
nothing else need be meant, or as a rule is meant, in these es- 
says, than asserting the objective existence of an intellect per- 
vading the universe and conscious of its own activity. That is 
the head and front of the Anthropomorphism to which Profes- 
sor Huxley opposes his Agnostic "non-proven." However, he 
continues, " the science of the present day is as full of this par- 
ticular form of intellectual shadow-worship as is the nescience of 
ignorant ages. The difference is that the philosopher who is 
worthy of the name knows that his personified hypotheses, such 
as law, and force, and ether, and the like, are merely useful 
symbols, while the ignorant and the careless take them for ade- 
quate expressions of reality." And he goes on to say that even 
"theological symbols," provided they be not converted into 
"idols," may serve a good purpose. Now, what is the precise 
difference between a "symbol" and an "idol"? I cannot be 
sure that the Professor has answered this question, unless when 
he deprecates our looking upon " personified hypotheses " in 
the light of " adequate expressions of reality." And if this be 
so, I could wish that he had given a little of his time to the 
study of St. Thomas Aquinas on the chapter of " rational dis- 
tinctions," and of the relation of our intellect to the objects 
with which it is acquainted. Does he really suppose Christian 
Theists so utterly puffed up in their own conceit as that they 
believe human thought or language can furnish them with 
" adequate conceptions " of a Reality, confessed by them to be 
infinite in all perfections ? Surely it is one thing to maintain 
our certain knowledge of a Mind without us, revealed in the 
universe of matter and spirit ; and quite another to pretend 
that the ideas which we frame of that Eternal, Self-sustaining 
Consciousness, will do more than dimly shadow forth His un- 
speakable Existence and all its attributes. The " analogy " 

VOL. LX. 22 



338 PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S ADMISSIONS. [Dec., 

upon which we assert a God is, I say, as clear and inevitable, 
as much a part of our necessary intellectual pronouncements, as 
that upon which we affirm an order of Nature. And in Nature 
itself we find its evidence. But to make our thought, which is 
but a " symbol " or an image of the Supreme, into a substitute 
for Him (as if it were not limited by the dependence of intellect 
on the senses, and by its own finite nature !), who could do 
so and not feel his conscience rebuke him in the very act? 
Why should Professor Huxley raise these ghosts of his own 
imagining? The point at issue is not whether we have an 
" adequate conception " of the Eternal Mind for no one 
dreams that we have but whether our conception, such as it 
is, and confessedly unequal to its object, is, nevertheless, 
founded on reality as known to us and interpreted by the laws 
of the mind. Is it an hypothesis which explains phenomena, 
and without which they remain inexplicable ? Is it demanded 
by reason, under penalty of stultifying all science by taking 
their objective value from the methods upon which science pro- 
ceeds ? That is the question, and the root of the matter. 
Again, can we account for the mind of man without postulat- 
ing, or concluding to, a Mind from which his intellectual light 
is kindled ? And what is there unscientific or irrational in argu- 
ing from the known to the unknown, in affirming purpose 
where we all admit purposive action, or in believing that the 
meaning which we read out of the Book of Nature, and which 
we term science, was there before we came to it and is not 
simply the coinage of our own brains ? But this seems to me 
the only possible beginning of Theism in the natural order ; 
and though it never can result in adequate ideas of the Su- 
preme ah no, at best they will be " mere imitations of the 
Inimitable " it does, at any rate, snatch me from the lampless 
deep of Nescience, and enable me to believe that I have a 
Father in Heaven. Is that so small a thing, and shall I scorn 
it because even grander and more ideal conceptions, " pinnacled 
far " in some sky that I may never ascend, must yet fall short 
beyond all reckoning of the Deity they stammeringly express ? 

WANTS THE COURAGE OF HIS DOUBTS. 

It is, at any rate, an impregnable idea. Let the reader take 
this assured and comforting truth home to himself. Professor 
Huxley would be an Atheist if he dared ; but his science, his ac- 
quaintance even with philosophy, have made it impossible. He 
knows of no weapon in the logical armory, of no fact in the mil- 



1894-] PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S ADMISSIONS. 339 

lionfold inductions of science, which will warrant him to stand 
up and say, " There is no God." Content though he may be / 
unlike the multitude of men and women who have suffered to 
"warm both hands at the fire of life" and then depart into 
annihilation or oblivion ; willing even to deduce " the laws of 
conduct " from " the laws of comfort," in spite of Christ and 
Calvary, still this accomplished man of science leaves ample 
room and verge enough for those who discern Thought in the 
nature of things, Reason in the hierarchy of laws, and a pur- 
pose in the development of human life and character. Is not 
that in the highest degree significant? Agnosticism, therefore, 
means that the whole assault upon our Faith in God, so long 
and vigorously sustained, so unsparing in its attack, so deter- 
mined to make an end of what it accounted superstition, and 
so indefatigable in its pursuit of arguments against the Most 
High from every phase and mood of existence, has failed, has 
gone to froth and foam, and is given up by those who would 
have delighted in urging it on to victory, if victory were ever 
within its grasp. The wave which seems to be mounting on 
the shore of Christianity, and which threatens to lay waste so 
many venerable institutions, is, when we look to the quarter 
whence it comes, a recoil from the lonely seas of Atheism. It 
will fertilize where it has destroyed ; and if it makes a silence 
instead of much loud and over-confident speaking on the one 
hand, is it not likely on the other to stop the mouth of sheer 
unbelief? To say that never has an argument been discovered, 
nor is one discoverable, which will disprove the first article of 
the Creed and this in the name of inductive, experimental, 
unimpassioned science is to throw open the Via Triumphalis 
by which religion shall one day go up to the Capitol of Hu- 
manity. For it is no vain syllogism which argues that if there 
may be a God, then there is a God. The possible, in this high 
region, can be nothing else than the actual, and so mankind 
will be assured when they have measured the significance of 
Professor Huxley's good confession, and of the commanding 
array of intellect, from Kant to Herbert Spencer, whose spokes- 
man in this conjuncture he has made himself. I do not over- 
look the grounds of nescience common to all these " champions 
not of Christendom." But while there is a nescience which 
avails to put down atheism for "who hath known the mind 
of the Lord, or who hath been his counsellor ? " it will avail 
nothing against the light we possess in our own intellect and in 
the make of the world. These are primordial facts to which 



340 PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S ADMISSIONS. [Dec., 

we can ever appeal ; and the Agnostic who confounds his 
would-be friend, the Atheist, is himself in turn put to flight by 
the Dogmatist, relying on the necessary and eternal axiom that 
if we deny Thought we cannot explain Things. It is all we 
ask or need to build up our Theism. With thought alone we 
can go to the end of the Milky Way and beyond it, to the 
galaxies and the nebulas, and wherever space extends. And as 
it will take us through the depths and heights of matter, so, 
and much more, will it find itself at home in the kingdom of 
spirit, in the range of moral evolution where promise and 
prophecy, as the ages tell us, have been ever tending to coin- 
cide, and, so far as the most exact science can perceive, may 
at length issue in everlasting righteousness. To all this Agnos- 
ticism, represented by Professor Huxley, makes no objection 
from the side of logic ; nor has it any facts to rehearse which 
would bar its fulfilment. It contents itself with a demand for 
evidence, and says that none is forthcoming. 

" Without stepping beyond the analogy of that which is 
known," writes Professor Huxley, "it is easy to people the cos- 
mos with entities in ascending scale, until we reach something 
practically indistinguishable from omnipotence, omnipresence, 
and omniscience." Of course he means to ridicule the notion 
that we should do well to go by " the analogy of what is 
known " to such an extent. Yet, in another place, he assures 
us that "the student of nature, who starts from the axiom of 
the universality of the law of causation, cannot refuse to ad- 
mit an eternal existence ; if he admits the conservation of 
energy, he cannot deny the possibility of an eternal energy ; if 
he admits the existence of immaterial phenomena in the form 
of consciousness, he must admit the possibility, at any rate, of 
an eternal series of such phenomena ; and if his studies have 
not been barren of the best fruits of the investigation of na- 
ture, he will have enough sense to see that when Spinoza says, 
" ' Per Deum intelligo ens absolute infinitum, hoc est substantiam 
constantem infinitis attributis,' the God so conceived is one that 
only a very great fool would deny, even in his heart." Such is 
Professor Huxley's emphatic, if somewhat truculent Credo ; and 
he subjoins with equal vehemence, that " physical science is as 
little Atheistic as it is Materialistic." 

HETERODOX AGNOSTICISM. 

But must we not conclude from so frank an admission that 
neither is science agnostic, if by that word we mean the refusal 



1 894.] PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S ADMISSIONS. 341 

of data, or the discrediting of methods, in virtue of which \re 
may lay down that the "infinite substance," with its " infinite 
attributes," is nothing else than conscious Thought and Will, 
existing from eternity to eternity ? How shall we express its 
infinitude better than in these or the like terms ? And how 
shall w not be denying it to human ears if we say that we 
know not whether it be Thought or the opposite of Thought, 
and that, anyhow, we are resolved to have done with " the 
effete mythology of Spiritualism"? Does "spirit," in the lan- 
guage of metaphysicians or divines, signify anything except a 
" thinking substance," and was not Spinoza's substance Thought 
raised to the infinite? Once more, if Kant were listening to 
Professor Huxley when he enunciated the above remarkable 
sentences, would not the sage of Konigsberg be well-warranted 
in declaring that this was a transcendental utterance of the largest 
scope, committing the scientific intellect to the Real Infinite, 
and carrying it beyond all limitary conceptions to the Eternal 
Self-existent ? True it is that where the Professor talks of mere 
" possibility," the argument requires " actuality," in obedience 
to that axiom of "the law of causation " from which he starts; 
for how can a possible cause produce a real effect ? But I will 
not insist on this point, momentous though it be. I am satis- 
fied to contrast the Agnosticism which declines to know any- 
thing but phenomena with the rebuke administered in these 
words to him who would deny in his heart either eternal energy 
or a substance containing in itself all manner of perfection, and 
therefore the highest possible degree of Thought and Power. 
If this be not an acknowledgment of omnipotence and omni- 
science on the lips of Professor Huxley, it proves at all events 
that the " analogy " which he has elsewhere scouted is the natu- 
ral dictate of reason. And perhaps I may venture to remark 
that a deeper consideration of all it involves will bring to light 
the true difficulty experienced by those who have seen Thought 
everywhere, in the Heavens above as in the heart of man, viz., 
not that of finding tokens and proofs of its all-pervading nature, 
but that of hindering the Finite from being absorbed and com- 
pletely assimilated by the Infinite. So manifest are the Energy 
and the Purpose which Agnosticism would fain turn its back 
upon as a conjecture never and nowhere to be verified ! 

Now I must not omit the fact, well known from previous writ- 
ings of this competent author, that, to his thinking, the doctrine of 
evolution, suppose even Darwin's, is not incompatible with final 
causes, with a Divine purpose, and the ordering of its every 



342 PKOFESSOR HUXLEY'S ADMISSIONS. [Dec., 

stage and detail according to a plan which comprehends them 
all. Professor Huxley does, indeed, forsaking his Agnosticism 
on occasion, hold it impossible to reconcile foreknowledge of 
the " evolutionary process " with a "purely benevolent intention "; 
but in taking this attitude, he has a real and formidable pro- 
blem in view, very unlike the suicidal revolt against Objective 
Thought which is at the bottom of his alleged nescience. Un- 
doubtedly, the ideal of Perfect Benevolence, while it must find 
a place among Spinoza's " infinite attributes," is but dimly seen 
reflected in the struggle and the torment of conscious existences. 
Here, if anywhere, we must go by faith and not by light, com- 
forting ourselves with the indications afforded on so many sides 
that pain is a means rather than an end, nor forgetting that 
moral evil implies choice, and that choice is self-determination. 
If it be true, in the language of Professor Huxley, that "each 
figure in that vast historical procession " which the Bible un- 
rolls and I suppose he would extend the saying to the whole 
of history " earns the blessings or the curses of all time, accord- 
ing to its effort to do good and hate evil," and if, again, the 
stream of tendency does " make for righteousness," although by 
" roundabout ways," the solution of our hardest enigma is, it 
seems to me, already given in principle. When to this we add 
the Agnostic confession, recorded in these same pages, that im- 
mortality is not disproved by physical science ; or, indeed, by 
any science ; and that it is not upon " a priori considerations that 
objections, either to the supposed efficacy of prayer in modify- 
ing the course of events, or to the supposed occurrence of 
miracles, can be scientifically based," I think we must perceive 
that the air is beginning to clear, and that Atheism, and not 
religion, has had its day if we ought not rather to say, its night 
and its twilight. 

ON THE HORNS OF A DILEMMA. 

Cardinal Newman, as the Professor feels and is not slow to 
indicate, was one of the most sagacious apologists that ever 
wrote. And Cardinal Newman has laid down in the Grammar 
of Assent a doctrine which he was never weary of enforcing, 
viz., that evidence in the concrete depends for its momentum 
on the antecedent prejudices it may have to overcome, or the 
anticipations in its favor which, on the other hand, make it 
plausible and attractive. Professor Huxley has swept aside 
once for all the presumptions, falsely called proofs, on which 
Atheism was wont to rely. They are unscientific, unverifiable, 



1894-] PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S ADMISSIONS. 343 

and without warrant from experience. And the human con- 
science, left to itself, rejects Atheism with loathing. But it 
neither does nor can reject Thought as the fundamental con- 
ception of science, as necessary to experience, and as an ex- 
planation of the things that exist and have existed. Nothing 
more does the Theist demand from those he would persuade. 
He means by spirit no " mythology," but the real consciousness 
to which every one may go back in his own breast. He desires 
to view the universe physical and psychical in the light of 
Reason, to trace its march and its presence through the count- 
less worlds made accessible to research by astronomy, geology, 
chemistry ; by the science of life, the certitudes of thought, and 
the dictates and postulates of conscience. If ever there was a 
rational enterprise, surely this is one. And though it would be 
a contradiction in terms to say that the Agnostic will be his 
ally to the end, he may well insist that an ally he is at the be- 
ginning, not as helping the Theist to manufacture knowledge 
out of nescience, or to affirm much because all is darkness, but 
in this most profound and striking sense, that the old atheistic 
prejudices are laid low by science even when science is handled 
by the coolest intellect ; and that, supposing Theism were at 
last a matter of faith and aspiration, the utmost wealth of 
knowledge, and the severest scrutiny of experience, could not 
justify us in calling it unreasonable. But we may remind the 
Agnostic in turn of Sir Isaac Newton's far-reaching dictum, 
" Deus sine dominis, providentia, et causis finalibus, nihil aliud, 
est quam Fatum et Natura," requiring him at the same time 
to confess, what is the simple truth, that " Fate and Nature " 
to which Thought is lacking are either empty names or dead 
matter. If then he does not go forward to Rational Theism, 
logic and common sense will drive him back upon the material- 
ism or the absolute and self destroying scepticism from which 
he thinks to have escaped. The one state in which neither he 
nor any man will permanently continue is that of " suspension of 
judgment " concerning the Intellect which made his own, and 
the Divine Purpose which gives life its meaning and its 
interest. No " laws of conduct," or perhaps even of " comfort," 
will long endure, when their foundation is so unstable an equi- 
librium. Shall we build the future of mankind upon this quak- 
ing bog? 




DAYBREAK. 

BY CHARLESON SHANE. 

ITHOUT, the rain 

Beats wildly 'gainst my window-pane. 
The roaring wind 

Seeks entrance ; but, enraged to find 
Himself debarred, his power defied, 
With sullen clamor slinks aside. 

Furious fast, 

Wind-driven clouds rush madly past. 

Th' awakened day 

Peeps, startled, forth, as well he may, 

And oh the face of heaven sheds a 

light 
That lends fair, wondrous splendor to the sight. 

The clouds grow bright, 

The rain has ceased, and lo! the morning light 

Through heaven's bars 

Gleams like a galaxy of daylight stars. 

Stray sunbeams through the breaking gloom appear; 

A smile the sky attempts, but drops a tear. 

With hellish guile 

The pow'rs of darkness hide the smile. 

Aside is cast 

Aurora's promise by the northern blast 

Dull, grayish gloom has overspread the sky: 

Alone, mayhap, I've seen the sunlight die. 

Perish the thought! 

For a good omen of my fight I sought 

In yonder sun ; 

And, as the gloom of midnight blackness won, 

E'en so, I fear, from heaven's darkened pole 

The night will fall and overshade my soul. 

The day dawns dark; 

Of future brightness not a sign or mark. 

Yes ! Conqu'ring Hell 

With legions bold has fought his battle well. 

Tell me : shall I be vanquished in the fight ? 

Or shall the hand of God sustain the Right ? 



I894-] 



COUNT DE MUN. 



345 



COUNT DE MUN: LEADER OF THE CATHOLIC RE- 
PUBLICAN DEPUTIES. 




BY EUGENE DAVIS. 

URING the period of my residence in Paris, ex- 
tending from 1879 to I 885, I used to visit the 
Chamber of Deputies on occasions when an ex- 
citing debate on some burning problem of the 
hour was anticipated. Being professionally a 
journalist, I had an entree into the Press gallery. From this 
compartment I watched the din and tumult prevalent among 
members, whose political policy was denounced in sarcastic 
terms by the orator who stood 
for the time being on the 
tribune. Betimes pugilistic 
encounters were indulged in 
by opposing cliques, and some 
times blood was shed on these 
occasions. The French, who 
belong to the Celtic race, arc- 
very impulsive. Moreover, 
there are so many parties in 
the house that they turn it 
into a Bedlam, where disorder 
reigns predominant at least 
once a week. 

On one occasion, when the 
Republican party was divided 
on the wisdom of Premier 
Ferry's policy of colonizing 
Tonkin, C16menceau, the lead- 
er of the Radicals, denounced 
the invasion of that colony, 
" which," he exclaimed, " not 
only cost us the deaths of 
thousands of our gallant sol- 
diers, owing to the malarial fever of that swampy land, but also 
the loss of several hundred million francs." C16menceau's aggres- 
sive speech created a wild uproar among the supporters of Ferry. 




COUNT DE MUN: LEADER OF THE CATHOLIC 
REPUBLICAN DEPUTIES. 



346 COUNT DE MUN. [Dec., 

The members of the opposing parties clutched each other in a 
vice-like grasp. Confusion and fisticuffs reigned paramount all 
over the assembly, except on the Bourbon benches. President 
Floquet, who sat behind a table on a dais or platform, over the 
tribune, where the members speak to their colleagues, rang a 
hand-bell incessantly in order to restore order from chaos ; but 
still the bellowings of both parties of the Republican brigade 
increased with such intensity that Floquet adjourned the sitting. 

During another debate on a bill introduced into the chamber 
by the then premier, Ferry, for the expulsion of the religious 
orders from France, the Count of Mun, who was at that time 
deputy for the arrondissement of Pontivy, province of Morbihan, 
Brittany, mounted the tribune, where he delivered one of his 
most powerful speeches against the government. Indignation, 
sarcasm, and satire flowed through his eloquent harangue. He 
lashed the Republicans' hides with a whip of scorn. The infuri- 
ated government deputies howled fiercely, like wolves, at the 
young orator, who, with an intrepid gaze at the opposition, 
stood calmly his arms folded on his breast. 

" A has les Clcricaux ! " Down with the Clericals ! " A has les 
Jesuites ! '" Down with the Jesuits! such were the cries of 
these bigoted fanatics that greeted his ears. Yet he continued 
to remain on the tribune till the voices of his enemies grew 
hoarse, and then he resumed his speech amid a solemn silence. 

He has passed through such ordeals on many another occa- 
sion, denouncing godless schools, and condemning the con- 
duct of the government of Paris, the municipal council, in dis- 
missing the sisters from the hospitals, and replacing them by 
lay nurses, women who were unable to take such care of the 
health or soothe the dying hours of invalids as the religious 
did. Cat-calls, angry shouts, and hisses did not dismay the 
intrepid orator. He seemed to me a modern Godfrey de 
Bouillon facing the Saracen Republicans of the chamber. 

The Count of Mun was born in 1841 in the chateau de 
Lumigny, situated in the department of the Seine-and-Marne. 
This edifice, and its surrounding estates, fell into the possession 
of Count Claude, the grandfather of the present Marquis de 
Mun, when he won the hand of the daughter of Helvetius, the 
well-known historian. Situated in a picturesque portion of the 
country, the chateau, crowned by two towers and a belfry, is 
still a solid and beautiful structure, flanked on every side, save 
in front, by forests where the wild deer and other animals roam 
through the green grasses. 



1 894-1 



COUNT DE MUN. 



347 



Count Claude died in 1843. Mrs. Craven, a daughter of the 
noble Breton family of La Ferronnays, writes as follows of the 
count's last hours in her Re'cit (Tune Sceur : 

" I was reading to him those chapters of The Imitation 
which speak of heaven. He interrupted me before I had fin- 
ished, and remarked, ' I have often read all that, but it is only 
now that I seem to understand it.' Then, with the charming 
simplicity that characterized him, he added : ' You must feel 
very much astonished that I have no fear of death. I should 
not myself have expected to feel thus, but I believe my dear 




CHATEAU DE LUMIGNY EN BRIE, WHERE DE MUN WAS BORN. 

friend, La Ferronnays (the father of Mrs. Craven), has obtained 
me grace from God.' Calm and courageous to the end, in this 
happy disposition he breathed his last." 

His son Adrian, Marquis de Mun, the father of the subject 
of this memoir, was born in 1817. He married the daughter of 
Mrs. Craven, Mile. Eugenie de la Ferronnays, whom he had the 
misfortune to lose three or four years after the nuptials. 

Mrs. Craven gives in her volume the following pen picture of 
Robert, the present heir to the marquisate, and Albert: 

" I have a glimpse of Albert in his mother's arms. A few 
years after the death of the marquis's wife, he wedded a 



348 COUNT DE MUN. [Dec., 

daughter of a noble family, partly in order to insure a Christian 
education for his sons. The step-mother proved to be both 
kind and judicious. She succeeded in winning their affections, 
and developing in their youthful hearts the germs of piety 
which had been sown there. During his early years Albert was 
chiefly distinguished by his love of books, and his taste for 
solid reading. Before the time came for him to fix on a path 
in life his choice was already made. He came from a race of 
heroes, and his desire was to serve his country on the field of 
battle, as his ancestors had done." 

In 1860, at the age of nineteen, he entered the military 
school of St. Cyr, Paris. After a brilliant career through the 
curriculum of studies he was awarded the epaulettes of a sous- 
lieutenant, and was ordered to join one of the cavalry regi- 
ments of the corps d'arme, the Chasseurs d'Afrique, whose 
commander-in-chief was General (afterwards Marshal) MacMahon, 
who was also the governor of Algiers. Here the rays of the 
hot sun bronzed the features of the young count. In the many 
skirmishes which the chasseurs had with the Algerine tribes De 
Mun distinguished himself by his courage and intrepidity. 

The Chasseurs d'Afrique were ordered back to France by 
the minister of war in the fall of 1870. The count had now 
reached the rank of captain. In the early portion of the 
Franco-German campaign he fought bravely on the battle-fields 
of Borny, Rezonville, and Saint-Privat towns that surrounded 
the fortifications of Metz. As a reward for his bravery he was 
awarded the cross of the Legion of Honor. Marshal Bazaine 
had under his command more than eighty thousand trained 
men, the very cream, so to speak, of the French army ; but 
towards the close of the siege he never made the least effort to 
break through the enemy's lines. When he heard that a pro- 
visional government was established in Paris, and that Bona- 
parte was no longer emperor, he exclaimed : 

" I will not swear loyalty to men like Rochefort, who are 
the leaders of a mob. I am still true to my emperor." 

By remaining faithful to a dethroned potentate he betrayed 
his native land by surrendering his army, without striking a 
blow, to Prince Frederick Charles, the commander of the besieg- 
ing forces. The Count de Mun was among the first band of 
officers who would be prepared to defend Metz to the end ; but 
Bazaine's treachery handed officers and soldiers over to the 
Germans. 

A few months after the surrender of Metz, Bazaine was de- 



1894-] COUNT DE MUN. 349 

prived of his marshal's baton and sentenced to death by a 
court-martial held in Versailles. He took care never to return 
to France. He proceeded, disguised, to Madrid, where he 
supported himself, or rather eked out a miserable existence, as 
French professor. Bonaparte and all his other former friends 
abandoned him to his fate. In 1882 he died in an attic of the 
Spanish capital. 

The count was taken prisoner of war with the rest of his 
comrades, refusing to give his parole of honor that he would 
not fight again if he were allowed his liberty. The French 
army were conveyed in trains to various fortresses in Germany. 
The regiment of chasseurs, of which the count was captain, 
were sent to one of the Bavarian fortresses. After the treaty of 
peace had been signed, all the imprisoned French officers and 
soldiers were escorted to the French frontier. 

He returned to his native land in March, 1871. The Reign 
of Terror, under the Commune, had just been inaugurated. Its 
horrors had convinced the count that, in order to prevent any 
such calamity in the future, he must go among the people to 
instruct them in the lessons of Christianity, and reconcile them 
with the church. 

In order to carry out this programme, he requested his 
brother Robert, and his friend, Commandant de la Tour du 
Pin, to assist him in laying the foundation of the Catholic 
societies of working-men all over France. Each of the three 
gentlemen selected a third part of that nation, where he would 
sow the good seed. In this tour the Count de Mun made his 
debut as an orator gifted with a marvellous eloquence. He 
converted by arguments, which could not be refuted, thousands 
of former anti-clerical laborers on the fields and artisans in their 
work-shops. 

In 1875 he sheathed his soldier's, and unsheathed his politi- 
cal sword in the championship of the Catholic cause. In the 
opening years of the Republican administration there existed 
no persecution of the church. The conservative element was in 
power. When the general elections took place .in 1876 a 
Republican majority was elected. From that date, under the 
premiershipa of Ferry, Gambetta, Floquet, and other Republican 
leaders, up to three years ago, the Catholic Church was ruth- 
lessly persecuted. Gambetta supplied the watchword to his 
followers " Le cttricalisme voila I' ennemie ! " 

It was at this crisis in the destinies of his church and 
country that a deputation of the electors of Pontivy requested 



350 



COUNT DE MUN. 



[Dec.,. 



the count to accept the candidature for the membership of the 
Chamber of Deputies as their representative. The count was 
always ready to fight against free thought and agnosticism. 
After a week's struggle, during which he addressed thousands 
of electors on the persecution of the church by a Republican 
cabinet, he triumphed over his Republican opponent. Owing to 
the anti Catholic prejudices of the majority of the members of 
the Chamber of Deputies, he was unseated on the absurd ac- 
cusation that the count's election was due to clerical influence. 
Re-elected in August, 1876, and afterwards at the election that 
followed the coup d'etat of the ]6th of May, he lost his seat 
once more in 1878, for the same "reasons" as on the previous 

occasion. In 1881, however, 
he was elected by such an 
overwhelming majority that 
the chamber did not dare to 
invalidate his election. Since 
then, with the exception of 
one brief interval, he has 
been one of its members. 
We may add that in his ad- 
dresses to the voters of 
Pontivy he avowed himself 
a royalist. " The De Muns 
of old fought for the. Bour- 
bon lilies," he said, " and so 
shall I ! " He was a staunch 
adherent of the then royal 
Pretender, the Count of 
Chambord, self styled " Henri 
V.," who stood sponsor by 
proxy for one of the chil- 
dren of the count. 

In his first speech in the chambers he exclaimed: "Thor- 
oughly convinced, as I am, that the Catholic faith is the sole 
indispensable basis of national laws and institutions, of social 
and political order ; that this faith alone is capable of counter- 
acting the poison of revolution, averting the evils that its prin- 
ciples bring in their train, and of securing the welfare of my 
country, I am firmly resolved, in whatever position I may be 
placed, to devote myself unreservedly to the defence of re- 
ligion. Open war is now declared against the church, and the 
hour has come for all Catholics to rally around her, to protest 




COUNT DE MUN AT THIRTY-FIVE YEARS. 



1894-] COUNT DE MUN. 351 

against the projects of her adversaries, to defend her rights and 
liberties, to secure for their children a Christian education, and 
thus restore to France the peace and stability she has lost." 

The count became subsequently aggressive, in the sense of 
visiting the citadels of Red Republicanism in Belleville and 
Montmartre, Paris, penetrating into Communistic dens, and con- 
versing with the working-men. Many of these ouvriers he con- 
verted to the Catholic faith. He used to attend socialistic 
meetings, and mount the platform, where he defended the 
church against its defamers. He faced the maelstrom of hisses 
defiantly. Still there were bloused sons of toil in the crowd 
who returned to the faith of their childhood, thanks to the 
count's logic and eloquence. 

He became in the early eighties a decided propagandist or 
lay missionary among those who were Catholics originally, but 
whose faith had been ruined by the editors of most of the Paris 
newspapers, who preached deadly hostility to the Catholic 
Church. The comic prints contained odious caricatures of 
priests and Christian Brothers the latter being called " les. 
ignorantins." Farcical Lives of the Saints, by Leo Taxil (who 
has since done penance for his sins), had a large circulation 
among the poorer classes of Paris and made most of them 
sceptics. The Catholic prelates and priests who denounced the 
tyranny of the government by their wanton persecution of the 
church were deprived of their stipends for a year. 

Count de Mun's object was to kindle enthusiasm among the 
population of France for the personality of the statesman-Pope 
Leo XIII., and for those principles of Christianity that had died 
out owing to the cynical sneers and calumnies of free-thinking 
organs. " The women of France," he once exclaimed, " have 
still that intense faith which won for France the proud title of 
the Eldest Daughter of the Church ! . I hope, under God, to in- 
spire the young men with the same holy feeling." With this 
object in view he formed all over the country associations of 
the Catholic youth. In his address to these young men he 
urged on them the necessity of illumining the minds of their 
friends and comrades who may be agnostics, and of bringing 
them back to the fold of their ancestors. His eloquence was so 
persuasive that in a few years he had rallied under the standard 
of Christ no less than two hundred and fifty thousand young 
men, many of whom were redeemed from spiritual darkness 
and became enthusiastic Catholics, thanks to the count's inex- 
orable logic and power of oratory. 



352 COUNT DE MUN. [Dec., 

The idea of forming this society occurred to him at the 
Eucharistic Catholic Congress of Friburg, Switzerland, in 1885, 
where he became acquainted with the details and scope of that 
organization, which he subsequently adopted for his own so- 
ciety. 

In the prime of life the count married the daughter of the 
Count d'Anlau, a devout lady, who bore him three children. 
Each of the infants, after baptism, was carried into the chapel 
attached to his mansion and laid at the feet of the statue of 
the Madonna, to whose service the baby was consecrated by 
one of the French prelates. His eldest boy died at the age of 
five. Later on, after the passing of the infamous Ferry bill by 
which the Jesuits were expelled from France, he accompanied 
his two boys to Canterbury, England, where the expatriated 
Jesuits had started a seminary for the education of the sons of 
the French nobility. Here they received a complete Catholic 
and secular education. 

Throughout his public career Count de Mun has been a 
warm advocate for the welfare of the working-men. In 1882 he 
organized a deputation from the Catholic working-men's society, 
a body numbering several hundred thousand members, to ac- 
company him on a pilgrimage to the Vatican, where they were 
very courteously received by the Holy Father, who endorsed 
the mediaeval system of guilds, which formed the Christian so- 
cialism of the count. The cardinal principle of that doctrine is 
that Catholic employers of labor should act fairly and generously 
towards their employees, and that these latter should be given 
a few shares each in the factories, or business houses, in which 
they toil. This system has been adopted generally throughout 
the provinces, and more particularly in Brittany, where it is a 
complete success. 

At the last general elections in France Count de Mun lost 
his seat for his old constituency of Lumigny, owing to his roy- 
alist principles. Many Catholics voted for the Republican can- 
didate because Leo XIII. , through the medium of the late Car- 
dinal Lavigerie, advised the French Catholics to rally to the 
Republic, in order to secure religious peace under its adminis- 
tration. Times and political ideas were changed since the days 
when the Republic persecuted the Church. The present govern- 
ment has practically repealed the Ferry bill, and the result is 
that church and state are in harmony. Cardinal Lavigerie made 
a tour of France, and urged on the Catholics not to continue a 
wild-goose chase for the restoration of the monarchy. "The 



1894-] COUNT DE MUN. 353 

overwhelming majority of Frenchmen have sworn allegiance to 
the Republic," he once observed. " You are now pariahs. Take 
advantage of your civil rights adhere to the Republic, and many 
of you will be entitled to public positions in its employ." 

Count de Mun received a personal letter from Cardinal Ram- 
polla which intimated to the French Catholic leader that the 
Pope would advise him to become a Republican conservative. 
The count, of course, bowed respectfully to the advice of the 
Pontiff, and accepted it.* A vacancy having occurred in the 
constituency of Morlaix, he was elected a member of the Cham- 
ber of Deputies for that town on a conservative Republican 
platform. He is now the acknowledged leader of that party in 
the house. There are only a score or so of Bourbons in the 
chamber at present. Very few of the former group of eighty 
in the preceding chamber survived the defeat that Leo XIII. 's 
adhesion to the French Republic dealt them. 

To resume, the life so far and the labors of Count de Mun 
are indications of his Christian, his Catholic, political, and social 
character. He started out in public life as a devoted Royalist. 
Advised a year ago by Leo XIII. to support the Republic, he 
sacrifices his former monarchical principles and becomes a Re- 
publican. He has been the most successful missionary in mod- 
ern times thanks to the large number of his countrymen who, 
through him, returned to the Catholic fold. He has elevated 
thousands of working-men to a higher social scale by the shares 
given to them by their employers. He has organized the Catho- 
lics of France in societies which will preserve their faith for 
ever against the wiles of the agnostic pressmen. 

*The Supreme Pontiff thanked him for his political conversion, and bestowed on him 
various medals emblematic of his love and esteem of the count. 




VOL. LX. 23 




354 A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. [Dec., 

A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. 

BY JOHN J. O'SHEA, 
ASSISTED nv THE FOLLOWING CONTRIBUTORS: MARIANNE KENT, " PEPITA CASADA," 

DOROTHV MONCKTON, AND MARIE LOUISE SANDROCK. 

IN THE HOSPICE OF MONT ST. BERNARD. 

: S there one of the many millions of good souls who 
revel in the joys of Christmas by their happy fire- 
sides in the populous 'towns and the comfor- 
table villages is there a single soul in all the 
comfortable farm-houses and snug villas scattered 
over the far-stretching lowland who has ever cast a thought up- 
on the lonely watchers away up in the realm of the clouds? 
Who can picture to himself the feelings and sensations of those 
devoted watchers, poised high between heaven and earth, as 
they keep the vigil of the Nativity in their solitary, ice-bound, 
storm-beaten eyrie near the summit of the Great St. Bernard ? 

Few wayfarers care to tempt the dangers of the Pass when 
the winter is so far advanced as the Christmas season. But even 
in the Alps the seasons are freakish ; and the rare spectacle of 
traveller-guests around the great hospitable hearth of the Hos- 
pice was witnessed one Christmas a few years ago. Further- 
more, the still rarer spectacle of a lady visitor amongst the 
number was the subject of general comment amongst the mem- 
bers of the brave community. 

Dr. Redfern and his wife, a young American couple on their 
wedding-tour, had made the hospice early in the afternoon. 
They had started from Aosta, on the Italian side, early in the 
morning, and, being experienced Alpine climbers, had covered 
the distance between this point and the summit of the St. Ber- 
nard before nightfall. A French gentleman, travelling for a 
great wine firm, on his road to Turin, had come all the way 
from Chamounix, on the other side. 

The trio, together with two of the " guest-fathers " of the 
community, were enjoying themselves around the cheerful blaze 
of the log-fire which glowed in the deep recesses of a great 
chimney. 

"Yes, madame, it was in that chair over there Bonaparte 



1894-] A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. 355 

sat on the evening he arrived at the hospice," said Brother 
Ernest, the elder of the two "guest-fathers," in reply to the 
lady's eager questioning. " We do not let everybody into the 
secret, as the article of furniture would soon be in need of re- 
pair, I imagine." 

"Are there any traditions of the great man's behavior on 
the occasion, father?" queried the lady, who, besides being 
pretty and shrewd-looking, seemed to have an extra allowance 
of the vivacity and inquisitiveness of her race. " We Americans 
have somehow got the idea that Bonaparte was boorish and 
overbearing in the extreme." 

" Bonaparte was not a Frenchman, madame," answered Father 
Ernest, "and he had none whatever of the French politeness or 
polish about him, even to his friends, I have heard it said. His 
manner here, it is recorded, was suave enough. He was ex- 
tremely glad to find such shelter as this roof could give him, 
and to escape the fall into the Drance from which he was 
saved by his guide." 

"If he had fallen those few thousand feet that day," philo- 
sophized Dr. Redfern, " how different the state of Europe might 
have been now. There might have been no France, for in- 
stance ; it may have been blotted from the map of Europe." 

The eyes of the French traveller shot Alpine lightning, and 
there might have been an outburst were it not for the presence 
of the lady. The angry gleam, however, passed away in an in- 
stant, and a sarcastic curl of the lips and the flash of the white 
teeth under the black moustache only spoke the wounded spirit 
of the Gallic chanticleer. 

"As well say that there would be no Alps, no Mont St. 
Bernard, no hospice, if there were no travellers to visit them," 
he laughed scornfully. " Napoleon could not make a France ; it 
was only a France that could make a Napoleon. It is the coun- 
try, monsieur, that makes the hero the long tradition of glory, 
the imperishable consciousness of national genius." 

" That is an ideal view of the matter, monsieur," said the 
American gentleman. " New countries that have had no sublime 
traditions, no monumental genius to encourage men to work for 
the degree of hero of the first rank, have developed some very 
respectable military talent. I speak nothing of my own country, 
where we have broken the world's record in revolution, in our 
own modest way, but I will merely instance successful adven- 
turers like Cortez and Pizarro, who fought without any stimulus 
like that to which you refer." 



356 A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. [Dec., 

" Pshaw ! They were only respectable filibusters," returned 
the Frenchman contemptuously. "Men in armor, with gun- 
powder and artillery, fighting against naked barbarians." 

" They founded very respectable empires, though," remarked 
Dr. Redfern. 

" We give no credit to our own countrymen who founded 
Canada," replied M. De Brissac, as the French traveller was en- 
tered on the list-book, " not even to men like De Frontenac and 
Montcalm, who held it so long against the British power. But 
we do give the palm of true heroism to the noble Jesuits who 
went amongst the savage Indians, with neither sword nor musket, 
to try to teach them Christianity. They were Frenchmen, for the 
most part, monsieur, and they represented the spirit that guar- 
antees that France, la belle France, shall never die never be 
blotted out from the map of Europe as long as a Frenchman 
lives." 

" The Indians could hardly be worse towards those good men," 
suggested Dr. Redfern, " than Frenchmen themselves were when 
they pulled down throne and church. Indeed, the perfidy which 
marked the infamous Noyades was what no Indian would ever 
be guilty of. They would not entice men to their death under 
false promises, as those concerned in the wholesale drowning of 
the clergy at that time did." 

" I have no excuse for the miscreants who were guilty of 
these barbarities," answered M. De Brissac. " But a few black 
sheep do not make the whole flock despicable. There were in- 
stances of heroism in the saving of the lives of priests at that 
time hardly less admirable, in very many cases, than that of the 
calm courage of the priests themselves." 

"You are quite right, monsieur," chimed in Father Ernest. 
" My good mother often told us the story of the wonderful es- 
cape of the Abbe" Croix, a friend of hers who lived in the south 
of France, and the heroic conduct of his mother, to which it 
was entirely owing." 

" Perhaps you would tell us of it, Father Ernest. I am just 
dying to hear that story now, after that introduction," said Mrs. 
Redfern. 

" I shall have much pleasure, but I must cut it short, madame, 
as I shall have to leave you at nine," replied the good pere, as 
he looked at the clock with a view to the usual devotions. " It 
was to this effect." 



1894-] A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. 357 

THE ABBE OF ST. CROIX. 

In the little village of St. Croix, in the far south of France, 
the inhabitants went on their tranquil way in happy ignorance 
of the evil days that were at hand. For, although the seeds of 
anarchy and rebellion had been sown broadcast over France, 
for awhile the agitators were too busy with the populations of 
big cities to trouble themselves with an out-of-the-way rural re- 
treat like St. Croix. It is an ideal hamlet, surrounded by a 
wealth of vineyards and full of the beauties that nature alone 
can give. The people were chiefly peasants ; and they were a 
hard-working, thrifty set by far the largest proportion of them 
being women, as the conscription allowed few able-bodied men 
to linger in their native place. But the French peasant woman 
is a strong, active creature, and never afraid of work. From 
dawn to sunset she is busy carrying heavy loads, her wooden 
sabots clinking over the rough, uneven stones of the village 
street, or toiling through the white, dusty roads among the vines. 
At this time the breath of irreligion had not swept over France, 
and its peasantry, at least, were an example of fervor and piety. 
Over each village a cur6 ruled, who was looked upon as the 
friend and father of his flock. Instead of the venerable pastor 
one would have expected to see, the Abb of St. Croix was a 
very young man. With his strong, lithe figure, his bright dark 
eyes, and thick black hair, he was unquestionably handsome. 
He had won distinction at college, for he was a student of no 
small repute, which accounted for his so early gaining for him- 
self the position of pastor. When he settled at St. Croix he 
devoted himself with the ardor and enthusiasm of youth, to the 
work before him, and very soon he had won a warm place in 
the affections of his people. 

In the little vine-clad presbytery lived the abbess widowed 
mother. She was a gentle, sweet- faced old lady. She idolized 
her son, and was ever ready, with heart and hand, to assist him 
in his work. There was not a creature, old or young, in the 
village but had some cause for gratitude to " Madame la Mere," 
as she was universally called ; indeed the mother and son held 
about equal places in the affections of the people. 

As on some calm summer evening, when not a cloud is to 
be seen, we are conscious of a distant rumble of thunder, tell- 
ing us that the elements are brewing for a storm, so it was that 
into this tranquil village-life there came vague rumors of trouble 
in Paris. Tales of deeds so dark that the very horror of them 



358 A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. [Dec., 

made them seem untrue. Gradually, however, the rumors took 
a more definite form, and conviction was forced upon the most 
incredulous. The women of St. Croix gathered together, in 
little groups, talking shrilly of what they had heard, while the 
old men, sitting outside the village inn, drank their red wine 
and shook their heads over the evil fate that had come upon 
the nation. 

For some time the young abbe" did his best to encourage 
the people, making them hope that the stories they heard were 
exaggerated ; but it was not long before he too realized the 
gravity of the situation. He heard how churches had been 
sacked and desecrated and the ministers of God put to a cruel 
and ignominious death, and he knew that at any moment a like 
fate might be his own. As he went about among his people he 
was conscious that they often looked at him wistfully, as if they 
too dreaded the thought of what the future might hold, and 
all the women, old and young, were filled with the tenderest 
pity for Madame la Mere. 

The mother and son seldom spoke of the future, though they 
were much together in these days, and on the old lady's gentle 
face the lines of care and sorrow seemed to deepen as the 
hours went by. 

At last the crisis came. A man arrived at St. Croix, from a 
village only twenty miles distant, bringing news of the terrible 
scenes he had just witnessed. On the previous day a large band 
of soldiers had entered his village and, after perpetrating many 
other outrages, the venerable cure" a man whose kindly presence 
was well known in St. Croix had been seized and taken prison- 
er. The frail old man had been so roughly handled by his brutal 
captors that he had died while on the road to his destination. 

It was not long before this tragic story reached the abb6 
and his mother. They said very little to those who brought the 
news, hearing them almost in silence; but when they were once 
more alone, the young man knelt by his mother's chair his one 
thought for the anguish that he knew she was feeling and be- 
sought her, in the most moving terms, not to despair. But he 
need have had no such fear, for a heart as heroic as that of 
Marie Antoinette's beat in the bosom of Madame la Mere. 
With a tender, caressing hand she smoothed back her son's 
dark hair. 

"Louis," she said, "you are so young, and it seems that the 
good God must still have work for you to do. So let it be no 
fault of ours if some way of escape is not found for you." 



1894-] A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. 359 

" I have no wish to die," he said quickly. " I have health 
and strength, and life is very sweet ; still, my mother, I must 
not desert my post though I may be driven from it." 

"You are right," she answered; "we have only to wait." 

The waiting was not for long. The very next day it was 
known to all St. Croix that the soldiers were, even then, on 
their way to search for the young abbe. 

Madame la Mere and her son had the presbytery entirely to 
themselves when these tidings reached them, for the old lady 
had allowed her little serving-maid to return to her friends a 
permission which she had eagerly accepted, for an almost ab- 
ject terror had seized upon all the villagers and there was not 
one among them who possessed the courage to offer a hiding 
place to their pastor. 

After a thoughtful silence the abb said : 

" It seems to me that my wisest course is to allow myself 
to be taken without resistance, as there is no place for safe 
concealment here, and if I am discovered in hiding it will make 
matters worse for you." . 

But his mother would not hear of this. 

"No, Louis," she said, "there is no justice now in France. 
Your only chance is in eluding your pursuers. There is, as you 
say, no place in this little house where you could hide ; but, my 
son, I have a plan which, for the time at least, may save you." 
As she spoke she led him through the kitchen at the back of 
the house, the door of which stood open, showing a small yard 
paved with white, uneven stones. At the end of the yard was 
a wooden shed, and the door of this too hung wide open upon 
its rusty hinges. The shed was only used in the winter-time 
for the abbess rough little pony, which all the summer through 
ran loose in the fields. The dry ground inside the shed was 
thickly strewn with straw and hay. The mid day sun streamed 
in through the open doorway, rendering each corner visible. 
Nothing but the four bare walls and the loose straw upon the 
ground : it looked anything but a promising place for conceal- 
ment. 

The abb6 turned to his mother for an explanation, as they 
stood together on the threshold. She entered, and lifting some 
of the straw aside, told him that her notion was that he should 
lie upon the ground, having the straw scattered over him ; then 
with the door still standing open, she believed that the men 
might pass and repass and never imagine him to be there. 

"Can you do this, Louis?" she asked anxiously; " remem-i 



360 A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. [Dec. 

her it will tax your endurance to the uttermost to lie there, 
resolved not to stir hand or foot no matter what you may 
hear going on about you." 

He hesitated for an instant, and his face was pale as 
death; then he answered quietly that it should be as she de- 
sired. But in his own heart the abb felt that it would have 
been almost easier to go boldly out to meet his fate than to 
lie cowering there, liable at any moment to be dragged igno- 
miniously forth, like a rat from its hole. Even as these 
thoughts passed through his mind, however, there was a distant 
noise; the trampling of many feet, mingled with shouts and 
cries, which warned them there was no time to delay, for the 
soldiers were actually in the village. 

Quickly and silently the mother and son put the straw 
aside, and then the abb stretched himself at full length. Ly- 
ing with his broad chest pressed against the ground and his 
arms extended by his side, he turned his head so that his right 
cheek rested on the earth and his eyes looked in the direction 
of the door. The mother bent over him for an instant, her 
lips touched his dark curls, and then, with deft fingers, she 
arranged the straw over him so that he was completely 
covered. This done, she returned to the house and took her 
accustomed place in the little sitting-room, trying to work in- 
dustriously. It was not long before there was a noisy rapping 
on the outer door, and, without giving time for it to be opened, 
the latch was unceremoniously lifted and a party of men entered, 
the leader asking in loud, peremptory tones for the citizen 
known as the Abbe Louis. Madame la Mere replied and with 
perfect truth that her son was not in the house. The men 
took little notice of her answer as they turned to begin a 
rigorous search. 

There were only six small rooms in all, and in none of 
these was there a place where even a child could have been 
concealed with safety. At length the men stood together in 
the small -kitchen, muttering angry imprecations. It was. evident 
that they dreaded the consequence of failure in the task they 
had been set to do by the tyrants they served, in the name of 
Freedom. The poor mother sat motionless, while her heart 
went out in an agonized prayer of supplication as she heard 
the men's heavy boots clatter across the little yard. Out there 
in the sunshine they gazed about them, a couple of them peer- 
ing in at the open doorway of the shed, and then remained 
just outside, discussing their plans, vowing that they would not 



362 A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. [Dec., 

be baffled that their prey could not be far off, and they would 
secure him yet. And not a dozen yards from where they 
stood their would-be captive lay, hearing each word they ut- 
tered, going through an agony of mind that no after experience 
would ever quite obliterate. 

At first, as his pursuers neared his hiding place, the abbe's 
heart had stood still; then, with one sudden bound, it beat so 
fast and furiously that it seemed to him that the men must 
hear its throbs. He tried to hold his breath, but that was im- 
possible, and as each panting, laboring sigh escaped his lips, 
the straw about his head stirred and rustled, so that he ex- 
pected every instant that savage hands would seize and drag" 
him forth. But the men heard no sound, and at last slowly 
and reluctantly turned to depart, saying to each other that they 
must search through the village, in case the abbe" had found 
shelter with any of his people. 

Soon after they had gone the mother came cautiously to 
the door of the shed, saying softly: 

" My son, thank God ! for a time, at least, the danger is 
past ; but it is not yet safe that you should quit your hiding 
place, as the men may revisit us." 

The abbe agreed to this, and Madame la Mere again re- 
turned to the house, where she busied herself quietly and 
methodically with her household tasks, feeling that at any mo- 
ment she might be taken by surprise. She was not mistaken, 
for as the twilight deepened, without any warning of their ap- 
proach, the soldiers again appeared. A search similar to that 
of the morning was gone through, and for the second time, with 
a very grateful feeling in her heart, the old lady saw them de- 
part empty handed. She stood by the window, watching the 
leader of the party gather his men together into marching 
order, shouting out the name of the village that was to be their 
next scene of action, and where, no doubt, they hoped to find 
at least some trace of the Abbe Louis. 

It was not until the whole village was quiet for the night 
that, stiff and cramped from the long hours he had lain there, 
the abbe emerged from his hiding place and entered the 
house. The mother still sat keeping her patient vigil. As her 
son stood before her in the lamp-light, she interrupted her ex- 
clamations of gratitude for his deliverance to cry out in alarm : 

" Louis, my son, what has happened to you ? 

And indeed the young man presented a strange appearance. 
All the hair on one side of his head the side that had lain 



1 894.] A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. 363 

upon the ground was bleached to a snowy whiteness, a start- 
ling proof of the agony of mind he had passed through. 

The mother was deeply affected by the sight, and, for the 
first time in all that dreadful day, her self-command completely 
deserted her. The abb did his best to comfort and reassure 
her, declaring it was of little moment what did it signify ? were 
not wigs and powdered heads in vogue ? and if he resorted to 
one or the other of these, who would know of the strange fate 
that had befallen him ? But although he made light of it for 
his mother's sake, he was then, and ever afterwards, very sensi- 
tive upon the subject. He could not endure the thought that 
strangers' eyes would follow him curiously. He resorted to 
powder when effecting his escape and, although he lived for 
many years, never relinquished the habit, wearing his hair 
thickly powdered, drawn back, and secured at the ends by a 
black ribbon, after the manner of a wig a fashion suited to 
the times and which gave him a somewhat picturesque appear- 
ance. 

The concealment in the shed had only saved the abbe from 
immediate danger, and the mother and son fully realized this 
fact as they sat, on far into the night, anxiously discussing what 
was to be done. But no plan seemed feasible, and at length 
the mother begged her son to rest, saying that some fresh 
ideas would come to them in the morning ; Providence would 
surely show them some way out of their difficulty. 

The next day, before five o'clock, while her son still slept, 
Madame la Mere was astir. Her heart was very heavy as she 
stood gazing out upon the fresh beauty of the summer morn- 
ing, when she saw a peasant, carrying a large basket, approach- 
ing the house. It was the wife of a farmer who lived a few 
miles out of St. Croix. She was a kindly creature, and often 
came with little gifts the produce of her dairy for Madame 
la Mere, to whom she was ever grateful for having befriended 
her son, a young soldier who had since died in the wars. 

The old lady opened the house-door, and the farmer's wife 
entered, setting down her basket which to-day seemed unusually 
large and heavy upon the red bricks of the kitchen floor. The 
butter and eggs, nestling among folds of snowy linen, looked 
very tempting, but Madame la Mere, who as a rule was loud 
in their praise, said no word, and she and the peasant gazed at 
each other with anxious inquiring eyes. They were women of 
the same country, and of much the same time of life, though 
they were very different to look upon. The farmer's wife, her 



364 A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. [Dec., 

back bent from the constant carrying of heavy loads, her 
wrinkled skin rough and coarse from exposure, her bony hands 
hard and sinewy from toil, was a striking contrast to the abbess 
mother, frail and delicate as a piece of Dresden china. But 
there was a bond between these women that made them 
one, and that was the strong mother-love that filled either 
heart. 

The peasant was the first to speak. 

" Ah, madame ! ' ' she said under her breath, " Monsieur 
l'Abb, is he safe is he here ? " 

There was no answer for a moment, then Madame la Mere 
said gently: 

" My good Marie, you are to be trusted, I know. Yes, my 
son is safe ; though God only knows how long his safety will 
last." 

Then she went on to recount the events of the previous 
day, ending by saying how sorely perplexed they were as to 
what was the next step to be taken. 

The peasant's rough face beamed with happiness. 

"Ah, madame!" she cried, "it may be that I can show you 
a way in which your son can escape in safety." 

Then with careful hands she lifted the butter and eggs from 
her basket and drew forth a soldier's uniform. It was the full- 
dress uniform of an officer, and was in perfect condition, not 
an article being missing. The abbe's mother looked on in be- 
wilderment, then suddenly the glad conviction came to her that 
now indeed escape was possible for Louis. 

The good peasant went on to explain how, a few days be- 
fore, a party of soldiers were in the neighborhood of her home 
when one of the officers was struck down by sun-stroke. He 
was carried into the farm and proved to be so ill that, after a 
time, his comrades were forced to go on their way leaving him 
behind. She had nursed him, she said, through many hours of 
fever and delirium, while her thoughts were ever with her dear 
abb and his mother, wondering what had been their fate, for 
she knew only too well that the soldiers were searching the 
village. Then last night, as the sick man had lain unconscious, 
the idea came to her that it might be an easy matter for the 
young abb to escape in the officer's clothes, and she at once 
resolved to lose no time in taking the uniform to the presby- 
tery ; so she packed it in her basket and set off as soon as it 
was light. She did not believe, she said in conclusion, that the 
sick officer had been one of the party who had been bound for 



1894-] A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. 365 

St. Croix. He seemed to be in a company of officers of supe- 
rior rank who were returning direct to Bris. 

Madame la Mere's heart went out in gratitude to the good 
woman who had proved herself such a friend in need. Then 
the farmer's wife declared that the abbe ought to lose no time 
in quitting St. Croix; the mother agreed to the wisdom of this, 
and went at once to rouse him. 

The abb was delighted with the notion of the officer's dis- 
guise. He knew it would require both tact and courage to 
carry it through ; still there was something bold and inspiriting 
in the thought of meeting his foes face to face which would, in 
a measure, compensate for the ignominy of the previous day. 

The uniform fitted to perfection, and his powdered hair only 
added to the disguise. The mother looked proudly at his 
strong, erect figure, while the peasant woman cried out, with 
tears in her eyes, that he was a true soldier. 

The abbe's plans were soon arranged. He would make for 
the Pyrenees and so into Spain. He felt that his only real 
safety lay in quitting France. Whether he should ever return 
to his native land would depend upon after events. In the 
present turmoil it was hard to say what might happen, but 
should he be forced to stay in Spain his mother must follow 
him there; on this paint he was very urgent. 

Then the mother and son took a tender farewell, and the 
young abbe set out upon his way. It was still early morning 
and he walked through the village without coming into contact 
with any of the people. He could see some of them at work 
among the fields, but the majority were in their houses, having 
been too scared by the rough treatment of the soldiers the day 
before to care to venture out. 

The abbe took care to walk with the steady, swinging step 
of a marching soldier, while his mind was full of plans by 
which he could render his escape more easy. About a mile 
outside the village, at a sudden turn of the road, he came upon 
a body of soldiers. They were no others than the search-party 
returning to St. Croix for one final attempt at his capture. 

For an instant the abba's heart beat as it had done while he 
lay under the straw close to these very men. Then he steadied 
himself and walked boldly forward. 

The .band of soldiers consisted of some twenty rough-look- 
ing men, in charge of a corporal. As they saw the officer ap- 
proach they saluted him, and the corporal inquired if he had 
seen anything of the Abbe Louis. 



366 A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. [Dec., 

The abb replied in the negative, and then, in calm but au- 
thoritative tones, bade them continue their search. The men, 
having again saluted him respectfully, went on their way. 

This encounter gave the abb courage to push bravely on, 
until at length he reached Spain in safety, and there, devoted 
to his studies, he remained for a time in quiet seclusion while 
the Reign of Terror held its dread sway in France. 

" Ah," sighed M. de Brissac, as the good father brought his 
impressive reminiscence to an end, "these were miserable times 
in France. All the noble impulses of her generous people 
seemed to be turned aside into wrong channels, like some of 
those torrents you see leaping down from the hills here sud- 
denly diverted by a great shoulder of rock or the encroach- 
ments of the sliding glacier. I suppose there were many 
refugees from that unhappy country claiming the shelter of the 
hospice during these miserable years." 

" I do not know that there were many ; there were some. 
How many there really were will never be known in this world. 
You have seen the morgue, perhaps, as you drew near this 
building?" 

"Yes, I saw it from the outside, helas ! It was getting dark, 
and I had not time to look further," replied the Frenchman. 

" Well, there are a good many bodies there which have 
never been identified. How many of these may have, been 
those of refugees from France, lay or cleric, must remain a 
mystery. But there can be no doubt that there were some, 
for the Simplon Pass is one of the most frequented highways 
over the mountains. Many refugees passed over in those years ; 
many, too, were found in the snow." 

" I believe those bodies last here a long time, Father 
Ernest?" queried Dr. Redfern. 

" Yes ; they seem, many of them, as though they would 
never decompose," replied the monk. " We keep them as long 
as we can, when there is no means of identification, in the same 
dress as we found them in, leaving any papers or objects by 
which they might be identified prominently about them or be- 
side them." 

"And does identification often take place?" queried Mr. 
Redfern. 

"There have been some instances, painful and startling in 
their circumstances," replied the monk. " But the number of 
cases are few in proportion to those who are lost in the snow." 



1894-] A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. 367 

"I am told that the bodies suffer little from decomposition; 
is that so, Father Ernest?" queried Mrs. Redfern. 

" They preserve the flesh, and a remarkably life-like appear- 
ance, in most cases, for a very long period, madame. There 
is one group in the morgue a mother holding her babe to her 
bosom which looks startlingly real. The freezing of the body 
seems to act as a powerful antiseptic, and to ward off decay in- 
definitely." 

" That is so," assented Dr. Redfern, " especially when the 
body has been healthy previous to death. A dead body 
packed in ice might take centuries to decompose. It is not 
many years since the body of a megatherium was found em- 
bedded in ice in North Siberia, in so perfect a condition that 
even the hair remained on the skin. The monster must have 
lain where he fell, when death seized him, for some thousands 
of years." 

" I suppose you have lost all record of even the finding of 
some of the bodies placed in the morgue, father ? " queried M. 
de Brissac. 

" Oh, yes ! in many cases. This monastery, you are doubt- 
less aware, has existed for about a thousand years. The Simp- 
Ion Pass was traversed by many of the hordes who poured 
into Italy from Gaul Franks and Goths and Longobardi, Suevi, 
Alemani, and even Celts from Armorica and Ireland have used 
this highway into Italy. For aught we know, the bones of 
some of these marauders may be mingled with those of modern 
travellers. The dust of haughty chiefs, like Brennus and Alaric, 
may thus be mixed up with that of peaceful itinerant musicians 
or travelling peddlers. Our morgue is a great democratic insti- 
tution." 

" The house of death should be the same in character as 
the potentate himself, who is no favorer of rank," remarked 
Dr. Redfern. His impartiality was recognized even before the 
morgue was built : 

" ' Pallida Mors equo pulsat pede pauperumque tabernos Re- 
gisque turres.' " 

" Your walls, my reverend host, appear to me the converse 
of the invisible monarch. They give comfort and protection to 
all ranks and classes of men without distinction. You welcome 
the peasant as freely as you have welcomed the king and the 
emperor." 

" Yes, sir ; they all have a common claim upon our charity 
their desperate need," answered the gentle-faced monk. 



368 A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. [Dec., 

" Your resources are pretty ample, yet I suppose they are 
often strained ? " observed Mrs. Redfern. 

" There are times when we are called upon to give shelter 
to several hundred visitors," answered the guest-father. " Even 
in summer, when the airs are the balmiest and most tranquil in 
the lowlands, the storms burst here with astounding suddenness. 
At such seasons the hills are crowded with tourists and peas- 
ants coming from fairs, and the rush for shelter then is many- 
footed. Fortunately we have a large building and our stores of 
supplies are usually commensurate to the strain. Firewood is 
the only thing we dread running out. It is the one thing that 
stands between us and death all through the winter season." 

"Your winter season is a long one here, I should say," re- 
marked Dr. Redfern. 

" Yes, almost all through the summer, if I may use a para- 
dox," answered Father Ernest. " The little lake that you may 
have observed glistening at the foot of the precipice outside the 
gate only melts in July and freezes again in September. The 
heat is never that of summer at any time 68 degrees is the 
highest yet recorded." 

" Still the cold can never be so intense as in the Arctic 
regions, I should say," said M. de Brissac. " How, otherwise, 
would it be possible for your community to live here without 
being wrapped up in furs, as they do ? " 

" The monks are all hardy young men when they come 
here," replied Father Ernest. "They are selected because of 
their good constitution and robust physique, yet they succumb 
in a comparatively short time to the rigor of the place. Four- 
teen or fifteen years is the longest period that they can endure 
it without collapsing altogether. The cold is not, as you say, 
so intense as in the high northern regions, but it is constantly 
severe, and sometimes it reaches 29 degrees below Fahrenheit." 

" That is trying enough," mused M: de Brissac ; " and I 
believe whilst the cold becomes colder in a high atmosphere, 
the opposite principle is observed in regard to heat. For in- 
stance, it takes longer to cook food." 

" Yes ; it takes twice as long as in the lowlands, whilst the 
water used in cooking it boils at a much lower temperature 
187 degrees, instead of the normal 212. This makes it terribly 
hard to keep up our supplies of firewood." 

" Where do you get them, sir ? " queried the doctor. " There 
is no timber visible for miles before you get here, and not 
even shrubbery or vegetation of any kind, so far as I could note." 



1894-] A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. 369 

" We have to go as far as the Val de Ferret for our fire- 
wood," replied the monk, "and that is twelve miles from this 
place. The labor of cutting it and drawing it up here is 
immense, but we would be glad if it could at all times be 
possible. But sometimes we are buried in snow here completely 
from thirty to forty feet. To dig our way out and fight our 
way down to the pine forest in the Val de Ferret is no small 
labor." 

" I should say it would be one not unworthy of that mythi- 
cal personage, Hercules," said M. de Brissac warmly. " When 
the winter snow has accumulated for a couple of months, I 
have been told, the danger from avalanches down the road to 
the valley is as deadly as on the battle-field." 

"There is no exaggeration in the report, sir," answered the 
good monk. "Around here the avalanches hurl themselves 
down upon our houses at times in such mass and with such a 
shock that the walls of our buildings, stout as they are, are 
put to a severe strain. The noise of their on-rush is like that 
of artillery, and their descent is fearfully swift. Ah, here comes 
Gervase," he added, glancing with a relieved expression at a 
lay brother who had just entered, with a brace of noble 
hounds of the famous convent breed. " He could tell you some 
thrilling stories of the avalanches. Any news to-night, good 
Gervase ? Is all quiet along the road ? " 

" Ay, father ; as quiet as in the morgue yonder," replied the 
man addressed, as he unwound his heavy wrappings, which were 
frozen into suits of mail apparently. " Though the night is fine, 
no traveller cares to stir out. I went down as far as St. Remy, 
where the villagers are joyfully celebrating the festa. No one 
will come up from that side, I imagine, until the morning, 
when we shall have some at Mass ; perhaps Bruno has gone 
down the Aosta side ; he ought to be back shortly." 

He drew a chair near the fire as he spoke, and the two dogs 
stretched themselves at full length before the glowing hearth, 
and regarded the assembled guests with a look of quiet welcome 
in their great brown, thoughtful-looking eyes. These animals 
looked the personification of calm courage and noble benevolence. 

" Go and get a cup of warm coffee, Gervase," said Father 
Ernest, " and then, when you have seen to the wants of our 
visitors here, tell them of the adventure of the English agnostic 
and little Gretel ; they want to hear something about the dan- 
gers of the avalanches. I must leave you to entertain them for 
a little while, for there goes the complin bell." 
VOL. LX. 24 



3/0 A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. [Dec., 

The young man addressed as Gervase, an athletiolooking, 
rosy-faced, fair-haired Teuton, whose countenance was the image 
of good-nature, smiled pleasantly. 

" Ah, yes," he replied, " I think I could tell that story of 
little Gretel till I drop asleep. She is a very dear little frau- 
lein, and a very good friend of mine. She comes from my own 
country, the Bavarian Alps. Now," he said, when he had helped 
himself and his listeners as desired, " you shall hear how my 
little fraulein saved an Englishman's life, and at the same time 
converted him from sneering infidelity. This is the story : " 

THE UTTLE SENNERIN OF ISELSTEIN. 

The red October sun had just crept up in the east over the 
jagged peaks of the Bavarian Alps, clothing their snowy sum- 
mits with a rosy mantle. Over the narrow valley a faint flaky 
vapor yet lingered, hiding the picturesque Alpine chalets, until 
the triumphal sun himself, throwing off his mantle of cloud, 
shot a few of his golden arrows athwart the shadowy veil, at 
the narrow, latticed windows, and proclaimed his reign. 

In their path to the village the sunbeams lighted the narrow, 
slot-like windows of a little church which stood on the upper 
slope of the Iselstein a spur of the Bavarian Alps and bid- 
ding defiance with its massive walls and heavy doors to the 
terrors of the mountain. Avalanches thundered by from the 
summit of the Iselstein, crevasses yawned in the ice around, 
winter's bitter blasts raged against its sides, and the treacherous 
snow circled slowly, slyly down, burying it in a white sepulchre ; 
but the little church, like its great prototype, stood firm on its 
rocky pedestal. 

Somewhat more than a hundred years ago a prosperous 
hamlet nestled on the mountain side and had grown there in 
perfect security for slow centuries, when one calm spring night 
a landslide occurred carrying with it the village and the larger 
part of its inhabitants. The survivors and their friends from the 
neighborhood erected the church as a general tombstone or me- 
mento of those dear to them who had perished in the catastrophe. 
Its site was as nearly identical with that of the destroyed vil- 
lage as the havoc wrought by the landslide would allow them 
to judge. This morning the villagers were busy gathering in 
their harvests or collecting their flocks on the heights to bring 
them down to the lower pastures ere the snows of winter began 
to fall. Many of them had their vineyards on the mountain- 



1 894.] 



A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. 



37* 



side, and the walk was long and the day short if one did not 
rise before the sun. Nevertheless both harvesters and Senne- 
rinnen, the Alpine herdswomen, who were upon the pasture 
with their cattle, found time to go to the church whenever the 
good pastor climbed up there, which he still did twice weekly, to 
say Mass. The pastor was no mountaineer, but the ascent to 
that rocky Cal- 
vary was a labor 
of love to him. 

Among the 
throng of wor- 
shippers on this 
autumnal morning 
was a girl of thir- 
teen or fourteen 
years whose soft, 
childish face and 
innocent blue eyes 
were singularly 
out of keeping 
with the prema- 
turely worried and 
troubled expres- 
sion of her coun- 
tenance. Around 
her mouth was 
that sorrowful 
droop which only 
comes from bat- 
tling with trouble. 
She wore the cos- 
tume of a Senne- 
rin a neat blue 
skirt and bodice, 
white chemisette 
and high, conical 
hat, quite una- 
dorned by the glittering pins and coins with which even the 
humblest Alpine maiden loves to deck herself. Such as she 
was, however, poor, simple, and plainly clad, Gretel Bechart 
was perhaps the most respected Sennerin of the Iselstein. 
Just now poor Gretel was in dire trouble. Her mother, the 
only parent left her, was very ill with rheumatism, and had 




SUNBEAMS LIGHTED THE NARROW, SLOT-LIKE WINDOWS OF 
THE LITTLE CHURCH. 



372 A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. [Dec., 

not been able to leave the village or work at her lace-mak- 
ing all the summer. The young girl was obliged, therefore, 
to leave her to the kindly neighbors' care and go alone up to 
the upper pastures with her little herd of four cows. She 
slept in one of the miserable sennhutte sometimes alone, some- 
times with one or two companions, and went down to Altenstiel 
two or three times weekly to visit her mother and bring the 
supplies of milk and butter. 

Things had gone very badly this year ; two of the cows had 
sickened and died, the third was now bitten with the plague. 
Poor Gretel's heart was nearly broken with anxiety and worry 
as she stole away from the sick animal to pray God to spare 
her this last hope for the winter's sustenance. 

Noiselessly the holy Sacrifice was proceeding ; the humble 
folk with bent heads prayed in their quiet, earnest fashion ; 
wearying cares and troubled thoughts dropped away from their 
minds, and even Gretel's wearied little heart grew comforted in 
that atmosphere of peace and rest. Not a sound, save the mur- 
mured words of the priest or the tinkle of the altar bell, broke 
the stillness until with a vigorous thrust the door of the church 
was pushed suddenly open and a young man in hunter's cos- 
tume, with his gun on his shoulder, tramped in. Although clad 
in the ordinary green dress of the mountaineer, there was an 
evident difference between him and the young peasants in the 
building ; his delicate white hands and fair, untanned face bore 
no traces of the burning sun or biting frosts of the Alps. 

At first he did not even think it necessary to remove his 
hat, probably not being quite sure as to where he was ; but the 
moment he perceived that service was in progress he drew it 
from his head, disclosing a frank, clear-skinned face, wavy chest- 
nut hair, and honest hazel eyes. After a somewhat puzzled stare 
around, as if he still hardly realized his whereabouts, he sank 
slowly on one knee, with a half shrug, and remained in that 
position gazing with unconcealed interest at the picturesque, in- 
tent worshippers and the crude statues and decorations. 

Shortly before Mass was ended Gretel, who feared staying 
too long from the stricken cow, stole softly out, unperceived by 
any one save the stranger at the door. He arose instantly and 
followed her. 

" Little girl, little girl ! " he called after her as she darted 
towards the upward path with wonderful swiftness, " can you 
tell me where I shall find the road to Andreas Kloft's cot- 
tage ? " 



1894-] A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. 373 

Andreas Kloft was one of the best-known guides and hun- 
ters of the Bavarian Alps. 

"Of course I can, sir," she answered readily, speaking slow- 
ly and distinctly, as she divined at once from his accent that he 
was a foreigner. " I am going that way. Follow me." 

He came up to her. 

" You are very good," he said, raising his hat with a courtesy 
new and rather bewildering to the little Sennerin. She nod- 
ded, however, with quaint dignity and sped up the steep path 
before him with the agility of a young goat. 

" Halt ! " cried the young man at last, laughing good-hu- 
moredly if in gasps " my feet are new to your mountains, 
and I cannot climb them like a chamois. Take pity on me and 
moderate your steps." 

Gretel turned round with her sad little smile. " I will go 
slower," she said, in that grave, old-fashioned manner of hers, 
and immediately came down beside him. He looked at the 
anxious face kindly. 

" You are in trouble ? " he asked ; his soft, cultivated voice, 
with its foreign accent, making the words sound almost tender. 

Gretel's eyes filled with tears at the unexpected sympathy, 
but she brushed them away. 

"Yes! I have great trouble. My mother is sick, and my 
cow is dying ; but but God is good and will not forget us in 
our sorrow." 

She glanced upwards at the pure morning sky, as if she 
could see into that mysterious realm "where He abides." Her 
trusting confidence was beautiful in its simplicity. 

A smile, half-pitying, half-contemptuous, curled the English- 
man's lips. 

" He will not forget you ! " he repeated with unconcealed 
sarcasm. " Well, I hop g e not. It would be too bad to lose the 
mother and the cow." 

Gretel's quick blue eyes flashed at his mocking words. She 
was not angry but, oh ! so pained, so surprised. 

"You do not believe God will help me?" she questioned, 
her astonishment audible even in her young voice. 

He shrugged his shoulders. Why cavil at her simple faith or 
give open expression to his thoughts of her belief? It probably 
sufficed for the consolation of her unreasoning soul in its petty, 
self-engrossed channel why disturb her by his sceptical opinion ? 

Acting upon this thought he answered aloud, carelessly but 
not irreverently : 



374 A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. [Dec., 

" I know but little of his ways, and I'm sure I hope he may 
befriend you in your distress. You deserve that all would go 
well with you a good, hard-working little Sennerin, as I've no 
doubt you are." 

"Oh! I'm not good," she cried hastily, her fair face suf- 
fused with color ; " I am often cross and disagreeable, and I even 
grow tired of praying. My mother never does she is surely 
a saint but I, though I know God will help me at last, I some- 
times get weary of asking, although he is never weary of listen- 
ing to our prayers." 

Her pathetic self-reproach and childlike confidence touched 
the young Englishman. His face lost its sarcastic look and 
grew more thoughtful. 

" I almost wish I had your faith, little one," he said gently, 
after a pause. 

" Do you not believe in God ? " 

He shook his head slowly half doubtfully, half sadly. 

" And you never pray to him ? " 

It seemed as if the child could not realize how he lived 
without belief or prayer, those two necessaries of her life. 

" I have not prayed since I was a little boy. My mother 
died before I was ten years old, and since then I have never 
been inside a church." 

Her eager questioning had not displeased him, and now he 
found himself telling this little Sennerin something he would 
not confide to most of his world, and she was gazing at him 
with pitying earnestness ; not the mildly reproving yet wholly 
condoning looks of the Pharisees for this spoiled, atheistical 
darling of society, but the sincere sorrow of a simple heart for 
one who had fallen away from the straight and narrow path, 
which alone leads to God. 

" I am sorry for you," she said at length, in her grave little 
way. 

The young man stared at her in astonishment. She, this 
sad, careworn mountain child, was sorry for him ! Pity was the 
last thing Hugh Trafford was in the habit of receiving, and pity 
from such a source! To what was he coming. 

" So you are sorry for me," he repeated, as soon as he had 
sufficiently controlled his feelings to speak. " Why ? Because 1 
have lost faith in God? Well, so far, that has not made me 
an object of pity. I have had most of the things I wanted or 
wished for without calling on his aid " 

" Oh, do not speak so, sir ! It is he who gives all, both 



1894-] A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. 375 

the good and the bad. When your day of reckoning comes 
you will feel sorry you did not ask his help or counsel. Even 
before that day a time may come when you will wish you had 
a God to turn to for assistance." 

Gretel spoke warmly, and her childish warning struck him 
more forcibly than a lecture on theology would have done. 
What truth might there not be in this innocent prophecy? 

" Well, you must pray for me, little one but only when you 
are not weary, remember so that if that day comes, and I 
shall invoke God's help, he may not reject me." 

He spoke lightly, but there was a vein of earnestness in his 
speech which Gretel was quick to note. His flippancy hurt 
her, for she was powerless to rebut it ; yet, with childhood's un- 
erring instinct, she felt that the flippancy was only skin-deep, 
and that a noble soul lay beneath the careless exterior, only 
awaiting God's touch to awaken into a new life. . 

They had quickened their steps the last few minutes, and a 
turn in the path brought them in sight of an old-fashioned cha- 
let which stood outlined in fantastic beauty against the blue, 
cloudless sky. Gretel pointed to it. 

"There is Kloft's cottage. Andreas and the gentlemen are 
at the door already. Hasten or they will have started." 

With a hasty thanks, and slipping a gulden in her hand, 
Hugh Trafford ran down the path to join his friends on their 
chamois hunt, while Gretel toiled upwards to the pasture where 
she had left the dying cow her gulden tightly clasped in one 
hand and the first prayer for the " Herr Englander" on her 
lips. 

Two days later a heavy snow-storm swept over the Alps. 
The Sennerinnen drove their cattle hurriedly into shelter ; paths, 
precipices, and crevasses were nearly obliterated from even the 
experienced eyes of the Alpine herdswomen. In one of the senn- 
hutte, crouched close to the small, smoky fire, sat Gretel, her 
hands folded listlessly in her lap ; her eyes, with their wistful 
intense look, fixed on the fire. Two or three young Sennerinnen 
sat by the window, knitting and chatting. 

" This will finish the upper pastures," remarked one of them 
after a glance at the eddying snow. " As soon as the ground 
clears from this I take my cows home ! " 

"And I, too, Annchen ! " cried the other; "this will be no 
place for us now the winter has begun." 

" No, Lizerl," said the first speaker, " winter has not come 
yet, even if we have a snow-flurry or two ; but one can't 



376 



A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. 



[Dec., 



How goes it 
the little girl 



with 
with 



the sick 
a kindly 



be too careful of one's cattle, 
cow, Gretel?" She turned to 
glance. 

" Better," answered the little one briefly. 
" Did you bring her to shelter from the storm ? " asked Li- 
zerl garrulously. 

"Should I be sitting here if I had not?" demanded Gretel 

quickly, and no- 
thing more was 
needed. No Sen- 
nerin seeks for 
shelter until her 
herd is safe. 

" Ah, dear 
heavens, but this 
is a storm ! " cried 
another girl, run- 
ning into the cab- 
in, her clothes 
wet through, her 
hands and face 
blue from expo- 
sure. " I'm so 
thankful to see a 
fire again ! v 

"What brought 
you here, Mina ? 
You always take 
refuge in the Isel- 
stein huts." 

"Ei! children, 
the Iselstein is 
threatened by an 
avalanche. I had 
my cows safe in 
one of the pens 
there, when Kloft's 
boy ran up and told me they had heard rumblings on the moun- 
tain top and feared an avalanche. His father went up there 
with some Englishmen two days ago, and they fear if he does 
not return soon that he will be surely killed. Well, when I 
heard that I just ran for my herd and hurried them over here. 
Why, Gretel, where are you going ? " 




THROWING OFF HIS MANTLE OF CLOUD.' 



1894-] A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. 377 

The little girl, her shawl drawn tightly around her head and 
shoulders, was running towards the door. 

" My cows I left them in one of the Iselstein pens. I was 
going home to-night and came over this way when the storm 
drove me in here ; but I must go back now. Don't hold me, 
Annchen ; I cannot leave them to be swept away." 

She sprang forth, heedless of the entreaties of the other 
women, and in another minute was breasting the furious storm, 
which whirled and raged on the bare mountain sides threaten- 
ing to crush the frail child against the pine trunks or bury her 
under the drifting snow. But the small, sure feet never wavered, 
the little slender body swayed with the wind yet never touched 
the trees, and the keen blue eyes, undazzled by the snow, peered 
cautiously at each landmark along the well-known path. Her 
pale lips moved in incessant prayer, and despite the fury of the 
storm and the dangers of the way the look of perfect trust 
and confidence in God never left her face. God would not for- 
get her, as she always said in her childish way, and with his 
constant guidance she felt no fear. 

Already she had traversed the boundaries of the Iselstein 
and was rapidly hastening upward by the little church to the 
pen where she had housed the cows. She had put them there 
in the early morning, before starting homewards by a short cut 
over the Altenberg, and now she had come back to save them 
or die in the attempt. 

A moment she paused at the door of the church only a 
moment to ejaculate " Maria, hilf mir ! " when through the howl- 
ings of the gale and the ominous rumblings which echoed from 
the mountain peak came a voice a voice, faint but distinct, cry- 
ing aloud for help. 

Gretel stood still and listened, her ears strained to their ut- 
most. 

Again the call rang out from the upper region of steep 
precipices and narrow, scanty pastures ; fainter this time and 
half-drowned by the storm, but still a human cry. " Help, help ! " 

For a second Gretel stood irresolute ; should she answer the 
appeal ? Death to herself and her cherished cattle was coming 
nearer every minute. All the cows were down from the Alps, 
the hunters had fled before the fall of the avalanche ; at best 
it was some stranger, some unknown tourist who called on her 
from the heights of the doomed mountain. Must she risk her 
life and the safety of her herd to bring him the help he sought 
for? 



378 A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. [Dec., 

It did not take Gretel quite the second to weigh all these 
considerations in the balance and find them wanting. Before 
the third call came she was on her way to the unknown. 

"Where are you?" she cried in her clear, loud voice, and 
the far-away muffled tones sounded clearer than before as they 
answered joyfully: "Here on a ledge above a great crevasse." 
Where had she heard that voice before, with its bad accent but 
grammatical speech ? Ah ! the young Englishman, who had gone 
with Andreas Kloft the day the cow sickened ; she had prayed 
for him since, and was she now to bring him deliverance? God 
grant it ! He was not so far off the crevasse, she knew the 
one he must mean, was not more than a couple of hundred 
yards above the church, and it did not take her long to reach 
the ledge upon which he was standing. She crept cautiously 
but fearlessly along it until she suddenly found herself beside 
the young tourist. He was leaning against the precipice, his 
eyes strained in the direction from whence her voice had 
sounded up to him. 

When he perceived her close beside him he gave a start and 
an exclamation of joy which broke off into a suppressed groan,' 
and she noticed that despite the cold the sweat-drops stood on 
his forehead. 

" Little one is it really you ? And so soon you must 
climb like" 

She interrupted him at once. 

" What is the matter with you ? " 

" I have broken my arm, I believe," he answered as careless- 
ly as he could, glancing at his limp coat sleeve. " I slipped 
over the precipice and landed on this ledge, smashing my arm 
and maybe a rib or two. I was quite unconscious for some 
time from the shock, and when I revived I found myself utter- 
ly alone. .Kloft and my companions, I imagine, gave me up for 
lost when I fell over the crevasse ; anyway they must have gone 
on, for I have had no response to my calls until you answered. 
I kept moving along the ledge, but grew so exhausted at last 
that I had to stand still." 

" Can you not walk ? " she asked quickly ; those awful 
thunders on the summit of the mountain were growing louder; 
she knew the avalanche was not far off. It was death sure and 
fearful to remain on that ledge another quarter of an hour; yet 
if he could not come to the shelter of the church she would 
not leave him to perish alone. 

" Where to ? " he asked vaguely. His eyes were clouded 



1894-] A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. 379 

and languid, his breath came in gasps, his few words to her 
seemed to have robbed him of his last strength. 

"To the church, it is not far, and " her voice faltered a 
little "the avalanche is coming and it will sweep us from 
here." 

He, too, paused. That deadly languor which was creeping 
over him made even death preferable to exertion. The pain 
was less intense now and the longing for rest irresistible. He 
almost wished he had not called for help, and then his eyes 
met hers, those true, patient eyes, so noble, so unselfish. She 
stood by him calmly, fearlessly ready to lead him to safety or 
face death by his side rather than leave a fellow-creature to 
die alone. He realized then the superior force and truth of 
character in this simple, God-loving child, and, with a mighty 
effort gathering himself together, he signed to her to go on. 
Placing his left hand on her shoulder, he followed her as quick- 
ly as his nervous strength would let him, she supporting him 
with all the ease of a child of labor, until they reached the 
old, snow-wreathed church. Already huge balls of snow and 
splinters of rock had torn by them, the first daring heralds of 
the advancing war. As the doors of the deserted chapel 
closed behind them the tumult on the mountain ceased ; the 
heavy clouds were sailing slowly away, and the snow-flakes no 
longer fell ; even the rumblings were stilled, and for a moment 
there was peace that awful, ghastly peace when Nature waits 
with bated breath for the coming of disaster. 

Then a strange darkness, or rather an intense gloom, spread 
over the heavens as, with the roar of a hundred cannon and the 
shrieks of infuriated demons, the avalanche started on its down- 
ward path of ruin and destruction. 

Something stronger than physical pain or weariness kept 
Hugh Trafford near one of the narrow windows, gazing silently 
at the mad, whirling torrent, and as he looked it seemed to 
him as if all his puny beliefs and theories were being swept from 
his soul by the mighty flood surging before him. What was 
man's logic, after all, against the might and majesty of Him who 
rules the elements ? Where was the work of earth strong or 
haughty enough to defy the hand which held weapons such as 
this in its grasp ? Above all, who, looking at this wonderful, 
heaving mass of accumulated snow and ice, would dare to doubt 
as Trafford had until this hour the existence of a Supreme 
Being, to whom all nature bows in awe and answers to* his 
will? 



380 A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. [Dec. r 

Gretel had crept to the altar-rail, trying with her hands 
over her ears to shut out the sounds of the tumult ; but Trafford 
never moved from the window. 

Still the avalanche raced on, so near the church that the 
branches of some of the writhing pines brushed the windows as 
they were borne onward in the rushing columns of snow, and 
the loosened fragments of rock threw themselves in mad fury 
against the stout stone walls, only to rebound into the fearful, 
tossing mass and be drawn downwards in the arms of that irre- 
sistible snow-maiden. In less time than it takes to write it, all 
was over ; faint thunders still resounded upwards, while the tor- 
rent seethed around the base of the mountain, heaping and 
tumbling over itself ere it subsided into the narrow valley its 
rage spent, its might exhausted a gigantic, unsightly snow-heap 
from whence protruded huge broken stones and battered pine 
trunks. 

Ere the last echoes of the dying storm ceased Gretel felt 
some one kneel beside her, and raising her head, perceived the 
form of her companion. His face was hidden by his left hand 
and his body leaned heavily against the altar-rail, but in spite 
of pain and languor he had come to make his peace with God 

Half an hour slipped by, but he did not move ; Gretel stole 
softly to the door and looked around her. On the right of the 
church, as far as the eye could reach, the mountain side lay 
bare and desolate the path of the avalanche had been truly 
one of annihilation ; on the left, the side nearer the village, the 
damage had been slight. A few stray boulders or uprooted 
trees lay here and there on the path, but they were no obsta- 
cles to a descent to Altenstiel. In the west the sky had grown 
clearer, a faint line of amber light gleamed from behind the far- 
away Alpine peaks. Gretel glanced up to the snowy heights 
above her, where the walls of the pen wherein she had stabled 
her cattle gleamed yellow in the dull sunset glow. They were 
safe, thank God ! the storm had swept by, leaving them un- 
harmed. Oh ! how thankful she was to him for his care to-day* 

A voice called from the interior of the church, and in an- 
other minute Trafford came out to her ; very worn and weak 
he looked, but there was a light in his eyes which completely 
dominated the expression of suffering and weariness on his face. 
He took her hand gently in his left palm. 

" I want to thank you now, Gretel," he said in quiet, sub- 
dued tones, " for what you have done for me. In the terror of 
our race before the avalanche I could not speak, but now now 



1894-] A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. 381 

I will try to tell you, as far as words go, how deeply, heartily 
grateful I am to you. Not only did you risk your life to save 
mine, but I saw it in your eyes if I had given way to my 
pain and languor on the ledge you would have stayed and died 
too rather than leave me to meet death alone. O Gretel! if 
only my words were not cold and formal ; but my tongue is so 
unfamiliar with your language that " 

" O sir ! " interrupted the little Sennerin hastily, " you must 
not speak of it. I did nothing nothing. It was God who sent 
me in time to hear your voice." 

" Ay, Gretel, that is it ! God sent you to save me ; that 
same God I have neglected and forgotten since my boyhood 
did not forget me in my peril. Do you remember telling me I 
might one day long for some one to turn to for a helping hand 
and then regret my unfaith ? How soon that day came ! Yet 
as I stood maimed and helpless on that precipice, in the line 
of the coming disaster, I thought of your words, I yearned for 
some of your faith and confidence. Even as I stood waiting 
for my end, hopeless, despairing, a flash of memory brought to 
my mind the teachings of my youth. I remombered that God 
was merciful and forgiving, and that no repentant sinner need 
fear to cast himself before the throne of charity. And then I 
prayed for the first time in how many years!" 

"And yet God answered you?" 

The bright eyes were fixed on him with such joyful cer- 
tainty had she not been herself God's messenger ? 

" Yes ! He answered me through you," replied Trafford 
gravely. " It was the turning point in my existence ; I had 
just entreated for another chance, a few years more of life, and 
I would turn to the right and go forward in the way my mother 
had taught me. It was not that I feared death, but I dreaded 
to meet my God. In a moment of awful agony and suspense 
life seems but a small thing ; it is death, or rather what lies be- 
yond death, which makes one cower and tremble. Well, just as 
I was yielding to despair, you came a veritable answer to my 
prayer and, in leading me back to life, you gave me anew the 
jewel of faith I lost so long ago. God grant I nevermore may 
forfeit it ! " 

" Amen ! " said Gretel, with shining eyes. " I will always 
pray for you, Herr Englander." 

Three weeks later Trafford left for England. His arm, thanks 
to the unremitting care of the Alpine doctor who had earned 



382 A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. [Dec., 

more in those three weeks than he would in three years among 
the mountaineers was nearly well, but still in a sling. His ac- 
cident and rescue by Gretel were the talk of the village for 
many a day, and the fact of his making extravagant purchases 
of lace and attending Mass the last Sunday before his depar- 
ture singled him out as a prince among British tourists. 

Before leaving he called to bid Gretel good-by and, notwith- 
standing his having bought more lace from her mother than 
that good woman dreamed of selling in ten years, he left be- 
hind on the little deal table a check for one hundred florins, 
with a short note for Gretel. " As a token of gratitude for your 
bravery," it ran, " in saving me on the Iselstein, and as a re- 
membrance of your promise to pray for my perseverance in 
the new life which awoke in my soul." 

"It might be assumed as a matter of course," remarked Dr. 
Redfern, " that a sojourn amidst those mountain regions dis- 
poses the mind toward devotion. The effect of such sublime 
scenery must be irresistible, even upon the most atheistically 
inclined." * 

" The assumption would be fallacious, like many others," re- 
joined M. de Brissac. " Distinguished infidels have written their 
names in the books of this hospice as well as distinguished be- 
lievers. You will find there, as well as the name of Dante, the 
great Christian poet, the signature of Jean Jacques Rousseau. 
Many eminent geologists come to live in the Alps to study their 
favorite science ; and these savans are mostly of the pronounced 
agnostic school." 

" True," remarked the lay brother, " and there is a very good 
instance just to hand. There is one Professor Tyndall, a distin- 
guished savant, I hear. He lives for a considerable time in the 
Alps every year, and he, I am told, is a devout agnostic. It is 
a strange result of scientific knowledge that it makes a man un- 
able to see what the most ignorant peasant of the hills can see 
the hand of the Almighty in the magnificent mountains and 
lovely valleys of the Alps." 

" The peasantry all around are very devout, I believe," re- 
marked Mrs. Redfern. " I have been told that these hills are 
full of legends of marvellous interpositions of Providence, in 
cases where death and destruction appeared to be inevitable." 

" That is so, madame," answered M. de Brissac. " I have 
spent a good many years, off and on, amongst them, and I 
know they are as firmly convinced of such interposition at times 



1894-] A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. 383 

as they are of their own existence. Here is one of the stories 
of this kind, which is most generally believed in all about the 
village of St. Remy : " 

THE UTTLE CRIPPLE OF THE SIMPLON. 

A red light is burning dimly in the window of a poor hut 
almost buried beneath the snow. The bitter cold and intense 
darkness, unrelieved by even the pale rays of a winter moon, in- 
spire only fear and dread in the heart of the lonely watcher 
within the wretched abode. In such depths of sadness and de- 
spair is that weary watcher, it would seem as though angel tid- 
ings would indeed be necessary to warm a heart so chilled with 
even a faint gleam of hope and love, I was about to add, 
but love is there maternal love, which eighteen hundred years 
ago that night found its completion and fullest benediction in 
the heart of the lowly Mother of Bethlehem. 

Within the gloomiest recess of the hut, on a bed of straw, 
lies a boy about seven years of age. The sunken cheeks and 
emaciated form speak eloquently a pathetic tale of poverty and 
sickness, but the patient expression in the little face tells a 
story too the story of suffering patiently endured. He has 
been a cripple since earliest infancy, and the daily inability to 
give him the necessary care, the constant vision of her child's 
suffering, seem to Margaret a burden almost too great to bear. 
The boy has been sleeping heavily, but wakens now and mur- 
murs something about " father." 

" What is it, my little Jean ? " the mother asks, bending 
lovingly over him. 

" Has father come back yet ? " 

" No, dear, but he will soon. Try to sleep until he comes." 
She speaks cheerfully, but is growing momentarily more anxious. 

Early that morning her husband had started on a five-mile 
walk to the nearest village to sell, if possible, the needle-work 
which is their only means of sustenance, and so procure food 
at least for the boy, who is daily becoming weaker from lack 
of nourishment. 

" I will try again to find work," he said to his wife upon 
leaving ; " but in vain I fear, for workmen are being discharged 
rather than employed in these hard times." 

It was not snowing when he started, and if all had gone 
well he should have reached home (if so poor a habitation can 
be called by that dear name) by three o'clock at the latest, and 



A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. 



[Dec., 




now it is eight, and the 
storm which has arisen 
suddenly is increasing in 
violence every moment. 

Margaret goes to the 
window, tries to make 
the light burn more 
brightly, then turns with 
a dreary sense of utter 
helplessness, takes up her 
knitting, and resumes her 
watch by the little suf- 
ferer. She bends lower 
than is necessary over 
the work to hide her 
face as much as possible 
from the watchful gaze 
of the child, fearing it 
may betray the anxiety 
she is struggling bravely 
to conceal. The boy is 
always quick to detect 
the slightest change in 
the beloved countenance 
of his mother. The pre- 
caution is unnecessary, 
however, for to-night the 
earnest eyes are not rest- 
ing upon her, but are 
raised upward with an ex- 
pression of deep thought 
not unmingled with 
brightness. 

"What is my darling 
thinking of so deeply?" 
Margaret asks present- 
ly, becoming conscious 
of the child's abstrac- 
tion. 

" I am thinking about 
the Baby on the straw 
the old priest told us 
about that day." 



1 894.] A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. 385 

" What priest ? what day ? " she asks wonderingly. 

" Oh ! don't you remember," the little fellow replies, an ex- 
pression of disappointment crossing his face " don't you remem- 
ber the old man who came to see us last winter, and said he 
was a priest, and told us all about a little Baby in a stable, and 
how," the child continues eagerly, "the Baby was really God, 
who made the mountains and the trees, and that it was all for 
me, mother, to show me that he loved me though I am so 
little and can't walk?" 

" I would not think too much about it, dear ; try to sleep 
again," his mother answers gently, fearing the effect of too 
much thought upon the little brain, and noting how the pale 
cheeks have flushed with excitement and the effort of speaking. 

" If I could dream again of the Christ-Child I would like to 
sleep ; I thought I saw him when I slept that time, and he 
looked so beautiful that I asked him please to come back to 
earth again and come to see me, and I am sure he will, moth- 
er," he adds confidently. 

" Yes, yes, dear ! " she answers again, soothingly ; " but rest 
now like a good boy, won't you ? " 

" Is he growing delirious ? " Margaret asks herself anxiously. 
She remembers clearly now the incident to which he alludes. 
A year ago a venerable old priest had stopped at the hut, and 
craved permission to come in and rest awhile. 

" I have been walking much," he said, " and still have some 
distance to go, though already fatigued." 

"You are welcome," the woman replied hospitably, agreea- 
bly impressed by the kindly appearance of the old man, who 
entered, glad to stop for a time in however poor an abode. 
He had shown much sympathy and interest in the little cripple, 
and upon leaving expressed regret that, being a stranger in that 
part of the country, he might never see them again. 

Margaret soon forgot the incident ; not so little Jean, 
whose childish heart and mind had been deeply touched by the 
beautiful story of Bethlehem. With the unquestioning faith of 
a child a faith so pleasing to the Most High that he bids us, 
his older children, to imitate it he had accepted the sweet 
truths, and ever since tried to be patient "like the dear Baby 
in the manger," he thought in his simple way, " who came to 
lead me to a beautiful place called heaven, where I sha'n't be 
sick any more." He had, however, said nothing to his mother 
after the first day or two, feeling perhaps, with the instinctive 
perception which even very young children seem to possess, 
VOL. LX. 25 



386 A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. [Dec., 

that she did not quite believe the beautiful tale. Poor Mar- 
garet ! she has had so hard a life, so little instruction in reli- 
gious truth, it is scarcely surprising she has grown sceptical and 
embittered ; and yet as she gazes upon the grand scenery by 
which she is unceasingly surrounded she often feels that there 
must exist an all-wise, all-merciful Creator. She is naturally of 
a thoughtful disposition, and in her many lonely walks during 
the pleasant months of the year Nature, so austere in her 
Alpine grandeur and yet so caressing in the pretty rural scenes 
which adorn the pass, fills her soul with loving, half-defined 
whispers of the divine Maker, and enables her to take up her 
daily life strengthened and comforted. But to-night she seems 
beyond the power of any comfort. Suppose her husband never 
returns ? many perish in the deep snow during the winter there 
and little Jean ! may he not die from want of food ? 

" O my God ! " she exclaims, falling upon her knees, forget- 
ful of everything as the agony of these thoughts overpowers 
her, " if you do exist, reveal yourself to me, your desolate 
creature, this night ; bring back my husband, spare me my child." 
Almost as she prays a faint cry is heard, followed by a gentle 
knock at the door. Margaret hears both, but at first thinks it 
must be imagination ; but no, cry and knock are both repeated, 
and she now springs to her feet with joy. May it not be her 
husband ? But the joy dies away, giving place to wonder, as 
she opens the door and beholds standing upon the threshold a 
Boy about twelve years of age. " Will you give me shelter to- 
night?" asks a sweet voice in pleading accents. He looks very 
pale as he stands there, framed in by the darkness of the 
stormy night, and the woman instinctively throws the door 
wide open and bids him enter. 

Slowly the Child Visitor obeys her, and she pours some water 
into a broken glass and turns to offer him the refreshment 
which, poor though it is, is all she has but lo ! the Boy, who 
in the uncertain light had looked faint and weak, is standing in 
the centre of the dimly-lighted room in an attitude of mingled 
command and entreaty ; the light brown hair is tossed back 
from a brow low and dazzlingly white, the features chiselled as 
marble, while the whole countenance is illumined by an expres- 
sion of such purity and calm that Margaret's heart grows 
hushed and reverent. " Not even a drop of cold water given 
in My Name shall go unrewarded." Clearly, sweetly, the words 
fall upon her wondering ear, and almost unconsciously she 
kneels. Then he smiles, and the poor abode, so dark and dreary 



1894-] ^ CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. 387 

before, is filled with a radiance which envelops in its glory 
Margaret and little Jean, who lies gazing at the unbidden 
Guest with eyes in whose clear depths shines a look of recogni- 
tion and of awe. 

" I thought you would come," he murmurs softly. 

" Yes, my little one ; no one ever seeks Me and does not find 
Me, and I have come to comfort you to-night because you be- 
lieved I would " ; and then resting his hand caressingly upon the 
wasted one of the little cripple, in words so simple that even 
he could understand, yet with majesty unspeakable, the Christ- 
Child tells the story of his unrequited love for men. The 
cattle-shed with all its poor surroundings seems to rise visibly 
before them as he speaks; they see the stable, the darkness, the 
shivering Babe, whose unearthly beauty is thrown into relief by 
the light of Joseph's lantern that illumines softly the gentle 
face of the Virgin Mother as she kneels in lowly adoration 
before her Almighty Little One. Margaret, as she listens, feels 
that the mystery of sin and its atonement is at last made clear, 
and realizes how the rays of a love that is divine shines upon 
human suffering in its every form, giving to the soul that 
patiently endures a reward even here, in the " peace which sur- 
passeth all understanding." The voice ceases, and the Speaker, 
bending, imprints a kiss upon the tiny face on its hard pillow. 
" I will come again, my little child," he whispers tenderly, and 
then, gliding past Margaret, vanishes as unexpectedly as he had 
appeared. 

Scarcely had the door closed, when it is pushed vigorously 
open and an old man with long white beard and merry eyes 
enters hastily. " I know you will bid me welcome, my good 
woman," he says cheerily, " for, like the angels of old, I bring 
you glad tidings your husband is safely housed in the hospice 
three miles from here." 

"Thank God!" murmurs the wife. "O sir!" she continues, 
"such wonderful things are happening to-night, I tremble lest I 
wake and find them only a dream." Then in as few words as 
possible she tells him of their celestial Visitor. 

The old priest's face grows very thoughtful as he listens. 
"Can it be that the Christ-Child has really visited this humble 
home this Christmas eve ?" "It may be," he thinks; "God is 
omnipotent and reveals himself often to little ones in ways un- 
guessed by men " ; and as he sees the light and peace in the 
childish face a light not unreflected in Margaret's own homely 
countenance he feels it must be true, and that the shadow of 



388 A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. [Dec., 

that Heavenly Presence is still resting upon them both. " The 
Christ-Child has indeed been with you," he says solemnly ; " may 
his benediction rest with you for ever." There is a pause of 
some minutes, and then the old man exclaims : " But come, 
Margaret ; your husband awaits you with impatience." 

" But Jean ? " objects the woman. 

" Oh ! he will be all right ; the storm has abated and I have 
plenty of warm coverings." So saying he takes the child up in 
his arms, wraps him in blankets, and in another moment they 
are speeding over the road, the sleigh bells tinkling merrily in 
the frosty air. On their way the monk tells Margaret how 
that night, when out on his accustomed mission, the dogs had 
darted some distance from him, but soon came bounding back 
barking and wagging their tails in greatest excitement. 

" I knew what that meant, didn't I, old fellow," he says, 
patting the shaggy head of the huge beast that, big as he is, 
nestles comfortably at his feet and blinks a sleepy rejoinder 
with affectionate eyes. "In a few minutes," he continues, "the 
faithful creatures led me to a man lying almost buried beneath 
the snow ; not seriously hurt, however," he hastily adds, noticing 
Margaret's alarmed expression, " only stunned and chilled ; by 
the time we reached the hospice he was able, though faint, to 
tell me who he was, and of you, my good woman, and the 
little son." 

At that moment a vision of a large square, white building rises 
before them. The hospice ! what memories of heroism and self- 
sacrifice are evoked by the mere name ! How many distressed 
creatures have found comfort and shelter within that abode, 
standing in majestic solitude upon the highest, bleakest point of 
the gigantic pass. For nine months of the year the cold and 
dreariness are intense ; but, however fiercely the elements may 
rage, the monks go daily out upon their perilous mission of 
charity. Hearts warmed by the fire of divine love, rise superior 
to personal discomfort and danger. These noble men lead 
cheerfully their lives of constant self-sacrifice, content to re- 
ceive their reward only from Him whose divine example has 
proved so eloquently that " Greater love than this no man 
hath, that he lay down his life for his friend." 

"Ah! here we are," exclaims the monk, as they reach the 
house, a flood of light streaming through the doors open wide 
to receive them, and in another moment the mother, with the 
boy in her arms, is standing in the midst of a group of kindly 
faces, that cluster round eager to bid them welcome. Very 



1 894.] 



A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. 



389 



tenderly the little cripple is laid upon a sofa in the large, old- 
fashioned hall, and while Margaret joins her husband in an 
upper room, the monks warm Jean's little feet and hands and 
give him the nourishment he needs so much. 

" Oh," the little fellow murmurs happily, " I think the 
Christ-Child must have sent me here to-night." 

" Would you like to see the image of the Christ-child before 
you sleep ? " asks the kindly monk, who, receiving an answer in 
the affirmative, once more takes the tiny form in his arms and 
carries it into the chapel. 

It is almost time for the midnight Mass ; the organ is play- 




THE TUMULT ON THE MOUNTAIN SIDE CEASED. 

ing softly the Christmas carol. The chapel is filled with radiant 
light, and fragrant with holly and evergreen, and there, in a 
corner of the holy place, little Jean sees the dear story of 
Bethlehem faithfully represented there is the stable, the man- 
ger, the Mother, and the venerable Joseph, but above all the 
infant Saviour each lovingly, if imperfectly, portrayed. And as 
Margaret silently joins her child and kneels before the crib it 
seems as though the Divine Babe stretches his little arms out 
in a special welcome to them, and that the angels chant now, as 



390 A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. [Dec., 

long ago, " Glory to God in the highest ; on earth peace to men 
of good will." 

Just a year from that night the Christ-Child fulfils his prom- 
ise to return ; but only the little cripple sees him this Christ- 
mas eve, and when the heavenly Guest vanishes this time he 
carries something in his arms, something so pure and bright 
that the angels are glad to welcome it into heaven the soul of 
little Jean. 

"I do not at all wonder," remarked Mrs. Redfern, "that the 
imagination easily lends itself to the romantic and the super- 
natural in these wild mountains. There seems to me something 
spectral at times in the towering crags half-veiled in mist, and 
showing their ghostly heads, in whose seams your fancy traces 
out rude features, above a belt of cloud. These heads and 
busts seem at such times to float upon nothing." 

" I have heard of castles in the air," said M. de Brissac, 
" but I often thought I realized them when looking at some of 
the buildings perched upon the summits of the crags in these 
valleys, at many points." 

" There is a very remarkable specimen of that sort of airy 
fortress on the road up from Aosta," said Dr. Redfern. " We 
passed it as we came up yesterday. The guide-books call it 
Fort Bard, and say it was battered down by Napoleon's guns 
during his dash down upon Marengo." 

" Yes, that is true," replied M. de Brissac. " It was a for- 
tress one, looking at it from the road, might deem impregna- 
ble. The Austrians held it then, and it checked the First 
Consul's advance for a considerable time. But our soldiers 
soon found there are crags higher than Fort Bard, and not very 
far from it, and they got up on them and dragged a cannon 
with them. With this they soon silenced Fort Bard, because it 
could not fire up in return." 

" I never could bear those Austrians," said Mrs. Redfern, 
" because of the part they played in the dismemberment of 
Poland. My sympathies are always with that unhappy country, 
which is not strange for an American woman. The Poles played 
a gallant part in the liberation of our country, and we are not 
ever likely to forget it. There is, besides, another reason why 
I am interested in that noble nation, and as we are in the 
story-telling humor perhaps I had better let you hear it." 



1894-] A CHKISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. 391 

AGIvAE LEVONOWSK1. 

The usual exchange of question and answer incidental to that 
trying ordeal, engaging a new servant, had been gone through. 
But, as Mrs. Arlworth rose to intimate the conclusion of the 
audience, she bethought herself of an important omission which 
she repaired by the question, " I had almost forgotten to ask, 
what is your name?" 

" Aglae Levonowski, madame." 

" What an extraordinary name ! But you are a Pole, of 
course, and Polish names have always an odd sound in Yan- 
kee ears. Were you born in America ? " 

" I have been but one year in this country, madame. We 
were unfortunate in our own land, and my father and I the 
rest are with Christ came to America a twelvemonth ago. My 
father's health failed here and his spirit was broken. He could 
get no work to do, and four weeks ago he died. Now I am all 
alone. My father's little store of money is all gone and I can- 
not content myself to remain idle any longer, a burden to the 
faithful friends who cared for me in my trouble and who are 
almost so poor as myself." 

Her voice was tremulous but sweet and refined. It was 
manifestly an effort for her to speak of her grief. The kind- 
hearted woman watching her felt a touch of motherly pity as 
she listened. 

" Is there nothing else that you can do ? You speak like 
an educated person. Besides, you look very young." 

" Alas, madame ! what shall I do ? It is true I have had 
good training. In my childhood the best masters were given 
me. But is not America filled with teachers of the piano 
and the languages? and without influence, where shall I get 
pupils? My Polish friends are only very poor people. They 
could not help me at all. A long while I have thought, and at 
last I decide ; my best gift it is the household management my 
mother who is with the saints taught me long ago. And I 
do not fear, madame, but that I can do these things to your 
liking. I have not forgotten what my mother taught me, and I 
will try hard to please you, for your face is kind, madame. 
And for my age I ask your pardon for neglecting your question 
so long I am not young ; I am twenty." 

Mrs. Arlworth smiled and replied, " I feel sure we will get 
on well together. You will come to-morrow, then, Aglae ? 
Good morning." 



392 A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. [Dec., 

" Good morning, madame. In my country we say but you 
would not know the Polish, and in English it means ' Good 
morning ; God is good.' ' 

For fully ten minutes Mrs. Arlworth remained at the draw- 
ing-room window, watching with a puzzled smile the retreating 
figure of her new cook. Long after she was out of sight the 
lady was still abstractedly gazing before her. 

Her reflections found voice later in the daywlfen she com- 
municated to her husband, at dinner, the mor.riing!s interview 
and ended her narrative with the remark: " She is^lje. most re- 

j***' A 

markable-looking cook I have ever seen. It would Aot surprise 
me, John, if she turned out to be a countess in disguise." 

" Or an adventuress," interposed the listening John. 

" That is impossible. You will say so when you have seen 
her. But it is precisely like a man, and a lawyer, to suppose 
the worst of every one ! " 

" Very true, my dear. It is also very like a woman to give 
sympathy first place and capability second. How do you know 
that your Polish cook, of the unutterable name, can cook ? That 
question would be, I confess, of prime interest to a mere man" 

" I know all about her cooking," was the dignified response. 
But Mrs. Arlworth's heart sank with the certainty that she knew 
nothing whatever on the subject beyond the Pole's confident as- 
sertion. During the rest of the day she was tormented at intervals 
by the thought that Aglae might prove an impostor or an in- 
capable, or saddest rt flection of all, and from long experience 
she knew it the most probable she might never appear again. 

Early the next morning her fears were set at rest by the 
appearance of the new cook and all her possessions. An ex- 
cellent dinner manifested her possession of that subtle gift I 
know not if it be a sixth sense or an infusion of genius of 
fascinating the most blast palate. 

Mr. Arlworth tasted and deliberated ; tasted again, and then 
made his decision known. 

" Your new cook, my dear, would have been a chef had she 
been born a man. Destiny has been too much for her. A wo- 
man may become, nowadays, a doctor or a lawyer, or even a 
stock-broker ; but leap the barrier that nature has erected be- 
tween the cook and the chef she cannot. However, as a cook, 
your ' Owski ' I sha'n't attempt to struggle with any other por- 
tion of her cognomen is not to be beaten that is to say, if 
this dinner be her regular gait. It may be a mere spurt for a 
starter, you know." 



I894-] 



A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. 



393 



As time passed Mr. Arlworth discovered that Aglae or, as 
he preferred to call her, Owski kept the pace her first dinner 
had instituted. At the end of a week he delivered the follow- 
ing encomium, as he liberally helped himself a second time to 
the mayonnaise : " It is the first time in all my long experience 




FROM THE MELTING SNOWS ABOVE. 

of living and dining, in all my search through the m ize of 
would-be mayonnaise for the genuine article, that I have found 
it prepared by a woman. I would venture the assertion without 
fear of contradiction, my dear, even were you not th most 
amiable of women, that your Owski is absolutely the onl> ame 



394 A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. [Dec., 

or damsel in the United States whose soul is alive to, whose 
intellect has grasped, and whose hands have prepared real 
mayonnaise. Your Owski, my love, is a Polish Koh-i noor." 

"And you are the Koh-i-noor of absurd men," was the an- 
swer. "One would positively doubt, John, that this is your 
forty-fifth birthday." 

" One would indeed," he answered with a tremendous sigh, 
"except that the top of one's head is not apt to become a 
polished ivory mirror at a more tender age." 

While this and many similar snatches of talk took place in 
the dining-room or other family haunts, Aglae Levonowski was 
industriously at work in the kitchen. Noiselessly and skilfully 
she went about her work, as much a marvel to her fellow- 
servants as to her mistress, with the difference that, while one 
respected what was so unlike the ordinary look and manner 
and ability of her class, the others jeered at and were unfriend- 
ly to what was incomprehensible to them. Aglae, however, 
paid little attention to whatever treatment was accorded her, 
although her manner to her mistress was invariably grateful and 
respectful. No more of her story had she ever told, though 
Mrs. Arlworth had tried occasionally to win her confidence. 

As time went on that lady became more and more con- 
vinced that her " Polish Koh-i-noor " had fallen from a rich 
and appropriate setting. She felt an occasional flick of trouble 
at the thought of the monotonous and unbefitting outlook 
before Aglae, but this feeling was generally allayed by the 
comforting reflection that her own worries anent the house- 
keeper's problem of problems, the servant question, were at an 
end. The possession of Aglae gave peace to her mind, placid- 
ity to her thoughts, leisure to her pursuits, and flesh to her 
bones. Had the Pole known her value, she would have raised 
her wages, or, being of nobler bent, have congratulated herself 
that she had been able to do good to her kind mistress. 
Such a thought would have, perhaps, sent a darker glow to the 
girl's soft hazel eyes, eyes that were sometimes amber and some- 
times olive and sometimes a dark brown. 

Taller than most of her countrywomen was Aglae ; taller 
and not so thick-set, carrying her head with the superb dignity 
that belongs, proverbially, to the duchess, and that falls now and 
then, so contrary is nature, to the portion of the peasant. 
Her hair was a light gold, with a waviness through it that no 
brushing could quite subdue. Her complexion was the pale 
olive that is not uncommon among the Poles, and her mouth 



1894-] A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. 395 

and chin were beautifully moulded, firm but touched with 
melancholy. Her hands were well-shaped, and, more extraordin- 
ary, well cared for, in spite of the inevitable marks of hard 
work upon them. 

Such was Aglae Levonowski as she sat one day, about two 
years after her coming to Mrs. Arlworth's house, in a comfort- 
able wooden rocker at the kitchen window. It was one of her 
rare moments of rest, and she looked the image of comfort as 
she rocked to and fro and looked out of the open window. But 
one looking closely at her would have noticed that her mouth 
drooped more sadly than usual, and there was the softness of 
unshed tears in her eyes. 

The same afternoon Mrs. Arlworth sat on her veranda 
reading. That is to say, a book was in her lap, a pile of news- 
papers and magazines on a little table beside her, but the 
book was closed, the periodicals uncut. Mrs. Arlworth had 
given herself up to an hour's dreamy, indolent enjoyment of 
the exquisite September day. 

" What is the charm of such a day as this ? " she thought. 
" Is it that one seems to penetrate the joy of life to the very 
core, or that its illusiveness pervades one's soul ? " 

Before she had answered the query to her own satisfaction, 
a voice broke in upon her reverie. 

" Pardon me, madame, for disturbing you, but I wish to 
ask" 

At this point she aroused herself from her dreaming and 
turned her eyes and attention to the man before her. He was 
a foreigner undoubtedly. His appearance as well as his accent 
told that. He was handsome, too, and evidently a gentleman. 
His age might have been twenty-five or thirty. While she 
took this rapid observation of his appearance he continued : 
" I wish to ask if a young lady resides here called Aglae 
Levonowski ? " 

His voice was low and rapid. The last words were full of 
suppressed excitement, which communicated itself at once, by 
some strange trick of sympathy, not untouched with curiosity, 
to Mrs. Arlworth. She rose as she answered : " Aglae Levon- 
owski does live here. You wish to see her ? " 

" If madame will be so kind." 

" I will tell her. Come into the house, please." 

She left him seated in the hall and went in search of Aglae. 
As she reached the kitchen it occurred to her she had ne- 
glected to ask his name. At the same time she decided to ask 



396 A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. [Dec., 

Aglae no questions. The girl was still seated in the old 
wooden rocker, and so intently was she gazing through the 
window, and many a mile beyond, that she did not hear the 
door turn nor her mistress's step upon the floor. 

A moment Mrs. Arlworth stood regarding her. Then she 
said softly : " Aglae, wake up ! I have some news for you. 
There is a visitor to see you. You will find him in the hall, 
but you will be able to talk more comfortably together in the 
dining-room, perhaps." 

Aglae started to her feet. A wave of color rushed over her 
face, then receded, leaving her unusually pale. 

Mrs. Arlworth did not wait to hear her murmured thanks. 
As she reached the veranda, she heard Aglae walk swiftly into 
the hall and then she heard a low cry. After that silence. 
She did her best for the next half-hour to banish the occurrence 
from her mind and interest herself in her book. 

At the end of that time the hall door opened and Aglae and 
her visitor stood before her, hand-in-hand. 

" Madame," said the girl was it the September sunshine 
that kindled cheek and eye as she spoke? "will you permit 
me to present to you Stanislaus Krakowski, my betrothed ? " 

Mrs. Arlworth's inward vision showed her the image of her- 
self without Aglae as the St. Zita of her kitchen. A weary, 
nerve-worn victim of intelligence offices, trial weeks of incompe- 
tent girls, unsuccessful attempts at teaching, with fingers cut, 
bruised, and burned the invariable accompaniment of amateur 
cooking thus she beheld herself, while outwardly her attention 
was entirely absorbed in the two people before her. 

As Aglae spoke Mrs. Arlworth rose from her chair and, ex- 
tending her hand to the young man, who took it with a very 
low bow, said : " Mr. Krakowski, I congratulate you very 
sincerely. I have good reason to know what a treasure you 
have won in Aglae. Do your best to make her happy. And, 
Aglae, what shall I say to you ? I think," glancing at the girl's 
happy face, "that I may safely congratulate you also. And now 
sit down and tell me all about it." 

There was a moment's pause, during which one glanced at 
the other. Finally Aglae began: "You are very kind, madame, 
and, indeed, I understand that it is right for me to tell you 
somewhat more of the circumstances of my life before it hap- 
pened that I came into your good house. 

" In my childhood my father was the possessor of large es- 
tates near Warsaw, which even then, owing to repeated govern- 



1894-] A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. 397 

ment seizures, had considerably dwindled from the original lands 
belonging for many generations to the family of Levonowski. 
In my sixteenth year came the first sorrow the death of my 
dear mother. After that trouble knocked continually at our 
door. My little sisters, Olga and Maria, followed my mother. 
Sergius only, the oldest, and I were left with my father. Mer- 
cifully the first sharpness of our grief wore itself away. Then 
came an interval of peace, so serene that even yet it is sweet to 
look back upon. At that time it was that " 

Seeing that she hesitated blushingly, Stanislaus, glancing at 
her with a look full of tenderness and pride, took up her words. 

" It was then, madame, that the Countess Aglae Levonowski 
did me the great honor of promising to become my wife." 

Mrs. Arlworth remembered, with a feeling of pardonable ex- 
ultation, her first surmise concerning her Polish cook. The re- 
membrance imparted a more benevolent sweetness to the smile 
with which she regarded the look exchanged between the lovers. 

" I was then eighteen," Aglae went on. " The interval of 
peace, alas! was not of long duration. In a few weeks an in- 
surrection, which had been plotting for some time, broke out. 
It was headed by my father and Count Paul Krakowski, the 
father of Stanislaus. Sergius and Stanislaus, too, were among 
the leaders. It was a mad attempt. It is only the intense and 
despairing love of my countrymen for the land they still, un- 
reasoningly, call their country, that gives the faintest excuse for 
such recklessness. 

"To finish my story, madame. The insurrection ended as 
every similar attempt for Poland has done. In a fortnight the 
peasants, of whom the band was mostly composed, were killed 
or imprisoned. My brave brother fell, shot through the heart. 
My father was wounded ; Count Paul Krakowski was taken pris- 
oner, and " 

" Do not fear to say it, Aglae," interposed Krakowski, 
with pale face and blazing eyes. " His life was the forfeit, 
madame, for his love of Poland. The last acre of our estates 
was confiscated. The old Count Levonowski and myself were 
reduced to beggary, to accepting the charity of the peasants 
who had refused to join us, and who gave us food and shelter 
until we could safely leave the country. O Aglae ! " he cried 
passionately, " shall I ever forget the agony of the moment when 
I bade you farewell, and gave my word of honor to your father 
that I would not claim your promise until I could offer you 
comfort and independence ? " 



398 A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. [Dec., 

Aglae's hand closed tenderly over his, and there were tears 
in her eyes and his as they looked at each other. 

After a slight pause, she continued : " When my father had 
recovered sufficiently and could safely venture to leave his 
hiding-place, we made our way to America. When we left our 
home I took with me my mother's jewel-casket. It was by the 
sale of its contents that we contrived to reach America and 
live here until my father's death. After that I found employ- 
ment and a good home with you, madame. And there is no 
more to tell, for Stanislaus has come to seek me." 

" I thank you, madame, for the kindness Aglae has received 
in your home. She has not told you, because she has not yet 
heard, by what blessing of heaven I am enabled at last to 
claim her without violating the promise I make to her father. 
In one word it is told. Luck, if you will Providence, I prefer. 
Enough that from the ends of the earth so should I call the 
diamond-fields of Africa, where the never-to-be-forgotten kind- 
ness of a friend enabled me to settle and invest I have brought 
a modest fortune. I have worked hard and suffered much, but 
my reward is exceedingly great." 

And as Mrs. Arlworth observed the smile that illuminated 
Aglae's face she heartily agreed with the close of his speech. 

"I hope, dear madame," the Pole continued, "you will not 
think me unreasonable if I am in haste as only those can be 
who have loved and waited as we have to claim my reward. 
In one week, I have told Aglae, she must be my wife." 

As Mrs. Arlworth could interpose no reasonable objection to 
this arrangement, the wedding took place the following week. 

Never, they say, before or since, has there knelt in St. 
Adelbert's Church that edifice which, erected by the poor Poles 
of one of our large American cities, almost vies with some of 
the old world cathedrals so beautiful a bride. 

In accordance with the Polish custom, the ceremony was 
followed by a drive around the city, in which all the wedding 
guests participated, after which Stanislaus and Aglae, blissfully 
certain that they had well earned an extended holiday, departed 
on the conventional wedding journey. On their return they 
decided to remain in the city where Aglae had spent such lonely 
and laborious but peaceful years. Krakowski built a fine house 
in the Polish settlement, where Aglae soon came to be known and 
loved as the ministering angel to all who were sick or sorrowful. 

"Almost as romantic a story as that of ' The Bohemian Girl,' ' 
remarked Dr. Redfern. " But the fact is that the imagination of 



1894-] A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. 399 

poet or novelist never conceived of situations in romance half 
so wonderful as many things which happen under our own eyes 
almost every day. But what on earth can be going on outside ? " 

A faint shriek outside the door, followed by a succession of 
hoarse shouts of delight in a man's voice, and then a sound of 
mingled sobbing and laughter, was the tumult which called forth 
this exclamation. Gervase rose hastily and opened the door. 
The others rose also and followed at a little distance. 

" Ha, Bruno ! " called Gervase, as several large dogs came 
bounding into the room, " what has happened with you ? You 
have found somebody in the Pass." 

The tinkling of bells was heard, and Gervase, looking out, 
saw his comrade assisting a woman from the back of a mule.- 
Beside another mule stood a young man with his left arm in a 
sling, and around his curly head, from which his fur cap had 
fallen, a bandage was wound. With his sound limb he was en- 
deavoring to help Bruno to lift the form of the woman from 
the mule's back. The dogs ran in and out barking joyously, as 
though they felt themselves important actors in a great drama. 

" Found somebody ! Well may you say so, Gervase. And 
that somebody has found somebody else who was given up for 
dead. Praise be to God ! Oh, it is wonderful ! " 

All crowded around to hear, heedless of the keen air. 

" This good girl here," went on Brother Bruno " this is 
Lisette Fauchon, the housekeeper at the Chateau Belvoir, who 
was married five years ago to the gardener, Pierre Lebrun, that 
young fellow there. They were the happiest pair in the village 
until like a thunderclap came the order for Pierre to go to the 
war. He was drawn in the conscription, poor lad, and had not 
the money to buy a substitute. 

" Well, to cut a long story short, it was soon given out that 
Pierre Lebrun had fallen in the war. It was reported he was 
killed in one of the battles, I forget which ;. and Lisette mourned 
him as dead. 

" But Lisette had a dream last night which made her resolve 
to come to the Hospice to night to attend the midnight Mass. 
I picked her up as she came up the Pass from my side, and 
just as we got here we met none other than Pierre Lebrun him- 
self coming back from the wars to look for his good wife. He 
was not killed but lay under a heap of dead, and got off with 
the loss of only an arm. But he was reported amongst those 
dead, and he was unable to write or do anything else, poor 
fellow, for a long time, his case was so bad. And they met 
here at the very door." 



400 A CHRISTMAS IN CLOUDLAND. [Dec., 

" Parbleu ! A wonderful confirmation of your profound re- 
flection, monsieur," exclaimed M. de Brissac, turning to the doc- 
tor. " It is one touching reunion one de'notiment most affecting." 

" Let us go in and talk over it," replied Dr. Redfern. 
" Come, Bella dear, or you will take cold." 

" Oh ! let me stay here just for a moment," pleaded his wife. 
Did you ever see so glorious a sight ? One can never have an- 
other view like this in all their lifetime." 

She pointed upwards as she spoke, and Dr. Redfern for the 
first time cast his eyes in the same direction. He stood as if 
spellbound by the sublimity of the spectacle. An irresistible 
feeling of worship was the sensation which instantly fell upon 
both as they gazed out upon the vast profound. 

Is there any power in mortal pm to depict the awful mag- 
nificence of a mid-winter night on the summits of these Alpine 
peaks? There is none able to approach the task even remotely. 
Such splendor of the heavens, such mysterious beauty of the 
enigmatical gulf of infinite space, such endless succession of 
clusters of constellations, such majesty of blazing planets, such 
incessant gleaming of iris-hued meteors, such vast phantoms of 
mountain-peaks shimmering in lakes of ether, such thundering of 
torrents in the rocky abysses below. 

But the stars the overpowering beauty of the shining hosts 
of stars that cover the vast mantle of night who can conceive 
of their wondrous lustre, as it is revealed in those great alti- 
tudes in the thin, clear air? They seem to grow in bewildering 
number, until the sight recoils in pain from the labor of track- 
ing each constellation through space ; the larger orbs gleam up- 
on us in steely beauty like near electric globes; rays of prisms 
dance around them ; shafts of light bridge incessantly the im- 
measurable gulf of space which lies between the eye and them. 

But even in the summer he must be a hardy wight who 
stands long in the open air to watch the stars and the spectral 
mountains in the region of the Alps, on such a height as that 
of the great St. Bernard. Every night, even during the sum- 
mer, the frost is keen in the air. 

" Come, dear, let us tear ourselves away," said the doctor, 
at last drawing his wife's arm tenderly within his own. " Let us 
go inside and look at the Crib ; they tell me it is very beauti- 
ful. It will not be long until we shall hear the bell for the 
midnight Mass. Thank God there is such a place as the Alps 
such a house as the Hospice on them to bear witness to his 
love and chanty, as well as the sublimity of his handiwork." 




1894-] ANCIENT MAMMALS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS. 401 

ANCIENT MAMMALS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS. 
BY WILLIAM SETON, LL.D. 

OME millions of years ago, before the dawn of the 
Tertiary age which is divided into three epochs, 
namely the Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene the 
old world, as well as the new, was inhabited by 
low, generalized forms of mammals, apparently 
marsupials,* known mostly by scattered teeth and portions of 
the backbone ; and it is from them that other and higher types 
were evolved. We say evolved, for, as the root of all progress 
lies in a correct system of thought, if we abandon the working 
hypothesis of evolution, we may as well give up the study of 
natural history. It is interesting to observe that marsupials first 
appear in different parts of the globe at the same geological 
horizon, viz., the Triassic. Before this period no traces of them 
are discovered, and whether non-placental mammals had their 
earliest habitat in the so-called Old World or in America is 
uncertain ; it has even been suggested that the primitive marsu- 
pials may have originated in some continent now covered by 
the sea. 

EVOLUTION OF ANIMAL LIFE. 

With the opening of the tertiary age the placental mam- 
malian fauna, which, as we know, are of a higher type of life 
than the marsupials and egg-laying monotremes, become so 
abundant that this portion of the world's history has been called 
the age of mammals. 

But let us remark that in passing from the reptile to the 
mammal era there is no abrupt change in the life system ; and 
in no part of the world is the transition so clearly perceived as 
in North America. In Colorado and Wyoming we have a con- 
tinuous series of conformable rocks, deposited in brackish water 
changing gradually into fresh, where dinosaurian reptiles are 
found side by side with tertiary plants. And through the efforts 
of Professor Marsh these rocks, which pass without a break 
from the cretaceous into the tertiary, and which are known as 
the Laramie, have yielded lately a number of mammal teeth. 

* Semi-oviparous mammals, in which the embryonic development is completed outside 
the uterus in the pouch (marsupium). 

VOL. LX. 26 



4O2 ANCIENT MAMMALS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS. [Dec., 

Indeed, we may accept it as true that wherever there appears 
to be a gap in the record, a break in the life-system, it is ow- 
ing to our not having yet discovered the intermediate forms. 
But every few years, as the record of the rocks is further and 
more carefully searched, some new link comes to light which 
diminishes the distance between one genus and another genus, 
and every transition form thus discovered tells in favor of the 
hypothesis of evolution. At the very base of the eocene, in 
the WahsatcJi beds of western North America, we find the Phe- 
nacodus, the most generalized placental mammal yet known. It 
has five toes on each foot, and each toe ends in a blunt nail 
which is neither claw nor hoof, but intermediate between the 
two: and the Phenacodus is now considered to be the common 
ancestor of all the odd and even toed ungulates or hoofed mam- 
mals, while good authorities hold it to be also the common an- 
cestor of other orders now widely distinct. And when we study 
the early tertiary mammals all of which have exceedingly small 
brains even when accompanied by immense bodies they cer- 
tainly impress us as the growth of several stems from a com- 
mon root ; as time goes on these stems become more and more 
developed and differentiated, until at length some turn into 
carnivorous and others into herbivorous mammals. It is also 
interesting to find that more than one genus in the early ter- 
tiary is the very same in Europe as in America ; and this points 
not only to unity of origin, but also to the former connection 
of two widely separated portions of the earth. During the first 
division of the tertiary (eocene) the high plateau of western 
North America was occupied by several very large lakes, and 
the climate was tropical. 

A SIX-HORNED MONSTER. 

Among the wonderful animals that roamed along the shores 
of these lakes the most curious belonged to an extinct order 
the Dinocerata.* These creatures, which were discovered by 
Marsh in 1870, looked half elephant and half rhinoceros. The 
legs, however, were shorter than an elephant's, there were five 
toes on each foot, and it is calculated that when alive the 
dinoceras must have weighed between two and three tons. Be- 
sides having six horns, it had in the upper jaw two razor-like 
teeth ; but well-armed as it was, it must have been a stupid 
beast, for no other mammal living or extinct had so small a 
brain in proportion to its bulk. Yet in this respect, viz., small- 

* See Marsh's monograph, The Dinocerata, in United States Geological Survey, vol. x. 



1894-] ANCIENT MAMMALS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS. 403 

ness of brain, it resembled all the early tertiary mammals. The 
dinoceras may be considered to be a generalized type ; that is 
to say, it combined characters which are found in several kinds 
of existing quadrupeds. 

Towards the close of the eocene epoch the dinoceras dis- 
appeared, and Marsh attributes its extinction to its not being 
able to adapt itself to new conditions, perhaps of geography. 
But the geological record does not furnish evidence of any sud- 
den change great enough to account for the dying out of these 
elephantine beasts. May it not be that, instead of becoming ex- 
tinct, the dinocerata migrated to more favorable regions? For 
the fact that their fossil remains have not been discovered else- 
where is no proof against migration. 

PROBABLE MIGRATION OF LOST SPECIES. 

In the same eocene sediment of Wyoming, along with the 
dinoceras is preserved the Eohippus, the first of the series of 
fossil horses. It was a small animal, not bigger than a fox, 
with four toes and a rudimentary one on its fore feet, and 
three toes on its hind feet, which shows that this primitive an- 
cestor of Equus had already diverged somewhat from the other 
five-toed mammals among which it lived. At a little later horizon 
of this same epoch we find the eohippus developed into the 
orohippus. The orohippus is larger, it has lost the rudimentary 
toe of the fore foot, and is more like the animal we call a horse 
than the eohippus. During the same period as the dinoceras and 
eohippus there flourished in the Rocky Mountain region a mam- 
mal that is now found only in Mexico and South America, viz., 
the tapir. 

We also discover in the eocene strata of our continent the 
typical American pig, and we can trace this pig upwards through 
the several succeeding epochs to our own day, where it is re- 
presented by the existing peccary. We also find near the base 
of the eocene the line of ruminants leading up to the llama 
and camel. But like the primeval horse, this cameloid form is 
very generalized, and it is not until long afterwards that it de- 
velops into the true camel and llama. But when the true camel 
does appear it is as abundant in North America as the true 
horse: and let us say that both horse and camel survived here 
until up to a comparatively recent date ; while the llama still 
survives in South America. We may also remark that the bet- 
ter opinion is that the old world received its camels from Ameri- 
ca by way of the land-bridge at Behring's Straits. 



404 ANCIENT MAMMALS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS. [Dec., 

THE ADVENT OF THE CAT. 

Although in the eocene epoch the typical fdidce had not yet 
appeared, nevertheless towards the close of this first division of 
the tertiary there abounded in the Rocky Mountain region a 
carnivorous animal, the Limnofelis y which was allied to the cats 
and almost as big as a lion. Another group of animals found 
in the eocene strata of New Mexico, and at its very base, are 
the Primates. They are, as we know, the highest in the class 
of mammals. But as might be expected, these earliest forms 
were low, generalized types allied to the lemurs (at present con- 
fined chiefly to Madagascar) and showing affinities with the 
carnivores and ungulates. These early primates were also at 
this period widely spread over Europe, Asia, and Africa. But 
it is a curious fact that the true monkeys are not found in 
North America after the succeeding miocene epoch (and they 
are all below the old world monkeys). While man, the highest 
in the order, does not appear with certainty until the post-plio- 
cene ; although, according to Marsh, there exists some slender 
evidence that he lived in the American pliocene. But all the 
fossil remains that have till now come to light on our continent 
since this epoch belong undoubtedly to Genus Homo and to 
only one species of the genus, namely, the American Indian. 

THE ANCESTOR OF THE WHALE. 

It is in the middle of the eocene that the first aquatic mam- 
mal, the Zeuglodon, makes its appearance ; and good authorities 
hold that in this whale-like creature (which was probably seven- 
ty feet long, and whose fossil remains are plentiful in Georgia 
and Alabama) we have the transition form which connects the 
existing whales, porpoises, and dolphins with the other mam- 
mals. And certainly no mammals are more interesting than 
those which have assumed the shape of fish. These warm- 
blooded creatures suckle their young like other members of the 
class, and they are obliged now and again to rise to the sur- 
face in order to breathe. Their fore-limbs have become modi- 
fied into a pair of flippers, while their hind-limbs have quite 
disappeared externally, and in the whale only faint traces of 
them are discovered deeply buried in the muscles. Their skin 
is smooth and naked, instead of being covered with scales, 
while around the mouth of the young whale are often found 
a small number of bristles, and these bristles point to its de- 
scent from ordinary mammals. We may add that only for the 



1894-] ANCIENT MAMMALS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS. 405 

layer of fat which encloses the whole body, the whale's blood 
would soon become chilled by the water. 

MIOCENE. 

We have now arrived at the second division of the tertiary, 
viz., the Miocene. By this time the dinoceras, as we have said, 
had either become extinct or had migrated. But another mam- 
mal equally huge makes its appearance, namely, the Brontops, 
which was more closely allied to the existing rhinoceros than 
to any other living animal. It had one pair of horns and pro- 
bably a flexible nose, like the tapir. 

In this epoch we also discover the fossil remains of the Me- 
sohippus, which is even more horse-like than orohippus. The 
fore feet have only three toes and a rudimentary splint, and 
there are still three toes on the hind feet. Mesohippus was as 
big as a sheep. 

During the miocene epoch there also lived in North Ameri- 
ca a singular animal called the Oreodon. It was of a highly 
generalized structure, for we find blended in it the characters 
of the hog, deer, and camel ; and Professor Leidy has named 
it a ruminating hog. Let us add that the oreodon, which was 
so abundant during this epoch, did not survive beyond the fol- 
lowing pliocene. 

SIMULTANEOUS ARRIVAL OF THE APE AND THE TIGER. 

Towards the end of the miocene a dangerous animal, the 
Machairodus, appeared in Europe. We might call it a sabre- 
toothed tiger, from its sharp, curved tusks, which projected eight 
inches beyond the mouth. At about the same time the first 
true monkeys are found in the Old World : previous to this the 
lemurs had been the sole representatives of the primates out- 
side of America. And let us add that the non-placental mam- 
mals the marsupials which had seemingly become extinct in 
America at the beginning of the eocene, now show themselves 
again in this epoch as opossums. 

It is commonly held, too, by scientists that it was during 
the miocene that the horse, rhinoceros, camel, pig, and deer 
(all distinctively American types) made their way into Asia by 
way of the isthmus at Behring's Straits ; while the bear and the 
antelope, which are not considered as primitive American types, 
proceeded in a contrary direction from Asia to America. But 
the giraffe, hippopotamus, and hyena did not reach America 
at all owing to the fact that the miocene land-bridge had dis- 
appeared by the time they got to Behring's Straits, 



406 ANCIENT MAMMALS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS. [Dec., 

PLIOCENE. 

When we ascend from the Miocene strata into the Pliocene 
one of the first fossils we meet with is the Protohippus, which 
is decidedly more like a horse than mesohippus. It is as big 
as a pony ; each foot still preserves three toes, but of these 
three only one the middle one touches the ground. And 
here let us say that the American protohippus corresponds very 
closely to the Hipparion of Europe. A little higher in the 
pliocene strata we discover the Pliohippus, which has only one 
toe, or, as we say, hoof, and is even still more horse like than 
protohippus. But it is not until we reach the very topmost 
strata of this last division of the tertiary that the evolutionary 
change is complete and the true horse makes its appearance. 
It is almost unnecessary to add that in this unbroken genealogy 
of Equus we have the best evidence of evolution that can be 
given at present, and for these several transition forms, begin- 
ning with the diminutive eohippus of the eocene and leading up 
to the large and noble animal of our day, we are solely indebt- 
ed to Professor Marsh, whose unequalled collection in the Yale 
College museum is worth going far to see. Let us observe, 
moreover, that when a scientific theory puts us in the way of 
correctly predicting what is to be discovered, this theory is 
thereby greatly strengthened and confirmed. Now, in 1870, 
Huxley wrote: "If the expectation raised by the splints of the 
horses, that in some ancestor of the horses these splints would 
be found to be complete digits, has been verified, we are fur- 
nished with very strong reasons for looking for a no less com- 
plete verification that the three-toed plagiolophus-like ' avus ' of 
the horse must have had a five-toed 'atavus' at some earlier 
period. No such five-toed 'atavus/ however, has yet made its 
appearance." But since this was written eohippus, as we know, 
has been discovered with four well marked toes and one rudi- 
mentary toe, and this certainly comes very near to the desired 
five-toed ancestor. 

But equus is not the only animal whose genealogy, by the 
discovery of missing links, has been completed by Marsh. He 
has also traced the pedigree of the rhinoceros up from the lower 
eocene; nor was its primitive ancestor, which was found embed- 
ded in the Wyoming lake basins, much larger than the primi- 
tive ancestor of the horse. And like equus, the American 
rhinoceros became extinct long ago ; it disappeared in this epoch, 
the pliocene, but what caused it to disappear we do not know. 



1894-] ANCIENT MAMMALS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS. 407 

DIFFERENT TYPES IN NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA. 
It is at the beginning of this last division of the tertiary 
that the bison and mastodon make their appearance in the 
Mississippi valley ; but the genus Elephas is not found here 
until near the close of the epoch. It is also an interesting fact 
that during the pliocene, but not earlier, we discover in South 
America North American types, and in North America South 
American types ; and this would indicate that the Isthmus of 
Panama did not rise above the sea until this epoch, and it was 
probably a much broader isthmus then than now. There were, 
however, many peculiar animals in South America long before 
the pliocene. And let us add that the hoofed mammals of 
South America are extremely isolated and differ widely from 
those of North America, while the South American marsupials 
comprise not only the opossum, but other non-placental forms 
nearly allied to those which have only recently become extinct 
in Australia ; and this last fact would seem to render more 
plausible the theory of a former land connection between Pata- 
gonia and the Australian region. Von Zittel, in his learned 
work, lately translated, The Geological Development of tJie Mam- 
malia, holds it not unreasonable to suppose that South America 
may at an early period of the tertiary have been connected 
with South Africa as well as with Australia, and that from these 
parts of the world it may have received its first mammals. 

THE HAIRY MAMMOTH. 

With the close of the Tertiary, divided, as we have said, in- 
to the Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene epochs, we find ourselves 
approaching what is called the Ice age, or glacial period, when 
from some cause, not yet satisfactorily explained, a good part 
of the northern hemisphere suffered a temporary change of cli- 
mate, and extensive glaciers spread far to the south. It was 
now that the mammoth, erroneously named E.lephas primigenius, 
appeared, whose hairy covering made it well suited to endure 
the cold. The musk ox an aberrant form allied to the sheep 
was also quite common at this time in regions where to-day 
it does not exist, owing to the heat ; while in France the rein- 
deer wandered down even to the Pyrenees. But in North Ameri- 
ca the mammoth did not go east of the Rocky Mountains, nor 
south of the Columbia River. 

THE RUMINANTS. 

Compared with the epochs which preceded the ice age we 
may be said to be living to-day in an impoverished world as 
regards the larger mammals, the dominant type of which at 



4o8 ANCIENT MAMMALS AND THEIR DESCENDANTS. [Dec., 

present are ruminants, such as oxen, antelope, deer. And let 
us remark that the function of chewing the cud, or ruminating, 
is no doubt of advantage to such of these animals as have re- 
mained wild, while in past ages it must have been of even 
greater advantage to them. Rumination, as we know, consists 
in reversing the muscles of the throat, and thereby throwing up 
into the mouth the grass and leaves which had been swallowed 
as soon as plucked and then deposited in a special compart- 
ment of the stomach. When the food is thus thrown up into 
the mouth it is masticated and then sent down again but this 
time into the stomach proper to be digested. Now, the ad- 
vantage of rumination is that it allows the animal to rapidly 
take in a large amount of food (all herbivores are great eaters),, 
and after this food has been swallowed the animal may scam- 
per off to its hiding place and there digest it at leisure. 

In our age ruminants are provided with antlers and horns ; 
but we know by fossil remains that there was a time when they 
either had no such weapons, or when their horns and antlers 
were too small and weak to be of any use. 

We may also observe that far apart as the two groups were 
placed in the life-time of Cuvier, it is now ascertained, through 
late palaeontological researches, that the cud-chewing mammals 
and the swine are nearly related and in extinct forms the tran- 
sition between them can be plainly perceived. 

ANTIQUITY OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT, 

We conclude by saying that no part of the yet geologically 
explored world has yielded such wonderful treasures as the 
ancient lake basins of western North America, and for discover- 
ing and describing these fossils we are indebted to the Ameri- 
can scientists Marsh, Cope, and Leidy ; and what they have 
brought to light has greatly changed our ideas of mammalian 
evolution. We know now that mammals with claws and mam- 
mals with hoofs are merely variations from a common ancestral 
type which appeared at the very dawn of the mammal era.*" 
And in studying the fossil mammalia of North America we are 
struck by an interesting fact, viz., that the fauna of our Eocene, 
Miocene, and Pliocene epochs are not the exact equivalents of 
those epochs in the old world : the American mammals appear 
to be older. And this confirms what is beginning to be generally 
recognized, viz., that it was from here that the majority of mam- 
mals first migrated, and that America is in reality the Old World. 

* The point of union between mammals and reptiles will probably be found in a type con- 
necting monotremes and marsupials. 




1894-] MISSIONARY EXPERIENCES. 409 



MISSIONARY EXPERIENCES ON THE "CLEVELAND 

PLAN." 

BY REV. WALTER ELLIOTT. 
MISSION AT GREEN SPRING. 

OUR nights were all that we could give to this 
little village, our first mission in the diocese of 
Cleveland ; and we were sorry not to be able to 
give more. Fifty persons listened to the opening 
lecture, ninety to the second, and one hundred 
and fifteen and one hundred and seventy respectively, to the 
last two. Not a minister appeared in the hall, though there are 
three resident in the place, and very few Protestant women 
came, for they have been led through misrepresentation to look 
upon our priesthood as something unclean. Catholics are scarce 
in the neighborhood, nor had we more than a score of them any 
night some stalwarts, some weaklings. Among our most atten- 
tive hearers were some fallen-off Catholics. 

Two nights we drove to and from the pastor's town, six 
miles away, having missed the train, or the train having missed 
us by being late. The rain held back our audience the first two 
nights dismal autumnal showers. As we sat waiting for our 
hour of opening, and for our audience, we both felt and finally 
said to each other that there should be no such village in America 
without its annual series of public meetings conducted by Catho- 
lic missionaries or semi-annual ones. Should any neighborhood 
in free America remain unevangelized ? 

There is a little Catholic church at Green Spring, attended 
once a month. The Catholics, few and badly scattered, are 
practically without public life. How they hailed our meetings ! 
How glad they were to see their Protestant neighbors, even in 
small numbers, listening to their religion, publicly called on to 
question its representatives. Even the good-natured Protestants 
are pleased to see the Catholic Church stepping out into the 
open, its reticence broken by a loud appeal to fair play as well 
as to the religious sense, taking its place among the claimants 
for spiritual allegiance. How soon shall we not see Holy 
Church easily first before men's eyes, once she emerges from 
the catacombs. 



410 MISSIONARY EXPERIENCES. [Dec., 

My pastor is a tall man of fine bearing and manly beauty. 
Part of our advertisement was to parade together through the 
short street of the village, smiling and bowing right and left, as 
if to say " Look at the big, hearty American men who are 
among you to speak about the old Catholic Church come and 
hear us ! " Often the passers-by would stand and gaze after us. 

In the question box our only abundant matter was furnished 
by the Seventh-day Adventists, for their propaganda had won 
over a little band of fanatics. They seemed to be surprised 
that I took the Protestant side of the controversy on the ques- 
tion of Sunday observance, and then they deluged us with angry 
interrogatories. I maintained that, first, a " Bible Christian," one 
who holds to the private interpretation of the Scriptures as the 
only rule of faith, can and must believe that the entire cere- 
monial law of the Jews is totally abolished by Christ, including 
all liturgical observances whatever, no less the Jewish Sabbath 
than the Jewish sacrifice. Second, I maintained with the Cate- 
chism of the Council of Trent that there is evidence in the 
New Testament of the selection by the Apostles of the Sunday 
as a substitute for the Mosaic Sabbath ; and if the texts are not 
conclusive of an obligation, they are still plainly indicative of 
the apostolic origin of the new custom. That gave me ample 
opportunity to demonstrate the need of church authority in 
such matters; but the two points above stated compel us, I am 
sure, to take sides against the Adventists. I dread their fanati- 
cism. If they ever grow strong, the Sunday is gone from our 
public courts and legislatures, from the industrial and domestic 
life of the people an incalculable loss to religion. These new 
sectarians are making converts in many places, full of deadly 
hatred of the Catholic Church, some of whose exponents have, 
unhappily, supplied them with their most effective weapons to 
unsettle Protestant belief and practice on the question of Sun- 
day observance. 

The mayor of the village, a fine old veteran, attended every 
lecture. After our last one he said : " Gentlemen, this is the 
best thing for our town that has happened for many a day. 
The idea that a Catholic priest would appear openly in a public 
hall to lecture on religion, offering to answer all questions, was 
something never thought possible. A Catholic priest was looked 
on as something like a lion, mostly concealed in his lair, and 
only appearing outside when it was safe to do so ; and then 
only for purposes of depredation." 

The question box here was not fruitful of novelties. Nuns, 



1894-] MISSIONARY EXPERIENCES. 411 

why they cannot " talk to the public," the difference between 
them and Sisters of Charity, why nuns do not marry, why 
priests do not marry, why Catholics allow habitual drunkards to 
remain in the church, where purgatory is, what sinning against 
the Holy Ghost is, whether secret societies are a benefit or a 
curse to this nation such were the common run of our ques- 
tions, in addition to the perplexities of the Sabbatarians. " They 
can't run down the Catholic sisters to me," said an old soldier 
to us, as we waited for the train after our closing lecture ; 
" they saved my life in the Nashville Hospital, where I was 
suffering from a severe wound in the spring and summer of 
1863." 

And so we were done with Green Spring and very sorry 
that we could not stay longer, very hopeful to be able to go 
there again. 

MISSION AT THOMASVILLE. 

Armory Hall, in which we held our six meetings, was the 
scene of the annual reunion of the Seventy-second Regiment a 
few days before we opened. Both the pastor and myself were 
invited to speak to the veterans and their friends, and this 
served to introduce us to the Thomasville public. They saw us 
associated with the leading men of the place, and they heard 
our profession of faith in the American Republic. 

The town, whose population does not reach three thousand, 
is full of bigots. The A. P. A. movement is strong, and its 
venom is peculiarly bitter. Though it has no help from the lo- 
cal press, which has been won and held for the right side by 
the pastor, it counts many members and openly boasts of its 
power. Yet, curiously enough, from first to last we had a repre- 
sentation of the lodge at the lectures. When the night for* their 
own meeting came they postponed it, and the foremost agita- 
tors, with a good contingent of other members, were in our au- 
dience. The effect can only be a good one. These lodges have 
but a precarious existence at best. They constantly have to con- 
tend against many of the better-informed Protestants, whose con- 
demnation of them is outright and even public, and is scornful and 
quite unsparing. Meantime, since they are a vote-making insti- 
tution, they soon fall under control of local politicians ; after 
that the zealots quickly begin to tire of being handled by vote- 
brokers, and the movement dwindles and disappears. 

We opened Monday night, and had an audience of three 
hundred, something over half being non-Catholics. By Wednes- 



412 MISSIONARY EXPERIENCES. [Dec., 

day night we had over four hundred and fifty and the hall 
looked crowded, many additional seats being brought in. But 
Thursday night it rained hard, and our space was only half 
filled, and the same may be said of Friday night ; but at the 
close, on Saturday night, though it rained some and threatened 
to rain hard, we had a splendid attendance, and said good-by 
in a high state of good humor. 

Among our most attentive listeners was the superintendent 
of the public schools, a man of much intelligence and respecta- 
ble scholastic acquirements. But consider this : he wanted to 
know, through the query box, how we could reconcile the ad- 
mitted cruelty of the Spanish Inquisition with the doctrine of 
church infallibility, as that dogma supposes the church to be 
wholly saved from every moral as well as doctrinal failing. Of 
course it was easy to answer that infallibility of the church does 
not mean security of her rulers from all wrong-doing, and also 
to show that Catholicity is not responsible for the Spanish In- 
quisition ; but it is pitiful that a man may be the head of the 
state schools in a bright Ohio town and need to be told such a 
thing as that. He is to be blamed himself, yet he is an honest 
man ; and may God soon send us such a propaganda of Catho- 
lic truth as will prevent the possibility of any educated Ameri- 
can being similarly deluded ! 

As at Green Spring so here, no Protestant ministers attend- 
ed. Nor did we get a hearing from the prominent church offi- 
cials ; but many members of churches were present. It enlivens 
one to face such an audience as was gathered in Armory Hall. 
There were our own Catholic people making sacrifices to attend, 
many of them having driven several miles through the rain ; 
they were proud and happy and looked so, highly delighted 
to hear the questions answered, to hear the familiar Catho- 
lic doctrines and practices affirmed, proved, illustrated, and pro- 
claimed as the dearest birthright of humanity, as well as urged 
for acceptance on their Protestant neighbors and friends. There 
were the Protestants, whose eyes never seemed to wander from 
the lecturer's face, whose attention was fixed from first to last. 
Of course in speaking publicly one can never make quite suie 
of the effect of his words, but what more can one ask than at- 
tentive listeners to the truth of God ? Do you want bigoted 
anti-Catholics to suddenly turn into monks and nuns ? The work 
of converting a nation is necessarily one of deep faith in results 
which the pioneers never can hope to see. One must begin 
away back and look far forward, content to get an audience. 



1894-] MISSIONARY EXPERIENCES. 413 

If our appliances, our advertisements, the zealous solicitation of 
our own Catholic people can secure non-Catholic attendance at 
public lectures, that alone places the missionaries face to face 
with an imperative duty, places the church herself in that atti- 
tude, and especially the men and women who feel the inner fire 
of apostolic zeal. Nor does this hinder the hope of seeing some 
immediate results, and at our last meeting a direct appeal was 
made for study and prayer about Catholic claims, with a view 
to discovering the true religion. 

Another sign of how very far off we are from the non-Catho- 
lic world in this section was the lack of questions. We had a 
few every night, but nothing like the number we had hoped for. 
We were compelled to ask some of the more important questions 
ourselves as introductions to the lectures. But we got pretty 
nearly all our doctrines before our public in some shape or some 
connection. Of course we were tagged after by the Seventh day 
Adventists, they first hoping to set us on the other Protestants 
for keeping Sunday without warrant of Scripture ; and then spit- 
ting fire at us for refusing to become their allies. These Ad- 
ventists are a class of persons who mistake their own vindictive 
feelings for emotions of piety inspired by God. One must be 
careful to hold his temper with them, and should not allow them 
to get too much time by misusing the query box. Our Catholic 
people are sometimes quite piqued that we do not vigorously 
cut and slash at the regular anti-Catholics in the community. 
I had an instance in this place. One day, while taking a walk 
towards the country, I got a bow from an old man digging 
potatoes. I stopped and chatted with him a genuine old- 
country specimen of the church militant. As I resumed my 
walk and bade him good-by he called after me, " Give them 
Hail Columbia, father ; don't spare them ! " 

This was the mission at which we first began to work on 
our " Cleveland Plan." The bishop of this diocese has long 
contemplated systematic evangelization of the non-Catholics in 
his diocese, and the Paulists are fortunate enough to be able to 
assist him. Our community offered him my services for his first 
year, to co-operate with his own priests while they are getting 
settled to the work. The bishop's purpose is a separate house 
which shall be the rendezvous of a small number of active lec- 
turers, working in every section of the diocese, wholly freed, for 
a term of years, from parish duty. To support them and pay 
the expenses of their apostolate, at least in part, they are to 
give some missions to the faithful, the stipends from which, to- 



414 MISSIONARY EXPERIENCES. [Dec., 

gether with the contributions of zealous benefactors, will form 
a missionary fund. Is it not encouraging to find God the Holy 
Ghost thus inspiring men in different places and in different en- 
vironments with the same apostolic zeal? Father Hecker's life 
purpose, as soon as it begins to take practical shape, finds in 
this diocese a similar enterprise ready to be set on foot, an en- 
lightened prelate, competent priests, enthusiastic laity, all glad 
to welcome a Paulist as a co-laborer in the holy cause of con- 
verting America. And the least inquiry reveals the same en- 
couraging conditions everywhere among us members of religious 
communities glad to work for their board and lodging and en- 
tirely without stipend, and numerous diocesan priests burning 
with zeal to be set free from parish duties in order to devote 
themselves, for some years at least, to that portion of their 
Master's vineyard which is ravaged by the wild beast of heresy. 

So at this mission I had a regular associate, Father Wil- 
liam Stevens Kress, soon to be relieved from all parish duty 
and set apart for non-Catholic missions. Two or three others 
will join him, and before long they will have their own house as 
a centre of operations and a quiet home for the necessary pre- 
paration. They will add to the church in the diocese of Cleve- 
land that forceful, resistless power of public agitation for Christ's 
Church which belongs to it as an essential quality. 

For Father Kress and myself to give alternate discourses 
the same evening added vastly to the attractiveness -of the 
meetings. We chose different aspects of our topic, made our 
selections, and between us gave a fuller and altogether a more 
impressive statement. We felt our souls elevated into the third 
heaven to be thus yoked together to the chariot of the Lord. 
Perhaps we were unduly elated, for I noticed a prodigal ex- 
penditure of voice and action in our addresses some of the 
evenings. The Protestants must have thought us the most earn- 
est lecturers they had ever heard, and earnestness is the stamp 
of the mint on the precious metal the truth. 





1894-] A NOBLE ARAB MARTYR. 415 

A NOBLE ARAB MARTYR. 

BY M. J. L. 

'HE other day, as I was listening to some old 
familiar words which have been sounding now 
for eighteen hundred years or more, my mind 
travelled back to a fort in Algiers, the Fort des 
Vingt-quatre-Heures, made of huge blocks, which 
for three hundred years remained immovable and silent. But in 
1853 a martyrdom which some people looked upon as an idle 
tale, others as a superstitious legend, was brought to light, and 
the very stones themselves, with undeniable witness, revealed 
the pathetic figure of the Arab martyr, Geronimo. Just three 
hundred and forty-seven years ago a little Arab baby was taken 
prisoner by some Spanish soldiers, and brought to Oran to be 
offered up for sale as a slave. The good Vicar-General, Juan 
Caro, bought him and took him to his own house to educate 
him, and baptized him under the name of Geronimo. When 
the child was eight years old a few Arab slaves made their 
escape from Oran, and believing they were doing the boy a 
kindness, they took him with them ; so for some years he lived 
with his people as a Mohammedan. But the holy faith which 
Juan Caro had planted in the child's heart had taken such firm 
root that his relations could not tear it out. He remained with 
them till he was twenty-five, and then he took a step which he 
knew no Arab could forgive, and which, if he should be recap- 
tured, would lead him with certainty to suffering or death. He 
fled from his home and returned to the vicar-general, and tell- 
ing him of the danger of his flight, he said simply: "It is be- 
cause I wish to live henceforth in the faith of the Divine 
Saviour." 

Juan Caro was so delighted that he received the young Arab 
like a lost child, and Geronimo, on his side, could not show his 
benefactor love and gratitude enough. He soon entered the 
Spanish Guard as a paid soldier, and he performed such brave 
deeds that he attained very high military honors. But the 
height of his joy and ambition was gained when he heard that 
the vicar-general gave his consent and approval to a marriage 
between him and a young Arab girl (also a convert) with whom 



416 A NOBLE ARAB MARTYR. [Dec., 

he had fallen in love. For ten years nothing but happiness 
shone on his life; he won the respect and confidence of all 
around him, he was Juan Caro's right hand, and his wife was as 
a daughter to his adopted father. No shadows seemed to 
cross their path ; no troubles seemed drawing near them. 

One bright May day in 1569 news came to Oran that a 
small Arab encampment had been noticed a short distance off. 
The rumor did not seem of importance ; a handful of Spaniards 
could easily manage the Arabs ; at least so Geronimo must 
have imagined, for he took only nine soldiers and manned a 
little boat, intending to land on the coast where the Arabs had 
assembled. They rowed out of the safe harbor with the sun 
shining on them, and sailed along the blue sea past the coral 
fishery of Mers-el-Kebir, never dreaming of danger, when sud- 
denly two Moorish brigantines, which had been lying secretly 
in wait for them, chased them and ran them down. The nine 
soldiers escaped, but Geronimo, who was too marked a man, was 
seized upon at once, and carried off to Euldj Ali, the Calabrian 
renegade. A great cry spread like wildfire among the Arabs 
throughout Algeria that the Apostate was captured ; that he, 
the traitor, who had abandoned his own people, denied his own 
faith, was lying a prisoner in the fortress, the " Bagno." The 
Moors, who knew his history, made a solemn vow that they 
would restore him to his old religion ; so they began by send- 
ing marabouts to convert him with arguments and fair prom- 
ises. But they returned discomforted to Euldj Ali ; their fine 
words had availed nothing ; the apostate remained immovable. 

A fresh treatment was next tried ; he was loaded with 
chains and treated with the utmost cruelty, and when he was 
faint from torture and scarcely able to speak the marabouts stood 
around him, offering him liberty, power, honor, riches. But no 
offer made him deny his faith, no longing for freedom made 
him forswear for one single moment his religion. Once, after 
some most horrible threat, he raised his poor suffering head, 
and with a voice so weak it could scarcely be heard he said : 
" They think they will make me a Mohammedan ; but that they 
shall never do, even if they kill me." For four months Euldj 
Ali gloated over the daily tortures he was inflicting on Ger- 
onimo ; but at last the very sameness of his cruelty palled upon 
him, and he was determined to invent a new and more hideous 
revenge for the " apostate's obstinacy." One morning the idea 
came to him ; he was examining the works of a fort by the 
gate of Bab-el-Oued, when he saw a block of beton standing by 



1894-] A NOBLE ARAB MARTYR. 417 

the great stones. This block was a mould in the shape of the 
immense stones, filled with a kind of concrete ; when the con- 
crete was sufficiently hardened, the wall was to be built with it. 
Here was the height of torture. Here was the most exquisitely 
painful death a man might devise. The dog of a slave should 
be laid in a similar mould ; the liquid plaster should be poured 
over him ; he should be built alive into the wall ; the renegade 
should be turned into very stone. But as Arabs never act 
hastily, the pasha deliberated most carefully whether this really 
could be the most brutal death he could conceive ; and then, 
believing there was no more effectual means of barbarity, he 
called a Navarrese mason, who was also a Christian slave. 
" Michel," he said, " you see this empty mould of beton ; for 
the present leave it ; I have a mind to make beton of that dog 
of Oran who refuses to come back to the faith of Islam." 
Poor Maitre Michel had to obey, but he finished his day's work 
with a sad heart. As soon as he entered the " Bagno " (for he 
also was a prisoner), he found out Geronimo and told him 
Euldj Ali's command. Geronimo heard the command in perfect 
silence, and then very calmly answered : " God's holy will be 
done. Let not those miserable men think they will frighten me 
out of the faith of Christ by the idea of this cruel death. May 
my blessed Saviour only pardon me my sins and preserve me 
my soul ! " 

The whole of that night this brave young Arab spent in 
prayer and preparation for the death tortures which he knew 
were awaiting him. Must not the memories of his high mili- 
tary honors and fame, the kindness of Juan Caro, the love of 
his fair young wife, have flashed through his overstrung mind 
like some beautiful glittering dream ? Was nothing left ? Noth- 
ing real? Nothing but death so ghastly in its fearful savagery 
that the very life beyond seemed hidden away ? Ah ! it was 
not too late even now. The sentence could still be recalled, 
and greater earthly power than Geronimo ever had was yet 
within his reach. Every line in that martyr's face, as we stood 
before his plaster cast, told us what his cry must have been 
then ; told us silently how his cry for strength was answered. 
Between two and three o'clock next morning a guard sum- 
moned him to the pasha's presence. There he stood, a suffer- 
ing, patient prisoner in chains, before a great multitude of 
Turks and Arabs in all their gorgeous magnificence. Then he 
was dragged by a hooting crowd, striking him and beating him, 
to the gate Bab-el-Oued, where he again stood before the 

VOL. LX. 27 



418 A NOBLE ARAB MARTYR. [Dec., 

pasha, in the midst of his pompous retinue. Euldj Ali then 
addressed him slowly and clearly ; he pointed out every detail 
of the fearful death ; he showed him the blocks of beton, and 
every torture of such a death was carefully explained. He then 
ended his speech with : " Dog ! you refuse to return to the 
faith of the Islam ? " " I am a Christian, and as a Christian 
will I die," was the noble Arab's answer. "As you will," 
replied the pasha. "Then here," pointing to the beton, "shall 
you be buried alive." "Do your will. Death shall not make 
me abandon my faith," were Geronimo's last words. The pasha 
raised his hand, soldiers stepped forward, they removed the 
chain from the prisoner's leg, they bound his hands behind his 
back, they crossed his legs and tied them ; then they took him 
up and laid him face downward into the mould. The plaster 
was poured over him, and Tamango, a renegade Spaniard, 
wanting to show what a fervent Mohammedan he was, jumped on 
Geronimo's body and broke his ribs. This act pleased Euldj 
Ali so much that others followed his example. For twentj-four 
hours Geronimo lay bleeding, suffering, dying, in that block of 
beton ; the jeers and oaths of his enemies must have been 
ringing in his ears, the African sun in its intense power must 
have poured upon his aching head ; but brave, faithful, and un- 
murmuring, this noble Arab lay there till the weary day and 
night were over, and another morning broke upon that beauti- 
ful Algerian land. But in the land above we believe the gates 
of the Kingdom of Heaven were thrown open, and Geronimo, 
bearing the palm in his hand, was admitted into the noble 
army of martyrs. 

For three hundred years this story was handed from one 
generation to another, till some people treated it as a romance ; 
but thirty-eight years ago, when alterations were being made 
and the wall had to be taken down, the workmen came upon a 
strange hollow place and some human bones. The governor, 
remembering this story, directed plaster-of-Paris to be thrown 
into the mould, and very soon the life-size figure of Geronimo 
appeared, proclaiming the truth of martyrdom. The cast is 
now kept in the museum at Algiers; it shows a slight figure, a 
face with the veins all raised, a poor mouth closed with a 
patient, determined expression ; the hands are tied, the legs 
are swollen, even the very broken ribs are lying there. Three 
hundred years of history holding its peace ; and lo ! the very 
stones, as it were, cry out, and the noble Arab's martyrdom is 
brought to light. 




DR. A. CONAN DOYLE has had two things in his 
favor in beginning his career as a writer of fiction. 
The habit of story-telling seems to have been al- 
most inborn with him. As a child, with little more 
literary education than the knowledge of the 
alphabet, he was found weaving fanciful tales for the edification 
of little comrades, generally for the honorarium of a tart, as he 
tells us. Perhaps the reward was sweeter in those infantile 
days than many that came later on. 

A good medical education was the second favorable condition. 
The experiences of an observant doctor embrace so many as- 
pects of life, and so many conditions of mental and physical 
suffering, that a man with a good memory and a facile pen may 
easily learn to turn them to good dramatic purpose. The rami- 
fications of disease, too, are so complex as to embrace many 
problems besides mere physical ones. They impinge at times* 
largely upon the metaphysical domain, and send the mind some- 
times down deeper still into the source and spring of all human 
existence. 

The question of moral responsibility for crime is one that 
thus comes into the purview of the medical expert, in certain 
classes of disease, and in pursuit of this obscure and delicate 
subject Dr. Doyle has employed his literary art in a way which, 
while it fascinates, may be productive of very startling conclu- 
sions. Once it is admitted that an apparently rational and 
levtl headed person is by nature and heredity powerless to re- 
sist the promptings of evil, the foundations 'of our existing 
jurisprudence and social safeguards are placed in deadly peril. 
The group of short stories ranged under the name Round the 
Red Lamp give a vivid idea of Dr. Doyle's method of work. 
They also induct us into the ethics of pathology which men of 
his school have been broaching of late, much to the dismay of 
plainer people. 



420 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Dec., 

If we are not easily nauseated, we may wade through pro- 
fessional horrors as ghastly in their way as anything that the 
feverish imagination of Edgar Allan Poe conjured up in a less 
sickening school, and drain full the dregs lying at the bottom 
of The Heavenly Twins' mystery. 

There may be readers to whom this class of literature is 
not distasteful ; it is impossible to account for the idiosyncrasies 
of the many-minded reading public. In the unwholesome en- 
thralment over such a story as one of them called The Third 
Generation tells, some might be oblivious to the peculiar moral- 
ity which underlies the reasoning of a doctor who is commended 
to us as the model of medical philanthropy. A certain misera- 
ble scion of aristocracy, Sir Francis Norton, calls upon Dr. Hor- 
ace Selby on the eve of his the baronet's marriage, for medi- 
cal advice. From what transpires it is made apparent that the 
marriage must be broken off somehow, and the suggestion the 
doctor makes is that the baronet commit a felony of some kind, 
and get sent to penal servitude. 

" How far the individual monad is to be held responsible 
for hereditary and engrained tendencies," as one of Dr. Doyle's 
characters, Professor Ainslie, remarks, " may be still an undeter- 
mined question," but the ordinary reasoner will have no difficulty 
in deciding upon the morality of endeavoring to avoid a physi- 
cal dilemma by the perpetration of an aggravated moral of- 
fence. 

It is impossible to question the literary skill with which these 
tales of medical life are woven. A concise and direct form of 
narrative, a careful use of detail, and a judicious introduction 
of medical phraseology are the methods on which the author re- 
lies. It is only in a restricted sense that they may be regarded 
as stories. They are rather brief imaginary episodes, not more 
startling in their character, it may be assumed, than the every- 
day experience of many medical men might furnish. An ex- 
ceptional case, perhaps, is a story called Lot No. 24.9, which is 
a work of imagination almost as morbid as anything ever 
dreamed of by the medical romancist. The germ of the idea, 
mayhap, may be found in that ghastly tale of Poe's in which 
galvanic experiments upon a corpse furnish the motif. 

There are doubtless some orders of mind which find pastime 
in literature of this kind. Chacun a son gout. The lovers of a 
healthier page will' put them by with the reflection that it is a 
pity the talent which was expended on them found no better 
aim than they did. 



1 894.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 421 

In this time of educational unrest, when one is apt to get 
confused over methods rather than aims, it is of a verity 
refreshing to be recalled to the truth of things by such a book 
as that just published by the Bishop of Peoria, Right Rev. 
J. L. Spalding. Things of the Mind* is a book for adults. It 
strikes a noble key for a healthy view of life and a manly tone 
in the moral system, to exorcise the spirit of pessimism which 
the pursuit of mere material success infuses so widely. All 
through its theme is education ; not the mere instilling of laws 
and rules and scientific methods, but the incessant effort of the 
mind and the soul after higher things and the search for the 
holy grail of life, the beautiful and the true. 

From end to end several chapters in the book are a cluster 
of pearls of fine thought. Nor is the thought labored, neither 
is there any semblance of jading repetition. Many of the dicta 
compress the experience of years in an epigram as, for in- 
stance, this : " It takes half a lifetime to learn to know the 
studies we should neglect." " Man is not pure intellect he is 
life ; and life is power, goodness, wisdom, joy, beauty, health, 
yearning, faith, hope, love, action." " The perfect man is not 
merely a knower and thinker, but he is also one who lays hold 
on life and does as well as he thinks." 

With all the views set forth in the book we may not agree. 
There are opinions about women in politics, and there are 
views on the merits of certain writers, from which many people 
will take leave to dissent; but the splendidly hortatory spirit 
and tendency of the work is not affected by these incidental 
obstacles. The student may well read it for style ; the 
thinker for light and direction. We have read it with pleasure ; 
few of those who take it up can fail to find a stimulus and a 
solace in it also, we confidently venture to predicate. 

Mr. Gladstone's erudition is no less wonderful a characteris- 
tic of him than his vitality and capacity for work at an age 
long past the normal limit of man's usefulness. It is a graceful 
trait of his that he always sought relief from the cares of poli- 
tics and statecraft in the cultivation of belles-lettres. A proof 
that his scholarly instincts still hold him strongly is to hand in 
a volume of translations of Horace,f dated so recently as Sep- 
tember of this year. The Greek classicists were his favorites, 

* Things of the Mind. By J. L. Spalding, Bishop of Peoria. Chicago : A. C. McClurg 
&Co. 

t The Odes of Horace. Translated into English. By W. E. Gladstone. New York : 
Charles Scribner's Sons. 



422 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Dec., 

we were led to believe, in earlier as well as in mature years ; 
the Italian poets sometimes intermitted those studies of Homer 
which have resulted in several scholarly volumes ; now we find 
that the most difficult of the Latin poets has had in him a 
diligent student and interpreter also. The introduction to the 
present volume is conspicuous for a quality never before ob- 
servable in Mr. Gladstone's work brevity. 

Mr. Gladstone's apology for adding to the number of Hora- 
tian translators is his belief that the quality of compression is 
not found amongst the many preceding renderings, with two 
notable exceptions, namely, Milton's and Conington's. Compres- 
sion he considers a sine qua non to any worthy Horatian ren- 
dering. He also alleges as a reason for putting himself into evi- 
dence his dissent from Mr. Conington's rule that all odes 
which Horace has written in a uniform metre should in a uni- 
form metre be done into English. Perhaps in urging this reason 
Mr. Gladstone would have been more correct in describing 
himself as in opposition to Horatius Flaccus himself, rather 
than to Mr. Conington. He does not think the poet showed 
good metrical taste in putting his ode to Soracte and his other 
ode on Regulus in the same metre, the subjects being so widely 
dissimilar. With all possible deference to Mr. Gladstone we pre- 
fer the poet's own judgment on this extremely delicate question. 
The Alcaic measure, in which both these odes are written, is a 
very effective form of verse and readily adaptable to grave and 
stately subjects as well as lighter ones. 

Mr. Gladstone improves on Horace, also, if we regard rhym- 
ing terminations as an improvement on blank verse. 

Some of Mr. Gladstone's renderings are more graceful than 
Milton's, possibly owing to his having the English language 
more under control than the great poet of Paradise Lost, who 
at times seemed more awkward in the handling of his native 
tongue than in foreign ones. The pretty ode to. Pyrrha, for 
instance, becomes in Mr. Gladstone's hands more intelligible 
than in Milton's. 

" For whom those auburn tresses bindest thou 
With simple care ? " 

is much more compact than Milton's lines : 

" For whom bindest thou in wreaths 
Thy golden hair, 
Plain in thy neatness ? . . . 



1894-] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 423 

"Simplex munditiis," the phrase of Horace, seems to have 
been somewhat of a stumbling-block to Milton, but Mr. Glad- 
stone renders it easily and aptly. So too with 

. . . " Heu ! quoties fidem 
Mutatosque deos flebit, et aspera 
Nigris aequora ventis 
Emirabitur insolens." 

This Milton gives stiffly : 

" How oft shall he 

On faith and changing gods complain, 
And seas rough with black winds 
Unwonted shall admire ! " 

Very different is the manner of Mr. Gladstone's version : 

" Full oft shall he thine altered faith bewail, 
His altered gods; and his unwonted gaze 
Shall watch the waters darkening to the gale 
In wild amaze." 

Horace's image in this verse presents some points of obscur- 
ity; but it must be owned that Mr. Gladstone, whilst not 
making it clearer than Milton, comes nearer to a poetical 
rendering. Some of Mr. Gladstone's renderings, as he takes 
care to explain in various foot-notes, are softened from the ori- 
ginal text, so that the book cannot offend any delicate sensi, 
bility. 



I. SAINT PAUL AND HIS MISSIONS.* 

It would be difficult to find a more interesting and instruc- 
tive book than Abb6 Fouard's St. Paul and his Missions. It is 
translated with great spirit by Rev. George F. X. Griffith, who has 
done into English Fouard's Life of Christ and of St. Peter, 
As the background for the narrative Abb Fouard constructs 
from Acts and the Epistles of St. Paul, he places before the 
reader a carefully considered view of the state of religious feel- 
ing among the heathen nations to whom St. Paul brought the 
Gospel. 

* Saint Paul and his Missions. By the Abbe Constant Fouard. Translated by George 
F.X.Griffith. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. 



424 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Dec., 

It is too much the fashion to maintain that all belief in the 
old worship had passed away from the cultivated classes of the 
Roman world, and that only an imitative scepticism, mingled 
with the grossest superstition, remained among the other classes. 
Undoubtedly there was an affectation of cynical unbelief in the 
upper ranks. All the strange worships of the world had found 
their way to Rome and found acceptance among the plebs, or 
what remained of or represented that once haughty democracy ; 
but that, so far from being a proof of scepticism among them, 
is rather a proof that they were wildly groping for more light, 
that they had an enduring faith in the supernatural. 

Neither does the sneering of the upper classes at the events 
recounted of the gods prove unbelief. It would rather indicate, 
when coupled with other signs, a desire for an eclectic or phil- 
osophic creed. Nor does the moral leprosy that whitened all 
classes, high and low alike, prove abandonment of belief. His- 
tory is full of instances of great corruption of morals residing 
with strong beliefs. 

As a proof in some degree of what has been said, we may 
mention that in the country districts of Italy the old and simple 
worship existed almost unchanged from the Etruscan times. It 
preserved its simplicity and strength and purity, however marred 
and covered over the worship in the city may have been by 
the bewildering complexity of beliefs and forms that had 
gathered around it. 

Glimpses like the blue sky between the parted clouds can be 
seen of this patriarchal creed in the valleys, on the mountain 
slopes, under the vines, on the pastures, amid the waving corn, 
on the sacred hearth of the Roman country home. If the Ro- 
man world had lost all belief, St. Paul's preaching would t e in 
vain, because they would have lost the capacity for belief. 

We take Abbe Fouard's book at the passages dealing with 
St. Paul's arrival at Cyprus. A Roman noble, Sergius Paulus, 
administered the government of the island. We have in a few 
sentences an excellent presentation of the social condition and 
religious traditions of the Cypriotes. It is so remarkably well 
done that the reader may be prepared for picturesque and 
effective writing throughout the work. 

Sergius, as we know from St. Luke, was a man of talent. 
It is suggested by the abbe" that in the leisure he enjoyed at 
his government, so far from the claims of society doubtless, 
and the suspicious eye of his imperial master, he must have 
realized what a void the banished faith of his fathers must have 



1894-] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 425 

left in his soul. Consequently he was haunted by that yearn- 
ing so natural to man for light and order among the dim and 
ever shifting fancies in which the quest after the unseen so 
often wearily and vainly spends itself. 

We have some evidence of this feeling in the patronage 
which Sergius bestowed upon the Jewish magician, Bar-Jesus. 
He was treated with distinction by the proconsul, and probably 
stood in the place of the philosopher who usually enlightened 
and guided the conscience of a Roman patrician. 

When the news reached his court that those Jews recently 
landed on the island were exciting the wonder of the syna- 
gogues by their preaching, Sergius invited them. It was evi- 
dently a part of that marvellous curiosity with which the East 
and the world had been throbbing for some time with the ex- 
pectation of a teacher who would solve the most difficult pro- 
blems of life and its obligations. 

A trial of skill in controversy takes place before Sergius. 
The disputants are St. Paul and the magician. It must have 
reminded Sergius of what he had read of the conflicts between 
the great orators of Greece. Our author portrays it with fire 
and energy, and the description can be taken as a good instance 
of his power and the sympathy and ability of his translator. 

In every passage of it we have the impress of the great 
apostle's character. His vigorous, rugged, impetuous nature 
lighted to highest enthusiasm by the fire of the Holy Spirit as 
he launched the thunders of impassioned invective on the head 
of Bar-Jesus. We can almost fancy him scorched by the eye 
and the words of St. Paul. 

The great apostle throughout the book stands in vivid per- 
sonality. We accompany him everywhere, to Galatia, Asia Minor, 
Macedonia, Athens, Corinth everywhere the old immemorial 
gods are falling before him. As of old, according to the myth, 
they left the earth, now they leave Olympus. 

Nor does the animation of the narrative prevent Abb6 
Fouard from supplying all the materials to grasp the picture in 
its truth. He has brought to his work copious information con- 
cerning the physical geography of the regions visited by St. 
Paul as well as the customs, traditions, and creeds of their in- 
habitants. These are the setting of the picture, and give to it 
the completeness which any trustworthy monograph should pos- 
sess. 



426 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Dec., 

2. HAMON'S MEDITATIONS.* 

This is an excellent English version of a work which has 
been extremely successful, and which undoubtedly deserves the 
success it has obtained. It follows the order of the Calendar, 
special meditations being added for the feasts of many of 
the saints, and contains also forms for morning and evening 
prayers. 

One of its best features is the summary of the morrow's 
meditation, to be read the night before. It is no doubt impor- 
tant to have such a summary, and difficult to prepare it for 
one's self ; still more difficult to have it when a book of this 
kind is to be used for a community. 

The only fault we should have to find with the book, parti- 
cularly for community use, is that the subjects are too much 
developed, making the exercise rather a spiritual reading than 
a meditation properly so called. This fault, however, is to be 
found with almost all similar works, and is not of so much con- 
sequence for persons using them privately, as one can stop 
wherever it may seem best. Another difficulty in its way for 
community use is the variable number of the points, two, three, 
or four. But this again may be an advantage where one is at 
liberty to select what may be most profitable. 

But if such a large amount is read aloud at once for a num- 
ber of persons it will, we think, be usually found difficult to se- 
lect any particular part for meditation, the memory of each be- 
ing somewhat confused by what follows. For those, however, 
who have the book at hand to help them, this objection does 
not apply. 

But for private meditation, a practice that is coming more or 
less into vogue, no better book can be recommended than Ha- 
mon's meditations. Its wonderful and phenomenal sale in France, 
reaching nearly one hundred thousand copies, shows that it is 
very much in touch with the popular devotional sentiment. 
The revulsion against infidelity in France is manifesting itself 
in a deepening and widening of the religious sense. Of this 
awakening have been born the numerous lives of Christ. Pere 
Didon, Le Camus, Fouard, and others have written for this new 
spirit. The latest but not the least sign is the one hundred 
thousand copy sale of Hamon's Meditations. 

* Meditations for all the Days of the Year. For the use of priests, religious, and lh 
faithful. By Rev. M. Hamon, S.S. From the twenty-third revised and enlarged edition, by 
Mrs. Anne R. Bennett (nee Gladstone). Benziger Brothers. 



1894-] NEW Boons. 427 



NEW BOOKS. 

BENZIGER BROTHERS, New York, Chicago, Cincinnati : 

Mostly Boys. Short Stories. By Francis J. Finn, SJ. Let us go to the 
Holy Table. By the Rev. Father J. M. Lambert. Translated from the 
French by the Rev. W. Whitty. 
H. L KILNER & Co., Philadelphia: 

Moondyne Joe. By John Boyle O'Reilly. 
CATHOLIC SCHOOL BOOK Co., New York: 

Hygiene, with Anatomy and Physiology. By Joseph F. Edwards, A.M., 

M D. 
LONGMANS. GREEN & Co., New York : 

A Text-book on the History of Painting. By John C. Van Dyke, L.H.D. 
A Text-book on Inorganic Chemistry. By G. S. Newth, F.I.C., F.C.S. 
The History of Marriage, Jewish and Christian, in Relation to Divorce 
and certain Forbidden Degrees. By Herbert Mortimer Lucknock, D.D., 
Dean of Lichfield. Practicable Socialism. By Samuel and Ht-nrittta 
Barnett. The Truth and Reality of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. By 
George Rundle Prynne, M.A. 
BURNS & GATES, London : 

Letters and Writings of Marie Lataste. Translated from the French by 
Edward Healy Thompson, M.A. Vol. III. Manual of Scripture History. 
By the Rev. Walter J. B. Richards, D.D. Sixth edition. 
LITTLE, BROWN & Co., Boston : 

Three Heroines of New England Romance. Bv Harriet Prescott Spofford, 
Alice Brown, and Louise Imogen Guiney. With illustrations by Edmund 
H. Corrett. Centuries Apart. By Edward T. Bouve. Hope Benham: 
A Sto*y for Girls. By Nora Perry. 
J. DULACHAN & Co.. Chicago : 

The Acolyte's Companion : Ceremonial and Prayer-book Combined. With 
Rules and Regulations for establishing and governing a Sanctuary Society. 
Compiled from approved sources by a Member of a Religious Community. 
WYMAN & SONS, Fetter Lane, London: 

A Life's Struggle and its Result. By Lady Herbert. 
FR. PUSTET & Co., New York and Cincinnati : 

St. Benedict's Manual. By Rev. Wendelin Maria Mayer, O.S.B. Sixth re- 
vised- and enlarged edition. St. Francis' Manual. Arranged by Clem- 
entinus Deymann, O.S.F. Twelfth edition, revised and enlarged. St. 
Anthony's Manual. Compiled from authentic sources for the Faithful 
Servants of the great Thaumaturgus of Friars Minor. Translated from 
the German for the Devotees of St. Anthony. 
MACMILLAN & Co., New York: 

Love in Idleness. By F. Marion Crawford. The Use of Life. By Sir John 
Lubbock, Bart., M.P. 
WALTER SCOTT, limited, London ; New York : Charles Scribner's Sons : 

The Humor of Ireland. By D. J. O'Donoghue. 

The Brehon Laws. By Lawrence Grinnell, of the Middle Temple, Barris- 
ter-at-Law. 

NEW PAMPHLETS. 

ALFRED COPPENRVTH'S Verlag (H. PAWELEK), Regensburg: 

Aulhentische Portrdte der Konigin Maria Stuart. Herausgegeben Von 
Dr. Bernhard Srpp. 

P. O'SHEA. New York : 

Catholic Literature in Catholic Homes. By Rev. J. L. O'Neill, O.P. 

MURDOCK, KERR & Co., Pittshurg : 

Centennial Celebration of the Incorporation of Pittsburg. 




IN view of some recent developments in Ameri- 
politics it would be well for both friends and 
enemies of the Papacy to ponder on the attitude 
and utterances of the Holy Father on the subject of the sepa- 
ration of religion and politics. Even the bitterest enemies of 
the Catholic Church must concede that no trace of ambiguity or 
indirectness can be found in the clear and unmistakable terms 
in which he has time and again expressed himself on the ques- 
tion of the duty of both clergy and laity in various countries 
towards their respective governments. Take for instance one of 
his most recent declarations, made to a distinguished French 
ecclesiastic : 

" I do not wish the French monarchists to make use of re- 
ligion as a party tool. It is not only my right but it is like- 
wise my bounden duty to hinder religion from serving as a 
springing board to partisans of this or that government. I 
know that all are not pleased. They have gone so far even 
as to hint to me that the Peter-pence may suffer from their 
displeasure. I do not believe it. Be that as it may, how- 
ever, I do my duty, and I shall do so to the end." 

Being asked if thes"e words might be repeated, the Pope 
replied : 

" Most assuredly. Proclaim that I hold religion to be above 
all parties. That I so will it. That I so require it." 

If, then, the enemies of the Catholic Church commend 
these significant utterances of the Head of that Church to its 
adherents, how can they with any show of fairness pretend 
that politics may utilize religion for the purpose of gaining 
its own ends? 

The same rule must be applied in either case impartially, 
if the civil government of this world is to be carried on in 
a spirit of justice. 



One of the world's greatest despots has passed away since 
the preceding issue of this magazine was printed. The Czar 



1 894.] EDITORIA L No TES. 429 

Alexander III. has had to obey a ukase more irresistible than 
any of his own, and his place is now filled by his son, Nicho- 
las II. 

Those who desire peace in the old world wish that in this 
case Amurath may to Amurath succeed, as the late Czar's con- 
sistent policy resembled that of the street angel who is, accord- 
ing to the proverb, the house devil. Nervously anxious to 
maintain peace abroad, his policy was to keep his subjects at 
home in a state of perpetual torture, by a system of police 
terrorism and arbitrary punishments and expatriation more 
merciless than those of Caius Marius. He lived in constant 
dread of the dynamite bomb, the stiletto, and the poisoned 
bowl, and he seemed to be determined that if misery was to 
be his lot, it should be that of his subjects too. It is believed 
that his successor is not so well disposed toward the French 
Republic as the late Czar was, and it is on this account the 
European powers are regarding the immediate future with 
anxiety. 

A frightful report, which is taken with some reserve, reach- 
es us as we go to press. It affects the Christians of Armenia, 
of whose condition we published so graphic a picture in our 
last issue from the pen of the Catholic Bishop of Tarsus and 
Adana. The story goes that a series of frightful massacres 
have been perpetrated on them by the Kurds and regular 
Turkish troops, owing to their inability to pay taxes. The 
horrors of Tatar- Bazardjik and Philippopolis are reported to 
have been reproduced and on a larger scale, over a large dis- 
trict of Armenia, but some doubts have been thrown on the 
accuracy of the report. All past experience of Turkish rule, 
however, goes to show that it is quite within the bounds of pro- 
bability. 



430 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [Dec., 



THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 

FIVE bishops attended the meeting held October 1 1 at the Columbus Club, Chi- 
cago, for the purpose of considering the advantages to be derived from a 
Second Summer-School for Catholics in the United States. Emulous of the 
good work done in the East at New London and at historic Champlain during the 
past three years, Catholics living in the West have decided to establish a Sum- 
mer-School within easy reach of their own homes. Among the sites proposed 
for this new undertaking were Mackinaw, Green Bay, and Madison. It was de- 
cided to locate for the first season at Madison, Wis. This decision holds 
good for one year; afterwards another site may be selected, or it may be agreed 
to move about from year to year, in order to extend the influence of the move- 
ment throughout the West. Right Rev. S. Messmer, D.D., Bishop of Green Bay, 
Wis.; Rev. J. A. Zahm, C.S.C., of Notre Dame University, Ind.; and Rev. T. 
Hughes, S.J., of St. Louis University, were appointed a committee on studies. 
Catholic Reading Circles nineteen are now established at Chicago alone will be 
invited by Rrv. P. J. Agnew to co-operate with the board of managers, which 
already includes many eminent names among the clergy and the laity, representing 
Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, and Michigan. These 
seven States contain a sufficient number of Catholics well able to give ample pa- 
tronage to a new Summer-School. 

* * * 

The Casket, a Catholic journal, published at Antigonish, Nova Scotia, admits 
the truth contained in a statement from Church Progress that it is scarcely rea- 
sonable to suppose the Summer-School on Lake Champlain can draw appreciable 
patronage from regions a thousand miles remote. Still the question is open for 
discussion whether another school should be established so soon. Every summer 
New York State is favored by many visitors from the West. The Casket thus 
states an opinion deserving of careful consideration : 

" One of the chief incentives to visiting what could heretofore be called the 
Catholic Summer-School was the prospect of meeting in the flesh the leading 
men and women in Catholic literary and educational life from over the entire na- 
tion. Indeed, we here in Canada had entertained some hope that the Summer- 
School might yet become an international institution American in the proper 
sense of the word. More intimate relations in the field of thought between the 
Catholics of the United States and Canada are much to be desired. It is not a 
little disappointing, therefore, to see these hopes dashed." 

Why should the hopes of our Canadian brethren be frustrated ? They will 
find both at Madison and at Champlain a truly representative American gathering 
of students and distinguished thinkers. Sooner or later the managers of the two 
or more Catholic Summer- Schools that are to be established and conducted with- 
out sectional rivalry will realize the value of reciprocity. Lecturers of national 
reputation will not restrict their influence to one locality. While it may be an 
insurmountable difficulty to gather an audience from California at Madison, or 
any other point requiring a journey of a thousand miles, it is comparatively easy 
to arrange by consultation in advance for the lecturer to travel. The problem 
will be solved by a generous spirit of co-operation in the East, West, North, and 
South to make effective use of the intellectual forces among Catholics. What- 
ever may be the future development of the Summer-School movement it is per- 



1894-] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 431 

manently settled by the laws of nature that the picturesque Champlain valley, lo- 
cated between the Green Mountains of Vermont and the Adirondack Mountains 
of New York, will always be a delightful resort for intelligent people to improve 
their minds by study and recreation. For historic associations of noble deeds in 
defence of religion and fatherland it cannot be surpassed anywhere in the whole 

United States. 

* * * 

Through the efforts of many who have taken part in the work proposed by 
the Columbian Reading Union the Public Library in different localities has 
learned to know Catholics not simply as readers, but also as the owners and 
makers of a good, honest, healthy literature, characterized by a just sense of art 
and by a high claim, clean as well as modern, and covering every branch of 
literary composition. A communication showing how gladly such information is 
received, when presented in definite shape for use, is here given to indicate what 
intelligent women may do to defend the faith : 

" I wrote last January asking your help in obtaining a list of books counter- 
acting one already in our Public Library. The librarian had written to other 
cities for similar lists, as he thought best not to give me one with a merely local 
scope. This caused one delay. Then your very necessary wish to know ' which 
dogma was attacked or epoch of history was misrepresented in each book ' 
required some time on my part, as I was unfamiliar with most of the books. My 
dunes leave me very little spare time. Unfortunately I am not always able to 
utilize this, as my health is not good. Furthermore I was away from home dur- 
ing July and August. Pardon me for all these personal excuses, but having 
asked your help it seems decidedly ungracious not to take advantage of what 
was so freely offered. 

" In the meantime I have not been idle, but have been sowing the seed for 
the Columbian Union here and in the places I have visited this summer. My 
efforts have been so well received that I feel greatly encouraged to continue the 
work. Enclosed you will find the list of the books: 

" Historical Studies, by Eugene Lawrence, is a collection of articles pub- 
lished in Harper's Monthly Magazine some years ago (during the 7os). These 
articles are written in most attractive style, with an attempt at fairness tending 
to deceive. It is not a safe book in the hands of one not well versed in history 
and without the means at hand to contradict the testimony the author cites, viz., 
Migne, Voigt, Gesta, Milman, Ranke, Mosheim, Stendhal, Jorius, Michelet, 
Walch, Audin, Roscoe, and others. His subjects are The Bishops of Rome, 
Leo and Luther, Loyola and the Jesuits, Ecumenical Councils, the Vaudois, the 
Huguenots, the Church of Jerusalem, Dominic and the Inquisition, the Conquest 
of Ireland, and the Greek Church. 

" The Story of Liberty, by Coffin, is, in my estimation, a most dangerous 
book, inasmuch as it is a child's book gotten up in Harper's most attractive style 
in regard to type, binding, and illustrations. On turning over the leaves of the 
copy I procured I was heart-sick. The well-thumbed leaves gave evidence of 
the number of youthful minds poisoned by the vile calumnies with which every 
page teemed. The same old falsehoods (those, alas! that contain a grain of 
truth) that have been controverted again and again. Infallibility, Luther, the 
Jesuits, the Inquisition, Confession, Indulgences ; these and many other topics 
receive their share of distortion. 

" Mediceval and Modern Saints and Miracles, by an anonymous author, is 
another of Harper's publications. The title indicates the subject matter. The 
animus of the author can be implied by the following quotation from his preface: 

" Romish proselytism . . . distorts the truth by silent suppression, by 
artful equivocation, and not rarely by unscrupulous denial of damaging fact, 
which its ministers know the objector has not at hand the means of establishing." 

" Dr. Littledale's Plain Reasons is answered by Rev. H. F. Ryder's Catholic 
Controversy. 

" Catholic and Protestant Nations Compared, by N. Roussel, is offset in part 
by Balmes' European Civilisation. This is already in the library. I should be 
glad to have a book that is more modern than Balmes. 



432 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [Dec., 1894. 

" Evenings with the Romanists, by Hobart Seymour, is a somewhat flippant 
account of how the writer spent Sunday evenings among the benighted peasantry 
of Ireland. He attacks nearly every article of our faith, and the ease with which 
his hearers become converted is only equalled by his sleight-of-hand performances 
in reasoning. Catholic Belief, by Rev. Joseph Faa Di Bruno, is an excellent an- 
tidote for this book, which is scarcely worthy of notice. However, some person 
might be attracted by it, and it would be well to have it answered. Should there 
be a book that answers this purpose better than the one I have cited I should be 
glad to have it included. 

"The Papacy and the Civil Pnuer, by R. W. Thompson, is answered by 
Father Weninger's pamphlet. 

" The Sclwnberg-Cotta Family, by Mrs. Charles, is a somewhat out-of-date 
novel that is, it is little read at present. I have not had time, so far, to exam- 
ine it. 

" The History of the Dutch Republic, by Motley, is too well known to need 
any comments from me. The remaining books indicate by their titles what is 
the subject attacked. We need a judicious selection of Catholic writers on the 
same subjects to have these attacks properly answered." 

The offensive books in this particular Western city were selected by bigots 
and recommended to the Public Library. Hundreds of sturdy Catholics, having 
an equal claim to make a request for books of their choice, passed to and fro 
quite oblivious that the minds of their fellow-citizens were becoming infected 
with falsehood by the circulation of malicious lies in print. After consultation 
with six well-informed scholars, a list was sent by the Columbian Reading Union. 
The books mentioned should have a place in every Public Library that provides 
for the impartial study of important subjects. It will be noticed that the books 
were chosen as antidotes to those already in circulation. The list is here given : 

Clifton Tracts three volumes. 

Spanish Inquisition. De Maistre. 

Answers to Littledale. Ryder. 

St. Elizabeth of Hungary. Montalembert. 

History of Lourdes. Lassere. 

Faith of our Fathers. Gibbons. 

Church and the Age. Hecker. 

Henry VIII. and Monasteries. Gasquet. 

Queen Elizabeth and Catholic Hierarchy. Gasquet and Knox. 

History of the Reformation. M. J. Spalding. 

Cardinal Fisher. Bridgett. 

Chair of Peter. Murphy. 

Temporal Power. Gosselin. 

Formation of Christendom. Allies. 

Protestant and Catholic Countries Compared. Young. 

No book by a Catholic writer has been suggested that would serve to counter- 
act the attractive books by Coffin, entitled The Story of Liberty, A New Way 
around the World, etc. Many of our correspondents have noticed that his books 
are eagerly read by the young, and are to be found in all circulating libraries. 

* * * 

For ten cents in postage-stamps the Columbian Reading Union, 415 West 
Fifty-ninth Street, New York City, will send to any part of the United States or 
Canada a selected list of stories for young people. Every book on the list is 
suitable for a Christmas gift. 

* * * 

A request from a Reading Circle printed some time ago in this department 
has induced Murphy & Co. of Baltimore to print in a cheap, handy volume a 
compendium on the middle ages from the writings of Archbishop Spalding/ We 
hope it will have a wide circulation to encourage other publications of a similar 
character. There are many sources of information not available for Reading 
Circles. Excellent articles on historical subjects especially might be profitably 
reprinted in cheap form from back numbers of the American Catholic Quarterly 
Review and THE CATHOLIC WORLD. Opinions on this matter are requested. 

M. C. M. 



THE 




CATHOLIC WORLD. 



VOL. LX. JANUARY, 1895. No. 358. 

HERE AND THERE IN CATHOLICISM. 

BY HENRY AUSTIN ADAMS. 
//. UN WITTING WITNESSES. 

VER since the centurion, calling his guards away 
from the hill of Calvary, gave his downright, sol- 
dierly, " Surely this was the Son of God " ; and 
Pliny the younger, writing of the faithful in his 
jurisdiction, bore generous testimony to their 
child-like guilelessness, the divine Truth has not lacked those 
in high places who have been witnesses, willing or otherwise, to 
its triumphant superiority. 

All literatures in Christian times have teemed with thinkers 
of every shade who, from all sorts of view-points, have in the 
most surprising fashion seized upon one or another feature of 
the Faith and vindicated it. 

Even the Babel of non-Catholic theology itself, when taken 
as a whole, furnishes here and there, piecemeal, the faith en- 
tire ; for what one doctor learnedly denies another proves, and 
so on, a majority of heretics for ever showing the utter nonsense 
of any one man's special heresy ! 

The readers of this magazine no doubt recall Newman's in- 
imitable putting of this point in Loss and Gain. All may not, 
however, have seen Augustin Birrell's keen use of it in his 
clever Obiter Dicta. He says that Newman's argument reminds 
him of the missionary's dress-suit which fell by accident into 
the hands of naked savages. 

To their primitive minds it was inconceivable that so large 
a number of articles of clothing could be intended for one man ! 

Copyright. VBRY RBV. A. F. HBWIT. 1894. 
VOL. LX. 28 



434 HERE AND THERE IN CATHOLICISM. [Jan., 

Accordingly the king assumed the majestic silk hat, and dis- 
tributed the coat, waistcoat, trousers, boots, etc., among his 
faithful courtiers. Thus a complete civilized suit was en evidence 
at court, but scattered about on a dozen men ! 

So is it with the Anglican divines, goes on the cardinal in 
his delicious humor. They teach the whole Catholic Faith but 
in scraps! Everybody reveres the "standard old Anglican di- 
vines." Very well ; listen to Newman. 

A Catholic, he points out, is merely a man with the whole 
suit on at once! He holds "the divinity of Tradition with 
Laud, consent of Fathers with Beveridge, a visible Church with 
Bramhall, dogma with Bull, the authority of the pope with 
Thorndyke, penance with Taylor, prayers for the dead with 
Ussher, celibacy, asceticism, ecclesiastical discipline with Bing- 
ham ! " 

Birrell is merely one of the sharp-sighted thinkers of this 
day and generation one of an increasing school of writers who 
say : " Don't be a Catholic if you do not wish to be, but please 
do work up a new set of reasons, as the old lot is worn 
out ! " 

Let one read as one will far ahead on the skirmish line of 
destructive and radical criticism, or back of the bulwarks of the 
standard classics it matters not. Everywhere crop out these 
delightful side-lights flashing forth truth. 

Some time ago I decided to jot down in a leisure week's read- 
ing anything that might turn up bearing on the subject of this 
article, and the result was a resolution to write at least a book 
on the unwilling or unwitting corroborations of Catholic verity to 
be found in English literature. The dozen instances of this 
transpiring in the most casual browsing of three days set me 
to thinking of scores of books and authors not before noticed 
with respect to it, but well enough remembered to promise me 
a rich return for a renewed perusal with this in view. 

There was your livid Orangeman, Macaulay, prophesying per- 
manence to Catholicity so stable that his New-Zealander, perched 
on a broken arch of London Bridge viewing the ruins of St. 
Paul's Cathedral (i.e., Anglicanism), might yet hear Mass at 
Rome ! 

And dainty Matthew Arnold no friend of the faith ex- 
quisitely demonstrating the incompatibility of St. Paul and Pro- 
testantism not to say anything of the vulgarity he points out 
in dissent. 

And our own mystic, Hawthorne, of the nameless charm a 



1 895.] HERE AND THERE IN CATHOLICISM, 435 

Catholic in soul shrinking like an exposed and spiritual nerve 
from the mechanical, the blatant, the false in Calvin. 

And stout old Scott a cavalier and churchman to the quick 
making a " business" century glow with the faith, the passions, 
and the aspirations of the middle ages. 

I thought of these, I thought of some score others poets 
and novelists and thinkers and historians and for the first time 
saw the " Rainbow of the Truth " spanning our splendid firma- 
ment of Letters. 

I thought that it was more than accident that in the 
families of the last three named Arnold and Scott and 
Hawthorne conversions to the Catholic religion have taken 
place. 

At Abbotsford the family is wholly Catholic, while Haw- 
thorne's daughter and her husband and compeer in letters are 
fervent children of Mother Church. 

But to come back. The first book I picked up was Rich- 
ardson's Clarissa Harloive the first great novel in the English 
tongue, remaining yet not at all crowded by competitors for 
immortality. 

Richardson's contribution to my peculiar purpose was 
meagre in extent, but it made up by its delicious flavor and 
quaint conceit for anything that it might lack in force. 

Lovelace, the villain, having compelled his victim, poor 
Clarissa Harlowe, to mount his coach and drive into the 
country, protests most loudly that the young lady gave her con- 
sent. Whereupon sly old Richardson declares that she " con- 
sented," doubtless, much in the way a dean and chapter of the 
English Church " elect " a bishop ! 

This is delicious. It is worth more than a whole treatise 
upon the mooted question (so sore with Anglicans) as to who 
is the church's head. A dean and chapter, it may not general- 
ly be known, " elect " their bishop in the following way : The 
queen, by her prime minister, fills the vacant see by appointing 
some popular divine, and then issues her conge d'etre, or per- 
mission to elect, to the dean and chapter. These worthies 
thereupon convene with no end of red-tape, and after solemnly 
invoking the guidance of Heaven in their choice, unanimously 
elect the queens appointee! And the Right Rev. Dr. Lovelace 
declares that poor Anglican Clarissa said " yes " the coy 
creature ! 

My next happening was upon a couplet of the poet Gray's, 
intended by him to have been introduced into his fragment on 



436 HERE AND THERE IN CATHOLICISM. [Jan., 

" Education and Government," which, by the way, deserves to 
be better known than it is. 

Both of my editions of Gray omit the lines to the lasting 
credit of the poet as a sound Anglican ; but Mason has pre- 
served it for us. Speaking of the conversion of Henry VIII. 
and the founding of the English Church in consequence, Gray 
had written : 

" When love could teach a monarch to be wise, 
And gospel light first dawned from Boleyn's eyes." 

Nothing so casually thrown out by a non-combatant, pastor- 
al poet during a lull in theological hostilities can be ignored, 
or argued around. There it is ! And it is evidence of the first 
water of the simple truth, that the labored and pathetic ex- 
post facto effort of Anglican theologians to purify the motives 
of the monarch who grew " wise " (i.e., reformed) ; and to vindi- 
cate a schism as a result of a religious conviction which was 
neither more nor less than a fortuitous outcome of a scandalous 
breach of the laws of both God and man is futile. 

Gray was not taken in by such poor sophistry. 

He noticed and sung the coincidence of the " love-light " 
and the " gospel-light " in the saucy eye of that wanton, old 
Tom Bullen's daughter. 

And, be it remembered, Gray was no low-churchman resort- 
ing to " low " means to down Tractarian theorizers. He ante- 
dated Newman by a whole century. 

Strangely paralleling Gray's frank couplet are those lines of 
Horace Walpole's a different man, indeed which he inscribed 
upon a column to poor Queen Katherine, whom the " wise 
monarch " got rid of to make room for his plump Anne Boleyn 
and the gospel ! 

If Gray was frank and incautious enough to give damaging 
witness, what shall we say of brother Walpole's ingenuous 
burst of plain but indiscreet allusion to history? 

He inscribes: 

" From Katherine's wrongs a nation's bliss was spread, 
And Luther's light from Henry's lawless bed." 

There's an insular, not to say insolent, twist to the old 

truth, that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church ! 

Note, too, the monumental calm that could chisel in cold 



1895.] HERE AND THERE IN CATHOLICISM. 437 

stone the connection of a national bliss with a foul and cruel 
divorce! Good old "St. Martin Lutjier " must be proud of the 
method whereby his "light" was disseminated throughout the 
British Isles ; and it would seem a bit rough, even on the gay 
and festive Martin himself, to have recourse to the " lawless 
bed " of a sensual king for a candle-stick to his flaring rush- 
light. 

Walpole was an earnest, honest man ; but as he also had 
not basked in the sunshine of the " Oxford Movement," how 
could he guess that he was "giving it away"? 

A staunch defender of the Church of England as by law es- 
tablished in these realms could not at that time possibly see 
the awkwardness of that whole Henry VIII. business. Never 
dreaming of an Anglc-Catholic descent from pre-Reformation 
Catholicism, his simple soul was innocent of all necessity for 
looking the other way on mention being made of Harry's 
rather questionable marital relations. 

Not that the eighteenth century was quite devoid of those 
who, bravely and with sinking hearts, tended the little lamp of 
Catholic tradition which never has gone out in England ; but 
these were few and as yet quietly enduring their isolated and 
pathetic exile. 

The masses were like Walpole, Protestant, and naturally 
spoke out in meeting. The " bulwarks of the Reformation " 
were then intact, and the Erastianism of the house of Han- 
over settling with chilling effect upon the long despiritualized 
Establishment. 

It was then that the indifference, ignorance, and Protestant- 
ism of the English Church, thrown into relief by the awakening 
of Catholicity throughout Europe, produced that unguarded, 
degraded, indolent state of religion which the literature of the 
period reflects, and which at length called forth the fierce 
anguish of the early Tractarians and the later morning of the 
Catholic Revival. But the ingenuous, unbiased, spontaneous 
testimony of the great authors of the time to the effect that 
there was no claim to Catholic descent, no pretension to Catho- 
lic belief, no evidence of Catholic practice, but an emphatic 
repudiation of these, cannot be too lightly estimated. 

Dryden, himself a convert in after years, puts the common- 
sense philosophy of the " wise monarch " in a nut-shell, when 
he writes : " If Conscience had any part in moving the king to 
sue for a divorce, she had taken a long nap of almost twenty 
years together before she was awakened ; and, perhaps, had 



HERE AND THERE IN CATHOLICISM. 



[Jan., 



slept on till doomsday if Anne Boleyn, or some other fair lady, 
had not given her a jog: so the satisfying of an inordinate 
passion cannot be denied to have had a great share at least in 
the production of that schism which led the very way to our 
pretended Reformation." 

More subtle than this, but not more to the point, are the 
delicate cynicisms of Thackeray, the broader satire of Dickens, 
and the coarse guffaws of Butler's immortal Hndibras. 

No mention need be made of the long list of works inten- 
tionally making for or against the faith, nor could they have 
the weight of these great geniuses who mirror facts and men 
just as they are. These are unbiased, or if at all ex parte, they 
are invariably subpoenaed as witnesses not on our side. The last 
on whom I chanced was our own Lowell, from whose exquisite 
passage on St. Peter's at Rome room now remains for only a 
brief quotation. Could one, however Catholic, say more than 
this? 

" She (the Catholic Church) is the only church that has 
been loyal to the heart and soul of man. . . . She is the 
only poet among the churches, and while Protestantism is un- 
rolling a pocket surveyor's-pl-n, takes her votary to the pin- 
nacle of her temple, and shows him meadow, upland, and til- 
lage, cloudy heaps of forest clasped with the river's jewelled 
arm, hillsides white with the perpetual snow of flocks, and, be- 
yond all, the interminable heave of the unknown ocean."" 





1895-] THE HUMANISM OF PETER. 439 

THE HUMANISM OF PETER. 

BY K. F. MULLANKY. 

ARM-HEARTED, hot-headed Peter! How he 
stands out before us, clear-cut as a cameo 
against the simple Scriptural background ! A 
rough diamond, quick-tempered, impetuous, boast- 
ful. A rock indeed, full of sturdy strength, but 
rough in outward seeming ; and yet marked with the seal of 
God's choice as the foundation stone whereon should rest in 
undisturbable strength the mystical City of God unto which all 
nations should go up. Let us look at him well, this rough-gar- 
mented toiler of the sea, with the wind-tossed hair and spray- 
wet face, as he cast out his net with brawny strength into the 
water. A rough-hewn rock, with no lines of beauty to redeem 
its roughness, and yet with capabilities within it of being trans- 
formed by the power of a master's hand into a living, breathing 
soul. I have seen a block of stone, rough and ungainly, laid 
before a sculptor and when I saw it again a face of divinest 
beauty was gazing at me from it. It seemed as if I could see 
the whole majestic figure underneath the prisoning roughness of 
the stone, waiting only for the magic touch of chisel and 
mallet to break its fetters, when it would spring into enduring 
life, never again to be returned to its former state of crudity. 
The character of Peter was like that unchiselled stone before 
the divine Sculptor modelled it into rarest beauty. Our Lord 
called him Peter because his character was rough like a rock, 
but yet full of strength and firmly immovable like a rock as 
well. 

How wonderful are God's ways beyond our limited ken ! 
Not gentle John nor the others, all less faulty than our sturdy 
fisherman, did our Lord chose for his vicegerent, but Peter with 
all his faults thick upon him. How impetuous he was! Full of 
fire ; ever the first urged on by the impulsive love of his strong 
heart and quick mind. He was always the spokesman, always 
the one to be sent on errands of importance. A natural leader 
of men whose friends ever push forward or fall behind natur- 
ally. When the Apostles questioned among themselves re- 
garding any of the teachings of our Lord, Peter was the one to 



440 THE HUMANISM OF PETER. [Jan., 

speak out, asking the explanation. And our Lord loved to 
question him, delighting in the unshaken faith of his simple soul 
when some things were hard to be received by the people 
"But what thinkest thou, Simon?" "Whatsayest tkou?" And 
after each simple-hearted profession of faith in his dear Master, 
our Lord blessed him. " Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona, be- 
cause flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Fa- 
ther who is in Heaven." " Thou art a rock ; and upon this rock 
I will build my church ; and I will give to thee the keys of 
the Kingdom of Heaven." Think of it ! the rough Galilean 
fisherman to be preferred before the rest of men and given such 
God-like power. Why was it that our Lord chose Peter, the 
most faulty of all the apostles, as the one most fitting, most 
worthy of this great charge? Because he knew, like the wise 
sculptor, what that rough nature could be made ; and the warm 
heart beating with almost painful love within was more pleasing 
to him than gentle manners and a smooth exterior. Did he not 
say of sin-stained Magdalen, " Many sins are forgiven her be- 
cause she hath loved much " ? To Peter likewise he forgave 
everything because his errors had no root in his loving heart. 

Our Lord chose Peter because his character was strong and 
faithful, and because he knew that in choosing him he selected 
the one best fitted for the charge. The other Apostles depend- 
ed, relied, upon Peter's self-reliance. No dissentient voice was 
heard against the election. They were all well content that 
Peter should be first ; and he accepted the charge as a strong 
brother the care of weaker ones. Peter was so self-reliant, so 
confident in his own great love for his Lord, so sure that his 
love would withstand all shocks, that he said, " Though all be 
scandalized in Thee, yet will not I "; and he felt so strong in 
his great faith it seemed to him an impossible thing for him ever 
to waver, and a little while after we find him unable to keep 
awake though that beloved Master was prone in agony a few feet 
distant. This weakness of Peter must have hurt the sensitive 
Heart so human in its loneliness and sorrow, for it was to Peter 
our Lord uttered his reproach, " What, could you not watch 
with me even one hour?" After all his vain boasting of a short 
time before, yet to go asleep and leave him in bitterest anguish 
a few feet away ! Poor Peter ! we can well imagine that he was 
ashamed ; and, as though to make up for his fault, we find him 
a few minutes later, with his customary impetuosity, slicing off 
the ear of the man who dared to lay rough hands on the One he 
loved so well. Impetuous, stormy Peter! He could never do 



1 89 5.] THE HUMANISM OF PETER. 441 

anything without putting his whole soul into it. Impetuous in 
all things, we find him cursing and swearing impetuously an hour 
later that he knew not Him for whom he would die and then 
we see him going out to weep bitterly over his wretched weak- 
ness. What a grief was that to make one of his sturdy nature 
weep so wildly, so incessantly ever afterwards, we are told, that 
great furrows were worn in his cheeks by the constant out- 
pouring of his sorrowful repentance. It was like the wildly 
surging waves that waste themselves on a storm-beaten, rock- 
bound shore. It needed a shock of humiliation such as this to 
make Peter understand his own weakness and prepare his heart 
for greater things. 

We see no more of him until after the Resurrection. Where 
was he when his dear Lord was being so inhumanly treated ? 
and where when he was shedding the last drop of blood in 
most dire anguish upon the cross ? The gospels are silent, but, 
knowing what Peter was, we dare to say it was no craven- 
hearted fear for himself which kept him away, but, on the con- 
trary, his shame which made him wish to hide himself from the 
eyes of all men. Broken-hearted Peter ! If he had been there 
most likely he would have only made things worse by his fiery 
temper ; and then, again, natures tender and undisciplined by 
sorrow, such as Peter's was then, cannot stand the sight of their 
dear ones suffering. It was wisest and best, most likely, that 
he stayed away. 

It was to Peter of all his Apostles that he appeared first, 
and we know that Simon questioned not. Ah, that faith of 
Peter's, how beautiful it was ! How our Lord loved to test it ! 
It was not the other Apostles he sent on that faith-trying mis- 
sion to catch a fish in whose mouth money would be found 
with which to pay toll, but it was Peter, unquestioning ever, 
when commanded by his Lord. 

Our next view of Peter, after the Resurrection, is on the 
ship or fishing boat, with some of the other disciples, after a 
night's fruitless labor. On the shore stands our Lord, though 
they knew him riot until he spoke, and then Peter, impetuous as 
ever, flings himself into the sea in order that he may reach his 
loved Master all the sooner. It was there that our Lord tested 
him once more, saying, "Simon, son of John, lovest thou me 
more than these ? " Peter's tears must have flowed anew at 
these words, for they brought back to him in painful vividness 
the remembrance of his boastfulness and weak denial. No loud 
self-assertiveness is here displayed, but a humble meekness 



442 THE HUMANISM OF PETER. [Jan., 

which disclaims any self-esteem, " Lord, thou knowest that I 
love thee!" and when our Lord asked him for the third time, 
as though to make sure that all the old leaven of self-pride had 
been washed away by those bitter tears, his answer was still 
more humble " Lord, thou knowest all things ; thou knowest 
that I love thee." And our Lord, knowing it indeed, gave in 
charge to that strong love the infant church, assuring him that 
all the powers of hell would fail when brought against it. 

The throes of a strong nature when cast into the fires of 
humiliation, or lashed by the scourges of its own conscience, 
are always piteous. Strong souls feel strongly, and when they 
are bowed by some storm of sorrow sweeping over them, like 
mighty trees tempest-tossed, it means either utter destruction 
if unable to withstand it, or else the sending of their roots 
deeper into life-giving soil. 

Our Lord, without doubt, pitied Peter even when he hurt 
him by his questions, probing the ulcer like a wise physician in 
order to heal it. 

What a different Peter we see after the Ascension, subdued 
by sorrow, humbled ^because of self-knowledge, prayerful be- 
cause of the great trust confided to him. Before his dearly 
loved Master went from him he was but a faulty man ; now, by 
the touch of affliction and the marvellous effect of supernatural 
grace, he appears to us as the first time with the glory of 
sainthood about him. After the descent of the Holy Ghost he 
is transfigured, as it were, by the plenteous outpouring of 
sanctifying grace. Who would recognize in the inspired 
preacher, whose eloquence converted at one sermon three 
thousand souls, the rough-spoken disciple in the hall of 
Caiphas? or who, in the gentle, kindly man, going about heal- 
ing the sick, the maimed, and the blind, the impetuous, rough- 
grained Peter of former days ? No wonder fear fell upon the 
people when they witnessed such a wonder as this. Peter is no 
longer the statue in the block, but the perfect sculpture in all 
its mystery of beauty. The illiterate fisherman is the teacher 
of the learned, and all men marvel thereat. There is but one 
characteristic which marks him as the same man he is always 
the leader, the one first to speak. 

It is indubitable to any unbiased student of the Gospel and 
the Acts that Peter was the recognized authority and leader of 
the Apostles. It was he who was chairman of the assembly at 
all times, if we may so express ourselves. At the election of 
Mathias to the place left vacant by Judas it was Peter who 



1 895.] THE HUMANISM OF PETER. 443 

presided. He it was who preached the first sermon, who per- 
formed the first miracle, who first spoke to the wondering 
people with the authoritativeness of a leader. John was with 
him, but John was silent ; and when they were apprehended and 
brought before the judges it was Peter, as the leader, who made 
answer, and none questioned his right to do so. 

When Ananias and Saphira brought to the Apostles the dis- 
honest offering of money, it was Peter who reprimanded them, 
Peter who passed sentence on them ; and none rose up to 
question his authority. In fact, the entire people looked upon 
him as having a greater power and sanctity than the others, for 
we read " That they brought forth the sick into the streets, 
and laid them on beds and couches, that when Peter came 
his shadow at the least might fall upon them, and they might 
be delivered from their infirmities." 

When Simon the magician sought to deceive the Apostles 
by his pretended conversion, it was Peter who denounced him 
for his hypocrisy. 

We also find that Peter visited all the churches through- 
out Samaria, Galilee, and Judea, like the wise overseer visiting 
all the vineyards committed to his care. 

In the first council of the church, held at Jerusalem, Peter 
presided and defined the doctrine of the church regarding the 
reception of the Gentiles, and after his decision " All the multi- 
tude held their peace." His epistles are replete with the digni- 
ty of the Supreme Head as well as the overflowing charity of 
the saint. 

From the character of Peter much can be learned of God's 
dealings with his saints ; much to encourage the faint- 
hearted and discouraged to hope that, notwithstanding their 
very human weaknesses and imperfections and back-slidings 
which, in spite of prayer and sacraments and heroic resolutions 
to the contrary, entangle their feet and trip them up discour- 
agingly often, they may, by God's grace, conquer in the end 
and be saints, like Peter. 

" Rome was not built in a day," nor did Peter or any 
other saint become perfect in a day ; not until long years of 
patient conflict with themselves, the world, and the devil did 
victory come to them. So too may we, if we but love God 
with all our hearts, like Peter, overcome, because of that love, 
all our infirmities and arrive one day at the goal of perfection, 
for St. Paul tells us " we are all called to be saints." 




THE VENERABLE BEDE. 

(Bede died while translating St. John's Gospel.) 

BY EMMA PLAYTER SEABURY. 

HERE is still a chapter wanting." 
" Dearest Master all the night 
Thou hast not one moment rested ; 

Thou art weary ; see the light. 
Wait a little. Do not question 

Thyself farther." Calm and bright 
Came the dying master's answer, 

" Quickly seize the pen and write ! " 
All day long, with love untiring, 

Wrote the scribe, while hopes and fears 
Filled his boyish heart to bursting, 

With his farewells and his tears. 
All day long with zeal unflagging, 

The death angel by his side, 
Anxious, fearful, spoke the master, 

Till the hours of eventide. 
When the Angelus was sounding 

Once again he interposed : 
" There's a sentence still unfinished, 

Ere thy noble work be closed." 
"Then write quickly," said the master, 

" For my life-tide ebbs so fast " ; 
And they paused not till he murmured : 

" It is finished done at last. 
" Ah ! 'tis true, my faithful scholar, 

All is finished even now. 
Lift my head up from the pavement, 

Wipe the death-damps from my brow ; 
Let the last ray of the sunlight 

Come into my convent cell ; 
Hold me in thy arms a little 

It is finished all is well." 
So the Master's voice in chanting 

Rose in melody supreme, 
"Unto God be all the glory"; 

And his spirit, like a dream, 
With the last sweet strain of music 

Floated through the convent bars, 
And the little scribe sat weeping 

'Neath the glimmer of the stars. 




1 895.] THE THREE LIVES LEASE. 445 

THE THREE LIVES LEASE. 

BY JANE SMILEY. 
i 

HERE could be little doubt that Granny was 
dying. When a woman of eighty-six is sudden- 
ly stricken and lies in a state of immobility and 
stupor, it is natural to fear that her days are 
numbered. So thought the sons and daughters 
of this aged woman as, hearing the news, they hastened from 
their own to their mother's house. And when all were gath- 
ered round the kitchen hearth with saddened, care-worn faces, 
one felt that Granny had been blessed with many children. 

Idly the gray-haired sons stood about the room telling in 
low tones of their success with crops and cattle. Quietly the 
women sat with toil-worn hands crossed awkwardly in unac- 
customed rest, whispering to each other their own fears and 
the opinion of the village doctor. 

" It cannot be the falling sickness, for mother's too old for 
that," said the eldest of Granny's daughters in a low, sad voice. 

" True for you, Sarah," answered brother John's wife ; " your 
mother is eighty-six come Michaelmas, father says." 

" I wonder what the boys would do if mother if anything 
happened to mother?" queried sister Kate, sighing. 

" We'd all have to leave the land for one thing, and go to 
America ; there's naught for poor folks here," declared practical 
sister Anne. 

" Why would we have to leave home, mother ? " whispered 
one of the granddaughters tearfully. 

" Because the lease is up with the lives, Mary. Is that not 
so, John ? " And Anne turned to her brother. 

"That is so, that is so," answered he. "You see it's this 
way," settling to his story with the garrulity of approaching 
age: "Your great-grandfather, may he rest in peace! made the 
lease with Lord Marc for three lives. There was his own, and 
his eldest boy that died when he was four years old from the 
look of an evil eye, they say and Granny here, who is eighty- 
six come Michaelmas. A long life had Granny, and it kept the 
lease for us all ; an' now there's no renewal, for his honor wants 
an increase, and I'm giving all the land's worth ; there cannot 
be aught more taken from it." 



446 THE THREE LIVES LEASE. [Jan., 

" If we're all going away, you and I'll be wed the sooner," 
whispered a stalwart youth to Mary, who, smiling shyly, left her 
mother's side to stand with him in the door-way. 

" If we could but stay till the children were grown," mur- 
mured one anxious woman sadly. 

" What's to be done if Granny goes the night, John ? " 
asked sister Anne; "there's the crops in the ground as will be 
lost, an' the trees an' the bushes that was set in the fall, and 
Peter's new shed, and all will be gone if you don't renew." 

" Will we have a white lamb in America, and a donkey with 
a turf-cart ? " piped one of the children. 

Just here there entered from an inner room Father Cleary, 
the parish priest, who had been with the sick woman. 

" You may all go home for to-night," he said, looking 
brightly about the circle of anxious faces. " Granny will not 
die to-night, and please God she may live many a long day 
yet." 

With words of hope and comfort to each other the 
sons and daughters went their several ways, each man speaking 
earnestly to his wife of the time when Granny was laid at rest 
in the old churchyard, and they would have to leave the old 
home for America, and, womanlike, each wife hastily dismissed 
the subject with, " Please God, Granny will live many a long 
day yet, and then well then, perhaps, his honor will renew 
cheap." 

And strange to say the women were right. Was it due to 
the old doctor's skill ? or the last upflickering of the lamp of 
life before it went out for ever ? Certain it is that Granny 
grew slowly better. Not her old strong self again, she who had 
so nimbly tripped about at eighty-five ; but well enough and 
strong enough to sit by the window or hearth in her high- 
backed, big-armed chair, contentedly chatting with children or 
neighbors. An odd little figure she was, this mother of ten old 
men and women, with her nut-brown face and her bright black 
eyes, her cheery smile, and her glad, shrill laugh. She had been 
quite a beauty in her day, tradition said, and in fact it was 
her pretty face that first attracted " his honor's lady," and 
changed the even tenor of Granny's life. Riding alone one 
day the landlord's wife had met and tarried to talk with Gran- 
ny, then a girl of sixteen, and when the interview was ended 
Granny had promised to enter my lady's service. 

How excited were friends and neighbors as on the morrow 
they watched the girl ride away to her new life. Five miles 



1 895.] THE THREE LIVES LEASE. 447 

was a good journey in those days, and Granny, tearful and 
joyous, sat behind her father on a pillion as they rode on. 

" Thou art to be a good girl, Ellen, and a credit to the 
mother that brought you up ; remember that, my girl," said the 
father sternly as he left her. 

"Yes, father, I will try!" sobbed the little maid, and well 
she kept her word. From an extra pair of hands in the kitch- 
en she soon became under-nurse and constant companion to 
my lady's only daughter, and as the years went by, changing 
the child Margaret into Miss Marc of Dunford Hall, the two 
remained fast friends. And so it came to pass that when the 
beautiful, spoiled daughter secretly left her father's house to 
become Robert Nugent's wife, Ellen went with her. 

" Why is that woman here, Margaret ? " Robert Nugent 
had asked angrily, and the young mistress had answered, " I 
will not go without Ellen." No more could be said, and so 
three journeyed where the bridegroom had hoped there would 
be but two. 

To the country girl who had never been ten miles from 
home the journey was full of marvellous sights, and in the years 
that followed Granny never tired of telling, nor her children of 
hearing, of the wonderful trip to England. For Granny re- 
turned home a grief-stricken and care-worn woman, who had 
just bidden a long farewell to her dear young mistress, and 
watched the saddened wife sail, with her babe in her arms, to a 
far-away land in the West. Both " my lady " and " his honor " 
were well aware of the girl's return to her kindred, but never 
by word or sign did they inquire for their lost daughter. 
Granny was still a beauty despite her heartache, and might 
have chosen higher than a farmer's youngest son had not her 
father and Michael's father met one market day and arranged 
the match together. 

Then she and Michael had been married, and had loved 
each other, not passionately but well, working together and 
weeping together through forty long years, until the father 
died, and this fragile little woman lived on " to hold the land 
for her sons," she often said ; for Granny had always been an 
able manager. But this was over now, and the Granny who 
rose from the almost fatal illness was not the Granny of old. 
Gone were the sharp tongue and the quick temper, the con- 
tempt for failure and the pride in her own success, and in 
their place the children found a wise and gentle little woman, 
sitting in her great chair, patiently awaiting the coming of the 



448 THE THREE LIVES LEASE. [Jan., 

summons. Were her sons perplexed, her daughters weary, it 
was to Granny they came ; and with shrewd suggestion and 
loving word she eased their heavy burdens. 

"A very bundle of sunshine!" exclaimed the little doctor; 
and the listeners silently acknowledged it was true. 

One year became two, then five, and still Granny " held the 
land," taking a very earthly pleasure in the fact that her mere 
existence was a grievous disappointment to the noble lord of 
the soil, eager for new and more profitable leases. 

It must have been Granny's wonderful age that awed her 
neighbors. For almost half a century she had been "Granny" 
to half the village ; now she was their oracle, confidant, friend, 
in every happening of importance. 

Was it not she who forbade the marriage of her grandchild 
Sally to the sailor lover, and conclusively proved the would-be 
husband was the descendant to be expected of a race of ne'er- 
do-weels ? 

Who would have known the rightful owner of the buried treas- 
ure found on the village pasture had not Granny told of a miser 
who lived and died in a cabin near the place full sixty years ago ? 

To the children Granny was a fairy god-mother. None so 
well as she could cure their childish ailments, telling them won- 
derful tales the while ; and no youthful sinner but fled to 
Granny's hearth for protection, trusting that her soft words 
might turn away paternal wrath. 

And so it came to pass that ninety-odd years of Granny's 
life had been lived, and still she sat in the great chair close to 
the hearth ; and here one day they came to tell her that 
William, her eldest grandson, was dead. 

"And is Willie dead too?" she questioned, raising her trem- 
bling hands to her streaming eyes. " Willie dead too, with 
Anne, and John, and Peter ah me ! I am very old ; and Wil- 
lie was a grown man too; near fifty years, you say?" slowly 
shaking her aged head and murmuring softly to herself, "and 
yet I remember the day that Willie was born. Near fifty years, 
and 'twas I who laid the babe on its young mother's arm, and 
she smiled at me in her joy. She was but a girl, and I was 
an old woman then and Willie is dead ! They must have for- 
gotten me." And Granny wept, suffering the passionless grief of 
age ; and even as she mourned there came into the room two 
of her grandsons whose faces were white and drawn. 

" What is it ? " cried their sister, feeling that William's death 
could not account for their excitement. 



1 895.] THE THREE LIVES LEASE. 449 

" His honor's dead ! " answered one. 

" Dead ! " screamed Mary. " Why he passed by the gate not 
three hours gone by. I took thought of it because Granny 
noticed the horse-tread." 

" Dead ? " murmured Granny, as if waking from a dream ; 
" and is he dead too ? He was a hard man on the poor." 

" How did it happen, John ? " asked the girl. 

" I was at work in the wheat," said John, " and saw him 
come riding my way, when one of the dogs at his heels 
ran in among the grain. Then his master jumped the wall 
and rode through the field hunting the dog. I called that his 
horse was trampling the crop that was to be cut on the mor- 
row ; but he paid no heed, and then the dog ran up. He was 
near the wall by that, yet he turned and rode across to the 
gate. I called it was closed fast, but he tried to take the gate. 
It was too high and I saw him fall, and when I ran up he was 
dead." 

" It was punishment for his pride," said Granny. " May the 
Lord have mercy on him ! " 

" Amen," added the others ; and no more was said either in 
praise or blame of the man that was dead. 

While the country-side were still talking of his honor's 
funeral, there came to Granny's cottage two strangers who had 
travelled down from London to see this aged woman. 

" You are very welcome. What may your business be ? " 
Granny said in her sweet, shrill voice. 

" We have come from London, my good woman," said the 
elder man, speaking very slowly and distinctly, " to find, if 
possible, some trace of the heir to this estate ; otherwise the 
land will lapse to the crown. My name is Mr. Snelling, the 
late lord's legal adviser ; this is my friend, Mr. Pratt. We are 
told you accompanied the late lord's daughter when she when 
she left home. Now if you will tell us where she went, the 
task will be very simple." 

" That I will gladly, sir," answered Granny. " We went to 
Dublin, and then to Kingstown, and then we took a ship." 

" Where did this ship go to ? " 

"That I have forgot, sir," said Granny sadly; "it's very 
long ago full sixty years." 

The strangers looked at each other silently. Their only 
hope lay with this aged woman, and she had failed them. 

" Make an effort to remember," entreated the younger man. 
VOL. LX. 29 



450 THE THREE LIVES LEASE. [Jan., 

" I cannot, sir," said Granny very slowly ; " an' strange it is, 
for I remember the dock and the inn we lodged at as if it 
was yesterday, an' it's sixty years ago." 

" Will you come and show us the place ? " asked Mr. Snell- 
ing eagerly. 

" That I would, sir ; but I am very old, and it cost Miss 
Margaret many a pound before, she so had little to spare, poor 
dear." 

" If you will come with us, Granny, we can never repay 
you." 

" I'll go, and gladly, sir, if 'twill do you good," said Granny 
sweetly. 

"Will you start in two days?" 

" That I will ; but, sir, if it is not too costly, may may my 
grandchild Mary I'm old and weak, and not used to 
strangers." 

" Take whomever you wish," said Mr. Snelling. 

In the excitement that ensued Granny, despite her age, was 
still mistress of her household, and paying little heed to the 
lamentations of her daughters and the arguments of her sons, 
she cheerfully prepared for what might prove her last journey. 

" I am going for Miss Margaret and her boy," she said, 
speaking no word of the husband she had so long ago learned 
to despise. Sixty years ago Granny had travelled stealthily 
and rapidly, now she journeyed by slow degrees, surrounded by 
every luxury. 

No one of the little party but watched each movement of 
the aged woman, and none harassed her with questions about 
the past, trusting that the impressions made sixty years ago 
had not faded entirely from her mind. 

To Dublin they went and to Kingstown before she showed 
recollection. 

" This is not the ship," she said anxiously as they led her 
up the gang-plank. " It was a sailing packet ; not like this." 

"That was sixty years ago," they told her; and Mr. Snelling 
added to the others, " There was but one line of packets in 
those days, stopping at three ports ; we will try each in turn." 

" Ah well-a-day ! " murmured Granny, " this is not the place 
we came to"; and she wept in her bewilderment. 

" Of course it is not, Granny ; do not trouble yourself ; we 
know the way," said Mary. 

" Come to the baggage shed, out of this crush. I'll find a 
cab at the station," said Mr. Spelling to Mary, as together 



1895-] THE THREE LIVES LEASE. 451 

they guided the faltering feet. " Wait here a moment," he con- 
tinued when a sudden exclamation made them turn. There 
stood Granny leaning on her staff, shading her eyes with one 
trembling hand. 

"This is the town!" she cried in glad triumph. "There's 
the church that was on the corner and the inn is across the 
way." 

" Yes, yes," said Mr. Snelling encouragingly, as he gazed at 
the great business block which marked the spot where the inn 
had once stood. 

"Now we will go to a hotel to -rest," he said, anxious at 
the sight of Granny's agitation. To the hotel they went, but 
rest was out of the question for Granny, into whose clouded 
mind had suddenly flashed a ray of recollection. 

"Now we've found the place, and the money's not ill-spent," 
she murmured happily, and no one had the heart to tell her 
that their journey had been all in vain. 

"And 'twas there we stayed waiting for the letter, but his 
honor was ever a hard man ; and there Miss Margaret's boy was 
born, and he that was her husband bade me go home, and 
took her away." 

" Where did he take her, Granny dear?" asked Mary timidly. 

" He took her in a ship, child," explained Granny, with 
much condescension, " to a place he called they called they 
called it New York." 

A shout from Mr. Snelling interrupted her. 

" What is it ? " she cried in alarm. 

"We've found the heir!" cried the lawyer; "you've told us 
the place he is living." 

" Child, child," answered Granny, " yes, that was the name 
of the town. Miss Margaret bade me never tell and I have not 
thought on it for fifty years. It was the church made me 
think." 

Two days later began their homeward journey, and as the 
little party travelled slowly back the cable hummed with mes- 
sages asking tidings of Robert Nugent. 

That sixty years had come and gone, making the finding of 
the heir almost improbable, did not enter Granny's mind. 

Miss Margaret's beautiful boy would, of course, appear in a 
short time to claim his own. 

Strange to say come he did, a worn and gray-haired man, 
with little save a few almost worthless papers with which to 
prove his claim. 



452 THE THREE LIVES LEASE. [Jan., 

" He is an impostor," said the lawyer ; and the stranger could 
say nothing in reply. What was to be done? 

" It is a foolish test, but let us go to Granny," suggested 
Mr. Snelling. 

As of old, she sat in her arm-chair by the hearth and smiled 
brightly on her visitors. 

" Granny," said Mr. Snelling, " we have come to you again 
about the heir; this gentleman claims to be Mrs. Nugent's 
Miss Margaret's son. He comes from New York. What do 
you say ? " 

"Has he Miss Margaret's marriage lines?" asked Granny 
sharply. 

The keen old lawyer looked at his colleague in astonish- 
ment. That had been his first question to the claimant. 

" My mother's papers, and much besides, were lost in a fire 
twenty years ago," said the American quietly. 

Granny made no comment on the information. " Come close 
till I see you," she said. 

For a long minute not a sound broke the stillness. 

" You have thy mother's eyes, and thy father's curls, and 
the look of his honor round the mouth. Have you all your 
fingers?" she asked suddenly. 

" No," said the stranger, " I lost a finger in my infancy." 

" It was thy father's doing," said Granny sadly ; and the lost 
heir was found. 

Quietly the visitors withdrew, leaving the aged woman to 
her meditations. The sudden change in his fortunes did not 
seem to affect the new heir. Gratitude was evidently a ruling 
trait in his character, as all who had shared in the search soon 
discovered. 

Before many days the eldest of Granny's grandsons was sent 
for, and the three lives lease was renewed as never, lease was re- 
newed before. 

They thought that Granny would be pleased when the good 
news was told, but she made no sign. 

" My work is done," she murmured almost sadly as she 
watched them hide the precious paper in the ancient dresser. 
" I held the land for our boys," she whispered to a younger 
Michael, who stood beside her chair. 

It was harvest week with no time for idle joy, and into the 
fields trooped the busy workers, with hearts filled with thank- 



1 895.] THE SCEPTIC. 453 

fulness that the tenure of their father's land no longer depended 
on an aged woman's life. 

It was sunset hour when they returned, weary but happy. 

In the road stood Mary, white and breathless. " Come," she 
gasped, and ran before them. Wondering they followed, even 
to Granny's door, and awe-struck entered. 

There in her high-backed chair she sat, her kind old eyes 
closed in sleep, her fingers clutching her beads, her withered 
cheeks pillowed on the new lease; but one glance told the chil- 
dren that it was the sleep which knows no earthly awakening. 

NOTE. The custom of making leases which were to last for a specified number of lives 
running from father to son or, as in Granny's case, to the second child, should the tenant's 
eldest die during his life-time was common in Ireland during the last two centuries. This 
sort of lease is now seldom made, being looked upon as unsatisfactory by both landlord and 
tenant. J. S. 



THE SCEPTIC. 

Bv MARY T. WAGGAMAN. 

'ROUND thee ever- formless shadows roll, 

Thou art encompassed by some demon spell, 
Black pinioned doubts, the vampire brood of Hell, 
Suck ceaselessly the life-blood of thy soul, 
And thou art dumb, while thro' the cycles toll 
The hymns of nations. Thou dost dare rebel 
'Gainst the Eternal One, whose word doth quell 
The whirlwind, and whose name upon the scroll 
Of night is blazoned in vibrating fire. 
Thou dost reject, in prideful impotence, 
Faith's music, echo of God's symphonies 
Thro' death-doomed Time. In vain shalt thou aspire 
To tune the universe by arguments 
To draw Truth's rhythms from jangled fallacies. 



454 F& A ANGELICO. [Jan., 




FRA ANGELICO. 

BY SARAH C. FLINT. 



N our study of the painters of Italy we learn that 
Raphael came from the hill-sides of Umbria ; 
Titian, from the Venetian Alps, and Fra Angeli- 
co, from the mountains of Etruria. The white 
hamlets which crown the hills like diadems were 
the birthplaces of these noted Italian children who have become 
the royal heritage of the land of the Madonna. As rivers find 
their source in the little springs which start from the mountain- 
side, and, flowing downward, enrich the land through which 
they pass, at last finding their home in the broad ocean, to 
rise in vapor that again falls refreshing the whole earth, so did 
these painters, born among the mountain fastnesses, find their 
way down to the valleys ; enriching them with all their works 
of art which have come down to us of the nineteenth century. 
Looking at these works, our minds are filled with wonder 
that in the ages which we are disposed, many times, to call 
" dark " there were men who lived near to the source of all 
light and strength and were enabled to embody their thoughts 
so that our lives are made purer and holier thereby. The sub- 
ject of our present paper belonged to this class. Vecchio, the 
place where he was born, is a lofty village situated on one of 
the spurs of the Apennines, overlooking the province of Mugillo 
and the rich valley of the Sieve. Lanzi and Rosso agree in 
saying that Fra Angelico's family name was Santa Tosmi, but 
other records entitle him Guido, the son of Pietro. 

His early life must have been largely influenced by his sur- 
roundings, for he lived midway between the valley hamlets of 
Dicomano and Borgo San Lorenzo, and but a few miles from 
the famous villages of Cafaggiolo and Fontebuona. The former 
was the seat of Cosmo de' Medici's mountain place, whose long 
battlemented fronts and high towers still rise over the rich 
meadows. Here, in later days, Lorenzo de' Medici found his 
favorite resting-place, and here the member of this noted fam- 
ily who afterward became Pope Leo X. was educated. At 
Fontebuona the Medici afterward reared the palace of Prato- 
lino. Surrounding it were broad gardens and curious fountains. 



I895-] 



FRA ANGELJCO. 



455 



Here, also, they placed the statue of the " Genius of the Apen- 
nines," a colossus sixty feet high. 

The lofty mountains by which he was encircled could not 
have been without their influence Monte Guerrino on one 




PORTRAIT OF THE FRA. 

side, Giovi on the other, and the crest of Monte Falterena on 
the west. These were all celebrated for their great altitude, 
and must have brought to his mind the power and majesty of 
their Creator, who has " weighed the mountains in scales and 
the hills in a balance," and of whom it is said " The strength 



456 FRA ANGELICO. [Jan., 

of the hills is his also." The language of his heart may often 
have been expressed in the words of the psalmist : " I will lift 
up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help." 

Although his home was in this secluded nook, it was situat- 
ed less than a score of miles from Florence, and was cognizant 
of its busy activities. The politics, the arts and sciences, and 
the half-way reforms in matters pertaining to the church were 
favored subjects of conversation among the mountaineers. 

He was born at the time when the science of perspective 
was the chief subject of research among the great masters. 
Masaccio was learning its rudiments ; others were finding out 
its adaptation to sculpture, and still others were learning to 
apply it to bas-relief. The work of noted painters of his time 
must have been a source of constant inspiration, and the lives 
of the Medici have formed a large portion of his childhood 
tales. Even the great Giotto himself was one of his born com- 
patriots. Often must the sons of Pietro have heard the stories 
of the Tuscan cities. Vasari gives us this glimpse of the child- 
hood of our artist : " Although he might have lived in the 
world in the greatest ease, and, besides what he possessed, have 
earned all he desired by the arts he knew so well even in his 
boyhood, yet, being naturally steady and good, he resolved to 
become a ' religious ' of the order of Friar Preachers, for his 
own satisfaction but principally to save his own soul." From 
the above words we are led to conclude that before he had 
decided to abandon secular life he had devoted himself to the 
study of art. 

There is no means of knowing who was his first master. 
Some have supposed that it was Gherardo Stamina, and that 
his fellow-pupil was Masolino de Pameale. These statements, 
however, are based wholly upon a certain resemblance in the 
manner of these artists. It is very natural to suppose that his 
art was developed by the conventual school of miniature paint- 
ing, in endeavoring to represent images in those childlike ages. 

He left his home in the year 1401, when only fourteen years 
of age, and for six years we lose sight of him, but subsequent 
events show that he had not been idle. 

Ere he had reached his twentieth year Guido sought the 
convent which stood upon the slopes of Fiesole and which 
overlooked the City of Lilies. While here he worked inces- 
santly. Besides painting and decorating his own convent, he 
painted many pictures for the other churches of Fiesole, and 
also sent many to Florence. 



i8 9 5.] 



FRA AN GEL ico. 



457 



Loving and amiable in all his ways, it must have cost him a 
struggle to have left his home, retired from the world and 
given himself to God. He never leaves his own comfortless, 
however, and as in former years he had comforted Paul by the 
coming of Titus, so now he brought joy to the heart of Guide 
by putting into the heart of his brother the desire to enter 
upon convent life. 




FRA ANGELICO'S MADONNA AND CHILD. 

The new name which Guido now assumed was Fra Giovanni, 
but in later years he was called Fra Angelico, the Angelic 
Brother. His devoted admirers also called him II Beato Angel- 
ico, the Blessed. His full name, therefore, is II Beato Giovan- 
ni da Fiesole, or the Blessed John called the Angelic of 
Fiesole. The " Blessed," which falls but little short of " Saint," 
was not conferred by the church, but by popular esteem. 



458 F KA ANGELICO. [Jan., 

In the year 1407 Fra Angelico received the clerical habit. 
He did not enter the convent that he might have more time to 
cultivate his art ; for if that had been his object, he would 
naturally have joined the learned Benedictines, or even the easy- 
going Silvestrines ; instead of which he chose one of the most 
laborious and self-denying of the religious orders ; and then 
not the oldest of these, but the youngest and most austere of 
the Dominicans showing by his choice that his was a hearty 
and thorough self-surrender. This venerable order, of which 
Fra Angelico was now a member, had already existed two cen- 
turies, and had been engaged in sending its ambassadors of 
peace to the cities of northern Italy, striving, and in many 
cases succeeding in reconciling the feuds of the Guelphs and 
Ghibellines. As a thank-offering from these reconciled cities 
they had received rich endowments of houses and lands, so that 
in the fourteenth century they are found erecting splendid 
temples of religion and surrounding them with all the charms 
of art. 

In connection with their architectural work many of the 
monks were sculptors of ability, and others had made great 
progress in painting and illuminating monastic manuscripts. Of 
them it may be truly said, that they " praised God in colors." 

It was Guide's good fortune to be brought under the influ- 
ence of Beato Giovanni Dominic, the founder of the convent, 
who was a powerful orator and had used his talents to revive 
the spirit of the members of his order. He had succeeded in 
founding new convents and filling them with consecrated men. 
Amidst all his labors he did not forget the artistic part of his 
work. Being a great lover of painting himself, he endeavored 
to awaken a like spirit in others, telling them that it was a 
powerful agent, used in the right direction, to develop the holy 
thoughts of the heart and to elevate the soul. 

The youth from Vecchio soon felt his influence, and art be- 
came in his eyes a means for the advancement of the church. 
While the vocation of his brother might be that of the pulpit, 
his was the studio, and he realized that it was his duty to en- 
rich his work from all possible sources. 

In 1409 the affairs of the church were still farther compli- 
cated by the election of a third pope, Alexander V., by the 
Council of Pisa. The archbishop declared for the new pope, 
and persecuted the brotherhood of St. Dominic because they 
maintained allegiance to Gregory XII. They were forced to 
abandon their convent at Fiesole and take refuge at Foligno. 



1895-] F RA ANGELICO. 459 

"While Fra Angelico might feel as did Jacob of old when he 
said, "All these things are against me," it was owing to this 
change of abode that there was preserved for him the devotion- 
al feeling of his pictures, for now he was removed from the in- 
fluence of the Florentine school, which at this time cared not so 
much for the development of devotion and religious feeling as 
for the perfection of form. Now he would be more under the 
influence of the Umbrian school, as shown forth in the works of 
Giotto and his pupils. 

In addition to the lessons of the Umbrian school, he had 
opportunity to study the old paintings at Siena, where he may 
have acquired that pure and perfect type which is never absent 
from his Madonnas. So we find that 

" The massive gates of circumstance 

Oft turn upon the smallest hinge, 
And that some seeming pettiest chance 
Oft gives our life its after tinge." 

The brotherhood remained at Foligno until 1413, when, 
driven hence, they removed to Cortona. 

The Dominican church at this place contains several of Fra 
Angelico's pictures in fresco. One is the Madonna and saints 
and the evangelists. Another is the Madonna with her smiling 
child surrounded by angels. Another picture painted by him is 
now in the Gesu Church at Cortona. It represents the Annun- 
ciation ; the Virgin being richly clad, seated upon a throne 
with her arms crossed, while an angel approaches with a scroll 
on which are written the Latin words signifying : " The Holy 
Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the Most High 
shall be upon thee." The Virgin holds an answering scroll con- 
taining these words : " Behold the handmaid of the Lord." 
This was always one of his favorite subjects, and his brush 
never ceased the song of Ave Maria. 

These are but a few of the works that he executed while at 
Cortona, but the most of them have been destroyed. They 
were, however, the beginning of his masterpieces which he 
afterward executed in San Marco and the Vatican. 

In the year 1418 the exiled monks yearned for their 
mountain home at Fiesole. Their foundation deed read that if 
they were absent from the convent two months they forfeited 
all right to return, but the bishop permitted them to do so 
upon the payment of two hundred ducats, which were drawn 



460 



FRA A NG ELI co. 



[Jan., 



from the patrimony of one of the brethren. Soon after this 
they received a bequest of six thousand florins from a Floren- 
tine merchant. This they expended in enlarging and beautify- 
ing their home, and Cartier gives this interesting description of it: 
" The convent of Fiesole is built midway up the mountain. 
The church opens on the high road, and attracts the wayfarers 
by its pure and simple architecture, like the fountains which 
formerly offered a seat and limpid water to the weary traveller. 
The apse is surrounded with buildings and cloisters, all pro- 
tected by a silent valley. Nothing is finer than these palaces of 
poverty the long corridors, the wall without ornament, the little 
windows, where the sweet light meets with a holy image or a 
pious sentence. The rays of the sun penetrating the cell is 




THE CORONATION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN. 

like Jacob's ladder, where angels are passing up and down to 
exchange grace and blessings between God and man. The 
mountain of Fiesole is one of the most beautiful of those that 
shelter the valley of the Arno against the north winds. Rich 
and wooded hills story the sides of the mountain, and their low- 
est declivities end at the gate of the Athens of the Middle 
Ages." 

It was here that Fra Angelico executed some of his choicest 
work. His time was constantly occupied. For the convent he 
executed two paintings in fresco, one in the refectory and the 
other, a Crucifixion, in the chapter-room. The three pictures 
which he painted for the conventual church were an altar 
piece, an Annunciation, and the Coronation now in the Louvre. 

It was his custom never to retouch, or amend in any way, 
his paintings, believing that as they first came from his hand 



1 89 5.] FRA AN CE LI co. 461 

was the way God intended them to be. His pictures express 
strongly the sincerity of his Christian faith. He is said never 
to have commenced a painting without first having engaged in 
prayer. There was no hap-hazard work in the pictures with 
which he endeavored to glorify God. 

Any one who looks at Fra Angelico's angels must admit 
that herein much of his genius lay. It must have been no easy 
task to embody his thoughts, for many of the old school with 
whom he was familiar represented angels as we read of them 
in Isaias : 

" Each one had six wings, with twain he covered his face, 
and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly." 

Giotto preferred to represent them as they appeared to 
others, clad in the form of youth. Fra Angelico was an apt 
scholar in this respect, and while he gave to his angels the 
freshness of youth, he never represented them as infants, as he 
did not think the age of childhood adapted to express the zeal 
and intelligence which should belong to the messengers and 
ministers of the Most High. 

In 1436 the brotherhood, through the powerful influence of 
Cosmo de' Medici, were removed to San Marco at Florence. 
While he was at his country home at Fiesole he had been the 
benefactor of the Fiesole convent, and now, on his return to 
Florence, he was determined that the brotherhood should ac- 
company him there. It was also through his influence that the 
monks of Silvester were, on account of their evil lives, ejected 
from San Marco, which was now given to the Dominicans of 
Fiesole. 

It was at this time a half-ruined building, but Cosmo 
caused it to be rebuilt by the famous architect, Michelozzo 
Michelozzi. While it was rebuilding Fra Angelico was at work 
upon the altar-cloth, which represented the Virgin enthroned 
with the infant Saviour, adored by the kneeling figures of Sts. 
Cosmo and Damian. These were chosen as a tribute of grati- 
tude to the patron who had been so lavish with his gifts. 

Fra Angelico was so beloved by Cosmo that, having built a 
wall round the church and the convent of San Marco, he de- 
sired Fra Angelico to paint the whole passion of Jesus Christ 
upon the walls of the chapter-house, with all the saints on one 
side who had been heads or founders of any religious order 
sorrowing at the foot of the cross, and on the other the 
Evangelist St. Mark attending upon the mother of Christ, she 
having fainted at the sight of the Crucifixion. Under this work 



462 FRA ANGELICO. [Jan.,. 

he had painted upon the frieze a tree of St. Dominic. At the 
root of it, and in round shields upon the branches, were por- 
traits of all the popes, cardinals, bishops, saints, and theological 
teachers who had belonged to the order of the Dominicans 
down to his own time. This painting is of great historical 
value. 

The decorations of the cells is one of the greatest manifesta- 
tions of Angelico's disregard of earthly praises, for in them he 
used his utmost skill, though he knew they could be seen only 
by the brethren of the order. The cells were small, and on the 
otherwise unornamented walls the artist painted his luminous 
frescoes, which Vassari declares to be " beautiful beyond the 
power of words to describe." These paintings were scenes 
from the life of Christ, and he placed them there to stimulate 
the piety of the brethren. 

The Adoration of the Magi is in a large cell which Cosmo 
had built for himself, so that he might meet there with the two 
artist monks whom he loved. It is supposed that the heads of 
the Magi are portraits of noted men of the fifteenth century \. 
and herein was one of Fra Angelico's faults, he so often com- 
bined the religious with the secular that in looking at some of 
his pictures it was hard to tell which feeling predominated. 
Many of his saints and angels had faces of well-known men of 
his own day. 

Fra Angelico had a wonderful gift in painting and illuminat- 
ing manuscripts, and two large books which were painted by 
him are in the Cathedral of Florence. They are held in great 
veneration, and are exhibited only on the most solemn festivals. 

His was a spirit of humility, in honor preferring others rather 
than himself. 

Eugenius IV. was very anxious to appoint him Archbishop 
of Florence, but he begged leave to decline, saying it was easier 
to obey than to command, as in the former case one was less 
liable to err, but recommended in his stead Antonius. 

The church of Santa Maria Novella, at Florence, was the 
scene of his labors for a long while. The monks who held the 
church at that time had been looking for painters to complete 
the decorations begun by Orcagna, Memmi and Taddeo Gaddi, 
and at last decided that Fra Angelico and Masaccio were suffi- 
cient masters of the work to be entrusted with the task. Many 
of these works have been destroyed, but there still remain the 
three reliquaries which were made by Giovanni Masi, and beau- 
tifully adorned by Angelico. The first is painted with a Ma- 



1 895.] FRA ANGELICO. 463 

donna and many saints ; the second has the Annunciation, and 
the Adoration of the Magi ; and the third the Coronation of 
the Virgin, and the Adoration of the Child Jesus by his 
parents. 

Over the door of the guest-chamber in his own convent is 
frescoed the Dominicans receiving the Lord of Life clothed as 
a pilgrim. He also painted for the convent two Madonnas, one 
of which is in the refectory, and has an attendant figure of St. 
Dominic pointing to the words of his bequest to the order : 
" Have charity, keep humility, possess voluntary poverty. I call 
down the curse of God, and mine, on him who shall bring pos- 
sessions into my order." 

The last ten years of his life were spent in Rome, where he 
executed some of his best works. Shortly after his arrival in 
Rome Pope Eugenius died, and before Nicholas V. was fully 
established in the papal chair Fra Angelico was called upon to 
paint the frescoes in the Cathedral of Orvieto. He was only 
able to work here three months of the year, June, July, and 
August, as during the remainder of the year he was obliged 
to serve the Holy Father in Rome ; but so rapidly did he work 
that with the assistance of his pupil, Benozzo Gozzoli, he com- 
menced to decorate three triangular divisions in the ceiling. 

The first represented the Saviour in the act of giving the 
last judgment, and surrounded by saints and angels. The sec- 
ond was sixteen figures of saints and apostles seated among the 
clouds ; and the third the Virgin among the apostles. He was 
never able to finish these, for he was summoned again to Rome 
by Nicholas V., and was employed in decorating the chapel of 
the Vatican. For two centuries the key of this chapel was lost 
and the room closed up and forgotten. When the art student, 
Battari, discovered this shrine he entered the room by a small 
window. The Roman professors forbade their pupils studying 
the paintings, thinking it might be injurious to their taste. 

In 18(5 Pope Pius VII. ordered the frescoes cleaned "to 
preserve them for the desire and study of all." The western 
wall has suffered from dampness, and the frescoes have been 
skilfully removed and transferred to canvas. In 1810 they were 
engraved and published at Rome in six plate folios, and many 
of the single subjects have been engraved in other forms. The 
shrine in the chapel is one of the chief ornaments of the Vati- 
can. The frescoes represent a pavement of white marble, beau- 
tifully inlaid with representations of the sun, and the twelve 
months of the year. 



464 



FRA ANGELICO. 



[Jan., 



Angelico also decorated the chapel of the Holy Sacrament 
in the Vatican, which was destroyed to make room for the stair- 
case leading to the Sistine chapel. 

Again, he was commanded to paint the chapel of the palace 
of Rome where the pope usually held Mass. For this he made 
a Deposition of the Cross, and some beautiful subjects illustrat- 
ing the life of Lorenzo. 

He subordinated everything to the fervent piety within his 
soul, and his mind was only open to impressions of those things 
which tend to elevate. Of him it might well be said that "he 
found tongues in the trees, books in the running brooks, sermons 
in stones, and good in everything." He seemed incapable of 
understanding evil, and all the faces of his angels pictured noth- 




THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI. 
i 

ing but joy, peace, and love. He had no idea how to picture 
despair or fear, for where he had undertaken it many of the 
faces resemble those of naughty school-boys. 

As the bee hovers over the flowers, extracting sweets which 
it applies to its own use, so may Fra Angelico have fed on the 
works of his predecessors and contemporaries, appropriating the 
ideas which pleased him to his own use. 

The frescoes of Orcagna, in the Strozzi chapel in Florence, 
may have exercised a greater influence over his mind than the 
works of Giotto himself. Orcagna was vigorous in his delinea- 
tions, but Angelico was more sentimental. 

The religious calm which is looked for in vain in the works 
of Masaccio is one of the first things noticed in looking at those 



1895.] FRA ANGELICO. 465 

of Fra Angelico. The depth of feeling that is depicted in the 
pictures of the God-man fills the gazer with awe, and one can. 
feel nothing but admiration for the man who could so delineate 
the features of the Son of Man, and bring to them the expres- 
sion that gives one the feeling that he is on holy ground, and 
looking exclaim, with Dante : 

"And didst Thou look 

E'en thus, O Jesus, my true Lord and God ? 
And was this semblance thine ? " 

Fra Angelico's art may truly be called " pietistic "; his faces 
have an air of rapt devotion, fervency, and saintliness, and 
leave the impression that those whom they are intended to 
represent are far removed from earthly fret and turmoil. This 
is very attractive to some, and on others it leaves little if any ger- 
uine impression. Nevertheless he may be taken as a typical painter 
according to his own conceptions. What was peculiarly his own 
was the freshness of color and the beauty of form, without cor- 
responding mastery of light and shade. The brilliancy of his 
tints, combined with the free use of gilding, contributes largely 
to the celestial character of his visions of the Divine Persons. 

He submitted to his successors the old scheme of preparing 
the ground for fresco which afterward was to be finished in 
tempera. This is seen in his great mural painting, which is to 
be seen in the chapter-house at San Marco in Florence. He 
had laid in the sky in deep red preparatory to putting in the 
blue, but for some reason was unable to finish it. When he 
entered upon his Florentine career he was brought into close 
relation with Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, and Masaccio, and his own 
fame being great, he was doubtless received into their company. 
It is said of the last of these three great painters that " his 
art was a revelation ; that he burst through the routine by which 
painting hitherto had been bound ; that he anticipated all that 
was to be done after him ; that his works were studied as 
models by the greatest artists of succeeding times by Michael 
Angelo and by Raphael, who imitated him to the extent of 
plagiarism." Fra Angelico paid but little attention to their dis- 
coveries, preferring to follow the inspiration of the cloisters, al- 
though their influence was effectual in modifying some of his 
ideas as regards archaic traits. He clung less closely to the idea 
that the pointed arch was the only appropriate architecture to 
introduce into his backgrounds and he adopted the new style 
VOL. LX. 30 



466 



FRA ANGELICO. 



[Jan., 



in the Florentine structures, and there was a change in the 
length of his figures, which before had partaken of the lankness 
of the Byzantine pictures. 

He was one of the last of the painters who performed their 
work kneeling. His paintings were unsigned, and rarely paid 
for. The sole object of his life seemed to be to turn the 
thoughts of men and women toward Christ and his saints. 

A great German critic says that Fra Angelico was the first 
to express the mental emotions in the human countenance, and 
adds that he obtained a decided influence on his times by the 
clearness with which he impressed upon the faces the tenderest 
emotions of the soul. 




THE MEETING ON THE WAY TO EMMAUS. 

When Piero de' Medici built the chapel of the Annunziata 
in Florence no pains were spared to make it worthy of his 
father Cosmo, of whom it was a memorial. It was from plans 
by the architect Michelozzi, and Pagno Portigiani was deputed 
to carry out his design. Fra Angelico was engaged to adorn 
the receptacles for gold and silver plate that they might be 
worthy to stand beside the picture of the Virgin. He also 
painted thirty-five panels illustrating the life of our Lord. 
These paintings bear evidence of deep theological study and an 
intimate acquaintance with the Bible. The first poem is a pro- 
logue to his great poem of the Redemption. On one side ap- 



1 895.] FRA ANGELICO. 467 

pears Ezechiel contemplating the symbolical wheel, and on the 
other is St. Gregory writing the explanations. The next thirty-two 
pictures are devoted to events from the life of Christ the In- 
carnation, the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, the Flight 
into Egypt, the Baptism of Christ, and many others, each with 
two verses of Scripture, one from the Old Testament containing 
the prophecy, and the other from the New containing the ful- 
filment. The picture which closes this series is that of the Last 
Judgment, which was a favorite theme among all painters. 

We have now followed Fra Angelico through the three 
epochs of his life. Fiesole, Florence, and Rome have all claimed 
him, and now we find him, in the last years of his life, after 
having enriched the cities of Florence, Rome, Fiesole, Cortona, 
and many others with the wonderful productions of his brush, 
retiring to the cloisters of Santa Maria sopra Minerva and de- 
voting himself to still greater deeds of holiness and consecration. 
It is many years since he was summoned to contemplate the 
scenes which he so .often depicted here upon earth. Among 
the most noted monuments which adorn the church where his 
last days were spent is one upon which reposes the marble figure 
of a Dominican monk. Underneath this stone are the remains 
of Fra Angelico, and the epitaph which is inscribed upon it 
shows what was the mainspring of his life : 

" Not that in me a new Apelles lived, 
But that Thy poor, O Christ ! my gains received : 
This be my praise. Deeds done for fame on earth 
Live not in Heaven. Fair Florence gave me birth." 

" The artist saint kept smiling in his cell 
The smile with which he welcomed the sweet, slow 
Inbreak of the angels, whitening through the dim 
That he might paint them ; while the sudden sense 
Of Raphael's future was revealed to him 
By force of his own fair work's competence. 
Thou, God, hast set us worthy gifts to earn, 
Besides Thy heaven and Thee ; and when I say 
There's room here for the weakest man alive 
To live and die there's room too, I repeat, 
For all the strongest to live well and strive 
Their own way by their individual bent." 



468 



OF THE ADVANTAGES ATTENDING 



[Jan., 



OF THE ADVANTAGES ATTENDING THE INVESTI- 
GATION OF CATHOLIC TRUTH. 




BY WILLIAM C. ROBINSON 
( Yale Law School). 

I. 

SEEKER after truth, whatever be the subject of 
his inquiry, enjoys a great advantage when the 
field of his investigation can be narrowed to a 
single question, whose answer so expresses or 
involves the solution of every other problem 
which his subject may present that it relieves him from all 
further danger of mistake, and from all doubt as to the cer- 
tainty of his ultimate results. The mariner who has secured a 
pilot to whom he can with confidence entrust himself, and thus 
embarks upon his voyage over unknown seas without anxiety 
and with an assurance of its successful termination, is not more 
fortunate than is the student in any science who has dis- 
covered some fundamental principle that serves as an unerring 
standard by which he can test the truth or falsity of every 
other proposition, and under whose direction he can advance 
toward conclusions which no subsequent investigation will com- 
pel him to modify or disaffirm. 

THE SCIENCE OF SCIENCES. 

Religion is no less a science than chemistry or mathematics. 
Like them, it deals with facts, not with opinions or conjectures. 
Its so-called " doctrines " and " creeds " are, like their axioms 
and formulae, simply the correct conception and accurate state- 
ment of the facts with which it is concerned. Some of these 
facts are past, some are present, some are yet to come. Many 
of them transcend the scope of human observation, and there- 
fore can be known only through communications from some 
superior intelligence. Still each, as a fact, is as definite in its 
character and as impregnable in its reality as any fact of 
physical science ; and taken all together these facts constitute 
the spiritual world in which the souls of men have always 
lived, and now live, and are to live for ever. The knowledge 



I895-] THE INVESTIGATION OF CATHOLIC TRUTH. 469 

of these facts, and of their relations to each other, and of the 
laws by which they are produced and governed, is a true 
science ; the highest, the most abstruse, and at the same time 
the most practical and important of all sciences the only sci- 
ence whose study is absolutely necessary to men, and which 
consequently is capable of sufficient study by every man. It 
cannot be otherwise than advantageous if the exploration of 
this supreme science can be conducted under the direction of 
some universal fact or law, to which all supposed facts or laws 
may be referred, with which all actual laws and facts must cor- 
respond, and which can therefore be accepted as an infallible 
guide and touchstone at every future stage of the investigation. 

AN INFALLIBLE TEACHER. 

To the student of the science of religion the Catholic 
Church presents, at the outset, such a guide and touchstone. 
She affirms that a universal fact exists ; that it is discoverable 
by every man ; and that having once discovered it he can, by 
its means, attain with unerring certainty to the knowledge of 
every other fact and law with which the science of religion is 
concerned. That universal fact is this : That God, having in 
divers methods, and with such definiteness and completeness as 
was suited to their state, made known to men in ancient times 
those spiritual facts and laws which their own reason and ob- 
servation could not ascertain, at last sent into the world his 
Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, clothed with divine power and 
wisdom, to become the teacher of all nations and to impart to 
them the fulness of all spiritual knowledge ; that in pursuance 
of this mission, and in order to perpetuate his work, Jesus 
Christ established an indestructible society of men and women, 
to be distinguished from all other societies by its union with 
the Apostle Peter and his successors as its official head, to 
which society he committed the instruction of mankind in mat- 
ters pertaining to the science of religion under guarantees of 
infallibility, both in believing and in teaching, which effectually 
preserve it from all error whether of assertion or omission ; 
that this society still exists and still unerringly believes and 
teaches the truths which it received from him ; and, therefore, 
that in this society man now possesses, and will possess until 
the end of time, an infallible teacher from whom he can obtain 
a knowledge of the facts and laws which constitute the spirit- 
ual world. 



47 OF THE ADVANTAGES ATTENDING [Jan., 

THE SCIENCE DEMONSTRABLE. 

The fact thus affirmed is one of simple human history. It 
resolves itself into three questions: r. Did Jesus Christ come 
into the world as the teacher of the science of religion? 
2, Did he establish a perpetual and infallible society as the in- 
strument through which his work should be carried on among 
men ? 3. Does that society exist to-day, carrying on this work 
in pursuance of his order and appointment ? These questions 
can be examined and determined by the same processes of his- 
torical investigation which are employed in ascertaining the 
appearance of any other person on the stage of human activity, 
or the origin and constitution of any other society, and the 
nature and effect of the operations in which it is now engaged ; 
an investigation for which abundant materials are within the 
reach of every man and for the successful prosecution of which 
only candor, patience, and ordinary intelligence are required. 

The searcher after spiritual truth, who pursues his inquiry 
along the lines of Catholic thought, is thus singularly fortunate. 
His field of personal investigation is narrowed to one proposi- 
tion which is demonstrable by human reason from familiar 
premises, and upon whose recognition and acceptance all diffi- 
culties in the science of religion immediately disappear. 
Thenceforward he has but to ask and he is answered, to knock 
and the door of wisdom opens. He is delivered from all fear 
of error and from all danger of ignorance, and rests contented 
in the sure possession of the truth, the whole truth, and noth- 
ing but the truth. He believes what the church teaches, and 
thus obtains all spiritual knowledge possible to man. He obeys 
what the church commands, and thus keeps himself in harmony 
with all the facts and laws of the spiritual world, and advances 
with undeviating steps toward the destiny for which he was 
created. 

II. 

A seeker after truth enjoys another great advantage when 
his investigation, if faithfully pursued, is certain to result in his 
complete mastery of the science which he endeavors to acquire. 
In physical science such a result is rarely, if ever, possible. 
The vastness of the field is out of all proportion to the limited 
means which man possesses for its scrutiny, and however far 
he may have progressed in his discoveries he always has been, 
and probably always will be, compelled to recognize the im- 



1 895.] THE INVESTIGATION OF CATHOLIC TRUTH. 471 

mensity of those unknown regions which he has had no power 
or opportunity to explore. In the abstract sciences this dispro- 
portion is still wider, for the nature of the subject bounds upon 
the infinite, while the appliances for its examination are more 
restricted and uncertain in their operation, although our sense 
of the discrepancy is less profound because the spheres which 
lie beyond us are' unsuspected as well as unperceived. In the 
science of religion, which includes the infinite and to whose 
study man, when unaided by interior or exterior revelation, 
brings only a finite reason disciplined by exercise upon the 
phenomena of consciousness or of the physical world around 
him, the disproportion is immeasurably increased, and with the 
exception of a few general principles the whole domain of the 
science remains within the realms of the unknowable. Hence, 
from the beginning God has been obliged to impart the neces- 
sary knowledge of this science by some form of revelation, and 
in all ages and to all races, by personal inspiration, by the 
events of his providence, and by the tongues and pens of his 
appointed messengers, he has disclosed the facts and laws of 
the spiritual world in such measure as men were able to receive 
them enough at least in the case of every individual'to enable 
him, if he chose to do so, to attain the end to which he had 
been destined by the eternal purposes of God. 

DEFECTS OF THE OLDER SYSTEMS. ' 

But notwithstanding this divine assistance, how incomplete 
and inexact has been the knowledge of the science of religion 
among men ? What one of the older systems did not and 
does not leave unanswered numerous questions of absorbing 
interest to the human mind ? Even among the various societies 
which base their creeds upon the written words of Christ and 
his apostles, where is the one which assumes to teach the 
whole truth of God, or one which is not ever and anon con- 
fronted with some problem of faith or morals which it dare not 
undertake to solve ? In this condition of religious knowledge 
what could be more welcome to an earnest seeker after truth 
than a teacher from whom every reasonable inquiry would at 
once receive an adequate reply, and by whom every honest 
doubt would be forthwith removed ? If such a teacher any- 
where exists, are not its disciples favored beyond all compari- 
son in the means at their command for mastering this science 
of the soul ? 



472 OF THE ADVANTAGES ATTENDING [Jan., 

A TEACHER IN ALL BUT VAIN KNOWLEDGE. 

The Catholic Church is such a teacher. She undertakes to 
answer and does answer every question concerning the facts of 
the spiritual world in which man is legitimately interested, or 
the reply to which can in any manner promote his present or 
his future welfare. She undertakes to explain and does explain 
all the laws of the spiritual world which relate to man with 
such precision and minuteness as to enable him under any cir- 
cumstances to direct his conduct according to right reason and 
the will of God. She does not, indeed, encourage the indul- 
gence of a vain curiosity by disclosures which have no practi- 
cal bearing on the spiritual life and destiny of man, but no- 
where else within the entire field of religious inquiry is her 
voice silent or her utterance uncertain. How well she has dis- 
charged these duties of a universal teacher any one can satisfy 
himself by reading either of her accredited treatises on dog- 
matic and moral theology. At its conclusion he will search his 
intellect in vain for rational doubts and queries to which he 
has found no sufficient answer. 



III. 

A seeker after truth enjoys a third inestimable advantage 
when the conclusions to which he attains not only illuminate 
his intellect, but also rejoice his heart. Knowledge does not 
invariably lead to happiness. Explorers in many sciences have 
found the objects of their quest only to confess with sorrow 
that ignorance contained the greater bliss. The overthrow of 
long maintained opinions, the destruction of cherished hopes, 
the ruin of accumulated fortunes, the extinction of a hard- 
earned fame, are not infrequent consequences of advancing 
knowledge. A new invention in the industrial arts, a new dis- 
covery in physics, a new combination in the elements of some 
abstract hypothesis by these the world may gain, but out of 
these have often come to multitudes of individuals disaster, dis- 
appointment, and dismay. 

THE CONSOLATIONS OF RIGHT RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 



An increase in religious knowledge, however, ought never to 
occasion sorrow. On the contrary, since the happiness of man 
consists in his attainment of the end for which he was created, 
and as that end can be attained only through his recognition. 



1895-] THE INVESTIGATION OF CATHOLIC TRUTH. 473 

of the facts and his obedience to the laws of the spiritual 
world, the knowledge and the practice of religion ought, above 
all other causes, to promote his contentment and felicity in this 
life as well as in the life which is to come. It is repugnant to 
reason that any doctrine should be true a belief in which 
necessarily clouds and saddens the believer's soul ; and, on the 
other hand, a doctrine which encourages, consoles, and elevates, 
exhibits in that quality alone one of the strongest intrinsic 
proofs of its correctness. Hence in comparing one religious 
system with another, that which not only answers most com- 
pletely the questions of the intellect, but which most fully 
satisfies the aspirations of the heart, approves itself to reason 
as the one whose doctrines and precepts correspond most near- 
ly to the actual laws and facts of the spiritual world, and con- 
stitute the real body of divine truth revealed by God to men. 

The student who investigates any system of religion, which 
has ever exercised any influence upon mankind, necessarily dis- 
covers in its precepts and its doctrines much that comforts and 
uplifts the human heart. Whether he examines the sacred 
books of India and China, or the Scriptures of the House of 
Israel, or the venerable traditions of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, 
or the theologies which under names innumerable have sprung 
up from the fertile soil of the New Testament under different 
modes of cultivation, he will obtain light and consolation ; for 
through each one of these the voice of God is teaching, and 
that which gladdens and illuminates is his truth, which alone 
answers to the longings and the searchings of the soul. 

But however rich may be the harvest garnered from a study 
of these systems, old or new, far more productive is the investi- 
gation of that system which the Catholic Church propounds for 
the observance and belief of man. If out of all the religions 
of the earth were collected every doctrine and precept which 
makes for wisdom, righteousness, and joy, and these woven into 
one golden book of truth, it would contain nothing which the 
Catholic Church does not already believe and teach. The 
theologies of Asia and Africa and Europe and America have 
nothing to offer her by which she could enlarge the boundaries 
of her science or multiply the aids and consolations which she 
gives to men. Embracing and proclaiming every truth which 
they profess, she reaches out beyond them into regions which 
to them are only regions of conjecture, and as for every 
question of the human intellect she has an answer, so is her 
answer always welcome to the human heart. Whether she de- 



474 THE INVESTIGATION OF CATHOLIC TRUTH. [Jan. 

scribes the nature and attributes of God, or his relations to his 
creatures, or the position of man in the universe and his 
duties and destiny, or the various instrumentalities by which he 
is assisted to attain his end, or, descending into lower truths 
(which nevertheless awake sometimes a keener interest), she re- 
veals to us the attitude in which we stand toward each other 
both while we walk together on the earth and after one or all 
have passed within the veil as from our eager eyes she withholds 
no light, so is the light she sheds radiant with warmth and 
tenderness and peace. To those who dwell within this light it 
is no wonder that the Catholic is satisfied with his religion, 
whether he be the prelate at the altar or the pauper lying at 
the gate ; nor that the seeker after truth, having drunk deep 
from the rivers of divine wisdom and delight which flow in so 
many channels throughout all the world, should taste at last 
her living fountains and thenceforth thirst no more. 

A method of investigating the science of religion which pos- 
sesses these three advantages requires no further recommenda- 
tion to conscientious and earnest men. Its simplicity of opera- 
tion, its economy of effort, are only equalled by the magnitude 
and value of its results. Man needs a knowledge of the facts 
and laws of the spiritual world to live by as well as to die by, 
and no one can afford to spend his life-time in ascertaining 
what they are, or where he must look for guidance and instruc- 
tion. By this method, without delay, the humblest intellect can 
recognize its true teacher, and can enter at once into the en- 
joyment of immeasurable light and peace. 





"I WILL GATHER ME STICKS." 




1 BY P. J. MACCORRY. 

"Thou fool, this night do they require thy soul 6f thee : and whose shall those things be 
which thou hast provided ?" Luke xii. 20. 

WILL gather me sticks," said the woodsman wise, 

" While the morning yet is young ; 
And I'll build me a fire of a goodly size 

As the vesper bell is rung. 
And then, when the evening dew-damps fall 
And the chill air starts at the night-bird's call, 
I will bask me there, while the flame-darts tall, 
With sparks, from my sticks are flung." 

So he set him to task, did this woodsman sage 

Sage in the wisdom of men. 
And his keen-edged sickle cleft him a gauge 

'Mid the copse and brushwood den ; 



476 "/ WILL GATHER ME STICKS:' [Jan., 

And the swift-speeding hours unnoted fled 
As the woodsman toiled, till his fingers bled 
And his brow-sweat mixed with a crimson red 
Where the brier thorns had been. 

Until thrice had the bells from the cloister walls 
Tolled their three times three and nine ; 

And thrice prayed the monks in the chapel stalls, 
While answering to their chime. 

But the man in the deep woods could not hear, 

For the stroke of his sickle dimmed his ear, 

Till the hooting owl in a pine-tree near 
Proclaimed the day's decline. ' 

So he gathered his sticks, did this woodsman wan, 

In a great heap, high and long, 
And their bulk was far more than his rope could span 

Than his back could bear, though strong. 
So he took of the heap a goodly load, 
And he trudged him, spent, on his homeward road, 
And his shoulders ached 'neath the sticks' sharp goad 

'Neath the bruise of thorn and prong. 

Till at length, when in view of his hut he came, 

The darkness quite conquered day. 
Then a something touched him and spoke his name, 

Whose breath seemed of freezing spray ; 
And its rude hand gripped with an icy lock, 
And he sank with his burden beneath its shock, 
As a weird voice rose in a hollow mock, 

" Thou fool of fools ! Come away ! " 




1 895.] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 477 




GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 

BY REV. CLARENCE A. WALWORTH. 
CHAPTER IX. 

After Effects of Carey's Ordination. War on Bishop Onderdonk in Diocesan 
Convention. The Bishop's Masttrly Defence. Judge Duer's Speech. A 
Change of Tactics. The Bishop's Private Character Assailed. His Trial 
and Condemnation. 



N these reminiscences hitherto my memory has 
been occupied with the rise and growth, in the 
United States, of Tractarianism, or what is more 
popularly known as the Oxford Movement. We 
had, in truth, a little Oxford on this side of the 
Atlantic. It was located in a little suburban appendix to New 
York City, known as Chelsea. Its name was the General Theo- 
logical Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church. 

The Oxford Movement in the United States came in due 
course of time and very naturally to a convulsive conflict, a close 
grapple of controversial contention and angry feeling which agi- 
tated Anglicanism throughout the whole country. The imme- 
diate occasion of this was the examination and ordination of 
Arthur Carey, an account of which has already been given in 
the third and fourth chapters of these reminiscences. 

A very salient statement of the causes which led to this 
struggle and of circumstances which aggravated the excitement 
was thus given, at the time, in the columns of the Quarterly 
Christian Spectator for October, 1843 : 

" Such an occurrence as the ordination of Mr. Carey with the 
protest of two eminent clergymen against him, on the ground 
of his being in effect a Roman Catholic, became the town's 
talk; and filled the newspapers, not only in the City of New 
York but everywhere else. Nor did the news from Europe just 
about those days help to divert the public attention from these 
matters. The astounding progress of O'Connell's movement for 
giving to Popery its natural ascendency in Ireland ; the ad- 
mired secession of one-half of the Established Church in Scot- 
land ; the universal agitation in England about Tractarianism, 



478 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Jan., 

together with the University censure of Dr. Pusey himself at 
Oxford, gave to an ecclesiastico-religious question of this kind 
a new and surprising power of interesting the whole people." 

It was impossible that so fierce a conflict could go on long 
without a break-up of Tractarianism, such as it was, for in point 
of numbers Tractarians were by far the weaker party. It is 
also impossible to describe this break-up without giving some 
account of the trial and condemnation of Dr. Benjamin T. On- 
derdonk, President of the Seminary and Bishop of New York. 
To this we devote the present chapter. 

The ordination of Carey 
made Bishop Onderdonk the 
central point of a violent storm. 
The bishop could not properly 
be called a Tractarian, he was 
rather a High-churchman ; but 
believing the Anglican Church 
to have been established on a 
compromise in matters of doc- 
trine, he was willing to give 
that compromise its largest 
latitude. This made him a 
great protector of Tractarians, 
whether clergymen or seminari- 
ans looking forward to ordina- 
tion. He was no great favorite 
at our seminary, but all the Trac- 
tarian students in the institution 
recognized him as a protector. 
His ordination of Carey 
now made him a target. Every 
evangelical zealot, whether bish- 
op, priest, or layman, entered 
upon a war the success of which seemed to depend necessarily 
upon the downfall of the bishop. As for him, his Dutch blood 
was fully aroused, and until his character was undermined he 
stood the shock of battle like a veritable Van Tromp. The war 
against him was not carried on merely in social circles and in 
the columns of the press, and in multitudinous pamphlets ar- 
raigning his action in the ordination of Carey ; it broke out 
openly and vigorously in the first convention of his diocese that 
met after the ordination. This was in the latter part of Sep. 
tember, of the same year, at St. Paul's Chapel in New York 




DR. BENJAMIN T. ONDERDONK. 



1895.] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 479 

City. It was the largest gathering of delegates in convention 
since the formation of Western New York into a separate dio- 
cese in 1838. 

On September 28, .1843, Judge Oakley, chief-justice of the 
Superior Court, opened fire upon the bishop in full convocation 
by the introduction of two resolutions in themselves not at all 
unreasonable, but in view of all the circumstances quite out of 
season if the end which he proposed to himself was the resto- 
ration of peace. 

The first resolution was that the delegates from New York 
to the next general convention should be instructed to procure 
such an authoritative interpretation of the rubrics as should 
settle the question whether clergymen have the same right as lay- 
men to object to a candidate in response to the call of the 
bishop at the ordination ceremony. 

The second resolution looked forward to the procuring of a 
canon providing that upon the application of two presbyters ob- 
jecting to the fitness of a candidate, a trial shall be had with 
notice of time and place, so that the two objectors may be 
present, and that the answers to all questions put to the can- 
didate shall be placed on record. 

These propositions seem innocent enough. We must con- 
sider, however, the time and circumstances which called them 
forth, all the heated discussions to which Tractarianism had 
given rise both in England and America, the suspicions so rife 
in regard to the orthodoxy of the General Seminary, the exami- 
nation of Carey so widely published with all its particulars, and 
above all, the startling protests of Drs. Smith and Anthon at 
his ordination so summarily and indignantly disposed of by 
the bishop. It then becomes evident that the introduction of 
these resolutions into the New York convention was simply the 
casting of an additional firebrand into the Anglican communion. 

The attack was foreseen by Bishop Onderdonk. His opening 
address and the whole result of the convention show how well 
prepared he was to meet it. 

The principal speaker in behalf of the resolutions was John 
Duer, Esq., a lay delegate from Dr. Anthon's parish of St. 
Mark's, a zealous Low-churchman, and one of the most distin- 
guished jurists of the country. He was surrounded and sup- 
ported by many prominent laymen, some of them lawyers like 
himself. His manner in speaking is thus described by a friend 
in an article published in the New York American of October 
2, 1843: 



480 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Jan., 



"We have rarely seen an instance where the sense of the 
holy place in which he stood and of the sacred nature of the 
topics he was discussing seemed more thoroughly to pervade 
the mind of the speaker, and to impart to him the mastery 
over the impulses with which he seemed struggling to a more 
impassioned style and burning thoughts." 

It is difficult to pass without some notice the utterances of 
so strong a man on an occasion so memorable. A pamphlet 
published at the time by Harper & Brothers, and preserved in 
the State Library, enables us to refresh our dim recollections of 
Judge Duer's argument. We 
only give a few passages, select- 
ing such as are most likely to 
interest our readers. In the 
course of his speech, after hav- 
ing waived all personal applica- 
tion of any of his remarks to 
the chair (Bishop Onderdonk), 
and making the supposition 
that a bishop might arise 
whose own mind should be 
deeply infected with the very 
errors against which, as a 
church, Episcopalians had pro- 
tested, he said : 

" I have already spoken of 
testimonials and preparatory 
examinations. The only appar- 
ent security is the required sub- 
scription of the candidates to 
our Articles of Religion, but 
what security is that subscrip- 
tion against those who believe 
in the innocence of mental reservation ? What security 
against those who have been taught to interpret the Articles 
in a sense that robs them wholly of their Protestant char- 
acter, and renders them easy to be reconciled with the most 
obnoxious doctrines and practices of Rome ? Under such 
a bishop there would be no difficulty in finding candidates 
of the necessary pliability of conscience. Rome herself, 
acting upon the system that in other countries she is known 
to have pursued, would supply them. She would send her 
own emissaries into your church, and not only permit but 




JUDGE JOHN DUER. 



1 895-1 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 481 

command them to become its ministers. Far from considering 
their subscription to your articles as a crime, she would en- 
courage and reward it as an act of pious obedience : the end 
to be obtained would sanctify the means. In the present state 
of the church, viewing the actual progress of certain doctrines, 
and the multitude and zeal of those who have embraced them 
remembering the caution with which these doctrines were first 
promulgated and the lengths to which their authors have now 
boldly advanced, it cannot be said with truth that the dangers 
of which I have spoken are so remote and improbable that it 
would be useless to adopt measures of precaution. A Romanist 
bishop in a Protestant church is no longer an improbable event." 

A little later the speaker refers to Tractarianism, and to the 
New York Churchman in particular, as follows : 

" The doctrines of the Tractarian writers of Oxford have, 
in certain quarters, been openly embraced have been propa- 
gated in the diocese with, unusual diligence and zeal, and in a 
journal which claims to be the legitimate organ of the churcH, 
have not only been avowed in their full extent, but have been 
defended and maintained with signal ability, skill, and learning." 
He adds : " They have become a favorite study of the youth 
in our seminary, the future candidates for orders, and by many 
of the younger clergy who have issued from the seminary they 
have been passionately embraced, and are now zealously propa- 
gated." 

The distinguished orator took occasion to champion the 
rights of the laity, to which, in his view, Tractarianism was 
especially hostile. " If you would lead the laity," he said, ad- 
dressing the chairman, "the laity must know where you are 
going. If you would govern their conduct, you must gain their 
confidence by convincing their reason. If you claim from them 
an implicit faith, the claim is sure to be rejected, and those 
who, properly instructed, would have been glad to follow, will 
be prompt to abandon you." Then, bringing his argument to 
bear specifically upon the resolutions, he concludes: "In one 
sense the spiritual powers of the bishop to ordain cannot be 
limited ; he may ordain whom he pleases, but his power to or- 
dain those who are to be received as ministers of the church is 
necessarily subject to such regulations as the church may 
impose. To deny this is to subvert the whole constitution of 
the church is to demolish the edifice, in order to build the 
prerogative of the bishop upon its ruins. It is to make each 
bishop the pope of his diocese." 

VOL. LX. 31 



482 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Jan., 

A remarkable feature of this memorable convention is the 
careful courtesy with which the chief combatants treated each 
other. It could scarcely be otherwise, for they were all gentle- 
men and bred to understand the laws of courtesy. Their ex- 
pressions of mutual esteem, however, were simply formal. Like 
pugilists before a combat, they shook hands, well knowing the 
fearful encounter which was to follow. 

The bishop opened the synod with great dignity and sol- 
emnity, not affecting to conceal his consciousness that a storm 
was brewing and that he was prepared to meet it. His words, 
however, were kind and offered no provocation to attack unless 
a manly defence of himself and of the presbyters who had 
acted with him at Carey's examination is to be considered as such. 

" Wicked attempts," he said, " are making without to rend 
us asunder by jealousies, and to provoke the disunion of our 
happy communion. To meet this, be we all as one man cling- 
ing to Christ, his cross, and his church, let us resolve that we 
will be one in order, in affection, and in all the graces of the 
Christian faith." 

In like manner Judge Duer, before closing his argument, 
professed his desire for peace and proffered as terms of peace 
the acceptance of the hostile resolutions for which he con- 
tended. Addressing himself to the clergy and laity who had 
already shown their opposition to the resolutions on the day 
previous, by seeking to have them laid upon the table, he said : 

" Will you reject our overtures of peace ? Instead of receiv- 
ing, will you dash from our hands the olive branch we tender? 
We entreat you to remember that if by your votes these reso- 
lutions shall be rejected, it is upon you alone that the responsi- 
bility will rest ; you and you alone will be answerable to your 
church and to your God for the consequences that may follow." 

These professions of a desire for peace sound well, but were 
necessarily unavailing. The famous words so well uttered at 
the beginning of our American Revolution may readily be 
applied to the mutual declarations of amity so formally made 
at this New York convention. 

" Gentlemen may cry ' Peace ! peace ! ' but there is no peace. 
The war is actually begun." A bugle-note of war was sounded 
when the seminary at Chelsea was first assailed and Carey's 
ordination objected to. Some miserable details excepted, all 
that followed was inevitable. 

This Diocesan Convention of 1843 was the culminating point 
in Bishop Onderdonk's career. He stood at that time the fore- 



1895-] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 483 

most bishop in an ecclesiastical body comprising many distin- 
guished priests and prelates. He was in that body the most pow- 
erful, courageous, and reliable champion of the High-church party. 
Although much that occurred at that time has faded from my 
memory, the long years have obliterated little of the picture 
then imprinted of that fearless, ready-witted, and sagacious 
man. He confronted his enemies in the convention at every 
point. They retired from it at its close beaten and baffled. 
And this was not caused by any insufficiency on their part, for 
they included in their number some of the foremost men of 
the day, flowers of the clergy and pillars of the bar. The tri- 
umph of the evangelical cause came later and was achieved by 
less respectable means. 

To explain my meaning it will be necessary to give the 
reader a sketch of the initiation and progress of a movement 
against Bishop Onderdonk's private character. This was carried 
on at first in secret, but "afterwards was brought out in the 
form of public charges preferred by his enemies and resulting 
in his trial and condemnation by an ecclesiastical tribunal. 

The first combined efforts of the Evangelical party of Angli- 
cans against Tractarianism in America had been directed against 
the General Seminary in Chelsea, and only included Bishop On- 
derdonk as president and professor of that seminary, and the 
best-known defender of the rights of Tractarians to hold their 
principles in the Anglican fold, to exercise their ministry in that 
fold, and to use the advantages of the seminary. 

The institution was governed by an ample Board of Trus- 
tees, to which all the bishops belonged ex officio. The attack be- 
gan during a meeting of the board assembled at the seminary 
for the June examinations of 1843. Drs. Smith and Anthon 
proposed to the trustees that the examining committee should 
direct their attention especially to points involving Tractarianism, 
in order to draw out any bias of the students in this direction. 
The trustees declined to do this on the ground that the busi- 
ness of the committee was not to examine, but to attend up- 
on the examination as conducted by the professors and to re- 
port the result. Drs. Smith and Anthon were, however, added 
to the examining committee, and it was suggested to them that 
a request to the professors to examine any particular student 
or students with special distinctness on any particular topics, 
would undoubtedly accomplish their object. This course, we 
are informed, was taken ; but nothing appears to have been 
elicited by this means either to prove or disprove the suspicions 



484 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Jan., 

which had been excited. Drs. Smith and Anthon were not sat- 
isfied with the manner in which the resolutions moved by them 
had been disposed of. Still less were they satisfied the next 
day, when a third resolution, requesting that the sermons which 
the members of the senior class had handed to the professor 
for inspection might be brought to the committee, shared the 
fate of its predecessors and was laid to sleep with them. (See 
Quarterly Christian Spectator for October, 1843.) 

This direct attempt of the Evangelical or Low-church party 
to purge the seminary of tendencies Romeward was soon dis- 
continued for a less direct but more effectual method of war- 
fare. Bishop Onderdonk, as we have said, stood foremost as 
the protector of Tractarians. He was fearless and powerful. 
To prostrate him would leave the cause he favored demoralized 
and without a head. There were existing circumstances which 
seemed to pave a way to effect his ruin, by assailing his char- 
acter. 

The first suspicions that the bishop's private life was open 
to attack on its moral side began to circulate about the time 
that I first came to the seminary, namely, in 1842. This ap- 
pears by the testimony of the Rev. Paul Trapier, the record of 
which may be found in a pamphlet published by that gentle- 
man in 1845, directly after the Onderdonk trial. I do not 
think the students of the seminary knew anything of such ru- 
mors until they were made public by the action of his prosecutors. 

Mr. Trapier tells us that these rumors were well known 
among the presbyters of South Carolina gathered in convention 
in February, 1844. Mr. Trapier himself, who was prominent 
among these, was also a trustee of the General Seminary at 
Chelsea, New York, and an active Evangelical. He is well known 
to all who remember these sad transactions as the most active, 
untiring, and unrelenting of the bishop's adversaries. Three 
other presbyters are mentioned in his pamphlet as associated 
with him in bringing to light the evidence of misconduct relied 
upon by the presenting and prosecuting bishops. Two of these 
presbyters I knew personally. One of them, Mason Gallagher, 
was with me at the seminary during my first year, and was at 
that time a candidate for orders from Western New York. 
Gallagher is still living, a minister of the Reformed Episcopa- 
lians. Another was the Rev. James C. Richmond, already men- 
tioned in our sixth chapter and bearing, as there stated, the 
sobriquet of "Crazy Richmond." 

The convention of the South Carolina Diocese, in February, 



1895-] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 485 

1844, joined in the attempt already referred to by passing a re- 
solution to inquire into the state of the General Seminary. 
Rumors were already rife, as we have said, against the personal 
character of the Bishop of New York, but were not publicly in- 
troduced into the proceedings of this convention. They had 
their influence, however, upon these proceedings, as Mr. Tra- 
pier informs us, and helped to secure a majority in favor of the 
action there taken. He says : 

" My conviction is that though the alarm was more extensive 
on the subject of Tractarianism, yet there could not have been 
the majority requisite for any action of the convention had not 
others of its members been uneasy about the moral influence 
of the Right Reverend Professor. As it was, the two sets of per- 
sons combining, such majority was secured." 

Mr. Trapier himself tells us that he was not very apprehen- 
sive of Tractarianism infecting the seminary, and that he was 
not much disposed on its account to carry out any further than 
duty might demand the resolution of his convention. The ru- 
mors concerning the moral misconduct of Bishop Onderdonk 
were, in his view, more serious as they were rapidly spreading 
among the laity. He arrived at the General Seminary for the 
meeting of the Board in June, 1844, with a determination rather 
to make a special investigation into these private rumors. He 
returned home, so he tells us, without any success. No one 
could be found to stand to his assertions, none could allow the 
seal of confidence to be broken, and yet many were whispering. 

At the next General Convention of the Church, which met 
at Philadelphia, and which Trapier attended, he was seemingly 
no nearer to his purpose than before. But one day, during the 
sessions of this convention, he was in the yard of St. Andrew's 
Church when he was informed by Mr. Gallagher that affidavits 
could be procured. The two resolved to consult Mr. Memmin- 
ger, a lay deputy from South Carolina, and found that he was 
already better posted than themselves, and intended to bring 
the matter out in open convention on the question of receiving 
the report of the trustees of the seminary. Instead of this, 
however, after consultation they concluded to put the matter 
into the hands of the bishops only, and they drew up and signed 
a memorial which was handed to Bishop Meade. A few days 
after Bishop Chase returned the paper to Mr. Trapier, the bishops 
having decided to present the matter in another shape. The 
reason assigned was that the conduct of Onderdonk as profes- 
sor could not be inquired into without involving his character 



486 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Jan., 

as bishop. Nothing was publicly done at the meeting of this 
General Convention. It is not probable that anything effective 
upon Tractarianism or the General Seminary or Bishop Onder- 
donk could have been done in General Convention, so long as 
his private character remained unassailed. The evangelicals, 
therefore, took the matter into their own hands. A trial of 
Bishop Onderdonk for immorality was determined upon. Bishops 
Meade, Otey, and Elliott undertook to present the case, and 
the time was fixed upon. The bishops would not consent to 
hunt up evidence, as one of them expressly declared to the 
Rev. Mr. Trapier. Trapier tells us that he thought this rather 
hard on the signers of the memorial ; for he as one of them 
"had certainly had no expectation of being called upon to do 
more than put the bishops as a body into the way of getting 
at information by calling before them the clergymen whose 
names were therein mentioned," and that he " did not at all 
relish being transformed, though in a righteous cause, from the 
sufficiently odious position of an informer into the one yet more 
so of a prosecutor." The bishops, however, persisted, and Trapier 
and Memminger consented to the parts assigned them, Memmin- 
ger acting a lawyer's part in receiving testimony and preparing 
affidavits, which work was done in New York. 

The foregoing facts, gathered from Mr. Trapier's pamphlet, 
seem to me important to these reminiscences, as they show how 
the immediate field of war was transferred from the seminary 
to more secret action elsewhere, and finally to the scenes of 
the memorable trial of the New York bishop. 

The proceedings of the actual trial of Bishop Onderdonk were 
all published, and therefore well known to me as well as to the 
entire public. Of this preliminary work, however, of hunting up 
evidence and of urging witnesses to come forward I should 
have known nothing at the time had I not accidentally become 
acquainted with the Rev. James C. Richmond, whom I have al- 
ready mentioned as very forward in the movement. He talked 
freely of the part which he had taken in it. 

There is good evidence to show that the bishop could have 
conciliated this adversary if he had thought it prudent and 
proper to do so. This we learn from Mr. Richmond himself, 
in his "Reply" to the pamphlet entitled "Richmond in Ruins." 

The bishop is quoted as having made the statement that 
Mr. Richmond had called on him, and expressed a warm desire 
to return from Rhode Island to the diocese of New York, that 
he might be the bishop's friend and stand by him in his trou- 



1 895-] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 487 

bles. This is partially confirmed by Richmond himself. He 
states that he said to Dr. Onderdonk : " Bishop, are you aware 
that it is in my power to render you more service than any 
presbyter?" The bishop, he tells us, instead of saying, "What 
do you mean, sir?" blushed and was silent. 

One who would have been very insignificant as an active 
ally was thus permanently made into a most dangerous foe. ; It 
was a repetition of the old story of Paris and the Tendon Achilleis. 

The court of bishops for the trial of Onderdonk convened 
December 10, 1844, in the Sunday-school building of St. John's 
Chapel, New York City. 

Philander Chase, Bishop of Illinois, being senior bishop, was 
in the chair. Bishop Ives of North Carolina, Bishop Hopkins 
of Vermont, and twenty other bishops were present. Rev. Bird 
Wilson, D.D., of the seminary, was unanimously elected secre- 
tary, which office, be it remembered to his great credit, he de- 
clined. Bishop Whittingham acted instead as clerk and secre- 
tary. Presentment was made by Bishop Meade of Virginia, 
Bishop Otey of Tennessee, and Bishop Elliott of Georgia. 

The prosecuting bishops, as also Bishop Onderdonk, were 
represented by counsel, eminent lawyers of New York City. 
The presenting bishops were represented by Hiram Ketchum 
and Girardus Clarke. Bishop Onderdonk chose for his counsel 
David B. Ogden and David Graham. 

The charge against Bishop Onderdonk, made by the present- 
ing bishops, was that of immorality and impurity, nine separate 
instances being specified. No attempt to commit any criminal 
act was either proved or alleged. The offences proved con- 
sisted rather of maudlin familiarities indulged in by a half- 
conscious man overheated with wine, and generally before wit- 
nesses the fact of whose presence precludes all suspicion of 
criminal intent or any definite purpose. It was impossible for 
the counsel of the accused bishop, or for his friends, to make 
any complete and satisfactory defence of his conduct. It was 
easier, however, to palliate these offences and to show that his 
guilt was far less than his enemies would make it out to be. 
None of the instances alleged against him had occurred within 
two years and a half of the trial. 

Under all the circumstances of the case it seems strange that 
such strong measures should have been taken, and that any 
number of Episcopalian bishops should have been willing to 
bring such scandalous matter to so public an exhibition. Ladies 
of high respectability and perfectly innocent were brought out 



488 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Jan. 

in open court to testify, to their own confusion, and all that 
they said was paraded in the public newspapers. The proceed- 
ings of this extraordinary court, including the testimony of wit- 
nesses and the full arguments of the counsel, were published, by 
authority of the bishops themselves, in a pamphlet of three hun- 
dred and thirty-three pages, and a copyright secured. One 
young lady implicated in these disagreeable matters absolutely 
refused to appear and testify. Her name, however, and the 
nature of the insults offered to her all went freely before the 
public and appeared on the record of the proceedings. 

The court remained in session during twenty-four days, 
i.e., from the tenth of December to the third of January inclu- 
sive. On that day the judgment of the court was publicly an- 
nounced, in which the respondent was declared guilty of six of 
the charges specified by a majority of the court, consisting of 
eleven bishops. The verdict of guilty having thus been reached, 
it became necessary for the bishops to decide what the sentence 
of the court should be, namely, whether the punishment should 
be deposition, or suspension, or only admonition. The votes of 
the bishops on this question were given by ballot, each bishop 
signing his own name and sometimes also assigning on the bal- 
lot his reasons for the mode of sentence which he approved. 
There were several ballotings without arriving at any conclu- 
sion. Several of the bishops then changed their votes. Some 
of them gave as their reason for this, the necessity of securing 
a majority for some form of censure. Some of Bishop Onder- 
donk's friends, who voted at first for a simple admonition, 
ended by agreeing to a sentence of suspension to ward off a 
more serious censure. 

Suspension was the sentence finally arrived at and declared 
by the court. 

This sentence was never removed. A Standing Committee 
was empowered to represent temporarily the ecclesiastical au- 
thority of the diocese. Finally, in November, 1852, Dr. Wain- 
wright was consecrated to take charge of the see, with the title 
of provisional bishop. This qualified title he continued to bear 
until the death of Bishop Onderdonk, which took place April 
30, 1861. 

The influence of this downfall of Bishop Onderdonk upon 
Tractarianism in the United States, both at the Seminary and 
elsewhere, will be presented and pictured to the reader in chap- 
ters still to come. 

(TO BE CONTINUED.) 




One of his Life Principles was to Preach from the Printing-Press. 



THE CONSECRATED MISSION OF THE PRINTED 

WORD. 

BY MARGARET E. JORDAN. 

" A bit of printed matter is a sacred thing." Temperance Truth. 

HE invention of printing accomplishes the great- 
est social revolution the world has ever known ; 
henceforth two-thirds of mankind will be governed 
by the printing-press." Thus wrote Right Rev. 
J. S. Alemany, O.P., treating of the fifteenth 

century in his Life of St. Dominic. It is a truth, be the silent/ 

government productive of good or of evil. 




490 THE MISSION OF THE PRINTED WORD. [Jan., 

" At the Council of Lateran," to quote the Mission of the 
Press* " Pope Leo X. declared printing invented for the glory of 
God, the propagation of our holy faith, and for the advancement of 
knowledge" Truly a mission holy and sublime ! A mission, in 
its three-fold aim, self-same as that of the preacher and the 
teacher of God's word ! Well may Albert Reynaud exclaim, 
writing in THE CATHOLIC WORLD of July, 1889:! 

" Teaching the young has been hallowed as a vocation ; why 
not the teaching of the adult and the world? Preaching has 
its anointed ministers, why not the predication of the written 
message ? The evangels of human triviality and error have their 
zealous distributers ; why might not the evangels of truth have 
consecrated agents to disseminate them with devotion and or- 
ganized effort ? In a word, why should so powerful, so univer- 
sal, so far-reaching a means of doing good be left almost wholly 
in indifferent and purely worldly hands?" 

The writer last quoted does not ignore the fact that noble 
efforts have been and are still being made to secure the God- 
given mission of the printing-press, but he justly says they " fail 
to fill the requirements of the situation." And why this fail- 
ure ? He is explicit in giving the reason therefor. It is because 




THE MONARCH OF THE WORLD is TRUTH ; HIS THRONE, HOWEVER, is THE PRINTING- 
PRESS. PRINTING-HOUSE OF THE PAULISTS. (CORNER OF THE PRESS-ROOM.) 

" they lack the fundamental requisite of any lasting work. They 
are mainly the efforts of an individual, or of a few, and they 
live, at best, the length of an individual life. Something greater, 
broader, larger than individual life and individual aims is what 

* Tract 49 of the series issued by the Catholic Book Exchange. 

t We refer our readers to "A Religious Order devoted to Publication. Why not ?" 



I895-] 



THE MISSION OF THE PRINTED WORD. 



491 



they want ; something other than the fatal limitation of person- 
ality that ear mark of mere human undertaking." 

Then in one succinct sentence he makes the bold and true 




His SCEPTRE is THE PEN. (EDITORIAL SANCTUM OF "THE CATHOLIC .WORLD 

MAGAZINE.") 

declaration of the need of the day : " What is wanted is voca- 
tion and the lasting stamp of God, religious consecration and reli- 
gious organization "; and in making this declaration the writer is 
not only giving expression to his own view of the matter, but 
he is voicing, consciously or unconsciously, the aim and the 
prayer of one of the master-minds of the nineteenth century, 
of one who may well be called the Apostle of the Printed 
Word, Very Rev. Isaac Thomas Hecker. 

Turn to this life of noble endeavors, of fruitful results, which 
one of his spiritual sons has given us.* Read in its early pages 
(70-71) how even before his conversion to the Catholic faith one 
of his future life's aims began to unfold itself to him: "Not 
yet certain of his own vocation, the dream of a virginal aposto- 
late, including the two sexes, had already absorbed his yearning?, 

* The Life of Father Hecker. By Rev. Walter Elliott. Columbus Press, 120 West Six- 
tieth Street, New York. 



492 



THE MISSION OF THE PRINTED WORD. 



[Jan., 



never again to be forgotten ; . . . the union of souls ? Yes ; 
for uses worthy of souls. . . . Thenceforward the test of 
true kinship with him could only be a kindred aspiration after 
union in liberty from merely natural trammels, in order to tend 
more surely to a supernatural end ; . . . such an integral 
supernatural mission to mankind was what he ever after de- 
sired and sought to establish, though he only attained success 
on the male side. . . . He never for an hour left out of 
view the need of women for any great work of religion, though 
he doubtless made very sure of his auditor before unveiling his 
whole thought. He never made so much as a serious attempt 
to incorporate women with his work, but he never ceased to 
look around and to plan with a view to doing so." 

Turn now to the pages that reveal the heroic struggle with 
disease and inaction (359-367), when far away from the scene of 
his life-work he bears about with him in the lands of his travels, 
not only the community of men, founded and flourishing, but 
the community of women still to come forth from the pregnant 
being of God. He has reached Switzerland. He has seen be- 




; A BIT OF PRINTED MATTER is A SACRED THING." (WHERE THE BINDING is DONE.) 



l8 95-] THE MISSION OF THE PRINTED WORD. 493 

ginning there what he would fain reproduce in his own loved 
America. He found that a zealous canon had " organized, or 
rather begun, an association of girls to set types, etc., who live 
in community and labor for the love of God in the Apostolate 
of the Press. He publishes several newspapers and journals. 
The house in which the members live is also the store and 
the publishing house. Each girl has her own room. They 
are under the patronage of St. Paul. The canon is filled with 
the idea of St. Paul as the great patron of the press, the first 
Christian journalist. What has long been my dream of a move- 
ment of this nature has found here an incipient realization. 
Our views in regard to the mission of the press, and the neces- 
sity of running it for the defence and propagation of the faith, 
as a form of Christian sacrifice in our day, are identical. You 
can easily fancy what interest and consolation our meeting and 
conversation must be to each other." * 

We have seen his unaccomplished aims ; let us now listen to 
his apparently unanswered prayer. He is in Rome, in the 
Catacombs of St. Agnes. He has celebrated Mass there on the 
feast of the martyr. "What did I pray for?" he questions, 
penning a letter home. " For you all, especially for the future. 
What future ? How shall I name it ? The association of wo- 
men in our country to aid the work of God through the Holy 
Church for its conversion. My convictions become fixed and 
my determination to begin the enterprise consecrated." 

His convictions are fixed ! His determination to begin the 
enterprise consecrated ! Two decades of years have passed 
through the fingers of Time since Father Hecker breathed this 
prayer in the Catacombs. Nearly five decades since the light 
into the future was first flashed upon him, and yet that organi- 
zation of women has never come into existence ! Did Father 
Hecker determine upon enterprises at random ? Nay. Did 
God, then, permit him, the firm believer in the " direct action 
of the Holy Spirit on the human soul," who trusted so im- 
plicitly to " the inner and secret prompting of the Holy 
Ghost," to follow, even in the planning of his life-work, a 
false light ? Again, nay. Then why the delay ? the non-fulfil- 
ment ? 

The ardent heart of the apostle beat impetuously for the 
doing of God's work, but the illuminated soul of the contem- 
plative breathed to the ardent heart, " Peace, be still," and 
in prayerful waiting the apostle and the contemplative, for 

* See chapter xxx. Life of Father Hecker. 



494 



THE MISSION OF THE PRINTED WORD. 



[Jan., 



Father Hecker was both, bided God's time, his way, and his 
instruments for the doing of a divine work. 

There is a great lesson for us of the present day contained 
in the fact that in addition to the works which Father Hecker 
accomplished, he held locked up within his soul for nearly five- 
and forty years another work, inexpressibly dear to him on ac- 
count of its possibilities of salvation to men and glory to God. 




VERY REV. A. F. HEWIT, D.D. ; NOW AT ST. THOMAS' COLLEGE, CATHOLIC 
UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON. 

At rarest intervals he gave to others a glimpse of that which 
was living within it, and yet he passed away from earth with- 
out even having made a serious attempt to do this work, " though 
he never ceased to look around and to plan with a view to do- 
ing so." It often happens in the divine economy that one may 
never be called upon to bring into visible existence a work 
with the desire of which God has imbued our souls. Our part 



1 895.] THE MISSION OF THE PRINTED WORD. 495 

may be only that of prayer. We will surely strengthen by 
prayer that which we may possibly, if not probably, render 
abortive by premature activity. It is not in doing all the work 
that we can do for God that perfection consists, but rather in 
doing just what he wills, when, where, and how he wills it. 

And here comes another lesson : watch for right times 
and places and means and co-workers. We Catholics of 
America have been censured for keeping " behind the times " 
in the doing of active good works. We are awakened at 
last, and we are up and doing in every line of advancement. 
Let us take care. We are certainly right in endeavoring 
" to keep up with the times," but let us remember that 
God is not behind them. For us who are his followers it is 
not on the times, but on the lines that he has drawn for us 
through them, that our eyes should be fixed. Too many good 
works begun in the most unselfish spirit never reach devel- 
opment. They are abortive not so much because undertaken 
by souls not called to undertake them, as because they are 
undertaken before the marked hour, with the wrong co-opera- 
tors. Too often we drop the seed before the Master has 
tilled the ground or gathered about us the workmen whom 
he has trained to aid us. A burning desire to be about our, 
life-work may not mean that the hour has come for action. 
It may be given us that by repression, of ardor to-day we 
may, through the exercise of self-restraint, possess to-morrow 
a concentrated earnestness that will empower us to move, 
not only self, but many another in the direction in which we 
would go. Christ the Master in the temple amidst the doctors 
was burning to be about his Father's business. Could he have 
done better in the ardor of his twelve years the work of salva- 
tion that he accomplished with divine perfection after growing 
for eighteen years " in wisdom and age and grace with God 
and men " ? 

But one may question why Father Hecker never strove to 
realize his apostolic desire. It is never very difficult for any 
priest to gather a body of women for purposes of religion or 
charity, much less would it have been difficult for this priest 
who conceived and accomplished so many great works. Yes, 
one may well question why he never attempted an organization 
of women whose lives should be consecrated to the spread of 
the truth through the powerful, silent-voiced agency of the 
printing-press, and should be, at the same time, an oblation of 
praise and thanksgiving for all the blessings of which the writ- 



496 THE MISSION OF THE PRINTED WORD. [Jan., 

ten and the printed word have been the channel, and a vapor 
of prayer which, rising heavenward, would descend in copious 
showers of grace, irrigating the desert places of heresy, and 
fructifying the seeds of truth sown in hearts by workmen the 
world over. Here comes a point where this work must needs 




OUT THROUGH THESE DOORS THERE GO OVER FlVE MILLION PAGES OF PRINTED 
MATTER EACH MONTH. (THE COUNTING-ROOM.) 

reproduce all others : where Father Hecker could learn much 
from the great works of other great men. 

Confraternities, societies, parish congregations, clubs, all may 
be formed of members drawn collectively ; not so an organiza- 
tion that is to reproduce the spiritual family life as religious 
orders do. No exterior binding together of human lives can 
form into one family beings of widely different human genera- 
tion ; no similarity of human desires can blend the aims of 
many into one great harmonious endeavor. One thing alone 
has power to effect this family life, this unity of action : it is a 
God-given vocation. Somewhere in God's world there must 
needs exist a soul in whom he has implanted this vocation, if 
his eternal designs embrace such a work ; and, doubtless, within 
reach of that woman other women with corresponding vocations 
exist, yet one may be unconscious of the existence of another. 



I895-] 



THE MISSION OF THE PRINTED WORD. 



497 



Father Hecker must needs have met the soul in which the 
germ of such a work was implanted, or his efforts to develop it 
would be unavailing. But evidently he never met her, and 
versed as he was in God's ways from his own soul-illumination, 
and his study, doubtless, of works done by others, not meeting 
her was to him a clear proof that any attempt at such a work 
wouldc/foe premature, its effects abortive. 

But does this prove that his light was false ? his prayer 
vain ? his aim destined never to reach realization ? Nay. It 
proves but this : that God's allotted hour for the work was not 
one embraced in Father Hecker's allotted years of earthly life. 
It is said that "poets never die." With far greater truth may 
this perennial life be ascribed to founders of religious institutes. 
They live on endlessly in the lives of the spiritual children 




COMPOSING-ROOM IN THE PRINTING-HOUSE OF THE PAULISTS. 

.they give to the church and the world, and the works accom- 
plished by their spiritual children are but, as it were, the con- 
summation of their work. "Prayer will do more than action," 
and the prayer of faith that arises from a supernatural glimpse 
of God's work for future time is not unanswered even though 
visible results have not been achieved till that prayer of faith 
has long been crowned by full knowledge gained in the light 
of the Beatific Vision. 
VOL. LX. 32 



498 THE MISSION OF THE PRINTED WORD. [Jan., 

Reading of this desire of Father Hecker's ardent heart, of 
this determination of his energetic nature, one is moved to 
question whether or not he went even so far as to draft any 
plan for this organization of women whose daily work should 
be the consecration of pens and types and printing-presses to the 
propagation of the truth as a form of Christian sacrifice. " He 
did not," his spiritual sons assure us ; " he would naturally wait 
until he had found the souls for whom to draft such a plan." 
Perhaps we can find another reason of his bequeathing to those 
whose dearest wish would be to develop his plans, none for 
this future work for the sanctification of America. 

It was not only respect, it was reverence that Father Hdtker 
yielded to the God-given freedom of mankind, to its God- 
given right'' to 1 listen for, to hearken to, and to follow the 
interior guiding voice of the Spirit of Him who is the way, and 
the truth, and the life. He never sought to make of any 
human being a mere tool to work out his aims for God's glory, 
but rather to find each one that which he himself was: an 
instrument fashioned and tempered for its own purpose in the 
great work. It was the co-operation of free men and women 
that he craved always. He, no doubt, felt that if he ever met 
those who were to take the initiative in this work he would 
meet in one or more of them a spirit, a method, an organiza- 
tion, in full or in part developed, and impressed in some one 
of those supernatural ways that produce an instantaneous con- 
viction of their unerring guidance. "The words of God in ithe 
soul effect what they say," declares Father Faber, contrasting 
the human spirit with the divine, in Growth in Holiness. " The 
divine voice may have uttered but a single sound, one little 
word, but the work is done. It is safe to build upon it the 
edifice of years." 

Looking over the universal Catholic world of to-day, and 
beholding all that is being done for the spread of the printed 
word of God, one may question : In sight of all this is there 
any need of such a religious organization as that contemplated by 
Father Hecker ? We can but judge of the present by the past. 
For hundreds of years Christianity had been preached to the 
nations of the earth, and yet God gave to St. Dominic and St. 
Francis, to St. Ignatius, St. Alphonsus and St. Paul of the 
Cross, and to others as well, revelations of his will, and forth 
from those revelations came great orders specially devoted to 
preaching. For hundreds of years the poor, the sick, and the 
unfortunate had been cared for in Christ's name, and yet God 



I895-] THE MISSION OF THE PRINTED WORD. 499 

called upon a Vincent de Paul, a Father Eudes, a Catherine 
McAuley, and in response to his voice arose the Sisters of 




WHERE THE PROOFS ARE READ. 



Charity, of the Good Shepherd, of Mercy. For hundreds of 
years the church militant on earth had offered suffrages' for the 
suffering church in purgatory, and yet in our own century God 
whispers in the depths of a human soul that his church has no 
order devoted specially to the relief of the suffering dead, and 
from that pregnant whisper comes forth the Helpers of the 
Holy Souls. For hundreds of years the daily Holy Sacrifice 
had been in the sight of Heaven a ceaseless reparation for 
God's injuries, and yet in our century the Divine Majesty in-i 
spired the foundation of a religious congregation of Perpetual 
Reparation. Multiply questions as the world will, there is but one 
to be answered, and it is one the world will scarcely propound : 
Has this newly contemplated work existence in the eternal plan 
of God? Upon the answer, yes or no, hangs its future earthly 
existence. 

Arises the question: How penetrate the veils that hide the 



5oo 



THE MISSION OF THE PRINTED WORD. 



[Jan., 



divine plan from human inspection ? There is no need to 
penetrate the impenetrable. When comes God's hour his hand 
will part the veils, and through the rift his light will shine, and 
on earth in some soul, perhaps in more than one, will be 
mirrored that eternal plan, maybe in full, maybe in part, but if 
in part the soul that has received it will bide the hour of 
another rifting of the impenetrable veils, for human conjecture 
will never be allowed to supply aught that is wanting to com- 
plete the divine certainty. 

An Order devoted to Publication, to the silent preaching of 
God's truth by the broadcast sowing of the printed word, to 
the uplifting of the masses to a higher mental culture by the 
instilling of a love for good reading in young and old, in plac- 
ing good reading in mansion and hovel, such an order must of 
necessity be as novel compared with existing institutes as was 
that of the Visitation compared with all previously existing at 
that time. If the founder of the Visitation, St. Francis de Sales, 
was inspired to mark out for souls a royal way of the cross that 
was free from the steel-pointed austerities of all other orders, 
so must the one who will found the Order devoted to Publica- 
tion keep souls safe within the royal way of the cross without 




HENCEFORTH TWO-THIRDS OF MANKIND WILL BE GOVERNED BY THE PRINTING-PRESS. 

(PRESS-ROOM.) 



i8 9 5.] 



THE MISSION OF THE PRINTED WORD. 



the iron-clad rules regulating for the sisterhoods of to-day hours 
and places and prayers and garb. Is laxity here advocated for 
the Order of Publication ? Nay, nay. Freedom and elasticity 
do not presume laxity. If daily labor is such that it cannot be 




THROUGH THE PRINTED WORD IT is POSSIBLE TO SECURE YOUR LARGEST AUDIENCE 

AND DO THE MOST GOOD. 

broken in upon at frequently recurring intervals for prayer, and 
literary labor is such, so too is the mechanical labor of publi- 
cation ; then grows upon one the necessity of making of 
one's day's labor an unbroken prayer by purity of intention. 
If one cannot renew that intention by visits at stated 
times to the Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament, then 
becomes more pressing the need of an abiding sense of the 
real presence of the Holy Spirit around, within, directing, in- 
spiring, sanctifying each faint movement of the heart, the 
brain, the hand that manipulates the pen or the type. If one's 
life must be more or less a public life; if one must be no strange 
presence at summer-schools or press conventions; if one's voice 
even must be heard in papers bearing upon the vital questions 
of the day that concern minds and souls and God's truth, then 



502 



THE MISSION OF THE PRINTED WORD. 



[Jan., 



it becomes more necessary that self be hidden even as was the 
Master when, through Mary's lips, he uttered the Magnificat of 
praise. If one's name must go forth on the printed page and 
wia laurels for the thoughts to which it may claim ownership, 
then there is but the need of a constant interior renunciation 
of all ownership of thoughts and words and deeds that may 
merit earthly fame or heavenly reward into the keeping of her 
who kept all the words of Jesus in her heart. No ; freedom in 
the fulfilment of the consecrated mission of the Printed Word 
does not mean laxity or the breathing of a worldly spirit, but 
an elasticity of soul that, knowing the Holy Spirit breatheth 
where he wills, can at any moment find him there where he 
breatheth. 

What,, a mission it is even at will to write and print and 
scatter broadcast the blessed truths of God ! And to save from 
woeful ,:waste all that is helpful and holy of what others write 
and print ! But what a thrice blessed mission for the souls who 
will one day arise in answer to Father Hecker's prayer in the 
Cataco,mbs of St. Agnes, and, in gratitude for the glorious heri- 
tage of the faith, make their life-long Te Deum the spread of 
that faith in a consecrated Apostolate of the Press. 






^i ^* ' fc 

,A 
/-. . '.1 "* " t 




1895.] 



REV. FATHER MAURICE, C.P. 



503 



REV. FATHER MAURICE, C.P.* 

BY HELEN GRACE SMITH. 



HERE is a grave beside the 

Southern Sea, 

The shining Southern Sea 
The grave of one pure knight, whose faith- 
ful sword 

Was sheathed right joyfully : 
Now is his warfare o'er ; his latest word 
Was " Patience still and courage, dearest 

Lord, 
Until thy mercy set my spirit free." 




So pure 



a knight ! He wore no waving 

plume, 

Nor carried yet a shield with brave device ; 
There are no laurels sculptured on his tomb, 
No record of past conflicts fought and won, 
No tale of mighty deeds, nor service done 
For sake of country, no great sacrifice; 
And no one passing pauses here to read ; 
He was an exile, and his country's need 
Was not for him ; yet did he love his land, 
And wept for parting, while his gentle hand, 
So fair and strong, was lifted up to bless 
What was his own, and should be his no more ; 
And sails were set, while yet the brightening shore 
Smiled sweet return to his mute eyes' caress. 

* The Rev. Father Maurice, of the Order of Passionists, was known in the world as 
Theodore Dehon Smith. He was born on January i, 1857. His religious vocation declared 
itself previous to his twenty-first birthday, and after more than a year's consideration he 
entered the Order of Passionists on that day. He passed his novitiate at Pittsburgh and 
Hoboken. He was ordained by Bishop Wigger, of Newark, and after being stationed as a 
missionary priest at Cincinnati and Louisville, he was finally appointed to a professorship to 
the students at the house of his order at Normandy, near St. Louis. From this position he 
voluntarily went to the missions of his order in the Argentine Republic, making his journey by 
way of Italy and visiting Rome. He entered on his work in South America with character- 
istic ardor, but his failing health soon compelled him to give up active duties. He submitted 
with patience and resignation to the inevitable change, and after months of suffering passed 
away on the isth of February, 1894. This tribute was written by his sister. 



504 REV. FATHER MAURICE, C.P. [Jan., 

There have been many partings and the world 
Is old in sorrow ; eyes have wept anew, 
With ready tears, love's long since cancelled woe ; 
And bitter waves have, writhing, foamed and curled 
Round prows of many ships that, bending low, 
Confessed their might, yet dared the fatal blue; 
But never ship bore nobler heart from home, 
And never heart more trusting, nor more true. 
There have been many partings : exiles roam 
Through alien lands, with hopes that longing turn, 
O'er leagues of sea, to where their hearth- fires burn ; 
But never heart held higher hope, nor cherished 
A dearer dream than his, whose dream hath perished. 

High hope, and brave ambition, young desires ; 
Bright birds of passage, could ye your far flight 
For once have stayed, your winging that aspires, 
With force unerring, ever toward the light 
Could ye have folded once your quivering pinions, 
And slumbered warmly gathered to his breast, 
Ye might have been content with him to rest, 
And he had followed not o'er earth's dominions 
The sunless way ye sought ; yet did the sweet 
Recurring thought of home stay not his feet 
Upon the hills. Ah ! world of banishment, 
Of doubt and ills, give birth to soft content, 
And speak a calmness hopeful, for again 
Is wrought a mystery, and the spirit's pain 
Hath earned reward. You have not seen in vain 
The human creature smile through tears, and ring 
A song of rapture from a breaking heart 
A glad, pure ecstasy, a song apart 
From poet's theme, or hymn that angels sing. 
You have not seen in vain, nor vainly heard ; 
A presence blest in sympathy hath stirred 
The deep of woe, that hence may healing spring, 
And peace be born anew of sorrowing. 

In times of old, when bravest knights lay dead 
Their deeds were sung, and panoply of state 
Was folded round them, and the muffled tread 
And bated breath of mourners, vigil keeping, 
Gave solemn show of grief, and there was weeping, 
And sighing for the sad decree of fate. 



1895.] REV. FATHER MAURICE, C.P. 505 

When such lay dead there was lament and sorrow. 

Nor heart for play and feasting on the morrow. 

Good knights of old, your spirit lived in him, 

Who was true knight, and, through the ages dim r 

Some reflex of the glory and the gleam 

Of high chivalrous honor, like the stream 

Of light through minster windows, round his brow 

Made shining holy, and he lieth now 

In such a state as they of nobler worth 

Would rather choose, who reverent trod the earth: 

A simple state. The suns that were his eyes 

Look calmly now on awful mysteries ; 

Of old they looked through tears, and there was set 

A bow of colors, gold and violet, 

In our dull skies. Now is the white repose 

Of folded lids, the majesty, the peace 

Above them, that which maketh our sick gaze 

To fix itself in solemn awe, and cease 

From trembling scared. It seemeth fitting close 

Of such a life, since he was led through ways 

Of humbleness, and all unseemly pride 

Of place or fortune that were his by law 

Of high inheritance he put aside, 

That flesh might conquered be, and sanctified 

In truth and spirit and a holy awe, 

With meekness chaste, and poverty abide 

Where such should dwell ; it seemeth fitly ended 

That he should lie but by meek signs attended. 

Death leaves no room save for high thoughts and holy, 
Which only lead us nearer to our dead. 
Grief is of earth, with sighs and melancholy, 
And from such things the souls we love have fled. 
We find them now through faith and patience lowly 
Who humbly follow where they sought to tread. 
Death is a joy; so felt our knight when dying, 
So feel we now when thinking how he died. 
Turn then, my heart, and see him sweetly lying, 
Whose hope is found at last, whose truth is tried ; 
And, from that place where thou art glorified, 
Look, O beloved ! The morning star hath set, 
Day is abroad, and from the valley's breast 
The cry of labor sounds ; the grass is wet, 
And bendeth to the knife ; and men forget 



506 REV. FATHER MA UK ICE, C.P. [Jan. 

All things in toil, save toil itself, and rest 

Content alone for gain, the earnings mean 

That earth allows. The tired hands that glean 

The close-shorn fields count out their spoil with care, 

And then, outworn, are clasped, but not in prayer. 

Look, O beloved ! Self-exiled, 'twas for these 

Thy voice made pleading, and God's sacred ground 

Thus given up to greed, the places fair 

That met thy gaze with loving, and were good 

In His dear eyes and thine, all these are found 

Fit cause for holy war, and, on thy knees, 

Stripped for the fight of all things that were thine, 

Oblation of thyself thou mad'st and stood 

Clean before men, and in the sight divine. 

True knight and pure, thy sword was forged of faith, 

And sheathed for joy since, conqueror in death, 

Thou needest love alone which is the breath 

Of God, and in the rapture of high Heaven 

That love is thine, the life whence thine is given. 

Look, O beloved ! who lookest on the face 

Of Truth itself look till thy spirit's grace 

Encompass earth. So may we learn of thee : 

So would we learn. O shining Southern Sea! 

Tread evenly and measured where he lies 

Beneath the Southern Cross. Ye kindly skies 

That brought him dreams of home ; the sympathy 

That little grasses speak, and winsome flowers 

With shy, strange faces that were wont to smile 

For comfort when he passed, or paused awhile 

Too weary to smile back, keep through the hours, 

The lengthening days, and months of changing splendor 

Your watch with him, who kept true faith and tender 

With such as ye ; watch kindly where he lies 

Till earth at last give place to Paradise. 

Ah, lovely grave beside the Southern Sea! 

The shining Southern Sea ! 
And thou, pure knight, whose sword 

Was sheathed right joyfully : 
Soon our long warfare o'er, the spoken word 
Will make us thine, and courage still, O .Lord ! 
Until Thy mercy tell us we are free. 

Edinburgh, August 24, 1894. 




PORTRAIT OF GREGORY THE GREAT, PAINTED BY HERMANN KIK, SAULGAN, WURTEMBERG. 



GREGORY THE GREAT AND THE BARBARIAN WORLD. 

BY T. J. SHAHAN, D.D., 
(Catholic University^) 

'HE latter part of the sixth century of our era 
offers to the student of human institutions a 
fascinating and momentous spectacle the simul- 
taneous transition over a great extent of space 
from an ancient and refined civilization to a 
new and uncouth barbarism of manners, speech, civil polity, 
and culture. It was then that the great mass of the Roman 
Empire, which generations of soldiers, statesmen, and adminis- 
trators had consolidated at such frightful expense of human 
blood and rights, was irrevocably broken by the savage hordes 
whom it had in turn attempted to resist or to assimilate. 




503 GREGORY THE GREAT [Jan., 

One moment it seemed as if the fortune of a Justinian and 
the genius of a Belisarius were about to regain all Italy, the 
sacred nucleus of conquest, and to proceed thence to a recon- 
stitution of the Roman state in Western Europe. But it was 
only for a moment. Fresh multitudes of Teutonic tribesmen 
swarmed from out their deep forests along the Danube or the 
Elbe, and overflowed Northern Italy so effectually as to efface 
the classic land-marks, and to fasten for ever on the fairest 
plains of Europe their own barbarian cognomen. It is true 
that the bureaucracy of Constantinople, aided by the local 
pride of the cities of Southern Italy, by a highly centralized 
military government, by the prestige and the influence of the 
Catholic bishops, as well as by the jealousy and disunion of the 
Lombard chiefs, maintained for two centuries the assertion of 
imperial rights, and a steadily diminishing authority in the 
peninsula and the islands of the Mediterranean and the Adri- 
atic. But, by the end of the sixth century, all serious .hope of 
reorganizing the Western Empire was gone. Thenceforth 
(thanks to the Lombard) the Frank and the Visigoth, luckier 
than their congeners, the Ostrogoth and the Vandal, might 
hope to live in peaceful enjoyment of the vast provinces of 
Spain and Gaul, and the fierce pirates of old Saxony could 
slowly lay the foundations of a new empire on the soil of 
abandoned and helpless Britain. In the West not only was 
the civil authority of Rome overthrown, but there went with it 
the venerable framework cf its ancient administration, the Latin 
language, that masterful majestic symbol of Roman right and 
strength, the Roman law, the municipal system, the great net- 
work of roads and of inter-commercial relations, the peaceful 
cultivation of the soil, the schools, the literature, and above all, 
that splendid unity and consolidarity of interests and ideals 
which were the true cement of the ancient Roman state, and 
which welded together its multitudinous parts more firmly than 
any bonds of race or blood or language. 

THE PROBLEM OF THE GREGORIAN AGE. 

Notwithstanding the transient splendor, the victories and 
conquests of the reign of Justinian, the condition of the Orient 
was little, if any, better than that of the West. The Persian 
and the Avar harassed the frontiers, and occasionally bathed 
their horses in the sacred waters of the Bosphorus. The popu- 
lations groaned beneath the excessive taxes required for endless 
fortifications, ever-recurring tributes, the pompous splendor of a 



1 895.] AND THE BARBARIAN WORLD. 509 

great court, and the exigencies of a minute and numerous 
bureaucracy. Egypt and Syria, no longer dazzled by the pres- 
tige or protected by the strong arm of Rome, began to indulge 
in velleities of national pride and spirit, and, under the cover of 
heresy, to widen the political and social chasm that yawned be- 
tween them and the great heart of the empire. The imperial 
consciousness, as powerful and energetic in the last of the Paleo- 
logi as in a Trajan or a Constantine, was still vigorous enough, 
but it had no longer its ancient instruments of good fortune, 
wealth, prestige, and arms. The shrunken legions, the dimin- 
ished territories, the dwindling commerce, foreshadowed the dis- 
solution of the greatest political framework of antiquity, and in 
the quick succeeding plagues, famines, and earthquakes men 
saw the ominous harbingers of destruction. The time of which 
I speak was, indeed, the close of a long, eventful century of 
transition. Already the political heirs of Rome and Byzantium 
were looming up both East and West. In the East fanatic con- 
quering Islam awaited impatiently the tocsin of its almost irre- 
sistible propaganda, and in the West the Frank was striding 
through war and anarchy and every moral enormity to the 
brilliant destiny of continental empire. We may imagine the 
problems that beset at this moment the mind of a Boethius or 
a Cassiodorius. Would the fruits of a thousand years of Greek 
and Roman culture be utterly blotted out ? Would the gentle- 
ness and refinement that long centuries of external peace and 
world-wide commerce and widest domination had begotten be 
lost to the race of man? Would the teachings of Jesus Christ, 
the source of so much social betterment, be overlaid by some 
Oriental fanaticism, or hopelessly degraded by the coarse natur- 
alism of the Northern barbarians ? Could it be that in this 
storm were about to be engulfed the very highest conquests of 
man over nature and over himself, the delicate and difficult art 
of government, the most polished instruments of speech, the 
rarest embodiments of ideal thought in every art, that sweet 
spiritual amity, the fruit of religious faith and hope, that com- 
mon Christian atmosphere in which all men moved, and 
breathed, and rejoiced ? 

THE MISSION OF THE CATHOLIC EPISCOPATE. 

We all know what it was that in these centuries of com- 
motion and demolition saved from utter loss so much of the 
intellectual inheritance of the Greco-Roman world, what power 
tamed and civilized the barbarian masters of the Western 



5io GREGORY THE GREAT [J an > 

Empire, fixed them to the soil, codified and purified their laws, 
and insensibly and indirectly introduced among them no small 
share of that Roman civilization which they once so heartily 
hated, and which in their pagan days they looked on as utter- 
ly incompatible with Teutonic manhood and freedom. It was 
the Catholic hierarchy, which took upon itself the burden and 
responsibility of civil order and progress at a time when abso- 
lute anarchy prevailed, and around which centred all those 
elements of the old classic world that were destined, under its 
aegis, to traverse the ages and go on for ever, moulding the 
thought and life of humanity as long as men shall admire the 
beautiful, or reverence truth, or follow after order and justice 
and civil security. 

It was the bishops, monks, and priests of the Catholic 
Church who in those troublous days stood like a wall for the 
highest goods of society as well as for the rights of the soul ; 
who resisted in person the oppression of the barbarian chief 
just emerged from his swamps and forests, as well as the 
avarice and unpatriotic greed of the Roman who preyed upon 
his country's ills ; who roused the fainting citizens, repaired 
the broken walls, led men to battle, mounted guard upon the 
ramparts, and negotiated treaties. Indeed, there was no one 
else in the ruinous and tottering state to whom men could 
turn for protection from one another as well as from the barba- 
rian. It seemed, for a long time, as if society were returning 
to its original elements, such as it had once been in the hands 
of its Architect, and that no one could better administer on its 
dislocated machinery than the men who directly represented 
that Divine Providence and love out of which human society 
had arisen. 

THE INFLUENCE OF THE BISHOP OF ROME. 

The keystone of this extraordinary episcopate was the 
Papacy. The Bishop of Rome shared with all other bishops of 
the empire their influence over the municipal administration 
and finances, their quasi-control of the police, the prisons and 
the public works, the right to sit as judge, not alone over cler- 
ics and in clerical cases but in profane matters, and to receive 
the appeals of those who felt themselves wronged by the civil 
official. Like all other bishops of the sixth century, he was a 
legal and powerful check upon the rapacity, the ignorance, and 
the collusion of the great body of officials who directed the in- 
tricate mechanism of Byzantine administration. But over and 



i895-] AND THE BARBARIAN WORLD. 511 

above this the whole world knew that he was the successor of 
the most illustrious of the Apostles, whose legacy of authority 
he had never suffered to dwindle ; that he was the metropolitan 
of Italy, and the patriarch of the entire West, all of whose 
churches had been founded directly or indirectly by his see. 

From the time of Constantine his authority in" the West 
had been frequently acknowledged and confirmed by the 
state and the bishops. In deferring to his decision the incipi- 
ent schism of the Donatists, the victor of the Milvian Bridge 
only accepted the situation such as it was outlined at Aries and 
Antioch and Sardica, such as Valentinian formally proclaimed 
it, and the Pragmatic Sanction of Justinian made the funda- 
mental law of the state. Long before Constantine, the Bishop 
of Rome seemed to Decius and Aurelian the most prominent 
of the Christian bishops, and since then every succeeding pon- 
tificate raised him higher in the public esteem. 

Occasionally a man of transcendent genius, like Leo the 
Great, broke the usual high level of superiority, and shone as 
the savior of the state and the scourge of heresy, ,or again, 
skilful administrators like Gelasius and Hormisdas piloted 
happily the bark of Peter through ugly shoals and rapids. But, 
whatever their gifts or character, one identic consciousness sur- 
vived through all of them the sense of a supreme mission, and 
of the most exalted responsibility in ecclesiastical matters. 
Did ever that serene consciousness of authority need to be in- 
tensified ? What a world of suggestion and illustration lay 
about them in their very episcopal city, where at every step 
the monuments of universal domination met their gaze, where 
the very atmosphere was eloquent with the souvenirs of im- 
perial mastery and the stubborn execution of the imperial will, 
where the local mementoes of their own steady upward growth 
yet confronted them, where they could stand in old St. Peter's, 
even then one of the most admired buildings of antiquity, over 
the bodies of Peter and Paul, surrounded by pilgrims from all 
parts of the world, and echo the words of the first Leo, that 
already the spiritual rule of the Roman pontiffs was wider than 
the temporal one of the Roman emperors had ever been ! 

THE CAREER OF GREGORY. 

It was to this office, and hi the midst of such critical events 
as I have attempted to outline, that Gregory, whom after ages 
have styled the Great, succeeded in 590 A.D. He could boast 
of the noblest blood of Rome, being born of one of the great 



512 



GREGORY THE GREAT 



[Jan., 



senatorial families, a member of the gens Anicia, and destined 
from infancy to the highest political charges. His great-great- 
grandfather, Felix II. (483-492), had been Bishop of Rome, and 
he himself at an early age had held the office of pretor, and 




STATUE OF ST. GREGORY, BY CORDIERI, IN THE CHURCH OF S. GRKGORIO, ON 

THE CCELIAN. 

'walked the streets of Rome in silken garments embroidered with 
shining gems, and surrounded by a mob of clients and admirers. 
But he had been brought up in the strictest of Christian families, 
by a saintly mother, and in time the blank horror of public life, 
the emptiness of human things in general, and the grave concern 



1895.] AND T HE BARBARIAN WORLD. 513 

for his soul so worked upon the young noble that he threw up 
his promising carriera, and, after distributing his great fortune to 
the poor, turned his own home on the Ccelian Hill into a mon- 
astery, and took up his residence therein. It was with delibera- 
tion, and after satisfactory experience of the world and life, 
that he made this choice. It was a most sincere one, and 
though he was never to know much of the monastic silence and 
the calm lone-dwelling of the soul with God, these things 
ever remained his ideal, and his correspondence is filled with 
cries of anguish, with piteous yearnings for solitude and re- 
tirement. On the papal throne, dealing as an equal with em- 
perors and exarchs, holding with firm hand the tiller of the 
ship of state on the angriest of seas, corresponding with kings 
and building up the fabric of papal greatness, his mighty spirit 
sighs for the lonely cell, the obedience of the monk, the mys- 
tic submersion of self in the placid ocean of love and con- 
templation. His austerities soon destroyed his health, and so 
he went through fourteen stormy years of government broken 
in body and chafing in spirit, yet ever triumphant by the force 
of his superb masterful will, and capable of dictating from his 
bed of pain the most successful of papal administrations, one 
which sums up at once the long centuries of organic develop- 
ment on classic soil and worthily opens the great drama of 
the Middle Ages. 

FIRST OF THE MEDIEVAL POPES. 

In fact, it is as the first of the mediaeval popes that Gregory 
claims our especial attention. His title to a place among the 
benefactors of humanity reposes in great part upon enduring 
spiritual achievements which modified largely the history of the 
Western Empire, upon the firm assertion of principles which 
obtained without contradiction for nearly a thousand years, and 
upon his writings, which formed the heads and hearts of the 
best men in church and state during the entire Middle Ages, 
and which, like a subtle, indestructible aroma, are even yet 
operative in Christian society. 

The popes of the sixth century were not unconscious of the 
fact that the greater part of the Western Empire had passed 
irrevocably into the hands of barbarian Teutons, nor were they 
entirely without relations with the new possessors of Roman 
soil ; but their temporary subjection to an Arian king ; the 
Gothic war, and the cruel trials of the city of Rome; the mete- 
oric career of Justinian, as a rule deferential and favorable to 
VOL. LX. 33 



514 GREGORY THE GREAT [Jan., 

the bishops of Rome ; the painful episode of the Three Chap- 
ters, in which flamed up once more the smouldering embers of 
the great Christological discussions ; the uncertain relations with 
the new imperial office of the exarchate, as well as a clinging 
reverence for the empire and its institutions, kept their faces 
turned to the Golden Horn. They had welcomed Clovis into 
the church with a prophetic instinct of the r6le that his de- 
scendants were to play, and they kept an eye upon the Catho- 
lic Goths, on the Suabians of north-western Spain, and on the 
Irish Kelts. Individual and sporadic missionary efforts origi- 
nated among their clergy, of which we would know more were 
it not for the almost complete destruction of their local annals 
and archives in the Gothic wars. But withal, one feels that 
these sixth-century popes belong yet to the old Greco-Roman 
world, that they hesitate to acknowledge publicly that the im- 
perial cause is lost in the West, that the splendid unity of the 
Roman and the Christian name is only a souvenir. On the 
other hand, the barbarian was too often a heretic, too often 
slippery, selfish, and treacherous, while the Roman was yet a 
man of refinement and culture, loath to go out among uncouth 
tribes who had destroyed whatever he held dear. In a word, 
he nourished toward the barbarian world at large that natural 
repulsion which he afterward reproached the British Kelt for 
entertaining toward the Saxon destroyer of his fireside and his 
independence. 

Gregory inaugurated a larger policy. He was the first monk 
to sit on the Chair of Peter, and he brought to that redoubt- 
able office a mind free from minor preoccupations and devoted 
to the real interests of the Roman Church. He had been pre- 
tor and nuncio, had moved much among the bishops and the 
aristocracy of the Catholic world, and was well aware of the 
inferior and painful situation that the New Rome was preparing 
for her elder predecessor. The careers of Silverius, Vigilius, 
and Pelagius were yet fresh in the minds of men, and it needed 
not much discernment to see that, under the new regime, the 
Byzantine court would never willingly tolerate the ancient in- 
dependence and traditional boldness of the Roman bishops. 

THE VOCATION OF THE WANDERING NATIONS. 

It was, therefore, high time to find a balance to the en- 
croachments and sinister designs of those Greeks on the Bos- 
phorus, who were drifting ever farther [away from the Latin 



1895-] AND THE BARBARIAN WORLD. 515 

spirit and ideals ; this the genius of Gregory discovered in 
the young barbarian nations of the West. It would be wrong, 
however, to see in his conduct only the cold calculations of a 
statesman. It was influenced simultaneously by the deep yearn- 
ings of the apostle, by the purest zeal for the salvation and 
betterment of the new races which lay about him like a whiten- 
ing harvest, waiting for the sickle of the spiritual husbandman. 
While yet a simple monk he had extorted from Pelagius the 
permission to evangelize the Angles and the Saxons, and had 
proceeded some distance, when the Romans discovered their 
loss and insisted on his return. Were it not for their selfish- 
ness he would have reached the shores of Britain, and gained 
perhaps a place in the charmed circle of King Arthur and the 
Knights of the Round Table, who were even about that time 
engaged in the losing conflict for independence which ended 
so disastrously at the Badonic Mount. 

GREGORY AND THE LOMBARDS. 

This is not the place to relate the details of the numerous 
relations which Gregory established on all sides with the barba- 
rian peoples of Europe. The nearest to him were the Lombards, 
the resistless hammer of the Italo-Roman state, and one of the 
most arrogant and intractable of all the Teutonic tribes. His 
policy with them is peace at any price. Now he purchases it 
with church-gold, sorely needed elsewhere, and again he con- 
cludes a treaty with these iron dukes in the very teeth of the 
exarch. He takes their rule as an accomplished fact. He re- 
fuses to be an accomplice in the base, inhuman measures of the 
Byzantine governors. He rests not until he has converted their 
queen, Theodelinda, and their king, Agilulf ; with a certain 
mixture of bitterness and joy he proclaims himself more a bishop 
of the Lombards than the Romans, so numerous were their 
camp fires upon the Campagna, and so familiar the sight of 
their hirsute visages, and the sound of their horrid gutturals 
among the delicate and high-bred denizens of Rome. 

It was he who restrained this rugged and contemptuous race ; 
who started among them a counter current against their brutal 
paganism, and their cold, narrow, unsentimental Arianism ; who 
left to them, in his own person and memory, the most exalted 
type of Christian manhood ; at once fearless and gentle, aggres- 
sive and enduring, liberal and constant, loyal to a decaying > 
incapable empire, but shrewd and .far-seeing for the interests 



516 GREGORY THE GREAT [Jan., 

of Western humanity, whose future renaissance he must have 
vaguely felt as well as an Augustine or a Salvian. 

GREGORY AND THE FRANKS. 

Beyond the Alps the descendants of Clovis had consolidated 
all of Gaul under Prankish rule. Though Catholics, they were 
too often purely natural barbarians, restrained with difficulty 
from the greatest excesses, and guilty in every reign of wanton 
oppression of church and people. They sold the episcopal sees 
to the highest bidder, and they often intruded into these places 
of honor and influence their soldiers or their courtiers. With 
great tact and prudence Gregory dealt with these semi Christian 
kings. In his correspondence he argues at length, and explains 
the evils of a simoniacal episcopate ; he pleads for a just and 
mild administration; he warns them not to exert their power 
to the utmost, but to temper justice with mercy, and to learn 
the art of self-control. In all the range of papal letters there 
is scarcely anything more noble than the correspondence of 
Gregory with the kings of Gaul, Spain, and England. This fine 
Roman patrician, this ex-pretor, recalls the palmy days of repub- 
lican Rome, when her consuls and legates smoothed the way 
of success as much by their diplomacy as by their military skill. 
He speaks with dignity to these rugged kings, these ex-barbarian 
chieftains, yet with grave tenderness and sympathy. He recog- 
nizes their rank and authority, their prowess and their merits. 
He reminds them that they are but earthly instruments of the 
Heavenly King, and that their office entails a grave responsi- 
bility, personal and official. At times he dares to insinuate a 
rebuke, but in sweet and well-chosen words. He ranks them 
with Constantine and Helen, the benefactors of the Roman See. 
His language is generally brief, but noble, courteous, earnest, 
penetrating, and admirably calculated to make an impression 
upon warlike and untutored men, who were' delighted and flat- 
tered at such treatment from the uncrowned head of the Wes- 
tern civilization. Childebert and Brunehaut, Recared and Ethel- 
berht and Bertha, became powerful allies in his apostolic designs, 
and opened that long and beneficent career of early mediaeval 
Christianity when the youthful nations grew strong and coalesced 
under the tutelage of the Papacy, which healed their discords, 
knitted them together, and transmitted to them the spirit, the 
laws, the tongues, the arts, and the culture of Greece and Rome 
treasures that, in all probability, would otherwise have perished 
utterly. 



1 895.] AND THE BARBARIAN WORLD. 517 

OUR DEBT TO GREGORY. 

We are in great measure the descendants of these ancient 
tribes, now become the nations of Euiope, and we cannot dis- 
own the debt of gratitude that we owe to the memory of that 
Roman who first embraced with an all-absorbing love the Frank, 
the Lombard, and the Gael, the Ostrogoth and the Visigoth, 
the Schwab, the Wend, and the Low-Dutch pirates of the Elbe 
and the Weser. Hitherto their chiefs had esteemed the vicarious 
lieutenancy of Rome, so deep-rooted was their esteem for the 
genius of the empire. But they knew now what a profound 
transformation was worked in the West, and they began the ca- 
reer of independent nations, exulting in their strength. Politi- 
cally they were for ever lost to the central trunk of the empire, 
but they were saved for higher things, for the thousand influ- 
ences of Roman thought and experience. They were made 
chosen vessels, not alone of religion but of the arts and sciences, 
of philosophy and government, and of that delicate, refined ideal- 
ism, that rare and precious bloom of long ages of sincere Chris- 
tian life and conduct, which would surely have perished in a 
new atmosphere of simple naturalism. 

GREGORY AND THE ANGLO-SAXONS. 

No act of Gregory's eventful career has had such momentous 
consequences as the conversion of the Angles and the Saxons. 
They were, if possible, a more hopeless lot than the Lombards ; 
revengeful, avaricious, and lustful, knowing only one vice cow- 
ardice and practising but one virtue courage. Though dis- 
tant, the fame of their brutality had reached the ends of the 
earth. Moreover they had already nearly exterminated a flour- 
ishing Christianity, that of Keltic Britain. In a word, they were 
not so very unlike the Iroquois when Brebeuf and Lallemant un- 
dertook their evangelization. I need not go over the recital of 
their conversion. All his life Gregory cherished this act as the 
greatest of his life. He refers to it in his correspondence with 
the East, and it consoled him in tjie midst of failures and dis- 
couragements. His great soul shines out through the pages of 
Bede, who has left us a detailed narrative of this event his 
boundless confidence in God, his use of purely spiritual wea- 
pons, his large and timely toleration. For these rude Saxons 
he would enlist all the sympathy of the Franks and the co- 
operation of the British clergy. He directs in minutest detail 
the progress of the mission, and provides during life the men 



5i8 GREGORY THE GREAT [Jan., 

and means needed to carry it on; Truly he may be called the 
Apostle of the English, for though he never touched their soil, 
he burned with the desire to die among them and for them, 
he opened to them the gate of the Heavenly Kingdom, and 
introduced them to the art and literature and culture of the 
great Christian body on the Continent. \ 

ROME AND THE ANGLO-SAXONS. 

Henceforth the Saxon was no longer the Red Indian of the 
classic peoples, but a member of the world- wide church. Quicker 
than Frank or Lombard, he caught the spirit of Rome, and as long 
as he held the soil of England was unswervingly faithful to her. 
Through her came all his culture the fine arts and music, and 
the love of letters. His books came from her libraries, and 
she sent him his first architects and masons. From her, too, 
he received with the faith the principles of Roman law and 
procedure. When he went abroad it was to her that he 
turned his footsteps, and when he wearied of life in his pleas- 
ant island home he betook himself to Rome to end his days 
beneath the shadow of St. Peter. In the long history of Chris- 
tian Rome she never knew a more romantic and deep-set 
attachment on the part of any people than that of the Angles 
and the Saxons, who for centuries cast at her feet, not only 
their faith and their hearts but their lives, their crowns, and 
their very home itself. Surely there must have been something 
extraordinary in the character of their first apostle, a great 
well-spring of affection, a happy and sympathetic estimate of 
the national character, to call forth such an outpouring of 
gratitude, and such a devotion, not only to the Church of 
Rome, but to the civilization that she represented. To day the 
English-speaking peoples are in the van of all human progress 
and culture, and the English tongue is likely to become at no 
distant date the chief vehicle of human thought and hope. 
Both these peoples and their tongue are to day great com- 
posites, whose elements it would not be easy to segregate. 
But away back at their fountain head, where they first issue 
from the twilight of history, there stands a great and noble 
figure who gave them their first impetus on the path of reli- 
gion and refinement, and to whom must always belong a large 
share of the credit which they enjoy. 

GREGORY AS POPE, ADMINISTRATOR, WRITER. 

As pope and administrator of the succession of Peter 



1895.] AND THE BARBARIAN WORLD. 519 

Gregory ranks among the greatest of that series. His personal 
sanctity, his influence as a preacher, his interest in the public 
worship, and his devotion to the poor, are only what we might 
expect from a zealous monastic bishop ; but Gregory was emi- 
nent in all these while surpassingly great in other things. No 
pope has ever exercised so much influence by his writings, on 
which the Middle Ages were largely formed as far as practical 
ethics and the discipline of life were concerned. They were in 
every monastery, and were thumbed over by every cleric. 
Above all, his book of the Pastoral Rule fashioned the episco- 
pate of the Middle Ages. By the rarest of compliments, this 
golden booklet was translated into Greek, and Alfred the Great 
put it into Anglo-Saxon. It was the vade-mecum of every 
good bishop throughout Europe, and a copy of it was given to 
every one at his consecration. Among the essential books that 
every priest was expected to own it was reckoned, and it 
would not be too much to say that, after the Bible, no work 
exercised so great an influence for a thousand years as this 
little manual of clerical duties and ideals. It filled the place 
which the Imitation of Christ has taken in later times, and in 
the direct, rugged Latin of its periods, in the stern uncom- 
promising doctrine of its author, in its practical active tendency, 
in its emphasis on the public social duties of the bishop, and 
its blending of the heavenly and the earthly kingdoms, are to 
be found several of the distinctive traits of the mediaeval epis- 
copate. He laid out the work for the mediaeval popes, and in 
his person and career was a worthy type of the bravest and 
the most politic among them. Though living in very critical 
times, he maintained the trust confided to him and handed it 
over increased to his successors. There is no finer model of 
the Latin Christian spirit, and some will like to think that he 
was put there, at the confines of the old and the new, between 
Romania and Gothia, to withstand the flood of Byzantinism, to 
save the Western barbarian for Latin influences, and to secure 
to Europe the transmission of the larger and more congenial 
Latin culture. 

GREGORY AND THE EMPIRE. 

Yet he was, like all the Catholic bishops of that age, de- 
voted to the ideal of the Christian Empire, and while he 
recognized the hand of Providence in the breaking up of the 
once proud system, he did not spare the expression and the 
proof of his loyalty to the emperors at Constantinople. Though 



520 GREGORY THE GREAT. [Jan. 

virtually the founder of the temporal power of the Papacy, he ever 
held his temporal estate for and under New Rome, and was never 
happier than when he could safeguard or advance her interests. 
Like most men of his time, he believed that the last of the 
great empires was that of Rome, and that when it fell the end 
of the world was close at hand. Indeed the well-known couplet 
(made famous by Anglo-Saxon pilgrims) belongs to his epoch, 
and strikingly conveys the popular feeling: 

" While stands the Colosseum, Rome shall stand ; 
When falls the Colosseum, Rome shall fall; 
And when Rome falls, the World." 

Long ages have gone by since he was gathered to his rest 
(604) in the portico of old St. Peter's, with Julius and Damasus, 
Leo and Gelasius, and all the long line of men who built up the 
spiritual greatness of Rome. Legends have gathered about his 
memory like mosses and streamers on the venerable oak, and 
calumny has aimed some poisoned shafts at his secular fame. 
But history defends him from the unconscious transformation of 
the one, and the intentional malice of the other, which ever 
loves a shining mark. She shows to the admiring ages his por- 
trait, high-niched in the temple of fame, among the benefactors 
of humanity, the protector of the poor and the feeble against titled 
wealth and legalized oppression, the apostle of nations once 
shrouded in darkness, now the foremost torch-bearers of hu- 
manity one of that very small number of men who, holding 
the highest authority, administer it without fault, lead unblem- 
ished lives, and find time and opportunity to heal, with voice 
and pen and hand, the ills of a suffering world, and advance 
its children on a path of unbroken progress, guided by the 
genius of pure religion, consoled, elevated, and purified by all 
that the noblest thought and the widest experience of the past 
can offer. 




DR. HOLMES AT FIFTY. 




TENNYSON AND HOLMES: A PARALLEL. 
BY HELEN M. SWEENEY. 

Master : What is a parallel ? 

Pupil : Two lines running side by side which never meet. 

NCE, in an old rectory garden in Lincolnshire, 
England, shadowed by magnificent elms and 
sweet with the soft greens of an early spring, a 
little fair-haired boy of five ran down the garden 
path, letting himself be blown about by the breeze, 
and shouted in childish exuberance of spirit, " I hear a voice 
speaking in the wind ! " It was the first poetic utterance of 
one who seventy-eight years later died Poet Laureate, Alfred, 
Lord Tennyson. 

On the same day, perhaps, on this side of the Atlantic, an- 
other little five year-old was playing in his garden at Cambridge, 
Mass.; this a tiny plot in comparison with the more stately Eng- 
lish place. The garden at Lincolnshire and the garden at 
Cambridge smiled around the two boy poets, who were des- 
tined to make the fragrance of flowers, the song of birds, the 
cloud tints and shadows, the endless chain of succeeding sea- 



522 TENNYSON AND HOLMES: A PARALLEL. [Jan., 

sons, live in their poetry that has lifted the people of two 
worlds a little nearer the heaven of which poets are the pro- 
phets. The home of a poet's childhood, if at all beautiful, is 
always to him the most beautiful and poetic spot on earth. It 
is the deep sea from which he draws the innumerable pearls to 
glimmer on the dress of life. 

These two happy little children, in the two such widely dif- 
ferent flower-scented gardens, were born in the same month of 
the same year, 1809. Both were striking examples of the theory 
of family inheritance. 

" And gently conies the world to those 
That are cast in gentle mould." 

The fathers of both were clergymen, men of culture, refine- 
ment, and literary attainments. The mothers of both were in- 
tensely, fervently religious, as mothers of poets often are. Both 
gave evidence of poetic instinct early in life and lifted their 
voices so as to be heard in the same decade. Their methods, 
though, are as far apart as England and America. Their stand- 
points have little or nothing in common. And yet, because they 
both recognized that the highest aspect of man is his spiritual 
aspect, and as poets have appealed to that higher element, they 
have won a common triumph. 

" Minds roll in paths like planets ; they revolve, 
This in a larger, that a narrower ring." 

Their early writings were prophetic of the power and genius 
of maturer years. Read the " Poems of Two Brothers," and on 
every page will be found a surprising amount of technical knowl- 
edge, here and there a gleam of the future glory. Read the 
first " Autocrat " papers as they appeared in the New England 
Magazine, and there too we find the boy father to the man. 
Even as a lad Holmes's work had the continuous sparkle, the 
" electrical tingle of hit upon hit," we are apt to associate with 
the name of Holmes. Take this for instance: 

" When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my dic- 
tionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as that of 
sentences. The author may arrange the gems effectively, but 
their shape and lustre have been given by the attrition of 
ages. Bring me the finest simile from the whole range of 
imaginative writing, and I will show you a single word which 



I895-] 



TENNYSON AND HOLMES: A PARALLEL. 



523 



conveys a more profound, a more accurate, and a more eloquent 
analogy." 

Tennyson's earliest fame proclaimed htm a lyrist when he 
gave to the world "The Lady of Shallott," "The Deserted 
House," and " yEnone "; and as a lyrical poet Holmes has 
written many exquisite songs and no bad ones, rfis power of 
expression is always equal to the thought to be expressed. 
What could be more tender than the lovely lines " Under the 
Violets " ? 

" For her the morning choir shall sing 

Its matins from the branches high ; 

And every minstrel voice of Spring, 

That trills beneath the April sky, 

Shall greet her with its earliest cry. 




BIRTH-PLACE OF OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 

" When turning round their dial-track 
Eastward the lengthening shadows pass, 
Her little mourners clad in black, 
The crickets, sliding through the grass, 
Shall pipe for her an evening mass." 

Or that hymn of faith and trust, " O Love Divine, that stooped 
to share," or " Homesick in Heaven," or that most perfect of 
its kind, " The Chambered Nautilus," and the sweet, strong song 
of his old age, " The Iron Gate." 



524 TENNYSON AND HOLMES: A PARALLEL. [Jan., 

"Youth longs and manhood strives, but age remembers; 
Spreads its thin hands above the whitening embers 
That warm its creeping life-blood to the last." 

In this same poem he says : 

"If word of mine another's gloom has brightened, 
Through my dumb lips the heaven-sent message came ; 
If hand of mine another's task has lightened, 
It felt the guidance that it dare not claim." 

This, the sunny nature that " never deemed it sin to gladden 
this vale of sorrows with a wholesome laugh." Tennyson sel- 
dom if ever adopts this familiar tone ; once he says : " What- 
ever I have said or sung, some bitter notes my harp would 
give," but as a general thing remains aloof "in his magic clime," 
mystic, silent, and scornful of the public desire to read the 
man's heart through the poet's lines. Holmes's silver-stringed 
harp never gave out a bitter note. He was filled with unswerv- 
ing optimism, and with his brother poet never " soiled with ig- 
noble use" the name of poetry. 

Sometimes in the unfairness of popularity Holmes is quoted 
as merely a humorous poet, or the " Chambered Nautilus " is 
mentioned as his one departure from the lighter vein. True, to 
write good comic verse is a difficult thing. To save pleasantry 
from buffoonery requires the highest art. A jest or a sharp 
saying he finds it easy to turn into rhyme, and he enjoys the 
rare distinction of blending ludicrous ideas with fancy and im- 
agination, displaying in their conception and expression the 
same poetic qualities usually exercised in serious composition. 
No one, not even Hood, excels Holmes in this difficult branch 
of the art. His light glancing irony and sarcasm are the 
more effective from the sunshine of his benevolent sympathies. 
He wonders, hopes, wishes, titters, and cries with his victims. 
He kills with a slight stab, and proceeds on his way as if " noth- 
ing in particular" had happened. He translates the conceited 
smirk of the coxcomb, the inanities of the brainless, the vacant 
look and trite talk of the bore, into felicitous words. The move- 
ment of his wit is so swift that its presence is unknown till it 
strikes. And in all this never being uncharitable ; with a sur- 
geon's knife he cut away numerous foibles dear to society's 
heart, and his influence was highly civilizing. 

But, added to this rare gift, Holmes is also a poet of senti- 
ment and passion. "Old Ironsides," "The Steamboat" which 



I895-] 



TENNYSON AND HOLMES: A PARALLEL. 



525 



is Wordsworthian in its poetic treatment of an unpoetic subject 
" The Bells," " The Secret of the Stars," " The Mother's Se- 
cret," and numerous passages of " Poetry " and " Wind-clouds 
and Star-drifts," display a lyrical fire and inspiration equal to 




some of the best lyrics of Tennyson. Those who knew him 
only as a comic poet are surprised at the clear sweetness and 
skylark trill of his serious and sentimental compositions. 

Tennyson had a subtle mind of keen, passionless vision. His 
poetry is characterized by intellectual intensity as distinguished 



526 



TENNYSON AND HOLMES: A PARALLEL. 



[Jan., 



from intensity of feeling. Its pure philosophy demands for it, 
and repays, profound criticism. As for Holmes's work, a spirit 
of affectionate partisanship forbids much or adverse criticism on 
his writings. He belongs to that class of authors who manifest 
so much purity and sweetness of disposition that our admiration 
for their talents is merged into love for their quality of heart. 
Wherever they find a reader, they find a friend. Longfellow, 
Holmes, and Whittier are pre-eminently of this class ; Milton, 
Tennyson, and Emerson were outside it. 

Tennyson's imagination brooded over the spiritual and mys- 
tical elements in his own being with the most concentrated 
power. He, even when depicting rural scenery in which none 
could excel him was never spontaneous. Holmes was particu- 
larly so, as his numerous, apt, and beautiful poems for special 
occasions show. 

Added to his spontaneity, vivid imagination, playful fancy, 
and love of the beautiful, Holmes had in abundance that rare 
quality that the theologians call prudence, or counsel, or judg- 
ment, and what ordinary people call " common sense." We 
would not be surprised to miss it in the poetic nature, but 

finding it in com- 
bination with the 
higher faculties, we 
are the more grate- 
ful for the rarity. 
s There must have 
been a dash of 
this saving element 
in Tennyson also ; 
for he, too, not 
only achieved fame, 
but amassed a large 
fortune. 

Both poets piled 
correction on cor- 
rection, revision on 
revision, until their 
work was as per- 
fect as labor could 
make it. Indeed, 
Tennyson never al- 
lowed a second edi- 
tion to be exactly like his first. His constant revision, as 




STAIRWAY IN THE OLD HOMESTEAD. 



1895-] TENNYSON AND HOLMES: A PARALLEL. 527 

that of Holmes, might be described in the laureate's own 
words : 

" Laborious orient sphere in sphere." 

As in the eastern toy, ornate in design, rich in imagery, word 
fits into line, line into stanza, stanza into lyric, as the ivory 
spheres fit with marvellous precision into each other. With 
Holmes the spheres were pure ivory, indeed ; but they lacked 
the wealth of carving seen in Tennyson's. 

As an instance of Tennyson's submission to the critic's dic- 
tum, and his own passion for revising, we give these lines from 
the first edition of the "Miller's Daughter": 

" ('Twas April then) I came and lay 
Beneath those gummy chestnut-buds, 
That glistened in the April blue." 

Now, chestnut-buds are gummy, and they do glisten "in the 
April blue " ; but the over-fastidious " Scorpion " (Lockhart) 
maintained that " gummy " was particularly unpoetical, and in 
the next edition the lines read : 

"('Twas April then) I came and sat 
Below the chestnuts, when their buds 
Were glistening to the breezy blue." 

Strange to say Dr. Holmes uses exactly the same expression 
in his exquisite poem on "Spring": 

" On all her boughs the stately chestnut cleaves 
The gummy shroud that wraps her embryo leaves " ; 

and we cannot find fault with it because of its very poetical 
association. The buds are shrouds and the hidden leaves will 
emerge, as some day our bodies will leave the grave. 

This is not the only time both poets have touched the same 
theme. Of course poets will sing of spring as long as that 
sweet miracle recurs. Here are Tennyson's lines: 

" Now rings the woodland loud and long, 
The distance takes a lovelier hue ; 
And down in yonder living blue 
The lark becomes a sightless song." 

There is the picture, all color and light. Here is Holmes's : 



528 



TENNYSON AND HOLMES: A PARALLEL. 



[Jan., 



" Then bursts the song from every leafy glade, 
The yielding season's bridal serenade ; 
Then flash the wings returning Summer calls 
Through the deep arches of her forest halls : 
The bluebird breathing from his azure plumes 
The fragrance borrowed where the myrtle blooms ; 
The thrush, poor wanderer, dropping meekly down, 
Clad in his remnant of autumnal brown ; 
The oriole, drifting like a flake of fire, 
Rent by a whirlwind from a blazing spire." 

Is nbVthe one all art, the other all nature? 

But, iilomparison as a mode of criticism is fruitful of naught 
but disappointment. 

The ^relationship of poets goes farther than the surface ; 
theirs is,, a spiritual affinity, and the countless influences that 




DR. HOLMES AT SEVENTY-FIVE. 

have moulded two minds, a world apart, are not more diverse 
than their products. 

Tennyson was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge the 
same hallowed walls that saw the youthful Milton a student. 
He lived apart from his fellow-students absorbed in the great 
minds of Greece and Rome, and with literature as his one love, 



I895-] 



TENNYSON AND HOLMES: A PARALLEL. 



529 



devoted himself exclusively to the classics and made himself so 
one with them that his poetry bears upon its face the marks' in 
simple grandeur of the poet's deep learning. Holmes's early 
education was obtained, first at a village " academy," afterwards 
at Harvard, a stripling college compared with its elder brother 




As LAUREATE. 

in the "right little, tight little isle." The result is obvious; the 
one is always deep, " a ponderous weight of learning " sometimes, 
the other seldom so, but when he is surprises us into new ad- 
miration for the versatility of the genius that within a period 
of four-score years produced forty-two books on medicine, two 
biographies, innumerable lectures, essays, poems for special oc- 
casions, and created for himself a new departure in the world 
VOL. LX. 34 



53O TENNYSON AND HOLMES: A PARALLEL. t [Jan., 

of letters, the " Autocrat " papers. Edward Everett Hale says 
of him that he left college " prepared to learn." He became a 
learned man ; but it was more on a scientific than classical 
line. By expressing the life, feelings, and ideals of his own times 
he bettered his chance of commending himself to after-times. 
His muse could not depict the passion-rocked JEnonc making 
the hills echo and re-echo her mournful lament ; but beautiful 
as is the latter it appeals to the aesthetical sense chiefly, and is 
for that reason restricted. There is a certain lack of sincerity, 
despite their artistic beauty, in such foreign and antique ex- 
ploits, and lack of sincerity is lack of truth. 

Stedman says of Tennyson that of all English poets since 
Spenser, he and Keats are most given to picture-making, to the 
craft that is artistic, picturesque; but that sometimes his words 
are too laboriously and exquisitely chosen. He occupied him- 
self very closely with the technique of verse, its rhythm, diction, 
and metrical effects, with the result of producing some marvel- 
lous word-paintings. 

Aristotle defines poetry as a structure whose office is imi- 
tation through imagery, and its end delight, the latter caused 
by workmanship, harmony, and rhythm. " Horace," says Sted- 
man, "among his class none more enduring, excludes himself 
from the title of true poet by the very attributes that make 
him modern his lyrical grace and personality." 

Then, too, our dear Holmes must bear him company in that 
great outside circle that lies around the smaller, inner one, for 
his writings are almost autobiographical. Measured by the ex- 
treme canons of art, Holmes is not the poet Tennyson was ; but 
he was 1 the poet of our own times, he sang of things we knew and 
loved, and we cannot but read and love him on whatever step 
of Fame's throne he rests. And what more does poet want? 

Poets have been finely called the "unacknowledged legisla- 
tors of the world," for the passionate or persuasive utterance 
of great thoughts brings them home to the affections, and they 
imperceptibly mould the minds of those by whom they are per- 
ceived. The real elements in the life of any people, the most 
interesting and valuable portions of their history, constitute their 
poetry. When Sir Philip Sidney gave away that drink of water, 
he was giving to the world true poetry. When Dr. Holmes 
lectured year after year to the students of the Boston Clinic on 
the wonderful and beautiful intricacies of the human body, he 
was contributing poetry to the world no less lasting than the 
spirited lines that saved the Constitution. " The Living Temple," 



TENNYSON AND HOLMES: A PARALLEL. 531 

breathing as it does the strains of pure poetry, might be used 
as a text-book. 

If their methods are diverse, their aim being the same, their 
personalities, both striking, are diametrically opposite. 

William Howitt, in an article on Tennyson, speaking of the 
poet himself, says: "You may hear his voice, but where is the 
man ? He is wandering in dreamland, beneath the shade of old 
and charmed trees, by far-off shores, where 

" ' . . . All night 

The plunging waves draw backward from the land 
Their moonlit waters white ' ; 

by the old mill-dam, thinking of the miller's pretty daughter, or 
wandering over the open fields. From all these places, from 







TENNYSON IN HIS LIBRARY. 



the silent corridors of an old convent, from some shrine where 
a devoted knight recites his vows, from the drear monotony of 
the ' moated grange,' or the forest beneath the ' talking oak ' 
comes the voice of Tennyson, rich, dreamy, passionate, musical 
with the airs of chivalrous ages, yet mingling in his song the 
theme and spirit of those yet to come." 

When we ask of Holmes, Where is the man ? his kindly 



532 TENNYSON AND HOLMES: A PARALLEL. [Jan. 

eyes smile into ours and we find him near unto us. All the 
world, too, heard and loved his clear, sweet tones ; but he hid 
not in dim forests and " moated granges." In the bustle and 
whirl of the " Hub of the universe " men met and talked with 
him every day ; students sat under him day by day in the lec- 
ture-room ; patients were ministered to by him in his own joy- 
ous, sunny way ; and though lacking in the mysticism surround- 
ing his brother poet, he was none the less loved because he was 
the better known. His was a most delightful disposition. A 
long ancestry noted for their perfect health and spirits forbade 
their descendant to live in the " purple twilight," even though 
the poetic temperament seems best to thrive in the soft gloom. 
Nothing happened in public or private life in which he was not 
keenly interested. The titles of his occasional poems are a sort 
of calendar of what is going on in the world around him. The 
very plan of his chief work, the " Autocrat " papers, supposed 
and established a close confidence between him and the reader. 
He, more even than most men, liked the sympathy of his au- 
dience, and he made large use of the colloquial style a most 
dangerous by-path to one less than a genius to secure the con- 
fidence he craved. The result justified his faith in his fellow- 
men, and firmly manifested the solidarity of his fame. 

Both men had in plenty a sort of harmless vanity, never de- 
generating into conceit. In Holmes, the great desire for. admira- 
tion that he had arose from his wish to be at one with his 
fellow-men ; in Tennyson conservatism was at the root of 
vanity. Holmes's unflinching, unvarying kindness to young 
people, particularly literary aspirants, was inexhaustible. His 
joyous manner, like sunshine, put every one in his company at 
his ease. Tennyson's manner had always a touch of asperity in 
it. All his life Holmes was young young of heart and fresh 
in mind, mellowed by books and reading and .converse with 
life ; and under all the fascinating surface lay the deep basis of 
sound scientific learning. 

Tennyson was always " Tennyson," and later carried some- 
what stiltedly the title, Alfred, Lord Tennyson ; but Holmes, the 
genial, the kindly, the ever-gentle, was the "Autocrat," by his 
own sweet personality taking from the word any repellent shade 
of meaning. After reading his two beautiful allusions to Our 
Lady in his " Mother's Secret," and the lines beginning " Four 
gospels tell their story to mankind " in " Wind-clouds and Star- 
drifts," we as Catholics have a still warmer regard for him, and 
again in " Over the Teacups " he says : " So far as I have ob- 




DR. HOLMES AS AN OCTOGENARIAN. 



534 TENNYSON AND HOLMES: A PARALLEL. [Jan. 

served persons nearing the end of life, the Roman Catholics 
understand the business of dying better than Protestants. 
They have an expert by them, armed with spiritual specifics, 
in which they both, priestly ministrant and patient, place 
implicit trust. Confession, the Eucharist, Extreme Unction, 
these all inspire a confidence. ... I have seen a good many 
Roman Catholics on their dying beds, and it always appeared 
to me that they accepted the inevitable with a composure 
which showed that their belief, whether or not the best to live 
by, was a better one to die by than most of the harder creeds." 

In 1886 the two poets met for the first and only time at 
Farringford, Tennyson's country seat, where both could enjoy 
what was a common taste, a love for trees. Tennyson had 
read Holmes's three great books, and valued them among the 
best writings of their sort in our time. Six years later one of 
them had " met his Pilot face to face," the other following him 
" across the bar " two years afterwards. On the whole their 
two lives were touched but gently by the passing years. They 
enjoyed the blessings of this world, honor, wealth, fame, and 
longevity to an unusual degree ; and who shall say, but that the 
world on this side of the Atlantic and that on the other were 
not enriched by the two lives that ran so long side by side, 
with an ocean between ? 

It is given to few men to leave the world at eighty-five and 
have so little ill said of them as Dr. Holmes. There was not a 
single unpleasant note in any obituary, editorial, or anecdote 
in the press of this country or of England. The English press 
compared him favorably with James Russell Lowell, who was 
the best beloved of any American, which was natural consider- 
ing Lowell's constant and sometimes obtrusive laudation of all 
that is English ; but Holmes never was anything but purely 
American, with a strong predilection for the special little 
corner of it called Boston. He was always ready to make the 
best of life and its surroundings ; and no man was more ready 
to see the best in another's writings. 

Long, long will we remember him, the man nature cast in 
such tender mould, not as a physician, nor a critic, but as a 
singer of unvarying sweetness whose songs well up from a heart 
so pure that sorrow could not injure it, nor experience em- 
bitter. 




THE GREAT RULING POWERS OF THE OLD WORLD. 




READY TO STRIKE BUT WHEN AND WHERE? 
BY S. MILLINGTON MILLER, M.D. 

E n'aime pas la guerre ; non, je ne I'aime plus : je 
Fai fait trop souvent" So spoke the gallant, 
debonair Skobeleff, darling of the armies, hero of 
Plevna, at one time the talk of all Russia. But in 
spite of Veretschagen's pictures, and Skobeleff's 
confession, and Jules Simon's passionate plea for " disarma- 
ment," and the loud " Halt ! " echoing over two continents, 
the nations still prepare for war ; still sharpen the sword with 
the taxes on agriculture, traffic, science, and art. Since the 
annihilation of the Spanish Armada in 1588 England has 
grown more and more secure from .the alarms of invasion. Her 
policy of foreign, colonial and imperial aggrandizement may be 
said to date from the latter part of the reign of James I. It 



536 READY TO STRIKE BUT WHEN AND WHERE? [Jan, 

was this monarch who made the first deliberate efforts to 
colonize America in 1606 and 1607, when permanent settlements 
were made on the James River in Virginia. 

In the middle of the eighteenth century, 1746, Robert Clive 
laid the foundation of her Indian Empire. At the opening of 
the nineteenth century she took possession of an enormous 
territory, then known as New South Wales, which has lately 
been designated by the name of Australasia. This possession 
began as a penal settlement and ended as an empire. Since 
that period Burmah has been conquered, annexed and ruled as 
a province of India by a council of state and a viceroy. The 
deposition of the Tsawbwa of Wunthro in 1891 and its occupa- 
tion by the English " nutted " the rivet of possession. Various 
large additions of African territory have also been made 
(Central, South and East Africa, Cape Colony, and Niger Land), 
including also the imperial control or " overlordship " of Egypt. 
At the present day England bears rule over more than one- 
third of the whole surface of the earth, and governs one-quarter 
of its entire population. Her possessions abroad are sixty 
times as large in area as the parent state. She owns three and 
one-half millions of square miles in North America, one million 
in Asia, one million in Africa, and two and one-half millions in 
Australasia. She has thirty-eight separate colonies, varying in 
size from Gibraltar to Canada. Originally these dependent 
states were all governed in London, but of recent years the idea 
that they only existed for her benefit has been " veiled," and 
self-government by a self-elected parliament has been permitted. 
In each case, however, supreme authority is vested in a gov- 
ernor, or viceroy, appointed by the crown. 

India was originally ruled indirectly through the lay figure 
of some native nizam or nawab, a glittering dummy, but 
authority now rests with an English viceroy and a resident 
council of state. Egypt at present occupies about the same 
relation to England as did India in the era of Clive and 
Hastings. That is to say, that while the authority of Lord 
Cromer, the English resident, is absolute and paramount, it is 
exercised through the intervention of a native ruler, or khedive. 
To reiterate, this khedive is practically only a puppet in the 
hands of Lord Cromer. 

Of all her possessions or imperial dependencies, Egypt and 
India stand in most intimate relations with the entourage of 
Downing Street. Her virtual possession of Egypt gives England 
the practical control of the Suez Canal twenty million odd 



1 895.] READY TO STRIKE BUT WHEN AND WHERE? 537 

dollars worth of whose capital indebtedness she bought from 
Ismail Pasha, and now holds as a national investment. This 
canal has become a very carotid artery to the welfare of her 
Indian Empire. All her commerce with the Orient prefers this 
route, and through it would sail her battle-ships, carrying her 
armies, in case of attack upon her Eastern dependencies. 




THE RUSSIAN FLAG-SHIP THE "ADMIRAL SENIAVIN." 

Turkey, although nominally an independent empire, is so 
much swayed by English diplomatic influence as to be practi- 
cally in the position of a vassal state. It is a case of mind 
England, or be wiped out by Russia. Not only are the govern- 
ments of Canada, Australasia, and of her South African colo- 



538 READY TO STRIKE BUT WHEN AND WHERE? [Jan., 

nies less intimate with the home office, but, furthermore, the 
vital importance, from a strategic stand-point, of India, Turkey, 
and Egypt renders the other possessions mere quantites negli- 
geables for purposes of present consideration. 

To protect these colonial or imperial possessions, England 
maintains a large, powerful, and admirably equipped navy, and 
owns and holds by her well-nigh impregnable fortifications and 
garrisons such marine depots and coaling stations as Malta, 
Gibraltar, Bermuda, Hong-Kong, and Ceylon. The army of 
England on a footing of active war does not exceed 30x3,000 
men, with about an equal number of volunteers. 

Peter the Great lifted Russia bodily into the company of 
European nations occidentalizing his hitherto Oriental subjects. 
By his will St. Petersburg arose like an exhalation on the 
marshes of the Neva in the space of five months, and through 
the corvee of three hundred thousand men. He turned an in- 
land into a maritime nation by another fiat of volitions, and 
founded naval depots on the Baltic and on the Black Sea. 

When Peter died his territories included five million square 
miles of the earth's surface. Since his day Catherine II., Nicho- 
las I., and Alexander II. and III. have, by diplomacy or con- 
quest, nearly doubled the size of the empire. From his throne 
in St. Petersburg the tsar holds sway over nine million square 
miles of territory, and rules the one hundred and twenty million- 
inhabitants thereof. This territory extends from the northern- 
most frozen fields of Siberia to the confines of China, India, 
Persia, and the Black Sea ; while its extent from east to west 
is virtually from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. 

The very opposite condition of affairs obtains here from that 
present in England, both socially and territorially. In the one 
ease the territory is widely diffuse, in the other absolutely com- 
pact. On one side exists the widest possible personal liberty of 
belief and opinion, on the other an enforced absence of both. 
Russia is an orthodox aristocracy one church to whom all must 
belong, and one tsar whose authority is absolute and final. Eng- 
land is nothing less than a liberal parliamentary government. 

In Russia I find a vast, semi-barbaric power ; governed by one 
will ; animated by one desire ; pushing its way by a sort of 
blind instinct towards the rich and fertile south. Any concerted 
action on the part of the European powers to check this ad- 
vance of Russia, for good or for evil, is now utterly out of the 
question. The same causes that have called Russia into exis- 
tence will keep her fabric together for more than a little eter- 



1 895.] READY TO STRIKE BUT WHEN AND WHERE? 539 

nity of epochs. The great mass of the inhabitants, more than 
half Oriental in their instincts, share the innate conservatism of 
the Eastern world, its hatred of change, its passive acquiescence 
in all established authority. Russia has no trade of any conse- 




THE RUSSIAN IRON-CLAD "ADMIRAL NACHIMOFF." 

quence except within herself. She has no manufacturing inter- 
ests to nourish. She is absolutely self-supporting. Her lack of 
the higher civilization, and her dearth of the finer organization, 
are plus and not minus qualities in the event of war. While 



540 READY TO STRIKE BUT WHEN AND WHERE? [Jan., 

other political bodies are combining and separating, kaleido- 
scopically, she is par excellence always the same. 

Nine times since the beginning of the eighteenth century has 
Russia attacked Turkey. The result of these attacks has been 
to disintegrate the Ottoman power in Europe. Some of its ter- 
ritory she has herself acquired, some she has indirectly parcelled 
out and established as independent states. 

A prophecy of extreme antiquity foretells the final supre- 
macy of Russia on the Bosphorus. Eight centuries ago this 
prophecy might be read on an equestrian statue then very old, 
which had been brought to Constantinople from Antioch. The 
Turks themselves look forward to the same consummation. This 
feeling of indicible ownership is instinctive. Emperors like 
Nicholas I. and Alexander II. have declared themselves as per- 
sonally opposed to the annexation of Turkey, but as unable to 
resist the popular bent, which was that of a furious mountain 
torrent in its downward course. Edward Dicey speaks of this 
southward tendency as equalling the inevitableness of the break- 
ing of its shell by the chick. That Russia did not conquer 
Turkey in 1829 and 1876 was solely due to the interference of 
England. And this in spite of the combined protests of all her 
most enlightened philosophers of history. 

France has had a checkered career during the past century ; 
and, while gaining much at times, has, with one exceptioa her 
African possessions lost not only what she has gained, but also 
suffered deprivation in the Franco-German war of a fat slice of 
her own territory. Under Napoleon Bonaparte she invaded and 
conquered Russia. But fire and famine, and frost and snow, 
turned the balance irretrievably against her. The disastrous re- 
treat from Moscow is supposed by many to have thrown the 
empire of the world into the hands of Russia. 

Dupleix and Labourdonnais exercised imperial sway in In- 
dia previous to the arrival and operations of Clive. But this 
able proconsul extracted the rich and coveted territory from 
their grasp. Jacques Cartier and Champlain preceded the 
colonists of James I. in North America, but the death of Wolfe 
and his simultaneous victory over Montcalm on the Plains of 
Abraham handed over the reins of empire to England in 
America too. 

Napoleon conquered Egypt- and introduced French com- 
merce, literature, science, and art Champollion and the splen- 
did array of his compeers and successors. But Nelson's victory 
in the Bay of Aboukir eventually drove the great Corsican back 



1895-] READY TO STRIKE BUT WHEN AND WHERE? 541 

to France. And that pre-eminent French influence and prestige 
which marked the reign of Mehemet Ali, and of succeeding 
pashas and khedives, was lost when the French admiral de- 
clined to assist in the bombardment of Alexandria, and sailed 
out of the roads leaving the burden of battle with the general 
of the English fleet. Since then there has been a veiled pro- 
tectorate and not a dual control in Egypt. It does really look 
as if that signal coup de thtdtre of Gladstone's premiership 
actually interfered with the grinding of the mills of God. 

But, as an offset to all these losses, which would form the 
matter for a very interesting article on " French chefs and 
English appetites," France laid the foundation in 1827, with the 
overthrow of the Barbary corsairs and the conquest of Algiers, 
for what seems destined to be a permanent and mighty African 
Empire. In 1881 Tunis was also acquired. These were her 
victories under that stately line of mare'chals Pelissier, Bugeaud, 
Canrobert, and MacMahon. 

There has been no question raised by any impartial author- 
ity of the general beneficence of French control in these coun- 
tries. Plissier's smoking to death of the survivors of an Arab 
tribe in a cave is indeed a blot on the scutcheon. The Algerian 
imports have been increased from $[,400,000 to $25,000,000. 
Roads and bridges have been constructed. Five hundred miles 
of railroad have been built. Light-houses have been erected and 
harbors improved. A French engineer has surveyed a trans- 
Saharan railway, the track of which already extends through 
the pass of Kantara to Biskra, the African Nice. The surveyed 
route is across the great desert from oasis to oasis, until the 
southern shore of the sand is reached, when the trunk line 
divides, one branch running south-west to the bend of the Niger 
above Timbuctoo, and the other south-east to Lake Tchad. 
What a sound to reverberate over the dunes of the great sand 
sea and reach and rouse all lands will be the call of the con- 
ductor of the first train at the junction "All out for Timbuc- 
too ! " 

Of late years French influence, pouring southward out of the 
Kantara Pass, has, like a deep stream which finds exit from a 
narrow, rocky bed, spread over the whole of Northern Africa, 
Egypt, Morocco (which is already largely under French diplo- 
matic surveillance), and the valley of the Nile. In defiance of 
the " Hinterland " theory, France has surrounded the British 
and other colonies on the west coast of Africa, thereby throt- 
tling their trade with the interior. The Gambia is dead. Other 



542 READY TO STRIKE BUT WHEN AND WHERE? [Jan., 

British colonies are all but moribund. Between Algeria and 
Senegambia, and between the latter and Lake Tchad, all is 
French, even the rocky plateau of the Sahara. The French 
colony on the Congo is extending towards the Soudan, behind 
the German Shere (hence the term " Hinterland," as interpreted 
at Paris). France has lately acquired full control in Siam and 




ANOTHER PAW OF THE RUSSIAN BEAR THE "DVENADZAT APOSTOLOFF." 

in Madagascar (although the Hovas seem to still seriously ob- 
ject), and her diplomatic influence is rife in Morocco, Egypt, 
Abyssinia, and the Soudan itself. 

Italy, Germany, and Austria, as is well known, form to- 
gether the " Triple Alliance." Of these three, Germany, with 
her immense "emergency money," $150,000,000, deposited in 
the tower of Spandau, and other convertible funds of even 



i 895.] READY TO STRIKE BUT WHEN AND WHERE? 543 

greater amount, is the only one of the three adequately sup- 
plied with the sinews of war. 

France and Russia have combined under a dual alliance. 
The armies of these two continental powers amount together to 
six million men on a war footing just about ten times the 
size of the forces of Great Britain. The navy of the latter is, 
however, equal in size and effectiveness to the combined navies 
of France and Russia. There is no imminent casus belli be- 
tween the triple and dual alliances, except France's " open 
sore," and she will subordinate this to profounder schemes. 

Besides her offensive and defensive alliance with France, 
Russia has recently inaugurated and solidified very favorable 
commercial relations with Germany. This commercial entente 
tordiale, particularly when taken in connection with the German 
tendencies of the tsar, would indicate a certain possible weaken- 
ing of Germany's hostility to Russia, or to a Russo-French 
alliance in case of war. 

The inter-relations of France, Russia, and England in the 
past century have been remarkable, to say the least. In 1798 the 
English under Nelson defeated the French fleet in the Bay of 
Aboukir. In 1807 Napoleon bivouacked in the deserted palaces 
of Moscow. In 1827 the combined English, French, and Rus- 
sian fleets annihilated the Turkish squadron at Navarino. In 
1833 Turkey made the treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi as a protection 
against French ascendency in her vassalage of Egypt. In 1854 
France and England united their armies against Russia in the 
Crimea. 

Since 1829, when Nicholas I. and his one hundred and fifty 
thousand Russians were " hindered," almost within sight of Con- 
stantinople, England's hereditary policy has been the mainte- 
nance of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. The avowed ob- 
ject of this has been that ogre, " the balance of power in Eu- 
rope." Sir Henry Elliot, in a letter written to Lord Derby from 
Stamboul in 1876, says: "We have been upholding what we 
know to be a semi-civilized nation, liable under certain circum- 
stances to be carried into fearful excesses, but the fact of this 
having just now been strikingly brought home to us (by the 
Bulgarian horrors) cannot be a sufficient reason for abandoning 
a policy which is the only one that can be followed with due 
regard to our own interests." 

The dynasty of the Ottoman Turks has been supported at 
Constantinople by England. It has been a constant menace and 
scourge to humanity. Edward Freeman, the great English his- 



544 READY TO STRIKE BUT WHEN AND WHERE? [Jan., 

torian, has bruited this inhuman attitude of England so unspar- 
ingly and so incessantly that no policy which was not stubborn- 
ly intent upon the very thing denounced would dare live on. 




The Sultan of Turkey receives about $3,500,000 annually 
from Egypt. In plain words, England takes this amount out of 
the pockets of 5,500,000 fellaheen in Egypt and gives it to Ab- 
dul Hamid for the exigencies of his harem. Turkey is thus 



1 895.] READY TO STRIKE BUT WHEN AND WHERE? 545 

supported as a "buffer" state, but at no expense to England. 
In the same way Abdur Rahman Khan, the Amir of Afghan- 
istan, receives $900000 annually out of the Indian treasury, that 
he may be relied upon as a " buffer " between the Russian outposts 
on the upper sources of the Oxus (in the Pamirs) and the most 
northern frontiers of British India. In the past fifty years Eng- 
land has alternately fondled and fought the Afghan amirs 
Dost Mahomet, Shir AH, Yakub, et al. 

Another paw of the Russian bear is planted, Ignatieff wise, 
at Vladivostock. What the " bolted " or the " buffer " state 
there will be depends largely upon the outcome of the Corean 
war. 

The Eastern question to-day can be readily put in a nutshell. 
Russia and France are closely united ; Russia and Germany are 
friendly ; Russia must have Turkey, hankers after India, would 
not object to Corea. France is determined upon the reposses- 
sion of Egypt. 

England is safe from attack in her island home, but is ter- 
ribly open to blows aimed at her imperial dependencies. France 
can strike her in Egypt, from her African Empire with its foun- 
dation in Tunis and Algiers. France can threaten her Indian 
Empire from Siam. If Egypt be recovered by France, she can 
not only close the Suez Canal to England, but interfere (from 
her station in Madagascar) with the passage of English vessels 
north-eastward from the Cape of Good Hope. Russia hovers on 
the outskirts of Constantinople, India, and Corea. 

If some power were to strike at England herself there might 
be a terrible collapse among the foundations of her colonial 
scaffolding. 

Late advices from England which depict the new tsar as 
already shaped to play the fly to Queen Victoria's spider must 
be accepted cum grano salts. This is not the first time that 
mistakes have been made in forecasting the horoscopes of kings. 
The shy poetaster and voluptuary of Potsdam, who divided his 
time between laying out flower beds and composing mediocre 
French verse, became in a flash the greatest captain and the 
most absolute despot of Europe Frederick the Great. 

This article must not be mistaken for a suggestion of Alarm- 
ism. It merely illustrates Opportunism. 



VOL. LX. 35 




546 THE MISSIONS TO NON-CATHOLICS. [Jan., 

THE MISSIONS TO NON-CATHOLICS. 

BY REV. WALTER ELLIOTT. 
MISSION AT MARVIN. 

HE problem here was how to keep the Catholics 
away from the meetings. The tonw has over 
twelve thousand inhabitants, with two flourishing 
Catholic congregations, a zealous clergy and ac- 
tive-minded laity. The Opera House is a large 
hall, seating twelve hundred, so we undertook to " corral " 
the non-Catholics in the parquet, which our ushers reserved for 
them as the best place for hearing and seeing. But the plan 
was not wholly a success. Many Catholics tried to get in there 
and some succeeded, and the result was that the non- Catholics 
got what they could in all parts of the house and were secured 
the bigger share of the parquet. If we had had three thousand 
sittings we could have filled them some nights. We are sorry 
to learn that many Protestants were unable to get in at all 
each night after the opening. Let somebody with a genius for 
getting rid of a surplus study and solve the problem. 

The mission was managed by the pastor of the German con- 
gregation, who, with his brother, has known how to achieve a 
splendid success in the difficult undertaking of holding on to 
the new generation without losing the old. It was President 
Lincoln who first gave currency to the saying, " Don't swap 
horses while crossing a stream." But what will you say to the 
dire necessity of swapping languages while crossing the stream 
of passionate race sentiment ? It must be done, nevertheless, 
and it is being done in some places in a way to excite the 
admiration of all who closely observe the processes of divine 
grace in a faithful clergy and people. I have lived with many 
secular priests and have known familiarly many congregations, 
but I have seldom known the equal of this parish and its two 
devout and enlightened priests for serving God as he should be 
served, both by individual sanctification and general edification. 
St. Joseph's choir was a feature of our meetings a large Ce- 
cilian choir, perfectly trained, and executing with facility and 
exquisite taste most beautiful selections three times each even- 



1 895.] THE MISSIONS TO NON-CATHOLICS. 547 

ing. Such fine singing makes good speaking. It tones one up 
to "concert pitch "thus to hear religious sentiments proclaimed 
in enrapturing harmonies. When one of the missionaries rose 
to address the audience his soul was so resonant of melody 
that his words came from his choicest vocabulary, and were ut- 
tered in whatever sweetness of rhythm and cadence his vocal 
organs were capable of. 

" Don't talk to me about Catholics any more," said a good 
old Protestant lady to her Catholic neighbor. " I was at that 
meeting last night, and the priest said that no Catholic over 
seven years old is allowed to read the Bible." " Did you hear 
him say that ? " was asked. " No, but I was told it by another 
lady who did hear him." " Who is she, for the land's sake ? I 
was there, and heard just the contrary who told you that, any- 
way ? " " Well, I'm not allowed to tell who she is but she 
certainly told me, and I believe it, too." Such stupidity annoys 
Catholics, but it also annoys sensible Protestants and helps 
them to appreciate just what sort of a thing prejudice is. 
Most of our Protestants, however, here as elsewhere, were of 
the more thoughtful class. Many came early and waited an 
hour in" the hall so as to be sure of good places, paying the 
strictest attention, critical, we cannot doubt, but not without 
fairness. We had a minister in the audience at two or three of 
the meetings, but as a rule they ignored us. There is a large 
theological seminary of the German Reformed Church here, but 
we were unable to attract more than a very few of the stu- 
dents. The institution belongs to the section of that denomi- 
nation which has finally dropped the German language in pub- 
lic services and preaching, and are connected with the Mercers- 
burg Seminary in Pennsylvania. 

Among our audience each evening we noticed one of the 
leading men of the city, president of a bank. He stopped the 
pastor in the street one day and assured him that the lectures 
were timely, and were beneficial to the people. " They will do 
much good ; they will show Protestants just what Catholics 
believe." He is an indication of a more genial religious atmos- 
phere than what we found north and east of here, in the old 
Western Reserve. That is a section in which bigotry survives 
in pristine vehemence. But so does religious earnestness, even 
among those who are tending towards rationalism. The main 
thing we hope for is fondness for religious discussion, for that 
is seldom dissociated from sincerity of character ; and I am 



548 THE MISSIONS TO NON-CATHOLICS. [Jan., 

persuaded that Catholicity will win its way into the disputa- 
tious minds of the New England race for that is the Reserve 
population if we can manage to present it in accordance with 
their natural mental tendencies. 

We had a fruitful query box here, and therefore we man- 
aged, as usual in that case, to bring in the entire scheme of 
the Catholic faith and practice by way of answering the ques- 
tions. I was not conscious of anything insulting, or specially 
indelicate in any of them ; yet I was stopped on the sidewalk 
one morning by the following salutation from an ordinary look- 
ing citizen : " Brother, I am sorry for that question. I am a 
Protestant, but I have enjoyed your lectures greatly ; and when 
that question about nunneries came up last night I felt ashamed 
of myself, and I sympathized with you." The question he 
meant must have been one asking why there were certain rooms 
in every nunnery which no one was allowed to enter. In 
answer I said there was no such room in any nunnery, unless 
it might be a garret or a lumber-room, and I added that the 
questioner should not harbor suspicions about his neighbors. 

Two days after we had closed a bright Catholic girl, who 
writes in the street-car office, came to the pastor for some 
more leaflets. Said she: " They used to attack me and argue 
with me about religion, but now they let me alone and argue 
among themselves." A prominent Protestant remarked to the 
pastor that it would be of no use to bring ex-priests to the 
town after this " Father Elliott has set at rest all the points 
they used to urge against Catholics." It remains to be seen 
whether this will be the case. The ministers here, and there 
are not a ftw of them, including professors in the seminary, 
gave us very little attention* though when any ex-priest has 
vomited his blasphemies and his slanders they attended conspicu- 
ously. Ministers are certainly not all mean men, but courage 
and fairness and consistency must not be counted on in dealing 
with them. The financial necessities of their existence make 
them men-pleasers, in the meaning of the Apostle : " If I 
please men, then am I no longer a servant of Christ." 

I wish that I could give something novel from the questions, 
but they range very generally over the same ground so plenti- 
fully treated of in former articles. The first night I got from 
one questioner a round dozen of double texts from different 
parts of Scripture, the numbers of chapter and verse only 
being given, with a request for harmonization. I declined, on 
the ground of want of time to look up all the matter. Next 



1895-] THE MISSIONS TO NON-CATHOLICS. 549 

night a portion of the texts were found in the box written out 
for me. But they were about curious and recondite matters, 
and I objected to discuss them for that reason, and also because 
they did not touch our differences with Protestants or infidels. 

God's foreknowledge and permission of evil came up, being 
vigorously put and often returned to. I afterwards learned that 
the questioner is a young infidel lawyer of the town. I spent a 
good deal of time in dealing with his difficulties, not only be- 
cause of the intrinsic importance of the questions, but also be- 
cause our energetic affirmation and proof of God's goodness, 
man's liberty, and the real guilt of sin is high recommendation 
for us with the Protestant public. It must have been the same 
questioner who handed this in : " If a man is a good citizen, 
honest and moral, but believes wholly and only in the unity of 
God, why could he not become a member of the Catholic 
Church?" Answer. Because the Catholic Church has all the 
truth to teach which Christ revealed, and that is far more than 
the unity of God. Natural religion knows that much without 
the aid of revelation. God has appointed the visible society 
called the Catholic Church to teach the Unity of God in the 
Trinity of persons, the Incarnation of the deity, the redemption 
of man by Christ's death, the Grace of God, or supernatural 
love of God for man, the ways and methods of securing that 
grace and thereby saving our souls, and many other truths, all 
necessary to be known either for salvation or because God has 
revealed them ; among them being the origin and constitution 
of the church itself. 

To the following I answered that I didn't quite see what 
the questioner wanted to know. I give it as a specimen of 
mental confusion often revealed by the query box. It was pro- 
perly spelled and type-written : 

" If trials or temptations, seemingly, chain the heart, the Bible 
whispers its consolation ' Whomsoever the Lord loveth he 
chastiseth.' Again, if those trials are apparently the result of 
the heart yielding to silent influence, the Catholic is heard to 
say, ' You are reaping the harvest of your ambitions ' ; in other 
words, God is displeased with your deeds ; hence the trials. If 
he loveth, he chastiseth you ; if you wrong him, he will punish 
you ; the logic of this I don't understand. Kindly answer." 

Question. " If God rules heaven, and Satan rules hell, who, 
then, is the ruler of purgatory or the middle state, as you re- 
presented it in your lecture Wednesday eve?" 

In answering this I said that God ruled everywhere, by his 



550 THE MISSIONS TO NON-CATHOLICS. [Jan., 

love in heaven and purgatory, and by his justice in hell. But 
the questioner was by no means satisfied with my answer, 
seeming to think that a middle state of souls must have a 
middle ruler, and so handed in the following : " Answer by 
' Yes ' or ' No ' ; not being satisfied with your answer last 
night : Is there a ruler in purgatory ? if so, what is he called ? " 

The following seemed to be the plaintive wail of a good 
Catholic with a houseful of children and nothing in the bank: 
" Can you explain why apostate Catholics in a majority of cases 
are successful in their financial undertakings, and in almost 
everything else they undertake? Everything seems to come 
their way; while so many good and sincere Catholics who do 
their religious duty, and are in their hearts good Christians, 
have nothing but trials, tribulations, and financial reverses ; 
nothing seems to come their way but many children. 

" Respectfully submitted." 

Question. " Would a priest marry a couple if the contracted 
parties were Protestants? By an interested listener." 

I judged this to be the outcome of a consultation as to who 
should officiate at the " interested listener's " approaching 
nuptials. 

If the printer will reproduce the spelling of this question he 
will assist in exhibiting a specimen of private interpretation of 
Scripture : 

"The Bible Says heven and earth shal pas A way but my 
wordes shal never pass A way 

" wher will those spirtes go to that are in heaven when 
hevenes passes away " 

The following is a sort of puzzle question: "If Christ came 
on earth to die in order that we might be saved, why should 
the Jews be censured for killing him ? Were they not assisting 
the plan of sdvation?" Answer. If the business of the sheriff 
is to arrest criminals, why should he censure thieves and mur- 
derers ; do they not assist him in earning an honest living? 
If the Revolutionary War secured our independence, why should 
we censure the red-coats, since they were necessary for that 
patriotic achievement ? 

A humorous Protestant illustrated his pleasure in assisting at 
the lectures by saying to a Catholic friend : " I wish I was a 
single man I would marry a Catholic girl and have her convert 
me, so much does your religion please me." 

We thought that our audience would be wholly drawn from 
the towns-people, but in this we were agreeably disappointed. 



1895.] THE MISSIONS TO NON-CATHOLICS. 551 

Catholic farmers drove in from many miles' distance, and not a 
few Protestant ones. The names of several of these latter were 
given us, some of whom had come a journey of five, and one 
nine, miles every evening. The weather favored this, for we had 
beautiful moonlight nights. Everything seemed to favor us here 
except the rush of Catholics. They, too, profited not a little 
by the lectures, and if for their sakes only it was worth while 
giving them. But we are like miners in the Rocky Mountains 
who complain of the silver in the ore ; not because they do not 
want silver, but because it is less precious than the gold ; it is 
not that we love Catholics less, but Protestants more. 

I worked here in conjunction with Fathers Kress and Won- 
derly. Our little band is gradually forming. This mission will 
be ever memorable to us, because while here we received Bishop 
Horstmann's letter relieving Father Kress from parish duty and 
assigning him definitely to the non-Catholic missions. We 
were beside ourselves with joy, and returned thanks to God by 
many prayers, and by offering a Mass of thanksgiving. Let all 
who love the kingdom of God join with us in the same happy 
transport. 

MISSION AT ELY. 



We have never met a brighter people, and seldom seen a 
lovelier little city. The Catholic church has a fine congrega- 
tion, a zealous pastor, and a church edifice the largest in town, 
and one of the handsomest. No wonder, then, that from first 
to last we drew out large numbers of Protestants. As a rule, a 
good Catholic condition means a good missionary outlook. 

But this calls for a high order of speaking, if not in the bril- 
liant qualities of oratory, at least in the solid qualities. For 
one has to reckon with an intelligence aroused to acute interest 
in religious things. Besides that, we are here in the Western 
Reserve, a strictly Yankee section, having been colonized by 
Connecticut emigrants in the earlier part of the century. No 
man need hope to fool the Western Yankee. But, on the other 
hand, a plain statement is both the best and the easiest method 
for winning a critical audience as long as one is certain of be- 
ing right. What a joy it is to be sure of the truth, especially 
when one has to deal with strong minds. We felt like lawyers 
addressing an unfavorable judge, but one known to be upright. 
As my eye ranged over the audience I saw faces of men and 
women so grave and so deeply thoughtful that equality of 
speaker and listener was born of the contact-equality in all but 



552 THE MISSIONS TO NON-CATHOLICS. [Jan. 

the possession of the truth. Let God but bring about that 
equality in America and this strong race will convert the world. 

We had one very rainy night, a downpour in fact, which 
prevented a good attendance; the other five meetings were 
very full, over six hundred being present some nights, nearly 
half of them being Protestants. We dreaded a lack of public 
interest on account of our week being just before the election. 
But no difficulty was had in getting our usual audiences. 

After one of the lectures a lady of much intelligence intro- 
duced herself and said : " I am thankful for your statement about 
human depravity. I have tried all my life to believe myself a 
totally depraved sinner and never have succeeded in doing so, 
and that made me feel guilty ; for I was taught the doctrine of 
total depravity from childhood. Now I see things differently." 
Somebody had given her a copy of Catholic Belief, and I trust 
she will find her way into the church. She was deeply moved 
by the Catholic view of sin and its pardon, and will, no doubt, 
be drawn to the study of the entire Catholic system. 

An old lady attended every meeting, sitting in front and 
paying strictest attention. She afterwards called on us, and we 
found her to be a sort of preacher. She lives some miles out 
of town in a little village and has had a good following a bright 
mind with immense devotional feeling, perfect verbal knowledge 
of Scripture, and little sentimentality. She has been gradually 
working and thinking and praying and preaching herself towards 
the church, and will, doubtless, soon place herself under instruc- 
tion at lease so we judged from her conversation. 

The last night we held the meeting in the church, as the hall 
had been pre-engaged ; the attendance of Protestants was fair, 
though not nearly so good as at the meetings held in the hall. 

The questions were just about enough each evening to occu- 
py half an hour in answering, and they were nearly all reason- 
able, though I do not find anything in them of sufficient novelty 
to make it worth while giving them to the reader. 

We had many requests from non Catholics to return and 
give another course, and we hope to do so. In that case it 
might be well to choose a different line of topics, expounding, 
for example, the fundamental moral principles ; or, perhaps, 
treating of the higher spiritual and mystical life of the soul. 




A TURCOMAN BANDIT. 



UNHAPPY ARMENIA. 

BY JOHN J. O'SHEA. 

UTHENTIC confirmation of the first sinister reports 
of renewed outrage in Asiatic Turkey has been 
received. These reports may have been exagger- 
ated, or they may not approach the truth as to 
the real extent of the tragedy. But the details 
which are beginning to leak out leave no room for doubt that 
a fresh illustration of the unfitness of Turkey for civilized com- 
ity has been furnished in the outbreak. 

Three times in the course of the fast-expiring century has 
the hand of western civilization been stretched out perforce to 




554 UNHAPPY ARMENIA. [Jan., 

rescue Christian populations from the brutal grasp of the Otto- 
man power. And now it seems likely enough that a fourth 
essay must be made in order to finish the work. If only one 
tithe of the story of recent outrage be true, not all the per- 
fumes of Arabia can wash the hand of Turkey clean enough to 
be suffered any longer to hold the reins of power over one inch 
of Christian territory, one soul professing the Christian faith. 

For more than four centuries the experiment of trying to 
reconcile the Oriental barbarism which Turkey represents 
with the social life and the Christian systems of Eastern 
Europe and trans-Caucasia has been going on. Again and 
again has it been proved and decreed a failure, but a reprieve 
has come on every occasion when justice had drawn its sword, 
owing to the selfishness and the international distrust, of the 
European powers. It is entirely owing to the non placet of 
England that the Christians of Armenia are still groaning under 
the iron heel of Turkish rule. For every drop of Armenian 
blood shed in the recent massacres, for every outraged maid 
and mother whose wrong and slaughter cry to Heaven for ven- 
geance, the late Lord Beaconsfield, England's cynical prime 
minister, is entirely responsible before God. 

" Statesmanship " has committed many crimes in its day ; 
but the policy which condemned those Christian populations in 
the East to a continuance of servitude to Turkish rule, after 
the revelations made about it in Bulgaria, deserves to be exe- 
crated as monumental Machiavellianism. Nor will the world 
ever forget the irony of it, when it is recalled that it was Eng- 
land, in whose name the iniquity was committed, which first, 
through the fiery eloquence of Mr. Gladstone, caused the world 
to stir in behalf of the oppressed Bulgarians. Mr. Gladstone's 
noble work at the time of the Bulgarian massacres can never 
be forgotten. But equally will it be remembered that it was 
his rival, Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield, who stepped in, when the 
sword of Russia had severed Armenia from the Turkish Empire, 
and insisted that it should be restored to the scoundrelly 
pashas. This was done with the sole purpose of preventing the 
weakening of the Turkish power; there was no attempt at 
cloaking the purpose. Disraeli was not hypocritical enough to 
pretend otherwise. He, who was so utterly impartial himself in 
the matter of religion, could see nothing wrong in compelling 
Christians to live under the system whose raison (fttre is hatred 
of Christianity. And so the new map of Asia which Russia 
had made by her conquests in the Caucasus had to be torn up 



I895-] 



UNHAPPY ARMENIA. , 



555 



and the miserable province doomed to sink back into the foul 
and degrading slavery from which it had fondly hoped the gal- 
lantry of Skobeleff had for ever freed it. 




KURDS IN AMBUSH. 



In the most solemn manner, in the face of the world, the 
Sublime Porte undertook, as an alternative to the withdrawal of 
the Armenian territory from its jurisdiction, that it should have 



556 UNHAPPY ARMENIA. [Jan., 

a complete reform in its government. The demands of the 
Armenian population it undertook to satisfy ; their just grounds 
of complaint it undertook to remove. Under these conditions, 
and no other, did Russia consent to surrender the fruits of her 
costly victories in Asia Minor. Substantially, then, the Porte 
has exercised since then a trusteeship only over Armenia. It 
has stood in a fiduciary capacity to the great powers of Europe, 
and the unreservedly expressed condition to that relationship 
was a faithful discharge of its solemn responsibilities. It is lia- 
ble to be held to account for the manner in which it has dis- 
charged them ; and there is the strongest reason to believe, 
unhappily, that the day of reckoning has been delayed too 
long. 

Already the Porte is preparing excuses for the outrages which 
there is no longer any possibility of denying. Every precaution 
was taken to prevent the disclosure being made, but despite the 
censorship of the press and the manipulation of the telegraph 
wires, the facts have been established beyond the possibility of 
further denial. Hence, another attitude has been adopted. It 
is now boldly stated that the Armenians were the aggressors, 
that they rose in rebellion and perpetrated outrages on the 
Mussulman tribes living near their villages, and that whatever 
bloodshed took place was the necessary consequence of the pro- 
cess of restoring order. We must not be deceived by this de- 
nial. Similar defences were set up for the atrocities in Bulgaria, 
and when they came to be investigated they were found to be 
utterly baseless. The defence put forward in the case of the 
Armenian outrages bears its own condemnation on its face. 
It is alleged that the Armenians were incited to revolt by an 
English consul. It surely is not the interest of the English 
government that the fUmes of war should be lit again in Asia 
Minor, and no British consul is likely to step outside the line 
of his duty or his instructions through a mere spirit of knight- 
errantry. 

As the very existence of Islam was pronounced to be a 
standing casus belli by one of our greatest of pontiffs, so in these 
days the fanaticism of the Moslem is a perpetual danger to the 
peace of Christendom. It is a thing inflammable as gun-cotton, 
and whenever it bursts out it bursts out in massacre, suddenly 
and unexpectedly. The incident at Salonica about ten or twelve 
years ago is a very good illustration of the sort of berserker 
rage which seizes upon the fanatical Moslem, like rabies on dogs 
in summer. It is a fury like that of the Malayan when he 



I89S-] 



UNHAPPY ARMENIA. 



557 



runs amuck uncontrollable by the will of the homicidal maniac 
until its rage has spent itself in satiety. Many Europeans fell 
in that massacre, were murdered for no reason other than that 
they were of the race of the hated Giaour. Although a heavy 
reparation was exacted from the Porte for this infamy, its les- 
son has been easily forgotten. 

A very peculiar position is that of Turkey. Its power is 
spread over a territory which embraces almost every form of 
Christianity. It sits upon the ruins of many antique civilizations, 
beautiful even in their catalepsy. It is a Cyclops immense and 
savage clutching the fair form of Caucasian civilization, its only 




NOMADIC BEGGARS OF THE ORIENT. 



-eye aflame with brutality and sensualism. A foe to progress it- 
self, it will have no progress amongst those enslaved peoples. 
An enemy to letters, it discourages literature. Conscious of its 



558 



UNHAPPY ARMENIA. 



[Jan., 



enormities, it hates newspapers as thieves hate the light of day. 
There is no censorship so rigid as that which it has established 




A PASHA'S PALACE. 

over the press. The more permanent forms of literature are 
equally discouraged. This is the normal condition of things in 
times of tranquillity. We may easily surmise the strenuousness 
of the efforts which are put forth in periods of disturbance to 
prevent the truth* from leaking out. It took seven or eight 
months for the discovery of the real truth about the horrors of 
Bulgaria, and not all the diligence of the powers could prevent 
the escape of the principal ruffians whom Mr. Gladstone de- 
nounced in connection with that monumental horror. They 
were encouraged in their career of rapine until the whole 
horrid work of " pacification " was over, and then rewarded 
for their share in it. When the cry for their punishment arose 
from the horrified outside world, their escape was deliberately 
connived at. 

Now this is the very course which is being repeated with 
regard to the desolation of Bitlis. All the avenues of intelli- 
gence from that stricken province were carefully guarded until 
the work of butchery and violation was finished and the victims 
hidden away under the earth or devoured by the vultures and 
the jackals. Then the story was stoutly denied ; now it is par- 
tially admitted and defended ; and at last the Porte is reluctantly 
coerced to issue an irade for a commission to inquire into it. 



1895.] UNHAPPY ARMENIA. 559 

Meantime it is openly asserted that the Porte has sent honors 
and rewards to the leaders of the troops engaged in the mas- 
sacre. This is quite in keeping with the reputation which the 
Ottoman Porte has enjoyed from its earliest days. Duplicity 
has been its best defined characteristic. It lies like truth at 
the beginning, and when it is detected in the lie it endeavors 
to palliate and defend. 

In one respect there is an essential difference between the 
horrors of Bulgaria and those in Armenia, and that point makes 
the case infinitely worse against the rulers of Islam. The regu- 
lar troops of Turkey were the chief perpetrators of the massacres, 
there is no doubt. In Bulgaria the ruffians concerned were al- 
together Bashi-bazouks, or irregular soldiers, not directly under 
the command of the Turkish war office, but in its pay. This 
fact was accepted as a sort of apology for the ruling power at 
the time, but the case stands on a different footing now. This 
point is too important to be overlooked in holding the Porte to 
account for its crime. 

It is a grim satire upon the civilizations of Europe that this 
barbarous power should have no better claim to continue its op- 
pressions than the necessity of its existence as a make-weight 
and an obstacle to the ambition of one of the rival states. In 
this sense the European powers are no better than their protege. 
Turkey is a Bashi-bazouk, known to be a lawless ruffian, but re- 
tained in their service solely because of his fighting powers. 

The general instincts of humanity compel our sympathy with 
the suffering Christian population of Armenia ; there are special 
reasons which give them a strong claim upon the active moral 
support of their fellow-Christians more happily circumstanced. 
They are an ancient people perhaps the oldest race in the 
whole world. The land which they inhabit is regarded as lying 
close to the very cradle of the human species. From the ear- 
liest times this region has been connected with the most sacred 
tradition. Through its midst flow the Euphrates and the Tigris, 
the rivers by some supposed to have watered the soil of Eden. 
Its skies are pierced by the heaven-climbing peak of Ararat, 
where rested the Ark on the subsidence of the Deluge. It was 
holy ground, in a certain sense, under the old dispensation. 

From the dawn of Christianity it has played a very impor- 
tant part. It has formed an insuperable bulwark against the 
Zoroastrianism of Iran, as against the encroachments of Islam 
later on. Though the Moslem power crushed the princes of 
Mingrelia, it could not stamp out the religion of the people. To 



560 



UNHAPPY ARMENIA. 



[Jan., 



that and to their national language, national dress, and national 
customs the Armenians clung through every vicissitude of for- 
tune. Their tenacity in adhering to these heirlooms of ancient 
autonomy extorts our warmest admiration. When it is remem- 
bered that the strongest inducements, in the shape of honors 
and rewards, were held out to these oppressed Christians if 
they would only embrace the faith of Islam, it will be confessed 




A TURKISH LADY ENTERTAINING ARMENIAN VISITORS. 

that they deserve to take rank with the Irish people and the 
Poles in love of religion and nationality. 

We may estimate approximately how a free Armenia must 
have progressed, in this age of universal progress, by looking 
at the condition of Bulgaria now and comparing it with its sorry 
plight a generation back whilst it lay powerless under the 
plantigrade hoof of the Ottoman. Bulgaria, the downtrodden 
pashalik, has sprung into potency as the powerful principality, 



1 895.] UNHAPPY ARMENIA. 561 

of high international rank, able to hold her own in the field of 
war, as she proved in the campaign against Servia, and making 
giant strides forward in every avenue of human progress. 
The Armenian race is confessedly one of the brightest of the 
Oriental nationalities. With a fair field for its energies, it must 
become a power for civilization in those eastern regions which, 
despite the forward movement of the world, remain practically 
still in the same state of barbarism and brigandage as the 
soldiers of Xenophon found their people when they hung upon 
his flank and harassed his march all through that retreat which 
his pen has made immortal. 

A multitude of reasons compel our sympathies for the peo- 
ple of Armenia, but the immediate and irresistible one is the 
demand of nature and humanity. The day has gone by, if it 
ever existed, when civilized people could look on with sang- 
froid upon the flaying alive of Christian victims by their Mo- 
hammedan oppressors. This was the favorite punishment for the 
Greek rebel officers after the massacres at Scio and Crete. 
There are people still living who remember it. And there are 
plenty of men in the Russian army who have seen their dead 
comrades mutilated and their bodies impaled in the Balkan 
passes no later than the last war. The power stained with 
such abominations as these must be regarded as outside the 
pale of civilization, and if it be proved guilty once more, after 
its solemn undertakings to the combined European powers, it 
ought to be for ever removed from the control of Christian 
races and rigidly confined in its own barbarian limits like a 
dangerous beast in its den. 




VOL. LX. 36 




ALTHOUGH the tendency to connect the genius 
of Catholicism with the reactionary forces of ignor- 
ance and crime is not so general in these days as 
it was a few years ago, it exists in some quarters 
not easily pervious to truth. There are those who 
repeat the stereotyped formula for no other reason than intel- 
lectual density; there are others who repeat it because they 
honestly believe it ; there be those, again, who utter it out of 
sheer malice. Argument is wasted upon the latter class of 
minds; the other two may with patience be got to see and ac- 
knowledge the mistakes into which innate prejudice or mislead- 
ing information led them. To the honest and candid adversaries 
of the Catholic system we would earnestly commend the work 
just completed by the Rev. Alfred Young of the Congregation 
of St. Paul, under the title Catholic and Protestant Countries com- 
pared* 

Father Young has gone about the task of dispelling some 
eminently respectable stock fallacies in a very methodical and 
business-like way. He has mastered every detail of the case 
which he is called upon to defend, and he proceeds to the dis- 
section of it with all the scientific aplomb and masterly skill of 
the trained advocate. The array of testimony adduced by 
Father Young in support of his position is startling, not merely 
by its weight but by its character. All the authorities he cites 
are non-Catholic. From title-page to colophon he does not call 
upon any Catholic aid save his own pen. Out of the mouths 
of non-Catholics he disproves the slanders which have so long 
passed current with the foes of Catholicism. It is often ob- 
jected and well objected in many cases that figures and sta- 
tistics are illusory things when applied to peculiar social or eco- 
nomic conditions. They reveal nothing of the inner side of the 
question ; and it is this side which in many cases it is desirable 

* Catholic and Protestant Countries compared in Civilization, Popular Happiness, Gene- 
ral Intelligence, and Morality. By Rev. Alfred Young, C.S.P. New York: Columbus 
Press, 120 West Sixtieth Street. 



1 895.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 563 

to know when studying social and historical phenomena, or, in- 
deed, of the ordinary every-day life of the outside world for 
that matter. But Father Young has not relied upon bare, bald 
statistics. He proves his case up to the hilt by copious extracts 
from the writings of acknowledged authorities men who made 
the esoteric side of life their special study, and who may all be 
depended on for having no especial reason to favor the Catholic 
side in any debatable matter. 

The branches of the subject are many and diversified, mak- 
ing the task Father Young set unto himself no mere leisure- 
hour amusement. University education, intermediate, and pri- 
mary ; the social life and habits of the people ; the condition of 
labor, and especially the condition of women and children em- 
ployed in various industrial pursuits, and the moral state of the 
various populations passed under review all these things are 
amply dealt with. The work, great as it is, is a work to bear 
the severest test of scrutiny. It is like a great ship, complete 
in all its parts, all its machinery perfect, and every bolt and 
rivet fashioned of such stuff and placed with so much care as 
to render the whole structure completely impervious to the as- 
saults of the winds and waves of controversy. It is a book for 
the time a dynamite gun, before which no foe can hope to stand 
for an hour. We commend it to every Catholic home in the 
land. 

Half Brothers, by Hesba Stretton one of Cassell's "Sun- 
shine" series is a fine example of the Exeter-Hall style of 
literature. Vulgarity, bigotry, and improbability are the charac- 
teristics of the production. If there be any class of English 
readers of whose tastes this novel is a reflection, their intellec- 
tual status must be on a par with that of the region of Tierra 
del Fuego. 

It is pleasant to hear that so excellent a book as Father J. 
M'Laughlin's Is One Religion as Good as Another? has reached 
its fortieth thousand, as the fact goes to show the spread of a 
wholesome spirit of inquiry. Whether this success is to be 
attributed to the catching style of the book or the soundness 
of its arguments, we should hesitate to decide. The merits on 
either side strike a pretty even balance. The new issue is a 
cheaper one than any of its predecessors, and we confidently 
anticipate for it a speedy exhaustion. 

There could be no better Christmas present for young 



564 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Jan., 

people than Mr. Maurice F. Egan's two stories (bound as they 
are in one handsome volume), The Flower of the Flock and 
The Badgers of Belmont. These tales have already appeared in 
serial form ; in their less ephemeral shape they will prove a 
welcome addition to the literature for our jeunesse dore'e. They 
are vivacious, life-like pictures of the time, and the spirit of 
harmless humor which pervades them renders them very agree- 
able reading for the long winter evenings. The book is pro- 
duced by the Messrs. Benziger in handsome holiday dress. 

An admirable little drama suitable for schools is the new 
one of Ursula of Brittany, just published by the Ursulines of 
St. Teresa's. A judicious selection of passages from standard 
authors in appropriate places lends to the famous legend the 
dignity of a fine mosaic. To judge from the reading of the 
piece, it ought to make a splendid and impressive stage specta- 
cle. The drama is published at the Ursulines', 137 Henry Street, 
New York. 

One of the oddest literary coincidences ever known, perhaps, 
is the selection of the same ode in Mr. Gladstone's new Horace 
by the reviewer of this magazine and the reviewer on the 
London Daily News, for a comparison between Mr. Gladstone's 
rendering and that of Milton. That this particular ode (To 
Pyrrha) should have been picked out from over a hundred by 
two minds working three thousand miles apart is a curious fact 
for the psychologist. No two minds could be by any possibil- 
ity more ignorant of each other's intentions, or even existence. 
They were, and still are, utterly unknown to each other. Sure- 
ly "there are more things in earth and heaven than are 
dreamed of in our philosophy." 

The Ordo for 1895 has been issued from the publishing 
house of Fr. Pustet & Co., in the usual neat and convenient 
form, with blank pages for memoranda at the end. 

We are too apt to overlook the noble part played by wo- 
men in the evil days of martyrdom and persecution. It is well 
to recall the many examples of heroic fortitude and constancy 
displayed by noble Catholic women in times when physical suf- 
fering was relied on to overcome spiritual grace. The Countess 
de Courson performs a service in this way in bringing before 
the French public the career of four illustrious women* who 

* Quatre Portraits de Femmes, Episodes des Persecutions d'Angleterre. Par La Com- 
tesse de Courson. Paris : Librairie de Firmin-Didot et Cie, Rue Jacob, 56. 



1895-] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 565 

figured in the grim drama of English persecution, at different 
epochs namely, the Duchess of Feria (ne'e Jane Dormer), a 
lady who rendered vast assistance at the court of Spain to her 
compatriots who took refuge in Spain during the Tudor per- 
secutions ; Luisa de Cavajal, a Spanish lady who devoted her- 
self to the service of God and at the time of the so-called 
Gunpowder Plot rendered much service to the persecuted 
Catholics in London ; Mary Ward, who under great difficulties 
established a religious community in England during the days 
of Puritan supremacy; and Margaret Clitherow, the heroic 
martyr of York. There is no more thrilling chapter in human 
history than the trial, the torture, and slaying of this brave wo- 
man by Elizabeth's minions, and the Countess de Courson 
tells it well. The work is furnished with portraits of two of 
the ladies treated of viz., the Duchess of Feria and Mary 
Ward. 

To the foregoing some section of the reading public may 
find a kind of set-off in a work by H. M. Bower, M.A., entitled 
The Fourteen of Meaux* Herein the transactions which led to 
the Huguenot troubles in France are investigated, apparently 
with the view to show the Catholic Church was to blame for a 
state of civil turmoil and repression by the secular arm entirely 
beyond her control. In his quest after light the author has come 
upon some scraps of history which serve the purpose of vindi- 
cating the institution he would fain inculpate. He shows, for 
instance, the effect of the violent and outrageous proceedings of 
the early " Gospellers," in filling the cities with vile placards de- 
nouncing the Mass as idolatrous and containing foul libels on the 
priesthood. One of these placards was affixed to the very door 
of King Francis the First, as if in defiance of his authority and 
as a taunt at his moderation. This was the spark that set fire 
to the magazine. Parliament was summoned, and stern meas- 
ures of repression civil repression were adopted. For it must 
be borne in mind that the movement for religious reform at this 
period meant a political and social reconstruction in every 
detail of life as well. The war was begun by the Huguenot 
party, and it was a civil war in France, and a civil war as purely 
as any other insurrectionary outbreak that ever arose within 
her borders. There were massacres and atrocities on both sides 
whilst it desolated the country, at which humanity and Christianity 
alike must weep. There was an intimate connection between 

* The Fourteen of Meaux. By H. M. Bower, M.A. New York: Longmans, Green & 
Co. 



566 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Jan., 

the reformers of Geneva and those of Meaux, and the mode in 
which the former used the right of private judgment in a way not 
agreeable to the Calvinists deprives the assailants of the French 
government of the Huguenot period of any shred of argument. 
In Geneva it was the church which really acted to stamp out 
dissent from Calvinism ; in France it was the Parliament which 
set the law in motion for the preservation of the public peace. 

A volume of lyrics from Mr. Charles H. A. Esling reveals a 
graceful and facile calamus. The author is one of those ready 
writers who adorn the bare surfaces of opportunity, as they 
present themselves, with the pictures and festoons of fancy and 
music. The seasons, commemorative celebrations, social events, 
visits to famous localities, historic events of war and peace, all 
find him ready with an ode, a ballad, an epithalamium, or an 
elegy. The title very aptly describes the collection, Melodies 
in Mood and Tense* They are melodious pieces as a rule, 
and they reflect many phases of life and thought. They are of 
unequal merit, and some of the work might have been well 
left out because of its awkwardness and straining both of idea 
and versification ; but it must in fairness be owned that the 
genuine ring of poesy is oftener heard than the false. A few 
excellent plates embellish the work ; and to some of the pieces 
there is the addition of a musical setting. The volume Bought 
to be a very acceptable Christmas or New Year's gift. 

Of other books suitable for the season there is no lack, but 
on the contrary so many that our space will not permit us to 
do a moiety of them the justice their merits demand. We 
must, therefore, only briefly note the more prominent : 

Three Heroines of New England Romance (Little, Brown & 
Co.) is a tripartite literary effort sketching the lives and habitat 
of Longfellow's Priscilla, and of Agnes Surriage and Martha 
Hilton, two Boston ladies who played memorable parts upon 
life's stage in pre-Revolution days. The three sketches are 
rather biographical essays than personal chronicles, and they 
will be read more for their quality than their bulk. The names 
of the respective authors is a guarantee of good work. They 
are Harriet Prescott Spofford, Alice Brown, and Louise Imogen 
Guiney. 

Much talk there was a few years ago about "the best hun- 

* Melodies in Mood and Tense. By Charles H. A. Esling, M.A.. LL.B. Philadelphia: 
Charles H. Walsh. 



1895.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 567 

dred books." We do not think a tithe of it worth remembering 
when we go through the charming gossipy pages of Miss Agnes 
Repplier's latest production, In Dozy Hours, and other Papers 
(Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York). She chats 
with such pleasant, erudite vivacity about old friends as well as 
new aspirants for that title that she is very likely to convert 
hours that might otherwise be dozy into very alert and wide- 
awake ones. She gossips also about the respective qualities of 
American and English humor, and about many other things, 
and though we may not acquiesce in all her deductions we 
continue to read on with unalloyed pleasure. The book is one 
of the best we know of wherewith to exorcise dull care or 
warn Morpheus off when his visits are " too previous." We 
would like to see it in a less Quakerly cover. 

Father Finn's holiday book, Mostly Boys (Benziger Brothers), 
is capital reading for our golden youth. It embraces nine live 
stories, in all of which the charm of variety and the dash of 
hustling boyhood are kept up from start to finish. 

Legends and Stories of the Holy Child Jesus (Benziger Broth- 
ers) is an admirable collection of quaint and delightful tales of 
the infant Saviour as they are found in various countries. The 
compiler is A. Fowler Lutz, and the work is well done. The 
book will be welcome at every Christmas fireside. 

Ballads in Prose, by Nora Hopper (Roberts Brothers, Bos- 
ton), are well named or if they were styled "poems in prose" 
it might be better. The collection is one of old Irish legends, 
and we have not seen the subjects more beautifully treated in 
any literary shape. The spirit of the work is quaint and ten- 
der, and the stories of witchcraft, wonderful deeds, and pas- 
sionate love and revenge are brimful of Celtic sympathy. 

Timothy's Quest, a story by Kate Douglas Wiggin (Hough- 
ton, Mifflin & Co.), is an illustration of that clever writer's best 
style. It is not much as a story, but as a piece of refined 
humor it is admirable. In Sunshine Land (from the same firm) is 
a book of poems for young people by Edith M. Thomas. It is 
full of pretty fancies and conceits about animal life and 
nature. Fine illustrations by Katharine Pyle abound through- 
out. 

John Boyle O'Reilly's book is recognized in the Moondyne 



568 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Jan., 

foe of Kilner & Co., Philadelphia. The novel made its mark 
deeply whilst the talented writer lived. It was one of those 
which are described as " purpose " novels, but it is remarkable 
for power in dramatic construction and picturesque presenta- 
tion of antipodean life, no less than the wrongs and mistakes of 
the old-time penal system. It is a book that deserves to live. 

A Story of Courage (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) is the joint 
work of George Parsons Lathrop and his wife Rose Hawthorne 
Lathrop. It is a record of the founding and growth of the 
Georgetown Convent of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin, 
admirably told. A more befitting notice of the work we hope 
to be able to give later on. 

Many people have heard of the Brehon Laws ; * few know 
what the term means, save that it refers to an obsolete code 
of legal rules for the government of a primitive Celtic people. 
A little inquiry would at once place us face to face with the 
startling fact that these laws had their origin in the very 
foundation of modern constitutional systems, and that they 
represent the earliest forms of popular and parliamentary gov- 
ernment ever known to history. The Feis of Tara, which prac- 
tically represented the collective wisdom of the Irish nation, 
was instituted, according to the ancient chronologists, by the 
high King, Ollamh Fodhla, anno tnundi 3884. It was to all 
intents and purposes a national parliament, and it was con- 
tinued on at irregular intervals down to the time of the coming 
of St. Patrick, by whom the whole body of Irish laws, national, 
provincial, and local, as well as judicial, tribal, social, and 
sumptuary, was collected and revised, with the help of the 
most learned legists of the time, and placed in permanent form 
under the title of the Senchus Mor. This book was completed, 
according to the Annals of the Four Masters, in the year of 
our Lord 438. It is, therefore, an older legal compilation than 
the Codex Justiniani. The much- vaunted Magna Charta is a 
modern and trivial document as compared with it. 

The Senchus Mor has been translated under the supervision 
of the Brehon Law Commissioners, but it is a bulky volume. 
Many will be glad to avail themselves of a handier work just 
published by Mr. Lawrence Grinnell, Barrister of the Middle 
Temple, London. It does more for the general reader than the 
larger volume, from its nature and limitations, could. It gives 

* The Brehon Laws. By Lawrence Grinnell, of the Middle Temple, Barrister-at-Law. 



i895-] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 569 

him a comprehensive view of early Irish society and civilization, 
and of the causes which led to the decay of the ancient system 
and the destruction of its literature. Those who might expect 
to find in this volume a mere dry legal commentary, will be 
agreeably disappointed on opening its pages. They will find it 
instead a very luminous and sympathetic review of a most 
interesting upgrowth, and a very helpful hand-book in the 
mazes of a forgotten period. 



I. HYPNOTISM AND THE STIGMATA.* 

This very important and valuable work, the scope of which 
is sufficiently indicated by its title, is a very notable contribu- 
tion to even the knowledge possessed by Catholics of facts in 
the supernatural order. We venture to say that few, even of 
those most familiar with these matters, can fail to be astonished 
at the number of the instances, particularly of stigmatization, 
which are here presented, and the strength of their attestation. 
Beginning with St. Francis of Assisi, we find here a list of over 
three hundred persons who have, in one form or another, re- 
ceived the stigmata, and in many of these a detailed description 
has come down to us. And though the subject of ecstasy is 
not treated at such length, and indeed hardly needs to be, as 
mention of it occurs frequently in the accounts of the stigma- 
tized, the facts presented, specially with regard to the elevation 
of the body into the air during that state, are far more numer- 
ous, and more surprising in their character, than most of us are 
accustomed even to imagine. The apparition of Lourdes, and 
the subsequent miracles, continued, as every Catholic knows, 
down to our own day, are more summarily treated ; the evi- 
dence of these will be found more fully elsewhere. 

The book is written, and the facts and evidence collected, 
specially as an argument against those who at the present day 
explain stigmatization and ecstasy by means of hypnotism ; the 
discussion of the facts, which occupies the second volume of 
the work, having mainly this scope. And, for reasonable rea- 
ders, the author undoubtedly accomplishes the result which he 
intends. No Catholic, and indeed no person whatever who be- 

* La Stigmattsation, fExtase Divine et les Miracles de Lourdes : rlponse aux libres-pen- 
seurs. Par le Dr. Antoine Imbert-Gourbeyre, Professeur at 1'Ecole de Medicine de Cler- 
mont (1852-1888), Commandeur de 1'Ordre de Charles III. Clermont-Ferrand, 1894. 



5/o TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Jan., 

lieves in God and in the possibility of his action in a superna- 
tural way in the world which he has created, can fail to see 
that no human agency or occult powers of nature will sufficiently 
account for all the phenomena here detailed. The only escape 
from this conclusion is to deny the value of the testimony pre- 
sented where it does not fall in with preconceived notions ; to 
say, in short, that the witnesses are liars-, consciously or uncon- 
sciously. By this short cut, of course, all difficulties can be 
overcome ; but we need hardly say that those who follow it 
abandon by doing so the right to be called reasonable beings. 
And least of all mankind do those deserve to be called free- 
thinkers who are obstinately and resolutely pledged to dogmas 
of their own making, and absolutely refuse to admit evidence ir- 
reconcilable with them. They may call themselves scientific 
men, but they bring disgrace upon the fair name of science. 

Still, though such men cannot be entirely silenced and put 
out of the field, and will always have their followers and adhe- 
rents, it is desirable to stop their mouths as far as possible, 
and not give them any more ground than can be helped for 
their objections; and not to use any arguments against them 
which they can find other grounds for rejecting than the gen- 
eral one above stated. And it seems to us that the eminent 
author lays himself open to attack unnecessarily in this way. 
He is, perhaps, somewhat too strong in his own faith for the 
purpose which he has in hand, and does not always recognize 
that cavil may be made in cases which are to the well-disposed 
quite clear. It would, we think, have been better for the pur- 
pose to admit the possibility of doubt in instances where we 
ourselves feel no doubt, and to allow that the natural may play 
its part to some extent even in cases mostly supernatural. Un- 
doubtedly the author would admit this, and actually does recog- 
nize it; but he might well give the natural more scope, at the 
same time devoting himself more distinctly to showing, by ar- 
guments which his opponents would be forced to admit, that 
there are limits beyond which it cannot go. Instead of this, he 
too frequently falls back on the authority of the church, a good 
authority surely for us, but worthless for those who pose, whether 
sincerely or not, as unbelievers. It is utterly immaterial, for 
instance, to the English or American Protestant whether an 
ecstatic or stigmatized person has been canonized or not ; we 
do not see why, in controversy, it should be otherwise to the 
French bad Catholic, whatever his interior convictions may be. 



1895.] NEW BOOKS. 571 

The book is, as has been said, a very important contribu- 
tion to our knowledge ; but its scientific and controversial value 
might, it would seem, have been much increased on the basis of 
the facts in hand, and of others which no doubt the author would 
have been able to furnish. 



NEW BOOKS. 

FR. PUSTET & Co., New York and Cincinnati : 

The Ceremonies of Holy Mass Explained, By Rev. F. X. Schouppe, S.J.. 
Translated by Rev. P. F. O'Hare. (Third revised edition.) 

BENZIGER BROTHERS. New York. Chicago, Cincinnati : 

Legends and Stories of the Holy Child Jesus from Many Lands. By A. 
Fowler Lutz. Jesus the Good Shepherd. By the Right Rev. J. de Goes- 
briand, D. D., Bishop of Burlington. The Lover of Souls ; or, Short Con- 
ferences on the Sacred Heart of Jesus. By a Priest. A History of the 
Mass and its Ceremonies in the Eastern and Western Church, By 
Rev. John O'Brien, A.M. Fifteenth edition. 

LITTLE, BROWN & Co., Boston : 

Hero Tales of Ireland. By Jeremiah Curtin. 
GEORGE H. ELLIS, Boston : 

Faith, Hope, and Love. Selections from sermons and writings of James 
Freeman Clarke. The Deeper Meanings, By Frederic A. Hinckley* 
Old and New Unitarian Belief, By John White Chadwick. 

EDGAR S. WERNER, New York: 

The Basic Law of Vocal Utterance, By Emil Satro. Werner's Readings 
and Recitations. 

LONGMANS, GREEN & Co., New York: 

The Permanent Value of the Book of Genesis. By C. W. E. Body, M.A., 
D.C.L. 

BURNS & GATES, London : 

A Manual of Scripture History, By the Rev. Walter J. B. Richards, D.D., 
Oblate of St. Charles, Inspector of Schools to the Diocese of Westminster. 
Journals of Retreat. By Father John Morris, S.J. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & Co., Boston and New York : 

Occult Japan ; or, The Way of the Gods, By Percival Lowell. 

LAND & LEE, Chicago : 

A Frog-land Wedding. By Roy Conger and Helen Hitchcock. 

CATHOLIC UNION AND TIMES, Buffalo: 

Foreign Societies and American Schools, By Thomas Jefferson Jenkins. 




WE have received a letter from the Bishop of 
Tarsus and Adana, Right Rev. Paul Terzian, con- 
veying very deplorable tidings. By an accidental 
fire his church and presbytery and schools at Hadjine, one of 
his principal mission stations, have been destroyed, and his school 
children are now without a regular school building. The church 
services are being held in a private building which has been 
rented for the purpose, and great inconvenience and unseemli- 
ness in divine worship are the consequence. The good bishop 
is in sore distress over the disaster, and we hope that Catholics 
of means in this country may be touched by his tale of dis- 
aster so as to lend him a helping hand. The burning appears 
to have been accidental, as Adana is not in that part of Arme- 
nia where the outrages have taken place, but away down near 
the sea-shore. 



WE are to have a Catholic University Bulletin. This is as it 
should be, in order to keep pace with the growth and impor- 
tance of the institution. The Bulletin will be issued quarterly, 
and its editorial work will be in the hands of the Rev. Profes- 
sor Shahan. We are justified in anticipating that its literary 
claims will be on a high level, and we hope it may receive all 
the support needed to enable it to accomplish its laudable aims. 



DEATH has been busy of late amongst our notabilities. His 
latest distinguished victims are the Prime Minister of Canada, 
Sir John Thompson, and Mr. Robert Louis Stephenson, the fa- 
mous novelist. The Canadian premier's demise took place un- 
der singular and terrible circumstances. He had been at Wind- 
sor Castle, the guest of Queen Victoria, when he was seized 
with a sudden stroke, and died in fifteen minutes afterward. 
The tragic event created a profound impression, the Queen be- 
ing deeply shocked. Mr. Stephenson died suddenly also, 
away in his South Sea island retreat. 



1895.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 573 



THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 

WITHIN the past year the Catholic Truth Society established at Ottawa has 
put into circulation 10,422 leaflets and bound volumes. Since its forma- 
tion three years ago it has distributed 25,396 publications in defence of the 
Christian religion. The object of the society is the diffusion of Catholic truth 
and its vindication whenever assailed. Communications from the members to 
the daily press are not intended to provoke controversy, but solely for the pur- 
pose of explanation and correction of errois. This highly important part of the 
work, requiring literary skill and calm judgment, has been attended with satis- 
factory results. 

At the annual meeting lately held in the Ottawa University the president, 
Mr. J. A. J. McKenna, likened the power of the Catholic laity to a moral 
Niagara,' stating that the mission of the Truth Society was to afford a channel 
by which some of the power of this Niagara might be utilized to spread Catholic 
truth. While Catholics knew they had the faith in its fulness, had the whole 
and entire truth, had the church builded by God, not by men, the church that 
had civilized and humanized mankind, they too often forgot the obligations that 
go with this privilege. The obligations of the clergy did not excuse the laity 
from their share of the work of spreading the truth. The achievements of the 
Truth Society should encourage and attract the support of the laity. 

The financial statement presented by Dr. MacCabe showed receipts $442.17 
and an expenditure of $340.34, leaving a balance of $101.83. 

Archbishop Duhamel thanked the officers of the society for the work dur- 
ing the year, and expressed his happiness and consolation at seeing the Catholic 
laity understand their duty to help the clergy. He asked all present to join the 
society and to encourage others to join, that they might work towards the perfect 
union of mankind on the basis of the truth as taught by the Catholic Church, 
that all men might be of one heart and one soul, recognizing one Father, God, 
in heaven, and one mother, the church, on earth. 

* * * 

Bishop Messmer, of Green Bay, Wis., is determined that there shall be no 
hostility between the new Summer-School to be held at Madison, Wis., and the 
one already established on Lake Champlain. In a letter to Mr. Warren E. 
Mosher he states that we must preserve union and harmony at all costs ; 
Summer-Schools and Reading Circles should work together to give the force of 
unity to the Catholic intellectual and educational movement. 

" It is my intention at our next meeting in Chicago to propose the question 
whether a uniform course of study and lectures could be devised acceptable to 
both Summer-Schools. Not to speak of the united work among our Reading 
Circles, East or West, the simultaneous treatment of the same important sub- 
jects and vital Catholic questions by different men and in diverse modes would 
be, it seems to me, of incalculable advantage. Such uniformity could easily be 
obtained if the respective special committees on studies and lectures of both 
schools would arrange the plan conjointly. By such a plan lectures could be 
interchanged the East to get men from the West, the West fiom the East. 
Thus the unity of scope, plan, and object, together with the diversity of place and 
persons, treatment and presentation of the object, would lend a charm to our 
Catholic movement and power to its work." 



574 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [Jan., 

The lecture by the Rev. J. L. O'Neil, O.P., on Catholic Literature in Catho- 
lic Homes delivered at the Summer-School last July awakened considerable 
healthful discussion. It has now been published by P. O'Shea, New York, in 
pamphlet form, with a dedication to Archbishop Corrigan, and should have a 
wide circulation. Inferior publications bearing the name of Catholic are boldly 
attacked. A pungent writer in the Seminary fully approves of the attack, and 
desires the joy of writing a brief obituary of " a score or more so-called Catholic 
weeklies," believing that nothing in their life would so become them as their 
leaving it. 

From the same writer we take this excellent and accurate statement of pre- 
sent conditions : 

" We are so accustomed to praising ourselves because of our material pros- 
perity that we need frequent, plain-spoken reminders of our defects and neglects. 
In the matter of Catholic literature for Catholic homes we have much to do and 
much to undo ; and though many heads and hands are now engaged in the great 
work of the apostolate of good reading, more wise heads and careful hands are 
needed. The rich must be interested in the work. It is a duty they owe to re- 
ligion and society. They should be the leaders, the exemplars of the poor, pro- 
viding sound, nourishing food for their minds and souls, as well as for their 
bodies. Unfortunately some of our rich men are destitute of a proper sense of 
the duties of wealth. 

"Then there are the publishers, the editors, and the writers. For those who 
are wholly Catholic, giving their time and talents to the cause of Catholic truth, 
the editor of the Rosary has a kindly sympathy; and they deserve it. The rich 
do not patronize them ; nor do the booksellers share a profit with them. Indeed 
there are editors of journals and of magazines who would not extend them com- 
mon politeness, if common politeness were cash. Still, the Catholic writer should 
know what is in store for him, and be prepared for a life of sacrifice." 

The claims of the Catholic magazine as a powerful aid in the apostolate of 
good reading are thus presented : 

" Some argue that the reading of magazines spoils a taste for good books, 
and makes superficial men and women. As far as our experience goes, every- 
thing depends on the magazine and on the reader. Most people are satisfied, 
and must be satisfied, with superficial information. The goodness of the sources 
from which information is drawn is, therefore, the more important consideration. 
We believe that because of its timeliness, its change, its freshness, its cheapness 
the magazine has an advantage[over the book. The quality of the average maga- 
zine is as good as the quality of the average book ; its variety is beyond question, 
its quantity decidedly greater. Several dollars for a volume means one subject 
soon read, soon ended, ordinarily, Several dollars for a magazine means a year's 
delightful, varied reading." 

* * * 

In the Cosmopolitan Mr. William L. Fletcher has given the results of his 
study of the public libraries in the United States. Those established by private 
endowment may or may not allow equal rights to Catholic authors. The follow- 
ing list shows the number of libraries wholly or mainly supported by taxation, 
which should make no discrimination against good books on account of the race 
or creed of their authors : 

"Massachusetts, 179; Illinois, 35; New Hampshire, 34; Michigan, 26; 
California, 18 ; Ohio, 15; Rhode Island, 13; Indiana, 13; Iowa, u ; New York, 
i 1 ; Wisconsin, 9 ; Maine, 8 ; Kansas, 7 ; Minnesota, 7 ; Connecticut, 5 ; New 
Jersey, 4; Colorado, 2; Missouri, i ; Vermont, i." 



1 89 5.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 575 

We have received a marked copy of the New Ireland Review, 54 Eccles 
Street, Dublin (New York office, Benziger Bros., 36 Barclay Street), which con- 
tains a most practical statement of the good to be accomplished by parish lend- 
ing libraries. The writer, J. G., approves our plan of providing not merely de- 
votional and religious books, but also popular works in history and literature, 
and a collection of good, instructive, and amusing novels. Without a liberal sup- 
ply of fiction no library for young people will long survive. They will have 
novels if it is possible to get them, and hence the best way to oppose the per- 
nicious literature of the day is to place within easy reach such novels as will en- 
lighten, refine, and amuse without corrupting their minds. 

Country districts in America have very much the same state of things as in 
Ireland. Though passionately fond of reading, " people in rural parishes have 
scarcely any facilities for procuring sound, entertaining, and cheap books. 
There are no book-shops nearer than the larger towns, and even there the 
selections offered for sale, through want of knowledge and discrimination in the 
shopkeeper, are often of a trashy, worthless, unhealthy character. Besides no 
reductions in published prices are usually given. Moreover, country people 
seldom go to the larger towns except to fair or market, and then they are so en- 
grossed in their business that the idea of looking out for the book-stall will scarce- 
ly, occur to them. It would be very different if cheap, attractive books were 
brought under their notice in the rural village, or in their houses by colporteurs 
or by means of book-stalls erected near the chapels on Sundays. It would then 
be found that country folk are without books simply from want of opportunity to 
purchase them. The danger in the means here suggested for supplying the peo- 
ple with cheap literature would be the possibility, or rather probability, that 
without strict supervision on the part of the local clergy publications dangerous 
to faith and morals would unwittingly or maliciously be circulated. Hence, 
although it would be a boon if our country people had better facilities for procur- 
ing a collection of good books of their own, the remedy to be suggested for 
turning them into a reading people is not the buying of, but the borrowing of 
books. 

" Since, therefore, the people do not read, although eager to do so, the 
question arises as to how this state of things is to be remedied. The most obvi- 
ous and practical way is by means of the parochial lending library. By subscrib- 
ing a small sum to purchase books, each one can thus have access to, say, 200 
volumes, with as much right to their use as if all were his or her private property. 
Hence it is also the cheapest way. Moreover, and this is of far greater import- 
ance, each one will thus read only such books as are instructive, moral, and 
healthy, and so will be protected against the terrible evil of having, perhaps, 
faith and morality sapped and underminded by the immoral and infidel publica- 
tions with which the country is being flooded. Happily few of them have found 
their way into our country parishes, but the danger that they may remains all 
the same. Strange that when we do find a few books which the young people 
have purchased or borrowed they are generally of the most worthless kind, and 
if not immoral or infidel, near akin to both. The only thing the good, simple 
bookseller in town knows about them is that they are novels and cheap, and 
on this recommendation the unsuspecting country boy or girl buys them, and un- 
awares imbibes their poison. The parish library is hence the only safe way to 
satisfy the people's love of reading. It is a continual and pressing want, and one 

which there is reason to believe is not at all adequately supplied." 

* * * 

Recent events demand that we should make a loud protest against people 



576 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [Jan., 1895. 

who want to get something for nothing. About two-thirds of the letters sent to- 
us since September, requesting information concerning Reading Circles, etc., 
have had enclosed not even one postage-stamp for a reply. Each printed list 
represents a money value. The minimum charge is ten cents, and this is abso- 
lutely required to pay expenses. We fully endorse a statement recently published 
in the Living Church. Though written by an Episcopalian and for Episcopa- 
lians, it has Catholic approval, because it contains the truth : 

" We started out, some sixteen years ago, to furnish a paper that would be 
readable and useful at $2.00 a year, or less than four cents a week ; yet now and 
then we hear of people who ' can't afford it.' In the case of poor clergymen who 
are trying to support their families on a dollar and a half a day we can understand 
that a dollar is a serious matter, and we generally see that they have the paper if 
they want it. But when we hear the above from those who live in elegant houses, 
and go to church in carriages, and dress in cloth and silk, we feel just a little im- 
patient, not because we have any claims upon them to take ' our paper,' but be- 
cause they make this wretched excuse for taking no paper and no interest in 
church affairs. They afford a thousand things that are of no real benefit to them- 
selves or their families. They ought to be ashamed of themselves for offering 
such an excuse. They ' afford ' nothing which does not bring some selfish grati- 
fication. 

" These remarks are not intended to reflect upon our people as a whole ; 
but we think it might as well be frankly stated that there are large numbers of 
church people, so called, that give no attention whatever to church matters, and 
care not at all to be informed about them. They supply their families with 
reading of every other kind, and buy many things that they could well do- 
without, but do not see a church paper of any kind from year to year. In many 
cases they spend twenty dollars a year for the daily papers and the magazines,, 
but they ' can't afford ' one-tenth of that sum for the papers that are maintaining 
the honor and contributing to the growth of the church. It may be somewhat 
the fault of the papers that they are not more interesting ; but how can we ex- 
pect to enlist enterprise and capital in producing that for which there is such a 

limited demand ? " 

* * * 

Under the auspices of the Paulist Fathers, Henry Austin Adams, M.A.,. 
delivered a course of lectures during Advent at Columbus Hall, New York City, 
and won deserved tributes of praise for his remarkable oratorical gifts. The 
subjects are here given with a synopsis : 

Random Reading in Fiction. Imagination Memory Will Habits The 
Average Reader The Average Book Pure Genius versus Commercialism 
The Writers How to Choose and Why A Book's Credentials The Columbian- 
Reading Union Some Schools and Tendencies Friendships in Fiction Ulti- 
mate Results. 

Facts and Fabrications in History. The Causes of False Witness 
Romance Delights of Delusion Prejudice The Idolatry of Letters The 
Making of Humbug Ignorance, Fraud, and Antiquity The New Historical 
Conscience Its Manifestations: Iconoclasm, Reparation, Restatements Stand- 
ard Historians Some Instances of Colossal Injustice. 

Duties and Defects of the Reading Public. The Public Does it Read ? 
Printer's Ink Taste The Publisher The Editor The Author The Hack 
The Penny-a-liner The People The Gentle Reader Who is to Blame ? Duty- 
in the Matter of Reading Books Newspapers Periodicals Information. 
versus Knowledge Reading Circles The Personal Question Life. 

M. C. M. 



THE 



VOL. LX. FEBRUARY, 1895. No. 359. 

LEO XIII., POPE, 

TO MOST REV. FRANCIS ARCHBISHOP 
SATOLLI, APOSTOLIC DELEGATE. 

(REPLY TO THE ADDRESS SIGNED BY THE EDITORS 
OF CATHOLIC PERIODICALS IN THE U. S.) 

VENERABLE BROTHER : 

Health and Apostolic Benediction. 

It has ever been Our most ardent desire that in these 
days of such unbridled literary license, when the world 
is flooded with hurtful publications, men of marked sa- 
gacity should labor for the public welfare by the dif- 
fusion of wholesome literature. That this great work 
was being most zealously prosecuted by Our faithful 
children in North America, We were already aware, 
while an Address which many of them had signed 
and caused to be transmitted to Us, confirms Our con- 
viction of their zeal. 

Assuredly, since it is the spirit of the times that 
people of nearly every condition and rank in life 
seek the pleasure that comes from reading, nothing 
could be more desirable than that such writings should 

Copyright. VKRT RBV. A. F. HEWIT. 1894. 
VOL. LX. 37 



578 BRIEF OF LEO XIII. [Feb., 

be published and scattered broadcast among the people 
as would not only be read without harm, but would 
even bear the choicest fruitage. 

Hence to all those who labor in a cause at once so 
honorable and fruitful We are moved to extend Our 
hearty congratulations, and to accord to them the tribute 
of well-earned praise; exhorting them at the same 
time to continue to defend the rights of the Church, 
as well as whatever is true, whatever just, with be- 
coming harmony and prudence. But we hope to treat 
of this matter at another time and soon. 

In the meantime you will give expression to Our 
grateful and kindly sentiments in their behalf, and will 
announce the Apostolic Benediction which We lovingly 
impart to each one of them, as also to yourself as a 
token of heavenly reward. 

Given in Rome, at St. Peter's, the I2th day of De- 
cember, 1894, in the iyth year of our Pontificate. 

LEO P. P. XIII. 




1 895-1 THE QUESTION OF RECONCILIATION. 579 



THE QUESTION OF RECONCILIATION BETWEEN 
CHURCH AND STATE IN ITALY. 

BY WILLIAM J. D. CROKE. 




N studying the question of Reconciliation between 
Church and State in Italy we need not fear that 
we are spending time to no purpose. The ques- 
tion is a permanent one : from time to time it 
gives promise of actual development, of passing 
from the order of " questions " to that of facts. Reconciliation 
always exists in fieri and must eventually exist in fact, unless 
we count upon the certainty of a future chaotic social state 
and the internecine civil and religious war which will betoken 
the days of Antichrist. It is only -in such evil times that the 
question would be dead and its discussion untimely ; it is 
timely even in the condition of things at present existing in 
Italy ; in better days and in any more normal condition of 
things, the question would assume vast proportions and enforce 
its own solution. The trend of the times in Italy should be 
considered in weighing it ; so should the current of public 
opinion ; the abating of the more general and excessive anti- 
clerical violence ; the predominance of moderate opinions. 
Then there are certain minor facts to be taken into account : 
the comments of the newspapers and the falling into line of 
officialdom with the spirit of its masters; the weighty declara- 
tions of the Vatican, and, strange to say, the novelty attaching 
to the public utterance of the name of God by the prime 
minister. There is a rude diapason in the dissolution of three 
offending Catholic syndics for the burlesque offence of object- 
ing to the hoisting of the national flag on the 2Oth of Septem- 
ber last. 

We have here unquestionably a concatenation of recent 
facts of no slight importance, as their detailing will more fully 
show, but the roots of the question have some depth in the 
past. 

This last aspect has not been sufficiently set in relief by the 
heralds of Reconciliation in the press. 

Unquestionably there has been a lull during late years in 
the state of warfare existing between the Italian Church and 



580 THE QUESTION OF RECONCILIATION [Feb., 

State, and it has probably been the more real for having es- 
caped the dangers of publicity. I do not mean that the Italian 
people would have been averse to it ; but the anti-clerical sec- 
tion would have been, and their accredited organs would have 
tolerated it with less grace than suits their present humor. 
The bank scandals form an epoch, and Colajannis' revelations 
deserve the honored name of epoch-making. There was a con- 
sequent sobering, and it has affected the church, partly nega- 
tively inasmuch as it has distracted attention from the skir- 
mishing persecution going on before, setting men's thoughts in 
new channels, and partly positively inasmuch as the corruption 
revealed set the integrity of Catholics in relief, they having 
been notable for their complete absence. This sobering has 
also been the more real because the less talked about, and 
indeed almost imperceptible ; for, whatever be the case else- 
where, in Italy it is in great part true that the less abundant 
the demonstration made, the more thorough is the matter of 
conviction. 

Some Catholics call Crispi a commedian, and one hears genu- 
ine anti-clericals calling him a madman. He is neither the one 
nor the other. The reason of these exaggerated estimates is 
the extreme versatility of his policy, to speak euphemistically. 
But great ships of state in many European lands have suffered 
deviation in their political career, and if Signer Crispi was not 
subjected to the early and sudden transformations which befell 
Beaconsfield and Gladstone, he deserves at best but measured 
censure if he has compensated for the lack of direction in his 
political freshness by steering steadily towards conservatism in 
the latter part of his life. 

He has, therefore, recognized that the Papacy is something 
more than a merely resistant and conservative force, and that 
it is, in every sense of the word, an enemy to be reckoned 
with. Hence also, though of late years he has not neglected 
occasional harassing measures, he has somewhat laid aside the 
old fury of anti-clericalism. Moreover, since his coming to 
office the last time, besides the question of the temporal pow- 
er, there was only one serious cause of strife between the gov- 
ernment and the church the question of the Patriarchate of 
Venice a legacy of clumsy feud bequeathed to him by his 
antagonist, the preceding minister, Giolitti. It would have 
been indecorous for the armed man to have yielded this point 
of honor to the vanquished Vatican. Yet never was claim more 
ridiculous. In former times a very exceptional privilege had 



BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE IN ITALY. 581 

been granted to an extinct Catholic government, and it was 
therefore purely temporary and particular to those conditions. 
The present government has succeeded neither to its spirit nor 
to its local character, and could only unreasonably claim to in- 
stal the patriarch on its own account. This preposterous de- 
mand was too trivial to be seriously contended for, and the 
issue was only momentous for the moral aspect which the com- 
bat had assumed. Last summer the Giolitti government 
asserted its determination to withhold the exequaturs, or letters 
of royal recognition, from all newly-appointed Italian bishops 
until the point was won, and the Vatican's decision that the 
privilege should not be granted created a deadlock. 

It is not easy to admire Signer Crispi's escape from the 
difficulty ; it did not save forms, but for this very reason it was 
regarded as an olive-branch. The king's government nominated 
the Pope's nominee, against whose person and against whose 
nomination such strong objection had been taken, and a royal 
exequatur was finally granted. Other exequaturs followed. 

About the same time the press announced that the Holy See 
had created a new prefecture apostolic in Erythrea, ordering 
the substitution of Italian for French missionaries. The entire 
liberal press was jubilant. The news was as timely as welcome. 
To the Liberals it seemed a recognition of Italian unity as made 
visible in Africa, and therefore a peace-offering, and as such a 
boon. Everything here takes a French aspect. Nowhere is 
France so truly la grande nation. The action was interpreted as 
a favor to Italy and as not less of a rebuff to France. The 
Catholic press in its " inspired " parts vainly protested that it 
was the constant policy of the Holy See to depute to colonial 
possessions priests of the protecting European nationality, and 
various instances were cited to this effect. But years of secu- 
larist education and anti-clerical fanfaronnade had engendered 
crass ignorance of ecclesiastical traditions. The same Catholic 
organs pointed out that the interest of souls was the only one 
held in view by the Holy See, and that the fact of calling 
Italians to labor in Erythrea while Italy was at enmity with the 
Papacy was a typical instance of apostolic indifference to human 
interests. But the liberalistic interpretation was a fait accompli, 
and it had a good effect. 

Then came Signer Crispi's speech. From the applause of 
the audience, as disproportionately reported by the Stefani 
agency, and from subsequent comments, it would seem to have 
been his apotheosis. In 1884, when Naples had been ravaged 



582 THE QUESTION OF RECONCILIATION [Feb. 

with cholera, King Humbert and Cardinal Sanfelice had taken 
an active and heroic part in allaying the evils of the scourge, 
and it constitutes one of the best-founded claims of the im- 
mense popularity of both. It was determined to consecrate the 
memory by a lasting memorial. An inscription was erected re- 
cording the fact, and Signor Crispi honored the occasion of its 
uncovering by his presence. He took occasion, from the union 
of prelate and king in the act of heroism, to point out the right- 
fulness of union between church and state, and he called upon 
the former to unite with the latter in the defence of the father- 
land against subversive sects. He concluded, to the surprise of 
all, with an invocation of the aid of God. An ardent discussion 
was raised in the press as to the nature of the God invoked, 
and an article in the Tribuna, said to have originated with the 
prime minister himself, explained the expression in a moderate 
manner. But the circumstances of the case and the appeal 
made to the Catholic Italian majority sufficiently indicated to 
what God the destinies of Italy are ultimately to be entrusted, 
if she is to escape shipwreck. 

So far the main facts of the case. 

One is not justified in dealing with intentions either in an 
arbitrary or unauthorized way. What I say of Signor Crispi's 
intentions is drawn from a trustworthy source. He has been 
manoeuvring with the Vatican for a long time past, and the two 
facts last related are simply a public demonstration of his ten- 
dency. He is supposed to have taken alarm at the Milan elec- 
tions in June, when the results were as follows : 

Radicals, , 7,961. 

Catholics, 5,275. . 

Moderates, 4,889. 

Socialists, 1,905. 

Anarchists, 600. 

Last February he told the Chamber of Deputies that the 
king was "the symbol of unity and the ark of salvation," but 
there is little doubt that if the ark failed in efficacy Signor 
Crispi would place his faith in the next best symbol that suc- 
ceeded it. Still, in the present condition of things he strenu- 
ously upholds the monarchy. He sees it threatened by Radi- 
calism, Republicanism, Socialism, and Anarchism, practically 
weakened and morally disavowed by the abstention of the mil- 
lions of Catholics who, obeying the pontifical directions, are 



1 895.] BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE IN ITALY. 583 

neither electors nor elected. Were they to rally, they would form 
an essentially conservative force and the safety of the cause 
would be assured. But there is an indispensable condition to 
the pacification which would result in their going to the urns: 
the Sovereign Pontiff's repeated and insistent claims to plenary 
independence by means of temporal sovereignty. It is in pro- 
test against his dispossession of the temporal power that the non 
expedit debars Catholics from voting. The measure is intrinsi- 
cally bound up with the principle of papal independence, in fact 
if not in theory. Thus, if they were to vote, their support would 
be given to the power residing in the Quirinal in possession of 
the conquered papal territory. The Pope declines to play into 
the hands of his enemies, and the non expedit will continue in 
force as a momentous protest and efficient measure. Signor 
Crispi's negotiations with the Vatican have all tended to the 
removal of this prohibitory measure. On his part he offers such 
secondary concessions as could be contained in a pacific policy 
founded on relative friendship between irreconcilable antagon- 
ists. He would engage to cease from the persecution which has 
wearied but not broken the Catholicism of Italy. 

The compromise as such has not been accepted by the 
Vatican. The removal of the prohibition to vote occupies the 
same place in the desires and needs of the Quirinal as the rec- 
ognition of territorial independence in the desires and needs of 
the Holy See. Not even a multitude of minor concessions, 
nor an entire policy of peace, could be equal in value to the 
favor sought in its removal. There is no just proportion 
between the advantages sought and offered by the prime 
minister. The question, therefore, remains where it was before. 
But if he be willing to follow pacific lines, the Vatican, I am 
informed, is disposed to suspend hostilities in part, to make 
fewer protests, to abstain from demonstrations which would 
provoke reprisals, and to await events; but always in the ex- 
pectation and hope that matters may mend radically. Each 
party is tired of war and desirous of peace, and failing to 
obtain the main point of contention, to suspend hostilities as 
pernicious to itself. If Signor Crispi wishes, it is in his power 
to establish a Truce of God with the Vatican, as with the parlia- 
ment. 

The negotiations are said to have been carried on through 
Monsignor Carini, canon of Saint Peter's and first custodian of 
the Vatican Library, a man of vast learning and in great favor 
with Leo XIII. His father was a Garibaldian and general of 



584 THE QUESTION OF RECONCILIATION [Feb., 

the forces at Perugia during Leo's rule there, and a warm 
friendship during life happily resulted in the archbishop's re- 
ceiving him into the church on his death-bed. Monsignor 
Carini is a frequent visitor at Signer Crispi's house, and is a 
friend as well as a fellow-countryman of the Sicilian prime 
minister. The negotiations concerning Erythrea were carried 
out by the minutante, or secretary, for Eastern affairs in the 
Congregation of Propaganda. 

Considering these negotiations for peace on the part of the 
Garibaldian and anti- clerical premier of modern Italy, expressive 
as they are of surrender, we cannot help thinking that Signer 
Crispi has set out on the way to Canossa. True, he is still 
very far from that celebrated castle, but he has unquestionably 
made some steps on the way. I say this in the fullest realiza- 
tion of a possible change of attitude on his part, because it is 
certain that any such change of attitude would result in the 
customary illsuccess. The favorite of Garibaldi, become a 
royalist, after a long tenure of the reins of supreme power, has 
had to beg the old Vampire to save the newly-modelled state 
for the creation, but not for the maintenance, of which the 
united efforts of Garibaldians and Royalists have proved suffi- 
cient. 

The attitude of the government during the coming months, 
while showing what success has been achieved by the prime 
minister, will probably reveal the final phase of the question. 
In the promised destruction of the Pia Casa dci Catecumeni it 
may be that we have the revenge following upon failure. 

In writing the present article I have consulted a staunch 
Liberal, who told me, among other things, that every effort for 
reconciliation which has been made hitherto has enjoyed the 
effective patronage of Queen Margherita, who is very strongly 
disposed to peace and not less willing to use her great in- 
fluence in that direction. He assured me, moreover, that pacific 
proposals on the part of the government would obtain a pre- 
ponderant majority probably in the parliament, and certainly in 
the senate, and would, moreover, realize the ardent wish of the 
overwhelming majority of Italians. 

The fact was improbable at no time, and is more probable 
than ever now. The growing organization and increasing fer- 
vor of Catholics ; the disillusioning which has followed the failure 
of Unitarian and secularist ideals ; the influence of the pacific 
attitude to the Vatican on the part of France, Germany, and 
Russia; the pressure of political and national interests; the 



1895-] BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE IN ITALY. 585 

tactics and necessities of the war against subversive parties ; 
the truthful revelations which time has brought ; the acceptance 
given the latest phase of the question ; the majestic character 
of the Pontificate itself, are all signs and tendencies that go far 
to make Italy recognize that its real interest is to make peace 
with the great spiritual power which it is its traditional and 
unique glory to possess in its midst. The efforts of the Liberals 
will be met with enthusiasm by the Catholics. The success of 
any peace policy will depend upon the fulness of its acceptance 
by the Liberals. The Holy See, being the offended party, has 
taken up a defensive attitude, from which it cannot recede* with- 
out difficulty. What is required is a strong hand in the govern- 
ment or the stronger force of facts. Those who are acquainted 
with Italy know that a peace once inaugurated would grow 
apace. It is the singular European country which has never 
had a religious war, though it has been the seat of dangerous 
and widespread heresy and of the Supreme Pontificate. Italians 
are, for the most part, essentially tolerant and submissive to 
existing conditions. The advent of peace would be marked 
with the revival of prosperity for Italy. Freed from the em- 
barrassments which its short-sighted polity had imposed upon 
it, rid of the military incubus which it must support as a de- 
fence of its present unity, strong with the moral influence of 
the Papacy reposing in its heart and inevitably profiting the 
chosen land of its destiny, there is every ground for the hope 
that it would see a new and fuller realization than was ever be- 
fore made of the prayer of her saints and pious people in all 
ages : Fiat pax in circuitu tuo ct abundantia in turribus tuis. 




THE ROSARY HOUSE, STOCKHOLM. 




CATHOLICISM IN SCANDINAVIA. 

BY MOST REV. FRANCIS JANSSENS, D.D. 

'O many readers of THE CATHOLIC WORLD the 
three Scandinavian kingdoms, Denmark, Swe- 
den, and Norway, are perhaps a terra incognita, 
and it may be of interest to them to learn 
some few details, taken at random, about these 
northern countries of Europe. 

Sweden is the most populous kingdom of the three, contain- 
ing a population of about four and one-half millions, whilst Den- 
mark and Norway have each about two millions. Sweden and 
Norway are governed by the same king at present Oscar, a 
descendant of Bernadotte, one of the generals of Napoleon I. 
Norway, though governed by the same king, is free and inde- 
pendent of Sweden ; it has its own legislature, laws, flag, army,, 
navy, money, and import duties. The King of Sweden is recog- 
nized only there when he is crowned King of Norway, and he 
is obliged to spend some months every year in Norway. The 
Norwegians desire no closer union with Sweden ; on the contrary 
last summer they agitated the question of having their own 
ministers and consuls abroad, independently of those who 
now represent the two kingdoms together. The two countries 



1 895.] CATHOLICISM IN SCANDINAVIA. 587 

are separated by the Scandinavian mountains, and the Norwe- 
gian government carefully keeps up the broad avenue cut in 
the forest to mark the division line. 

During the last year many travellers, who had already visited 
middle and southern Europe, directed their steps to its northern 
portion, and were delighted by the beauty of the magnificent 
scenery of land and water, of coasts and mountains and fjords. 
The inland route through Southern Sweden is a wonderful piece 
of engineering, due to the genius of the famous Ericsson, of 
American renown. The great Werner and Vetter and some 
smaller lakes, the Gotha and Motala rivers, are made navigable by 
means of canals and of seventy-four locks, built of granite, which 
connect the Cattegat with the Baltic Sea, connecting also the two 
principal cities of the kingdom, Goteborg and Stockholm. Gote- 
borg has become well known these last years by its vast increase 
of commerce and population, and not less so by a new system 
for the suppression of drunkenness, originated in that city and 
called the Goteborg system. Few drunkards are seen in the 
city ; all the saloons are controlled by a committee of gentle- 
men under the supervision of the city government. These gen- 
tlemen locate the saloons, control and appoint the barkeepers \ 
great placards are placed on the walls which show the evils of 
drunkenness and admonish the frequenters to abstinence or 
moderation. 

The revenues derived from the traffic, excepting five per 
cent, of the net gains, fall to the city treasury, and are applied 
to the erection and maintenance of beautiful and substantial 
school-houses, hospitals, and orphanages ; to the laying out and 
keeping up of public parks, and to the improving of the city 
generally, making Goteborg one of the cleanest and prettiest 
cities in Europe. The trip by boat from Goteborg to Stock- 
holm takes nearly three full days. It is exceedingly interesting 
to the traveller for the beauty of scenery, and because it gives 
him an insight into the character and the customs of the 
Swedish people. The Swedes of the better class are of an 
amiable and gentle disposition, fond of pleasure and of flowers, 
and polite to the stranger who comes among them. They par- 
take more of the character of the French than of their nearer 
neighbor the German, and they prefer to learn the language of 
the former rather than of the latter. We noticed on the fin- 
gers of some ladies one, two, or three plain gold rings, and 
were told that it is the custom to give one when the lady is en- 
gaged to be married, she receives the second at the marriage 



588 CATHOLICISM IN SCANDINAVIA. [Feb., 

ceremony, and puts on a third when she is mother of her first 
child ; she does not add any more for the following. 

When looking at the quantity and the variety of things 
spread out for dinner and supper, it would not be rash to sup- 
pose the Swedes are fond of eating and drinking. Before 
beginning the regular courses served at these meals, probably to 
stimulate the appetite, they help themselves first from a table 
on which is placed what they call smorbrod ; smor means but- 
ter ; brod, of course, bread. But smorbrod is a misnomer, for 
the bread and butter is the smallest portion of the table, which 
holds a variety of cold meats, of salted or smoked fish, and 
of cheeses (I counted once thirty different dishes for the smor- 
brod), all of which may be washed down by as much gin and 
kiimmel as one desires to take, without extra charge. When the 
smorbrod, to which each one helps himself, is partaken of, the 
more substantial courses of warm victuals are passed around. 
The Swedes are so polite to the ladies that they charge them 
one-third less than gentlemen for the price of dinner. At the 
railroad stations where the train stops for meals the meals are 
not served by waiters, but each one takes his plate, with the 
necessary implements, and helps himself from the various dishes 
placed without stint on a large table. When time is limited to 
fifteen or twenty minutes, this proceeding, whilst novel, is very 
commendable and acceptable to the traveller. 

The scenery on this three days' trip is grand and replete with 
variety. On the first day, whilst the boat passes through a 
series of locks, the traveller, preceded by a guide, may take a 
two hours' walk along the bank of the Gotha river, which near 
to its connecting point with the Werner lake casts itself down 
through the majestic Frollhattan falls, called the Niagara of 
Europe. The falls are neither as grand nor as wide as our 
American celebrity, but they are considered the finest falls in 
Europe, and are well worth visiting. Further on the boat stops 
at Wadsena, renowned for an old castle, but more worthy of in- 
terest to the Catholic on account of the old convent, still in ex- 
istence, in which St. Bridget of Sweden died and was buried. 
The only native Swedish priest, an old man, has built a little 
chapel in honor of the saint near to this convent, where he says 
Mass for half a dozen Catholics who still cling to the faith. 

On the same route whilst it takes the boat one hour to 
pass another series of locks an old monastery church may be 
visited at Vreta, where several of the old Swedish kings lie 
buried and where are placed against the walls the remains of 



I895-] 



CATHOLICISM IN SCANDINAVIA. 



589 



statues of Christ and of his saints, torn from their niches and 
broken by the iconoclasts of the sixteenth century. Stockholm 
is a lovely city, surrounded by rocky upheavals and fjords of 
great beauty; and intersected by many canals. The city is rich 
in monuments, old churches, a national museum, a magnificent 
palace for the king, a zoological garden and the Skanze, which 
represents the dwellings, utensils, and costumes of different por- 




BISHOP JOHANNES VON EUCH. 

tions of the kingdom. The Swedes call Stockholm the Paris 
of the North, and it seems to be a city of amusement and plea- 
sure. In summer every one who does not go to a country 
house and even families of small means leave the city for three 
or four months is seen at the many saloons, where in open 
gardens they listen to delightful music and sip Swedish arrack 
punch. The capital of Norway, Christiania, presents little of 



590 CATHOLICISM IN SCANDINAVIA. [Feb., 

interest except its magnificent bays and fjords, and we leave to 
others to describe the grand Atlantic coast scenery and the in- 
land lakes of Norway. We also left to others the pleasure of 
travelling to the North Cape to behold the midnight sun setting 
and rising almost at the same hour. It is very pleasant to have 
a long day of it in summer, but what of the long night in win- 
ter ? A priest, who during six years labored among a very 
small congregation at Hammersfest, told me that for more than 
two months in the year he had just enough of daylight, with- 
out needing the artificial means of candle or oil, to say his Lit- 
tle Hours, provided he placed himself near the window. 

Christianity was partially introduced into Sweden during the 
ninth century by the holy Bishop Ansgar, the Apostle of 
Northern Germany, and it was fully established in the eleventh 
century by St. Canute, King of Denmark, who also established 
it in that kingdom and in Norway. 

The three Scandinavian kingdoms, which in olden times were 
usually at war with one another, were united into one kingdom 
by the Union of Calmar in the fourteenth century, under the 
King of Denmark as the head. Christian II., in the beginning 
of the sixteenth century, was a cruel king. He beheaded many 
of the Swedish nobles, among others the father of Gustaf Wasa. 
This Gustaf Wasa availed himself of Protestantism to shake off 
the dominion of Denmark and to proclaim himself King of 
Sweden. At the end of the same century, Charles IX. used the 
same means to dethrone his Catholic brother, Sigismund, and 
to usurp his place. As a matter of course, Gustaf Wasa began 
and Charles finished taking all the properties belonging to the 
church and to the monasteries, and kept them for themselves 
and their followers. 

In Denmark the political power and the landed property were 
divided between the bishops and the nobility. Christian II. 
took Lutheranism as a pretext to break down the political 
power of the bishops and to confiscate all ecclesiastical proper- 
ty. His work was continued by his son, Christian III., and al- 
ready before the middle of the sixteenth century laws were 
passed by which the clergy were banished from the country, 
and Catholics were debarred from holding office and deprived of 
their hereditary rights. Norway, which remained united to Den- 
mark until the reorganization of Europe in 1814, followed its 
example and lost the faith in a similar manner. The people 
fell almost unawares into the doctrines and practices of Lutheran, 
ism. :The government translated the Roman Liturgy into the 



1 895.] CATHOLICISM IN SCANDINAVIA. 591 

vernacular, but left its substance almost untouched. Confession 
was abolished, priests were allowed to marry, communion was 
administered under two forms, but the order of archbishops and 
bishops was retained. They are, however, appointed by the 
king, who thus becomes the spiritual head, and they are considered 
as superintendents and not as possessing any special power by 
virtue of their consecration. Even to-day the altar is adorned 
with a large crucifix, six tall candlesticks, and lighted candles ; 
the Mass is, in a great measure, the same as according to the 
Roman rite, and the minister wears the chasuble with the cross 
on the back, and the ceremonies of baptism are almost identi- 
cal: the sign of the cross is made over the child, which is bap- 
tized by a threefold pouring of the water. Baptism adminis- 
tered by a Lutheran minister in the three kingdoms is looked 
upon as valid, and the three vicars apostolic assured us that con- 
verts so baptized are not rebaptized conditionally. 

These three northern bishops, whom we visited in our travels, 
were exceedingly kind. They extended to us a most hearty 
welcome and furnished us with much of the information con- 
tained in this article, for which they will please accept our most 
cordial thanks. 

The Scandinavian kingdoms resisted the march of religious 
freedom longer than most European nations. Until within the 
present generation no religious denomination was tolerated ex- 
cept Lutheranism, which even unto this day is the acknowl- 
edged religion of each state. 

In Denmark Catholic service was allowed in the private 
chapels of the ambassadors of France, Spain, and Austria, who 
resided in the capital. Owing to the many Catholic soldiers in 
the pay of the government this privilege was extended in 1686 
to the fortress Fredericia. The law of 1849 granted freedom 
of worship to all dissenters from the state religion, and it was 
from that date that any effort towards Catholic missions could 
be attempted. A few Catholics, mostly immigrants, were scat- 
tered here and there, and when in 1860 the present vicar apos- 
tolic was sent as a newly ordained priest to Denmark, he found 
but 5 priests, 675 Catholics, and two schools numbering 90 
pupils. The kingdom was erected into a prefecture in 1869, and 
in 1892 into a vicariate apostolic, with Monseigneur John von 
Euch as vicar apostolic and titular bishop in partibus infidelium. 
Monseigneur von Euch is a man of great talent and of most im- 
posing and pleasing appearance; he is universally esteemed by 
Catholics and non-Catholics alike. The Danes possess a firmer 



592 



CATHOLICISM IN SCANDINAVIA. 



[Feb., 



and more steady character than their northern brethren, and con- 
versions have been more frequent and are more reliable. The 
poor, of course, have the Gospel preached to them, and heed 
the invitation ; but many others, who by their social position- 
er learning wield great influence, have entered the fold with 
them. The small number of Catholics, 675 in 1860, has risen, 
principally through conversions, to the respectable number of 
near 6,000 in 1894, with about 1,000 children in the Catholic 
schools. Copenhagen is a beautiful city and most favorably 
situated on the Sund. Its population, as it is with all capital; 
cities, has vastly increased these last years. The government 

is finishing very extensive 
works to make the city a 
free harbor ; this is attract- 
ing commerce and shipping, 
and will still add to its al- 
ready large population. The 
energetic bishop does not 
remain idle, but keeps pace 
with this progress, and two 
more churches have recent- 
ly been built to give the 
city population a better and 
easier opportunity to attend 
to its religious duties. The 
so-called cathedral of the 
bishop is a very modest 
building without steeple 
steeples on Catholic church- 
es were prohibited until 
within the last years and 
his episcopal palace so-call- 
ed, an appendix to the rear 
of the church, is of still more 
modest dimensions, and whilst fully in accordance with the pov- 
erty of his means, it is far from being in accordance with the 
dignity of his office. The bishop is assisted in his work by 36 
priests, one-half of whom are Jesuits, who, besides parish work, 
attend to two colleges, one in Ordrup, the other in Copenhagen. 
The Sisters of St. Joseph from Chambery are already some 
years in the country and God has greatly prospered their work. 
They possess a very large convent in the capital, which serves 
for t mother-house, novitiate, schools French and Danish, and 




THE PARISH PRIEST OF FREDERIKSHALD. 



1 89 5.] CATHOLICISM IN SCANDINAVIA. 593 

hospital ; they number one hundred sisters in the mother-house, 
and about sixty more in their other convents. 

Besides these Sisters of St. Joseph there are a few of an- 
other order, and some brothers. For a good many years a 
weekly paper has defended the interests of the church. The 
best proof that the church is making itself felt in the hearts of 
the people is afforded by the fact that of the 18 secular priests 
12 are natives of the soil, as well as the 4 ecclesiastical students, 
and the religious orders of women count about 40 sisters born 
in the country. Great hopes for conversions had been placed on 
the marriage of the third son of the Danish king with the 
Catholic Princess Marie, of the house of Orleans ; but the re- 
sult has been disappointing. It was stated at the time of this 
marriage that the conditions required by the church for mixed 
marriages had been complied with, yet the three children of 
this union, all boys, have been baptized by a Lutheran 
minister. 

The great drawback and the most burdensome cross of the 
good bishop is poverty in worldly goods. In the early days of 
Christianity poverty seemed not to hinder the rapid progress of 
religion, and St. Francis Xavier accomplished the conversion 
of thousands and thousands without any money to his credit ; 
but somehow or other it is the experience of modern mission- 
aries, even of the most zealous, that money 'is a necessary 
adjunct to the grace of God. And so in Denmark the lack of 
this precious aid makes it difficult to keep up what is done, 
and still more difficult to extend, the work that should be done. 
Yet the Lord has been good, conversions are increasing, and 
the future of the Church in Denmark becomes daily brighter. 
The vicar apostolic has charge also of the island of Iceland in 
Europe and of Greenland in America, but so far he has not 
been able to send a priest to those far-away and cold countries. 

The Catholic religion and its adherents had been proscribed 
in Sweden for nearly two centuries when, in 1789, the king 
allowed Catholics to live in the kingdom and publicly to exer- 
cise their religion. In 1860 the law which punished with ban- 
ishment and privation of patrimony whomsoever should abjure 
Lutheranism, was abolished. Previous to 1873 marriages per- 
formed by dissenting ministers were illegal ; in fact, no one not 
confirmed in the Lutheran faith could legally be married. 
Lutheranism still remains the official state religion, but of late 
all religious denominations are tolerated and enjoy full liberty 
to exercise their rites. 
VOL. LX. 38 



594 CATHOLICISM IN SCANDINAVIA. [Feb., 

Bernadotte, born in Pau, Southern France, a marshal and 
prince of the French Empire under Napoleon I., was elected 
Crown Prince of Sweden in 1810, but as soon as he landed on 
Swedish territory ha had to abjure Catholicity and to embrace 
Lutheranism. His son Oscar, who as a child had been reared 
a Catholic, followed his father's evil example. Oscar married 
Josephine, daughter of Eugene Beauharnais, the son of the 
Empress Josephine, the lawful wife of Napoleon. She remained 
a faithful Catholic, and was universally esteemed and beloved by 
the people. She favored, in as far as she could, her few Catho- 
lic subjects. She founded and endowed an asylum for thirty 
poor widows Catholic or non-Catholic placing the asylum un- 
der a mixed administration, with the proviso that it be under 
the care of the Sisters of St. Elizabeth. 

Already in 1783 a vicariate apostolic, embracing Sweden 
and Norway, had been established by the Holy See, but with 
no visible results, for it was only in 1837 that the first Catholic 
church was built in the kingdom. In 1868 Norway was made 
a separate apostolic prefecture, and in 1892, simultaneously 
with the erection of Norway and Denmark into a vicariate, 
Sweden obtained a vicar apostolic in the person of Right 
Rev. Albert Bitter, who was consecrated bishop in partibus 
infidelium. The number of Catholics in Sweden is about 1,500; 
probably one-third are natives and converts ; 800 live in the 
city of Stockholm, and the balance, 700, are scattered here and 
there over a vast territory and among a population of more 
than four and one-half millions. The bishop and his clergy are 
very zealous for Christian education ; their resources are ex- 
ceedingly limited, yet each parish possesses a Catholic school. 
Thus they retain the faith in the Catholic families and add 
some few by conversion to the church. There are a dozen 
priests and three orders of sisterhoods to assist the bishop in 
his vast diocese. Their trials are great and so is their poverty ; 
but they bear up bravely. If they reap little comfort, and at 
times bitter disappointment in this world, they may reasonably 
expect a very bountiful reward in the next. 

When passing through Goteborg we looked for the Catholic 
church ; few people seemed to be aware there existed such a 
building ; at last we found it. The exterior presents no beauty 
nor architectural style, neither has it any steeple; the interior, 
however, is beautifully decorated. It is in charge of two Jesuit 
fathers, who also attend to the neighboring missions. The 
capital, Stockholm, has two churches. One is under the care of 



i8 9 5-] 



CATHOLICISM IN SCANDINAVIA. 



595 



the Jesuits; the building possesses no special attraction, but is 
favorably situated in the heart of the city and well attended, 
especially in winter. The ambassadors for the two kingdoms 
reside in Stockholm ; several represent Catholic countries and 
add respectability to this church. The cathedral is situated 
on a high hill and in a poor neighborhood. It is not a 
large but a very beautiful building. It was erected by the 
present vicar apostolic from alms, principally obtained from 
friends and benefactors in Germany. It is exceedingly neat 
and chaste in design ; its interior furnishing corresponds with the 




PANORAMIC VIEW OF FREDERIKSHALD. 

style of the church, the decorations and stained-glass windows 
display great artistic taste, and everything is kept scrupulously 
clean. The good sisters, who live in the same building with 
the bishop and keep a school and orphanage, sing in the choir. 
We said one of the parochial Masses on Sunday ; the attendance 
was small, the singing by the sisters most devotional ; the 
choice and execution of their church music rivalled any we 



596 CATHOLICISM IN SCANDINAVIA. [Feb., 

ever heard. The beauty of the building, the solemn services, 
and the impressive music attract many Protestants and often 
result in conversions. The church is slowly, though steadily 
progressing; but the scarcity of means and of priests, and the 
emotional and unsteady character of the Swedes, are serious 
drawbacks to the spread of the Catholic faith. 

By royal decree of 1842 the few Catholics of Christiania, 
Norway, obtained a special permission to constitute themselves 
into a congregation under the management of a priest. The 
law of 1845 granted to all dissenters, among them the Catho- 
lics, the liberty to observe their religious rites, yet forbade 
Jesuits and men of religious orders to exercise sacred functions. 
Civilly, dissenters and Catholics remained excluded from nearly 
all public offices until the year 1894, when the exclusion was 
restricted to the king's ministers and to all public-school teach- 
ers. These teachers are required by law to teach the Lutheran 
religion to the pupils, and, as a natural consequence, the law 
must exact their adhesion to that particular denomination. 
Still, children of dissenters, at the request of their parents, are 
not obliged to assist at religious instruction. Moreover, dis- 
senters are allowed to erect and control their own schools and 
teach their own tenets during school hours, and the parents 
are exempt from the special school-tax if their children fre- 
quent a school which is conformable to certain reasonable 
state regulations. Marriages of Catholics, or between a "Catho- 
lic and a non-Catholic, are subject to certain regulations, which, 
on the whole, are not unfair. Though the Chambers still cling 
to Lutheranism as a state religion, they are inclined to deal 
liberally with all dissenters. The Catholic Church in the king- 
dom remained in a languishing condition ; she possessed but 
one church in Christiania, built in 1856, and a handful of 
members, mostly foreign immigrants, until the year 1869, when 
Pius IX. erected Norway into an apostolic prefecture with a 
French priest, Father Bernard, as prefect apostolic. From that 
time dates a period of constant though slow progress. 

In Norway, no more than in America, are conversions made 
by the wholesale ; the reaping is rather a slow but steady glean- 
ing of scattered ears of grain. A priest, stationed in a large 
territory with but a few dozen Catholics under his ministration, 
requires the patience of a saint and much strength of character 
not to lose courage when gathering in the stray sheep one by 
one, and sometimes at long intervals, into the true fold of the 
Lord. I visited the pretty town of Frederikshald, where the 



1 895.] CATHOLICISM IN SCANDINAVIA. 597 

cousin of a friend was pastor. The surroundings of the town 
are grand ; waterfalls hurry down from the mountains and 
through a chain of lakes along the valley, the Tisdal ; the city 
is overlooked by the fortress, in olden times considered impreg- 
nable, and near it a monument has been erected by the Swedes 
in honor of Charles XII. This Swedish king, whilst leading a 
brave attack on city and fortress, was struck dead by the 
Norwegian troops, who were fighting for liberty and country. 
On the monument a Latin verse records that this brave king 
knew not how to retreat, but knew how to die. The congregation 
of Frederikshald is in possession of a nice but half-finished and 
small church, and of a little frame convent, where some Sisters 
of St. Joseph brave the cold in the winter, and poverty nearly 
the whole year round, in order to nurse the sick and to teach 
a few children. The good pastor, whose smiling face has made 
friends with the whole town, and whose choir is made up three- 
fourths of Lutherans, is the spiritual ruler over just forty 
members, and his neighbor at Frederikstadt, about thirty 
miles distant, ministers to only twenty. It is hard and trying 
to be able and willing to serve two or four thousand souls and 
to have but twenty or forty under one's care and ministration. 
So there are many other parishes in Norway, Sweden, and 
Denmark where priests find an insufficient field for their zeal, 
and where they must and do keep their souls in patience until 
.the Lord give them a reward greater than to priests who 
labor for thousands of Catholics. In 1887 Father Bernard was 
succeeded by Father Fallize, a Luxemburger, who in his 
country fulfilled the office of vicar-general and of state deputy. 
There were then 8 stations, 4 houses of sisters, and about 700 
Catholics in the whole kingdom. The i$th of March, 1892, 
Leo XIII. erected Norway into an apostolic vicariate and ap- 
pointed Father Fallize vicar apostolic, who was consecrated 
bishop of some extinct oriental see. The Catholic religion is 
steadily on the increase, and has doubled its number by con- 
versions taken from various classes of society, who seem sym- 
pathetic for the old Mother Church, whom they should never 
have deserted. At present there are 1 1 parishes. Each one has 
a Catholic school attached, frequented by many non-Catholic 
children, who are often the cause of the conversion of the 
whole family. There are 9 houses of sisters, among whom 12 
natives, who devote themselves to all good works ; they teach 
the children, nurse the sick, care for the poor, and give an ex- 
ample of heroic charity and piety to all. Seventeen priests, 



598 FOR THEE THE JOYS THAT CROSS THE TIDE. [Feb., 

only two of whom are natives, assist the energetic bishop in 
his extensive and laborious missions. May God send him some 
more reapers for the field of the Lord, and add thereto the 
necessary funds to sustain his clergy and to establish and keep 
up the works of religion ! The bishop has erected a printing 
press to print catechisms and devotional books in the 
Norwegian language ; the same press issues a weekly paper, 
called St. Olaf. This short report shows that there is life and 
activity in those cold Northern countries, and any one who pos- 
sesses some surplus means, and has the spread of our holy 
religion at heart, will do a good work by helping the zealous 
Bishops of Christiania, Stockholm, and Copenhagen. They rely 
almost entirely on the alms from the Propagation of Faith, 
which are entirely inadequate, and these worthy bishops fre- 
quently have to take the beggar's staff in hand in order to 
solicit help from kind friends in other countries. 




FOR THEE THE JOYS THAT CROSS THE TIDE. 

BY EDWARD DOYLE. 

H, while my baby sleeps, what fancies rise ! 

A sparkling dew, all tremulous, she seems, 

On Slumber's crimson-opening bud of dreams. 

Cease, Zephyr ! hold thy breath ; nor move 
thine eyes. 

Lo ! angels deem her sleep auroral skies, 
And float thereunder from the crescent's beams. 
Oh ! God be praised that, while with woe earth teems, 
It is on Gideon's Fleece my infant lies 
O Beatrice ! my love spreads azure-wide 
Above thy slumber, and, star-lighted, reaches 
The Father whom no soul in vain beseeches. 
It craves for thee the joys that cross the tide, 
When the dark seas that roar along Life's beaches, 
With threat of chaos, hear God and divide. 




1 895-] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 599 

GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 

BY REV. CLARENCE A. WALWORTH. 
CHAPTER X. 

Break-up at the Seminary. Professors take Alarm. Jesuits in Disguise. 
Wattson and Donnelly dismissed. Me Vickar withdraws. Walworth, 
McMaster, and Wadhams cross over to Rome. 
i 

'HE trial and degradation of Bishop Onderdonk, 
of New York, was a substantial triumph for the 
Evangelical party in the Protestant Episcopal 
Church. It effected in the United States in 
many respects what the condemnation of Ward 
had brought about in England, although accomplished by dif- 
ferent means. In England it was a square, open fight. It was 
made evident that the Mother Church there would not tolerate 
any further advance of Tractarianism, and this spirit prevailed 
even amongst High-churchmen of every variety of color and 
degree. The High-churchmen in the United States, however, 
had not taken so much alarm. Hitherto they had resisted all 
the efforts of evangelicals to meddle with the situation of things 
at the General Seminary. They had with great unanimity sus- 
tained the ordination of Arthur Carey, believing that all the 
leanings of Carey towards Roman Catholic doctrine and 
customs were at least things to be tolerated in the same way 
that the leaning of evangelicals towards the doctrines and 
fashions of dissenters found tolerance. 

So confident were the High-church bishops of maintaining 
the toleration that they desired for their own views and for a 
very large latitude in those views, that they ventured some- 
times to indulge in a very humorous vein when dealing with 
the alarm felt by the opposite party. This sportive mood dis- 
played itself sometimes even in their General Conventions. In 
the convention held at Philadelphia in October, 1844, Bishop 
Chase presiding, it was proposed to send certain questions to the 
faculty of the Chelsea General Seminary in order to ascertain if 
Tractarianism was not propagated at that institution with the 
connivance and even with the open aid of some of its pro- 



6oo GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Feb., 

fessors. From the autobiography of Professor Turner (page 
192) we learn that forty questions were prepared and for- 
warded from the House of Bishops. 

Some of these questions ran as follows : 

"Are the Oxford tracts adopted as text-books in the 
seminary? Are they publicly or privately recommended to the 
students? Is Tract $0 used as a text-book, or (so) recom- 
mended ? " 

" Are the works of the Rev. Dr. Pusey, Messrs. Newman, 
Keble, Palmer, Ward, and Massingberd, or any of them, used 
as text-books, or publicly or privately recommended in the 
seminary ? " 

" Are the superstitious practices of the Romish Church, such 
as the use or worship of the crucifix, of images of saints, and 
the invocation of the Blessed Virgin, and other saints, adopted, 
or publicly or privately recommended in the seminary ? " 

The questions just given emanated unquestionably from 
spirits of the Low-church type. They are ridiculous when the 
character of any of the professors of the seminary in my day 
is taken into account. How much fun was to be found among 
the right reverend bishops convened at Philadelphia may be 
gathered from the following questions, which were put in to 
serve as foils to the mischievous thrusts of the Low-church pre- 
lates : 

" Is Calvinism, comprehending what are known as the ' five 
points,' so taught or recommended ? Is any one of the five 
points so taught or recommended?" 

"Are the works of Toplady, of Thomas Scott, and John 
Newton, and Blunt on the Articles, or any of them, used as 
text-books, or publicly or privately recommended to the 
students of the seminary ? " 

There is not so much fun in some of the other questions 
which intimate at the seminary the teaching of rationalism. 
These seem to be aimed chiefly at Professor Turner. There 
cannot be the slightest justice in them. Out of deep respect 
for the memory of that learned scholar and truly good man, I 
deeply regret them. They belong, however, to the history of 
the time, they are quoted by himself in his autobiography; no 
call of delicacy requires me to leave them out. 

" Is the German system of rationalism that is, of rejecting 
everything mysterious in the doctrines and institutions of the 
Gospel, and making human reason the sole umpire in theology, 
adopted or so recommended in the seminary? Are German or 



1895-] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 601 

other authors who support that system adopted as text books, 
or so recommended as guides of theological opinion?" 

Had the opponents of Bishop Onderdonk left his private 
character unassailed, they would have gained nothing in their war 
against the seminary or the stout old Bishop of New York, 
who was a champion too doughty for any honorable weapons 
which they could bring to bear upon him. 

As it was, however, they conceived that they had scored for 




PROFESSOR SAMUEL H. TURNER. 

the time being a substantial triumph in accomplishing his de- 
gradation and suspension. Many churchmen who had stood by 
the bishop in defence of Carey were not prepared to justify, nor 
willing to appear before the public as justifying, all that was 
proved against the bishop on his trial. They felt humiliated in 
his humiliation. They felt demoralized and in a way discour- 
aged. They became afraid to identify themselves with him in 
anything, even in what they believed to be right. 



602 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Feb., 

All this made a great difference with matters at the semi- 
nary. Our principal defender, the Bishop of New York, had 
now become defenceless. Those professors there who were either 
friendly to us or naturally indisposed to listen to anything which 
could disturb the seminary now became timid. They would 
gladly have shielded Tractarian students, but dared not. Pro- 
fessor Ogilby, on the other hand, though professedly a High- 
churchman and intolerant towards dissenters, was in his way a 
good deal of an Orangeman and always ready for a fight against 
anything that was really Catholic. He was now ready to take 
the lead in purifying the seminary of all Romanism. He soon 
succeeded in making things lively at Chelsea. He took it 
into his head that there was an organized party both in the 
seminary and outside, including clergy, whose object was to 
Romanize the Episcopalian Church. 

One day near the close of December, 1844, Professor Ogilby 
sent for one of the students named Wattson, of the middle class, 
and accused him and several other students of being engaged 
in this conspiracy. The manner in which this suspicion arose I 
never knew until lately. The particulars have been furnished 
me by Wattson's own son, the Rev. Lewis Wattson, of King- 
ston, N. Y., with permission to use his communication freely. 
His father, Joseph N. Wattson, one day jokingly said to Pres- 
cott, who subsequently became a member of the English Socie- 
ty of St. John the Evangelist, known in the Anglican Church 
as the Cowley Fathers : " Don't you know, Prescott, that there 
is a number of Jesuit students in disguise here at the General, 
and that when they have made all the converts they can, they 
are going openly to Rome themselves ? " Prescott took the joke 
in dead earnest and reported it to the dean. Upon this Watt- 
son was called up before the dean. In due course of time he, and 
another student named Donnelly, of the same class, namely, that 
of 1846, were publicly tried upon charges founded upon this 
misconception. They were acquitted for want of sufficient proofs, 
but for all that they were quietly dismissed. 

The other students implicated by name in this supposed plot 
were Taylor, Platt, McVickar, and myself. Of these Platt was 
a graduate belonging to the diocese of Western New York and 
already in orders. Of Taylor I have no special recollections, 
though he belonged to my class. I find his name included in 
a list of alleged conspirators named by McVickar in a letter 
written at the time to my friend Wadhams, afterwards Bishop 
of Ogdensburg. This letter I have given nearly in full in my 



1 895.] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 603 

Reminiscences of Wadhams. I myself was at the time not in 
the seminary, although nominally a student still. I was resid- 
ing during the latter part of that autumn, and during the winter 
and spring of 1845, with Wadhams in the Adirondacks. He was 
in deacon's orders, having charge, under Bishop Onderdonk, of 
Essex County. His principal stations were Ticonderoga, Port 
Henry, and Wadhams' Mills. I did not belong to the jurisdic- 
tion of Bishop Onderdonk, but had received from him a license to 
act as lay-reader. This empowered me to conduct the morn- 
ing and evening service as provided in the Book of Common 
Prayer in the absence of my friend, as also to read a discourse 
from any book of sermons published by some clergyman of the 
church in good standing. 

I do not remember to have read in public anything except 
from the " Plain Sermons," which were discourses of simple 
practical piety intended to be free from points in controversy 
and unobjectionable to any Anglican congregation. 

McVickar, mentioned as one of the partners in this complot r 
was a son of the Rev. Dr. McVickar of Columbia College, one 
of the most learned of the clergy of the New York diocese and 
one of those examiners of Arthur Carey who had decided in 
his favor. 

Henry McVickar had his trial before the faculty on the 
seventh of January. A special charge was made against him 
of recommending Romish books, and of believing in the papal 
supremacy. In the letter above mentioned McVickar states 

that the information came through P . This may be the 

same student upon whom Wattson played his perilous joke. 

It does not appear that anything was made out against 
McVickar at his trial, except that the latitude of opinion which 
he had used was detrimental to the interests of the seminary. 
His judges furthermore alleged that not McVickar, but they 
themselves were the best judges of what was thus detrimental. 
This claim McVickar allowed, and said that if they would point 
out how they thought he had injured it, he would avoid it for 
the future. Afterwards he thought he had allowed too much, 
for they restricted him so closely that he felt himself thorough- 
ly hampered by his own promises and preferred to leave the 
institution. He retired to rooms in Columbia College, where he 
prosecuted in private his preparation for orders. He did not 
count, however, upon receiving orders at all. In a letter to 
Wadhams, dated Maundy-Thursday, 1845, he says: "I am ex- 
tremely doubtful whether I can obtain orders without exciting 



604 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Feb., 

new commotions and troubles ; and if I think so when the 
time comes I shall not apply for them." 

Whitcher (Benjamin F.), belonging like myself to the West- 
ern diocese of New York, was also involved in these troubles, 
although, being a graduate and in deacon's orders, he was no 
longer responsible to the faculty of the seminary. On a visit 
to New York at the time, he informed his friends there that 
he had been summoned to appear before his bishop. All those 
supposed to be in this popish conspiracy were reported to their 
several bishops. It is certain that Bishop De Lancey gave little 
heed to the charges made against myself. He never spoke to 
me or wrote to me on the subject. In fact I never knew that 
I had been denounced to him except through McVickar's let- 
ters. For this confidence in me I feel grateful to him ; I have 
never ceased to cherish his memory as a loved and honored 
friend of my youth. 

Dr. William Everett, now rector of the Catholic Church 
of the Nativity in New York City, name loved and revered by 
all, then residing not far from the seminary and within easy 
reach of the students, a post-graduate of the last class, was as 
much a papist as any of us, but I cannot find that he was at 
all involved in this alleged conspiracy. I suppose the reason to 
be that, like Arthur Carey, he was considered too valuable a 
man to lose whatever his religious tendencies might be. 

One thing connected with this complot is and, I fear, ever will 
be a profound mystery. Who could the concealed Jesuits be? 
Among all the faces at the seminary, still familiar to my mem- 
ory, I cannot recall one that fills the picture. Shall we look 
for -them among the faculty? It could not be Bishop Onder- 
donk, the president. He was bold, open, and outspoken in 
maintaining the right of Tractarians to toleration in the Angli- 
can fold. But boldness and frankness are not the supposed 
characteristics of Jesuitism, and he would never have been 
selected by that terrible society to act in such a capacity. 
Dr. Turner could never be suspected of acting in such a rdle. 
He was a most devoted student of the Bible, and so familiar 
with it that he seemed to know it all by heart; besides this, 
although not averse to quoting from the early Fathers in the 
interpretation of Scripture, he leaned more to modern Anglican 
commentators, and especially to such German authors as he 
considered to be reliable critics in matters of biblical text. 
Moreover, as dean of the faculty, he took not a little part in 
this very scare of which we are speaking. Professor Ogilby 



1 895.] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 605 

was a most violent anti-popery man and hated Romanism more 
even than he scorned Dissent. Professor Haight could not have 
been one of them. If so, he died in the same disguise. Good 
Dr. Moore must be acquitted of any such suspicion. Although 
learned in the Hebrew and gifted as a poet, he was as simple 
and hearty a man as Santa Claus himself. Moreover, while 
teaching us Hebrew from the Hebrew Bible, he made it an 
invariable rule, as being a layman, never to interpret the pas- 
sages he translated. By this rule he cast away, as a concealed 
Jesuit never would, his best opportunity to poison our minds 
with popery. The only two left about the institution who had 
any easy access to the students were Professor Bird Wilson, 
who taught theology, and a good old man who presided over 
the coal-bins and furnaces. One gave out doctrines more or 
less new to us, and the other furnished fuel and fire. If these 
were Jesuits, they concealed themselves most effectually. No 
suspicion ever fell upon either of them. 

Among the students themselves I can recall only two that 
can possibly lie open to suspicion. One had been va Catholic. 
He did not always give the same reasons for having joined the 
Episcopalian Church. Sometimes he alleged that it was because 
when he was a Catholic he was not allowed to read his Bible. 
This made him very interesting to a society of pious ladies who 
maintained him at the seminary. He told McMaster once that 
it was because he couldn't stand the fasting imposed upon him 
in the Catholic Church. This roused McMaster's indignation, 
who confronted him with the first reason given, insisting upon 
it that he should stand upon one story or the other, and say 
whether he had come over to Protestantism for the love of his 
Bible or for the sake of his belly. 

The other student had been brought up in the Greek 
Church, and consequently early imbued with all that is held to 
be odious in Catholic doctrine except the supremacy of the 
Roman See. This one redeeming trait stripped him of horns 
and hoofs and made him welcome to Protestantism. Even 
thus, however, he might be a concealed Jesuit, but I am not 
aware that any such suspicion fell upon him. 

The sensitive dread of Jesuitism which prevailed about this 
time, and had succeeded at last in placing a time-honored in- 
stitution under public surveillance, was not confined to Chelsea, 
nor to the Episcopalian Church. It found lodgment also in sem- 
inaries of other Protestant sects. It existed, for instance, at the 
same time at East Windsor, Conn. It existed most tenaciously 



606 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Feb., 

in the mind of one of the faculty there. He was, if I remem- 
ber the tradition right, a professor of scriptural exegesis, and 
irreverently named by the students, for reasons of their own, 
" Old Kaigar." One day he enlarged before his class on a 
subtle policy attributed by him to the Church of Rome of lo- 
cating Jesuit spies wherever an opportunity was afforded of 
doing mischief. " They locate themselves," said he, " in every 
city, every town, every community, every social circle, with an 
eye upon every family. I should not be surprised to learn that 
there is a concealed Jesuit, perhaps, in this very seminary, per- 
haps in this class-room at this very moment." The impression 
made upon the students was not a very solemn one. It was 
not only long remembered by the inmates of Windsor Semi- 
nary as a joke, but was well circulated outside. 

In a series of lectures delivered at London by John Henry 
Newman, in 1849 or ^50, he compares the great break-up of 
Tractarianism to an incident related in the Arabian Nights, when 
Sindbad, the sailor, and his companions found themselves 
stranded on what they took to be an island, but was in reality 
the back of a sleeping whale. The merry crew amused them- 
selves in dancing, and shouting, and a variety of other antics 
on the back of the unconscious creature, and with perfect safety. 
When, however, they proceeded to build a fire upon his back 
the great fish woke up to a sense of pain and, becoming conscious 
that mischief was going on, he shook himself suddenly free 
from these disturbers of his peace. In England the Tractarian 
coals grew too hot for toleration when William George Ward, 
at Oxford, published his Ideal of a Christian Church. Ward's 
speedy condemnation followed, and all the Tractarians who 
really meant anything by their Catholic antics were either 
obliged to take refuge in the real Catholic Church, or else recon- 
cile themselves to those quiet slumbers so congenial to their 
Anglican mother. 

The break-up of Tractarianism in the United States was 
simultaneous with that in England. In the Mother Country and 
in the Mother Church the coals on the whale's back lay hottest 
at Oxford, and there the first nervous shock of the sleepy old 
creature made itself felt. The Seminary at Chelsea was the Ox- 
ford of American Anglicanism, and there occurred also the 
first throes of that convulsion which forced so many enthusias- 
tic young Tractarians either to climb back into the Protestant 
ship and stay quiet, or else take to the water and swim for 
their lives. 



1895-] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 607 

One student had already left and united with the ancient 
church before the whale began to flop. This was Edward W. 
Putnam, of the class succeeding mine. His conversion occurred 
in 1844. It took place so quietly that many of us did not 
know of it when he left us. Even- now I do not know any de- 
tails to show the special reasons and circumstances which led to 
his conversion. About three years afterwards he took priest's 
orders in the Catholic Church. I think he must have been or- 
dained for the diocese of Albany, for I find his name in the 
parish records of St. Mary's, Albany, officiating under Bishop 
McCloskey during the first year of his pontificate in that dio- 
cese, after that prelate's transfer from New York. He was a 
good, zealous, and fervent priest, and his memory still remains 
in benediction among the few Catholics of Albany who are old 
enough to look back to his time. The latter part of his life 
was spent in Maine. He was a fruit of the Tractarian move- 
ment, but he does not belong to that great break-up of which 
I am now speaking. 

The first conversion consequent upon the great scare at 
Chelsea in January, 1845, was my own. I was not at the 
seminary when the scare took place, although my name was 
involved in the supposed conspiracy. Its influence upon my 
life, however, was almost instantaneous. The reader must 
here recall the pretty little by-play of founding a monastery 
which Wadhams and I, in connection with McVickar, were 
carrying on among the Adirondacks in Essex County. This 
air-drawn convent of the future went down at once into the 
ocean when the scared fish shook his sides and dived. 
McVickar crawled back at once into safe quarters. Our beauti- 
ful Fata Morgana disappeared [like a dream. Prior Wadhams, 
although suddenly unfrocked, stiM held his mission in Essex 
County and could take time to feel his way out. But I was 
completely afloat. Crawl back like McVickar and others, I 
would not. Go forward in pure dreamland, without a single 
peg to hang a hope on, I could not. Neither could I go home 
to my father's house at Saratoga, and to the village circle 
which surrounded it. There the atmosphere was more stifling 
even than the sham pretences to Catholicity so rife in Episco- 
palian .Protestantism. Besides this, my Tractarian course had 
been so contrary to the wishes of my parents and other old 
friends near the homestead, that it seemed to me a call of 
honor to become independent, and by earning my own living 
acquire a right to follow my own conscience. The monastic 



6o8 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Feb., 

bond between myself and Wadhams being broken, there was 
nothing to keep me any longer by Wadhams' side. Our 
vocations lay along different lines, and I must strike out a 
separate path for myself. I therefore made arrangements to 
work at a lath-mill in Essex County until I could see my 
way distinctly to join the Catholic Church, and enter its priest- 
hood. Before I could carry out this plan, McMaster arrived at 
Ticonderoga on his way to Canada, and my friend and I went 
down there to meet him. On learning my determination to 
become a Catholic, and my preliminary purpose of becoming a 
miller's boy, McMaster said : 

" Don't do that. I can tell you where to go. I've stumbled 
on a priest in New York City that is just the man to receive 
you into the church. It is Father Gabriel Rumpler. He is the 
superior of a convent of Redemptorist priests in Third Street, 
New York. He is a most remarkable man, full of learning, 
wisdom, experience, and a truly holy man. And besides that, 
it is an order of religious missionaries. You were always wild 
after missionary work. You can't do better than join them." 

The account he gave of Father Rumpler and of the 
Redemptorists put an end at once to my project of going into 
the lath business. It opened a practical door by which to 
enter the Catholic Church. It promised me a wise Ananias to 
take me by the hand and direct my course among the new 
faces which were soon to gather around me, and in the new 
life which lay before me. My determination to become a 
Catholic was fixed and resolute. To unite with the Catholic 
Church all I needed was an introduction to it. The oppor- 
tunity was now offered and I embraced it immediately. 

Wadhams and McMaster accompanied me from Ticonderoga 
village to the steamboat dock by the old fort to see me off. I 
urged the former to take the same step without delay. 

" Don't hurry me, Walworth," said he ; "I am in a position 
of responsibility and confidence, and when I leave, if leave I 
must, it shall be done handsomely. You have no charge. You 
have only to let your bishop know what you are about doing, 
and then do it." 

" Go ahead, dear old boy," said McMaster. " I'm ashamed 
to have you get the start of me, but I'll follow you soon. I've 
been fooling about with these Puseyite playthings too long. 
Look for me in Third Street when I get back from Montreal." 

There we parted. I took the steamer for Whitehall. Mc- 
Master took the same boat on its return and made his visit to 



1 89 5.] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 609 

Canada, and Wadhams went back, lonely and desolate, to his 
room at the village, inn at Ticonderoga Falls. 

A couple of days later found me knocking at the convent 
door in Third Street. I found in Father Rumpler the very 
man I needed. The Redemptorist convent and church were 
wooden structures at that time and very shabby. Everything 
was new and poor. I liked it all the better for its destitution. 

During my stay in New York I stopped with my sister, 
Mrs. Jenkins, who resided with her husband and children in 
Eleventh Street, near the corner of Fifth Avenue; but I visited 
the convent in Third Street every day. Father Rumpler 
examined me very particularly, to see how near my religious 
convictions were in accord with Catholic faith and how far my 
intelligence of Catholic doctrine extended. My answers were 
satisfactory, and he said : " I see no reason to delay your re- 
ception into the church. Is there anything in Catholic doc- 
trine which you find difficult to believe ? " I answered : " No, 
father. I do not understand Indulgences, but whatever that 
doctrine really is, I am willing to take it on trust without the 
least doubt that whatever the church believes and teaches is 
true." He smiled and said : 

" Well, that has the true ring of faith. You can take your 
time to study up that question, and now about your baptism." 

I, told him what I knew about my baptism when an infant 
by a Presbyterian minister ; and the subsequent ceremony of 
trine immersion in the waters of New York Bay administered 
by my old friend, the Rev. Caleb Clapp. He said that the first 
baptism was probably done right and so valid, but if not, the sec- 
ond was superabundantly sufficient, and could not be made surer. 

On Friday, May 16, 1845, I made my profession of Faith, 
in the Church of the Holy Redeemer, in the presence of three 
or four witnesses only, and thus terminated at the same mo- 
ment my connection with the Chelsea Seminary and with the 
Protestant Episcopal Church. On the following Sunday I made 
my first Communion at the same altar. Shortly after I was 
confirmed at St. Joseph's Church, on Sixth Avenue, by Arch- 
bishop Hughes. 

In the meantime McMaster had arrived at New York. He 
took up his quarters with the Redemptorists, and was there re- 
ceived into the church. Both of us had come also to the deter- 
mination to embrace the religious life in the Redemptorist Or- 
der. About the middle of June I went to visit my parents at 
Saratoga, where I remained two or three weeks. I then re- 
VOL. LX. 39 



6 io GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Feb., 

turned to New York, and on the 2d of August I set sail, in 
company with McMaster and Isaac Hecker, for the novitiate at 
St. Trond, in Belgium. 

It is scarcely necessary for me to give any further details 
concerning the conversion of McMaster and that of Wadhams, 
since that would be only to repeat what has already been pub- 
lished at some length in my " Reminiscences " of the latter. I 
may be excused in like manner for observing the same reticence 
in regard to my friend, Henry McVickar. He never became a 
Catholic. He died, not long after his leaving the seminary, 
still an Episcopalian and in deacon's orders. Another of the 
same family, Lawrence McVickar, more happy than Henry, 
found his way into the Catholic Church at Chicago, or Milwau- 
kee, during the sixties. He was a nephew of Dr. John Mc- 
Vickar, of Columbia College, and therefore a first cousin of my 
old friend and fellow-seminarian. He also died young. 

In my next chapter I propose to continue my account of 
the great break-up of Tractarianism in the United States, in- 
troducing especially what I remember or have ascertained of 
other old companions at the seminary whose names have been 
introduced to the reader in these Reminiscences. 

(TO BE CONTINUED.) 




1 895-] FATHER TANQUEREY' s DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. 6n 




REVIEW OF FATHER TANQUEREY'S SPECIAL DOG- 
MATIC THEOLOGY.* 

BY VERY REV. A. F. HEWIT, D.D. 

GOOD theological manual, i.e. handbook, as an 
adjunct to the professor's lectures, and a com- 
panion and guide in the study of larger theologi- 
cal works, is of great practical utility to ecclesi- 
astical students. It is also a difficult work to 
compose, like every other sort of compendium. There are 
several such compendiums by authors of high repute. The fact 
that such an experienced teacher as Father Tanquerey has seen 
reasons for adding one more to the number proves that he 
finds some deficiencies in the existing ones to be remedied, and 
some modifications in their method desirable, so that students 
may possess a manual better suited to their wants. One natur- 
ally looks, therefore, to see what are the specific differences 
which distinguish this manual from others of the same kind. 

The author has written especially for American students. 
He has aimed to exclude all matter which has become anti- 
quated and comparatively useless, and to insert that which has 
become especially important for the present time. For instance, 
there is a more full exposition than usual of the doctrine of 
development, (vol. i. p. 33) of the dogma of the Trinity, with 
a refutation of the objection of modern Unitarians ; of the 
dogma of our Lord's divinity, etc., etc. The questions concern- 
ing the Mosaic cosmogony, evolution, and hypnotism are treated 
as fully as the succinct method of a text-book can permit. 
The two volumes now published contain only the Treatises in 
Special Theology, but another volume on Fundamental Theol- 
ogy is promised to appear after the lapse of one year. 

The first thing which arrests attention in looking at Father 
Tanquerey's Theology is the beauty of the mechanical execu- 
tion, which is sufficiently accounted for by the fact that it is 

* Synopsis Theologies Dogmatictz Specialis, Ad Mentem S. Thames Aguinatis, Hodiernis 
Moribus Accommodata. Tomus Primus : De Fide, de Deo Uno et Trino, de Deo Creante 
et Elevante, de Verbo Incarnate. Tomus Secundus : De Deo Sanctificante et Remunera- 
tore, seu de gratia, de Sacramentis et de Novissimis. Auctore Ad. Tanquerey, S.S. Tornaci 
(Belg.) : Desclee, Lefebvre et Soc. ; Baltimore, Md. : St. Mary's Seminary. (For sale also 
by the Messrs. Benziger.) 



6i2 REVIEW OF FATHER TANQUEREV'S [Feb., 

published at Tournay. This may seem to some a trivial cir- 
cumstance ; but really, it is not so ; for study is made much 
more attractive when a book has an agreeable and convenient 
style of typography. 

Of course, the greatest part of a theological text-book is 
taken up with the matter on which there is no controversy or 
difference of any moment among Catholic theologians. Here, it 
is only method and style which come into consideration, in the 
case of any particular text-book. In these respects the present 
work may compete with the best of its predecessors. We turn 
naturally, with a more special interest, to see how the author 
treats those questions which are topics of controversy between 
different Catholic schools, or, at least, between authors of re- 
pute who advocate different opinions. His method, in respect 
to the principal questions on which the great schools are 
divided, i.e., the two grand divisions of theologians, one com- 
monly called Thomistic, the other Molinistic, is to present im- 
partially the principal arguments on each side, and to withhold 
any judgment of his own ; even professing a conviction that in 
the crucial instance of predestination before or after foreseen 
merits, a certain judgment is unattainable (vol. i. p. 154). A 
reason for pursuing this course may be found in the fact that 
the narrow limits of a compendium do not admit of the 
thorough and extensive discussion of such abstruse and con- 
tested topics, which is requisite to a complete understanding of 
the case. The author of an extensive theology may properly 
make a more succinct abstract of a cause which he has already 
fully argued, in a compendium of his own work ; but it seems 
more suitable that a Synopsis which stands alone, should leave 
the student to investigate the most difficult controversies of 
Catholic theologians in the standard works of both sides. The 
questions here alluded to may probably become burning, as 
the disputations which interest the public at large are turned 
upon them by the progress of controversy. In fact, these 
questions have already begun to be discussed, through the 
already widely spread and increasing revolt from the old Cal- 
vinistic formulas among the members of the Presbyterian sects. 
The searching for some better formulas in which to embody 
the Christian doctrines turns the attention of thoughtful minds 
upon Catholic Theology, and awakens inquiry after the answers 
which Catholic theologians are able to give to anxious ques- 
tioners as to the relation of men to God ; the destiny of the 
human race in the present and the future world, under the 



1895-] SPECIAL DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. 613 

ruling of Divine Providence ; as to the possibility of solving 
the problem, how the sovereign dominion of God over rational 
creatures can be reconciled with free-will ; and his infinite wis- 
dom, goodness, and power with the existence and prevalence 
of evil. Catholic theologians and philosophers must therefore 
look these dark and metaphysical questions in the face, and 
consider whether and how far they can receive an answer ; 
what, if any, the answer must be ; and what, if they are un- 
answerable, is the just and reasonable ground of tranquil sub- 
mission to the necessity of remaining always over-shrouded by 
the cloud of unknowing. We may be permitted to wish that 
another St. Thomas Aquinas may arise, who shall stand in the 
same relation to him that he does to St. Augustine, and com- 
plete his vast edifice of philosophy and theology. 

Dr. Tanquerey has modestly abstained from undertaking any 
solution of these deepest problems. He has not, however, con- 
fined himself to the mere task of making a synopsis of that part 
of theology in which there is a perfect agreement of doctors, or 
of giving an analysis of the arguments for differing views and 
opinions on questions in respect to which there is a division 
among expositors and advocates of Catholic doctrine. He has 
explained his own intention (Preface) of discussing questions 
which are practical for the preacher, and which relate to the 
task of confuting modern errors. In the questions which he 
has selected for this purpose of discussion, Dr. Tanquerey fol- 
lows a definite line of his own, and what is most interesting in 
a review of his work is to follow this line and discover what 
he has contributed of his own to the theological treasury. 

In our opinion, the starting-point for the philosophy of re- 
vealed facts and doctrines, is the idea of the supernatural order, 
and the direction taken from this position is that which deter- 
mines a large part of any theological system contained within 
the limits of orthodoxy. The doctors of the two great 
schools mentioned above are in substantial agreement respect- 
ing this idea. There is, however, the school represented by 
Berti, Belelli, and Noris, which still survives, and has in recent 
times found advocates, who, although not among the masters of 
sacred science, are writers on sacred subjects of honorable re- 
pute. The characteristic position of this class of writers is the 
impossibility of a state of pure nature. Consequently, they can- 
not admit that the plane of elevation and grace is so absolutely 
and completely above all nature which has been or could possi- 
bly be created, as those theologians maintain that it is, who 



614 REVIEW OF FATHER TANQUEREY'S [Feb., 

closely follow St. Thomas. Their theory of original sin and its 
logical sequences is determined by their primary notion of the 
supernatural, and a special tendency is imparted to the whole 
current of their theology, which carries it far away from ra- 
tional philosophy. Even among authors who profess and intend 
to follow St. Thomas, there is often found a lack of clearness 
and consistency in their apprehension of the supernatural idea, 
together with confused notions on particular topics which really 
imply the Bertian premisses which they formally reject. 

This being our view, we are pleased to find that Dr. 
Tanquerey has made a full and clear statement of the doctrine 
of the supernatural order in all the extension and comprehen- 
sion which it has in the writings of the chief theologians of 
both the great schools. Of course, the possibility of a state of 
pure nature is maintained, and, in harmony with the description 
of the two states of pure and elevated nature, the state of 
lapsed nature is explained as having for the specific difference 
from the other two, privation of sanctifying grace. The three 
states can therefore be tersely designated as humanity nude, 
clothed, and denuded (vol. i. p. 330, etc.) 

Such a view of original sin prepares the way for a recogni- 
tion of the natural good, the capacity for virtue, the intellec- 
tual and moral dignity, remaining in man after the fall. More- 
over, it opens the prospect of a state of relative eternal felicity 
as the final determination of the unregenerate who are free 
from the guilt of actual sin. 

The general topic of the attitude and relation of the natural 
to the supernatural branches out into another series of impor- 
tant questions, when the action of supernatural light on the natural 
intellect, and of supernatural inspiration on the natural faculty 
of will and its free self-determining power of choice, is considered. 

These faculties have a concurrent action with divine grace 
when the act of faith is elicited. Hence, the analysis of the com- 
plete act is a very delicate and difficult operation. The Treatise 
on Faith includes in its compass some abstruse questions. One of 
these, viz., what is the ultimate motive of assent to the veracity 
of God as the Revealer of truth ? has not been answered by a 
common consent of theologians ; but discussed in various senses 
by the most eminent authors, such as Suarez, De Lugo, and 
Cardinal Mazzella. We believe articles of faith because God 
has revealed them. Why do we believe that God has revealed 
them, and that he is veracious in revealing? Is it because we 
are convinced on grounds of reason and evidence, or because 



1 895.] SPECIAL DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. 615 

God reveals that he has revealed and is veracious? Dr. Tan- 
querey decidedly adopts the first alternative. The question 
appears on its surface to be purely speculative and of no practi- 
cal importance. It is not so, however. For, if the second 
alternative is embraced, the action of supernatural grace does 
not enable the intellect to elicit an act substantially different 
from that which it is capable of eliciting by its natural power, 
but only elevates and modifies the act of rational assent. The 
assent of a philosopher, a Zoroaster, a Pythagoras, a Plato, to 
those divine truths which are necessary, de necessitate medii, and 
which may have been derived to him partly by the secret, 
obscure tradition of a primitive revelation, may therefore be re- 
garded as sufficient to make him a competent subject of super- 
natural grace, elevating his rational convictions into acts of faith, 
a faith which through divine grace can become that fides formata 
which is intrinsically sufficient for justification and salvation. 

On the second alternative, divine revelation must explicitly 
and distinctly propose itself as revelation, by the mouth of a 
witness specially accredited, and the assent of faith be given 
from first to last to a manifest divine testimony ; otherwise 
there is no material or formal credible object upon which an 
act of faith can be elicited. There is no way open, then, to 
the heathen, even to begin to work out their salvation. It is a 
matter of some practical importance, to have a view of human 
history which harmonizes with the truths we are taught in the 
Bible of the universal benevolence of God, and the universal 
redemption of mankind by the divine Saviour of the world. It 
is also important to remove obstacles to faith from the path of 
doubters and inquirers. Now, one of the chief of these obstacles 
is a notion that Catholic faith represents God as governing the 
world by an arbitrary and partial providence. An explanation 
of Catholic doctrine which amplifies the extent of the operation 
of divine grace and mercy renders more easy the refutation of 
this false view, and has therefore a great practical value. Dr. 
Tanquerey shows, moreover, that the opinion which he rejects 
involves reasoning in a vicious circle. I believe what God re- 
veals because he is veracious; I believe he is veracious because 
he reveals it. This is the logical fallacy of idem per idem. 

Another question is, whether the authority of the church is 
an essential part of the motive of faith, in technical language, 
the formale objectum quo. That is, do I believe a revealed 
truth because of the veracity of God revealing, and the infalli- 
bility of the church proposing? If so, I must first know the 



616 REVIEW OF FATHER TANQUEREY'S [Feb., 

true church and submit to its infallible authority, before I can 
make an act of faith in the truth as revealed by God. This is 
as much as to say, that only one who is formally and ex- 
plicitly a Catholic can make an act of faith. For, according to 
this opinion, a man must believe a certain doctrine to be credi- 
ble on the veracity of God revealing, because the infallible 
church declares it to be so ; and no other reason or motive for 
regarding it as revealed, and therefore credible, will suffice. 
The necessary logical conclusion from these premisses is : that 
the dictum extra ecclesiam catholicam nulla salus must be inter- 
preted in the most literal and exclusive sense. Only those who 
are in formal communion with the visible church, at least in 
desire and intention if they are unable to be so actually, and 
baptized infants, can possibly be in the state of grace and in 
the way of salvation. All other adults are in the state of sin, 
and if they die out of the church, are reprobates. The multi- 
tude of these reprobates must therefore be a very large major- 
ity of those who have already lived and died in this world. 
And, if the spirit of rigorism leads on, as it sometimes does, to 
the conclusion that the majority of adult Catholics die impeni- 
tent, theology assumes a very sombre aspect. 

I am not aware that any theologians of recognized authority 
teach the doctrine just described. But there have been writers 
in the English language who have done so, and thereby given 
occasion to grave misrepresentations of the authentic teachings 
of the church by her adversaries. 

Dr. Tanquerey cuts the ground from under this whole fabric 
of extravagant assumptions, by denying the proposition that the 
authority of the church is of the essence of the objcctum 
formate quo of faith. The object on which the act of faith ter- 
minates he explains to be revealed truth, and the motive of 
faith the veracity of God. The authority of the church is the 
ordinary and most perfect attestation of the fact and the true 
sense of revelation. But, no matter how the revealed truth, as 
revealed, is brought face to face with the intellect, the objec- 
tive term of an act of faith is present. One may have no 
explicit knowledge that the Roman Church is the true Church 
and infallible. He may live and die in the communion of a 
schismatical or heretical sect. Nevertheless, he may have been 
validly baptized in his infancy, thus having infused into him the 
habit of faith ; he may have been taught the Creed, become 
familiar with the divine gospels, kept the commandments, 
remained always in good faith, and at the close of life may 



1895.] SPECIAL DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. 617 

have died believing and trusting in Jesus Christ as the Saviour 
of the world. If he has never committed a mortal sin, he 
cannot have lost baptismal grace. If he has not knowingly and 
wilfully sinned against faith, he cannot have lost the habit of 
faith. His inculpable separation from the communion of the 
church does not render him a schismatic, his inculpable ignor- 
ance of a part of the revealed truth does not make him a 
heretic. He has faith, hope, and charity, he may, perhaps, 
receive truly and worthily all the Sacraments in some one of 
the sects which have preserved them all ; and he will certainly 
go to heaven. Now, it has been seriously affirmed by some 
Catholic writers whose works have had a considerable circula- 
tion, that infante baptized and brought up in sects which are 
separated from Catholic communion, lose the gift of faith and 
sanctifying grace as soon as they reach the age of reason, be- 
cause they are incapable of making those acts of faith which 
are indispensably necessary to salvation. It is not without rea- 
son, therefore, that Dr. Tanquerey has refuted this utterly 
groundless opinion. 

The church teaches nothing positive about the relative num- 
ber of the saved and the lost. There are some whose spirit 
leads them to magnify the sphere of sin and evil, and to minim- 
ize the sphere of divine grace and mercy. Others are dis- 
posed to magnify the mercy of God and minimize the amount 
of evil which is the dark shadow of good in the rational crea- 
tion. Dr. Tanquerey has none of the spirit of the former class. 
On the contrary, he is disposed to recognize a large sphere of 
operation to divine grace outside of its regular and ordinary 
channels within the domain of the visible church. Of course, 
then, he will incline to extend its efficacy within the bounds of 
the church as largely as possible. 

In respect to those who are not Christians, he quotes with 
approbation, among others speaking in the same sense, Gener, 
who says : " There are not so many reprobates as is commonly 
asserted ; for the Church has innumerable hidden cliildren, of 
whom she will say at the last day: Who hath begotten these? 
and these where were they ? (Is. xlix. 21.)" Concerning adult 
Christians, Dr. Tanquerey writes : " If it is question of Catho- 
lics only, it is commonly taught with Suarez, that even among 
adults the elect outnumber the reprobate. If it is question of 
all Christians, Catholics, schismatics, and heretics, many hold 
that the number of the condemned exceeds that of the elect. 
The contrary opinion, however, seems to us more probable. 



6i8 REVIEW OF FATHER TANQUEREY'S [Feb., 

For a third part die before the age of reason, and all who are 
baptized are saved ; moreover, there is a sufficient reason for 
supposing in regard to non-Catholics, that many Protestants 
and Schismatics are in good faith, who, even if they have fallen 
into mortal sin, can be reconciled to God by perfect contrition, 
and also, in the case of schismatics, by receiving absolution, 
which, at least in the article of death, is valid. Besides, in 
those things, which are necessary, God never fails to provide, 
and therefore he will grant them special graces in their last 
moments by whose aid they may be able to repent ; so that 
there is no hindrance to the salvation of many of them" 
(vol. i. p. 155, etc.) 

It is not so much an estimate of the relative number of 
those who are admitted into or excluded from the kingdom of 
heaven that is requisite, in order to vindicate the justice and 
goodness of God in his final judgments upon men, as a well- 
supported statement of the principles which regulate those 
judgments. The most serious of all the objections against 
Catholic theology is this : that it represents God as leaving a 
multitude of men under a doom of guilt and misery which they 
are unable to avoid and from which they cannot escape. It 
makes no difference with the import of this objection, whether 
the number of supposed victims of this doom bears a greater 
or a lesser proportion to the whole number of mankind. And 
the objection has really more influence on the minds of men, in 
withholding them from faith, than any difficulties respecting 
history, chronology, biology, or any similar matters. 

Now, Dr. Tanquerey touches the precise point, in the follow- 
ing brief but pregnant sentence : 

" One thing is beyond doubt, to wit, that no adult, even among 
those who lack Christian faith, will be condemned, unless he has 
knowingly and wilfully offended against laws known to himself, in 
a grievous manner" (p. 155). 

Of course, infants are not subject to any judgment at all, 
being incapable of either merit or demerit, and their final 
state in eternity is determined by the capacity and exigency of 
their nature, whether regenerate or unregenerate. 

As for all who have actually passed through a state of 
moral probation, they incur the privation of natural or super- 
natural felicity only in so far as they have despoiled them- 
selves of the good which they might and should have obtained, 
by their own free choice of evil; nor is their doom rendered 
hopeless except by final impenitence. 



i895-l SPECIAL DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. 619 

In regard to the doom of the reprobate, Dr. Tanquerey sum- 
marizes the common teaching and arguments of theologians. 
He maintains the physical reality of the infernal fire, but at the 
same time excludes every positive doctrine concerning its nature 
and mode of action from the domain of faith. Wherefore, he 
gives an admonition to preachers : that " in practice great 
caution should be used in speaking of the fire of hell, and 
those horrible descriptions so very often employed by preachers 
should be carefully avoided, descriptions which, while they 
terrify some pious believers, cause others to doubt of the ex- 
istence of hell or to regard God as a cruel tyrant." 

The opinion advanced by the celebrated Abb Emery, for- 
merly superior of the Society of St. Sulpice, that not only are 
there some sufferings in hell which are accidental and tempor- 
ary punishments, like those which are endured in purgatory, an 
opinion favored by St. Thomas ; but also that there are inter- 
vals of relief from the pain which is a punishment of mortal 
sin, and a continuous mitigation of the same, finds favor in the 
eyes of Dr. Tanquerey as more probable than the opposite opinion. 

"A transient or successive mitigation can be admitted, in 
accordance with some Fathers and theologians, a mitigation not 
indeed due in justice but granted in mercy, by which the lot of 
the condemned, though always lamentable since they will be 
for ever separated from God, will become nevertheless more 
tolerable. For this doctrine is found in a hymn of St. Pruden- 
tius formerly sung in many churches, is allowed by St. Augus- 
tine, is insinuated by St. Chrysostom, is expressly taught by 
St. John Damascene, was proposed by Mark of Ephesus in 
the name of the Greeks at the Council of Florence and not 
condemned ; moreover it is altogether agreeable to the mercy 
of God, and admirably shows how that mercy is exercised 
even in hell. Therefore, such an opinion can be held without 
hazard to faith, whatever some theologians may have taught to 
the contrary. (See Emery, Dissertation sur la mitigation des 
peines des damnees)" (vol. ii. p. 398). 

In respect to the important question of the Mosaic Cosmogony, 
the following is Dr. Tanquerey's thesis : 

" Nothing certain can be defined from the first chapter of 
Genesis concerning the order of creation and the Genesiac days, 
wherefore the various systems excogitated among Catholics 
for reconciling the Mosaic narrative with natural sciences, can 
be freely discussed, without danger to faith, so long as the 
truth of Scripture is firmly held." 



620 FATHER TANQUEREY' s DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. [Feb., 

In respect to Evolution and Transformism, Dr. Tanquerey's 
thesis is as follows : 

" Mitigated Transformism, although at first sight seemingly 
opposed to the obvious sense of Scripture, is nevertheless not 
evidently contrary to faith, but can be maintained as a proba- 
ble hypothesis, until the church has pronounced a judgment on 
the matter " (vol. i. pp. 258-272). 

In respect to Dr. Mivart's hypothesis on the formation of 
the human body, Dr. Tanquerey expresses his opinion, in con- 
formity with that of Palmieri, that it is not heretical, although 
it is prima facie opposed to the Mosaic narrative (p. 317). 

The use of hypnotism he judges to be generally unlawful, 
but allowable when prudently employed by competent physi- 
cians for medical purposes (p. 312). 

The foregoing analysis is not complete and exhaustive. It 
may suffice, however, to give an idea of the spirit, tone, and 
scope of the work under review. 

It is manifest that the author keeps carefully within the 
limits of the doctrine prescribed or permitted by ecclesiastical 
authority. Moreover, that he is very sober and moderate in 
the exercise of his own private judgment upon disputed ques- 
tions, and not addicted to novel and singular theories. His 
work is, therefore, eminently safe, is in general a reflex of the 
common teaching of theologians, and even where it advances 
beyond the beaten path into ground where the road is not yet 
so accurately surveyed and laid out, he is careful to avoid any 
temerarious excursions into by-paths and across lots. 

We cannot profess to agree with all the particular opinions 
advanced by Dr. Tanquerey, and it is morally impossible that 
any text book should command universal assent in all its special 
expositions of matters within the sphere of free opinion, where 
we have only reasoning and human authority as the motives of 
assent. We are convinced, after a sufficient examination of Dr. 
Tanquerey's Theology, that it is an excellent and useful manual 
to guide students in their researches into this sublime science, 
and also well adapted to assist the younger clergy in reviewing 
their course and preparing themselves for examinations and con- 
ferences. Its style and method are clear, and its whole con- 
struction and arrangement betokens the hand of an experienced 
teacher of young ecclesiastics, who is not only erudite, but pos- 
sessed of the talent, cultivated by practice, of imparting his 
knowledge and fulfilling well the important function of a 
teacher. 




1 895.] CATHOLIC VERSUS CAWTHOLIC. 621 



CATHOLIC VERSUS CAWTHOLIC. 

BY HENRY A. ADAMS. 
III. HERE AND THERE IN CA THOLICJSM. 

I ' 

EOPLE who rove very much over this little globe 
of ours forget a great deal more than they re- 
member of the places and things they see. But 
who ever forgets what he sees on those miracle 
spots of beauty, the isles of the tropical seas ? 
They come back and come back to one's memory over no mat- 
ter how many dreary years, like the subtle scent of their own 
rose gardens. 

In a moment one feels it all over again the nameless yield- 
ing to their transcendent charms. 

One sees the fleckless blue, the strange, vast clarity, the 
opalescent gleaming of that wondrous light. 

One sees those waters pulsating mirrors of liquid amethyst, 
shot here and there with the incessant flashings of the fish, 
golden and cardinal and blue and silvered green. 

One can recall the merest detail of the gardens, and number 
for you just how many palms stood in the little lane between 
the high stone walls. And with these memories of the sublime 
come the ridiculous. 

I can remember the various toughnesses of beef, for instance, 
in the Bermudas and the Bahamas and the West Indies. Cuba 
in this respect was facile princeps ; but, then, Cuba made up for 
it in other ways. 

I remember that in Bermuda the asking price of all articles 
in the little shops was twice the actual fetching price ; whereas 
in Nassau it was invariably four times as great. A dollar 
sponge in Nassau can be bought for twenty cents that is, when 
it cannot be bought for fifteen. 

I can never forget Nassau. And among the many, many 
beauties which the very name brings back, I can best of all 
remember the religion and the churches of the place. 

At the quaint old landing, which is as well the market 
and the rendezvous (on steamer days), I was asked by about 
sixty-nine very polite colored gentlemen, if I would drive up to 
the hotel at a charge as elastic as I afterward found to be the 
case in the sponge market. An ebony boy with the finest teeth 



622 CATHOLIC VERSUS CAWTHOLIC. [Feb., 

I had ever seen in my life, and a grin which I defy anybody 
to resist or forget, held the door of his carriage open, with the 
remark : " Here I be, boss. You see Charlie doant forget." 
Need I say that I got in ? Well, Charlie proved to be worth 
his weight in sponge. 

Before reaching my hotel I had engaged him to serve me 
in the capacity of guide during my stay. I was at that time 
an Anglican calling myself a Catholic, and thoroughly miserable 
as a result. Nassau has long been more or less dear to the 
ritualistic heart through the Anglican bishop being a prominent 
and very saintly advocate of the "advanced" party. Accord- 
ingly I regarded my visit to the place somewhat as of the 
nature of a pilgrimage, and my first thought was of the church. 

Charlie was a mighty theologian. At all events he set me 
to thinking more than once by his inimitably funny comments 
on the religious life of his native land. 

He promised to come for me after dinner, and he did 
wondrously washed and starched and decorated with flowers. 

" Take me to some Catholic Church that is kept open for 
prayers," I said to him. 

"Does you mean a Catholic Church, boss, or a Cawtholic 
Church ? " 

He was not joking. I looked at him. He was as serious 
as if he had not just put a very mountain of controversy in 
the nutshell of a phrase. He kept blinking his great eyes at 
me, until the contagion of my burst of laughter had caught his 
grin. I envied him his two rows of flawless ivories for a mo- 
ment or two, and then asked him: "What on earth do you 
mean by Catholic and Cawtholic ? " He drew up his gray horse 
in the shade of some flowering trees, and took off his immense 
hat as if out of respect for the subject about to be discussed. 

"You see, boss, the English Churches is ob two kinds, high 
and low. Dey calls de high ones Cawtholic" 

" Exactly," I answered eagerly ; " of course they do ; but 
what did you mean by Catholic ? " 

"Why, boss, deres a sure enough Catholic Church Father 
Mc's and we calls dat Catholic." 

It was a matter of a broad " a " or a narrow, and yet what 
a difference ! 

Our whole party broke out into a storm of merriment at 
my expense, as I was the only " Cawtholic " present, and, 
therefore, the only one unable to relish the delicious satire so 
unconsciously perpetrated by the little ebony imp, as I thought 
him just then. 



1 895.] CATHOLIC VERSUS CAWTHOLIC. 623 

Far and near, Charlie conducted us to the churches, and an 
exceptional bit of church-life that is which one sees in that 
natural paradise. 

Probably nowhere else has the Catholic movement in the 
Anglican communion found quite such a theatre for its action. 

It is unique. First of all, that bugbear of a ritualist, a 
bishop who is not "sound," is not present in the tight little 
island diocese. 

On the contrary, the bishop is one of those singularly holy 
and learned men who were the fruit of that deep spiritual 
movement in England forty years ago, and which led its choic- 
est to the logical length of submission to the Holy See. 

Such a man has naturally surrounded himself with a clergy 
to whom self-sacrifice and the Faith mean all. 

And, however much the Catholic may and must deplore the 
absence from such a work of the vitalizing essence of com- 
munion with the One Living Body, who can but see that the 
English affectation of " Cawtholic " is making and will make, 
in God's good way, for the truth. 

Charlie, for example, was brought up in one of the out- 
lying parishes there in Nassau a Cawtholic. But when we 
knew him (some fifteen years of age) he was preparing for his 
First Communion in the Catholic Church. His family had been 
converted the preceding winter. And what had they previously 
been taught ? Much which a Christian ought to know and be- 
lieve to his soul's health. 

One remembers, as I said, much that one sees in those 
wonderful dream islands of the blue-gold South. How well I 
now recall our Charlie's rector. I noticed him before the 
steamer was made fast to the pier. The visage and the car- 
riage of a saint. He was attired in a coarse cassock girded at 
the waist, and his deep black eyes looking from the shadow of 
a broad pilgrim's hat, and the long white beard, gave him the 
very likeness of those old monks one sees in the more quiet 
corners of the Grande Chartreuse. 

We watched him as he moved like a father and a friend 
among the motley crowd of English and of blacks. 

His church is in a distant and despised suburb ; but for us 
now it best will illustrate our point. 

Fancy a long, low church, of white calcareous stone, cov- 
ered with flowering vines, and lying deep among the dense 
perpetual shadows of palms and oleanders and fruit trees. 
Quite by itself, save for a cluster of mean, poor little houses, 
homes of this pastor's flock. There is a large, plain cross above 



624 CATHOLIC VERSUS CAWTHOLIC. [Feb., 

the tiny belfry, and cut into a marble slab above the door a 
simple exhortation to remember death and the soul and God. 

The door is never locked. Enter it. A Catholic would find 
it hard to say what in this church was lacking. 

The simple but most scrupulously tended altar has its large 
crucifix and countless candles. 

A tiny lamp before the Tabernacle speaks of a Presence. 
About the plain white walls are hung rude painted Stations of 
the Cross, and even as we watch, an aged colored woman is 
" making " them devoutly. 

The old care-taker tells us that there is " daily Mass," and 
there are evidences that Holy Water and the Confessional are 
known and used. 

Here, with the simplicity of some Breton curt, the pious 
clergyman teaches poor negro children their Our Father, their 
Creed, and their Hail Mary ! 

They learn the virtues which build up character, and grow 
into strong, clear conceptions of God and life. And yet 

Yes, how a Catholic can see it ! And yet they lack the one 
great Fact of all ! 

So, close to it the ever watchful, sleepless mother of all 
souls, has built her altar and put her priest to witness for that 
Fact that is the difference between Catholic and Cawtholic. 
And Charlie and Charlie's people are learning that difference 
now. 

If to the Anglican zealot I then was that little island 
church with its so great peculiarities furnished so much for 
study and for most anxious questioning, certainly to us, as 
Catholics, the meaning of the movement in the English Church 
must for some years to come invite the closest scrutiny. 

In possession as she is of the vast fabric of the Establish- 
ment, and capable of deep spiritual results, as witness Nassau 
and ten thousand quiet corners where souls grow, surely a com- 
munion which, as she grows in life, approaches nearer and 
nearer to Catholic truth, must call from the Catholic student 
of history the glorious hope that the approximation toward 
similarity may result in vital union and return to Catholicity. 

Abiding charity and unflinching steadfastness may yet trans- 
form this bleak and rugged world of ours into a " garden of 
the Lord" fairer than are the islands of the tropic seas, where 
under the broad shadow of the truth all men may know him 
as he is and hold alike the one and only faith without so much 
as the distinction of a broad accent. Spcs meet! 





DULCE IN UTILE. 

BY PAUL O'CONNOR. 

MALL is the profit where no pleasure lies 

To lure the mind along the page of thought ; 
If pleasure leap not in the poring eyes, 

Poor profit's best endeavor falls to naught. 
The heart and mind, co-operating, tend, 
In mutual ray reciprocally bright, 
To perfect purpose ; soul and body blend 
Not more harmoniously, or day and night, 
Than profit and the promptings of delight. 

Of pleasure robbed, see how the mind's dim orb, 

Like eve's dull beam o'er darkening moor and hill, 
Scarce conscious of the sense it would absorb, 

Droops as it flies, or soars uncertain still, 

In all the weakness of unaided will ; 
Or if a wandering beam it chance to note 

Along the dim skies of its mental night, 
Mounts not the wings on which its beauties float. 

But give it pleasure how the wakeful sight, 
Alive to every beam obscured before, 

Sweeps sunward on the pinions of delight ! 
Dull effort ceases, and, its languor o'er, 

As dew-bejewelled larks ascend the skies, 
Into the mind the beaming beauties soar, 

Perspicuous to the receiving eyes, 

Revealing other beauties as they rise. 
VOL. LX. 40 



626 DULCE IN UTILE. [Feb., 

For, skilled to catch the hidden sense within 
The darkened page o'er which dull effort pined, 

Pleasure is profit's parent, yet its twin ; 
Sees at a glance the truth it seeks to find, 
And leaves enduring impress on the mind. 

O Memory ! thou mirror of the brain, 

Reflecting every image in life's sun ! 
What but for pleasure were thy smiling train, 

Thy trophies intellectually won ? 
Dim Recollection ! groping in the dark, 

Thy lamp still fed by Memory's sputtering oil ! 
What but for pleasure were thy shining mark ? 

Pleasure ! which strews while profit strips the soil, 

And only lack of which makes labor toil. 

But dulness is the gaoler of the mind, 

Locking the portals effort fain would ope ; 

And all endeavor, without pleasure, blind, 

Doomed, rayless still, in noon's bright beam to grope, 

Grasps but to lose, each struggle but a strain 

Born of the froth of the fermenting brain. 

Let then this rule direct the studious mind, 

Aspiring still to learning's quiet fame: 
To study only when the heart's inclined, 

Avoiding moments when its mood is tame ; 

When pleasure kindles, profit shares the flame. 





1 895.] THE PULLMAN STRIKE COMMISSION. 627 

THE PULLMAN STRIKE COMMISSION. 

BY REV. GEORGE MCDERMOT, C.S.P. 

iHE commission appointed by the President to 
inquire into the causes of the strike at Chicago 
and the conditions accompanying it has fur- 
nished its report. It recommends the creation 
of a permanent strike commission to deal with 
disputes between railroads and their employees. 
However, the value of this recommendation seems to be greatly 
impaired by a statement in what lawyers would call the matter 
of inducement immediately preceding the recommendation. It 
is stated as the opinion of many and the commission appar- 
ently endorses it that while the employer can be readily made 
to pay under an arbitration decision more than is, or than he 
thinks is, right, the employee cannot practically be made to 
work. It draws a distinction then between railroads and other 
employers as a reason for holding that the former may be 
justly subjected to the jurisdiction of what, in plain terms, seems 
to be nothing more than a one-sided tribunal. 

COMPULSORY ARBITRATION THE BEST SAFEGUARD. 

Upon the whole we are inclined to think the report a 
valuable one, and its recommendations very far from deserving 
the strictures so freely lavished by the press. In dealing with 
it we shall avoid, as far as possible, topics of a controversial 
character and suggestions of a purely experimental character. 
The question is one of very great complexity, but by attend- 
ing to some main characteristics, and putting aside circumstances 
that are merely accidental, we hope to show that compulsory 
arbitration is the true solution of the difficulties between rail- 
way companies and their servants. 

A TREMENDOUS " COMBINE." 

It is seldom we can obtain so much and such reliable in- 
formation as we possess concerning the strike at Chicago. We 
have a pretty exhaustive account of the position of the dif- 
ferent parties to the controversy, their resources, their modes of 
action, and their temper. We find that, over and above the 



628 THE PULLMAN STRIKE COMMISSION. [Feb., 

ordinary strain of relations between labor and capital, we have 
the capitalist a monopolist nay more, a league of monopolists 
banded against the public and every interest that in any way 
might come in collision with them. In a word, the battle of the 
Pullman Company was fought by an association of twenty-four 
railroads " centring or terminating in Chicago " ; so that the 
wealth of this tremendous combination was for the time em- 
ployed in giving a crushing defeat to labor. 

THE REPORT A GREAT STATE PAPER. 

As might be readily enough anticipated, the strike was a 
failure. The report finds that it was injudicious, and in so far 
as it involved labor interests different from those of the Pull- 
man employees, injurious to those interests. This finding 
should be regarded, we submit, as evidence of the impartiality 
of the commission ; but the press, to a very great extent and 
by very considerable organs, denounces the tribunal as if it 
were no more than a working-man's committee, and its report 
a labor pamphlet in the guise of a state paper. It is, on the 
contrary, a state paper of importance, and deserving of the 
careful consideration of the government and legislature of the 
Union and of every State belonging to it. It is no excuse for 
the hostile opinion of so many newspapers that the commis- 
sion finds the employees had a grievance and that the attitude 
of the Pullman Company was hard and unsympathetic. We do 
not see, indeed, that it could come to any other conclusion as to 
the company's tone and temper having regard to the evidence 
of Mr. Wickes, its second vice-president. This gentleman de- 
clared that they would not treat with their men as members of 
any union. " We treat with them as individuals and as men," 
he continued, as if this should settle the merits of the question 
for good and all. When, however, the commission suggested 
that a man of his ability would have an advantage over the 
individual workman, Mr. Wickes complacently replied that that 
would be the latter's " misfortune " ; but in any case the 
company would have nothing to do with the organizations of 
their employees, and this in its naked insolence or beauty was 
the pith and marrow of his evidence. 

A MONSTROUS OUTGROWTH OF THE STATE. 

It is not too much to say that the evidence taken by the 
commission, the disclosures then made, and their relations to 
each other, show a state within the state in some respects more 



1895.] THE PULLMAN STRIKE COMMISSION. 629 

powerful than any State of the Union. So far as we know, the 
government of every State, from ocean to ocean, from Canada 
to the Gulf, reflects the sentiments of the majority of the 
citizens within it. Whenever an executive runs counter to the 
popular will, the power it used or abused is taken away. The 
verdict of the electorate may be wrong and capricious, or 
sound and deliberate ; but it is theirs, and their servants must 
abide by it. But any single railway company, by sheltering 
itself in a conspiracy with others, seems able to trample upon 
thousands of citizens who are its employees, and to disregard 
the rights of millions of citizens who may have the misfortune 
to travel or send goods along its road ; and this although the 
very company owes everything to the state, to the powers con- 
ferred by the state, the concessions, the grants of land made 
by the state ; although, in a word, from beginning to end, from 
top to bottom, from side to side, it is the creature of the state. 

TERRITORIAL WEALTH OF THE RAILWAYS. 

The question has gone beyond the dispute between the 
Pullman Company and its men. Divested of extraneous cir- 
cumstances it amounts to this : Is a combination of railroads to 
be at liberty to use the privileges and resources granted by the 
public against the public interests? The twenty-four railroads 
fought the battle of capital on that occasion, and they may 
fight against the interests of passengers and consignors of 
goods on the next. Whoever has a dispute with one must 
reckon on the twenty-four. No resources of an individual could 
contend against such wealth. There is nothing to prevent the 
whole railway system of the United States from entering into 
a league as well as the Chicago roads. What would that 
mean? It is estimated that up to 1883, 255,000,000 of acres 
were granted to railway companies by Congress and the States. 
To more than one company belts of land eighty miles wide 
were granted, to others belts of forty miles wide. The Atlantic 
and Pacific Company owns a belt eighty miles wide extending 
across New Mexico and Arizona to near the Pacific. 

If deduction from the grants be allowed on account of for- 
feitures, still it is estimated that the area of the lands remaining 
in the hands of the companies is twice and a half the total 
area of Great Britain and Ireland. If we take the grants as 
they originally stood, we find them bestowing estates greater in 
extent than the Empire of Austro-Hungary, together with the 
Kingdom of Italy, Switzerland, Holland, and Belgium, and 
greater than the Empire of Germany combined with Italy, 



630 THE PULLMAN STRIKE COMMISSION. [Feb., 

Portugal, Greece, and the Republic of Switzerland.* The 
thirteen original States of the Union comprised a territory one- 
fifth less than the grants originally made to the companies, and 
the lands retained by the companies are very nearly as exten- 
sive as the same thirteen States, f 

LEGALITY OF THE APPOINTMENT OF A COMMISSION. 

In his letter appointing the commission the President names 
the Illinois Central as one of the two companies whose con- 
troversies with their men were to be part of the subject of in- 
vestigation. The Sun declares the appointment was illegal. 
We apprehend that the President knew the power conferred 
upon him by the statute under the authority of which he sent 
forth the letter constituting the court of inquiry; so we shall 
pass from this to call attention to the fact that the first grant 
of land by Congress was made to the company just mentioned. 
If there were an analogy between a royal charter granting a 
franchise for public purposes and the grants conferred by the 
United States on railway companies, then as no one could 
seriously contend that a quo warranto might not issue to be 
argued in the case of the crown grant as to whether the con- 
ditions of the charter had been observed or broken, so we think 
there might independently of any statute be a show of equity 
on the part of the President in appointing the commission in 
question. What are the facts? 

Public traffic had been stopped, or at least greatly impeded ; 
the whole police force of Chicago had been withdrawn from its 
ordinary duties to occupy the premises of railway companies, a 
civil and military force besides of eleven thousand men had been 
engaged in preserving order and protecting property ; and all 
this array of force, as well as the disorder which rendered it 
necessary, had sprung from the action of corporations created and 
endowed by the state ; so we can only say, if the President had 
no power to institute an inquiry in order to fix the responsibility, 
that the United States is behind every government in the world. 

DANGEROUS CHARACTER OF THE RAILWAY COMBINATION. 

There was clearly a grave responsibility somewhere. We do 
not suggest that Congress can be charged with apathy or indif- 
ference because those railway companies have acquired a dan- 
gerous power by their combination. But it seems strange that 
they may cause a civil war and its attendant loss whenever they 
seek to increase profits or prevent the reduction of them at the 

* Denslow, Economic Philosophy. \ Ibid. 



i895-J THE PULLMAN STRIKE COMMISSION. 631 

expense of their employees. There must be found some means 
to control action leading to such consequences. 

THE REMEDY PROPOSED. 

With the report of the commission before them the public 
cannot be ignorant of the dangerous possibilities in store for 
the country. They know the mischiefs ; it remains to apply the 
remedy. But first the remedy must be found, the newspapers 
say. The most favorable deny that a real remedy is suggested 
by the commission. They contend that what stands for one is 
so obviously unjust as to be impracticable. Others maintain 
that even if there were an equal power in the tribunal with re- 
gard to the parties before it, still the decisions could not be en- 
forced. The meaning of this is that the compulsory fixing of 
wages would destroy a number of enterprises ; while, on the other 
hand, to use the language of the report itself, to compel em- 
ployees " to obey tribunals in selling their labor would be a dan- 
gerous encroachment upon the inherent inalienable right to work 
or quit as they please." 

As we have said, that opinion is the weak part in the re- 
commendation, and it could not escape the criticism of friends 
and enemies alike. The latter could ring the changes over the 
novel experiment of an unilateral tribunal constituted to con- 
fiscate the property of one class for the benefit of another; and 
this tribunal would necessarily fluctuate in the character of its 
blood-letting according as, with the changes in its personnel, it 
happened to be more or less favorable to capital. The friends 
of the working-man sneered at the recommendation on the ground 
that it was not intended to be acted upon, while they admitted 
that to some extent the ventilation of this particular phase of 
the great and far-reaching labor question might be of value. 

WEAK ATTITUDE OF THE PRESS. 

It is difficult to realize the absence of responsibility with 
which important organs of opinion approached the question. It 
is charged that the commissioners entered upon a field of in- 
quiry not included in the scope of the reference in order to 
give themselves a factitious importance ; it is even charged that 
they recommended the permanent board of three their own num- 
ber as a means of providing for themselves at the expense of 
the state. All this is discouraging. When we look for light 
and leading in the press we discover only confusion, contradic- 
tion, malice, folly. 

We take the question seriously for the benefit of all parties. 



632 THE PULLMAN STRIKE COMMISSION. [Feb., 

Let the papers say the commission is hollow, unreal a mockery ; 
but what paper will deny the reality of the rioting, burning, 
and plundering at Chicago ? deny that lives were lost ? that the 
State troops were called out, and the troops of the United 
States ? Is it a dream that five thousand extra deputy marshals 
were employed and two hundred and fifty extra deputy sheriffs? 
that nearly six hundred arrests were made by the police, and that 
indictments were found against seventy-one persons? That num- 
ber of indictments a century ago in England would afford the 
title of Bloody Assizes to the assize at which they might be tried. 

THE REPORT REALLY MODERATE. 

We think the report of the commission a singularly temper- 
ate document when we consider the facts upon which it was 
based. If it errs at all, it does so on the side of moderation. 
It is more in the nature of a plea than of a judgment, a plea 
for consideration towards the weak for justice towards the weak. 
Its very moderation, its deprecatory tone, is the strongest con- 
demnation of the hard and tyrannical character of the Pullman 
methods and of the astounding insolence of the twenty-four rail- 
way companies. Every offer of conciliation proposed on behalf 
of the men before the strike was decided upon was rejected. 
There was nothing to arbitrate, was the invariable reply of the 
companies to proposals for arbitration. Yet the commission 
finds that the reduction of wages was excessive, and expresses 
the very significant opinion that if the Pullman Company had 
abated the rents payable by their workmen for the tenements 
occupied by them the strike might have been averted. 

VERBAL SUBTERFUGES. 

The company is the landlord of their workmen. They say 
that they don't compel their workmen to become their tenants ; 
but it requires very little penetration to see that there must be 
a moral coercion when the workmen believe that their chance 
of retaining employment very materially depends upon whether 
they are tenants or not. No one can entertain the slightest 
doubt but that the position of landlord of rooms iri the vicinity 
of the workman's place of labor deprives the latter of all free- 
dom of choice as to his abode. Besides, the company erected 
the houses for their workmen, and, surely, it was with the cer- 
tainty that they would be occupied. It appears from the 
evidence that the rent was higher by twenty-five per cent, than 
for the same kind of accommodation in Chicago or elsewhere. 
The contention of the company that they were entitled to keep 



1895-] THE PULLMAN STRIKE COMMISSION. 633 

the question of rent distinct from that of wages may be legally 
sound, but in substance the relation of both was inseparable. 
It was a form of the infamous truck system by which work- 
men used to be so grievously oppressed both in England and 
in this country. 

CAPITALIST MISREPRESENTATIONS. 

Yet the' Sun describes the commission as " three representa- 
tives of a Populistic President," and their report or themselves 
it is not clear which " an outrageous violation of a national 
statute " ; while the Evening Post, from the serene air of an 
Epicurean Olympus, informs us that the " best citizens " rejoiced 
with a great joy because " the implacable Pullman and the 
hard-hearted managers refused to arbitrate." The latter paper 
calls the report "a travesty," and informs us that the recom- 
mendation referred to above is " too absurd to be credible." 
Of course we do not pretend to know what this aristos of the 
pen means by the phrase " best citizens " we have been fre- 
quently amused by the ardent championship of class privileges 
and the lordly contempt for the proletariat written in some 
garret of London or Dublin but whoever "the best citizens" 
may be, we pity them if the gentleman of the Post expresses their 
sentiments correctly. Something more germane to the matter 
is the practicability of arbitration with or without the clog 
which the commission has tied to it, and we think we can 
show that it is the way out of the difficulty. 

THE DOCTRINE OF STATE SUPREMACY. 

The commission has laid stress on .the fact that railway 
companies are the creatures of the state, and seems to infer 
that where the interests of the great army of railway employees 
are involved the state is entitled to step in to protect them. 
There is nothing novel in the doctrine implied in this infer- 
ence. Not a government in Europe but has asserted its right 
to control the administration of public funds vested in private 
corporations. European states have gone farther : they have 
extinguished such private corporations for breaches of trust, or 
when their mode of action or their existence was deemed a 
danger to the state. The proposal of the commission goes no 
farther than arbitration as to wages. For this there is a pre- 
cedent in the fair-rent clauses of the Irish Land Act of 1881. 
Labor organizations in England have asked the Duke of Dev- 
onshire's commission to apply that principle to the adjustment 
of wages disputes in that country. 



634 THE PULLMAN STRIKE COMMISSION. [Feb., 

AUTOMATIC SETTLEMENT OF DISPUTES. 

There fairly working schemes "of voluntary arbitration are 
employed in various industries. We take, e.g., the Durham col- 
lieries ; and we find that for " the settlement of disputes an 
official relationship exists between the Durham Coal Owners' and 
Miners' Associations." These bodies jointly deal with (i) local 
questions and (2) county or general questions by a constitution 
which provides for questions of the former kind by a commit- 
tee of six elected representatives of the owners and six repre- 
sentatives of the men. The county court judge of Durham is the 
chairman of the committee and has a casting vote on all points 
of dispute. The general or county questions of wages and hours 
of work are considered between the federation board, consisting of 
representatives of the miners, mechanics, enginemen, and coke- 
men, and a special committee of the Owners' Association. This 
federation board sometimes deals with serious local disputes.*' 
We find a similar system in Cleveland, in Northumberland, in 
South Wales, and generally equivalents to the system elsewhere. 

THE ARGUMENT FOR COMPULSORY ARBITRATION. 

What has been just mentioned concerning the mining indus- 
try is applicable to other industries. At the same time there is 
a feeling in favor of compulsory arbitration, because where the 
men are imperfectly organized the owners are stubborn and im- 
practicable. One cannot help seeing that the attitude of the 
capitalist everywhere is naturally harsh and exacting, while that 
of the workman, as a rule, is conciliatory and liberal. This 
contrast runs through the passages of the commission's re- 
port which refer to the position taken by the men and that of 
the employers. For this the report is severely criticised by the 
newspapers, as if in offering the result before it the commission 
betrayed a bias in favor of labor. 

But the case in favor of compulsory arbitration between 
railroads and their employees has not been presented with its 
full force in what we have been saying hitherto. The news- 
papers in reviewing the report referred to railway companies as 
if they were private capitalists in no way different from a small 
shopkeeper or small farmer. The report dealt with them mainly 
as public or quasi-public bodies. We suggest that they must 
be treated as the owners of monopolies granted by the state, 
and therefore controllable by public policy. The nearest parallel 
to their position is that of the French seigneur before the Revo- 

7 C mmi3sion n Labor - VoK '- : Mining. P. 59. Presented to Parliament 



1 895.] THE PULLMAN STRIKE COMMISSION. 635 

lution, the Irish landlord before the act of 1881. It was in the 
power of both of these to turn their estates into chases, if they 
preferred hunting to rent. Whole country-sides have been de- 
populated in Ireland in obedience to the clamor of certain political 
economists who thought beef and mutton more productive, more in 
the nature of wealth, than agriculture and the hands it employed. 

THEORIES OF INDEFEASIBLE RIGHT IN MONOPOLY. 

Those monopolists of the old world land-system believed 
themselves above all law; accountable to no one for the innu- 
merable hearts they broke, lives they withered, crimes they 
caused. A curious illustration of the mad selfishness of these 
men is witnessed in a petition presented by the landlords of 
the counties adjacent to London against the opening of roads 
because it would interfere with their vested right to a monopoly of 
the metropolitan supply.* There is something as blind and brutal 
in the action of the associated railroads in the case before us. 

CONCLUSION. 

This paper has already gone beyond the space we may fairly 
claim. We shall now conclude. All political economists recog- 
nize that the circle of man's wants is susceptible of indefinite 
extension. Whoever calls to mind Cooper's Indians, and at the 
same time thinks of an Athenian of the age of Pericles, or an 
educated artisan of New York to-day, will realize how much 
education has to do with awakening wants. It is as much a 
part of the business of education to provide for such wants as 
to awaken them. Whatever stands in the way of such supply 
is an obstacle to the material purpose of education ; whether it 
be an European landlord of the evil past or a conspiracy of 
American railroads it is equally a public enemy. The comforts 
of life, with leisure to read, to cultivate in some degree a taste 
for the fine arts, to enjoy the best productions of genius as ex- 
hibited on the stage, these are among the wants of modern civil- 
ization which every working-man of good character has a title 
to satisfy. These are quasi-necessities which economists must 
recognize upon their own principles. But even more than these 
should be within the reach of men employed by the great cor- 
porations of the country. They should be enabled to provide 
for an annual holiday for themselves and their families in order 
to admire the fairness of this earth of ours, in the woods, wa- 
ters, mountains ; and, while gaining a fresh store of health, ac- 
quire an appreciation of the lines of beauty which God has 
drawn upon the world he created for man. 

* Senior's Political Economy. 




636 ROME VIA ENGLAND. [Feb., 



ROME VIA ENGLAND. 

BY MARION AMES TAGGART. 

OSTON is a city of ideas. They spring up beside 
the Charles as rushes around other rivers, and 
radiate from the gilded dome of the State-House 
as from the helmet of Pallas Athene. Indeed, it 
is well known that as soon after the destruction 
of the Acropolis as circumstances would permit the goddess 
made her headquarters on that same dome as a convenient 
point from which to distribute ideas to the dwellers around. 

Close to the State-House, straight up the " long mall " in 
the Common, and a short distance northward, stood a sombre 
house, the home of the Hamiltons. In this mansion the ideas 
rife in the atmosphere found a shelter and fostering care. 

Mr. Hamilton had been a tall, visionary man, with a high 
white forehead and far-away blue eyes. He had in his youth 
been imbued with the views of Channing and early Unitarianism, 
and had become an ardent Emersonian. Later he left the 
teachers of earlier days, and adopted German mysticism and a 
gentle atheism, that was discordant with his favorite theory of 
the ultimate preponderance of soul in the universe, and his un- 
ceasing investigation of the influence of soul upon soul, inde- 
pendent of, and superior to, the aid of the body. 

Mrs. Hamilton was an entire contrast to her husband, and 
her ideas had travelled in precisely opposite directions. In her 
youth rationalism had possession of her, chemistry and geology 
had been her passion, and John Stuart Mill her prophet. She 
became a rabid abolitionist in due season, and after the war 
substituted an interest in tenements for science, and a study of 
the effect of improved sanitary condition of the race for that of 
rocks and gases. After her husband's death she revived the 
Puritanism of her ancestors, united the saving of souls of the 
poorer classes with her improvements in their sewerage, and, 
slavery being abolished, turned her attention to the African on 
his native shore, where she proposed imbuing him with Cal- 
vinism, encouraged thereto doubtless by the warmth of his 
climate. 

Somehow, among these ideas crowding his home a little boy 



1 895.] ROME VIA ENGLAND. 637 

managed to grow up, and his naturally precocious mind devel- 
oped rapidly in the invigorating atmosphere. His father had 
died when he was too young to imbibe his views ; but he had 
inherited enough of his mystical nature to prevent him from 
sympathizing with his mother, from whom, on the other hand, 
he had too much practical common sense to follow his father's 
steps. 

Between these conflicting influences Ernest developed ideas 
of his own, and in his twenty-fifth year presented in the old 
house a third, and in that family quite new, phase of thought, 
which took the form of ardent ritualism. 

The Church of the Approach was near where the Hamiltons 
lived. It was ministered to by a kind of religious order that 
lived in something not unlike a cloister, and wore in the street 
a habit with a large silver cross on the breast, that with their 
flowing capes commanded attention. 

Among the young men of their congregation there was no 
one that they valued more highly than Ernest Hamilton, whose 
birth, education, and qualities of mind and heart made him an 
important auxiliary. 

There had been a slight falling off in his fervor that was ob- 
served by his mother with satisfaction. " He will settle down 
to a common-sensed, ordinary Christian by the time he is thirty," 
she thought. 

The truth was, there were two facts that gave Ernest great 
uneasiness. One was, that though he had a firm faith in the 
Real Presence in the Eucharist himself, of his Episcopalian 
friends none save some of his fellow-communicants of the Church 
of the Approach shared his belief. It was a source of actual 
pain to him that, with the exception of a very few, all the 
members of the " Anglo-Catholic Church " " ate and drank un- 
worthily, not discerning the Body of the Lord." 

The other cause of disquiet was closely allied to this one ; 
it was the great diversity of opinion entertained by his friends, 
who were all under the same bishop. These two disturbing 
thoughts intruded themselves frequently, and cooled Ernest's 
ardor a little. He strove to banish them, telling himself that 
he must be patient and suffer with the church ; at the same time 
he could not help perceiving that unless by " the Church " he 
meant the Church of the Approach, she did not suffer at all. 

He was dressing one evening to go to Miss Hardy's when 
these annoying thoughts presented themselves more vigorously 
than usual. Miss Hardy was a great friend of his; a kindly, 



638 ROME VIA ENGLAND. [Feb., 

agreeable lady of thirty-five, young enough to be a pleasant 
companion for a young man, yet old enough to be a safe one. 
She had invited a friend of whom she was very fond Miss 
Hardy was subject to violent affections to pass the winter with 
her, and it was in honor of the arrival of this friend that she 
had sent a few invitations for that first evening of Isabel Du- 
rand's presence in her house. 

Miss Durand was much younger than her hostess, younger 
in fact than Ernest himself, and she was a Catholic ; " Roman- 
ist" Ernest called her in his cogitations, and it was owing to 
this latter fact that the thoughts he strove to banish came to 
him so forcibly that evening. 

At Miss Hardy's house one always met the pleasantest peo- 
ple, and her circle was almost entirely composed of Episcopa- 
lians ; but they were of such divers sorts, high, low, and broad 
churchmen, as well as ritualists, that animated discussions fre- 
quently took place between them, and Ernest foresaw the pro- 
bability of their renewal with the addition of a Catholic to 
help them on. Hence, as he gave a final touch to his necktie 
and turned off the gas, he walked away with the painful sense 
of disunion among his fellow-churchmen unusually keen. 

On arriving at his destination and being presented to Miss 
Durand, Ernest found her so different from his preconception 
of her that he had a confused impression of being introduced 
to the wrong person. As he had opportunity he discovered 
that, though her features were regular and beautiful, she pos- 
sessed more than that, the indescribable something that makes 
what we call a charming woman. There was a womanly ten- 
derness in her clear brown eyes, but Ernest saw in them too 
a gleam of humor, the traces of which he distinguished again 
in the lines of her sweet curving lips. 

There was no other young man present besides himself, a 
fact to which his hostess called his attention as she stood rest- 
ing her hand on the back of her young friend's chair. 

" I have been very good to you to-night, do you know, Er- 
nest?" said Miss Hardy laughingly, "in giving you of all my 
young men friends the chance to know Isabel first. She will be 
very much sought after when they find her out; she always is, 
and you have the chance to make her believe you a pleasanter 
fellow than any who may come later." 

Miss Durand raised her eyes and laughed frankly. "You 
see, Mr. Hamilton," she said in a clear, sweet voice, "what a 
delightful winter Miss Hardy prophesies for me. But no matter 



1 895.] ROME VIA ENGLAND. 639 

what efforts you make I shall not form an opinion till I have 
seen the others." 

" Unaffected, and not at all self-conscious," was Ernest's 
mental comment as he answered : " I give you my word of 
honor, Miss Durand, that Miss Hardy knows no one who can 
compare with me, and I am sure I have had more opportunities 
for judging than you can ever have." 

There were only half a dozen people in Miss Hardy's bright 
little drawing-room that evening. Mr. and Mrs. Townshend 
were her cousins. Mr. Townshend, a lawyer of considerable 
eminence, was considered a successful advocate of everything 
save his own domestic authority, his energetic little wife ruling 
his household, himself included, with a rod of iron, and gov- 
erning her deposed lord in things temporal and eternal, from 
his neckties, which she always bought, to his religion, in which 
he meekly accepted her low-church Episcopalianism. 

Mr. Lowton, Miss Hardy's other guest that evening, was an 
Episcopal minister of the old school, who had formed his ideas 
before ritualism had come to the fore, and adhered to them 
with a comfortable scorn of later notions. He had been a 
friend of Miss Hardy's father, and was a loud-voiced, cheerful 
old gentleman, dearly loving a good story and a good dinner, 
upon whom Ernest was inclined to bestow a sacerdotal dig- 
nity not at all claimed by the worthy man, and which, in fact, 
rather annoyed him. 

As the evening wore on, after Miss Durand had sung to 
them in a pathetic contralto voice some of the Schubert songs, 
Mr. Lowton, who loved music but preferred English songs of 
sentiment, or, better still, old English glees, had taken possession 
of the singer and was telling her eagerly of the time when he 
heard Jenny Lind, and how, when quite a young lad, he had 
heard Malibran in Italian opera in New York. 

Ernest found himself seated by Miss Hardy, a little apart 
from the others ; he was singularly sensitive to music, and after 
such as he had heard his nerves were always quivering, and con- 
versation difficult. Miss Hardy was embroidering religious em- 
blems on a white cloth in gold thread. 

" How beautiful that is, Miss Hardy," said Ernest, bending 
forward to examine one corner of the work. "What is it to 
be?" 

" It is a part of our new altar-cloths. There will be an en- 
tirely new set this Christmas," answered Miss Hardy. 

" Mr. Lowton," exclaimed Mrs. Townshend, in her clear, de- 



640 ROME VIA ENGLAND. [Feb., 

cided voice, "have you heard that some of the ladies of our 
congregation have subscribed for, and are making a complete 
set of vestments, with which they propose adorning our choir? 
And Mr. Bland has actually accepted them ! " 

"So I'm told, so I'm told," said Mr. Lowton, smiling and 
stroking the broadcloth knee that was uppermost above the other. 

" It is quite true, and I am dreadfully vexed," the energetic 
little woman went on. " I have been to that church since I was 
a child ; it has always been low, and it is very trying to see 
such a change made ; Mr. Bland should not have allowed it. 
One of my friends says she will leave the church, but I am not 
prepared to carry my disapproval so far at first. If Mr. Bland 
should go too far, though, I certainly should leave. In that 
case I should ^come to you, Mr. Lowton, which of course would 
be pleasant ; but it is inconveniently far, and besides one be- 
comes attached to the church one was brought up in." 

"Don't borrow trouble, Mrs. Townshend," Mr. Lowton said, 
still smiling. " Bland will never go too far." 

"Well, Emma, what possible objection can you have to the 
vestments ? " began Miss Hardy. 

" Plenty," said Mrs. Townshend with perfect decision. " It 
is useless to talk to you, Alicia, for we never agree, but I am 
an old-fashioned churchwoman, and I am very much annoyed 
with Mr. Bland." 

" Pardon me for the suggestion, Mrs. Townshend," said Er- 
nest gently, " but doesn't it seem to you that we have to sub- 
mit to our superiors?" 

Isabel Durand turned on him eyes of amused wonder. 

"Look here, my dear Hamilton," broke in Mr. Lowton, as 
though feeling himself indirectly attacked. "You good people 
are very inconsistent. You talk more about obedience to reli- 
gious superiors than any of us, yet how many of your religious 
superiors approve of you, do you think? Why, in the old 
bishop's time you remember the old bishop?" 

" Yes, certainly ; he confirmed me," said Ernest. 

" Just so. Well, he was notoriously a low-churchman ; disliked, 
utterly discountenanced, in fact, all the ornamentation and ritu- 
alism of the Church of the Approach. Now, I know that one 
Easter they trimmed everything, as usual, as much like a 
Roman Catholic church as they could, and in the afternoon, 
when the bishop came to confirm, they stripped the whole thing 
till it was like any other Episcopal church. What do you. 
think of that?" 



1 89 5.] ROME VIA ENGLAND. 641 

Ernest looked troubled. " I suppose," he said slowly, "that 
was, in itself, deference to a superior." 

Mr. Lowton laughed. " They had a ritualistic morning out 
of deference to themselves and a plain afternoon out of defer- 
ence to the bishop and the majority of churchmen. No, my 
dear fellow, you do not like it yourself." 

" It certainly is a pity," Ernest said. " I regret such neces- 
sities more than I can say." 

" It is trying," said Miss Hardy, " but such things are not 
usual. Obedience on one side and compromise on the other 
will gradually mend matters." 

" Obedience to compromise ! " exclaimed Mr. Lowton. " My 
dear Alicia, you get into dreadful tangles. Just let me tell you 
what happened in well, in a city of this Union," Mr. Lowton 
went on, with the intense enjoyment of a joke, even against him- 
self, which he always betrayed. " It happened there was as low- 
church a bishop as our old one was, and as ritualistic a church 
as your own Approach. The bishop was present one Sunday 
morning, and as he objected strongly to the procession at best, 
he begged Father I won't mention names he begged the rec- 
tor at least to leave the cross behind the door. ' Certainly, 
bishop,' said the rector. 'Anything to oblige you. Only you 
know we shall have to alter the hymn to suit, and instead of 
singing, With the cross of Jesus going on before, we shall have 
to sing: With the cross of Jesus left behind the door.' And 
he'd have done it, sir," cried Mr. Lowton with a laugh that 
made the room ring, " but the bishop told him to carry the 
cross." 

Miss Durand, after her first shocked exclamation at the free 
use of a name that she never mentioned without Catholic rev- 
erence, laughed too. "It is very funny," she said. 

" Funny ! " exclaimed Ernest with no slight annoyance. " I 
cannot say I find it so. However, it may never have hap- 
pened." 

" I give you my word that one of the choristers present 
when it was said told it me," said Mr. Lowton. 

" Oh ! I knew that you believed it, sir," said Ernest with 
perhaps, a temptation to satire. " But even if it be true it 
proves nothing." 

"It illustrates that obedience to superiors is not revived with 
imitations of monastic life," said Mr. Lowton more gravely, 
"and that these things are not an expression of the feeling of 
our church. I am much kinder to her than you, my dear boy, 

VOL. LX. 41 



642 ROME VIA ENGLAND. [Feb., 

when I do not make such claims for her, but take her as I find 
her, transplanted and flourishing as the Protestant Episcopal 
Church in this country. Those things are not Protestant, my 
dear fellow." 

" Heaven forbid ! " cried Miss Hardy, while Ernest said 
quickly : 

"Pray do not use that word, my dear sir; we are not Pro- 
testants." 

" Pardon me, but I am," answered Mr. Lowton, " and you 
make me a double-dyed one. I protest against the Church of 
Rome saving your presence, Miss Durand and against the 
people within our pale who strive to hold an impossible position 
mid-way between." 

"We are the Catholic Church," said Miss Hardy, breaking 
her silk in the vehemence of the twitch she gave it. 

" With all my heart," said Mr. Lowton, " but nevertheless 
we are Protestants." 

"Not that, Mr. Lowton," said Ernest. "We lament Rome's 
errors, but we are not Protestants." 

" And Rome is greatly obliged to you ! " said Mr. Lowton. 
" She laughs at your talk of union, and denies our orders. 
Here is a young lady looking amused, who considers me no 
more a clergyman than a Baptist preacher. Eh ! do you deny 
my orders, Miss Durand ? " 

"I never enter into controversy, Mr. Lowton," said Isabel 
smiling. " I have neither the taste nor necessary knowledge. 
However, I deny them, certainly. The question of orders is of 
secondary importance. The Greek Church has orders, you know. 
That the English Church is out of communion with Peter's See 
is enough. This very disunion you lament is the result of be- 
ing cut off from the centre of unity." 

Mrs. Townshend exclaimed : " Have we a female Jesuit 
among us? She disclaims all controversial powers, and then 
proceeds to cut us; Alicia, you are harboring a serpent." 

Miss Durand laughed gaily. " If all serpents waited to be 
invited to sting before they showed their fangs, what delightful 
forests we should have," she said. 

" You surely do not look upon us as heretics, Miss Durand ? " 
said Ernest anxiously. "Think how in all essential points we 
are one with Rome." 

Isabel shook her head, "I really dislike to speak at all, Mr. 
Hamilton," she said. "Catholics rest so firmly on infallibility 
that we are often reproached for indifference by those who do 



1 895'] ROME VIA ENGLAND. 643 

not understand our peaceful security. It seems to me, however 
that far from being one with us in essential points you do not 
even agree together." 

" In essential points ? Oh, yes ! " cried Ernest. 

Isabel looked at him pityingly. " Unless the ritualists form a 
sect by themselves," she said, "you certainly disagree in points 
of vital importance. Baptismal regeneration, the Real Presence ; 
these two alone are enough, but there are many more." 

" Oh ! we believe that baptism is necessary for salvation," 
said Miss Hardy. 

"Nonsense!" cried Mrs. Townshend, "I believe nothing of 
the sort." 

" No," said Mr. Townshend, speaking for the first time. " An 
idea worthy of the dark ages." 

" Well," said Mr. Lowton gravely, " I believe baptism is in 
a sense regeneration ; yet I do not believe it is necessary for 
salvation." Ernest's face clouded ; he looked appealingly at 
Isabel, who smiled at him with sympathy for the distress he 
showed. 

"As to the Real Presence," Mr. Lowton continued, "I think 
it is monstrous and deny it utterly." 

" Of course," assented Mr. Townshend. 

" I believe it firmly," said Miss Hardy eagerly. 

" I believe," said Mrs. Townshend slowly, " something I can- 
not define, and in this one respect I differ from the majority 
of low-church people, who totally deny, as a rule, like Mr. Low- 
ton. I do not believe in the Real Presence literally, like Alicia 
and Mr. Hamilton, yet I believe we receive Christ more than 
spiritually. In fact," she said reverently, and with lowered voice, 
" I think no one can define what we believe on that awful 
point." 

" I believe the Lord's Supper to be a commemorative Chris- 
tian feast," said Mr. Lowton, "perfectly easy to define clearly. 
I believe the bread and wine to be merely bread and wine, and 
I never have any compunction or anxiety about what is done 
with any that may remain." 

Ernest gave a genuine shudder. "You make me wish Miss 
Durand were right and you had not orders," he cried in tones 
that trembled. " If I thought all you say were true I would go 
over to Rome to-morrow." Silence followed this outburst for 
a moment. 

" My dear Ernest," Mr. Lowton said, " that would be a fatal 
misstep certainly, so fatal that I say a very strong thing when 



644 ROME VIA ENGLAND. [Feb., 

I tell you that it would be more logical than staying where you 
are now." 

" It seems to me we have had tenough controversy for one 
evening," said Miss Hardy pleasantly. " Isabel, please sing for us 
that ' O Salutaris ' you sang for me last night." 

Isabel arose and went to the piano. Her rich voice thrilled 
with peculiar sweetness as she sang : " Qui coeli pandis ostium, 
da robur, fer auxilium," and lingered on the last words till 
" Nobis donet in patria " sank into Ernest's soul, calming the 
disturbance of a few moments before. Miss Durand turned, and 
met the look he gave her. " Do not be afraid of your own 
conclusions," she said gently. " Let me sing something you all 
must love," she added, turning to the music-stand for a hymnal. 

She found Cardinal Newman's hymn, " Lead, kindly Light," 
and sang it with all its power of expression. 

Ernest felt the significance of the words and author. It 
aroused him to something like resistance. " I need not fear my 
own conclusions," he said, as soon as the last note was sung, 
" since they are to be more faithful to my church the more she 
needs me." 

When Miss Durand had been in Boston a month she and 
Ernest were very good friends, and when he went to Miss 
Hardy's house, which was not seldom, he received as cordial a 
welcome from the younger as from the elder lady. He felt that 
in the companionship of this unaffected, beautiful girl the lack 
of a sister, which he had always known, was in a measure supplied 
to him. It was, doubtless, this growing fraternal affection that 
called her face before him so often in the day, and made the 
light of her pure eyes the unconscious illumination by which he 
more and more viewed things and people, and it certainly must 
have been fraternal affection that caused him to see flaws which 
he had never discerned before in the young men of his ac- 
quaintance whom he met in her presence. 

With the freemasonry of young and congenial people Isabel's 
and Ernest's friendship reached a degree of intimacy quite dis- 
proportioned to its duration, and Ernest wondered how life 
had been endured before this beautiful feminine sympathy had 
permeated it. They shared such mild forms of enjoyment as 
Advent, which Miss Hardy rigorously observed, admitted plea- 
sure seen through a purple veil and it was to Isabel Ernest 
found himself turning to share every thought or interest of his 
more serious occupations. 

So Christmas came with its bright cheerfulness and loving 



1 895.] ROME VIA ENGLAND. 645 

kindness that has made it the dearest festival of the Christian 
year, and caused it to win its way more and more even in Pu- 
ritan Boston. 

Before the New Year Ernest came one evening to Miss 
Hardy's house when she was not at home, and Isabel was seated 
alone in the dim firelight of the library. The night was gray 
and cold, and the wind blew sharp and chill from the river. 
Isabel rang for lights, which showed that Ernest's face was pale 
and troubled, and his manner grave. They had not met since 
Christmas eve, and Isabel exclaimed, as she saw his gloomy 
countenance : " Is anything the matter, Mr. Hamilton ? " 

" Yes," Ernest answered. " I am glad to find you alone to 
tell you about it. I suppose a Roman Catholic is a strange 
counsellor in such a difficulty, but you will understand." 

" I will try," said Isabel gently. 

" I received communion Christmas morning, Miss Durand," 
Ernest said, plunging at once into the matter. " Unless I can 
bring myself to feel differently from my present feeling it will 
be my last communion in the Church of the Approach." 

"Why, Mr. Hamilton!" cried Isabel. "What do you in- 
tend doing ?" 

" Nothing," answered Ernest, sadly. " There is nothing 
that I can do. I can go nowhere else ; it is not that. It is 
hard to explain, but in some way scales seem to have fallen 
from my eyes. It is not what I thought. Individually we are 
often very sincere ; collectively we are I don't like to say what. 
Certainly very unreal. But the main thing is the Eucharist. 
Miss Durand, Mr. Lowton was right. I have been fearful for 
a long time; now I know. It is mere bread and wine, and I 
have believed always in the Real Presence." 

Isabel sprang up, her face shining with suppressed excite- 
ment. 

" It is like the story of the pagan that came in disguise to 
the court of Charlemagne," she exclaimed breathlessly. " It 
was Christmas morning, and when the king and his court knelt 
at the rail the poor pagan had a vision of the Infant in the 
Host whom the others could not see, and he became a Chris- 
tian. You have been shown where He is not, and it is a part of 
the same mercy." 

" I was afraid that you would feel thus," Ernest said sadly, 
though moved by her emotion, " but I cannot feel so now. I 
am adrift. It is painful to be so shaken in one's surest trust. 
The disunion and varying opinions among us have long dis- 



646 ROME VIA ENGLAND. [Feb., 

turbed me, and all at once I see clearly that I have been 
wholly mistaken ; the faith I held is not the faith of my 
church, though the awful truth seems to be that she has no 
faith. What can I do?" 

" It is very hard to know how to answer," Isabel said. " I 
have no right you know what I would say. Try to find out 
what you believe is right, and do it steadily. If it is to wait, 
wait. Whatever is required of you, if you really want to know 
you will be shown. All I can say is, be quiet and true, and do 
not fear. No one who wants to do right can ever go wrong." 

" Here is Miss Hardy," said Ernest hastily. " Please do 
not speak of this. Thank you." 

Miss Hardy glanced hastily from one to the other of her 
guests as she entered the room, but by an effort Ernest had 
thrown off much of his gloom, and Miss Hardy found them dis- 
cussing plans for a sleigh-ride to the reservoir should the 
threatening snow fall. 

"I rejoice," said Ernest as he rose to go, "that our good 
old Puritan forefathers were gathered to their reward before 
my day. It is long past curfew, yet no watchman on his 
rounds shall challenge me as I go home." 

"Speak for yourself and Miss Alicia, please, when you say 
our" answered Isabel. "There was never a 'crop-headed' 
ancestor among the Maryland cavaliers from whom I claim 
descent." 

" We sympathize on that point," said Ernest, " so I shall 
not take up the defence. Good night, Miss Hardy. Good- 
night," he added, turning to Isabel, holding out his hand and 
looking straight into her eyes " Good night, daughter of the 
cavaliers." 

Miss Hardy happened to be engaged just then in free- 
ing her dress from the carved point of the table on which it 
had become entangled, so she did not see the look Ernest had 
given her young friend, and his words had certainly been noth- 
ing remarkable, yet she walked over to the fire and began 
mending it, carefully avoiding looking at Isabel. 

A great deal has been said of electric glances, and the 
simile holds good, for electricity affects the surrounding atmos- 
phere, and it is not necessary to be struck to know that there 
has been a shower. 

Isabel had herself made a discovery which she pondered 
upon that night in her own apartment. The result was, that 
when she was aroused from her meditations by the clock strik- 



1 895.] ROME VIA ENGLAND. 647 

ing twelve, she walked to the glass and looked long at her own 
reflection with the searching gaze of a woman who sees her- 
self for the first time as the beloved of the man whose opinion 
is more important to her than that of all the world. Then she 
turned away with a sigh. " God bless and guide him," she 
said ; " but I must go. There must not be even an unconscious 
influence at such a time." 

When Ernest called again at Miss Hardy's, he received a 
kindly welcome from his old friend and a little note of fare- 
well from the newer and dearer, but the house was dark and 
empty, for Isabel had gone. 

Almost every man has some hidden resource outside his 
daily avocation to which he gives his best thought and inter- 
est. In one it is ambition, social or political; in another art, 
or some darling science ; in all, sooner or later, the love, for 
weal or woe, of a woman. 

Ernest's thoughts had turned in a direction unusual in the 
life of American youth, a life so practical that it wastes little 
energy on a future for which they seem to consider eternity 
long enough without borrowing from time. He had given real 
enthusiasm and devotion to the Church of the Approach, and 
the withdrawal of it left a vacuum costing him keen regret. 
Since he had lost her he discovered fully what Isabel had 
been to him, and he had to suffer at once the deprivation of 
the two' dearest objects of his existence. 

When he learned from Miss Hardy that Miss Durand had 
gone, he hinted to her that he might be called to Baltimore 
on business in a few weeks, when he should try to see her 
friend. Miss Hardy, whose conception of the state of the case 
was entirely at fault, set aside the business subterfuge as be- 
neath notice, and with the philanthropy of the surgeon who 
amputates a precious limb to save the life of the mutilated 
body, gave Ernest clearly to understand that his visit would 
not only be useless, but unwelcome. 

Since then he had settled down to make the best of things 
that he could, but the best was a sorry one. The friends that 
he had formerly seen most frequently he quite deserted, and he 
left the Church of the Approach altogether, not even attending 
service there as he had at first intended doing. When the 
worthy fathers inquired for him of Miss Hardy she could give 
them no tidings of him, for he avoided her house chiefly as the 
spot that most emphasized his loneliness. He would tramp or 
ride for hours through the most inclement weather, coming 



648 ROME VIA ENGLAND. [Feb., 

home utterly weary, but beaten in the fight. His mother 
noted and interpreted these symptoms aright, but they gave 
her little uneasiness, for she did not consider them dangerous 
as long as she saw that his room was properly warmed and 
aired, and she had great faith in the cure time would effect, 
not being of a sentimental turn of mind, though even senti- 
mental people learn to smile at fifty at the wounds of twenty- 
five. 

Ernest had been too prominent in the Church of the 
Approach for his absence not to be noticed and commented 
upon, and the explanation offered for his withdrawal founded 
upon experience of similar cases. 

" I hear you are going over to Rome ? " said Mr. Townshend, 
meeting him in the street. 

" I am not sure of going anywhere," Ernest answered. " If 
I do it will be by centrifugal force. It is the Church of the 
Approach that sent me, and the route will be via England." 

Ernest had trusted confidently in his own former con- 
clusions, and they had been mistaken, he said ; he would take 
all possible care that it should not happen again. What he did 
not say, and was in reality the strongest reason for his holding 
back, was that he feared lest his love for Isabel should draw 
him toward her faith, and blind his mental vision. So having 
the first necessity for self-knowledge, self-diffidence, he waited, 
a Catholic outside the fold, till another Advent had" nearly 
rolled around. He had come in just before dinner one evening, 
and dropped into his own particular chair in the dark library. 
He opened the newspaper, shaking out its damp folds and re- 
arranging it so that the page he wanted should be on the out- 
side. In the corner said to be most interesting to its female 
readers the name of Baltimore attracted his attention, as any 
familiar or especially interesting word will stand out from among 
its surroundings. Turning to look again he read : " In Balti- 
more, on the loth inst, by the Rev. Father Carmen, Mr. John 
Black, of New York, to Miss Isabelle M. Durand, of Baltimore." 

The paper dropped to the floor with a rustle; Ernest sat 
quite still, and the patter of the rain and hail fell clearly against 
the window. Mrs. Hamilton opened the. door and looked in. 
" Ernest," she said, " dinner is ready ; come." 

He sprang to his feet with something like a groan. " I am 
going out, mother," he said, and rushed past her into the hall. 
Once in the street he walked rapidly away, not noting where 
he went, turning corners and running into passers-by without 



1 895.] ROME VIA ENGLAND. 649 

seeing them or hearing their indignant exclamations. He turned 
into Commonwealth Avenue, and hurried along the pavement 
till the lantern of the Redemptorist church came in sight. 
Turning back he slowly retraced his steps, and gaining his 
chamber he shut himself in with his grief. 

There is a quarter of the little city far from the neighbor- 
hood of the State-House far in habit, for distances are not 
great in Boston. An old servitor of Ernest's house had been 
injured in an accident, and Ernest bent his steps southward one 
afternoon, several weeks after he had read the notice of Isabel's 
marriage, toward the City Hospital to make inquiry as to the 
old man's condition. 

It was Epiphany : the first Friday in the new year. Er- 
nest came across Franklin Square, bright in the winter sunshine, 
and paused a moment before a church, over the door of which 
a figure of the Blessed Virgin stood in a niche, and the pigeons 
had sought a refuge in either outstretched hand. Ernest re- 
membered that this was the church to which Miss Durand had 
gone during her stay in Boston, and a strong desire to enter 
seized him, which he attributed to the longing for her, against 
which he hourly battled. " At least I need no longer fear to 
trust my own motives," he thought, and went up the low, broad 
steps. He had been studying Catholic claims of late, and the 
title of a book which had impressed him recurred to him. 
4< The Invitation Heeded" he thought, pushing the interior doors. 
4t Not accepted ; heeded, yes." 

The church was large and beautiful; white columns sup- 
ported the vaulted dome, all was light and cheerful, and for a 
moment the unity betrayed by the different classes worshipping 
there struck Ernest with a sudden sense of verity. But only 
for a moment. As he walked up the aisle, his eyes festing on 
the brilliantly lighted altar, on the monstrance in its centre, all 
sense of place, time, people, joy, sorrow, himself, was lost in an 
overwhelming feeling of the Presence there. On, with eyes 
fixed and senses submerged in knowledge alone, tasting the 
mystery of eternity in time he could no longer measure, he 
walked, till reaching the rail, he fell upon his knees. 

It was not reason, it was not faith, it was the revelation 
sometimes made to this degree, often dimly felt by those who 
only know that " a Catholic church has such a striking atmos- 
phere ; is so different." Emmanuel : God-with-us. 

Like the apostle he had always especially loved, Ernest 
was annihilated in the Presence for which he had faithfully 



650 ROME VIA ENGLAND. [Feb., 

sought, mistakenly worshipped, at last come into, and instantly, 
completely known. His life had been spotless, and that the 
pure in heart shall see God is often singularly fulfilled in life, 
for the pure most frequently see the truth. 

How long he knelt there he did not know ; it was the ab- 
sorption into God of the Christian, so different from the Nir- 
vana of the Eastern mystic. He was aroused by a touch on 
the shoulder ; the crowd had increased, and the church was 
lighted to the door. 

" Please go into a pew," whispered a lay brother. " It is 
benediction time." 

When Ernest left the church he staggered, and was dazed ; 
he walked into the darkness of the street, his mental retina 
dazzled by the light flooding upon it. He went to the college, 
and rang the bell. He was shown into the bare parlor, and a 
priest responded to his request for one of the fathers. 

" Baptize me," Ernest said without preface, and told the 
story of his life, his study, the knowledge which had come, al- 
most excluding faith. 

" It is the feast of the Manifestation to the Gentiles," 
thought Ernest as he stood later on the college steps, looking 
up to the stars, before going home, having completed the 
arrangements for his reception into the church, which could be 
speedy, since he needed but to accept the primacy of the 
Apostolic See and group around it in logical certainty the 
dogmas he had always held. " The feast of the Manifestation 
to the Gentiles, and the completion of Isabel's story of the 
pagan at the court of Charlemagne." 

Victory, peace, joy, sang jubilate in his heart ; human love 
was denied him, but divine love held him close, and in the in- 
finitude of its ecstasies the thought of Isabel could bring no pang. 

Ernest's reception, into the Catholic Church, after some 
time of careful instruction and preparation, though not unex- 
pected, caused a good deal of indignation among his friends. 
His mother was very angry, and the fact that she had been for 
some time in her life without any faith did not lessen her 
wrath. Some of the good people of the Church of the Ap- 
proach said that Ernest Hamilton had always b,een a little 
queer, and touching their foreheads significantly murmured 
something about his father, and its being inherited. 

Miss Hardy was immensely disgusted, but being a woman 
of sentimental proclivities, and possessed of tardily awakened 
suspicions, she wrote a letter telling the news to Isabel. 



1895.] ROME VIA ENGLAND. 651 

When he had been a Catholic a month and a little more, 
Ernest received a note of invitation to pass an evening that 
he should himself appoint with Miss Hardy. 

Accordingly he stood one evening once more upon the 
door-step awaiting an answer to his summons. The same maid 
admitted him whom he had seen there a year ago, and he 
went again into the library. 

Miss Hardy received him with unexpected cordiality, and 
he was engaged in a conversation that totally ignored the 
changes of the past year when the door opened, and Isabel 
walked, smiling, in holding out to him a hand of welcome. 

The words he was speaking died on Ernest's lips, the room 
seemed to fade before him, and he gazed at her in vain effort 
to form words of greeting. 

" You are surprised," she said gently, and seated herself, 
turning to Miss Hardy with some trifling remark to give him 
time to recover. 

" Have 'you been here long, Miss Mrs. Black ? " Ernest 
stammered at last. 

" Only a few days," said Isabel. " Why do you call me 
that, Mr. Hamilton?" 

" I saw your I saw the notice in the paper," he answered. 
" I hope it is not too late to wish you happiness." 

" Oh ! " cried Isabel, blushing finely as a light broke in upon 
her mind. "Did you see the notice of Bella's marriage? You 
thought it was I? She used to live here; I suppose that was 
why it was in a Boston paper. It should have been Durant, 
not Durand ; it was a misprint that amused my friends in Bal- 
timore ; I never dreamed that it would travel so far. My name 
is spelled with one / too, while hers is Isa&ette, double / e. It 
was a mistake certainly, but not a very strange one." 

As Isabel spoke and Ernest's brain slowly received the 
meaning of the words he heard, his face expressed the intense 
emotion that made speech still more impossible than at first, 
and Isabel's blush as she looked at him burned higher and 
deeper, till her woman's tact deserted her and she sat with her 
eyes cast down in utter silence. 

Miss Hardy looked from one to the other, and as she real- 
ized that she was in the midst of a genuine romance she 
straightway forgave Ernest his recent conversion, and, like 
the considerate woman she was, left the room murmuring some- 
thing about a shade of silk that she had left upstairs. 

Whether it is a good way to find forgotten shades of silk to 



652 ROME VIA ENGLAND. [Feb. 

walk upstairs to one's room and sit down smiling in the dark 
for three-quarters of an hour is doubtful, but this Miss Hardy 
certainly did, and returned at the end of that time still smil- 
ing, but without the silk. 

Not that either of her guests noticed the lack; they were 
deep in a discussion of the comparative merits of Dickens and 
Thackeray, which argument Ernest had opened by taking up 
a volume of the latter author exactly fifteen seconds before 
Miss Hardy opened the door. 

Isabel's visit was not a long one, but in the following sum- 
mer Ernest made the journey to Baltimore from which Miss 
Hardy had previously discouraged him, and that this time it 
was really on business may be believed from the fact that he 
was very busy in arranging a charming little house before he 
left Boston, and it is likely that he had to go to Baltimore for 
some of the appointments. 

He resumed his place among his business friends after his 
return with a face so radiant and manner so buoyant that 
several dyspeptics contemplated immediate removal to Balti- 
more. 

But the true secret of his joy lay in the soft brown eyes 
that every night watched for him out of the windows of the 
new home, eyes that must have had a charm since even the 
elder Mrs. Hamilton vouchsafed to say that for a truly intel- 
.lectual woman, and one who united grace of manner with every 
accomplishment, and clear practical views for helping the poor, 
she knew no one who surpassed her son's wife Isabel. 

This was a great victory, for Mrs. Hamilton had been much 
displeased with Ernest for throwing himself away on a Catho- 
lic, when she had intended him for a young lady of advanced 
views. 

There were not wanting those who said that he had become 
a Catholic in order to win his wife, but Isabel and Ernest 
knew the truth, and were happy enough to smile at a world 
which held for them no ungratified desire. 





THE FLIGHT INTO EGYPT. {Hoffmann.} 



IN HOFFMANN'S STUDIO. 
BY MARY CATHERINE CROWLEY. 

ERR HOFFMANN lives in Dresden, and is a profes- 
sor of the celebrated art school of that interesting 
old city. Although not one of his great pictures 
has crossed the ocean, his work, as reproduced by 
engravings and that friend of the humble lover 
of art, the camera, is perhaps more generally known in the 
United States than that of any other German artist of the pre- 
sent day. 




654 IN HOFFMANN'S STUDIO. [Feb., 

His fame is of the character hardest to win, dearest when 
gained; he is not only distinguished in art, but the message of 
his genius is so noble and direct that it appeals to the hearts 
of those who, knowing little of technique, yet instinctively love 
and are responsive to whatever is truly beautiful. His pictures 
are not only noted but popular. 

Shortly after my arrival in Dresden, an acquaintance con- 
nected with the Academy was so kind as to give me a card of 
introduction to Professor Hoffmann, saying, in response to a 
demur lest the call might be an intrusion : 

" Not at all ; Hoffmann likes Americans, they are very ap- 
preciative of his pictures, you know. Unfortunately he is to 
leave town on Monday for a little sojourn in the country. But 
he will probably be at leisure to-morrow morning ; why not go 
then?" 

The next day was Sunday and, after attending Mass at the 
Hofkirche, or Court Church, I engaged a carriage and told the 
driver to take me to " Number Strehlener Strasse." 

The way led through the most attractive part of Dresden : 
across the quaint old market-place, now strangely unfamiliar in 
its Sabbath desertion and stillness ; past a green park where foun- 
tains played, and through avenues shaded by overarching trees 
and lined with pretty homes. These homes had gardens in 
front, and sometimes a rustic summer-house upon the garden 
wall. More frequently, however, the neat parterres were en- 
closed merely by an iron paling which afforded a bright glimpse 
of blooming flower-beds wherein no single blossom seemed per- 
mitted to grow wild, and of luxuriant rose-bushes pruned into 
diminutive trees, prim and well regulated as the comely young 
girls who peered at the passers-by from the ivy-wreathed arbors 
or behind the blinds of the old-fashioned casements. From 
one of these quiet avenues we turned into a still quieter 
street and stopped on the slope of a hill before a picturesque 
little Gothic house, up the stone front of which climbed an as- 
piring vine, as if ambitious to peep in at the studio windows. 
The small garden bore a family resemblance to the others in 
the vicinity, and was also shut in by a high iron fence. 

A ring at the gate brought a trim, pink-cheeked servant maid 
upon the scene. When asked if she understood any English or 
French she shook her head, but was good-naturedly eager to do 
her part towards getting over the difficulty. I was therefore 
encouraged to explain, in very halting German, the object of 
my call. 



18950 



IN HOFFMANN'S STUDIO. 



655 



" Ya, ya ; Ichverstehe" she cried, with a smile, and went on 
to say that Professor Hoffmann was indisposed and perhaps un- 
able to receive visitors that day, but if the lady would come in 
wait a few moments she would ascertain. 

Thereupon she led the way up the straight, flagged walk to 




"GET THEE BEHIND ME, SATAN." {Hoffmann.} 

the front door, and thence to a charming little drawing-room. 
Then she disappeared with my note of introduction. 

The little drawing-room was in itself a picture ; the polished 
floor half covered with soft Eastern rugs of richly blended hues, 
the walls hung with paintings and artistic souvenirs ; here upon 



656 IN HOFFMANN'S STUDIO. [Feb., 

a bracket a rare bit of bric-a-brac, there on a pedestal a lovely 
piece of Dresden china. Several easy-chairs invitingly placed 
gave the apartment an appearance of cosiness, while in a cor- 
ner stood an upright piano, suggestive of restful evenings soothed 
or enlivened by music and song. A portrait above the piano 
could not fail to attract the attention. It was that of a hand- 
some man of fair complexion with a noble intellectual face, 
thoughtful blue eyes, and a light brown beard worn long after 
the German and English fashion. 

Presently the maid returned accompanied by the fraulein, or 
housekeeper, who said Professor Hoffmann begged to be ex- 
cused from coming down, but would be happy to see me in 
the studio. Following her, therefore, I mounted a narrow, 
crooked staircase that led up between the walls to the unpre- 
tending atelier, where in peaceful seclusion the painter has 
wrought out his beautiful conceptions. 

As I entered the room a gentleman, the original of the 
portrait below, rose from the depths of an arm-chair, in front 
of which was spread a handsome tiger-skin. 

After a cordial greeting, expressed in excellent English, he 
continued : " You must pardon me for not going to the draw- 
ing-room to welcome you, but you see I am unexpectedly an 
invalid, and walk with difficulty." 

An attack of rheumatism, I thought, regretfully. It turned 
out, however, that the professor was suffering from a slightly 
sprained ankle, the accident having occurred the evening be- 
fore. 

" I am sorry, but I have hardly any work here to show 
you," he said as, smilingly disregarding a protest against his 
making any exertion, he slowly crossed the room. 

" The only finished picture which I have in the studio is 
that upon the easel." 

This painting had charmed my gaze the moment I passed 
the threshold. Only the presence of the artist could have 
diverted one's attention from it. 

It was the exquisite picture of " Christ and the Rich Ruler." 

" You know it ? " he inquired. " It has only recently been 
engraved." 

He seemed pleased at the reply that I had admired it great- 
ly, even from the reproductions. Although these are, on the 
whole, satisfactory, it is not possible for an engraving or even 
a copy in oils to give an adequate idea of this chef-doeuvre, 
to reflect the majesty of the Christ, the searching tenderness 



1 895.] IN HOFFMANN'S STUDIO. 657 

of his glance as it rests upon the troubled, handsome counte- 
nance of the young man who, though moved by that convinc- 
ing appeal to mind as well as heart, and urged by lofty aspira- 
tions to embrace the invitation to a higher life, yet hesitates 
and finally refuses to follow in the path of self-denial. 




CHRIST AWAKING THE SLEEPING DISCIPLES. (Hoffmann,') 

And the coloring ! Who but Hoffmann shows us such tones 
of purplish red, and dark gold, and blue and brown? Not even 
amid the splendors of Paul Veronese do we see richer raiment 
or such lines of old-rose, ashes of-roses, and mahogany. And 
then, that hazardous dash of vivid green, which none but a 
VOL. LX. 42 



658 IN HOFFMANN'S STUDIO. [Feb., 

genius would venture to employ, yet which boldly defines, and 
steadies, and brings out the harmonies of the other colors, 
making the perfect whole. 

The old painters knew nothing of many of these tones of 
color, or of the pigments used to produce them, but Hoffmann 
appears to be master of all the tints discovered by modern art. 

Alluding to the " Christ in the Temple," I spoke of my 
delight at seeing the original in the Dresden Gallery. 

"Ah yes," said the professor simply, "Americans seem to 
like that picture." 

The appreciation of his visitor being evident, he drew from 
a recess at the end of the studio two canvases, which he set 
side by side at the foot of the easel. 

" These are merely sketches," he said, " or studies for two 
large pictures intended for the walls of a church, or rather a 
chapel where the marriage ceremony is performed." 

It was unnecessary to explain the subjects, which could be 
told at a glance. One was " The Marriage of Cana," the 
other " Christ at the House of Lazarus, and the Choice of 
Martha and Mary." 

Although the painter unassumingly described it as a sketch 
and would undoubtedly bestow much painstaking labor upon it 
before he would suffer it to leave his easel, " The Marriage of 
Cana " would appear to the majority of observers to require 
but little to make it a finished work. 

The whole atmosphere of the picture is lovely, reverential, 
and natural. The change of the water into wine is indicated 
by the presence of the stone water-jars and the golden, jewelled 
cups in the hands of the attendants. Christ is represented, 
however, not in the act of performing the miracle, but stand- 
ing in all the majesty of his newly acknowledged mission, with 
his hands raised in benediction above the heads of the young 
bride and bridegroom. 

Hoffmann succeeds signally in his portrayal of our Saviour, 
which is always religious and appeals to the ideal in every hu- 
man heart. Thus in this picture the figure of Christ is strong 
and beautiful, the attitude and expression shadowing forth the 
divinity, together with all the tenderness, and graciousness, and 
human sympathy of the perfect humanity. 

The countenance, as in all the Christs of Hoffmann, is that of 
the Child Jesus in the Temple, the same face but grown older, 
more commanding, more benign, and with the divinity shining 
through more and more. 



I895-] I** HOFFMANN'S STUDIO. 659 

Of the wedding group the richly apparelled bride, a fair 
young girl with peach-blow complexion, deep blue eyes and 
red-gold hair, is very sweet and winning. One can almost see 
her blush in her shy happiness as she looks up with awe to 
receive the nuptial blessing. Beside her stands the youthful 




CHRIST LAID IN THE TOMB. (Hoffmann.) 

bridegroom in costly vesture, handsome, proud, and triumphant, 
yet reverent and impressed. Behind the newly wedded pair are 
the parents of each, whose faces present an interesting study. 
Beyond them are grouped some of the guests; the background 
affords a glimpse of a spacious banquet hall. 



660 IN HOFFMANN'S STUDIO. [Feb., 

To the right of Christ are his mother, John, Peter, and 
other disciples. The gentle, pensive sympathy of the Madonna 
with the joy of the occasion, the tranquillity of John, the ardor 
of Peter, are beautifully depicted. 

The companion picture represents Christ in the garden of 
Lazarus' house. The place is bright with flowers, the sky blue 
and cloudless, the sunshine all pervading. He is standing near 
the fountain, and at his feet, half kneeling, half resting against 
its marble base, is Mary with upturned face listening with rapt 
attention to his words. 

In contrast to the calm of her expression is the imperious 
countenance of Martha, who has apparently just come in search 
of her sister. She stands a little in the background, and the 
face of Christ is turned towards her as she prefers her com- 
plaint : 

"Lord, hast thou no care that my sister has left me alone 
to serve? Speak to her, therefore, that she help me." 

One can almost hear the reproachful, tender reply that be- 
speaks the will to reveal to a nature over-fretted by worldly 
cares the secret of contentment and peace. 

" Martha, Martha ! thou art troubled about many things." 

" You will go on with this work, Professor Hoffmann ? " I 
asked. 

" No," was the response. " I decided to abandon it, because 
it would require too much time and labor. It would be five 
years before the pictures on the wall of the chapel could be 
completed, for the place would be too cold to admit of one's 
painting there in winter. And then, after all my trouble, per- 
haps the dampness would speedily ruin them." 

"There is one of your pictures, professor, which I have 
always especially admired," said I ; " that is the Saint Ce- 
cilia." 

He appeared at a loss, saying : " I do not understand." 

" Die Heilige Cecilia." 

"But I do not remember," he protested. 

" Oh, indeed, it is assuredly yours," I declared. 

"I have always thought it very beautiful, and have treasured 
a small engraving of it ever since I was a child." 

He smiled, but with a puzzled air, and I found myself in 
the singular predicament of trying to persuade an artist that he 
had painted a picture which he had himself forgotten. At last 
the recollection seemed to dawn upon him. 

"Oh, yes!" he exclaimed, "Die Heilige Cecilia a little 



1895-] Iff HOFFMANN'S STUDIO. 661 

thing ; I did it many years ago ; it is in a private gallery at 
Munich." 

" If I had known that, I should never have left Munich 
without seeing it, if a glimpse were to be had ! " 

He looked amused. Certainly only a painter capable of 
executing so beautiful a work as this Saint Cecilia could have 




ST. CECILIA. {Hoffmann.} 

forgotten it. Many critics consider that no modern artist has 
given us so exquisite a conception of the patroness of music. 

" So many of your friends in America would envy me the 
pleasure of this morning, Professor Hoffmann," I said. "What 
a satisfaction it would be to them if you could be induced to 
send a picture, like this one of " Christ and the Rich Ruler," 
for instance, to the United States for exhibition." 



662 IN HOFFMANN'S STUDIO. [Feb., 

" But there is always a risk in sending paintings across the 
water. They may be spoiled by dampness, as I said before, 
or injured by handling, or defaced in a variety of ways." 

"Then your American admirers will have to come to Dres- 
den to see them." 

He laughed. 

" But you, Professor Hoffmann, have you no desire to visit 
the United States? Shall we not welcome you there some 
day?" 

" Ah, well ! " he answered, " we painters are a stay-at-home 
people, and care little for travel and sight-seeing. We live quiet, 
uneventful lives, working and dreaming in retirement and soli- 
tude, and, when in need of rest or change, contenting ourselves 
with very simple recreations. But we are always glad to see 
our friends," he added cordially, as I rose to take leave, " and 
when you return to Dresden, come and call on me again. Per- 
haps I shall then have another canvas on my easel which you 
will like to see." 

One of Hoffmann's brother professors of the art school was 
announced as I withdrew. My good-natured driver was waiting 
with his cab before the gate, and after a last look at the pretty 
house I was driven back to Sendig's big hotel, which many a 
weary wanderer has declared to be the best in Europe. In its 
noted winter garden, where one lunches under tall palms and 
surrounded by the rare plants of the tropics, there was leisure 
to reflect upon the visit of the morning. 

At first Professor Hoffmann impressed me as being about 
sixty years of age. Afterwards, however, as he stood looking 
at the picture on the easel, his erect carriage, fresh complexion, 
and brown hair and beard, but little tinged with gray, made him 
appear younger. Upon a second visit to the Dresden gallery 
I read with surprise the tablet beneath the " Christ in the Tem- 
ple." "Painter, Heinrich Hoffmann, born 1824." 

Hoffmann is, therefore, seventy-one years old. Amid our rest- 
less, wearing American existence, certainly few individuals ap- 
proach so near the full limit of life without beginning to 
show signs of age. But time, and a serene and simple life in 
the tranquil art centres of Germany, have dealt gently with our 
artist, who is apparently as strong and active as a man of fifty, 
and whose genius is still in its prime. 

At Dresden copies of Hoffmann's pictures are to be seen 
everywhere, and one is soon convinced that not in America 
alone is the " Christ in the Temple " an especial favorite. Of 



IN HOFFMANN'S STUDIO. 



663 



this picture exquisite reproductions in porcelain are displayed 
in the windows of every art store. A dealer whose establish- 
ment overlooks the quaint market-place has the exclusive right 
to dispose of the authorized copies in oils, however. Each of 
these copies, large or small, is submitted to Professor Hoffmann 






m W 




THE MEETING AT EMMAUS. {Hoffmann.') 



for inspection. If it meets his approval, he signs it with his 
initials H. H. This mark is, therefore, a guarantee that it has 
passed his scrutiny. 

But although these copies are very fine, none can do justice 
to the original. 



664 I N HOFFMANN'S STUDIO. [Feb., 

The ideal beauty of the boy Christ is beyond description 
the graceful figure, the perfect head, the peculiarly transparent 
spirituelle beauty of the complexion, the delicate features and 
thoughtful brow, the wisdom and fire of the dark eyes, the light 
of the divine intellect upon the face of .this wondrous Child, 
the revelation of the Messias to the Doctors of the Law. 

We, too, find ourselves, as it were, hanging upon his words as 
the elders did, scarcely daring to stir lest the vision vanish, yet 
almost ready to assert that which would proclaim it no vision 
that the tint of color comes and goes in the sensitive face, and 
the young breast rises and falls with vivifying breath. We no 
longer think of the work of art, but can imagine that in that 
far-off age and city of Jerusalem we too have discovered Jesus 
in the temple in the midst of the doctors. 

We watch the expressions of the latter also. That profound 
thinker at the left who wears a robe of violet red and a dark 
green-blue mantle. He absently strokes his beard, resting his 
elbow upon the open book on the reading-desk, while his deep- 
set eyes are fixed on the Child. Notice the look of interest 
and surprise upon the face of the man just behind, whose head 
is covered with an end of his brown mantle, below which is re- 
vealed a bit of his dark gold-colored tunic. And the patriarch 
in the centre, he who leans upon a staff and listens with the 
shrewd calculating air of one who would fain detect flaws in the 
reasoning of this eloquent young expounder of the law. See 
the fair-minded philosopher beside him, who interrogates Christ 
with earnest sincerity ; and the sage seated in the foreground 
with the book upon his knees, who, looking from the ancient 
prophecies to the Child, " marvels at his wisdom and his an- 
swers." 

The successful coloring of this picture probably suggested 
that of the " Christ and the Rich Ruler." Here we have the 
same splendid tints and costly fabrics. The velvet mantle of 
the seated sage is of a deep old-rose, that of the philosopher 
the striking green which Hoffmann knows so well how to em- 
ploy, and of the hoary patriarch a subdued tone of ashes-of- 
roses. 

The lights of the picture of course centre about the figure 
of Christ, the only note of color upon whose spotless robe is 
the delicate oriental tracery, and a cincture of Syrian weave 
and dye. 

The picture in the Munich gallery, "Christ addressing the 
weeping Daughters of Jerusalem," although not so elaborately 



1 895.] IN THE CONVENT GARDEN. 665 

finished, is very beautiful. At the National Gallery of Berlin is 
Hoffmann's " Christ preaching from the Barque of Peter." 

He has also executed other works, of which the scenes from 
the dramas of Shakspere, especially the Othello and Desdemona, 
and Shylock and Jessica, are well known. 

His decorative paintings, particularly those in the Court 
Theatre at Dresden, are much admired. 

But his pictures of Bible scenes are generally regarded as, his 
greatest works. 

They impress one also as a transcript of the ideal life of a 
painter, a reflex of beautiful thoughts and lofty aims, of kindly 
deeds and that looking above " what is of the earth earthy " 
which ennobles art and character.* 




IN THE CONVENT GARDEN. 

BY S. ALICE RAULETT. 

> LAME-HUED and azure, rosy- veined and white, 
In the fair tangle artists love to paint 
In flowering maze about some calm-browed saint, 
The blossoms quiver in the August light. 
Beyond, the garden beds slope down a-bright 
With scarlet poppies, all a living glow, 
And golden-crowned anemones a-row, 
And pure, pale lilies tall, a stately sight. 

Dark in the sunshine's drifting, amber mist, 
A veiled nun softly glides, with cloistral grace: 
Careless of other flowers, she seeks true place, 

And, lily among lilies keeping tryst, 

She stands, with peace and prayer upon her face, 

In silence, by the golden sun-glow kissed. 

The name of the artist as given in full is Heinrich Johann Michael Ferdinand Hoffmann. 




666 MISSIONS TO NON-CATHOLICS. [Feb., 

MISSIONS TO NON-CATHOLICS. 

BY REV. WALTER ELLIOTT. 
MISSION AT WENDELIN. 

E had a splendid attendance of Protestants here r 
all classes coming, full of attention, deeply 
interested, and loading our query box with just 
the questions we wanted to answer. 

The opera-house seats nine hundred, and was 
filled every evening but one: that was a very stormy evening,. 
with a perfect down-pour of mingled rain and snow, and yet 
we had nearly as large an attendance as usual. The floor of 
the hall was reserved for non-Catholics, the galleries for Catho- 
lics, and both were too small to seat the audience. We 
managed to exclude a good portion of the boys, much to their 
disgust. One boy offered to carry an advertising banner 
through the streets if we would let him in. 

The congregation here is dominantly German, and is full of 
zeal for non-Catholics. The pastor has received forty-one con- 
verts during his three years' incumbency, and has four more 
under instruction. Not far south is a small parish in which 
there are about a hundred and fifty converts. These were re- 
ceived by the pastor at present in charge a man with an un- 
pronounceable German name and an unmistakable accent. Now 
right here is seen our plan, all the more practical because so 
simple. It is. to feed these little streams by lectures and ser- 
mons on the part of the clergy, and by literature, conversation, 
personal and social influence, and especially virtuous lives on 
the part of the laity. A general missionary awakening will turn 
all active spirits into missionaries, each in his own place and 
measure. There should be no parish in America without at 
least one week each year devoted to public meetings in the 
interests of Catholic truth. The reader will easily perceive that 
the " Cleveland Plan," which is a small body of capable lec- 
turers exclusively engaged in the public propaganda, will arouse 
private and local zeal in every direction, and maintain its 
activity. 

Arriving here Saturday afternoon I walked through Main 



i895-] MISSIONS TO NON-CATHOLICS. 667 

Street, and at the busiest corner found the Salvation Army at 
work. A big bass drum, two or three tambourines, and a cor- 
net which seemed to lack a musician, was the martial music of 
the little squad. There were about eight of them, men and 
women, all joining in the songs, all clapping hands, all looking 
happy. But what they said while I listened was trivial, and 
what they sang was not well sung. Their leader's accent was 
cockney, and their whole demeanor was English, though doubt- 
less nearly all had been recruited in America. But I said to 
myself that if these religious curiosities are able to catch and 
hold the attention of the street people, how much better would 
the true soldiers of the Cross succeed ! The Salvationist move- 
ment is almost a total failure in the smaller towns. But it is 
entitled to this success : it should cause some of our bishops 
and priests to open an out-of-doors apostolate. This country 
now has a street population of great size. These souls can be 
effectively reached only where they spend their leisure, in the 
streets and squares of the cities. If a bishop and one or two 
able priests would start street-preaching, assisted it might be 
by men and women of the laity, the results would be marvel- 
lous. Some of us little dream that there is a distinct class of 
street people, grown in later years into many thousands in 
every great centre of population. They live on the streets as 
much as the climate allows, they read their penny papers on 
the streets, they are taught by their petty leaders on the 
streets the street is a roomier place, a freer place, and just as 
clean a place as where they are supposed to live, but where 
they only sleep. When the Catholic Church takes to the 
streets with its representatives high and low, it will reach these 
street people. They are not all bad, many are fairly good 
Catholics, and these would secure a respectful hearing but that 
is certain anyway. And meantime our highly educated and 
zealous priesthood would simply revolutionize for good the 
street life which at present is often a menace to public order, 
and is addressed on religious topics by men and women who 
play soldier and beat bass drums. 

But to return to our opera-house apostolate. We were 
here during election week, and we feared that this would hurt 
us, but the attendance continued good throughout. In fact I 
suspect that some came on Tuesday night to kill time till the 
returns began to come in. Then, and for two or three evenings 
after, the amazing result of the election formed a subject of 
pleasantry between the stage and the audience, especially in 



668 MISSIONS TO NON-CATHOLICS. [Feb., 

answering the questions. These were plentiful, and ranged over 
the entire religious field. One evening we were nearly an hour 
in answering them. 

We had the Lutheran minister and his wife with us every 
meeting, and traced to him a question wanting to know why 
Luther might not have first discovered the true doctrines of 
Christ ! 

The following question interested us : 

MR. ELLIOTT DEAR SIR : I have attended all your lec- 
tures and you have not opened one of them by reading a por- 
tion of Scripture and praying to God to help you to carry out 
the object of your lectures and what is the object ? 

I answered by saying that during my last lecture season I 
had always opened with prayer and Bible reading, but had 
been advised that some Protestants objected to this ; upon con- 
sultation I had omitted prayer, except the blessing at the 
conclusion. I stated that my questioner had forgotten that we 
had several times read parts of Scripture, though not always as 
a formal devotional exercise. In fact the devotional question 
is a somewhat difficult one. Perhaps our return course may 
show us a way of uniting all in prayer in a Catholic spirit and 
yet without offence to Protestants. Our original hope of regu- 
larly constituted devotional exercises for all comers and in a 
public hall has not yet found a way of fulfilment. 

This curious question came in near the end of the week : 
"Why am I a Catholic, and yet have my doubts as to the 
faith ? " Answer. A genuine doubt as to the Catholic faith is 
incompatible with being a Catholic a doubt known and ac- 
cepted as a negation of Catholic doctrine. But oftentimes one 
has momentary waverings which are only shadows of doubt. 
Frequently the lower part of our mind, the feelings and in- 
stincts, are restive under the rule of reason, whose whip and 
spur are needed to secure their obedience. Fancies and vagaries 
involuntarily occupy our thoughts, but they are not our real 
selves, however much they occupy us in endeavoring to control 
them. This is shown by an effort of the will to assert the 
authority of reason and faith. 

The following is an instance of lying on the part of Catho- 
lics either in joke or for a purpose. It enrages one to be com- 
pelled to set the church right with honest Protestants after she 
has been hurt by dishonest Catholics : 

MR. ELLIOTT REV. SIR : I have been told by faithful and, 
I believe, true and honest Catholics, that they did pay a com- 



1895.] MISSIONS TO NON-CATHOLICS. 669 

pensation in money, ranging from twenty-five cents and up ac- 
cordingly for confessing their sins before a priest. When was 
this law or discipline changed ? If not changed, what has been 
the object of a good Catholic misrepresenting this article of their 
religion ? ANXIOUS INQUIRER. 

The following shows how much like a secret society the 
most open of all organizations seems to those who are repelled 
from near acquaintance with us : 

Are Catholics never allowed to read the code of laws and 
theology governing the church ? If not, please to explain the 
reason for the concealment. 

Question. Would it be considered a personal query to in- 
quire what has been the direct cause leading to the public ex- 
position of Catholic doctrine throughout the country ? 

Answer. Our church is essentially missionary, and would 
decay and finally perish if it did not seek to win the whole 
world. So our ultimate aim is to win you to accept the Catho- 
lic Church as the divinely given means of salvation. Our pre- 
sent and immediate purpose is to do away with prejudice; get- 
ting men and women, especially those of religious character, to 
know just what we are and just what we are not. 

MISSION AT DERRICKVILLE. 

We are " boarding around " here. The pastor resides eight 
miles east of us, visiting this little congregation twice a month ; 
and so my companion and I are the guests of families happy to 
serve us. But the domestic side of " boarding around " life is 
not clerical, though pleasant enough otherwise. The town is an 
oil product, brand-new, muddy and busy. 

Let the reader imagine a hall with about three hundred and 
fifty sittings, mostly full of Protestants for our own people are 
very few the gallery railing corniced with the boot-soles of young 
oil-pumpers, the light being the flaring and smoky natural gas of 
this region ; and then the shabby stage, adorned with two stal- 
wart missionaries, one lean and tall and the other tall and not 
lean, and he has our outfit. 

Two nights we failed to secure more than a half-measure of 
hearers, the weather being very stormy. But the rest of the 
time we "drew" well. Father Muehlenbeck certainly did make 
a deep impression, especially on the subject of Intemperance 
and on that of Confession a convincing speaker, with the vigor 
of an earnest nature. 

There is an eccentric character here who is called the Come- 



670 MISSIONS TO NON-CATHOLICS. [Feb., 

outer, and who rails at all churches, condemning the waste of 
money in building and supporting them. He was a regular at- 
tendant at the lectures and said that those men talked sensibly, 
and that he is going to have his children sent to a Catholic 
school and brought up in that religion, etc., etc. 

The newness of all things in Derrickville, the transient nature 
of the population, the small number of Catholics, prevented our 
making a superlative success. But the leading men and wo- 
men, including Protestant ministers, were generally present, and 
many requests were made for our return. 

The questions were not numerous and far from interesting, 
at least to the lecturers. One old gentleman insisted night after 
night on our explaining the prophecies about the scarlet woman, 
the Babylon on seven hills, the abomination of desolation, and 
the man of sin. We informed him and the audience that he was 
behind the times, as contemporary Protestant commentators did 
not generally affirm the Catholic Church to be the fulfilment of 
these prophecies. 

MISSION AT YELLOW HAMMER. 

And if this is not the real name of the place, it is no more 
curious than the real name. It is a metropolis of four hundred 
souls, two miles from the nearest railroad. It is among the oil 
derricks, though an agricultural village, peopled by what the aris- 
tocratic oil-pumpers call " yellow hammers." The missionaries 
were Fathers Kress and Wonderly, who lectured here about a 
year ago, and now returned by urgent request of the Protestants, 
who, by the way, are everybody but three families. 

The meetings were held in the Lutheran church, so called, 
for the society that owns it is hopelessly split and the building 
is not at present used for church services. At the first meeting, 
Sunday afternoon, the house was fairly filled ; after that there 
was as good an attendance as the weather permitted, the 
missionaries feeling greatly encouraged to have any audience at 
all during those stormy evenings. 

The music was good, being furnished by a choir very prom- 
ising for the future union of Christendom, made up of Metho- 
dists, who furnished the organist and the hymn-books, Presby- 
terians, Lutherans, and Disciples (Campbellites), all under the 
leadership of a Catholic young lady. The mission was conducted 
on the lines usually followed in this apostolate, the subjects be- 
ing The Bible, Intemperance, Confession, Church and State, and 
Why I am a Catholic. Of course the question box was a fea- 



I895-] MISSIONS TO NON-CATHOLICS. 671 

ture of the meetings and made an element of interest. The 
inquiries were chiefly about the ceremonies of the church and 
her symbolism blessed water, palms, ashes, candles, and incense ; 
the questioners seemed to think that our ceremonies had some 
occult meaning, and that we had certain secret services. 

" I saw a boy," said one question, " dressed in white, shaking 
a vessel with a chain attached, and then the priest took it and 
shook it around the altar. What is the object of it? There 
was smoke emanating from the vessel." 

The school-teachers of the town were the most interested of 
all, the superintendent saying the last night to one of the fathers, 
as he congratulated him on " the gentlemanly exposition of the 
church," that he must admit that he had been very much pre- 
judiced against the church, but that his " prejudices are now 
removed. After this, when I hear anything derogatory to the 
church, I shall make it a point to investigate before I believe 
it." He then asked for a copy of the Enquirer's Catechism, 
and said, " But I ought to have somebody to explain this to 
me." However, the little pamphlet given him is very plain and 
extremely useful, being a summary of the religion without 
question and answer, furnished with ample Scripture texts and 
conveniently divided up. It is an adaptation of an English 
publication of Rev. F. X. Reichert called The Converts Cate- 
chism. 

At the end of the last meeting a large number of persons 
came forward on invitation of the lecturers and accepted copies 
of the Catechism, wishing to learn more fully the doctrines of 
the church ; several of these said that they had attended all 
through, and that was the case with all who were present at 
that meeting. The last evening the fathers took tea with a 
Methodist deacon, accepting one of many invitations. It was 
Friday, and the meal was a fine specimen of a Catholic Friday 
supper. Take Yellow Hammer, all in all, it is a most promis- 
ing field. 





672 THE NEW YEAR. [Feb., 



THE NEW YEAR. 
BY ALBERT REYNAUD. 

WEARY slept the Earth 'neath snow and gloom ; 
For sin and sorrow more nor place nor room 
Within its nightly, well-filled couch did seem ; 
And trembling joy had fled, 
And heavenward had sped 
Its way upon the sunset's latest beam. 

Lord, who all things with weight and measure made, 
Is not the measure full, the weight well lade ? 
Is it Thy breath that pierces thro* the pall, 
Thy voice I hearken thro' the darkness all, 
Or whispers thus the slow-expiring year : 
"She is not dead but sleepeth ; do not fear"? 

As at Creation's dawn the first year sprang 
Fresh from its Maker's hands and brightly rang 
The opening toll of Time, 

So now, the New Year, freshly fashioned flies, 
Bearing to listless ears in sweet surprise 
Hope's reawakening chime. 

O beauteous Earth a-dreaming 'mid the spheres, 
And still bedewed with all our evening tears ! 
Thy course resume at Hope's on-beckoning word, 
As started when Faith's fiat first was heard; 
Till Love, eternal, waiting at the goal, 
Its welcome tells to each obedient soul. 

To God all praise, 

To men new length of days ; 

And to all creatures cowering with affright 

In dusk and gloom new cycling for the Light. 

Earth, sun, and stars who trustful in His palm 

Hymn to His glory the eternal psalm : 

Good cheer, good cheer, 

God's day hails a New Year. 



i8 9 5-] 



A POET'S ROMANCE. 



673 




A POET'S ROMANCE. 

BY WALTER LECKY. 

RITICISM in our day has become a strange 
medley of passionate exploiting and perfunctory 
damning. It is the great vehicle of cant. What 
the sonnet is as a lesson of exactness, it is to 
diffuseness. The critic allows himself a certain 
patch, and guards it jealously. All who differ, or who do not 
belong to his mystic shrine, are bludgeoned with a Zulu 
ferocity. The Ibsenites find in their founder the high-water 
mark of genius in this age. The followers of Tolstoi are con- 
tinually bombarding their ramparts. The romantic and psycho- 
logical schools have their gods. Every man in his own baili- 
wick is out, telescope in hand, scanning the sky for a new 
star. The star is the sensation of a week maybe a month. 
Its glory is trumpeted through the length and breadth of the 
land by the fortunate discoverer. This glory does not escape 
the arrows of the less fortunate bailiwicks. 

It is the way in this strange land ; what you do not dis- 
cover, decry. Of late years, the discovery of new and dazzling 
stars has been the monthly occupation of reviewers. This has 
been especially so in the poetical sky. The death of England's 
laureate was marked by the coming of William Watson. Late- 
ly Mr. Zangwill, the new expert, discovered John Davidson, a 
prodigy " of every divine gift, pouring out untold treasure from 
his celestial cornucopia. Fancy and imagination, wit and 
humor, fun and epigram, characterization and creation and 
observation, insight and philosophy, passion and emotion and 
sincerity all are his." 

Could Shakspere from the most loving of his critics claim 
more? Evidently Davidson is the long besought bard, who is 
to crystallize in immortal verse the scientific spirit of the cen- 
tury. How we mortals hunger for the master's great creation. 
How poignant will our sorrow be should cruel fate pervert his 
mission. Strange that Mr. Zangwill's loose-strung substantives 
should be questioned ! 

Alack for the faith of our times ! The gods have fallen on 
an evil day. There is nothing to hedge their divinity. 

The latest star is Francis Thompson. The Meynells, no 
VOL. LX. 43 



674 A POET'S ROMANCE. [Feb., 

ordinary couple, vouch for him ; the aged Patmore has said 
words of cheer, while the critical Traill has marked him as a 
true bearer of English song. The lesser fry for or against 
keep up a constant barking. His personality has a fascination. 
A little of the mystery of his life has been unveiled, enough 
to poke our curiosity and beget a crop of guesses. This was 
a wise move made by his sponsors. The swaddling clothes 
period is too early for extended biography. So many heralded 
poets of late years, bearers of messages to suffering humanity, 
intellectual giants, deceivers of the elect in criticism, were but 
the comets of a season. They have left us their bread was 
stones for where what man cares to know ? The peep at his 
life will aid the circulation of his book. It is bait to the 
curious, and, after all, the curious are the buyers of books and 
the givers of bread. The greatest poets did not object to a 
good sale of their wares. They have been often known to give 
lazy book-sellers hints as to how this might be effected. The 
unveiled life of Francis Thompson bears out Mr. Patmore's 
statement that he is an " extraordinary person." Born in London, 
the son of a well-to-do physician, it is right to suppose his early 
years pleasantly spent. It were easy to say, from allusions here 
and there in his writings, that youth was to him, as it is to most 
men, a golden vale where beauty wanders everywhere. He was 
a born lover of books, and in his father's library must have 
spent many happy hours with the true kings of men. ' At an 
early age he went to the great College of Ushaw, a place of 
large memories and hallowed shrines to all those of the ancient 
faith. His life here, as far as documentary evidence goes, is a 
blank. That he was an ardent student goes without question. 
Whether he held to the ordinary curriculum, or stole away to 
browse in fairer fields, is a point for his biographer. That he 
laid a deep classical foundation, his writings are in evidence. 
Here he had his romance, that necessary romance in the 
formation of a poet. Cupid, playful elf, threw a dart. Of these 
times we catch a glimpse in " Her Portrait " : 

"Yet I have felt what terrors may consort 
In woman's cheeks, the Graces' soft resort: 
My hand hath shook at gentle hand's access, 
And trembled at the waving of a tress : 
My blood known panic fear, and fled dismayed 
Where ladies' eyes have set their ambuscade. 
The rustle of a robe hath been to me 
The very rattle of love's musketry." 



1 895-1 A POET'S ROMANCE. 675 

At Ushaw he had felt the poet's call. A life of literature 
beckoned to him. Such a life is looked upon now as it was 
in the days of Dryden and Pope, a precarious means to eke 
out an existence, a kind of lottery where, save a few lucky 
prizes, the drawings are blank. Those callow critics who foam 
beget and fury vent at the name of the poet's father for drasti- 
cally checking his son's original bent, will find the fathers of 
most literary men in the same box. Ambitious fathers have 
little respect for that old saying, " Love conquers all things," 
especially if love leads in an opposite direction to long cher- 
ished designs. In the parental calculations young Thompson 
was to be a physician. A comfortable country doctor, with his 
smug home, easy carriage, doll-wife, and gaping Hodges, has 
something tangible. A poet ! associated since the days of 
Homer with light, airy subsistence, rent clothes, and capacities 
largely developed for changing habitation, and often, from the 
stress of circumstances, a name. A poet ! was not the country 
sick and weary of their constant din ? 

" Both strong bards and weak bards, funny and grave, 
Fat bards and lean bards, little and tall bards: 
Bards who wear whiskers, and others who shave." 

Let us not judge too harshly the practical parent who fore- 
warned his son from sailing with such a crew. The warning, as 
often before in the annals of history, was forgotten, and Francis 
Thompson was another name added to the long list in that 
pathetic chapter of Literary History the " Misfortunes of Gen- 
ius." His name is a peg for some well-fed moralist to decorate. 
Poets pay little attention to sign-boards. The world has been 
strewn with their sorrows, yet each new-comer will have his 
way. To pluck the rose they will feel the thorns prick. The 
penalty Thompson paid for following his " Ladye " poesy was 
the withdrawal of his father's pocket-book, a serious drawback 
to a budding poet. Book-sellers nowadays will not advance 
cash, even if immortal song be promised. Landlords are as 
obtuse to genius as Goldsmith's was. The baker will not ac- 
cept the pipes of Pan for a paltry loaf. These hard truths 
came early, to shape for all time the poet's mind. 

Leaving Ushaw, its peaceful homes, green fields, babbling 
streams, by whose banks the cattle lazily loitered and the sheep- 
bells quaintly tinkled the music of happiness, fit home for a 
lutanist of Apollo he wended his way, bewitched by the lights 



676 A POET'S ROMANCE. [Feb., 

of London Town, to its misery and clamor. He was not the 
first of the clan. His Scottish namesake had made a similar 
venture a century earlier. Had not Dr. Cranston relieved him 
when his credit was gone, the seasons and their changes might 
have remained unsung. Here, alone and friendless, Francis 
Thompson dwelt, like the children in the wood, wandering up 
and down ; when weary finding rest on steps, shelter under 
porticoes. A peripatetic by circumstances. 

Money gone, and with it hospitality. In a great city hospi- 
tality is not for the houseless wanderer. If it is met, it is in 
some charitable institution, the last resort for a poet. Despite 
the cant of the world-reformers, prosperity in an evening dress 
cares little for poverty and its faded, torn clothes. His employ- 
ment was of the most menial kind holding horses for a beg- 
garly "tip," selling matches at theatre doors, glad when chance 
gave him the price of a crust, herding with the city's scum, a 
Galahad among them. It is sad, at this period, to write of 
him as a devotee of opium. De Quincey's question comes to 
mind : " How came any reasonable being to subject himself to 
such a yoke of misery, voluntarily to incur a captivity so servile, 
and knowingly to fetter himself with such a seven-fold chain?" 
Katherine Tynan answers this query after her own way by at- 
tributing it to an emulation of the writer of the query. Noth- 
ing could be more absurd. No sane mind that has read De 
Quincey's marvellous pages would for the sake of its mere pleas- 
ure have its ultimate pain. The true cause was not the emula- 
tion of the English opium-eater, nor for the purpose of creat- 
ing pleasure, but of mitigating pain in the severest degree. 
The baneful habit once contracted, its fascination grew apace. 
His life was one of gnawing pain and glorious dreams. Books 
were his only solace in those rueful waking hours when, escap- 
ing from the valley of visions and dreams, he entered that of 
pain and misery. Reading kept the mind from decay under its 
cruel burden. He read without ceasing philosophy and poetry. 
Dante, with the light of Aquinas, saw the empty, prattling hu- 
manists bereft of their spurious glory, found the wheat of the 
schoolmen trodden under by the rank rot of post-Reformation 
divines and scientists, swept England's poesy with eagle eye, 
filling his roomy mind with thoughts that bid defiance to time. 
A Grecian philosopher fasted in order the more readily to ab- 
sorb thought. Shelley held a similar theory. Whatever its 
merits may be, it worked well in the person of the poet. Of 
book-learning he has a store. 



1 895.] A POET'S ROMANCE. 677 

His gaunt face, peering into some old tome, his soul in his 
work, was well known to the libraries, until his unkempt figure 
and tattered clothing cancelled his passport. Deprived of the 
creative works of others, harassed by his own mind, his only 
escape was to turn creator, to give vent to the thoughts that 
craved language birth. In this wise his poem " Dream-Tryst " 
was written and sent to the editor of Merry England. It arrived 
at the office " on the blue back of a bill so slovenly and un- 
tempting a manuscript that it was pigeon-holed unread." Some 
lucky chance threw it in the way of Editor Meynell, a critic of 
no mean rate, who at once saw its beauty and its author's 
promise. 

The hunt for the poet amid the London slums, his discovery 
and redemption, may well form one of the most interesting 
chapters in the life of a lovable pair. The poet has been far 
from ungrateful. His best thoughts are lovingly thrown at the 
feet of her who led him from misery and early death to honor 
and light. She has made his captivity sweet, and his harp has 
been strung to sing her beauty. Not beauty as sung by the 
modern school of mosaic artificers, with its lusciousness and 
sensual imagery, beauty miscalled, moral ugliness rather, draped, 
the folds of the drapery cunningly done the better to show the 
depravity of love. Thompson has no affinity with this now 
triumphant school. 

His beauty is not sensual ; it is spiritual. It strikes its roots 
on a high table-land, where breathing becomes difficult to 
those whose hearts have been solely nourished by mundane 
things. As Coventry Patmore says, " The Lady whom he delights 
to honor he would have to be too seraphic even for a seraph." 
This spiritual quality in Mr. Thompson's poems is genuine, and 
is his least fault in these times of grovelling materialism. It is 
akin to Dante's, Petrarch's, Crashaw's idealizations of beauty 
as a virtue. 

" Something more than 
Taffeta or tissue can, 
Or rampant feather, or rich fan, 
Beget, a virtue that so fashions 
Life, that dares send 
A challenge to his end. 
And when it comes say: Welcome, friend." 

It is worthy of remark, that these poets were moulded by a 
study of that long unworked, and, to use a phrase of a keen critic, 



678 A POET'S ROMANCE. [Feb., 

inexhaustible mine of Catholic philosophy. From it came the first 
stream of English poesy checked and distorted by the Reform- 
ers a stream from whence Shakspere, Crashaw drew, and Mil- 
ton, when at his best. To this stream belong the poems of Fran- 
cis Thompson, " which if it be not checked, as in the history of 
the world it has once or twice been checked before, by prema- 
ture formulation and by popular and profane perversion, must 
end in creating a new heaven and a new earth." Such poetry 
must ever be of the highest order. It alone will express those 
deeper things in life that prose gropes at. It will bear us 
beyond the line of nature, to the home of things beyond 
nature, and their Creator. It will not longer be enmeshed by 
the phan tasies of sense, unthwarted by earth, it will live in the 
things of heaven. The great debt the poet owes to his bene- 
factress, Mrs. Meynell, a sweet poet, charming essayist, and 
gracious woman, is returned a hundredfold both in his quaint 
dedicatory verse, and in his longer poems, grouped as " Love 
in Dian's Lap." The key to these verses is found in these 
lines : 

" How should I gauge what beauty is her dole 
Who cannot see her countenance for her soul ; 
As birds see not the casement for the sky ? 
And as 'tis check they prove its presence by, 
I know not of her body till I find 
My flight debarred the heaven of her mind." 

And yet by 

" The loom which mortal verse affords, 
Out of weak and mortal words," 

he will weave us some image, if inadequate, of his lady. Yet 
he is at loss how to throw his shuttle : 

" How praise the woman who but know the spirit ? 
How praise the color of her eyes, uncaught 
While they were colored with her varying thought ? 
How her mouth's shape, who only use to know 
What tender shape her speech will fit it to ? 
Or her lips' redness, when their joined veil 
Song's fervid hand has parted till it wore them pale. 

"What of the dear administress then may 
I utter, though I spoke her own carved perfect way? 



1 895-] A POET'S ROMANCE. 679 

What of her thoughts, high marks for mine own thoughts 

to reach ? 

Yet (Chaucer's antique sentence so to turn), 
Most gladly will she teach, and gladly learn ; 
And teaching her, by her enchanting art, 
The master threefold learns for all he can impart. 
Now all is said, and all being said aye me ! 
There yet remains unsaid the very She ; 
Nay, to conclude (so to conclude I dare), 
If of her virtues you evade the snare, 
Then for her faults you'll fall in love with her." 

Corporeal loveliness is to the poet nothing. Christianity has 
taught the true beauty, and of that beauty will he sing: 

" Loveliness corporeal, 

Its most just praise a thing improper were 
To singer or to listener, me or her. 
She wears that body but as one indues 
A robe, half careless, for it is the use : 
Although her soul and it so fair agree, 
We sure may, unattaint of heresy, 
Conceit it might the soul's begetter be. 
The immortal could we cease to contemplate, 
The mortal part suggests its every trait." 

Having subtly woven her portrait, he lingers to tell us what 
she has been to him a safeguard 

"Against the fell 
Immitigate ravening of the gates of hell." 

She must be true to the spiritual life, through faith and 
prayer, else the holy Grail is lost not only to the Ladye but 
to her poet. 

" O be true 

To your soul, dearest, as my life to you ! 
For if that soil grow sterile, then the whole 
Of me must shrivel, from the topmost shoot 
Of climbing poesy, and my life killed through, 
Dry down and perish to the foodless root." 

The strength of his genius comes from her ; would she be 
false to her high mission, then genius, losing its stay, swept 
from her " mind's chill sky," 



680 A POET'S ROMANCE. [Feb., 

" It needs must drop, and lie with stiffened wings 
Among your soul's forlornest things ; 
A speck upon your memory, alack ! 
A dead fly in a dusty window-crack." 

"Love in Dian's Lap" is a series of poems that will insep- 
arably link for all time the Ladye and her poet. It is a new 
friendship in literature, and the only one I can recall where 
the spiritual, not the sensual, from the first held sway. In 
these poems the poet has struck a bold note ; he has left the 
loquacious throng of idle singers to prate in simulated speech 
of woman's natural beauty, to sing of the beauty that knows 
neither canker nor decay. Let the tuneful choir give us their 
toy songs ; the crowd's applause both pays and measures their 
life. 

" Deaf is he to world's tongue ; 
He scorneth for his song 

The loud 
Shouts of the crowd." 

The other poems in Mr. Thompson's little volume classed as 
"Miscellaneous" and "Poems on Children," contain some of his 
best work. The " Hound of Heaven," an irregular ode, would 
alone rank the poet high up in English song. It tells in lofty and 
sustained verse of the pursuit of a wavering and flying soul from 
God, its final capture and gentle reprimand. 

" Ah ! fondest, blindest, weakest, 

I am He whom thou seekest. 
Thou drawest love from thee who drawest Me." 

This poet is very fond of the irregular ode, a species of com- 
position that many have tried, therein few succeeded. The metre 
of this kind of ode, artless as it may seem to the novice, is one 
of great difficulty, even in the hands of a true poet. Its lines 
range from two syllables to ten, with an occasional Alexan- 
drine ; and the rhymes follow the subtle and delicate instinct 
of taste. In the hands of Patmore the effects have been a 
beautiful addition to English literature. Some of his poems in 
this metre are well nigh perfect. Such poetry requires not only 
a delicate ear for rhythm, a technical mastery of language, but 
a passion sufficiently intense to create the metre. 

To write an irregular ode a long apprenticeship to the sim- 



1895-] A POET'S ROMANCE. 68 1 

pier forms of art is necessary. That Francis Thompson has in 
one instance incomparably succeeded and given us one of the 
very few great odes of which the language can boast, is no cri- 
terion by which we gauge the future. Other attempts in this 
line reveal that he is far more happy when using the simpler 
forms of art. His training has been defective, his technique be- 
times shows a strange want of mastery, and too often his pas- 
sion flags before the winning-post is reached. In his " Making 
of Viola," "Daisy," and "Dream-Tryst" there is a flow of lan- 
guage and a smoothness that irritate the reader with a poet 
who has purposely resorted to harsh versification, far-fetched 
similes, defective expression, barren drapery, and positive mys- 
ticism. These inelegancies may give rise to a Thompson clique, 
who may see in them great genius ; but the poet who will linger 
in the minfl, rich and full, with that magical quality that runs 
with time, must rid himself of such absurdities. Greatness has no 
tricks genius has rarely been a gymnast. Another trick of the 
poet is a foolhardy use of obsolete and archaic words that ne- 
cessitates a constant use of the dictionary. Here the influence 
of De Quincey is felt. The poet forgets that he is writing for 
the nineteenth century, and that the common tongue of that 
century is capable of the highest poetic effects. 
( It is not necessary either to coin new words, as Mr. Thomp- 
son does on every page, nor to draw from well-merited obliv- 
ion unmusical and unmeaning ones. Mr. Thompson cannot be 
read simply as a recreation ; he is a poet of infinite suggestive- 
ness, who will well repay the hours loaned to him. His style is his 
own, as it must be to all great poets. Every poet interprets life 
personally, and clothes the interpretation in the dress it bespeaks. 
It is only talent that fears to leave the model. The style 
of Thompson has freedom, force, and originality. It is full of 
life and color. It embodies faith and beauty, revelations of the 
soul's life, calmness and steadiness in the pursuit of beauty. 
He has great faith ; without it there can be no great art. 
Scepticism smothers genius ; it is as the blight ; nothing lives 
under its spell. Francis Thompson, possessor of faith and many 
other subordinate gifts that must equip a poet, has much to 
learn, much to forget. Criticism, true criticism, ever the 
author's friend, has shown his faults, and spoke warmly of his 
graces. Shall he hearken ? Slowly and painfully must he work. 
Mountain-climbing requires constant effort. On the peak is his 
rightful place ; shall he, forgetting his mission, rest on the hill- 
top? He believes in his mission; will he achieve it? 




682 THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. [Feb., 



THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE.* 

(R. LUCKOCK, who is a dean of the Established 
Church in England, supplies us with a treatise 
on the history of marriage written with special 
reference to the indissoluble character of the bond 
and to a large extent with reference to legislation 
which is desired by powerful influences in that country concern- 
ing marriage with a deceased wife's -sister. We dismiss this 
part of the tract with the bare mention because its interest is 
local. No doubt Dr. Luckock holds that marriage within the 
degree of affinity in question is contrary to the divirfe law, and 
therefore a matter of universal interest. So would be a ques- 
tion of purely ecclesiastical law if the conditions were present 
which transcend the material barriers of physical nature or the 
moral barriers of time and training. But he seems to think it 
stands upon the same ground as the law which makes mar- 
riage indissoluble, and claims for this provision a binding force 
which he denies to other enactments of the Levitical law. He 
overlooks the difference between both enactments to be found, 
first, in the fact that our Divine Lord has himself re t enacted 
the primal law of the life-long character of the marriage con- 
tract, and his church, which interprets his mind now and did 
so from the day he founded her, so declares the law ; and sec- 
ond, in the fact that while the church has always claimed the 
power to dispense from the impediment of marriage with the 
sister of a deceased wife we find no reference to this impedi- 
ment in the New Testament. In other words, whatever may 
be the force of the Mosaic laws in Dr. Luckock's judgment, he 
cannot deny that there is a wide difference, to Christians at 
least, between a Mosaic law re-enacted by our Lord and one 
not re-enacted. 

On the question of the indissoluble nature of the marriage 
tie, Dr. Luckock, as might be expected, is Catholic in opinion 
and bears testimony to the Catholic tone of the best class of 
minds in his church on this vital question. There is, however, 
a shadow on the book. It lacks warmth, heat, spirit. It is 

* The History of Marriage, Jewish and Christian, in relation to Divorce and certain 
Forbidden Degrees. By Herbert Mortimer Luckock, D.D., Dean of Lichfield. New York: 
Longmans, Green & Co. 



18950 THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. 683, 

the echo of the voice of the prophet of a dead god and a 
dead faith. It will convince no one that is not convinced before. 

The work is learned for all that. The argument from the 
relations between God and man is apt and lucid, the exposition 
of the law of marriage among the Jews is sound, the history 
since its reinstitution by the Lord himself is well stated, so far 
as it goes, and logical ; but, as we shall show before we con- 
clude, he does not make the most of the argument from the 
action of the Church. 

No one who can take in the bearings of any moral influence 
or the operation of any law can deny that the Supreme Pon- 
tiffs in every age expressed the mind of the church by their 
legislative acts or acts declaratory of legislation. Dr. Luckock 
sees this, but he half-closes his eyes. On the part borne by the 
popes in maintaining Catholic doctrine the enemies of Chris- 
tianity are incomparably more just than members of any of the 
revolted creeds. These cannot afford to be just ; if they were 
just the reason of their existence would have ceased. It is 
hard to say whether a cultured dignitary of the Anglican Es- 
tablishment or the preacher who tells a New York audience 
in Canadian English that the pope is the Scarlet Woman of 
Revelations is the more incapable of estimating the pope's 
relation to the teaching church. 

Dr. Luckock's tract begins with the institution of marriage 
in Paradise as we find it suggested in the opening pages of 
Genesis. There is in this part of the treatment of his subject 
evidence of piety and earnestness such as, God willing, shall 
receive their reward in a return to the fold from which his 
fathers strayed. We can only briefly refer to it. God's pur- 
pose in creating man was so to create him that he should 
reflect the image of his Maker, but man would have fallen 
short of the Divine resemblance, and that in a very important 
feature, had he been left in solitude, with no companion to hold 
communion with in his intellectual and spiritual nature. As 
throughout man was to reflect the Divine image, however im- 
perfectly, so the marriage bond could only be a reflection of the 
eternal union of the undivided Trinity so far as the finite can 
be a reflection of the infinite by a union which nothing could 
sever but death. It was manifestly intended by the Creator 
that the reflection should extend as far as possible, and if we 
form any lower conception of the marriage tie we efface all 
human claim to be in this feature after the likeness of God. 

We pass over what we read in Genesis of the mode of the 



684 THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. [Feb., 

woman's formation out of man, and what .may be and has been 
said of its deep significance. The reference to this is not with- 
out interest to that class of students who are sufficiently curi- 
ous to go below the surface and look for the truths hidden in 
the folds of language. There is a meaning in all Divine acts 
that lies under the bare narrative ; but passing from this we 
have the explicit assurance of our Lord himself that he who 
created male and female at the beginning had also said : " For 
this shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to 
his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. Wherefore they are 
no more two but one flesh." 

The moral retrogression from the time of Adam to that of 
Moses prepares us for great changes in the legislation which 
God permitted for the Israelites. The Divine standard mea- 
sures the ideal of marriage as it was in Paradise before sin 
entered the world. In the later books of the Pentateuch we 
have the ideal obscured and disfigured by human law, but even 
here the human legislator fixes the nearest approach to it 
which is practicable for fallen man having regard to the exi- 
gency of time and circumstances, he must have before his 
mind the original purpose of God and the life of man as it is. 
With these two great facts before him, Moses framed his laws 
for the greatest attainable good. 

To estimate his legislation properly, it must be measured by 
the standard of the time ; interpreted by the side-lights of con- 
temporary history. Read in this light we see a keen discern- 
ment of the condition into which the Jews had fallen through 
their contact with the law and morality of the heathen nations 
about them, and a determined purpose on the part of the law- 
giver to elevate them to a higher moral plane. This is illus- 
trated in the three particulars of slavery, polygamy, and 
divorce. 

Slavery had become practically a necessity. Captives were 
taken in every battle whole nations were often carried into 
captivity. For the captives for whom such a decree as trans- 
portation was not made there were two alternatives, death or 
slavery in the usual acceptation. This is the state of things that 
Moses found, and he chose the more merciful of the two. It is 
very plain that expediency was an influence on his legislation. 
With regard to the concession he allowed in writing a bill of 
divorce in the event mentioned, our Lord himself declared 
that Moses allowed it because of the hardness of their hearts. 



1895.] THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. 685 

This shows that in the whole legislation he was only aiming at 
the best standard he could lift the people to then and there, 
and not the best possible standard for all time and all 
peoples. 

If we are to take the authority of the Old Testament alone 
as the rule on matters of life and conduct, we find there as 
much authority in favor of slavery as for divorce ; and yet the 
very countrymen of Dr. Luckock maintain a ship-of-war on the 
African station to prevent the former, while their modern divorce 
court exceeds Chancery in its arrear of cases unheard, and the 
common-law courts in the sensational character of its trials. 

Why is not polygamy, in the Turkish sense, a British institu- 
tion on the same authority ? Any Englishman with moderate 
good luck can have a greater number of separated wives than 
a Turkish pasha with three tails can have of wives unseparated, 
or the sultan himself of wives unbowstringed or unsacked.* 

In the Old Testament there is as much authority for re- 
marriage as for polygamy. Those who hold the laws and cus- 
toms given in the Old Testament should rule Christian society 
in their unmodified integrity will find more in favor of remarriage 
than against it. Such people should not be shocked like the 
gentleman at the dinner-party in Vared who met four men and 
their four wives each of whom had been the wife of the other 
husbands. For the same reason we think the honest Teuton 
who told the Royal Commission " that the state of marriage in 
Germany makes a German cover his hands with shame " was 
quite too squeamish. What good Lutheran is without his open 
Bible printed, too, from that text which, as D'Aubign6 tells us, 
was so wonderfully discovered by Martin Luther at Erfurt ? 

In dealing with the subject of Christian marriage we must 
keep in mind the difference between a divine and a human law- 
giver. Like the human law-giver the Lord Christ had indeed 
to deal with men as he found them ; but he also had to pro- 
vide for all future contingencies. It was impossible for him to 
temporize to substitute laws of expediency for absolute right. 
He had only power to hold up an ideal standard based on the 
eternal and immutable principles of truth. He could only pro- 
claim a morality such as should be conceived by the divine in- 
telligence and asserted by the divine authority. Prophets in 
whom the purely human is so large a part gave only in mea- 

* A summary way the sultans had of divorcing their wives was to have them sewed up in 
a sack and thrown into the Bosphorus. 



686 THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. [Feb., 

sure the divine counsels because they only received them in 
measure. When he came in the ripeness of the world, he came 
to restore the law of the world such as it was when God con- 
versed with man as friend and father before sin entered it and 
defaced in man the image of the Creator. When we take up 
the New Testament we must feel in a peculiar sense that we 
tread on holy ground. 

When the Lord came it was as the restorer of the world 
lost by the fall of Adam. He found marriage degraded to the 
character of a civil contract among the Jews. The nuptial bene- 
dictions in which the divine origin of marriage was attested 
and God's blessing solemnly invoked had sunk into a secondary 
place. The bridegroom might repeat the form, or any layman 
present. The dominant school that of Hillel allowed divorce 
for any reason or for no reason. Moreover, Roman influence 
was making itself felt in Palestine if not to the same absorb- 
ing extent as elsewhere in drawing to itself the local social and 
religious institutions and interpenetrating them with the supre- 
macy of its irresistible will ; still with sufficient strength to 
overshadow the old Jewish exclusiveness and bend it. Except 
the more furious of the zealots* and the rugged half-savage 
mountaineers of Palestine itself, the Jews were everywhere eager 
to become Romans. This could not happen without a weaken- 
ing of the power of the old religious laws, usages, and ceremo- 
nial which had been maintained in some degree of vigor under 
their ancient life of isolation, and, therefore, a decay in the 
moral tone should, and did, follow. 

As all the pollution of the heathen worships found its 
way to Rome with their rites, so Rome gave back the foulness 
to the provinces with a deeper and more fatal influence. The 
Epistle to the Romans affords some idea of the way in which 
flesh had again corrupted its way upon the earth. The old 
Roman respect for marriage belonged to the past. The Roman 
matron of rank had ceased to dispense the moralities of the 
hearth and the parental board. She thought only of her as- 
signations with Clodius, and no longer calculated the years by 
the consuls, but by the number of her husbands. Tacitus, 
Suetonius, Juvenal, Martial, fill in the unutterable horrors 
which St. Paul has outlined. One shudders to think of the 
Divine Lord living in such a world. We look for another 
deluge as when before 

* Even St. Paul himself. 



1 895.] THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. 

"All dwellings else 

Flood overwhelm'd, and them with all their pomp 
Deep under water roll'd ; sea covered sea, 
Sea without shore ; and in their palaces, 
Where luxury late reigned, sea-monsters whelp'd 
And stabled"; 

but the Sinless One came to repair instead. 

He, above all great moral reformers, would see that the 
purity and sanctity of marriage is the foundation of all 
national virtue. We can hardly hesitate to believe that it was 
the urgency of this need which caused him to choose the 
marriage-feast of Cana as the occasion for the first display of 
his divine power. The early church interpreted his presence 
there as the indication of his will to sanctify anew the union 
of man and wife ; and she must be held in all respects as the 
.highest exponent of her Founder's mind in all that he did as 
well as said. 

The Fathers who learned at the feet of the Apostles who 
had been His companions, and the later Fathers, who learned from 
these, were near enough to the Lord's time to possess a vivid 
sense of the influence and meaning of his life standing as they 
were almost within its luminous shadow ; add to this, the world- 
wide rivulets of recollection called the sense of the faithful 
flowing down, in every church and city and province and na- 
tion, to the time of St. Cyril, who tells us that Holy Church, 
not dogmatically indeed, but in her heart and fancy so inter- 
preted his presence there ; and so the whole great flood carried 
the thought downward as it did other thoughts begotten of the 
purity of faith in its first freshness, and this may be accepted 
at least as a link in the collateral argument which goes to 
prove that the Lord meant marriage should be a great sacra- 
ment, and not a bargain and sale or a contract of concubinage. 

Why the decent jurisprudence of the world holds illegal 
such a contract as the last, but what does divorce and the 
right of remarriage mean but the legalization of such a con- 
. tract ? 

But the real argument lies in the words of our Lord when 
the Pharisees tried to test his position in reference to the two 
leading Rabbinical schools. "They came unto him, tempting 
him and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away 
his wife for every cause? And he answered and said unto 



688 THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. [Feb., 

them: Have ye not read, that he who made them at the 
beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause 
shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his 
wife, and they two shall be one flesh? Whereupon they are 
no more now but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined 
together let not man put asunder." We have here a re-enact- 
ment of the primal law, with a clear implication that it had 
never been authoritatively revoked. In the words used by the 
Pharisees it is evident that the law had fallen into disuse. 

We have extended this notice already to a length which 
prevents us from examining the Lord's utterances as they are 
recorded in St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke. We can only 
refer the reader to Dr. Luckock's treatment of the matter, 
which we think leaves little to be desired. To ourselves it 
seems clear enough that in our Lord's words we have a law 
coupled with an enacting exposition of its meaning. No doubt 
what seems to be a serious difficulty is created by what ap- 
pears according to St. Matthew to be the Lord's teaching that 
" fornication " may dissolve the bond. Sts. Mark and Luke, on 
the other hand, represent him as teaching in the most explicit 
manner that marriage was absolutely indissoluble. 

This difficulty, we think, is fully met by Dr. Luckock so far 
as reliance upon the naked criticism of the authorized judg- 
ment on the passages can claim to be satisfactory. The church, 
however, speaking by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, has in- 
terpreted the Lord's words to mean what he himself declared to 
have been the primal law. In his recapitulation of the various 
and successive testimonies from within the church Dr. Luckock 
presents a vast and irresistible array of opinion on the question. 
It, however, seems with him that the whole mass can claim no 
higher value than a purely human accumulation ; but even as that 
it outweighs beyond all comparison any contrary evidence, and 
is not to be set aside by any mere criticism based on the 
seeming exception in St. Matthew. We go with him so far. 
Unquestionably we think he might have rested his case on the 
Pastor of Hernias and on the apology addressed to Antoninus 
Pius by Justin Martyr for the interpretation of the first cen- 
turies so far as the historic fact. Independently of other con- 
siderations, there must have been a reason for that interpreta- 
tion in the period nearest to the speaker, and the reason could 
be no other than that the seeming exception was no exception 
at all. 



I89S-] 



THE HISTORY OF MARRIAGE. 



689 



The falling away of the nations of Christendom from the 
centre of unity from time to time witnessed in these separated 
limbs a departure from the doctrine of the indissolubility of 
marriage. Beginning with exceptions to the law in the 
case of adultery, they ended with any exception whatever if it 
were demanded on the part of power. We see this in the 
Greek Church very remarkably ; we see it more unmistakably 
still in the interested complaisance of the Reformers in the 
sixteenth century. Dr. Luckock, we regret, does but scant 
justice to the popes for their uncompromising attitude on this 
question amid the enormous difficulties which so often beset 
them and seemed to threaten the existence of the church her- 
self. 

Take, for instance, the case of Innocent III. with Philip 
Augustus. Every suggestion of human prudence would have 
counselled that pontiff to conciliate the greatest prince of the 
age, the eldest son of the church, the crusader. But it was im- 
possible the same " non possumus " for ever replied by the 
Vicars of Christ to those who asked them to betray the su- 
preme trust he reposed in them. It was this that saved the 
doctrine which Dr. Luckock has so ably vindicated from the 
assaults of power and passion. When Philip Augustus in the 
rage of disappointment exclaimed " Happy Saladin, he has no 
pope ! " he expressed what all others have felt when stayed in 
the course of crime by the inviolable fidelity of the popes to 
the commission conferred upon them by their Master. 




VOL. LX. 44 




690 THE CRITICS CRITICISED. [Feb., 

THE CRITICS CRITICISED. 
BY REV. R. M. RYAN. 

OT the least remarkable feature of the closing 
years of the nineteenth century is the extraor- 
dinary metamorphosis observable in the manner 
of treating polemical subjects. Facts have super- 
seded rationes wherever they could be made to 
speak; with the result, that a general fixing-up has become ne- 
cessary in the many things that were considered as stable as 
the stars. In historical subjects, in particular, this necessity has 
become more specially apparent. Had those hopeful offspring of 
the nineteenth century's decrepitude, " the higher critics," been 
permitted to continue much longer their peculiar process of 
proving the wrongness of all records that did not conform to 
their standards, our histories would soon have been reduced to 
book-covers, and as lifeless and empty as the cast-off chrysalis 
of the butterfly. Hardly a single Greek hero was left by them 
to enliven the battle-field of Troy. Historic characters of 
Assyrian, Phoenician, Egyptian, and Hebrew fame shared the 
same fate. The solvent used to blot them off the historic 
pages, where they had so long figured, was the following : Con- 
temporary records, which the critics thought well of accepting, 
did not refer to them ; writing, which alone could perpetuate 
their memory, could not even have been known at the time the 
records referring to them claim to have been written ; the 
spelling of their names showed them not to belong to the race 
they were said to be leaders of these and other equally in- 
genious arguments, which, of course, the critics first demon- 
strated to their own satisfaction, are fair specimens of the 
means employed to discredit the greater part of the earlier 
biblical narratives. Baur a really eminent Greek scholar 
established a critical canon still more remarkable. He 
" showed " that a tendency to any literary excellence in any 
New Testament writer, excepting St. Paul, must invalidate 
his authenticity. Acting on this very flexible principle, he 
deposed three of the evangelists, leaving us only St. Mark. 
His disciple, Volkmar, another Greek scholar, continuing his 
master's work, by "solid argument," based on another ground 



1895.] THE CRITICS CRITICISED. 691 

principle of his own, proved even St. Mark's gospel to be 
equally undeserving of acceptance. In fact, with this new 
weapon of " higher criticism," there is not a work of the 
ancients or, for that matter, of the moderns either which they 
could not discredit or " prove " whatever they pleased about it. 

From the outset these scholars and their criticisms excited 
suspicion. In the first place, they themselves seemed uncon- 
scious of what to all others was very apparent, that their im- 
pelling motive was the destruction of all sacred Scriptures. 
Their learning was unquestioned, their industry could not but 
be admired, but their motives were distinguishable by negative 
and positive characteristics that could not be entirely concealed, 
however carefully guarded. An honest desire to find out the 
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, whatever it 
was, was conspicuous by its absence ; as were also all signs of a 
prudent, discreet, and reasonable regard for what so many 
master minds among their contemporaries and predecessors 
treated not alone with implicit confidence, but with profoundest 
reverence and admiration. The reasons of these latter for such 
respect and trustfulness had withstood the tests of thousands 
of generations, and deserved at least to be inquired into. 
They were brushed aside with a majestic pen-sweep. Had the 
critics let loose all their forces of argumentation on the testi- 
monies to the truth of the narratives, and, after disproving them, 
established on their ruins their own views, they would long ago 
have been answered. But, owing to the unique mode of the 
attack, it was hard to meet them on advantageous ground, or, 
in fact, on any ground except that of negation. But, happily, 
they have been encountered and overthrown in a way they little 
suspected, and so completely that we are not likely to hear 
much more of their new-fangled " higher " critical methods. 

With the scholarly critic, armed, disciplined, and regularly 
enrolled, but antagonistic to the Bible, go down the motley 
crowd of irregulars that follow in their wake. These are the 
little, loquacious, sceptic squads who prop up their doubts, 
notions, and pretensions petty in everything save in their mis- 
chievousness with the weapons and phrases of their betters. 
By them the phrases "higher criticism," " modern research," and 
" the latest scientific discoveries " are made do duty for thought, 
intelligence, and personal examination of both sides of the 
questions at issue. Whilst ever boasting of independence of 
thought, they seem hydrophobically fearful of tasting a little of 
its limpid sweetness; so much so, that their ignorance of the 



692 THE CRITICS CRITICISED. [Feb., 

true import of the phrases they quote becomes sometimes pain- 
fully almost disgustingly apparent. 

That the same fault may not be found with ourselves, let 
us, before adducing those facts that refute the critics' con- 
clusions, define what we mean by " higher criticism." It is an 
inquiry into the nature, origin, and date of the documents with 
which one may be dealing, as well as into the historical value 
and credibility of the statements they contain. It really is new 
only in name, at least to theologians and biblical scholars. 
The distinction between it and what is called " lower criticism " 
is more nominal than real ; inasmuch as both have always been 
carried on by biblical students side by side, and often inter- 
mingled. Neither in the Catholic Church, nor even outside of 
it, has belief in the Bible ever been based solely on internal 
evidence, or even on philology and palaeography, which the 
"higher critics" say constitute "lower criticism," but in the 
case of the church on her infallible power of distinguishing 
the true from the false; and in the case of non-Catholics, on 
all and every evidence that human intelligence and human in- 
genuity could supply, including all honest, well-founded methods 
of criticism. The real difference between believers in the 
Bible and modern unbelievers now seems to be, that the latter 
invent some specious criterion, and demand that the sacred books 
demonstrate their correspondence with it ; or else they pretend 
to see conclusive evidences of error in their want of concordance 
with certain archaeological discoveries, and become confirmed 
therein if a reconciliation be not forthwith effected by those 
professing belief in the Sacred Scriptures. This is like the 
Roman emperor's method of removing a too powerful or too 
affluent subject. He had leave to kill himself, if he did not 
instanter clear himself of a hastily trumped-up accusation which 
was often as fantastic as it was insidious. 

On what single work of the ancients would a "higher" criti- 
cal investigation make men agreed ? On what comparatively 
modern work, even, are they in accord on all points ? The very 
authorship of the best known of all English poetical works is 
seriously controverted. What wonder is it, then, that controversy 
exists about some things pertaining to the oldest and most ill- 
used book in the world ? This in no way alarms the really 
enlightened and really earnest Christian ; but it rejoices the 
Agnostic, who finds, or thinks and boasts he finds, herein all 
he wants for his position. To make still surer of it he takes up 
the sacred volume and demands, with his newly-tempered criti- 



1 895-1 THE CRITICS CRITICISED. 693 

cal scalpel in hand, evidence of its contents that he cannot dis- 
sect and disprove, or at least reduce to an unrecognizable mass. 
This process having in part succeeded with the earlier histo- 
ries of Greece and Rome, allured the sceptic to try it with 
that of ancient Israel. The same canons that had relegated 
Mycenaean power and the Trojan war to the realms of myth- 
land, consigned the earlier biblical narratives to the same 
unhistoric region. Abraham, Lot, Melchisedech followed Aga- 
memnon. There was no contemporary record of any of 
them existing; therefore they did not exist. But the spade of 
Dr. Schliemann, the great Grecian archaeologist, reinstated the 
"king of men " in classic history, and the pick and shovel of a 
Petrie, a Bliss, a Botta, a Layard, and other oriental explor- 
ers have brought to light overwhelming archaeological testimony 
* some of which had lain buried for over three thousand years 
in Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, Phoenicia, and Palestine confirma- 
tory of many portions of the Bible narrative, on which the critics 
had, as they thought, piled an irremovable load of higher and 
lower, positive and negative critical rubbish. Like that cover- 
ing the Cross and the holy places in Palestine until St. Helen's 
time, it only served to preserve them. 

We are indebted to a distinguished oriental linguist, archaeol- 
ogist and palaeographist, A. H. Sayce, of Queen's College, Oxford, 
for bringing before the public in popular form the results of 
recent explorations amongst the ruins of the palaces and temples 
of ancient Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, etc., in his admirable work 
entitled The Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the Monuments. 
On the learned professor's work we shall freely draw for illus- 
tration, and on that of Major Conder's, The Tell Amarna* Tab- 
Jets, a briefer, clearer, better ordered translation and explana- 
tion of this wonderful archaeological library, published last 
year. 

The critics had rejected the larger part of the earlier history 
of the Old Testament ; indeed, Havet and Vernes had gone fur- 
ther, and declared that before the Babylonian Exile there was 
little of it that could be believed at all, whilst many learned 
classical scholars would persuade us that before the time of 
Solon there was not a knowledge of letters existing, anywhere 
outside of Greece, sufficient to enable the written records, which 
the Scriptures presuppose, to have been made. It therefore 

* The insistence of Major Conder and Professor Sayce on their respective modes of spell- 
ing these simple words, is a marked illustration of the little dependence that can be placed on 
.arguments derived from etymology. 



694 THE CRITICS CRITICISED. [Feb., 

is impossible, they say, to conceive of a Samuel or a Moses 
writing or compiling a history. Force was lent to this from the 
fact that until recently no inscription in Phoenician characters, 
which were regarded as the oldest in Syria, was known that 
went farther back than the time of Solomon ; but now the 
Siloam inscription demonstrates that there was an alphabet used 
for writing purposes long before that time, which Moses or 
Samuel might have used. But there is stronger evidence of the 
erroneousness of such an argument against the antiquity of 
the Sacred Scriptures. 

The assumption that the Phoenician alphabet is the oldest 
is a false one. It is found that the Mincean, which was said to 
be derived from it, is its parent, and numerous inscriptions in 
southern Arabia, its home, prove that at the time of the Exodus 
the Minceans had a literature with which their Semitic neigh- 
bors, the Israelites, could easily have been acquainted. As Pro- 
fessor Sayce expresses it : " So far from its being improbable 
that the Israelites of the age of the Exodus were acquainted 
with writing, it is extremely improbable that they were not. 
They had escaped from Egypt, where the art of reading and 
writing was as familiar as it is in our days, and had made their 
way into a desert which was traversed by Mincean traders, 
equally familiar with the literary arts. With them, also, the 
kinsmen of Jethro, the ' priest of Madian, the father-in-law of 
Moses,' must have been familiar." Indeed, the condition of the 
Jews on entering Arabia must have been somewhat analogous 
to what that of the negroes of the United States would be to- 
day were they to betake themselves to the country of their 
ancestors. 

Strong as these arguments are in favor of the impugned 
feature of early biblical records, the discovery in 1887 of cer- 
tain Egyptian cuneiform tablets, at Tel el-Amarna, completely 
settles all further controversy in their favor. These, further- 
more, revolutionize all our ideas of ancient peoples, by showing 
that those of Western Asia, in the time of Moses, were as 
highly cultured as those of Western Europe in the age of the 
Renaissance. 

About one hundred and eighty miles south of Cairo, midway 
between Thebes and Memphis, on the eastern bank of the Nile, 
is a long line of mounds. Beneath them has been discovered a 
vast library containing the records of Egypt under the eight- 
eenth dynasty, which were deposited there by Amenophis IV., 
in B. c. 1500. Amongst these records are letters from Baby- 



1 895.] THE CRITICS CRITICISED. 695 

Ionia, Assyria, Kappadocia, and Northern Syria, as well as from 
Egyptian governors of the Amorites and Philistines, and from 
various other parts of Palestine. They are upon every variety 
of subject, as well as from persons of every variety of race and 
nationality. They testify to an active and extensive correspon- 
dence carried on, not by a select body of scribes but by per- 
sons of every class and condition. Amongst them are some from 
the then king of Jerusalem, who speaks of his God as the 
" Most High God of Heaven." They are written in the Baby- 
lonian language and in cuneiform characters, a fact which 
brings out in most striking prominence the schooling the 
writers must have undergone to master so strange and difficult 
a double language it being, like Latin in the middle ages and 
French in modern times, the common vehicle of international 
communication. Moreover, the writers had also to learn a dif- 
ferent syllabary, consisting of five hundred different characters, 
each of which had at least two different phonetic values. In 
addition, each character might denote an object or idea, and 
in combination another idea, different from that which the 
separate characters denoted, or their combined phonetic effect 
expressed. Acquiring a knowledge of this script-language must 
have been equivalent to learning from three to five of our 
modern languages. Yet the " critics " have " proved " the 
erroneousness of Genesis by the fact (?) of the general ignor- 
ance of the people, especially of writing, at the time and place 
it was supposed to have been written ! 

The most interesting letters are from the southern part of 
Palestine, which refer, with great clearness, to the conquest of 
that country by Joshua. The name of one of the kings killed 
by him, Japhia (Josh. x. iii.), is found, and also that of Adoni- 
zedek, King of Jerusalem. The name Jabin, King of Hazor, 
whom Joshua attacked, is also given. The Hebrews are said to 
have come from the desert and from Mount Seir all of which 
is in complete conformity with the Bible record. 

Amongst other things swept away by the critics was the 
biblical chronology relating to the Exodus. The Tel el-Amar- 
na tablets replace it in its entirety. The date of the Hebrew 
invasion of lower Palestine is exactly that which is derivable 
from I. Kings vi. i. It corresponds with the time when, ac- 
cording to the tablets, the Egyptian troops had been with- 
drawn, and the various peoples whom the Israelites conquered 
were left to shift for themselves, under the nineteenth dynasty 
that is, between 1700 B. C. and 1800 B. C. 



696 THE CRITICS CRITICISED. [Feb., 

" Ur of the Chaldees " ; Haran, where Thare the father of 
Abram died, and several other Scripture places have been 
" proved " by the critics never to have existed, after much 
merry-making over the differences in them and other names in 
Deuteronomy and Genesis. They have turned up on the tab- 
lets, however, where it is impossible to suspect that they are 
only mythical ; for data is supplied otherwise which enable us 
to identify their site. The tablets also justify their difference 
in spelling and pronunciation. They are given in Deuteronomy 
as they were actually pronounced ; and in Genesis as they read 
on some Babylonian tablets. 

Again, the much-ridiculed campaign of Choderlaomer and 
his allies has been proved historical; nor can the " higher critics " 
any more assert the Elamite invasions of the distant West, in 
the time of Abraham, to be incredible. It is no longer permis- 
sible to maintain, as they have done, that the story is merely a 
variation of the Syrian campaigns under Tiglathphilazer or 
Sennacherib, and that the names of the Palestinian kings afford 
etymological evidence of their mythical character. Ill- concealed 
scepticism and rash criticism have received a severe rebuke in 
the references to them through the Tel el-Amarna tablets, which it 
is hoped will be profitable. From them we learn that Palestine, 
and even Jerusalem, had come under and suffered from Baby- 
lonian or, as it was known in these parts, Assyrian power. 
According to the Babylonian records, as far back as B. c. 3800 
Sargon of Accad had marched four times into the land of the 
Amorites. On the bricks of the Babylonian prince Eri-Aku 
we read that his father, Kudur-Mabug, was " the father of the 
land of the Amorites." Now, Kudur-Mabug was an Elamite, 
and his name is precisely of the same form as Koderlahomer. 
There is nothing strange, therefore, in the name nor the event 
in the Scripture record ; more than this, the various places 
mentioned in the expedition can, by the aid of the cuneiform 
records, be identified to-day. 

But the second half of the fourteenth chapter of Genesis it 
was that received the least quarter from the critics ; they hardly 
thought it worth while to waste arguments on it at all. " Mel- 
chisedech, King of Salem and priest of the Most High God, a 
man without father, without mother, without genealogy," they 
dismissed as too obviously a creature of imagination. And yet, 
among the surprises which the tablets have in store is a vassal 
king of Jerusalem answering exactly to this description of Mel- 
chisedech. A letter from him to the Pharoah tells us that, un- 



1 89 5.] THE CRITICS CRITICISED. 697 

like any other Egyptian governor in Canaan, he had been ap- 
pointed not by the Pharoah, but by the oracle and power of 
the god whose sanctuary was on Mount Moriah. He says : " Be- 
hold, neither my father nor my mother have exalted me in this 
place "; and in another : " Behold, I am not a governor or vas- 
sal of the king my lord. I am an ally of the king. . . . 
Neither my father, nor my mother, but the oracle of the Mighty 
King established me." Here is an explanation also of that 
mysterious passage in Heb. v. 6. 

There is a reason why Melchisedech should be called " King 
of Salem," rather than King of Jerusalem. In the cuneiform in- 
scriptions Jerusalem is written Uru-'salim, and a lexical tablet 
explains uru to mean city. He was king of the city of Salim. 

Of the story of the creation and of the deluge most strik- 
ing corroboration has been offered. These have frequently been 
referred to, and need only be mentioned now in passing to no- 
tice a peculiarly obtuse view taken of them by Professor Sayce : 
that they, or copies of them, may have served as the originals 
from which the writer of Genesis drew his information. Is it not 
much more reasonable to suppose that the memory of the event 
traditionally preserved by both peoples served as the common 
source from whence the inscriber of the Assyrian bricks and the 
author of Genesis drew their information ? And that the former 
distorted, corrupted, and spoiled his work in a very natural and 
human way, whilst the latter, being preserved therefrom by divine 
influence, gave the true account ? This is, prima facie what ap- 
pears, and what never-ending criticism but confirms ; yet, strange- 
ly enough, Professor Sayce devotes a large portion of his other- 
wise valuable work to unfolding a crabbed, forced, and altogether 
gratuitous theory of his own. Had he, like Major Conder, content- 
ed himself, as he indeed should have done, with explanatory 
comments on the text, for which he is so eminently fitted, the 
public would owe him a debt of gratitude they by no means now 
feel under. They cannot help thinking that in The Higher Criti- 
cism he has, just as ruthlessly as the " higher critics," tried to pull 
-down with one hand what he built up with the other. 




698 BONAPARTE AND THE MORAL LAW. [Feb., 

BONAPARTE AND THE MORAL LAW. 

BY JOHN J. O'SHEA. 

'HE manes of Bonaparte are being gratified. As- 
he scourged Europe in the flesh, so he is afflict- 
ing us here in America in the spirit. Again he 
bestrides the world like a colossus, and torrents 
of printer's ink are being poured out over him 
in volume as great as his own bloodshed. The conqueror has 
appropriated our hoardings and our dead-walls as coolly as he 
appropriated kingdoms and dukedoms long ago. He glares at 
us in horrent form from a portentous steed, like a new 
Gorgon. He is, in fact, becoming somewhat of a bore. 

It is due to the appearance of a fresh set of Memoirs * of 
this phenomenal figure that we come to swell the volume of 
buzz about him now. The Baron de Meneval is the author. 
He was private secretary to Napoleon from 1802, when the great 
man was First Consul, down to the disastrous close of the 
Russian campaign, and did literary work for him intermittently 
afterwards until his departure for the Bellerophon. His oppor- 
tunities for the study of his subject were, therefore, excellent \ 
his partiality for him, which seems to have amounted to an in- 
fatuation, was not, however, the best of qualifications. The 
eulogies with which he loads his idol, in the course of a 
characteristically French preface, remind us of the period of 
Roman decadence when the debased and degenerate wearers of 
the imperial purple got parasites to pay them divine honors 
and worship their effigies in public. Such a pen as his was 
not the one to give us a picture of the despot in . all his true 
inwardness ; and indeed he frankly confesses his own unfitness. 
But he felt a sort of commission to write this biography as a 
sacred duty. "You will one day write," Napoleon said to him 
once, as the biographer tells us ; " You will not be able to re- 
sist the desire to write Memoirs." It did not require any very 
profound insight into human nature to make this prophecy. 

It is useful to place this work in juxtaposition with the 
Memoirs written by Madame de Rmusat, and endeavor, by a 
comparison of their respective portraits, to form a sort of 

* Memoirs illustrating the History of Napoleon I. from 1802 to 1815. By Baron Claude 
Francois de Meneval. Edited by his grandson, Baron Napoleon Joseph de Meneval. New 
York : D. Appleton & Co. 



1895.] BONAPARTE AND THE MORAL LAW. 699. 

kinetoscopical picture for ourselves. According to Baron de 
Meneval, Bonaparte in private life was chivalrous, generous, and 
tender-hearted to a fault. Madame de Remusat describes hinv 
as a model of coarseness and brutality in ladies' society. The 
devotion of this faithful servitor proves the exception to the 
generally admitted rule, that "no man is a hero to his own 
valet." 

M. de Meneval was evidently a most laborious and pains- 
taking chronicler. His three volumes are stuffed with details. 
The multitudinous transactions which occupied the time of Bona- 
parte, when he began to be a figure of national importance, are 
related most carefully in these pages. His criticisms of individ- 
uals are interesting, and they possess the merit of being crisp 
and graphic. But he looked at everything as his master looked ; 
he had no eyes of his own. 

One of the darkest episodes in Bonaparte's career the shoot- 
ing of the Due d'Enghien is softened down very sensibly by 
the narrative which M. de Meneval gives of it. That it was a 
misadventure of an unavoidable kind is what he endeavors to- 
show. 

It would appear from his narrative that when the duke 
was under arrest and being tried for conspiracy by the military 
commission at Vincennes, Bonaparte had despatched a special 
messenger, State-Counsellor Real, to examine him and see that 
the case was fairly tried. This envoy had been so broken 
down by incessant work over the conspiracy cases that he had 
to betake himself to bed, and could not be seen when the 
messenger bearing Bonaparte's commission arrived at his house. 
He arrived at Vincennes in time only to hear that the duke 
had been found guilty and shot immediately. Beside this mishap, 
the unfortunate duke had suffered from another. A personal 
note which he had written to the First Consul, praying for 
an interview, was not forwarded by the court-martial. Bona- 
parte, according to M. de Meneval, had made up his mind that 
the duke would be found guilty; but he was prepared to deal 
with any such incident as this request, and it was with this 
view he had despatched the letter to M. Real. But it must be 
clear, from this partial description, that when he heard from 
his messenger's lips the story of his failure and its tragic se- 
quence, he did not exhibit any great remorse. He merely ob- 
served, " It is well," and went upstairs to his private rooms, 
walking very slowly. Afterwards he got the official report of 
the judgment, and it caused him, as M. de Meneval says, 
"fresh grief." He found that the forms of law had been vio- 



700 BONAPARTE AND THE MORAL LAW. [Feb., 

lated in the proceeding, and that many irregularities and omis- 
sions marked the report so much so that he had a new one 
drawn up. This does not mend the matter in any way what- 
ever. Napoleon assumed that the unfortunate prince was guilty 
of entering into a conspiracy against France, in the carrying 
out of which his own seizure was to be an incident, and he 
resolved to frustrate it by having first blood. Hence the kid- 
napping of the duke an international outrage without modern 
parallel and the post-haste mockery of a trial, and the military 
murder. The only extenuating word that can be offered for 
it is that there were, without doubt, many plots formed at the 
time against the Republic and against Bonaparte, and when the 
public mind is excited peoples and rulers alike are driven into 
a panic state, and into the perpetration of acts which their 
calmer judgment condemns. 

The unlimited adulation of M. de M6neval fails to convince 
the reader of his Memoirs that he had implicit faith in the 
idol whom he adored. To chronicle such proceedings as he 
from time to time had to chronicle must have cost a conscien- 
tious man a pang. That M. de M^neval had some compunction 
about delicate matters, wherein the rude hand of the despot 
was thrust to rend and shatter natural ties and moral bonds, is 
quite apparent from the bald way in which some of these mat- 
ters are stated and the absence of any lengthened commentary 
on them. There were two things in especial which Napoleon 
strove with all his tyrant energy to subdue to his will the 
Catholic Church and its laws, and the right of his own family 
to marry as it pleased its various members to do. His inces- 
sant efforts in the former direction showed that he was not 
discouraged by the failures of the English Henrys or the 
German Henrys, the Fredericks or the Philips, but hoped 
against hope still to make the church a great state department, 
like the Protestant church in the English polity. In his out- 
rageous attempts to prevent his brothers marrying where they 
had placed their affections, he made himself ridiculous, and by 
one brother at least (Lucien) to endure humiliation. The 
flabby excuse that the senatus-consultum was as much the bar- 
rier to these marriages as the emperor himself will not serve. 
The senatus-consultum was the tool of the emperor; everything 
in France was at the time prostrate and pliant at his feet. 
His behavior toward the pope, amounting to rudeness, in the 
coronation ceremonial; his seizure of the pope's person and 
lengthened imprisonment of the steadfast pontiff, and the 
whole spirit of his policy as a ruler, showed that he designed 



1895.] BONAPARTE AND THE MORAL LAW. 701 

that he should rule the church and be supreme in the moral 
order as well as in the military state. 

The process by which the Corsican adventurer endeavored 
to carry out his design went far beyond anything ever pre- 
viously attempted. The method known as " bulldozing " in this 
country is mildness itself as compared with his. In addition to 
seizing the pope's person he sought to terrorize the cardinals 
and the bishops, fomenting the spirit known as Gallicanism un- 
til it assumed to master, on the pretence of resisting, the church 
outside. He annexed the Papal States to the French Empire, 
and indeed there is not the smallest doubt that he contemplated 
" running " the church from France, as well as running the 
secular world on the Continent of Europe generally. He im- 
prisoned bishops who stood up against his pretensions ; he ex- 
iled sixteen cardinals who absented themselves from his espou- 
sals with Princess Marie Louise, and deprived them of their 
right to wear the' red garments which symbolized their rank. It 
was only at the earnest solicitations of his uncle, Cardinal Fesch, 
who played a very weak part in all these high-handed proceed- 
ings, that he did not go to greater lengths in the attempt to 
break down the steadfast opposition of the Holy See and the 
church generally to his infamous thrusting away of an unsatis- 
factory wife in pursuit of his vast and overweening ambition. 

It is amusing to note the complacency with which the fol- 
lower endorses the action of the dictator in these remarkable 
events intensely amusing, as an instance of that self-sufficiency 
which makes the Frenchman at times the very peacock of hu- 
manity. M. de M6neval on this point says much, but a little 
will serve to show how the spirit of the master had inflated the 

vanity of the servitor. He writes : 
i 

" The pope seemed so necessary to Napoleon that he used 
to say that if he did not exist he would have to be created. 
But he wished to have him in his hands, and to establish him 
in Paris, so as to make this capital the metropolis of the Cath- 
olic world. In placing the Holy See in the capital of the em- 
pire Napoleon would have surrounded it with magnificence and 
honors, but at the same time he would always have kept the 
pope under his eyes. This vast ambition was a permissible one, 
and he would perhaps have had the power and the genius neces- 
sary for realizing it. The establishment of the sovereign pon- 
tiff in Paris would have been fruitful in great political results, 
and the influence exercised by the head of the church over the 
whole Catholic world would have become the inheritance of 



702 BONAPARTE AND THE MORAL LAW. [Feb., 

France. That was the time of mighty conceptions ; and the 
generations which shall follow us, in reading over the history 
of Napoleon, will believe themselves transported to the heroic 
ages." 

Italics are hardly necessary to emphasize the astounding im- 
pertinence of this endorsement. A duke getting a character 
from his valet is only a poor parallel. It is tendered, however, 
in all sincerity, apparently ; therefore, we may conclude that in 
giving Napoleon a recommendation on the score of his spiritual 
excellence he was an equally competent authority. He says : 

" To sum up, Napoleon loved his religion and wished to 
honor it and render it prosperous. This is proved by the Con- 
cordat. But at the same time he wished to employ it as a so- 
cial force with which to repress anarchy, to consolidate his 
preponderance in Europe, and finally to increase the glory of 
France and the influence of the French capital. The emperor 
used to say to the Bishop of Nantes, who pointed out to him 
how useful and how important for the unity of the faith was 
the visible head of the church : ' Master Bishop, be without 
anxiety. The policy of my states is closely bound up with the 
preservation and maintenance of the pope's spiritual power. It 
is necessary to me that he should be more powerful than ever. 
He will never have as much power as my policy prompts me 
to desire for him.' " 

Bonaparte's law of comparative values in ethics is one of the 
most curious paradoxes ever observed. Reserving to himself 
the right of infringing and abolishing every law whatsoever, 
divine or human, that stood between him and his daring schemes, 
he allowed no infringement on the code he himself set up. The 
senatris-consultum he considered authority good enough to annul 
his marriage with Josephine Beauharnais, but he wpuld allow no 
infringement of the civil law on marriage which he patronized. 
Thus, when one of his servants wished to marry a step-sister of 
his deceased wife, which was not permitted by the law, Napo- 
leon refused to set it aside when the man appealed to him ; but 
he made a sort of atonement for this scrupulosity about law by 
advising the suppliant to go outside the country and get mar- 
ried where such a marriage was not illegal. This characteristic 
anecdote M. de Mneval relates with the greatest ingenuous- 
ness. 

It is well that these Memoirs have made their appearance 
just now. The public mind is filled with the afterglow of a 
dazzling military career, to the exclusion of the consideration 



1895-] BONAPARTE AND THE MORAL LAW. 703 

of the deadly menace it was to every institution which stands 
for liberty of soul and mind here below. It is well that it is 
afforded a glimpse into the life of the real man by one who 
saw him at close range. To find how he acted towards the 
Catholic Church, towards the distinguished women who op- 
posed his ambition, towards the illustrious Chateaubriand, and 
the greatest minds, in short, in France who would not bend to 
his will, it is only necessary to go closely through the pages 
of this devoted amanuensis. No spot or blemish appears in the 
character of either Bonaparte or Josephine, whilst the writer 
does not hesitate to blacken the character of Napoleon's adver- 
saries, such as Madame de Stael, wherever he can. If there 
were any scandals in the career of that illustrious and much- 
persecuted woman, why not let the grave close over them as 
over those of his master and mistress, which were far more no- 
torious? The more we learn of the French Empire that of 
Napoleon the Great and Napoleon the Sham the greater reason 
we have for believing that the Republic, with all its drawbacks, 
is far more beneficial to France and to the cause of universal 
justice and progress than the Imperial rule. And as regards its 
attitude towards the church, it is well to bear in mind that it is 
at all times better to deal with an avowed enemy than with a 
make-believe friend a friend who abuses the name of friend- 
ship for the purpose of enslavement and humiliation. 

Robert H. Sherard, who translated the work, explains that 
he found no small difficulty in following the original text, so 
complex and roundabout was the style. This method of com- 
position is, it appears, in France the "style administrative"; 
and it is interesting to note that this was also the style of Bona- 
parte in dictating. The popular belief was the contrary of this. 
He was credited with affecting a Caesarian brevity and direct- 
ness. It will surprise many to learn also that he was unable to 
write a letter hardly able to write or spell anything, in fact. 
Like another great man of old, he was almost supra grammati- 
cam. The translator makes some very pungent and valuable 
notes and corrections in the course of his exceedingly onerous 
task. 

The production of the book, it is but just to say, reflects high 
credit on the publishers, the Messrs. Appleton. Its bindings 
are in rich blue and gold, and the white and gold Napoleonic 
device on the cover is beautifully reproduced. Four finely exe- 
cuted portraits those of Bonaparte, Josephine, Marie Louise, 
and the author are given in the work. They are tinted etchings. 




AUBREY DE VERE stands apart from the crowd 
who depend upon noisy fame. That feverishness 
to keep their names ever before the public is no 
mark of his. It suggests the fear that the laurels 
they have won are not evergreens, but leaves to 
wither unless kept in the sunshine of public notice with jealous 
assiduity. The calm consciousness of a higher desert is dis- 
cernible in his attitude ; the modesty which is ever the accom- 
paniment of sterling genius restrains him from constantly figur- 
ing in the public eye, or striving to catch the volatile spirit of 
the age by the production of work suitable to that species of 
pleasure which consists in perpetual motion and feverish haste 
in all things. Work like his may indeed be said to be "cavi- 
are to the general " ; it is for the retirement of the study and 
the calm seclusion of the woods and brook-sides in the long 
summer days. 

But this is only speaking generally. There are many people 
still, for all our age of rush, who love this sort of caviare, and 
to these the fact of a new volume of selections* from the poet's 
best work will be welcome news. This edition has been edited 
by Mr. George Edward Woodberry, of Beverly, Mass., who lays 
it before the American public with a felicitous introduction. 

To American readers some of these poems of Aubrey de 
Vere's must open up a world of ideas and ancient peoples as 
strange and wonderful as a new stratum to the geologist and 
biologist. Those, particularly, which treat of the mythical 
period of Irish pagan chivalry must be a revelation. They deal 
with beings answering in some respect to the Greek demigods, 
but more distinctly human even though invested with super- 
natural gifts. A past age was familiar enough with the nomen- 
clature of Ossianic literature ; in America, at least the present 
generation know nothing, it may be almost literally true to say, 
about the subject with which that literature dealt. On the 

* Selections from the Poems of Aubrey de Vere. Edited, with a Preface, by George Ed- 
ward Woodberry. New York : Macmillan & Co. 



1895.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 705 

other side of the Atlantic commendable efforts are being made 
to bring the forgotten Celtic literature on which the Ossianic 
inventions rested once again under the attention of scholars. 
Excellent translations of " The Sons of Usnach," " The Pursuit 
of Diarmid and Grania," " The Children of Lir " and other 
works, have been given the world by the Society for the Pre- 
servation of the Irish Language, and thousands of copies of 
these works have been sold. On these themes each of them 
a masterpiece of tragic composition several modern poets have 
sought an afflatus, and of these it may be said at least that 
Aubrey de Vere stands primus inter pares. 

" The Foray of Queen Maeve " is one of those old Irish ro- 
mances whose hero commended himself most to the poet as an 
ideal. Cuchullain is his name ; his existence as a real personage 
is a matter of grave doubt. He is one of a race of heroes whose 
military prowess altogether surpasses that of the Greek mythical 
champions ; and he surpasses these, too, in the fact that the 
most sensitive chivalry underlay his martial spirit, in regard to 
women and persons unworthy of his warrior steel. In Aubrey 
de Vere's hands he becomes a paragon of knightly tenderness 
and purity of motive, and the chivalric order of the Red 
Branch Knights the earliest creation of its kind, so far as we 
can learn, in the whole world assumes a new character. Other 
poets have handled the same personages, but none of them 
have conceived of the pre-Christian heroes as Aubrey de 
Vere does. Although pagan in training, he illuminates them 
with the glow of the coming dawn of Christianity, and fills them 
with the spirit of self sacrifice and purity of soul which ren- 
dered the followers of Patrick and Columbanus the light of the 
western world. This may not be in " the spirit of the old 
Irish poetry " of which we hear so much but still are left to 
know so little ; but we prefer to think that so poetical a people 
as the ancient Celts undoubtedly were more nearly approach- 
ed the spiritual conception of Aubrey de Vere than the gross 
and material one of, say, Sir Samuel Ferguson. 

The other selections in this volume show the author in dif- 
ferent moods some of them not his best. Those of his later 
years exhibit marks of saturninity. When a poet becomes 
soured by the course which the mutations of the ever-changing 
world takes, he had better lay down his lyre altogether and 
exchange it for a bicycle. De Vere himself has nobly indicated 
the spirit in which the muse should be truly wooed, and we 
cannot do him better service, in view of some recent threnodies 
VOL. LX. 45 



706 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Feb., 

of his, than let Philip sober speak to Philip in the post-pran- 
dial or dyspeptic mood : 

"THE POET'S SONG. 

" Far rather let us loathe and scorn the power 

Of Song, than seek her fane with hearts impure, 
Panting for praise or pay, the vulgar lure 

Of those on whom the Muse doth scantly shower, 

Or not at all, her amaranthine dower; 

Ye that would serve her, first of this be sure, 
Her glorious Paeans will for aye endure 

Whether or not she smile upon your bower. 

Go forth, Eternal Melodies, go forth 

O'er all the world, and in your broad arms wind it! 

Go forth, as ye are wont, from South to North ; 
No spot so barren but your spells can find it. 

So long as Heaven is vaulted o'er the earth, 

So long your power survives, and who can bind it ? " 

Amongst the many fine things in this volume is a piece called 
"The Sisters." It seems to be founded on a study of humble 
Irish life, yet it serves as a beautiful allegory of the relations 
between England and Ireland ; and its lessons are such as ought 
to be laid deeply to heart by all good men who wish to see a 
better order of things replace the old and evil deray. 

Two good books come to us from the eminent Irish pub- 
lishing house of Gill & Son, Dublin. One is The Life of 
Cardinal Franzelin, by Father Nicholas Walsh, S.J. ; the other, 
a volume of Essays by Mrs. Sarah Atkinson, edited, with an 
introduction, by Mrs. Rosa Mulholland Gilbert. They are both 
sure to be read with pleasure and much edification. 

The biographer of Cardinal Franzelin resembles his subject 
in his excessive modesty. He is a Jesuit priest justly famed 
for his erudition, and whose reputation as a pulpit orator was 
such as to draw great crowds to the Church of St. Francis 
Xavier, in Dublin, whenever it was known that he is to preach 
there. Yet he puts forth this work with all the diffidence of a 
raw beginner, craving pardon for its defects in a very shame- 
faced sort of way, as it must appear to the reader. That this 
humility is not the mask of pride any one who knows Father 
Nicholas Walsh need hardly be informed. He has no reason to 
fear any criticism of his work. It is in style and substance a 



1895-] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 707 

well-written biography, and must prove of exceeding interest to 
all those who desire to find rules for every-day guidance in the 
religious life. To these it is a work of great value. 

Father Franzelin belonged to the same illustrious order as 
his biographer. He was, intellectually, exceptional in his youth. 
He did not delight in robust exercises or boyish games, but 
was given from an early age to retirement, study, and contem- 
plation. Yet this was only his mental habit ; there was noth- 
ing of the ascetic or 'the misanthropic in his gentle, lovable 
nature. He was fond of solitary rambles over the hills and 
amidst the lovely valleys of his native Tyrol, feeding heart and 
eye with the varying beauties of the glorious panorama, and 
pondering on the eternal beauties of which these are but the 
faint reflection. He began his studies at an early age, and he 
seems to have had at the beginning the idea that he was 
destined for the religious life. Although it was under the 
Franciscans those studies were conducted, it was the Society 
of Jesus which he desired to enter when the question of choice 
was put to him when he was called upon to make a final de- 
cision. He was assisted in this decision in a very remarkable 
way. There lived in the Tyrol at the time one of those singu- 
lar women known as ecstatics. Her name was Maria Mori. 
She was a person of singular holiness and austerity of life, and 
had the reputation of seeing visions and bearing the stigmata. 
She was consulted about young Franzelin's choice for, although 
he had decided on the vocation, there were financial and other 
reasons which interfered with his free action. She prayed in 
solitude for some days, and when she had finished she declared 
it was God's wish that he should enter the Jesuit order. Ac- 
cordingly, those difficulties having somehow been surmounted, 
he entered on his novitiate at Gratz, in Styria, in his eighteenth 
year ; and the record which he left in the convent was elo- 
quent of his character : " In tyrocinio omnibus raro praeluxit 
exemplo." But his -habit of mortification was over-great, so 
that he ran imminent danger of doing himself permanent physi- 
cal injury ; hence he was placed under restrictive orders by 
his superiors, just in time barely to save his life, though not 
avert a very alarming illness. It was at Tarnapol, in Galicia, 
that young Franzelin began his more serious studies, and here 
he was thrown much in the way of Father Beckx, who subse- 
quently became general of the order. A great aptitude for 
languages was one of young Franzelin's gifts, and he found it 
exceedingly useful in those early days, thrown as he was 



TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Feb., 

amongst a mixed population, in imparting religious instruction 
and teaching the catechism to the young people of the sur- 
rounding district. He appears to have had also an extraordin- 
ary gift of memory. He finished his studies in the Roman 
College, his theological course being exceedingly brilliant. In 
the year 1858 he succeeded Father Perrone in the chair of 
dogmatic theology, and held that responsible position for the 
space of nineteen years. It is recorded of his method of teach- 
ing that he used no text-books or papers, but dictated slowly 
and distinctly to the class, for the first quarter of an hour, and 
lectured on this skeleton of his thesis until he had completed 
the structure as a beautiful whole. Many exquisite things are 
written of this portion of the cardinal's life, but it is as well here 
to say that they are related in a way more suitable to people in 
the religious life than to the lay mind. The work is essentially 
a spiritual book, and we most earnestly commend it to all in that 
state, and more especially to those who are about to enter it. 

The second production from the press of the Messrs. Gill is 
a volume of Essays by the late Mrs. Sarah Atkinson. This 
lady, who died only a little while ago, was better known in 
Ireland and England than she was here, not only as a literary 
figure of rare talent and sprightliness but as a philanthropist 
and promoter of practical religious enterprises of far-reaching im- 
portance. To her the Children's Hospital in Dublin owed its suc- 
cess. The still more famous establishment, the Hospice for the 
Dying, in the same city, which is under the charge of her sister, 
Mrs. Anne Gaynor, of the Sisters of Charity, was also in its 
early days much indebted to the help given it by this excellent 
lady, who never tired of well-doing. In the preface to the Es- 
says, which is from the pen of Mrs. Rosa Mulholland Gilbert, 
we get a vivid glimpse of the busy life which Mrs. Atkinson 
led, and our wonder is how she was enabled to devote so much 
of her time to literary work, so much of -it was taken up with 
duties akin to those of a ministering angel. She had the good 
fortune to be married to a gentleman of ardent literary tastes, 
the late Dr. Atkinson, joint proprietor with Dr. Gray of the 
Dublin Freeman's Journal, and the similarity in tastes and pur- 
suits between those two refined minds made their lives a per- 
fect idyl of noble living and thinking. 

Mrs. Atkinson's Life of Mary Aikenhead, foundress of the 
Irish order of the Sisters of Charity, is the work by which she 
is best known. It is an admirable piece of biography, and the 



1895-] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 709 

pains taken by the talented authoress to make it an authentic 
one in every particular, make it most valuable to many classes 
of readers. These essays furnish an illustration of her powers 
in other directions. They are chiefly biographical studies on 
St. Brigid, St. Catherine of Siena, Eugene O'Curry, John Ho- 
gan the sculptor ; Henry Foley, his successor ; the Dittamonda 
of Uberti, old Irish mansions, historic Dublin, etc. Mrs. Atkin- 
son and her husband had travelled much, seen much that was 
worth seeing, and were constant note-takers ; hence these essays 
are exceedingly valuable as notes and comments. Their literary 
style is smooth and graceful ; and therefore the book is in itself, 
apart from its historical value, a valuable intellectual study. 
As a glimpse of the literary life of Ireland, out of the beaten 
track a good deal, it is eminently deserving a place on the 
student's table. 

A companion work to the Life of Mary Aikenhead is the biog- 
raphy of Sister Mary Monholland* lately published. The author- 
ess does not desire publicity, contenting herself with the signa- 
ture "A Member of the Order." In literary method the work is 
not the best, yet it will be perused by many with keen relish 
as the glowing and ingenuous tribute of a fresh young mind, 
as it seems to us, to the virtues of one of heroic self denial and 
mortification for the love of her crucified Lord. It is a stirring 
chronicle. No chapter of the Crusades can surpass the history 
of the early sisterhoods in the West of this continent, and Mary 
Monholland's life as a Sister of Mercy in Chicago two genera- 
tions back. 

Sister Mary Monholland had more than her share of those 
" moving accidents by flood and field." On her journey down 
to Chicago from New York, it being in the days when there 
was no railway communication with the West beyond certain 
points, she was engulfed in Lake Michigan with some three hun- 
dred other passengers by the unfortunate steamer Lady Elgin, 
but was heroically rescued by Mr. W. B. Ogden, afterwards Chi- 
cago's first mayor. Again, the house in which the community 
were located was threatened with destruction by the Know- 
nothing mob ; but the Irishmen of Chicago turned out and pro- 
tected all the imperilled churches and convents, and the Know- 
nothings thought discretion the better part of valor. Thtn in 
the fearful visitation of Asiatic cholera which swept over Chi- 
cago in 1854 some of the sisterhood were among the victims, 

* Life of Mar v Monholland. one of the Pioneer Sisters of the Order of Mercy in the 
West. Chicago : "j. S. Hyland & Co. 



710 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Feb., 

yet Mother Mary and her companions never flinched, but went 
into the homes where its raging made the people shunned 
as lepers, and helped the sick and soothed the dying with all 
the intrepidity of soldiers charging up to the cannon's mouth. 
When reading the lives of such women it is not difficult to 
understand how powerful an auxiliary they have proved to the 
church in its sublime mission, in the living testimony they bear 
to the charity of God within it. This is one of the most thrilling 
of those real-life romances, and one calculated to fill the Catho- 
lic heart with pride and joy in such noble witnesses for the cross. 

If books were to be valued by bulk, the greatest work of 
the age is the huge volume entitled The Yachts and Yachtsmen 
of America, published by the International Yacht Publishing 
Company, New York. The literature of yachting is not the 
least interesting of the many pursuits which claim a distinc- 
tive library, and the reader who might expect to find in this 
work only a mere technical treatise would find himself agree- 
ably disappointed. Its editor, Professor Henry A. Mott, Ph.D., 
LL.D., makes the subject a fine historical and international 
study, from the time and clime of Homer down to those of 
Lord Dunraven and the Isle of Wight. This volume, which 
contains nearly seven hundred pages, is only the first instal- 
ment of the work a fact which suggests one alarming appre- 
hension on the score of library capacity. It is choke-full of 
fine plates too, and is besides an exemplar of fine printing and 
book binding. The facts that the work has required ten years 
for its preparation and that already over fifty thousand dollars 
have been expended on its production ought to speak strongly 
for its worth as an authoritative work and the excellence of 

its style. 

* 

I. A STORY OF COURAGE.* 

The edition de luxe, in white vellum with gold lettering, is 
of rare and chaste beauty, in the perfection of good taste, and 
worthy of the Riverside Press, as well as most appropriate to a 
memorial of the refined and holy community of ladies whose 
story is related in its pages. 

The names of the authors of the narrative are a sufficient 
guarantee of the literary excellence of the work, while the 
sources from which the whole account of the Georgetown 

* Annals of the Georgetown Convent of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. By 
George Parsons Lathrop and Rose Hawthorne Lathrop. Cambridge : Printed at the River- 
side Press. 



1895-] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 711 

Convent has been derived, viz., the authentic and copious 
annals which have been kept from the beginning, are a warrant 
for its accuracy. 

The Georgetown College and Convent are among the most 
picturesque and interesting places devoted to religion and edu- 
cation in North America. Even the oldest institutions in 
Canada are modern in European eyes, having less than three 
centuries of antiquity. In our own part of America, there is 
very little left of so ancient a date ; and in our young 
country, even the last century seems like a very remote epoch. 
The Georgetown institutions, therefore, seem to us very ancient, 
because they are coeval with the age of our earliest Presidents 
and with the beginnings of the capital city of our Republic. 

The Georgetown Convent is associated with the early history 
of the nation. A number of its inmates, and a still larger 
number of its academic pupils, have come from American 
families which, in our sense of the word, are old, and whose 
names are distinguished in our national history. We may very 
justly claim the Order of the Visitation in the United States 
as an American Order in its origin and foundation. Although 
it reverences St. Francis de Sales and St. Jane Frances de 
Chantal as its original founders, it has American priests and 
religious as its second founders. It was not a colony from 
Europe, but a new and indigenous institute. The constitutions 
and rules of the primitive society were adopted, and the new 
crder was affiliated to the old. But its canonical establishment 
and the approbation of the Holy See which it enjoys, do not 
rest on the original acts which authorized the European order, 
but on new and distinct decrees of the Sovereign Pontiff, 
given in favor of the Georgetown Convent and its offshoots. 
Moreover, the original plan of St. Francis, accidentally modified 
from the stress of necessity in France, was modified in a legiti- 
mate and regular manner in the American society, making the 
education of young ladies a principal object of its professed 
members. In fulfilling this high and holy task they have con- 
ferred an incalculable benefit upon the church and upon society, 
as all whose opinion is of any value must acknowledge. 

The history of this venerable convent has been told in a 
charming manner which gives fitting adornment to its intrinsic 
and moral beauty. And it is a most pleasing circumstance Jo 
us, as Catholics, that it has been done by members of the 
family of one so dear to all lovers of American literature as 
Nathaniel Hawthorne. 



712 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Feb., 

2. NEWSPAPER SERMONS.* 

Doubtless there has been meat in these sermons for many a 
reader of the great journal in which they appeared, and doubt- 
less too as many more will find in them corn, and not husks, 
in their present form. Apropos of this remark a clever 
Agnostic he called himself an Agnostic, and intellectually he 
is the joint product of Amherst and Harvard, so he should be 
clever said in the hearing of the writer, on Christmas Day, 
his remark being a part of a discussion on religion called forth 
by the feast : " I hold to no creed. What religion I have I 
formulate on the broad lines of reason, and of the Christian 
teaching as informed by reason." His conversation indicated 
that he had read Newman, Manning, Brooks, Storrs, Gibbons 
the Cardinal, Liddon and others, and Hepworth. He had sat 
through a long Catholic service that Christmas Day, and had 
listened to a sermon on the Incarnation, had come and thanked 
the preacher for the " real pleasure his sermon had afforded 
him, bringing him a new hope." He was not without religious 
sentiment keen and intellectual, however vague and ill-defined 
it was in his mind. Dogma and authority to him are as 
nothing, yet he is athirst for God, and knows not where or 
how to find the living waters of life. To him, and to many edu- 
cated men like him, George Hep worth's sermons will, prove 
helpful. " You should believe in something, and that something 
should furnish you with noble impulses, with charity for your 
fellow-men, with pity for the unfortunate, and with a desire ta 
do all that lies in your power to make this old world better 
because you have lived in it. That much of a creed is absolute- 
ly necessary, and when you have that much you want nothing 
more." 

Thus speaks Hepworth in one of these sermons. Better this 
much than nothing. So if this Herald preacher of a world- 
religion aids in keeping aglow even this spark of belief, his 
preaching is not in vain. But we would like to ask George 
Hepworth if he casts out the supernatural? Tell me, sir, 
whence I come, and tell me my destiny ? Tell me if Christ be 
not God as well as babe of Bethlehem ? Preach if you must, 
following Mr. Bennett's noble suggestion of making the Herald 
"helpful on Sunday in matters pertaining to religion," but 
preach the Incarnate God. Tell of his Passion and death, tell 
of sacrifice and penance and sorrow for sin. You are right, sir: 

* Herald Sermons. By George H. Hepworth. New York : E. P. Button. 



1895-] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 713 

"The object of the church is to make a man loyal to the 
truth." But it is more. It is to teach man truth. Christ is 
God and Christ is man. Christ is both God and man in nature ; 
God only in person. Hold fast to the supernatural in religion. 
Hold fast to that which teaches that the elevation of the 
natural man to a state of knowledge and of joy far above his 
highest natural condition is of God. This elevation was actually 
brought about by the Incarnation of the Divine Word. The 
noblest aspirations of the natural soul lack this elevation and 
yearn and struggle toward it in the dark. 

" An infant crying in the night, 
An infant crying for the light : 
And with no language but a cry." 

The very boon of Christianity is the union of man with God 
in the supernatural state. The noble sentiments of many of 
these sermons, the desire to be of service for God, morality, 
and happiness so aptly expressed in most of them, we deem 
honest and true. This yearning for God, this yearning for 
union with God, this ceaseless desire for a supernatural eleva- 
tion, from whence is born to us strength, is the truest of 
prayers. 

" Be near me when my light is low, 

When the blood creeps and the nerves prick 
And tingle ; and the heart is sick, 
And all the wheels of Being slow. 

Be near me when the sensuous frame 
Is racked with pangs that conquer trust ; 
And Time, a maniac scattering dust, 

And Life, a fury slinging flame. 

Be near me when my faith is dry, 
And men the flies of later spring, 
That lay their eggs, and sting and sting, 

And weave their petty selves and die. 

Be near me when I fade away, 

To point the term of human strife, 

And on the low dark verge of life 
The twilight of eternal day." 



714 NEW PUBLICATIONS. [Feb., 

NEW PUBLICATIONS. 

A VERY notable addition to the higher Catholic literature 
of America is The Catholic University Bulletin. The 
opening of the year 1895 is marked by the debut of this new 
exponent of academical thought, destined, we opine, if properly 
supported, to play a high part in the discussion of the more 
abstruse problems, religious and philosophical, of the age. The 
scope of the Bulletin is limited, in the statement of the pros- 
pectus, to the meaning of its title. It aims at making itself a 
link between the University and the outside world of Catholic 
thought to being, in short, the organ of the University as well 
as the expositor of Catholic philosophy. The processes and 
progress of education will especially claim its attention, natur- 
ally. In the hands of Professor Thomas J. Shahan the editor- 
ial work of the Bulletin ought to be safe. A choice list of 
contents distinguishes the first issue. It starts with a paper on 
"The Church and the Sciences" by the Chancellor of the 
University, his Eminence Cardinal Gibbons; and the other 
contributors include Rev. Professors Thomas O'Gorman, 
Thomas Bouquillon, Charles P. Granna, Edward A. Pace, and 
Daniel Quinn ; as also Professor J. W. Spencer. Those who 
delight in the profounder side of religious thought and philoso- 
phy will hail the new exponent as the worthy representative of 
Catholic scholarship in the New World, and wish it, as we 
cordially do, a prosperous career in its nobly-ambitious mission. 

The Messenger of St. Joseph for the Homeless Boys of Phila- 
delphia for 1895 is now out. It sounds a cheering note: 
splendid work done for the homeless boys of the Quaker City 
in the past year, hopes of still greater in the year to come, 
are the chief features of its story. The director, the Rev. D. 
J. Fitzgibbon, C.S.Sp., is doing for these lads what the saintly 
Father Drumgoole did for those of New York. The Messenger 
is a bright little magazine, and its pages are full of things 
which make its appeal most effective. 

The Rev. Father Callaghan, director of the Mission of Our 
Lady of the Rosary, New York, has published his annual state- 
ment. It shows that during the past year three thousand, three 
hundred and forty-seven immigrant girls . (including those who 
arrived by way of Philadelphia and Boston) received the 
hospitality of his Home for Immigrant Girls, 7 State Street, 
New York. This number should be doubled or trebled if 
account be taken of those who received advice and assistance 



1 895.] NEW PUBLICATIONS. 715 

at Ellis Island. On some occasions the accommodation of the 
Mission was taxed to its utmost capacity sheltering and provid- 
ing for no fewer than one hundred and thirty immigrant girls 
over night. The resources of the mission, owing to the depres- 
sion of the times, were often put to a severe test. The insti- 
tution is dependent solely on public charity. It is not merely a 
local charity. There is scarcely a State of the Union that does 
not receive its share of those whom the mission cares for. This 
great and beneficent work deserves a generous support from 
the people. 

St. Lukes is the title of a new Catholic magazine which 
made its bow on New Year's day for the first time in London. 
It must not be measured by its bulk, but by its merits. Two 
interesting biographical sketches are given in this issue one of 
Cardinal Vaughan, the other of the heroic but unfortunate 
Charles Albert of Sardinia. Another notable paper recalls the 
almost forgotten hymns of a great ancient psalmist, he who is 
ordinarily known as Prudentius, but whose full name was 
Aurelius Prudentius Clemens. The beauty, of these antique 
hymns is quaint and striking. A paper "On the Singing of 
Plain Song " deals with the important question of reform in 
church music in a suggestive way. We trust St. Luke s may 
meet with the success which it desires, and as it succeeds that 
it may be able to give a more varied bill of fare. 



NEW BOOKS. 

BURNS & GATES, London : 

Bernadctte of Lourdcs : A My st fry. Bv E. Pouvillon. Translated by Henry 
O'Shea. The Inner Life of Father Thomas Burke, 0. P. By a Dominican 
Friar of the English Province. 
JOHN MURPHY & Co., Baltimore: 

The Judicial Murder of Mary E. Surratt. By David Miller DeWitt. 
H. L. KlLNER & Co., Philadelphia : 

Little Comrades: A First Communion Story. By Mary T. Waggaman. 
MACMILLAN & Co., New York: 

The Magic Oak- Tree and Prince Filderkin. By the late Lord Brabourne 

(E. H. Knatchbull-Hugessen). 
R. WASHBOURNE, London : 

The Missing Links of the English Religious Establishment. By W. W. Hard- 

wicke, M.D. 
LONGMANS, GREEN & Co., New York and London : 

Life of Edward fioui>erie Pitsey. By Henry Parry Liddon, D.D. Vol. III. 
The Truth and Reality of the Eucharist ic Sacrifice. By George Rundle 
Prynne, M.A. 
BELLET, CLERMONT-FERRAND : 

La Stigmatisation, I'Extase divine ct les Miracles de Lourdes, refionse aux 

libres-pensetirs. Par le Dr. Imbert-Gourbeyre. 
PETER PAUL BOOK Co., Buffalo : 

Woodland Rambles: Poems. By John A. Lanigan, M.D., B.A. 



716 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [Feb., 



THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 

^PHIRTY Catholic Reading Circles have been organized in Chicago. Such is 
the estimate contained in a letter lately received, which attributes para- 
mount honor to the pioneer in the good work, Miss Mary E. Vaughan. Without 
depreciating the zeal and energy displayed in other cities, the facts clearly indi- 
cate that the new intellectual movement among Catholics is stronger in Chicago 
than anywhere else in the United States. The different educational institutions, 
including the parish schools, are represented by their most gifted graduates, all 
seeking self-improvement by effective methods of organization and a deliberate 
purpose to make a profitable investment of their time in reading by accepting 

competent guidance. 

* * * 

The Columbian Reading Union has had from its formation visible proofs of 
intelligent appreciation of Catholic literature and zeal for its diffusion from those 
who fondly claim as their Alma Mater some one of the excellent academies con- 
ducted by the Religious of the Sacred Heart. Only a small minority, however, 
of the graduates so thoroughly taught in Christian doctrine and other branches 
of the higher education for women, have fully utilized their opportunities to 
counteract the spread of dangerous and pernicious literature. The following re- 
port from Chicago will give new strength to many individual efforts throughout 
the land, because of the sanction given to the movement by those in high posi- 
tion. 

For the first time in the history of the Institute of the Sacred Heart, its 
alumnae have organized an association to cherish its purposes and to continue, in 
science and literature, studies whose beginnings were had in its schools. The 
first organization was effected in October, 1894, at Chicago, under the approval 
of the authority of the vicariate whose seat is at Clifton, Ohio, Reverend Mother 
Garvey, vicar. The organizing meeting was called at the mother-house on West 
Taylor Street, within whose walls many of the best-known Catholic and non- 
Catholic women of Chicago received part or whole of their academic training. 
Several hundred ladies were present. The superior, Mother Van Dyke, called 
the meeting to order, and requested Mrs. Margaret F. Sullivan to take the chair, 
whereupon Mrs. Sullivan was elected permanent president by acclamation. The 
following other general officers were unanimously elected : Vice- President, North 
Division, Mrs. Gormully; South Division, Mrs. Wilson ; West Division, Mrs. W. 
H. Amberg. Secretaries, Miss Onahan and Miss Ward. Treasurer, Miss 
McLaughlin. Directors: Mrs. Gallery, Miss Moran, Mrs. Newton, and Mrs. 
Charles Frederic Smith. The president, when the permanent organization was 
completed, delivered an address upon the parallel between the foundation of 
schools by St. Lioba and her companions and the revival of higher education by 
the Sacred Heart Institute after social and martial disturbances had practically 
deprived women of educational opportunities in a large part of Europe ; and 
likened the coming of the Sacred Heart apostles to the United States Mother 
Duchesne and her companions, sent out by the foundress, Mother Barat, decreed 
Venerable by the Holy See to the mission of educated women that accompanied 
Saint Boniface to the Continent from England. It was ordered that the board of 
directors arrange for regular meetings of the alumnas association once or twice 
a year in their discretion. Applications were received from alumnae residing at 



1 89 5.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 717 

various cities in easy reach of Chicago to be included in the association, which 
began brilliantly and promises to be a potent influence for religion and culture. 

As an illustration of the way the population of Chicago is made up, it may 
be said that the enrollment of the alumna? shows that the following Sacred 
Heart Academies or cities in which the institute exists are represented: Paris; 
New York, Manhattanville; Kenwood, Albany ; Rochester, Buffalo, St. Louis, 
Maryville, Detroit, Clifton. Among the non-Catholic members are residents of 
Milwaukee, Duluth, St. Paul, and Chicago, the latter including the president of 
the Chicago Women's Club, Miss Sweet. One of the members, Mrs. Sullivan, is 
president of a non-Catholic club of students of literature in other languages than 
English. Another member, Miss Cecilia Cudahy, is distinguished in the 
Amateur Musical Society of the city, a harpist and pianist. One of the members, 
Dr. Mary O'Driscoll, is a graduate of the Women's Medical College of Chicago. 
Several are notable in literature, their names being seen in the pages of THE 
CATHOLIC WORLD from time to time. 

After the alumnas organization was perfected two Catholic Reading Circles 
were organized under the Columbian Reading Union. The Mother Duchesne 
Circle, the second in order of organization, meets at the convent on West Tay- 
lor Street Mondays, at four o'clock. Mrs. Amberg is president ; Mrs. Gallery, 
secretary, and Miss Bremner, treasurer. The first Circle, named for the Venerable 
Mother Barat, meets Tuesdays at half-past three o'clock at the convent on Chi- 
cago Avenue. Mrs. Sullivan is president, and conducts its work; Mrs. Mona- 
han is vice-president ; Miss Kathryn Prindiville, secretary ; and Miss Alice 
Moran, treasurer. . 

The two Circles follow the same plan and use the same text-books, keeping 
hand-in-hand, so that students of either feel perfectly at home in the other and 
up in its work, week by week. The order of exercises presents points of diver- 
gence to some extent from other circle programmes. The meeting is opened 
with a prayer taken from the ritual of the day ; the members becoming familiar 
in this manner with the history of the worship of the church as it was chrono- 
logically moulded. Roll-call is by quotations, either from a source, previously 
designated or at the discretion of members. The Bible is the favorite book. 
The history of the books of Sacred Scripture is acquired incidentally with 
.adoption of one as the quotation well of a week. The music committee then 
presents a five-minute essay, telling the story of one of the great chants. The 
committee began with the Te Deum, covering the relationship between the Am- 
brosian modes and the Greek, and relating the origin of the noble composition 
written by Saint Ambrose to celebrate, according to good authority, the baptism 
of St. Augustine. The regular lesson of the day proceeds, an analysis committee 
having prepared the questions which are handed by chance to the members. 
The questions constitute the thread upon which the lesson, largely made into a 
lecture or commentary by the leader, is developed. 

The meetings have been characterized by diligence and sincerity in prepar- 
ing the lessons, and by grace, accuracy, and composure in presenting the results. 
There is a question-box committee who attend well to their duties. After trans- 
acting any new business that comes up, each meeting closes with singing the 
anthem whose story had been related by the music committee. There is a choir 
in each Circle which meets half an hour in advance for rehearsal of the day's 
music. Both Circles are fortunate in musical equipment. 

The first text-book in course used by the two Circles is Bible, Science, and 
Faith, by Rev. J. A. Zahm, C.S.C. At present a general study of figurative Ian- 



7i 8 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [Feb , 

guage and of Grimm's Law in Linguistics alternates with the regular text-book. 
At the suggestion of the Reverend Mother Vicar the meetings of the two Circles 
are open to "hearers " as well as to workers, " hearers " b<eing alumnae whose 
family cares or health do not permit them to study, but who are privileged to at- 
tend the meetings and derive benefit from the work of their associates. To ac- 
custom all to presiding, the respective presidents call other members frequently 
to the chair. 

It is needless to say that the Sacred Heart Institute, of the vicariate of Clif- 
ton, is rejoiced over the success of the first alumnze organization, and that the 
community is delighted with the talent, attainments, and enthusiasm shown in 
the two Reading Circles. A spiritual retreat for the two Circles was conducted 
the first week in December at the mother-house, by Rev. Michael O'Connor, S.J. 
# * * 

With considerable persistence we have endeavored to overcome by reason- 
able argument the reluctance shown by some Reading Circles to the publication 
of their proceedings. Good people with many hidden virtues sometimes forget 
that their influence for the intellectual advancement of the Catholic body may be 
indefinitely extended, may be rendered most helpful to others by the aid of prin- 
ter's ink. With regret we notice that the name of the directress, to whom so 
much honor is due for splendid results, is not mentioned in the following ac- 
count kindly prepared by Miss Anne Stuart Bailey : 

On November 29, 1892, the Sacred Heart Reading Circle was organized at 
Manhattanville Academy, New York City, with fourteen members. The regula- 
tions were few, but they have been strictly adhered to. Membership was limited 
to twenty-five, either graduates of the Sacred Heart, or Catholic ladies whose 
tastes and acquirements would be of similar scope. Even in this initial meeting 
the spirit of the Circle was shown ; very creditable work was done. A synopsis 
of the life of Cardinal Newman was read, together with a selection from Loss 
and Gain, and the study of Newman was taken up in earnest. A working com- 
mittee was organized each month, and this we believe to be a unique feature of 
the Sacred Heart Reading Circle. 

It is the duty of this committee, about four in number, to read designated 
books and to give at the following meeting a verbal or a written digest. Many 
delightful talks and earnest, thoughtful papers have resulted from this practice. 
Those not on the committee may read as their taste directs during that month, 
but to their credit be it said, nearly all follow the course mapped out by the 
directress. 

It is also the custom for individual members to supplement the work of the 
committee, by adding to the general fund anj interesting and appropriate infor- 
mation they may have gleaned relative to the subject under discussion. Refuta- 
tion of calumnies in newspapers or magazines of the day is also part of the work 
expected of each member. Much ardent enthusiasm has been generated, which 
has steadily increased until one essential requirement for membership seems 
guaranteed "the ability and willingness to read and work." 

Indeed, intelligent enthusiasm seems to be the predominant characteristic of 
the Circle. Even those who do not read with the committee are kept well in- 
formed on the special line of work by means of the papers, to all of which are ap- 
pended the references consulted. They are then ready to take up the link in their 
turn when placed on committee work, and pass it unbroken to others. A list of 
the optional reading, in which fiction is limited to one volume in three, is kept, 
and furnishes not only an interesting index to the literary taste of the members, 



1 89 5.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 719 

but is useful for others who desire a guide in reading. In both respects it has 
proved thoroughly satisfactory. 

The study of church history, chiefly by means of biography, has been the 
main work of the Circle ; a rapid review of Darras was made the groundwork, 
then have followed lives of the saints, from the earliest Doctors of the Church to 
those of the English saints of later times. Special attention has been given to 
the work of women in the church, beginning with an account of those who served 
our Lord in his public life. 

In order to be in touch with the spirit of the Columbian Celebration, a short 
course in Spanish literature was taken at that time, and very interesting histori- 
cal papers were read on Spain. The Congress of Religions in Chicago led like- 
wise to a study of the Catholic missions in Japan, and some valuable papers were 
the result. 

It has been the aim of the Circle to link the history, literature, and art of the 
periods studied; one memorable paper was that on the Symbolic School. In 
this connection much pleasure and profit have been given through our one cor- 
responding member, a former pupil of the Sacred Heart, whose ripe scholarship 
and patient research are ever at our service. 

At the request of an officer of the Catholic Summer-School two members, 
already favorably known as translators, have undertaken to render into English 
a work which will prove a valuable addition to the authorities we already have on 
church history. Others have contributed interesting articles, both literary and 
historical, to various Catholic magazines ; one of them is well known as a writer 
of children's stories. 

A question-box occupies a prominent place at the meetings. The informa- 
tion asked for is given at the subsequent meeting by some members detailed for 
this work, or, in some instances, by clergymen to whom the questions are re- 
ferred. Many thanks are due to those members of the clergy who have taken a 
practical interest in the work of the Circle, and given it the benefit of their learn- 
ing and experience ; particularly do we recall two most instructive lectures. 
Thanks are also due to the various libraries of the city for kind assistance and 
courteous treatment. The Circle was present at the conference of Reading Cir- 
cles held last June, and a report of work done was read. 

A word as to the spiritual side of the Circle's life may not be amiss. The 
meetings are opened with a short prayer that of St. Thomas before study. As 
devotion to the See of Peter is a characteristic of the pupils of the Sacred Heart, 
it seemed most fitting to place the Circle under the patronage of St. Catherine of 
Sienna, that model of learning God's chosen instrument in bringing back the 
popes to Rome. Last year's work closed by a spiritual retreat given at the con- 
vent, in which the members participated with great zeal and earnestness. 

The Circle is not at all social in its character ; the members keeping strictly 
to the purpose for which they organized, work in the cause of Catholic truth, 
though much friendly feeling exists among those whom similarity of taste has 
brought together. 

Although this is the first Reading Circle organized under the auspices of the 
Religious of the Sacred Heart, it is not their first work of the kind. Fifty years 
ago, in their house of Jette St. Pierre, outside of Brussels, a literary circle was 
formed by our present venerated Pontiff, Leo XIII., then Papal Nuncio to Bel- 
gium. At a recent audience, granted to the Religious of the Sacred Heart, his 
Holiness took pleasure in alluding to " His little Academy," and even produced 
some of the essays of its members. 



720 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [Feb., 1895. 

Literary societies are also found in some of the Sacred Heart convents of 
Southern Europe, and we know of at least one doing good work in the Sacred 
Heart in England; in 1888 a Circle devoted to the study of philosophy was es- 
tablished in one of the two houses of the Sacred Heart in Chicago. 

In closing, we can only repeat the prayer of our association, that " God may 
grant us ardently to desire, prudently to study, and perfectly to fulfil the things 
which are pleasing to Him, to the praise and glory of His Name." 

* * * 

These questions have been submitted for solution : " Why is it that women 
cannot be fired to read and study individually ? Why must they run after intel- 
lectual truth always in squads? " 

Allowing for great minds remarkable for individual strength, the average 
woman, like the average man, can work to better advantage by association with 
others of kindred tastes. The solitary student is exposed to the danger of get- 
ting narrow opinions on many topics. Nevertheless, it is very much to be 
desired that women should do much more independent thinking in choosing 
books. Too many run " in squads " for works of fiction which are entitled to 
no consideration from any intelligent reader. The feminine reading public is 
responsible for the sale of vast quantities of literary rubbish. 

* * * 

One of our correspondents sends this excellent advice on reading from the 
late Oliver Wendell Holmes : 

" The work of hemming handkerchiefs and towels, or those other house- 
labors from which few are wholly exempted, are not enough to take up all the 
mental energy of the busiest young woman. What did they do before the days 
of printed books ? They carried the songs of their tribe, of their nation the 
songs which were the best part of their literature in their memory. Now the 
rivulet which the press poured out four centuries ago has widened with every 
succeeding generation, till it is no longer a stream within its banks, but an 
inundation. Books, reviews, magazines, newspapers, come in upon us like a 
flood, and the landmarks of our old literature are lost sight of, if they are not 
swept away. There never was a time when young readers were in such need of 
assistance. 

"Shall we read that is, shall we make serious business of reading ? This 
seems a strange question to- ask, but let me give some meaning to it. I heard 
the late Mr. Edward Everett tell a story of Lord Palmerston, which I have never 
forgotten and often repeated. Some one asked him ' Have you read a certain 
book?' naming it. 'I never read a printed book,' was Lord Palmerston's 
answer. Mr. Everett did not explain or account for this answer so far as I 
remember, but I suppose he meant that he had enough to do with reading docu- 
ments, newspapers, the face and character of men, and listening to their conver- 
sation to find out what they meant perhaps quite as often what they did not 
mean. 

"Some persons need reading much more than others. One of the best 
preachers I have known read comparatively little. But he talked and listened, 
and kept his mind sufficiently nourished without over-burdening it. On the 
other hand, one of the most brilliant men I have kndwn was always reading. 
He read more than his mind could fairly digest, and, brilliant as he was, his con- 
versation had too much the character of those patchwork quilts one sees at 
country cattle shows, so variegated was it with all sorts of quotations." 

The genial author of the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table recommends 
that we acquire the habit of loving books, and admits the difficulty of guidance 
for minds of varied aptitudes and different stages of education. He likewise 
bears testimony that the number is legion of those young women who pass their 
days and nights in reading useless novels, so called doubtless from their want of 

n <>veity. M. c. M. 




ST. THOMAS AQUINAS. (See page 795. ) 




THE 

CATHOLIC WORLD. 

VOL. LX. MARCH, 1895. No. 360. 



ENCYCLICAL OF LEO XIII. TO THE BISHOPS OF THE 
UNITED STATES. 

BY VERY REV. A. F. HEWIT, D.D., Superior-General of the Paulists. 

NCE more our venerable and beloved Pontiff has 
given evidence of his paternal affection and 
solicitude for the Church in our Republic, and 
his high esteem and regard for this great Re- 
public itself, and all its citizens. We may say, 
with confidence and sincerity, that in no country are his in- 
structions and admonitions received with more reverence and 
docility, by bishops, clergy, and people, than in our own. 
Moreover, all our best citizens look on him, and treat his offi- 
cial acts, with respect, and reciprocate his amicable advances in 
a courteous and friendly manner. 

In the present Letter, the Pope not only expresses his grati- 
fication at the growth and extent of the Catholic Church and 
its institutions in this Republic, and his hope for a still greater 
prosperity in the future. He also gives us the assurance : " We 
highly esteem and love exceedingly the young and vigorous 
American nation, in which we plainly discern latent forces for 
the advancement alike of civilization and of Christianity." 

Alluding to the Columbian celebration, he extends his view 
over the entire continent of the Greater America, and speaks 
eloquently though briefly of the fostering care of the Church 
over its infancy and early adolescence, of the apostolic labors of 
the members of religious orders and other missionaries, and the 
many marks and signs^ of Catholicity and its past history with 
which the New World is filled. ' Reverting to our own particu- 
lar nation, he notices the coincidence of the formation of the 

Copyright. VBK.Y REV. A. F. HBWIT. 1894. 
VOL. LX. 46 



722 ENCYCLICAL OF LEO XIII. [Mar., 

constitution of the Catholic Church, t and that of the Constitution 
of our federal Republic, and the mutual friendship of our first 
great archbishop and our first illustrious president : Carroll and 
Washington. 

The Pontiff pays a high tribute to the virtue and wisdom of 
the great Father of our country, particularly singling out for 
approbation and praise the principles which he inculcated so 
clearly and emphatically, in respect to morality and religion as 
the foundation of all civic and social well-being and stability. 

Hence it follows, that from the Catholic Religion flow out 
great blessings in the natural and temporal order, upon soci- 
ety and the nation. We take the liberty to add to this, that 
those who make war upon the Christian religion, upon the 
ethical code derived from it, and who seek to traverse and hin- 
der either the Catholic Church, or other religious societies, in the 
enjoyment and exercise of their equal rights before the law, 
are dangerous enemies of the country, who are working moral 
and political mischief, and undermining the foundation of the 
national welfare. 

It is to the equity and liberty established and sanctioned by 
our laws, and which are contravened by those who seek to de- 
prive Catholics of their full enjoyment, that the Pontiff ascribes, 
in part, the prosperity of the Catholic Church in this Republic : 
" Moreover, (a fact which it gives pleasure to acknowledge) 
thanks are due to the equity of the laws which obtain in 
America and to the customs of the well-ordered Republic. For 
the Church among you, unopposed by the Constitution and 
government of your nation, fettered by no hostile legislation, 
protected against violence by the common laws and the impar- 
tiality of the tribunals, is free to live and act without hin 
drance." 

It is true that the Pope here enters a caveat, lest the conclu- 
sion should be drawn that our American status is the best desira- 
ble status of the Church, and that the severance of Church and 
State is universally lawful and expedient. We surmise that this 
caveat has been inserted, not as having a bearing on America, 
but in view of some other countries, to prevent would-be inno- 
vators on their order from applying the commendation given to 
the American system in view of the particular state of things 
in this Republic to other nations where it is diverse. The 
mediaeval ideal of a Christian nation and of Christendom was : 
that a society of Catholics should be a Catholic society. The 
people of the United States are not a society of Catholics, and 



1 895.] TO THE BISHOPS OF THE UNITED STATES. 723 

therefore the nation cannot and ought no* to be a Catholic 
society. Our status is the best and the only possible one for 
us, and we all, bishops, priests, and laity, will loyally and faith- 
fully concur with our fellow-citizens in keeping Church and 
State separated as they now are. Loyalty to our American 
Constitution does not require us to affirm that it is a model for 
Russia, Germany, and every other nation to copy. Neither 
does our fidelity to the same Constitution require us to con- 
demn the mediaeval ideal, in respect to the union between 
Church and State, or to pass judgment on the laws regulating 
their mutual relations in Spain or Austria. We do not cherish 
any absurd wish that the United States or any single State 
should establish the Catholic Religion. There are none so in- 
sane as to conspire and plot to bring about the realization of 
such an impossible scheme. It is true that the Pope says that 
the Church " would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addi- 
tion to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the 
patronage of the public authority." Undoubtedly, if the whole 
people were to become Catholic, there would be a favor and a 
patronage extended to schools, asylums, charitable works, which 
would cause them to flourish more abundantly. The divine 
law in regard to marriage and divorce would be incorpo- 
rated into the law of the land, and many moral and social evils 
would be corrected by the enlightened Catholic conscience of 
the people and their representatives. Such a state of religious 
unity and harmony we must, of course, regard as desirable ; but 
it is only ideal, and there is no practical utility in speculations 
upon the happy effects it might produce. 

We have no doubt that it would be the greatest possible 
blessing to the nation, even in a temporal and worldly sense, if 
all, or a majority of its citizens were to embrace the Catholic 
Religion, and live according to its precepts and rules. It is 
our duty and our right to strive for this end ; but only by 
argument, persuasion, example, and moral means. 

We may, perhaps, give a sense to the phrase, " the favor of 
the laws and the patronage of public authority," which is per- 
fectly consistent with the actual state of separation between 
Church and State, and the practical conduct of our national, 
state, and municipal authorities during the past century. 

Our greatest jurists have declared that this is a Christian 
country. The Sunday is recognized and its observance protected 
by law. Thanksgiving and Fast Days are proclaimed by au- 
thority. Chaplains are appointed in legislatures, in the army 



724 ENCYCLICAL OF LEO XIII. [Mar., 

and navy. Colleges, under the control of ecclesiastics, and insti- 
tutes of charity have been liberally aided, and among these have 
been some institutions under the direction of Catholic authori- 
ties. There is nothing in this policy which is un-American. It 
would be contrary to the spirit and letter of our laws to favor 
one denomination above others. All should be treated impar- 
tially, not only those which are Christian, but the Jewish com- 
munity as well. It is not aid given to any form of religion, as 
such, when patronage and favor are extended to works done for 
the general good of the community and the service of the State, 
by schools, orphanages, foundling asylums, hospitals, and indus- 
trial institutes for training boys and girls in useful occupations. 
It is un-American for the State to ally itself with the sect of 
the Secularists, to the exclusion of all other sects, and to dis- 
criminate against religious societies, as co-workers in the cause 
of religion and morality. This is not the legitimate separation 
of State from Church, but hostility of State against Church. 

In this connection, it is gratifying to note the moderate and 
amicable tone of Bishop Paret, in his criticisms on the Encyclical, 
reported in the Baltimore Sun of January 31 : 

" It is pleasant to find the Pope's views with regard to the 
union of Church and State so much modified and expressed in 
so much more kindly manner than those issued a few years ago. 
It is pleasant that he gives thanks for the protection to the 
Roman Catholic Church as to all other religious bodies by the 
Constitution and government of this nation, and that by the im- 
partiality of its tribunals it is free to live and act without hin- 
drance." Then, after quoting the paragraph upon which we 
have been last commenting, he adds : " It is, indeed, mildly 
putting the old and well-known claims of authority over all na- 
tions and all rulers." 

Again, the bishop says : " There is so much that is excellent 
in the encyclical, that I would avoid criticism, it ends with the 
wish that those who differ from the Roman Catholic Church 
might be brought back from their prejudices and from their er- 
rors, and put in the better way of salvation. Surely we must 
be thankful for such kindly wishes, but, having our own con- 
victions, we think our best way would be to reciprocate them, 
to express, as I am sure all those who are Catholics without be- 
ing ' Roman ' will do, our earnest wish and prayer that our 
brethren of the Roman Church may be delivered from the pre- 
judices to which they have been long subject, and that they may 
also find the right and true way of the Lord." 



1 895.] TO THE BISHOPS OF THE UNITED STATES. 725 

While we cannot endorse Bishop Paret's remarks, we may 
nevertheless thank him for his expressions of good will and 
kindness, and praise his irenical tone. By all means let him 
and his brethren exert themselves to the utmost, to prove that 
their communion is the Catholic Church of America. All we 
ask of America is a candid examination of both sides of the 
question at issue between us. And may God favor the right, 
and bring us all into "the Unity of the Spirit, in the bond of 
Peace." 

The Pontiff recommends the Catholic University in the strong- 
est terms to the cordial support of the hierarchy and people, 
highly commending the noble generosity of Monsignor McMahoh, 
and exhorting those who are possessed of wealth to follow his 
example. In like manner he commends the American College 
at Rome to the affection of the prelates and the generosity of 
the people. 

The Apostolic Delegation receives a considerable share of 
the Sovereign Pontiff's attention. The inherent right of the 
apostolic see to send or appoint legates, delegates, envoys, into 
all parts of the Catholic Church, the necessity of doing so, and 
the actual exercise of the right from an early period, have been 
fully shown by Dr. Bouquillon, in the January number of the 
Catholic Quarterly Review. The Pope deigns to explain, that 
the establishment of the delegation and the mission of Arch- 
bishop Satolli, are an honor to the Church in the United States, 
as recognizing its title to rank with the older and most impor- 
tant divisions of the Church Universal. It is moreover neces- 
sary for the more perfect ecclesiastical order and administration, 
and for the prosperity of religion. 

The Pope explains that there is no interference with the 
canonical rights of bishops. The honor and jurisdiction of the 
Pope, whether his authority is immediately exercised, or medi- 
ately through a delegation, and the honor and jurisdiction of 
bishops, are in harmony with each other, since the Catholic 
Episcopate is one body, under one head. Their union and 
mutual co-operation are necessary to the well-being of the Church. 
So, also, is unity among the bishops. A slight acquaintance with 
church-history will suffice to show any one how disastrous con- 
tests of bishops among themselves, or with the Holy See, have 
proved in past ages. The Pontiff hopes, and we hope with him, 
that the influence of the Apostolic Delegate will powerfully 
tend to increase and perpetuate this harmony among the bishops, 
and thus to strengthen the loyal reverence and obedience 



726 ENCYCLICAL OF LEO XIII. [Mar., 

of the clergy and people toward their prelates and the 
Church. 

We can assure the Holy Father that American Catholics 
receive with gratitude the mission of the Apostolic Delegate, 
and are entirely disposed to give him due honor and obedience. 

The Encyclical contains much more salutary and opportune 
counsel and instruction, concerning Marriage, Duties of Citi- 
zens, Labor Unions, and the Press. 

Finally, the Pope earnestly exhorts both clergy and laity to 
be zealous for the propagation of the Catholic faith among all 
classes of our fellow-countrymen who are separated from the 
communion of the Roman Church. Missions to non-Catholics 
have already commenced, and are likely to be prosecuted on a 
larger scale in the future. It is to be hoped that the exhorta- 
tion of the Supreme Pontiff will encourage all who are en- 
gaged in this apostolic work, and stimulate others to join in 
it ; and that the divine blessing will crown it with abundant 
success. The gathering of all Christians together into one fold 
under one shepherd is a consummation most devoutly to be 
wished. And how can this be accomplished, except by a re- 
turn to that Church in which all our ancestors were once 
united, before the divisions of the sixteenth century ? 

The last loving look of the venerable Vicar of our Divine 
Saviour Jesus Christ toward America is turned upon the mil- 
lions of African descent, and the many thousands of our 
aboriginal Indians, who dwell within our borders. This is a 
topic of such paramount importance and interest that it de- 
serves to be enlarged upon. This we are not able to do at 
present, though we hope that it may be done hereafter, and 
that others, more competent, may take it up and carefully dis- 
cuss it, both now and in the future. 

We conclude with an expression of the firm intention of all 
who are engaged in the conduct of THE CATHOLIC WORLD 
MAGAZINE, and the Columbus Press, to follow faithfully all 
the injunctions and advice of the Sovereign Pontiff, and a pro- 
fession of our perfect loyalty and obedience to the Holy See. 




1 895-] PICTURES OF THE GALWAY COAST. 727 

PICTURES OF THE GALWAY COAST. 

BY MARGUERITE MOORE. 

'HE Gal way coast offers to the artist or romance 
writer material with which to fill portfolio and 
note-book to repletion. 

Anglers find in it a paradise. Dryasdust 
archaeologists and antiquarians, inquisitive bo- 
tanists, hammer-armed geologists, and statistic-seeking social 
economists find there a happy hunting-ground over which to 
ride their favorite hobbies. 

Wild in aspect, almost inaccessible, it is seldom really seen 
by the tourist, who to examine it thoroughly must journey on 
foot and reside for some time among the natives, studying their 
ways, listening to their legends, examining their condition, and 
wandering at will on land or sea ; thus alone can its possibili- 
ties be understood, its beauties impressed upon the mind. 

Along the stretch of ocean-washed coast, of which Arran 
Island off Galway harbor, and Innisboffin at the mouth of 
Clew Bay, form the extreme ends, may be found more material 
for romance and song, more varied types of character, strange 
costumes and customs, ancient architecture and modern pov- 
erty, than one will see elsewhere through the Emerald Isle. It 
is a beautiful coast. Beautiful in the sunshine of summer when 
blue waters lazily kiss its rugged face ; terribly grand in the 
gloom of winter storms when the wind-lashed ocean leaps upon 
its shore in passionate fury. High above the inhabited island 
of Innisboffin towers Clare Island (County Mayo), guarded by 
three hundred and sixty-five islands of various sizes, like a 
stately queen surrounded by liveried retainers. In the days of 
the English Elizabeth Clare Island was a royal stronghold, but 
no blood of the Sassenach flowed in the veins of Grace O'Malley, 
who then ruled the island with stern hand, jealously guarding 
her rights, at times administering sharp rebukes to those 
thwarting her imperious will. 

When she met Elizabeth of England, to whom she paid a 
visit, it was as an equal, not a vassal ; she absolutely refusing to 
pay homage by the slightest inclination of her haughty head 
before- her sister sovereign, who was forced to agree to the 



728 PICTURES OF THE GALWAY COAST. [Mar., 

Irish princess's view of what her position demanded. To this 
day one noble house in Ireland puts in practice a lesson rough- 
ly taught by Grace O'Malley. The galley of that valiant lady 
bore her one day into Dublin harbor, where she intended to 
make a ceremonious call on the Earl of Howth's family. They 
were at dinner, unconscious of the honor to be conferred on 
them ; at dinner with the great gates of the castle closed 
against all comers! Such a breach of hospitality was unknown 
in Doona, where all were welcome, particularly at meal-hours. 
All were not at dinner; the exceptions were the heir, St. Law- 
rence, and his nurse, playing " bo-peep " on the strand. Grace 
promptly availed herself of the opportunity to inflict the fitting 
punishment for inhospitality. She had the boy and his nurse 
brought on board of her vessel, a notice placed on the gate so 
tightly shut gave in strong language her opinion of people 
probably she called them churls who shut themselves up at 
meal-times. In time the boy was returned to his parents, 
hardier and more robust for his sojourn in Doona's stronghold. 
The lesson was not forgotten ; from that time up to the pres- 
ent the gates of Howth Castle lie hospitably open at meal- 
hours, though the welcome of unbidden guest may be none 
the warmer. 

The Arran islands at the other extremity of the Galway 
coast-line are not uninteresting, although no princess ever held 
court upon them. Lever, the Irish novelist, placed here the 
scene of Luttrell of Arran, one of his best works. In the 
eyes of the ornithologist the islands are remarkable as the 
only places on the Irish coast visited by the Cornish "chough," 
a small black crow with coral-red beak. As its name implies, it 
is a native of Cornwall, and for some reason known but to 
itself visits this wild out-of-the-world place. 

Arran Island is wonderfully fertile, thanks to its limestone 
formation. At the same time so thin is the covering of soil it 
seems as though the seed could not find earth to hide its roots. 

Arranmore, largest of the island groups, is fast changing its 
characteristics, ceasing to be picturesque. The village of Kil- 
kerrin has a church, school-house, priest, doctor, police-barracks, 
jail, and other adjuncts of civilization. A steamer replaces the 
trading-smack which contrary winds so often detained in Gal- 
way while the provisions she bore were urgently needed on 
Arran. Pampooties are things of the past or almost so. 
" Pampooties ! "the reader naturally asks what are they ? The 
footgear worn in primitive times by the islanders, formed by 



I895-] 



PICTURES OF THE GALWAY COAST. 



729 



steeping a piece of green cow-hide in water until flexible, scrap- 
ing off the hair and wrapping the skin around the foot, the 
shape of which it rapidly took. Inelegant in appearance they 
are, yet comfortable and non-productive of corns, bunions, or 
the other pedal ailments which in a higher state of civilization 
afford a harvest to the chiropodist. The Galway peasant does 




LOOKING OUT TOWARD ARRAN. 

not take kindly to foot-coverings. The tourists note the fact 
when they see men and women carrying shoes in their hands 
while trudging gaily through mud or dust. They cannot walk 
easily hampered by shoes, though it is considered good form 
to appear in them at church or market. At the journey's end 
or near it they wash their feet in a convenient stream, then 
put on the shoes, with or without stockings. What a differ- 
ence shows in their gait on resuming the walk ! elasticity has 
gone from their step, they are uncomfortable and self-conscious. 
The costume of the peasant women is variable as the cli- 
mate. Looking from the window of Mullarkey's Hotel, in 
Clifden, one needed but a slightly vivid imagination to fancy 
the market-place a Neapolitan plaza so dark the hair of the 
native Galwegian, so vivid the impression of color caused by 
the dress or want of it. In addition to the short red petticoat, 
the material of which is flannel, spun, carded, woven, dyed by 
themselves, many wear a gay-colored patch-work quilt in lieu 



730 PICTURES OF THE GALWAY COAST. [Mar., 

of cloak and hat ; this odd substitute for a garment is cast 
carelessly over the head so as to expose the face ; a piece of 
strong cord passed around the head-piece of the quilt and tied 
under the chin forms a hood ; the hands are thus left free, and 
no brooch or breastpin is needed. Women may also be met 
wearing blankets, webs of red or even white flannel fresh from 
the loom and draped about head and shoulders; others appear 
in the red skirt and blue cloak dear to the artist-eye. AlasT 
the young women who can afford to do so ape modern fash- 
ions and cease to be picturesque. 

The Irish type of beauty is found here developed to per- 
fection. It is strikingly Spanish, and at times suggestive of 
Hebrew origin. Jet black hair, clean-cut features, heavy eye- 
lashes so dark it is a never-ending surprise to find them veil- 
ing orbs of bluish-gray. Their figures are tall, lithe, and vigor- 
ous. Enforced abstinence from flesh-meat has its compensation 
in the whiteness of their even teeth. Hard work out-of-doors 
develops the physical powers, while their native buoyancy of 
disposition triumphs over the misery of their lot. 

In character the Galway peasant is crafty, suspicious, at times 
treacherous, yet withal open-hearted and hospitable. To under- 
stand the contradictions of his disposition it must be noted that 
his faults are the result of the oppression under which he has 
so long suffered ; his virtues are natural to himself. 

The feeling of hospitaility pervades all classes. The fox- 
hunting squire, whose dinner-table is spread with mutton, fowl, 
game, beef, ham, fruit, vegetables, and poteen, all produced on 
his own farm ; the jovial priest, who gives you hearty welcome 
to his dinner of corned beef, cabbage, and potatoes whose sides 
have split with laughter ; and the poor woman with nothing to 
offer but potatoes, salt, and buttermilk are all representatives 
of the national characteristics. As a native poet wrote : 

" Tho' the cup is well nigh empty, 

And but scant the meagre fare, 
Heart and hand give ready welcome 
All may claim a brother's share." 

The Galway peasant is in many cases comfortably clad in- 
gray frieze made by carding together the wool of black and 
white sheep. 

Superstitions long since banished from other parts of Ireland 
are still rife in Galway. Of these the most prevalent is a be- 



I895-] 



PICTURES OF THE GALWAY COAST. 



lief in the fairies' desire to substitute changelings for earth-born 
child, youth, or maiden. When a young girl dies after lingering 
illness it is not uncommon to hear a mourner say, " Shure 'tisn't 
herself was there this many a day "; meaning that the original 
bright, healthy maiden had been stolen with her bloom intact 
and replaced by the fairy semblance that pined and died. 

Belief in the power of the " evil eye " is as strong in Conne- 
mara as in Cairo, and spitting is regarded as the only reliable 
offset. The newly-born infant is first washed with the midwife's 
saliva, and each one who looks upon the babe must remark, " 'Tis 
a fine child, God bless it ! " then spit upon it for luck, or run the 




A VILLAGE IN THE MOUNTAINS. 

chance of being blamed for any ill-fortune that may befall it 
owing to the omission of the formula. It is not safe to ad- 
mire cows, horses, sheep, or even inanimate objects such as 
boats, fishing-nets, etc., without the blessing and salivated punc- 
tuation mark. 

The Galway peasant is not particularly religious, yet he is 
prone to the celebration of saints' days, or " pattherns," of which 
there are several throughout the year. Each locality has its 
especial patron saint all of Irish birth and from their festivals 
events are dated. " So many days after St. Darragh's day," 
or " weeks before Conan's patthern," are expressions used in the 
computation of time. 



732 PICTURES OF THE GALWAY COAST. [Mar., 

On St. Martin's eve blood must be shed in every house- 
hold ; the very poor kill a chicken, those better off a lamb or 
goose. Apropos of geese, nowhere are they cooked to such per- 
fection, stuffed with potatoes, butter and onions, parboiled, 
baked in an iron pot-oven buried in turf-embers, the bird which 
saved Rome comes to table an epicurean feast as to flavor, a 
picture as to coloring. 

Geese are even more plentiful than sheep in Connemara, roam- 
ing in large flocks amongst the rocks and through the scanty 
pasture. Twice a year the living birds are plucked, hence the 
poorest cabin boasts the possession of three or four feather 
beds ; one of these is kept in a large wooden chest together 
with pillows, blankets, and flannel quilts all reserved for stranger 
guests ; blankets, quilts, and bed-tickings are durable as iron, 
and almost as hard. In a few houses home-made sheets and 
table cloths may be found, but such are rare. Connemara was 
always more of a wool-producing than a flax-growing country. 

The spring of the year, beautiful everywhere, is especially 
so in Ireland. The young grass is softly green; hedgerows are 
thick with bud and blossom ; pale, shy snowdrops, bashful violets, 
golden-heart daisies, yellow daffodils, and nodding cowslips are 
peeping everywhere ; fields are starred with primroses. Black- 
birds, thrushes, larks, and linnets fill the air with melody, while 
the pink-and-white hawthorn and yellow furze add color and 
fragrance not to be delineated by brush nor described by pen. 

Over all this beauty hovers the chill shadow of poverty. 
Throughout Ireland, as in parts of Germany, the spring months 
are called the "hungry months"; everything is scarce and dear. 
Cows, to calve in May or June, give little or no milk; the 
store of potatoes and turf is running short, in many cases is 
exhausted ; cabbages and turnips are not to be had. On the 
Galway coast most families are short of potatoes by January. 
That means slow starvation, as Indian meal, though cheap, costs 
money, of which there is little in the country. Credit is diffi- 
cult to obtain nowadays from the Clifden shop-keepers. In 
former years large quantities of kelp were manufactured by the 
country people from the sea-weed which is found in such large 
quantities on the coast. Kelp was then worth from twelve to 
fifteen pounds sterling per ton. Clifden shop-keepers purchased 
it at that price for shipment to Scotland. Having the monopoly 
of the district market, they had no hesitancy in giving goods 
on time, payment being made when the kelp was delivered. 
Chemistry, in evolving aniline dyes from coal-tar, rendered less 



1 895.] PICTURES OF THE GALWAY COAST. 733 

valuable the kelp, until then the sole source from whence those 
dyes were obtained, and the price fell to one-fourth of what it 
had been. 

This want of food or of money to purchase it leads to a ter- 
rible state of things : a slow starvation, harrowing to the feelings 
of those who feel the hopelessness of individual effort in 
assuaging the suffering due to want of opportunity to work. 
Strong men are living on one meal of Indian mush in twenty- 
four hours naked, unadorned mush without sugar or milk to 
make it palatable not even plentiful, it is eked out with crabs 
caught in the rocks and roasted on wood fires. 

The people are naturally industrious, but have no employ- 
ment. The sea is teeming with fish which they cannot catch 
because they have not the proper boats, lines, etc., for deep-sea 
fishing. Even if they catch a quantity of fish they have no 
market for it. The town of Galway is fifty or sixty miles away, 




THE CASCADE AT CLIFDEN. 

with no connecting railroad. Clifden, the small town in the 
vicinity, buys only what is needed for home consumption 
buys at a very low rate indeed. The dreary days pass slowly ; 
men and women till the land, sow the seed, and cut seaweed 
for manure. The women work as hard as the men ; they 
may be seen standing knee-deep in water, chilled by the bleak 
March winds, gathering the floating weed rich in fertilizing ele- 



PICTURES OF THE GALWAY COAST. [Mar., 

ments, sodas and what not, then carrying it long distances over 
rocks in baskets strapped upon their backs. However, 

" Be the day weary or ever so long, 
At length it ringeth to even-song." 

Potatoes grow, corn ripens. On the twenty-fourth of June, 
St. John's day, the mid-summer fair is held in Clifden. New 
potatoes are ready for the market, and with small quantities for 
sale the long-suffering people go forth on pleasure bent. Once 
a few coins are theirs to spend, privation is forgotten as if it 
never existed. They are hilarious. They sing, dance, drink tea 
and eat white bread, oblivious of the past, careless of the mor- 
row a state of feeling calculated to excite the envy of the un- 
satisfied rich. 

If you study conchology and are interested in the marine 
flora, you will find pleasure hitherto undreamed of in sitting by 
the edge of the translucent pools left amid the rocks by the 
ebbing tides. Here are to be seen things of wondrous beauty 
hidden from the gaze of all but the favored few who, loving 
nature well, turn from the tourist-beaten track to rest with her 
in the do Ice far niente. 

In those rock-basined pools are gardens of sea-weeds in 
gorgeous red browns, filmy leaved and delicate as hot-house 
ferns, their colors shading from darkest red through all the 
gradations of brown, pink, and cream to white. Dwelling 
amongst them are jelly-fish of coral red, whose waving filaments 
of silky fineness are hastily withdrawn at touch of finger-tips. 
Long narrow dragon-flies dart hither and thither in search of 
prey, in their eager, rapacious greed suggesting the money-grab- 
bers of the far-off world. Deep in the crystal-clear waters we 
see tiny green insects, gorgeous yellow ones, delicate shells of 
pink, and pearls that hold the rainbow's tints. The hoary rocks 
in whose shadow you loiter are gay with sea-pinks that nestle 
confidingly in their old gray arms arms that were old when 
the world was young. Rock-ferns and green samphire cluster 
in the crevices of the most rugged boulders, leading you to feel 
as if everything around were filled with sentient life, to believe 
that things inanimate love company. The blue sky is reflected 
in a bluer sea flecked with dancing golden light and snow-white 
foam. The blue of the sea is a deception, a borrowed sheen 
which, mirage-like, vanishes on nearer acquaintance. The actual 
tint of the ocean here near the shore over a sandy bottom is 



1895.] PICTURES OF THE GALWAY COAST. 735 

green, a beautiful pale green, the shade of which is exactly 
produced in the stone called aqua marina. 

Galway is deservedly celebrated for its white trout and 
salmon fishing. "Anglers' Retreats " and "Fishermen's Rests" 
abound near the lakes, of which the fishing is strictly preserved. 
A license to tussle with the playful salmon costs much coin of 
the realm, but the fish can be bought at a very moderate rate, 
owing to the lack of ice and transportation facilities. The 
average price of trout is three-pence (six cents) per pound. 
Here a word of caution inserted may save the reader from a 
future sense of being " sold." Should an enviable happy fate 
conduct you to the Galway coast to make inquiries as to the 
prospects for a fish dinner, do not take an epicurean feast for 
granted because the fisherman to whom you speak tells you he 
has a fine trout for sale ; to him every fish from a whale to a 
sprat is known by the generic term trout. If the peculiarity be 
unknown, a distinct shock is sure to be felt when, rushing to 
the boat, intent on buying salmon trout, one is confronted with 
a six-foot conger eel! With disgust the victim of such a disap- 
pointment refers to it now after the lapse of many years. On the 
coast sea-fish are abundant and varied. Often on calm summer 
evenings they rise to the top of the water in search of food ; 
far as the eye can reach the ocean is black with them in 
shoals. Then, in their ardent pursuit of food, they at times 
follow the sprat on to the shore, filling creek and inlet to suffo- 
cation. Wild excitement results. Men, women, and children 
hurry to take advantage of the glut. The boy with a hook on 
his solitary suspender is well to the fore. The provident man 
fastens three hooks to his line ; each time they bring in their 
victims. Women dip their baskets into the squirming mass 
and pull them up heavily laden. The very small boy or girl 
manages to have a share of the fun by falling in, being pulled 
out gasping amid general excitement, spanked to restore circu- 
lation, and set on the rock to dry. Such fish as are to be 
seen here! Beautiful their changing, gem-like hues, delicious 
their flavor even when broiled on a drift-wood fire amid the 
rocks, and eaten with hunger sauce au naturel. There are 
bream, mackerel, gurnet, white, red, and gray ; black and white 
pollock; scad, needle-fish, etc., in endless variety. Cray-fish of 
enormous size, crabs and lobsters, lurk amid the rocks. Cockles 
and periwinkles are found in abundance on the shore, but 
want of money and a market paralyzes enterprise. 

The ocean is not always softly beautiful, nor its bosom 



736 



PICTURES OF THE GALWAY COAST. 



[Mar., 



calm and serene. When rough winds sweep across its face and 
ruffle its placidity, it is difficult to give inland residents the faint- 
est idea of its furious aspect. Nowhere does it appear more 
terribly grand than on this wild western coast. Huge heading 
billows of green-gray hue come thundering in with sullen boom ; 
louder grows the sound as the rushing torrent strikes sunken 
rocks, half-submerged islets over which the now broken water 
pours in tremendous volume, filling the air with clouds of mist 
and spray. Woe to the hapless ship exposed to the force of the 
winter storm on that rock-bound coast ! where certain destruc- 
tion awaits her. Spectators safe on terra firma are impressed 
with awe mingled with terror as they watch the tempest-lashed 
breakers arise to a threatening height. The feeling pervades 
one that the huge mass of water coming landward with such 




WHERE PRINCELY DICK MARTIN LIVED. 

velocity might easily sweep all before it across the country into 
Dublin Bay. 

Tourists visiting Connemara generally begin the tour from 
Dublin, thence by the Midland Great Western Railway to Gal- 
way, capital town of the county a quaint, picturesque old 
place, with many reminiscences of the days when Spanish mer- 
chants visited it and intermarried with its daughters. The drive 
from Galway to Clifden is one of fifty miles. The road excel- 
lent, the scenery fine, great beauty may be discovered by eyes 



i895] PICTURES OF THE GALWAY COAST. 737 

trained to observation. The bleakest mountains have gleams of 
color in pleasant relief to their gray-brown hues. Patches of 
yellow furze or purple heather, deep cool shadows, streaks of 
golden light. White-fleeced sheep, kyloe cattle with shaggy 
manes, herds of Connemara ponies, sure-footed as Alpine cha- 
mois, add diversity to the landscape. Then the driver beguiles 
the time with snatches of song and story; some of the latter 
gloomy but interesting. Passing through wild wastes of country 
the traveller is sure to notice mounds overgrown with grass and 
weeds ; uninscribed tombs are these the inscription is engraved 
on the hearts of the Irish peasantry with memories of former 
years when the homes of Connemara were desolated by govern- 
ment-fostered famine. The weird, lowly mounds were cabins 
where happy families dwelt before evil days came on the land ; 
until fever, born of famine, ravaged the peasant homes. One 
by one they died. All dreaded the fatal fever, feared to touch 
the gaunt, festering corpses which the safety of the living de- 
manded should be hidden from sight. The paternal government 
rose to the occasion ; by order of the authorities ropes were 
placed around the walls of cabins wherein the entire family lay 
dead ; a long pull and a strong pull tumbled the walls, the 
thatched roof settled down upon the ruins, which thus afforded 
shroud, coffin, and tomb to the victims who lay beneath. 

" Nerve and muscle, heart and brain, 
Lost to Ireland lost in vain ! " 

At Ballinahinch is seen the former residence of Colonel Dick 
Martin, M. P. dashing Dick, who used to boast of being able 
to ride twenty-six miles through his own estate from the castle 
by the lake to the shooting-lodge at Oughterard. Dick was the 
type of Irish landlord of whom Lever wrote. A whole-souled 
sportsman, a generous friend, a good all-round man with a 
talent for spending more than his income ; enjoying the day, 
taking no heed for the morrow ; hating lawyers, creditors, and 
duns. The colonel's stables were the admiration of the country, 
paved as they were with marble, their stalls and woodwork of 
mahogany. The marble came from extensive quarries on his 
estate, the mahogany was flung at his feet by old ocean in the 
fury of the equinoctial gales. Bad times came to Dick, as to 
his tenants ; the estate, forced into the market, did not bring 
a tithe of its value from a London law firm. Dick died broken- 
VOL. LX. 47 



738 PICTURES OF THE GALWAY COAST. [Mar., 

hearted, leaving an only daughter ; she died in the steerage of 
an emigrant vessel on the way to New York. 

Clifden is a picturesque little town snugly sheltered at the 
foot of a mountain. It has a good hotel, thriving shops, and a 
large supply of the native green marble made into handsome 
souvenirs, shamrocks, brooches, harps, bracelets, etc., mounted 
in silver with fine effect. A vein of marble found in the moun- 
tains and called moss-stone from its peculiar surface shows, when 
polished, perfect pictures of mosses, grasses, miniature trees in 
various shades of green on a ground of paler tint. Lustrous as 
onyx, it readily lends itself to .ornamental purposes. 

The archaeologist, in search of antiquities, may spend some 
days profitably in Clifden, as within short driving distance of 
the town are to be found wonderful remains of ancient architec- 
ture. Omey Island contains the ruins of a large monastery ; the 
monastic cells, in bee-hive form, are in excellent preservation. 
Hermitages abound on lonely islands, some of large size, others 
small cells, all built of heavy stones cemented by the wonderful 
shell-mortar which defies the ravages of time. Chapters might 
be written of the history of those remains, of the stones with 
strange runic writings found in their vicinity, and of the legends 
connected with the saintly builders. But time passes, and we 
must move on through the water-soaked bogs and by the ruined 
lands of banished peasants. Chameleon-like, the mind takes color 
from its surroundings ; we feei desolate, dull, depressed amongst 
the cold browns and gloomy grays, until at the mountains we 
are forced to look upward ; then such feelings vanish, for grand 
are those eternal hills that bear the modest title of the " Twelve 
Pins." Some are king-like in regal mantle of purple heather, 
crowned by the golden sunlight. Others bleak, bare, but grandly 
threatening, like warriors in armor ; the thunder-cloud or ghostly 
mist seeming to rest fittingly upon their stern brows. But we 
are wandering from the object of our sketch the Galway coast 
seduced by the joy of travel. 

Before saying farewell it is just to remind strange visitors to 
the green fields of Erin that the province of Connaught, to which 
Galway belongs, is peopled in great part by the descendants of 
brave men and women who, faithful to their country as to their 
religion, were driven across the Shannon by the Cromwellian 
spoilers of their homes in the South. 




1 895.] INDIA-RUBBER ORTHODOXY. 739 



INDIA-RUBBER ORTHODOXY. 

BY HENRY AUSTIN ADAMS. 

IV. HERE AND THERE IN CATHOLICISM. ' 
I 

HERE is something very charming about the 
present passion for politeness: As against the 
polemics of our fathers, these polite phrases 
of our contemporaries are as the pipings of 
peace to the din of war. The roar is now 
become as gentle as the sucking dove's. May it remain so ! 

Charming to see Moslem and Jew and Christian meeting at 
the World's Fair in what Max Miiller calls the first truly oecu- 
menical council ! And more delicious yet to observe sects with- 
in sects of sects here in America conferring and co-laboring and 
palavering just as though their differences were not profound ! 

Nor is this amenity of temper confined to the theological 
mind. Here and there even a liberal thinker and agnostic scientist 
begins to betray a possible willingness to admit that (within 
limits) somebody else knows a little. Keep it up, gentlemen ! 

Not so entirely pleasing is the elasticity beginning to mani- 
fest itself in the moral tension of our " end of the century " 
civilization ; but so wide-spread is the influence of culture's 
laissez faire and cosmopolitan every-man-for-himselfness, that it 
is no uncommon matter to find, in the reviews, a sound, well- 
starched English dean crossing swords with a hedonistic, Oscar- 
Wildean acrobat on the question of marriage. Observe, question 
mooted question, of marriage ! 

Let but some " new woman " throw down the gauntlet, and 
it shall go hard but some gallant right reverend or other will 
pick it up and give her battle (of the kid-glove kind) on the 
issue, let us say, " Is marriage natural ? " or " Is suicide a sin ? " 
or " Is life a lie ? " 

Much of this is, of course, "ad gallery," and part of the 
rdle Bishop Gullam has been playing, these many years, to the 
infinite delight of the comic-paper people. And it must ever 
be remembered, that to every infallible Ph.D. who settles things, 
month by month, in the reviews, there are a million of sensible 
men who do not read those ipse dixits, and would not care a 
fig for the doctor's opinions if they did. 



740 INDIA-RUBBER ORTHODOXY. [Mar., 

However, there is no doubt but that a spirit of tolerance is 
abroad, and that the very incongruities, inconsistencies, and con- 
tradictions which are now for the first time finding full play in 
the warm sunshine of mutual recognition, will by this very stand- 
ing side by side discover their discrepancies. Comparisons are 
odious chiefly to the found inferior. The " deadly parallel 
column " has terrors only for one of the things paralleled. 
Indeed, now we have got the ox and the ass well yoked to- 
gether, it cannot be a matter of much time when we shall know 
which is the ox ! 

One of the best and fullest illustrations of this all-compre- 
hending toleration of divergent views is furnished by that church 
which, while numerically small, is powerful and, no doubt, des^ 
tined to provide safe neutral ground for those escaping from 
the fast crumbling and disintegrating systems of the other sects. 
It is her known elastic temper which has for twenty years 
drawn to her fold most of her converts, ministers finding within 
her latitudinarian bounds room for their ever-widening eccen- 
tricities. 

The broad-church party in the Episcopalian Church boast 
of this fact as the chief glory of that communion ; but ritualists, 
especially the self-styled " Catholics," deplore it, and prophesy 
the gravest possible results. And yet it is to its existence that 
these latter owe their new-found freedom to exercise their Catho- 
lic proclivities. We find the bishops staving off all ecclesias- 
tical trials of even the most lawless, with the very sensible, if 
not very dignified, observation : " Don't make me prosecute 
Father Chasuble, dear Mr. Hazey ; for if you do, he will be 
certain to make me go for you ! " " Ecce quam bonum" etc., etc. 

Accordingly we find the larger dioceses veritable happy 
families including every variety of believer, from a shouting, 
anti-sacramental Salvationist up (or is it down f) to a barefooted, 
tonsured monk ! And over this ecclesiastical omnibus sits 
smiling (and dodging) the bishop. 

To an indignant old lady who complained of her rector's 
popery the other day, the bishop said : " Madam, the Greek 
word for bishop is episcopos, which is composed of ' over ' and to 
' look.' I therefore overlook everything. Good-morning ! " 

The rank and file are tickled by this, and a bishop so act- 
ing and so speaking makes himself solid with the millionaire 
man of the world so necessary for vestry purposes and when 
the hat goes around. But an immense number of earnest, 
pious souls are scandalized by this betrayal of the Son of Man 



1895-] INDIA-RUBBER ORTHODOXY. 741 

with a paradox, and hundreds of their clergy are humiliated 
and disheartened by it. 

Of course, one would think that such a condition of self- 
contradicting and mutually destructive teaching would logically 
lead men to the Catholic Church. And so it would and does, 
save when the spirit of the times breathes of "tolerance" and 
" breadth " and " comprehensiveness." 

These are splendid mental virtues. Who dares attack them? 
And so man's very logic is prostituted to the prevailing hallu- 
cination, and every ludicrous absurdity countenanced in the 
name of freedom. 

How often we hear that in the non-essentials we must have 
liberty. Grant you and amen ! But which be the non-essen- 
tials? Dr. Gullam answers: "It is not essential to know what 
the non-essentials are." And there you are ! Further discus- 
sion (with him) proves you to be a man narrow enough to 
quarrel over non-essentials ! 

It was not, however, of the theologians that I intended to 
write; but of the unsuspecting lay victim of this reign of a 
" don't-mention-it " kind of orthodoxy. 

Let us contemplate the experiences of some well-meaning 
layman of an open and teachable mind and obliged (as who is 
not in this country?) to change his place of residence from time 
to time. 

He is a Virginian, let us say. In Virginia our Episcopalian 
is little better than a Methodist with a (usually mussy and 
enormous) surplice on him. 

The church to which our supposed layman always went 
looked like a Protestant meeting-house. It had an "altar" it 
is true, but that not much used article of furniture was a little 
marble-topped table, dusty and rickety, which served three or 
four times a year for the administration of a rite which our 
layman was taught to regard as a mere memorial love-feast. 
No cross of any kind was to be seen in or about the 
church. Flowers were forbidden. The saints' days were ig- 
nored, as were also the fasts and the general system inculcated 
in the Prayer-book. 

His rector denounced the idea that he was a " priest " ; that 
there could be any sacrifice; that there was any such thing as 
priestly absolution ; and that sacraments were life-giving. 

Our layman, consequently, grew up a vague sort of Protest- 
ant, with the notion that his church differed from the other 
denominations principally in that its service began with " Dearly 



742 INDIA-RUBBER ORTHODOXY. [Mar., 

beloved Brethren," etc., that it included Jackson's Te Deum 
and, as a rule, a tamer and sleepier sermon than common ! 

Having to " go North " in pursuit of wider business oppor- 
tunity, our friend established himself in the quiet old vicinity 
of Stuyvesant Square, New York. 

He attends church St. George's. Lo ! Is this his Episco- 
palian church ? Choir boys in popish vestments ? But the 
service and sermon reassure him. They are Protestant. After 
a little he grows accustomed to the breathless all-around hu- 
manitarianism in vogue there, and the constant services and 
meetings, and the machinery. Having to move to the West 
Side, our pilgrim finds himself at the Church of St. Ignatius. 
Hears Solemn High Mass! Is paralyzed when one of the 
" fathers " preaches on the necessity of auricular confession ! 
Holy-water, incense, candles, crucifixes, pictures, Stations of 
the Cross ! 

On May I he moves to a flat on the east of Fifth Avenue. 
He is now in All Souls' parish. No popery here ! No, nor 
much of the dear old Gospel preaching our layman loves so ! 
But he is teachable, and he listens to sermons destructive of 
miracles, inspiration, orthodoxy the very divinity of his Lord. 

Next May he moves westward and into St. Agnes's parish 
a chapel of Old Trinity. 

Here he finds via mediaism. Some ritual but not too much 
to frighten people. Some teaching of innocent doctrine but 
a cautious indistinctness which leaves the worshipper to think 
as he pleases. If they hear confessions, they do so on the sly. 

Some of the congregation bow and genuflect and cross them- 
selves ; others loll around on the cushions in reassuring Protest- 
ant indifference. And although there are suspicious touches 
of Romish error, they are really nothing more than concessions 
to the artistic requirements of the age, and have no "doctrinal 
significance," says the pastor. 

Moving again, our Virginian is once more compelled to set 
the focus of his telescope of faith, for he finds himself at the 
Church of the Redeemer on Park Avenue. With a ritual as 
Catholic as that at St. Ignatius, and confessions and masses and 
all the paraphernalia of an advanced parish, he finds here doc- 
trines on social questions which are indeed novel to the Episco- 
palians. The single tax is taught him along with prayers for 
the dead, and the mass is shown to be a socialistic centre of 
the life of the world. 

For the first time our friend finds the poor really reached. 



i8 9 5.] 



INDIA-RUBBER ORTHODOXY. 



743 



and the easy-going, well-fed, selfish, snobbish, dominant class to 
which our Episcopalian thought his church was limited, scarcely 
represented at all. He fears, however, that this parish is not 
loved very much by the " powers that be." From ward to ward 
of the city, and from street to street, the poor layman moved 
and was orthodox only if he adjusted his belief anew with every 
move! 

Mr. Hazey, to whom the pious soul resorted for an expla- 
nation of this singular india-rubber holding of the faith, said to 
him, that we should be very proud to belong to a denomination 
so broad and liberal that it could lovingly embrace men of all 
shades of opinion, and, after all, the differences were of a trifling 
nature ! 

" But," answered the victim, " if my rector says he is a priest 
with power to offer sacrifice and to absolve, and my last rector de- 
nies it, one of them is wrong ; and wrong on a matter of stu- 
pendous import. What is true on Forty-fifth Street and Seventh 
Avenue is true in Stuyvesant Square, isn't it ? " 

So our friend appealed to the bishop. The bishop was busy. 
Mr. Hazey then called our perplexed pilgrim's attention to the 
fact that our excellent system of rapid transit reduced the prac- 
tical embarrassment very much. " If you take the elevated 
road you will be sure to reach a church to your liking, no mat- 
ter where you live ! " 

The next Sunday the pilgrim attended a modest little church 
uptown. As he entered the choristers were singing : 

" We are not divided, 
All one Body we : 
One in faith and doctrine, 
One in charity ! " 

" What a mockery ! " he cried. 

That is the kind of man who finds his way into the One 
Fold sooner or later. 




744 A MODERN ICONOCLAST. [Mar., 



A MODERN ICONOCLAST. 

BY MARY ANGELA SPELLISSY. 

ALLOO!" "Halloo!" 

" When did you get back ? " " Half an hour 
ago." 

" Looking for board ? " " That's the size of it." 
" Beastly business." " Oh ! so so." 

" What do you know of these places ? " 

" Less than nothing." 

" I'll ask the clerk,"' said Conrad Siegwart, as he departed, 
leaving Godfrey Dubois before the bulletin board in the uni- 
versity hall to scan, da capo, the list of boarding places in the 
vicinity. 

" Well, have you found inspiration from that sheet ? " inquired 
Conrad, returning. 

" No ; I'm quite at sea. The place I stopped in last year 
has shut up, and I know nothing of the rest." 

"What do you say to our going on the hunt together?" 

" I shall be much obliged ; I credit you with lots of experi- 
ence, capability, and such. I'm from a country town in Penn- 
sylvania, and " 

" Oh, that's all right ! I remember the name the fellows be- 
stowed on you last year, and honor you for it. ' Innocence ' 
is so rare a quality nowadays that it commands consideration. 
The clerk knows the woman who runs one of these places, and 
I am going to look her up. If you like we can go together ; 
he says the house is clean, cheap, airy, and has a good cook. I 
do not object to a room-mate, if he is half civilized. If you 
choose we might go shares?" 

"Indeed, I would be delighted," said Godfrey. "I think I 
heard that you were a Californian." 

" So they say," answered Conrad, as his long legs made two 
steps of the five ascending to Mrs. Bangs's hall door. 

To his companion Godfrey left the preliminary interrogations, 
but he failed not to note the terms of each of the rooms and 
their respective advantages. 

"Well, what have you got to say?" inquired Conrad, as they 
finished their tour of inspection. 



1 895-] A MODERN ICONOCLAST. 745 

"That third floor front is a fine room. What do you think 
of two single beds ? " 

" Capital idea," responded Conrad. 

An hour sufficed for the transfer of Godfrey's trunk to Mrs. 
Bangs's, and after an early dinner the young man departed for 
Atlantic City. Lectures would not begin until the fifteenth, and 
a week at the sea was an enticing prospect to an inland youth. 
Steaming away to the shore, he congratulated himself on the 
companionship of such a jolly room-mate. Conrad's genial tem- 
per and tone of good-fellowship had made him a prominent 
figure during the two previous years. From him Godfrey hoped 
to derive much useful knowledge ; this was Conrad's last year, 
while Godfrey was but a second-year man. 

The week at Atlantic City was not hilarious. October is a 
beautiful month at the sea, but to a diffident youth who has 
outgrown the attractions of toboggan and the varied methods 
of locomotion that the ocean promenade provides, life becomes 
monotonous. The long evenings grow wearisome without con- 
genial companionship, and it was therefore with pleasing antici- 
pations that Godfrey returned to Mrs. Bangs's and Conrad Sieg- 
wart. 

Entering his room, the setting sun shone red upon a crucifix 
suspended at the head of a single bed ; over the table in the 
corner assigned to the Californian hung a picture of the Divine 
Child standing on his mother's knee; her finger points to the 
printed page of an open book. The title Godfrey easily trans- 
lated, " Our Blessed Lady of Letters. From the original at St. 
Peter's in Rome." 

All the Huguenot blood of six generations of the Dubois an- 
cestors rose within Godfrey's breast as he strode about the 
room. This, then, was the explanation of the desire for compan- 
ionship. 

The Californian's free-and-easy air had captivated Godfrey, 
and he had marvelled that so popular a man had been so ready 
to admit him to such close fellowship. 

" Doubtless," thought he, " this was part of a scheme to en- 
trap me, but he shall find out that I am not so ' innocent ' as 
he thinks me." 

Resentment swelled within him. He had admired Conrad's 
varied ability, and considered him born under a lucky star; he 
could do anything. In the ball-field or on the river, in the lec- 
ture-hall or abroad he was equally at home, and everywhere he 
-diffused a joyful atmosphere. Before his hilarious voice ill-liu- 



746 A MODERN ICONOCLAST. [Mar., 

mor vanished as the fog flies before the sun ; jollity preceded 
him, his song or whistle announced his approach, and his jocund 
face, framed by his blonde curls and full beard, was ever the 
signal for mirthful banter. 

The bell interrupted Godfrey's sulky promenade ; Conrad 
did not appear ; and in no pleasant mood Dubois descended to 
the supper-table, where he found himself the only representative 
of the family. Mrs. Bangs volunteered the information that Mr. 
Siegwart was out of town, and would not return until Monday. 
Godfrey chafed at the thought that he must bottle up his wrath 
for forty-eight hours. 

Returned to his room, he unpacked his trunk and placed his 
table in such a position that, when at work, he could sit with 
the pious objects behind him. But when at night he laid him- 
self down he found the electric light as strong a revealer as the 
sunshine ; the contrast of the white figure against the black 
cross was ghastly in the extreme ; the face was turned towards 
him ; the sunken eyes looked an agonizing appeal from beneath 
the thorn-crowned forehead ; the drooping head ; the protrud- 
ing tongue ; the tense strain of the figure, hanging by the nail- 
pierced hands; all gave, with soul-piercing eloquence, the story 
of the harrowing torture suffered by the Redeemer. " God so 
loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son ! " Godfrey 
Dubois was a Sunday-school teacher ; he knew the hymn-book 
from cover to cover. From infancy he had sung : 

" I will believe, I do believe, 
That Jesus died for me." 

But for the first time in his young life the truth in its awful- 
ness was borne in upon him in all its magnitude and with its 
consequent responsibilities, and he shrank from the consideration 
of all that its acceptance involved. He was angry, and, like the 
young man in the gospel, his inclination was " to walk no more 
with Jesus." 

He had read in one of the Sunday-school books, "Are there 
any idolaters on our continent ? " 

"Yes, the Catholics in Mexico worship images." 
Towards the Catholics he then turned the tide of vexation 
that boiled within him. With some difficulty he refrained from 
tearing the crucifix from the wall. Quieting himself with 
the resolution to look for another room in the morning, he 
rose, turned the slats of the shutter, and resumed his comfort- 



1 895.] A MODERN ICONOCLAST. 747 

able position in bed, relieved by the effacing shadow that ren- 
dered the crucifix invisible. He discovered next morning that 
Mrs. Bangs's house was indisputably popular ; every room was 
taken. The university men had been rallying in hundreds dur- 
ing the past week, appropriating to themselves winter quar- 
ters. Godfrey found he had been peculiarly fortunate in se- 
curing a room affording such extended outlook ; into it the 
sun shone, and abundant fresh air kept it sweet and wholesome ; 
he resolved to make no change for the present, but to request 
the Californian to take down the objectionable emblems. 

The excitement of meeting acquaintances, and the general 
hurrah that characterizes the first few days of the resumption of 
university life, blotted from Godfrey's memory all ill-humor ; 
not until the two were sole occupants of the chamber did he 
find a chance to make his protest. 

"See here, Mr. Siegwart " 

" Call me Con, won't you ? " 

" Thank you ; Con, would you mind taking down those 
things that you have hung up there ?" 

" What things ? " 

"That cross and picture." 

Dubois's voice stammered into ignominious silence under 
the towering indignation that flashed from Siegwart's clear 
blue eyes. 

" Move my crucifix and picture ? " he roared. " I'll be 
kicked if I do. What's the matter with them?" 

" 1 object to having graven images put up for me to wor- 
ship." 

" What about that ? " And Conrad pointed through the 
open window to where the bone of contention stood aloft in 
the moonlight with its bronze nose confronting the north star. 

" Oh ! everybody knows that William Penn was not set up to 
be worshipped." 

"And only calumniators say that Catholics worship images." 

" Then that picture of the Virgin with the crown on it." 

" O Du ! for goodness' sake don't be so stupidly narrow," 
said Conrad in a milder tone. " Didn't the whole country 
go wild over the silver statue of the Goddess of Liberty 
at Chicago, and did any single voice charge the nation 
with idolatry? Look here, if you're such a dense little 
bigot, we had better part company right now. I did not 
dream that you were such mighty small potatoes; your 
horizon has been limited by the low hills that bounded the 



748 A MODERN ICONOCLAST. [Mar., 

wash-basin in which you were born. You can't help that all at 
once, but if you will keep your eyes and ears open and your 
mouth shut it is possible you may enlarge a little. This side 
of the room is my territory, and in it I will bestow my traps as 
I see fit ; and if you don't like them you can clear out." 

The last two words came in thunderous tones from his 
capacious chest. 

Dubois left the room in a ferment. Wasn't his father the 
Reverend Mr. Dubois, of Swansdowne? And did not his 
mother spring from the Gautiers, who counted their descent 
from the Huguenots who fled to New York in 1625? "Wash- 
basin ! " Why " Chalky Valley " is the garden-spot of Pennsyl- 
vania, one acre of which raises more wheat than any two out- 
side it. 

Godfrey's townsman, Amede Lafond, had the third floor 
back at Mrs. Bangs's ; to him the discomfited Godfrey pre- 
sented himself, craving shelter, which was readily accorded. 

Morning found Godfrey very unrefreshed. Amed6e was a 
very active sleeper, and appeared to take his half out of the 
middle of the bed. The room had but one window, blocked 
by the wall of the opposite stable, from which arose odors 
stifling. 

As Godfrey put his foot out of bed it crashed power- 
fully through his disorderly neighbor's guitar. This disturbing 
incident unfitted him for breakfast ; not even the blithe ques- 
tion, "How did you sleep, old man?" voiced in Conrad's gen- 
tlest tone, restored his equanimity. The week passed wearily. 
Saturday night brought merriment to the third story front, 
which the men had christened the " Lick Observatory." Dubois, 
leaving his stuffy room at 9:30, jostled against Conrad, who, 
with a ponderous pitcher of ice-water in hand, was ascending 
the stair. " Halloo ! " he shouted. " Where are you going ? " 

" I have read myself stupid ; I was thinking of a walk." 

" Why not come over to my room ? Some of the fellows 
are there." 

" I supposed so ; I heard the racket." 

" Come along ; you know them." 

Dermody, the quarter-back; Heintz, stroke of the 'Varsity 
crew, and Pappenheim, the quiz-master, welcomed Godfrey. 
Two of them were comfortably extended on the bed that he 
had found so delightful; a chair was proffered the new-comer, 
and he found himself seated opposite the crucifix. The 
choice spirits about him kept up a running fire of chat, inter- 



A MODERN ICONOCLAST. 749, 

rupted only by shouts of laughter. Godfrey noted that a re- 
volving book-case, filled with coveted authorities, stood beside 
Conrad's writing-table. The chest of drawers held a photo- 
graph case, and two of the pictures were familiar ; the Review 
of Reviews had given them in the previous month. As vis-a-vis 
to these distinguished men a beautiful matron was placed, and 
beside her the likeness of a magnificent girl in evening, 
dress. 

When the men departed, Godfrey lingered. 

"I see you have a picture gallery here?" 

" Only my family group." 

" Who is this ? " " My mother's brother." 

" Isn't he the lord mayor of London ? " "I believe so." 

" Why, you're a swell ? " "I don't see it." 

"Who is this?" " My father." 

" General Siegwart?" "That's his title." 

" If I had known you were such a big gun I should have 
been afraid of you." 

" I can't see why. I do not inherit the titles of either my 
father or uncle." 

" I see you still have your holy images ? " 

" Yes, they go where I do." 

" I happened in with worse since I left you." " Yes ? " 

"Yes indeed, I've struck the nasty this time. All the filthy 
things that Amedee lays hold of he posts on the wall ; they 
make me sick." 

"Why don't you clear out?" 

"Well, I begin to see that a fellow can't have everything 
as he wants it. The wretched food at Mrs. Bleedums made me 
ill last winter, and lost me a month. Greasy food, sloppy 
coffee, and the rest of it. Mrs. Bangs keeps a good table. 
She can't give me a room to myself, and I could not well af- 
ford to pay for it if she did. I don't mind telling you, 
Siegwart, that my father is a poor minister, and that I am the 
eldest of nine children. I got a scholarship at the university, 
and an old family friend pays my board. I am awfully sorry 
that I cut up so roughly about your holy pictures, and I am 
not ashamed to say that I see now that I was a fool." 

" Sit down Du, and let's have it out ; you went off at half- 
cock and I should have had more sense than to mind such a 
whipper-snapper pardon me. First, I had a perfect right to use 
my territory as best suited my convenience so long as I did 
not interfere with your side. If I were to shout and kick, you 



750 A MODERN ICONOCLAST. [Mar., 

would be justified in protesting against my infernal clatter 
because it would make study impossible." 

"You're a reasonable fellow, Siegwart. How came you to 
offer me a share in your room ? " 

"As usual, a mixed motive; I sized you up last year, and 
found you clean and honest. I wanted to get good surround- 
ings at a low tariff, and to cut from a crowd of fellows so con- 
genial that I could not work. I must let sport go this year 
and work like the mischief. Army life shows a man that un- 
less he works he's not worth shucks." 

" This is a fine room." 

" Bully, and there are no women to object if the fellows 
make an occasional row." 

" I suppose you can't comprehend my objection to your 
images." 

" I confess I can't understand intolerance and the rash judg- 
ment of the Pharisee. How dared you accuse me of worship- 
ping images? Do I look like a wallowing idolater? Did I rave 
at you last year when you told of the hundreds of roses you 
cut from your mother's garden to decorate the Liberty Bell as 
it journeyed homeward from Chicago ? " 

"That was prompted by patriotic spirit." 

" Look here Du, will you tell me that your Redeemer is not 
as dear to you as 'the bell that proclaims liberty throughout 
the land ' ? Did not the Lord Jesus Christ die to give liberty 
to every human being from Adam down, for time and eternity? 
I should have given you some explanation before, but that I 
make it a rule never to argue with a leaden-headed sulk. If you 
want to come back, say the word ; I don't want to share my 
room with every man. I know you are quiet and no sneak, and 
I also know that I can be of service to you. I saw your 
mother in town last winter, and resolved to keep an eye on 
her son ; on you depends her happiness. In this room I can 
promise freedom from filthy talk and beastly pictures, and 
that, you know, is something in this neighborhood." 

"You're a good fellow, Siegwart, and I will not forget this 
talk." 

" Get your traps, sonny, and say no more." 

Godfrey found Conrad a hard student and a wonderful 
helper. 

"Pile up your questions, Du, and if I cannot answer them 
I will show you where to look. You are welcome to use my 
books, but replace them and don't shift the markers." 



1 895.] A MODERN ICONOCLAST. 751 

Conrad found an old acquaintance at table one evening. 
Miss Shrewsbury and he had been fellow-boarders the previous 
winter and had become very good friends. 

" Who is your chum ? " she inquired. 

" Oh, my room-mate ? He's a man from the agricultural 
department of your noble State." 

"Don't jeer, young man." 

" I intended a compliment, Miss Lucy ; but the acidulous 
character of your temperament changed the milk of human 
kindness into an indigestible curd." 

"You know we cannot all breathe the air of the sand-lots, 
nor boast of our ancestors the Pioneers." 

"A truce. Where are you living?" 

" In various places. I am booked here for table-board, and 
have a room across the street." 

"To what Mass do you go to-morrow?" 

" The eleven o'clock." 

"Can you lend me your alarm?" "With pleasure." 

" I must go to the half-past six or not at all." 

" I'll leave the clock with the chambermaid to-night." 

" What's the row ? " cried Godfrey as the ting-a-ling-ling of 
the tiny clock sounded at six A.M. on All Saints' day. 

" Go to sleep, my baby, my baby, my ba-a-a-by," sang Con- 
rad, as he stalked over to the wash-stand. 

" No, but what are you up to ? " 

" Going to Mass, thou precious child." 

" Can't you stop that darned thing ? " 

"Yes, love; I'll immerse it in the water-pitcher." 

With a grunt of desperation Godfrey ducked his head be- 
neath the blankets. 

At dinner Conrad returned the clock to Miss Shrewsbury. 

"I hope my property did not interfere with your morning 
nap, Mr. Dubois ? " she said as Conrad left the parlor. 

" Oh ! not much. I wish I could get up at six every morning." 

"What time do you go to bed?" "About twelve." 

" You should have at least seven hours." 

" Oh ! I can get on with very little sleep if I must ; but Sieg- 
wart is the greediest man in that line that I ever saw. I've 
known him to go to bed at nine o'clock and sleep solidly until 
ten the next morning. He must think a k>t of his church to 
go off as he did at half-past six." 

"Yes; he never misses Mass on the days of obligation. 
Have you many Catholic friends, Mr. Dubois?" 



752 A MODERN ICONOCLAST. [Mar.,. 

" No ; I never knew any until I met Siegwart. I find I en- 
tertained very erroneous impressions about their belief. I have 
been looking into some of Conrad's books and find the doctrines 
quite the contrary of what I have credited them with." 
With a tentative " Yes ? " Miss Shrewsbury departed. 
Finding Conrad the only man at breakfast next morning she 
attempted to relieve her mind. 

" I think you have a probable convert on your hands, Mr. 
Siegwart." 

" Who may he be ? " " Your room-mate." 
" Why do you say so ? " 
" We had a word or two after dinner." 
" Now, Miss Lucy, you've been fishing again." 
" Oh ! indeed, no ; it all came from himself quite spontane- 
ously. He has been reading some of your Catholic books." 

" Ha, ha ! That explains the presence of Catholic Belief be- 
tween the leaves of Ashursfs Surgery. I wondered how it got 
there and credited it to the blundering chambermaid." 

" Did you ever invite him to go to church with you ? " 
"Not I." 

"Don't you think you should?" 
" Now, Miss Lucy, that's quite in your line." 
" I should not hesitate a minute but for the gossip." 
"And you will keep the poor youth out of the church 
through your self-love ? Fie upon you ! " 

" I know you are but chaffing, but there is some truth in 
what you say." 

As Miss Shrewsbury passed out the following evening she 
found the young men enjoying the woodbine-scented air whilst 
they smoked their cigars on the porch. 

" Fine night for a walk, Miss Shrewsbury." 
" Yes, Mr. Dubois ; would you like to escort me to church ? "" 
" What time can I be back ? " " In an hour." 
" Thank you ; I will be delighted to go with you." 
Sage Miss Shrewsbury asked no account of Mr. Dubois' 
impressions as they returned, but remarked casually that cere- 
monies on Sunday at last Mass and Vespers were accompanied 
by the music of a very fine choir, and invited the youth to take 
possession of her pew whenever he felt inclined. On Sunday 
morning she handed him the admirable leaflet, A Companion to 
High Mass for the Use of non-Catholics. Thus it happened that 
Godfrey Dubois soon became a regular attendant at High Mass 
and Vespers. 



iS95-] A MODERN ICONOCLAST, 753 

" Why don't you take your friend to see a priest ? " said 
Miss Lucy one evening in May. 

" Why don't you take him yourself, my friend ? " 

"Don't you know Father Hoffman?" 

"As well as I want to know him." 

" Oh ! I see what's the matter ; you've not made your Easter 
and we are nearing Trinity Sunday." 

"Indeed, Miss Lucy, you should set up as a professional 
mind-reader." 

" Never mind me ; just turn your attention to the main point. 
I know the examinations are a horrid grind, but you will meet 
them better if you just run over to church. The priests are 
hearing for to-morrow first Friday, you know." 

It was with joyful heart Miss Shrewsbury recognized Conrad 
among the communicants who thronged to the altar-rail next 
morning; the glad sunlight streaming through the tinted 
windows glorified his golden locks. His was a noble figure, 
and in his face shone the nobility of Christian manhood 
" giving to God the things that are God's," whilst not unmind- 
ful of those belonging to Caesar. 

Gradually Godfrey's prejudices melted away in the Catholic 
atmosphere he inhaled that winter. The talks at the Ozanam 
Club brought him in contact with many who he was surprised 
to find were members of the church he had thought so despica- 
ble. 

They were a lot of boyish fellows when at recreation, 
merciless in their chaffing of one another, and untiring in argu- 
ment, but also clear-headed and well-informed. The men were 
surprised one evening by the visit of a distinguished Catholic 
bishop, who, passing through the city, called on them to say a 
few words of encouragement. Bishop Quincy was another 
Saint Francis de Sales, gifted with keen penetration allied 
with exquisite tact, and animated with that ardent love for 
souls that characterizes the saint. Godfrey was enchanted with 
him. A few simple, earnest words of congratulation, followed 
by the introduction of each member to the delightful visitor, 
speedily brought familiar intercourse ; the tone was that of a 
family reunion of those long separated. 

"Why my dear boy! You are the son of Barnes of '85, 
and" 

" You here all the way from Dakota ? I knew your mother 
well ; she was in Washington the year the war broke out." 

"And you, my friend? What State do you represent*" 
VOL. LX. 48 



754 A MODERN ICONOCLAST. [Mar., 

asked the good bishop, holding in an affectionate clasp 
Godfrey's rather rigid hand, while his bright eyes appeared to 
read the young man's soul. " Ah, another of great Pennsylva- 
nia's sons ! Don't you think Catholics are a queer lot ? " 

Godfrey started. How did this strange man know that he 
was not a Catholic? 

" May I ask, bishop, how you discovered that my friend is 
not of the one fold ? " 

" Well now that is easily accounted for. Our Divine Lord 
said: I know mine and they know me, and he has endowed his 
shepherds with many of his qualities ; another reason is that 
Catholics approach their spiritual fathers with an air of confi- 
dence that cannot be expected from the non-Catholic." 

" But how do you get on with these people, Mr. Dubois ? 
College men are often a teasing lot." 

" Oh, very pleasantly, bishop ! I was a lonely waif in this 
great city until they adopted me. I knew no Catholics until I 
met Mr. Siegwart ; his friendliness has been not only a great 
comfort, but a great help in my studies ; whilst using his books 
I came across Catholic Belief and for the first time in my life 
learned the doctrines of your church." 

" You know that every acquired truth brings additional re- 
sponsibility ? " 

" I am finding that out, and when examinations are over I 
hope to give the subject the attention it demands." 

Hot weather came suddenly, and proved most oppressive to 
the sorely pressed student. Happy the man to whom cool 
blood was a birth-right. The neighborhood of the university 
in an extensive radius was heavy with the apprehensions con- 
sequent on examinations. " Woe to him who had sacrificed study 
to pleasure ! " Amede was seen through the open door of his 
room seated at the table on which his elbows rested ; with 
head plunged between his hands, he presented a pitiable object. 
The ballet-dancers leered at him from the walls; his eye rested 
on one face as he looked up. Springing from his chair, he tore 

the picture from the wall in a fury. " D you," he muttered, 

" I should not be in this mess to-day but for your nonsense." 
With hat pulled over his eyes and book under his arm, he 
strode out and down the street. As the clock struck ten he 
faced the examiner. 

In half an hour he re-entered his chamber, tumbled his 
clothes into a trunk, stamped on them until he could close the 
lid. Lifting the trunk he carried it down to the pave and 



1 89 5.] A MODERN ICONOCLAST. 755 

hailed a passing car, which swiftly carried him to the station ; 
a pitiful contrast to the handsome youth who came like the 
fortunate prince, a beau ideal for the admiration of many a 
gushing maiden. They voted his " lovely eyes " and " elegant 
moustache " just " grand." Haggard, dishevelled, with blood- 
shot eyes and aching head, he was borne through a land riot- 
ing in the luxuriant growth of spring. 

Beauty everywhere but within ; there the tortures of hell 
were seething ruin, rage, but not remorse; he blamed every- 
body but himself. To what was he going ? What welcome 
could he find at home? His mother had stinted herself and 
spared in all directions to spend on his education. He knew 
he. might still deceive her, and pose as a victim but his sister, 
clear-sighted Margaret? She would read him like an open 
book, and despise him. How could he meet his debts ? Mrs. 
Bangs would probably advertise all over that he left without 
paying his board. He groaned in his agony. 

,, Godfrey postponed his appearance before the examiners un- 
til the close of the week ; he reported to Conrad at twilight. 

" I've downed three of them, and I don't know anything 

about it. When I tackled Dr. X he paid no more attention 

to me than if I had been a tack in the leather of his chair ; 
after one or two questions, he looked at me grimly and 
shouted : 

" Where do you live, young man ? " 

" I'll be blessed if I know," said I. 

"Just as I thought," said he; "look here, go out and walk 
as fast as you can for half an hour. I'll see you then." 

, " I took his prescription, and I suppose did better, but he 
vouchsafed no word good or bad." 

"That's all right; you think too much of the man; put him 
out of your head altogether ; think only of your subject." 

".Whom do you face next?" 

Dr. z ." You need have no fear ; you are ready for 

him. He thinks only of the matter you give him. Some of the 
professors are vulnerable ; you can tickle them into good humor 
by ) an allusion to their favorite theory or some other small 
trick ; but Z is inflexible, and hopelessly just." 

Commencement-day brought to Godfrey the coveted honor 
of second place. Conrad received his diploma and an average 
in the honor list. The evening train carried them both from 
the city, and with the rising sun they entered the garden of 
" Rosevale." The parsonage was set within an Eden of rural 



756 A MODERN ICONOCLAST. [Mar., 

beauty, and the juveniles of the Dubois household came in a 
welcoming swarm. 

Breakfast was a substantial delight, and the porch invited 
them afterward to social intercourse. 

" Are your parents living, Mr. Siegwart ? " inquired God- 
frey's mother. 

" My mother died five years ago ; my father is stationed at 
Fort Leavenworth." 

" Then you are a son of General Siegwart ; are you an only 
child ? " 

" Oh, no ! my eldest brother is a priest of the Redemptorist 
order ; my sister is a nun and superior of a convent in Boston. 
My younger brother is still at Santa Clara College, where I 
graduated. The journey home is so costly an experiment and 
the members of our family are so scattered that I have con- 
cluded to take a short vacation in the Catskills, as soon as I 
hear from the hospital to which I hope to be elected. Can 
you spare Godfrey for a month ? I mean to make the trip 
cheaply, and I think the mountain air will serve both of us. 
Godfrey has done splendidly, and is well prepared for next 
year's studies." 

"You have been such a good friend to Godfrey, Mr. Sieg- 
wart, that we cannot easily refuse your request ; our boy's let- 
ters have shown us that to you he owes his success this year." 

" Indeed, Mrs. Dubois, any little help I have been able to 
give, I have received full compensation for in your son's com- 
panionship." 

Sunday morning saw the two young men setting off for a 
three-mile walk to the nearest Catholic church. In the evening 
Godfrey took his friend to Pinnacle Hill, from which they had 
a fine view of sunset on the Susquehanna. Before retiring the 
Rev. Mr. Dubois called Godfrey into the library; Mrs. Dubois 
followed them ; her pious soul had suffered disappointment in 
the absence of her son from both morning and evening ser- 
vices; but the return home of Amede before commencement 
had given his defeat to the little world of Swansdowne. Letters 
had been received by some of the young people of the neigh- 
borhood detailing some of the incidents in his career, and the 
principal fact that he had been " thrown." Mrs. Dubois wisely 
concluded that virtue and honor even through Catholicity were 
preferable to libertinism that brought ruin for this world and 
the next. 

Godfrey was amazed at the toleration he found from his par- 



I895-] 



A MODERN ICONOCLAST. 



757 



cnts ; his father soon acquainted him with the reason. Swans- 
down e had been visited by one of the missionary fathers, who 
had lectured in the town-hall during the evenings of an entire 
week; questions had been answered from the platform, and the 
listeners learned that the dogmas of the Catholic Church pre- 
sented by. a Catholic priest were very. unlike the doctrines as- 
signed to her by those outside her fold. Rev. Mr. Dubois was 
a thoughtful man, and was much impressed by the statement 
that the world is now divided between Catholicity and Infidelity, 
that Protestantism is but a name for various shades of antagon- 
ism to the Catholic Church, and that no two outside her fold 
are united in their acceptance of dogma. 

Confusion confounded is the result of private interpretation. 

As this must be a short story, there remains but to tell that 
the Catskill trip proved a great success, ennobling alike to mind 
and body. 

In December Conrad left his beloved hospital duty for a 
brief trip to Boston and acted as sponsor to his friend, who was 
baptized on the 8th, the patronal feast of the United States 
the Immaculate Conception. 

;'; Conrad urged Doctor Hoffman to allow Miss Shrewsbury to 
act as godmother, but the reverend gentleman declined ; saying, 
^with a quizzical expression in his gray eyes, that he desired to 
avoid all future complications. 

Poor Miss Shrewsbury blushed painfully as she said : " Why, 
doctor, I'm too old to be the wife of either of these boys." 

" Never too late to marry or mend," quoth the priest. 





758 THE SCOPE OF PUBLIC-SCHOOL EDUCATION. [Mar., 

THE SCOPE OF PUBLIC-SCHOOL EDUCATION.* 

BY RIGHT REV. J. L. SPALDING, D.D. (of Peorz'a). 

fUR system of Public-School Education is a result 
of the faith of the people in the need of univer- 
sal intelligence for the maintenance of popular gov- 
ernment. Does this system include moral train- 
ing? Since the teaching of religious doctrines is 
precluded, this, I imagine, is what we are to consider in discuss- 
ing the Scope of Public-School Education. The equivalents of 
scope are aim, end, opportunity, range of view; and the equi- 
valents of education are training, discipline, development, instruc- 
tion. The proper meaning of the word education, it seems, is 
not a drawing out, but a training up, as vines are trained to 
lay hold of and rise by means of what is stronger than them- 
selves. My subject, then, is the aim, end, opportunity, and 
range of view of public-school education, which to be education 
at all, in any true sense, must be a training, discipline, develop- 
ment, and instruction of man's whole being, physical, intellec- 
tual, and moral. This, I suppose, is what Herbert Spencer 
means when he defines education to be a preparation for com- 
plete living. Montaigne says the end of education is wisdom 
and virtue ; Comenius declares it to be knowledge, virtue, and 
religion ; Milton, likeness to God through virtue and faith ; 
Locke, health of body, virtue, and good manners; Herbart, 
virtue, which is the realization in each one of the idea of inner 
freedom; while Kant and Fichte declare it to consist chiefly in 
the formation of character. All these thinkers agree that the 
supreme end of education is spiritual or ethical. The control- 
ling aim, then, should be, not to impart information but to up- 
build the being which makes us human, to form habits of right 
thinking and doing. The ideal is virtually that of Israel that 
righteousness is life though the Greek ideal of beauty and 
freedom may not be excluded. It is the doctrine that manners 
maketh man, that conduct is three-fourths of life, leaving but 
one-fourth for intellectual activity and aesthetic enjoyment ; and 
into this fourth of life but few ever enter in any real way, 
while all are called and may learn to do good and avoid evil. 

*An Address delivered before the Sunset Club, Chicago. 



1 895.] THE SCOPE OF PUBLIC-SCHOOL EDUCATION. 759 

"In the end," says Ruskin, "the God of heaven and earth 
loves active, modest, and kind people, and hates idle, proud, 
greedy, and cruel ones." We can all learn to become active, 
modest, and kind ; to turn from idleness, pride, greed, and 
cruelty. But we cannot all make ourselves capable of living in 
the high regions of pure thought and ideal beauty*; and for the 
few even who are able to do this, it is still true that conduct 
is three-fourths of life. 

"The end of man," says Buchner, "is conversion into car- 
bonic acid, water, and ammonia." This also is an ideal, and 
he thinks we should be pleased to know that in dying we give 
back to the universe what had been lent. He moralizes too; 
but if all we can know of our destiny is that we shall be convert- 
ed into carbonic acid, water, and ammonia, the sermon may be 
omitted. On such a faith it is not possible to found a satis- 
factory system of education. Men will always refuse to think 
thus meanly of themselves, and in answer to those who would 
persuade them they are but brutes, they will, with perfect con- 
fidence, claim kinship with God ; for from an utterly frivolous 
view of life both our reason and our instinct turn. 

The Scope of Public-School Education is to co-operate with 
the physical, social, and religious environment to form good 
and wise men and women. Unless we bear in mind that the 
school is but one of several educational agencies, we shall not 
form a right estimate of its office. It depends almost wholly 
for its success upon the kind of material furnished it by the 
home, the state, and the church ; and, to confine our view to 
our own country, I have little hesitation in affirming that our 
home life, our social and political life, and our religious life 
have contributed far more to make us what we are than any 
and all of our schools. The school, unless it works in harmony 
with these great forces, can do little more than sharpen the 
wits. Many of the teachers of our Indian schools are doubt- 
less competent and earnest, but their pupils, when they return 
to their tribes, quickly lose what they have gained, because 
they are thrown into an environment which annuls the ideals 
that prevailed in the school. The controlling aim of our teach- 
ers should be, therefore, to bring their pedagogical action into 
harmony with what is best in the domestic, social, and religious 
life of the child ; for this is the foundation on which they must 
build, and to weaken it is to expose the whole structure to 
ruin. Hence the teacher's attitude towards the child should be 
that of sympathy with him in his love for his parents, his 
country, and his religion. His reason is still feeble, and his 



760 THE SCOPE OF PUBLIC-SCHOOL EDUCATION. [Mar., 

life is largely one of feeling, and the fountain-heads of his 
purest and noblest feelings are precisely his parents, his coun- 
try, and his religion, and to tamper with them is to poison the 
wells whence he draws the water of life. To assume and hold 
this attitude with sincerity and tact is difficult ; it requires 
both character and culture ; it implies a genuine love of man- 
kind and of human excellence ; reverence for whatever uplifts, 
purifies, and strengthens the heart ; knowledge of the world, of 
literature, and of history, united with an earnest desire to do 
whatever may be possible to lead each pupil towards life in its 
completeness, which is health and healthful activity of body 
and mind and heart and soul. 

As the heart makes the home, the teacher makes the school. 
What we need above all things, wherever the young are gath- 
ered for education, is not a showy building, or costly apparatus, 
or improved methods or text-books, but a living, loving, illu- 
mined human being who has deep faith in the power of educa- 
tion and a real desire to bring it to bear upon those who are 
entrusted to him. This applies to the primary school with as 
much force as to the high school and university. Those who 
think, and they are, I imagine, the vast majority, that any one 
who can read and write, who knows something of arithmetic, 
geography, and history, is competent to educate young children, 
have not even the most elementary notions of what education is. 

What the teacher is, not what he utters and inculcates, is the 
important thing. The life he lives and whatever reveals that 
life to his pupils ; his unconscious behavior, even ; above all, 
what in his inmost soul he hopes, believes, and loves, have far 
deeper and more potent influence than mere lessons can ever 
have. It is precisely here that we Americans, whose talent is 
predominantly practical and inventive, are apt to go astray. 
We have won such marvellous victories with our practical sense 
and inventive genius, that we have grown accustomed to look 
to them for aid, whatever the nature of the difficulty or problem 
may be. Machinery can be made to do much and to do well 
what it does. With its help we move rapidly; we bring the 
ends of the earth into instantaneous communication ; we print 
the daily history of the world and throw it before every door ; 
we plough and we sow and we reap ; we build cities and we fill 
our houses with whatever conduces to comfort or luxury. All 
this and much more machinery enables us to do. But it cannot 
create life, nor can it, in any effective way, promote vital pro- 
cesses. Now, education is essentially a vital process. It is a 
furthering of life; and as the living proceed from the living, 



1895.] THE SCOPE OF PUBLIC-SCHOOL EDUCATION. 761 

they can rise into the wider world of ideas and conduct only 
by the help of the living; and as in the physical realm every 
animal begets after its own likeness, so also in the spiritual 
the teacher can give but what he has. If the well-spring of 
truth and love has run dry within himself, he teaches in vain. 
His words will no more bring forth life than desert winds will 
clothe arid sands with verdure. Much talking and writing about 
education have chiefly helped to obscure a matter which is 
really plain. The purpose of the public school is or should be 
not to form a mechanic or a specialist of any kind, but to form 
a true man or woman. Hence the number of things we teach 
the child is of small moment. Those schools, in fact, in which 
the greatest number of things are taught give, as a rule, the 
least education. The character of the Roman people, which en- 
abled them to dominate the earth and to give laws to the 
world, was formed before they had schools, and when their 
schools were most flourishing they themselves were in rapid 
moral and social dissolution. We make education and religion 
too much a social affair, and too little a personal affair. Their 
essence lies in their power to transform the individual, and it 
is only in transforming him that they recreate the wider life 
of the community. The Founder of Christianity addressed him- 
self to the individual, and gave little heed to the state or other 
environment. He looked to a purified inner source of life to 
create for itself a worthier environment, and simply ignored de- 
vices for working sudden and startling changes. They who have 
entered into the hidden meaning of this secret and this method 
turn in utter incredulity from the schemes of declaimers and 
agitators. 

The men who fill the world, each with his plan for reform- 
ing and saving it, may have their uses, since the poet tells us 
there are uses in adversity, which, like the toad, ugly and ven- 
omous, wears yet a precious jewel in its head ; but to one deaf- 
ened by their discordant and clamorous voices, the good pur- 
pose they serve seems to be as mythical as the jewel in the 
toad's head. 

Have not those who mistake their crotchets for nature's laws 
invaded our schools? Have they not succeeded in forming a 
public opinion and in setting devices at work which render edu- 
cation in the true sense of the word, if not impossible, difficult ? 
Literature is a criticism of life, made by those who are in love 
with life, and who have the deepest faith in its possibilities; 
and all criticism which is inspired by sympathy and faith and 
controlled by knowledge is helpful. Complacent thoughts are 



762 THE SCOPE OF PUBLIC-SCHOOL EDUCATION. [Man, 

rarely true, and hardly ever useful. It is a prompting of nature 
to turn from what we have to what we lack, for thus only is 
there hope of amendment and progress. We are, to quote 
Emerson, 

"Built of furtherance and pursuing, 
Not of spent deeds, but of doing." 

Hence the wise and the strong dwell not upon their virtues 
and accomplishments, but strive to learn wherein they fail, for 
it is in correcting this they desire to labor. They wish to know 
the truth about themselves, are willing to try to see themselves 
as others see them, that self-knowledge may make self-improve- 
ment possible. They turn from flattery, for they understand 
that flattery is insult. Now, if this is the attitude of wise and 
strong men, how much more should it not be that of a wise 
and strong people? Whenever persons or things are viewed 
as related in some special way to ourselves, our opinions of 
them will hardly be free from bias. When, for instance, I think 
or speak of my country, my religion, my friends, my enemies,. 
I find it difficult to put away the prejudice which my self-esteem 
and vanity create, and which, like a haze, ever surrounds me 
to color or obscure the pure light of reason. It cannot d6 
us harm to have our defects and short-comings pointed out to- 
us, but to be told by demagogues and declaimers that we are 
the greatest, the most enlightened, the most virtuous people 
which exists or has existed, can surely do us no good. If it is 
true, we should not dwell upon it, for this will but distract us 
from striving for the things in which we are deficient ; and if 
it is false, it can only mislead us and nourish a foolish conceit; 
It is the orator's misfortune to be compelled to think of his 
audience rather than of truth. It is his business to please, per- 
suade, and convince ; and men are pleased with flattering lies; 
persuaded and convinced by appeals to passion and interest. 
Happier is the writer, who need not think of a- reader, but 
finds his reward in the truth he expresses. 

It is not possible for an enlightened mind not to take pro- 
found interest in our great system of public education. To do 
this he need not think it the best possible system. He may 
deem it defective in important requisites. He may hold, as I 
hold, that the system is of minor importance the kind of 
teacher being all important. But if he loves his country, if he 
loves human excellence, if he has faith in man's capacity for 
growth, he cannot but turn his thoughts, with abiding attention 
and sympathy, to the generous and determined efforts of a 



1895-] THE SCOPE OF PUBLIC-SCHOOL EDUCATION. 763 

powerful and vigorous people to educate themselves. Were our 
public-school system nothing more than the nation's profession 
of faith in the transforming power of education, it would be an 
omen of good and a ground for hope, and one cannot do more 
useful work than to help to form a public opinion which will 
accept with thankfulness the free play of all sincere minds about 
this great question, and which will cause the genuine lovers of 
our country to turn in contempt from the clamors politicians 
and bigots are apt to raise when an honest man utters honest 
thought on this all-important subject. 

I am willing to assume and to accept as a fact that our 
theological differences make it impossible to introduce the 
teaching of any religious creed into the public school. I take 
the system as it is that is, as a system of secular education 
and I address myself more directly to the question proposed : 
What is or should be its scope? 

The fact that religious instruction is excluded makes it all 
the more necessary that humanizing and ethical aims should be 
kept constantly in view. Whoever teaches in a public school 
should be profoundly convinced that man is more than an 
animal which may be taught cunning and quickness. A weed 
in blossom may have a certain beauty, but it will bear no 
fruit ; and so the boy or youth one often meets, with his ir- 
reverent smartness, his precocious pseudo-knowledge of a hun- 
dred things, may excite a kind of interest, but he gives little 
promise of a noble future. The flower of his life is the blossom 
of the weed, which in its decay will poison the air, or, at the 
best, serve but to fertilize the soil. If we are to work to good 
purpose we must take our stand, with the great thinkers and 
educators, on the broad field of man's nature and act in the 
light of the only true ideal of education that its end is 
wisdom, virtue, knowledge, power, reverence, faith, health, be- 
havior, hope, and love ; in a word, whatever powers and capaci- 
ties make for intelligence, for conduct, for character, for com- 
pleteness of life. Not for a moment should we permit our- 
selves to be deluded by the thought that because the teaching 
of religious creeds is excluded, therefore we may make no 
appeal to the fountain-heads which sleep within every breast, the 
welling of whose waters alone has power to make us human. 
If we are forbidden to turn the current into this or that 
channel, we are not forbidden to recognize the universal truth 
that man lives by faith, hope, and love, by imagination and 
desire, and that it is precisely for this reason that he is edu- 
cable. We move irresistibly in the lines of our real faith and 



764 THE SCOPE OF PUBLIC-SCHOOL EDUCATION. [Mar., 

desire, and the educator's great purpose is to help us to believe 
in what is high and to desire what is good. Since for the ir- 
reverent and vulgar spirit nothing is high or good, reverence, 
and the refinement which is the fruit of true intelligence, urge 
ceaselessly their claims on the teacher's attention. Goethe, I 
suppose, was little enough of a Christian to satisfy the 
demands of an agnostic cripple even, and yet he held that the 
best thing in man is the thrill of awe; and that the chief busi- 
ness of education is to cultivate reverence for whatever is 
above, beneath, around, and within us. This he believed to be 
the only philosophical and healthful attitude of mind and heart 
towards the universe, seen and unseen. May not the meanest 
flower that blows bring thoughts that lie too deep for tears? 
Is not reverence a part of all the sweetest and purest feelings 
which bind us to father and mother, to friends and home and 
country ? Is it not the very bloom and fragrance, not only of 
the highest religious faith but also of the best culture? Let 
the thrill of awe cease to vibrate, and you will have a world in 
which money is more than man, office better than honesty, and 
books like Innocents Abroad or Peck's Bad Boy more indicative 
of the kind of man we form than are the noblest works of 
genius. What is the great aim of the primary school, if it is 
not the nutrition of feeling ? The child is weak in mind, weak 
in will, but he is most impressionable. Feeble in thought, he is 
strong in capacity to feel the emotions which are the sap of the 
tree of moral life. He responds quickly to the appeals of love, 
tenderness, and sympathy. He is alive to whatever is noble, 
heroic, and venerable. He desires the approbation of others, 
especially of those whom he believes to be true and high and 
pure. He has unquestioning faith, not only in God but in 
great men, who, for him, indeed, are earthly gods. Is not his 
father a divine man, whose mere word drives away all fear 
and fills him with confidence ? The touch of his mother's hand 
stills his pain ; if he is frightened, her voice is enough to soothe 
him to sleep. To imagine that we are educating this being of 
infinite sensibility and impressionability when we do little else 
than teach him to read, write, and cipher, is to cherish a delu- 
sion. It is not his destiny to become a reading, writing, and 
ciphering machine, but to become a man who believes, hopes, 
and loves, who holds to sovereign truth and is swayed by 
sympathy, who looks up with reverence and awe to the heavens 
and hearkens with cheerful obedience to the call of duty, who 
has habits of right thinking and well doing which have become 



1895.] THE SCOPE OF PUBLIC-SCHOOL EDUCATION, 765, 

a law unto him, a second nature. And if it be said that we all 
recognize this to be so, but that it is not the business of the 
school to help to form such a man ; that it does its work when it 
sharpens the wits, I will answer with the words of William von 
Humboldt : " Whatever we wish to see introduced into the life 
of a nation must first be introduced into its schools." 

Now, what we wish to see introduced into the life of the 
nation is not the power of shrewd men, wholly absorbed in 
the striving for wealth, reckless of the means by which it is 
gotten, and who, whether they succeed or whether they fail, 
look upon money as the equivalent of the best things man 
knows or has ; who therefore think that the highest purpose of 
government, as of other social forces and institutions, is to 
make it easy for all to get abundance of gold and to live in 
sloven plenty; but what we wish to see introduced into the 
life of the nation is the power of intelligence and virtue, of 
wisdom and conduct. We believe, and in fact know, that hu- 
manity, justice, truthfulness, honesty, honor, fidelity, courage, 
integrity, reverence, purity, and self-respect are higher and 
mightier than anything mere sharpened wits can accomplish. 
But if these virtues, which constitute nearly the whole sum of 
man's strength and worth, are to be introduced into the life of 
the nation, they must be introduced into the schools, into the 
process of education. We must recognize, not in theory alone 
but in practice, that the chief end of education is ethical, since 
conduct is three-fourths of human life. The aim must be to 
make men true in thought and word, pure in desire, faithful 
in act, upright in deed ; men who understand that the highest 
good does not lie in the possession of anything whatsoever, but 
that it lies in power and quality of being; for whom what we 
are and not what we have is the guiding principle ; who know 
that the best work is not that for which we receive most pay, 
but that which is most favorable to life, physical, moral, intel- 
lectual, and religious ; since man does not exist for work or 
the Sabbath, but work and rest exist for him, that he may 
thrive and become more human and more divine. We must 
cease to tell boys and girls that education will enable them to 
get hold of the good things of which they believe the world to 
be full ; we must make them realize rather that the best thing 
in the world is a noble man or woman, and to be that is the 
only certain way to a worthy and contented life. All talk 
about patriotism, which implies that it is possible to be a 
patriot or a good citizen without being a true and good man, 



766 THE SCOPE OF PUBLIC-SCHOOL EDUCATION. [Mar., 

is sophistical and hollow. How shall he who cares not for his 
better self care for his country ? 

We must look, as educators, most closely to those sides of 
the national life where there is the greatest menace of ruin. It 
is plain that our besetting sin, as a people, is not intemperance 
or unchastity, but dishonesty. From the watering and manipu- 
lating of stocks to the adulteration of food and drink, from 
the booming of towns and lands to the selling of votes and the 
buying of office, from the halls of Congress to the policeman's 
beat, from the capitalist who controls trusts and syndicates to 
the mechanic who does inferior work, the taint of dishonesty is 
everywhere. We distrust one another, distrust those who man- 
age public affairs, distrust our own fixed will ,to suffer the 
worst that may befall rather than cheat or steal or lie. Dis- 
honesty hangs, like mephitic air, about our newspapers, our 
legislative assemblies, the municipal government of our towns 
and cities, about our churches even, since our religion itself 
seems to lack that highest kind of honesty, the downright and 
thorough sincerity which is its life-breath. 

If the teacher in the public school may not insist that an 
honest man is the noblest work of God, he may teach at least 
that he who fails in honesty fails in the most essential quality 
of manhood, enters into warfare with the forces which have 
made him what he is and which secure him the possession of 
what he holds dearer than himself, since he barters for it his 
self-respect; that the dishonest man is an anarchist and dis- 
socialist, one who does what in him lies to destroy credit, and 
the sense of the sacredness of property, obedience to law, and 
belief in the rights of man. If our teachers are to work in the 
light of an ideal, if they are to have a conscious end in view, 
as all who strive intelligently must have, if they are to hold a 
principle which will give unity to their methods, they must seek 
it in the idea of morality, of conduct which is three-fourths of life. 

I myself am persuaded that the real and philosophical basis 
of morality is the being of God, a being absolute, infinite, un- 
imaginable, inconceivable, of whom our highest and nearest 
thought is that he is not only almighty, but all-wise and all- 
good as well. But it is possible, I think, to cultivate the moral 
sense without directly and expressly assigning to it this philo- 
sophical and religious basis, for goodness is largely its own evi- 
dence, as virtue is its own reward. It all depends on the teach- 
er. Life produces life life develops life, and if the teacher 
have within himself a living sense of the all-importance of con- 



1895/0 THE SCOPE OF PUBLIC-SCHOOL EDUCATION. 767 

duct, if he thoroughly realize that what we call knowledge is 
but a small part of man's life, his influence will nourish the 
feelings by which character is evolved. The germ of a moral 
idea is always an emotion, and that which impels to right ac- 
tion is the emotion rather than the idea. The' teachings of the 
heart remain for ever, and they are the most important, for what 
we love, genuinely believe in, and desire decides what we are 
and may become. Hence the true educator, even in giving 
technical instruction, strives not merely to make a workman, but 
to make also a man, whose being shall be touched to finer is- 
sues by spiritual powers, who shall be upheld by faith in the 
worth and sacredness of life, and in the education by which it 
is transformed, enriched, purified, and ennobled. He under- 
stands that an educated man, who, in the common acceptation 
of the phrase, is one who knows something, who knows many 
things, is, in truth, simply one who has acquired habits of right 
thinking and right doing. The culture which we wish to see 
prevail throughout our country is not learning and literary 
skill, it is character and intellectual openness, that higher hu- 
manity which is latent within us all, which is power, wisdom, 
truth, goodness, love, sympathy, grace, and beauty, whose sur- 
passing excellence the poor may know as well as the rich, whose 
charm the multitude may feel as well as the chosen few. 

" He who speaks of the people," says Guicciardini, " speaks, 
in sooth, of a foolish animal, a prey to a thousand errors, a 
thousand confusions, without taste, without affection, without 
firmness." The scope of our public-school education is to 
make commonplaces of this kind, by which all literature is 
pervaded, so false as to be absurd ; and when this end shall 
have been attained, Democracy will have won its noblest victory. 

How shall we find the secret from which hope of such 
success will spring? By so forming and directing the power of 
public opinion, of national approval, and of money as to make 
the best men and women willing and ready to enter the 
teacher's profession. The kind of man who educates is the 
test of the kind of education given^ and there is properly no 
other test. When we Americans shall have learned to believe 
with all our hearts and with all the strength of irresistible 
conviction that a true educator is a more important, in every 
way a more useful sort of man than a great railway king, or 
pork butcher, or captain of industry, or grain buyer, or stock 
manipulator, we shall have begun to make ourselves capable of 
perceiving the real scope of public-school education. 




768 CHRIST'S MASTERPIECE. [Mar., 



CHRIST'S MASTERPIECE. 

BY BARNET TOLDRIDGE. 

HOU Wonder of the Ages, ever new, 

Yet evermore the same ! Thou throned Queen- 
That since the sweet Christ rose hath trusted 

been 

With His grand Truth to help men dare and do \ 
And hath not proved a recreant to the trust, 
But proudly, humbly, hath the jewel worn 
Upon thy bosom, and hath humbly borne 

The rebels' strife to hurl it in the dust ! 

These have gone out in hordes from thy sweet care; 
Gone out to wander in the dark, to keep 
Their children's children from the light, to steep 

Their souls in doubt, in terror and despair. 

They who are folded in thy sweet embrace, 
O tender Mother ! know no wild unrest ; 
But like the babes, pressed to the mother-breast, 

Look up, confiding, to the mother-face ! 

No need for baffled questioning no need 

For aught but to drink in the Life that's given, 
And to list humbly while she breathes of Heaven, 

And sweet unfolds her tender-guarded creed. 

No need for fear, for doubt, for gropings blind ! 
Our God a God of Light ! His children know 
He hath not left them to grope blindly so. 

Light's in the world for all who wish to find ! 

Alas for those who found and flung away ! 
In the world's morning races forgot God ; 
Set up their idols, in defilement trod, 

And have not remembered to this day ! 

So with His Church: At it men's doubts are hurled, 
Derision and contumely ; still it goes 
Serenely on, Christ-led, whose promise was 
" Unto the consummation of the world." 

Naught shall prevail, world's might nor " gate of hell," 
O fixd Rock, so solid built to brave 
All Time's resisting force and lapping wave 

And mutability. Hail, Deathless Sentinel! 



I895-] 



Is INFANTICIDE PRACTISED IN CHINA f 



769 




IS INFANTICIDE PRACTISED IN CHINA? 

BY A. M. CLARKE. 

T might be imagined that the prevalence of infanti- 
cide in China is a fact too well authenticated to 
be called in question. It is, however, not only 
disputed but denied in France in the present 
day by a considerable number of journalists and 
other writers, and the denial is based on the testimony of 
certain recent travellers, who allege that throughout the course 
of their journeying in the Celestial Empire nothing has met 
their eye calculated to indicate or even suggest the existence of 
this reprehensible practice. Furthermore, they declare it to be 
a crime utterly at variance with the well-known desire of the 
Chinese to possess children. But the animus and persistency 
wherewith these writers endeavor to make good their point 
argue a motive more powerful than the simple wish to refute 
an unjust accusation, to pro- t 

claim what they believe to be 
the truth concerning a nation 
that has been grossly calum- 
niated. The real motive is 
not far to seek. It is hatred 
to religion. 

DENIALS OF THE FRENCH 
PRESS. 

Their design is not to do 
justice to the Chinese, but to 
cast odium on the church, to 
decry those who devote their 
lives to spread the faith and to 
save souls. The Catholic mis- 
sioners assert that they have 
been the means of rescuing 
from an untimely death multitudes of helpless infants whom their 
parents intended to destroy ; that in the refuges and orphanages 
established by Christian charity, these children have been 
sheltered, taught, and trained. To expose the fraudulent misre- 
VOL. LX. 49 




s' 

THE EMPEROR OF CHINA. 



77Q Is INFANTICIDE PRACTISED IN CHINA? [Mar., 

presentations of the missioners, and to exhibit the work of the 
Sainte Enfance a wide-spread and well-organized institution in 
the light of a barefaced imposture, is the object the dpologists 
of the Chinese have in view. Admitting that rare instances of 
abandonment of unwelcome infants by unnatural mothers occur 
in China as in every other country, they assert that for the 
reception of these ample provision is made by government, by 
the erection of foundling hospitals. Consequently the interfer- 
ence of foreigners is quite superfluous, and the frequent appeals 
made for the support of their refuges is nothing more or less 
than a commercial speculation under the guise of charity, a 
means of trading on the generosity of a too credulous public. 

SUPERFICIAL OBSERVERS. 

Since, then, it is a fresh and covert attack upon religion, an 
attempt to bring missionary work into disrepute, that we have to 
deal with, the question whether infanticide exists to any great 
extent in China assumes a greater importance, and it may be 
well to examine it more closely. With regard to the testimony 
of the travellers already mentioned, it may be said that it is 
only certain districts of China that the European, whether he 
be tourist, diplomatist, or trader, ever visits, and in those parts 
foreign influence has so far modified public opinion that in- 
fanticide is scarcely practised at all, or at any rate kept well 
out of sight. Thus the witness of the ordinary traveller, who 
only sees the large towns and most frequented regions, is of 
little weight, and cannot counterbalance the statements of men 
of position and character who have dwelt for years among the 
Chinese, and have had abundant opportunities to acquaint 
themselves with the social life of the people; to enter, as far as 
it is possible for a foreigner to do, into the penetralia of the 
nation. 

GIRLS REGARDED AS A DRUG IN THE MARKET. 

The co-existence of infanticide with the universal desire for 
children, a desire stronger perhaps in China than in any other 
country, admits, like many apparent paradoxes, of a ready ex- 
planation. The great object of desire is the possession of sons. 
This is looked upon as the chief blessing of life. Consequently 
girls are the only victims. The poorest people nourish and 
cherish their sons. Their labor soon becomes remunerative, and 
while the daughters marry and leave their home, the sons live 
under the same roof with and support their parents in their old 



1 895.] Is INFANTICIDE PRACTISED IN CHINA ? 771 

age ; and when these latter are gathered to their forefathers, 
they perform for them the acts of ancestral worship. Death 
loses half its terrors to the Chinaman if he is assured that his 
sons will be present at his tomb to perform the customary rites 
and offer the prescribed sacrifices, on the due performance of 
which he believes the peace of his soul depends. One detail 
given by Miss Gordon-Gumming, in her entertaining work upon 
China,* will suffice to illustrate the different estimate in which 
sons and daughters are held 
even in families where no wish 
exists to destroy the latter. In 
certain districts of northern 
China and elsewhere the medi- 
cal charge for vaccinating a 
boy is 800 cash (about nine- 
pence). The charge for a girl 
is only 400, because the par- ;| 
ents would rather run the risk" 
of her disfigurement or death 
small-pox is the most de- 
structive and terrible of diseases 
in China than pay for her at 
the same rate as for a son. 
Chinese students of Bible his- 

tory find it impossible to accept the first chapter of Exodus as an 
accurate translation. It seems to them preposterous to assert 
that Pharao could have commanded the boys to be destroyed 
and the girls saved alive. " The proportion of female infanticide 
(the same author writes) varies greatly in different provinces. 
Throughout the province of Fuh-keen it is unusually high ; in 
fact, there are districts where thirty per cent, of the girls are 
put to death, strangled or else drowned like so many puppies. 
In Fuh-choo it is quite a common thing for a mother to avow 
that she has made away with three or four girls. Throughout 
the empire the numerical disparity of girls is a painfully sug- 
gestive characteristic." 

THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL IN FUH-CHOO. 

" In Fuh-choo city there is a foundling hospital ; many infants 
are handed in anonymously by their own parents, but the miserable 
children thus rescued are horribly neglected. The death-rate is 
enormous, and about a coolie-load of dead babies per diem is carried 

* Wanderings in CAt'na, by F. Gordon-Gumming, v. i. p. 193 seq. 




772 Is INFANTICIDE PRACTISED IN CHINA f [Mar., 

out of the hospital to receive uncoffined and unrecognized burial. 
Such babies as survive acquire a definite value. They are fre- 
quently purchased by childless couples who want to rear a servant 
to tend their old age, or by provident parents who thus cheaply 
provide secondary wives for their sons. The supernumerary sons 
of poverty-stricken households are occasionally consigned to this 
hospital, whence they are removed by sonless couples who wish 
to adopt an heir to offer sacrifice for them after their death." 

But as the reports of missioners and the accounts given by 
travellers are often considered to be open to the charge of in- 
accuracy and exaggeration, it is to the Chinese themselves that 
we will turn, and seek from them the solution of the point at 
issue. 

No attempt is made by the Chinese to conceal the fact that 
infanticide prevails among them to a great and lamentable 
extent. The official proclamations of the government, the press 
and literature of the country, afford ample, convincing, and in- 
controvertible testimony that its existence is no myth, but a 
terrible reality. Monsignor de Harlez, writing in a French peri- 
odical * on this subject, brings forward an overwhelming amount 
of documentary evidence, from which we shall in the course of 
this paper give a few extracts. In a book published in 1869 
the following passage occurs : 

" Among the population of Tchang-nan it is customary for 
parents to bring up one daughter ; if more are born to them, 
they drown them." 

" The custom of drowning female infants," writes another 
author, " is followed in many districts ; but men of the literary 
classes too often refuse to take cognizance of it, alleging that 
where they live it is unknown. They little know that in their 
district, in their immediate neighborhood, hundreds perish every 
year ; hundreds of helpless infants who cry aloud for some one 
to rescue them. No one proclaims this to them, so they stop 
their ears and close their eyes that they may not hear or see 
what goes on around them." 

AN IMPERIAL INHIBITION. 

A book entitled Stories with Illustrations, to prevent the 
destruction of girls, published in the reign of the predecessor of 
the present emperor, contains these words : " The practice of 
drowning girls prevails everywhere in China, but it is met with 
principally in the families of the poor. Already thoughtful and 

*La Revue Gintrale, Juillet and AoGt, 1892, " L'Infanticide en Chine." 



Is INFANTICIDE PRACTISED IN CHINA? 



773 



humane men of letters are disseminating pictures and pamphlets 
with the object of inducing them to desist from the commission 
of this crime. In the books of the wise we are told of two 




THE CHINESE VICEROY, Li HUNG CHANG. 



means of prevention : the issue of prohibitory laws and the 
relief of the necessitous poor. The former of these deterrent 
measures has been tried. From time to time mandarins have 
published decrees with this design, but they have remained a 



774 Is INFANTICIDE PRACTISED IN CHINA f [Mar., 

dead-letter. The people continue in the present, as in the past, 
to drown their daughters with impunity." 

In 1877 one of the Shanghai papers, the Wan-Koue-Kong-pao, 
said : 

" The drowning of little girls at their birth has reached such 
a point that it may be said to be universal throughout the 
empire. It is a custom most difficult of repression." 

KILLING NO MURDER. 

In the country districts, where infanticide chiefly prevails, 
the poorer classes of the population count it no crime. Far 
from endeavoring to conceal it, they avow it openly, and even 
go to the length of defending the practice. " What is the 
good," they say, " of rearing daughters ? When they are young 
they are merely an expense, and when they reach an age when 
they might be able to work for their living they marry and 
leave us. Besides, thanks to the metempsychosis, death is for 
them a signal advantage ; it may be the means of enabling them 
to return to the earth as one of the other sex." When it 
serves their end, the Chinese can be good disciples of Buddha. 

There is no doubt that in the vast majority of cases poverty 
is the principal incentive to the crime. How otherwise are the 
parents to dispose of infants which they regard as an encum- 
brance and are too poor to maintain ? A few orphanages are, 
as we have said, established in some of the large towns for the 
reception of the luckless babies, but how can they be conveyed 
thither from the distant parts of the vast empire ? The parents 
will not and cannot undertake a journey for the purpose of 
finding a shelter for children of whom they can rid themselves 
by a quick and easy process. Consequently the asylums erected 
by the authorities are useless for the poverty-stricken inhabi- 
tants of remote villages. Miss Gordon-Cumming relates that in 
the town of Fuh-choo a prosperous and liberal-minded Chinese 
merchant has saved innumerable babies by the announcement 
that he would give an allowance of rice for a certain time to 
every mother who, purposing to destroy her infant, would 
abstain from so doing. When a woman has reared a child 
through the early stages of existence, she becomes fond of it 
and rarely consents to put it to death. The number of the 
good merchant's pensioners varies considerably in years of 
plenty and of famine. During one of the latter he allowed rice 
to no less than five hundred mothers to induce them to spare 
the lives of their offspring. 



I895-] 



Is INFANTICIDE PRACTISED IN CHINA f 



775 



CALLOUSNESS AMONGST THE RICH. 

The practice of infanticide is, however, by no means con- 
fined to the homes of the lower orders and of the necessitous 
poor. The lives of numberless little girls of all ranks are sacri- 
ficed daily to the feeling of contempt for the weaker sex. 
Although it is true that in the present day owing in great 
measure to intercourse with the European "barbarians" 
a better feeling is beginning to prevail among the educated 
classes, and public opinion generally condemns the practice, 
many parents in easy circumstances simply will not be troubled 
to bring up and educate useless daughters, who cannot repay 
the cost of their maintenance, and whose marriage will involve 
an outlay that they are un- 
willing, and often unable, to 
meet. Besides this, the mother 
who has the misfortune to have 
no son thinks that by getting 
rid of the unwelcome infant, 
instead of rearing and nursing 
her, she will the sooner be able 
to give birth to another child, 
which may perhaps prove the 
earnestly desired son, who will 
perform the time-honored rites 
of ancestral worship. Rever- 
ence for their own institutions, 
and contemptuous indifference 
to the outer world, are the 
leading characteristics of the 
Chinese nation ; hence the 

only chance of influencing the THE KING OF COREA. 

upper classes is by the efforts 

of native reformers, who endeavor to create a more healthy 
state of public opinion. 

EFFORTS OF CHINESE PHILANTHROPISTS. 

In justice to Chinese literati, it must be admitted that they 
are making praiseworthy attempts to deter their fellow-country- 
men from committing this degrading and unnatural crime. The 
number of books and pamphlets on the subject of infanticide 
published of late years witnesses to the widespread and inveter- 
ate hold it has acquired over the nation. All the religious sects 




776 Is INFANTICIDE PRACTISED IN CHINA ? [Mar., 

concur in inveighing against it, but the Taoists are the most 
zealous and persistent in their exertions. In proof of how 
pleasing their efforts are to the gods the following story is 
told ; we give it in outline only.* 

There lived at Kiang-si a man who, in spite of hard study 
and passing several examinations, could not get on in the liter- 
ary world. Knowing that a man of letters, unless possessed of 
private means, must make his way by aid of his pen or his 
oratorical powers, he implored the counsel and assistance of the 
gods. Their answer was this : The custom of drowning infants 
exists to a great extent in this country ; do you devote yourself 
to the task of suppressing this crime, and you will meet with 
the success you desire. The man obeyed the celestial voice, 
and applied himself to the work prescribed. For three years he 
labored indefatigably, inducing others to join him, and sending 
them to different villages and districts to exhort the people. 
During this period he inscribed in a register the names of all 
his co-operators, and of those who had listened to his admoni- 
tions. When the list was complete, he sent it up to heaven 
(by burning it). Then the promise of the gods was immediately 
fulfilled : the man attained a high position and great renown 
in the realm of letters, and was made a member of the 
academy. 

" O hard hearts ! " exclaims another writer, apostrophizing 
guilty parents, " cannot you be moved to compassion by the 
cries of the unhappy infants who bewail the miserable fate to 
which you condemn them. Scarcely has the thread of their ex- 
istence been spun, when you snap it asunder ; scarcely has the 
soul entered the body prepared for it, when you compel it to 
return whence it came. Heaven wills that these children should 
live; man wills that they should die. He who opposes the 
will of Heaven shall be cut off ; he who takes away the life of 
man incurs the penalty of death. According to a popular say- 
ing, the family which for three generations has reared no girls, 
but destroyed them all, will die out. If this detestable prac- 
tice prevailed everywhere, there would be no wives for the 
men, and the human race would become extinct. The fierce 
tiger and hungry wolf do not injure their little ones ; is man 
alone to be without affection for his offspring, and thus show 
himself to be inferior to the brute creation ? " 

* Cf. Revue Generate, Juillet, 1892, p. 10. 



1 89 5.] Is INFANTICIDE PRACTISED IN CHINA ? 



"WITHOUT REMORSE OR DREAD.' 



777 



Appeals like this latter are of slight avail. Addressed to the 
Chinese, they are little more than a waste of words. As religious 
sentiment is lacking in the national character, so the quality of 
pity is absent from it. Remorseless cruelty too often takes its 




GATE IN NANKING. 



place. " Look at the countenances of the Chinese," remarks a 
recent writer. "There is plenty of intelligence, reverence, and 
even generosity to be read there. But none the less they are 
unfeeling, unpitiful, devoid of the mercy that is twice blest." 
Since compassion is an element which does not enter into the 
composition of the Chinaman, it is necessary to appeal to 



778 Is INFANTICIDE PRACTISED IN CHINA ? [Mar., 

other motives : the fear of punishment, the desire of reward. 
Accordingly the writer quoted above concludes his appeal for 
mercy on behalf of the innocent victims of parental indiffer- 
ence by bringing on the scene one of the Chinese divinities, 
who declares that he has seen in the place of eternal torment 
a countless multitude of parents who had been relegated to 
that dismal region in consequence of having put their newly- 
born infants to death. 

AN ARGUMENTUM AD HOMINEM. 

But warnings and threats that refer only to a vague and 
shadowy future life have little effect on the stolid Chinese ; pen- 
alties and pains to be incurred in this world impress him more 
deeply. Another of the writers quoted by Monsignor Harlez 
says : " The custom of drowning girls at their birth is so gen- 
eral, and has reached such a pitch of cruelty, that man is worse 
than the lower animals. If you admonish the parents accord- 
ing to the dictates of justice and reason, they cannot under- 
stand what you say. If you threaten them with the arm of the 
law, they turn a deaf ear to your words. It is only by point- 
ing out to them the rewards and chastisements that will be 
respectively meted out to those who save and those who 
destroy their daughters, that any good can be effected." The 
principal argument against infanticide urged by the moralists is 
that, as the murder of girls is undoubtedly displeasing to the 
gods, it must tend to defeat the object in view, namely, obtain- 
ing the heaven-granted gift of sons. As the prospect of dying 
without male issue is what the Chinaman dreads above all else, 
many tales are written to show that sons are denied to un- 
natural parents, or they are taken from them in chastisement 
for their crime. The following is an instance in point : " At 
Kin-Hoa-Hien, it is related, the wife of one Tchang-kin-lan gave 
birth to a daughter. At this her husband was enraged. ' It is 
useless to waste our trouble on bringing up this girl,' he said ; 
' if you spend your strength on nursing her, you may perhaps 
never have another child. We will drown her ; then if we have 
another, it may be a son.' But the following night the father 
of Tchang-kin-lan appeared to him in a dream, apparently in 
great grief. 'Alas!' he said, 'you, my only child, were 
destined to have a son who should keep up the family and 
perform the funeral rites. Now the great Spirit is so angry 
because you have drowned your daughter that he will not 
grant a son to you ; thus through your fault my family will be 
cut off, and my name die out.' Tchang-kin-lan awoke in 



1895-] Is INFANTICIDE PRACTISED IN CHINA f 779 

alarm ; his wife had had a similar dream. The dream came 
true; they died without posterity." 

A BELIEF IN RETRIBUTION. 

Terrible and mysterious diseases which attack the parents 
and bring them to a miserable and ignominious end are also 
said to be one form of the punishment sent by the gods to 
avenge the murder of children. Shortness of days is another. 
Long life, which among the Jews was the promised reward of 
filial piety, is among the Chinese recompense of parental virtue. 
In the Book of Rewards and Punishments compiled by a Taoist, and 
published with the imperial sanction in 1655,* we read that for 
the crime of maltreating children or causing the death of in- 
fants the divinity who presides over human existence cuts off a 
portion of the delinquents' days varying from one hundred 
-days to twelve years. 

SENSATIONAL ART IN A USEFUL RoLE. 

Another shape which the efforts of the reformers have lately 
taken is that of posting up in the towns large illustrated placards 
representing scenes of a startling character calculated to inspire 
the common people with a horror of infanticide. These sensa- 
tional and realistic pictures, coarse and grotesque as they often 
are, do far more than the eloquence of orators, or the treatises 
of moralists and philosophers, to produce a profound and lasting 
impression on the minds of the populace. Some of these colored 
prints, of a smaller size and accompanied with explanatory text, 
are printed and distributed among the people not by ministers 
and foreigners, but by the Chinese themselves. In one may be 
seen a guilty mother surrounded by fiends who torment and 
torture her ; in another she and her husband, who is her ac- 
complice, transformed into human-headed dogs, are castigated 
by satellites of the evil one ; or, worse still, they are brought to 
shame and sorrow by the misdeeds of their only son, whom 
they see led out to public execution. Sometimes a whole story 
is depicted in this popular imagery, f In one may be seen a 
cruel mother calling her slave to prepare a wine-bath wherein 
to immerse her baby4 Then comes a picture of the mother in 
the act of drowning the child. This is followed by successive 

* Livre des recompenses et des peines. Traduit par M. Abel Remusat. Paris, 1816, p. 33. 

t Wanderings in China, v. i. p. 96. 

I In China the ill-fated infants are almost invariably drowned by being held head down- 
ward in a bucket of water. Sometimes they are strangled. In India there are three methods 
of destroying them : i. To lay a plaster over the mouth of the newly-born infant ; 2. To ad- 
minister to it a pill of tobacco and bhang ; 3. To drown it in a pail of milk. 



;8o 



Is INFANTICIDE PRACTISED IN CHINA f 



[Mar., 



pictures of her condemnation after death, concluding with a 
gruesome portrayal of a terrible baby-headed serpent about to 
devour the ruthless mother. Others have for their subject the 
rewards lavished on virtuous parents, and on persons who have 
interposed to rescue an infant doomed to destruction. These 
individuals are represented as well-dressed and smiling, gazing 
complacently on a group of children who will be the pride and 
happiness of their declining years. Of one of these, a series of 
four pictures, the following description is given : * In the upper 
division, on the left, a husband and wife may be seen grandly 
dressed, receiving commendation and rich presents from persons 
of high rank. Below is a mother embracing and caressing her 
newly-born daughter, while the father of the child is receiving 
two august visitors who hand over to him a well-filled purse 

and a document as- 
suring to him a long 
life. On the right- 
hand side an angel 
looks down from the 
clouds and makes a 
note of the care dis- 
played at the birth 
of a female child, for 
the future reward of 
its parents. In the 
lower compartment 
an opposite scene is 
enacted : two miser- 
able women, who 
stifled their children 
at their birth, are 

throwing themselves into a river to escape from the armed 
ruffians who are pursuing them. Many other instances might be 
given in which calamities of every kind are represented as sent 
to avenge the murder of babies in order to terrify evil-doers. 

THE NATIVE PRESS ON THE EVIL. 

If we interrogate the press in China as to the existence of 
infanticide, it will be found that the leading journals acknowl- 
edge its presence, and from time to time suggest plans for its 
repression. In 1875 one of the principal papers of Shanghai pub- 
lished a series of articles on the subject, urging the necessity, 
owing to the great prevalence of infanticide among the lower 

* Cf. Revue Gtntrale, Aout, 1892, p. 251. 




GATE IN THE CITY OF SEOUL. 



1 895.] Is INFANTICIDE PRACTISED IN CHINA? 781 

orders, of forming a society for the protection of infants. In 
support of this proposal the text was given of an address pre- 
sented to the viceroy of Nan-king, in which these words oc- 
cur : " This crime is so habitual among the people that the es- 
tablishment of asylums in different localities is most desirable, 
and the organization of associations for its prevention would be 
of incalculable service in saving the life of innumerable babies." 
The inquiry naturally suggests itself whether the Chinese 
government ignores a practice carried on for the most part in 
secret, and takes no measures for its suppression? Official pro- 
clamations have, it is true, been issued from time to time, and 
imperial edicts dating back as far as three centuries ago have 
not been wanting in condemnation of the inhuman custom. 
The people have been reasoned with, and exhorted to relin- 
quish it ; it has, in fact, been made penal ; but such is the ex- 
traordinary reverence felt in China for parental authority that 
officers of justice shrink from inflicting the penalty of the law 
on parents for crimes committed against their children, lest they 
should thereby lessen filial respect and obedience. Only in 
cases where boys have been the victims have the mandarins 
been induced to take tardy and reluctant action. It must also 
be admitted that to detect the guilty persons in flagrante delicto 
is extremely difficult. As the mother of a family remains in 
strict seclusion, it is only her husband and the servants of the 
household who are privy to the birth and subsequent destruc- 
tion of an infant. 

THE ONLY REMEDY. 

Enough has been said to prove beyond dispute that infanti- 
cide exists on a large scale in the present day, especially in 
certain districts and among the poorer population in China. 
The educated classes in the country, far from repudiating the 
charge, fully admit the prevalence of the custom, and for the 
most part deplore it. They can, however, do little to combat 
it, owing to the obstinacy of the great mass of the people and 
the inefficiency of the police. The customs and opinions now 
in force in the Celestial Empire have existed for thousands of 
years ; they are ingrained into the heart of the nation, and are 
clung to with the utmost tenacity. The spread of Catholicism 
is the only effectual antidote, the only check to the progress of 
infanticide. The missioners and the sisters in charge of the 
orphanages have already done much in this direction even 
among a people so hostile to Christianity as the Chinese and 
so resentful of foreign interference. 



782 



MARCH. 



[Mar., 



MARCH. 




BY WALTER LECKY. 

LONG for March, 

So gay and arch, 
With its fleecy showers, its drizzling rain ; 

When winter dies 

'Mid laughing skies, 
And the spring in its beauty blooms again. 



I long for March 

Amid the larch ; 
To stroll and hear from the robin a lay, 

While skipping free, 

From tree to tree, 
He sings to his mate of the summer day. 

I long for March, 

So gay and arch ; 
For it wakes the flowers the winter tost 

Beneath the earth, 

To joy and mirth ; 
And gives to the valleys the joys, they lost. 

It paints the hills, 

And loosens rills 
That long in chains by the winter were bound ; 

Lets music float 

From ev'ry throat, 
And a thaw in the frozen world of sound. 




1895 ] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 783 

GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 

BY REV. CLARENCE A. WALWORTH. 

CHAPTER XI. 

The Break-up (Continued). Diverging Paths. Donelly. Wattson. Everett. 
Platt. Whitcher. American Obedience to Law. Blind Obedience. The 
Chelsea Break-up echoed in Maryland. Hewit, Baker, and Lyman. 


NE of the principal students at the seminary sus- 
pected of Romish tendencies, and even of being 
engaged in a complot against the interests of the 
seminary and the peace of Protestant Episco- 
palianism, was James B. Donelly, of the class of 
1846. As I have already stated, on his trial before the faculty 
he was acquitted for want of definite proof, but was for all that 
obliged to leave the seminary. Dr. Seabury befriended him, 
and found employment for him in the office of the New York 
Churchman. Perhaps, also, Donelly served, as Carey had done 
before him, as assistant to Seabury in the little old Church of 
the Annunciation, since known as St. Ambrose's, on the corner 
of Thompson and Prince Streets. 

I had some correspondence with Donelly while he was thus 
engaged in New York and I was residing with my friend Wad- 
hams in Essex County, before my entry into the Church Catho- 
lic. I sent him an article which I wished to have published in 
the Churchman. The spirit of the article was altogether too hot 
for even Dr. Seabury to handle, as he informed me through 
Donelly, who urged me to come down to New York and have 
a talk with the doctor about it. 

Later, after my profession of faith, Donelly made a visit to 
the Redemptorist Convent upon my invitation, made acquain- 
tance with Father Rumpler, and looked at the church and 
convent buildings with great interest. He seemed much de- 
pressed and under great restraint, more so when talking with 
me than when in conversation with Father Rumpler. Whether 
the extreme poverty which prevailed everywhere was repug- 
nant to him or not I cannot say, but he returned no more and 
I never saw him again. 



784 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Mar., 

It is certain that shortly after this last interview of ours 
Donelly had it in his mind to enter the Catholic fold, but 
needed encouragement to carry it out. One day when passing 
by the Catholic Cathedral on Mulberry Street, in company with 
Wattson, his classmate and co-conspirator, he proposed to the 
latter to make a call on Archbishop Hughes. Wattson hesitat- 
ed for awhile, but finally declined the offer, and the golden 
opportunity of grace passed away from both for ever. This 
incident I have from Wattson's own son, now rector of St. 
John's Church, Kingston. In an interview with this latter gen- 
tleman he communicated to me many incidents derived from 
his father concerning these early days, with full freedom to 
publish all he communicated. His father said to him once : 
" Had I accepted Donelly's invitation at that time and visited 
Archbishop Hughes, there is little probability that either you 
or I would now be Episcopalians." 

Some things communicated to me by Wattson (the younger) 
he put down on paper, for I feared to trust my memory too 
far. Among these I find the following: 

" Donelly, on leaving the seminary, was ordained by Bishop 
Onderdonk and was assistant to Dr. Seabury. Pressure becom- 
ing too great, he was forced to leave New York and so far 
ostracised that he took some out-of-the-way parish in the South 
and shortly after died." 

From all that I can hear of James B. Donelly, he died a 
broken-spirited man. He was naturally too much of a man to 
thrive while trampling upon his conscience. 

Joseph N. Wattson, after being dismissed from the semi- 
nary, sought his Diocesan, Bishop Lee of Delaware, who 
calmly told him, "Young man, my advice to you is: go to 
Rome, for that is where you belong." He was finally or- 
dained to the priesthood in the diocese of Maryland, by Bishop 
Whittingham. He afterwards went to Mississippi, but at the 
breaking out of the Civil War returned to Maryland and re- 
mained there until a few years before his death, which occurred 
in Kingston, New York, in 1887. By a singular coincidence 
Bishop Lee ordained to the diaconate in June, 1885, the Rev. 
Lewis T. Wattson, now rector of St. John's Episcopal Church, 
Kingston, New York and he was presented by his father, Jo- 
seph N. Wattson, whom Bishop Lee years before had advised 
to go to Rome. 

William Everett, known familiarly amongst us by the name 
of Doctor, was as far advanced as any of us in Tractarianism, 



1895.] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 785 

but was of a prudent and quiet disposition, besides being highly 
esteemed for his scholarship, wisdom, and high moral qualities. 
I cannot remember that he encountered any difficulties in the 
way of his graduation or receiving of orders. He did not enter 
the true church until 1850 or 1851. I met him for the first 
time after my own conversion, and after my return from Eu- 
rope, while engaged in giving a mission at Saint Peter's Church, 
Barclay Street, where he visited me. 

It was a great joy to meet my old companion again and 
greet him as a Catholic. He is still on duty as rector of Na- 
tivity Church in New York, over which he has presided for 
many long years. 

My cousin, Charles Henry Platt, one of those included with 
me in the charge of conspiracy against Anglican Protestantism 
and the interests of the seminary, was, at the time, a graduate 
and already in orders at Rochester. He was then as near to 
Rome as man can come without actually crossing the gulf. 
When Bishop De Lancey, of the Western diocese, received my 
letter asking him to take my name off from his list of candi- 
dates, he said to Platt, " What will your cousin do ? Will he 
go over to Rome?" Platt answered that of course I would. 
His manner was so indignant and the words he added were so 
full of contemptuous bitterness for the thraldom in which he 
felt himself enwrapped, that the bishop felt it necessary to em- 
ploy every means to hold him to his chains. Several of Platt's 
letters to Wadhams may be found in my "Reminiscences" of 
that good bishop. They show how near he then came to his 
salvation. 

A short time before my departure for Europe and the Re- 
demptorist novitiate, I wrote to my cousin urging him to 
come to New York and see me off. He replied that he could 
not come. That to do so would involve a decision to leave the 
Anglican communion, and that he could not break his mother's 
heart by taking such a step. I have lost his letter and remem- 
ber in general only its substance. The state of his conscience 
is clearly shown in the first words of the letter, which I re- 
member very distinctly. It began thus : 

" DEAR COUSIN : I thank my God that your feet are at 
last planted upon the ' Rock of Peter.' ' 

Poor man ! He lived to marry and have a family. He 
served as chaplain in the army of the Union. He never be- 
came a Catholic. At the time of his death, in 1869, he was 
rector of Christ Church, Binghamton, N. Y. 

VOL. LX. 50 



786 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Mar., 

The influence of my cousin's example was very unfortunate 
upon his classmate, co-conspirator, and most familiar friend, 
Benjamin W. Whitcher. I had sent to him a similar invitation 
to come and see me before I left for Belgium. At first he was 
inclined to do so and endeavored, though in vain, to engage 
Platt to accompany him. Of this he informed me in his reply, 
saying also that he could not venture to come alone. When 
denounced, as we have seen, for his Romanizing tendencies, he 
was summoned to his bishop for examination, and there was a 
delay about his ordination. A letter of Platt's dated April 6, 
1846, which is given in the " Reminiscences " of Wadhams, tells 
us something of this affair. We read as follows : 

" Whitcher is in priest's orders. He had a hard time win- 
ter before the last. They passed him to the priesthood last fall ; 
but he was plump with them, and kept nothing back." 

Whitcher must be classed amongst that large number of 
Christian workers, apparently very zealous at first, who are 
covered by our Lord's rebuke when he says, " No man putting 
his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the king- 
dom of God." His first backward step was when he took 
orders in the Episcopalian communion. The second was when 
he took a Presbyterian wife. Still later on, becoming a widow- 
er, he took a second wife, and became surrounded by a family 
of children. Ten years of his life passed away in this false 
position when, much shorn of his former strength and demoral- 
ized by loss of self-respect, he found his way into the Catholic 
Church. I will give in detail that part of his conversion with 
which I had something to do. 

In 1855, if I remember rightly, I was engaged in giving a 
mission at St. Patrick's, Utica. Whitcher, at that time, had 
charge of an Episcopalian church near by at Whitesboro.' One 
day a card was brought up to my room bearing the name of 
my old friend upon it. I soon had him by the hand. I antici- 
pated a warm discussion, for I have never found any Protest- 
ants more fierce in controversial fencing than old Tractarians 
who have backed away from their earlier convictions. I was 
therefore resolved, if possible, to get in the first thrust. After 
he 'had taken his seat and we had got past the first natural 
greetings, I said : 

"Well, Whitcher, don't let us dodge the one great matter 
we are both thinking of. Why are you not a Catholic long 
before this?" Without showing the least signs of fight, 
Whitcher dropped his head and answered : 



1 895.] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 787 

" Sure enough, that is the great question, and I don't know 
how to answer it." 

" Ten long years of your life have passed away," I con- 
tinued, " and still here you are, looking one way and rowing 
the other. How can you do it? How can your conscience 
bear it?" 

"Conscience!" he repeated mournfully; "don't talk of con- 
science. I don't know that I have any conscience left." 

His case was a plain one. I urged him to do his duty 
manfully and without further delay. To this he agreed. " Only 
give me two or three weeks," said he, " to settle up a few 
affairs, and I promise you that I will then go to Father Mc- 
Farland and put myself in his hands." This promise he car- 
ried out faithfully. Father McFarland, then in charge of St. 
John's Church, Utica, is now well remembered as the third 
bishop of Hartford, Conn. Whitcher has published a full his- 
tory of his conversion, giving his religious life as Presbyterian 
and Episcopalian. In this will be found some account of his 
connection with the break-up at the seminary, and his examin- 
ation before his bishop. It is called " The Story of a Convert, 
as told to his former parishioners after he became a Catholic." 

I do not think that the incidents thus far given or any 
others that I may give tend to show anything like a spirit of 
disobedience to superiors in young Tractarians or any others in 
America who followed the Oxford movement. Whatever those 
educated under European influences may think of us, the virtue 
of obedience and respect for rightful authority comes as easily 
and naturally to true Americans as to any other people. The 
great crisis which most threatens the prosperity of our country 
at the present time is one which shows foreign lawlessness 
reaching to anarchy combined against American law and order. 
So long as Americans remain American, nihilism and anarchy 
imported from abroad will have to bow before the majesty of 
law. And let me add, the more that Americans study the 
Catholic Church and its religion, from her own doctrines, from 
her own decrees and her own authors, the more they will find 
that true obedience and true liberty are twin sisters. At the 
bottom of this whole matter lies the primary question : In what 
does the true virtue of obedience consist? 

I have the following incident from Father Isaac Hecker 
late superior-general of the Paulists. It came to him from the, 
lips of Cardinal Barnabo, who was so long Prefect of the Propa- 
ganda in the days of Pius IX. Once, when presenting and 



788 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Mar., 

recommending to that Pontiff an appeal from an American 
religious against his superior, the Holy Father said: 

" What shall we think of these Americans ? Do they under- 
stand obedience ? " 

The cardinal replied : 

" I do not think they know much about blind obedience. I 
do think, however, that they understand what true obedience 
is, and that they practise it as well as any other people." 

Another incident goes more thoroughly into the question. 
I have it from Bishop Lynch of Charleston, one of the most 
learned and gifted prelates that our American hierarchy ever 
knew. He was a student at Rome in the time of Pope Gregory 
XVI. 

A young American had been admitted into the English 
College there, and held a room in the building during the 
rectorship of Dr. Wiseman, afterwards cardinal. He had nearly 
completed his course of studies when a young Englishman of 
a distinguished family applied for admission into the same 
college. It was full. The rector endeavored to make place for 
him by persuading our American student to give up his room 
and pursue his studies privately, promising him that he should 
graduate like the rest and receive his diploma. 

The student replied that he did not value his position in 
the institution simply for the privilege of a diploma, but was 
particularly anxious to have the benefit of the whole course of 
studies. For this reason he declined to withdraw. He persisted 
in this determination notwithstanding all that the rector could 
urge, and although a day or two was given him to consider. 
Dr. Wiseman then took a short and decisive way to enforce his 
will. On returning to his room one morning the student found 
his door locked and all his furniture moved out into the cor- 
ridor. No remedy was left him but to appeal to higher au- 
thority. He did appeal to the Cardinal Prefect of the Pro- 
paganda. The cardinal was surprised and displeased. He con- 
sidered that the young man had been wronged. He promised 
to see him restored to his rights, and appointed a day when 
he should call again. 

When presenting himself again on the day appointed he did 
not find the cardinal prefect so resolute. He was told that Dr. 
Wiseman was a very eminent man whose standing and influence 
at Rome were very high. It would be far more prudent and 
advisable to yield to his desires, instead of persisting in an op- 
position which would be almost sure to prove fruitless. The 



. 1 895-] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 789 

unfortunate appellant saw that he had little to hope from the 
present appeal. 

"I will not trouble your eminence any further," he said, "in 
this matter, if you will promise to do me one favor, which will 
cost you very little. Will you obtain for me a private audience 
with the Holy Father himself ? " 

This promise was readily given. At the audience thus 
obtained the Holy Father listened with great attention, noting 
down carefully certain particulars. " I will make further in- 
quiries into this affair," he said, " and that at once. Give me 
your present address, and leave all the rest to me." 

It was not long before some of the Papal sbirri appeared 
at the English College and moved all our student's furniture 
back into his room. This, of course, settled the whole matter 
so far as that case was concerned. Another point, however, 
was settled in the mind of the English rector. 

" So long as I am head of this college," said he, " no 
Americans shall get into it again. They won't obey anything but 
law.' 1 

I have always taken great pleasure in this anecdote because 
I consider it to be highly complimentary to the American 
character. I am free to confess that blind obedience finds little 
favor in this country. St. Francis of Sales, when conversing 
one day with certain young sisters of the Order of the Visi- 
tation on the virtue of obedience, was asked what they should do 
in case one of their superiors should give some order that would 
be contrary to the laws of God or of the Church ? Francis re- 
plied that in that case they should not obey her, any more 
than if the superior were to say, "Sister, go into the garden 
and gather some flowers, and throw yourself out of the window 
that you may get there the sooner," when the sister should 
gently and respectfully answer : " Mother, if you please, I will 
go down the stairs." 

I have already said that the progress of the Oxford move- 
ment in the United States, although generally adverse to a 
blind obedience, was not characterized by a spirit of disobedi- 
ence, though this was frequently charged against some of them 
by their bishops and other superiors. We have seen something 
of this overstraining of authority in the experience of Henry 
McVickar at the Chelsea Seminary, which led to his withdrawal 
from that institution. Some of the bishops in their dioceses 
carried on things with a much higher hand. I will here refer 
to a few instances with which I am most familiar, or which are 



790 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Mar., 

most accessible to me. Let us begin with the diocese of 
Maryland. 

William Rollinson Whittingham was one of the foremost 
figures of the Episcopalian communion at the period of which 
I am treating. He graduated at the Chelsea Seminary in 
1825, and officiated as professor of ecclesiastical history from 




REV. DWIGHT LYMAN. 

1836 to 1840, when, being made bishop, he moved to Baltimore 
and assumed charge of his diocese. I am glad to introduce 
Bishop Whittingham to the reader, not only because of the im- 
portance of his diocese and of his own personal eminence, but 
because, so far as he dared to be so, he was a Tractarian. 
Arthur Carey had been one of his pupils at the seminary. 



1 895.] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 791 

After Carey's ordination Whittingham endeavored to secure 
him for his diocese, but without success. Several young men, 
however, not unlike Carey, soon gathered around the new 
bishop and looked up to him as a guide and protector. Three 
of these, afterwards converts to Rome, are especially memora- 
ble. Dwight Lyman became an inmate of his family. When 
Lyman went to Hagerstown to pursue his studies at St. 
James's College, Nathaniel Augustus Hewit took his place with 
the bishop's family, in Courtlandt Street. Directly opposite, 
on the same street, resided Francis Baker. The bishop's 
demands upon the obedience of these three rare young church- 
men were remarkable, and remarkable was their docility. 
Father Hewit says in his Memoir of Baker: 

" In Bishop Whittingham's own eyes, he was himself the 
equivalent of the whole Catholic episcopate. Consequently, 
what he and his colleagues and predecessors in the Anglican 
Church had decreed had full Catholic authority, and was just 
as final and authoritative as if the whole world had taken part 
in it. Hence the assertion of a despotic, exclusive authority of 
the Anglican Church, concentrated in his person, over every one 
who acknowledged his jurisdiction. He would not permit us 
to attend any Catholic services, or read any Catholic books, as 
an ordinary thing." Hewit was anxious to read Mohler's Sym- 
bolism and Ward's Ideal of a Christian Church, but did not do 
so on account of the bishop's prohibition. He even gave up 
using certain Anglican books of devotion to please him. Hewit 
says : " Baker was equally obedient with myself at that time ; 
although afterward, when he was governed more by common 
sense and a just sentiment of his own rights, he read whatever 
he thought proper." 

The compliance, however, which Bishop Whittingham and 
other Episcopalian bishops of his type required from their neo- 
phytes was not so much an obedience to law, for Episcopalian- 
ism in the United States has very little ecclesiastical law to 
back it up. The bishop stands in the midst of his clergy only 
as primus inter pares. He is superior in dignity rather than in 
power. He has not much authority of a kind that can be en- 
forced. He can neither appoint a rector to a parish nor re- 
move one from his charge. He has no cathedral properly so 
called ; that is to say, a seat, or see, in any mother church around 
which the other churches of the diocese cluster as dependencies. 
The actual state of things is illustrated by the fact that in New 
York for many years the bishop occupied the position of assis- 



792 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Mar., 

tant minister in Trinity Church. So at Baltimore Bishop Whit- 
tingham, who for a long time was rector of no church there, 
had no authority in any of the churches. He could not, for in- 
stance, officiate or preach at St. Paul's Church, in Charles Street, 
without permission of Dr. Wyatt, who was the rector. 

There is, however, another kind of authority not founded on 
any canonical law, which Episcopalian bishops often claim, and 
is carried even farther in that denomination than in the Catho- 
lic Church. It is simply that authority exerted over the opinions, 
actions, and general life of others founded upon a deference to 
some superiority in age, office, dignity, or experience; or upon 
a combination of these qualities in a class of prominent men. 
It often has no other sound reason to enforce it than the argu- 
mentum ad verccundiam. In the Anglican Church this sort of 
authority was liberally and often successfully employed to keep 
young Tractarians from going to Rome, or otherwise following 
their consciences in the ruling of their lives. In my " Reminis- 
cences " of Bishop Wadhams I have shown what warning letters 
were addressed to him, urging him to yield the dictates of a 
conscience already thoroughly enlightened to sagacious guides 
and politic trimmers who had no authority to appeal to but 
grave beards and pompous phrases. 

This solemn cantiloquia went very far in the diocese of 
Maryland. Bishop Whittingham himself was so far committed 
to Catholic innovation in matters of outward form that it was 
hard to drive his young colts with a safe and steady rein. He 
was himself the first to wear long cassocks, reaching nearly to 
his heels. He could not quarrel with his neophytes if they wore 
theirs a little longer. This caused them sometimes to be mis- 
taken for Catholic clergymen. One day on Saratoga Street 
Baker, when passing by two boys who were playing together on 
the sidewalk, was saluted very reverentially by one of them. 
Baker felt pleased, but was soon taken down by the other boy, 
who cried out : 

" Hello ! What are you taking your hat off to ? That ain't 
no priest. What's the matter with you?" 

Baker felt at the time as if he had been caught in a sort of 
fraud, but often told it afterwards as a good joke. 

The bishop at the same time favored also the use of crosses 
in the churches, the removal of pulpits towering above desks 
and communion tables underneath, and the substituting of some- 
thing in their place more like altars. Hewit, Baker, and some 
others eagerly followed the bishop's lead, and would gladly 



i895-] GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN- AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. 793 

have pushed their imitation of Roman observances much far- 
ther. This they could not very well do at St. Paul's, where they 
attended, for Dr. Wyatt was omnipotent there and clung to the 
more Protestant practices in which he had been brought up. 
There they contented themselves with kneeling with their faces 
towards the altar, though the rest of the congregation faced the 
other way. Providence soon opened a better way to play Catho- 
lic. The Rev. Mr. Mcjilton was rector of St. Stephen's, an 
insignificant brick church in a poor district of Baltimore. He 
warmly sympathized with Hewit and Baker in their Catholic 
tendencies, and allowed them to remodel the interior of the 
church and to imitate Catholic ceremonies according to the full 
desires of their heart. This liberty they carried so far that the 
congregation became alarmed and remonstrated ; and as the 
bishop seemed indisposed to interfere, they began to forsake 
the services. The parish was threatened with ruin both spiri- 
tual and financial. At this juncture a power more effectual than 
that of the bishop interposed. This was the rector's wife. With 
her it was a matter of bread and butter, and she interposed 
her authority so effectually that all the innovations were brought 
to a stop. The obnoxious symbols on the window curtains were 
banished out of sight. The chancel was restored to its former 
simplicity, containing no longer anything bearing resemblance 
to an altar, but revealing as before the old marble-topped com- 
munion table which, like so many others, would have served as 
well for a washstand. 

Hewit, Baker, and Dwight Lyman, whose names we have 
brought so prominently forward amongst the Tractarians of 
Maryland, must not be set down as characterized by a spirit of 
ritualism. Outward forms have often real value as symbolizing 
essential doctrine, and therefore minds most earnestly seeking 
for doctrinal truth must needs often attach much importance to 
ceremonies. The cross is typical of the atonement, the altar of 
a continued visible sacrifice, and rich and costly vestments, 
when attainable, are acknowledgments of the presence of God 
in the temple. But these young men cannot be classed with 
those who place ceremony, dress, or any show above truth and 
true worship, or place quaint fashions or antique curiosities above 
sincere and heartfelt devotion. It was an easy thing for them 
to yield up cassocks or Roman collars when their bishop de- 
sired it. 

When the time came for Hewit's ordination to the diaconate 
he gave his assent to the Thirty-nine Articles in the sense of 



794 GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN AN ANGLICAN SEMINARY. [Mar., 

" No. 90." Baker was passed for ordination to the priesthood 
by the bishop, despite his unqualified rejection of Articles 22 
and 31, besides some others. 

It was not long before Whittingham himself fell under sus- 
picions of popery, and was obliged to defend himself against 
the open attacks of one of his own clergy, the Rev. Henry V. 
D. Johns, rector of Christ's Church. It was to avoid the charge 
of popery that he put an end to the very novelties which he 
himself had introduced. Paralyzed by this change of front on 
the part of their bishop, many of the clergy and students dropped 
quietly back into the old ways. Some who felt it hard to keep 
quiet left the diocese. 

Hewit, Baker, and Lyman yielded much at first. It was not 
long before they found their consciences put to a far severer 
test. They were expected to abandon what they felt to be the 
only way to truth. This brought them speedily to a decisive 
" break-up," like that which took place at the Chelsea Seminary. 
Hewit was the first to take refuge in Rome. His conversion 
followed close upon that of John Henry Newman in England. 
He was received into the Catholic Church at Charleston, S. C., 
in 1846, at the close of Holy Week. 

Baker, whose attachment to the Anglican Church reached 
farther back, lingered several years longer. He was received in- 
to the Catholic Church by his old friend and comrade, Father 
Hewit, April 9, 1853. The reception took place in the little 
chapel of the Orphan Asylum of the Sisters of Charity, in Bal- 
timore. I was then residing at the Redemptorist Convent in 
Saratoga Street, and saw him in his visits there during the days 
of his preparation. My memory is still fresh with the keen in- 
terest I took in the conversion of a man already so distinguished. 
Baker was ordained to the priesthood September 21, 1856, in 
the Baltimore Cathedral. Present on that occasion and in 
priestly vestments was D wight Lyman, his old friend and co- 
partner in so many vicissitudes of joy and grief and trials of 
conscience. A few days later Hewit, Lyman, and Baker cele- 
brated together a solemn votive Mass of thanksgiving at St. Al- 
phonsus' Church, for the same great grace. 

(TO BE CONTINUED.) 




'895-] ODE TO ST. THOMAS AQUINAS. 

ODE TO ST. THOMAS AQUINAS. 
BY M. T. WAGGAMAN. 

I. 

RANSCENDENT Italy, 
Lodestar of History! 

Her name shall stand 
Thrice blessed as thy natal land : 

The land of Love and Art, 
The land where th' impassioned heart 
Throbs out its ecstasy 
In fervid melodies. 
The land caressed by ardent seas, 

The land of Poetry 

Whose sons a Dante sings, a Titian paints. 
The land of martyrs and of saints ; 
The land whose vaunt is Rome, 
The vanished Caesars' home, 
The crumbled centre of an empire's greed 
The radiant focus of a changeless creed. 
Transcendent Italy ! 

Her name shall stand 
Thrice blessed as thy natal land. 

II. 

Inspired Philosopher ! 
Unrivalled spirit of the Middle Ages, 
Thou peerless genius 'midst the world's great sages ! 

Divine Interpreter, 
Empowered by the Deity 
To translate the Eternal Truth 

Into Time's dialect. 
The seraphs brooded o'er thy destiny, 
And Wisdom watched the footfalls of thy youth ; 
Her hand thy dust-begotten fevers checked, 
She soothed thee with her virgin balm, 
She crowned thee with celestial calm ; 



79$ 



796 ODE TO ST. THOMAS AQUINAS. [Mar., 

Obedient to her voice, 

Thou didst make choice 
Of the Omniscient's will. 
Thro' sacrificial days 

Thy meek soul trod 
The orbits traced by God. . 

'Thwart Reason's gloom thy mind shot forth moon-rays, 
The reflex glory of the Infinite ; 
The dusk was cloven by an argent light, 
Death felt the thrill. 



III. 

Thou Angel of the Schools! 

Thou triumph of the Church, thou scourge of fools! 
Before thine eyes all knowledge was unrolled ; 
To thee did mysteries unfold 

As lilies to the dawn. 

Whilst whirled the hearts of mad humanity 
In wheeling storms of Doubt, 
Whilst Pride did shout 
Her void claims, and ravening Anarchy 
Flung far and wide her spawn 
Upon the clanging tides of thought, 
Thou, Thomas, trumpet of the Lord, 
Didst sound the breathings of the Trinity 
Across the deeps, and peace was poured 

Upon the land. 

Above the discord surged a harmony. 
With humble rapture was thy spirit fraught, 

With pray'rful exultation, 
With a glow like that the harp feels 

When a musician's hand 
Strikes its gold strings and the air reels 
At the ambrosial revelation. 



IV. 

O Saint of saints! 
Thy work is done, 
Thy goal is won ; 
Unloosed from clay's restraints, 
Thy soul among the cherubim is throned. 



1895.] ODE TO ST. T&OMAS AQUINAS. 

Thy sacred brow 

Is lustrous with thy threefold vow ; 
For ever more 
Thou shalt adore 
God, the Omnipotent. 
Whilst thro' eternity 
Hosannas are intoned 
Which shake the firmament ; 
Whilst hell's dread monarchy 
Resounds with an unceasing moan, 
In this dim world, from zone to zone, 
Thy " Summa " shines, a vast electric fire 
Flashed from Faith and Philosophy, 
The heaven and earth-charged poles of Truth. 
Thy " Summa " burns the funeral pyre 
Of Ignorance, the huge, uncouth 

Grandsire of Sophistry. 
O Holy Ghost ! may the flame blaze 

Throughout all Christendom, 
Adown the yet unpeopled days 

Till He shall come 
To judge the generations 
Of silenced nations ! 



797 





THE LATE DR. CHARCOT. 



DOCTOR CHARCOT AND HIS WORK. 

BY WILLIAM SETON, LL.D. 

MONG the eminent men who during the past fifty 
years have advanced the science of medicine in 
France, perhaps none have done more than the late 
Jean-Martin Charcot. His father was an honest, 
hard-working wheelwright, and having three sons 
he said to them : " I cannot afford to let all of you finish your 
studies. The one who at the end of the scholastic year will 
have done the best in his. class, he alone shall continue and re- 
ceive a liberal education. Of the other two, one is to be a 
soldier and one shall follow my trade." The future doctor 
won the coveted honor, and we find him shortly afterwards at 




1 895-] DOCTOR CHARCOT AND His WORK. 799 

the Lyce St. Louis. Having completed the college course, he 
began, in 1848, the study of medicine, and as the allowance 

which his father made him did not suffice for his wants 

although these were not many he eked out his slender in- 
come by giving private lessons. During this period young 
Charcot was able to see a good deal of the famous hospital, 
the Salpetriere, destined one day to be the scene of his greatest 
triumphs, and he quickly recognized the vast opportunities 
which it afforded a medical student. Not long after taking his 
degree we find him, in conjunction with his friend Dr. 
Vulpian, gathering together the numberless notes and observa- 
tions of the many and curious cases treated in this immense 
hospital, and these observations and notes became Les archives 
me'dicales de la Salpetriere. The choice materials thus compiled 
formed an inexhaustible mine into which he delved deeper and 
deeper, and from this mine he drew the subjects for his 
original communications to the Socie'te" de Biologie, of which he 
was secretary. 

In 1866 Dr. Charcot commenced his lectures at the 
Salpetriere ; not in the spacious amphitheatre where we listened 
to him a few years ago, but in one of the sick wards, which 
was placed at his disposal. In 1869, assisted by Dr. Vulpian 
and Dr. Brown-Squard, he founded Les archives de Physiolo- 
gie ; and it was now that his superiors and those in authority, 
recognizing in him no ordinary worker, determined that he 
should have a broader field for his talents, and the following 
year, 1870, all the epileptic and hysterical patients who were 
not insane were removed to a separate wing of the establish- 
ment and there put wholly under his care ; and the day when 
this was done may be reckoned a marked day for mental 
science. Now more than ever he devoted himself to the study 
of the nervous system, and in 1872 he published his lectures 
on hysteria and hystero-epilepsy. But, like some other great 
men, Dr. Charcot was rather careless as to the fate of his manu- 
scripts ; and his lectures, after they had once been delivered to 
his class, might never have found a wider audience except for 
his intelligent and worthy spouse, who preserved them all and 
finally persuaded him to give them to the world in book-form. 
In this same year, 1872, he became professor of pathological 
anatomy, succeeding his friend Dr. Vulpian ; but this did not 
prevent him from continuing his numerously attended free 
lectures at the Salpetriere. It was not, however, until 1878 that 
he began his great researches into the phenomena of Hypnotism, 



8oo DOCTOR CHARCOT AND His WORK. [Mar., 

and he was still engaged in them when he unexpectedly (while 
taking a brief holiday) died on the I5th of August, 1893. His 
funeral was held in the chapel of the Salpetrire, and the 
solemn absolution was pronounced by the Abb< Girau, cur6 de 
St. Marcel. It was a never-to-be-forgotten occasion. 

In his exploration of the nervous system Dr. Charcot main- 
tained from the very first a reserved and prudent attitude :. 
the extraordinary, the mysterious did not, seemingly at least,, 
attract him so much as the objective, clinical realities, the patho- 
logical characters of the various phenomena which hypnotism 
presented. All his studies on this subject were made upon per- 
sons afflicted with that most awful of maladies, hystero- epilepsy 
(liysteria major), for it is among them that the several artificially 
produced nervous states attain their most perfect development. 
As our readers know, it was an English physician, Dr. Braid 
of Manchester, who, in 1843, first began to investigate what we 
now call hypnotism. But after him this phase of the nervous 
system fell into almost complete neglect, and it so remained until 
Dr. Charcot, braving scepticism and ridicule, once more drew 
the attention of physiologists to it and succeeded in bringing 
it within the domain of science. According to him, the several 
phenomena which we observe among persons who are hypno- 
tized do not correspond to one and the same nervous condi- 
tion ; he maintains that there are three fundamental states, each 
markedly different from the other two, viz., the cataleptic, the 
lethargic, and the somnambulistic. The cataleptic state is 
brought about primarily either by a loud, unexpected noise, by 
a bright light placed before the eyes, or again by gazing intent- 
ly on some object. When in this condition the subject is mo- 
tionless, the eyes wide open and staring, and tears may gather 
and flow down the cheeks without causing the eyelids to wink. 
We may also twist the subject's limbs into the most difficult 
positions without the least resistance on his part, and they will 
so remain during a long time ; the limbs, too, seem uncom- 
monly light. But the sense of hearing and the sense of sight 
remain, partially at least, subject to sense impressions, so that 
the subject may be given hallucinations. Few things interested 
us more at the Salpetriere than to witness the suggestions im- 
parted by Dr. Charcot through the muscular sense ; thus, while 
in the cataleptic state the person's physiognomy, which at first 
evinces no trace of emotion, would be made to assume the 
various expressions corresponding with the attitudes given to the 
limbs. If the hands were tightly closed and the arms bent as 



1895-] 



DOCTOR CHARCOT AND His WORK. 



801 



if to strike, the face would presently take a harsh, angry^look; 
while if the hands were opened wide and brought to the lips 
as if to throw a kiss, the visage would brighten and a smile 
steal over it. Again, with some subjects in the cataleptic^state 





" THE VISAGE WOULD BRIGHTEN AND A SMILE STEAL OVER IT." 

it was possible to proceed inversely, and by exciting the proper 
muscles of the face by means of a galvanic current, and causing 
the patient to smile or to frown, the limbs would presently take 
the corresponding attitudes of pleasure or anger. More curious 
still, we have seen one fist doubled up as if to strike, while at the 
VOL. LX. 51 



802 DOCTOR CHARCOT AND His WORK. [Mar., 

same time the other hand was opened and carried to the lips 
as if to throw a kiss, whereupon one-half of the patient's face 
would scowl while the other half would be smiling. These ex- 
periments show how intimate is the mechanism which links ges- 
ture to physiognomy ; and if it be true, as some writers affirm, that 
the sculptors of antiquity made use of female models in the cata- 
leptic state, it was no doubt the condition of catalepsy described 
by Dr. Charcot. Moreover, these automatic actions developed by 
exciting the nervous centres through the muscular sense may, 
like all reflex actions, be up to a certain point educated by 
practice. But to be carried out they always require a few mo- 
ments' time. Here we quote Dr. Charcot : * "II semble . . . 
que Timpression partie des muscles contracts de la face mette 
un certain temps pour marquer son empreinte sur le cerveau et 
rveiller I'activit6 des centres automatiques." 

It is interesting to see the subject pass from the cataleptic 
state to the lethargic ; and this may be done either by extin- 
guishing the light, ceasing to beat the gong, or by pressing 
down the eyelids. Frequently, when the subject is falling into 
this condition, a peculiar sound is heard in the larynx, while at 
the same time a little froth appears on the lips. In a moment 
the subject seems to be fast asleep, the eyes are closed or half- 
closed, and there is generally an incessant quivering of the eye- 
lids. Although the sense organs preserve a certain activity, it 
is now almost impossible to produce any effect by means of 
suggestion ; and one of the fundamental characters of the con- 
dition of lethargy is hyper- excitability of the neuro-muscular 
system ; the muscle, its tendon or its nerve, promptly responds 
to the smallest mechanical excitement, such as a slight pressure 
with the rounded end of a stick. We may even cause the sub- 
ject's ears to move quite perceptibly. The third state into which 
Dr. Charcot divides hypnotism is that of artificial sleep, for- 
merly called magnetic sleep. This is brought about by fixing 
the eyes very intently on some object. Presently the subject 
gives two or three sighs, the eyes close, or nearly so we some- 
times press gently on the eyeballs the head droops and the 
subject is asleep. And in order to awaken him you blow upon 
his face and eyes; although if left to himself he will awaken in 
two or three hours' time. This third state is perhaps the most 
interesting, for it is now that the strangest psychical phenomena 
are manifested. In this artificial sleep suggestions of the most 
marvellous kind may be made. By suggestion is meant the act 

* CEuvres completes de J.-M. Charcot, vol. ix. p. 445. 



I89S-] 



DOCTOR CHARCOT AND His WORK. 



803 



by which the operator imposes an idea on his subject, either 
by word or gesture; and the study of this phase of hypnotism 
opens new horizons to the physiologist and psychologist. At 
the Salpetrtere a sore has been made to appear on what had 
been perfectly healthy skin, simply by suggestion. Hunger, too, 




"THE FACE WOULD PRESENTLY TAKE A HARSH, ANGRY LOOK." 

may be appeased by suggestion. We may also in the hypnotic 
sleep suggest to the sleeper that he is smelling a perfume, say 
the perfume of a rose, and on awaking he will continue for 
some time to smell a rose. Here the person remains under the 
influence of the idea suggested during his artificial slumber, but 
does not at all remember the act of suggestion. After Dr. 
Charcot had founded what is now known as the school of the 



804 DOCTOR CHARCOT AND His WORK. [Mar., 

Salpetriere, Dr. Bernheim opened another school for the study of 
hypnotic phenomena at Nancy. The difference between the two 
schools is this : Dr. Charcot maintains that hypnotism is a 
pathological and not a physiological state ; that it is a morbid 
condition of the nervous system ; that subjects who are prone 
to fall into it are always hysterical. He also holds that in the 
complete type of hypnotism, which he calls Le grand hypnotism, 
there are three distinct states, viz.: the cataleptic, the lethargic, 
and the somnambulistic. Dr. Bernheim maintains, on the con- 
trary, that hypnotism is a physiological rather than a pathological 
state ; he denies that persons who may be hypnotized are by 
nature hysterical and inclined to brain trouble ; he considers 
Dr. Charcot's three divisions as purely artificial, and he believes 
that all the phenomena called hypnotic are solely due to sug- 
gestion, and are its products. 

We do not pretend to judge between the two schools. We 
merely remark that what we have seen of this phase of the 
nervous system has been at the Salpetriere, and that to Dr. Char- 
cot undoubtedly belongs the honor of having been the first to 
give a scientific demonstration of hypnotism. It is perhaps too 
soon to tell what good may be affected through hypnotic 
suggestion ; on this point physicians are not agreed. Dr. F. L. 
Stuever, a member of the Sixty-sixth Congress of German 
scientists and physicians, held this autumn in Vienna, has writ- 
ten to us as follows : " In answer to your last letter I will say 
that hypnotism is very little used here in the treatment of dis- 
ease. In Germany even less confidence is placed in it. At the 
Congress ... I attended chiefly the meetings of the sec- 
tion on insanity and neurology, and I heard a discussion on hyp- 
notism. There were only two members of the congress that 
spoke in favor of it in the treatment of disease ; one of them 
with some enthusiasm, but the cases he offered in proof of his 
views were not at all conclusive. Hypnotism has been employed 
a good deal here and in Germany, but has been found bene- 
ficial only in some cases of hysteria and in some cases of func- 
tional troubles, such as abnormal menstruation and constipation 
of the bowels not dependent on organic disease. ... Of 
course experiments are still constantly being made, but with 
very critical eyes." It is generally conceded, however, that 
hypnotism is a precious mine for physiologists and psychologists 
to explore, and that a study of the phenomena which appear 
during the hypnotic state may throw not a little light on the 
mechanism of thought. 



1895.] LEO XIII. 805 

We conclude by saying that this condition of the nervous 
system, lying as it does on the borderland of hysteria and mad- 
ness, is one well calculated to inspire us with awe, and in former 
times yet not so very long ago before science had fought 
and conquered its way to the high position which it now holds, 
not only the oi polloi, but men learned in jurisprudence and 
metaphysics, believed in witchcraft, and too often looked upon 
the unfortunate beings who were afflicted with hystero-epilepsy 
as demoniacs. Happily those days have passed away ; through 
a better knowledge of the human body we are grown more 
humane he who does not say aye to this has read history to 
little purpose and for this greater enlightenment and humanity 
we are mainly indebted to scientists who had the same courage 
and perseverance as Jean-Martin Charcot. 




LEO XIII. 

St. Peter s, January i, 1888. 
BY RALPH ADAMS CRAM. 

[ H ROUGH the white light clear peals a silver bell, 
And he is coming. Smoking censers swing 
And snowy plumes are tossing where they 

bring 

A King, and more than king. The awful spell 
Is on me of those eyes where ages dwell. 
Kneeling I see him Peter, Priest and King, 
Wearily bearing, while hosannas ring, 
In pallid hands the Keys of Heaven and Hell. 

" Blessed is he that cometh in the Name 

Of Christ the Lord." Yea, more than any man 

Blessed art thou, and blessed shalt thou stand, 
O patient prisoner of the Vatican ! 
A cloud by day, by night a living flame 

To lead thy people to the Promised Land. 




806 A PRINCE OF SCRIBBLERS. [Mar., 

A PRINCE OF SCRIBBLERS. 

BY VINCENT D. ROSSMAN. 

JR. JOHNSON says of a certain novel a much- 
belauded production of Congreve's youth, upon 
which Mr. Gosse bestows considerable praise 
that he would rather praise it than read it. So 
most people would much rather echo the tradi- 
tional praise of the famous Letters of Horace Walpole than 
read theni, and satisfy their minds as to whether the Letters 
really deserve all the fine things which have been said of them. 
Of course there is nothing very astonishing in the fact that 
in our large libraries the dust of neglect is allowed to accumu- 
late upon single copies of such books as the published corre- 
spondence of Walpole, while twenty-five copies of the latest 
work of fiction are speedily worn to rags. The Prince of 
Poets has not told us a truer thing than what he tells us in the 
lines addressed by the expostulating Ulysses to the pouting 
Achilles : 

" One touch of nature makes the whole world kin, 
That all with one consent praise new-born gawds, 
Though they are made and moulded of things past, 
And give to dust that is a little gilt 
More laud than gilt o'er-dusted." 

From a literary point of view, our interest in Walpole 
begins with his famous quarrel with the author of the Church- 
yard Elegy. In the year 1739 Walpole, having been graduated 
from Cambridge where, according to his own ingenuous con- 
fession, he was anything but a brilliant scholar set out "to 
do " the Continent, accompanied by Gray, whom he had in- 
duced to make the grand tour with him. It was an ill-matched 
pair from the start. Their tastes "and inclinations were dis- 
similar ; and such was the self-sufficiency and wilfulness of each 
that any accommodation or subordination of the wishes of the 
one to those of the other was not to be thought of. Gray, 
with his studious and researching propensities, was for gloating 
in contemplation of thought-awakening antiquities or works of 
art, or in poring over old books and manuscripts in the 
libraries of France, Germany, and Italy. Light-hearted and 



1895.] A PRINCE OF SCRIBBLERS. 807 

frivolous Walpole, on the other hand, had no liking for such 
pursuits, and cared little for anything but balls and dinner- 
parties, and for the enjoyment of all the social pleasures at the 
command of the son of Sir Robert Walpole. The mutual feel- 
ing of impatient restraint resultant of such incompatibility 
broke out in numerous tiffs and poutings, but the occasion for 
an open rupture was had in Italy. It is said that Walpole sus- 
pected that in a letter to England Gray had expressed himself 
very unfeignedly touching his opinions of his travelling com- 
panion, and that Walpole, having surreptitiously got possession 
of the suspected epistle, perpetrated such an atrocious deed of 
dishonor as the opening and reading of it. By the upbraiding 
of Walpole, or by other means, Gray discovered that his mail 
had been tampered with, and of course a tremendous rumpus, 
and a deal of harsh recrimination, were the results, followed by 
the parting of the two. Such is one story of this famous 
quarrel. The cause of their ultimate and separating embitter- 
ment is not really known. Walpole was in all probability most 
at fault. He afterwards expressed himself very penitently 
concerning the affair, and repeatedly declared that the blame 
was his. He made overtures to Gray Looking to a renewal of 
their intimacy, and though the latter has expressed very grave 
and philosophic thoughts in his writings, he here showed himself 
so devoid of right-minded philosophy as to repel them. 

WALPOLE AS A ROCOCO CRANK. 

Walpole, however, was not of such a mental constitution as to 
disturb himself much over his quarrel with Gray, and his failure 
to effect a reconciliation. On his return to London he at once 
became a central figure of that social world which is so graphi- 
cally described in his inimitable letters. He bought the shop 
of a toy-woman situated in a suburb of London, took up his 
abode there, and became a toy-man himself not a commodity- 
selling toyman, but a collector of all sorts of absurd oddities 
with which he toyed to the end of his life. He embellished 
his house, known as Strawberry Hill, with incongruous archi- 
tectural excrescences which Macaulay calls "pie-crust battle- 
ments." These decorative outrages were indeed of a pie-crust 
sort, for they were such as to make one of right artistic taste 
have the nightmare. Macaulay has described Walpole's manner 
of life in his review of the letters to Sir Horace Mann, and, 
though written in the great essayist's best style, there runs 
throughout his scoffing of Walpole's inconsistency and frivolity 



8o8 A PRINCE OF SCRIBBLERS. [Mar., 

a strain of bitter and contemptuous arraignment which is en- 
tirely unjustifiable. It was a great deal more reprehensible in 
Macaulay to be so indignant over Walpole's foolishness than it 
was in the foolish Walpole to follow the bent of his unwise 
inclinations. Such criticism of such a man is analogous to that 
wretched system of pedagogics which subjects a pupil to pun- 
ishment, or to the ridicule of his companions, because his is 
the heavy misfortune to have a mind thralled in the sloughs 
of sluggishness and unresponsiveness. If Walpole thought more 
of pieces of broken glass and ragged bits of tapestry than of 
his duties of parliamentary legislation ; more of epitaphs for 
departed dogs and cats of quality and for the latest tid-bit of 
scandal than of the marvellous and map-changing exploits of 
Frederick the Great ; if he was a man of the affectation which 
fears to reveal conditions and purposes, instead of one of that 
bold, honest candor which declares, in contradistinction to lago's 
avowal of hypocrisy, " I am what I am " if all this be true 
of Walpole, pity rather than malediction is his due. One who 
so much lacks in appreciation of the serious and vital concerns 
of life as did Walpole, and who occupies himself with, and thinks 
of little save trifles, does indeed perpetrate an egregious blun- 
der ; and some blunders may, as is said, be more serious than 
crimes ; but the blunderer merits no such measure of reproba- 
tion as deservedly falls to the lot of the criminal. 

A PROFOUND JESTER. 

To enlarge unduly upon the mental weaknesses and aberra- 
tions of Walpole, and so create the unfounded notion that his 
mind was incorrigibly frivolous, and radically incompetent of 
apprehending the serious aspects of affairs, would be a piece of 
strained criticism for which no provocation may be alleged. 
There are occasional passages in his correspondence which in- 
dicate in the writer powers of keen and discriminating ob- 
servation, and an ability to think well and coherently on sub- 
jects other than trifles. Macaulay writes with the utmost con- 
tempt of the measure of Walpole's appreciation of the litera- 
ture and affairs of France, and insinuates that he failed utterly 
to realize the portentous significance of the tendencies of the 
French thought and happenings of the times; that he was in- 
capable of feeling any forebodings of that awful deluge, the 
approaching tumult of which the wretched Louis XV. heard on 
his death-bed. Facts by no means justify Macaulay here. Wal- 
pole visited Paris in the fall of 1765, and in a letter written 



1 895.] A PRINCE OF SCRIBBLERS. 809 

from there at that time there occurs the following significant 
passage : " Laughing is out of fashion here. Good folks, they 
have no time to laugh. There is God and the king to be 
pulled down first, and men and women, one and all, are en- 
gaged in the demolition. They think me quite profane for hav- 
ing any belief left." Walpole was again in Paris in the summer 
of 1771, and his letters written thence at that time particu- 
larly one to his friend General Conway, dated July 31, 1771 
show that he possessed sufficient penetration to read aright the 
signs of the times, and to sniff the premonitions of blood and 
fire in the air. Edmund Burke did not see what Walpole saw. 
The great orator sojourned in Paris the year subsequent to the 
occasion of Walpole's visit last alluded to, and he was so en- 
raptured by the beauty and graciousness of Marie Antoinette, 
then Dauphiness, and so delighted with the polish and stateli- 
ness of the court that did obsequious homage to the young Aus- 
trienne, that he felt nothing of the tremors of those convul- 
sions gathering under the thin exterior strata of French society 
which were so soon to split the earth and send forth the awful 
incarnations of long-repressed vengeance. Mr. John Forster 
says, in his magnificent biography of Goldsmith : " Burke saw 
little but an age of chivalry extant still, where something should 
have been visible to him of an age of starvation and retribu- 
tion ; and through the glittering formal state that surrounded 
the pomp of Louis the Well Beloved not a shadow of the an- 
tic, Hunger, mocking the state and grinning at the pomp, 
would seem to have revealed itself to Edmund Burke." Not 
so with Horace Walpole, however silly and frivolous he seems. 

SCRIBBLING DOWN SLAVERY. 

It is also creditable to Walpole's head and heart that he 
was strongly opposed to the institution of slavery, and in Par- 
liament he was as ardent as was possible for one of his temper- 
ament to be in the advocacy of that anti-slavery movement 
which was carried subsequently to glorious victory by the in- 
defatigable labors of Clarkson and Wilberforce, Garrison and 
Channing. In 1750 he writes to Mann: "We have been sitting 
this fortnight on the African Company. We, the British Sen- 
ate, that temple of liberty and bulwark of Protestant Christian- 
ity, have been pondering methods to make more effectual this 
horrid traffic of selling negroes. It would appear to us that 
six and-forty thousand of these wretched creatures are sold every 
year to our American plantations alone ! It chills one's blood ! 



8 io A PRINCE OF SCRIBBLERS. [Mar., 

I would not have it to say that I voted for it for the conti- 
nent of America." 

DEARLY LOVED A LORD IN LETTERS. 

Walpole's most heinous literary fault was his absurd though 
not at all remarkable disposition to gauge his estimate of a book 
according to the rank or gentility of the author. He actually 
seemed to think a plebeian incapable of meritorious effort in 
literature, and his opinion as to any performance anonymously 
published was probably held in suspense until the fact of its 
authorship had been clearly established. If by a man of the 
people, like Johnson or Goldsmith, it was a poor performance 
worthy of little notice 

" But let a lord once own the happy lines, 
How the wit brightens, how the style refines! 
Before his sacred name flies every fault, 
And each exalted stanza teems with thought." 

He makes few allusions to the writers contemporaneous with 
him who were making the real literature of the time ; they were 
all too vulgar to engage his pen, except when he went out of 
his way to write adversely of them, when he perpetrated some 
precious bits of most nonsensical critical coxcombry. In his 
correspondence there are several allusions to Fielding, in one 
of which he describes how inexpressibly shocked he was when, 
on calling with some friends upon the novelist on some busi- 
ness connected with the latter's magisterial duties, he found 
Fielding sitting before a table covered with a dirty cloth, and 
eating cold ham and mutton out of one dish. How greatly, 
indeed, must this vulgar spectacle have shocked the delicate 
gentility of the fastidious Horace, and how must his perturba- 
tion have been intensified by Fielding's crowning and unpar- 
donable violation of the rules of polite table etiquette his shar- 
ing of his dirty meal with several dirty beggars! Is it possible 
that Walpole was ignorant of Fielding's connection with the 
royal house of the Austrian Hapsburgs, alluded to so forcibly 
in the well-known panegyric of the novelist in Gibbon's me- 
moirs, which occasioned Thackeray to express the opinion that 
to have one's name mentioned by Gibbon is like having it writ- 
ten on the dome of St. Peter's? And yet it seems difficult 
to believe that Walpole would have had anything but ex- 
travagant praise for Fielding had he been aware of this. 
Walpole has no commendation to express concerning Dr. 



1895.] A PRINCE OF SCRIBBLERS. 811 

Johnson's periodicals, but is thrown into ecstasies of admiration 
over some of the papers in the fashionable publication, The 
World, written by his lordship of Chesterfield. The following 
passage from one of his letters, written in 1773, is quite unique, 
but very characteristic : " I should like to know Mr. Anstey 
and Mr. Mason, but I have no thirst to know the rest of my 
contemporaries, from the absurd, bombastic Dr. Johnson down 
to the silly Dr. Goldsmith. Don't think me scornful. Recollect 
that I have seen Pope and lived with Gray." It is indeed a 
pity that in his contact with Pope and Gray he was not taught 
sufficient sense to prevent him from thinking and expressing 
such folly as this just quoted. Again, referring to Johnson's 
stupendous dictionary achievement, he has this to say to a cor- 
respondent : " Surely you do not equal the compiler of a dic- 
tionary with a genuine poet ? Is a brick-maker on a level with 
an architect ? " And so the great service of Johnson to the 
English, rendered by the compilation of his dictionary, is here 
spoken of as a piece of literary brick-work ! If Walpole had 
been more sensibly appreciative of the value of a dictionary and 
of the labors of the lexicographer, he might have learned to 
write more correctly and to restrain his habitual predilection 
for foreignisms. When one considers the intellect of Johnson as 
compared with that of Walpole, the aristocratic scribbler's sneers 
at the doctor's work seem exquisitely absurd. As the old pau- 
per in Oliver Twist says, on a different sort of occasion, " It's 
as good as a play ! as good as a play ! " Sensible Englishmen 
of the day had but one opinion of Johnson's ability and attain- 
ments, however much they may have disliked him socially, 
feared him as a conversationalist, and censured his overweening 
intellectual arrogance ; and this unanimous opinion was that 
Johnson was, as Cowper expresses it, 

"... a sage by all allowed 
Whom to have bred may well make England proud." 

Walpole seems to have forgotten that Johnson had not only 
produced the dictionary, but had also written two noble poems ; 
that he had not only proved himself what Walpole calls a lite- 
rary brick-maker, but had also shown his capabilities as a literary 
architect. 

Walpole himself occasionally " dropped into poetry," and the 
products of his poetic delusion are about on a level with the 
effusions of Mr. Silas Wegg; indeed, they are of such a char- 
acter as to explain most conclusively why their author preferred 



8 12 A PRINCE OF SCRIBBLERS. [Mar., 

Anstey and Mason to Johnson and Goldsmith why he thought 
"The New Bath Guide" and " Elfrida " immeasurably finer per- 
formances than "The Vanity of Human Wishes" or "The De- 
serted Village." Here is one of them, composed on a certain 
lady of Paris speaking English : 

" Soft sounds steal from fair Forqualier's lips, 
Like bee, that murmuring the jasmine sips. 
Are these my native accents ? None so sweet, 
So gracious, yet my ravished ears did meet. 
O power of beauty, thy enchanting look 
Can melodize each note in Nature's book! 
The roughest wrath of Russians, when they swear, 
Pronounced by thee, flow soft as Indian air, 
And dulcet breath, attempered by thy eyes, 
Gives British verse o'er Tuscan verse the prize." 

One might write such nonsense extemporaneously and infor- 
mally, and still be forgiven ; but to subject it to a formal tran- 
scription in a letter to a third person as Walpole did and to 
seriously comment upon it as Walpole did is really a piece 
of almost unpardonable stultification. " You must not look, 
madam," writes he to Lady Hervey, " for much meaning in 
these lines ; they were intended only to run smoothly, and be 
easily comprehended by the fair scholar who is learning our 
language. Still less must you show them." Of course this, 
translated, means : " You will probably, madam, think these 
lines very smart and elegantly significant. You will please show 
them to every one." Walpole's poetry does, indeed, sufficiently 
account for his judgments on the poets of his day. A person 
might possess the most delicate susceptibilities to the beauties 
of real poetry, and be incapable of writing a single verse of 
poetic sense ; but it is hardly within the range of mental incon- 
gruity that such a person should be capable of writing versified 
and rhythmical nonsense and think it poetry. 

GINGERBREAD CRITICISM. 

Towards the close of his life, addressing a friend, Walpole 
writes: "With regard to letter-writing, I am firmly persuaded 
that it is a province in which the women will always shine su- 
periorly; for our sex is too jealous of the reputation of good 
sense to condescend to hazard a thousand trifles and negligences 
which give grace, ease, and familiarity to correspondence." This 
is truly a most striking passage. It shows how entirely the 



1 895.] A PRINCE OF SCRIBBLERS. 813 

writer misconceived of his own powers. It was exactly his 
ability to dilate entertainingly upon social nothings, and to in- 
dulge in the trifles of easy, familiar correspondence, that secured 
for Walpole's name a permanent place in the records of English 
literature. He was quite sure that his reputation would extend 
beyond the period of his life, but his anticipations of lasting 
fame were mainly based on the estimate he placed on his more 
serious and ambitious literary efforts ; though, of course, he was 
not unconscious of his unusual epistolary powers, and left care- 
fully transcribed and annotated copies of his letters. But those 
writings of Walpole which may be designated as his works, his 
Historic Doubts, his Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors what 
a labor of love was the composition of this last-named work ! 
his Anecdotes of Painting, his obnoxious tragedy, and even his 
Castle of Otranto, have been almost completely forgotten, and 
their very titles would be lost in the oblivion that has engulfed 
many better works were it not that the Horace Walpole who 
wrote these books is identified with the man who wrote the Let- 
ters of Horace Walpole. 

When Walpole formally put on his thinking-cap, and sat 
down to spread his irregular and superficial learning over pages 
of criticism and didactics, he by no means did what was con- 
ducive to the augmentation of his literary reputation ; when he 
diverted his mind from its native tendencies, and tried to force 
it to a state of sustained and protracted seriousness, he was un- 
der a delusion as to his capabilities during the prevalence of 
which he was not always able to write good sense ; but when 
he threw off all affectation, and dashed off the inimitable letters 
he could write so well, then did he do what was to save him 
from the fate which awaited so many of his contemporaries 
whose verbal commonplaces and elegant inanities he thought 
finer than the writings of the " bombastic Dr. Johnson " and the 
"silly Dr. Goldsmith." 

It is due to the ladies to say that facts by no means sup- 
port what Walpole says, in the passage last quoted, concerning 
an exclusive ability on their part to accomplish that expansion 
of nothing which is the secret of correspondence of a familiar, 
easy sort. Of course, the obvious refutation of it lies in Wai- 
pole's own achievements as a letter-writer; while the implied 
innuendo, that such letters are the only kind ladies are capable 
of producing, might have been given the lie even when made, 
for when Walpole wrote this passage both the correspondence 
of the unfortunate Lady Russell, and the more celebrated letters 



8 14 A PRINCE OF SCRIBBLERS. [Mar., 

of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, had been published ; the first 
of which two ladies possessed more right-minded philosophy, 
and the latter more solid learning, than a score of Horace Wai- 
poles rolled into one ; and either of whom displayed more ease 
and' directness in the expression of profound thought than Wai- 
pole did in the expression of superficial thought. 

A SHAM PHILANTHROPIST. 

Walpole's penchant for attitudinizing led him to a phase of 
affectation which incurs the charge of hypocrisy. It pleased his 
whim to sometimes masquerade in the robes of refined and large- 
hearted philanthropy. The costume by no means fitted him, 
and deceived no one. His borrowed plumage has been torn 
from him, and he has been driven with scorn back to his own 
proper level of flippant unconcern for the great interests of man- 
kind. Such was the natural sphere of his thoughts and inclina- 
tions, though he was not incapable of occasional elevations from 
it. He pretended to entertain a most edifying horror of war, 
and affected an aversion to the society of Pitt because of the 
bellicose propensities of the " Great Commoner " for which cul- 
pable priggishness Macaulay accords him a dressing-down which 
was richly deserved. At the opening of the terrible Seven 
Years' War we find this enemy of war writing, in a spirit of per- 
siflage, to a friend concerning the object of his righteous en- 
mity as follows : " To be sure war is a dreadful calamity, but 
then it is a very comfortable commodity for writing letters ; 
and as one did not contribute to make it, why there can be no 
harm in being a little amused with looking on." The prepon- 
derating business of Walpole's life was to amuse himself, and it 
is rather surprising that he should not have been disposed to 
cherish the friendship of a man who, like Pitt, was largely in- 
strumental in affording him opportunities of amusing himself in 
the observation of war, and in the gossiping upon its awful events. 

And yet this same Seven Years' War provoked Walpole to say 
some very amusing things. Sir Charles Williams, the diplomat 
and political satirist, having been sent some years previous to 
the opening of the war to treat, in the name of England, with 
Frederick on Silesian questions which eventually caused the 
war, this fact was announced to Mann in a letter from Wal- 
pole, who makes a humorous allusion to the literary idiosyn- 
crasies of the Prussian monarch : " He (Williams) is to teach 
the monarch of Prussia to fetch and carry, unless they happen 
to treat in iambics, and begin to treat of the limits of Parnassus 



1895.] A PRINCE OF SCRIBBLERS. 815 

instead of those of Silesia." And later, during the prevalence 
of hostilities, he writes thus of the absurdly vacillating conduct 
of the Russians and their Swedish allies : " They quite make one 
smile. They hover every summer over the north of Germany, 
get cut to pieces by September, disappear, have a general dis- 
graced, and in winter out comes a memorial from the czarina 
of her steadiness to her engagements, and of the mighty things she 
will do in spring. The Swedes follow them like Sancho Panza." 

AN UNREVERENCED OLD AGE. 

Walpole had busied himself so much with fleeting trifles 
that his mind contained little material for the serious retro- 
spection which may be such a solacing mental occupation for 
placid old age. As early as 1765, while suffering from a 
severe and protracted attack of gout, he writes as follows: 
"I am tired of the world, its politics, its pursuits, its 
pleasures; but it will cost me some struggles before I submit 
to be tender and careful. Can I ever stoop to the regime of 
old age? I do not wish to dress up a withered person, nor 
drag it around to public places ; but to sit in one's room, 
clothed warmly, expecting visits from folks I don't wish to see, 
and tended and flattered by relations impatient for one's death ! 
Let the gout do its work as expeditiously as it can ; it would be 
more welcome in my stomach than in my limbs. I am not 
made to bear a course of nonsense and advice, but must play 
the fool in my own way to the last, alone with my heart, if I 
cannot be with the few friends I wish to see ; but to depend 
for comfort on others who would not be a comfort to me this 
surely is not a state to be preferred to death." 

At the threshold of the grave he craved the society of a few 
sincerely sympathetic friends, but in having no such friends he 
but paid the bitter price for such life as he had lived. He re- 
alized the true import of all the solicitude manifested toward 
him, and he choked with the ashes of the fruits of ceremony 
that were offered him. He yearned for kind interest in his be- 
half, and he obtained nothing but that unlovely interest of 

" Ceremony that was devised at first 
To set a gloss on faint deeds, hollow welcomes, 
Recanting goodness ; sorry ere 'tis shown ; 
But where there is true friendship, there needs none." 

In March, 1797," God's finger touched him, and he fell asleep." 
Let us now forget his faults, and trust that he rests in peace. \ 




THE LATE SIR JOHN THOMPSON, PREMIER OF CANADA. 



SIR JOHN THOMPSON: A STUDY. 

BY J. A. J. MCKENNA, 

of the Department of Indian Affairs, Ottawa. 

\ UST as that organization which, under the guise 
of patriotism, aims at the exclusion of Catho- 
lics from public office was making itself felt as 
a disturbing element in Canadian as well as 
American politics, death, by a sudden stroke, 
brought vividly before the public view the career of a man 
whose life afforded the strongest possible refutation of the 
calumny that the influence of the Catholic Church makes not 
for civic virtue. It is not the rarity of such examples that 
causes the life of Sir John Thompson to stand forth so promi- 
nently. Neither in the past nor in the present has the church 
or the world's commonwealths been sterile in this regard. It 
is only a few months since the press and pulpit of the chief 




1895.] Sf* JOHN THOMPSON. 817 

province of the Canadian Dominion resounded with the praises 
of a man who had proved himself to be a most faithful stew- 
ard of a great department of the provincial government. He 
was looked up to as a tower of strength by the Liberals; Sir 
John Thompson was regarded by the Conservative party as 
the embodiment of its hopes. The political ideals of the one 
were, in a certain sense, the very antithesis of those of the 
other. The one stood for freedom of trade and founded his 
policy on the principles of the English school of Liberals; the 
other held that protection of native industry was more in the 
interest of the nation, and drew his political inspiration in the 
main from Conservative sources. But Christopher Finley Fraser 
and John Sparrow David Thompson were at one in this: 
they were faithful guardians of public trust, and no motive 
whatever was potent enough to make them deviate from the 
path of duty. And when death removed them early and sud- 
denly from the sphere of human activity, men of every reli- 
gious belief and of none political partisans and men who stand 
aloof from party all to whom their lives had been made 
manifest, joined in declaring these Catholic public men to have 
been honest, honorable, and just ; and what is more, it was 
made evident that it was faithfulness to religious principles 
which begot that strength and rectitude of conscience which is 
the source and the guarantee of upright conduct. 

EARLY INFLUENCES. 

But the extended field in which Sir John Thompson exer- 
cised the power and influence of a political leader, the circum- 
stances of his brief career and its most dramatic ending, give 
unusual emphasis to the lessons of his life. His father was an 
Irish Methodist, who emigrated from Waterford to Nova Scotia, 
and by careful and laborious effort attained a position in the 
civil service of the colony which brought him a decent com- 
petence. He was only able, however, to give his son the bene- 
fits of a common-school education, supplemented by a course 
at a local Presbyterian academy. But John Thompson learned 
in early youth the value of quiet, patient endeavor; and in his 
life he fulfilled that saying of the Scriptures : " The diligent 
man shall stand before kings." Born in 1844, he was called to 
the bar in 1865. But in the meantime he had made himself 
proficient in the art of stenography, and was thereby enabled 
to support himself in modest independence during the dreary 
and briefless years that form the prelude of the career of 

VOL. LX. 52 



8i8 SIR JOHN THOMPSON. [Mar., 

him who enters upon the profession of law without the adven- 
titious aid of either wealth or influential connections. In 1870 
he married Anne Affleck, a Catholic girl who was as fitted to 
be the helpmate of the hard-working young barrister as she was 
to be the companion of the statesman whom his sovereign de- 
lighted to honor. 

LOGIC DECIDES THE RELIGIOUS QUESTION. 

John Thompson was not the man to allow his affections to 
influence him in his consideration of that momentous question : 
Which is the religion revealed by God? The man who held 
that the least excitement disturbed the weighing power of 
one's judgment, and who laid down the rule that feeling, 
though not to be dispensed with, must be crushed and sub- 
dued by the will until it left a lawyer's head as cool and 
steady as a surgeon's hand, was not likely to leap to conclu> 
sions in theology. He agreed to the conditions which the 
church imposes on those not of the fold who join in wedlock 
with any of her children. Further he was, not prepared to go. 
But his marriage brought him face to face with the claims of 
the Catholic Church, and he felt it his duty to examine and 
weigh the evidence offered in support of claims of such stupen- 
dous import. A Methodist minister, the Rev. Dr. Saunders, of 
Halifax, in writing on the death of Sir John Thompson, tells 
us that " his judicial turn of mind led him to examine every 
matter to its last possible analysis," and that, when his investi- 
gation was ended, " his instinctive honesty of purpose and calm 
courage made open avowal of conclusions reached a very easy 
matter." The calm and searching investigation of religious 
truth upon which he entered, with that good faith which is 
ever enlightened by the Spirit of Wisdom, ended in the convic- 
tion that the Catholic Church was what she claimed to be the 
infallible guide of men in the moral order. 

DUTY AND WORLDLY INTERESTS. 

And now came the great crisis of his life. His habit was 
to dispassionately consider the consequences as well as the 
grounds of his decisions. He had a religious nature, but his 
mind was not of so spiritual a trend as to keep him from am- 
bitioning riches as well as spiritual ease. He was conscious of 
the ' possibilities of his. talents, and he felt that by the right 
exercise of them he .could, without the least baseness, raise him- 
self to an honorable and opulent position. One who knew him 



I89S-] 



Snt JOHN THOMPSON. 



819 



from his youth writes that Sir John once told him that his 
ambition as a young man was to be a really good lawyer and 
to make money, so that his family might be in a better posi- 
tion than he himself had been. Sound common sense and a 
high degree of practicality were ever distinguishing character- 
istics of the man. His eyes were therefore wide open to the 
probable results, near and remote, of the course upon which 





EX-PREMIER OF CANADA. 

his conscience urged him. Touching this point in the late 
prime minister's career, Mr. George Johnston says: "In the 
several crises of his life he was guided by lofty principles. I 
remember well in one of the greatest of these how hard was 
the struggle in his mind between the conviction of duty and 
worldly interests. He saw before him, if he took one course, 
the possible lack of the comforts of life for himself and his 



820 to JOHN THOMPSON. [Mar., 

family. ' Never mind,' said he, ' stenography and I can scratch 
out a living for them, even though it be a poor one,' and he 
took the step." Believing he was throwing away the worldly 
prize, he entered the visible fold of Christ's Church in the 
summer of 1871 ; and when the angel of death smote him as 
he attained the very apex of civic greatness, the grandest 
eulogy pronounced over him was this : " Born a Protestant, he 
did not fear, when his conscience showed him his duty, to be- 
come a Catholic. He cared nothing for the approval of the 
populace; he felt only the satisfaction of duty accomplished. 
Could I do otherwise than admire such a man, the finest orna- 
ment of Canada, who was above all human considerations ? As 
it was in regard to his faith, so it was in his social and politi- 
cal creed he felt convinced that he was acting right, and he 
acted according to the dictates of his conscience." * 

GREAT LEGAL ABILITY. 

Lord Eldon attributed his rise to high office to his having, 
for many years, " lived like a hermit and worked like a horse." 
Sir John Thompson would not have made a statement so smack- 
ing of exaggeration ; but, had he been given to talking of him- 
self, in all likelihood he would have credited his advancement 
to work rather than to genius. He had none of those gifts 
whereby the orator ofttimes makes men's feelings rise in -mutiny 
against reason ; but he developed a power higher in order and 
more lasting in its effects, that of so appealing to men's reason 
as to obtain their assent to his views. He was not long at the 
bar when he became a recognized leader; and by 1877 he had 
established so high a reputation that he was retained as coun- 
sel by the government of the United States in the proceedings 
before the Fishery Commission which sat at Halifax in that 
year under the terms of the Treaty of Washington. Mr. Jus- 
tice Meagher, who was associated with Mr. Thompson in the 
practice of law, writes thus of his career at the bar of Nova 
Scotia : " His devotion to his clients' interests, his untiring in- 
dustry, coupled with his great love and unlimited capacity for 
professional work, ably supplemented as these qualities were by 
a wonderfully quick perception and ready mastery of detail in 
matters of fact, as well as a most thorough and comprehensive 
grasp of legal principles, enabled him to obtain a knowledge at 
once complete and thorough over every feature and question 
likely to arise, or necessary to be dealt with in the progress of 

* Honorable Wilfrid Laorier, leader of k the Canadian Liberals. 



x*95-] 



Six JOHN THOMPSON. 



821 



the matter entrusted to his management. Fortified as all these 
were by an earnest manner and an exceedingly happy faculty 
of expression combining ease, simplicity, and the highest de- 
gree of force and elegance it need not surprise any one that 
his career at the bar was marked by an almost uninterrupted 
series of victories." 

ENTRY UPON POLITICAL LIFE. 

Never enamored of political life, he had not proceeded far 
upon his career when he was called to the discharge of civic 
duties; In the early seventies he served his native city as alder- 
man and as chairman of the Board of School Commissioners, 
displaying in those humbler offices the same moral qualities 
which later on were made so manifest in the administration of 
the highest national trusts as to draw from his staunchest po- 
litical opponents the most 
unqualified encomiums. 
In 1877 he was elected to 
represent the County of 
Antigonish in the Pro- 
vincial Legislature, which 
he entered as a supporter 
of the then opposition. 
In the general elections 
of the following year the 
Liberal government was 
defeated, and Mr. Thomp- 
son entered the new ad- 
ministration as attorney- 
general. He was a Con- 
servative, but not one of 
the old, non-progressive 
Tory type. His conser- 
vatism was tempered by 
a fine sense of justice. 
He was no believer in 

., , , . r . i -1.1. THE HON. WILFRID LAURIEK, CANADIAN 

the doctrine of the right- LIBERAL LEADER ' 

ness of that which is. 

The dilettante worship of mere antiquity was not more conge- 
nial to him than the doctrinaire notions of amateur reformers. 
The government, in which from the first he exercised a control- 
ling influence, pressed on the construction of railways, attempted 
to simplify the over-elaborate legislative system by the abolition 




822 S/ff JOHN THOMPSON. [Mar., 

of the provincial senate, and introduced a bill designed to take 
from the magistrates and grand juries the functions of munici- 
pal government and vest them in elective county councils respon- 
sible directly to the rate-payers. On the eve of the dissolution 
of the Provincial Parliament, the first minister, Mr. Holmes, re- 
tired, and Attorney-General Thompson took the full command. 
But, strange to relate, his well-conceived Municipal Corporation 
Act a measure of genuine reform led to the defeat of his 
government at the polls ; and the Liberal party were returned 
to power, pledged to maintain existing conditions. Alas ! 
" What's in a name ? " It's oft with politicians as with roses. 

THE USES OF ADVERSITY. 

This defeat, however, was but the prelude to the consumma- 
tion of his young ambition. Politics were to him distasteful. 
He had a remarkably keen relish for jurisprudence, and from 
his youth he had looked to a seat on the bench as the culmina- 
tion of his hopes. He therefore received with undisguised pleas- 
ure the commission of a justice of the Superior Court of Nova 
Scotia, which issued to him in 1882. In his judicial career "he 
showed," says Senator Power, "great quickness of intellectual 
vision and a wide knowledge of law." And from abundant tes- 
timony we have it that, in this as in other spheres, the vigor of 
his conscience was as well evidenced as the lucidity of his mind. 
He meted out judgment by the measure with which he was 
prepared to have it measured out to himself. At this time he 
undertook the additional duties of a professorship in jurispru- 
dence, and his reputation became the mainstay of the law 
school of Dalhousie University. It has been said that as an 
expounder of legal science his equal was not to be found on 
the continent. It is certain that on the bench and in the lecture- 
hall he was seen to best advantage ; for they afforded ample 
opportunities of bringing into play, untrammelled by exigencies, 
all the noble attributes of his character, and enabled him to 
demonstrate, in theory and in practice, that " law is beneficence 
acting by rule." 

THE EXECUTION OF KIEL. 

But he was not destined to long pursue the peaceful paths 
he loved. Three years had scarce elapsed ere the demands of 
statecraft bade him launch forth again upon the turbulent sea of 
politics. Louis Kiel, who led the half-breeds of the North-west 
in rebellion when, in 1869, the Canadian government extended 



1895-] Ssx JOHN THOMPSON. 823 

its authority over the territory formerly held under the imperial 
crown by the Hudson's Bay Company, tried his hand again at 
revolution, and raised in 1885 his Metis kinsmen and some of 
their Indian allies ia insurrection against the constituted authori- 
ties. This is not the place to discuss the causes and conse- 
quences of his action. He was taken in arms, tried and con- 
victed of high treason, and sentenced to be hanged. And now 
arose a turmoil in the state. The sword had been laid away 
in its scabbard ; but there was a war of tongues in the land. 
The mass of Kiel's French compatriots called for the commu- 
tation of his sentence ; others not of his blood the Orangemen, 
with their usual disregard of decency, loudest of all demanded 
that the law should take its course. A medical commission 
pronounced the convicted man to be compos mentis. Only on 
the ground that he was not responsible for his acts would the 
government agree to exercise executive clemency ; and Louis 
Riel suffered the death penalty of treason. The clamoring of 
one set of men was set at rest, but an ominous burst of pro- 
test came from Quebec. Riel dead was more potent than Riel 
living, and it looked as if Canada was to have a war of races, 
which, though bloodless, would make stable government exceed- 
ingly difficult. A section of the French Conservatives withdrew 
their support from the administration ; Mr. Edward Blake,* the 
then leader of the Liberal party, adversely criticised the action of 
the government, and the question became the crucial one with 
which Parliament would have to deal on its assembling. Mr. 
Blake was facile princeps in parliamentary debate, the leader of the 
Canadian bar, and an authority on constitutional law and practice 
with whom no member of the Canadian Commons could cope 
on equal terms. That most astute politician, the late Sir John 
Macdonald, saw that the government needed as defender, not 
a man versed in the art of political sleight-of-hand but one 
who could bring broad principles to bear on great occasions. 
Never did he more clearly evidence his rare sagacity in esti- 
mating men than when he called John Thompson from the 
bench of Nova Scotia to the ministership of justice in the 
federal administration. 

A PARLIAMENTARY TOURNEY. 

Up to this Mr. Thompson's reputation had been restricted 
to his own province. Beyond its confines only a few of the 
leading men knew ef his standing. And the question was 

*Now member of Parliament for Longford, Ireland. 



824 $!/ JOHN THOMPSON. [Mar., 

asked : " What manner of man is this who enters federal politics 
by the great gate and is preferred before so many ? " The 
ministerialists protested against so unprecedented a putting for- 
ward of an unknown man. " Gentlemen," replied Sir John 
Macdonald, "wait until six months have passed before you 
form your judgment of the new minister of justice. Come to 
me then, if you will, and tell me that I have made a mistake." 
Ere six months had passed the new minister was looked upon 
as the Joseph of the Conservative party, and " Go to Thomp- 
son " came to be the leader's not infrequent answer to unusually 
difficult questions of state. He had met Edward Blake in the 
great debate and had proved himself worthy of his powerful 
antagonist. Never before had there been so dignified, so in- 
tellectual, and so well balanced a conflict in Canada's Parlia- 
mentary arena. Never before had there been heard in the 
Commons so scientific an analysis or so masterly an arraign- 
ment, such setting aside of precedent by precedent. Parliament 
now indeed appeared to be in reality what it is in theory the 
high court of the nation. The potency of Kiel's memory was 
overcome by the calm, judicial influence of Thompson. The 
stampede of the French Conservatives was stopped. The 
government was saved. 

INSTABILITY OF POPULAR FAVOR. 

If many in Quebec looked askance at the man in whom 
was so strikingly blended strength with modesty, coldness with 
urbanity, faithfulness to conscience with devotion to party, 
Ontario regarded him as a very Daniel. But alas ! for the 
fickleness of popular favor ; the cheers which greeted him in 
Ontario in 1886 had turned to groans in 1891. For another 
question had arisen which stirred up an animosity that is, by a 
strange paradox, called religious. In 1888 the late Honor6 
Mercier, then premier of Quebec, had an act passed by the 
Provincial Legislature authorizing a money payment to the 
Society of Jesus in compensation for lands illegally escheated in 
1800, when old Canada was subject to the irresponsible rule of 
the Colonial Office. The preamble of the bill consisted of cor- 
respondence which had passed between the Quebec government 
and the Propaganda, Mr. Mercier considering it necessary, in 
order to secure the province from further demands from other 
claimants within the church in Quebec, that the Papal consent 
to the settlement as conveyed in the correspondence should be 
thus embodied in the legislative measure. But this official 



i8 9 5.] 



JOHN THOMPSON. 



825 



recognition of Pope and Jesuits was construed by some relig- 
ionists as an insult to Protestantism and a menace to the state. 
The constitution of Canada gives to the federal government 
the power to veto the acts of the provincial legislatures. The 
power, of course, has its limitations. But the Pope had been 
recognized in the statute-book of a British dependency as a 
necessary consenting party to an arrangement of state; and on 
that ground there went up a Protestant cry for disallowance, 
and Ontario lashed itself into a finer fury than did Quebec over 
the death of Kiel. When the question came before him, the 




SIR CHARLES TUPPER, CANADIAN COMMISSIONER IN ENGLAND. 

minister of justice reported that there was no reason for dis- 
allowance, and recommended that the act be left to its opera- 
tion. Mr. Mercier was so informed ; and then the storm of op- 
position broke in all its violence. It invaded Parliament in the 
session of 1889, and Mr. D' Alton McCarthy, the leader of the 
nisi prius bar of Ontario and the erstwhile faithful henchman 
of Sir John Macdonald, directed an attack on the government 
for not exercising the prerogative of disallowance in the matter. 



826 Sfx JOHN THOMPSON. [Mar., 

A GREAT CONSTITUTIONAL TRIUMPH. 

In repelling that attack Sir John Thompson made his great- 
est speech in Parliament. The argument was more sustained 
than that in the Riel case. He fel* more at home in the 
Commons, and Mr. McCarthy's case was so constructed as to 
admit of his using bolder strokes in dissecting it than he was 
able to employ in contending with Mr. Blake. Putting aside 
the religious question as one which should never enter into the 
discussion of such a subject, and shutting out the clamor of 
fanatics, he treated the matter, from the stand-point of constitu- 
tional law and practice, with such lucidity and power, such 
breadth of view and judicial calmness, as captured the mind of 
the House. When he resumed his seat, Mr. Blake rose and, 
making a new departure in politics, crossed the floor and con- 
gratulated the only minister of justice who had attained the 
high standard which he himself had set. Sir John Thompson 
now became the hero of Quebec. He quelled the storm in 
Ontario ; and although the suspicion with which he was for a 
time regarded in the one was now current in the other pro- 
vince, he had again saved the government and kept his party 
off the rock of faction. But he did more. He reversed the 
old policy of the government on the question of disallowance, 
by defining in unmistakable terms the extent and inviolability 
of provincial rights. Sir John Macdonald was a centrist, and 
liked to regard the provincial legislatures as bodies dependent 
on the Dominion Parliament. Sir John Thompson read the 
constitution with the eye of a federalist, and he declared that, 
in dealing with subjects entrusted to them, the provincial 
legislatures were as supreme as the Imperial Parliament. 
Thenceforth the policy of the government on constitutional 
questions was moulded in accordance with his view. 

THE FISHERIES TANGLE. 

He had not been long in office before his hand was plainly 
seen in federal affairs. The voluminous despatches of the 
Canadian government on the Atlantic Fisheries question were 
prepared by him ; and, for the services which he rendered as 
adviser of the British plenipotentiaries who negotiated the 
Chamberlain-Bayard Fishery Treaty in 1887, he was made a 
knight commander of St. Michael and St. George. His influ- 
ence was soon observable upon the statute-books; and in his 
codification of the common and statutory law relating to crimi- 



1 895.] Su? JOHN THOMPSON. 827 

nal matters and criminal procedure % he has left a monumental 
proof of the great ability, the painstaking zeal, and the un- 
limited devotion with which he labored for the common 
weal. 

On the death of Sir John Macdonald, in 1891, the governor- 
general called upon Sir John Thompson to take the post of 
first minister. But the party then were not sufficiently advanced 
for leadership by one who in his young manhood went over to 
Rome and in his maturer years defended the interests of the 
Jesuits. He could have wrecked the party had he so willed. 
But he believed that the welfare of the state was bound up 
with its existence ; and, with unexampled unselfishness, he 
stepped aside, named another for the honor, while his was the 
labor and his the burden. In the same spirit he carried on the 
work of administrative reform, cutting off corrupt branches lest 
the whole tree would cease to bear fruit and come to be con- 
sidered as cumbering the ground. The retirement of Sir John 
Abbott within little more than a year of his assumption of 
office rendered the premiership vacant again ; and now Sir 
John Thompson was pressed to accept the position of leader 
which he had been too unselfish to insist upon as his by right. 

THE SEAL-FISHERIES. 

As a representative of Great Britain on the International 
Board of Arbitration, which sat in Paris in 1893 to settle the 
dispute between England and the United States respecting the 
seal-fisheries in the Behring Sea, he received the praise of his 
fellow-arbitrators and the encomiums of the legal luminaries 
who presented the case for the Empire and for the Republic. 
For his services on that tribunal he was honored by being 
called to the historic and select body which forms the Privy 
Council of Great Britain ; but just as he had taken before his 
queen, in Windsor Castle, the oath of the distinguished office 
of an imperial adviser, he was summoned by the King of kings 
to the imperishable reward of an upright life. With imperial 
honors and national mourning, all that was mortal of the man 
whose life so eloquently taught the oft-forgotten truth that 
devotion to religion and devotion to country are cognate vir- 
tues was borne to its last resting place in the city where, as a 
young man, he made the great choice between obedience to 
conscience and the prompting of secular ambition. 



828 Ss* JOHN THOMPSON. [Mar., 

A PERSONAL PARALLEL. 

One who well knew him in his latter years* has told us 
that Sir John Thompson's favorite character in history was Sir 
Thomas More. There are many respects in which Canada's 
late prime minister was strikingly like England's beatified chan- 
cellor. The basic principles of their lives were those which 
must form the ground-work of every career, be it ever so hum- 
ble or ever so exalted, which makes at once for a man's own 
uplifting and the betterment of his kind. They were both men 
who sought the approval of conscience before that of sovereign 
or populace. They loved truth for truth's sake, and hated all 
exaggeration and hypocrisy. Piety without cant, incorruptibil- 
ity of conduct without parade of righteousness, characterized 
them both. Never seeking place through the base art of cring- 
ing, they attained to high positions in the state ; and without 
stinting their labors for the commonwealth, they found time 
for the exercise of those domestic offices which best fit men 
for the fulfilment of public trusts. More in a letter to a favor- 
ite daughter declared that, rather than suffer his children to 
lose ground, he would himself continue their education to the 
loss of his worldly estate and the neglect of all other cares and 
business. Thompson hesitated not at incurring great expense 
to secure his children the benefits of a sound religious and 
secular education in famed European schools ; and now that 
his comparative poverty has been made known, his self-sacrific- 
ing devotion to his children looms up as one of his most 
admirable traits, reminding parents that the education of their 
children should be regarded as a first charge upon their time 
and their income. 

Like More, he set not his heart on worldly wealth. His 
youthful desire for riches faded away, and he lived in the capi- 
tal of the city he governed with a modesty that afforded a 
striking rebuke to that love of display, as vain as it is vulgar, 
which is the source of much of the evil that afflicts our age. 
Had he devoted his talents to the practice of his profession 
rather than to the service of the state, or had he used public 
office with an eye to personal aggrandizement, he might have 
amassed a fortune. He failed as Aristides failed, in not leaving 
a sufficient portion for his family. But that union of poverty 
with all the virtues in a sober, industrious, just, and valiant 

*Rev. M. J. Whelan. 



1895.] Ssx JOHN THOMPSON. 829 

statesman, which spoke the elevated mind of the one, showed 
the true nobility of the other. 

A PROPAGANDIST OF CATHOLIC TRUTH. 

Sir Thomas More's practice was ever in accordance with his 
profession of faith ; he realized in his life the mission of a lay- 
man in the cause of truth, and in his death his career was 
glorified. Sir John Thompson was no mere formal adherent of 
the church. His life was regulated by her rules, and his soul 
was strengthened and his heart kept pure by the use of her 
sacraments and sacramentals. Before setting out in response to 
the gracious summons of his queen, he received Holy Com- 
munion with his family ; and when he died in her royal castle 
there were found on his body the tokens of a simple and sincere 
faith a rosary and an image of his crucified Redeemer. He 
found time in the midst of the pressing cares of high office to 
give the aid of his counsel to those who in the Canadian 
capital seek to disseminate truth through the apostolate of the 
press; and, as first president of the Catholic Truth Society, he 
opened its inaugural meeting with an address in which he 
dealt with misrepresentations of the church's teaching in the 
uncompromising language of a man who passionately resented 
the calumnies heaped upon her head. And when his mighty 
spirit fled, his body, lying in state beneath the shadow of the 
crucifix, demanding and receiving recognition for the old reli- 
gion, brought back to ancient Windsor's storied halls the long- 
ostracized rites of that faith which, within England's realm, it 
was once treason to profess. 





830 PASTORAL LETTER. [Mar., 



PASTORAL LETTER OF THE BISHOPS OF THE PRO- 
TESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

BY VERY REV. A. F. HEWIT, D.D. 

SOURCE AND IMPORT OF THE PASTORAL. 
I 

HIS Pastoral Letter is a very important and in- 
teresting document. It is an instruction ad- 
dressed to the clergy and laity of that respect- 
able body which is under the chief pastoral 
superintendence of the prelates by whose 
authority it has been issued. It relates to two cardinal dogmas 
of the Catholic Faith, professed alike by the Roman and Greek 
Churches in their doctrinal formularies, and by a great number 
of separate communions in the West, whose Confessions of 
Faith are in respect to these points orthodox. These two 
dogmas of faith are first, the Incarnation ; second, the Inspira- 
tion of Holy Scripture. 

The pastoral is issued by five bishops to whom the office of 
preparing it was delegated by the whole body of "their 
brethren of the episcopate assembled in council in the City of 
New York," October 18, 1894. The prelates composing this 
commission are: Presiding Bishop Williams, and Bishops Doane, 
Huntington, McLaren, Seymour, and Potter. We presume that 
their Letter has been submitted to all the other bishops, and 
that they assent to its doctrine. At all events, there is good 
reason to regard it as fairly representing their common senti- 
ments and convictions. Probably, the great majority of the 
clergy, also, will give their adhesion to its doctrine, and the 
lay-members of this church, especially the most religious portion 
of them, will receive it with a reverent and docile respect, as 
an instruction from their chief pastors, and as an exposition of 
truths in which they already believe as essential parts of 
Christian faith. 

IMPORTANCE 'AND UTILITY OF THE PASTORAL. 

"V "i > 

Considering the character and contents of this Pastoral 
Letter, and the great moral influence it is fitted to exercise not 
only within the particular ecclesiastical body to which it is ad- 
dressed, but in the much larger ^community embracing other 



1 895-] PASTORAL LETTER. 831 

similar societies professing faith in Christ as the Divine Saviour ; 
its issue is an event of great importance. 

It is important, because of the influence it will have on the 
convictions and belief of a multitude of persons, in respect to 
that primary article of Christian Faith, the Incarnation ; and 
that other essential doctrine of Christianity, the Inspiration of 
the Holy Scriptures. 

The Christian Creed is attacked on all sides with relentless 
animosity, and unbelief or scepticism have invaded the domain 
of what was once united Christendom to an alarming extent. 
Even those who are by their office ministers or theological 
professors in great societies, calling themselves Christian 
churches, and in their universities, have been the leaders in 
this unholy warfare. 

There are others, both in Germany and England, and even 
some English prelates, who have not gone to this extreme 
length, but who have nevertheless attenuated and perverted the 
Catholic doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the 
Inspiration of Scripture. The bishops seem to fear lest an 
heretical infection of this kind is creeping in among their own 
clergy and laity ; for they say : " We have availed ourselves of 
the opportunity to meet in council to consider our duty in 
view of certain novelties of opinion and expression, which have 
seemed to us to be subversive of the fundamental verities of 
Christ's religion." The motive, therefore, of the issue of this 
Pastoral, is to oppose and check this heretical inroad. 

This is enough to show the importance of the Pastoral. 
And also, its great utility. For, it is a most useful work, to 
confirm and strengthen those who believe in Christ and in the 
Bible in their religious convictions, and to guard them against 
the insidious approaches of errors subversive of the great 
Christian verities. 

THE DOCTRINE OF THE PASTORAL ON THE INCARNATION 

ORTHODOX. 

The manner in which the bishops have performed their task, 
in giving an exposition of the doctrine of the Incarnation, con- 
firms our judgment of the beneficial influence it is fitted and 
likely to exert in a wide sphere. 

. We are happy to acknowledge its entire and faultless ortho- 
doxy. It is the very doctrine always held and taught in the 
Catholic Church, to which the Fathers and Doctors bear witness, 
and which the great Ecumenical Councils have defined. The 



832 PASTORAL LETTER. [Mar., 

true and proper divinity of the Son, the Second Person in the 
Adorable Trinity, his assumption of a true and proper humani- 
ty by a Virginal birth, the unity of person and distinction of 
natures in our Lord Jesus Christ, his atoning death and bodily 
resurrection, together with his ascension to heaven and sover- 
eignty ; in short, every article of the Catholic Creed, in its 
strict and traditional sense ; all are clearly and distinctly stated. 

Moreover, this part of the Pastoral is not only orthodox, it 
is excellent as a piece of theological writing a clear, luminous 
exposition of the fundamental verity and dogma of the Incar- 
nation. This sublime mystery is indeed the very essence of 
Christianity. It presupposes, includes, and implicitly or 
virtually contains all that is in the Creed, and without it, noth- 
ing distinctively Christian is left in religion, nothing specifically 
different from mere natural religion, and rational philosophy. 

We must rejoice, therefore, to see this doctrine so positively 
and clearly affirmed and defended, and hope for a happy effect 
on the minds of a great many, in confirming those who already 
understand and believe it, enlightening those whose apprehension 
of the real meaning of the Divinity of Christ is obscure, and 
preserving those who are wavering from falling into most griev- 
ous, anti-Christian errors. 

THE DOCTRINE OF THE PASTORAL ON INSPIRATION.. 

The Second Part of the Pastoral affirms in general terms 
that the Bible is the word of God and inspired. It says: that 
" the Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures is a postulate of faith, 
not a corollary of criticism. It cannot lawfully be questioned 
by any Christian man, and least of all by men who have 
sealed their conviction of the certainty of the Faith with the 
solemn vows of Ordination." In another place, the bishops 
say: "What we deprecate and rebuke is the irreverent rashness 
and unscientific method of many professed critics, and the pre- 
sumptuous superciliousness with which they vaunt erroneous 
theories of the day as established results of criticism. From 
this fault, professedly Christian critics are unfortunately not 
always exempt; and by Christian critics we mean, those who, 
both by theory and practice, recognize the inspiration of God 
as the controlling element of Holy Scripture." It is apparent- 
ly this latter class of critics whose teaching is aimed at in 
the following sentence : " A great danger may beset the flock 
of Christ, not merely from false teaching, but through injudi- 
cious and ill-timed teaching, the effect of which is not to settle 



1895-] PASTORAL LETTER. 833 

and confirm, but to undermine and weaken faith." Since this 
inopportune teaching is not condemned as false, it must lie 
within the " border-land " where liberty of opinion exists, and 
undetermined questions can be discussed, and not within "the 
domain of faith," " the realm of adjudicated truth," which truth 
is " a body of Doctrine once for all delivered and received." 
The upshot of the caution seems to be : that it is rash and 
dangerous to moot openly opinions on some unsettled questions 
in criticism and hermeneutics, which minimize the inspiration 
and authority of the Scriptures. However wise and well-timed 
this warning may be, it will be heeded only by those who do 
not need it ; as for others, whether inside or outside of the 
fold in which the bishops are shepherds of their flock, even if 
they are Christian critics, they will proceed to construct their 
hypotheses and to publish them to the world, so that all who 
choose may hear or read what they have to say. 

The lambs of the flock need some sure safeguard against 
false and dangerous doctrine. What do the bishops give them, 
as a practical rule for discerning truth from falsehood, safe 
from dangerous doctrine ? 

" The true corrective of the unrest of our day will be found 
in the devout use of the Holy Scriptures. If any man will search 
them as our Lord commanded, they will testify of Him. If any 
man will study them ' for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, 
for instruction in righteousness," he will not be disappointed." 

This is good and wholesome counsel. No doubt, the hum- 
ble, docile believer, who has learned the Creed, by devoutly 
reading the Bible, will be confirmed in his belief of its divine 
inspiration, and will find in it the Divinity of Christ, together 
with all other doctrines of the Catholic Faith which he has 
been taught. We have no hesitation in assenting to the above 
proposition of the Pastoral, so far as this : that the devout 
use of the Holy Scriptures is a corrective ; a very powerful 
prophylactic and remedy against religious unrest. But that it 
is, alone, the exclusive and efficacious corrective, the bishops 
themselves cannot fancy; for they have thought it necessary to 
administer a dose of medicine in their Pastoral, to keep off or 
cure the spiritual malaria which infects the atmosphere. 

THE DOCTRINE OF THE PASTORAL VAGUE AND INDEFINITE. 

The second part of the Pastoral is not by any means as 
clear and definite as the first part. It states the doctrine of in- 
spiration in general terms which are not incompatible with the 
VOL. LX. 53 



834 PASTORAL LETTER. [Mar., 

more precise statements of the great Fathers and Doctors of 
the church, but yet do not exclude opinions which limit the 
extension and the effect of inspiration. Indeed, the bishops 
seem to have studiously avoided explicit teaching of this kind, 
although their general tone and manner of expression seems to 
favor a strict doctrine, and to discountenance all attenuating 
theories. 

WHAT IS THE PASTORAL'S CRITERION OF DOCTRINAL TRUTH ? 

The Pastoral Letter instructs the clergy and laity to whom 
it is addressed respecting two great doctrines, the Incarnation 
and the Inspiration of Scripture, which it sets before them as 
Christian verities, to be received and confessed. But what is 
the criterion, the determining motive of the practical judgment 
that it is the duty of these clergymen and laymen, to conform 
to this admonition of their bishops? 

The first effort of the Pastoral is put forth to show that the 
two doctrines in question are the doctrines of " this Church," 
i.e., of the Protestant- Episcopal Church. This is an easy task. 
The duty of the clergy to conform to the doctrine of their 
own church is inferred from the fact that they have professed 
their adhesion to it, have promised to teach it, and on the faith 
of these engagements have been ordained to the ministry. 

This argument does not apply to the laity. It is taken for 
granted that they are baptized Christians, who recognize their 
obligation to profess the Christian faith, and regard the com- 
munion to which they belong as a true church, in which, con- 
sequently, this faith is held and taught. It is assumed, there- 
fore, that they wish to believe the doctrine of " this church," 
when they are duly informed what it is ; and that they are 
disposed to receive with docility the instruction of those whom 
they acknowledge as their bishops, as of their best qualified 
and duly authorized teachers of Christian doctrine. 

The tone and mien of episcopal authority which the bishops 
assume is very marked and imposing. 

" We, your Bishops, having been assembled to take order, 
under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, for the extension of the 
Kingdom of God, have availed ourselves of the opportunity to 
meet in Council to consider our duty in view of certain novel- 
ties of opinion and expression, which have seemed to us to be 
subversive of the fundamental verities of Christ's religion. It 
has come to our knowledge that the minds of many of the 
faithful Clergy and Laity are disturbed and distressed by these 
things ; and we desire to comfort them by a firm assurance 



1 895.] PASTORAL LETTER. 835 

that the Episcopate of the Church, to which, in a peculiar 
manner, the deposit of the Faith has been entrusted, is not 
unfaithful to that sacred charge, but will guard and keep it 
with all diligence." 

Seldom, if ever, has any council of reformed bishops put on 
so majestic a port, and sent forth so clear and sound an in- 
struction on the doctrine of the Incarnation. One might sup- 
pose it was an Ecumenical Council, so little does it fall behind 
the First Council of Jerusalem, in its quiet assumption of 
authority. It claims to be " the Episcopate of the Church, to 
which, in a peculiar manner, the deposit of Faith has been en- 
trusted." 

This tone of authority is noted and remarked upon by the 
Congregationalist. " This letter makes assumptions which will be 
promptly challenged outside of the Episcopal Church, and 
which we find it difficult to believe will be altogether accept- 
able within it. ... The Bishops intimate also that their 
own letter is an inspired utterance, and therefore authoritative. 
' We, your Bishops, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, 
are speaking not as truth-seekers, but as truth-receivers.' The 
Pope himself could not speak with greater dogmatism than 
this. The doctrine that the Church is the inspired authority in 
interpreting the Scriptures, and that the deliverances of its 
officers are to be received without question, appears as plainly 
as in the assertions of this document. Inferentially, not only 
doctrines of the Person of Christ and the Inspiration of the 
Scriptures are here set forth, but the body of teaching held by 
the Church to be dependent on them, and the doctrine of the 
inspiration and dogmatic authority of the Church moved by 
the Holy Ghost, speaking through its appointed leaders." 

This is somewhat unfair. The bishops do not claim inspira- 
tion. They claim authority as teachers, and they present the 
authority of "this Church" imposing on its clergy the doctrine 
of the Prayer-book, as imperative. But we cannot ascribe to 
them the intention of making their own particular Council, or 
the Prayer-book itself, an original authority and a final criterion 
in determining the Faith. Submission to the teaching of " this 
Church " is exacted on the ground that it is the teaching of 
the Church Catholic. Because they profess to teach in the 
name of " this Church " the Faith which the Catholic Church 
received from the apostles, and to have a commission inherited 
by succession in the episcopate from the apostles, therefore they 
demand for their doctrine the assent and obedience of their 
flock, as to the genuine, divine revelation of Christ the Lord. 



836 PASTORAL LETTER. [Mar., 

When they style themselves " the Episcopate of the Church," 
they can only mean that they are the bishops of a certain 
portion of the Church, whose official designation is " The Pro- 
testant-Episcopal Church in the United States." If their whole 
body endorses the Letter, it is a significant act on their part, 
which will gain an increased importance if the majority of 
their clergy and laity give their adhesion. The rector of Trin- 
ity Church, Boston, is reported to have criticised the Pastoral 
in his pulpit, as the utterance of one bishop only, not of the 
whole house (Living Church, February 2). Dr. Rainsford ex- 
pressed regret at the issue of the Pastoral, at the Church Club 
of New York, in the presence of Bishop Potter, although he 
did not criticise its doctrine, but only its opportuneness. If 
the bishops endorse the Letter, it is incumbent on them to 
make it known; and likewise, if they do not. 

Whatever may be the attitude of the rest, the five bishops 
have certainly professed to give voice to the teaching of the 
Catholic Episcopate, and the Catholic Church. In this instance 
their utterance is certainly an echo of that voice. They have 
the advantage of giving their testimony to the doctrines of the 
Incarnation and Inspiration, with the Catholic Episcopate and 
Ecumenical Councils to back them. They teach "quod semper ; 
quod ubique, quod ab omnibus traditum est." 

This is evidently the Pastoral's criterion of the truth of the 
doctrines which it teaches the testimony of the Universal Church, 
that it has received them from the apostles as a deposit of 
Faith, entrusted in a peculiar manner to the episcopate, as the 
ecclesia docens. It teaches that there is a " realm of adjudicated 
truth," in which there is no place for liberty of opinion, but 
only for " a holy and blessed servitude," for " unflinching loyalty 
to a body of Doctrine once for all delivered and received." 

" We are speaking, not as truth-seekers but as truth-receivers," 
" ambassadors in bonds "; even as St. Paul says, " that we also 
received deliver we unto you." Our sole inquiry is : What does 
this church teach ? What is the declaration of God's Holy 
Word ? And here we rest ; for the priest's vow is to minister 
the Doctrine as well as the Sacraments and the Discipline of 
Christ, "as this church hath received the same," and because 
she hath received it " according to the commandments of God." 
And the true lover of God, the Theophilus, who would " know the 
certainty of those things " wherein he is instructed, who would 
have "a declaration of those things which are most surely be- 
lieved among us," must receive them as they " delivered them 
unto us, which were eye-witnesses and ministers of the Word." 



1895.] PASTORAL LETTER. 837 

It should be borne in mind by all, bishops, priests, deacons, and 
laymen, that the facts and truths which lie at the basis of the 
religion of Christ are eternal facts and eternal truths, stamped 
with the assurance which Divine infallibility gives. A revelation 
the conditions of which should be pliable to the caprices of 
speculative thought would be thereby voided of all that makes 
revelation final and secure. A creed whose statements could be 
changed to accord with shifting currents of opinion or senti- 
ment, or with the trend of thought in each succeeding genera- 
tion, would cease to command and guide the loyalty of the 
people, and would not be worthy of the respect of mankind. 
The Creeds of the Catholic Church do not represent the con- 
temporaneous thought of any age ; they declare eternal truths, 
telling what God has taught man and done for man, rather than 
what man has thought out for himself about God. They are 
voices from above, from Him " with whom is no variableness, 
neither shadow of turning," and as such are entitled to our im- 
plicit faith. Grave peril to souls lies in the acceptance of the 
letter of the creeds in any other than the plain and definitely 
historical sense in which they have been interpreted by the con- 
sentient voice of the church in all ages. Fixedness of interpre- 
tation is of the essence of the creeds, whether we view them as 
statements of facts, or as dogmatic truths founded upon and 
deduced from these facts, and once for all determined by the 
operation of the Holy Ghost upon the mind of the church. It 
were derogatory to the same Blessed Spirit to suggest that any 
other than the original sense of the creeds may be lawfully 
held and taught. 

INSPIRATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT DEDUCED FROM THE 
APOSTOLIC COMMISSION. 

In the Catholic Idea, the Bible is one of the gifts of the 
Holy Spirit to the church. It is a fountain, from which she 
draws living water, to distribute out of the golden vessels of 
her definitions the life and health-giving drink of pure doc- 
trine. The fountain itself is but one reservoir of that perennial 
stream of revelation, flowing from the garden of Eden for thou- 
sands of years before the first page of the Bible was written, 
.and flowing onward through the subsequent centuries, as a liv- 
ing tradition of Faith. 

God did not give a finished Book to men that they might 
learn from it religion. He gave them the church, and sent liv- 
ing Teachers, Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, the great Teacher 
Jesus Christ, and neither he himself, nor the majority of his pre- 



838 PASTORAL LETTER. [Mar., 

cursors and messengers, left any written record of their teaching. 
The doctrine and law which God gave through them were com- 
mitted to an organized society, beginning in the family of Adam, 
developing into the kingdom of Judah, and finally transformed 
into the Christian Church. Some of the prophets were inspired 
to make written records, which were embodied in the Sacred 
Tradition, to enrich and supplement and preserve its precious 
deposit, under the custody of ecclesiastical authority, but not 
to supersede and be substituted for it. 

In accordance with this Catholic principle, the Pastoral 
states that it was " the ancient church to which were ' committed 
the Oracles of God ' " i. e., the Scriptures of the Old Testament. 
It proves their inspiration, without difficulty, from the authen- 
tication of Jesus Christ, who handed them over to the apostles, 
and from their testimony to the doctrine of the Christian 
Church. 

The really important point to be proved, and one which re- 
quires a more elaborate argument, is : that the Christians of the 
second century received from the first century the New Testa- 
ment, as a collection of inspired writings. The Pastoral does 
not prove this, or give the shadow of a reason for the assump- 
tion commonly made by Protestants, that the apostles be- 
queathed to the church in writing the complete and only au- 
thentic monument of their teaching. It asserts, indeed, that 
"St. Paul, with direct reference to the Scriptures of the New 
Covenant, declares in the First Epistle to the Corinthians: 
' Which things we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom 
teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing [com- 
bining] spiritual things with spiritual ' " (i Cor. ii. 13). There 
is here no reference to any Scriptures of the New Testament, 
except one which is indirect. The apostle speaks of the preach- 
ing of the gospel, and we can only infer that the same teach- 
ing in the form of writing would have equal authority. 

It is very remarkable that the Pastoral goes on to vindicate 
the inspiration of apostolic writings from the general authority 
of the apostolic commission, and the promise of the gifts of the 
Holy Spirit to them in this capacity. " It is the men who are 
inspired, and not primarily the book." " We may have full as- 
surance that the Faith which was taught by the preaching, has 
been preserved in the writings of men to whom, 'through the 
Holy Ghost,' Christ gave commandment that they should teach 
all nations to observe all things whatsoever he had commanded, 
and to whom the authority committed on the day of the 
Ascension was confirmed and quickened into active exercise by 



1 895.] PASTORAL LETTER. 839 

the power given on the Day of Pentecost, when < they were all 
filled with the Holy Ghost.' " 

Now, we may undoubtedly ascribe infallibility to the teach- 
ing of the apostles contained in their writings, when we are cer- 
tain that they are really the authors of the documents con- 
tained in the New Testament, which bear their names. But 
how are we made certain? Every part of the New Testament 
bears the name of some one of the Apostles, Peter, Paul, John, 
Matthew, James, and Jude. But there are two gospels, bearing 
the names of Mark and Luke, also the Acts, bearing the name 
of Luke, and then, there is the Epistle to the Hebrews, ascribed 
by some very ancient authorities, by most recent Protestant and 
some Catholic critics, to Luke, Clement, Apollos, or some other 
author, not St. Paul. It will be said that these writings were 
accredited and sanctioned by apostles. We do not question the 
fact, but how do we know it ? The genuineness of the various 
writings of the New Testament can be proved historically and 
critically. We can prove that the four gospels and most of the 
other portions of the New Testament were received as authen- 
tic and even as inspired, throughout the Catholic Church of the 
second century. The chief witness on whose testimony we rely, 
in this instance, is St. Irenaeus, at the close of this century. 
Sound criticism sustains this extrinsic evidence. There was a 
New Testament received from the apostolic age by Christians 
of the age following. But how about the Canon of the New 
Testament ? Several books, included in the canon by the final 
adjudication of the church, though generally, were not uni- 
versally accepted as beyond doubt, for three centuries after the 
death of St. John. The final settlement was an agreement in 
respect to the tradition which came down from the apostles. 
Now, we would respectfully ask the bishops, why they consider 
the inspiration of the Hebrews and the Apocalypse as "a 
postulate of faith " ? Is it because their right to a place in the 
Canon is historically certain, by the testimony of the fifth 
century, supported by criticism? Moreover, why is the inspira- 
tion, not only of the deutero canonical but also of the proto- 
canonical books of the New Testament, a postulate of faith * 
And still further, how is the witness of Jesus Christ and of 
two of his apostles to the inspiration of the Old Testament set 
before us, as an object of divine faith? Everything depends 
on the verity of the New Testament. If this be purely histor- 
ical, we have a reasonable certainty, and a motive for human 
and historical faith. But where does this human and rational 
cert utity take a grasp of the supernatural and divine testimony. 



840 PASTORAL LETTER. [Mar., 

by which it is enabled to pass the boundary between human 
and divine faith, and to believe truth on the veracity of God ? 
Is it by evidence that a certain Book is the Word of God, so 
that we are to find there at first hand, by reading that revela- 
tion of truths which we must believe on the veracity of God ? 

THE PASTORAL TEACHES THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE CHURCH. 

The Pastoral does not teach this doctrine, so absurd and so 
contrary to all facts. Before Christ came, God ceased to inspire 
men to write books, and the Canon of the Old Testament was 
closed. Christ came, he taught, he commanded men to believe 
in him, he was accredited by the Father, and by his own works. 
He formed his church, made a full revelation to his apostles, 
commissioned them to teach and rule in his name, and gave 
them authority and power, co-extensive with all nations and all 
ages, to the end of the world. Their writing or sanctioning of 
books was only a sequence and a corollary of this primary and 
universal consecration in the Holy Spirit. By their apostolic 
authority, i. e., by the infallibility of the Ecclesia Docens, the 
New Testament, as well as the Old Testament, was authenti- 
cated as the inspired and unerring word of God, useful for 
Christians instructed in the Faith, and taught by their pastors 
the true sense of the divine oracles. But the Christian faith 
and religion were not founded and built up on the Scriptures 
as the only and the undermost basis of Christianity. The faith 
was preached and believed, and churches were founded, before 
the writing of the New Testament was begun, while it was be- 
ing formed and completed. The apostles took no measures to 
collect its parts into a volume and to circulate it in the church 
at large. They did not define its canon. They gave no hint 
that it was to be substituted for the ordinary teaching of them- 
selves, their associates and successors. They did not insert into 
any of its documents the Creed, or the Constitution of the 
Church. Their commission and the gifts which they received did 
not find their culmination in the formation of a written code of 
doctrine and polity which was henceforth to be the light of the 
world. The commission and the gifts were perpetual, and they 
transmitted them to their successors, the bishops. To them they 
entrusted the deposit of Faith, which these bishops formulated 
in the Creeds, and the definitions of the Ecumenical Councils. 
The bishops tell us that " The Creeds of the Catholic Church 
are voices from above . . . entitled to our implicit faith 
. . . in the plain and definitely historical sense in which they 
have been interpreted by the consentient voice of the church 



I895-] 



CONTRASTS. 



841 



in all ages, . . . statements of facts, . . . dogmatic truths 
. . . once for all determined by the operation of the Holy 
Ghost upon the mind of the church." 

Therefore, the Catholic Episcopate is indefectible, its dogma- 
tic definitions are irreformable, the Ecclesia Docens is infallible. 

We trust that all who belong to the flock of these learned 
prelates will study and lay to heart the orthodox teachings of 
this Pastoral ; and will be convinced by it of the duty of yield- 
ing implicit faith to the Creeds of the Catholic Church and all 
their articles, interpreted by the consentient voice of the church 
in all ages. 



CONTRASTS. 




BY REV. WILLIAM P. TREACY. 



I. 



HIGH Archangel's pride 
Drew legions to his side, 

Who were, like blighted stars, , 

hurled from the skies ; 
A fruit, plucked from a tree, 
Brought death and misery, 
And closed on man the gates of Paradise. 

II. 

A host of angels bright, 
Upon Christ's Natal Night, 
Announced with heavenly hymns the 

King of kings; 

Beneath Love's crimsoned Tree, 
O wondrous mystery ! 

New Edens rise, and glad Redemption 
springs. 




I. THE TRUTH AND REALITY OF THE 
EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE.* 

This is a very remarkable work. It contains 
within a small compass the exposition and proof of 
the Catholic doctrine concerning the sacrificial character of the 
Blessed Eucharist. It is written for members of the Established 
Church in England ; and, curiously enough, Mr. Prynne reverses 
the process which took place when the new formularies were 
drawn up at the Reformation. Then, owing to reasons which 
he suggests rather than states, all the stress was laid upon the 
Blessed Eucharist in its character of a communion ; now he 
lays stress upon it in its nature of a sacrifice. 

At page ninety he informs us that he has given no private 
interpretation of the passages of Holy Scripture adduced in 
support of the Real Presence and the Sacrifice of the Mass. 
They are interpreted in harmony with the meaning put upon 
them by the greatest and holiest intellects of the Primitive 
Church; and he makes the very interesting addition that they 
are interpreted according to the meaning of " the most learned 
and saintly writers " of the present English Church. 

He naturally complains that the English Church or, as he 
loves to call her in phrase of legal and heraldic accuracy, that 
portion of the Catholic Church commonly called the Church of 
England does not set forth the sacrificial character of the 
Holy Eucharist with "that distinctive clearness with which it 
was most undoubtedly set forth in the Primitive Church." He 
is anxious to maintain that the Sacrifice of the Mass was pre- 
served, and with it every doctrine of the church, every law, 
every observance of patristic authority, and, it would seem, 
every pious practice of the faithful down to the Reformation. 

Of course the English Church could not set forth in plain 
and unquestionable terms the sacrificial character of the Eu- 

* The Truth and Reality of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. By George Rundle Prynne, 
M. A., Vicar of St. Peter's, Plymouth, etc. New York : Longmans, Green & Co. 



I&95-] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 843 

charist when it was the boast of the most influential Reformers 
that they had abolished the Mass ; that it was their business to 
put an end to the idea of a sacrificing priesthood ; or of any 
ministry possessing higher authority than what they derived 
from the state. If the bishops and clergy under the vicar- 
generalsMp of Cromwell were only the ministers of the king's 
highness, we are at a loss to conceive what they were under 
Somerset, and what their successors were under Elizabeth. 

Cranmer laid it down and in this he expressed the opinion 
of many of the council that the commissions of bishops 
expired at the king's demise. Accordingly he considered it his 
duty to obtain a new commission from the council of regency 
a degree of scrupulous nicety we should not have looked for 
in any courtier or churchman of his time ; consequently we 
think this punctiliousness must have paid. But if such an 
opinion stood as a principle in the minds of those who were 
shaping the new church, the divine character of the church 
could hardly have a place ; the divine origin of episcopacy and 
the sacrament of order could have no place. There could be no 
institution of priesthood, much less of a sacrificing priesthood, 
in the minds of such men. 

We think this is the explanation of the matter, and not 
what Mr. Prynne suggests : " the great reaction against some 
false notions which seemed common in the early part of the 
sixteenth century." As an extreme revolt from Catholic doctrine 
would be displeasing to eleven-twelfths of the nation,* there 
was nothing for the leaders of the movement but a compromise. 

Let us take the Reformation in England, step by step. It 
is plain that Henry VIII. contemplated an Anglican Church 
differing from the Catholic Church on the point of supremacy 
alone. During his lifetime circumstances favored such a sys- 
tem ; but the ministers who held the royal prerogatives in 
trust for his infant son did not persist in it. 

We find that Hooper will not wear episcopal vestments, 
and that Ridley pulls down the altars in his diocese. The 
latter has the communion administered at tables resembling 
oyster- boards surely not because that was the practice of the 
Primitive Church and the ancient Fathers. When Grindal, the 
metropolitan, regarded the consecration of bishops as a mum- 
mery, and Pouet said the word bishop should be abandoned 
to the Papists, we can only wonder at the canon of a few 
years later (1571) which enacted "that preachers shall be care- 
ful not to preach aught to be held by the people except what 

* This appears from a letter of Paget to Somerset, dated July 7, 1549. 



844 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Mar., 

is agreeable to the doctrine of the Old and New Testament, 
and what the Catholic fathers and ancient bishops have gathered 
out of that doctrine." We can only wonder more that Mr. 
Prynne should think such prelates must have intended to or- 
dain a sacrificing priesthood. Yet he means this or he means 
nothing. 

We think Macaulay puts the matter correctly enough when 
he says that the Church of England was the result of an 
alliance between the government and the Protestants. It can- 
not be doubted, on the evidence we have, that there would 
never have been a reformation in England were it not for the 
collision between Henry and the Holy See on the question of 
the divorce of the queen. The people were content with the 
faith of their fathers. It, of course, suited the courtiers and 
officials enriched by grants of the dissolved religious houses to 
accept the theology of the king. Foreigners had carried with 
them from the Continent the tenets of Luther, Calvin, and other 
sectaries, and made proselytes here and there among soured 
and gloomy spirits who had -inherited, or who in some way 
sympathized with, the opinions of the Lollards.* 

These are the men whom Cranmer described as " glorious 
and unquiet spirits," but to whose influence he bowed with such 
sincerity as his false, crafty, and calculating nature was capable 
of. These were, roughly stated, the elements from which the 
new church was to be constituted. The mass of the people 
wanted no change of doctrine or ritual ; the government wanted 
no more than was necessary in the establishment of a complete 
despotism in the king over the consciences of his subjects. The 
third party were those seduced by " the glorious and unquiet 
spirits," or by Englishmen who had brought back from Germany 
religious and political opinions which in a generation or two 
were to work deep and wide-reaching results in the life of the 
English nation and in the destiny of the English-speaking races. 

We believe that it is literally the fact, that about the be- 
ginning of the reign of Elizabeth not more than one-tenth of 
the English people would lift a hand for the supremacy of the 
pope, and not more than one-tenth cared a straw for the re- 
formed doctrines. That is to say, eight-tenths of the English 
people were Catholics without a pope ; one-tenth were real 
Catholics, and the remaining tenth Protestants. From this 
tenth, as from the cloud which bears the storm in its bosom, 

* The idea that Lollardism prevailed to a large extent among the rural population is 
not well founded. That a social movement had been going on from the reign of Richard 
II. is, we think, capable of proof. 



1895-] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 845 

the humiliation of the monarchy under James I. proceeded ; from 
it the long Civil War, the murder of Charles I., the revolution- 
ary parliament which voted itself immortal, and the successful 
soldier who cut it off with a brutal jest as he planted his armed 
heel on the footstool of five dynasties, from the Norman to the 
hapless Stuart in a word, from that tenth comes the whole 
polity which governs church and state in England to-day. 

Nor does Mr. Prynne altogether ignore the power and influ- 
ence of that tenth which was the seed of Puritanism and the 
ten thousand sects which infested England during the Great 
Rebellion, and of all the Nonconformist bodies which since the 
Restoration found in unsurpliced ministers and lay apostles the 
genuine representatives of the Twelve. But he takes such 
little account of it that, so far as his argument is concerned, 
the Church of England had no doctrinal interval between 1549, 
the date of the first English prayer-book, and 1662, when the 
prayer-book was amended or altered to the form in which it 
stands at present. 

The alterations just referred to were made in a Catholic 
direction, as one would naturally expect. The Church of Eng- 
land, in so far as she had endeavored to mould herself on the 
form of the Catholic Church, had been the mainstay of the 
throne in the disastrous period which had just passed. All the 
influence, moral and material, she could command was at the 
king's service during the Civil War. The blood of Laud cried 
for vengeance at the hands of every gallant gentleman to whom 
the sacred building could appeal in which his fathers had knelt 
for generations, and whose arms looked down upon the family 
pew where he lisped his first prayers by his mother's side. 
When the royal cause went down, the cathedrals were widowed, 
every parish exchanged its incumbent for some crop-eared, 
snuffling divine who hated the Church of England only a shade 
less than he hated her of Rome. It would be hard to suppose, 
then, that at the Restoration the revision of the prayer-book 
should take a Puritan direction. Of course it took a Catholic 
direction. 

It may be true that the communion service of the Church 
of England, if used by a duly-ordained priest with intention, 
would be sufficient for consecration. This is the whole value 
of the appeal to the passage from Welby Pugin's Earnest Ad- 
dress* But where can the duly-ordained priest be found in 
the Church of England ? 

Mr. Prynne, in a passage of great force, maintains that the 

* P. 120. 



846 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Mar., 

members of his church, if they are consistent, must believe in 
the sacrificial character of the Holy Eucharist, because it is as 
universally held by the Primitive Church and advocated by the 
ancient Fathers ; and because it " was endorsed by general 
council " (sic). From these facts he concludes most rightly that 
the doctrine is true, and a most important part of the faith 
once delivered to the saints. And yet from the same Book of 
Common Prayer many members of his church, he sadly admits, 
deny that truth as inconsistent with its teaching. He then 
proceeds by an argument of much ingenuity to prove from his 
prayer-book what ? Not the Objective Presence of our Lord in 
the Blessed Sacrament and the Sacrifice of the Mass ; but that 
there is nothing inconsistent with that great truth in the prayer- 
book. 

This no English churchman, we believe, could seriously ques- 
tion since the judgment of the judicial committee of the Privy 
Council in Sheppard v. Bennett. That learned body laid down 
as legally tenable in the Church of England the following pro- 
positions : i. The Real Presence of the Lord in the Blessed Sacra- 
ment. 2. The sacrificial character of the Lord's Supper. 3. 
That adoration is due to the Lord present in the Holy Com- 
munion. The judicial committee in this case has stated with 
great fulness all that is meant by, and included in, these pro- 
positions, and in this fulness we find the exact doctrine of the 
Catholic Church. But all this does not prove Mr. Prynne's under- 
lying and real contention that the Catholic doctrine concern- 
ing the Holy Eucharist has been held without break or inter- 
ruption in the Church of England, and that the bishops and 
clergy of that church are a sacrificing priesthood. 

We learn that one of the Anglican bishops lately addressed 
candidates for ordination the evening before the ceremony in 
this sense : " Don't any of you gentlemen go away with the 
idea that I am going to ordain you to-morrow sacrificing priests ; 
I am not going to do anything of the sort." Notwithstanding 
the judgment in Sheppard v. Bennett every one is bound to be- 
lieve that the bishop in question acted within his legal rights. 
If ever a service could be said to be a facing-both-ways formula, 
the Communion Service of the English Church is that one. 

As we have said, it is the result of an unscrupulous alliance 
between a government anxious to exalt the royal prerogative 
above the laws and usages of the realm and the Protestants 
who sought the extirpation of the Catholic religion. This off 
spring of the brain and character of Cranmer claims to be a 
branch of the Catholic Church, and in the same way that the 






i 895.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 847 

Greek and the Oriental Churches in schism possess the Sacra- 
ment of Holy Order she claims to possess it too. We need 
not pause over the branch theory; we no more accept a 
two-fold or a twenty-fold church than we believe in a two-fold 
or a twenty-fold Christ. We reject this theory of disunion, dis- 
solution, death ; but while we condemn Mr. Prynne's vain effort 
to prove the church of Henry VIII. and Cranmer, of Somerset, 
of Elizabeth, of the drivelling idiot James, and the " martyred " 
liar and despot Charles is the Church of our Divine Lord, we 
cannot express in terms too high our sense of the ability and 
learning he has brought to the task before him. 



2. DR. PUSEY AND THE THEORY OF ANGLICANISM. 

It is often a surprise to non-Catholics to learn with what 
avidity we devour such of the many books issued from time to 
time bearing on the Oxford Movement. Although there is al- 
ready an abundant literature of this class, we venture to say 
that those who read the third volume of Canon Liddon's Life 
cf Dr. Pusey* will pronounce it not inferior in interest to any 
of its predecessors. This volume will be of special service to 
Catholics who wish to study the movement, in order to better 
appreciate the position of many Anglicans who are approaching 
the church along this road. The period dealt with is that which 
followed the secession of Newman and many others in and 
about 1845. These events had shaken the confidence of most 
of those in authority, and the trials which beset Dr. Pusey as 
the now recognized head of the party were not a few. He had 
to ward off the attacks of enemies with one hand, while with 
the other he directed and aided in the work of construction 
which began as the result of the spiritual awakening and the 
infusion of new ideas. Sisterhoods now began, the emphasis 
being laid at first upon the work which none but specially de- 
voted women could accomplish ; afterwards the life as such re- 
ceived more attention, and Pusey was the spiritual director of 
the young community in London. In this connection, and 
gradually among the followers at large of the new school, 
the subject of private confession came into a position of pro- 
minence in the discussions engendered. Pusey became confes- 
sor for persons all over the kingdom who were attracted to 
him by his setting forth of the doctrine of penance, particularly 
in the famous sermon " The Entire Absolution of the Penitent," 

* Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey, D.D. By Henry Parry Liddon, D.D. Vol. Hi. Lon- 
'don : Longmans, Green & Co. 



TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Mar., 

which was the theme chosen by him for his first discourse after 
long suspension from University preaching. Meantime he was 
full of anxiety for the improvement and extension of university 
education, and extensive plans were formed by a corps of sym- 
pathizers looking to the establishment of one or more new col- 
leges at Oxford, where less expensive habits and a higher tone 
of religious living might prevail. The heads of houses did 
not approve the scheme, however, and it fell through. The 
same philanthropic spirit which prompted this unsuccessful 
effort led Pusey to take a practical interest in the relief of the 
poor in Ireland at the time of the famine. He even doubted 
whether it would be right to hear confessions on the fast day 
which had been appointed by national authority ; but Keble as- 
sured him of the appropriateness of such work for such a day. 

But the chief interest of the book, for us, lies in the view, 
which it gives us incidentally, of the position which Pusey con- 
ceived for the Church of England, and its relation to the Cath- 
olic Church. Early in the volume, speaking of the devotions 
which he was " adapting," as was his wont, from " Roman 
books," for the use of the newly established sisterhood, Pusey 
in a letter says : " In the adaptations I admitted whatever I be- 
lieved to be true "; and, further on : " The ground on which I 
rest is that since our church, both by the declarations of the Re- 
formers, by her canons, and by the combined teaching of ap- 
proved divines, refers to antiquity, the early church, the quod 
ubique, etc.; then, in receiving what is so taught, I am following 
the teaching of my church. If, then, anything in our formula- 
ries seems, according to any received interpretation, to be at 
variance with that teaching, I think myself compelled, on her 
own principles, to inquire whether these formularies necessarily 
require that interpretation," etc. In these sentences, which 
might be added to, we have enough to determine Pusey's notion 
of the Anglican position. Catholics have always held that the 
appeal to antiquity and the consentient voice of Christendom is 
a criterion of faith, and the famous Vincentian formula has its 
place in our treatises on dogma. But Pusey considered himself 
capable of making this appeal himself alone and unassisted, and 
not only of making it, but of voicing the answer as well, where- 
as Catholics believe that God has from the first provided a 
mouth and a living voice for His Body, the Church. 

It is precisely here that Catholics must be differentiated 
from even these high Anglicans. These soon came to be called 
popularly, and they were, Puseyites followers of the school of an 
individual learned and devout, perhaps, but still only an indivi- 



1895.] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 849 

dual. This true state of the case was clearly seen in those early 
times by some of those who would have liked to be Pusey's 
friends if they could have agreed in his method. Bishop Wil- 
berforce saw in it " a subtle and therefore most dangerous form 
of self-will"; "and a tendency," in Pusey, "to view himself as 
one in, if not now the leader of, a party." This seemed to lead 
him "to judge the church " which he "ought to obey; some- 
times to blame, sometimes almost to patronize her." 

Any one at all familiar with the attitude of High-churchmen 
all along the course of the movement knows how truly these 
words describe it. Dr. Hook, of Leeds, the harmony of whose 
parish the clergy at St. Saviour's were disturbing by their in- 
novations, was another to voice the same sentiment. He told 
Pusey plainly : " With all deference to you, I think that the 
Reformers were as likely to know what was really Catholic and 
primitive as you are ; and what, accepting their teaching, Con- 
vocation was overruled by Divine Providence to adopt that I 
receive as the voice of the Catholic Church." Here was a po- 
sition, narrow enough to be sure, sectarian and untenable for 
any but the short-sighted, but consistent and capable of being 
the basis of corporate unity and action. It embraced a rational 
conception of authority, and furnished a sphere for the exercise 
of discipline all this, of course, within the bounds of its own 
membership. Such had been the position of the old school of 
High-churchmen, and of such were Hook and Wilberforce. Now, 
Pusey and his followers, seeing the shortcomings of this kind 
of religion as compared with Catholicity, and knowing the Church 
of England to be in desperate straits, make an essentially new 
departure. They would introduce some of the Catholic doc- 
trines Penance, Baptismal Regeneration, the Real Presence 
dimly at first, but in a gradually strengthening sense the Coun- 
sels of Perfection. They would introduce English churchmen to 
the treasures of Catholic devotional literature through the medium 
of " adaptations." If any formulary of the church seemed to 
militate against this process, they would say it had been wrongly 
interpreted, for "the Church is Catholic, therefore these things 
are ours." 

The result of this departure was two-fold. First, it presented 
portions of truth to thousands of truth-loving, starving souls. 
Minds were quickened, hopes were raised, hearts were enlarged, 
eyes were opened to the fact that there was a world of Catho- 
lic thought and doctrine hitherto unexplored by the living gen- 
eration of Englishmen. In this lay the strength of the move- 
VOL. LX. 54 



850 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Mar., 

ment. Second, it involved a loss of the dogmatic principle. 
The most the new school could plead for was toleration. Keble 
speaks of "the large license allowed by our church"; Bishop 
Forbes was dismissed with only a censure " in consideration 
that the respondent now only asks toleration for his opinions, 
and does not claim for them the authority of the church or any 
right to enforce them on those subject to his jurisdiction "; and 
the internal index of the weakness of the movement has been 
the state of lawlessness, division, and disorder which has been 
its constant accompaniment. The true character of the move- 
ment began to be evident before long to men of discernment. 
In January, 1847, Archdeacon Manning wrote to Pusey: "You 
know how long I have to you openly expressed my conviction 
that a false position has been taken up in the Church of Eng- 
land. ... It is clear that they are ' revising the Reforma- 
tion '; that the doctrine, ritual, and practice of the Church of 
England, taken at its best, does not suffice them. ... I say 
all this not in fault-finding, but in sorrow. How to help to heal 
it I do not pretend to say." Manning foresaw " the direct and 
certain tendency to the Roman Church." The new sort of Angli- 
canism afforded no standing ground ; it was ever shifting, ever 
progressing, never attaining, for in the last analysis it rested up- 
on authority only human, and therefore subject to the weak- 
ness, fickleness, obtuseness, and inconsistency of mankind. It 
exercised an enormously attractive force over the minds of thou- 
sands in the Anglican communion who were ready to imbibe 
some portion of the church's doctrines. They were not obliged 
to go all lengths at first ; congregations were to be found in all 
stages of advancement ; there need be no sudden and sad break- 
ing with relatives and friends; it was not taking a step which 
might not be easily reconsidered. So the movement grew. Of 
individuals, many were logical and eventually became Catholics ; 
many followed the leaders for a time; then, seeing whither they 
were tending, became frightened and turned back to the more 
consistent Anglican position ; many were content to stake every- 
thing upon their chosen teachers. 

Allies said of Marriott that when all other arguments had 
failed " his one unconquerable fact was Pusey." Subsequent 
history has been but a repetition of the same state of affairs. 
Good men and true, in England and America, have espoused 
the cause of the " Oxford Revival " and have been its expo- 
nents. As they were good men, and as they taught many 
truths and exemplified them by earnest, self-denying lives, they 



I8 95-] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 851 

have had many disciples. They have been doing a work for the 
Catholic cause which, so far as is evident, the church could not 
have done, preparing for a future harvest-time. It is this which 
gives a peculiar interest for Catholics to works like the Life of 
Pusey ; this, and not any intrinsic truth of the underlying prin- 
ciples of the High-Church movement. 

It is not ours to estimate the degree of good faith or the 
amount of responsibility which is to be attached to the acts of 
such a man as Pusey. That he was the means, under God, of 
dispelling from many minds the thick cloud of prejudice which 
hid large portions of Christian truth from their sight, we do 
not doubt ; but that he and the leaders whom he led left many 
souls in a position of deep distress, in a very slough of despon- 
dency, by failing to show how God's work in the external sphere 
completely corresponds with the interior leading of the Holy 
Spirit, is matter of historical as well as of present fact. Indeed 
the present volume brings with it an air of sadness shall we 
not say of incipient penitence ? The human soul, all marred 
and fallen from its high estate of union with its Maker, led by 
the bitter experience of sin, and catching a glimpse of the glories 
and comforts of the Father's House, longs for a share of its 
light and peace, yet is loth to submit again to the paternal 
rule, and seeks if haply some middle course may not be found 
which will not involve the humiliation of acknowledging a griev- 
ous fault. In like manner we seem to see here the portrayal of 
the first throes of a nature which is waking to a consciousness 
of its miserable condition towards religion. 

Here are the phenomena of a being which longs for a 
former and higher state, now ill at ease with itself, distracted, 
disordered ; having a theory of its own autonomy, yet daily 
witnessing abundant proofs of its falseness: knowing that a 
great mistake has been made, yet writhing and twisting in its 
efforts to find some way of self-justification ; trying at times and 
in places to assume an air of easy confidence, or even festive 
gaiety, as if, forsooth, the past were forgiven and reconciliation 
made only to be made wretched again by fresh lapses and 
the renewed clash of warring elements. These are the symp- 
toms of what may be we pray it may be the beginning of 
true repentance, the repentance which humbles itself in submis- 
sion to Divine Authority. But if Dr. Pusey shall prove to have 
contributed to so happy a result, it will be one of the cases in 
which men build much better than they know. 



852 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Mar., 

3. HELPS TO MEDITATION* 

Father Gallwey has for many years been venerated through- 
out Great Britain as one of the most experienced guides of 
souls in the ways of perfection. Readers of the Life of Lady 
Georgiana Fullerton will remember what he was to her ; and 
what is disclosed there is but a specimen of what for many 
years he has been to very large numbers of others who have 
tried to walk in the ways of the saints. His time has been so 
filled by active work of this kind that he has hitherto published 
little. In these volumes we have the results of both a life's ex- 
perience and of a devoted study of the spiritual writings of 
others to which study, indeed, with characteristic humility, he 
ascribes, in a touching preface, whatever there is of value in 
these pages. 

The meditations, or rather the contemplation, of our Lord's 
Passion, as contained in this work, begin with the Raising of 
Lazarus and go through in great detail the whole series of our 
Lord's acts, words, and sufferings, until His Ascension into 
heaven. The generally received notion of St. Ignatius's method 
of meditation is that it essentially consists in the application of 
the memory, understanding, and will to particular texts of Holy 
Scripture; and it may be a surprise to learn that this is not 
really its special characteristic. Any one who will look at the 
Exercises will see that by far the greater part consists of con- 
templations of various scenes in the life of our Lord, or, at all 
events, of directions to his readers to make such contemplation. 
The saint's desire is that his disciples should learn to become, 
as it were, eye-witnesses of our Lord's actions, hearers of his 
words. It is this idea which Father Gallwey has aimed at carry- 
ing out, and in order that the scene may be the more vividly 
realized he has included in these volumes views .of Jerusalem 
and of the Mount of Olives, in which every street and road as 
they existed in our Lord's time are placed before the mind. 

Of course what St. Ignatius wished and what Father Gallwey 
wishes is that each one should do this for himself, should strive 
to live in spirit in view of Christ. But not every one is willing 
to do this. These volumes are, therefore, devoted to doing 
for them what people in general are unwilling or unable to 
do for themselves. What we have already said about the au- 

* The Watches of the Sacred Passion, with Before and After. By Father P. Gallwey, 
S.J. 3 vols. London Art and Book Company, 1894. Agents for the United States, Benzi- 
ger Brothers. 



1895-] TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. 853 

thor will enable the reader to judge as to the manner in which 
the work has been done. We will only add that while the 
number of meditation-books is legion, there are very few in- 
deed which are not foreign in origin, feeling, and expression ; 
many of them often seem to be extravagant and sentimental, 
sometimes even silly. A characteristic of these volumes is that 
along with deep and fervent devotion and tender piety is asso- 
ciated the most practical common sense a common sense which 
adapts the often too abstract and remote spiritual teachings of 
other times and places to the ways of thought and action of 
our own times and country. In short, in these volumes the 
reader has the summing up of the life's work of one of the 
most learned theologians and most experienced spiritual direc- 
tors of our times. 



The quality of Celtic humor is a matter of as much controversy 
as the color of the chameleon. Mr. O'Donoghue, who has done 
much work as a literary collator, endeavors to help a judgment 
on the point by his latest volume, The Humor of Ireland* The 
only conclusion he enables us to reach is that the national 
spirit has undergone a change since the time when the genius 
of Ireland was purely Celtic. What specimens of early Irish 
mirth have come down to us through the ages show little affinity 
with the modern examples of Irish pleasantry. There is a classi- 
cal dignity about the ancient stories which speaks more of the 
studied joke and the wise saw of the mediaeval court jester than 
the spontaneous sparkle which is a feature of the modern Celtic 
wit. The grafting of the Anglo-Saxon laws and language upon 
the Irish character would appear to have produced a far-reach- 
ing metamorphosis in the spirit of the national drollery. 

The standard of this wit is altogether intangible and uncer- 
tain. We talk glibly about Irish wit, but a good deal of that 
which passes current for it was mere Anglo-Saxon vulgarity. 
Swift was one of the greatest wits of his age, yet his wit was 
not Irish. In his day it was supposed that genuine Irish wit 
consisted in perpetually making " bulls " and blunders. This 
erroneous idea is visible in his own last epigrammatic effort, com- 
posed ere the cloud had permanently settled down over his 
intellect, as he drove with his physician through the Phoenix 
Park: 

* The Humor of Ireland. By D. J. O'Donoghue. London : Walter Scott, limited 
New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 



854 TALK ABOUT NEW BOOKS. [Mar., 

" Lo here's a proof of Irish sense, 

Here Irish wit is seen : 
When nothing's left that's worth defence 
They build a magazine." 

This was neither a proof of Irish sense nor of Irish wit, 
since the building of the magazine was entirely the work of the 
English garrison, and the Irish people had no more to do with 
it than they had with the wall of China. 

Mr. O'Donoghue gives some good selections in the pages of 
this book, and a great many that are the reverse. A class of 
writers once flourished whose aim it was to caricature and be- 
little the Irish character, and these are copiously represented in 
the volume. There are besides some modern mediocrities pa- 
raded as men of wit whose claim will come as a surprise to the 
more discriminating. There is no subject in the world on which 
a more entertaining treatise could be written than this, but the 
work is one for the future, when the circumstances of literature 
are better, and when the standard of taste is purer. 

Some nice plates are given in this book. They are the 
work of Oliver Paque. They are dainty bits of drawing, but 
they are not like anything Irish. 



Childhood is the time for the sowing of the myth-seed in 
the mind ; in the busy days of manhood things of greater mo- 
ment crowd them out of view. We fear there is a growing dis- 
position to make light of myths in the hard and materialistic 
tendencies of our modern system. The value of these delight- 
ful aids to the development of the mind is too often overlooked. 
We are glad to see an attempt made to make their acquirement 
attractive. Emma M. Firth's little book of Stories of Old Greece 
(D. C. Heath & Co., Boston) is a good beginning. She tells in 
a way suitable to the youngest mind some of the choicest old 
stories of classic Hellas, and illustrates them with graceful pic- 
tures, bringing out all the beauty of the quaint legends and 
leaving out of sight their coarser side. There is something 
beautiful in the myths of all archaic peoples, and a judicious 
selection of these would help to build up the structure of the 
imagination, and if their moral were well pointed show how in 
even the earliest times the mind of man was struggling through 
clouds of ignorance toward the light of truth and beauty. 



I895-J NEW BOOKS. 855 

We notice in the issue of The Architectural Record for Janu- 
ary-March an exceedingly valuable paper on the interesting 
subject of " Christian Altars," by Caryll Coleman (of the 
Tiffany Co.) It is from a literary point of view erudite and il- 
luminative in a very high degree, and an historical document 
of no ordinary value. There are special attractions in it, from 
a pictorial stand-point, for the lover of Christian art. It is em- 
bellished with a very large number of exquisite plates, showing 
some of the most famous altars and shrines throughout the 
Catholic world. The article will prove, it may safely be said, 
not only of deep interest but great practical value. 



NEW BOOKS. 

BENZIGER BROTHERS, New York, Chicago, Cincinnati : 

Elocution Class. A simplification of the Laws and Principles of Expression. 
By Eleanor O'Grady, author of " Aids to Correct and Effective Elocution," 
etc. 

Of the following new books Bengizer Brothers have imported editions : 
Essays by Sarah Atkinson. Edited by Mrs. Rosa Mulholland-Gilbert ; with 
Portrait. A Memoir of Mrs. Augustus Craven, author of " A Sister's 
Story." By Mary C. Bishop; with Mrs. Craven's Portrait. The 
Watches of the Passion, with Before and After. By Rev. P. Gallwey, 
S J. History of St. Francis of Assist. By Abbe le Monnier. Translated 
by a Franciscan Tertiary ; with preface by Cardinal Vaughan. Redmin- 
ton School. By C. M. Howe. History of St. Philomena. Edited by Rev. 
Charles Henry Bowden. Our Lady of Good Counsel. By Georgina 
Gough. The Pope and the People. By Rev. W. H. Eyre, SJ. ' 

LONGMANS, GREEN & Co., New York: 

The Foundations of Belief. By the Right Hon. A. J. Balfour, M.P. 
P. J. KENEDY, New York : 

Devotion to the Holy Ghost. 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & Co., Boston and New York : 

Old South Leaflets. Edited by Edwin C. Mead. 

MACMILLAN & Co., New York : 

The Diary of Samuel Pepys, M.A., F.R.S. By Henry B. Wheatley, F.S.A. 

Vol. V. 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, New York: 

Our Fight with Tammany. By Rev. Charles H. Parkhurst, D.D. 

FR. PUSTET & Co., New York and Cincinnati : 

Roman Hymnal, Part I. Visits to St. Joseph. By a Spiritual Daughter of 
St. Teresa. 



856 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [Mar., 



THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 

ABOUT four hundred lectures have been engaged by the Brooklyn Institute 
of Arts and Sciences to be delivered within a period of thirty-four weeks 
from October to June. Membership in this organization costs only five dollars a 
year ; the same amount is charged as an initiation fee. No other institution in 
the world can offer superior advantages for the same expenditure. The number 
of members is now about four thousand. With remarkable ability Professor 
Franklin^W. Hooper, director of the Brooklyn Institute since 1889, has selected 
subjects and lecturers representing nearly every department of modern research. 
He is a Harvard man who gave up the study of theology for science and natural 
history. His comprehensive plan recognizes no exclusion of any race or creed. 
In the programme for 1894-5- Catholic thought is represented by Right Rev. 
John J. Keane, D.D., rector of the Catholic University; George Parsons Lathrop, 
LL.D. ; Henry Austin Adams, M.A. ; William T. Vlymen, Ph.D., and F. Marion 
Crawford. 

Among the general courses of lectures the foremost place is given to one on 
The Founders of New England, as follows : William Brewster, the Elder of 
Plymouth, by Edward Everett Hale ; William Bradford, the Governor of Ply- 
mouth, by Rev. Dr. William Elliott Griffis, of Ithaca; John Winthrop, the 
Governor of Massachusetts, by Frederick T. Greenhalge, Governor of Massa- 
chusetts ; John Harvard and the Founding of Harvard College, by William R. 
Thayer, of Harvard ; John Eliot, the Apostle to the Indians, by Rev. James De 
Normandie ; John Cotton, the Minister of Boston, by Rev. John Cotton Brooks, 
a descendant of the subject of the lecture; Roger Williams, the Founder of 
Rhode Island, by President Andrews, of Brown University ; Thomas Hooker, 
the Founder of Connecticut, by Rev. Dr. Joseph H. Twitchell, of Hartford. 
This course is also to be given in the Old South Meeting House in Boston. 

Professor Hooper attaches special importance to a series of lectures on the 
literature and religion of India, to be given by T. W. Rhys Davids, LL.D., pro- 
fessor of Sanscrit literature in University College, London. Professor Davids is 
a high authority on this subject ; his lectures will also be given at the Lowell 
Institute, Boston ; Columbia College ; the University of Pennsylvania ; the Pea- 
body Institute, Baltimore; Cornell University, and Brown University. The sub- 
jects are The Religious Teachers of India, and their Influence on India and in 
the West; The Buddhist Books and their History ; the Vedas as Literature, The 
Life of the Buddha, The Buddhists' Secret, and the Ideal of the Later Buddhism. 

An author's course of addresses on American literature will attract favor- 
able attention. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe will speak on Patriotism in American 
Literature, and her famous Battle Hymn will be sung; Professor John Fiske 
will speak of America's Historians and their work ; Edmund Clarence Stedman, 
on America's Poets ; F. Marion Crawford, on Romance in American Fiction ; 
Mrs. Kate Douglas Wiggin, on American Magazine Literature, and Mrs. Frances 
Hodgson Burnett, on Children's Literature. 

The Brooklyn Apprentices' Library, established in 1823, was the real begin- 
ning from which has developed the great work of self-improvement now organ- 
ized by the Brooklyn Institute. Augustus Graham, the founder, provided that 
courses of lectures should be given from time to time on " The Power, Wisdom, 



1895.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 857 

and Goodness of God as Manifested in His Works." By this salutary regulation 
agnosticism is for ever excluded. 

The departments of Pedagogy and Psychology in the Brooklyn Institute 
arranged for a course of six lectures by Professor William James Ph D of 
larvard University. Considering his distinguished reputation as one of the 
ablest philosophical scholars in the United States, Professor James uses the 
following simple language in announcing his subjects ; Mind and Environment; 
Habit and Character; Association and Memory; Attention; Conception and 
Reasoning ; Will. No attempt is made to befog the subject with high-sounding 
words. Miss A. E. Wyckoff is chairman of the section devoted to educational 
psychology, which has in charge the following special subjects : Children's Home 
and School Interests ; Mental Traits of Children as revealed by physical signs ; 
Infant Development; Home Life of Children; Child Study; The Child's Ideals;' 
Children's Difficulties in accomplishing school tasks; The Ailments of Children; 
Mental Development of Children. 

Miss Isobel Camp, Ph.D., is chairman of the section on Reading Circles. 
The work outlined is intended to encourage the study of the works of William 
Cullen Bryant and William Morris ; also, psychology by Professor W. James, 
Romola by George Eliot, Sartor Resartus by Thomas Carlyle, Saracinesca by 
F. Marion Crawford, Letters of an Altrusian Traveller by William Dean 
Howells, and children's literature. 

Law lectures for women, by Cornelia K. Hood, LL.B., are conducted on the 
plan adopted by the Law School of the University of New York. These are the 
subjects chosen for one of the courses : 

Historical Review of Woman's Legal Status ; The Relation of Law to the 
Possession of Property ; Marriage ; Legal Relations of Husband and Wife ; Pro- 
perty Rights of Married Women ; Effect of Divorce and Lawful Separation ; 
Parent and Child ; Legal Relations of Employer to Employee. 



:: 



An article by Walter Lecky in the Catholic News for January 23 has awak- 
ened discussion, which was doubtless the object he had in view, as he has in 
many ways proved himself a benefactor of the Reading Circle movement. A 
letter before us, however, suggests that the Catholic laity need to be aroused ; 
that crude efforts have to be praised because they are efforts, in order to encour- 
age growth ; that it is better to give a kind word of advice, even if a Reading 
Circle is not doing its best work, rather than satirical criticism. 

" The leaders of the Catholic Reading Circle movement must be well aware 
of the fact that turning the suppressed energy of the laity into this channel is not 
only going to raise the people to higher levels spiritually and intellectually, but 
it is going to avert wrong uses of this energy; it will furnish legitimate safety- 
valves whereby the thought stirring within may find expression." 
* * * 

We have received many indications of approval for the splendid work " the 
Sacred Heart girls are doing." One writer wishes a larger organization in the 
East, believing that there is a vast field of usefulness for talents which have 
been submerged since the day of graduation. " There is no use of hiding the 
fact that Catholic women must move with the times in matters pertaining to 
their own good and general culture. The new woman is a myth and is used to 
frighten those of our sex who want to be intelligent and useful in the social 
world." 



858 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [Mar., 

Our attention was called to a book of fiction that has been widely circulated. 
Under pretence of exposing " the most pernicious evil society has to do with," 
the author has adopted a style and introduced characters that deserve the 
severest condemnation. We sent the exact title of the book, the name and ad- 
dress of the publisher, to the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, 
Room 85, Times Building, New York City. This society has already rendered a 
valuable service to the reading public by its vigilance in detecting the immoral 
publications which are sent by mail to various parts of the rural districts, and dis- 
tributed by secret messengers. In answer to our communication Mr. Anthony 
Comstock writes these words of approval for the work of the Columbian Read- 
ing Union : 

" My recollection is, that in '92, when this (book) came out, we took action 
against it, and it was, I think, withdrawn from circulation. I will endeavor to 
have the matter looked into. 

I congratulate you that you have asked the question ' What shall we 
read?' and have started the answer by such practical outlines as you send to 
me. There is great need for guarding the imagination or re-imaging power of 
the mind from the defilements of corrupt literature. There is an infectious 
disease that very little attention is given to and yet that is very, very important, 
to wit, Immoral Imaginationalism ; a term which I have applied to the condition 
of mind that exists in many youth, where the re-imaging or picturing power of 
thought is kept busy in reproducing scenes or pictures which come through eye 
or ear into the ' chamber of imagery ' in the heart. I am satisfied, after a most 
careful study of God's word, that there has been no condition of mind that has so 
grieved the Almighty as the evil imagination. With all my heart I congratulate 
you and your organization on your practical efforts to redeem the mind of the 
youth from the thraldom of corrupt thoughts." 

Bishop Hedley, of England, in a pastoral letter has formulated the enlight- 
ened Catholic opinion on this same matter. He insists that all idle reading is 
hurtful : " To read, for honest recreation, even silly books that are not other- 
wise objectionable, is in no way to be condemned. But continuous idle reading 
of romantic, sentimental, or exciting narratives spoils one's life and causes a gen- 
eral laziness and looseness in one's whole nature, unfitting the mind for exertion 
and the body for self-denial. The inordinate reading of newspapers should be 
avoided on similar grounds. There are all kinds of newspapers and cheap peri- 
odicals good, bad, and indifferent. Catholics must remember that they are not 
to take the tone of their moral feelings from newspapers, but from the teachings 
and traditions of their Holy Religion. It cannot be denied that there is, on the 
whole, a very free and lax interpretation on the part of the newspaper press of 
that precept of St. Paul which prescribes that certain things should ' not be so 
much as named ' among Christians. Because a matter is reported in a news- 
paper, it by no means follows that it is right or proper for a Christian to read it, 
much less to dwell upon it or to let it get into the hands of those for whom one is 
responsible. The standard of right and wrong, in things of this kind, is con- 
stantly in danger of being lowered. Our duty is, by precept and by example, to 
uphold and maintain it. It may not be possible for us to do much in purifying 
the periodical press although the disapproval of God-fearing readers is never 
without its effect but we may at least preserve our own conscience free from 
stain, and help many souls who otherwise would be carried away by the evil and 
corrupting tendencies of the age. 

Even when the newspaper is free from objection, it is easy to lose a great 
deal of time over it. It may be necessary or convenient to know what is going 



1895-] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 859 

on in the world. But there can be no need of our absorbing all the rumors, all 
the guesses and gossip, all the petty incidents, all the innumerable paragraphs in 
which the solid news appears half-drowned, like the houses and hedges when the 
floods are out. This is idle, and it is absolutely bad for brain and character. 
There is a kind of attraction towards petty and desultory reading of this kind 
which is sure to leave its mark on the present generation. The newspaper pre- 
sents not only news but ideas, reflections, views, inferences, and conclusions of 
every kind. As the reader takes in all this prepared and digested matter, he is 
deluded with the notion that he is thinking and exercising his mind. He is do- 
ing nothing of the kind. He is putting on another man's clothes, and fitting 
himself out with another man's ideas. To do this habitually is to live tthe life of 
a child ; one is amused and occupied, and one is enabled to talk second-hand 
talk, but that is all. Men were better men, if they thought at all, in the days 
when there was less to read. It is pitiable to reflect how many there are, in all 
the ranks of life, who depend for ideas on the utterances of their newspapers. 
And who, after all, are the writers of newspapers ? Men by no means specially 
endowed or qualified ; men who have to write in a hurry, with little learning or 
training, on all kinds of subjects, some of them the most momentous; and men 
who have strong temptation to speak rashly and flippantly on all things connect- 
ed with religion and morality. Immoderate newspaper reading leads, therefore, 
to much loss of time, and does little good either to the mind or the heart." 

* * * 

We are very much pleased with this expression of opinion from The Casket. 
It enables us to see ourselves as our friends in Canada see us : 

"THE CATHOLIC WORLD, in its Columbian Reading Union department, 
quotes with approval some remarks recently made by The Casket with reference 
to the establishment of a second Catholic Summer-School in the United States. 
It wants to know, however, why the establishment of the Western Summer-School 
should interfere with our hopes for a closer union of thought and sympathy be- 
tween the Catholics of Canada and of the United States. Well, to be perfectly 
frank with our contemporary, our remarks were made before we had seen in the 
Catholic Reading Circle Review the very cordial expression of good-will by 
Madison towards Champlain. We sincerely trust that this expression is some- 
thing mare than the ' assurances of most distinguished regard ' or the personal 
feelings of the worthy prelate who conveyed it. We confess that, entertaining 
strongly the aspirations expressed in the words quoted by THE WORLD, we were 
not a little disappointed at the entire absence of Western Catholics of note at 
the last session of the Summer-School. This, taken in connection with the dis- 
satisfaction known to exist in the West over the location of the school, seemed 
to us a- very significant fact ; and the immediate establishment of another institu- 
tion, together with the tone adopted by some of the Western papers in referring 
to the matter, caused us to fear that one of the worst possible enemies of the 
Catholic intellectual movement was at work. For if that movement has one foe 
more to be dreaded than any other, it is sectional jealousy. Let us hope, there- 
fore, that if such danger ever existed, it is past and gone, and that the mutual 
assurances of good-will may continue to have a deep and solid foundation." 

* . * * 

An official statement has been sent for publication by the Columbian Catho- 
lic Summer-School which is to open in Madison, Wisconsin, July 14, 1895, under 
happy auspices. The preliminary organization to carry out this important work 
has been effected, and the indispensable sanction and approval of the Most 
Rev. the Archbishops and the Right Rev. Bishops concerned has been given in 



860 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. [Mar., 1895. 

letters of sanction and assurances of sympathy and support. The programme of 
studies and lectures for tthe first session has been determined upon, and the 
arrangements for carrying same into effect is now fully in the hands of a com- 
mittee headed by Right Rev. Bishop Messmer, of Green Bay, president of the 
board. The general Committee of Control includes bishops, priests, and laymen. 

The board is not committed to any one place as a permanent location for 
the school. The choice of the capital of Wisconsin for the opening session is 
regarded on every side as most convenient and appropriate because of its central 
position, its proximity to the principal Western cities, the beauty and attractive- 
ness of its situation and surroundings, and especially on account of the impor- 
tant advantages offered in halls, libraries, museums, and, not least essential, in 
ample hotel and boarding-house facilities and moderate prices. Reduced railroad 
rate of transportation is also assured. The active co-operation and cordial sup- 
port of Catholics is now invited. The necessity for the establishment of a 
Catholic Summer-School to meet the convenience and demands of the central 
west is apparent ; its importance and value to the educational and literary in- 
terests of the country cannot be overestimated. 

In order to place the Columbian Catholic Summer-School on a secure finan- 
cial footing the Board of Control has provided for a limited number of life-mem- 
berships in rtie association, and for annual memberships. 

The Board of Control of the Columbian Catholic Summer-School is as 
follows: Right Rev. S. G. Messmer, D.D., President, Green Bay, Wis. ; 
Right Rev. John A. Watterson, D.D., Columbus, O. ; Right Rev. John S. 
Foley, D.D., Detroit, Mich. ; Right Rev. James McGolrick, D.D., Duluth, Minn. ; 
Right Rev. Camillus P. Maes, D.D., Covington, Ky. ; Rev. J. A. Zahm, C.S.C., 
Notre Dame, Ind. ; Rev. Patrick Danehy, D.D., St. Paul, Minn. ; Rev. James F. 
X. Hoeffer, S.J., Chicago, 111.; Rev. P. J. Agnew, Chicago, 111.; Rev. Patrick B. 
Knox, Madison, Wis.; William J. Onahan, LL.D., Chicago, 111.; H. J. Desmond, 
Milwaukee, Wis. ; William A. Amberg, Chicago, 111. ; Maurice Francis Egan, 
LL.D., Notre Dame, Ind.; Conde B. Fallen, LL.D., St. Louis, Mo. ; Charles A. 
Mair, Chicago, 111. 

The Officers of the Board are: Right Rev. S. G H Messmer, President; 
H. J. Desmond, Vice-President and Secretary pro tem. ; Charles A. Mair, 
Treasurer; William J. Onahan, Charles A. Mair, and William A. Amberg, 
Finance Committee. 

The full course of the Columbian Catholic Summer-School will comprise 
two sets of lectures: one of a more didactic nature, giving regular class in- 
struction and being intended principally for the members and pupils of the 
school, the other more adapted to the public platform and addressed to a more 
general audience. The subjects chosen for the class lectures are the Encyclical 
of Leo XIII. on the Bible, the Eastern Schism and the efforts of the Popes for 
reunion, Church and State in their mutual relation, History of Catholic popular 
Education, Religion and Science, Ethics, Catholic Contemporary Literature, 
Economic Questions of the day, and the work of the Catholic Reading Circles. 

The general lectures will treat of some very interesting subjects of Catholic 
Biography (Ozanam, Joan of Arc, Savonarola, Missionary Explorers of the 
North-west) ; of American History (American Mound-builders and Cliff-dwell- 
ers, The Magna Charta and American Independence, Witchcraft in New Eng- 
land) ; or from the field of contemporary thought (Buddhism, Christian 
Science, Hypnotism, etc.) The first session of the school is to last three weeks 
from July 14 to August 4, 1895. M. C. M. 



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