Full text of "The Catholic world"

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THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD, 




MONTHLY MAGAZINE 






GENERAL LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 



PUBLISHED BY THE PAULIST FATHERS. 



VOL,. I.XXXVII. 

, 1908, TO SBPTEMB3R, 1908. 



NEW YORK : 

THE OFFICE OF THE CATHOLIC WORLD, 
120 WEST 6oth STREET. 



1908. 




Alessandro. Hope Lesart, ... 69 

Anglican Clergyman, Diary of. Edited 

by Orby Shipley, . . .50, 189 

Anglican Orders, Practical View of. 

George M. Searle, C.S.P., . . i 

Arnoul the Englishman. Francis Ave- 

ling, D.D., n, 170, 321, 461, 602, 755 

Artist's Proof, An. Mrs. Wilfrid 

Ward, 155, 298 

Assent (Religious) and the Will. 

Thorn is /. Gerrard, . . .145 

Belief, The Function of the Will in. 

Thomas /. Gerrard, . . . 145 

Bonnefois, Mile. Jeanne Marie. Coun- 
tess de C our son, .... 669 

Bush Happening, A. M. F. Quinlan, 639 

Canon (Muratorian) of Scriptures of the 
Nt \\ Testament Louis O" Dono- 
van, 368 

Catholic Allegiance to Elizabeth. 

Louise Imogen Guiney . . 577 

Celibacy of the Priesthood. Abti 

Felix Klein, ... . . 384 

Children (City), Fresh Air for. Wil- 
liam /. Kerby, Pli.D., . . . 236 

Church (The) and Nationalism.//. P. 

Russell, 512 

City Children, Rural Homes for. }} 'il- 

liamj. Kerby, Ph.D., . . .236 

Clovelly (West-Country Idvlls). H. E. 

r. ' . .735 

Columbian Reading Union, The, 140, 285, 
430, 573, 718, 862 

Comet (Halley's), Return of. George 

M. Searle, C.S.P 289 

Controversial Novel, Birth of the. 

'/'<?;, . . 30 

Current Events, 131, 275, 417, 563, 710, 853 

Dublin a Century Ago.//. A. Ilink- 

son, . . ' 629 

Klizabrthaii Catholics and their Alle- 
giance. Louise Imogen Guincv, . 577 

Faith, The Will in the Act of. Thomas 

/. Gerrard 145 

French Home Missionary, A. Countess 

de Courson, ..... 669 

French Red Cross Nurses. A. M. /'. 

Cole 522 

Fn 'h Air for City Children. William 

/. Ksrby, Ph.D 236 

Friend of the Little Sisters, A. Katha- 
rine Tynan, 214 

Foreign Periodicals, 123, 267, 408, 556, 

699, 843 



Gardner's St. Catherine of Siena. Vida 

D. Scudder, . 452 

Halley's Comet, Impending: Return of. 

George M. Searle, C.S.P., . .289 

Ibsen, The Moral Ideas of. Charles 

Baussan, ...... 785 

Irish Writers, Neglect of. Katharine 

Tynan, '. . . 83 

Italian Schools, Religious Teaching in. 

R.E., ..... 433 

Jehu Day, Knife-Grinder, (West-Coun- 
try Idylls).-//. E.P., . , . 443 

Jesuitism and the Law of Prayer. Cor- 
nelius Clifford , .... 39 

Lavarone in Austrian Tyrol. E. C. 

Vansittart, . . . . 531 

Loneliness of Priests. Louise Imogen 

Guiney, 166 

Mediaeval Piety, The Romance of. 

Kutherine Bregy, .... 306 

Modern Society, The Neighbor in. 

William /. Kerby, Ph.D., . 347, 743 

Modern World and the Sacramental 

Life. Cornelius Clifford, . . 227 

Muratorian Canon of New Testament 

Scripture. Louis O' Donovan, . 368 

Nationalism and the Church. H. P. 

Russell, .... 512 

Neighbors in Modern Society. William 

/. Kerby, Ph.D., . . . .347 

New Books, 100, 246, 392, 536, 679, 829 

Novel (Controversial), Birth of the. 

Agnes Repp tier, .... 30 

Old Manor House (West-Country 

Idylls).//. E P., . . . . 595 

Orders (Anglican), A Practical View of. 

George M. Searle, C.S.P. , . . i 

Papal Protection, The Principle of. 

H. P. Russell, 512 

Passing of Tommy, The (West-Country 

Idylls). //./?./>., .... 93 

Patriarch- of Mendip, A (West-Country 

Idylls) H. E. P., . . . .207 

Pink Lemonade, A Bear, and a Prodigal, 

feanie Drake, .... 376 

Prayer, Law of, aod Jesuitism. Corne- 
lius Clifford, ..... 39 

Priesthood, Celibacy oi.Abbe Felix 

Klein, 384 

Priest in Recent Fiction, The. Corne- 
lius Clifford, 655 

Priests, The Loneliness of. Louise 

Imogen Guiney, .... 166 



CONTENTS. 



in 



Quebec and Its Early History. Anna 

T. Sadlier, 488 

Red Cross Nurses, French. A. M. F. 

Cole, 522 

Religion (Mediaeval), The Romance of. 

Kathenne Bregy, . . . 309 

Religious Teaching in Italian Schools. 

K. E., 433 

Romance and Religion. Katherine 

Bregy, 309 

Sacraments (The) in Modern Life. 

Cornelius Clifford, .... 227 
St. Catherine of Siena. Vida D. Scud- 

der, 452 

Saints and Animals, The. Katharine 

Tynan, 803 

Science or Superstition ? Thomas F. 

Woodlock, . . . . . 721 



Scripture Canon of New , Testment 

(Muratorian). Louis O'Donovan, . 368 

Tree of Help, The. Claude M. Girar- 

deau, 817 

Tyrol, A Corner of the Austrian. E. C. 

Vansittart, 531 

West-Country Idylls H. E. P., 93, 207, 
443. 595, 735 

Whippoorwill Sang Among the Abe- 
naki, When the. W. C. Gaynor, . 794 

Who is My Neighbor ? William /. 

Kerby, Ph D., . . . 347, 743 

Will (The) in Religious Assent. 

Thomas J. Gerrard, . . .145 

Wolf of Seraghtoga, The. W. C. 

Gaynor, 500 

York. Ellis Schreiber, . . . .356 



POETRY. 

Centenary, The, 1808-1908. Francis Indefatigable Christ, The. Cornelius 

A. Foy, 235 Clifford, . . . . . , 391 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



655 
258 



539 
684 
536 



Apple of Eden, . 
Assertio Septem Sacramentorum, . 

Beginnings of the Temporal Sovereignty 
of the Popes ...... 

California, The Mother of, . . . 
Canon and Text of New Testament, . 
Catholic Church (The), the Renaissance, 
and Protestantism, .... 537 

Catholic School System in the United 
States, ....... 548 

Catholic Who's Who, .... 543 

Christ Among Men, .... 688 

Christ and the Gospels, Dictionary of, 404 
Christianisme et 1'Extrerne Orient, 108, 259 
Christologie ....... 264 

Christ, The Life of, .... 402 

Church and Empire, .... 262 

Church (The) of the Fathers, . . 697 
Communion, Ministry of Daily, . . 689 
Converts to Rome in America, Distin- 
guished, ...... 

Cords of Adam ...... 

Crise (La) du Liberalisme et la Liberte 
d'Enseignement, . . . 

De Toute Son Ame, .... 838 

Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, . 404 
Dieu et 1'Ordre Naturel, . . . no 

Draught of the Blue, A, ... 121 

Economic History of the United States, 113 
Economics for the Household, . .114 
Economics, History of, . . . . 553 

Education of our Girls, The, . . 103 

Father Alphonsus, ..... 655 

Fathers of the Desert, .... 396 

Foi et Systemes, ..... 265 



251 
688 



540 



Francmaconnerie en Italic et en France, 693 
Garden of Allah, The, . . . .655 

Great Secret, The, .... 262 

Gregoire de Nazianze, .... 54 2 

Guibert de Nogent, Histoire de sa Vie, 542 
History of Nations, The, . . .119 

Industrial America, . . . . "3 

Industrial Education, .... 113 

Inquisition, The, 216 

Intimations of Immortality, . . . in 

Jeanne d'Arc, Maid of France, . . 692 
Jesuits in North America, History of 

the, 255 

Jesus Christ, L'Enfance de, . . . 402 

Jesus Christ Sa Vie et Son Temps, . 402 

Lake, The, 655 

L'Ame d'un Grand Chretien Esprit de 
Foi de Louis Veuillot, d'apres sa Cor- 
respondence, 842 

Lord of the World 39 



Mankind and the Church, 
Many Mansions, .... 
Marriage, Law of Christian, . 
Marriage Legislation, The New, . 
Martyrs (Les) de Gorcum, 
Maryland, The Land of Sanctuary, 
Matrimonial Legislation, The New, 
Mediums, Behind the Scenes with the, 
Mexico and Her People of To-day, 
Missionary's Notebook, A, 
Modernism, Catechism on, . 
Modernism, Doctrine of, and its Refuta 

tion, 

Modern Medicine, Makers of. 



IV 



CONTENTS. 



Mon Mari, 840 

Moral Theology for English-speaking 

Countries, 547 

Naomi's Transgression, . . . 693 
Navarre and the Basque Provinces, 

Castles and Chateaux of Old, . . 681 
"Ne Temere," A Commentary on the 

Decree, 394 

Nietzsche, The Philosophy of, . . . 398 

Nun, The, 679 

Organ Accompaniment, Modern, . . 105 

Parerga, ....... 248 

Pentecost Preaching, .... . . 688 

Petals of a Little Flower, The, . . 122 

Philosopher's Martyrdom, The, . . in 

Philoshphiae Scholastics Summula, . 264 

Philosophia Naturalis, .... 263 

Pioneer Priests of North America, . 832 

Political Economy, .... 112 

Popes and Science, The, . . . 830 

Pope (The), Is he Independent ? . . 604 

Pragmatisme, Le, 835 

Priest and Parson ; or, Let Us Be One, 697 

Priests Studies, The 253 

Princess Nadine, 262 

Progres(Le) du Liberalism Catholique 

en France sous le Pape Leon XIII., . 109 

Quivira 836 

Rambles in Erinne, .... 249 

Reaping, The, 407 

Redemption, 838 

Regina Pcetarum, 250 

Return of Mary McMurrough, The, . 116 

Rome, Museums and Ruins of, . . nc 

Rosmini-Serbati, The Life of, . . 553 

St. Athanasius, 543 



St. Brigid, Patroness of Ireland, . . 396 

St. Christopher, Breaker of Men, . . 692 

St. Francois de Sales, .... 542 

Ste. Melanie, 395 

St. Jerome, Life of, .... 263 

St. Pierre Damien, 395 

Saints, The Coming of the, . . . 118 

St. Vincent de Paul, History of, . . 396 

Scotland, Ancient Catholic Homes of, . 112 

Secret of the Statue, The, . . . . 251 

Socialism, Characteristics of Modern, . 544 

Socialism, Fundamental Fallacy of, . 100 

Socialism, Inquiry into, .... 103 

Social Questions and Duties of Catholics, 398 

Songs and Sonnets, . 407 

Spectrum of Truth, The . 829 

Spirit and Dust, . . 836 

Spiritual Retreat, A, . 555 

Story of Ellen, The, . 115 

Summa Apologetica de Ecclesia Christi, no 
Supreme Court of the United States, 
No. 143. The Municipality of Ponce 
vs. The Roman Catholic Church in 

.Porto Rico, 550 

Tertullian, de Praescriptione H;ereti- 

corum, 542 

Theologie Dogmatique, Lecons de 117 

Tribulations d'un Vieux Chanoine 696 

University Teaching, . . 657 

Vatican, Secrets of the, . 114 

Verite, La Notion de la, . . 264 

Veuillot, Louis, L'Esprit de, 842 

Weight of the Name, The , . 403 

World in which We Live, The, 400 

Young Malefactor, The, . . . 401 

Young Man, What can he do ? . . 107 




THE 

CATHOLIC WORLD. 

VOL. LXXXVII. APRIL, 1908. No. 517. 

A PRACTICAL VIEW OF ANGLICAN ORDERS. 

BY GEORGE M. SEARLE, C.S.P. 

|NE' of the chief difficulties in the way of many An- 
glican clergymen, and one which prevents their ask- 
ing to be received into the Catholic Church, has of 
course been the knowledge that their orders would 
not be recognized by us; that they would be con- 
sidered as mere laymen, and would have to be reordained if they 
were to act as priests. It is hard, no doubt, even for an unmar- 
ried man to give up the idea that he is a priest, if he has officiated 
as such for years; but for a married man it is still harder; for 
though, theoretically, he might be ordained with us, practically 
it is impossible. It is, therefore, no wonder that this point 
causes them much trouble. They hardly see why we should 
treat them in a different way from that in which one of the 
Eastern schismatic priests would be treated. He would not 
have to be reordained ; why should they ? 

The arguments of Pope Leo, and indeed of our theologians 
generally, do not seem to them convincing. They cannot see 
why the Apostolic succession of a sacrificing episcopate and 
priesthood should not go on, in spite of mistaken views about 
it entertained by those actually concerned in its transmission. 
They may be forced to admit that those so concerned did not 
intend to transmit such a thing; for there is every indication 
that many, and probably the great majority of them, agreed with 
the thirty-first of their " Articles of Religion," in which it is 
stated that " the sacrifices of Masses, in the which it was com- 

Copyright. 1908. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE 

IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK. 
VOL. LXXXVII I. 



2 A PRACTICAL VIEW OF ANGLICAN ORDERS [April, 

monly said that the Priest did offer Christ for the quick and 
the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous 
fables and dangerous deceits." 

Still, this does not seem to them to destroy utterly their 
claim to valid ordination. They have an inner line of defense 
to which they can retreat ; namely, that just as we acknowledge 
that even a Jew or an infidel may validly baptize, even though 
he does not believe in any real change effected by the act, if 
only he seriously intends to perform a Christian ceremony, so 
the Calvinist bishops, who abhorred the idea of the Mass, still 
might validly ordain mass-priests, by simply intending to per- 
form Christian ordination. The ordaining Anglican bishop says : 
" Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a priest 
in the Church of God." Even though the bishop is entirely 
mistaken as to what that office and work is, a High Church- 
man might still say that the true office and work are produced 
by his words, just as regeneration is produced in baptism by 
the Jew or infidel who gives it, but does not believe in it at 
all. The same, of course, may be said of the corresponding 
words in the order of consecration of a bishop. 

The words specifying "the office and work of a priest" (or a 
bishop) were not in the Ordinal of Edward VI., as our Anglican 
clergy are aware ; still they may persuade themselves that the 
office and work were, or at any rate had been, well enough 
understood without expressing them, and that it really makes 
no difference whether they are expressed or not. A candidate 
is present to be made priest or bishop; every one knows what 
he is there for. The bishop, by words which can be conceived 
as having sufficient sacramental efficacy, makes him a priest or 
a bishop ; what difference, they may say, does it make what 
the individual consecrating bishop thinks a bishop or a priest 
is ? He may regard a priest as merely a preacher, or paro- 
chial visitor; a bishop simply as one appointed to oversee the 
priests, and to make new ones; but even so, it may still be 
urged, why should his misconception or ignorance invalidate 
the ordination or consecration which he gives, if the unbelief 
or indifference of an infidel baptizer as to the effect of baptism 
does not destroy that effect ? 

There is, however, really a wide difference between the 
cases ; between that, for instance, of a medical man who offers 
to baptize an infant in a difficult confinement, and has no ob- 



i9o8.] A PRACTICAL VIEW OF ANGLICAN ORDERS 3 

jection to doing whatever the Church believes can be done, 
and that of a reforming bishop who detests the very idea of 
the Sacrifice of the Mass, and arranges everything expressly to 
eliminate that idea. Of course the ordinations of such a re- 
forming bishop are excellent in the opinion of one who believes 
that the Holy Sacrifice is a " blasphemous fable," unknown to 
primitive Christianity ; but our modern Anglicans have no such 
belief. To them, then, it ought to seem clear that such a bishop 
distinctly intends not to do what the Church really does. To 
quote the words of Pope Leo's Encyclical: "If the rite be 
changed with the manifest intention of introducing another rite 
not approved by the Church, and of rejecting what the Church 
does, and what by the institution of Christ belongs to the nature 
of the Sacrament, then it is clear that not only is the necessary 
intention wanting to the Sacrament, but that the intention is 
adverse to and destructive of the Sacrament." 

However, we need not hope to produce any impression on 
those whom the Encyclical and the arguments of Catholic the- 
ologians in general have not convinced. Let them still hold, 
if they wish, that a heretical bishop, by using what seems to 
him a sufficient form to make what he thinks a proper priest 
and to avoid making a mass-priest, can and infallibly will make 
a mass-priest of the candidate in spite of his own intention, or 
that of the candidate, or of any others present. 

There is, however, another point to be considered. It is 
this. They will probably agree that this result could not be 
produced by even the head of their church, that is to say, the 
King or Queen of the realm, without the assistance of some 
real bishop. And why ? Because the King or Queen has no 
holy orders. They will also, we believe, admit, that a Jew or 
other unbaptized gentleman, could not be made a priest by all 
the bishops in the world. And why? Because he has not re- 
ceived the Sacrament of Baptism, which is necessary as a foun- 
dation for that of Order. 

Well then, if in the line of Apostolic succession on which 
any particular Anglican clergyman depends for the validity of 
his orders, there should be a break somewhere, by the one or- 
dained not having been validly baptized, or by the ordainer 
not having been validly consecrated, ordained (or perhaps even 
baptized), the line of succession stopped just there, and did not 
come down to the clergyman who claims it. He will admit 



4 A PRACTICAL VIEW OF ANGLICAN ORDERS [April, 

that this is, theoretically at any rate, true; but will urge that 
no Catholic priest can be absolutely sure of these points. It is 
always possible that an infant may be invalidly baptized, by 
some mistake, inattention, or want of care, and may afterward 
seek and obtain promotion to the priesthood, or even the epis- 
copate. 

There is no doubt that such a thing may happen; we may 
say that it probably has happened. There is a proverb that 
" accidents will happen, even in the best regulated families." 
But when the family is well regulated; when, as in the Roman 
(or in the Greek) Church, the true belief has been held as to 
the effect and the importance of baptism; it is not unreasona- 
ble to suppose that our Lord, who is the originator of the Sac- 
raments, and of course not subject to what He Himself has 
established, will supply the defect, not only for the person in- 
validly baptized himself, but also for all others who might be 
affected by such invalidity, if he were afterward ordained. That 
is to say, he would be made a Christian, capable of receiving 
the Sacraments, and, if need be, able to produce and adminis- 
ter validly those belonging to his order. 

But suppose that the family is not well regulated ; and this, 
it seems, our present " high " Anglicans must and in iact do 
admit with regard to their own church, even now, and still 
more so for two or three centuries in the past. Suppose that the 
whole idea of the church has been degraded ; that it has be- 
come a sort of mere moral police employed by the State to 
keep people decent and orderly ; that the idea of any super- 
natural effect produced by its Sacraments has, for a long inter- 
val, largely, at any rate, disappeared. In such a state of things, 
is there going to be any great care taken about baptizing val- 
idly, especially about having sufficient water run on the infant's 
skin, when hardly any one believes that it makes any differ- 
ence whether it so runs or not ? 

That " high " Anglicans now take care about such things is 
of no consequence, except for the building up of a church in 
the future. They can, of course, secure valid baptism for all 
the infants and others in their charge ; these or others can be 
validly ordained by resorting to some bishop whose succession 
is not open to doubt ; these in turn can in the same way be 
validly consecrated. There is no doubt that the high Anglicans 
can form a church with valid orders, and with the other sacra- 



A PRACTICAL VIEW OF ANGLICAN ORDERS 5 

ments ; and if they can persuade all the clergy to follow this 
line, a real Anglican national church can be formed, for which 
corporate reunion with Rome might be possible. But all this 
does not affect the present state of things, or the ecclesiastical 
status of any Anglican clergyman who has not taken these 
special precautions; as some of them actually have. Others, 
that is to say the Anglican clergy generally, have to depend 
on what they have received from centuries of heresy or indif- 
ference concerning the efficacy or utility of the Sacraments 
themselves. 

Let us suppose then, as seems highly probable, that quite a 
large proportion of the members of the English Church for the 
last three centuries never were validly baptized. Modern High 
Churchmen will hardly admit this, especially if young them- 
selves, and accustomed to better things ; but it is nevertheless 
only too probable that, a hundred or even fifty years ago, in- 
valid baptisms in the English Church were not uncommon. 
Why indeed, as we have said, should a clergyman take great 
care about the matter or the form of baptism, if he regarded 
it as simply a ceremony ? It would be at the best like a ru- 
bric, which of course ought carefully to be observed ; but even 
careful priests may fail in these when no special end is to be 
accomplished by them, and imperilled by want of care. 

Let us suppose, then, that a definite percentage, say ten 
per cent, or one-tenth of the whole number of Anglican boys, 
were at any particular epoch (say two hundred years ago) in- 
validly baptized. There is no reason why the same percentage 
of candidates for orders should not be in the same boat, and 
therefore invalidly ordained, and the same percentage of bish- 
ops invalidly consecrated, simply on account of this want of 
baptism on their own part. This would very probably be in- 
creased by the really non-episcopal character of their conse- 
crators. But let that pass for the present. We have, then, at 
this epoch, or a little after it, one-tenth of the supposed bish- 
ops who are not bishops at all. 

How, then, about the Apostolic succession, so far as it de- 
pends on them ? 

Anglicans may claim that there is a safeguard in the other 
bishops who assist at the consecration of new ones. 

And it does seem that, on mathematical principles, their 
case might be much strengthened by the presence of these 



6 A PRACTICAL VIEW OF ANGLICAN ORDERS (.April, 

other bishops; that is, if it was sufficient for the validity that 
only one of the others should be a real bishop. For the prob- 
ability of the invalidity would be, if three were present, that 
of all three not being real bishops; that is to say, the third 
power of one- tenth, or one-thousandth, according to the theory 
of probabilities. In other words, it would be 999 to I that the 
new bishop was a real one, even if it were only 9 to I for any 
one of the consecrators, as we have supposed. 

This seems quite plausible. And it might and does count 
in favor of the validity of Roman consecrations, in which the 
assisting bishops actually do say " Accipe Spiritum Sanctum" 
with the consecrator; but in the Anglican form of consecra- 
tion, the assistants say (by the rubric) nothing at all at the 
moment of consecration. Even if they should do so now, that 
would not help the past. So, even if the intention of the 
church is to have the assistant bishops really co-consecrators 
with the principal one, the Anglican rubric seems very prob- 
ably to bar them from such participation in the work, or rather 
from individual sufficiency for it. 

It seems, then, rather an unsafe thing to depend on. We 
can hardly safely assume the new Anglican bishop, even if 
certainly baptized and ordained, to have more than the 9 to I 
in his favor that his consecrators had. But inasmuch as the 
chance of his being, by a valid baptism, a possible subject for 
consecration, is only 9 10, the actual chance for his being a 
real bishop is only 9-10 of 9-10, or 81-100. 

And so, after say ten steps like the one already taken, we 
find the probability in favor of the bishop finally consecrated 
(two or three centuries later), to be the eleventh power of 9-10, 
as 81-100 was the second power; which is a little less than 
%. In other words, it is two to one that he is not a bishop 
at all, though it was nine to one for the first ones from whom 
he began his succession, that they were bishops. 

Even if the Anglican insists that the assisting bishops are 
really co-consecrators, so that there is no material reduction of 
the probability of a valid consecration on the part of the con- 
secrators, still the probability will never rise, of course, above 
that of the subject being (by baptism) a possible one for it. 
And if our Anglican is willing to admit a probability that his 
theory is wrong, the chance (on this admission) of valid con- 
secrations will go on decreasing, though not so rapidly. If, for 



i9o8.j A PRACTICAL VIEW OF ANGLICAN ORDERS 7 

instance, we use the factor 95-100 instead of 9-10 at each con- 
secration, we shall have, at the tenth step, about ^ instead of 
j ; that is, it is about an even chance that the last one con- 
secrated is not a bishop ; not so bad as two to one, but still 
a very uncomfortable figure. 

And, beside what has hitherto been said, we must remem- 
ber that valid ordination to the priesthood is commonly held 
in Catholic (and we think also in Anglican) theology as a nec- 
essary prerequisite to episcopal consecration. The probability 
of an invalid ordination, as well as of an invalid baptism, must, 
therefore, be considered in a candidate for the episcopacy ; and 
as there is only one bishop concerned in an ordination, the 
probability of his not being a real bishop comes in with its full 
force, instead of being diminished by the presence of others, 
as it might be in a consecration, as we have seen. 

The whole matter forms rather an intricate problem of prob- 
ability, which might be discussed in general formulas with the 
three probabilities, namely, that of invalid baptism, that of error 
in our Anglican's theory, and that (in his mind) of the priest- 
hood being necessary in a candidate for the episcopacy, as a 
basis. But it is plain enough, from what has been said, that 
the effect of these probabilities is quite serious. As to the first, 
straws showing which way the wind blows are common enough. 
A convert friend, formerly an Anglican clergyman, has informed 
me that he saw one of his confreres "baptize " a child merely by 
putting his hand in an empty font, and waving it over the 
child's head. Imagine such an event in a Catholic Church ! 

The difficulty and the danger at the root of the whole matter 
seem to have been, and to be even now, a want of thorough 
appreciation among Anglicans, and, of course, also among 
Protestants generally, of certain principles applying to questions 
like this, which are taught to all the Catholic clergy at the 
beginning of their studies in moral theology. These principles 
show when we may take chances, and when we may not. 

They are as follows: When it is merely a question of a 
law, which is to be obeyed simply because it is a law, not 
because of any bad consequences evidently liable in every case 
to follow a disobedience of it, we ought to be fairly certain of 
the existence of the law, and of its application to the actual 
case in hand, if we are to be bound to obey it. This applies 
principally to moral laws pointing out such or such an action 



8 A PRACTICAL VIEW OF ANGLICAN ORDERS [April, 

to be right or wrong, but about the existence or scope of 
which there is some controversy even among good, careful, 
and thoughtful people; and it has a still more special applica- 
tion, if the law is a merely human one, having no necessary con- 
nection with morality. There are innumerable cases in these 
lines occurring in daily life; Protestants have got into the 
habit of despising the discussion of them, and calling it "cas- 
uistry." This is probably mainly due to their not having con- 
fessionals, where advice on such points would be often asked, 
and must be given. Of course some cases are clear, but others 
are not. For instance, you see a person drop a valuable ar- 
ticle on the street; it is clear, of course, that you cannot law- 
fully pick it up and put it in your pocket ; if you take pos- 
session of it at all, it must be to give it to the person whom 
you saw drop it. But the question may occur, whether you 
are bound to pick it up at all, or to notify the person of his 
or her loss ; and if so, in any case, how much trouble you 
would be obliged to take in order to do so. Any obligation 
in the matter is plainly one of charity, not of justice ; for it is 
supposed that you were not in any way the cause of the loss. 
If by doing so you would lose a train which you need to take, 
would you have to lose that train ? Or would not a less in- 
convenience excuse you ? Most people would probably say 
that you need not bother about the matter at all. 

Or, let us take the matter of a human law, which is to be 
kept simply for its own sake, not for any penalty attached to 
it. Such laws may well exist, and do exist in the Catholic 
Church. I know, for instance, that I ought to abstain from 
meat, not only on Fridays, but on fast days ; but I don't know 
whether this is a fast day, or not, and there is no one at hand 
who can certainly inform me. Must I take what might be called 
the safer part, and abstain, or can I have what is called the 
benefit of the doubt ? 

The general rule, in both of the kinds of cases just treated, 
is that the law must make itself reasonably clear; at any rate, 
that if no one seems to know what line to follow in them, you 
can have the benefit of the doubt. 

But there are other matters, very distinctly and clearly 
separated from those which we have considered, where these 
principles will not apply at all. If you see a barrel of some 
black substance, and are not sure whether it is coal or gun- 



1908.] A PRACTICAL VIEW OF ANGLICAN ORDERS 9 

powder, and the question is whether you shall throw your live 
cigar stump into it, there is no benefit of the doubt for you 
there. The obligation is clear and certain not to destroy your 
own life, nor the lives of others, and does not allow you to 
take chances. Or, suppose you have a bill which you are cer- 
tainly bound to pay ; it is plain that you muSt not pay it with 
money which may probably be counterfeit. 

The distinction, then, is quite plain between these two kinds 
of cases ; those in which the obligation is uncertain, because 
the law itself is uncertain, and those in which there is no doubt 
at all about the obligation, so that one must choose the safest 
means for its fulfilment. Of course there are a number of dis- 
tinctions to be made in working out these principles thoroughly 
into practice. But in the case we are now considering we need 
not go into all these. 

The case, practically, is just this, for a " high " Anglican 
clergyman. He does not need, for the present purpose, to con- 
sider whether he is really in heresy or schism ; it is plain 
enough that these things do not of themselves invalidate his 
ministerial functions. But according to his own belief, invalid- 
ity in his priesthood would. He would strongly object even 
to having a minister of some sect having no claim at all to 
valid orders in his pulpit, even though the sermon he was to 
preach were perfectly orthodox ; and much more would he ob- 
ject to having such a minister officiating in his confessional or 
at his altar. 

And the same rule ought to apply to himself. As long as 
he is occupied in a ministry in which, according to his own 
view, valid orders are necessary, he is called upon continually 
by a most certain obligation to prevent the loss of souls or 
to promote their welfare in special ways not open to an un- 
ordained layman. A real priesthood is necessary to discharge 
these undoubted obligations which he has taken on himself; if 
there is any doubt about his priesthood, he cannot discharge 
these obligations satisfactorily, any more than he can pay his 
grocer with a probably counterfeit bill. And how can he stand 
at the altar, and consecrate the Blessed Sacrament, and distrib- 
ute it to his people, especially when they are dying, when 
there is a considerable probability that his orders are invalid, 
and therefore that it is not the body of Christ at all ? 

This is a very serious and practical matter. Those who do 



10 A PRACTICAL VIEW OF ANGLICAN ORDERS [April. 

not believe in the transmission of these supernatural powers 
by valid episcopal consecration and priestly ordination may, of 
course, regard the whole question whether this transmission has 
been properly attended to in any particular case, even in their 
own, as of no consequence whatever; they do not believe that 
any one can exercise these powers, or can be rightly requested 
or obliged to do so. But one who does believe in them must 
regard the matter as one coming very near to his conscience, 
if he is going to undertake to use them himself. 

There are some, it would seem, who imagine that, in order 
to use these powers, it is quite enough to pretend to have 
them ; or that they will be given to those who would like to 
use them, at any rate, if they belong to some respectable Chris* 
tian organization. They seem to think that all that needs to 
be done is to dress up in the vestments that were formerly 
used, and go through the old ceremonies, and everything will 
be just as it was before. But of course such as these do not 
really believe in any apostolic succession at all. 

We do not appeal to such. But we do appeal to those 
whose belief in the succession is sincere and genuine to con- 
sider seriously the matter in the practical aspect in which we 
have tried to present it. We can assure them that no priest of 
the Roman Church would dare to stand at the altar or to enter 
his confessional with a doubt as to the validity of his ordina- 
tion even remotely approaching what must attach to that of 
any Anglican who has received it in the ordinary Anglican 
way. Practically, it is not a question of Parker, or of Barlow, 
or merely of formularies or ceremonies ; we may even concede, 
for the argument, that the intention has been all that was 
needed, incredible as that may seem. It is simply the obvious 
want of any care about the whole sacramental system, and of 
any belief in it, prevailing for so long a time in the English 
Church, that has made the survival in it of valid orders ex- 
tremely improbable, and their renewal impossible, except by 
applying, if not to Rome, at any rate to some Church where 
they have been undoubtedly preserved. 





ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN. 

AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.* 
BY FRANCIS AVELING, D.D. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

AVING once asserted himself in the manner de- 
scribed in a previous chapter, having shaken off 
the trammels in which his memory of the past had 
bound him and poured out the stimulant of excite- 
ment and sensible pleasure upon his conscience, 
Arnoul found it easy to pursue his new course. Not that he 
had no misgivings ; but he managed to find palliating circum- 
stances, if not positive arguments against them, in some of the 
scraps of learning that he had picked up. And certainly the 
whole spirit of the party to which he had attached himself was 
calculated to encourage him. For it was a spirit of personal 
liking or whim as against authority of any kind, of criticism 
opposed to obedience, and pride of intellect against humility 
of soul. Logically pursued, it ended no one could quite tell 
where. Adopting its unspoken principles, Arnoul pushed them 
for himself to their practical conclusions. He was his own mas- 
ter. So he practically gave up going to any lectures at all, 
unless he hoped for some brilliant display of dialectic that 
might add to his morbid love of excitement. 

King Henry had left Paris for Boulogne, after having spent 
something over a week in visiting the principal sights that the 
city had to show. There had been a great dinner given in the 
enormous Royal Hall of the Old Temple. It was the talk of 
the University as well as of the town. The three kings had 
been seated together, Henry giving place to Louis, and taking 
his seat on his right hand : while the King of Navarre sat 
upon his left. Then came twenty-five dignitaries, some of them 
dukes, and twelve bishops seated with the barons. It was re- 

* Copyright in United States, Great Britain, and Ireland. The Missionary Society of St. 
Paul the Apostle in the State of New York. 



12 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [April, 

marked that some of the bishops were placed among the dukes. 
Eighteen countesses among them Sanchia, Countess of Corn- 
wall, who, with a great train of nobles and gentlemen, had 
come over from England to meet her royal sisters, and the 
Countesses of Anjou and Provence, with their mother Beatrice 
had their seats at the board. And there was an innumera- 
ble company of knights. The hall was hung with tapestry, and 
the shields of the order were displayed upon the walls. More- 
over, it was a fish day. 

These things did not prove of much interest to Arnoul who 
had other and more pressing affairs on hand now to occupy 
him. There was Maitre Barthelemy, for instance, and Jeannette. 
Also there was Ben Israel. He had he must not forget it 
to raise some ready money. He had an appointment to meet 
Barthelemy beyond the Chateau de Vauvert that very day. 
Well, he would keep it, but he must see Jeannette first. Bar- 
thelemy was a strange man, to be sure ! What had he meant 
by saying that he read fortune and advancement in the lines 
of his face ? And what was all the jargon about the numbers ? 
Perhaps he would learn that afternoon when he went with Louis. 

It was early when they set out so as to be back in time 
before the gates were closed. They followed the road along the 
Clos des Francs Murcaux and passed Notre Dame des Champs, 
lying snugly amidst its smiling fields. 

Through the spaces in the trees the haunted chateau showed 
upon their right. Then they made a long detour and found 
themselves behind the triangular enclosure of the chateau and 
standing before a low building of rough stone and plaster that 
was almost entirely hidden among the trees. The house is not 
marked on the plan of Charles V. ; neither does it figure upon 
the earlier one of the time of Philip Augustus. Either it was 
built some time between the two dates, or, what was more likely, 
it was so unimportant a dependency of one of the great estab- 
lishments of Paris that it had its existence indicated only in 
the musty title deeds of the land upon which it stood. But, 
whatever was the case, certain it was that, up to the year 1257, 
it was the habitation and the laboratory of Maitre Barthelemy, 
clerk, alchemist, and astrologist. 

The wooden door opened slightly to Louis' low knock, and 
the enormous egg-shaped head of the occupant of the hut ap- 
peared in the aperture. Seeing who it was that demanded ad- 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 13 

mission, he opened the door wider and bade them enter. He 
closed it again, and barred it with a heavy wooden beam as 
soon as the two clerks were within. 

A singularly unpleasant and acrid odor filled the building. 
It came, apparently, from a pot or kettle that was seething and 
steaming over a fire in the corner. When the lads became ac- 
customed to the semi-darkness of the room, they were able to 
take notice of some of the furniture it contained. It was a 
fearsome medley. On a large table, standing in the centre un- 
der an aperture in the roof that was partially closed with a 
thick, dressed sheepskin, was pinned down a large parchment 
covered with mysterious drawings. A rough pair of compasses 
lay upon it, and ranged beside these were an empty crucible, 
two phials full of some dark liquid, a human skull, and a flat 
dish containing a heap of yellow powder. From perches stick- 
ing out into the room at all angles and heights from the floor 
hung bunches of dried herbs and roots, skins, bones, and little 
parchment packets sealed and labelled the entire paraphernalia 
of a magician's stock in trade. In a conspicuous position hung 
what looked not unlike a withered and shriveled hand. It was, 
so Louis whispered with awe to Arnoul, a mandrake, possessed 
of strange qualities and mystical properties. And everywhere 
on the floor were vessels filled with powders and liquids, un- 
wholesome looking masses of spongy subsistence, crucibles, 
alembics, retorts. The owner of this strange collection stepped 
about cautiously among the crucibles, looking not unlike a great 
cat as he picked his way to the fire and gave the pot a stir 
with a wooden ladle. He was still clad in rusty black ; and, 
in the half-light, looked more solemn and serious than ever. 
He motioned his visitors to a seat ; and, having sniffed sus- 
piciously at the stench coming from his brew, came gingerly 
over to the table and stood beside them looking down upon 
the parchment. 

" I have prepared," he whispered, modulating his nasal voice 
to a purring tone, in keeping with his mysterious surroundings. 
"I have prepared a scheme of the nativity of our good friend 
Maitre Arnoul. It is as I foresaw. His orb is, without doubt, 
in conjunction with the most potent Mercurius which, accord- 
ing to the teaching of the divine Pythagoras, is a name of the 
Tetrad. And Mercurius is but a semitonium from both Luna 
and Venus, from which is to be read a dissonance in the har- 



I4 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [April, 

mony of the celestial spheres. But Tetractys is also as say 
Aristotle his Ethics impetuosity, most strong, Bacchus, and 
masculine. And Plutarch hath it that it signifies the soul ; for, 
says he, it consists of mind, science, opinion, and sense." 

" For the love of God," whispered Arnoul to his companion, 
" what does the sage mean ? " 

" Hush ! " That was all the reply Maitre Louis deigned to 
give. Barthelemy went on unheeding. 

" The Tetractys is the mean betwixt the Monad and the 
Heptad, equally exceeding and equally exceeded in number." 

Arnoul could stand it no longer. " Maitre," he called out 
to the astrologer, " what is the meaning of these strange words ? 
I do not understand! I cannot comprehend! What is a Mo- 
nad ? I have never heard of a Tetrac What is it ? " 

"You should not interrupt me," said Maitre Barthelemy 
solemnly. " In mystic rites the pupil and the worshipper should 
hold himself in a state of reverence and awe. It is so pre- 
scribed. The words I use have mystical power and may not 
be changed. However, a part I may reveal for your weakness : 
know that the Monad is the unit of all number. The sublime 
Tetractys is the number four. The Hebdomad is that below 
the octave, or eight. And the Decad is ten the beginning of 
a reborn series. I proceed with my prognostication. The Mo- 
nad, being the mother of all numbers, is continent of all the 
powers ; and the Hebdomad, motherless and a virgin, possess- 
eth the second place in dignity, since it is not composed of 
any number within the Decad. Therefore, since the Tetrad or 
Tetractys lies the mean between the unbegotten Monad and the 
motherless Hebdomad, it thus comprehends all powers, both of 
produced and of productive numbers." 

At this point in the learned exposition of his art, the pot 
in the corner began to bubble furiously and boil over, the 
liquid as it fell upon the coals beneath igniting in pale blue 
spurts and flashes. The alchemist hurriedly dropped the com- 
passes with which he had been measuring distances upon the 
parchment; and, interrupting his speech, made for the corner. 

He lifted the heavy vessel from the fire, and setting it down 
on the floor, began again to stir it with his ladle. The fumes 
were filling the chamber with an abominable odor. Arnoul was 
choking, and the tears were starting to Louis' eyes. But Maitre 
Barthelemy did not seem to notice it, and continued from where 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 15 

he stood, bending over the vessel and stirring the unwholesome 
contents. 

"Your life, young sir, is cast in the Church. You will come 
to great dignity and high honors such as few ever reach. You 
are a clerk of Paris ? " 

Arnoul answered in the affirmative, rubbing his smarting 
eyes the while with the back of his hand. 

"And of England?" 

" From Devon," coughed the boy. 

" Good ! Your advance lies in England. It is there that, 
the starry harmony will most resound. It is so written in the 
heavens. Are you yet a bachelor ? " 

" No ; I am only a scholar. As yet I but follow the readers 
in the schools." 

" Never mind," said the man, straightening himself again. 
" What is to be, will be. It is written in the stars. You will 
come to a canonry, at least, or a bishopric. Perhaps you will 
even rise to the sacred purple." He laughed a dry, sarcastic 
laugh as he spoke, and again bent over the caldron. " But 
there is death written too," he muttered to himself. "Death 
violent and sudden. Death creeping up behind, wreathed in the 
gay flowers of life. And for whom ? The stars say not. It 
may be for him. May be for me. Shall I pour the lifeless 
water into the globe and make him see ? Shall I force his eyes 
to pierce the veil of destiny, and read the future that is to be 
nay, that already is ? Or shall I summon the spirits to 
my aid ? That empty skull ! But, no ; why seek to know or 
teach ? 'Tis enough for my purpose that he needs my art. He 
will come again again." 

The mutterings were lost upon the two students, but they 
sat bolt upright with a start as the man straightened himself 
again, striking against a pendant cluster of human bones that 
hung behind him as he did so. The dismal rattling was un- 
canny, and seemed to communicate itself to all the hanging 
objects as they swayed to and fro in the narrow space. The 
parchments shivered together like dry leaves in a wind, and the 
heavier things swayed pendulously back and forth as if sud- 
denly endowed with life. The man was still smiling as he 
steadied the rattling bones. 

" Yes ; you will undoubtedly live to be a cardinal, or a 
bishop at least, young sir. 'Tis written in the timeless book 



16 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [April, 

of fate, across the face of the night that cannot lie. But never 
refuse honors, Maitre Arnoul, when they come ! Refuse nothing ! " 

He beckoned Louis to his side, and bade him look into his 
brew. The two stood whispering together in the far corner. 
Arnoul's brain was in a whirl. Here was a new sensation. He 
was to be a bishop perhaps a cardinal ! What did the man 
know of the future ? He said it was fixed and certain. He 
was right there. Of course it was fixed planned out and 
settled from the beginning of all things. The lad let his mind 
work along the line of least resistance, speculating vaguely. 
The past was phantom-like with its array of bloodless spectres. 
Even the present seemed but an unreal part of one great Now 
in which past and future both met and blended. How strangely 
Maitre Louis and Sir Guy fused into one character and Sibil- 
la and Jeannette were merged in one, too. And the oppressive 
odor ? Was it the incense of St. Mary's or the flowers Jean- 
nette carried in her hand ? Was he already receiving the hom- 
age of the crowds that pressed forward to meet him ? 

The alchemist threw a handful of powder into the cooling 
vessel; and a yellow flame flared up from the mixture. The 
thick atmosphere was clearing slowly, as the fumes filtered out 
through the aperture in the roof. He heard a voice speaking 
softly and as from a far distance. 

"It is done, Maitre Louis. Never before have mortal eyes 
save yours and mine looked upon the great result ! And I have 
spent my life in the achievement ! Surely, it cannot fail me 
now ! There can be naught wrong with the ingredients naught 
amiss in my calculations ! It will be cool ere long and we can 
put it to the test." 

"Come!" the voice was louder and more natural. "We 
shall drink to our experiment in the sublime liquor of gold it- 
self." The alchemist reached up to a shelf for a flask half full 
of a deep amber-hued liquid as as spoke. " This is the true 
distillation of life, the product of the alembic of the sages ! 
I had it the secret from Maitre Albert himself, when he was 
at Cologne. Drink ! " And he poured out the golden liquid 
into three cups. "It might be the elixir of life!" 

It choked and burned. Arnoul's head swam under the in- 
fluence of the potent spirit. He was walking on cloud, on 
light air, and the road led to the mitre or to the sacred purple ! 
He was without a body, floating spirit-wise through the circum- 



ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 17 

ambient ether ! He had put off the cloying vesture of flesh, 
and soared triumphantly in undreamed-of realms! He saw the 
goal clear and unmistakable before him in a swimming vapor 
of gold and amber and pink ! 

The two students remained, sipping the fiery distillation and 
talking with their extraordinary host, until Arnoul bethought 
him that the gates of the University would soon be closed, 
and there was the danger of being shut out until the morning. 
He turned to Louis. 

"Come," he said. "We had best be going, if we would be 
home to-night. I crave your pardon, Maitre Barthelemy, but 
the gates will be shut if we do not set out at once." 

The master magician smiled. Arnoul might go as soon as 
it pleased him ; but he had need of Louis. 

" Must you return at all ? " he asked in his dry, nasal voice. 

" Undoubtedly," replied the lad, thinking of his assignation 
with Jeannette. 

"And you also?" asked the alchemist of Louis. 

"No"; replied the scholar, with a half-apologetic glance at 
his companion. "No; it is not it will not be necessary, I 
think. I can tarry until the experiment is completed." 

" It is well," said the man approvingly. " You will remain. 
And you, young sir, when there is need, you will return hither. 
I have philtres which but you understand. I am ever at your 
disposition." 

The boy acknowledged his courtesy with an inclination of 
his head. Notwithstanding the charm of mystery that hung 
about the place, he was impatient to be gone. Jeannette was 
waiting for him. Barthelemy lifted the heavy wooden bar, and 
pulled the door open gently, inch by inch. He peered out 
through the narrow opening as it swung silently upon its hinges, 
until, satisfied that no one was within sight or hearing, he had 
it quite open and allowed Arnoul to pass. 

As the young man turned to salute him, he put both his 
hands upon his shoulders and looked steadily into his eyes. 
The boy saw the huge, egg-shaped head before him, and felt 
the pressure of the hands upon his shoulders ; but what he was 
most conscious of was the fascination of those steady eyes. 
They pierced and burnt as it were with a pain almost physical ; 
and, what was more, he felt his own eyes growing fixed and 
heavy before them. With an effort he looked upon the ground. 

VOL. LXXXVII, 2 



i8 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [April, 

Maitre Barthelemy laughed his dry laugh. " You will come 
again," he said sharply. " Until then honor ! Go forward 
and prosper ! Farewell ! " 

He watched the clerk's figure out of sight, and then, enter- 
ing, closed and barred the door again. 

"And now, Maitre Louis, that we are alone and have that 
for which the philosophers have ever striven and labored al- 
most within our grasp, let us fortify our souls again with the 
golden liquor ! " He filled the cups afresh ; and, as they drank, 
he busied himself in removing the parchment, skull, and other 
objects from the table, and putting an alembic of clay in their 
place, all the while keeping up a running commentary upon 
what he was doing. 

" We shall place this preparation that has cost me so much 
care in the retort, and heat it, like the furnace of Nabucho- 
donosor, seven times. And indeed, it might be the three 
children in the furnace, for there are three brains from the 
Provost's gallows, as well as the bones, dissolved in the strong 
acids as I did but now explain to you. And, if I am right " 
the man was fairly shaking now with excitement and hope, 
while Louis' eyes and drooping lip expressed his fear and sup- 
pressed terror " if I have made no mistake, in a few moments 
you shall see the true essence of life issuing from the worm of 
the still." 

His trembling hands ladled some of the contents of the 
fetid caldron into the alembic. A great slab of stone was 
set upon the table, and the brazier lifted upon it, the clay 
bowl of the still being plunged into the glowing coals. 

" Blow ! " commanded the master, handing Louis a pair of 
bellows. He took a bellows himself, and both men directed 
them upon the fire. Little by little the temperature was raised 
and the steam began to pour from the worm in heavy, op- 
pressive clouds. The charcoal was glowing with a white heat. 
Master and pupil were intent, rapt, saying no word, the sweat 
pouring from their brows, their gaze bent alternately upon the 
mouth of the worm and the flaming glare of the brazier. 
Suddenly the master cried aloud. The steam had changed from 
grayish white to blue. Now it came forth from the orifice in 
bursts of fire. Whatever it was, this essence of life, it was 
consuming itself as soon as it was born of the heat and the 
human members. 



ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 19 

"Water!" cried the magician. "Water, for the love of 
God ! Plunge the worm in water, or all is lost and the labor 
of a lifetime spent in vain ! " 

Louis dropped his bellows and did as he was bid. The tube 
was now dipping under the surface of the water, and, besides 
the steam and smoke that bubbled up to the surface, they could 
see a waxy, viscid mass falling slowly to the bottom of the 
receptacle. They worked at the bellows as if for dear life, sweat 
pouring down their cheeks, breath labored and catching. At 
last Maitre Barthelemy cried : " Enough ! " The distillation was 
ceasing ; and they laid aside the bellows. Slowly the fire 
cooled ; the glowing alembic lost its whiteness ; the distillation 
stopped passing over. The two men were shaking like aspens. 
Their faces were white and hard and drawn, though the sweat 
was still dripping from them. Only, Maitre Barthelemy's mouth 
worked spasmodically. Again his trembling hand reached and 
fumbled for the phial; and a third time they quaffed the po- 
tent spirit. The chamber was growing dark by now, for lit- 
tle of the fading light filtered through the half- open aperture 
above them. The alchemist drew the skin entirely across it and 
lit two candles, placing them upon the table, one on either 
side of the worm of the alembic. He stared down upon the 
few gouts of wax- like substance that had formed together and 
become congealed at the bottom of the water. 

" At last ! " he exclaimed, in a voice almost choked by his 
emotions. ''At last the toil of years and the labors of a life- 
time bring their reward ! Look, Louis ! Look ! There lies the 
veritable elixir of life, that all the world has searched for, and 
in vain ! Within the palm of my hand I shall hold that for 
which kings would give their very crowns ! " 

" But are you sure, Master ? " 

"Sure!" He hissed the word through his clenched teeth. 
" How could I have failed ? Life is but fire and warmth. When 
life wanes we grow cold and die. And there in those few pre- 
cious drops have I imprisoned the very principle of fire itself! 
No longer does it soar ! Look how quietly it rests beneath the 
water in its unaccustomed form ! I have changed the elemental 
fire into an earth and bound it down within that celestial food 
that shall give to me unending life ! " 

It seemed likely enough to be true. Whatever it was that 
had been issuing from the worm of the still in spurts and flashes 



20 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [April, 

of flame had congealed into that reddish-brown substance and 
sunk to the bottom of the vessel. Was it imprisoned fire? 
The very font and principle of life? The elixir that could 
conquer sickness and old age, and give enduring vital powers 
to the worn-out organs and frayed tissues of mortal men ? 

Maitre Barthelemy, rolling back his sleeve, plunged his arm 
elbow-deep into the water and drew forth a particle of the pre- 
cious substance. He held it in the palm of his hand. 

" At length," he said, apostrophising it, and seemingly ob- 
livious even to the presence of his disciple. "At length, O 
ancient mystery ! art thou given to the true seeker after knowl- 
edge ! At length human eyes behold thee, thou very quintes- 
sence of life ! " And he gazed lovingly at the morsel resting 
upon his bare palm. 

Freed from its contact with the water, the waxen substance 
quickly dried, giving off a pungent smoke that curled upwards 
towards the roof. 

" A lifetime spent in seeking," went on the master in his 
rhapsody. " The four quarters of the world ransacked for the 
ingredients ! But at last ! Ye Gods ! How the imprisoned 
fire burns and strives upwards towards it empyrean source ! 
God in heaven ! " The cry was wrung from him by the intense 
heat. The blue spirals of vapor trembled and curled, writhing 
above his open palm like living things born of the yellow wax. 
Suddenly they burst into a fierce flame. The whole substance 
flamed and flared, sending off clouds of suffocating smoke. The 
man screamed aloud in his agony, striving to cast the new-found 
elixir of life from his hand. It was burning, eating, gnawing 
into the living flesh, and he could not rid himself of it. His 
sufferings were terrible to look upon, as he writhed, shrieking 
in his pain, his hand on fire with the villainous substance he 
had made. Louis seized a vessel of water and dashed it over 
the unfortunate man's burning flesh. And he sank upon the 
bench groaning and crying, stupid with the agony, holding the 
mutilated member before his eyes. 

The place was full of the pungent, choking smoke, the smell 
of charred flesh. The student tried to comfort him, to assuage 
his suffering, bringing cloths and oil from a jar that stood by. 
But the alchemist moaned and rocked his body to and fro. 
He did not seem to see Maitre Louis' horror-stricken face or 
to hear his commiserating words. Only the imprisoned fire ran 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 21 

pulsing, throbbing through his veins, and he held up his maimed 
hand before his unseeing eyes. The labor of a lifetime had 
been in vain the long voyages, the weary journeyings in Spain 
and Africa, the colloquies with the Arabian alchemists, and the 
poring over strange writings of forgotten lore; all his own work 
the nightly vigil and the patient investigation useless and with- 
out reward. The fiery principle of all living things had been 
for an instant wrested from the treasure-house of Nature, only 
to reassert its potency and to destroy. The elixir of life was 
an agency of death; and he sat there groaning, holding up his 
scorched and twisted hand, and rocking his body to and fro. 

CHAPTER XVII. 

The Lord of Moreleigh had business in Exeter. All the 
castle knew it before he set out; for, when Sir Sigar rode 
abroad he rode in state befitting his station ; and grooms and 
pages had been rushing about the courtyard and stables from 
early morning until the time of his departure, making ready his 
train. He rode with two men-at-arms before him and two be- 
hind. A squire and a page completed his retinue. All these 
wore gay clothes, upon some portion of which the arms or 
device of the Viponts figured prominently. His own garments 
were in sombre contrast with those of his escort. The yellow 
leather jerkins and bright steel caps of the retainers, and the 
blue and red of the page's suit served to accentuate the black 
silks and velvet that set off his own well-proportioned figure to 
so great an advantage. But for an edging of dark fur about 
his dress and collar, and the dull gleam of gold in chain, buc- 
kles, spurs, and rings, which he displayed upon both hands, he 
was clothed entirely in sable. He sat erect upon his magnifi- 
cent charger, a heavy hand upon the rein, for the mettlesome 
beast fretted at the dignified pace at which he rode. The brows 
were drawn together as usual over the piercing eyes and his 
lips tight locked in a haughty and disdainful smile. 

His business done, he rode to the Benedictine monastery, 
over which his sister presided as the Lady Abbess. Now, if 
there was one person in the world for whom Sir Sigar Vipont 
had an unmitigated respect, and, at the same time, a salutary 
fear, it was his sister the Abbess. As children she had ruled 
him with a rod of iron, for she was by some years older than 



22 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [April, 

he, and had the dogged and overbearing spirit of the Viponts 
just as strongly, if not more developed than her brother. Her 
training in the cloister had robbed her of nothing of her strong 
character, while it had taught her to keep herself thoroughly in 
hand under any and all circumstances. Where Sir Sigar flared 
up to an unreasonable madness when he was crossed, the Lady 
Abbess preserved a placid demeanor and unruffled countenance, 
that made her all the more terrifying to those upon whom her 
wrath happened to fall. Sir Sigar was undisciplined. The 
Abbess Matilda was discipline personified. 

The Lord of Moreleigh certainly hoped, as his squire 
knocked upon the monastery gate, that the Abbess had not 
heard of his latest outbreak. But he was outwardly calm and 
unconcerned as he bade his attendants await him at the outer 
hostel, although he was anything but certain of the manner of 
his reception. 

His brotherly salutations were cut short by the Abbess' 
matter-of-fact, incisive tones. She had heard. 

" Sigar, you're a fool ! How often shall I have to tell you 
that you're ruining that girl of yours by the absurd way you're 
bringing her up ? The idea ! Poor, motherless child, in a 
castle like yours ! With a father like you ! With " 

"But Matilda" 

" Don't ' but ' me, Sigar ! I won't have it ! Blessed Saints ! 
It's more than ruining Sibilla. It's a scandal. That's what it 
is. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Why ! all Exe- 
ter's talking of your shameless treatment of the poor girl " 

" Matilda ! Sister ! Give me leave" 

" Be silent, Sigar ! May I not speak in my own Abbey ? 
It's too bad your not being able to control your temper. One 
of these days evil will come of it, be you sure. As to Sibilla, 
you must send her here to me. You are not fit to bring up a 
young girl like Sibilla. She will grow up like you, absolutely 
incapable of self-control. Or, worse still, you will break her 
spirit altogether, with your abominable goings on." 

Vipont wilted visibly as his sister spoke to him. She was a 
little woman, with plump, apple-red cheeks and large gray eyes. 

The black Benedictine habit made her look taller than she 
really was; but, standing before her brother, it was easy to see 
that she was head and shoulders shorter than he. Her face, 
framed in its square of white linen under the flowing veil, was 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 23 

quite calm while she rated him ; whereas Vipont's expressed 
anything but placidity. He was inwardly fuming, but he stood 
so in awe of his masterful sister that he kept his annoyance 
within due bounds. He spread his hands out in a deprecatory 
gesture, and made several attempts to speak; but the Abbess 
took no notice and continued roundly taking him to task. 

"I would ask you to remember," she said severely, "that 
all this is exceedingly unpleasant for me. There should be no 
cause for talk in any brother of mine. You have your duty to 
your sister as well as to Sibilla to remember." 

" I assure you, Sister " essayed the knight with a nervous 
catch in his breath. 

The Lady Abbess cut him short. " I want none of your 
assurances, Sigar. I know what your promises are worth. What 
you are to do is to send Sibilla to me. I shall look after the 
girl, since you are quite unfit to have her. She shall come to 
me here " 

" But, Sister, I don't think she will come. 1 ' 

" Not come ? But I say she shall come. You are to do 
exactly what I tell you and send her here to me at once. I 
will have no excuses. Blessed Saints ! Am I to tell you twice 
that I wish a thing done ? " 

" Nay, Sister ! 'Tis not I ; 'tis Sibilla you have to reckon 
with. You may say what you please I may say all I can 
but Sibilla will not budge unless she wants to." 

"Tut! Tut!" exclaimed the Abbess. "A nice way to have 
brought your child up, forsooth ! Where is your parental author- 
ity ? Where is her filial obedience ? You must make her come." 

" I cannot," said the knight. 

" Then I shall," retorted the Lady Abbess. " I myself shall 
go to Moreleigh and bring her back with me." 

"You will fail." 

"Fail? Not a bit of it! Do you think I can't manage a 
chit of a girl like Sibilla ? " 

" I tell you, Sister, she won't come." 

" And why not, pray ? " 

" She would not leave Moreleigh and me." 

"You!" snorted the Abbess. "You! A fine father, in- 
deed ! The creature's not a fool, is she ? " 

Vipont frowned. " I will not have Sibilla spoken of so, even 
by you, Matilda." 



24 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [April, 

" Tut, man ! You know perfectly well what I mean. Am I 
not her aunt ? A nice person you to defend her name after 
beating her with a riding whip ! " 

"I beg of you, Matilda!" Vipont wilted again. 

"Oh! I heard all about it. St. Scholastica ! The town 
rings of it. They talk of it in taverns yet. No. I shall see 
niece Sibilla, and bring her back with me to Exeter. In the 
Abbey, at least, she will be safe and sound. The sisters are 
not beaten with riding whips." 

Vipont writhed, muttering that the girl would not leave 
Moreleigh for the dull life of a cloister. The Lady Abbess had 
sharp ears. At the word " dull " she turned upon her brother 
again, still smiling, but with an ominous flash in her clear gray 
eyes. 

"Dull? The Abbey dull? She will not find time to be 
dull ! There are matins and Masses and vespers to be at. There 
will be the reading of holy books to fortify her mind. I war- 
rant me she has no learning. How should she have, poor maid, 
in a rough keep like Moreleigh, with none but soldiers and 
stable boys and rude peasant women ? " 

" You would not make a nun of her, Matilda?" 

" A nun ? Stuff and nonsense ! What a fool the man is, 
to be sure ! Yet she might do worse than be a Benedictine. 
Listen to me, Sigar. This Sibilla of yours has grown up like 
some wild thing. She needs discipline. She knows nought but 
of Moreleigh and men. She must mix with women of her own 
rank and station. Her mind must be enlarged. She must be 
trained to be worthy of the position she will some day take in 
the world. The world Stop ! I have it ! The very thing ! " 

The Lady Abbess rubbed her plump hands together and 
allowed a broader smile to spread over her rosy face as she 
pieced together a scheme for her niece's education. Her brother 
saw the change in her countenance there was a faint resem- 
blance to Sibilla when the Abbess smiled like this and heard 
the new inflection in her voice with much relief. His brows 
relaxed. 

" She will go to the court, or, better still, abroad. You are 
right, Sigar, for once in your life. Twould be too sudden a 
change to coop her up here. She must travel. Now don't 
contradict me! Don't argue the point! I say she must tra- 
vel; and travel she shall." 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 25 

" But, Matilda, Sibilla cannot travel abroad alone ! " 

" And who said she should travel alone ? Certainly not I." 

"I cannot take her." 

" I should hope not, indeed ! That would be a pretty way 
out of the difficulty." 

" And you" 

" I stay where I am ; but Sibilla Sibilla shall go afaring in 
the train of some great lady. I shall find the one to take her. 
She shall see the world. She shall learn" 

" She won't go." 

" You madden me, Sigar ! She will go. Trust a girl to 
miss such a chance ! " 

"You are wrong, Matilda. You are wrong." 

" I have made up my mind," the Lady Abbess asserted 
blandly, her lips coming together with a snap. " She shall do 
as she is told ! " 

Vipont shrugged his shoulders. " Very well then, Matilda," 
he said, " manage it if you can ; but you will soon find that 
you are mistaken." 

"Send the child to me," commanded the Abbess, "and I 
shall talk to her." 

" I shall bring her with me when next I ride to Exeter." 

" Good ! . It is all arranged. Blessed Saints ! Will the girl 
dare to refuse me ? I should think not indeed ! " 

Notwithstanding which protestation on the part of the Lady 
Abbess, the persuasion of Sibilla was no easy task; and nearer 
three years than two elapsed e're she was finally packed off on 
her travels in the train of the " great lady " whom her aunt 
had persuaded to chaperone her. 

Her plans for Sibilla had put the Lady Abbess in a good 
temper. For the remainder of the interview she was in the 
best of humors with herself and with her brother. His brow 
cleared as they spoke together, and before long he looked quite 
a different man. The heavy lines that his habitual frown had 
drawn between his eyes and at the corners of his mouth were 
not indeed gone, but they were smoothed away to faint pen- 
cilings as he smiled. His eyes, too, lost their worried, brood- 
ing look, and sparkled frank and clear as he became more ani- 
mated ; for, if he feared the Lady Abbess and her sharp tongue, 
he loved his sister Matilda none the less. Seen thus, he was a 
handsome man, splendidly set up, noble in his bearing and ges- 



26 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [April, 

ture, utterly different from the overbearing, morose, and self- 
centered master of Moreleigh. 

When at length he turned to go, the Abbess once more spoke 
of Sibilla. 

"You will bring the child without fail, Sigar ? " she asked. 

"Without fail, Matilda; though I doubt me that you will 
be able to persuade her." 

"Tut!" said the Abbess. "Leave that to me. Good-bye, 
Sigar! Keep your temper in hand and let us have no more 
talking of Vipont among the serfs and pot-boys. Blessed 
Saints ! You were ever unruly. You need your sister to manage 
you ! A good ride to you ; and a speedy return with Sibilla ! " 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

While the untoward events recorded at the laboratory of 
Maitre Barthelemy were taking place, Arnoul had hurried back 
from the sinister neighborhood, keeping as far as was possible 
from the Chateau de Vauvert. He had passed through the gate 
of the University in time and without challenge, and had made 
his way to his own lodging. 

Although he was overwrought by the events of the after- 
noon, and above all by the strange predictions and counsels of 
Maitre Barthelemy, which undoubtedly had a strong effect upon 
his mind, he was careful to see that his most gaudy dress was 
properly adjusted, his short cloak jauntily hung from the 
shoulders, his newest headgear set off to its best advantage, 
and his weapon carefully concealed, before he sallied forth 
again to keep his tryst with Jeannette at Messire Julien's 
tavern. 

But once having entered the wine house, and found himself 
under the spell of the girl's bright eyes, he speedily forgot 
both vaticination and advice, and gave himself over entirely to 
the pleasure of the moment. It was a pleasure he had been 
looking forward to all the day. Now he had come to make an 
evening of it; and he intended to enjoy life while it lasted, 
careless of the vague stirrings of a conscience that even the 
alchemist's words had still been able to evoke. 

And so the wine flowed. Wit, repartee, and jest were 
bantered about. The falling of the dice was as music in his 
ears, Jeannette's smile a thing to live for. The company was 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 27 

composed, for the most part, of the regular habitues of the 
place, with most of whom Arnoul had long been on the best 
of terms. 

The hours sped on, measured out by the emptying of the 
wine cups and the falling of the dice. The warm blood of 
youth flowed, coursing, exhilarating. The tavern was becoming 
noisy. Jeannette's eyes sparkled, he thought, like twin stars 
as she leaned towards him. Her lips were as rose- red petals 
of June flowers. She toyed with a silver ornament hanging 
around her throat that shone, a flickering disc of light, upon 
her bosom. He had seen it before he remembered ; but to- 
night it interested him as it had never done. What were those 
cabalistic signs scratched upon it those scrawls and dashes 
and perforations ? It was a type of Jeannette herself. He put 
out his hand to grasp it, but the girl drew away and, with a 
little shrug, hid it in her breast. 

" No, my Englishman ! You must not touch my talisman. 
Not to-night! You have seen it often before; and I can tell 
you no more about it now than I told you then. You would 
discover nothing of its meaning by looking at it." 

" Let me have it," he begged. " Perhaps there is some 
sign, some cipher, we have overlooked. Do you remember 
nothing of its history ? " He fumbled at her throat to get 
possession of the disc. 

" Nothing other than I have told you. I have had it and 
worn it, so, ever since I was a child ever since I can remember. 
Let go, Arnoul! You disarrange my dress! Let the bauble 
be, since you cannot read its meaning ! Let it be, for to-night 
at least." 

They took no notice, either of them, of the others in the 
tavern. They might have been alone, for all the heed they 
paid to any save themselves. Some one spoke at his elbow: 
" How now, Maitre Englishman ? Where is your crony, Maitre 
Louis, this evening ? " 

"You are not likely to see him here to-night. I left him 
without the wall at the Chateau de Vauvert." He gave the 
answer roughly, scarce turning his head ; and the speaker, 
satisfied with it, though annoyed at the manner in which it was 
given, turned away with a muttered: "All right, Englishman! 
A civil answer costs no more than a rough one ! You might 
at least be civil ! " 



28 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [April, 

Jeannette Blanches Mains leaned forward towards Arnoul. 
She whispered, a sort of terror in her voice : " Where did you 
say Louis was ?" 

"Behind the haunted Chateau," said Arnoul carelessly. 

"And with? With? Whom is he with?" 

" With, Jeannette ? What do you mean ? If you talk like 
that, I shall begin to be jealous of you! But, no; I cannot 
be jealous of poor Louis ! " 

"Louis! I hate him!" Jeannette showed her hatred in 
her face as well as spoke it. 

"And Barthelemy ? " 

" He is with Barthelemy then ? " 

" Yes ; but what of that ? You have not fallen in love with 
Barthelemy, have you ? " 

" No." The girl was shaking, manifestly ill at ease, and 
Arnoul wondered. 

"What of Barthelemy?" he asked. 

" I am afraid of him. He is so uncanny ; and yet I am 
drawn to him somehow. I never feel safe when he is about. 
I don't know why ; but it is true. And he seems to hold me 
with his eyes whenever I see him. I fear for Maitre Louis." 

" Jeannette ! Barthelemy is nothing to you, is he ? You 
have never even spoken to him. Louis I might be jealous of, 
did I not know that you will have nothing to do with him. 
But Barthelemy it is too absurd ! " 

" I dislike him, Arnoul. Yet I am strangely drawn to him. 
What it is I cannot tell. Oh ! I fear him, Arnoul ! I fear 
him!" 

" There is nothing to fear, Jeannette. I will never let him 
so much as say a word to you, if you do not wish it. You 
need never fear ! No one shall dare to frighten you while I 
am near to defend you. God's death ! Do you think I would 
not challenge every clerk in the whole University for you, 
Jeannette ? " His hand mechanically sought the concealed dag- 
ger ; but, with a laugh, he withdrew it again. Then he caught 
her hands in his own and dropped his voice suddenly to a 
whisper, heedless of the nods, the smiles, the coarse comments 
of the others in the tavern. After all, if he took notice at all, 
what did the others matter ? His life was his own and his do- 
ings. He would live for himself and now ! And the girl's 
fear and animation held him in their thrall. He was intoxi- 



i9o8.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 29 

cated with the sparkle of her eyes, with the tear trembling on 
her cheek, beguiled by the sensuousness of her full red lips. 
All the hot flames of passion flared up, surrounding, bathing, 
engulfing, carrying him away. He was aghast at their very 
fierceness. Yet he drew closer and ever closer to her. The 
fumes of the wine had not so clouded his brain but that he 
saw the passion in her face and ielt the answering pressure of 
her hands. The dice fell and rough voices sounded in the 
tavern ; but his mind was in a whirl and he heard nothing save 
her whisper in his ear. 

A low knock sounded upon the door. No one heard it. 
Then the hinges creaked as the door slowly opened and a voice, 
pregnant with forebodings, came from without : 

" I seek Arnoul the Englishman. Is he within ? " 

Through the doorway, in the dark street, a glimpse of a 
white habit showed ghost-like. Silence fell like a pall upon 
the revellers. Jeannette grasped the lad's hands convulsively, 
apprehensive, fearful, and then let them drop. She had gone 
pale and trembled. Her great eyes stared out into the dark- 
ness. 

Arnoul himself, flushed with the wine, rose unsteadily to 
his feet. 

"I am he," he made answer; and he moved towards the 
door. " What wouldst thou with me ? " 

" Hence, then," spoke the vibrant voice. " All the long day 
and night have I sought thee through the streets of Paris. I 
have gone from our cloister to the Abbey of St. Victor, and 
thence, by devious ways and with much seeking, to thy lodg- 
ing near St. Austin's Convent. There they told me that I 
might find thee here. Hither am I come; for there are tidings, 
urgent tidings, that brook no delay tidings from thy home 
in Devon. I have come to seek and acquaint thee with them." 

Like a wan ray of light, struggling through clouds, the words 
broke through upon the boy's brain. What was it home 
the voice had said ? The thought lost itself among the others: 
Home, Barthelemy, Jeannette, Sibilla, Guy. He staggered un- 
steadily across the threshold into the dark night. 

(TO BE CONTINUED.) 




THE BIRTH OF THE CONTROVERSIAL NOVEL. 

BY AGNES REPPLIER. 

" When we leave out what we don't like, we can prove most 
things." Mark Pattison. 

'OW cutting it is to be the means of bringing 
children into the world to be the subjects of the 
Kingdom of Darkness, to dwell with Divils and 
Damned Spirits." 

In this temper of pardonable regret the mother 
of William Godwin wrote to her erring son ; and while the 
maternal point of view deserves consideration (no parent could 
be expected to relish such a prospect), the letter is note- 
worthy as being one of the few written to Godwin, or about 
Godwin, which forces us to sympathize with the philosopher. 
The boy who was reproved for picking up the family cat on 
Sunday " demeaning myself with such profaneness on the 
Lord's day " was little likely to find his religion " all pure 
profit." His account of the books he read as a child, and of 
his precocious and unctuous piety, is probably over- emphasized 
for the sake of color ; but the Evangelical literature of his day, 
whether designed for young people or for adults, was of a 
melancholy and discouraging character. The Pious Deaths of 
Many Godly Children (sad monitor of the Godwin nursery) ap- 
pears to have been read off the face of the earth ; but there 
have descended to us sundry volumes of a like character which 
even now stab us with pity for the little readers long since 
laid in their graves. The most frivolous occupation of the 
good boy in these old story books is searching the Bible, 
" with mamma's permission," for texts in which David " praises 
God for the weather." More serious-minded children weep 
floods of tears because they are 'Most sinners." In a book of 
Sermons for the Very Young, published by the Vicar of Wal- 
thamstow in the beginning of the last century, we find the fall 
of Sodom and Gomorrah selected as an appropriate theme, and 
its lessons driven home with all the force of a direct personal 
application. "Think, little child, of the fearful story. The 



1908.] THE BIRTH OF THE CONTROVERSIAL NOVEL 31 

wrath of God is upon them. Do they now repent of their sins ? 
It is all too late. Do they cry for mercy ? There is none to 
hear them. . . . Your heart, little child, is full of sin. You 
think of what is not right, and then you wish it, and that is 
sin. . . . Ah, what shall sinners do when the last day 
comes upon them? What will they think when God shall 
punish them forever?" 

Children brought up on these lines passed swiftly from one 
form of hysteria to another, from self -exaltation and the assur- 
ance of grace to fears which had no easement. There is noth- 
ing more terrible in literature than Borrow's account of the 
Welsh preacher who believed that when he was a child of 
seven he had committed the unpardonable sin, and whose whole 
life was shadowed by fear. At the same time that little Wil- 
liam Godwin was composing beautiful death-bed speeches for 
the possible edification of his parents and neighbors, we find 
Mrs. Elizabeth Carter writing to the distinguished Mrs. Montagu 
about her own nephew, who realized, at seven years of age, 
how much he and all creatures stood in need of pardon ; and 
who, being ill, pitifully entreated his father to pray that his 
sins might be forgiven. Commenting upon which incident, the 
reverent Montagu Pennington, who edited Mrs. Carter's letters, 
bids us remember that it reflects more credit on the parents 
who brought their child up with so just a sense of religion 
than it does on the poor infant himself. " Innocence," says the 
inflexible Mr. Stanley, in Calebs in Search of a Wife, "can 
never be pleaded as a ground of acceptance, because the thing 
does not exist." 

With the dawning of the nineteenth century came the con- 
troversial novel, and to understand its popularity we have but 
to glance at the books which preceded it, and compared to 
which it presented an animated and contentious aspect. One 
must needs have read Elements of Morality at ten, and Strictures 
on Female Education at fifteen, to be able to relish Father 
Clement at twenty. Sedate young women, whose lightest avail- 
able literature was Ccelebs or Hints Towards Forming the Char- 
acter of a Princess, and who had been presented on successive 
birthdays with Mrs. Chapone's Letters on the Improvement of the 
Mind, and Mrs. West's Letters to a Young Lady, and Mrs. Ham- 
ilton's Letters to the Daughter of a Nobleman, found a natural 
relief in studying the dangers of dissent, or the secret machina- 



32 THE BIRTH OF THE CONTROVERSIAL NOVEL [April, 

tions of the Jesuits. Many a dull hour was quickened into 
pleasurable apprehension of Jesuitical intrigues, from the days 
when Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, stoutly refused to take 
cinchona a form of quinine because it was then known as 
Jesuit's bark, and might be trusted to poison a British consti- 
tution, to the days when Sir William Pepys wrote in all serious- 
ness to Hannah More : " You surprise me by saying that your 
good Archbishop has been in danger from the Jesuits; but I 
believe they are concealed in places where they are less likely 
to be found than in Ireland." 

Just what they were going to do to the good Archbishop 
does not appear, for Sir William at this point abruptly aban- 
dons the prelate to tell the story of a Norwich butcher, who 
for some mysterious and unexplained reason was hiding from 
the inquisitors of Lisbon. No dignitary was too high, no or- 
phan child too low to be the objects of a Popish plot. Mrs. 
Carter writes to Mrs. Montagu, in 1775, about a little found- 
ling whom Mrs. Chapone had placed at service with some coun- 
try neighbors. 

" She behaves very prettily and with great affection to the 
people with whom she is living," says Mrs. Carter. "One of 
the reasons she assigns for her fondness is that they give her 
enough food, which she represents as a deficient article in the 
workhouse; and says that on Fridays particularly she never 
had any dinner. Surely the parish officers have not made a Pa- 
pist the mistress / If this is not the case, the loss of one din- 
ner in a week is of no great consequence." 

To the poor hungry child it was probably of much greater 
consequence than the theological bias of the matron. Nor does 
a dinnerless Friday appear the surest way to win youthful con- 
verts to the fold. But devout ladies who had read Canon Sew- 
ard's celebrated tract on the Comparison between Paganism and 
Popery (in which he found little to choose between them), were 
well on their guard against the insidious advances of Rome. 
" When I had no religion at all," confesses Cowper to Lady 
Hasketh, " I had yet a terrible dread of the Pope." The worst 
to be apprehended from Methodists was their lamentable ten- 
dency to enthusiasm, and their ill-advised meddling with the 
poor. It is true that a farmer of Cheddar told Miss Patty More 
that a Methodist minister had once preached under his best 
apple tree, and that the sensitive tree had never borne another 



1908.] THE BIRTH OF THE CONTROVERSIAL NOVEL 33 

apple ; but this was an extreme case. The Cheddar vestry re- 
solved to protect their orchards from blight by stoning the 
next preacher who invaded the parish, and their example was 
followed with more or less fervor throughout England. In a 
quiet letter written from Margate (1768), by the Rev. John 
Lyon, we find this casual allusion to the process. 

"We had a Methodist preacher hold forth last night. I came 
home just as he had finished. I believe the poor man fared 
badly, for I saw, as I passed, eggs, stones, etc., fly pretty thick." 

It was all in the day's work. The Rev. Lyon, who was a 
scholar and an antiquarian, and who wrote an exhaustive his- 
tory of Dover, had no further interest in matters obviously aloof 
from his consideration. 

This simple and robust treatment, so quieting to the nerves 
of the practitioners, was unserviceable for Papists who did not 
preach in the open; and a great deal of suppressed irritation 
found no better outlet than print. It appears to have been a 
difficult matter in these days to write upon any subject, without 
reverting sooner or later to the misdeeds of Rome. Miss Sew- 
ard pauses in her praise of Blair's sermons to lament the " boast- 
ful egotism " of St. Gregory Nazianzen, who seems tolerably 
remote ; and Mr. John Dyer, when wrapped in peaceful con- 
templation of the British wool-market, suddenly and fervently 
denounces the " black clouds " of bigotry, and the " fiery bolts 
of superstition," which lay desolate " Papal realms." In vain 
Mr. Edgeworth, stooping from his high estate, counselled se- 
renity of mind, and that calm tolerance born of a god-like cer- 
titude ; in vain he urged the benignant attitude of infallibility. 
" The absurdities of Popery are so manifest," he wrote, " that 
to be hated they need but to be seen. But for the peace and 
prosperity of this country, the misguided Catholic should not 
be rendered odious; he should rather be pointed out as an ob- 
ject of compassion. His ignorance should not be imputed to 
him as a crime ; nor should it be presupposed that his life can- 
not be right, whose tenets are erroneous. Thank God that I am a 
Protestant ! should be a mental thanksgiving, not a public taunt." 

Mr. Edgeworth was nearly seventy when the famous Prot- 
estant's Manual ; or, Papacy Unveiled (endeared forever to our 
hearts by its association with Mrs. Varden and Miggs), bowled 
over these pleasant and peaceful arguments. There was no 
mawkish charity about the Manual, which made its way into 
VOL. LXXXVII. 3 



34 THE BIRTH OF THE CONTROVERSIAL NOVEL [April, 

every corner of England, stood for twenty years on thousands 
of British book-shelves, and was given as a reward to children 
so unfortunate as to be meritorious. It sold for a shilling (nine 
shillings a dozen when purchased for distribution), so Mrs. Var- 
den's two post-octavo volumes must have been a special edi- 
tion. Reviewers recommended it earnestly to parents and 
teachers ; and it was deemed indispensable to all who desired 
"to preserve the rising generation from the wiles of Papacy 
and the snares of priestcraft. They will be rendered sensible 
of the evils and probable consequences of Catholic emancipa- 
tion ; and be confirmed in those opinions, civil, political, and 
religious, which have hitherto constituted the happiness and 
formed the strength of their native country." 

This was a strong appeal. A universal uneasiness prevailed, 
manifesting itself in hostility to innovations, however innocent 
and orthodox. Miss Hannah More's Sunday-Schools were stout- 
ly opposed as savoring of Methodism (a religion she disliked), 
and of radicalism, for which she had all the natural horror of 
a well-to-do middle-class Christian. Even Mrs. West, an op- 
pressively pious writer, misdoubted the influence of Sunday- 
Schools, for the simple reason that it was difficult to keep the 
lower orders from learning more than was good ior them. 
" Hard toil and humble diligence are indispensably needful to 
the community," said this excellent lady. " Writing and ac- 
counts appear superfluous instructions in the humblest walks of 
life ; and, when imparted to servants, have the general effect 
of making them ambitious and disgusted with the servile offices 
which they are required to perform." 

Humility was a virtue consecrated to the poor, to the rural 
poor especially ; and what with Methodism on the one hand, 
and the jarring echoes of the French Revolution on the other, 
the British ploughman was obviously growing less humble every 
day. Crabbe, who cherished no illusions, painted him in colors 
grim enough to fill the reader with despair; but Miss More 
entertained a feminine conviction that Bibles and flannel waist- 
coats fulfilled his earthly needs. She believed this of England's 
subjects, whether in Ceylon or Surrey. Her converted Ceylonese 
presents the Bible to his countrymen with these reassuring words: 
" This is the boon which England sends, 

It breaks the chains of sin ; 
Oh, blest exchange for fragrant groves : 

Oh, barter most divine ! " 



1908.] THE BIRTH OF THE CONTROVERSIAL NOVEL 35 

(" ' Give me yer land, and I'll give ye th' Bible,' he says. * A 
fair ixchange is no robbery,' he says.") In Miss More's stories 
and tracts the villagers are as artificial as the happy peasantry 
of an old-fashioned opera. They group themselves deferential- 
ly around the squire and the rector; they wear costumes of un- 
compromising rusticity ; and they sing a chorus of praise to the 
kind young ladies who have brought them a bowl of soup. 
It is curious to turn from this atmosphere of abasement, from 
perpetual curtsies and the lowliest of lowly virtues, to the 
journal of the painter Haydon, who was a sincerely pious man, 
yet who cannot restrain his wonder and admiration at seeing 
the Duke of Wellington behave respectfully in church. That 
a person so august should stand when the congregation stood, 
and kneel when the congregation knelt, seemed to Haydon an 
immense condescension. " Here was the greatest hero in the 
world," he writes ecstatically, " who had conquered the great- 
est genius, prostrating his heart and being before his God in 
his venerable age, and praying for His mercy." 

It is the most naive impression on record. That the Duke 
and the Duke's scullion might perchance stand equidistant from 
the Almighty was an idea which failed to present itself to 
Haydon's ardent mind. 

The pious fiction put forward in the interest of dissent was 
more impressive, more emotional, more belligerent, and, in some 
odd way, more human than Calebs, or The Shepherd of Salis- 
bury Plain. Miss Grace Kennedy's stories are as absurd as 
Miss More's, and though the thing may sound incredible 
much duller, but they give one an impression of painful earn- 
estness, and of that heavy atmosphere engendered by too close 
a contemplation of Hell. A pious Christian lady, with local 
standards, a narrow intelligence, and a comprehensive ignorance 
of life, is not by election a novelist. Neither do polemics lend 
themselves with elasticity to the changing demands of fiction. 
There are, in fact, few things less calculated to instruct the in- 
tellect or to enlarge the heart than the perusal of controversial 
novels. 

But Miss Kennedy had at least the striking quality of te- 
merity. She was not afraid of being ridiculous. She was un- 
daunted in her ignorance. And she was on fire with all the 
bitter ardor of the separatist. Miss More, on the contrary, en- 
tertained a judicial mistrust for fervor, fanaticism, the rush of 
ardent hopes and fears and transports, for all those vehement 



36 THE BIRTH OF THE CONTROVERSIAL NOVEL [April, 

emotions which are apt to be disconcerting to ladies of settled 
views and incomes. Her model Christian, Candidas, " avoids 
enthusiasm as naturally as a wise man avoids folly, or as a 
sober man shuns extravagance. He laments when be encounters 
a real enthusiast, because he knows that, even if honest, he is 
pernicious." In the same guarded spirit, Mrs. Montagu praises 
the benevolence of Lady Bab Montagu and Mrs. Scott, who had 
the village girls taught plain sewing and the catechism. "These 
good works are often performed by the Methodist ladies in the 
heat of enthusiasm; but, thank God! my sister's is a calm and 
rational piety." " Surtout point de zele," was the dignified 
motto of the day. 

There is none of this chill sobriety about Miss Kennedy's 
Bible Christians who, a hundred years ago, preached to a listen- 
ing world. They are aflame with a zeal which knows no doubts 
and recognizes no forbearance. Their methods are akin to those 

of the irrepressible Miss J , who undertook, Bible in hand, 

the conversion of that pious gentleman, the Duke of Wellington; 
or of Miss Lewis who went to Constantinople to convert the 
Sultan. Miss Kennedy's heroes and heroines stand ready to 
convert the world. They would delight in expounding the Scrip- 
tures to the Pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople. Contro- 
versy affords their only conversation. Dogma of the most un- 
relenting kind is their only food for thought. Piety provides 
their only avenue for emotions. Elderly bankers weep profuse- 
ly over their beloved pastor's eloquence, and fashionable ladies 
melt into tears at the inspiring sight of a village Sunday-School. 
Young gentlemen, when off on a holiday, take with them " no 
companion but a Bible"; and the lowest reach of worldliness 
is laid bare when an unconverted mother asks her daughter if 
she can sing something more cheerful than a hymn. Conform- 
ity to the Church of England is denounced with unsparing 
warmth ; and the Church of Rome is honored by having a 
whole novel, the once famous Father Clement, devoted to its 
permanent downfall. 

Dr. Greenhill, who has written a sympathetic notice of Miss 
Kennedy in the Dictionary of National Biography ', considers that 
Father Clement was composed "with an evident wish to state 
fairly the doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church, 
even while the authoress strongly disapproves of them " a 
point of view which compels us to believe that the biographer 
spired himself (and who shall blame him?) the reading of this 




1908.] THE BIRTH OF THE CONTROVERSIAL NOVEL 37 

melancholy tale. That George Eliot, who spared herself noth- 
ing, was well acquainted with its context is evidenced by the 
conversation of the ladies who, in Janet's Repentance, meet to 
cover and label the books of the Paddiford Lending Library. 
Miss Pratt, the autocrat of the circle, observes that the story 
of Father Clement is, in itself, a library on the errors of Roman- 
ism, whereupon old Mrs. Linnet very sensibly replies: "One 
*ud think there didn't want much to drive people away from a 
religion as makes 'em walk barefoot over stone floors, like that 
girl in Father Clement, sending the blood up to the head fright- 
ful. Anybody might see that was an unnat'ral creed." 

So they might; and a more unnatural creed than Father 
Clement's Catholicism was never devised for the extinction of 
man's flickering reason. Only the mental debility of the Claren- 
ham family can account for their holding such views long 
enough to admit of their being converted from them by the 
Montagus. Only the militant spirit of the Clarenham chaplain 
and the Montagu chaplain makes possible several hundred pa 
ges of polemics. Montagu bibles run the blockade, are discov- 
ered in the hands of truth- seeking Clarenhams, and are hurled 
back upon the spiritual assailants. The determination of Father 
Dennis that the Scriptures shall be quoted in Latin only (a 
practice which is scholarly but inconvenient), and the determi- 
nation of Edward Montagu " not to speak Latin in the pres- 
ence of ladies," embarass social intercourse. Catherine Claren- 
ham, the young person who walks barefooted over stone floors, 
has been so blighted by this pious exercise that she cannot, at 
twenty, translate the Pater Noster or Ave Maria into English, 
and remains a melancholy illustration of Latinity. Indeed all 
the Clarenhams are ignorant even of their own superstitions, 
which we might expect their chaplains to have taught them, 
were it not that these reverend gentlemen (Jesuits to a man) 
seem never to have studied the catechism. Their knowledge 
of their priestly functions is distressingly vague, and they are 
unaware that five o'clock in the afternoon is not a customary 
hour to communicate. 

Any little deficiencies in theology, any little ignorance of 
canon law, are more than atoned for, however, by depths of 
Jesuitical intrigue. When young Basil Clarenham shows symp- 
toms of yielding to Montagu arguments, and begins to want 
a Bible of his own, he is spirited away to Rome, and confined 
in a monastery of the Inquisition, where he spends his time 



38 THE BIRTH OF THE CONTROVERSIAL NOVEL [April. 

reading " books forbidden by the Inquisitors," and especially 
" a New Testment with the prohibitory mark of the Holy Of- 
fice upon it," which the weak-minded monks have amiably 
placed at his disposal. Indeed the monastery library to which 
the captive is made kindly welcome, seems to have been well 
stocked with interdicted literature; and, after browsing in these 
pastures for several tranquil months, Basil tells his astonished 
hosts how their books have taught him that " the Romish 
Church is the most corrupt of all churches professing Chris- 
tianity. Having accomplished this unexpected but happy re- 
sult, the Inquisition exacts from him a solemn vow that he will 
never reveal its secrets, and sends him back to England, where 
he loses no time in becoming an excellent Protestant. His sis- 
ter Maria follows his example (her virtues have pointed stead- 
fastly to this conclusion) ; but Catherine enters a convent, full 
of stone floors and idolatrous images, where she becomes a "tool " 
of the Jesuits, and says her prayers in Latin until she dies. 

No wonder Father Clement went through twelve editions, 
and made its authoress as famous in her day as the authoress 
of Elsie Dinsmore is in ours. No wonder the Paddiford Lend- 
ing Library revered its sterling worth. And no wonder it pro- 
voked from Catholics reprisals which Dr. Greenhill stigmatizes 
as " flippant." To-day it lives by virtue of half a dozen mock- 
ing lines in George Eliot's least- read story ; but for a hundred 
years its progeny has infested the earth a crooked progeny, 
like Peer Gynt's, which can never be straightened into sincer- 
ity. A controversial novelist who should attempt to state his 
opponent's principles with candor, and to rebut them with fair- 
ness, would make scant progress. It is his part to set up the 
opposition arguments like nine-pins, and to bowl them over at 
short range with unconvincing ease. It is his privilege to give 
himself as many points as he likes in a game where he controls 
his antagonist's tactics. He may be very much in earnest, but 
his methods are dishonest ; and his charity has been stretched 
to its utmost bounds when he blandly invites us to "compassion- 
ate " those whom he has deliberately made odious or idiotic. 

I say "he," but in good truth it is generally "she." It is 
generally a woman who handles fearlessly themes of which she 
is profoundly ignorant, who censures most where she has least 
authority, and who thinks to do her Master's work "by scrambling 
up the steps of His judgment throne to divide it with Him," 




JESUITISM AND THE LAW OF PRAYER. 

BY CORNELIUS CLIFFORD. 

|T has been observed more than once, by those who 
are not otherwise ungenerous in their appreciation 
of the undoubted services rendered by the Society 
of Jesus to the post-Tridentine Church, that our 
present widespread insensibility to what may be 
called the liturgical aspects of Catholicism is the unlovely pro- 
duct in great part of Jesuit ideas. The existence of the insen- 
sibility is not likely to be questioned. It is one of the ad- 
mitted, if minor, scandals of the time. One does not need to 
be a profound ecclesiologist in order to recognize it ; but if one's 
reading of the past is too perfunctory to enable one to pro- 
nounce upon its significance, either to the individual conscience 
or to the world at large, there are certain enactments made re- 
cently by Pius X. in reform of our admitted laxities in Church 
music ; there is the grave tribunal known at Rome as the Con- 
gregation of Rites ; and, if such evidence be accounted too tech- 
nical, or, it may be, too remote from the purpose of our own 
parochial economies in worship to enable one to lay its lesson 
to heart, there is the abiding protest of our actual liturgical 
books. 

It is in these last, in our Roman Vesperals, our Pontificals, 
our Breviaries, in our venerable and most wonderful Mass Book, 
that the least pragmatical will obtain glimpses of certain well- 
nigh forgotten obediences of the orthodox soul at prayer that 
once seemed too sacrosanct in their origin, too ecumenic in their 
development, too humanly Catholic in their healthy balance of 
symbolism and spirituality ever to have been permitted to fall 
into disuse. And yet, between the Church of the pre- Reforma- 
tion period and the Church of our own day, not only has a 
change of practice intervened in this grave matter, but a change 
in psychological tendency as well. Not a little of the change 
can be explained as the outcome of a more critical experience 
on the part of the Church's pastorate of the deeper and more 



40 JESUITISM AND THE LAW OF PRAYER L A P ril > 

tragic contrariousness of the heart of man. Moods, no less 
than modes, have altered. As is often verified in the case of 
one whose character has deepened without hardening under the 
stress of failure or sorrow, the honest student feels that the 
same spiritual fibre is there, the same persistent ego and per- 
sonality, the same ineluctable prepossessions about God, and the 
ordinances which Christ has devised for the individual soul ; 
but none the less much has been transformed. 

The Church of the fifth century is psychologically not more 
removed from the Church of the fifteenth than is the Church of 
Caraffa's day the reformer Pontiff who first accurately gauged the 
extremer tendencies latent in the Ignatian ideal from the busy 
argumentative, school-building, " mission- giving " Church of the 
present time. While the contrast may be detected in a hundred 
breathless activities to which the earlier epoch was a stranger, 
it is in the liturgy, as it has survived in theory, while being 
confusingly altered in practice, that one may best appreciate 
some of the more spiritual consequences involved in the transi- 
tion. There are few things, of course, upon which the reflec- 
tive mind will be less prone to dogmatize than upon a problem 
like this. 

The questions involved in it are too far- reaching, too many- 
sided, and, let us add, too delicate likewise, to enable any 
single scholar, however widely informed his readings in eccle- 
siology may have made him, to take in all its bearings at a 
glance. But if the trained expert is bound from the nature of 
the case to cultivate an attitude of caution, what shall be said 
of the untrained, yet not necessarily unread, apologist in the 
street? He, too, we imagine, would do well to maintain a policy 
of discreet aloofness in such bewildering encounters, and leave 
views and generalizations to the theological wits who are able 
to enforce them. No prejudices are safe where historic theories 
are involved, save those that are derived from the Holy Ghost. 

It may be admitted, then, that a more dispassionate survey 
of the data actually available will possibly tend to shift the 
blame from Jesuit shoulders to more impersonal factors in the 
complex problem. Many things have happened since that mem- 
orable juncture in the fortunes of the youthful Order when 
Paul the Fourth sent Cardinal Pacheco to Lainez and his dis- 
affected companions to urge upon them the necessity of making 
the public recitation of the Breviary binding in the Jesuit Rule. 



1 90 8.] JESUITISM AND THE LAW OF PRAYER 41 

The anti-liturgical instinct displayed by Lainez on that occasion 
soon passed into a tradition which no amount of after-pressure 
could modify; and the drift of popular Catholicism during the 
next two centuries only served to emphasize the significance of 
it as an initial breach with the historic past. Not for the merit 
of their services only to the cause of Christian education, but 
for the indefatigable resourcefulness with which they strove to 
keep alive the piety of the towns- folk through southern and cen- 
tral Europe, were the Jesuits everywhere recognized as leaders. 
Not being charged with the cure of souls in the old canonical 
sense, it became a kind of necessity with them to create in the 
minds of those to whom they ministered a craving for the supra- 
normal in their religion which should yet be decent and loyal 
and true. A policy of that sort, it need scarcely be said, could 
hardly help blunting the sensibilities of men to the older and 
more leisurely forms of prayer j and when one takes into account 
the other forces at play during the period under review, one can 
see how inevitable it was that the change, which the great litur- 
giologists of the present generation are doing their utmost to 
counteract, should prove as portentous as it is now seen to be. 
Yet in all this the Jesuits were but obeying an instinct which 
will be admitted on reflection, we think, to be both orthodox 
and wise. They established themselves in what they believed 
would turn out to be important centres of city life. Their 
churches were roomy and modern looking, built rather for 
preaching and hearing confessions than for the statelier functions 
of the liturgical year. A school of architects, recruited in some 
instances from their own very versatile ranks, sprang up to aid 
them in carrying out their ideas. The churches thus erected, 
collegiate for the most part, as they were, soon engendered a 
style that reflected the questionable taste of the day. The Jes- 
uits were dangerously " popular," in a word. The note of their 
instructions was " popular " likewise. Their orators were facile 
in discourse, moderate and seldom grandiose in tone, familiar 
yet dignified in manner, and always actual in the treatment of 
their theme. The easy devotions which they encouraged had 
the supreme advantage of being " understanded of the people " ; 
with the saving difference that the " people" in this instance meant 
the middle and upper classes. If the form of Scripture was al- 
lowed to disappear in these provisions for the more general 
heart of Catholicism, the substance of Scripture, at least, was 



42 JESUITISM AND THE LA w OF PRA YER [April, 

retained, and retained, too, in its most central and efficient sense. 
Europe was taught to hold hard by the doctrine of the Mass. 
No Order, however revolutionary, could afford to forget that; 
and it is to the credit of the great Society, that, so far from 
even seeming to forget it, its members thrust it prominently 
into the foreground, making frequent Communion and practi- 
cal devotion to the Blessed Eucharist the be-all and end-all of 
a Christian life. Not all orthodox men could have an hourly 
interest in Christ's Vicar, but there was no one who could not 
live in constant relationship to the great mystery of Christ's 
Presence on the Altar and the overflowing mercies of His now 
daily Mass. For whatever other achievements their partisans 
may praise them, this one alone reveals their worth ; as it also 
reveals the sometimes neglected secret of their own and the 
Church's strength. 

With the history of the Society as a whole, and the tortu- 
ous policies associated with its name, we have no concern here. 
Its members may have pursued devious ways ; they may have 
scandalized Protestant Europe by a most perverse and uncom- 
promising allegiance to certain questionable theories of moral- 
ity ; their esprit de corps may have degenerated into partisan- 
ship ; their devotion to the Papal claims may have been vitiated 
all unwittingly by the controversial bias, the narrowness, the 
sectarianism of the Pharisee. All this may be admitted for the 
sake of argument, even while we are perfectly aware that a 
more reasonable, perhaps a more human, interpretation of the 
facts is possible, a more scientific reconstruction of the disjecta 
membra of their story. One may even go further, and allow 
again for the sake of argument that they have perceptibly 
lowered the prestige of the elder religious bodies of Latin 
Christianity; that they have acted as a drag-weight upon the 
proper initiative of the diocesan clergy; that they have been a 
secret vexation to the episcopate whose powers they have be- 
littled by specious arguments in theology, and whose preroga- 
tives they have nullified by quiet intrigue at Rome; that they 
have, all unconsciously, loved credit and influence and the friend- 
ship of the great as less disciplined orders have loved ease and 
material well-being; that they have endeavored, by undenoted 
yet mysteriously effective ways, to make themselves the hinge 
of St. Peter's world, a sort of new and black- robed cardinalate, 
in fine, and become, as Clement XIV. long ago said of them 



1908.] JESUITISM AND THE LAW OF PRAYER 43 

in the famous Brief which he issued for their suppression, a 
menace to the peace of the Church. 

It is no paradox to maintain that much of this may be 
colorably true ; and yet must this challengeable body not be 
too sweepingly condemned ; because, as every commentator on 
their Institute, from Suarez and Orlandini to the author of the 
little Catechism of the Vows, will warn you, their actual ideals 
may turn out, upon analysis, to be identical with the ideals of 
the New Testament itself, while no serious departure from the 
spirit of their Rule has ever been juridically proved against 
them. Read in the light of these cautions their ambition takes 
on a certain character of evangelicalism ; and their influence is 
of the sort that any society of good priests would be able ulti- 
mately to exercise that knew how to insist upon the substance, 
rather than the accidents of Catholicism, and that could distin- 
guish between the soul and the body of its ordered system of 
prayer. It is in this wonderful sureness of intuition call it 
mere cleverness or by the worse name of astuteness, if you 
will in this clear and untroubled sense of the instant need of 
things, that the real secret of Jesuit success has ever lain. 
Their attitude towards the liturgy, therefore, so far from being 
a difficulty to be explained away, becomes rather a signal illus- 
tration of a two-fold law which the student may see at work 
in the public prayer of Christianity, as developed out of its 
half-Jewish, half-Gentile surroundings from the very beginning. 
It is the law of permanence, on the one hand, in all central 
and dogmatic meanings, and, on the other, a very human, yet 
slowly evolved self-adaptability to circumstance in things of 
lesser moment, 

Like many another outward sign of present-day Catholi- 
cism, the Church's liturgy and the attitude of her own children 
towards it in the face of hostile criticism, have been much mis- 
understood. To the student of origins that liturgy largely ex- 
ists as a most curious but valuable survival out of which he 
constructs a strange semi-apocalyptic "beast," which is neither 
wholly Christian nor wholly pagan, but which typifies, with 
more or less accuracy, the kind of Catholicity that was evolved 
from the jarring elements of the Roman Empire from the sec- 
ond to the sixth century of our era. The cruder and more pop- 
ular expression of this view may be found in Gibbon ; the more 
speciously scientific presentment of the same may be consulted 



44 JESUITISM AND THE LAW OF PRAYER [April, 

in writers as unrelated in subject-matter as are Mr. J. G. Frazer, 
the author of The Golden Bough, and Professor Percy Gardner 
in England, and Professors Harnack, Dobschiitz, Wehrnle, and 
other exponents of the Ritschlian school in the Germany of 
our day. 

Yet, in spite of all this, the liturgy will be found, after due 
investigation, to be an institution that reflects, in many unsus- 
pected ways, the long life-story and the ultimate significance 
of gospel Christianity itself. Existing in its most meagre form 
as a mystical and many- voiced body of literature and ritual 
coming down to us by well-ascertained stages out of a very 
remote past, it has this unique quality above all other monu- 
ments of religious antiquity, that it arrests the most various 
and opposite types of men. Poet, historian, antiquarian, eccle- 
siologist each alike is interested in its flowing testimony ; and 
no sincerely Christian inquirer, whatever his confessional ante- 
cedents may be, can be wholly insensible to the potency of its 
spell. Grave and musical as the phrases of the old Versio Itala 
in which it enwraps its transcendent meanings, mysterious as 
the rites to which it never fails to adapt the inevitable word, 
it may be described as a stately synthesis of sacramentalisms, 
the rounded and ceremonious obedience of a vast apostolic 
brotherhood or army of souls made perfect, because they have 
been careful to remember the evangelical injunction, thus shall 
ye pray ! 

The bare archaeology of such a subject is full of interest, not 
for the student only, but for the general reader as well. One 
kas but to consult the works that the Church of the present 
time owes to the industry of that remarkable group of scholars 
represented by M. Vacandard, Mgr. Batiffol, and the Abbe 
Chevalier in France, Mgr. Duchesne in Rome, and, most of all, 
by Abbot Cabrol and his Benedictine collaborators in the exiled 
community now happily established at Farnborough in the Isle 
of Wight, to realize how serious and how single-minded is the 
movement which may be said to have begun anew in our own 
day, and which seems deliberately to aim at recalling to the col- 
lective consciousness of Catholicism the beauty and spiritual sig- 
nificance of much that the griefs of the post-Reformation period 
and the graver anxieties of the long Napoleonic crisis compelled 
the Church to forego. Yet it is not precisely to the liturgy as 
viewed from the scholar's standpoint that we would appeal in 



1908.] JESUITISM AND THE LAW OF PRAYER 45 

support of our contention that in the law of prayer one may 
expect to find fresh and present evidence of the truth of Catholi- 
cism considered evangelically as The Way. To be of any value 
the argument ought to proceed contrariwise. It ought to show 
that it is in what Catholicism has retained, not in what it has 
suffered to fall into abeyance, that its essentially evangelical 
character, its true and Christ-like pragmatism, in a word, ap- 
pears. 

And this, surely, it ought not to be difficult to do. There are 
three enjoined obediences in his creed with regard to which 
even the twentieth century Catholic feels that he must hazard 
his all. They are his Baptism, his use of sacramental Penance, 
and his feeling for the Sunday Eucharist. If, when death 
knocks sharply at the door of life, he seems to betray an 
equally grave concern for the Sacrament of the Last Anointing, 
that fact will not really weaken the point of the argument. 
The least instructed layman knows that if he must choose be- 
tween an Unction and an Absolution, he ought, if he be in 
grievous sin, to seek the Absolution first. It is in the three 
sacraments we have instanced, therefore, that Catholicism ap- 
pears most persuasively to reveal, not merely the outward and 
historic significance of the liturgy, but its inward character and 
ethos as well. The liturgy, in so far as it is distinguishable 
from the Mysteries at least, may, indeed, be looked upon as 
an aftergrowth ; but in its more sacred aspects it has always 
been regarded as ancillary to these, and derives the chief burden 
of its message from these, almost as the body, in the Aristo- 
telian concept of corporeity, exists for and finds its meaning, 
or true " entelechy," in the soul. 

And what is true of the liturgy is truer still, and in a much 
more recondite sense, of the Sacraments or Mysteries in their 
own order. They have never existed for themselves ; have 
never been an end in themselves; but have served always as 
instruments, or Ways, for the soul in its progress through Christ 
to the Father. Sacramenta propter homines ! The clue to all the 
liturgical variations to which antiquity bears such ample wit- 
ness really lies in that sensible and supremely Catholic phrase. 
It links the apparent antinomies of our earlier past with those 
more familiar modifications to which we alluded in our intro- 
ductory remarks as constituting one of the minor scandals of 
the time. No doubt there is a sense also, in spite of the fact 



46 JESUITISM AND THE LAW OF PRAYER [April, 

that there has never been a proverb in current use to lend it 
point, in which it is hardly less true to say : Sacramento, propter 
ecclesiam. Baptism is certainly not administered for the sake of 
the recipient alone, but for the sake of the Church also, which 
must be built up through such ordinances unto the full measure 
of the stature of Christ. Nor, again, is the admission of the 
individual believer to the privilege of Holy Communion a matter 
beside the concern of the faithful at large, seeing that we all, 
being many, are one Bread, all we that partake of that Bread. 

It is possible, of course, to lend a false emphasis to an idea 
of this kind, and so to work confusion and disedification, Some 
such misconception, indeed, would seem to have lurked behind 
the rigorisms of the earlier Frankish and Irish Penitentials,* 
against which, as being essentially uncanonical in character and 
origin, the humaner Churchmen f of the ninth century were 
compelled to protest in vigorous terms; just as a parallel no- 
tion, derived in part, no doubt, from an analogously perverted 
reading of antiquity, lent color a thousand years later to the 
unlovely pretensions of Jansenism. 

Both sides, however, if wisely counterweighed, will help the 
sincere inquirer to understand the curious fortunes that have 
befallen the liturgy of Baptism. The simplest and most ele- 
mentary of rites, as it is depicted for us in the Book of the 
Acts, it becomes, within the next three centuries, not only in 
Palestine and in Egypt, but in Rome itself, and throughout 
the most matter-of-fact portions of the Western -Empire, an 
elaborate and exceedingly complex obedience, or cult, a series 
of ceremonialisms giving meaning and substance and liturgical 
content to the most important divisions of the Christian year. 
If concern for the proper training of the adult candidate for 
Baptism did not inspire our present season of Lent, it furnished, 
at any rate, some of its most striking characteristics. How 
profoundly spiritual these characteristics are, how pragmatical, 
how obediential, a glance at the Lenten Masses of the Roman 

* -v. g. The Pcenitentiale Columbani, the work of St. Columbanus. It is discussed with 
much learning by Wasserschleben in Die Bussordnungen der Abendlandischen Kirche, Halle, 
1851 ; and is perhaps not the least interesting of its class. 

t The Council of Chalons, A. D. 813, c. 38, insists that Scripture and earlier ecclesiastical 
tradition must furnish the norm in these matters. Modus enim pcenitentiae peccata sua con- 
fitentibus aut per antiquorum institutionem, aut per sanctarum scripturarum auctoritatem, aut 
per ecclesiasticam consuetudinem imponi debet, repudiates ac penitus eliminatis libtllis quos 
pcenittntiales vacant quorum sunt certi errores, incerti auctotes. Quoted by Smith and 
Cheetham in loc. 



J9o8.] JESUITISM AND THE LAW OF PRAYER 47 

Missal will reveal. Outside of the Canon, which has a history 
of its own, they constitute one of the oldest, as they are also 
one of the richest and most stimulating portions of the great 
est prayer book that Christianity has known ; and if we would 
measure their spiritual compass and capacity for triumph, we 
must reckon, if we can, the ethical -distance that lies between 
the ruder religious notions peculiar to the semi-pagan popula- 
tions of sixth-century Europe and the ideals that gave char- 
acter to the Middle Age. The various scattered conceptions of 
a pre-paschal obedience, which gradually chrystallized into our 
present Lenten discipline, played no small part in that tremen- 
dous change ; and if they are still retained in the Roman lit- 
urgy, surely we may believe that it is because they are in- 
tended to speak further victories even for the modern soul. How 
long this quasi-primacy of Baptism lasted for in reality it all 
but amounted to that it would be difficult within precise limits 
to say. So long as there were adult candidates for initiation 
into Christianity in numbers sufficient to make a difference in 
the moral atmosphere of the time, we may be sure that these 
mysterious rites loomed large in the life of the Church. When 
the note of Catholicism became a plain geographical achieve- 
ment instead of a divine tendency, when faith came in and pa- 
gan darkness went out, the transition allowing always for the 
obvious inertia of an institution like the liturgy would doubt- 
less tend to make itself felt at first by reading a new and wider 
meaning into the elaborate ritual of former days, and then by 
a gradual curtailment of the less obvious words and ceremonies 
of the rite itself. 

The process thus roughly indicated in historic outline cov- 
ered, in all probability, a space of close upon a thousand 
years. Taking its rise in the already elaborate ceremonial for 
which Justin Martyr is so specific a witness,* it moves forward 
with an increasingly poetic preoccupation with the sacramental 
idea lying at the heart of all its mysterious ritual, until it 
reaches its apogee during the critical years that intervene be- 
tween the close of the fourth century and the beginning of the 
fifth ; a period as prolific in ethnic, as it certainly was in relig- 
ious, change. With the disappearance of the Cathecumenate, 
however, the chief reason for its liturgical prominence was ta- 
ken away. The old, orderly, civilized groups, for whom Cyril 

* ApoL I. c. Ixi. Edinburgh Edition. 



48 JESUITISM AND THE LAW OF PRAYER [April, 

of Jerusalem labored in the East and Augustine wrote and 
preached in the West, the audientes and competentes whose hearts 
were searched and tested by organized instruction and austere 
delays, gave place to a new class of candidates when the fall 
of the Western Empire brought the rude barbarians of central 
and northern Europe under the sudden spell of the Church. 
The franchise of Latin Christianity was thus, indeed, mercifully 
widened ; but the change naturally reacted upon a liturgy which 
was still intelligible enough and fluid enough in conception to 
be actual to all those who waited upon its dramatic intervals 
from celebration to celebration throughout the year. The re- 
forms introduced by Pope Gregory the Great gave sureness as 
well as dignity to what survived out of a past to which, both 
as patrician and as Roman Pontiff, he could not but look back 
with a pathetic sense of loss. The unity aimed at two centu- 
ries later by Charlemagne, who strove to build up for Cathol- 
icism a purer, if not a statelier, world out of the very ruins 
over which Gregory had mourned, gave further, and perhaps 
more picturesque, definition to the fragmentary groups of ex- 
orcisms, unctions, and prayers that now remained, even though 
the immediate appositeness of many of them had disappeared.* 
Thus it came to pass that the soul of the rite lived on, 
weaving for itself, amid the changed conditions of the slow- 
coming modern world, those simpler but hardly less effective, 
externalisms familiar to the believer of to- day. f Yet who, that 
has ever watched with Catholic eyes even the most perfunctory 
performance of the now shrunken ceremony, will say that it 
has lost one jot or tittle of its really vital meaning ? The in- 
itial challenge; the laying- on of hands; the exorcisms; the 
breathings ; the symbolic renovation of the life of sense ; the 
triple renunciation of Satan and all his works and pomps ; 
the profession of faith; the re-affirmed will to be baptized in 
Christ ; the guarantees, made vicariously or in one's own per- 
son, according to circumstance; the oil; the saving water; the 
chrism ; the white garment ; the proffered light ; they are all 
there. They are not dead survivals ; but integral portions of 
a living sign ; and the feeling of the Catholic in this regard 
must be gauged, not by the brief quarter of an hour consumed 
in their application, nor by the perfunctory and sometimes 

* Cf. Alcuin's Letter to Odwin, Epp. 134 [261]. 

t Cf. Les Origines Liturgiques. Par Dom Fernand Cabrol. Paris,i9o6. Pp. [167 and seqq. 



i goS.] JESUITISM AND THE LAW OF PRAYER 49 

graceless behavior of sponsor or of priest, but by the after-care 
with which the new creature thus born to God is kept by the 
Church's ministrations from assoilment at the hands of the 
world. 

As we have already pointed out in a previous paper in this 
series, it is the costly sensitiveness of the Catholic conscience 
with respect to that most actual, perhaps most imperious, of 
questions, the proper Christian education of the child, that fur- 
nishes the most illuminating commentary on the significance of 
infant baptism to every loyal follower of Jesus Christ in this 
as in every other challenging age. Baptism is thus the foun- 
dation and the fair beginning of all the subsequent obediences 
in the Christian life; and the liturgy in which the sound form 
of it has been safeguarded from the perversions of envious 
time is precious in our eyes as being charged with such re- 
memberable tokens and vehicles of all that it entails. Nor is 
it precious only as the sentimentalist might prize it, but for 
the evidence it affords to the candid inquirer that, ministering 
or being ministered to, we are still with Christ in the Way. 

How the same truth may be gathered from the apparently 
incoherent story that attaches to the liturgical development of 
Penance and the Eucharist we hope to show in the articles 
that follow. 

Seton Hall, South Orange, N, J. 




VOL. LXXXVII. 4 




PASSAGES FROM THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN 
CLERGYMAN. 

CHOSEN AND COPIED BY ORBY SHIPLEY, M.A. 

PART I. 

|T may be useful to preface the following Diary with 
a few preliminary remarks. 

It would be incorrect to think that the doubts, 
which eventually led to my leaving the Church 
of England in 1901, presented themselves sud- 
denly only a year or two before that step was taken. During 
the preceding five or six years, I had been steadily, though at 
first quite unconsciously, moving in a Catholic direction. Ques- 
tions connected with the nature of authority in matters of faith ; 
with the position of St. Peter in the New Testament, and of 
his successors in the history of the Church; and with the con- 
troversy concerning Anglican ordinations, had occupied my 
mind more or less continually for years. But, whenever doubts 
about Anglicanism arose in my mind, as they did from time 
to time in connection with these questions, there was always an 
Anglican friend or teacher at hand, ready with an apparently 
satisfactory explanation. So matters went on during the whole 
period of my Anglican ministry; and so they seemed likely to 
go on to the end. 

Towards the close of the year 1899, however, various cir- 
cumstances united to bring matters with me to a head. Some 
were purely personal and, to all appearances, were quite uncon- 
nected with the " Roman Question," although I can now see 
that they played their part in setting one free from some of 
the ties which bound one most strongly to Anglicanism. 
Two things ought, perhaps, to be mentioned : 
First : I had almost unconsciously been gaining a deeper 
and clearer conception of the Church as the Body of Christ, a 
spiritual organism acting with the authority of her Divine Head ; 
and with this had come to me a more profound realization of 
the sacredness of Catholic truth, and the necessity, before all 
things, of believing the Catholic faith. 






1908.] THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN 51 

Secondly : The controversies, which began anew to agitate 
the Anglican world about the year 1897, and which have not 
even yet died away, forced upon my notice the real character 
of Anglicanism in a manner which could not be gainsaid. 

The following extracts serve to illustrate the struggle to 
which these considerations gave rise. One circumstance, whijh 
caused the struggle to be longer and more painful than it need 
have been, cannot be alluded to in these pages, except vaguely 
in one or two passages, under the term of " personal influences." 
* # * 

My doubts becoming still more pressing, I wrote to a prom- 
inent member of the English Church. He replied in a courte- 
ous and considerate manner at some length, in substance to the 
following effect. He reminded me of certain Anglican books 
by Bishops Forbes of Brechin and Hamilton of Salisbury, of 
Tract Ninety and Eucharistic Adoration, and bade me to con- 
sider, or re-consider, their position. He then added several 
points for me to estimate : 

1. That the Reformers were (unlike our two Archbishops, 
who are not) theologians and knew the value of terms; and 
they always, in the great Reaction, stopped short of heresy. 

2. That the Church of England was honest in her appeal to 
primitive antiquity, our fundamental position ; and hence, we 
are justified in choosing a catholic interpretation for our form- 
ularies, when they are ambiguous. 

3. Granted that much is unsatisfactory in the Church of 
England, is the confusion worse now than it was during the 
Great Schism of the West? 

4. Assuming that things are as bad with us as may be pos- 
sible, where are we to go ? The East is beyond our reach ; 
do we better ourselves with Rome ? Proving Canterbury wrong 
goes but a short way to proving Rome right. 

5. We do not get rid of corruptions by going to Rome 
for instance, the refusal of the Eucharist to children is a late 
corruption. 

For myself (he added), I feel that there are difficulties ev- 
erywhere. Here, I can hold and teach what I believe to be 
the Catholic faith. What more do I want ? 

# * * 

I also wrote to a sometime convert clergyman, now a priest, 
Father P . He refrained from coming to see me, as he did 



52 THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN [April, 

"not wish to be indiscreet." He adds: I would just make one 
remark ; when you feel practically convinced, do not hold back, 
as if waiting for a speculative completeness in the proofs, for 
a perfect answer to every objection, such as can never be found 
outside pure mathematics. One reads oneself into an unreal 
state of mind, in which things lose their proportion. After one 
becomes a Catholic, many an imaginary difficulty disappears, 
or retires into its proper place. 

* * * 

The following is a letter from Canon M , to whom I 

had written: 

I have received your touching letter, and have read it with 
the deepest interest. I see that God is prolonging your ag- 
onies of waiting and of mental conflict, adding this new ele- 
ment of distress from the side of relationship, in the natural 
order. Few of those who have had to break through their 
strongest ties of affection, can have had more to go through 
than yourself. May He who sends these trials enable you to 
bear them. Certainly He, will give the corresponding grace, for 
He only desires to give you the glory of struggling for Him. 

You favor me greatly, in telling me of your intention to 
make a profound reconsideration of your religious position. 
Such an examination must evidently be obligatory on all who 
are not in the One Fold which our Lord constituted ; although 
the majority of those who belong to the ninety-nine unsound 
systems, which surround the one true system, do not come to 
realize their obligation. 

The best friends you can go to are the Jesuits. Any priest, 
indeed, will be able to give you important information on ex- 
act points of Catholic belief. But there are few priests in Eng- 
land, and so many faithful souls taking their time, that you 
might be disappointed elsewhere. 

I think you said that you had St. Francis de Sales' work 
on controversy. Therein the saint treats all the great ques- 
tions which divide the different churches; the nature and marks 
and authority of the One Church of Christ; the eight Voices 
of the Church, etc. It seems to me that such an examination 
as you propose must concern itself rather with great lines on 
its positive side; that it must only go into details here and 
there, by way of answering objections. Even details must be 
reduced at once to great principles. The Church is an enor- 



1908.] THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN 53 

mous and complex organization. It speaks slowly ; seems to 
let abuses run on, as Almighty God certainly does. The Coun- 
cil of Trent, for instance, was the grand vindication of Catho- 
lic truth after the great Rebellion of 1520-1540. But the evils 
against which it was reacting go back two centuries earlier. 
So the consequences of its action took a hundred years to de- 
velop. 

All this reminds me of one of our greatest arguments for 
Catholicism our saints. There is our ideal. On that we humble 
ourselves for the awful imperfections which we have not the 
courage to root out in ourselves. The Established Church of 
England, on the average, has no notion of sanctity. One man 
is as good as another. I know well that you do not think this. 
But you, and the like of you, are in the Established Church, 
without being of it. 

* * * 

An Anglican clerical friend also wrote to me, in terms 
which I have greatly abbreviated : 

The rapidity (he says) of your last moves toward Rome, 
has been a shock to me ; but they must have been still more 
severe to yourself. I cling to the hope that the prayer you 
express on my behalf may fall in double measure on yourself, 
and keep you in the church of your birth. Whatever others 
may say or think of your action, I am convinced of the honesty 
of it ; though, if it leads you to forswear your own past life, 
I cannot but grieve sincerely, and should think you terribly 
mistaken. 

Already there are rumors of some of our bishops refusing 
to be led by any Anglican papacy ; and three (well-known) 
bishops will have none of the recent Archiepiscopal "Opinions." 
This, at any rate, is hopeful. 

You say that you are going to study the question. Study it, 
then, not so much in books, as in the lives of such men as 
(four Anglican clergymen since deceased), who were catholic to 
the core; and who fought and toiled, and into whose heritage 
we have entered. Shall we refuse to do the same for those who 
come after us ? 

Can we expect, in our short lifetime, to undo the work of 
centuries ? Can we, do we, desire that God's chastening hand 
shall be entirely removed from us, and that no blot shall still 
remain upon our beloved branch of the church ? Do 



54 THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN [April, 

not shut your eyes to those eternal blessings which you have 
enjoyed in the Church of England. 



Not long afterwards I resigned my curacy, but remained in 
the town until the close of the month, in order : I. To be as near 
as possible to a friend who was dying ; and 2. To be able to ex- 
plain to the bishop the reason of my resignation. Towards the 

end of the month I spent a few days in B . On the Sunday 

I felt much perplexed where I should worship. I found that there 

was an eight o'clock celebration at St. 's, and I went there. 

It was some years since I had been at such a service. Wor- 
ship was impossible to me. Only by a violent act of faith could 
one bring oneself to believe what the service was. The En- 
glish Communion Service, when enveloped and confused in 
Catholic ritual, may look like the Mass ; but, when rendered as 
one believes the Reformers intended it to be said, one sees that 
it is an " institution " or a " communion," and nothing more. I 
could use none of my accustomed Eucharistic devotions, and did 
not venture on a " thanksgiving " after my communion, for I 
could not tell what I had received. Six people were present. 
On my way home, I turned into St. Patrick's Catholic Church 
and lit a candle and said some prayers, feeling much more at 

home than in St. 's. The church was well filled, and crowds 

were receiving Holy Communion. 

* # 

My birthday rather a sad one. Father P was to 

preach next day at St. 's ; so, early in the forenoon, I went 

round to the presbytery to leave a note for him. I met a 
priest at the west end of the church, who said that the father 
had already arrived, and was at that moment in the house. 
He took me in. When I gave him my name, the priest became 
all at once intelligent, and asked if I had "been already re- 
ceived into the Church." I replied " not yet " ; but that I had 

come to talk to Father P about it. I was nearly two 

hours in conference with the father. He approved of the way 
in which I had approached the great question: ist. The dis- 
covery of the untenability of regarding the English Church as 
catholic, or safe; and 2d. The investigation of distinctively 
Roman claims. It is rather disappointing to me to find how 
few doubts one has to discuss. It was a very interesting talk, 



THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN 55 

and I came away much happier. To feel that one has a friend 
on the other side, makes the voyage across less terrible. 

* * * 

Three days later I had another interesting talk with the 
same father. He makes my own position clearer to me. I feel 
I am now at a point which leaves nothing more to be said. I 
know well enough what an Anglican would say, and what a 
Catholic would say. I know that the responsibility of deciding 
rests with myself alone. My mind is practically made up. My 
experiences at my last two communions show me better than 
anything else how I stand. 

* * * 

In the same week I had my interview with the bishop. I 
was shown into his study. Towards myself he was most kind 
and sympathetic, stroked my knee and purred over me, quoted 
Scripture and proposed to engage in prayer. He advised me 

to see Canon , in Oxford, not to be rash (they all say 

that), to be anxious after truth (who could be otherwise, if 
honest), to be sure I had it, and not merely what I thought 
was the truth. 

* * * 

The last remark, however, encouraged me, though not in 
the way the bishop intended ; for it has been the truth I have 
been searching for all the time. So long as I believed that I 
had truth in the Anglican Church, I tried to be a faithful 
member of that communion; but my search for truth showed 
me that the truth has been in my own mind and not in the 
church. Who is to tell me what is truth ? Nearly every one 
in the Anglican Church has a different idea of what the truth 
is ; all is conflicting and uncertain. I can get no clear answer 
from them. Rome, on the other hand, does give a clear an- 
swer, and puts before me a definite, systematized body of doc- 
trine. I can, with ordinary patience, discover what she believes 
and teaches. I may accept it, or reject it ; but, at any rate, I can 
know what I am accepting or rejecting; whereas, one might 
study all one's life long and never arrive at the knowledge of 
what the Anglican Church believes and teaches. Hence, the 
probability is in favor of Rome. If it is necessary that we 
must have the truth, there must be some earthly teacher in- 
spired to show it to us. The Roman Church claims to be this. 
The evidence she produces in support of her claim is sufficient- 



56 THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN [April, 

ly strong to support a matter of faith. No rival disputes her 
claim except, indeed, individual private judgment. Therefore, 
believing in the providential ordering of things, I feel justified 
in making my submission to the Catholic Church. 

* * 

Read Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doc- 
trine, without in the least understanding its main drift, though 
not without edification on many collateral points of controversy. 
I also read Inquiry into the Principles of Church Authority ; 
or, Reasons for Recalling My Subscription to the Royal Suprem- 
acy, 1854, by Archdeacon Robert Wilberforce, which I fairly mas- 
tered. 

* * * 

Went over to have a talk with . He was most kind 

and sympathetic, though, he said, he had never had any sim- 
ilar difficulties in his own religious life. He would not be able, 
I feel, to help me further than by his sympathy and kindness ; 
for, like so many Anglicans, he has never really grasped the 
catholic conception of the Church. 

* * 

To- day I came across a book by Mr. Mallock, a treatise OH 
the present state of Anglicanism, Doctrine and Doctrinal Dis- 
ruption. It echoed my ideas : " Rome, or Nothing." I spent 
hours, both forenoon and afternoon, over the book, of which 
I had never heard, but took up accidentally. It appealed to 
me, and seemed the expression of my own sentiments. I made 
many quotations almost an analysis of the whole work. On 
my way home I called on a friend, and he gave me Mr. (now 
Bishop) Gore's "Answer," as he called it, to Mr. Mallock's 
book, published in the Pilot, May 12, 1900. 

# * 

I feel that Mr. Gore's views, as to the process one must ge 
through in search of religious truth, omit altogether the Catho- 
lic Church as a living authority. If all that our Lord intended 
to do by His foundation of the Church was to leave men in 
the position described in the article, I feel that He came in 
vain ; or, at the most, that He founded a religion for Univer- 
sity professors and such like persons, but one far beyond the 
reach of the poor and uneducated. Honors at Oxford or Cam- 
bridge would be an indispensable requirement for admission 



i9o8.] THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN 57 

into such a Church, and for attaining the knowledge of even 
elementary religious truth. 

I feel, too, that Mr. Gore has a religion of his own. This 
he has carefully thought out to his own satisfaction, and ad- 
justed with much care to what he thinks are the needs of the 
age, the English temperament, the spirit of the time, etc. But 
it is Gore's religion, not the Catholic faith. If there be any 
authority in it, it is that of the author only. He has been de- 
scribed to me as a " prophet." Could I take him to be an 
infallible oracle, I might then take my religion from him, as 
many do ; but, if I am to believe that of any one, I prefer to 
believe it of St. Peter's successor. 

* * * 

My friend took advantage of this opportunity to give me a 
homily on the method of attaining to truth in religious matters, 
on the lines of the article in the Pilot by Mr. Gore. But I 
objected that Gore's severely intellectual process was such as 
to put the knowledge of truth beyond the reach of the poor 
and ignorant. He replied that the poor were "wonderfully 
helped " to see the force of truth, for instance, Eucharistic 
teaching, or the catholicity of the English Church. I said 
that I had not found this to be the case. This reduced my 
friend to saying that "some poor," at any rate, were brought 
to believe in these things an undeniable proposition. He ad- 
mitted, however, when pressed, that private judgment was at 
the basis of things in the English Church. 

My friend seems to have become more and more a disciple 
of Gore's, and to endeavor in all things to submit to Gore's 
teaching. The latter is the pope of the new party, and a 
reference to him seems to settle everything. Meanwhile, it is 
grievous pain to me to think how much I am annoying and 
disappointing all these good people. 

* # 

Father P had given me an introduction to Canon . 

I called at his house. We talked for quite an hour. He was 
very kind and nice ; but, beyond assuring me of his prayers 
and sympathy and readiness to be of service to me, the Canon 
did not advance things in my mind. He took me into his 
chapel, where we spent a few minutes before the Blessed Sacra- 
ment. 

* * * 



58 THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN [April, 

I find a difficulty in carrying on an argument, as on equal 
terms, with men whom I have been for years accustomed to 
look up to as my instructors. This places me at a disadvantage, 
because I shrink from making a retort, even when I have a 
good rejoinder. The question, said one such of my instruc- 
tors, is, whether to be content with a position which is all 
" ragged ends," and yet true ; or to desire a position where 
everything is beautifully rounded off, and yet is not true. 
One ought to be content with the position which one feels is 
best adapted for one by God. 

Accepting the superficial aptness of the epigram, I cannot 
feel that this goes to the root of the matter. I put up with 
the Anglican "ragged ends, etc.," so long as I believed in the 
catholicity of the English Church; but the situation is entirely 
altered when one ceases to believe in her catholicity. And I 
fear that I am coming to see that the truth may be on Rome's 
side, in those points where she differs from England. In that 
case, the completeness of her system, its attractiveness and 
practicality, instead of being snares, are signs of her being the 
True Church. 

* * * 

Had a long talk with . He is distressed at my hav- 
ing ceased from communion. I think my reasons are as fol- 
lows : 

1. Had some one in my condition come to me, and acknowl- 
edged what he thought of the English Church, I should have 
felt that I ought to refuse him absolution and communion. 
Therefore, I deal with myself as I should deal with another. 

2. If the English Church is tainted with heresy and schism, 
as I more than suspect she is, then, even granting the validity 
of her orders and the reality of her sacraments, I have scruples 
about communicating with her. 

This is, of course, a miserable state of things, and it has 
great dangers. 

* * * 

At 9 P. M. I went to have my talk with P. Q., as suggested 
by . I felt that certain facts in the reign of Queen Eliza- 
beth would not decide me one way or the other. However, to 
show that I had an open mind, I went. It was a pleasure to talk 
with P. Q. Nothing he said distressed me, because his position 
is so different from my own. I felt that his difficulties in ac- 



i9o8.J THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN 59 

cepting Rome had no connection with me. I made notes after- 
wards of what he said. 

1. His own religious position. He is strong (with Dr. Pusey, 
in the past) on the rights of a National Church, which was the 
position deliberately taken by the Church of England at the 
Reformation. 

2. High-Churchmen, he held, are too anxious to make out 
that the Prayer Books of 1549 and 1552 had the sanction of 
Convocation ; and they attach too much importance to the plu- 
ral in the Article, touching the " Sacrifice of Masses," though 
we are entitled to the benefit of the doubt, inasmuch as the 
plural and not the singular is used. He has no objection to 
my saying I thought that Father (now Abbot) Gasquet's and 
Mr. Edmund Bishop's work, Edward VI. and the Book of Com- 
mon Prayer, was the most sensible book on the history of the 
Prayer Book I had read. The facts, he said, are correct; but 
they are used with a strong bias. 

3. My old " Catholic " position in the Church of England is 
"quite untenable." It is honestly held by many High-Church- 
men ; but has never been held by himself, and he knows no 
one now, even in Oxford, who holds it. It is excluded from 
argument by the action of the Church of England at the Refor- 
mation ; and its suppression is aimed at by the High-Church 
prelates of the present day. 

4. He declared that, from time to time, he has strong in- 
clinations to go over to Rome ; feels that he would be happier 
there, and more comfortable, and sure that he was in a church 
which actually did hold the Catholic faith. But he is con- 
stantly held back by certain historical facts, which convince his 
reason that Rome has added to the deposit of faith. 

5. He does not care to be pressed as to the Anglican doc- 
trine on the Sacrifice of the Mass ; maintains that the beliefs 
of our Reformers only concern us, inasmuch as they contribute 
to a state of things in the past which we inherit now. 

# # * 

These talks with Anglicans, though they sometimes distress 
me and never convince me, are yet profitable because they help 
me to see things more clearly such as the High-Church posi- 
tion as it is in itself, so far as any Anglican position can be 
clearly seen; and my own position; and the issues before 
me. 



60 THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN [April, 

I agree with one result of my last talk, namely, the untena- 
bility of the so-called " Catholic " position in the Church of 
England. But, unfortunately, I still believe as true the various 
distinctive doctrines which go to make up that position. I ac- 
cepted them on authority. It was not an adequate or a com- 
petent authority, as I now see. Still, it was all I could then 
get ; and I believed my teachers were the authorized exponents 
of Catholic truth. 

Now, if I am to remain in the Church of England, it must 
be by taking up the " Anglican " position. This would mean 
to me the reconstruction of my whole creed upwards from the 
bottom. It would mean the abandonment of any real notion 
of authority in matters religious, and the adoption of private 
judgment as the only guide. 

This, to me, would be a violent proceeding. It would be 
the destruction of the whole process of religious development 
which has been going on, quietly and steadily, in my mind for 
some twenty years. If I am to do this, I know that I shall 
go in time to the extreme position in the other direction Ag- 
nosticism. 

To accept the Roman theory of authority, on the other 
hand, would be to place the keystone upon the arch. 

The most impossible step for me to take would be, to re- 
turn to the *' Catholic " position in the Church of England. It 
seems wonderful to me now, that one can ever have believed 
it to be tenable. 

One more avowal has to be made in this relation: It seems 
to me, that we have all the " corruptions" in kind or degree 
of Rome, without any of the security of her position. As long 
as I believed in the Church of England, I felt one must put 
up with these practical corruptions ; but it needs faith in the 
church to make them tolerable, or to make us tolerant of them ; 
and when faith goes, one cannot countenance them. No doubt 
great practical corruptions exist in Rome; yet, if we believe 
Rome to be the One True Church of Christ, they will be no 
more an offence to me, than the even worse practical corrup- 
tions of Anglicanism were, while we believed in the Church of 
England. 

* * * 

I now felt that I must put an end to my indecision as 
quickly as possible. On the advice of a friend, I went into 






i9o8.J THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN 61 

retreat, under , for this purpose. As far as I can remem- 
ber, the conductor dwelt mainly on two points: 

1. The historical evidence against the "Papal claims." He 
was entirely destructive, refuting (as it seemed to me) one by 
one the arguments I had found in their favor, but making no 
attempt to give me anything positive in their place. I cannot 
recall anything he said to establish an "Anglican " position on 
which I could rest. 

2. He insisted that pride, wilfulness, and other moral faults 
and failings must be at the root of my dissatisfaction with the 
Church of England. As I was painfully anxious to avoid act- 
ing from such motives, it was not difficult for him to reduce 
me to a condition of mental inability to make any sort of de- 
cision for myself. His representation of history seemed to give 
me grounds for seriously doubting all that I had read or con- 
sidered about " Papal claims." 

* * * 

After coming out of retreat, I set to work and put into 
writing the conclusions at which I thought I had arrived. 
Reading later on what I then wrote, it now seems strange to 
me that Anglicans, such as those with whom I had lately con- 
ferred, and to whom I showed the result of my thoughts, 
should have been pleased with it, and have considered it gave 
satisfactory reasons for remaining in the Church of England. 
* * # 

"Not doubting for a moment," writes a Catholic priest, "your 
good intentions (in making a retreat), I cannot altogether think 
you acted wisely, not in having withdrawn yourself from con- 
troversy to prayer, but for having chosen to do so under the 
direct influence of one who has already prejudged the case at 
issue." On the other hand, one Anglican clergyman hopes 
that the result of my retreat may lead me to remain in our 
branch of the Catholic Church, marred though she is with so 
many imperfections. Another complains that my letter, written 
on announcing my intention to make a retreat, had to do with 
an ideal of the church, rather than with one's individual rela- 
tion to our Lord. He adds the criticism, that a great act of 
faith, such as is involved in accepting "Papal claims," has no 
parallel in the New Testament, where faith is always a personal 
relation. " You ought to go into retreat with a New Testament, 
and believing in the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to make a 



62 THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN [April, 

good communion. The responsibility of that rests with the 
church, not with you, unless you believe you are in mortal sin." 
A third writes thus : " If you were already convinced that the 
church was co-terminous with the Latin Communion, and that 
the whole church was teaching us that the Papal claims were 
true, there would not be any place for inquiry. But, as you 
have no such conviction, the whole argument begs the ques- 
tion under consideration. 

* * 

The following extract from a letter of a Catholic priest will 
indicate a partial and, thank God, a temporary retrocession 
only, on my part, under the combined influences of personal 
persuasion and controversial argument. But the letter shews 
more : it shows the charity with which a Catholic priest can 
write and the tenderness with which he can deal with one who 
had caused him disappointment. "Of course" (he writes) "I am 
glad that you have found your peace of mind, though I may 
have doubts of its continuance. I believe that you have missed 
a great grace which was offered to you ; and I only hope that 
there was nothing culpable, or of self-interest (as regards the 
world, I mean) in the way you came to the conclusion at which 
you have arrived." 

* * * 

In spite of all, in writing of a friend, distracted like myself 
with similar doubts as to the catholicity of the Church of Eng- 
land, I admit I still feel equally with him, that the Anglican 
body seems to be a city of confusion, unable to attract, to in- 
fluence, or to inspire us. Above and beyond this religious de- 
bris, rises before us the edifice of Rome, like the Holy City, 
the New Jerusalem, having the glory of God. To both of us 
she appears as the most beautiful and ideal object of intellec- 
tual contemplation we ever hope to see in this life. Were the 
question to be settled by ideals, one could not hesitate between 
the two churches ; the advantage is all on the side of Rome. 
For myself, I feel placed under obligations to test this ideal, 
in order to see whether or not it be true. Before long, how- 
ever, he (my friend) will probably have passed, like Christian 
and Hopeful, "in at the gate"; whilst I shall only be able to 
look in after him, and with divine envy wish myself in company 
with him. I now feel that everything in life is, in comparison, 
commonplace and dull and stupid; that my existence will very 



i9o8.] THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN 63 

likely be stranded in shallows, or wrecked upon rocks ; and that 
I am practically beginning a new career full of danger, uncer- 
tainty, and effort. 

* * * 

Perhaps it would be well, at this point, to group together 
a few extracts from the diary which give my impressions of 
St. Peter's, as they help to indicate the direction in which my 
mind was moving. Five years and a half passed between the 
date of the first visit mentioned in these quotations and the 
last: 

May i : My first day in Rome. My first visit was naturally 
to St. Peter's ; and there my first acts were to salute his statue 
and to pray at his Confession. The " threshold of the Apos- 
tles " was the goal of my pilgrimage. Of St. Peter's, from an 
aesthetic point of view, I formed no opinion; for I did not go 
there as a sightseer. To me everything else gave place to 
the fact that it contains the tomb of the Apostle "Where 
Peter is, there is the Church." 

* # # 

April 21 (Two years later): It made me very happy to find 
myself once more at the " threshold of the Apostles." As I 
assisted at Mass at St. Gregory's altar, it was very strongly 
borne in upon my mind how steadily and persistently the Ro- 
man Church has pursued her own course, in spite of all oppo- 
sition and attack ; and how undauntedly she has worked out 
her own development on her own lines, notwithstanding all ad- 
verse criticism. In this she has been so unlike the Church of 
England, which is always carried about by every wind of doc- 
trine. For instance, Anglicanism is just at present in a worse 
than usual state of confusion, because a certain man made a 
disturbance in a certain London church on a certain Good Fri- 
day. It would require many such men to frighten Rome. 
Near the altar, at which Mass was said, stands the monument 
of Pius VII., who guided the Church through one of the most 
critical periods of history in modern times. St. Peter's seems 
built for eternity ; and the simple ceremonies of Low Mass 
are the product of centuries of steady, harmonious development. 
By comparison we Anglicans are upstarts of yesterday. 

* * # 

June i (Three years later) : To St. Peter's. Had much to 
pray about at the Confession. On former visits one had few 



64 THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN [April, 

or no misgivings about one's religious and ecclesiastical posi- 
tion; but, since I was last here, "the waters have come in, 
even unto my soul " ; and now I seem to be drifting along 
without rudder or guide. 

* * * 

It is now settled that I am to take up work again at . 

I daresay I shall labor there with as much, or as little, heart 
as elsewhere. I have had to deal with several kinds of person- 
alities in my several chiefs. Now I am going to have one who, 
amongst his admirers, bears a reputation for sanctity probably 
the most trying of them all. As to details of work, or matters 
of ritual, I feel utterly indifferent; doing one thing saves one 
from doing another. 

* # # 

Some of my reasons for resuming work in the Church of 
England may be briefly given as follows : 

1. My Anglican advisers had raised objections to the Ro- 
man claims, to which, at the time, I found no sufficient an- 
swer. 

2. The Church of England, allowing men of all religious 
opinions, and even of none, to act as her ministers, I did not 
see why I had not as much right as they had to minister in 
her name. 

3. My Anglican friends were anxious to see me at work 
again, in hopes that active parish-work would dispel doubts 
which they persisted in regarding as merely speculative. That 
I felt unable to become a Roman Catholic was the one thing 
that seemed to satisfy them. Into my views regarding the doc- 
trines and practices of the Church of England none of them 
even inquired. 

* # # 

X , one of my more intimate friends, and myself are 

still much alike in our religious condition ; and as he is about 
the only person who knows all about me, and as I am the 
only person who knows all about him, we are delighted to 
discuss matters and to enjoy one another's intelligent sym- 
pathy. Some of our conferences have been very strange ; and 
it is perhaps as well that no third person was present to re- 
member and repeat our utterances. He is in the same state of 
mind that he was in six months ago sure that Rome is right 
and we are wrong ; that the Church of England is not catho- 






1908.] THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN 65 

lie ; that his main argument for being an Anglican is that he 
is one. He seems to have taken no steps to arrive at any so- 
lution of his difficulties. 

* * * 

Y , another of my intimates, was to be received to-day, 

in the afternoon, I suppose. I sent him a little missal, and 
could not suppress the thought : " We went through fire and 
water, and Thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place." At 
evensong it seemed to me that the first lesson was appropri- 
ate to my case: for, like Jonah, I rejoiced in the shadow of 
the Anglican gourd which had now perished, leaving me ex- 
posed to the vehement east wind, and the sun beating on my 
head, whilst Y goes into peace and shelter. Yet the ques- 
tion still remains : Are this peace and shelter true and right ? 
I know he is sure they are. I fear that I never can have this 
assurance. 

* * * 

Again amongst some of my friends, A , B , and C 

Called to see A and had tea with him. Had to listen to 

much High- Anglican conversation, with a strange aloofness from 
it all. " Round- table conferences," etc., seem to have little in- 
terest with me now. Somehow A has lost his influence 

over me; his religion now seems hard, narrow, and opinionated. 

On the other hand, B is a man who has grown won- 
derfully on me during the summer. He is more learned and 
scholarly than the other, and is too wise to dispose of Rome 

in A 's offhand way. He has himself felt the attraction of 

the Roman theory too strongly for that ; whilst he has been 
kept back by the same arguments which have weight with me. 

I find C changed since the autumn less buoyant and 

optimistic, and more alive to the seriousness of the situation. 
He confesses that after nearly a decade of years of zealous and 

unceasing work at St. , on " Catholic " lines, he is bound 

to admit that " the faith " has got but little hold over his peo- 
ple. He teaches and admonishes, and the people seem to ac- 
cept his teaching for a time ; but, on the least provocation, 
they are ready to throw up all of it. For instance, if a St. 

's young person marries a non-St 's young person, it 

is always the influence of the nn-St. 's young person, of 

either sex, which proves the stronger. He owned to feeling 
discouraged a great thing for him to allow. He said that a 
VOL. LXXXVII. 5 



66 THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN [April, 

common friend of us both is quite alive to the fact that the 
tide is ebbing; but he consoles himself with the belief can this 
be literally true, or is it a figure of speech ? that the end of 
the world is at hand. I feel that if any man could make things 

succeed in a parish, it would be my friend, C ; therefore, 

his failure is the more ominous. St. is emphatically a 

" one-man-show." Whatever succeeds there has been due to 

C 's natural and sterling qualities ; and were he to leave, 

his work would all fall to pieces. 

* * * 

Joined a friend and went with him to hear preach as 

select preacher. I remember his first attempt at a sermon at 
a Theological College at which I was a student. How familiar 
the sermon seemed. The same old themes the glories of Eng- 
land ; the rich promise of the future ; so many more grounds 
for hopefulness than there were twenty years ago ; the re- 
sponsibility of being at the University and belonging to this 
country it is an empire now ; the use one may make of life, 
etc. Just what University preachers preached to us fifteen years 
ago. I st> tied to know exactly what was coming, as if I had 
heard the whole sermon before. And there my friend who ac- 
companied me and the others were drinking in all they heard 
with the same simplicity as we had done in our undergraduate 
days. One wonders how can dare to preach such stuff. 

* # # 

The last of a series of Sundays which will always stand out 
as the strangest Sundays of my life. During these past months 
everything I trussed in has given way, and I now find myself 
without fixed convictions at all. I think I have a simple creed 

which consists of a single article: I believe in : my friend 

lately received. At any rate I am tolerant of every one and 
everything. If there is such a thing as a Catholic Church, or 
a Catholic faith at all in the sense in which one used to em- 
ploy the word catholic they are equivalent to the "Roman 
Catholic " Church and faith. Much that we held as catholic 
has no place in the Anglican Church, and can only be held 
legitimately and honestly by those who accept the Papal po- 
sition. 

When my guides gave me good reasons for refusing to ac- 
cept the Papal position, they unconsciously destroyed the whole 
" Catholic " position as I understood it. The former is the ba- 



1908.] THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN 67 

sis of the latter. Those Anglican clergy who are endeavoring 
to catholicize the English Church may be either heroic or fool- 
ish ; but they are attempting the impossible. The question 
now to be worked out in my mind is whether there be any 
Catholic faith, or Church. I do not consider myself as a mem- 
ber of any church. There is no Church of England. There is 
only an aggregate of individuals who call themselves a church, 
without unity, or cohesion, or any idea of submission to any 
authority. Indeed, I believe that I am more genuinely Angli- 
can at present than ever before, because I have no principles 
and no convictions. 

* * * 

After lunch my friend X held forth about ecclesiastical 

topics in his usual revolutionary manner. He does not "go 
over," because he does not want to. He rejoices in others go- 
ing. He maintains that the work of the Catholic Movement in 
the Church of England is to prepare people for returning to 
the real Catholic Church. We Anglicans have no .mission, no 
bishops, no jurisdiction, and we have no business to go and 

make Anglicans of the heathen. Y , X , and, -myself are 

illustrations of three different positions. Y , by becoming a 

Roman Catholic, has placed a foundation under the superstruc- 
ture of his faith ; X , not having become one, is trying to 

keep up his superstructure without a foundation; and I I 
have neither foundation nor superstructure. 

* * * . 

Called to see a High-Church friend, alluded to before, with 
whom I have taken counsel. He regards my present indefinite- 
ness in religious matters as natural and not -deplorable. He 
calls it the "Liberal Catholic" position. This sounds well, and 
ought to console me. Nevertheless, this dignified title does not 
make me feel happy, nor does it supply the place of a definite 
religious position, such as I enjoyed before my troubles began. 

* # * 

Weekly meeting at the parsonage. Long discussion between 
the incumbent and his curate over the services in the church. 
It was amusing to watch the method by which the former got 
his own way so considerate, so earnest, so soothing, so round- 
about. It was the everlasting question, over and over again : 
how to teach people what they do not want to learn, and get 
them to come to services different from any to which they have 



68 THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN [April. 

been accustomed. The failure of the attempt to catholicize 
England is dawning on the chief; but his curate still believes 
that one has only to teach strongly, to have choral celebra- 
tions, and to work hard, in order to win people to the Catholic 

faith. 

* # * 

Heard from AA . He encloses a letter from ZZ , 

who has lately " gone over," and is now studying in Rome. 
ZZ 's letter is a beautiful one; but it contains no fresh ar- 
guments or reasons. It contains much that I once felt and 
still feel. AA appeals to me for help. I am in an awk- 
ward position, having so little to say on the subject. Who am 
I, that I should recover a man of his leprosy? However, I 
wrote just what I believe to be true, neither more nor less a 
much feebler " apologia " than others would make ; but I can- 
not assume a hopefulness and confidence which I do not feel. 

This correspondence with AA has again stirred up all 

the mud, filling me with scruples as to my motives in deciding 
to take practical work again in the Church of England. Did I 
allow personal considerations, fear of temporal consequences, 
and the like, to count for too much in arriving at that deci- 
sion ? Scruples like these will always remain with me, I sup- 
pose. It is miserable to go about and mix with people feeling 
one has something to conceal, or rather, something which it 
would do no good to make public. It is the first time in my 
life that I have experienced anything of the kind. 

(TO BE CONCLUDED.) 




: 



ALESSANDRO. 

BY HOPE LESART. 

LESSANDRO the strength of the sea in the erect, 
superb carriage of his body, tanned to a glowing 
warmth by the sun of Southern Italy Alessan- 
dro, as I remembered him of old, met me as I 
stepped off the puffing, snorting little train. Two 
years had made no perceptible change in the joyous figure be- 
fore me. 

I rejoiced that Alessandro should be the first to welcome 
me, somehow it seemed a good augury of the future. My con- 
tent increased as the minutes flew by, for did I not find my 
rooms in old Giuseppe's house waiting for me the very rooms 
I had occupied two years before. Giuseppe, one of the few 
men spared by the cruel sea, had passed the number of years 
allotted to man, and was yet as hale and strong as a man of 
sixty. The old man's joy at my return well-nigh equalled my 
own, though it was much more voluble. 

"The Signora is pleased to be content with little," he cour- 
teously said. " Had Maria not gone to the saints, things would 
be much better. Or," he added regretfully, " had she only left 
me a daughter. Man is not made to care for himself." 

"But you are an exception," I answered. "Few women 
can keep house and cook as you can." 

"The Signora is kind; but it is not man's work." 

"You should have married again, Giuseppe. It is hard to 
live alone." 

" To marry twice ! The Signora is pleased to jest." The 
old brown eyes looked reprovingly into mine, and I felt duly 
humbled. 

The little town had a strangely peaceful look to one who 
had fled from the turmoil of a great city. Among all the 
changes of two years, however, Alessandro alone remained un- 
changed. He had not married, and I wondered why. He had 
thought once of emigrating of going to America and had 
asked my advice. 



70 ALESSANDRO [April, 

" No, no " ; I cried eagerly, " you must not go. You would 
not be happy. It would be worse than the very worst that 
you could imagine." 

He nodded gravely and accepted my decision, and ever 
since I have felt a moral responsibility for his welfare. It was 
just after this talk that I thought how suitable it would be for 
him to marry Annunziata. That Annunziata had other views 
I soon discovered, and when she married Marco Santo, I felt 
more heartbroken for Alessandro than he felt for himself. 

Alessandro's sturdy, blunt- prowed boat, with its enormous 
sail, that to my land- faring eyes looked dangerously risky, was 
beating out to sea. The sky was dull and lowering, the waves, 
as they broke at the foot of the old sea-wall, held a sullen 
menace in their roar. The little street had lost its glowing 
color, and to-day looked gray and old. A group of women 
chatting by the fountain caught my eye, their brilliant gar- 
ments making a riot of color against the dull day. Annunziata, 
her dark eyes eloquent with joy, hurried forward to meet me. 

" And the bambino is well ? " I asked, after her own many 
inquiries. 

"Yes, Donna Lisa; he is well and so beautiful!" 

" You have forgotten to tell me his name," I began. 

"The Signora must pardon. The joy of seeing her again 
made me forgetful. The name is Marco Stefano Lucia Sper- 
anza." 

I gasped then inquired faintly : " Why Lucia ? " 

" Because he was born on the festa of Santa Lucia ; Marco, 
because it is his father's name ; and Stefano Marco wished 
Stefano because it was he who made possible our marriage. 
You remember, Signora, he took him in his boat when no one 
else would." The dark eyes overflowed for a second at the 
thought of those unhappy days. " And Speranza is because we 
Marco and I desired him to have your name." 

I murmured my thanks. " But what do you really call him?" 
I queried. 

" We call him Speranza. There is no other of that name 
in la citta" 

" Tell me of Marco he is still a shoemaker ? " I asked. 

" Yes, Signora." Then rapidly, in her native tongue : " Look 
at that water, that sky, there " making an excited gesture in 
the direction of the women, gazing across the gray stretch of 



i9o8.] ALESSANDRO 71 

sea. " They are all suffering, praying for their men mine is 
on land." 

"But there is danger and suffering on the land, Annun- 
ziata." 

"I know," she assented gravely. "Only the sea is cruel, 
he is hungry always." 

I left her, promising to see my namesake very soon. Such 
a cheerless day ! I half made up my mind to leave it, to go 
inside and devote myself to letter-writing. Then I remembered 
my wide window looking over the gray sea. I was in no mood 
for such companionship, so I kept on, past the shabby houses 
with their high steps, not minding where I went, only keeping 
my eyes fixed on the white-capped mountains. 

The storm clouds had scattered before I turned my back to 
the hills, and when I reached home Giuseppe was standing in 
the doorway, his bronze-brown eyes twinkling merrily from 
under his wild thatch of hair. 

"The Signora has a visitor," he announced with much cere- 
mony. 

" And it is ? " I inquired carelessly. 

" Alessandro, Signora. He said he would wait for the Sig- 
nora's return." 

I found big Alessandro standing before my window, looking 
strangely out of place in my low-walled room. He saluted 
me courteously these peasants' manners put mine to shame, 
and after two years' absence the contrast was all the greater. 

" The Signora can see far," he remarked after he was seated. 
"Almost as far as C ." He named the land that lay be- 
low the horizon. 

I laughed. "Yes; is it not wonderful? You like it, Ales- 
sandro ? " 

" Yes, Signora ; and yet " he paused and looked at me as 
if in doubt. 

"What is it?" I asked. 

" It is as the Signora says wonderful out there it is so 
near ; while in here " He glanced around. " I feel caged 
trapped. To have it so near and yet not to be on it. I could 
not bear it, Signora. It is calling me. It does not call the 
Signora?" 

" Sometimes," I answered. " I am not a sailor like you, 
Alessandro. I am neither brave nor skilled on the sea. I am 



72 ALESSANDRO [April, 

afraid of it, yet I love it, and this is the only way I can have 
it." I pointed to my wide window. He nodded, apparently 
understanding my whim. 

A glowing, flaming sunset was tinting the water and light- 
ing up the few sails that were lazily drifting before the breeze. 
The old sea-wall, with the nets drying on it and the waves 
lapping idly at the foot, seemed part of creation, so blended 
was it with the earth color around. A couple of fishermen 
with baskets of vivid- hued fish came up the beach, a group of 
sun-tanned, shouting children following every step. From my 
point of vantage we gazed at the joyous life, somewhat in the 
manner of Olympian deities amused by these mortals of a little 
day, whose intense, beauty-loving nature was ever a source of 
joy. Nothing morbid, nothing unclean ever came near to this 
little sea town. 

Alessandro was laughing heartily at the bare- legged chil- 
dren hopping around the well-filled baskets. 

" Little pests, Signora, they could well be called. Look at 
Nicola, small imp that he is. The Signora knows he is too old 
to play all day." Alessandro muttered something under his 
breath that my quick ears failed to catch. Rising rapidly to 
his feet, an inscrutable look in his velvet brown eyes, he bade 
me a courteous farewell, praying me to remember that always, 
always his boat was at my disposal. I told him truthfully that 
I was looking forward with great pleasure to many days spent 
on the sea with him for boatman. A red tint that the com- 
pliment called to his cheek showed beneath the brown. A 
final bow and he was gone. 

It was some days before I could claim the promised boat. 
The day was golden warm, with a blaze of sunshine, when I 
stood on the beach watching for Alessandro. He soon came, 
and close at his heels was Nicola, the dancing, shouting Nicola, 
whom only a few days ago he had so indignantly dubbed "an 
imp, a pest." The imp stood, silent enough now, all suspense 
with bated breath while Alessandro asked my permission to take 
him with us. His eyes, that I knew could hold so much mis- 
chief, looked solemnly into mine, his brown, naked toes digging 
into and grasping the sand. The permission was given and 
with a shout of joy he made off in the direction of the boat. 
I looked inquiringly at Alessandro. 

"The Signora is too good," he protested. " She should not 






1908.] ALESSANDRO 73 

be worried with such wickedness. Nicola is wild, but he has 
made me promises. He has no one to mind." 

" Why has he no one ? " I asked. " Maddalena was always 
a good mother." 

" The best the very best ! " he added. " Only she is young 
and alone." 

"Alone?" I laughed at the notion. "With that young- 
ster ? " 

" She needs some one to help her." He looked at me in 
all seriousness, as if to chide me lor laughing. 

We were soon cutting rapidly through the clear water, the 
boat careening under the big sail. 

The gorgeous splendor of the sunset was before us when 
we turned homeward, and when the little town came in sight 
it was glowing with the reflected glories of the flaming sun. 
Maddalena was watching for us from the sea-wall ; Alessandro 
greeted her with a loud, ringing call and a glad toss of his 
scarlet cap ; Nicola tried a feeble imitation, and nearly lost 
himself overboard. 

" He is safe, thanks to Alessandro," I called as I jumped 
from the boat and climbed the stone steps to where Maddalena 
stood, She seemed absurdly young to be the mother of the 
sturdy little ragamuffin that capered beside me. 

"You should have been with us, Maddalena; the day was 
beautiful and Alessandro's boat went as easily as a sea gull." 

" The Signora knows I have work to do," she answered. 
" I cannot spare so many hours ; besides, I care not to be on 
the sea, only to look at it when the sun shines. Has Nicola 
been a wicked boy ? " 

I assured her nothing could have been more lamb-like than 
Nicola's behavior, owing, I promptly added, to his regard for 
Alessandro. 

" Ah, he is always good with him," she sighed. " I try 
but he will not mind me. We are good comrades, we play 
games together; but when I try to discipline him he runs 
away." 

" Alessandro," I said, as he ran quickly up the steps, " Mad- 
dalena says she wishes she could make Nicola mind like you 
do. She wants to know how you manage it. Will you ? " 

"Ah, Signora! Never, never did I say that," she cried. 
I stopped, astonished at the emphatic denial. Alessandro, look- 



74 ALESSANDRO [April, 

ing like a convicted criminal, stood twisting his cap, the red 
that mounted to his cheeks vying with Maddalena's kerchief. 
I glanced from one to the other. Alessandro finally broke the 
uncomfortable silence. 

" I will tell, if Maddalena wishes." But Maddalena shook 
her head with great energy, and raised a pair of beseeching 
eyes to Alessandro. 

"You are both certainly very foolish,'* I continued. "There 
can be no reason why I should not be told. Nicola is a very 
bad boy sometimes, and if Alessandro knows " 

"No, no, Signora; Nicola is not bad, he is never bad, not 
like " She would have named a dozen imps had I not inter- 
rupted. 

" It is as you please, Maddalena. The Signora is tired." I 
broke in rather ungraciously. "I will say good- night." 

" Adieu ! " I called back, standing a moment to watch the 
three as they moved off. Nicola waving frantic good-byes from 
his high perch on Alessandro's shoulders, and Maddalena, laugh- 
ing merrily at the happy nonsense of the two. 

" Giuseppe " I was sitting at supper, the antique lamp giv- 
ing little light beyond the white cover " the sea was more 
beautiful to-day than I have ever seen it. It was glorious. 
We went on on, as if there was no ending; then home, straight 
home into the golden sunset." 

"The Signora should have been a fisherman," he replied; 
which matter-of-fact speech brought me down from my airy 
flight. 

" Never, Giuseppe, never ! " I cried, with more energy than 
the situation demanded. " I hate killing things, and I'm afraid 
of the water." 

"The Signora need not fear," he replied soothingly. "She 
can never be a fisherman." 

" Giuseppe, why has Maddalena so much trouble with Nico- 
la ? " The old man stopped in his serving and stared at me. 
The change in the conversation had been too swift for his slow- 
working mind. 

" Is Nicola a very wicked boy, Giuseppe ? " I asked, putting 
the question in a simpler form. 

"Not wicked at all, Signora, only mischievous." 

" Then, why " returning resolutely to my first proposition 
" does Maddalena have so much trouble with him ? " 



ALESSANDRO 75 

" Maddalena is young, she yields to all his demands too 
much ; she is wrong." 

"Giuseppe," I said, in a coaxing voice, "this salad and wine 
are too good to be enjoyed alone. Take that chair and this," 
I filled a glass and held it towards him. Protesting feebly, he 
did as I bade him. " Now, tell me all about Maddalena." 

"There is nothing to tell. The Signora knows she married 
very young. Her husband was a brave man and a good fisher- 
man. One October day he was drowned, and she was left with 
the child." 

" She loved him ? " I asked. 

" She adores him still," he answered. " Poor Matteo was a 
good man, but not handsome. The Signora must remember 
him a short, broad man, with small eyes and red cheeks, and 
hands hands like that," he cut a swift circle in the air with 
one finger. 

" And Maddalena is so beautiful," I murmured, a picture of 
the departed Matteo rising before my eyes. " And Alessandro," 
I went on meditatively, " why should the boy mind him what 
does he do ? " 

Giuseppe drained the last drops in his glass, put it down on 
the table, pushed back his chair, and stood up. " The Signora 
must know," he answered. 

The Signora did not know, and for all her adroit question- 
ing was not going to know ; so, with a few more words, I left 
my host and climbed the narrow stairs. 

One of the great feasts of our Lady was near and the town 
was fairly seething with excitement. It was the most important 
festa of the whole year. The church was dressed in the gay- 
est and stiffest of paper flowers, green boughs stuck everywhere, 
the tallest tapers only were used to light the altar. At the 
head of the procession our Lady's statue was to be carried, 
gowned in gorgeous clothes and covered with a lace veil, the 
work of her loving children. The stiff, overdressed little fig- 
ure, that to my critical Northern eyes seemed but a travesty, 
was to their loving Southern hearts and vivid imaginations al- 
most a living memorial of their Blessed Mother. 

I donned a white dress, and instead of my sombre black 
ribbons tied on our Lady's own color, in honor of her festa, as 
a token that, for once, I would forget I was a calculating, criti- 
cal American, and become forthwith a gay, glad- hearted child 



76 ALESSANDRO [April, 

of Italy, prepared to walk beside her image with a fervent 
prayer, and if necessary to dance merrily with a light heart. 
So did my simple blue ribbons become symbolic. I ignored 
Giuseppe's astonished stare at my unusual adornment. 

Annunziata, with my namesake comfortably asleep in the 
bend of her arm, walked home with me after Mass to my studio. 

The baby of many names had become familiar with every 
nook of my small domicile, and often risked his precious per- 
son many times a day by sucking my brushes, licking paints, or 
bedaubing his little face with indiscriminate colors. Annunziata 
and I became so occupied in sudden, life-saving onslaughts that 
we could think of little else. 

" Annunziata," 1 began, " do you not consider children a 
great care ? " 

" No, Signora"; Annunziata answered instantly. "Speranza 
is not a care ; he is a pleasure, a joy." 

"That is just the way," I replied dryly. "He is a play- 
toy now, a doll that you dress " 

" And love," the mother added wisely, wondering, I am sure, 
what was coming next. 

" Yes, and love " ; I amended. " Then when they grow big 
they run wild, pay no heed to your wishes." 

"Why is the Signora thinking such thoughts ?" Annunziata 
asked me soberly, looking at the wee man on the floor. 

"My thoughts are with Maddalena, for I remember when 
Nicola was as he is," I answered, pointing to the baby on the 
floor. "There is nothing talked of in the town but Nicola's 
pranks and the trouble he gives Maddalena." 

Annunziata looked at me, with an expression in her big 
black eyes that I did not understand. 

"Well?" I inquired. 

" If the Signora does not know " This was too much. 

" No, I do not know " ; I answered very decidedly. " But 
you are going to tell me." 

"It is no mystery," Annunziata began. "The whole town 
knows it. Alessandro wants to marry Maddalena ever since 
the last festa, a year ago and she will not have him. She 
thinks, and I do also, Signora, that marrying twice is not right. 
We all think so," she added, with a tone of grave decision in 
her voice, as of one who sat in judgment. 

" That is why he cares so for Nicola ! " 



i9o8.] ALESSANDRO 77 

" It is the short way to the mother's heart." 

"And Maddalena?" I asked. 

She shrugged her shapely shoulders. " Second marriages 
are wrong," she maintained doggedly, merciless as happy peo- 
ple can be. " We have told her." Again the official tone, the 
red lips set firmly together, the narrow brows nearly meeting 
in a disapproving frown. 

"You mean that you went to her and told her she must 
not marry Alessandro ? " I questioned. 

"Not 'must not' Signora," she corrected, "only better 
not. She agreed, after a few tears. We told her that in the 
memory even of Giuseppe there had been no one wedded 
twice." 

" Suppose " I suggested, after we had talked some time. 
" Suppose she cares for him as you care for Marco ? " 

" Impossible," she answered quickly. 

" May be so," I replied carelessly, hoping she might re- 
member the unhappiness of her own courtship, and have mercy. 
"That true love seldom runs smooth is as old as old as 
Italy," I finished. " Speranza mia" stooping to pick up my 
ridiculous namesake " tell your mother some day to remem- 
ber how desolate her heart was when she stood on the shore 
and watched a tiny boat, with two men in it, tossed about by 
the mad fury of the sea." I longed to add to the mother "that 
all your unhappiness came from foolish, narrow prejudice, be- 
cause in the memory of man a Galdi had never wed any but 
seamen, and Marco, to whom you gave your heart, was a fol- 
lower of the gentle craft, a son of St. Crispin." 

I think from all the stories I heard that Nicola's guardian 
angel must have had a busy time. I almost doubted some of 
the pranks, when I thought of the small figure I had seen at 
the festa, walking beside our Lady's statue, holding the lighted 
candle bravely aloft though his arms must have ached with 
the heavy burden. From the seraphic expression of his face 
one might have thought he was absorbed in prayer. Maddalena 
had pointed him out to me with triumphant pride. 

" The Signora sees for herself," she whispered. " He is an 
angel ; I am indeed fortunate. Yet they would make me believe 
he is wicked." 

I assented faintly, doubt in my heart. Had I not seen him, 



78 ALESSANDRO [April, 

on his way to church, give Angelo a ducking in the fountain, 
tripping him up skillfully, in all his gay festa attire, as he was 
running past, and disappearing still more skillfully before the 
victim's screams brought his mother, who gave him a sound 
spanking. 

Some days after I met Maddalena looking as if all the cares 
of the universe had settled on her shoulders. 

"Had I seen Nicola?" I shook my head. She had heard 
about Angelo, she told me. "And on the festa" the tears 
rolled unchecked down the smooth olive cheek. Nicola had 
been severely chastised and forbidden to leave the house. I 
think, from Maddalena's vivid description and the tears that fell 
during the recital, that it was the first punishment the very 
first she had ever inflicted on her offspring in the whole 
course of his seven years. Being absolutely unprecedented, he 
had resented it bitterly, and Maddalena's voice choked with 
sobs as she told me that he had run away, and she could not 
find him. What could she do ? Where could she look for him ? 
She knew he had gone to join the brigands. 

The idea of Nicola trudging off on his fat brown legs to 
join the brigands was amusing. I consoled the disconsolate 
mother as best I could, begging her not to worry, that he would 
come home when he was hungry, which I felt sure would be 
soon. 

The town was a small one, and before sunset every nook 
and cranny had been searched for the runaway, but no trace 
was found. Maddalena, dry- eyed now and desperate, sat at 
home and refused to be comforted. The boats were all in, all 
but Alessandro's; he had sailed for a port farther south, and 
would be gone for twenty-four hours. 

The next day, boats and fishing neglected, with only a few 
hours sleep, the men started out again ; a single thought pos- 
sessed the town to find Nicola, imp though he was, and to 
see the sorrow leave Maddalena's eyes. 

When I passed through Maddalena's open door, I found 
her sitting idle, without hope, stricken to the heart. " You 
must have some breakfast, Maddalena," I said. She shook her 
head. "This is nonsense," I went on. " Nicola will be found, 
and you will be ill ; I will cook your breakfast, and you must 
eat it." I had hoped my words would rouse her the idea of 



1908.] ALESSANDRO 79 

the Signora waiting on her but they failed utterly. Her eyes 
never left the open door that showed the steep little street and 
the olive hills above it. I soon had a makeshift meal ready 
and she ate it obediently. I do not think she had touched food 
since the morning of the day before. 

" Maddalena," I repeated to her, " you must not despair. 
Nicola will come back ; he is a big boy, and can take care of 
himself. If only Alessandro were home he would know where 
to look for him. Let us go to look for him. Come now." 
I thought anything would be better than this dumb despair. 

She looked at me startled. " Where would the Signora go ? " 
They were the first words she had spoken, and I felt rejoiced. 

"To the sea first to see if Alessandro's boat is in sight." 
We went out into the brilliant sunlight. She shaded her eyes for 
a, moment like a creature blinded and would have turned back, 
but I took her hand in mine and led her on, praying that the 
joyous day would put hope into her heart. I think it did, for 
soon she was talking to me telling me all that had happened 
since early Friday morning, when she had punished Nicola. 

"Why had Alessandro gone to V ?" I asked. This, 

too, she told me slowly, in a dull monotone as if it all con- 
cerned some one else. He had again asked her to marry him, 
and she had said "No." 

"You do not love him?" I queried. 

" Second marriages are not right," she answered, and went 
on to tell me how Alessandro had become angry ; he would 

leave M and go to America; so yesterday he had sailed 

for V , a busy seaport some miles south. I looked at Mad- 
dalena in amazement. She was sending Alessandro happy, 
wholesome Alessandro to that land of violent contrasts. My 
next words came quickly and were not premeditated, for a faint 
color crept into the pale cheeks and she asked me timidly : 

" Does the Signora think to marry again is not wrong ? " 
I was glad she put it that way, for I could answer truthfully. 

" Decidedly not wrong, Maddalena." 

" Ah, Signora," she cried, gazing across the shining water. 
" Why does he not come ? He would find my Nicola. Sup- 
pose I never see Nicola again, never hear his voice, never hold 
him in my arms. He is lying somewhere hurt and I cannot 
get to him." Sobbing violently she called : " Alessaadro, come 



8o ALESSANDRO [April, 

quickly, come, come ! You will find him." Then turning to 
me as the sobs wore themselves out : " Ah, Signora, I must go 
back maybe he is at home I should not have left." Breath- 
lessly she flew up the sea-wall steps and did not slacken her 
speed until she reached her house. 

It was past noon when Alessandro's boat came in. He had 
with him a strip of paper, for which he had paid, that entitled 
him to be carried across the dark ocean, away from bright Italy, 
to the modern Land of Promise. He had also a letter he had 
not paid for this, it was tendered him freely, payment would 
come later to a man in this promised land, a man who was 
guaranteed to wring water from a stone. Armed with these 
bits of paper, harmless in appearance as the three wishes of 
the fairy tale, but quite as subtly malicious, he secured his 
boat and turned toward home. That he would never see Mad- 
dalena again, he had quite determined. He would become an 
Americano and maybe when he came home in two or three 
years, his pockets lined with yellow gold, as the man had 
promised, he would buy the villa on the hill, and then may- 
be then They were very childish thoughts: we who are 
wise in the world's wisdom know how absurdly childish they 
were ; but to Alessandro whose love and pride had been 
wounded by Maddalena's refusal they were very real, and, as 
a child would, he found comfort in them. I saw his broad 
shoulders moving steadily up the narrow street, his head well 
back, looking neither to the right nor the left. With a hasty 
word to Maddalena I rushed through the door, stumbled down 
the crooked steps, and caught him before he disappeared. 

" Per la vita mia ! " was his startled exclamation when I 
told him the story. " Lost and since yesterday, Signora ? I 

found him hidden in the boat when I started for V ; but I 

put him ashore and told him we could be friends no longer." 
Poor Nicola ! a fallen idol and a chastisement all in one morn- 
ing ! " The Signora knows," continued Alessandro as his head 
went up straighten " I am going to America next week." 

" But, Nicola ?" I began, ignoring his words. "You must 
find Nicola. Maddalena will lose her reason if " 

" I will find him with God's help," he replied quietly. 
" Will the Signora tell me where the men have searched ? " 

" Everywhere," I answered. " They are still looking. Sure- 



i9o8.] ALESSANDRO 81 

ly, Alessandro, he was with you so much you must know his 
fancies, did he ever talk of running away ? Battista says he 
was always talking of being a brigand." 

A smile lighted his face as a recollection of the boy's talk 
came to him. " He was forever one thing or another; a brigand 
one day, a padre another, and again a noble signer with a villa 
among the olive hills. Yesterday, when I put him out of the 
boat, I told him if he did not mind, his mother would punish 
him, he said he was too old to be punished by a woman, even 
though it was his mother. And he only comes to my elbow," 
he added admiringly. " He must be found, Signora. I will 
go at once. You know the old ruined villa," pointing towards 
the sunset. " We were always talking of it both of us. I 
will look there first." 

" But the road is so steep," I cried. " No boy could climb 
that path." 

" Boys are monkeys but I must start, it is hard to find in 
the darkness." 

" You must see Maddalena before you go, tell her of the 
villa, it will give her courage," I said. He hesitated as if in 
doubt, then, raising his cap, turned and strode towards the 
open door where I could see her standing. They were best 
alone, so I turned away, hoping that now in her loneliness she 
would forget the village gossips and show her heart to Ales- 
sandro as she had shown it to me. 

I stopped idly at the fountain tinkling in the sunlight, and 
recalled the day when Angelo, in all the bravery of his festal 
clothes had been forced to do penance for the sin of vanity in 
its shallow waters. I prayed that the small knave, Nicola not 
Angelo was alive somewhere, though my heart misgave me 
when I thought of the hours he had been away without food 
or shelter. My words were brave ones when the desolate 
mother was within sound ; but I feared the worst. 

All at once a sound of many voices in the distance made 
me turn. Down the winding path that led to the old villa came 
the villagers, their shrill voices cutting through the quiet air. 
Nearer and nearer they came, their excited gestures telling me 
something had happened. That they had found the boy I was 
certain, but whether alive or not I dared not think. Ales- 
sandro had started, taking another path, one more direct but 
VOL. LXXXVII 6 



82 ALESSANDRO [April. 

so precipitous that it was considered impassible. The cries had 
attracted him and I saw him now, running down the road, throw- 
ing his cap up in the air and shouting: " He is found, Maddalena. 
He is found." 

It was as Alessandro had told me when we stood outside 
Maddalena's door; the boy had climbed the precipitous path, 
found the villa deserted of course, no one had lived in it for 
ten years crept into a sheltered corner of the courtyard, and 
cried himself to sleep. In the morning he hunted vainly for 
something to eat, and when the men found him he was quite 
ready to be rescued. Poor little mite! All his courage had 
fled away and he was crying bitterly for his mother. They 
carried him home triumphantly on their shoulders, but it was 
Alessandro who put him in Maddalena's arms arms that held 
both the big and the little man for an instant's time in a loving 
embrace ; and when the big man turned to me with a look that 
said much, the wee one was being smothered in kisses. I saw 
that all was well, that Alessandro had entered the land of his 
heart's desire, that the ticket for the Promised Land would 
never be used, neither would the letter be delivered to the man 
who, as Alessandro told me later, could turn stones into gold. 





THE NEGLECT OF IRISH WRITERS. 

BY KATHARINE TYNAN. 

NE of the little tragedies of literature a great 
tragedy it may be to those immediately con- 
cerned is the disappearance of the Irish writer. 
The reader who finds Irish names popping up 
constantly in the list of new books may lift his 
or her eyebrows at the foregoing sentence; but, none the less, 
is it true. Hope springs eternal in the young Irish writer, 
and he comes with zest to his book, oblivious of the fact that 
the way is strewn with the dead Irish writers who have gone 
under because no one would read them. 

As a matter of fact, the Irish are not a reading people. 
They are too restless to be readers, too fond of talking and 
storytelling, too desirous of the sympathy of eye to eye and 
smile to smile to sit down and receive impressions from the 
miles of printed matter in a book. You have but to see a 
couple or group of men meet in an Irish street. Each one is 
charged with good stories, which he delivers and receives amid 
such laughter as one never hears or sees this side of the chan- 
nel. I have heard more humor pass round an Irish dinner- 
table in one evening than would stock Punch for a year. I 
have heard wonderful tales told in an Irish drawing-room, tales 
of romance and adventure, of heroism and sorrow. But the 
teller could never put them down ; if you were to ask for even 
a repetition of them, they could not be repeated. If the story- 
teller were amiable enough to attempt it, you would get some- 
thing with all the life and sparkle gone from it; the prospect 
of the story ever finding its way into print would make the 
spirit of it fly away in terror. They are a people for the oral, 
not for the written literature over there. 

To be sure, two or three booksellers live and prosper in 
Dublin, so that some books must be sold. But Dublin is not 
at all representative of Ireland, being indeed an English city 
in which the well-to-do classes who would be book-buyers are 
of English blood although long settled in Ireland, or of the 
mixed races. To these the Irish writer is not persona grata. 



84 THE NEGLECT OF IRISH WRITERS |_ A P riI 

In the drawing-room of the well-to-do in Dublin you will find 
the latest London unliterary success. There is an extraordinary 
provinciality in Dublin. They are reading in Dublin to-day 
the books which the middle- class households of London were 
leading the day before yesterday. 

You go to a Dublin house which certainly ought to be intel- 
lectual, and you are invited to discuss some writer or some 
book which is not within the range of literature. I dare not 
name names, either of the readers or the books of their pref- 
erence, but I may give one or two examples. I found, not so 
long ago, the household of an Irish scholar of world-wide 
reputation discussing, with passionate excitement, the novels of 
a certain English theatrical novelist with whose name literature 
has not a nodding acquaintance. The conversation passed from 
this writer to others, of the mere trivial and contemptible 
achievement, the mere rag-bag of book-making. I listened with 
amazement, but expressed no opinion of my own, until, in a 
pause in the conversation I said something about Joseph Con- 
rad. Neither my host nor his family had ever heard of him. 
I listened in vain for the names of Meredith, Hardy, Wells, 
Jacobs, any one writer who has done well in his own sphere. 
But no name of even modest merit was mentioned. The 
changes were rung on I wish I could tell the names of the 
novelists. Some of those most belauded are hardly known even 
to the unexacting of English readers. 

Again, at the table of a literary household in Dublin, a re- 
mark of mine to the effect that if I could have only one book 
I should choose Wordsworth, was received with amazement 
which was almost contempt. " And why not Southey ? " I was 
asked with a smile. 

The opinions about literature in Dublin are, in fact, not old- 
fashioned but demodes. The Celt who does not read at all will 
quote you easily the things I used to hear said in my child- 
hood, as, for example, that Browning was a pretender and his 
wife the real poet; and that Moore is among the great poets 
of the world. The non-Celt who is very much more up-to- 
date will be reading the small fry among English writers. If 
you should express an opinion contrary to his or hers, you 
being a writer yourself, it will be ascribed in their own minds 
to jealousy, nor will your opinion be allowed. I met a lady 
at dinner in Dublin who frequently lectured on literature and 



1908.] THE NEGLECT OF IRISH WRITERS 85 

art. She had no knowledge of either ; and I heard a fellow- 
guest complain to her that in her last lecture the Christian 
names of the writers had been all wrong. She still lectured at 
dinner, not only about literature and art, but about the English 
and things in England generally. Any faint suggestion that 
things were not quite so, on the part of one who had lived 
more than a dozen years in England, was simply waved aside. 
I remember that my speaking of Harrow as a possible dwell- 
ing-place made this lady lift her eyebrows. " Oh," she said 
in a shocked voice, "do you think you will like it?" "Yes, 
I should think so; why not?" "Well" with polite hesi- 
tation " I shouldn't have thought you would. I don't exactly 
know Harrow, but then, I know the Harrow Road." Now the 
Harrow Road is a London slum many miles removed from the 
famous "Hill." 

They do not in the least know when they possess a genius. 
There is Mr. W. B. Yeats, who is in the line of succession to 
Keats and Shelley. Mr. Yeats jhas never been held in honor 
in his own country. He is not held in honor to-day. I have 
only once seen a book of his in an Irish house, and that was 
the house of an Irish writer, who is, of course, above all the 
things I have been saying. 

I remember long ago, when W. B. Yeats' Wanderings of 
Oisin (he calls it " Usheen " now) was published, I had the book, 
and a reviewer on the leading Dublin daily took it up when he 
was visiting me. " This fellow is too sure of himself, and I'm 
going to slate him," he said. And slate him accordingly he did. 

I remembered this more than a dozen years later, when I 
was in Dublin at the time "The Countess Kathleen" was first 
produced as a stage-play. Every one I met was belittling it 
and praising Mr. Edward Martyn's "Heather Field" at its ex- 
pense. Now I think a deal of this was due to the fact that 
they knew or suspected that Yeats was as far above Martyn 
intellectually as it is possible to imagine. " Sir," said Dr. John- 
son, " the Irish are a fair people ; they do not praise each other.' 1 
I would expand this saying from a closer knowledge than the 
Doctor possessed. They praise the little achievement; in pro- 
portion as achievement is good they ignore or belittle it. 

The one literary success of late years in Ireland has been 
the novels of a West of Ireland parson, which are Tracts for the 
Times as he sees the times. To be sure the success is in great 



86 THE NEGLECT OF IRISH WRITERS [April, 

measure a success of scandal, because he has introduced into 
his books thinly- veiled and very offensive portraits of living 
people. Literary merit the books have none; yet their author 
was invited to lecture before the Dublin National Literary So- 
ciety, where a Dublin Jesuit Father and Mr. John Dillon sat at 
his feet and were enthusiastic over the address in which he had 
recommended to the praise and love of Irish people books in 
which some of the most ugly and offensive travesties of all they 
held sacred were contained. 

The Irish are a people of shibboleths. One shibboleth is 
that they are an artistic and literary people, and that being 
said, it is so for all time, even though many an Irish writer 
has had to echo the bitter cry of William Carleton. 

By the way, the one body of men in Ireland who do not 
weary you with shibboleths, who look at things with honest 
and sincere, if wonderfully kindly eyes, are the priests. It is 
always a relief to talk with a priest. In ninety-nine cases out 
of a hundred you will find him reasonable, sane, receptive, one 
who sees life clearly and sees it whole, who knows all and pardons 
all. If a book has any sale at all in Ireland because it is 
National, or Catholic, or both, be sure the priests are largely 
the purchasers. 

In Ireland more than any other country familiarity breeds 
contempt. A young Irishman said to me frankly a little while 
ago : " Do you know, I never care to read a book written by 
any one I know." I should think it is a common character- 
istic of Irish people. In a house I visited some little while ago 
in Ireland, where the young people had a great many books 
given to them, I noticed that in the well-packed shelves in the 
bedrooms and school room and along the corridor there was 
Henty, there were Mrs. Meade and Mrs. Molesworth, and vari- 
ous others; nothing by Irish writers, although some writers of 
boys' and girls' books were connected with the household by 
affinity and old friendship. 

All this leads up to the statement that Irish writers have 
neither honor nor emolument from their own country. And 
English readers will have none of them. It was not always so. 
Carleton and the Banims and Gerald Griffin had English read- 
ers, to say nothing of Lady Morgan and Lady Dufferin. And 
Lever, of course, had a succes fou. And Leland and Lover 
brought their wares to the English market quite successfully. 



1908.] THE NEGLECT OF IRISH WRITERS 87 

But a good deal of water has flowed under the bridges since 
then ; and I venture to think that the reading public has 
changed. It is now the great middle- class that reads, and the 
middle- class has no love for the Irish. Partly from religious 
reasons, partly from racial, partly from recent causes of em- 
bitterment, they will have none of the Irish ; and, looking at 
the matter dispassionately, I cannot say I blame them. 

I fancy it was men who read Lever and made him a great 
popular success. Many men read Lever still; no later humor- 
ist has ousted that rollicking and gallant spirit. Whereas the 
novel-readers of to-day are women. Women are narrower by 
reason of their narrow, home-keeping existence. Women have 
memories. There was once a Union of Hearts, but certain 
things said in the name of Ireland poor Ireland especially 
during the Boer War, have rankled and will rankle in the 
breasts of those women who lead quiet, uneventful lives and 
have leisure to remember and no logic to distinguish. Just as 
advertisements for a housemaid or for a stevedore used to 
carry the legend, " No Irish need apply," after the Fenian times; 
though the Irish housemaid or the Irish stevedore might be 
just a quiet body desiring nothing so much as to lead a quiet 
life with all the world, he or she was made to suffer for the 
people who blew up jails and otherwise made English people 
uncomfortable. 

Perhaps the Union of Hearts never existed so far as the 
great middle- class is concerned. It was only their leaders who 
talked about it; and the loyalty of the English middle- class to 
a leader like Mr. Gladstone, who really captured their hearts, 
was without limit. But I imagine that the doctor's wife from 
Sydenham, who came to me to take up a servant's character, 
and remarked that all Irish told lies and that Roman Catholics 
had no principle, was representative of a considerable number 
of her class. It is a matter of detail that I carry an unspoilt 
Irish brogue ; and that I answered the remark about the Ro- 
man Catholic want of principle by the simple statement that 
I was a Catholic myself, which did not perturb the good lady 
in the least. 

Middle- class is, of course, a very elastic term, and the point 
at which the upper middle-class merges into the gentry is often 
non-existent. This overlapping section of the middle-class would 
be perhaps less hostile to things Irish as a whole. To them 



88 THR NEGLECT OF IRISH WRITERS [April, 

and to the upper class belong, I suppose, the modest few 
readers of Irish novels published in England. 

The only successful books by Irish writers at present are 
the books of those fine artists and fine humorists, the Misses 
Somerville and Ross, and the success, such as it is, is in no 
way commensurate with their merits. Probably most of their 
readers are to be found amongst men, by whom I should think, 
also, such writers as W. G. Wells and W. W. Jacobs mainly 
exist; women, English middle-class women at least, being rarely 
possessors of that gift of the gods, a sense of humor. But 
practically no one in England has read the really great serious 
novel by those ladies, The Real Charlotte, one of the books 
produced in Ireland of late years which marks an Irish literary 
movement of great importance, although the writers who con- 
tribute to it will probably be dead and buried before either 
Irish or English people know anything about it. 

This neglect of Irish writers is a thing that moves the saeva 
indignatio to think upon. The Irish are talking still of the '48 
men who wrote verses a servir. There was not a born literary 
man among them except John Mitchell. They are pious to the 
dead; but in the present, Irish writers, some of extraordinary 
merit, are being crushed out every day for want of readers. 
In fact, unless one can get sufficient of a hearing in England 
to live by it, there is no other fate for the Irish writer than 
penury and oblivion. And for certain serious Irish novels, it 
is quite natural that there should not be English readers. 

There was published a few years ago an Irish historical 
novel of the first rank in fact, in my opinion, the finest his- 
torical novel that has yet been produced in Ireland Croppies 
Lie Down, by William Buckley. This is a most extraordinary 
book. It is a novel of the Irish Rebellion of 1798. It has all 
the great qualities of tragedy, pity, passion, rage, scorn, love, 
hatred; and with all that it has deliberation, sanity, and jus- 
tice. It moves with the most irresistible force. I read it a 
hard-gallop, my pulses keeping pace to the breathless narrative. 
I freely confess that I could not sleep at night after reading 
it. Here is a great canvas, full of figures, each one painted by 
the hand of a master. Heathcote, the English soldier, Irene 
Neville, the poor, sweet, innocent, weak heroine, Gash, the spy, 
Harrigan, the villain and renegade, the ladies of the ascendancy 
party, Castlereagh, the leaders of the Rebellion, the yeomen, 



1908.] THE NEGLECT OF IRISH WRITERS 89 

even George the Third himself leave each a memorable impres- 
sion. The book is bloody from end to end with the colors of 
that bloody time. The screaming of women, who have suffered 
the last wrong, follow you long after you have closed the pages. 
The horror of the floggings at the triangles, the half-hangings, 
the pitch-cappings, the merciless inhumanity, that spared neither 
age nor infancy, that took no account of sex or helplessness, 
makes the book a shambles. But then it is truth, and truth 
does not spare the susceptibilities. If it had not great hu- 
mane qualities it would be intolerable. 

One can imagine the effect of such a book in one of those 
English households to which Mr. Buckley, because he is too 
big a man to have shibboleths or insincerities, pays tribute 
when he speaks of "the real virtue which has made England 
great, and, who knows, may yet have power to keep her glo- 
rious when the hour of trial comes." 

" What a monstrous tissue of lies ! " they would say, these 
gentlewomen who are kind and dutiful and compassionate and 
God-fearing. " This wrought by Lord Castlereagh at the in- 
stigation of Mr. Pitt, the great Commoner, in order to rob the 
Irish of their Parliament ! Horrible ! Incredible ! Impossible ! " 
Doubtless even Castlereagh could not have forecasted the things 
that were to happen in what was, after all, a religious war ; 
and so strange a thing is human nature that a war of religions, 
in the name of the Prince of Peace, is the most cruel and 
bloody of all wars. " To the victors the spoils ! " was yet the 
rule of war. Wellington, and the Peninsular War, in which he 
hanged a soldier who stole a chicken, yet was not always able 
to prevent the horrors of war there was the sack of Badajoz, 
for example were still in the future. "Those things could 
never have happened with England in the background of them ! " 
the blameless English reader would say, not knowing or re- 
membering how the world has progressed since then. Indeed, 
reading yesterday of George Selwyn and the public executions, 
I began to see how '98 was possible. 

But they did happen. There is chapter and verse for them. 
Let great Englishmen bear testimony : " Every crime, every 
cruelty that could be committed by Cossacks or Calmucks has 
been transacted here," wrote the humane general Sir Ralph 
Abercrombie. And Lord Cornwallis, who did his best to bring 
the Irish yeomanry and militia to justice, wrote : " On my ar- 



90 THE NEGLECT OF IRISH WRITERS [April, 

rival in this country I put a stop to the burning of houses and 
murder of the inhabitants by the yeomen or any other persons 
who delighted in that amusement ; to the flogging for the pur- 
pose of extorting confession: and to the free-quarters, which 
comprehend universal rape and robbery throughout the whole 
country." He says again : " There is no law either in town or 
country but martial law, and you know enough of that to see 
all the horrors of it even in the best administration of it. Judge, 
then, how it must be conducted by Irishmen, heated with pas- 
sion and revenge. But all this is trifling compared with the 
numberless murders which are hourly committed by our people 
without any process or examination whatever." 

Ireland was saved for England in '98 by the Irish yeomen 
and militia. English regulars had little to do with the sup- 
pression of the insurrection. The Highland regiments were con- 
spicuously humane in their treatment of the people ; and it will 
never be forgotten to them in Ireland. The most infamous of 
the militia corps were the North Cork and the " Ancient 
Britons," the latter a Welsh regiment. 

However it is all written in the histories of those who would 
look for it there ; and here, in this great romance, is a micro- 
cosm of the times. The book must be reckoned an Irish classic, 
but at present the Irish, with very few exceptions, are sublimely 
ignorant of its existence. The great Irish historical novel, for 
which we have been looking so long, has come, and one had 
almost said gone, and the Irish are not aware of it. 

Croppies Lie Down is the most flagrant example of a neg- 
lected book which ought to have brought its author fortune 
and renown. But there are many others. 

There is the work of Frank Mathew, whose novel of '98, 
The Wood of the Brambles, depicts the same dolorous time as seen 
by a dreamer and a poet. The Wood of the Brambles is an en- 
chanting book. Love of Comrades and The Spanish Wine are 
others of Mr. Mathew's Irish novels, which ought to be held 
in high honor in Ireland, and to have won for their author the 
consideration of all those who care for what is excellent in 
literature. Mr. Mathew, I believe, has ceased to write novels. 

Another Irish writer of great achievement is Grace Rhys. 
Her trilogy of Irish books, Mary Dominic, The Wooing of 
Sheila, and The Prince of Lisnover, are in an ascending degree 
books of a remarkable quality. Mrs. Rhys knows her Ireland 



1908.] THE NEGLECT OF IRISH WRITERS 91 

of the gentry, " mounted and half-mounted," as Sir Joshua 
Barrington distinguished them ; and it is a strange world. 
Those people possess features in common with the eighteenth 
century in England, " with a difference." The Celt who in- 
fluences the dweller in his midst without being at all influenced 
himself has given these descendants of English settlers a wild- 
ness, an adventurousness, a prodigality, a splendor so to speak 
which makes them widely different from their progenitors. 
Here you will see the children of the oppressors of '98, and 
also of the humane Protestants who tried in vain to check those 
dreadful excesses, with all their pride, cruelty, insolence, gener- 
osity, reckless courage, in their habits as they lived, and as 
they may live to-day for all I know, for they do not leant 
easily, although the Congested Estates Court and the Land 
League were rude teachers. Mrs. Rhys' work belongs to litera- 
ture as Frank Mathew's does, to such literary story-weaving as 
was done by Stevenson and is done by Conrad, finding the 
novel the vehicle for the romance and wonder that are in them. 
But Mrs. Rhys is unknown in Ireland ; and one is afraid that 
in England her circulation has been very small. 

Again there is Julia Crottie. She writes of the Irish mid- 
dle-classes, of the dreary, often ugly and sordid, often spiritual 
and lovely, life of an Irish country town. She brings to her 
task just the qualities it needs. She has no shibboleths, no il- 
lusions, wilful or otherwise. If the thing is dreary and horrid 
she sets it down as faithfully and pitilessly as any great artist 
who finds all that is worth recording. She is that very rare 
thing, an Irish realist; but she is not all realist, for her 
strong and sometimes corroding sketches are relieved by the 
poetry and softness which come in exquisite intervals. She 
has published two books, Neighbours and The Old Land. If 
she had been Scotch the English-speaking or English- reading 
world would have known of these books as it knows of Ihe 
House of the Green Shutters, with which her work has something 
in common, although the gloom and bitterness in her are light- 
ened by poetry and romantic vision. 

I know from personal experience that the English publisher 
is nearly always a self-sacrificing man when he consents to pub- 
lish an Irish book. Even the harmless romances of Mrs. Hun- 
gerford would have no chance in our day, although they had a 
great vogue in their own. I have spoken of the most striking 



92 THE NEGLECT OF IRISH WRITERS April. 

examples of the neglect of Irish writers; but I would also point 
to the many less neglected who would enjoy honor and fortune 
if they had chanced to be English or Scotch. There is Miss 
Emily Lawless, for example. How many in Ireland or Eng- 
land know those big books, Grania, Maelcho, With Essex in 
Ireland? There is Jane Barlow, the most exquisite of ideal- 
ists. She came in for a little while when the Kailyard school 
was beginning to have a vogue, but I doubt if her popularity 
ever amounted to much. There is the Real Charlotte, of which I 
have spoken before. There is the idyllic and delicate work of 
Rosa Mulholland. There are the incisive and brilliant books of 
Hannah Lynch, now dead. All the long list is, in reality, a 
list of failures failures in the vulgar sense that the books bring 
the authors little or no money; but failures also in the poig- 
nant sense that they bring them no readers. 

Surely literature springs up in Ireland with the scantiest 
encouragement it ever received anywhere. It was all very well 
to write in a garret on a crust, knowing, or believing, that some 
day the immortal poem or story would bring its message to a 
delighted and receptive world. It is another thing to write with 
the knowledge that you will have no honor either from your 
own people or others. 

There has always been a deal of poetry in Ireland. Some- 
times it has been artless in the extreme and founded on very 
bad models when it sought expression. Indeed it is within com- 
paratively late years that Irish writers to any number have 
learned to handle the English language, to bring artistry to the 
expression of the things they would say. There are now num- 
bers of young poets in Ireland who are saying simple things 
sweetly and naturally, with the artistic, ineffable touch that 
makes for real poetry. Have they any readers? They have 
at least one single, solitary publisher in Dublin who knows 
how to produce and clothe a book decently. One hopes that 
his recent choice of a Parliamentary career will not affect un- 
favorably the work of his press. There has been a literary re- 
vival in Ireland of late years, much greater and more general 
than people imagined who talked of the little and poetical Irish 
revival, which meant mainly the poetry of W. B. Yeats and 
George Russell, and the scholarly genius of Douglas Hyde. 
But, alas! it is a one-sided revival, for although the writers have 
come there are no readers among Irish people or elsewhere. 




WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS. 

BY H. G. P. 

I. 
THE PASSING OF TOMMY. 

JHE "snow-on-the-mountains " was in full bloom, 
groups of crocuses were holding out their golden 
fingers just behind it, and the yellow and white 
looked like strips of spring sunshine up each 
side of the footpath which led to the cottage at 
the end. Outside the door are the fender and the fire irons. 
This is a premonitary sign to me that cleaning is going on with- 
in, for any article that is displaced during the process, is put 
outside, or on the table, as there is no room to turn when any- 
thing is moved inside the cottage. 

An old man is in a chair on one side of the fire, and an 
old woman, who is on her knees before it, is putting whitening 
on the hearthstone, which she does in a curly pattern round 
its three sides. When I greet them, the old man answers cheer- 
ily enough his spouse answers, too, but neither turns nor rises 
at my entrance. This is not the absence of manners, but the 
result of the conviction that as the position took a long time 
to acquire it is not to be lightly foregone. For Mrs. Squance 
is eighty years of age, and although she is still " quite sprack," 
according to her own account, I know of the difficulty of get- 
ting up from her knees, and I excuse my welcome. 

The pattern round the hearthstone is finished, and with 
the help of the table and her husband's walking stick, which is 
held upright for the purpose, Mrs. Squance pulls herself slowly 
on to her feet. Meanwhile she still keeps her hold ot the white- 
ning brush and looks somewhat as if she was about to shave 
a process which might not, in her case, be altogether needless. 
One end of her bonnet string has been in the white stuff, as it 
has been in many things before, and her general aspect sug- 
gests a carelessness about the minor rites of life. 

I take a chair off the table and sit down to chat with the 
old man on many things. His broad, west-country accent is 



94 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [April, 

difficult to follow, and the fewness of his front teeth scarcely 
make him more distinct. Mrs. Squance joins in. 

"I've never seen your ' snow-on-the-mountains' so full of 
flower," I remark ; for it is generally safe to praise the botani- 
cal efforts of parishioners. 

" If it wasn't for them children, it would be a deal better," 
the old lady replies ; " but every time they comes from school, 
in they comes, just as if it was their own, and picks the flowers 
as if there was no commandments. I've been out times and 
times and screeched at 'em ; but it's no good you might so 
well dance a jig to a milestone, as talk to they." 

The old man scarcely holds with her, for he thinks the lit- 
tle 'uns should " enjy " themselves while they can. " And if 
my young 'oman" this was the name by which he always called 
his spouse, although she was five years his senior " and if my 
young 'oman would just save up her screeching and make the 
bed, it 'ud be better for I. But there she ain't so young as 
she was, Father," he adds apologetically, " and she ain't strong 
enough in the arms to turn the bed now, and sometimes it be 
that heapy, it do mind I o' emmet's-batches " (ant-hills). 

We chat on, and I notice how much they seem to know of 
the things around them how, in spite of their natural limita- 
tions, they are masters of the situation where they are. They 
know the why and the wherefore of so much that is around 
them. They illustrate with homely facts from nature, and they 
use similes drawn from the obvious things nearest to hand, 
which have a force and pertinence that fill their conversation 
with ever-recurring surprises. Then I come to the purpose of 
my visit, and arrange with the old couple to bring them Holy 
Communion the day after to-morrow. 

When the day after to-morrow comes, the hearth has evi- 
dently been whitened again, a clean cloth is on the table, old 
Tommy, arrayed in his best coat, sits back in his chair, and 
his wife has on a new- washed linen bonnet, stiff, white, and 
crimped, that sets round her withered old face like hoar-frost 
on an apple. She is in her chair on the other side. Besides 
the change of head-dress, she wears a clean pocket handkerchief, 
folded tippet-wise, with the two ends crossed upon her breast 
and fixed with her best brooch a surprisingly large emerald. 

The " snow-on-the-mountains" and the yellow crocuses have 
made a contribution to the table, and a many-colored china 



i9o8.] WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS 95 

shepherd and shepherdess hold a vase full of these flowers be- 
tween them. The kettle is sending a long jet of steam into the 
room, for it is full boil, in preparation for the cup of tea the 
old folks have had to postpone so long this morning. 

There is only one room in the house the one through the 
door is but an out-house, coal cellar, and general store com- 
bined therefore, as soon as I have set the visiting case on the 
table, lighted the candles, and deposited the Blessed Sacrament, 
the old lady gets up from her place, makes a charming old- 
world curtsey to her Lord, and goes into the said out-house 
while I hear Tommy's confession. Tommy's edition of the Con- 
fiteor is not the one found in approved manuals ; but he means 
all the long words, and he says them in a deep voice that has 
a ring of genuine piety in it, for Tommy is a saint. 

When we have finished, I seek Mrs. Squance in the out- 
house, where the coals, an old bedstead, a piece of bacon, and 
what is left of the winter's store of potatoes are the silent wit- 
nesses of her contrition and repentance. We go back to the 
room ; the same curtsey ; and then, with many groans, she 
slowly kneels upright on the floor on the old flagstones, cold 
and uneven to receive her Maker, for I cannot persuade her 
that she may sit in her chair without irreverence. 

Tommy's turn comes first, and as he holds the little white 
cloth he prays aloud prays in that same deep, reverent voice 
what, exactly, I can never quite catch ; but when it is ended, 
the old woman says " Amen " in a tone that suggests she is 
proud of Tommy's effort, or pleased with its effect. I say the 
thanksgiving prayers with them, and then step out into the lit- 
tle garden with its white and golden flowers. It was all so 
simple and so great such a wondrous adaptation of the Infinite 
to the finite ; such a lowly condescension to the feebleness of 
those two old souls. 

Three or four years after the time I am speaking of the old 
man died. Tommy was ill for some weeks before he went, but 
he kept his senses till the last, and prayed " main strong," as 
the woman who sat up with him told me, through most of the 
nights; for his pains let him have but little sleep. I had given 
him the last Sacraments, and the old man joined in everything 
I did, as well as he knew how, while explaining that he " was 
sure God knew he was no scholar, and didn't expect any great 
words." 



96 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [April, 

I had said the prayers for the dying, and finished with a 
good-bye to Tommy, for I thought it probable he would not 
live till the next day. As I went from the room he called to 
me. "Father," he said, "thank ye kindly, thank ye kindly, 
for all ye have done. That " meaning the Holy Viaticum, and 
pointing to the table whereon I had placed the Blessed Sacrament 
"that do sart of freshen I up." 

Tommy died in the night, still praying " main strong " to 
the end. During his illness the old bed from the out-house 
had been brought into use, and Tommy lay in it by himself. 

For two years or more before his death Mrs. Squance had 
been completely bed-ridden, or, as the neighbors said, thought 
she was. She suffered from nothing in particular, but she re- 
fused to leave her bed, and was waited on by her old husband 
until the beginning of his last illness, when a relation took her 
in hand. It was not easy work, for the old woman's natural 
asperity of temper had not improved, and her saving or miserly 
habits grew with her years. 

No one ever knew what weighed on her spirits. She was 
always very close saving of everything, soap and water included. 
Her friends said she was a miser and had a hoard stored away 
somewhere, and that she was afraid it would be found. No talk- 
ing with the old lady on financial matters ever brought me near 
to the mystery ; she fenced carefully, and left me convinced there 
was something to conceal. 

" When the old 'oman dies, her 'ull have a long stocking 
put by somewheres," was the confident prophecy of her next 
door neighbors. " She's kep' Tommy that shart all these years 
to scrape and scrape, that the poor man has had to go without 
many and many a time." 

I thought Tommy had been well able to look after himself, 
but I didn't say so, for experience has taught me never to con- 
tradict next-door-neighbors they always know. 

Well, it was the morning after Tommy died. The little 
room had been straightened up, the old bed had been wheeled 
into line with the other bed, with as much space between as 
the room afforded. The corpse of Tommy occupied the one, 
and his relict the other. 

She was sitting up when I let myself into the room by 
prying up the piece of old clothes-peg which took the place of 
a missing part of the door latch. She looked a trifle cleaner 



1 908. ] WES r- Co UNTR Y ID YLLS 9 7 

than of late; Tommy's bed was snow-white. The latter was 
hung round with all the clean sheets of the establishment, and 
some borrowed as well. The top of the old four-poster bed 
had long ago been mercifully removed, which left the four up- 
rights with nothing to hold up mere shadows, suggestive of 
departed greatness. Yet they were useful. On one of them 
had hung for years a discarded bonnet of Mrs. Squance's be- 
longing to the early Victorian period. This bonnet was a 
curiosity in its way, with a long black curtain at the back, and 
a bunch of what had once been green and pink dog-roses cling- 
ing to the peak in front. Age and a plentiful layer of dust 
had dimmed its original beauty ; but the design was there on a 
good firm foundation of iron wire that obtruded itself in various 
parts of the structure. However, we are not concerned with 
Mrs. Squance's once best bonnet, but with her late husband's 
corpse. 

They had railed Tommy round with sheets, which were hung 
from a clothes-line, stretched from post to post of the old bed. 
The bonnet had been removed in honor of the occasion, and 
the stone floor had been washed over for the same reason. As 
I made my way round Tommy's bed, I peeped over the white 
enclosure. Inside it the old man lay, straightened for the 
grave. The rugged face looked gentle and kind, for the firm 
mouth was less set than in life, and the fearless eyes, which al- 
most disconcerted you, being shut, you could look Tommy in 
the face with more comfort than when the life was in him. 
How wonderfully knotted his hands seemed as they lay crossed 
upon his breast hands that had worked so hard in their day 
as to be twisted by labor out of the form in which God made 
them, and yet had been so unsuccessful, or so handicapped, 
that there was nothing but the parish dole in the end. 

" Just ye pull the sheet back on this side and let the light 
on to he; he do look beautiful." And so, obeying the widow, 
I slid the sheet back along the line by the bed's head, and let 
the sunlight from the open window fall on Tommy's face. The 
streak fell just upon the old man's face, and although it made 
the lines look deeper, he appeared to be but sleeping, so na- 
tural did he look. It gave a sense of majesty to the time- 
worn face ; and there seemed to be an expression of wonder 
upon it, as if the vision of the Limitless had proved so infin- 
VOL. LXXXVII. 7 



98 WEST- COUNTRY IDYLLS [April, 

itely beyond his powers of beholding. I pulled the sheet back 
again and went over to the old woman's bed. 

" I wanted 'e badly," she said, as she turned round in the 
bed, and with her long, fleshless arms began to reach behind 
the pillow and under the head of the mattress. " I wanted 'e 
badly, to settle about Tommy's coffin." I assured her I had 
thought of that already, and that he was not to have a parish 
coffin, but that his friends were going to help in the matter. 

She made no reply, but continued to dive into the mat- 
tress. Finally, with many explanations mostly to herself she 
brought to the surface what looked like a disgustingly dirty 
doll. It was a coarse, begrimed cloth or piece of an old gown, 
with something, about the size of one's fist, tied up in the 
middle. 

First there was an old hat ribbon, the ends hanging down 
in front, and looking like a necktie, while the holes and stains 
on the rag made the doll's face, and the rest of the clout, its 
skirts. The old woman seemed to hug this filthy thing affec- 
tionately, and then, laying it on the sheet before her, proceeded 
to undo its tie. A bit of an old print dress, this time with a 
boot string for a fastening, made another " dolly " under the 
first. With shaking fingers she unpicked the knot and the 
process was repeated. Another garment, and tie ; and then 
another. How many in all I was not curious to see, for the 
odor got worse as the dolly's clothes grew damper and the 
time since the last had been unwrapped and seen the daylight 
more remote. 

Once or twice I asked what were we coming to ? But there 
was no answer, only the incessant murmur, half to herself: 
" Oh, dear ! oh, dear! whatever will become of us ?" We seemed 
to be getting to the heart of things at last, for the garments 
ceased and were supplanted by rolls of paper old wall paper, 
old prints, bits of brown paper, then some newspaper, worn 
till the print was gone, and finally the chink of money. 

Was this the hoard the neighbors had talked about the un- 
told gold that was put away in this festering bundle of rotten- 
ness, while the old woman and Tommy had well-nigh starved ? 
No ; with her yellow, skinny fingers Mrs. Squance took up a 
half-sovereign and a half-crown, and handed them over to me. 

" There," she said, " I put 'em by, this five and forty years 
agone, for Tommy's coffin ; but what's the use ? " Then, as 



1908.] WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS 99 

near crying as I had seen her yet since Tommy's decease, she 
went on : "I thought I'd like to be sure of a good coffin for 
him, come what might; and now what's the use tof it all?" 
she wailed. " What's the use tof it all ? " Her voice was getting 
sharper and sharper. " Every time as anybody died, I've asked 
after the price of the coffin, and they seems to me to .do 
nothin' but go up, up, up. And now they wants thirty shil- 
lin's for a coffin without a bres'- plate, an' the linin's extra. So 
what's the good of this I saved? Times I've said to myself: 
However will I bury Tommy ? And nights I couldn't sleep, 
I've said that if they goes up much more, he'll get a parish 
coffin after all." 

I comforted Mrs. Squance as well as I could, and pointed 
out that her savings would enable Tommy to have a much 
better coffin than he otherwise would have had. I promised, 
too, that I would make up the rest, and that there should be 
a breast-plate and linings and all of the best. Poor old lady. 
She looked happier than I had seen her for years. The great 
coffin question was settled at last was at rest, like Tommy 
was, since coffins in his regard would never go up any more. 

In the fullness of her heart, she offered me some of the 
late wrappings of the " dolly" in which to take away the twelve 
and six ; but I told her gently that I did not need them, and 
that I would keep the money safely against the day of the 
undertaker's account. 



flew Boohs. 

i 

In the opinion of the learned edi- 

SOCIALISM. tor of the Catholic Fortnightly Re- 

view a number of papers which 

appeared in that publication, on landownership, are worthy to 
be preserved in book form. The volume,* he believes, " con- 
tains the first and only adequate presentation, in English, of 
the important question of landownership"; and, furthermore, 
it is an effective refutation, not only of Agrarian Socialism, but 
also of " the fundamental fallacy underlying socialistic commun- 
ism." We regret that we cannot concur in this handsome eu- 
logy of the neatly printed little book before us. In the first 
place, to call a fragmentary discussion of the lawfulness of private 
ownership of land, as against State ownership as advocated by 
Henry George, " an adequate presentation " of the great ethical, 
social, and economic question of landownership is, to say the 
least, amusingly pretentious. In the second place, the writer 
fails to distinguish between several distinct issues, with the re- 
sult that his arguments are frequently glaringly defective and 
his conclusions unwarranted by his premises. His main pur- 
pose is to demolish the single tax theory of Henry George. 
With the help of the Encyclical of Leo XIII., he has no diffi- 
dulty in disproving the Georgian doctrine that " private owner- 
ship in land is essentially and irremediably wrong and unjust." 
But the writer proceeds much further. He attempts to prove 
that state ownership of the land is contrary to natural justice; 
a proposition which he seems to consider the contradictory of 
the former. The drift of his argument is that man has the 
right to foresee and provide for his future as well as for his pres- 
ent needs ; that he is deprived of this right if he is deprived of 
the opportunity of acquiring land ; and that if all the land were 
vested in the State, he would be deprived of such opportunity. 
" It is the earth, which by its abundance and fertility is a never- 
failing storehouse of supplies. Hence he must have the right 
to acquire, as his own also, land, i. e., a suitable portion of the 
soil, and can make use of this right, i. e., acquire actual landed 
property, whenever an opportunity is offered and no other right 

* The Fundamental Fallacy of Socialism. An Exposition of the Question of Landowner- 
ship. Comprising an Authentic Account of the McGlynn Case. Edited by Arthur Preuss. 
St. Louis : B. Herder. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 101 

is violated." The writer concedes that it is not necessary " that 
all men should be actual proprietors of land ; but there should 
be many, very many." He supports his main position by work- 
ing out the hypothesis of a man taking a piece of ownerless 
land and cultivating and improving it ; building a house on it 
out of ownerless materials ; and thereby establishing a just 
right to it, and so forth. Furthermore, the writer insists that 
a man's ownership or right to the full enjoyment and free dis- 
posal of the effects of his labor would avail him nothing if he 
could not freely dispose of the soil itself; for, with a fine in- 
difference to facts, with which anybody writing on this topic 
should be familiar, our author declares: "The free disposal of 
the former without the free disposal of the latter is impossible!" 
State ownership, then, would be iniquitous, because it would 
deprive the individual of any opportunity of exercising his pri- 
mary, inherent right of acquiring landed property. If this rea- 
son is good against State ownership, it is good against any 
other system that operates similarly. Now, over great areas of 
Europe, for a long period, the feudal system deprived all but 
a numerically insignificant number of the population of even 
the shred of a chance of becoming landowners. Yet, we never 
heard of the Church having condemned the feudal system as 
contrary to the natural law. Let us come out of the region 
of abstractions where the man reclaims the ownerless field, 
down to the actual world. Roughly speaking, two score of men 
own two-thirds of the soil of Great Britain. The sacred prin- 
ciple of private ownership justifies them in their possession of 
it. Suppose the law of entail which, by the way, prohibits 
most of them from freely disposing of their acres, and, never- 
theless, has never been condemned by the Church as unjust 
were abolished, and these present owners were to convey their 
property to the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the benefit of 
the nation at large, the rents, in future, to be applied to the 
extinction of taxation. Here at once we should have State own- 
ership constituted on a vast scale. Will anybody say that this 
arrangement would be a flagrant violation of natural justice? 
An English workman to whom Mr. Preuss would expound his 
theory would reply to him: "You tell me that as an individ- 
ual, and as father of a family, I have the right to a condition 
of life in which I may look forward to obtaining a house and 
a piece of land, to assure my family a decent livelihood, and a 



102 NEW BOOKS [April, 

support for myself in my old age; and that any system which 
deprives men of this opportunity is iniquitous. Now I, and 
thousands such as I, have no more chance of ever owning a 
loot of English soil than we have of getting hold of the moon. 
By the operation of the sacred principle of private ownership 
most of it belongs to men who devote to grouse and pheasants 
and partridges and the breeding of race horses, millions of acres 
that would support, in honest toil, thousands of families who 
are doomed to pass their lives in starvation and to die in an 
almshouse. This principle of private ownership may be all 
very well ; but, however it worked when there were ownerless 
fields, nowadays it does not help me and my fellow-workmen 
to become landed proprietors. And, I say, how many of these 
landlords' titles are derived from the men who first reclaimed 
the ownerless field and out of ownerless materials built their 
houses on ownerless ground ? " When Mr. Preuss will have 
dealt intelligently with the crux of the situation hinted at in 
these observations, he may, with more propriety than at pres- 
ent, claim to have produced " the first and only adequate pres- 
ention, in English, of the important question of landownership." 

A parting word. With questionable taste the writer resur- 
rects the McGlynn case. He resents the prevailing impression 
that the restoration of Dr. McGlynn by Cardinal Satolli was 
equivalent to a declaration that the Doctor's teaching on land- 
ownership was not contrary to Catholic doctrine. Not Mgr. 
Satolli, he contends, but four professors of the Catholic Uni- 
versity, examined the opinions in question, and these censors 
committed an egregious and deplorable blunder. Is it quite 
respectful towards authority to assert publicly that, in a case 
on which the eyes of two continents were fixed, the represent- 
ative of the Pope, in the exercise of his disciplinary authority, 
should have exonerated a man from the charge of advocating 
false opinions when these same opinions to which that man 
resolutely stuck, were in fact, grave errors ; and that, for the 
past fourteen years, the Holy See should have taken no steps 
to correct the impression that its representative gave a Nihil 
Obstat to a pernicious error, which, the writer asserts, is of late 
enlisting numerous recruits among Catholics ? 

Economic Socialism is rapidly spreading, because its vital, 
dynamic idea is more and more dissociating itself from a mass 
of unessential extravagances anti-Christian, anti-religious, im- 



i9o8.] NEW BOOKS 103 

moral which many of its doctrinaire advocates have attached 
to it. If it is to be conquered, its opponents, whether in the 
academic arena, or in the clash of action, must gauge correct- 
ly the strength of its position. It is an economic movement, 
born of some acknowledged colossal evils of this present in- 
dustrial age; and it demands that the justice of its claims be 
examined with reference to this age. The domination of capi- 
tal in the industrial world has, it declares, deprived nine-tenths 
of the population of any hope of obtaining a share of the land ; 
and, likewise, makes a mockery of their indefeasible right to 
the product, or a just equivalent of the product, of their labor. 
The principle that every man has a right to the fruits of his 
labors, is precisely the one to which Socialism appeals in order 
to convict the present system of having engendered enormous 
abuses. 

" Socialism declares itself to be a contemporary manifesta- 
tion of social grievances which, through long generations, have 
been borne by the sweating millions of labor that have endured 
patiently and died in silent misery, leaving no record of their 
awful burden of sorrow. It is the cause of wretched multitudes 
of men and women and children that has at last found utter- 
ance and organization, the protest of workers that still suffer 
from excessive hours of monotonous drudgery in mine and fac- 
tory in many lands, who live in economic insecurity and degra- 
dation, surrounded by the superabundant wealth which their 
toil has created." "The fundamental principle of Socialism is 
this: Associated labor with a joint capital with a view to a 
more equitable system of distribution." These extracts are tak- 
en from the Inquiry into Socialism* written by a sympathetic 
but temperate historian of the movement. It sets forth with 
remarkable logic, force, and perspicuity the genesis, aims, and 
claims of the form of Socialism which is gaining ground so fast 
at present. 

After the question, How are our 

EDUCATION. Catholic colleges to be improved ? 

By Shields. no other one is heard more fre- 

quently in circles where educational 
interests are debated than, What do you think of higher edu- 

* An Inquiry into Socialism. By Thomas Kirrup. Third Edition. New York : Long- 
mans, Green & Co. 



104 NEW BOOKS [April, 

cation for Catholic girls ? When this query elicits anything that 
professes to be an opinion, the view expressed is, very frequent- 
ly, a random venture, or some vague platitude, which merely 
reveals an absence of any definite thought on the subject. Yet 
the question is no theoretical one ; and its practical importance 
is growing greater every year. It is attracting the attention of 
the ecclesia docens among us, and is coming home much more 
intimately, to a large section of the ecclesia discens, where the 
burden of parental responsibility rests. Whosoever is interested 
in the subject will find a fund of suggestion in a modest little 
volume * by Dr. Shields, of the Catholic University, just pub- 
lished. To a thorough knowledge of theoretical pedagogics Dr. 
Shields unites a wide experience of the practical conditions of 
Catholic education for girls, as they exist in this country. His 
teachers' correspondence courses and his lecture tours have made 
his name a household word among hundreds of convents and 
other educational institutions throughout the country. 

He has adopted a very suitable form for the expression of 
his opinions on this subject in which, as yet, dogmatism, ex- 
cept on fundamental principles, would be out oi place; and 
opinion, criticism, and interpretation of facts are, on many 
points, best put in a tentative form. 

A number of persons three university professors, a self- 
made business man, two young women, one the principal of a 
normal school, the other a " co-ed, " with a degree from the 
University of Michigan, and Mrs. O'Brien, a matron of experi- 
ence meeting together at the home of the latter, constitute 
themselves a club for the discussion of the education question. 
The title given to the assembly the Crackers and Cheese Club 
adroitly conveys the intimation that when we are invited to 
form part of the audience we are not to expect the scintillat- 
ing atmosphere of a French salon. A glance through the book 
informs us, too, that the dialogues are cast in the mold of the 
debating society, rather than in conversational form. But it is 
the matter, not the form, which is the chief preoccupation of 
the author and the valuable part of the book. The topics dis- 
cussed under different aspects are : The proper grading of school 
children; The influence of co-education on marriage; The cul- 
tural development proper to each sex; The "social claims" 

* The Education of Our Girls. By Thomas Edward Shields. New York : Benziger 
Brothers. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 105 

upon women; The teaching of domestic science to girls. One 
member, the Rev. Dr. Studevan, who, obviously, holds the brief 
for orthodoxy, and, if gently scraped of the adulation which is 
plastered somewhat thickly upon him by his associates, would 
look remarkably like the author himself, finds the shackles of 
dialogue too much of a restriction, and, mounting the rostrum, 
delivers an excellent lecture on the type of girl that ought to 
be the home-maker of the future. Incidentally Dr. Shields ex- 
plodes the fallacious assumption of our self-complaisant age, 
that " woman's recognition of the social claim is a recent af- 
fair," by drawing attention to the part played by female reli- 
gious orders in the history of civilization. The book contains 
an eloquent preface by Cardinal Gibbons. 

This book,* coming from the pen 

ORGAN ACCOMPANIMENT, of one of the most distinguished 
By Richardson. musicians of the modern English 

school, is a valuable addition to 

the scant literature on the art of accompanying church music. 
Dr. Richardson had already given to choirmasters an invaluable 
handbook in Church Music, published in 1904, and his present 
suggestions to church organists will be equally valuable to those 
who are earnest enough in their profession to study the book 
carefully. Too much prominence has been given in the last 
decade to solo playing in church, and many of our most tal- 
ented organists have been satisfied to be virtuosos, neglecting 
the far more important art of accompaniment. The modern or- 
gan is, in itself, a temptation to organists to become star-solo- 
ists. But the wonderful mechanical contrivances and facilities 
for manipulating large instruments which abound in organs now- 
adays make possible beautiful and effective accompaniments as 
well as brilliant solo-playing, and Dr. Richardson insists that 
the chief function of a church organist is to summon all the 
resources of these perfected organs of to-day to supply artistic 
accompaniment to the singing. Dr. Richardson gives of his 
best thoughts in this book, and its purchase will repay any 
organist. 

All the various topics bearing upon the subject are con- 
sidered in detail ; the art of registration, the accompanying of 

* Modern Organ Accompaniment. By A. Madeley Richardson, Mus. Doc. New York : 
Longmans, Green & Co. 



106 NEW BOOKS [April, 

hymn tunes, motets, and plain song, the use of ornamentation, 
and the art of augmenting or reducing piano scores for use on 
the organ. It is to be regretted, however, that Dr. Richardson 
did not add a chapter on the art of accompanying choirs of 
boys and men. He could say many helpful things on this 
point, and many things are needed to be said to our organists 
to-day. How often we hear the beautiful bel canto t flute-like 
tones of the boy-sopranos quite neutralized by the distressing 
whistling of four-foot pipes, and the spunky overtones of 
strident reeds and string stops. Very often, indeed, the reli- 
gious effect of a composition is entirely lost in the injudicious 
choice of registers by the accompanist. The boy-soprano voice, 
thoroughly trained, is a blend of flute, string, and reed timbres, 
and a chapter on the art of accompanying such a quality of 
voice, would be very opportune just now, and would complete 
what is otherwise a splendid volume. 

A member of the American So- 

WITH THE MEDIUMS. ciety for Psychical Research, Mr. 

David B. Abbot,* who has devoted 

years to the study of the professional spiritualist, has acquired 
a knowledge of a great number of the tricks by which this 
type of charlatan deceives his dupes. A great many of these 
tricks have a commercial value. In fact the trade in them is 
so brisk that it has given rise to a brokerage system and a 
fairly normal list of prices. Mr. Abbot himself has paid hard 
cash for some of the secrets which he publishes. One of them 
was sold to a medium of Mr. Abbot's acquaintance for the 
sum of two hundred and fifty dollars. The stock in trade 
which is now so ruthlessly destroyed consists chiefly of reading 
of sealed letters ; reading of notes in a dark room ; spirit 
voices, taps, and lights; and slate- writing in many startling 
forms. The frauds here exposed vary from the simplest to the 
most ingenious, some of them depend on the operator's skill in 
slight of hand, while others secure success by surprising the 
confidence, or ingeniously taking advantage of the credulity of 
the dupes. Mr. Abbot confines himself to the role of ventil- 
ating deceptions that have been extensively used by profes- 
sionals. He does not discuss, nor even raise the question of 
the existence of genuine spiritistic phenomena. 

* Behind the Scenes With the Mediums. By David B. Abbot. Chicago, 111. : Open Court 
Publishing Company. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 107 

To indicate more precisely the 

WHAT CAN A YOUNG MAN character of the book bearing this 

DO ? interrogative title * the question 

By Rollins. might be put somewhat in this 

form : What are the various ca- 
reers, and their respective advantages, that are open to a young 
man in this country ? Generally speaking, anxious youths and 
perplexed parents for whom the above problem is pressing, 
seldom obtain any help from the many philanthropists who, 
through the medium of the press, have offered themselves as 
mentors to the Odyssey of American life. The advice offered 
is usually a compound of moral maxims that are but amplifi- 
cations of "Poor Richard's Sayings" and worthless, vague esti- 
mates of the pecuniary rewards attached to this or that occu- 
pation or trade, which recall the economic observations of Mrs. 
Micawber when pondering over the paths to which opportunity 
was beckoning her immortal spouse: "I have long felt the 
brewing business to be particularly adapted to Mr, Micawber. 
Look at Barclay and Perkins ! Look at Truman, Hanbury, 
and Buxton ! The profits, I am told, are e-NOR-mous ! " 

Mr. Rollins has aimed to supply practical information con- 
cerning the various careers which he discusses, definite in- 
struction as to the best means of entering them, the physical, 
mental, and moral qualifications which they demand for success, 
the difficulties which they present, and the rewards which they 
offer. The book contains a good deal of valuable information 
about almost every avenue of professional, commercial, manu- 
facturing, and agricultural life. The precise and circumstantial 
character of the information is a confirmation of the author's 
assertion that in the compilation of it, he has sought the help 
of specialists in various departments. 

To convey an idea of the detailed character of the work, 
we may mention that there are chapters on the Librarian, the 
Consular Service, Service in the Philippines, Lumbering, the 
City Guide, the Chauffeur, and the Mercantile Traveler. It is 
to be regretted that Mr. Rollins, who has given us a useful book, 
should, in an introductory chapter on schools and education, 
have, quite gratuitously, registered his opinion that, though he 
believes the Roman Catholics are justified in maintaining their 
own schools, yet the policy seems very bad for the Republic, 

* What Can a Young Man Do f By Frank West Rollins. Boston : Little, Brown & Co. 



108 NEW BOOKS [April, 

since it "is only through the mixing process which goes on in 
public schools that we are able to assimilate our heterogene- 
ous population." We feel quite confident that if Mr. Rollins 
would pay a visit to any of the great parochial schools, say in 
New York City, he would dismiss his groundless apprehension. 

In less than three centuries from its 

CHRISTIANITY IN THE FAR introduction Christianity had con- 
EAST. quered the Roman Empire ; more 

than half the population of the 

Empire, and several barbarous nations, had become Christian. 
For thirteen centuries the Church has been sending to the Far 
East, that is to say, to India, Indo- China, China, Corea, and 
Japan, band after band of heroic missionaries who have, in in- 
numerable instances, suffered every hardship, even a death of 
torture, in the cause of the propagation of the faith. The an- 
nals of the missions abound everywhere with histories of con- 
verts who, for virtue and fidelity unto death, are not unworthy 
of comparison with the early Christians. Yet, what are the 
gross results ? The religion which in three centuries conquered 
the Roman Empire has the following results to show for its 
labors in this other field : out of a population of about eight 
hundred millions (787,400,000) there are about four million 
Catholics. A French priest has made a study* of the history 
of this Eastern Apostolate, in order to discover, if possible, the 
reason of this comparative failure. His review of the fate of 
Catholic missions in the above-mentioned countries, is a splendid 
picture of the zeal of the missionaries and the virtue of the 
native Christians. The conclusion which he draws from what 
deserves to be called a close and intelligent study of the facts 
is that the modern missionaries have failed because in one im- 
portant respect they have not followed the example of the 
Apostles and their immediate successors. Everywhere they went 
the Apostles founded churches with a native episcopate and 
priesthood, and addressed themselves, above all, to the masses 
of the people. On the contrary, the modern missionaries too 
often turned first to the upper classes, hoping that the example 
of these would draw the lower classes ; and nowhere did they 
establish complete native churches. The result was that, in the 
eyes of these peoples, Catholicism always has remained a for- 

* Le Christianisme et L' Extreme Orient. Par Chanoine Ldon Joly. Paris : Lethielleux. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 109 

eign, anti-national religion, always under suspicion; and the 
converts to it have been regarded as renegades to their country. 

In his reply to the Encyclical of 

LIBERALISM IN FRANCE, our Holy Father to the French 

hierarchy relative to the Associa- 
tions Law, the Bishop of Coutances said : " The deplorable 
liberalism solemnly condemned by Pius IX. of glorious memory 
is more alive than ever; it has penetrated everywhere. How 
many enterprises, seemingly good, are impregnated with it. 
This liberalism has led us to the abyss. And it is from it that 
we would look for salvation ! " 

Inspired by this thought, a devoted defender ol the policy 
and action of Pius X. regarding France, has taken up the his- 
tory of liberalism in France for the last twenty odd years ; and 
the result is two solid volumes,* packed with documents, skill- 
fully digested into a long-sustained, coherent argument, di- 
rected to sustain a thesis which the writer frankly announces 
at the opening of his work. In an Introduction of one hun- 
dred and seventy pages, M. 1'Abbe Barbier defines the nature 
of liberalism as a movement whose essential principles, derived 
from the French Revolution, are irreconcilably opposed to the 
Catholic principle of authority. Then he proceeds to give his 
account of the rise and development of the school of liberal 
Catholicism which essays that impossible task of reconciling 
those contradictories. To indicate the viewpoint of the author, 
it will suffice to say that Archbishops Ireland and Kane, Amer- 
ican Americanism and Anglo-Saxon democratic ideas, are cred- 
ited with a sinister part in the spread of the movement. The 
thesis of the author is, that from the beginning to the end of 
his pontificate Leo XIII. pursued a policy which, to a very 
serious extent, contributed to weaken the cause of religion in 
France, and to promote the diffusion of "all those social and 
religious errors which, in our day, are so many forms of liberal- 
ism." Every prominent incident in the history of the French 
Church from 1880 is discussed in the light of a goodly array 
of documents. And in every instance the writer's verdict is 
that the interference of Pope Leo and his Secretary of State 
resulted in injury to the cause of the Church ! 

* Le Pr ogres du Liberalisme Catholique en France sous le Pape Leon XIII. Par E. Bar- 
bier. Paris: Lethielleux. 



I io NEW BOOKS [April, 

In M. Barbier's opinion there existed, among the French 
bishops and the higher clergy, even after the Vehementer Nos, 
a strong inclination to form the legal associations forbidden by 
the Pope. He believes that this same spirit of dissatisfaction 
with the policy of Pius X. is far from extinct among French 
Catholics. The purpose of his book is to exorcise that spirit, 
and to inculcate perfect obedience to, and trust in the French 
policy of the Pope to-day. The means he chooses to achieve 
this end is to write, at the cost of much time and labor, a 
large two- volume work demonstrating that, in the same affairs, 
disaster and ruin followed the policy pursued by the Pope yes- 
terday. 

The appearance of a third edition of 

APOLOGETICS AND PHIL- the Dominican Father De Groot's 

OSOPHY. Summa Apologetica * indicates that 

the work, notwithstanding its bulk, 

meets with approval as a text-book for seminary students in 
some parts of Europe, though, owing to the method of dividing 
the courses in this country, it has remained comparatively 
unknown among ourselves. Strictly scholastic in its spirit and 
method, the Summa treats first of the institution, constitution, 
and notes of the Church. Then, by the application of these 
notes, it identifies the Roman Catholic Church as the institu- 
tion founded by Christ. Next it proceeds to all the other 
questions that make up the traditional " Tractatus de Ecclesia " ; 
and concludes with an examination of the function of reason 
and the authority of philosophers and human history in reli- 
gious belief. 

An elaborate refutation of the materialism of Buchner, by 
a French priest,f seems, at first sight, somewhat belated; for in 
English philosophic thought, Buchner was long ago discredited ; 
and rationalistic and agnostic speculation runs in other direc- 
tions than it did thirty years ago, when the philosophy of 
" kraft und stoff " enjoyed some consideration. This same phil- 
osophy, however, has become the heritage of a large portion 
of the masses in France ; and a popular yet scientific refuta- 

* Summa Apologetica de Ecclesia Christi. Ad mentem S. Thomce Aquinatis. Auctore Fr. 
M. I. V. De Groot, O.P. Ratisbonas, 1906: Manz. 

\ L'Ordre Naturel et Dieu. Etude Critique de la Theome du Dr. L. Buchner. Par 1'Abbe" 
Alfred Tanguy. Paris : Bloud et Cie. 



1 908.] NEW BOOKS 1 1 1 

tion of it ought to do something towards diminishing the reign 
of error there. 

Under the form of an account of the meetings and debates 
of a philosophical club in an unnamed European capital, Dr. 
Paul Carus* satirizes the philosophy of agnosticism and the 
utilitarian ethical principle of " the greatest happiness of the 
greatest number." Imaginative construction is not the Doctor's 
strong point, and his humor does not flow spontaneously enough 
to give him a mastery over this literary form as a vehicle for 
philosophic disquisition. 

A more heterogeneous cloud of witnesses than has been as- 
sembled by the compiler of an anthology of thoughts on the 
immortality of the soul f could scarcely be called together, from 
all the ages, and from all shades of religious and philosophic 
belief, to deliver contributary testimony on any other subject, 
except, perhaps, on the text of Vanitas Vanitatum. The Scrip- 
tures, philosophers, ancient and modern, from Aristotle to 
Buckle, scientists, historians, priests, preachers, saints, and sin- 
ners, are thundering in the index. The index, by the way, 
brings into juxtaposition names that probably have never been 
in such close proximity before. St. Augustine and Matthew 
Arnold, Buddha and Thomas Henry Buckle, John Calvin and 
Lord Byron, Benjamin Franklin and St. Francis of Assisi, Fen- 
elon and Fichte, Gautama and Cardinal Gibbons, John Fiske 
and the English Omar Khayam, Luther and Lucretius, John 
Locke and Sir Oliver Lodge, Mohammed and Montesquieu, 
Thales and Tolstoi, are among the couples that go arm in arm 
in this dance, not of death, but of immortality ; where, to give 
a final example of the incongruous, Giordano Bruno is escorted 
by Robert Browning and William Jennings Bryan. The collector 
has brought together a great many gems ; but mingled with 
them there is also a lot of common pebbles picked up chiefly 
out of contemporary literature. It is unfortunate that the au- 
thor did not give references to the places from which she drew, 
instead of merely adding the names of the author. 

* The Philosopher s Martyrdom. A Satire. By Paul Carus. Chicago : The Open Court 
Publishing Company. 

\Intimations of Immortality. Significant Thoughts on the Future Life. Selected by 
Helen Philbrook Patten. Boston : Small, Maynard & Co. 



112 NEW BOOKS [April, 

This is a picturesque historical ac- 
SCOTTISH HOMES. count* of the principal castles or 

houses belonging to the few his- 
torical Catholic families who clung to the faith through the 
days of the Reformation and the executions, attainders, and 
confiscations of the early Hanoverian period : Caerlaverock and 
Letterfourie of the Gordons ; Terregles and Kirkconnell of the 
Maxwells; Beaufort of the Erasers; Traquair of the Stuarts; 
and Fetternear, originally the seat of the Bishops of Aberdeen. 
The names call up a host of historic memories stretching from 
the Middle Ages, past Flodden and Pinkie, through the stormy 
days of John Knox and Mary Stuart, down to and beyond the 
fatal field " that quenched the fortunes of the hapless Stuart 
line." Father Blundell, writing from the first Benedictine Ab- 
bey founded in Scotland since the Reformation, and himself 
claiming kindred with the Gordons and the Stuarts, could not 
fail to be inspired to eloquence by his theme. 

In the Preface to this, the third 

ECONOMICS. edition of his Political Economy f 

a work which gave the late Mr. 

Devas a position of authority among English economists the 
author points out that the course which economic opinion has 
taken since the book first appeared has justified some of its 
views which at first were subjected to much hostile criticism. 
The subsequent controversy between Free Trade and Protection 
has confirmed his contention that the difference between them 
is rather in the concrete than in the abstract. The problem of 
the unemployed confirms the principle of workmen's insurance 
and of employers' liability ; and the cry of race suicide indi- 
cates that a danger which he heralded has arrived. In the pres- 
ent edition many statistical figures have been revised to bring 
the work up to the latest returns. 

To encourage the study of economic questions and the de- 
velopment of industrial education in this country some Chicago 
merchants offered a number of prizes for the best essays on 
some topics pertaining to the above problem. A prize winner, 

* Ancient Catholic Homes of Scotland. By Dom. O. Blundell, O.S.B. New York: Ben- 
ziger Brothers. 

\Political Economy. By Charles S. Devas. Third Edition. New Vork : Longmans, 
Green & Co. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 113 

the professor of Commerce and Industry in Dartmouth College, 
publishes his essay.* He opens his dissertation with a compari- 
son between Germany and America. Germany compensates for 
its inferior physical resources by an efficient system of indus- 
trial education ; America's superior physical resources are seri- 
ously impaired by the absence of any adequate system of in- 
dustrial training. The main features of the German system are 
outlined. The professor then proposes a plan suggested by the 
German method, but modified so as to suit the special condi- 
tions of this country and to fit into the general educational 
system. 

Professor Laughlin, of the University of Chicago, publishes 
the series of lectures which he delivered in Berlin in 1906, on 
the present great industrial issues and problems in the United 
States f Competition ; Protection and Reciprocity ; The Trust, 
Banking, and Railway Problems. The Professor's treatment of 
his subjects is popular and devoid of technicality, intended for 
those who desire to gain, without much study, an intelligent 
grasp on the elementary factors in these questions. His general 
judgment of the situation, brought about by the enormous de- 
velopment of the capitalistic power, is optimistic. He believes 
that the country will prove strong enough to correct the pres- 
ent evils by devising restraints which, without infringing the 
legitimate rights of capital, will protect the rights and liberty 
of the people at large. 

Even the most loyal adherents of traditional ideals in edu- 
cation are beginning to recognize that the college programme 
cannot ignore the growing demand that, in the interest of the 
nation, economic studies and industrial training must receive 
more attention than has hitherto been accorded to them. The 
want of a good text-book of economic history has been an obsta- 
cle to hinder advance in this direction. For this reason, a 
manual just published by Longmans in their series of commer- 
cial text-books J is likely to meet with a favorable reception. 

* Industrial Education. A System of Training for Men entering upon Trade and Com- 
merce. By Harlow Stafford Pearson, Ph.D. Boston : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 

\IndustrialAmerica. Berlin Lectures of 1906. By J. Laurence Laughlin, Ph.D. With 
Maps and Diagrams. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 

\ The Economic History of the United States. By Ernest Ludlow Bogart, Ph.D., Prince- 
ton University. New York : Longmans, Green & Co. 
VOL LXXXVII. 8 



114 NEW BOOKS [April, 

It has, besides, the recommendation of intrinsic merit. It com- 
prehends the entire economic history of the country from the 
first colonial settlements down to 1906. The characteristics of 
the successive periods, the forces at work in them, and the 
various phases of this mighty development, which, as the author 
remarks, is the keynote of all American history, are saliently 
outlined. The growth of industry, agriculture, commerce, trans- 
portation, labor, and the relation and interaction of these dif- 
ferent factors, are set forth with precision, without overloading 
the pages with statistics. To each chapter is appended a brief 
summary, together with a set of suggestive topics, questions, and 
references to authorities; and at the end of the volume there 
is an extensive bibliography. 

A little book,* consisting of six lectures delivered at the 
London School of Economics, points out, and suggests remedies 
for, the ravages wrought in the home of the humbler wage- 
earners by neglect of hygiene, and by various forms of wasteful- 
ness and imprudence. 

Probably the title The Secrets of 
ROME. the Vatican f will arouse expecta- 

tions that will not be fulfilled by 

the large and profusely illustrated volume which bears it. It 
contains nothing approaching to scandalous gossip, and never 
touches upon anything pertaining to the arcana of diplomacy. 
The author, though not a Catholic, is respectful and even re- 
verential. With the exception of an account of a personal visit 
to Cardinal Merry del Val, everything else that he tells us, in a 
pleasant, easy tone, set off occasionally with some flashes of 
rhetoric, has already appeared in print. He describes some of 
the apartments and treasures of the Vatican which are not open 
to all comers. The origin of the palace, and some of its vicis- 
situdes; the ceremonies and usages observed at the death and 
the election of a Pope, and at the creation of cardinals ; audi- 
ences ; the constitution of the Papal household ; the composition 
of the Curia, and the duties of the various Congregations and 
of the Papal Secretary of State, and the daily routine of the 

* Economics for the Household. By Louise Creighton. New York : Longmans, Green 
& Co. 

t The Secrets of the Vatican. By Douglas ^ Sladen. Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott 
Company. 



i9o8.] NEW BOOKS 115 

palace, are described in a way to satisfy popular curiosity. 
Through the crypt of St. Peter's, the Libraries, the Borgia 
apartments, and even the Pope's coach-house, Mr. Sladen plays 
his part of cicerone, drawing from the present and the past 
much that is entertaining and instructive. A chapter on the 
Vatican and France consists of the inaugural address delivered 
on the subject by Archbishop Bourne at the Catholic Confer- 
ence at Brighton in 1906. The book is trustworthy; for when 
dealing with matters pertaining to the government of the Church 
and the intimate life of the Vatican, it follows as authorities 
such guides as the Gerarchia, George Goyau, Vicomte de Vogue, 
and the Abbe Cigala; and, in archaeology, Professor Marucchi, 
Pere Dufresne, and other scholars of rank. 

Prospective visitors to Rome will do well to provide them- 
selves with the English edition of Amelung and Holtzinger's 
guide to the ruins and museums of Rome;* unless they al- 
ready possess the German original. To call the work a guide- 
book is scarcely just. It is not a mere catalogue of objects 
and places. It assists the art pilgrim, by critical comment, to 
appreciate the character of the objects that are passed in re- 
view. The work is in two volumes of pocket size. The first, 
containing nearly two hundred illustrations, covers public mu- 
seums. The second takes up the ruins of the ancient city and 
the Christian basilicas; and, with the help of maps, plans, and 
illustrations, conveys, in much less space than one could ex- 
pect, a clear idea of the successive topographical changes that 
took place in the Imperial City. 

The Ellen of Lady Gilbert's " First 
FICTION. Book " f is a young Irish lady over 

whose parentage hangs a cloud of 

mystery. Left an orphan in Spain, she starts for London, where, 
with the help of an introduction to a distinguished painter, she 
hopes to be able to become an artist. She is shipwrecked on 
the Irish coast, is rescued by Mr. Aungier, the young master 
of the great house of the neighborhood. She remains in the 

* The Museums and Ruins of Rome. By Walter Amelung and Heinrich Holtzinger. 
English Edition. Revised by the Authors and Mrs. S. A. Strong, LL.D. New York: E. P. 
Dutton & Co. 

\The Story of Ellen. By Lady Gilbert (Rosa Mulholland). New York: Benziger 
Brothers. 



116 NEW BOOKS [April, 

family; and a mutual attachment springs up between her and 
Aungier. As the mystery of Ellen's birth begins to lighten, 
she learns something of her mother's story, whose life had been 
closely bound up with that of the Aungier's. As circumstances 
unfold themselves, Aungier is led to believe that the loyal, un- 
selfish girl is mercenary and fickle; then estrangement; an art 
student's life in London ; repentance of the person who con- 
trived to misrepresent Ellen; and "they lived happy ever af- 
terwards." A sweet, sentimental story, with some surprises in 
the plot; and some descriptions that catch the tender sadness 
that tinges the beauty of Irish scenery. 

More racy of the soil, and a stronger book by far, is The 
Return of Mary McMurroughf where some of the distinctive 
features of Irish peasant life and character are skillfully drawn. 
The greed for land, the contempt entertained by " the woman 
of three cows" for the cotter, and the tyranny of the match- 
making parents over their youngsters, which permits the af- 
fections of lovers to play but a small part in matrimonial se- 
lections, are drawn from life. We are introduced, too, to the 
Land League, the agent provocateur of the police force, the 
courthouse, and the jail. A universal chord in the tragedy of 
life is touched in the relations between Mary and her lover 
Shan, who, for fifteen years, has cherished in his heart the 
picture of his young sweetheart who has gone to America, and 
will return when she and he are in a position to have a few 
acres of their own. When Mary does return, he refuses to 
identify the wan and worn woman with the girl of his love's 
young dream. But well, we must not spoil, by anticipation, 
the interest of this clever story. 

One of the French theological pe- 

THEOLOGY. riodicals published recently a ' ' sy m- 

posium " of opinions on manuals 

of theology. Eighty.- four professors frankly expressed their 
opinions concerning the text- books on dogma used in their re- 
spective seminaries. The result may be surmised; not one- 
half were even fairly well satisfied with the manuals they were 
compelled to use. Wisely enough, the editor asked for sugges- 

* The Return of Mary McMurrough. By Lady Gilbert (Rosa Mulholland). St. Louis : 
B. Herder. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 117 

tions on the means of improvement. Among the suggestions 
were these : the ideal manual should sacrifice questions of mere- 
ly scholastic controversy; it should have regard to the ever- 
increasing demand for the treatment of historico-dogmatic ques- 
tions; it should be philosophical in its doctrinal exposition, 
more discriminative in the choice of proofs from the Scriptures 
and the Fathers, more careful of the validity of arguments from 
" theological reason," than even the best of the customary text- 
books has been ; it should furthermore be written in the ver- 
nacular and should aim at conciseness and strength in style, 
and should be equipped with an up-to-date bibliography. 

Such a programme may seem to the timid to savor of " mod- 
ernism," but those who doubt that a very close approximation 
can be made to fulfilling such demands, without sacrificing or- 
thodoxy, are commended to a close examination of the present 
volume * from the pen of M. Labauche, Professor at the School 
of Catholic Theology in the University of Paris. It is scarcely 
an exaggeration to say that he has inaugurated a gentle revo- 
lution in theological method. Or perhaps, to speak more truly, 
he has joined the ranks of those who, for some years past, 
while maintaining a " safe and sane " fidelity to orthodox doc- 
trine, have created a new science of historical and positive the- 
ology. 

He begins always with a clear exposition of the exact mean- 
ing and content of the defined dogma. He then proceeds to 
examine its history, from its birth in the Sacred Scriptures or 
the Apostolic tradition, through its development in the Fathers; 
its systematization in the schools ; and its increasing clarifica- 
tion until the present day. 

That his general arrangement is unusually logical is evi- 
denced by the fact that in this present volume, the one that 
would be named De Gratia et de Novissimis in the old man- 
uals, he groups all that is to be taught, dogmatically, concern- 
ing Man, in the state of original justice, under the fall, in the 
state of reparation, glory, or condemnation. He shows excel- 
lent judgment in not dividing his anthropology between two 
treatises, De Deo Creatore and De Gratia, but in grouping it all 
under one. Furthermore the placing of the discussion of the 
relations and the distinctions between nature and the super- 

* Lemons de Theologie Dogmatique. Par L. Labauche. Dogmatique Speciale. L'Homme 
Paris : Bloud et Cie. 



Il8 NEW BOOKS [April, 

natural immediately before the treatment of grace, is much to 
be commended. Again, the treatment of original sin, as a pre- 
liminary to the tract on grace, is obviously logical. In general, 
the plan, well conceived, is admirably executed. There is mani- 
fest in every page a most unusual sanity of judgment in the 
selection of proofs, and a thorough acquaintance with modern 
theological literature. 

The author has not neglected style ; he writes fluently, vig- 
orously, interestingly. The typography is of the best. We hope 
that M. Labauche will surely fulfil his plan of completing an 
entire system of theology, fundamental and special, according 
to the present method. 

The author of this present book * 

COMING OF THE SAINTS, takes his reader back to the ages 
By Taylor. O f faith, asks him to forget all 

that has been written in history 

and criticism since the days of Rabanus Maurus, and promises to 
enable him to "re-imagine the remote past in the light of the 
traditions of our forefathers." He plainly declares: "I have not 
taken upon myself to disentangle history from legend " ; for his 
purpose the legend is as good as the history, perhaps better ; 
for how can one see again the ancient world through mediaeval 
eyes, if he surround himself with an atmosphere that was un- 
known to the mediaeval ? And let it be said at once that if 
one surrender himself " at discretion," he will have some hours 
of as delightful entertainment and instruction, as can be con- 
ceived. The work is a frank attempt to supplement the his- 
torical data concerning the origin and spread of Christianity 
by a recurrence to every old legend and chronicle and tradi- 
tion available. Duchesne, Harnack, Freeman, Milman, Baring- 
Gould, Biggs, Edersheim, and even Houtin fraternize most dem- 
ocratically with Diodorus Siculus, Matthew of Paris, and Le 
Sire de Joinville, and for once, despite the critics, the Bol- 
landists, the Legenda Aurca, and the " Recognitions of Clement " 
are on the same footing : all the old " hagiographic trovatori " 
come into their kingdom again, and Delehaye is neglected. 
" The critics are not infallible," anyhow, and who knows for 
certain that Joseph of Arimathea did not come to Glastonbury, 
or that Lazarus and Mary Magdalen did not float on the raft 

* The Coming of the Saints. Imaginations and Studies in Early Church History and Tra- 
dition. By John W. Taylor. London : Methuen & Co. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 119 

to Aries ? James was bishop of Jerusalem, and Peter of Rome ; 
why, then, may not St. Zacheus have been bishop of Caesarea 
and Lazarus of Marseilles ? It seems to be all the same to the 
chroniclers. 

To be serious, there is, however, a genuine scientific value 
to the present work. On every page the author gives evidence 
of genuine erudition. He knows the " legenda," he knows his- 
tory, and we think that, if he cared, he could separate the 
two ; further, it would be difficult to find another whose writ- 
ing is so successful in reproducing the atmosphere of early 
times. Indeed, the faculty of historical imagination is Mr. 
Taylor's predominating gift. If it were tempered and regulated, 
made legitimate and scientific, he might be an historian. But 
he prefers romance and legend and pious tradition to history, 
and we do not say that his preference is unfortunate. 

This history,* edited by Dr. Lodge, 

HISTORY OF NATIONS, comprises twenty-four volumes. In 
By Lodge. general there has been evidently an 

earnest desire to be fair and impar- 
tial, and the whole work is more of a political history than a 
religious, economic, or military one. To the initiated student of 
history, who is able to discriminate and judge for himself, the 
work will be very useful and instructive. Such volumes as 
the History of England, History of Ireland, History of Africa, 
are taking all things into consideration quite fair. There are 
questions which they do not treat, but no one can expect a 
work like this to be comprehensive. 

In a work so extensive, however, there must almost of neces- 
sity be shortcomings. While chronologically correct, it pre- 
sents arbitrary judgments on great world-wide questions of 
history, as if there was no possibility that the particular view 
of the author could, with fairness and truth, be questioned. 

For example, in the History of the French Revolution, the 
writer attributes all liberal knowledge to the Renaissance, and 
all political liberty to the Reformation. Examples of the same 
attitude which we must, from the standpoint of the historian, 
condemn, are shown in the volume on Italy. We quote one 
two passages : 

* The History of Nations. By Henry Cabot Lodge, Ph.D., LL.D., Editor-in-Chief. 
XXIV. Vols. Philadelphia : John D. Morris & Co. 



120 NEW BOOKS [April, 

It was not till the time ot Gregory the Great that the 
Bishop of Rome began to assume a position which faintly 
foreshadowed the papal position in the Middle Ages. He 
was still for some centuries, till the quarrel with Constanti- 
nople in the eighth century, regarded merely as the foremost 
bishop in the West primus inter pares. 

* * * 

The triumph, however, of Christianity was not alloyed. 
The masses who were left without a creed had to be swept 
into the Gospel net, and the easiest way to do this was to 
make concessions to their superstitious ignorance which de- 
tracted from the purity of the Gospel. The doctrines of 
Christianity were too lofty and too severe to be readily ac- 
cepted by the corrupt population of the Roman world. But 
when they saw the old pagan ceremonial rivaled, if not sur- 
passed, by a parade of lights, incense, vestments, pictures, 
images, and votive offerings, it was not difficult to submit to 
so slight a change in the outer forms of devotion. The mul- 
titudinous gods of pagan worship were replaced by signs of 
Christian veneration. . . . By such devices as these the 
multitude were induced to acquiesce in the transformation of 
the heathen temples into Christian churches. There were 
not wanting high-souled characters in that day who protested 
against this dangerous trifling ; but their voice was generally 
overruled. The patrons of a corrupt reaction were honored 
and magnified. Vigilantius was denounced ; Jerome was 
canonized. 

These things are extremely vital points in the history of civ- 
ization, and in the history of that world-wide body the Catho- 
lic Church. 

Again, exception might be taken to the proportionate amount 
of space given to Huss and the Hussites in the History of Aus- 
tria ; to the statement that Huss stood for the historical ad- 
ministration of the Sacrament ; to the very partisan view of 
Luther, and to the statement that "he was of a very super- 
stitious nature because he believed in a real hell and an actual 
devil." 

We regret that there is no mention in the bibliography of 
the volume on Germany of the authoritative history of the Ger- 
man people by Janssen. We take pleasure in adding that the 
volume is fair in its exposition of the doctrine of Indulgences. 

The volume on South America is mainly political and gen- 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 121 

erally fair ; but it is certainly unfair to the Jesuits, particularly 
with regard to their colony in Paraguay ; and it is lamentably 
lacking in its appreciation of Garcia Moreno. 

In the History of the United States, Mr. Lodge is culpably 
unfair in not giving credit to Lord Baltimore for the establish- 
ment, of his own free will, of religious toleration in Maryland. 

It is impossible to give a categorical judgment on the whole 
work, but, as we have said, to the student who already knows 
something of history, the volumes will be useful. To the be- 
ginner, who needs direction and interpretation, we cannot re- 
commend them unconditionally. 

A Draught of the Blue,"* two 

A DRAUGHT OF THE BLUE, stories translated from the Sanskrit 

by F. W. Bain, are even more beau- 
tiful than his other translation, A Digit of the Moon. The ori- 
ginal work is in verse, and so careful has the translator been that 
a great deal of the poetry seems to have been preserved in Mr. 
Bain's prose. 

No difficulty will be met with in reading and understanding 
the stories, for Mr. Bain's knowledge of Hindu mythology, as 
amply shown by his prefaces and notes, is accurate and thor- 
ough. It would be practically impossible to give even a slight 
idea of what the stories contain in a short resume. Nothing 
since Mr. Kipling's Kim has brought Indian life and thought 
so vividly before the English -reading public. 

Mr. Bain has promised to translate the other fourteen parts 
of the manuscript from which the Digit of the Moon and the 
Draught of the Blue are taken. 

Longmans, Green & Co. has just published a translation of 
the Abbe Vacandard's treatise on " The Inquisition," by Rev. 
B. L. Conway, C.S.P. The Abbe is a historical scholar of first 
rank, at once critical, sane, and moderate. He is well known 
by his Life of St. Bernard and his Historical and Critical Essays. 

This able work discusses the origin and development of the 
coercive power of the Catholic Church in matters of faith. The 
old tu quoque argument of many apologists is abandoned as 
useless, and the Inquisition is treated from a purely objective 
standpoint. The facts are set forth clearly and honestly, because 

* A Draught of the Blue. By F. W. Bain. New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. 



122 NEW BOOKS [April. 

the author holds with Cardinal Newman that the cause of the 
Church is always helped by a frank facing of unpleasant facts 
in her history. 

Copies of this work may be obtained from Rev. Bertrand L. 
Conway. C.S.P., 415 West 59th Street, New York City. 

THE CATHOLIC WORLD has frequently called attention to 
the life and work of that wonderful servant of God, Sister 
Teresa, the Carmelite of Lisieux, popularly known as " The 
Little Flower of Jesus." The " Life " of this young contem- 
plative has had a wide circulation in France, and, by means 
of translations, in many other countries. Our gratitude goes 
out to Miss S. L. Emery for her capable translations of the 
poems of Sister Teresa * which give us insight into the poetic, 
devout, and ecstatic soul of the author. 

Through all of them runs a sustained note of spontaneity, 
of sacrifice, of union with the Unseen. Miss Emery has per- 
formed a difficult task with exactness and with taste. We cor- 
dially hope that the " Life " and the " Poems " of Sister Teresa 
will be still more widely known and read. 

Mr. Mosher, of Portland, Maine, published in the March num- 
ber of his Bibelot some choice selections from Francis Thompson. 
Considering that editions of Thompson's work are very rare, 
the number was particularly welcome. Mr. Mosher, as a further 
tribute to the memory of the great poet, republishes with his 
well-known taste and excellence a book making a separate 
edition of "The Hound of Heaven." It is a distinct pleasure 
to have this masterpiece of English poetry in separate form. 

* The Petals of a Little Flower. Poems of Sister Teresa. Translated by S. L. Emery. 
Boston, Mass. : The Angel Guardian Press. 



periobtcals. 



The Tablet (25 Jan.): Fr. Toohey concludes his articles on 
" Newman and Modernism," bringing forth particular pas- 
sages " to show how utterly foreign to his (Newman's) 
teaching are the methods and tenets of the Immanence 
theory." - Literary Notes speaks of Stedman's poetry as 
an admirable instance of the human and national spirit in 
literature. - The reported " Money Scandal in the Vati- 
can " has been done away with by Card. Satolli. - Card. 
Segna, the new Prefect of the Index, is said to have made 
a very special study of Modernism in all its evolutions. 
(i Feb.): Great care is taken to explain that the Pope 
in the " Pascendi Gregis " does not mean to institute a 
martial law of selection and repression. The disciplinary 
precautions are said to be the practical supplement of 
the doctrinal condemnations. - The layman's point of 
view toward the Encyclical is given by J. Godfrey Rau- 
pert. He combats the assertion that the laity passively 
accept the Encyclical because of intellectual apathy, 
and maintains that it is a source of encouragement to 
the Catholic people. 

(8 Feb.) : The relation of present-day Socialism to Chris- 
tianity is discussed. - The anti-clerical war against re- 
ligious instruction in the schools of Italy is said to be 
growing more dangerous to religion. The instruction now 
given is very perfunctory and the teachers are neither 
qualified for the work nor interested in it. - The per- 
sonnel of the Roman " Vigilance Committee " is given 
by the Roman Correspondent. - Apropos of Cardinal 
Richard's death it is stated that out of the sixty- one 
remaining Cardinals, the Italians number thirty- eight. 
Three represent the English-speaking world. - Rev. 
Spencer Jones writes to corroborate the views of Fr. 
Toohey on Newman and Modernism. 
(15 Feb.): A correspondent considers the attitude of the 
Catholic missionaries in relation to administrative abuses 
in the Congo. That such abuses have existed and do 
exist is proven beyond question of doubt. The silence 
of Catholic missionaries has been due to fear of the gov- 



124 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [April, 

ernment, to Belgian loyalty to the King, or to a prefer- 
ence to suffer wrongs in silence. Leopold is criticized 
unsparingly. "The fact that he is a Catholic should 

make us the more stern with him." The Children's 

Bill before Parliament is spoken of with approval. Its 
aim is to safeguard child- life by such measures as the 
punishment of careless parents, by prohibition of tobac- 
co, the regulation of reformatories, etc. 

The Month (Feb.): The article, "A Plea for Catholic Social 
Action," points out the deficiency in the present trend 
of anti-Socialistic literature which offers a variety of neg- 
ative criticisms unsupported by any attempt at positive 
construction. The only effectual argument against So- 
cialism is the presentation of a better scheme in its place. 
That Catholics are apathetic to the progress of Social 
Reform can scarcely be denied. "The English Catho- 
lic Calendar since the Reformation," by Rev. Herbert 
Thurston, presents a summary of gleanings from data 
which have accumulated since the time of Rev. John Mor- 
ris, S.J., whose masterly treatment of the subject left lit- 
tle to be added at the time. " Some Gothic Revival- 
ists," by N. Randolph, presents a list of the most repre- 
sentative exponents who aided in furthering the interests 
of the movement towards a revival of Gothic art. 

The Catholic factor in the revival was a leading one. 

" Religious Sentiment in Sienese Art," affords its readers 
an opportunity to become familiar with the salient feat- 
ures of Sienese art. 

The National Review (March) : " Episodes of the Month," con- 
tains an attack upon the naval programme of the pres- 
ent Government, and a bitter condemnation of Mr. Bir- 
rell and his Irish policy: "He dances to the piping of 
the Nationalists, and his every public utterance is punctu- 
ated by rebel applause, and the so-called ' lull ' in crime 
(throughout Ireland) is the result of a corrupt compact 
between Mr. Birrell and the Roman Catholic hierarchy.' 

In " The Russo-Japanese War An Unpublished Page 

of International Diplomacy," Andre Mevil charges that 

Germany incited Russia to begin the war. " Cobden- 

ism and Its Cancer," by J. L. Garvin. H. M. Hynd- 

man, in " International Socialism," presents a plea for 



1908.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 125 

his subject. He maintains that Socialism is spiritual as 
well as material a great material religion. "The old 
supernatural creeds have long ceased even to pretend to 
guide ; they have now almost ceased to influence the 

thought of our time." Sir William Ramsay writes on 

Lord Kelvin. Bernard Holland reviews a book of 

poems, just issued, by Mary Coleridge. The poems are 
praised very highly. " Mary Coleridge," says the writer, 
" recalls both George Herbert and Herrick." " Radi- 
cal Stalwart" writes of the approaching downfall of the 
Liberal Party. Notes on Canada and India. 

The Irish Monthly (March) : Some interesting letters from per- 
sons of more or less distinction are here published for 

the first time. Oliver Goldsmith is the subject of a 

paper by the Rev. Michael Watson, SJ. Gardening 

is enthusiastically recommended by Nora Tynan O'Mahony 

in her paper entitled : " A Pleasant Hobby." Mrs. 

Ellen Woodlock, a woman who did much work in her 
day, is the subject of a biographical sketch. 

Le Correspondant (25 Jan.): The heroes of La Vendee are the 

subject of an article by H. de la Combe. Lt. Col. 

Rollin outlines a system of espionage to be followed in 

time of war. The Countess of Clinchamp writes of 

the happy relations which existed from the twelfth cen- 
tury between the members of the Bourbon family and 

the famous Benedictine Abbey at Sauvigny. Count de 

Moiiy proposes to find the cause of the exceptional popu- 
larity of French Comedy. It lies in the fact, he thinks, 
that it has always been a social force, interpreting the 
deepest sentiments of the people in civil life. Louise 
Zeys traces summarily the origin and development of 
labor unions particularly those of women. She treats 
of the different unions of women in France to-day. 
(10 Feb.) : Minister Maura, of Spain, is described by 
Joseph Berge as a man of great ability, remarkable in- 
dependence, highly honest, virtuous, and courageous. 

P. Pisani relates the story of the parish of St. Gervais 

of Paris and the French Revolution. A number of 

unedited letters from Chateaubriand to his wife appear 
in this number. The compiler tells us that these letters 
are invaluable, as they show the intimate thoughts of 



126 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [April, 

that great man. Lucien Bezard contributes an essay 

on the ancient poetry of the Magyar people during their 

wars for independence. Francis Marre writes that the 

colonies of France are becoming the producing countries, 
and their industry has assumed such proportions that it 
will soon become a national question. 

Etudes (5 Feb.): In his paper on " Scholastics and Modernists," 
M. Lucien Roure states that Modernism is a tendency 
rather than a body of doctrine. Scholasticism, in turn, 
is distinguished by a three-fold tendency, i. e., intellec- 
tualism, objectivism, and realism. The writer then begins 
a comparative study of these two opposing minds, and 
claims that Modernism is the recrudescence of the spirit 
of the Averrhoists which spent itself against Scholasticism 
in the thirteenth century, and the spirit of the Reformers 
which, with no greater success, combated Scholasticism 

in the sixteenth. The award of the Nobel prize to 

Rudyard Kipling gives occasion for an article on Imper- 
ialism, by M. Paul Jury. 
(20 Feb.): M. A. Eymieu has a paper on the psychology 

of habit and self-discipline. M. d'Ales discusses at 

length the Virginal Birth apropos of M. Herzog's attack 
upon this doctrine in the pages of the Revue d* Histoire 
et de Litterature Religieuses. 

Revue Pratique d* Apologetique (i Feb.): J. Guibert puts forth 
the reasonings in favor of the evolution of man. Under 
three heads the universality of the law of evolution, the 
resemblances of man to the animal, and the history of 
humanity he states the chief arguments of the evolu- 
tionists. In the same order he proceeds to refute them. 
Distinguishing between the fact and the principle of evo- 
lution, he reasons that man does not owe his existence 
to the principle of evolution. That man has the power 
of speech, that he is a moral and religious being, that he 
progresses only within the species or the individual, wide- 
ly separate him from the animal. Finally, the history 
of mankind testifies that man has progressed only be- 
cause from the beginning he was man. H. Ligeard 

continues his discussion of the scholastic theories of the 

natural and supernatural. Rousse makes a plea for 

a chair of the history of religion in universities in order 



i9o8.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 127 

to oppose the false assertions of those who have studied 
the science with a hostile purpose. 

(15 Feb.): G. Bertrin criticises, in a scathing manner, 
those who maintain that the French clergy are in a state 
of disruption and are becoming weakened in faith. He 
believes that in reality there is no crisis. While some of 
the French priests do take an active interest in scientific 
and critical questions, all nevertheless form a united 
body. Still he admits that there exists a certain amount 
of unrest and gives three reasons for its existence 
Kantian philosophy, the superstition of internal criticism, 
and too much confidence in the scientific deductions of 

adversaries. A. Crosnier begins a series of articles on 

the recent converts to the Catholic Church. In this num- 
ber he gives a resume of the various motives which led 
to the true fold some of the most noted converts Bour- 

get, Huysmans, Coppee, Rette. Samuel, his birth and 

vocation, his relation to the priesthood, to royalty, to the 
prophetical schools, his last years, form the substance of 

a paper by H. Lesetre. From a brief study of P. Was- 

mann on the origin of man's body, J.-M. Boyron con- 
cludes that neither philosophy nor dogma set any limi- 
tations to researches in this line, and that inquiries can 
be made on a scientific basis without trying to harmo- 
nize facts with preconceived theories. 

Revue Thomiste (Jan.-Feb.) : Fr. Alexandre Mercier carefully 
defines the preternatural, drawing the line between it and 
the supernatural. The principles of faith, the conclu- 
sions from theology, Fr. Hugon urges in a paper on 
"Nature, Substance, and Person," enlarge the domain 
of rational science and make possible the solution, if not 
perfectly satisfactory at least reasonably so, of philosoph- 
ical problems which unaided reason attempts in vain. 

The " Actuality of the Scholastic Method." It is a pow- 
ful remedy against contemporary subjectivism. 

La Democratic Chretienne (8 Feb.): "Social Catholicism" in 
Italy, and its relations with materialistic and Masonic 
Socialism. M. Felix Belval, making observations, as he 
says, in the " social melee," gives an account of several 
Catholic industrial societies and enterprises for advancing 
the material prosperity of the Italian workingmen and 



128 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [April, 

defending and strengthening their Christian life and 
principles. Descriptions of "The Strike in the Region 
of Bergamo " and " The Work of the Catholics of Reg- 
gio-Emilio," show the practical and successful working 
of these societies. Accounts are also given of Masonic 
and socialist activities in conflict with these Catholic 
organizations. 

Revue du Monde Catholique (Feb.) : In " Voix Canadiennes " is 
given a short biography of Mgr. Lafleche, of Three 
Rivers, with a letter (Sept. 8, 1882) of this bishop up- 
on religious affairs in Canada. His efforts at Rome 
to clear away some difficulties are explained. Senti- 
ment and Faith, a consideration of two principal heresies 
that have persistently appeared since the time of Pascal. 
One has sprung from the relations between dogma and 
history, the other from the relations between dogma and 
reason. These two heretical tendencies, while distinct in 
object and form, are alike in foundation and in result. 

Annales de Philosophie Chretienne (Jan.) : " Newman," by H f 

Bremond. " The Limit of the Infinite," by Ed. Schiff- 

macher. " The Russian Problem," by A. Palmieri. 

" Chronicle of the Philosophic and Religious Movement 
in Spain." 

(Feb.) : A critical view of Joachim Merlaut's recent book 
on Senancour, the poet, religious thinker, and publicist, 

by Chr. Marechal. Much advantage will be gained in 

the exegesis of texts, writes Al. Leclere, if they are 
studied not only in themselves, but in their whole set- 
ting. L. Laberthonniere contributes his third article 

on " Dogma and Theology." M. Lebreton and M. 

Bremond cross swords on the point of a criticism made 
by the former on Williams' book, Newman, Pascal, Loisy, 
and the Catholic Church. 

La Revue Apologetique (16 Jan.): "Leo XIII. and Biblical 
Modernism," by P. Leclair, S.J. The Encyclical " Prov- 
identissimus " condemns rather than sanctions the princi- 
ples of the new exegesis. "The Psychology of Un- 
belief," by Pierre Suau, S.J. " Are Protestant Coun- 
tries Superior to Catholic?" by Maur. Lemozin. 

Stimmen aus Maria-Laach (7 Feb.): P. H. Haan, S.J., on 
"Dogma and Science," writes of the last two proposi- 



1908.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 129 

tions of the decree " Lamentibili Sane," tracing out the 
errors condemned and the consequences such errors 

would lead to if accepted by the Church. P. St. Beis- 

sel, S.J., concludes his paper on " Modern Art in Cath- 
olic Churches." He censures modern painters for so often 
striving only after tones and feelings and missing substance 
and meaning. He regrets the haste in which many new 
churches are decorated. By taking more time much 
cheap and worthless stuff would be kept out. P. H. A. 
Krose, S.J., in his paper on " Results of the German 
Census of 1905 Regarding Religious Denominations," 
gives details from the different states, and concludes that 
the proportionate increase of Catholic population is due 

to immigration. P. J. Bessmer, S.J., writes on " Chrys- 

tal Gazing," He counts the phenomena as visual hallu- 
cinations which were known and used in antiquity and 

through the Middle Ages. P. A. Baumgartner, SJ., 

has a paper on Manzoni's novel The Betrothed. He points 
out its beauties and shows its value and importance in 
the world's literature. 

La Civilta Cattolica (i Feb.): Articles upon "The Eloquence 
of St. John Chrysostom" and "The Theatre in Italy"; 
also a monograph upon " Historic and Positive Theol- 

ogy." 

(15 Feb.): The two main articles are continuations, 
" Theological Modernism" and "Schopenhauer and Moral 
Pessimism." The latter is one of a series of studies 
in "Moral Problems." 

La Scuola Cattolica (Jan.): " Cardinal Caesar Baronius," by Prof. 
Angelo Roncalli. The doctrine of vital or psycholog- 
ical Immanence is the positive, and Kantian Agnosti- 
cism, the negative foundation of Modernistic Philosophy, 
writes Guiseppe Ballerini. The former he examines criti- 
cally in this issue. " St. Jerome, Educator," by Ettore 

De-Giovanni. " II Rinnovamento " an examination of 

the defense which this magazine offers for issuing a num- 
ber after it had been forbidden to do so under pain of 
excommunication. The plea that the journal is non- 
confessional and an apologist for religion does not justify 

its defiance of authority. The International Association 

for the advancement of science among Catholics, recently 
VOL. LXXXVII. 9 



130 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [April. 

formed at Rome under the direction of three cardinals, 
has chosen for its Secretary Prof. Luigi Pastor, Diiector 
of the Austrian Historical Institute in Rome. 

Espana y America (i Feb.) : Father Hospital continues his 
sketch of Buddhism as a religious system in his series 

on the religions of China. Fr. Coco crosses swords 

with Loisy on the interpretation of Messianic texts in 
the Gospels. The article concludes with a gracious tribute 
to Loisy's old enemy, R. P. Fontaine. 
(15 Feb.): The second contribution of Father Garcia on 
" Modernism in Theology " contrasts the modern with the 
traditional Catholic conception of Christological dogma. 

Rdzon y Fe (Jan.) : L. Murillo and Pablo Hernandez continue 
articles begun in the previous number. The former will 
not allow an alleged Modernist even to question the jus- 
tice of the charge that Modernists make the act of faith 
consist essentially and simply in a religious sentiment. 
The latter concludes his account of the expulsion of the 

Jesuits from Paraguay. In an article on " Scholastic 

Philosophy and Experimental Psychology," Urgate de 
Ercilla sets about proving that Scholastic philosophy 
alone can harmonize and give value to the results of 

psychological observation. V. Mintegulaga writes on 

the legality of lay schools in Spain ; A. P. Goyena on 
the Golden Jubilee of our Lady of Lourdes ; and N. 
Noguer on Farmers Syndicates in France. 
(Feb.) : The opinions of Loisy and Le Roy upon the 
magisterium of the Church are heartily combated by 
A. Elorriaga. 

Biblische Zeitschrift (Jan.): P. J. Houtheim, S.J., in an exegesis 
of Canticle ii. 8-iii. 5, remarks that " difficulties arise 
only for an unpoetic pedant who forgets that the Canticle 

moves in an ideal world." Dr. A. Steinman shows the 

internal connection and influence of the Council of Jeru- 
salem in the controversy between Sts. Peter and Paul at 
Antioch. The controversy could not have occurred be- 
fore the Council, as Ramsay says. 






Current Events. 



How much the people of France 
France. feel the burden of keeping up the 

army is shown by the reduction 

which public opinion has forced the legislature to make in the 
periods of training of the reserves and the territorial army. 
This reduction is not very serious, in the case of the first re- 
serves, amounting only to one week less than as at present, 
from 28 days to 21 days; but it was opposed by most of the 
officers of the army, by the better judgment, it is said, of 
many of those who, to please their constituents, voted for the 
proposal, and by M. de Freycinet, to whom the organization of 
the national defence, both during and after the last war, is largely 
due. This venerable statesman emerged from the semi- seclu- 
sion to which he has of late betaken himself to speak against 
any reduction, and solemnly adjured his fellow-legislators not 
to weaken France by yielding on this point. The desires of 
the country, however, prevailed. The time to be saved from 
military service was looked upon as necessary for the economical 
well-being of the country, in these days of fierce competition 
in business. 

Very little progress has been made even in the discussion 
of the social legislation, which has figured so largely in minis- 
terial programmes. Old-age pensions form one of these meas- 
ures. Some time ago a bill passed the Chamber to provide 
aged workmen with what appears to us the not very munifi- 
cent sum of seventy dollars a year. As this, however, would 
amount to sixty millions per year, it will be seen that it is not 
easy for an already heavily taxed people to provide sufficient 
money for help of this kind. The Senate, in fact, was ap- 
palled by the largeness of the sum, and altered the bill so as 
to reduce the amount to twenty millions. With reference to an- 
other point, too, the Senate has come into conflict with the 
government, and, strange to say, has taken what seems to be 
the more popular side. The government's bill required, as one 
condition of the granting of a pension, that there should be 
paid some contribution on the part of the person to whom it 
was to be given. The Senate has invited the government to 



132 CURRENT EVENTS [April, 

bring in a new bill, which is to exclude the principle of oblig- 
atory contributions. In England the same question is being 
discussed, the working-men there being loud in exclaiming 
against the payment of anything at all as the condition of a 
pension. 

The introduction of an extension of the income tax has 
long been threatened, and in France as well as in this country, 
those who are in receipt of incomes manifest great unwilling- 
ness to serve their country by paying this tax. They had 
hoped that the project had been abandoned; and when on the 
contrary M. Caillaux, the Minister of Finance, brought in the 
proposal that an income tax should take the place of all other 
forms of direct taxation, some of the supporters of the govern- 
ment, leading Radicals, moved an amendment. The govern- 
ment, however, made it a question of confidence, and the 
amendment was defeated. 

The character of the proposed legislation for the liquida- 
tion of church property, which is a consequence of the Sepa- 
ration Act, may be learned from the judgment passed upon it 
by some Parisian Protestants, who have addressed a petition to 
the Senate calling attention to the serious infringement of the 
fundamental principles of law which this legislation involves. 
People are not always the best judges in their own causes; 
and when we have Protestants condemning the anti-Catholic 
legislation of the government, the real character of such legis- 
lation and the real character of the government are made all 
the more evident. The petitioners declare the proposals to be a 
" veritable iniquity." The Senate, they say, cannot sanction the 
confiscation of the property left for Masses, "without profoundly 
affecting all those who believe in the efficacy of prayers for the 
dead. If the conditions with which the legacies have been bur- 
dened can no longer be fulfilled, the amounts ought to be returned 
to the representatives of the testators." They conclude by ex- 
pressing, as the representatives of those who were robbed, per- 
secuted, and proscribed on account of their religion, the " in- 
vincible horror which they feel for every infringement of the 
liberty of worship and of private property," and urge the Sen- 
ate to place all citizens, to whatever religion they may belong, 
under the safeguard of the common law. Times have changed 
indeed in France when Protestants have to make such an ap- 
peal on behalf of Catholics. 



i9o8.] CURRENT EVENTS 133 

Morocco still remains the chief cause of anxiety for the 
government. It has to choose between three courses : the con- 
quest of the country; or its complete and immediate abandon- 
ment ; or the mere holding of the coast towns for the sake of 
the organization of a police force, the re-establishment of order 
and the maintenance of French predominance. From the first 
the latter course has been the one chosen, and the one to which 
the government resolutely adheres. The conquest of the coun- 
try would be an extremely difficult undertaking, and would in- 
volve the risk of a European war. If France were to abandon 
Morocco, some other power would step in, and that would be 
intolerable. The least disadvantageous course, therefore, is the 
one chosen ; and yet it involves great difficulties. Soon after 
the bombardment of Casablanca it seemed as if everything was 
in a fair way for settlement. But since then the tribes have 
taken the aggressive, and have, if we may believe the Germans, 
inflicted some slight reverses on the French troops. No one 
denies the bravery and discipline of these troops, but they have 
in one or two instances been outnumbered and have been glad 
to get back in safety to their bases. After some hesitation, the 
government has decided so to reinforce the numbers of the force 
that the tribes may be overwhelmed and crushed. 

The Socialists, under the leadership of M. Jaures, have done 
all that was in their power to bring the occupation to an end. 
They have raised the question in Parliament, but have failed 
to defeat the government. Public meetings have been held 
with the same object. They declare that French citizens are 
being sent to death and to the murder of the gentle Moor for 
the sake of the hateful capitalist. Insurrection, they say, is 
better than war. So far, however, they have produced no ef- 
fect upon the public opinion of the country. It cannot, how- 
ever, be denied that the Morocco question is far from settled, 
and involves many elements of danger, perhaps even an upris- 
ing of the Arabs in Algeria ; for Mulai Hafid has declared a 
holy war against the French, as the latter have refused to rec- 
ognize him as Sultan, and signs of uneasiness have manifested 
themselves throughout all the districts inhabited by Mahometans, 

A somewhat humorous incident is that negotiations have 
been going on for the appearance at the London Hippodrome 
of Raisuli, the bandit governor and captor of Sir Harry Maclean, 
whom some look upon as the most powerful man in Morocco. 



134 CURRENT EVENTS [April, 

The manager of the show failed, indeed, to prevail upon the 
chief to appear before the London public, but some of his fol- 
lowers have accepted his offer. 

Undeterred by the condemnation 
Germany. of the bill for the expropriation of 

the Poles, a condemnation ex- 
pressed by the best opinion of the civilized world, the Prus- 
sian Parliament has accepted the proposals of the government, 
although in a somewhat modified form. It is worthy of note 
that while it is true that a Sovereign professing to be a Catholic 
took part with an " orthodox " autocrat and an infidel King in 
the first infamous partition of Poland, yet those of the Poles 
who fell under the sway of Austria have, on the whole, been 
better treated than have been their compatriots in Russia and 
Prussia, and it is further worthy of note that the former have at 
length a large measure of autonomy and their due share in the 
government of the Empire of which they unwillingly .form a 
part. This is one case out of many which go to show that 
arbitrary methods are more successful outside than inside the 
Church ; although there still are among Catholics some who de- 
fend autocracy, there is something in the Catholic religion which, 
when practised, makes it hard for despotism to flourish. So 
slavery, although tolerated for a time, could not permanently 
survive in an atmosphere stifling to its principles. 

The Committee of the Prussian Upper House made several 
amendments, more, however, it is to be feared from a selfish 
apprehension that the principles of the Bill might be applied 
to themselves than from a disinterested regard for justice. These 
amendments limited the right of compulsory expropriation to 
estates entailed within the last ten years, thus exempting the 
old-established landowners. The government refused to accept 
this amendment, but accepted that which saved from forced 
sale lands owned by churches, by recognized religious associa- 
tions, or by charitable foundations. 

A franker confession of failure on the part of a government 
has seldom been made than that of Count Arnim, the minister 
for Agriculture, in moving the rejection of the amendments 
made by the Committee. The Prussian government, he said, 
most emphatically denied the possibility of solving the Polish 
problem by means of a policy of conciliation. Notwithstand- 



1908.] CURRENT EVENTS 135 

ing all that Prussia had done for the Poles, they had absolutely 
refused to renounce their national ideas. Their prosperity had 
increased, education had spread among them, but it had all 
tended to a more intense development of national feeling. Al- 
though they had renounced all attempts to rise in revolt, they 
were expelling the Germans by attaining a superior standard 
of civilization. The greater birthrate among the Poles contri- 
buted to the same result. 

The policy of buying out the land of Poland in order to 
settle Germans upon it, is not new; it has been in operation 
since 1886. What distinguishes the present measure is its com- 
pulsory character. The necessity of compulsion from the Prus- 
sian point of view is made evident by the fact that although 
nearly ninety millions have been devoted since 1886 to this pur- 
pose, Polish acquisitions from Germans have exceeded German 
acquisitions from Poles by nearly 250,000 acres. This ill-suc- 
cess has provoked the Prussian government to push this new 
law through the legislature, and by so doing to incur the some- 
what strong condemnation of M. Emile Ollivier, who declares 
that Germany thus consummates her moral degradation. She 
has ceased to be, he declares, a civilized nation, and no longer 
represents anything but the barbarism of brigandage. This 
language is over- strong, but there seems to be no doubt that 
the best opinion in Prussia itself is against these proposals, not 
merely as unjust in themselves and as affording a precedent for 
the Social Democrats if and when they come into power, but 
also as more likely to defeat than to secure the desired effect. 

Baron von Stengel, the Minister of Finance, has found it 
impossible to discover an acceptable way of meeting the deficit 
due to the increased naval expenditure and to the decline of 
industrial activity. He has given place to Herr Sydow, hitherto 
Imperial Under- Secretary of State for the Post Office. Consid- 
erable difficulty, it is said, was met with in finding any one 
willing to undertake a task which has baffled all the efforts of 
one of the most experienced and skillful Ministers of Finance. 
Like the rest of the world, Germany is suffering from industrial 
depression. Germany has its unemployed, as we ourselves have. 

The letter written by the German Emperor to the First Lord 
of the British Admiralty, and which has been construed as an 
attempt, upon the Emperor's part, to influence in a way agree- 
able to Germany the rate of construction of British ships, has 



136 CURRENT EVENTS [April, 

excited a great deal of discussion. Much more importance has 
been given to it than it deserves. That so much should have 
been said shows how far from satisfactory are the relations be- 
tween the two countries. 

The permission to make a survey 

Austria-Hungary. for a few miles of railway through 

the Sanjak of Novi Bazar to Mitro- 

vitza, which Austria has sought and obtained from the Sultan, 
has led to unlimited discussion in the press and to some little 
disturbance of the money market. Of the liberties, such as they 
are, of the various races under Turkish rule in Macedonia, Aus- 
tria and Russia have been deputed by the rest of Europe to 
be the guardians. It seems indeed like setting wolves to watch 
over lambs to entrust these two Powers with such an office. 
But it was the best that could be done in the present arrange- 
ment of the European Powers ; and as they knew that the rest 
of Europe, France, Great Britain, Italy, were interested specta- 
tors of their proceedings, some little good has been done and a 
little more is hoped for. 

The Miirszteg programme marked out the points on which the 
t<vo Powers had agreed, and it was under its provisions that com- 
mon action was taking place. The announcement, however, that 
this permission for a railway survey had been given to Austria, 
one of the partners in the Miirszteg arrangement, without the 
knowledge or consent of Russia, the other partner, was looked 
upon by many, at least in Russia, as a dissolution of the alliance, 
and as the reopening of the Eastern Question. All kinds of 
suggestions were made. There was to be a new grouping of 
the Powers. Germany was supposed to be at the back of 
Austria, and ready to support her in the maintenance of her 
separate interests. Russia was to join with England in joint 
action on behalf of the Christian races. This was one, it was 
said, of the results of the Convention recently concluded be- 
tween the two Powers. All agreed that Turkey had triumphed 
once more by her oft-repeated method of dividing her enemies ; 
and that Austria, having begged and obtained a favor from 
the Sultan, would no longer press upon him unwelcome re- 
forms. Baron von Aehrenthal, the Austrian Foreign Minister, 
however, did not admit the justice of these criticisms, and main- 
tained that while the Miirszteg programme provided for common 



1908.] CURRENT EVENTS 137 

political action in Macedonia on the part of Russia and Austria, 
it did not prevent the separate action of each of the two parties 
for its own economic purposes. They could still act in com- 
mon on behalf of the Christians. Austria will offer no oppo- 
sition to Russia if, as a set-off, a railway were to be made 
from the Danube to the Adriatic. While the Powers are thus 
wrangling in words, the bands of the Greeks and Bulgarians 
are continuing to slaughter each other and their Christian com- 
patriots in Macedonia, the Turk looking on with grim delight. 

Very little has to be chronicled 
Russia. about Russian affairs. The Sto- 

lypin ministry is still in power, 

the third Duma is still in existence. Outrages are still per- 
petrated, but they do not seem to be so numerous as before. 
Many trials behind closed doors are being held. Many execu- 
tions are still taking place. The most important event is the 
resignation of the constitutionally- minded governor of Finland 
and the appointment in his place of a General. This is thought 
to point to a renewed attempt to Russify the Finns. The Tsar, 
in reply to an address of the Moscow nobility, has declared 
his firm and inflexible intention of effecting the regeneration 
of the country on the lines marked out by the Manifestoes of 
October 30, 1905, and June 16, 1907. There is to be no turn- 
ing back for his Majesty upon this path. 

The seemingly interminable trial, 

Italy. or rather series of trials, of Signer 

Nasi has come to an end and the 

former minister has been condemned to eleven months' im- 
prisonment and four and one-half years' interdiction from hold- 
ing any public office. He was found guilty of the least of the 
offences laid to his charge, that of peculation, and sentenced to 
the lightest punishment. Strange to say the popular sym- 
pathies are with the condemned man. The use of public funds 
for personal advancement has not hitherto been looked upon 
as a great crime. 

The Italian Chamber has been occupied for many days in 
discussing the question of religious education in the schools. 
It is somewhat of a surprise to learn that such education is 
given in modern Italian schools, and still more that the govern- 



138 CURRENT EVENTS [April, 

ment and a large majority of the Chamber should be resolute in 
its defence. The attempt made to abolish it was defeated 333 
votes to 1 86. While a demonstration in support of the aboli- 
tion was made in Rome, petitions poured in from all parts of 
the country in favor of its maintenance. 

So far as can be ascertained, the 
Portugal. immediate cause for the assassina- 

tion of the King of Portugal was 

the exasperation which sprang from the harsh measures of the 
dictator, combined with the somewhat sordid advantages which 
the King personally was taking of the situation. There exists 
in Portugal a party which wishes to establish a Republic how 
strong it is, it is difficult to say ; but, owing to the arbitrary 
measures which had been taken by Senhor Franco, it had grown 
in strength, and arrangements had been made to overthrow the 
monarchy on a fixed day. Of this proposal enormous numbers 
were cognizant, nor was it without the support of many mon- 
archists. The plans of the organizers were, however, discovered, 
and their scheme defeated. This enraged some of the most ex- 
treme members of the Republican party, and they planned and 
carried out the brutal murders. 

The Republicans, as a party, are in no way responsible for 
the crime, although they were Republicans who did the deed. 
Under the new regime the party is biding its time, and has not 
relinquished its purpose. What its success will be the future 
will disclose. The facts that since the assassinations the graves 
of the regicides have been decorated and made into a place of 
pilgrimage, and that prominent merchants have contributed to 
the fund which has been raised for the support of the children 
of the murderers, show that no little sympathy exists even 
for these extreme opponents of the monarchy a sympathy 
which cannot be justified but which is explained by the hatred 
of arbitrary government. Those who know no better way of 
defending good government except that of force the officers of 
the army were on the point of chastising the offenders in their 
own way ; and it was with the greatest difficulty that the King 
and his Cabinet held them in check. Happily they succeeded 
in preventing the rule of the soldiery, a rule which is but a 
little better than anarchy itself. The prospects are, therefore, 
hopeful. The King has declared in the clearest terms his pur- 



1908.] CURRENT EVENTS 139 

pose to remain ever faithful to the Constitution, and under no 
circumstances to have recourse to a dictatorship. The Civil 
List is to be determined by the Cortes, and absolute freedom 
is to be left to it in fixing the amount to be granted. No 
money is to be expended by him except with its sanction. 

The Premier of the new Ministry declared the intention of 
his government to adhere strictly and unswervingly to the law. 
His residence in a country in which constitutional government 
was established had produced in him the conviction that this 
was indispensable. In the new elections perfect freedom was 
to be assured. The release of the Republican Deputies, and 
the repeal of dictatorial enactments, have, it is said, convinced 
public opinion of the sincerity of these declarations, and that 
the reign of law has at last arrived. The sympathies of the 
people for the young King have been excited by these decla- 
rations. 

As to the late dictator, Senhor Franco, few question his mo- 
tives or his integrity. He was incapable, however, of estimat- 
ing the effect of his measures, and was endowed with a fatal 
belief that he was both capable and indispensable. The young 
King has shown a remarkable grasp of affairs, and has displayed 
good qualities of heart as well as of mind. He seeks to associate 
himself in every way with his people, reading all the news- 
papers, especially the Republican organs. He wants, he says, 
the help of all in the difficult path which calamity has called 
upon him to tread. 

The financial condition is a cause of anxiety. There have 
been deficits for many years, and their existence was, indeed, 
one cause of the dictatorship. The Portuguese have had a curi- 
ous way of voting expenditure first, and supply afterwards. The 
new government proposes to reverse this, and by retrenchment 
to cut its coat according to the cloth. 



THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 

AS a current topic of general interest some of the Reading Circles could 
arrange a profitable discussion on the conditions that produce a finan- 
cial crisis. According to a theory proposed by the French sociologist Lebon 
the actions and impulses of a crowd are sometimes different from the actions 
and impulses of any individual in it, or of all the individuals combined, con- 
sidered simply as individuals. Naturally, he cites the familiar cases of riots, 
fire panics, excited religious revivals, and the like, and the reflective mind 
readily carries the illustration a little further to such surrender to impulse on 
a large scale as a national outburst of jingoism and war spirit, or, to take a 
very modern instance, the extraordinary demonstration against absolute 
monarchy in Russia, with its accompaniment of strikes against all productive 
labor and destruction of property by the concerted act of a community. The 
principle may easily be applied too sweepingly, and the deductions from any 
of these popular demonstrations may be carried too far. 

But even when full allowance is made for the contagious influence of a 
common motive in exciting among a mass of people a state of mind which 
they would not have adopted individually, the phenomena remain, and 
there is perhaps no department of human activity where they are more apt to 
present themselves than in finance. The power of contagion in a genuiue 
financial panic is too obvious to need argument; it is almost as obvious in 
such a craze of popular speculation as that of April, 1901. What more par- 
ticularly concerns the present situation is the question whether what Lebon 
calls the psychology of the crowd does not play some considerable part in a 
prolonged financial reaction. To the extent that rising prices and trade ac- 
tivity are a result of economic causes pure and simple a lucky harvest, for 
instance, or a sudden increase of gold production the psychological aspect 
is not so very important. It is not a very necessary element in the analysis 
of a collapse of credit caused purely by the absorption and exhaustion of 
available capital. Where the process of contagion begins to operate contin- 
uously, at such times, is with the development of the mental state in which 
the community as a whole feels rich or feels poor, and conducts its finances 
accordingly. 

There can be no doubt that the after-effects of a financial setback are 
largely governed, in their continuance and severity, by this state of mind. 
It is not altogether the fact of sudden poverty that cuts down a community's 
purchases after such episodes as those of 1893 and 1873 though there was 
plenty of real disappearance of means of livelihood and it is not altogether 
the fear of loss, through the altered aspect of trade and of the investment 
markets. The wide spread of the feeling that retrenchment was in order was 
quite as important an influence, and this was naturally contagious. The 
power of example in conspicuous places encouraged adoption of such prac- 
tice of economy, exactly as the example of extravagance, in the preceding era 
of prosperity, led people who were neither growing rich, nor indulging in 



1908.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION 141 

the illusions of speculation, to spend more than they had ever before thought 
of spending. Since it is not improbable, in the light of experience, that we 
may be entering on just such a period, it is a matter of seme importance to 
the industrial situation to inquire just what the -larger consequences are apt 
to be, and whether they will make for good or evil. 

Assumption of such a new habit of living, by a whole community, is cer- 
tainly looked upon as a misfortune in the financial markets, and not wholly 
without reason. Business enterprises usually have been capitalized on the 
basis of the trade created by the demand of the days of lavish expenditure, 
and they will be lucky if they have not accumulated stocks of merchandise on 
expectation of its continuance merchandise for which they have gone into 
debt. This creates an awkward situation and a good deal of troublesome fi- 
nancial readjustment, with some individual disaster. Even if times are not 
actually hard, in the old fashioned sense, for the average consumer, they cer- 
tainly are hard for the average merchant and producer, and, in so far as cap- 
italized enterprises are involved, to the average investor. 

What is to be said on the other side ? First, undoubtedly, that the time 
had been reached, or would very soon have been reached, when a change in 
the community's habits of expenditure was absolutely unavoidable. Perpet- 
ual increase, on the scale of the past year or two, was inconceivable. The 
actual fact was that the largest spenders were getting in debt, and that a very 
great part of the thrifty community was being already forced to a sacrifice of 
its usual enjoyments through the rise in prices. It did not seem to be real- 
ized by people that, while they were talking of the "business boom " of a 
year or so ago, great numbers of our people were discussing the hard times 
meaning the high cost of living which was thrusting them back into pover- 
ty even while their income remained fixed. 

The producing markets were already losing this support, and would have 
lost it more and more rapidly as time went on. They now appear to lose it 
on a much larger scale, but there are some exceedingly important compensa- 
tions. One is the stability which the new demand will be found to possess, 
but which the old did not. The other and the greater one is the resumption, 
through the new economics, of the accumulation of capital, in the country as 
a whole, which is absolutely necessary to the welfare of the community and 
the soundness of its financial markets. Without the hard times after 1893, 
the vigor and energy with which the American producer entered the world's 
industry after 1897 would probably not have been witnessed. 
* * 

Prompted by the favorable notice that appeared recently in this maga- 
zine of the latest novel by Miriam Coles Harris, entitled The Tents of Wicked- 
ness, one of our readers was surprised to find that the Public Library of her 
city did not purchase even one copy, owing to some want of correct informa- 
tion on the part of the chief librarian. She then called for Rutledge, the 
first novel written by the same author over thirty years ago, but it was out. 
After putting her name down for it she had to wait quite a while before getting 
a rebound copy, showing much signs of use. The distinction of the author 
should be a sufficient recommendation for all Public Libraries to encourage 
the reading of the safe and sane fiction produced by Mrs. Harris. 



142 BOOKS RECEIVED [April, 

The Frederick A. Stokes Company publish a memorial volume to Mrs. 
Craigie in the form of extracts from her writings, arranged by Zoe Procter. 
The selections vary from a line or two to several pages in length and are 
grouped under appropriate headings: Human Nature; India; England; 
Religion; Love; Marriage; Ideals; Art and Artists; Sentiment; Friend- 
ship ; and several others. It is a volume that will be welcomed by all ad- 
mirers of Mrs. Craigie's work, a volume to be picked up at odd moments and 
opened at random and read by brief snatches. One cannot dip anywhere 
into these pages without rinding something to stimulate thought or emotion 
or getting a new light upon ordinary affairs. Many readers of Mrs. Craigie's 
novels found their chief attraction in these reflections upon life and its prob- 
lems and upon men and women, which she scattered so liberally through her 
pages. And with good reason, for she had a wide and deep knowledge of 
both books and life, and she had studied both with an original and a fearless 
mind. Her opinions, formed by Catholic teaching, were of the concrete sort 
and concerned with the manifestation of mind and heart in daily life. Hence, 
its appeal was general, and the many who have enjoyed it in her several vol- 
umes will be glad to find its choicest bits brought together in compact form. 
It is to be regretted, however, that the compiler has passed by the epigrams 
which John Oliver Hobbes flung with a lavish hand over her pages. Her 
brilliant wit found its best and most characteristic expression in that form, 
and the present volume would have been brighter and more pleasing, as well 
as more representative, if it had been enlivened by selections showing her 
mastery of the epigram. A very complete index, arranged alphabetically, 
gives the -name of the book from which each extract is taken. 

M. C. M. 



BOOKS RECEIVED. 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, New York: 

A Dictionary of Christ and of the Gospels. Vol.11. Labor Zion. With Appendix and 
Indices. 

LONGMANS, GREEN & Co., New York: 

The Priest's Studies. By T. B. Scannell, D.D. Pp.239. Price $1.20. Catholicism and 
Independence. Price $1.20. New Testament Criticism During the Past Century. By 
Rev. Leighton Pullan. Price 30 cents. Meditations and Devotions. By John Henry 
Cardinal Newman. Parti. The Month of May. Part II. Stations of the Cross. Part 
III. Christian Doctrine. Pricey cents each. The Old Riddle and the Newest Answer. 
By John Gerard, S.J. Fifth and Cheaper Edition. Price 20 cents. The Inquisition. 
A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church. By E. Vacan- 
dard. Translated from the Second Edition. By Bertrand L. Conway, C.S.P. Price 
$1.60. 

BENZIGER BROTHERS, New York: 

Assertio Septem Sacramentorum ; or, Defense of the Seven Sacraments. By Henry VIII., 
King of England. Re-edited by Louis O'Donovan, S.T.L. Price $2. Short Ser- 
mons. Second Series. By Rev. F. P. Hickey, O.S.B. Price $1.25. A Key to Medita- 
tion; or, Simple Methods of Mental Prayer. Translated from the French of Pere Cras- 
set, S.J. Price 50 cents. The Catholic Who's Who and Year Book. Edited by Sir F. 
C. Burnand. Price $1.25. The Beginnings of the Temporal Sovereignty of the Popes. 
By Mgr. L. Duchesne, D.D. Authorized Translation by Arnold Harris Mathew. 
Price $2. The Way of the Cross: Ligourian Method. Eucharistic Method. Francis- 
can Method. Jesuit Method. Price 15 cents each. 



1908.] BOOKS RECEIVED 143 

E. P. BUTTON, New York : 

St. Catherine of Siena. A Study in the Religion, Literature, and History of the Four- 
teenth Century in Italy. By Edmund G. Gardner, M.A. Pp. xix.-44o. Price $4. 

FUNK & WAGNALLS, New York : 

The Psychology of Inspiration. By George L. Raymond. Price $1.40 net. 

CHRISTIAN PRESS ASSOCIATION, New York: 

Well Spent Quarters. Fifteen Minute Meditations Adapted to the Young. To which is 
added a Three Days' Retreat. By a Sister of Mercy. Pp. 271. Price, postpaid, 85 
cents. 

J. FISCHER & BROTHERS, New York: 

The Proper of the Mass for Sundays and Holy days. Vol.11. Set to simple music. By A. 
Edmonds Tozer. Pp. xv.-352. 

R. A. SILK, New York : 

Nephilim. By William J. H. Bohannan. Pp. 236. 

THOMAS B. MOSHER, Portland, Me. : 

The Hound of Heaven. By Francis Thompson. Price 40 cents. 

LITTLE, BROWN & Co., Boston, Mass. : 

Quickened. By Anna Chapin Ray. Pp. 358. Price $1.50. The Supreme Gift. By Grace 
D. Litchfield. Pp. 300. Price $1.50. 

LUCE & Co., Boston : 

Philosophy of Ftiedrich Nietzsche. By Henry L. Mencken. Pp. xii.-32S. Price $2. 

PITTSBURG CARNEGIE LIBRARY, Pittsburg, Pa. : 

Catalogue of Books Annotated and Arranged and Provided by the Carnegie Library of Pitts- 
burg for the Use of the First Eight Grades in the Pittsburg Schools. 

B. HERDER, St. Louis, Mo. : 

The World in Which We Live. By R. J. Meyer, SJ. Pp. 407. Price $1.50 net. The 
History of the Passion. By J. Groenings, S.J. 

AVE MARIA, Notre Dame, Ind. : 
Novena to St. Joseph. Pp. 69. 

BLOUD ET CIE, Paris, France: 

Maurice Barres Vingt-cinq Annes de Vie Liberaire. Pages Choisis. Introduction de 
Henri Brdmond. Pp. xcii.~442. Le Passe Chretien. Vie et Penste. Par A. Dufourcq. 
Third Edition. Pp. xxvi.~33o. Price 3 fr. 50. 

FELIX A.LCAN, Pans : 
/ 

Psychologic d 'une Religion. Par G. Revault d 1 Allonnes. 

VICTOR LECOFFRE, Pans: 

Les Saints : St. Pierre Damien. Par Dom Reginald Biron, O.S.B. Pp. xii.-2O4. Price 
2 fr. Les Martyrs de Gorcum. Par Hubert Meuffels, C.M. Pp. 199. Price 2 fr. 
Ste. Melanie. Par Georges Goyau. Pp. x.-2ii. Price 2 fr. Marie dans V Eglise 
Anttnicene. Par E. Neubert. Pp. ix.-28s. 

EMILE NOURRY, Paris : 

Lendemains d 'Encyclique. Par Catholici. Pp. 123. 

NOURRIT ET CIE, Paris : 

De s Monts de Boheme au Golfe Pemque. Par Rend Henry. Pp. 566. Price 5 fr. 

P. LETHELLIEUX, Paris : 

La Conquete du Peuple. Par Comte A. de Mun. Pp. 93. 

GABRIEL BEAUCHESNE ET CIE., Paris, France: 

L Enfance de Jesus-Christ, Suive d 'une etude sur les Freres du Seigneur. Par le P. A. 
Durand, S.J. Pp. xli.-287. Price 2 fr. 50. La Liberte Intellectuelle apres I 'Encyclique 
Pascendi. Lettre de Mgr. L'Eveque Beauvais a un Depute". Pp. 43. 

ALPHONSE PICARD ET FILS, Paris : 

Memoires et Lettres du Timothfe de la Flhhe. Par le P. Ubald d'Alencon. Pp. 218. 
Price sfr. 



U1.A. 4VI*VAXV| JTctlia . 

Etudes d ' Histoire et de Psychologie du Mysticisme. Les Grand Mystiques Chretiens. Par 
Henri Delacroix. Psycholoeie d 'une Religion. Par G. Revault d 1 All 




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THE 

CATHOLIC WORLD. 

VOL. LXXXVII. MAY, 1908. No. 518. 

THE FUNCTION OF THE WILL IN RELIGIOUS ASSENT. 

BY THOMAS J. GERRARD. 

|HE guiding light in the shaping of our apologetic 
would seem to be its aptitude for the purpose 
of saving souls. What line of thought needs 
developing and what line needs restraining ? 
There can be no doubt that dialecticism has 
been overdone. " Logic," writes one of our greatest experts, 
"makes but sorry rhetoric with the multitude; first shoot 
round corners, and you may not despair of converting by syl- 
logism." Nor can it be denied that emotionalism has been 
carried to excess. " Common sense tells us," says our Holy 
Father, Pope Pius X., " that emotion and everything that leads 
the heart captive prove a hindrance instead of a help to the 
discovery of truth." In the effort, however, of striving to avoid 
the fallacies of dialecticism and emotionalism there is a danger 
of becoming involved in a third and sister fallacy, namely, that 
of voluntarism. Much has been said lately about the philosophy 
of "the whole man." That "the whole man," using his in- 
tellect as the faculty of judgment, using his feelings as the pre- 
ambles of judgment, and using his will, under certain circum- 
stances hereafter to be defined, to incline the intellect to the 
truth ; that the whole man should be the principium quod and 
his intellect the principium quo in the search for truth ; that 
all the faculties of man should be duly equipoised ; and that 
a sound mind should exist in a sound body ; all this I hold 

Copyright. 1908. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE 
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK. 

VOL. LXXXVII. 10 



146 THE WILL IN RELIGIOUS ASSENT [May, 

to be one of the first dictates of the philosophy of common 
sense. But my suspicion is that this concept of " the whole 
man " is one that has been used to escape that dictate of 
common sense. It seems to have been employed to express 
not the whole man, but the whole man minus his intellect. 
Taking for granted that the seeker after truth has guarded 
against emotionalism, there remains the fallacy of voluntarism. 
To discuss this fallacy, and to indicate the safe middle way 
between it and dialecticism, is the aim of the following essay. 

By voluntarism I mean any use of the will for which there 
is not a sufficient reason. For instance, it is manifestly falla- 
cious to say : " I assent to such and such a truth merely be- 
cause I want to do so, or because I shall not feel happy, or 
comfortable, or at peace unless I do so." The apostolic in- 
junction is aimed precisely against this attitude of mind. I 
must ever be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in 
me. Now, amongst the various propositions which may be of- 
fered for my assent some are supported by more testimony, 
others by less. Some are absolutely true, others absolutely 
false, and between the absolutely true and the absolutely false, 
the degree of truth or falsehood varies indefinitely. But these 
varying degrees of truth and falsehood may not be accepted 
or rejected off hand. The evidence both for and against must 
be weighed. In all our great criminal trials the evidence va- 
ries. In one case it may be all one-sided, and the guilt of 
the prisoner may be glaring and palpable; in another it may 
not be so glaring and yet sufficient to justify conviction ; in 
another it may be so doubtful as to merit a verdict of " not 
proven"; whilst in a fourth the ends of justice can be met 
only by a verdict of " not guilty." 

An assent, therefore, may be either certain or evident. 
Some writers think that "certain" and "evident" are merely 
different degrees of the same kind of assent; others that "cer- 
tain" is a genus of which "evident" is a species. All things 
evident are certain, but not all things certain are evident. It 
will be sufficient for the purposes of this paper to recognize 
that there is some notable difference between the two. When, 
then, I say that a thing is evident I mean that the intellect is 
absolutely forced to assent to it on account of the entirely one- 
sided nature of the testimony in favor of it, and consequently 
on account of the known impossibility of the opposite. I as- 



1908.] THE WILL IN RELIGIOUS ASSENT 147 

sent to the fact that two and two make four because no amount 
of will-power or persuasion could move my intellect to assent 
to five instead of four. When, however, I say that a thing is 
certain I mean that the intellect is not absolutely forced to as- 
sent to it either on account of a perceived intrinsic necessity 
or on account of the known impossibility of the opposite, but 
that it is moved to assent to it rather on account of the weight 
of the known reasons for it and of the known feebleness of the 
reasons against it. To doubt in the presence of such uneven 
evidence would be imprudent. Thus that which is evident ex- 
cludes all kinds of doubt, prudent .and imprudent ; whilst that 
which is certain excludes only prudent doubt. 

Now the precise question at issue is this : How is the in- 
tellect to attain and maintain its firm assent to a proposition 
which is not evident? Certitude is a state of mind in which 
the intellect clings to a recognized truth with a firm assent. 
And since sometimes the evidence of the truth is sufficient to 
force assent and sometimes is not, and yet in both cases there 
can be the same subjective certitude, what is it that makes up 
for the difference of testimony in the two cases ? There can 
only be one answer, namely, the command of the will. 

Another question at once suggests itself. Is such .an action 
of the will a blind action or a reasonable action ? If it is 
reasonable it is guided by intellectual light. Whence, there- 
fore, does the will get this intellectual light ? The illumina- 
tion consists in this : That the intellect sees and evidently sees 
the dignity of the reasons for the assent and the triviality of 
the reasons against the assent. Man is a moral animal as well as 
an intellectual animal, and all moral beings act prudently. If, 
however, a man were to refuse assent to a given proposition, rely- 
ing on the trivial reasons and despising the weighty reasons, 
he would evidently be acting imprudently and irrationably. The 
justification of the will, therefore, in thus inclining the intel- 
lect to assent, the circumstance which makes it rational and not 
blind, the condition which saves it from running into the fal- 
lacy of voluntarism, is either the testimony which makes the 
proposition directly evident, or the testimony, the dignity of 
which makes the prudence of assenting to it evident. Assent 
is not merely a question of logic, but of logic, psychology, 
and ethics combined. It is the man who thinks, not a sheet of 
paper. 



148 THE WILL IN RELIGIOUS ASSENT [May, 

The above remarks apply to assent in all spheres of thought. 
They have, however, an additional importance in the sphere of 
religious assent, for in the assent of faith two new factors are 
introduced, first the promise of an exceedingly great reward, 
and secondly the help of grace. The greatness of the prize 
which is the reward of faith justifies greater venture than in 
other spheres of thought, whilst the help of grace assures a 
greater degree of certitude. I will let St. Thomas state the 
doctrine. He says : 

The intellect assents to a thing in two ways : one way be- 
cause it is moved to this by the object itself, which is known 
by means of itself or by means of something else ; the other 
way, not because it is sufficiently moved thereto by its proper 
object, but by reason of a certain choice freely (voluntarie) 
inclining to one side rather than to the other. And if, per- 
chance, this is with doubt or fear lest the opposite may be 
true, then it is but an opinion ; but if it is with certainty and 
without such fear, then it is faith.* 

And again: 

Sometimes the intellect is determined by the will, which 
ch'ooses to assent to one part definitely on account of some- 
thing sufficient to move the will, though not sufficient to 
move the intellect, in so far as it seems good or fitting to 
assent to this part. . . . Thus also are we moved to 
believe things said in so far as is promised to us, if we 
believe, the reward of eternal life ; and by this reward the 
will is moved to assent to those things which are said, al- 
though the intellect be not moved by anything understood, t 

Faith is the evidence of things which appear not, it is an 
assent to things which are not seen. It is at the same time a 
process of the mind and yet a process in which the mind does 
not clearly understand that to which it assents. It is a process 
beset with two dangers, the danger of rationalism and the danger 
of fideism. On the one hand it is not merely a process of syl- 
logizing in which the conclusion contains nothing more than 
was contained in the premises ; on the other hand it is not a 
blind choice ot the will with no guiding intellectual light. It 
must, therefore, be a choice by the will of something for which 

* Summa. 2a aae, qu. i, a. 4, corp. t De Veritate. qu. 14, a. i, corp. 



igo8.] THE WILL IN RELIGIOUS ASSENT 149 

there is sufficient evidence to justify assent, but which evidence 
is not sufficient to force assent. 

The next question, then, is how much evidence is sufficient 
to justify and yet not to force assent. We are here in the 
neighborhood of probabilities and of recent legislation ; and so 
we must walk warily. The doctrine condemned by the Sylla- 
bus is the proposition according to which "The assent of faith 
rests ultimately on a mass of probabilities." Let us notice at 
once that this proposition is very sweeping. It says nothing 
of the evident prudence, rationality, and necessity of assenting 
to grave in preference to weak evidence. It says nothing of 
the certitude given by internal strengthening grace. Indeed, if 
we wish an illuminating commentary on the decree of Pope 
Pius X., we have it in a previous decree of Pope Innocent XI. 
There the proposition is condemned which says that 

The supernatural assent of faith necessary for salvation is 
compatible with merely probable knowledge of salvation, nay 
even with doubt whether God has spoken.* 

Thus there can be no act of faith in the word of God unless 
one is perfectly certain that God has spoken. The ultimate 
foundation of the assent of faith is certitude. If probability 
precedes this certitude, then such probability is not the founda- 
tion of faith. Probabilities may, indeed, be used to lead the 
mind to certitude, but the mind has not arrived at certitude 
until it has passed the probabilities. Hence the probabilities 
are not the ultimate foundation of the assent of faith. There 
is something even more ultimate than they, namely the evident 
irrationability of refusing to cling to that mass of probabilities 
which God has provided to lead men to accept the fact of His 
revelation, the evident imprudence of flinging away the only 
chance of so great a reward, the evident wickedness of resist- 
ing internal grace. The reason why God has arranged that the 
testimony to His revelation should be so much and no more 
is in order that the human will may be left free, for it is in 
this free act of the will under the influence of grace that the 
merit of believing consists. 

The foundation of faith, therefore, comprises two sets of mo- 
tives, spoken of academically as the motives of faith and the 
motives of credibility. The former assure us of the truthfulness 

* Denziger, 1038. 



THE WILL IN RELIGIOUS ASSENT [May, 

of God, the latter of the fact that He has spoken. Our final 
assent is due to an inference in which the motives of faith im- 
pel the assent to the major premise whilst the motives of cred- 
ibility impel the assent to th.e minor premise. Whatever God 
reveals is true; but God has revealed this or that proposition; 
therefore this or that proposition is true. The major premise is 
always self-evident; the minor has always to be proved; and 
the proof of it lies in the limited testimony which is direct, 
plus the obligation of acting prudently and reasonably. In the 
matter of the assent of faith, however, this logical, psychologi- 
cal, and moral process must be performed under the vivifying 
and controlling action of divine grace. 

The direct evidence for assenting to the minor premise need 
not be of the same objective perfection for each and every per- 
son. Some persons need more evidence, others can satisfy them- 
selves with less. But, whether it be more or less, it must be 
sufficient to exclude doubt, it must be sufficient to convince the 
believer of the evident imprudence of refusing assent. In other 
words, a subjective and relative certitude is sufficient. If the 
perfect knowledge of all the motives of credibility, such, for in- 
stance, as the knowledge upon which the Church herself as a 
whole relies, if this were needful for every individual, then, in- 
deed, there were little chance of many being saved. On the 
other hand, if the knowledge of the individual is not sufficient 
to exclude prudent doubt, then is his faith unreasonable. In all 
cases, however, both with children and with adults, with the 
ignorant and with the learned, the motives must leave room for 
a free choice of the will. 

And more. Even after the will has made its choice and ar- 
rived at certitude, it can go on repeating its action, and thus 
strengthen the certitude of the intellect. When once sufficient 
evidence has been grasped so as to exclude prudent doubt, when 
once a relative and subjective certitude has been acquired, there 
may be a direct action of the will which does not imply volun- 
tarism, but which implies defined Catholic truth. Pope Inno- 
cent XI. has condemned the proposition which says : 

The will cannot make the assent of faith more firm in 
itself than is demanded by the weight of reasons inducing 
us to believe.* 

y Denziger, 1036. 



i9o8.] THE WILL IN RELIGIOUS ASSENT 151 

Hence the quantity of rational evidence is no measure of the 
tenacity with which the intellect, impelled by the will, may jus- 
tifiably cling to the fact and content of revelation. Hence con- 
version to the faith of Christianity or conversion to the religion 
of Catholicism is not merely a question of evidence. It is a 
question of evidence and also a question of how much evidence. 
But the quantity needful varies with the individual. It depends 
on many circumstances. The seeker after truth may be pos- 
sessed of many arguments against revelation, or he may be 
possessed of none. He may have been living a good life ac- 
cording to his lights, or he may have not. He may be anx- 
iously going out to meet the truth, or he may be haughtily 
waiting for the truth to come to him. He may be insisting 
on one kind of evidence whilst God offers him another kind. 
The Jews had been taught to look for the fulfilment of the 
prophecies. Yet when the prophecies were fulfilled they asked 
for miracles. Miracles were granted them, but to no purpose 
they demanded the miracle according to their own tastes. 
"An evil and adulterous generation seeketh a sign, and a sign 
shall not be given it, but the sign of Jonas the Prophet." The 
one thing needful is evidence such as will exclude prudent 
doubt. But when it is asked what is meant by sufficient evi- 
dence, then the answer is that each individual must decide for 
himself. He alone can tell when he is in a state of doubt and 
when in a state of certitude. He alone can put forth that act 
of will consenting to a truth which is not evident. One thing, 
however, is certain, namely that there is sufficient evidence at 
his disposal if only he will look for it. The Vatican Council 
has defined that: 

In order that the submission of our faith might be in ac- 
cordance with reason, God hath willed to give u?, together 
with the internal assistance of the Holy Ghost, external proofs 
of His Revelation, namely divine facts and, above all, mira- 
cles and prophecies, which, while they clearly manifest God's 
almighty power and infinite knowledge, are most certain Di- 
vine signs of Revelation, adapted to the understanding of all 
men* 

Thus a man may rise to a certitude of revelation on less 
evidence than prophecies and miracles, but he may not demand 

*Sess. III. cap. 3. 



152 THE WILL IN RELIGIOUS ASSENT [May, 

more. If they are not enough, he has need to examine his 
conscience and the disposition of his will. Miracles are not 
effective without personal holiness, that is, without the internal 
help of the Holy Spirit. Nay, have we not a great example 
of something quite the contrary? "The chief priests therefore, 
and the Pharisees gathered a council and said : ' What do we, 
for this Man doth many miracles.' . . . From that day, 
therefore, they devised to put Him to death." 

The foregoing doctrine is applicable not only to the attain- 
ment of faith but also to its maintenance. When a devout soul 
has fought its way to Christianity or to Catholicism its trials 
have not come to an end. The soul has a mighty strength to 
meet its trials, but still trials there are and in plenty. Taking 
the fact of revelation, however, as certain, the trials will con- 
cern the various contents of revelation. I suppose the most 
common and the most fruitful source of unrest in connection 
with this is the dogma of eternal punishment. Putting aside the 
many cases in which the doctrine is misunderstood and mis- 
stated, the dogma, even as taught by the sound theologian, may 
be to many the cause of much distress. There are good and 
learned men with whom the arguments of ethical text-books in 
favor of eternal punishment are far from sufficient to outweigh 
the rationalist arguments against it. 

Here it is, then, that the will must come in to incline the 
intellect to cling to the words of Christ and to force the in- 
tellect to lay aside as of little moment the reasons against the 
dogma. Nor is this unreasonable, for although the particular 
arguments drawn from the province of human reason for and 
against the doctrine may not be conclusive, yet when the cu- 
mulative arguments for the fact of revelation, together with the 
words of Christ revealing the dogma are weighed against the 
particular reasons against the dogma, then there can be no 
doubt which side a reasonable and moral man ought to em- 
brace. The danger, however, is that the man may be swayed 
by the particular reasons which are of their nature apt to ex- 
cite his imagination and so lead him the captive of his emo- 
tions. Then it is that he must put forth his will in choice of 
the doctrine which, according to previous reasoning, he has 
recognized as morally right and morally necessary. 

In a previous article elsewhere * I endeavored to apply the 

* New York Review, April-May, 1906. 



1908.] THE WILL IN RELIGIOUS ASSENT 153 

above line of argument to the problem of evil. What I failed 
to draw out, however, was the reasonableness of the act of the 
-will clinging to God's goodness in spite of all seeming contra- 
dictions. The omission seemed to imply a voluntarism such as 
is impugned in the present article. I take the opportunity, then, 
of correcting any possible misunderstanding. 

The dilemma is this : God sees all the misery in this world. 
Either He cannot mend matters or He will not. If he cannot 
He is not almighty; if He will not He is not all-good. The 
distressed soul who is beset by the dilemma has two sets of 
evidence before him. On the one hand he has the metaphy- 
sical proofs for the existence of God and the logical deduc- 
tions therefrom of almightiness and all- goodness. On the same 
side also he has the supernatural revelation of God's Father- 
hood and God's Providence. But on the other side he has a 
world of sin and suffering. Being a man he is possessed of 
will and feelings as well as of reason. The two sets of evi- 
dence, however, touch his different faculties with varying force. 
The metaphysical proofs for the existence, almightiness, and 
all-goodness of God, appeal chiefly if not entirely to the white 
light of intellect. The Fatherhood and Providence of God are 
not seen directly, but only through enigmatic analogies. But 
the misery and sinfulness of the world are before his eyes in 
all stern reality, not abstract but concrete reality, brutally con- 
crete. What is to be done ? To say that God is good because 
I want Him to be good, or because I like to think that He is 
good, is to run into sheer voluntarism or emotionalism. To 
say that the dilemma is complete and that God is bad, and 
therefore does not exist, is to be carried away by the imagi- 
nation under the pretence of being rational. The sound rea- 
soner, however, will take a middle way, avoiding alike ration- 
alism, emotionalism, and voluntarism. First, he will not blink 
the fact that the difficulty is a serious one. It is not merely 
emotional writers like Mrs. Besant, nor rationalists like John 
Stuart Mill who have experienced the difficulty. Cardinal New- 
man says: "I would rather be bound to defend the reason- 
ableness of assuming that Christianity is true, than to demon- 
strate a moral governance from the physical world."* Give full 
weight, then, to this piece of evidence and admit that, as far 
as our limited vision goes, it does tell against God's goodness. 

* Grammar of Assent. P. 95. 



154 THE WILL IN RELIGIOUS ASSENT [May. 

But insist on the infinitesimal narrowness of our vision. Then 
examine the evidence for God's goodness, the evidence of its 
metaphysical necessity, and the evidence of God's revealed word. 

In this way a flood of intellectual and supernatural light is 
let in on the will, showing it how it ought, as a moral duty, 
to incline the intellect towards the weighty evidence and away 
from the trivial evidence. This setting aside of trivial evidence 
is something which the mere dialectician, negligent of psycho- 
logical and moral considerations, cannot comprehend. He lik- 
ens it to sawing through the branch of a tree on which he is 
sitting. The simile is fallacious. I do not rely on only one 
argument either for the existence of God or for the existence 
of His revelation. A better simile would be that of a five- 
legged stool. I saw through one leg and still remain firmly 
seated. Nay, the stability of my equilibrium is improved, for 
I am not tempted to lean to the side of the leg which has 
been rotten from the beginning. My enlightened will keeps 
the center of gravity well within those points of support which 
have been duly tested and found secure. 

The object of the intellect is that which is true ; the object 
of the will is that which is good ; and it is the tendency of 
the will towards its proper object, namely, Eternal Goodness, 
which is the principle of its right use and the safeguard against 
its abuse. To act according to this principle is not voluntar- 
ism, but the most noble and the most rational use of the will. 
The will needs illumination and supernatural impulsion. But 
it may not be forced. It must make a venture. " In this," 
says Newman again, " consists the excellence and nobleness of 
faith; this is the very reason why faith is singled out from 
other graces, and honored as the especial means of our justifi- 
cation, because its presence implies that we have the heart to 
make a venture."* 

* Parochial and Plain Sermons. P. 21. 




AN ARTIST'S PROOF. 

BY MRS. WILFRID WARD. 

PART I. 

NEVER knew Lady Burrell in the days of her 
first beauty. As far as I could judge she was 
just passing into later middle life when she came 
to me to sit for her portrait. I knew nothing of 
her private history, except that she had been a 
Miss Swinburne, a neice of Lord Swinburne's, and had married 
Lord Burrell when she was somewhat past her first youth. 
Her husband had died about two years before the time when 
she came to sit to me, and she had never had any children. 
These few facts 1 had gleaned from the gossip of another sit- 
ter; but that was all. Though her youth might be passed, 
Lady Burrell had by no means forfeited all claims to the rank 
of beauty. The peculiar grace of her figure would be proof 
against the passing years. It had a spring and a suppleness 
which once possessed is rarely wholly lost. Nor would her 
dress have appeared ridiculous at any age. I never observed 
any particular gown, but there were always such folds and 
lines of drapery, of some negative color, as were an unusual 
consolation to a portrait painter. I do not think her hair was 
its natural color, nor could I tell you how much art had been 
employed in any part of her appearance. If there was any, it 
was not easily to be discovered. Perhaps the saying, " il faut 
beaucoup d'art pour retourner a la nature," is applicable to 
fashionable dress as well as to literature. 

But if Lady Burrell's figure and dress afforded me peculiar 
facilities for my work, they were the only parts of my subject that 
did so. I had never found a face more difficult to decipher or 
to express I am often visited by the faces of my models of 
long ago, some that expressed so much more than I could 
paint, and others that could not give me enough to reproduce. 
Once in the delirium of a fever they came round me and never 
left me, finding fault with me and upbraiding me for not un- 



156 AN ARTIST'S PROOF [May, 

derstanding them better; acting strange scenes, in which they 
would express my ideas of their characters in a distorted and 
grotesque manner. But besides one exception, which I will 
not dwell upon as yet, no face wearied me in these dreams as 
much as Lady Burrell's. The features were rather large, but 
admirably proportioned ; the forehead was very low, the eyes 
rather small and piercing^ the hair of a light brown, arranged 
in the latest fashion, but not aggressively so I always felt 
that fashion adapted itself to Lady Burrell rather than that 
Lady Burrell adapted herself to fashion. She smiled almost 
continuously while I was painting her, a little social smile ; 
and her laugh, too, was very slight, coming from lips that were 
never widely opened. 

Lady Burrell was never rude to me, but I was always un- 
certain of her manner and her temper. The manner was too 
avowedly calculated to attract, to be really attractive, at least 
so I used to think when she first came to me ; but it must 
have had its power, for I grew to think her very attractive ; 
and I find it difficult now to dissociate my first from my later 
impressions. At the first sitting I thought I saw my way to 
a picture of a fashionable woman, the highest interest in which 
should be the true rendering of the grace of my subject. In 
the second sitting I confined the talk to the " Shakespeare taste 
and musical glasses " of the day, which had occupied us at 
first, making no attempt to discover further depths in my 
model. I saw her smiling to herself during part of this chat, 
and presently she took the lead in the conversation; and I af- 
terwards reflected that instead of my making discoveries in 
Lady Burrell she had been making discoveries in her painter. 
Some of her questions had been decidedly impertinent in a 
stranger, though I had not thought so at the time, so skillfully 
had they been introduced. They had shown, too, a power of 
sympathy and of observation for which I had not given her 
credit. I began to suspect that I might be working on a wrong 
tack; and the next sitting increased this doubt to a certainty, 
and showed me the full difficulty of my undertaking. 

Yet our talk that morning was slight and unimportant. 
"Why will you not show me my picture?" she asked with a 
slight affectation of pettishness. " I could surely form some 
opinion of it now." 

" That is exactly what I should object to," I answered. 



igo8.] AN ARTIST'S PROOF 157 

"You would wish to change and correct before I have clearly 
drawn out my own ideas. A drawing in that state may sug- 
gest looks in the face which would afterwards disappear, but 
which if once seen may seem to haunt it perpetually. I have 
to correct many false conclusions before I get the right one." 

She smiled. " I suppose you may draw some disagreeable 
and unflattering expressions (of ill-temper shall we say ?) which 
you must afterwards take out, as photographers wipe away the 
wrinkles. It is most confiding to submit oneself to such an 
examination. However, at my age the mask is not easily 
lifted.' 1 

Even as she spoke I thought it was lifted for a moment 
(perhaps purposely). There was more depth in her expression 
and as she ceased smiling, and was silent, I could read the 
marks of an unresting sadness in the face a sadness which I 
did not for a moment attribute to the death of the late Lord 
Burrell. (This kind of ill is in the soul itself, and is not the 
mark of a simple loss, however sad.) 

A moment later I was called away, and I asked Lady Bur- 
rell to excuse me. She smiled graciously, and descending from 
her platform sat down by the fire. I offered her the Morning 
Post and then left her. Five minutes later I came back, and 
owing I suppose to the carpet slippers I wore when at work, 
came back unnoticed. I smothered with difficulty a loud ex- 
clamation at the sight of Lady Burrell. She had flung herself 
on the ground and had buried her face in her hands, leaning 
her head on the step of the platform on which she had been 
sitting. Her whole figure and attitude showed a complete 
abandonment to the feeling of the moment, such as I have 
never witnessed in any one before or since. There was no 
sound, and I had but a moment in which to spring back into 
the outer room and noisily move the handle of the door, when 
I heard Lady Burrell's voice quietly distinct "Mr. Hardman," 
I obeyed the summons. She was standing putting on her bon- 
net, with her little smile upon her lips, perfectly quiet but pale, 
I was by far the more confused of the two. 

"I don't think," she said, "that I can sit for you any 
longer this morning. I have had a shock, a painful shock, in 
seeing the announcement of the death of an old friend and 
cousin of mine. I think I had better go home." 

She bowed gracefully and left me. It was a simple ex- 



158 AN ARTIST'S PROOF [May, 

planation, but surely such an extraordinary display of feeling 
was unusual on the death of a cousin. Unusual too was the 
strange self command that followed almost instantly. Her voice, 
her look in speaking of the shock were those of a fashionable 
woman making a correct expression of grief which she does 
not feel but which it is necessary to affect. Of course I took 
up the Morning Post and after passing my eye over marriages, 
dinners, arrivals in town, came to two deaths : " Sad accident 
quite young." That wasn't it. Here: " Death of the famous 
Professor Swinburne, younger son of Lord Swinburne, who had 
done so much service in the cause of science, aged 59 ; was 
never married." This must be Lady Burrell's cousin. 

During what was still left of the morning, and throughout 
the afternoon, my mind was full of Lady Burrell and of that 
strange prostrate figure which it was almost impossible to 
identify with her. I made a chalk sketch from memory, which 
afterwards served as the foundation for the only subject-picture 
of mine which was ever thoroughly understood by the public. 
Would that public have believed that the despairing woman 
was a life- study from the very Lady Burrell whose portrait 
hung on the same wall in the Royal Academy ? I was still 
puzzling over this sketch when the door of my studio opened, 
and my servant announced in her usual abrupt manner: "Miss 
Swinburne." I was struck by the coincidence of the repetition 
of the name. 

A tall girl in plain black, but with a deep mourning veil, 
came in quickly and began to speak at once in a low and agi- 
tated voice : " Mr. Hardman, I have come to ask you if you 
would be able to come immediately to the house of my late 
uncle, Professor Swinburne. I want you to make a drawing of 
him." 

I saw she shrank from any more explicit statement. I 
hesitated. I had a busy day before me and I was not particu- 
larly attracted by the young lady's rather ghastly proposal. 
But I was touched by her tired, excited manner. She appeared 
to attach immense importance to my answer. Like many tired 
people she seemed to find it difficult to be silent, and before I 
had spoken she began again. 

" I was told that you would probably consent to make the 
drawing, and would understand what is wanted, a slight sketch 
that may be useful for a picture afterwards." 



1908.] AN ARTIST'S PROOF 159 

" I will come and do my best," I answered, " though I must 
prepare you for disappointment there is usually so much change 
after death, as to make these studies of very little use." 

She had put up her veil while we were talking, and showed 
a pale, tired face, of good, rather firmly set, but small features, 
and very large deep brown eyes, framed in the blue lines that 
are written by fatigue and sleeplessness on young faces. There 
were marks of recent tears. 

"It would be better than nothing," she answered. "Will 
you be able to come at once?" 

"I will follow you in about an hour." 

" Very well," she said, and without further speech she walked 
away. " There is certainly no family likeness to Lady Burrell, 
I reflected, as her tall, firmly-set figure disappeared through 
the doorway. 

Miss Swinburne had given me a card with her uncle's name 
and address, and before long I went out, portfolio in hand, not 
at all inclined to do what I had promised. And when I reached 
the house and was let in by a funereal servant, the atmosphere 
of solemn bustle in the hall, the pompous silence, oppressed 
rather than raised my mind. The sight of a quiet-faced nun, 
who came in immediately after me, seemed indeed to bring with 
her an atmosphere of spiritual sympathy that drew my heart 
towards her. 

"Mr. Hardman, the artist," was murmured from one servant 
to the other, and I was led to a back room on the ground floor. 
The late afternoon light filled it with no irreverent glare. It 
was a large room, with massive furniture which had been pushed 
aside to leave an open space, round a narrow and simple bed, 
at each corner of which stood four tall black candlesticks, bear- 
ing the largest candles I had ever seen. At the head of the 
bed a silver crucifix was raised upon a pedestal. I looked at 
everything before I looked at the face of the dead. It was an 
introduction to a dead man whom I had never seen in life 
not a common occurrence, unless in the case of a violent pub- 
lic death and whose past was almost a blank to me. I felt 
a strange fear for a moment of gazing at the dead face. The 
red sunlight and the dim candlelight showed every line of the 
features on the pillow. 

The hair was of an iron gray and plentiful, brushed back 
from a large, curiously dome-shaped forehead. This peculiarity 



160 AN ARTIST'S PROOF [May, 

was strongly marked in death, but it can only have given a 
pleasingly massive effect to the living. The nose was almost 
classical ; the mouth must have been exquisitely formed, firm 
yet sensitive, as far as I could judge, but I knew that on no 
part of the face did death work its changes more rapidly, or 
more completely. The eyes, that could never return my gaze, 
had long eyelashes and shaggy, overhanging eyebrows. I had 
chosen my light and begun my drawing before I discovered that 
I was not alone with the body. On her knees, bending over a 
low chair in a dark corner of the room, was Miss Swinburne. 
I could not be mistaken, though I could see nothing of the 
head but the coils of black-brown hair which had been before 
hidden by her bonnet. The sight of her kneeling there in quiet, 
dignified sorrow in that most pathetic prayer for forgiveness 
for the sins of one whose least weakness it had been a duty to 
ignore, this sight excited me to earnest effort to understand the 
face apart from the handwriting of death. The silence was com- 
plete, and as I worked on I began to feel as if I belonged in 
some manner by natural ties to this room of death. The little 
nun presently came in, and kneeling without any support be- 
gan, I suppose, to tell her beads. My work finished, I rose to 
leave. Miss Swinburne immediately did the same and led me 
into a room at the front of the house. As we entered I saw 
her start and look annoyed it was rather dark and I heard 
Lady Burrell's affected voice before I saw her : 

" Dear Florence," she said, " you will forgive my coming, 
although you have not answered my note. I must see your 
dear uncle once more, for though it is a long time since we 
have met, except in society, my recollections go back to early 
days, and you must not refuse me." 

" Of course I could not refuse you, Lady Burrell," an- 
swered Miss Swinburne rather stiffly. "If you would not mind 
waiting one moment I will take you." 

But by one of her rapid movements Lady Burrell had 
placed herself in the open doorway. " It is the room oppo- 
site, is it not?" she inquired, and before she could be an- 
swered she had disappeared. 

Miss Swinburne seemed to hesitate whether to follow her, 
but then turned back into the dining-room and asked me sev- 
eral questions about the drawing. Her face was flushed and 
I felt sorry for her. For what is more painful in a house of 



1908.] AN ARTIST'S PROOF 161 

grief than the intrusions of those who have not loved or un- 
derstood or reverenced our dead ? Why should a woman who, 
according to her own showing, had been on terms of bare civil- 
ity with her uncle for years, bring her affected condolences 
into his house of death ? This I felt convinced was her view 
of Lady Burrell's unasked- for visit; yet I wondered which of 
these two in reality suffered the most ? 

" There has never been a good likeness of my uncle," was 
Miss Swinburne's concluding remark, as she gave me the few 
photographs she possessed. I took them home with me and 
studied them earnestly that very night. There from a boy at 
school, on through the years of a young man's life into mid- 
dle age, I could see clearly the large brow, the shaggy eye- 
brows, the classical nose, and firm mouth I thought my task 
would be easy, and I began the next day a large charcoal 
drawing, taken principally from a photograph of the professor 
at about thirty years of age, which seemed to me to show most 
life and probability of likeness combining this with my own 
drawing from his lifeless remains. I had been copying the 
photograph almost mechanically for a few moments when I was 
called away. 

On returning to my studio I was startled by the drawing 
on the easel. There was an expression in the face which I 
must have unconsciously developed from the photograph, and 
which was in direct opposition to the lofty calm of my other 
sketch. At the first glance it was an unpleasing expression ; as 
I looked longer it seemed to me to be almost a bad one. 
There was a stern compression about the lines of the mouth 
which might indicate a hard or cruel disposition, and which 
gave to the firm brow, overhanging eyebrows, and strong jaw 
an evil interpretation, without lessening the appearance of in- 
tellectual power. I cannot define the impression made upon 
me in any clear way, but it was quite sufficient to alter my 
conception of the face, and therefore, as far as I knew, of the 
man. I was annoyed. I had been anxious to do justice to 
what had seemed to me to be a singularly noble and winning 
countenance, and I had hoped that my picture might be a real 
treasure to his niece. But if that had not been the true face 
which I had imagined, but only the glorified work of death, I 
should fail in a likeness which, if successful, might gain me a 
considerable increase of reputation. Nor would an obviously 
VOL. LXXXVII. ii 



162 AN ARTIST'S PROOF [May, 

ideal portrait be very valuable to Miss Swinburne if I had 
judged her rightly ; to Lady Burrell, indeed, I could imagine 
that the idealized picture of a man for whom she must have 
cherished a secret passion would be acceptable. Such artificial 
but highly excitable natures are not often possessed of great 
truth of vision. 

I turned again to the photographs, in hope of gaining more 
light, but I failed. From the boyish face of the early minia- 
ture I could get nothing, and the later likenesses were such 
bad photographs as to be quite unreliable. I looked again at 
the one I had first copied, and now that I had once seen this 
unpleasing expression in my drawing, I wondered how I could 
have overlooked it in the photograph. To me it indicated 
strong capacity for emotion, without the lofty expression which 
would show that the emotions had been noble ones. I cannot 
expect to be able to express all the subtle, almost impalpable, 
impressions which had brought me to my conclusions. There 
is, of course, a fitness in the different parts of a face, which an 
artist learns to recognize and on which he must greatly depend 
in such an undertaking as mine. It must be remembered that 
I could not rely upon the lines of the mouth after death, and 
the mouth copied from the photograph at the age of 30, when the 
signs of youthfulness had been taken away, combined perfectly 
with the other features; and though it altered the expression, 
increased the lifelikeness and the consistency of the whole face. 
I determined to make two drawings to suit the two ideas, and 
then see if I had obtained any fresh light upon my work. I 
grew excited as I worked, feeling absurdly as if the dead pro- 
fessor had been brought to the bar of my art for judgment. 
I finished them and went out for a long walk to change my 
thoughts, not very successfully. I went back to my drawings 
immediately on coming in, hoping to receive some new impres- 
sion, but I was disappointed. The one appeared noble and 
lofty, the great eyebrows seeming to express wise thought, but 
with a certain haziness in mouth and eyes. The other was 
strong, vigorous, almost violent. They were not now in a state 
to be shown to any one, but I determined so to alter and 
soften them that though the two expressions would be still dis- 
tinct, either might be recognized if truthful by those who had 
lived with and loved him. I wrote to Miss Swinburne to ask 
her to come and see the drawings, and decided to show them 



i9o8.] AN ARTIST'S PROOF 163 

to Lady Burrell at our next meeting. On the opinion of the 
latter I had little dependence, but I trusted if the less pleasing 
likeness were the true one that Miss Swinburne, even if she 
did not like it, would acknowledge its truth. 

During Lady Burrell's next sitting, to which she came 
dressed in slight and fashionable mourning, some days later, 
I was so absorbed in her portrait that I had almost forgotten 
the conflicting drawings of the late professor. But while thus 
engrossed I heard a knocking at my outer door. Having has- 
tily taken down my portrait, and turned its face to the wall, 
I went into the other room, where I found Miss Swinburne. 
Before I could speak and warn her of my sitter's presence in 
the studio Lady Burrell joined us hastily. 

" You dear Flora," she said, graciously kissing her passive 
cousin, " I hope you are somewhat rested after all your fa- 
tigues." 

She might have been alluding to the dissipations of a Lon- 
don season for anything her voice and manner showed to the 
contrary. 

Then with an air of immense sympathy : " I have been feel- 
ing so much for you." 

I thought Miss Swinburne shrank from these demonstrations. 

Did Lady Burrell love to give pain, I wondered, or was 
she envious of the other's right to open mourning ? I felt the 
awkwardness of showing the drawings to these two together. 
I hesitated. I wished I could express my regret to Miss Swin- 
burne by that hesitation. There was a worn and nervous ex- 
pression still in her eyes, a slight stiffness and self-repression 
in her manner. There was no use in waiting. 

"I have two attempts to show you," I said, "with slight 
differences ; if you will allow me, I will put them side by side, 
and you can tell me in which of the two you think that I 
have aimed most rightly." 

I put them on the easels in the studio, and then summoned 
Miss Swinburne. The two ladies came forward and stood for 
some moments in silence. The drawings were on different 
easels, and as it chanced Miss Swinburne had come forward 
opposite to the sketch which was far from being idealized, 
which indeed betrayed the hard, strong, almost sinister look 
that I had unconsciously evolved while copying the faded pho- 
tograph. 



164 AN ARTIST'S PROOF [May, 

Lady Burrell faced the ideal drawing, noble, refined, spirit- 
ual, but a little hazy and not quite actual. 

I was chiefly taken up at the moment by professional anx- 
iety, by a keen wish to learn all I could from the two women 
before me ; to see Professor Swinburne through their eyes. 
I looked at them as if I could catch the reflection of the liv- 
ing man in the faces that had loved him. Both betrayed a 
nerve tension that was natural, but in very different ways. 
Miss Swinburne's was a restrained excitement, a determination 
to judge without emotion was perceptible. She looked earnestly 
at the un-ideal drawing with a candor of expression that pleased 
me. Lady Burrell flashed one glance at both, and then her 
eyes became fixed on the ideal portrait with an expression I 
could not understand. 

I had foretold truly ! 

Miss Swinburne was going to choose the sternly truthful 
one before which she stood. 

Lady Burrell had chosen the ideal ! I thought she would 
be the first to speak, but I was mistaken. It was Miss Swin- 
burne who broke the silence. 

"Mr. Hardman, I do not hesitate " 

"There can be no doubt," cried Lady Burrell, and hastily 
passing in front of Miss Swinburne, and to my astonishment 
pointing to the realistic picture, she cried: "This is a triumph. 
I congratulate you." 

"No, no"; burst from Miss Swinburne, " indeed not"; 
and as she moved to the other easel she appealed to me with 
tears in her voice: "There is something quite wrong in that 
one; now this is beautiful and much more like my uncle. If 
you could do a little, a slight alteration, to make the mouth 
firmer ? " Then in a low, tremulous voice as I came to her 
side: "Please do not be influenced by anything Lady Burrell 
says she does not cannot know " 

Lady Burrell said nothing in a distinctly aggressive and, I 
thought, unfeeling way. 

But in the interests of the picture I felt obliged to ask one 
question. 

" Miss Swinburne," I said, " you will excuse my asking you 
if you are sure that you never saw are sure that you never 
saw your uncle look like that drawing ? " 



1908.] AN ARTIST'S PROOF 165 

I was right in supposing that she would dislike my ques- 
tion, but she answered candidly : 

" I cannot say that I never saw him look like that, but I 
am quite certain that it was merely a passing expression, en- 
tirely uncharacteristic." 

" I need not keep you longer," I said quickly, " I will work 
at the one you approve of, and perhaps you will see it when 
it is in a more advanced state." 

" Will you let me know when to come ? " she inquired, and 
then shaking hands stiffly with Lady Burrell turned away. I 
took her downstairs in silence and opened the door into the 
street. Then she hesitated, and turning to me looked at me 
with an almost beseeching expression in her eyes. 

" Next time let me know when I shall find you alone." 

" Your coming to-day was quite unexpected," I hastened to 
answer. 

" I know," she replied kindly. 

I returned to my sitter. 

" It is too late for me to stay now," said that lady turning 
to me as I came in, "but I must speak to you about these 
drawings : Miss Swinburne's mistake is a very natural one. She 
nursed her uncle to the last, he was everything in the world 
to her, and she was constantly in the room where they laid 
him out. She has simply idealized the face from sentiment 
and his look after death. I can assure you that the other draw- 
ing is the true one, and I can speak as a mere cousin without 
prejudice in any way." 

She spoke in a hard, almost angry voice, but concluded with 
her usual little smile and bow as we parted. 

I was left alone in as great difficulties as before. I turned 
almost angrily to the drawings and put them away, fairly dis- 
gusted with the whole subject. 

(TO BE CONCLUDED.) 




ON THE LONELINESS OF PRIESTS. 

BY LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY. 

is not a thing for pity, as the blind world thinks : 
far from it. But sensitive observation, quiet and 
constant succor, are its due : to our conscience, 
these things are mandatory, and to the priest's, 
sweet and right. Only by such giving and ac- 
ceptance can we testify our common belief [in a sublime ideal, 
and in human goodness, which so continually achieves it. Sure- 
ly, it is for Christ and for souls that the yoke is borne ; and 
it is the business of these two, conjointly, to keep the bearer 
free. The general interest of a religious society is to safeguard 
the most detached, disinterested, and authoritative figure in it: 
to secure for it Temporal Power and Home Rule. To set up 
as a private Vigilance Committee to that end is honor enough 
to any layman or woman of good-will. The priest must be 
free : but he need not be left alone. In fact, he deserves a cer- 
tain delicate consideration, and claims a certain unobtrusive ser- 
vice, as no one else can deserve it or claim it. He belongs to 
a Church which, as the late Dr. Luke Rivington once said, in 
his glowing way, from a London pulpit, is the only power dar- 
ing to deny its officers, from start to finish, the solace of do- 
mestic life. (For the State also denies this, now and then, per- 
haps for long periods, to Army and Navy.) Were it not for 
the Church's conception of the Divine and uniquely absorbing 
task to which her clergy have given their hearts, were it not 
for her conception of the importance of their standing exclu- 
sively ready to run and tender " first aid " to each and every 
sinner of us all, they, too, as other clergy do, might live amid 
those daily associations which are the staff and cordial of the 
general pilgrimage. But the priest is forever their alien, their 
passer-by. He must think, sometimes, of the modern poet's 
wistful lines about 

" The friends to whom we have no natural right, 
The homes that are not destined to be ours." 



1908.] ON THE LONELINESS OF PRIESTS 167 

Wistful lines they are ; yet he will not add to them any 
conscious wistfulness. Has he not bartered such chartered bless- 
ings for Christ our Lord and for us? His touching circum- 
stance forms the sacramental link, as God has willed that it 
should, between the Highest and our corporate need of Him : 
he has become the air through which, or the land and sea over 
which, Christ reaches the souls gathered into His Church. The 
very function which seems to separate him so austerely from 
worldlings, touches them, sinks into them, flows over them, is 
everything to them. Most gladly, then, should they turn about, 
and be, in their measure, everything to him ! With the uni- 
versality of that function always before us, can we not import 
something of the same glorious largeness into our reciprocal at- 
titude ? Personal preference is a ticklish matter for legislation ; 
yet it is the pride of a true Catholic temper to tender even to 
the most acceptable pastor not so much a personal preference 
as a generic piety. To no priest should be proffered a kind- 
ness which would not be proffered with the same alacrity, though 
not with the same satisfaction, to any other priest. And for 
the sake of one beloved Levite, dead or living (if you are so 
narrow as to love but one), you may pour, and ought to pour, 
as occasions arise, and means admit, a moral sunshine into every 
presbytery within reach. 

Secular or regular, these men are all " fools for Christ's sake." 
Would that a special chivalry, at least within the fold, ruled 
the actions of others towards them ! Strict poetical justice would 
exempt them not only from taxes, but from any payment not 
vicarious, of the fruiterer and the newsboy. One would have 
the parochus shown first into the carriage, and served first at 
lunch, while willing duchesses wait their turn. Individual feel- 
ing for the cause should certainly be able to affect pleasurably 
the local arch- promoter of the cause, in which his ungrudging 
intimate interest stands proved. Wisdom here is to give all, 
and expect nothing; above all, to exact nothing. Even that 
gigantic crime of omission, an unanswered letter, may be for- 
given the hand which has already baptized our little ones, and 
blessed our dead. In short, where priests are concerned, some 
of us would beshrew etiquette altogether. This may be a hard 
saying, but should have further testing in practice. 

To give and to withdraw is a beautiful art. " Much doc- 



i68 ON THE LONELINESS OF PRIESTS [May, 

trine lies under this little stone." Happy are they who know 
how to deal as saints have always dealt with saints: to use to 
the full a demonstration which is all abstinence, a nearness with- 
out approach, an all-affectionate friendship which has dropped its 
personality upon the threshold, and comes in silently, with 
reverence for something invisible, and without a breath of self. 
If worked out on these lines, that relationship of parishioner 
and penitent to the priest, is (to use a fine and abused adjec- 
tive advisedly) the most romantic relationship under heaven. 
It helps him to feel that they are all there, close about him, 
as dew in the desert, and as a lantern in the darkness, of that 
solitariness which is laid upon him for their good, and which they 
should be as willing to bear with as he is to bear. It will 
teach him that they are heartened by his quest of perfection, 
and not cast down by his human failings. Have we not long 
seen that anointed kindred "in labors, in watchings, in fastings, 
in chastity, in knowledge, in long-suffering, in sweetness, in 
the Holy Spirit, in charity unfeigned, in the word of truth, in 
the power of God ; by the armor of justice on the right hand 
and on the left, by honor and dishonor, by evil report and 
good report; as deceivers, and yet true; as unknown and yet 
known ; as dying, and behold, [they] live ; as chastised, and 
not slain ; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing ; as needy, yet 
enriching many ; as having nothing, and possessing all things." 
The waves of their calumniators' speech must break first upon 
us, a sea wall of hearts built out of every nation, knowing, 
understanding, cherishing, and defending them. Other earthly 
witness than this Catholic loyalty have they none. It is precious 
to them as a symbol of the Love towards which they go, in 
whose light the memory of their own shortcomings and of many 
trials shall be wiped out. 

After all, what does a priest ask of his very nearest ? Not 
benevolent appropriation : only sympathy, and at times a help- 
ing hand. Yet he lives along borderlands where often co-oper- 
ation, felt or acted, is not. Long ago he faced that possibility, 
weighed the loss, took the leap, and chose in his youth a 
work like no other, as in its delight, so in its pain. And he 
risked, if he did not quite choose, strange alternatives : dis- 
placement, unpopularity, hindrance, inferior housing and cloth- 
ing, overwork, poor diet, broken rest. All these may legiti- 



1908.] ON THE LONELINESS OF PRIESTS 169 

mately befall him, and wear him out, and break him down: 
pro vobis et pro multis. But to the Great Captain's brave and 
honest bodyguard grumbling is no part of warfare. The handi- 
caps are all in the game. It is the part of the laity to see 
that the game is played under fair conditions, and when their 
best is done, to step clear of the ropes. Co-operation of the 
most availing kind can never go so far as to cheat a priest of 
his sacred loneliness, lying at the core of every deed and aim. 
Since he will not shirk it, neither shall we. Our friend's song, 
which is the song of every feeling and thinking soul, but his 
in a more concrete sense, is all in a deep phrase of Plotinus. 
Lionel Johnson (no plagiarist !) once put it into an English 
music worthy to be remembered : 

" Lonely unto the Lone I go ; 
Divine, to the Divinity." 




ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN. 

AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY* 
BY FRANCIS AVELING, D.D. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

JT was a choir monk of the Cistercians who steadied 
him; and behind the white-robed figure, gleam- 
ing ghastly in the darkness, stood another form, 
dark and motionless as a shadow. The monk 
slipped his arm through Arnoul's, and led him 
away from the tavern door to the patch of light given out by 
a flickering lamp that burned dimly before a corner- shrine of 
our Lady the Virgin. When they stood within the circle of 
its meager radiance, the monk loosed his arm and faced him. 
The shadow crept up silently and stood before him in the feeble 
rays. 

Muddled as he was by drink, in a flash he knew them 
both. It was Brother Anselm from Buckfast with another Cis- 
tercian Anselm, the master of the Alumni and Roger from 
Woodleigh by Avonside. What were they doing here, of all 
people in the whole wide world ? What had brought them to 
France, and sent them out wandering in the streets of Paris at 
such an hour ? His face brightened and his hands went out to 
grasp theirs. 

" Roger ! " he cried thickly. " And Father Anselm ! You 
are welcome ! " But there was no response. Roger, indeed, 
caught the lad's hand in his own rough palm and pressed it 
silently ; but the monk regarded him sadly, almost sternly, 
and the lines deepened on his brow. * 

" Speak ! Speak ! " said the lad impatiently. " Have you 
just come from Buckfast ? When did you reach Paris ? What 
are the tidings that you bear ? And what news is there, Roger, 
of Woodleigh and Moreleigh ? Speak ! By the Holy Mass, one 
would think you were stricken dumb ! Come back with me," 
he went on. " Come back to Julien's ! There is light and 

* Copyright in United States, Great Britain, and Ireland. The Missionary Society of St. 
Paul the Apostle in the State of New York. 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 171 

warmth there; and we can quaff the red wine and talk of home 
and friends in peace and comfort." 

But Roger only squeezed his hand the harder; and the 
monk's lips moved slowly as though he were about to speak. 
At length he said solemnly: "I bear you evil tidings, Arnoul; 
sad tidings from your home. Your brother " 

" Guy ? " the lad broke in eagerly. 

" Your brother, Sir Guy," the monk continued and his 
voice had a catch in it " the priest of Woodleigh, is dead." 

" Dead ! " cried Arnoul, the color fading from his face as 
he started back, sobered in a moment by the suddenness of 
the terrible news. " Dead ! " he passed his hand up question- 
ingly over his eyes and brow. " I never knew he was ill ! He 
cannot be dead ! When did he die ? No one told me any- 
thing ! Why did they not tell me ? " He looked with startled, 
questioning eyes from the monk to Roger, and, reading noth- 
ing in the faithful man's wooden sorrow, back again to the 
monk. 

" He was not ill," the brother explained in a slow, level 
voice. " He was murdered." 

" Murdered ! " cried the lad. " It can't -be true ! I will 
not believe it ! Who would lift his hand against Guy, so good 
and so beloved ? Who would murder a priest a poor priest 
like my brother ? My brother " And Arnoul sobbed in spite 
of his questions. 

" Nevertheless it is true," the level voice continued, speak- 
ing slowly and distinctly. " Sir Guy, of Woodleigh, was mur- 
dered by Sigar Vipont, the Lord of Moreleigh, in a fit of pas- 
sion. He is [dead now may the good God assoil him ! and 
he is buried in his own church at Woodleigh. You do well to 
grieve, Arnoul, for your brother was a holy man. But I have 
much to say to you ; and it must be said at once. Shall we 
go to your lodgings, or will you come with me to our cloister ? 
There is a message from the bishop and a letter. Also, there 
are words from Sigar Vipont." 

" God's curse upon him ! " put in Roger. They were the 
first words he had spoken. 

"Guy! My brother! Dead !" sobbed Arnoul. "Take 
me where you will, Brother, to my lodging or to the cloister. 
My brother dead ! My poor brother ! " 

A whisper between the monks, and they moved off in the 



172 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [May, 

direction of the Bernardines', meeting none but a few roysterers 
on the way. 

Brother Anselm recounted to Arnoul the manner of his 
brother's death how he had encountered Sir Sigar in a tower- 
ing rage, and had drawn his anger upon himself by some re- 
monstrance. How the knight had worked himself into an un- 
governable fury ; and, drawing his dagger, had plunged it 
twice into the heart of the unhappy priest, who fell dying in 
the very court of Moreleigh castle. 

" But he had a beautiful burial," the monk continued. 
" The Lord Abbot went down to sing the requiem, and such a 
choir as was never heard in Woodleigh. All the people from 
miles around were there. The churchyard was full to overflow- 
ing, and the long street crowded with the mourners. Even the 
retainers of Moreleigh knelt within the church weeping, praying 
for the priest and for their lord. And Sir Sigar has gone to 
Rome. It was a sudden, a mad act; and, ere your brother 
breathed his last, Sir Sigar had repented him of it. He stood, 
bowed and haggard, at the far edge of the crowd while the dirge 
was being sung in Woodleigh church. Twice he sought his ab- 
solution at the abbey ; but the Abbot had no power to loose 
the bonds of such a heinous sin the murder of a priest. Nor 
could the bishop grant him absolution. He went on foot to 
Exeter to seek it, and the bishop told him what is true that 
only our Lord the Pope himself at Rome could free his soul 
from its awful guilt. So he has set out for Rome, repentant 
and sorrowing, vowing to do whatsoever penance his Blessed- 
ness shall give to him." 

Arnoul's grief, poignant though it was, did not prevent his 
understanding what had happened. He was torn by contrary 
emotions ; profound and bitter grief, a sudden and vindictive 
hatred oi the murderer. But the monk continued, still speak- 
ing slowly and distinctly : 

" Sir Sigar has said that he will do what lies in his power 
to make amends for his crime by providing for all your needs 
the brother of his victim. And my Lord of Exeter I have 
a letter from him for you will offer you a benefice in his 
cathedral church. I have seen them both before setting out." 

They reached the postern gate of the Bernardines' cloister 
and passed through it, the brother opening it with a key he 
carried. Striking a light, he lit an oil lamp. The four men 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 173 

were in a small, vaulted chamber opening from the passage that 
gave direct upon the gate. The room was bare and plain 
evidently no more than a place of waiting. The Buckfast monk 
was pale and calm. Arnoul moved about restlessly and nervous- 
ly. That Guy was dead he realized in a dull sort of a way, but 
the full meaning of it all had not yet come home to him. 
Roger stood silent and grief-stricken, a dumb look of pity and 
sorrow for the boy in his face. The other brother saw that 
his lamp was burning properly, and departed. 

" These are the letters," the monk proceeded, " that I have 
to give into your hands." He looked at the writing on the 
cover of each as he handed it to the boy. 

" The first is from the Lord Abbot. You will read it at 
your leisure. It gives a full account of all that has taken 
place ; and Father Abbot bade me give you his blessing in this 
your trial. Here is one from the Bishop of Exeter. I under- 
stand his Lordship purposes offering you a canonry that he has 
at his disposal. He feels for you deeply, and has taken Sir 
Guy's death to heart almost as much as Father Abbot. The 
third was given me by the seneschal at Moreleigh. It has no 
writing on the wrapper, but I believe it is from Sir Sigar him- 
self. There is a small matter of money, too, given me for you 
by Abbot Benet. I cannot give you that to-night, but you 
shall have it in the morning." 

Arnoul stretched out his hand mechanically for the letters 
and placed them in his vest. What was he to do now, he 
thought. Guy's death would change his life so much. He 
thanked the monk brokenly. " Guy dead ! His brother mur- 
dered !" It repeated itself over and over again like some 
monotonous threnody in his mind. 

" I shall go home to my lodging now," he said in a voice 
broken and tremulous with emotion. " Let me think ! I can't 
realize it all! My brother Guy murdered ! Yes; let me go 
home to think alone ! " 

They let him out into the street, his haggard eyes giving 
the lie to all his finery. The monk gazed sadly after him for 
a space as he stumbled slowly away from the abbey. Roger 
stood, twitching at his sleeve, wondering if he should follow 
him as he staggered into the darkness. Then, conquering his 
indecision, and with a word to Brother Anselm to keep the 
gate open for him, he ran after the retreating figure. 



174 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [May, 

" Master Arnoul ! Dear Master Arnoul ! For the love of 
Christ do not look so terribly ! " Poor Roger was on the verge 
of tears himself as he thrust a packet into the other's hand. 
" Isobel bade me give you this, and to tell you how she grieves 
ior you. It is Sir Guy's crucifix. None other than you should 
have it. Aye, she grieves and sorrows, does Isobel. Ah, lad ! 
we all grieve. I I as I cannot say." 

The true-hearted fellow caught Arnoul's hand once more and 
pressed it in his own rough palm. Then, dashing the tear from 
his eyes, he turned and made off again towards the patient fig- 
ure of the waiting monk at the postern gate. 

Arnoul walked on, stunned and suffering dumbly. Every 
nerve was on edge and raw quivering, palpitating, agonizing. 
He could not straighten it out and see it all clearly. He 
reached his lodging and climbed the stairs. Finding tinder, he 
struck a light and took the packets from his breast, turning 
them over vacantly. He broke the seal of one, and took out 
the roughly carved image of the dead Savior hanging on the 
cross. Kissing it reverently, in memory of Guy, he laid it gen- 
tly on the table. Then he opened the largest letter. It was 
from the bishop. He read through the lines of sympathy, half 
understanding. Yes; it was a canonry. The word stood out 
clear in the writing. Maitre Barthelemy had said But what 
had the alchemist to do with it ? His brother was dead ! 
Guy was murdered ! He broke the seal of the second letter. 
The Abbot's writing. More words of sympathy and consolation. 
Oh, that Father Abbot were here! Then followed an account 
of the murder and of Sir Sigar's pilgrimage in search of abso- 
lution. The Abbot had written " Pray for him ! " twice over. 
Pray for him? How could he pray for him? He would mur- 
der him if he could! Had he not robbed him of his brother? 
Were his hands not red with Guy's blood ? 

He flung his hat down and his gay red cloak in a heap 
upon the floor. The third letter he had forgotten, and it slipped 
unnoticed to the ground. Then he blew out the lamp and for 
a while paced up and down the narrow room in the darkness. 
His mind was caught in a torrent of surging emotions and swept 
hither and thither hopelessly. The only point that stood out 
now with certainty, vivid, dominating, was that Guy was dead. 
Around that central fact the other thoughts all moved his call 
to the ecclesiastical state and the bishop's canonry, the wasted, 







1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 175 

and worse than wasted, life that he had been leading. It all 
gathered itself up with a confused intensity and force. He saw 
himself taking leave of the Abbot, full of hope and spirits, as 
he went first to St. Victor's ; drifting, afterwards, in the devi- 
ous currents to which he had committed himself; and he real- 
ized with a start how near he had come to the fatal brink to- 
wards which they had been dragging him. 

Guy was dead ! Life, on a sudden, seemed not the same. 
It all came out with new colors, new values, new meaning. 
And so, on and on, urged forward in thought circles by the 
rushing emotions, his mind revolved until at last, worn out with 
sheer fatigue and grief, he threw himself as he was upon the 
bed and fell into a light and troubled slumber. 

CHAPTER XX. 

The sun had not yet risen over the roofs and spires of the 
city when Arnoul, worn out with the raging conflict of emo- 
tions within his breast, stood at the open casement of his lodg- 
ing. His face was haggard and drawn; and his eyes, sunken 
and dulled with sheer bodily fatigue, had the expression of a 
hunted animal's. He had discarded the gay dress of the night 
before and wore the simple habit from the Buckfast looms in 
which he had come to France it seemed so long ago. With 
bowed head and hands resting upon the sill, insensible to the 
chill of the early morning, he looked out upon a thick mist that 
hung like a curtain before him. It came up from the marshes 
that bordered the Seine, writhing in fantastic shapes as the air 
moved it hither and thither, wreathing itself round tke towers 
and spires that rose above the sleeping city, hiding the lesser 
buildings under an impalpable white pall, clammy, damp, dis- 
piriting, though he hardly noticed that it was there. It fell in 
sparse, congealed drops upon the streets, the squares, the roofs; 
and trickled down from gables, eaves, and cornices, over blind 
wall and house side, slowly, persistently, noiselessly, like great 
tears. It came through the open window and drifted into the 
cheerless room, standing out like clammy sweat upon the walls. 
It gathered itself up and dripped slowly from the window cor- 
nice upon his bent head, his dress, his hands. But he stood 
there heedless and unnoticing until, chilled to the very bone, 
a paroxysm of shivering seized him. 



176 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [May, 

The spasmodic action brought his dulled mind back from its 
lethargy. All the torture of the night rushed back upon him 
with new and bitter vividness. A new day had come, and with 
it new burdens, new anxieties, a feeling of loneliness and help- 
lessness such as he had never known. Still shivering, he closed 
the window, and began to pace up and down the narrow room. 
What was he to do now ? The question surged again and again 
through his brain as it had been surging all the night, even in 
his dreams. The news of Guy's murder had brought his mind 
back with a wrench to the old Devon days and set the old 
thought centers throbbing with the old thoughts. The peaceful 
Valley of Dart rose before him the peaceful monks toiling and 
praying in the cloister calm bringing not peace but anguish to 
his soul. A vision of Sibilla, conjured up by some trick of his 
mind's working, wrung his heart. Yet in this there was the 
consolation of an infinite rest. She shared his sorrow. How 
could there be a doubt of that ? In the thought all his feel- 
ing for her gathered itself together, as it were, and focussed 
itself. Her lather had made her suffer before. Now he had 
wronged him. They were knit together in a common bond of 
suffering. Pity for himself pity for her was the root- feeling. 
But it was a pity wrapping both together in a something com- 
mon. Suddenly he realized that it was not pity alone. It was 
something far more obvious, more close. She was an ideal to 
be enshrined, a lady to be loved. What a mistake it had all 
been, his dreams of an ecclesiastical career ! Why had he come 
to Paris ? He should have taken up the profession of arms. 
Surely that had been the right course. The other was a fatal 
mistake ! And yet ! And yet ! Neither was there hope 
for him in that direction. The Lady Sibilla of Moreleigh was 
rich and noble. He was poor and a clerk. And now, more 
than ever, with a river of his brother's blood flowing between 
them ! The consolation turned out to be an agony after all. 

He paused and looked with unseeing eyes at the glory of 
the sun piercing the mist wreathes, unravelling the white palls 
of filmy gossamer, painting the vapors in a rosy glow. 

No, it could never be; it ought not to be! And yet 
Had he a vocation to an ecclesiastical estate? Was it not all 
a mistake from beginning to end? What was he to think to 
do ? Oh ! what was to be done ? He stood again at the win- 
dow which he had opened for the second time, his lips forming 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 177 

the question silently, as his faculties became numbed and dulled 
again by fatigue and anguish. 

In the streets, rapidly clearing of the mist in the growing 
sunlight, groups of students began to gather. Soldiers and 
townsmen appeared ; the latter unbarring the shutters of their 
shops and houses ; the former, for the most part, seeking the 
shortest way to the nearest tavern. Peasants were arriving from 
the country with fruit and vegetables, eggs and fowls ; and 
men were carrying huge baskets of fish from the boats moored 
at the bank of the river. 

Over all the noise and bustle of a waking city, rising like 
the hum of an enormous hive, boomed the great bell of Notre 
Dame, summoning the scholars to their daily Mass. 

The sound brought Arnoul to himself again. It recalled 
the little church at Woodleigh, the abbey, and Exeter that 
sound of the church bell. 

A confused vision of the far-away green fields of Devon, 
the soaring moorland, the silent figures moving in the quiet 
cloister, while the bells rang out beside Dart until the echoes 
died away on the heather-clad slopes, came before his mind. 
And the anguish of his soul broke out afresh. What was he 
to do ? Oh ! what was he to do ? 

He thought of the grass- grown mound that he had never 
seen, beneath which his only brother lay sleeping, so quiet and 
so still. He pictured the little churchyard, lying within the 
shadow of the tiny church, the solemn trees that kept guard 
over the silent dead. And as he unravelled strand by strand 
the medley of his tangled thought, the vision passed on to the 
shapeless confusion that had come into his own life. 

It was like the fantastic mist-wreathes of the morning. 
Blurred and indistinct, the outlines of his possible vocation and 
of his old yet new-born love for Sibilla were the two points 
in his consciousness, blended and separated, forbidding and al- 
luring, so unreasoningly imperative and yet so uncertain, as 
the mists of his indecision moved and tormented. But the 
thought of his brother helped him. There was a comfort even 
in thinking of his loss. What would his brother have him do ? 
The question struck a new light into his tired brain, a new 
hope, a fresh strength. But it was like flint and steel without 
the tinder. His brother would have bidden him seek counsel 
from the abbot; and the abbot was far away at Buckfast. 

VOL. LXXXVII. 12 



1 78 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [May, 

The brother dead The abbot at Buckfast. Was there no 
one near at hand to help him ? Was there no one to counsel, 
to direct ? " What am I to do," he moaned aloud. " Oh, God ! 
what am I to do ? " 

The bell had ceased ringing; and the noise of the street 
traffic rose, worldly, busy, shrill, to his high window. He leant 
forward, looking down upon the people as one seeking an in- 
spiration from the gathering crowd. 

Two Franciscan friars passed beneath him, carrying baskets 
for the collection of alms. They walked slowly, their eyes 
bent upon the ground, asking for food in the Name of Christ, 
and thanking the donor in His Name, taking no heed of the 
ribald jest or coarse wit with which they were not infrequently 
assailed. Their habit, like that of the Cistercian lay brothers, 
was of a rough brown material. 

Suddenly his mind leaped to a new idea. Thomas ! He 
would see Thomas Brother Thomas the great teacher of the 
Dominicans. Did not all Paris ring with his fame ? His learn- 
ing and his sanctity were noised abroad. The spleen and in- 
vective of the secular party had not altogether tarnished the 
name of Brother Thomas. And Thomas would listen to him and 
help him ! Was he not ready to solve the difficulties and still 
the doubts of thousands ? Was he not always patient and cour- 
teous, humble and kind ? Surely it was an inspiration ! He 
would go to St. Jacques and lay bare his soul before Thomas 
Aquinas, at once the greatest teacher and the greatest saint 
in Paris. 

Taking his cap, and thrusting the abbot's letter into his 
breast, he left the room and descended the long flight of steps 
to the street. People turned and stared at him as he passed, 
dishevelled and untidy, his face pale as death, great dark lines 
drawn under his hunted eyes. 

" Aye, these scholars," said a countrywoman to her custom- 
ers. " That is a brave life to lead ! Dice and drunkenness 
and brawls at night, and in the morning that ! " And she 
pointed at Arnoul. " The English nation are sottish/' 

"Nay, dame," answered a serving man who had been chaf- 
fering with her. " It is the midnight study, not the red wine, 
that brings those lines. I know it well ; for ere I took to ser- 
vice with Stephen the Mercer, I was a student myself and 
taught by day what I had " 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 179 

" And to what nation did you belong ? Not that it makes 
much difference, though ! For if the English are sots with 
tails, the Germans are obscene in their cups, the Burgundians 
are beasts and fools, the Brabantines " 

" Oh, no ; I was not of those nations, dame. I have good 
Norman blood running in my veins." 

"I might have known it; the Normans are as bad as any. 
It is proverbial their boastfulness and vanity." 

"Well, well! that's better than some! A little vanity 
though I do not allow that I am given to boasting is a good 
thing at times. Now, were I a glutton Fleming, or a spend- 
thrift Picard, or a seditious, thieving Roman, you might have 
something to complain of. But I am a Norman, and sometime 
a scholar I know a thing or two about the schools ! " 

"Thou a scholar!" interrupted Master Stephen himself, 
coming up behind him. " Thou a teacher ! Thou art a lazy 
knave, a rogue, a wastrel ! Have done with chattering here, 
thou vagabond, and get to thy work ! Thinkest thou I pay 
thee to be idle ? Begone with thy basket before thy shoulders 
taste the cudgel ! Yet, stay," he added, catching sight of the 
countrywoman's poultry. "Thou canst carry these too." And 
he proceeded to bargain and haggle with the woman over the 
price of her goods. 

Meanwhile Arnoul, having taken the turning on the right 
hand, and passed through a maze of narrow and evil-smelling 
streets, had reached the celebrated Dominican convent of St. 
Jacques. He rang the bell hanging at the doorway and was 
conscious of a pair of beady black eyes looking at him through 
the grille. He stated his name and his business simply enough 
to the porter, and asked to see Brother Thomas of Aquin. 
But the old lay brother evidently mistrusted him ; which was 
no wonder, considering the appearance he made. He looked 
him up and down. He questioned him closely. Finally he left 
him waiting in a large, bare entrance-room while he went to 
make inquiries as to whether it would be possible for Brother 
Thomas to see him. 

After what seemed to Arnoul to be hours of suspense, the 
vague torment of uncertainty, grief, and counter-grief struggling 
in his soul for mastery, the old porter returned with the mes- 
sage that he would be received. 

"You can wait here," he grumbled, "or ycu can return in 



i8o ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [May, 

an hour's time. Brother Thomas has but now gone to the 
school where he lectures on theology. Did you look like a 
theologian" and here he eyed Arnoul with evident disfavor 
" I should advise you to go there now, too, that is, if there 
were any chance of your finding a place. Since Brother Thomas 
has come to teach under Master Elias it has been so crammed 
and crowded that the largest of our lecture halls will not suf- 
fice for those who come to learn. They sit on the benches and 
on the floor. The window ledges and the very steps of the 
chair ! It is a sight worth seeing, young man ; and since the 
pestilent seculars closed the schools, two years ago, it has been 
worse than ever. For, look you ! those two months put the 
scholars to the test. One saw the value of a man then. Those 
that were worth anything went over to the Cordeliers or came 
to Brother Thomas here. The worthless ones dropped out 
altogether and few of them ever returned. But I doubt me 
that you are a theologian. You look more like one of those 
hare-brained scholars that swarm through the University and 
keep folk awake all night with their singing and shouting. 
Most of them went to the bad when the seculars stopped teach- 
ing. You are an Englishman ? " he continued garrulously. 
"That accounts for Brother Thomas seeing you, I suppose, busy 
as he always is." 

His words, his garrulity, his criticism, his grudging of the 
master's time, fell upon inattentive ears; for Arnoul's strong 
emotions had asserted themselves again as he learnt that he 
must wait until the theological class was over. He was almost 
unreasonable in his mad desire to unburden himself at once, 
though his listless face now expressed little of the demons 
raging within his breast. Doubtless the porter thought he had 
found an attentive listener, for he continued speaking. 

" Aye, busy, that he is ! Up and at his prayers before the 
first bell for Prime, and back again in his cell before the breth- 
ren come for their devotions, lest they should fancy him what 
he is, a saint ! And then his schools after the Mass and his 
great commentary on the Sentences of the Lombard ! Four of 
our brothers are told off to write from his dictation. His 
letters go all over the world. He settles disputes and answers 
difficulties that pour in from every corner of Europe. At 
meal time he is so wrapped up in thought that he does not 
know what he is eating, and sometimes forgets to eat at all. 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 181 

He is at work all the day and often nearly all the night as 
well at his prayers, his books, his councils. And yet he finds 
time to give to you, Englishman!" and he eyed poor Arnoul 
with a climax of disfavor " the King himself does honor to 
Brother Thomas. King Louis is glad to listen to his words of 
wisdom and to consult him upon weighty matters. Do you 
realize the privilege you are having ? Do you ? " 

But the clang of the bell summoned him to the door, and 
still sermonizing and muttering as he went off to peer through 
the grating before opening it, he left Arnoul standing where 
he was in the center of the bare, white room. He walked me- 
chanically to a bench standing by the wall ; and, seating him- 
self on it, he bent his head and covered his face with his hands. 
He must so he argued with himself, as far as his tired brain 
would permit he must gather his wits together, and be clear. 
To shake off the dull lethargy that possessed his mind, and 
keep himself in hand, firmly, resolutely; not to lose himself in 
the paroxysm of incoherent emotions, this was his task now. 
To unravel the tangled skein of motives, so that he could put 
things clearly now that he had come to speak. 

Little by little his will asserted itself in the lonely silence 
of the great room. But it was a silence living, pulsing, dis- 
tressing, intolerable ; and his battle was a hard one. Far bet- 
ter the crowded streets, the hum of life without, than silence 
and himseif. 

But, no; here was the lay brother again, with a jangling 
of keys and a rattle of beads, telling him that Brother Thomas 
was ready to receive him. 

" Follow the friar," he said, pointing to a white form at 
the doorway. " He will lead you to Brother Thomas." 

Arnoul crossed the room and followed his guide in silence 
down the long, bare passage. They turned more than once. 
There seemed to be a perfect maze of corridors and passages, 
turnings and steps up and down, in this great convent. But at 
length his guide paused before a low door and knocked. 

" Enter," said a clear voice of extreme sweetness from 
within ; and without any ceremony the lay brother pushed him 
through the open door. 

Arnoul stood in the presence of Thomas Aquinas. 



1 82 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [May, 



CHAPTER XXI. 

A few years before the period in which this tale is set the 
differences between the religious of St. Francis and St. Dominic 
and the secular teachers of the University had become acute. 
Ever since the brilliant but unfortunate Abelard had let loose 
the spirit of rationalism and irreverence in the Paris schools, 
two definitely defined parties had struggled for the mastery 
over the intellect, not only of the youth of the University, but 
of the entire thinking world. The two opposed currents of 
thought had often run counter to each other, often come into 
conflict and distracted the calm pursuit of knowledge in cloister, 
college, and public square. The eastern heretical doctrines 
pantheism, gnosticism, and materialism, in their crudest and 
most insidious forms had been imported from Arabia with the 
genuine teaching of Aristotle ; and, finding a refuge and a pro- 
tection under the great name of the Stagyrite, had penetrated 
to the very heart of thinking Europe. The long-pending 
struggle between the orthodox representatives of the Fathers 
and of early Christianity and the philosophical innovators of 
the eleventh and twelfth centuries found expression on the 
one hand, in the teaching of the friars and, on the other, in 
that of a group of the secular professors and students. While 
the former upheld the mystical and traditional doctrines of the 
Church, the latter affected the brilliant, and often unscrupulous 
dialectic of free thought. While the friars were compromised 
in the ecstatic reveries of the Abbot Joachim, as exemplified 
in the Introduction to the Eternal Gospel, the seculars had de- 
scended, in the person of William of St. Amour, to an at- 
tack on the principles of all religious life in The Perils of the 
Last Times. 

It was a fight to the death between orthodoxy and hetero- 
doxy, between the simple Christian teaching of the friars and 
the emulation and liberalism of the seculars. But it was more 
than this. It exemplified the lasting discord between the Gospel 
and intellectual pride, the Kingdom of Christ and the Mammon 
of Unrighteousness, the spirit of penance and the spirit of lux- 
ury. The University was split up into opposing factions; and 
where teachers argued and inveighed against each other in the 
schools, the scholars carried their disputes into the public streets 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 183 

and argued them out with fists and cudgels. The whole place 
was in a ferment. Coarse jests, spiteful invective, ribald songs, 
malicious ridicule were poured out upon the friars. From the 
lecture rooms of the University, from the court of the King, 
where Ruteboeuf, the court poet, vented his spleen and satire, 
the scoffing spirit filtered down to the dregs and lees of hu- 
manity that stirred and festered beneath the intellectual life of 
the University, below the civil life of the town, and, losing any 
claim to either wit or wisdom, broke out in foulness and sordid 
abuse. 

Nor was it by satire and abuse alone that the religious 
were assailed. Brute force had been employed. It was only a 
short time before that the Brothers of St. Jacques had not 
even dared to leave the shelter of their convent to procure 
food for their community. On Palm Sunday Brother Thomas 
himself had been interrupted in the midst of the sermon that 
he was preaching in the church of the friars and forbidden, in 
the name of the University, to continue. With consummate 
audacity, the University beadle, clad in the gorgeous robes of 
his office, had commanded silence, and had proceeded to read 
before the indignant congregation a document full of reproaches 
and calumnies aimed at the friars preachers by the leaders of 
the seculars. Such an atmosphere of commotion, charged with 
intellectual unrest and moral ferment, was calculated to make 
the greatest saint lose his temper. Thomas Aquinas, against 
whom personally much of the hatred and spleen of the attack 
was levelled, had certainly been sorely tried; and, though he 
seemed to be enveloped in a halo of placid detachment from 
the world that seethed and stormed outside the convent walls, 
his face showed just the slightest trace of the stress and strain 
through which his order was passing. 

Arnoul gazed upon the man whose task it was to consoli- 
date the intellectual forces of Europe; and, as he gazed upon 
the solitary, white-robed figure, his own distress and confusion 
of mind seemed to leave him. He felt that he was in the pres- 
ence of colossal strength. Calm and peace seemed to radiate 
from the person of Brother Thomas a calm and a peace that 
nothing could disturb, but rather that wrapped all other things in 
themselves. Arnoul had a sensation as of bursting bands about 
his heart. The question that had been throbbing and pulsing 
rhythmically in his brain died away, and instead his mind mutely 



1 84 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [May, 

formed the decision " I must do whatever this man bids." For 
the moment, at least, his dulled indecision left him, and he was 
alert and keen. All the details of the cell and its occupant 
stood out clear. A low and badly furnished room lit by a sin- 
gle window. On the table a bronze lamp, a litter of parchments 
in various hands, a heap of books. But what struck him most 
was not the cell nor its furniture but the friar himself. He had 
just risen from the table at which he had been seated and stood, 
one hand resting upon the manuscript with which he had been 
occupied, half turned towards the entrance, looking at his visitor- 

A man to all appearance young he was then only in his 
thirty- second year but with a gravity of feature ripened be- 
yond his age. His composure of manner was extraordinary, ap- 
proaching impassiveness ; though beneath it one felt the enor- 
mous strength of character, the vast depth of power, that it hid. 
Of great height and imposing presence, by a sedentary life al- 
ready inclined to corpulence, he seemed to fill the little cell. 
His large, dark eyes looked out from beneath a massive and 
a noble brow ; and his face, though darkened by its southern 
blood, was of a remarkably clear complexion. His regular and 
refined features borrowed a still further dignity and beauty from 
the crown of dark, curling hair that betokened the religious. 
When he spoke, his clear and flowing words held his listener 
enthralled by reason of the very sweetness of their tones. 

" My child/' he began, with the simple directness of one ac- 
customed to go straight to the heart of a matter, " in what can 
I serve you ? " 

Arnoul threw himself upon his knees. Like a ship come 
into port after the fury of the storm, he felt the infinite peace 
that breathed from this strong presence. It was a father to 
whom he had come a mother, rather, and he was a little child, 
bringing his troubles to his mother's knee. 

He began to tell of his grief, his indecision, his anxiety 
calmly at first, and connectedly ; but as he went on he worked 
himself up again to the pitch of incoherence. Confused words 
of Buckfast and his brother, Vipont and the abbot and Sibilla, 
poured from his lips, mingled with his fears that he had really 
had a call from God and passed it by, his uncertainty whether 
God was still calling him. 

Understanding his emotion, Brother Thomas put out a steady- 
ing hand and laid it on the lad's shoulder. 



i9o8.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 185 

" You have a letter from the abbot, my son ? " he asked. 

" Yes, Brother." And, taking the packet from his breast, 
he handed it to the friar. 

"There are two letters: one also from the bishop." 

" Patience, then, my son ! We shall first see what the ab- 
bot has to say." 

He glanced rapidly down the parchment, fixing all the details 
of the written words. Then he turned to the other letter, study- 
ing it carefully, and saying nothing before he laid both aside. 

"He was your only brother?" he questioned at last. 

"Yes." 

" May God be gracious to him ! And his murderer is the 
father of the maid you think you love ? " 

"Yes, my Brother." 

" He has been refused absolution in England, this Vipont, 
and has set out for Rome ? How long have you been a scholar 
here, my child ? " 

" Nigh on two years, Brother. But I studied at Buckfast 
before I came to Paris." 

" And you were sent to study ? " 

" Theology, Brother, and possibly law or It was intended 
that I should become a clerk and make a great career." 

The friar's brows came sharply together for an instant as he 
heard the reply. 

" And you have studied well ? " He saw from the lad's garb 
that he was now, at any rate one of those students living as 
best they could in lodgings. 

"At first, my Brother; but "and he hung his head " of 
late I have not studied at all. I left St. Victor's, where I was 
living, and drifted from the class-rooms to plunge into the 
gayer life of the city. I went with my companions to pot- 
houses and taverns. I spent my life in dicing and play, until 
this dreadful murder brought me to my senses. Oh, my brother ! 
My brother! And now, oh, God!" he sobbed, "I dare not 
think of advancing in sacred orders ! I dare not even think of 
the Lady Sibilla not even as a far-off ideal! My life is bro- 
ken ruined ! Oh, what am I to do ? " 

The Brother looked down upon the bent head with a great 
tenderness and pity. He saw the frame of the boy shaken with 
violent sobs. He understood, far better than the lad himself, 
the tempest that had raged within his soul. " Courage, my 
child!" Again his hand went out and touched the boy's 



1 86 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [May, 

shoulder. "All is not done and ended! Your life ruined? It 
is not yet begun ! You say you have no vocation to religion ; 
and I I say that you have no call to the secular priesthood. 
Put the idea from your mind, my child ! The Church is not 
in the world to provide careers but to save souls. Would to 
God there were no rich benefices to be had, but that all were 
as we are poor religious! You at least, my son, can refuse 
to use the Church as a stepping-stone to power. You have no 
call. No ; when the voice speaks, it speaks with no uncertain 
sound ; and you would both know it and recognize it ! " 

The kneeling figure uttered a long-drawn sigh. The boy's 
sobs had ceased as the calm, silvery voice had been speaking, 
removing one, at least, of the difficulties that assailed him. 
He had no vocation. There was one thing, at least, fixed and 
definite. One less agony of his indecision to torment him. 

" And this maid this Sibilla of whom you speak," the 
friar continued, " you love her ? " 

"Love?" answered Arnoul, lifting his tear-stained eyes to 
the gentle, placid face above him. " How could I help loving 
her ? Yet how can I dare to love ? She is so pure and good, 
and I a creature so vile ! No ; I may never hope ! I have no 
estate. She is the heiress of Sigar Vipont, my brother's mur- 
derer. My brother ! My unhappy brother ! " 

"Your brother is with God," the friar interrupted him sol- 
emnly. " Forgive your enemies as you would be forgiven." 
And he traced the sign of the cross upon his breast as he spoke. 

" And the maiden does she also love you ? " Brother 
Thomas continued calmly. 

" Nay, I know not, my Brother. Still, I think I thought " 
the memory of Moreleigh rose before his mind " I think 
she may have some care for me some thoughts of me still. I 
am in your hands, my Brother." 

Friar Thomas was silent for a moment, his great head bent 
in thought, his hand again upon the lad's shoulder. 

And then: "Will you follow my advice?" he said. 

" Gladly, Brother ; and as the oracles of God." How strange 
it was, this complete possession that the personality of Brother 
Thomas took of his soul ! How wonderful that he should prom- 
ise blindly, and without a single misgiving, to do his utter bid- 
ding! 

" Good, then ! Put all thoughts of the ecclesiastical state 
from your mind. Reform your way of living now at once. 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 187 

You will still remain in Paris; and you will begin your studies 
afresh. Come and see me from time to time ; better still, come 
to my own school. And as touching this maid and her father 
' Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord ! ' Forgive him and 
pray for him, and keep her pure memory within your heart. 
God leads us by many paths, in many ways. It may be that 
He will make all clear and plain, that He has created these 
two souls for one another, that you will be united in His own 
way and in His own time. Look up to Him, my son eyes to 
the mountains whence cometh help ! Possess your soul in 
patience ! Trust in God ! And I " he spoke with humble 
confidence " I will make known your petitions at the altar of 
God. Courage, my son, and confidence ! You may not see 
how or when, but all will come right. The crooked and dev- 
ious will be made straight and plain the rough path smooth 
for with God there is nothing impossible, and He has thee in 
His keeping." 

He removed his hand from the lad's shoulder and raised 
him from his kneeling posture ; and then, looking straight into 
the lad's eyes-with those wonderful, luminous eyes of his, he asked 
him gently : " And how long, my son, since you were shriven ? 
Nay ; answer not," he continued with infinite tact, as the dusky- 
hue of shame mounted to the lad's brow. " Perchance even I 
can understand. But let no barriers of doubt or self rise in 
your soul now ! You will come with me to the church ; and 
Brother Antony shall shrive you a holy man and a discreet.' 1 

" But, Brother, will you not yourself hear my confession 
and loose the bonds of my sins ? " 

" Nay, child ; Brother Antony will hear your confession. 
You promised " and a faint smile lit up the mobile lips and 
played in the inscrutable eyes. " You promised to obey. Yow 
will confess to Brother Antony." 

Together they left the cell and passed through the monastery. 
The teacher struck thrice upon a little bell as he neared the 
door from the convent to the church. Together they knelt 
the strong man and the lad, clothed, as it were, in the garment 
of his strength. A Dominican friar, bent under the weight of 
years, came towards them, and Brother Thomas signed to 
Arnoul that this was the discreet and holy man to whose keeping 
he was to entrust his conscience, whose aged lips, long con- 
secrated to the service of his Master, were to pronounce the 
words that would strike the fetters of sin from his soul. 



1 88 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [May. 

In a corner of the dark church, with Thomas of Aquin at 
his prayers, drawing down from heaven upon them both the 
blessing of the Crucified, he knelt and told his sins. The 
trembling voice of the aged friar rose and fell upon his ears. 
The whispered penance was given, and the counsel. His heart 
was soothed and wrapped in an ocean of great peace. And 
then the old voice swelled in the majesty of the awful formula 
of remission. The shaking hand traced the sign of salvation 
over him. Peace infinite peace, and perfect rest ! " Dominus 
noster lesus Christus te absolvat and I, by His authority, ab- 
solve thee from thy sins, in the name of the Father, and of 
the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen." 

He was loosed in heaven! Great waves of consolation 
entered his soul. He was bathed, absorbed in an ocean of 
spiritual joy. His faculties were ecstasied his whole being 
suffused with peace. 

As he left the church, his penance and thanksgiving ended, 
he turned and approached his new-found friend and teacher. 
But as he drew near to the motionless figure, he saw a strange 
sight. Brother Thomas knelt upright, perfectly rigid, upon the 
bare pavement of the church, his hands clasped tightly to- 
gether before his breast, his eyes fixed upon the figure hang- 
ing from the cross over the altar. His lips did not move in 
prayer, neither did he seem to observe Arnoul's approach. 
The very beating of his heart seemed to have ceased, so still 
was he and motionless, rather like a dead man than a living. 
But great tears welled up in his eyes and coursed slowly down 
his cheeks. 

Brother Antony stood at his side, a palsied finger upon 
his lips, enjoining silence. He turned and led him to the 
door of the church, and then, raising a quavering voice, he 
whispered : You have seen this day a saint in his ecstasy. 
The eyes of Brother Thomas are beyond this world. He gazes 
upon God. May He keep thee in thy comings and goings ! " 

He blessed Arnoul with the sign of the cross, and moved 
along the cloister. The lad stood a moment looking back upon 
the kneeling figure ; and then, stepping forth into the sunlight, 
he left Brother Thomas alone in the great temple with his 
God. 

(TO BE CONTINUED.) 




PASSAGES FROM THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN 
CLERGYMAN. 

CHOSEN AND COPIED BY ORBY SHIPLEY, M.A. 

PART II. 

WILL here make an effort to analyze my some- 
what complicated, if not contradictory, mental con- 
dition: 

I believe all that I hitherto accepted to be 
intrinsically true ; yet I do not believe it is taught, 
or maintained, by the Anglican Church. I cannot teach it as 
anything else than what I have arrived at, by the exercise of 
my private judgment. I cannot believe that the Anglican 
Church means to be catholic, without limitations. I cannot be- 
lieve that her formularies are unequivocally catholic, or that 
High- Churchmen have any right to be more than a party in 
her, together with others who hold contradictory beliefs. I see 
as clearly as ever that the legitimate home of what I believe 
to be true and catholic is Rome ; and yet I cannot sincerely 
admit the terms of admission demanded by Rome. I have 
never modified or reversed the conclusion at which I have ar- 
rived concerning the Anglican Church, on a review of the whole 
question. Time has deepened my conviction of its truth. My 
Anglican guides certainly gave me reasons for pausing and so 
I find myself in a negative position, unable to believe fully in 
either church. As I am not one to rest satisfied with a nega- 
tive position, perhaps, after all, I am only halting on my jour- 
ney towards the goal. To settle on the lees and to be at peace 
again in the Anglican Sion, seems the least likely of all things 

to happen to me. 

* * * 

A friend called. We soon reached the ecclesiastical situa- 
tion. Indeed he seemed to desire it. His state of mind in- 
terests me. He is so canny, so unemotional, so cold and slow, 
so Scotch, that one values his opinions; and Rome has no 
attraction for him. He seems in an unsettled state, without 
much belief in, or respect for, the Anglican Church. In fact, 



THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN [May, 

our judgments on this enigmatical body are similar. It is a 
case of disappointment, disillusionment, and irritation with us 

both. 

* * * 

I have been looking through not reading, for I had no pa- 
tience for that the report of the " Round Table Conference" 
and a glorious muddle it seems to have been. Had I not been 
already unsettled in Anglicanism, this would have upset me, 
and it will probably send several over to Rome. However, it 
gives me some satisfaction, in that it confirms my judgment of 
the Anglican Church, at which I arrived last summer ; namely, 
that she has no mind of her own, and leaves her members free 
to believe, or to disbelieve, as they like. If a person asked 
me what I believed about the Blessed Sacrament, I could tell 
him. If he asked me what the Anglican Church believed on 
the doctrine, I could but say : I do not know. That " the vir- 
gin-daughter of my people is broken with a great breach " 
seems to be the thing chiefly made manifest by the discussions of 
the conference. Equally manifest is it that we have not yet 
found " a repairer of the breach." Certainly neither the Eng- 
lish Church Union, nor any of its members, from the president 
downwards, will become that. The only result which ensued 
from the representations made in Rome, as to the reality and 
validity of our orders, procured their formal condemnation at 
the hands of the Pontiff; whilst this attempt to draw Angli- 
cans into some sort of agreement in doctrine, has only resulted 
in manifesting the disunion and imbecility of Anglicanism. 

* * * 

Asked the same friend what he thought of the " Report of 
a (Round Table) Conference, held at Fulham Palace, in 1900." 
Like the sensible man he is, he cannot see what grounds it 
affords of hope for the future agreement of Anglican parties. 
As he said, however low they pitched a statement of belief, 
there was always some member of the conference who went 
still lower ; until, at the end, they would not accept even a 
quotation from the "judicious Hooker" without qualification. 

* * * 

Called at the clergy-house at . All the time I was 

there, I was conscious how great a distance separates me from 
these Anglican clergy. It matters little to me what agree- 
ment about incense and reservation has been made with the 



1908.] THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN 191 

new bishop. I cannot get up an interest in his lordship and 
the line he may take. These things seem so small and unim- 
portant, when questions relating to the fundamental position, 
claim, and authority of the Anglican Church remain unan- 
swered. What does it matter if two or three churches con- 
tinue some ritual practices, and succeed in keeping the author- 
ities at bay ? One swallow does not make a summer : and the 
Catholic party (whoever they now may be) cannot make ."a 
church catholic. " By what authority ? " are words never ab- 
sent from my mind. The men at the clergy-house have their 
answer ready ; but it is an answer that no longer satisfies me. 

* * * 

I attended a professor's lecture on the present condition of 
theology in Germany and its influence on us in England. As 
I listened to the able lecturer, the thought came into my mind, 
how strange it is for men now, at the end of the ages, to be 
studying de novo the origin of Christianity, as if the belief of 
past ages went for nothing. Yet if one rejects the conception 
of a Catholic Church, what else is to be done than to return 
again and again to the origin, and to construct, each man for 
himself, some fresh scheme or theory of Christianity ? But 
under such conditions there can be neither progress nor per- 
manency ; for the system and theories of one age will be demol- 
ished by those of another. Any residuum must be something 
small and colorless. If Christianity be divine, surely it is some* 
thing different from all this. 

* * * 

Wrote to X saying that my conviction of the truth of 

Romanism and of the falsity of Anglicanism was stronger than 
ever, and now fell little short of the conviction I feel requisite 
for going over in the proper spirit. It is so. The difficulties, 
which last summer I thought would prove to be bulwarks 
against Rome, are melting away. I do not ignore them ; but 
the " Roman " explanation of them now seems real and true. 
I cannot tell how soon the few remaining difficulties may van- 
ish also, and a call may come which I cannot ignore. Things 
seem to be taking definite shape in my mind. 
* * 

Mr. Gore's book, on the " Body of Christ," has again stirred 
up all my doubts and difficulties. I begin to take stock of my 
position. It has shifted since last autumn, and I am nearer 



192 THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN [May, 

Rome than ever. Quite apart from study of the strictly Roman 
questions, certain things in Scripture and history which were 
then real difficulties to me, have gradually ceased to be such. 
Either one sees them in a fresh light, or one has learnt other 
interpretations of them. On the other hand, belief in Angli- 
canism has not revived, as my friends prophesied and as I had 
hoped, under the stimulus of parish work. It is dead and, I 
fear, will never revive again. And so, at the present moment, 
I could "go over" with a firmer conviction of the truth of 
Romanism and of the falsity of Anglicanism than formerly. 
Still, I am not satisfied that I yet have that full and entire 
conviction of the truth of the Roman system, which I feel to 
be requisite for submitting to the Catholic Church in a proper 
way. 

Mr. Puller's book, The Primitive Saints and the See of 
Rome a bulwark I thought it is also crumbling away before 
plain and simple conceptions of the functions of history, and of 
the qualifications needful for a writer of history. All my con- 
ferring with flesh and blood seems to have been of use only 
in manifesting all that Anglicanism could urge in its defense, 
and the unconvincing nature of that defense. In short, my 
mind begins to get clearer. I have made some rough notes 
of my controversial position ; and as I made them, alone in my 
study, the first beginnings of conviction were developed in me. 
My last hesitations seemed about to vanish away. As I dis- 
trust sentiment and impulse, I merely state this as a fact. 
* * * 

My friend X wrote to me at this time: 

I am sorry to know that you are still unsettled, although I 
am not surprised. In spite of all my earnest desires to remain 
in the Church of England, I am quite unable to believe her to 
be catholic. I fancy she is a sort of alloy or amalgam, known 
to spiritual metallurgists as Anglicanism. I do all I can to be- 
lieve in her; but, although the matter of Anglican orders does 
not trouble me, I feel that we are in heresy and schism. I 
seem to have received no "call" to leave the Church of Eng- 
land ; and so, I can only remain until I may see clearly how 
matters really stand. I have never read Puller & Co.'s books, 
because I feel a distrust of all Anglican writers. I seem to 
have a great regard springing up in me for every one and for 
everything Roman. Yet, I fancy that we must be doing God's 



1908.] THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN 193 

work where we are, and a work which no one but a catholic- 
minded Anglican can do. You will see, from this letter, that, 
with me, it is all a "wobble," and that one's various inclina- 
tions pull one in various ways. 

* * * 

In reply to my friend X , I wrote thus: 

About waiting to receive a "call," we must take care not to 
dictate to God what kind of call we want. We must remem- 
ber that it was a wicked and adulterous generation that wanted 
a sign, though blind all the time to the existence and authority 
of the Divine Teacher among them. We are always saying in 
the pulpit, that God's calls are easily missed. I am very much 
afraid of missing one myself. 

About doing God's work where we are : I feel I have got 
to the end of that fallacy. No blessing can rest upon at- 
tempts made in so doubtful a spirit. So long as we were free 
trom doubts, it is possible that God did bless our work to our- 
selves and to others. It is now quite impossible for me to 
teach as I used to teach, feeling confident I was teaching what 
I had a right to teach as a Catholic priest of the Anglican 
Church. I cannot now leave out the connecting link, and say 
that as a Catholic priest I am able to teach the Catholic faith. 
I feel that it was the doctrine and discipline of Anglicanism 
that I promised at my ordination faithfully to teach. I feel it 
was to Anglicanism, as contained in the prayer book and ar- 
ticles, that I consented. I feel that on the bona fides of that 
assent my license was given. 

I think we also ought to bear in mind, that secondary con- 
siderations in our case are all in favor of our staying where we 
are community of interests, friendships, work, etc., and the 
natural fear of all that may await one on the other side. Yet, 
one would not admit for a moment that any of these, or all of 
them together, ought to influence us in coming to a decision. 
In fact, the absence of worldly or personal advantage to be 
gained by "going over" is a good thing, inasmuch as it re- 
moves the danger of being influenced by such advantages, did 
they exist. 

Another good thing is, that we are not under the spell of 
admiration for any particular individual, priest or other, in the 
Roman Catholic Church. I can imagine admiration for New- 
man or Manning having been a snare to some who afterwards 
VOL. LXXXYII. 13 



194 THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN [May, 

may have waked up to the fact, that their submission had been 
due more to that than to belief in the Church. 

Have you read the Roman Catholic Pastoral on Liberal 
Catholicism ? I cannot see anything condemned in it which 
I too do not condemn " ex animo." It is useful in showing 
what submission to the Church really means, and the spirit in 
which it ought to be made. Only this morning I was reading 
once more the Anglican Archbishops' two Decisions at Lam- 
beth (" On the Liturgical Use of Incense " and " On the 
Reservation of the Sacrament "). Now that the heats of con- 
troversy and irritation have cooled down in one's own mind, 
one sees how transparently sincere and honest their decisions 
are ; and how necessary it was for the archbishops to decide 
the questions on the grounds and in the way they did. 
* * * 

Writing to another friend at this date, the avowal is forced 
from me: 

I may as well say at once, that I am nearer Rome than I 
was a year ago. In resuming work, I had hoped that faith 
and confidence in the Church of England would revive, and 
that I should find it possible to go on as an Anglican clergy- 
man, if not happily, at least conscientiously. This hope has 
not been realized. Although I have thrown myself into paro- 
chial work, and have given Anglicanism another and a fair trial, 
belief and confidence are dead. On the other hand, I have 
not again directly studied the Roman question; but rather, 
have commenced reading for my B.D. degree, with the idea of 
keeping my mind off the subject. Still several points, which 
were real difficulties last year, are difficulties no longer ; so that, 
were I to "go over" now, I should go more convinced of the 
truth of Romanism and of the falsity of Anglicanism, than I 
was then. Of course, certain difficulties, chiefly historical, still 
remain; but they are few. I have no grounds for regarding 
them as insurmountable rather the reverse. Indeed, were I 
free from personal influences, I more than suspect that I should 
take the step without misgivings. Ought I, then, to resign my 
work ? I acquiesce in Anglicanism without believing in it, 
convinced as I am that the Church of England does not wish 
me to believe, or teach, several things which I most sincerely 
hold to be parts of the Catholic faith. 



i9o8.J THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN 195 

A little later I said to myself: Now that things are clear 
in my mind, and I really understand how much conviction of 
the truth of Rome I mentally possess, my next step must be, to 
see if such conviction be sufficient for reception. At the same 
time, another wave of thought comes over me; and when absent 
from my parish work for a few days, I realize how much of my 
hesitation is due to secondary and temporal considerations, which 
are absolutely beyond my own ordering. Away from influences 
which create such hesitation, I feel as if I could take the step 
at any time. The question has, indeed, passed from the doc- 
trinal and historical level to the moral level. 

# * * 

About this time I wrote the following paper, in order to 
make matters plain to myself: 

The two things to be afraid of are: i. Acting from unwor- 
thy motives ; and 2. Not giving due regard to all the consid- 
erations necessary for arriving at a right conclusion. 

I. I wonder if every one finds it as difficult as I do, to as- 
certain whether his motives are bad or good ? One examines 
oneself and analyzes one's own motives again and again, only 
to grow more befogged and to learn more plainly that our 
power of analysis has its limitations. I can quite understand 
that one may never arrive at certainty as to one's own mo- 
tives ; for a man cannot entirely make himself an object of analy- 
sis and examination to himself. Therefore, I fall back on the 
opinion of others, sensible people, who know me. 

I have assurances from my friends, that they are not doubt- 
ful about my motives. It is true, they all consider that I should 
make a mistake by " going over," and regret the possibility of it 
exceedingly. But this is another question. I am satisfied if 
they bear witness, as they do, to their belief in my sincerity. 

I can safely say that I have neglected no means for ascer- 
taining the quality of my motives; for instance, prayer, self- 
examination, and a desire to get to the bottom of things. 
Therefore, I now feel justified in concluding that enough has 
been done in that line, and I can dismiss from my mind scru- 
ples on that point. 

I cannot remember having in the past deliberately disobeyed 
what, at the time, I understood to be the will of God in mat- 
ters of importance. To recognize that something was wrong, 
meant to me that it must be renounced ; to recognize that a 



196 THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN [May, 

thing was right for example, confession, or clerical celibacy 
meant that it must be accepted. That one was long in effectu- 
ally renouncing what was wrong, and found difficulty in doing 
what was right, is certainly true ; yet, throughout, in my own 
mind, there was no doubt as to what must be ultimately done. 

II. The ultimate decision cannot depend upon secondary 
considerations ; yet, these last have their place and use in ren- 
dering one more cautious and circumspect in advancing towards 
the decision. 

The most important of them all is this the knowledge that 
I shall be causing pain and grief to others. So strongly does 
this appeal to me at times, that I feel as if no other considera- 
tion could outweigh it. Yet our Lord's words in the Gospel 
teach me to put it second. 

Moreover, I feel that one, for instance, who taught me Ger- 
man twenty years ago, did right to become a Christian, though 
it meant to him separation from his Jewish relatives, and leav- 
ing Germany. I am reminded of St. Perpetua and her father, 
and I am encouraged by learning that she too felt how hard 
it was upon him : " Ego dolebam pro infelici senecta ejus " ; 
and yet the saint did not give way. 

Other secondary considerations are the consequence of such 
a break in one's life uncertain future, new associates, loss of old 
friends, evils of which one knows not. But such fears are com- 
mon to any important step in life. One would probably never 
have been ordained, or have done anything definite, had one al- 
lowed oneself to be terrified by the possibilities of an unknown 
future. 

Should one remain, and not "go over," the prospect is 
scarcely more cheerful. It would mean remaining among cir- 
cumstances and among people with whom one is out of sympa- 
thy. Already, a gulf separates me from my fellow-workers and 
old friends. In fact, were I to " go over," we should probably 
be more at ease with each other than we are now. I know the 
pain of ministering in a Church in which one has no belief; 
and I think that scarcely any unpleasantnesses across the Rubi- 
con are likely to be greater. 

There is comfort in the thought, that the secondary consid- 
erations are all in favor of remaining; for this relieves one from 
the fear of being lured over by the hopes of worldly advantage. 

And so the conclusions arrived at are these: 



1908.] THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN 197 

1. That the purity of one's motives must be taken for 
granted, in the absence of grounds for doubting them ; and 

2. That secondary considerations even the highest ought 
not to outweigh the conviction that one would be doing God's 
Will by "going over." 

III. Have I got this conviction ? I am convinced that our 
Lord founded One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church to be the 
Teacher and Governor of all men in matters of faith and morals. 

The Anglican Church does not claim to be this church in 
its entirety; but to be only a branch of it. As regards her 
claims to be even a branch, I am convinced she rejects parts 
of that deposit of faith which I believe our Lord entrusted to 
the keeping of His Church. Therefore, I put her aside. 

There remain the East and Rome, both of which claim, with 
equal distinctness, to be the only Church of Christ. Dis- 
regarding their disagreements over other questions, it is easy 
to see that they are kept asunder chiefly, if not entirely, by the 
" Papal claims." If these claims are true, then the church which 
rejects them, rejects part of the deposit ; and so must be put 
aside also. 

Am I convinced that the " Papal claims " as I see them in 
the Church from the beginning ; as I see them in the Church 
now, after their latest, but not their strongest expression at the 
Vatican Council form part of the original deposit, and are in 
agreement with the Will of our Lord concerning His Church ? 
This is the real point at issue. 

I am convinced that there have been Papal claims in the 
Church from the day on which our Lord said : " Thou art 
Peter, etc." 

But are the claims, as expressed in the Vatican Council, in 
substance different from those made by the Roman See from 
the beginning ? I say, " in substance," for one must, in all 
reason, allow for development in everything but what is of the 
substance. In the history of the Church, from St. Clement's 
time onwards, I see many facts which make for the truth cf 
the Papal claims with varying degrees of cogency ; and I cer- 
tainly see some which make against it. But difficulties are to 
be expected. Difficulties exist in the proof of any Christian 
doctrine. Are the facts which seem to make against the truth 
of the Papal claims more insurmountable than those which 
seem to make against the truth of the Real Presence, the Eu- 
charistic Sacrifice, the Sacrament of Penance ? For, in com- 



ig8 THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN [May, 

mon with Greeks and Latins, and some advanced Anglicans, I 
am convinced that these doctrines are to be believed as being 
a part of the original deposit, in spite of these adverse facts. 
Unless the difficulties in respect of the Papal claims are very 
considerably greater than the difficulties in respect of the above- 
mentioned doctrines, one is not justified in regarding as proved 
the case against these claims. 

Just as there are limits to be placed to self-analysis, so 
are there limits to be placed to the analysis of history. To 
affirm that one knows all the facts of the history of two thou- 
sand years, to claim that one can attach to each of them its 
proper weight and significance, would be, practically, to claim 
omniscience. And so I fall back upon the conviction that our 
Lord promised something to St. Peter in the Gospel. What 
that " something" was, and what it entailed to the Church to 
the end of the world, I believe can be better told me by St. 
Peter's successors than by any one else. And this belief reaches 
the fullness of a conviction when, as a matter of fact, I see that 
the traditional teaching of the Popes about their own position 
is uniform and proceeds on lines of steady and natural de- 
velopment ; and when I see also that the objectors to the Papal 
claims have never been able to agree together, or to maintain 
for long the same ground of attack, but are continually shift- 
ing their position, and neutralizing the force of each other's 
arguments. 

I can well understand that the Papal claims assume altogether 
exaggerated proportions in the minds of people in my position, 
and that Anglicanism has preternaturally sharpened our facul- 
ties to detect and make the most of all that can be said against 
them. And so, I am ready to admit that, even now, I may 
not realize, in all its fullness, the force of what can be urged 
in their support. 

* * * 

In answer to a letter from me to Canon M , he writes : 

What you say of yourself interests me intensely. Far from 
me be the idea of saying, as you humbly suppose : " This is 
all very well ; but he said something like this months ago, and 
he is an Anglican still." The process of conversion is so in- 
tricate, that one wonders how one ever gets to the end of it. 
Similar phases must often recur in similar cases. I think that 
you were rather premature in taking up work again in the 
Anglican Church; for your mind was never made up in favor 



1908.] THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN 199 

of it again. But the position of men of catholic mind like your- 
self, in that system of contradictions which constitutes the 
Establishment, is always so peculiar, so artificial, that you had 
not the difficulty which ordinary men might, nay must exper- 
ience, in contributing to uphold what they consider wrong. 
You distinguish between the responsibility which you have as 
a private, individual minister, and that public responsibility for 
your brethren which you have before those outside your own 
Church. Be sure that I will pray for you harder than ever. 
* * * 

To this charitable reply I made the following explanation : 

I want to see more of the inside of things, and to get to 
know some people on the other side. One of your clergy said 
to me the other day, that sometimes Anglicans, whose knowl- 
edge of Rome is confined to books and the outside of things, 
find, when they " go over," that things are very different from 
what they expected ; and so are upset and unhappy and create 
an atmosphere of restlessness round about them. He was very 
strong on the duty of finding out things as they are, before 
taking the final step. I have no love for " Liberal Catholi- 
cism," as it exhibits itself in articles and letters in the news- 
papers. I dread, above all things, getting into such a state of 
mind. Better remain where I am than that. 

I have carefully read the " Pastoral Letter " against Liberal 
Catholicism, and can quite well understand that part of it which 
warns the clergy against receiving converts too readily, before 
they have grasped the true conception of Church authority. It 
is satisfactory to discover, that the conception of the Church, 
as the organ of the Divine Teacher, is the very conception 
which has been taking shape in my mind during the course of 
some five years past. I mean if there be a Catholic Church 
at all, it must be what the bishops say it is. 

Perhaps the conception of the Papacy in my mind is still 
inadequate. I cannot tell; and Anglicans cannot tell me either. 
I do not want to " go over " with less than the fullest belief in 
this dogma. 

I have given up worrying about my own motives. Angli- 
cans naturally blamed me for being impatient, or restless, or 
proud. I honestly tried to believe that such faults were at the 
bottom of my unsettlement ; but unless God is allowing me to 
be quite blind as to my state, I must honestly say that I can- 
not trace my unsettlement to these, or to similar faults. I sup- 



200 THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN [May, 

pose there comes a time, when a man must say that he is the 
best judge of his own motives. I believe my motive all along 
though, as you will understand, I have often failed in obedi- 
ence to it has been obedience to the Will of God. 

You will ask : " What, then, keeps you back ? " Two things : 

1. Uncertainty as to whether my belief in Papal Infallibility 
and Jurisdiction is already full enough. 

2. Simple nervousness at an unknown future ; attachment to 
old friends and things ; fear that I may not like persons and 
things on the other side; or that I may be viewed with dis- 
trust; and so forth. No one but a person who has been, or 
who is, in my position can fully realize all one feels in this 
condition. 

* * * 
To this Canon M answered in these terms : 

After all, speaking logically, the truth is the truth. Your 
motive for submitting to the One Church which has come down 
from the Apostles will be, that this is God's Will. If we are 
agreeable, or disagreeable when you join us, the fault will be 
ours, not that of the Church; and the suffering will be inevit- 
able, if we are so bad. The fact is that, as a whole, the 
Catholic clergy are the simplest and heartiest of men. There 
are foolish, inconsistent, grumpy, grumbling characters in every 
system ; but they do not represent the system, only the de- 
fects thereof. The question of the Pope's position is more im- 
portant. You must not join us until you have realized that 
truth. A quiet talk with one person, or two, is perhaps the 
best thing you could have. 

* * * 

In the forenoon I rode to . In the ordinary course of 

events, I should have made my confession; but I thought it 
right first to state plainly how I now stood. My confessor 
tried some of the old commonplaces of history, but without 
effect. His parable, stated in my own language, was some- 
what as follows : Last summer I did only half my work. I 
found myself unable conscientiously to accept the Roman theory 
of the Church. But, besides this, I ought to have reconsid- 
ered my own religious position; that is, not only the articles 
of my belief, but the grounds on which I believed. Then, 
having thus eliminated from my spiritual system everything 
savoring of Roman methods and ways of thinking, I ought to 
have undertaken a work of reconstruction. 



1908.] THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN 201 

On what lines was I to reconstruct ? It is significant that my 
confessor never hinted at Anglican formularies, or tests, in con- 
formity with which I was to set to work. His last word seems to 
be, I must bring myself into line with Gore. In Gore will be 
my salvation from Rome. And in his teaching I am to find 
the true rule of faith. 

* * * 

As far as I can follow my confessor, the sum of Christian- 
ity is faith in Jesus Christ. This he connects, in some way, 
with Baptism, but chiefly with prayer and that is all. This 
is the true attitude contrasted with the attitude of the Protest- 
ant, who rests his faith on a book ; and of the Roman Catho- 
lic, who rests his on an institution. The Anglican, apparently, 
rests it on nothing. My defense was this: To pull down the 
edifice of one's religious belief is a serious matter. Why begin 
to doubt things about which I have no doubt ? Having once 
begun the work of demolition, at what point am I to stop ? 
As to taking Gore as an inspired prophet, or oracle, that I 
absolutely decline to do. In my present isolated and external 
position, I might as reasonably take any prominent Low- 
Churchman as my guide. If I can be loyal to the Anglican 
Church only by becoming a disciple of Gore, that is an addi- 
tional reason for leaving her. 

I have no power of stopping halfway, of retaining hold of 
just so many articles of belief as are convenient, or sensible, 
or are in harmony with the spirit of the age. It is because I 
seriously accepted the principles which High. Churchmen taught 
me, and acted on them, that I find myself where I am. Now 
it is as if my teachers were frightened at the results of their 
own teaching. They seem to say to me : We never meant you 
to take these things seriously. We never meant you to take 
them as principles at all. You should have adopted them as 
ornaments to make your religion more poetical and attractive. 
* * * 

For myself, I feel that those few Roman Catholic priests 
who have become Unitarian ministers, instead of being stumb- 
ling blocks, are aids to faith ; inasmuch as they show, that there 
is no possible middle position for one who has once believed 
in the Catholic position : he must hold all, or must give up all. 
I cannot reconstruct my religious belief on the grounds sug- 
gested, because, on the one hand, I do not doubt the truth of 
what I hold; and on the other, I believe the kind of religious 



202 THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN [May, 

position now put before me to be false and insecure. At the 
same time, I no longer doubt my own motives, nor fear that 
I am attracted by externals. So far as I am able to judge, 
what has been going on in me, for some five or six years past, 
can scarcely be anything else but God's work in my soul. As 
for the Church of England, I acquiesce in her because I am 
in her; but for me, she ceased to be a church two years ago. 
All I can see is a congeries of people who have little other 
bond of union than the use of a prayer book, and an agree- 
ment to differ on nearly every point of doctrine. I can, how- 
ever, be patient and trust myself to the Divine guidance; for 
I am sure that God will not allow me to be at peace in the 
Church of England, and grace will be given me to act when 
the end comes. 

* * * 

It is strange how Providence seems to have hindered one 
from reading certain books which lay ready to hand, until the 
proper time arrived for profiting by them. To day I began 
reading Dr. Newman's Difficulties of Anglicans in Catholic 
Teaching, Newman has never appealed to me, or influenced 
me. I have hitherto been unable to understand wherein his 
great power lay ; but I understand it now. This book, though 
fifty years old, might have been written yesterday, so well does 
it fit with the situation of things at present. Moreover, it 
might have been written by one who knew my inmost soul, 
and spoke directly to me. Cor ad cor loquitur. It is a book, 
I know quite well, that I shall never recover from. The last 
supports seem giving way. 

Besides Newman, 1 am also reading Cardinal Wiseman's 
Essays, Vol. II. (Vols. III. and IV. of the newer edition, 
1853). One thing strikes me as I read how completely the 
Anglican arguments were answered, from the very start of the 
Movement, by Wiseman, while Newman, a few years later, 
shows how false and unreal the whole Movement was; and yet, 
Anglicans go on ignoring this refutation from one generation 
to another. Having discovered for myself the artificiality of 
the Anglican position, these articles and lectures by Wiseman 
and Newman read fresh, virile, and sensible. 

* * # 

Went early to London and paid a visit to the church of the 
Oratory. I remember being in it many years ago, shortly after 
the new fabric was opened. It had then neither form nor come- 



1908.] THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN 203 

liness in my eyes, for I was going through the usual Gothic 
craze. To-day, I looked at it with other eyes. I felt as if I 
were in Rome itself. Later on I had a long talk with Father 

P f at St. 's. None of my Roman friends were daunted 

at my halt on the onward path last summer; or, at least, they 
judge me charitably in regard to it. They rightly calculated 
on things working out as they have done. The father repeated 
a good deal he had said to me before. He considers my con- 
viction adequate for reception; but, I still wish for further ad- 
vice on this point. I came away much comforted and encour- 
aged, for I see, more clearly than ever, that I am neither mis- 
taken nor deluded. 

* * * 

My Anglican friends have returned to the charge, ar.d are 
pressing upon me all their arguments, with the result of rous- 
ing in my mind all the old Protestant doubts and difficulties. 
Once more the question seems too vast for me even to see on 
which side the truth lies. Moreover, "personal influences" 
have again been cruelly used against me, the effect of which 
has been to paralyze my will, and make it incapable of deci- 
sion, or indeed of action. It is discouraging to find, after all 
one has gone through, that one is still no nearer the end than 
before. In short, as things seem now, I have no anticipation 
that the end will ever come to me. The strain of the last few 
weeks has quite overcome me; and I am unequal to take fur- 
ther thought on the subject. 

* * * 

Meantime, some passages in St. Augustine's Confessions 
seemed to apply strangely to myself : 

I did not wholly separate myself from the Manichees ; but, 
out of vexation at finding nothing better, I made up my mind 
to be provisionally content with such conclusions as I had 
blundered upon, till something preferable should break upon my 
life. (V. vii.) 

The thought sprang up in my mind, that the wisest philoso- 
phers were the academics, who held that all is doubtful, and 
that certainty is unattainable by man. (V. x.) 

I did not defend it (the Manichaean heresy) with the same 
keenness as of old ; yet, the friendships of men disinclined me 
to look for anything else, the more so, because I despaired of 
finding the truth in Thy church . . . for, from this they 
had alienated me. (V. x.) 



204 THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN [May, 

My friend X to- day poured out his complaints before 

me : how unsettled he feels in religious matters ; how he con- 
ferred with some Catholic priests, and what they said ; how he 
tells his vicar all about it, and how kind and considerate the 
vicar is; how he sought consolation from a friend, and found 

him a sorry comforter; how he wrote to , of Cambridge, 

and how he never got an answer. 

Per contra, he considers my hesitation to accept such points 
as Papal Infallibility as academic and ridiculous, provided I 
have no other difficulties besides. He would have no difficul- 
ties of that kind. In short, he is not sure that his mind is not 
made up to go; only, he does not like the going. He would 

like me, or our common friend, , to go first and tell him 

how we found it. If one or other went, he says it would de- 
cide him. 

He talks of going to London to confer with Father . 

A fortnight later he was received into the Church by Bishop 
Brownlow, of Clifton thanks be to God. By his submission 

X risked his whole worldly prospects for what he felt his 

conscience asked of him. 

* * * 

Away from home ; was present at tierce in the chapel of the 

clergy- house. They use "Breviary Offices"; and I was 

amused to hear my old friend, , repeating the antiphons 

and responses of the Octave of the Assumption, a thing he would 
have sternly denounced in past years. He has a quiet way of 
changing his religious position, without knowing that he has 
changed it. He would deny that he had changed, and would 
be very cross with any one who accused him of having done 
so. The particular position he holds for the moment is the 
Catholic position, all others erring either by excess or by defect. 

* * * 

Read a pamphlet on the Anglican doctrine of the Eucharist. 
It is able and well expressed, the work of a man who knows 
his own mind, and thinks closely and clearly. I found it very 
interesting, for it confirms some of the points which my friend, 

Y , and I had worked out for ourselves. The main point 

of the pamphlet is to prove that the Eucharistic teaching of 
the Tractarians is " a development," unsupported by the teach- 
ing of either the Caroline divines, or of the Protestant Reform- 
ers. Not until the rise of Tractarianism, had Anglicans ever 



1908.] THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN 205 

taught that there was a Real Presence, localized, so to speak, 
in the Sacrament, independently of communion. 

* * * 

This evening I began to read Puller's Primitive Saints again. 
I am reading him more carefully. Perhaps the trouble one is 
going through has sharpened one's critical faculties. There 
now seems to me a distinction to be drawn between Puller's 
facts and Puller's conclusions from these facts. His facts may 
he true and be fairly stated; but I see that they do not ex- 
clude a conclusion being drawn from them, opposite to the one 
which he draws, and, indeed, even to favor it. Admitting his 
facts, one may, therefore, fairly question his interpretation. 
While reading his book, previously, one assumed that Puller's 
interpretation was the only one honestly deducible from his facts. 

* * * 

This has been a week of very great suffering. I am afraid 
that I have dishonored my conscience by going on in the Church 
of England. I fear that I am allowing " personal considera- 
tions " to take the first place. As for the simple dread which 
I feel at a plunge into unknown conditions, that I know to be 
purely constitutional. I was haunted by the same fear before 

my ordination at Theological College, where everybody 

and everything were encouraging me to go forward. Had it 

not been for , I should have drawn back from ordination 

at the last. Now, every one and all things are dead against 
me. I feel utterly weak and helpless. If ever I take the step, 
it will be a miracle of grace ; for, certainly, I am unable to 
take it by my own natural power. And yet, if I do not, I 
shall always accuse myself of cowardice and infidelity. 

* * # 

At this juncture came a letter from Y , who had, about 

a year before, become a Roman Catholic: 

Your letter was painful reading (he said). Either you are 
exaggerating your state of mind, or else I am afraid you are 
allowing yourself to run a great risk. Your position seems to 
me such an artificial one, that I am sure it cannot stand the 
strain long, but will soon collapse one way or the other ; and 
I am beginning to dread it may be the other. 

It is just so, I mentally replied. It would be so easy for 
me now to let things go; and for myself to drift along into 
unbelief in everything. 



2o6 THE DIARY OF AN ANGLICAN CLERGYMAN [May. 

I acn no longer honest in my position. I believe in the 
Roman Church as deeply as one can who remains outside it. 
The English Church has crumbled away to dust. I stay on, 
from personal reasons. There are now three points clear in 
my own mind : I believe in the Catholic Church ; I know that 
I ought to go; and I am losing self-respect. A friend suggests 
my traveling abroad. But Jonah tried that. I cannot see that 
a few months on the continent would alter the evidence for 
the Roman claims, though they would prolong the. agony, and 
might result in a relapse into indifferentism. Whilst reading 
Puller, I can see Papal Supremacy written across every page. 

# * * 

The end seems to have come at length. I am quite sure 
that it is wrong of me to celebrate in such a frame of mind 
as that in which I celebrated this morning. Things have now 
come to a head. I came away from church feeling that never 
again could I, or ought I, or would I, go up to celebrate at 
an Anglican altar. I am frightened; and yet am glad things 
have become so plain. 

I had a talk with the incumbent, who was effusively kind 
and sympathetic, and said he could always say to everybody 
that I had acted honorably by him. He added: It would be 
wrong for me to go on as I am ; and wrong for him to keep 

me. 

* * * 

Rome, November 28, 1901 : Words cannot express the hap- 
piness and comfort I felt as I once more walked up the nave 
of St. Peter's this afternoon. Now that I am safe in St. Peter's 
Barque, his Church has become far more to me than it can 
ever be to one who remains outside the True Fold. It is now 
a home the central shrine upon earth of one's faith. During 
the journey yesterday the very sight of a church filled me with 
contentment ; for I reflected that I had now as much right as 
any other Catholic to receive the Sacred Host reserved in its 
tabernacle. I could salute St. Peter's statue to-day frankly and 
in all reality, as confessing by that action my unquestioning 
faith in each and all of the doctrines of his Church ; I could 
kneel at his Confession, no longer as an outsider, but as one of 
the fellow-citizens of the saints, one of the household of God. 




WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS. 

BY H. E. P. 

II. 

A PATRIARCH OF MENDIP. 

IHE toad to his house lies across one of the best 
stretches of the Mendip hills. One may go by 
various ways three or four; but we turn off 
at Burnt Wood, the highest point of the road 
to Wells, just before one reaches that delightful 
view of the old towers of the cathedral, backed in the distance 
by Glastonbury Tor. It was the top of this lane, down which 
we are turning, and under shelter of the thick wood that was 
once the favorite haunt of highwaymen in early coaching days, 
if local stories may be trusted ; and it is certainly a suggestive 
spot in its loneliness even now. To-day the only living things 
to be seen are the rabbits which scamper across the road by 
the dozen, and nearly get under the bicycle wheel in their 
fright. A few minutes more and we are on the other Wells 
road a road better by far as an approach to the city than that 
we just left, if one is looking for a grand view. Under Pen 
Hill it twists and goes down, down into Wells, and all the 
time away to the left, and again in front, the country is spread 
out like a picture, from the Quantocks and the Welsh moun- 
tains to the Severn Sea. But we are not going along this road 
so far as Pen Hill, but only to the lodge gates of Hill Grove. 
A company of hatless patients are standing there, who have 
been rambling on the hills, trying to starve their unwelcome 
guests with the strong, pure air of the Mendips. Many look as 
if they had succeeded, for they are plump and rosy, while the 
newcomers cough wearily and seem to find the early days of 
the treatment as much as they can manage. 

. We turn off opposite this " Nordrach on Mendip," where 
the finger-post says the road goes to Priddy. There is noth- 
ing much to see at first, except that the whole character of 
the country is changing. Bleak, open stretches of land, with 



208 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [May, 

low stone walls, stunted trees which tell of wild winds and 
poor pasture, accounted for by the gray rocks scattered about 
everywhere this is all we see as we skim along the straight 
Roman road. Presently a chimney-top comes in view, and as 
we get nearer it grows to the full height of an ordinary fac- 
tory chimney in brick. It looks out of place and very lonely, 
and you wonder for what purpose a factory chimney exists in 
this wild. These are the Priddy lead-works. They seem now 
to be doing very little, although as they have come to an end 
twice before, perhaps they may yet be worked again. It was 
here probably that the Romans found and washed the lead they 
used in making their baths at Bath. The sturdy pipes they 
cast two thousand years ago still shoot the water to its place, 
and so thick are they, that they may well do their work for 
as long again. When the Priddy waters had washed the ore 
for the Romans, they took the best of the spoil away, but they 
did not take it all. A second time the refuse silt was washed 
through the men there told me "in King Charles' time " and 
further value obtained. And now to-day what was left after 
this second washing, is being washed yet again, and the yield 
till lately paid. But the first gleaning after the Roman har- 
vest gathered up the best, and this third washing promises to 
be the last. 

Priddy lead-works are behind us now, and the country is 
less wild. We are getting near to Priddy itself, and the land 
is cultivated again. It is not much of a place, and its chief 
feature is the green. Here once took place its famous wrest- 
ling matches, yearly at Whitsuntide. All the country round 
came to them, and rivals for the same maiden's hand settled 
their differences once and for all upon this green. It is very 
empty now, save for a few geese strolling about it, the usual 
donkey, and some stacks of hurdles square and black, waiting 
for the next folding season. The tower of the church is on our 
right, but we have no time for churches to-day, and almost 
directly we find ourselves on the other side of the village, and 
out again into the wild country. Ten minutes more and our 
bicycles are at the beginning of the Cheddar pass, and then we 
get a run, all down hill for two miles, right into the heart of 
the famous rocks. 

We are almost at our journey's end. On our left, spring- 
ing from the very roadway, rises a wall of rock four hundred 



i9o8.] WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS 209 

feet in height, whose turretted tops are finished off, in the 
blue space above, with an ever-wheeling crowd of jackdaws. 
Staid and rather matter-of-fact as is old Collinson in his His- 
tory of Somerset, which he wrote just a hundred years ago he 
cannot help breaking out a little when he describes these 
rocks. 

Proceeding in this winding passage the cliffs rise on either 
hand in the most picturesque forms, some of them being near 
eight hundred feet high, and terminating in craggy pyra- 
mids. On the right hand several of them are perpendicular 
to the height of four hundred feet, and resemble the shattered 
battlements of vast castles. On the left hand, or west side, 
are two also of this form which lean over the valley with a 
threatening aspect, and the tops of many others at the height 
of several hundred feet project over the heads of the spec- 
tators with terrifick grandeur. In general the swelling pro- 
jections on the one side, stand opposed to the corresponding 
hollows on the other ; which is a strong indication that this 
immense gap was formed by some dreadful convulsion of the 
earth. In passing along this valley, the awful scenery is con- 
tinually changing; but to observe all its beauties, it must be 
traversed backwards and forwards. In doing this there will 
be found ten points of view which are grand beyond descrip- 
tion, and where the prospects exhibit that wild and tre- 
mendous magnificence which cannot tail impressing the mind 
of the spectator with awe and astonishment of the works of 
that Power, whose voice even the obdurate rocks obey, and 
retire. 

In August, 1789, just about the time Collinson wrote the 
above, William Wilberforce visited the rocks. Hannah More 
says in her diary: 

The cliffs of Cheddar are esteemed the greatest curiosity in 

these parts. We recommended Mr. W not to quit the 

country till he had spent a day in surveying those tremendous 
works of nature. ... I was in the parlour when he re- 
turned. With the eagerness of vanity (having recommended 
the pleasure), I inquired how he liked the cliffs. He replied 
they were fine, but that the poverty and distress of the people 
was dreadful. This was all that passed. He retired to his 
apartment and dismissed even his reader. I said to his sister 

and mine, I feared Mr. W was not well. The cold 

chicken and wine put into the carriage for his dinner were re- 
turned untouched. Mr. W appeared at supper, seem- 

VOL. LXXXVII. 14 



210 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [May, 

ingly refreshed with a higher feast than we had sent him. 
The servant, at his desire, was dismissed, when immediately 
he began : " Miss Hannah More, something must be done for 
Cheddar." He then proceeded to a particular account of his 
day of the enquiries he had made respecting the poor. 
There was no resident minister, no manufactory, nor did 
there appear any dawn of comfort, either temporal or spir- 
itual. 

The result of the conversation and how Hannah More es- 
tablished schools, for which Wilberforce paid, may be read in 
this earnest diary. 

The inhabitants of Cheddar have changed since the day 
when good Mrs. More could write " there is as much knowl- 
edge of Christ in the interior of Africa as there is to be met 
with in this wretched, miserable place," but the cliffs are still 
much as Collinson describes them. The great wall of rock 
winds in and out, and as it twists with the road, we come 
suddenly upon those quarrying operations which have of late 
vexed the souls of so many. The work is being done on our 
right, and hence it is not the cliffs proper that are being 
blown up and broken down by the noisy paraffin-smelling stone 
cracker. Still the work and noise are out of place, and dis- 
turb the grand silence of the pass. 

Another twist of the road, and in only a few yards, we are 
out of sight and scent of the quarry, for a rampart of rocks bars 
the way. Now we may stop. Through an arch, where we pay 
a shilling, we walk straight up to the face of the cliff, which is 
hung with long trails of ivy and overgrown with trees. Here 
at last we find our patriarch at the entrance of his home and 
his tomb. He is resting, or as much of him as remains, in a 
glass case, pent-house shaped. His skull is in the middle, 
raised up, and surrounded below by what the pickax and 
dynamite have left of his pre-historic bones. The skeleton was 
found in December, 1903, while fresh openings were being made 
to extend the present cave. It lay in a layer of red, loamy 
cave-earth, upon a bed of stalagmite, and over the red loam, 
in the course of countless ages, another layer of stalagmite five 
or six inches in thickness had formed. It was the breaking up 
of this floor which so rudely disturbed the old man's long rest, 
and reduced him to such disorder. All round him were marks 
of his handiwork, for a hundred or so of flint instruments and 



1 908. ] WES T- CO UNTR Y ID YLLS 2 1 1 

their chips have been gathered up and put into the glass case. 
They form a sort of pebble beach, on which his broken bones 
rest uncomfortably, and coarse and uncouth as the skull sug- 
gests its ; owner to have been, yet these flints are cut with a 
certain fineness and delicacy which show he must have pos- 
sessed some intelligence. The lower jaw strikes you at once 
as being very different from a jaw of to-day. The sex of the 
skeleton has been taken for granted, for there does not seem 
enough of it left to enable the learned to say whether it be- 
longed to a gentleman or a lady ; but the massiveness, square- 
ness, and great strength of the bone in question raise the 
doubt whether the skeleton has been properly described. The 
jaw looks out of all proportion to the upper part of the head, 
and at least points to the ages that have passed since it was 
the fashionable type of the human race, and shows how we 
have developed in an upward direction. With flat shin-bone, 
instead of the more rounded form we possess, short to the 
knees, then longer up to the hips, with this coarse, brutal skull, 
the owner of the skeleton must have been a low- type savage, 
but little removed from the beasts. His height was only five 
feet three and three quarter inches, and this seems to tally ex- 
actly with that of other cave-dwellers of the same age, whose 
bones have been found at various times. As to the age when 
he lived, conjectures differ. The flint instruments give a clue, 
and the thickness of the stalagmite above his grave is also 
somewhat of an index, so that the time has been suggested as 
between forty and eighty thousand years ago. The man be- 
longed probably to the early Neolithic period, and beyond that 
it may be rash to make a statement. 

There he is then, in the archway of the cave, just in the 
place where he would often have sat, using his flint tools, 
thousands of years ago. We pass our old man, and enter his 
house. To-day there is no noisy crowd of sight-seers to giggle 
in the semi-darkness and make empty remarks about the shape 
and color of the stalagmite decorations, such as : " Lor, 'ain't 
that pretty ! " and " My blessed, it's just like 'am ! " No ; 
there is nothing to disturb the thoughts that almost appal, as 
to the age that that gray cave must be. Those grizzly bones 
in the doorway are so old that the mind can scarcely get back 
to the day when they were a frame for flesh, and held a beat- 
ing heart but what are they for age to that pearly stalagmite, 



212 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [May, 

no thicker than your wrist, which gleams like a jewel in the 
electric light ? Why, it was there in the darkness thousands of 
years before that old man's eyes ever fell on it, and it was 
but slightly less slender than it is to-day! But if this has 
taken untold ages to form, what about this column as thick as 
a big oak, away here to the right ? A pendant from the roof, 
twenty-five feet above, has joined the pillar rising from the 
floor beneath, and it has thickened and thickened as millions of 
lime-laden drops have fallen from the rocky ceiling. But they 
do not fall fast ; one every two minutes or so, is quick ; some- 
times only one in an hour. And how much does the drop de- 
posit when it falls a single grain of solid matter? Not the 
hundredth part of a grain very frequently ; often so little that 
a trace can scarcely be discovered with the minutest scientific 
care. What ages then have passed, what patience of the tiny 
drops, before that pillar was complete ! 

The uncouth boy who takes us through the cave, and turns 
on the electric light, has learned by heart all he has to say by 
way of information, and he screams it on a single high note, 
forgetting that we are two and not a party. The effect of his 
harsh, screeching voice in the cave, is to make it echo the last 
half of all he says. I had remarked to my companion that the 
old man was very short, which was convenient in a place where 
the ceilings were so low only five feet three. " Three and 
three-quarters," screeched the boy, correcting me as to the odd 
bit of the inch. "And three-quarters," yelled the cave back. 
"Three-quarters," came the echo from somewhere, much fur- 
ther away. And then, in the further distance, I heard the word 
" quarters " all by itself. It sounded as if the ghost of the old 
man was calling from these gloomy depths, and fighting to the 
last for his rights. When there is silence again, it is broken 
only by the music of the cave, for music it is, if you listen 
carefully the falling drops seem to take parts. There is the 
high tinkle of the tiny bead as it falls into the hole below, a 
smart splash somewhere near at hand, and then a deep sullen 
" blob," making a sort of bass, and caused by several drops 
running together and falling at once into a pool. There is ev- 
ery shade of sound and interval of time in this falling water, 
which thus keeps up an accompaniment, as it were, to its build- 
ing and its weaving. 

Just before we come back into the daylight we are shown 



1908.] WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS 213 

the spot where the old man was found. It is some thirty feet 
from the entrance, down a flight of steps on the left, through 
a little archway, and over a river-bed, which is said to flow 
about twenty feet beneath the floor, till it finds its way into the 
open, close by where we entered. As the spot is near the en- 
trance, we can imagine that the poor old savage crawled into 
this hole to die, or found it in his weakness a safer retreat 
from wild animals than the wide open cave. The boy who 
guided us always spoke of the old gentleman as if he had 
known him personally, and seemed to me to use the word "pre- 
historic " as if it was his Christian and surname. It probably 
conveyed as much meaning to him that way as any other. 

We are out into the open air again. The sun is making ar- 
rangements for going down, and the rocks are glowing in the 
light. The gray crags are golden, and the golden trees are 
red. The ivy glints like silver, and the briar berries and the 
fern are a blaze of fire. But it is only for a moment. Quickly 
a dull black shadow comes up from below, for the sun has sunk 
behind the rocks across the pass ; the wheeling jackdaws have 
stopped, and a cold autumn mist wraps up the cliffs for the 
night. 

The better way to return is by the road that leads through 
Chewton Mendip, as we have the advantage of a three-mile run 
down hill, so we turn off on our left when we come to the end 
of the road out of the pass. Before long we find ourselves on 
the very top of the Mendip hills, for we have been rising ever 
since we left the cliffs, and now we are at a height of over 
nine hundred feet. There in front of us, clear-cut against the 
sky, is that odd chain of "barrows" which gives its name to 
the place. What a contrast in burying places to the one we 
have just left ! Here they laid out their dead upon a moun- 
tain-top beneath a hillock and the stars ; there, back in that 
gloomy cavern, the lonely old man laid himself for his long 
cold sleep, while the waterdrops fretted a pall like ice above 
him. 

It is getting darker, and we may not stay to examine these 
giant mole-heaps on Mendip, and we fly down the hill past the 
Miners' Arms, on past Tor Hole, and so to Chewton and Em- 
borough, out on to the Wells road, and so home. 




A FRIEND OF THE LITTLE SISTERS. 

BY KATHARINE TYNAN. 

JHE Hon. Violet Frant was visiting her cousin the 
Duchess at the Little House of Loreto in the 
Bow Road. 

Bow associates itself with grime and poverty 
and meanness; but the House of the Little 
Sisters had once been a country house, and it still had its few 
acres of garden surrounding and isolating it from the seething, 
ugly world beyond. There was a high wall and a row of 
stumpy, pollarded trees, in which the birds sang delightfully in 
spring and summer. When the trees were bare the inhabitants 
of the opposite row of mean houses could see into the convent 
gardens and be seen; but in the leafy time the convent could 
forget that it had neighbors. 

Miss Frant had come and gone at the Little Sisters' since 
her charming babyhood. Her father, Lord Pelham, was the 
Duchess' first cousin, and they were attached friends, although 
Lord Pelham administered a considerable portion of the em- 
pire while the Duchess only administered the affairs of the 
Little Sisters and their old children. And that was not always 
so easy a matter as might be supposed. 

The Duchess by the way was not Duchess, but Reverend 
Mother to her little kingdom. There were several of the Little 
Sisters who had left their titles behind them in the world as well 
as she. Madame la Marquis and Madame la Comtesse were for- 
gotten in Sister St. John of the Cross and Sister Magdalen. You 
might see a lady who could trace her ancestry back half-a-dozen 
centuries picking an old mattress to pieces, or cutting garments 
for the old people out of discarded garments of benefactors. 
They fed on the bits and scraps left over when the best of the 
food given by hotels and restaurants and private people had 
been selected for their old children, for whom they begged from 
door to door. The Sisters worked incessantly and often disagree- 
ably, for the old people had to be waited upon, and in many in- 
stances washed and dressed like children ; they had to be made 
for, mended for; and they were often extremely cross. One 



1908.] A FRIEND OF THE LITTLE SISTERS 215 

old gentleman of ninety they were always " old ladies and 
gentlemen " to the Little Sisters had dealt the Marquise du 
Chateau Ferrand, otherwise Sister Frances, a resounding box on 
the ears one day when Violet Frant was looking on. The nun 
had apologized, turning deeply red, for the failure that had been 
punished by the box on the ear. After all, an old child of ninety 
is hardly accountable for what it does in its froward humors. 

To Violet Frant the life seemed one of unnatural austerities. 
She was a creature of a delicate refinement, and she felt that 
she could have endured austerities with any one, so long as 
the austerities were beautiful. But the work of the Little Sis- 
ters was often disagreeable, sometimes disgusting. Every one 
has not the vocation for minding old babies. With the Little 
Sisters nothing is wasted. The sight of a black- eyed French 
sister, who had been a great lady in the world, taking to pieces 
a feather bed which had seen much service, and showed it, af- 
fected Miss Frant with a sense of physical nausea. 

She said as much, being a privileged person, to her cousin 
the Duchess. There were things that refined ladies ought not 
to be asked to do. The Duchess smiled. 

" You have not the vocation, Vi," she said. " Your voca- 
tion is to marry Anthony Hamilton and bring him to God. 
You will serve God in laces and silks and fine linen ; your per- 
sonal beauty and charms are given to you by God to draw the 
soul of your lover to Him.'* 

Miss Frant shook her head. Why would not her cousin be- 
lieve that the rupture with Anthony Hamilton was final ? She 
had come to the Little Sisters to find balm for her broken 
heart. She had even expected to be approved and praised by 
her cousin because she had sacrificed her love for the most 
golden of golden youth to her religious ideals. Anthony Ham- 
ilton came of an old Catholic family, indeed, but he was gay, 
he was worldly, he was indifferent ; the world had taken pos- 
session of him, finding his youth and beauty and gaiety irre- 
sistible; he had laughed at Miss Frant when she had tried to 
lead him to her own lofty spiritual planes, quoting poetry to her : 

" Bid me to live and I will live 

Thy Protestant to be," 
and 

" Chide me not, Sweet, that thee I love 
More than the earth and heaven above." 



216 A FRIEND o* THE LITTLE SISTERS [May, 

Miss Frant would, in fact, drive him on too tight a rein. Though 
the sunniest of mortals, he had rebelled at last. She had been 
hard with him ; and, suddenly stern, he had told her that the 
next advances must come from her ; he was tired of serving so 
hard a task-mistress. 

Miss Frant, being perfectly aware of her own high-minded- 
ness in the matter, and also of how much she suffered, for 
Anthony Hamilton was not a lover to be lightly relinquished, 
had expected praise and consolation. And here was her cousin, 
a woman of the world as well as a saint, disapproving, not 
tacitly but frankly, of the rupture of her engagement and bid- 
ding her go back and make it up with her lover. 

On her way to the Little Sisters' Violet Frant had developed 
a vocation. Not for the Little Sisters. She said to herself that 
she could not endure that hers must be a clean austerity. 
Her thoughts went longingly to the Carmelites, who had a con- 
vent in a sequestered grove in Surrey where nightingales sang 
in their season and there were a green stillness and shade ; 
where a fountain plashed in a pleasant garden ; and doves 
wheeled in the sun through the quiet summer days. She 
thought she was certainly drawn to the Carmelites, and resolved 
to consult her confessor about it. And here was her cousin 
the Duchess, the Reverend Mother of the Little Sisters, bidding 
her go back to her lover and eat humble pie. 

" An engagement is only less solemn than a marriage," she 
had said ; " and since he loves you, you are responsible for him. 
A woman's grace and beauty are given to her by God that she 
may lay a golden chain over a man's heart to draw it to Him." 

Violet Frant was a delight to look at in the old gray house 
of the Little Sisters and their charges. She was very beauti- 
ful, fair and tall and gracious, with what her lover had called 
" everlasting eyes," deep, shining eyes of dark gray. She was 
always beautifully dressed, being one of the flowers of the 
world. Lord Pelham was a rich man and grudged his only 
child nothing. She had always gone to the best 'houses in 
London for her clothes. She would not have known how to 
do otherwise. In her silks and velvets and laces and sables 
she was extraordinarily exotic in the house of the Little Sis- 
ters. She was too precious and too remarkable in the East End 
to be allowed to go out even with a Little Sister ; so while she 
stayed she had perforce to take her exercise in the gardens. 



1908.] A FRIEND OF THE LITTLE SISTERS 217 

She was a constant delight to the old charges of the Little 
Sisters. The old ladies would finger her garments and calcu- 
late their cost; the old gentlemen would blink at her as though 
the sun had dazzled them and make her pretty speeches. They 
all knew her, many of them from her exquisite childhood, and 
they loved to see her come and go ; doubtless her beauty mak- 
ing to them unconsciously the bright spot in a life of safety 
and shelter, indeed, but the flat lands of old age, without 
color, without adventure, save what this brilliant young crea- 
ture supplied. 

Miss Frant had no idea that the Duchess had had a letter 
from Lord Pelham. She would not have liked the allusion to 
her charming self. 

"Vi has got a bee in her bonnet that she wants to go to 
the Carmelites," he said. ""She has been driving Anthony 
Hamilton on a tight rein. The lad is well enough wonderful- 
ly unspoilt considering how the women run after him. Vi 
wants a saint for a husband. I am not sure that I want a 
saint for a son-in-law. A decent fellow is good enough for 
me; and I am satisfied with Anthony Hamilton. Send her 
back in a better frame of mind. This talk about vocations 
worries me unnecessarily, I am sure." 

This time Miss Frant's stay at the Little Sisters' extended 
to quite an unusual period. The Duchess had an idea that the 
young lady had expected her lover to follow her and make his 
submission ; but if she had expected that it did not come about. 
The Duchess, watching her young cousin, saw that there was 
a cloud upon her beauty. She looked sad when she was ab- 
stracted in thought. There were purple lines about her beau- 
tiful eyes; she was languid and confessed that she did not sleep 
well at nights. 

(< The East End does not agree with you, Vi," the Duchess 
said one day. " You are not looking well. Why not write and 
say you have changed your mind about one of those invitations 
you refused. Why not go to the Riviera for Christmas with 
the Warringtons ? Or why not go down to Quest for Christ- 
mas ? " 

" I should be all alone. Papa has arranged his Christmas 
holiday, excluding me, since he knew I meant to spend it with 
you. He goes to Vienna first, to the Ambassador; then into 
Bavaria. What should I do with a big empty house at Christ- 



218 A FRIEND OF THE LITTLE SISTERS [May, 

mas ? And the servants would be put out. They are looking 
to enjoy their Christmas without any one to wait upon." 

" And where does Anthony Hamilton spend Christmas ? " 

" My dear cousin, I do not know. Mr, Hamilton's move- 
ments do not interest me." 

" Ah ! I am sorry, Vi. I don't see how you can help being 
interested though." 

It was most irritating to Miss Frant that the Duchess 
would not take seriously her vocation to the Carmelites. It 
was as bad as papa, who never protested, but went on mak- 
ing arrangements for the future, for Violet's as well as his own, 
which left the Carmelites out. It was not in her dream of the 
spiritual happiness that should make up for the lost earthly 
happiness that the Duchess should join with papa in ignoring 
her vocation. 

The month was December. It was too cold for the garden, 
except for the brisk constitutional which the Duchess insisted 
upon. Violet did not feel at all brisk; but in the walk round 
and round the garden she was accompanied by one or other of 
the Little Sisters, who kept her up to it. The place was less 
cheerful than in the old times when she had talked with the 
old ladies and gentlemen, and derived much pleasure and 
amusement from their oddities. She was less interested in her 
friends among the Little Sisters. Somehow it had been differ- 
ent when she had come for a brief visit, and the world had 
lain, smiling its invitation to her, beyond the gates of the 
House of Loreto. 

As the days grew to weeks, and Anthony Hamilton made 
no sign, her heart was really sick within her. One day, in a 
passion of grief and resentment, she had sent him back his 
ring; she had not in the least meditated such a strong measure 
as that when she had run away from him to the Little Sisters. 
She had hoped he would come after her in her secret heart ; 
even while she talked, and thought she talked sincerely, of the 
Carmelites. She had thought that he would abase himself be- 
fore her and that she might consent at last to stoop and lift 
him to her own heights. And, lo and behold, he had taken 
her dismissal without an attempt to alter her decision ; he had 
received the ring, that had meant so much when it was given, 
without a protest. Well, she would be done with him when 
she had escaped to the Carmelites. She wondered what he 



1908.] A FRIEND OF THE LITTLE SISTERS 219 

would think and feel when he heard that the impassable barrier 
of the convent had fallen between her and him. Would he be 
sorry that he had let her go so easily after all ? 

She made up her mind now that she would not go back to 
the world at all. She would stay at the Little Sisters till her 
father, influenced at last by her earnestness, gave her permis- 
sion to go to the Carmelites. She would not face a world 
where any day she and Anthony Hamilton might meet. Doubt- 
less he had consoled himself. There were plenty ready to 
console him, to make him forget her. Her heart ached atro- 
ciously while she said it he had been so entirely hers. If 
only she could have lifted him to her own heights. 

She secluded herself a good deal in the nun's cell which 
had always been her bedroom when she visited the convent. 
Concessions had been made to her a couple cf rugs put down, 
linen sheets and white woollen blankets on the pallet, where a 
Little Sister would have had sheets of the coarsest and other 
people's worn-out blankets. There was a looking-glass for her 
special behoof; a wicker easy-chair; a fire was laid in the 
grate so that she should not sit cold. 

She left the fire unlit, even though it necessitated her 
wearing her lurs. She rolled up the rugs and touched the 
bare floor with her feet. She sat on a penitential chair, while 
she read over to herself the spiritual exercises of St. Teresa, 
and St. Francis de Sales' On the Love of God. 

She warmed herself in feeling cold and miserable, and felt 
injured when Sister Martina descended upon her with instruc- 
tions from Reverend Mother to light her fire. She objected to 
the delicate fare provided for her, even while her soul revolted 
at the food the Little Sisters ate and thanked God for. She 
would have liked a diet of the most austere so long as it was 
dainty. The sisters, eating the coarser, less inviting portions 
of what was given to them for their charges, filled her with 
something that was almost disgust. 

It had been a fine, open, mild December up to this. A 
few yellowed leaves yet shook upon the boughs in the convent 
garden. The Little Sisters were grateful for the mild weather, 
because it was so hard to keep the old folk warm when it was 
very cold. When the cold came there would be a crop of 
funerals at the Little Sisters'. The bed-ridden folk, despite all 



220 A FRIEND OF THE LITTLE SISTERS [May, 

that could be done, died easily of the cold, the fire having gone 
out in their old bodies. 

So the Little Sisters, who had their affection for the old 
people, thanked God for the mild season. The thrushes and 
blackbirds were beginning to sing, although the beginning of 
winter was a week ahead. The old people grumbled no more 
than usual when they crowded about the fires, the coals for 
which had been begged by the Little Sisters, even sifted by 
them out of heaps of ashes. And Miss Frant took no harm 
from her self-imposed austerities which, as she said to herself, 
were preparing her for the Carmelites. 

She was making a new gown for herself with unheard-of 
difficulty, with much pricking of her finger, and many blunders 
a gown of black nun's veiling, of the most nun-like straight- 
ness and skimpiness. 

" Better let Sister Bernadine help you," the Duchess had 
said. "Even a nun's habit requites fitting." 

She had surprised Miss Frant at her task, to the girl's dis- 
comfiture, and her eyes had twinkled in the shadow of her 
veil. 

" I had to get something," Violet protested shamefacedly, 
" I was like Madame Louise of France, who when she went 
to the Carmelites had no simpler dress in her wardrobe to 
wear, cleaning the pots and pans, than a perfectly plain tight- 
fitting gown of rose pink satin. I hate all my fine frocks when 
I think of how you and the old people are clad." 

"Don't hate them, Vi. The old people like them so much. 
I believe we do. Your gray gown now, with the gray velvet 
hat and the white ostrich plume, gives me positive pleasure, al- 
though I have had my silver jubilee as a Little Sister. You 
are our one peep into the world, my child. And St. Francis 
de Sales was of opinion that ladies should dress according to 
their station. Lord Pelham's daughter should dress beautifully 
which you do, Vi. We shall have no delight of this black 
sack of yours." 

The Duchess would go on believing her to be a worldling, 
without a real vocation for the Carmelites. Violet had a feel- 
ing that the Duchess even thought that she might stay over- 
long with them this time. All the world would be coming to 
town after Christmas, at least a considerable portion of it. 
There would be ministerial dinners and parties. Was Lord 



1908.] A FRIEND OF THE LITTLE SISTERS 221 

Pelham to be left without his hostess ? The Duchess let a 
word fall now and again which betrayed her thought that Violet 
should presently be by her father's side and not occupied with 
making frocks against the Carmelites. Violet was hurt about 
it ; she had looked to the Duchess to help her with her father. 

Letters followed her to the Little Sisters', worldly letters 
sometimes which jarred upon her mood. A letter from Lady 
Grizel Beauclerk, a smart and rather frivolous young matron, 
brought a disturbing element into her thoughts; a sentence of 
it troubled her more than she could have believed possible. 

" Anthony Hamilton is epris with Mary Trefusis," it ran. 
" My dearest Vi, praying is all very well, but why not come 
back and fight for your own ? " 

Mary Trefusis was not a negligible rival. She too was of 
the old religion a charming girl, who was like a light in the 
world. Violet had had for her a young girl's adoration for an 
older one. Why, Mary Trefusis could drive such a one as 
Violet Frant completely out of the heart into which she chose 
to enter. 

She began to wonder if she had not been a little too un- 
yielding, too certain of herself too priggish, too pharisaical. 
Papa had said she was. He had almost lost his invariable good 
temper Lord Pelham sat at life like the spectator at a good 
play in rebuking her attitude towards Anthony Hamilton. He 
was very fond of Anthony Hamilton, who was in the Foreign 
Office, and thought well of his future. And she knew the 
Duchess bore with her as one does with a froward child. If 
it was true about Anthony and Mary Trefusis, then she would 
have given him up with her own hands. Why could she not 
have been more patient? She had expected too much of An- 
thony. Every one had said so. Was she to be wiser than 
papa and Cousin Ermyntrude that is to say the Duchess ? 
Why what was coming to her ? Some sharp grief began to 
ache in her. Was it possible that she wanted Anthony just as 
he was no impossible perfection, but just Anthony ? 

About the middle of the mild, gray December day a pall of 
fog swept in from the sea. London had been peculiarly exempt 
from fogs so far that season. Now the pall settled down with 
a suddenness. It was a cotton- wool fog, which presses on all 
the senses with a numbing force. In a cotton-wool fog one 
cannot hear, one cannot see, one cannot breathe; there is some- 



222 A FRIEND OF THE LITTLE SISTERS [May, 

thing terrifying in the way in which the familiar landmarks are 
blotted out. Where you could have found your way blindfold 
you are absolutely lost, at sea. 

All London was paralyzed, all traffic stopped ; life suspended 
under the immense pall of fog; and Sister Louis and Sister 
Imelda were out questing. 

There was dismay among the Little Sisters. How were they 
to get home? They had gone far afield into the West End, 
where Sister Louis and Sister Imelda were well known. Sister 
Louis' brogue and her blue eyes and her smile coaxed gifts 
from the most unlikely quarters. She was a true daughter of 
Erin ; and of a superabundant energy and enterprise. Once 
she had driven home a pig, offered her in jest, from the cat- 
tle-market, right across London, had built a stye herself to 
house him, and had wept when he fattened and had to be sold, 
because he had become a pet and very knowledgeable. 

The fog was an unusually dense visitation; and the Little 
Sisters, who were given to accepting all that came as in the 
day's work and something sent by the good God, might be par- 
doned for their perturbation. Besides Sister Louis was driving 
a new horse in the little covered wagon that was known so 
well up and down London streets. He was not so wise as old 
Dobbin, who had been put out to grass for the remainder of 
his days. Dobbin would have found his way home through the 
fog as he had done before. But now Sister Louis would have 
to depend on herself, unaided by the wonderful instinct of the 
dumb creature. 

All day the sisters prayed for the fog to lift, without an- 
swer to their prayers. It only thickened. The House of Lo- 
reto might have been in the midst of a great desert. There 
was a strange sense of silence, of aloofness from all the world. 
The short afternoon changed to evening. The lights had been 
lit all day. All day the curtain of the fog had hung in the 
rooms, blown hither and thither when a door opened like a 
substantial thing. With the coming of night the fog took on 
a new terror. It was unheard-of that a Little Sister should 
pass the night outside the House of Loreto. Five o'clock came, 
six, seven and there was no sign of the two questing sisters. 

The old people were all on their knees praying for the safe 
return of the wanderers. The sisters were murmuring prayers 
to themselves as they went to and fro about their duties. 



i9o8.] A FRIEND OF THE LITTLE SISTERS 223 

There was a hush and a consternation over the evening meal, 
which the Duchess tried to lift by cheerful and sober talk. 

Suddenly in the midst of the meal the bell of the hall- door 
clanged. All the Little Sisters were on their feet. For once 
discipline was forgotten. Sister Matthew, the portress, ran with 
her clanking keys. There was a hurry, a bustle, a happy con- 
fusion and the two missing sisters were in the midst of the 
rejoicing throng. 

Old Simon, who had been a coachman in his mundane days, 
had taken charge of the horse and van ; so that Sister Louis 
was free to tell all her adventures. Sister Louis was as talka- 
tive as Sister Imelda was taciturn. Sister Imelda could only 
turn her black eyes up to heaven and wave her hands in the 
air. The narrative of their adventures lost nothing in Sister 
Louis' telling of it. 

They were not famished, oh, no; they were not at all fam- 
ished. That dear angel from heaven had fed them luxuriously 
before piloting them through the fog. "That dear angel?" 
Yes ; Sister Louis would tell Reverend Mother all about it. 
When she had told all they could judge whether the Lord had 
not sent an angel to their help or not. 

They had been in Piccadilly when the fog had swept down 
on them ; and they had made their way by infinitesimal de- 
grees down St. James Street and into Pall Mall. In Pall Mall 
the clubs were showing great lights which only made indistinct 
patches of luridness through the fog ; but here and there the 
police were guiding the traffic by means of flare-lights ; and 
urchins were rushing hither and thither with torches, offering 
to take foot-passengers across the streets for a penny. 

Half-way down Pall Mall the new horse came to a full stop, 
terrified, poor beast. He was Irish-bred and had never beheld 
such a thing before. Sister Louis had got down and was try- 
ing in vain to induce him to move. She was illumined by one 
of the flare lights. Suddenly a young gentleman came, as she 
conjectured, from one of the clubs or from heaven perhaps. 
He was beautiful enough for heaven ; and he had a rose in his 
coat. As for his garments words failed Sister Louis to de- 
scribe how he was clad as the lilies of the field. 

He had run to Sister Louis' assistance ; had put her back 
in the wagon and taken the horse's head. The horse had 
yielded to his persuasions. Step by step they had walked 



224 A FRIEND OF THE LITTLE SISTERS [May, 

through the world of dirty cotton-wool, with a golden haze 
somewhere beyond. The sisters, under the tilt of the wagon, 
could not see their benefactor; but they went steadily on. 
Now and again his cheery voice came back to them out of the 
darkness. He had a dear voice, said Sister Louis, really and 
truly like an angel of God. 

Somewhere, where the flare beyond the darkness was very 
great, the wagon stopped and the gentleman came back to 
them. He asked them to wait a second or two. Presently he 
returned to them bringing them hot coffee and the most deli- 
cious food they had ever tasted. Really and truly the food and 
the coffee might have come from heaven. And they had been 
chilled to the bone and ready to faint from the fear. 

The dear angel had led them every step of the way to their 
own door. At the gate he had said good-bye, lifting a top- 
hat, the polish of which had impressed itself on Sister Louis 
despite the fog. He had Sister Louis opened her hand; she 
had been forgetting he had thrust something into her hand. 
She unrolled the crisp scrap of paper it was a Bank of Eng- 
land note for ten pounds. 

"Ah! blood yet tells," the Duchess said, looking highly 
pleased, while Sister Louis asked if it was not likely that the 
club-man from Pall Mall were not an angel of heaven. 

The House of Loreto prayed every day for this new bene- 
factor, who was to be in the bede-roll of the sisters forever 
and ever. The sisters were still divided as to whether he was 
mortal man or supernatural. He had grown in Sister Louis* 
account of him till he looked like the Archangel Michael. He 
was that tall, Sister Louis said, indicating some eight feet of 
height, and forgetting how the fog magnifies till men are as 
trees walking. 

The fog lasted nearly a week that time, and was long re- 
membered for the paralysis of life in London town. It lifted 
at last and the wind blew like May. Vi's black robe was fin- 
ished with the aid of Sister Bernardine. It did not become 
her. She had not the relief of the nun's white coif. In the 
little greenish glass, which was all the convent afforded, she 
looked like a ghost. She could not help comparing herself with 
that radiant creature, Mary Trefusis. She was really, genuinely 
disappointed. She had expected something quite different when 
she looked in the glass. She had forgotten that the glass was 



1908.] A FRIEND OF THE LITTLE SISTERS 225 

almost deliberately unkind, an ill-colored thing, with the quick- 
silver gone in patches. 

There was a tap at the door. A gentleman to see Miss 
Frant. 

Violet's heart gave an illogical leap, then dropped to a so- 
berer pace. It would be, of course, papa. Papa had promised 
to see her before he left town. 

She had a momentary hesitation about her dress then de- 
cided not to keep Lord Pelham waiting. In his leisured way 
he was, as might be expected, uncommonly busy. The Pan- 
hard probably was panting at the door to carry him back to 
Downing Street. 

She ran downstairs and into the austere, brown-panelled 
parlor of the Little Sisters. Against a brown window-shutter 
she saw a gracious head not papa's. All of a sudden she for- 
got that Anthony was a worldling, not serious enough for one 
with her ideals and traditions. She forgot Mary Trefusis. She 
forgot the Carmelites. 

" My darling, what have you been doing to yourself?" cried 
Anthony's dear voice, for which she had been pining, starving, 
dying all these sad days. She was in Anthony Hamilton's 
arms. 

Never before surely at least in the occupancy of the Little 
Sisters had such a meeting taken place in the austere brown 
parlor, with the picture of an anguished saint for sole orna- 
ment. The reconciliation was complete. There could never 
again be misunderstanding between them. Lord Pelham had 
sent Anthony Hamilton flying in a wild panic to the House of 
Loreto because of the story of the vocation to the Carmelites. 
Now, when was she coming back to-day, to-morrow ? He 
wanted to see her out of that black thing in which she looked 
adorable, dreadful. His sister Hilda was in town and had sent 
her messages. She was to come to Hilda till Lord Pelham 
returned to town. 

While he whispered he had slipped her ring back onto her 
finger. They were looking into each other's eyes in a quiet 
rapture. 

The door opened and they separated. There was a delicious 

smell of French coffee as Sister Louis came in carrying a tray. 

The Little Sisters were genuinely hospitable ; and their cooking 

was dainty when it was not for themselves. The coffee was 

VOL. LXXXVII. -15 



226 A FRIEND OF THE LITTLE SISTERS [May. 

accompanied by French rolls and a little pat of honey- colored 
butter. 

" Reverend Mother sends her compliments," she began, as 
she put down the tray; and then uttered a little shriek. 

" It is our young gentleman," she cried, running to Anthony 
Hamilton and shaking him vigorously by the hand. " Our 
young gentleman. The convent benefactor." Sister Louis had 
been praying that his name might be revealed to them if in- 
deed he were not St. Michael. 

Some of the Little Sisters were rather disappointed that it 
was Anthony Hamilton and not St. Michael who had rescued 
Sister Louis and Sister Imelda in the fog. But, after all, there 
was enough of the marvelous in the fact that it should have 
been the fiance of Reverend Mother's cousin to satisfy most of 
them. 

Miss Frant took the revelation of her lover's hidden act of 
kindness with characteristic enthusiasm. In fact, swinging round 
the other way, she was inclined to set him on a pedestal ; for 
which position Anthony Hamilton had no inclination. She 
asked herself rhetorically how she had dared to look upon him 
as worldly and unsuited to her seriousness, till she saw that she 
was making her lover unhappy by her humility a mood which 
stirred her father to cynical amusement and set the Duchess' 
eyes to dance in the shadow of her veil. 

London was robbed of one of its great weddings that year; 
for, by special arrangement, the marriage of Lord Pelham's 
daughter with Mr. Anthony Hamilton took place in the private 
chapel of the Little Sisters. The spectators were almost limited 
to the Little Sisters and their " old ladies and gentlemen "; and 
the breakfast cooked by Sister Pelagic was a revelation to the 
few guests from the outside world who had not known that 
the Little Sisters numbered a great culinary artist as well as a 
great lady among their numbers. 




THE MODERN WORLD AND THE SACRAMENTAL LIFE. 

BY CORNELIUS CLIFFORD. 

IF the researches of the past quarter of a century 
have gravely modified our outlook upon that an- 
cient formative world in which Catholicism first 
took root, they have also had the compensating 
effect of deepening our appreciation of the essen- 
tially evangelical character of much that was once confidently 
described in certain quarters as the product of a later period 
of growth. This is strikingly illustrated in the liturgical history 
of Penance and the Eucharist. With the dogmatic implications 
involved in certain theories that have gained currency at differ- 
ent epochs in response, it would seem, to the need of a popu- 
lar metaphysic of these living Sacraments, we need not delay 
now. It will be more to the purpose, we imagine, if we post- 
pone our consideration of them until we come to speak of Ca- 
tholicism under the Gospel category of Truth. For the present, 
therefore, it will be enough to point out that for the candid 
thinker who has taken the trouble to examine the facts of the 
case there need not be any serious difficulty on this score. 
The pronouncements of Trent will remain as they were ; and 
the assured results of modern scholarship will be found, in the 
long event, to justify at once their extraordinary courage and 
their equally extraordinary reserve. 

What recent research, therefore, may be said to have done 
for the traditional attitude of Catholicism towards Penance and 
the Eucharist, especially as viewed under their several liturgical 
aspects, is to furnish the latter-day apologist with certain data 
which are neither the less remarkable for having been so long 
forgotten, nor the less instructive for having been so frequently 
misinterpreted by the non- Catholic historian of our past. Not 
a few of these data, as we took occasion to observe, in our re- 
marks upon Baptism, carry one a long way back in the history 
of Christianity ; and, as will appear later on in the case of the 
Eucharist, at least, they may be said in this respect to antici- 
pate some of the most characteristic portions of the New Testa- 
ment itself. They thus afford fresh evidence that Catholicism 



228 THE MODERN WORLD [May, 

is at bottom an obedience and an art of life ; and they prove 
further that no theory which attempts to account for it can really 
afford to ignore the mysterious continuity which links the ac- 
tivities of its apostolic period with the living institutions which 
make it so unique a spectacle in the religious world of to-day. 
Scientific inquiry as to the nature and origin of Penance 
considered as a sacramental obedience in the Christian Church 
is, as might be expected, a thing of comparatively modern 
growth. It begins, curiously enough, not with the crude deni- 
als and counter-statements of the Reformation time, but with 
that remarkable movement in favor of a more exact study of 
the past which arose in the seventeenth century and which drew 
so much of its inspiration from the main points at issue in the 
Jansenist controversy. Antoine Arnauld's depressing book on 
Frequent Communion was productive, at least, of this much 
good, that it directed the more thoughtful minds of Catholic 
Europe at a very critical period in its history to certain funda- 
mental aspects of its sacramental life upon which the Church's 
real efficiency as a molder of human character may be said al- 
ways to depend. If the schools have been slow to avail them- 
selves of the wider opportunities for scientific vision, as well as 
for spiritual insight, of which the crisis itself ultimately proved 
to have been the occasion, Catholicism, on the other hand, may 
be said to have gained immeasurably by the general result. 
Indeed, it seems scarcely an exaggeration to maintain that the 
religion of the average Catholic of our time, even in those por- 
tions of the world which are often too hastily supposed to be 
morally honey-combed by an unlovely blend of spurious Latin- 
ism and Free-Masonry, is as far above the religion of his sev- 
enteenth century forbears as those second or third century ideals 
of purity to which Jansenism so learnedly harked back, as with 
a kind of neo-Montanistic relentlessness of temper, were them- 
selves beyond the reach of too many of the court politicians 
and ecclesiastics who prated about them. It is a more inward 
religion, for one thing; and not the less effectively disciplined 
for being so every-day-like and unobtrusive; it is also more 
enduring, and therefore manlier, more consistent, more health- 
ful, more genial ; it is saner, in a word, and more balanced, 
as Catholicism invariably tends to become when freed from the 
wearing anxieties of opposition ; and all this through the sheer 
force of that inherent and resourceful kindliness, that regard for 



1908.] THE SACRAMENTAL LIFE 229 

human nature, which proves it so Christ-like and universal. 
One may venture many explanations, psychological, economic, 
or racial, to account for the phenomenon; but it may well be 
doubted whether any of them will touch so simply or so in- 
fallibly upon the hidden core of the mystery as the obvious 
suggestion of a change in the old liturgical habit of soul on the 
subject of Penance and the Eucharist. 

Without losing one jot or tittle of their essentially sacra- 
mental nature these mysterious ordinances of Christ have gradu- 
ally assumed, within the past three hundred years, a certain 
flexibility of character that would have been thought foreign 
to the very idea and use of them during those statelier epochs 
in which the liturgy was looked upon as the more imperative 
expression of the Church's need for collective prayer. They 
have taken to themselves something of the elasticity and un- 
ceremoniousness of the " people's devotions." They have left 
the old high historic places, the cathedral, the minster, and 
the rest, and established themselves in the more convenient side- 
chapel or the more " popular " church. The Lenten shrift has 
almost lost its unique distinction. Confession at the greater feasts 
alone has given place to weekly or even to more frequent habits 
of self- accusation, in which "grave material," as the theologians 
call it, is seldom found. High Mass has been superseded by a 
rhythmic cycle of low Masses; and Holy Communion may be 
had at almost any reasonable hour of the morning, not only 
" in " Mass but out of it, by one soul or many, or even by 
whole troops and batallions of the devout. It marks an extra- 
ordinary change in the Churches way of doing things, when one 
stops to think about it ; and what is more significant still, there 
are few parallels half so inspiring, even amid the exuberant 
devotions of the Middle Age. Indeed, one will have to go 
back almost to Apostolic times themselves to find the usage, as 
well as the spirit, that justifies it. The fact ought to be borne 
in mind by those who seek to appraise the real worth of the 
force described with such various and often sinister connota- 
tion as "Jesuitism" in the post-tridentine Church; for it is due 
to the essential conservatism of the incorrigible pioneers of 
novelty grouped under that name that so tremendous an in- 
crease in true reasonableness and sacramental spirituality has 
accrued at last to the Catholicism of our times. More than 
any other body in Christendom the Society of Jesus has made 
piety, as we conceive it to-day, sane and feasible and actual. 



230 THE MODERN WORLD [May, 

When the people could not " come up to religion " it was the 
Jesuits who brought religion down to the people. 

As in all the subtler changes of spirit that have overtaken 
Western Catholicism in the long course of its development, the 
result came slowly and almost without observation, it might be 
said. Griefs and misunderstandings there were of necessity. Is 
not the history of the past three hundred years and more made 
up largely of such minor crises ? Even the dullest may see 
now that they were the pains of growth, however we are to 
explain them in the case of the great order itself. Jansenism, 
by the sheer force of momentum, spent itself; and the Society 
of Jesus in turn passed for a while into eclipse. The French 
Revolution came, a product in great part, as we are now be- 
ginning to see, of the curious religiosities of the century that 
preceded it. This was succeeded by Waterloo and the cautious 
restoration of the Bourbons, when, for a comparatively brief 
episode, Catholic Europe seemed to find itself face to face with 
the distracting alternative of Romanticism with all its specious 
futilities and sham pedantry, and the more consistent Ultra- 
montane spirit which now began to revive, with its inevitable 
instinct for the syllogism and its high regard for authority and 
the majesty of law. Meanwhile the essentially evangelical work 
of the restored Society of Jesus began to make itself felt. It 
revealed itself in many directions; most notably in theological 
manuals, in the revived scholasticism which Pius IX. and his 
far-seeing successor, Leo XIII., did so much to promote, in 
clergy- retreats and popular preaching, and in the encourage- 
ment given to the laity to make frequent and even weekly use 
of the Sacraments of Confession and Holy Communion. So 
far as our present ethos on this score is concerned, it was 
practically the beginning of the end. The mind of the Catho- 
lic teacher was ripe for the new scholarship. The materials 
that had been amassed under such unfavorable conditions and, 
at times, with so much rancor of perverted a-priorism during 
the old Jansenist schism, began to be worked over anew. Great 
theological masters, like Father Palmieri in Rome and Father 
De San in Louvain, sent men back from Perrone to Petavius ; 
and the passage from that really profound and original scholar 
to the half-forgotten documents of antiquity was an obvious 
one. The curiosum ingcnium, or instinct for research, without 
which even theology is doomed to cut a sorry figure among 
the sciences by which men live, was awake once more. The 



1908.] THE SACRAMENTAL LIFE 231 

new era of investigation was at hand. The schools were really 
to be schools, as in the old, far-probing days. The wonderful 
and various story of the fortunes of Catholic dogma, that age 
can never wither nor custom stale, was to be told anew. Posi- 
tive theology was coming into its own again. 

It would be a grave misreading of the situation, were one 
to infer from these remarks that no stimulus from alien sources 
had been felt in the great scholastic centuries during all this 
while. The stranger at the gates had been eloquent in his own 
behoof; the Canaanite and the Philistine and the wise men of 
Babylon had given the scribes of the children of God much to 
reflect upon. The Ritschlian school in Germany, and that less 
important group of scholars in England and America, who 
draw their inspiration from them, had familiarized our teachers 
with new and extraordinary applications of the theory of de- 
velopment as applied to the sense of Catholic dogma. A fresh 
literature thus sprang up not all of it equally defensible, in- 
deed of which we are only beginning to see the ultimate 
bearings to-day. It was a literature which, from the nature of 
the case, was accounted somewhat arid and forbidding at first 
in its general dearth of prospect; one which the ordinary student 
would be tempted to pass by as being scarcely germane to the 
rough and ready needs of the popular controversialist. But the 
authors of this new and perfectly loyal " positivism for Christ's 
sake and St. Peter's sake " knew what they were about. Care- 
ful, patient, indefatigable, austere, with an eye for the impor- 
tance of the infinitely little, and yet never losing sight the 
while of its real pertinence to those who have always main- 
tained, not only as a conviction of religious faith, but as a 
reasoned instinct of historic scholarship, that Catholicism, as a 
whole, has never seriously altered its direction or its bent in the 
world, they have gone on quietly, adding field to field, until 
the merest theological tyro, in all the more notable centers of 
Catholic learning at the present time, may be said to have 
a sound acquaintance with the outlines of the subject. One 
feels that in this way the priesthood of the generation upon 
which we are entering will be more fully equipped for the task 
for which they are, in part, ordained, and which they can ill 
afford to shirk at a period that promises to be both well-in- 
formed in the general level of its knowledge and critical in its 
abiding sense of values, even where religion is concerned. We 
are speaking, of course, of that comparatively restricted yet 



232 THE MODERN WORLD [May, 

important public, in which faith will always be found to be in 
quest of a workable expression of itself in terms of the rational 
intellect. More and more that public will tend to sway the 
religious curiosity of mankind in the years to come; and the 
Church's spokesman must have his rightful place in it. Nor 
will such a state of things tend to produce that most unthink- 
able of hypotheses wherever Catholicism is in question an 
esoteric Gnosticism, namely, the pride and privilege of the il- 
luminated few. On the contrary, even in the case of the mul- 
titude, who may be only half-educated in everything else, but 
never so in the essentials of their creed if the Church can help 
it, and who are in that sense every bit as much the object ef 
her most anxious concern as her regularly ordained ministers 
are, it will be found that those commoner categories of life to 
which they recur in deference to the same reverent instinct 
fides quarens intellectum are but the concrete, everyday equi- 
valents of those more abstract forms to which the scientific 
mind inevitably holds. 

It would be impracticable to attempt to reduce in these 
pages the results of the new scholarship on the two Sacra- 
ments of which we have been speaking. The subject is too 
technical and much too various; and the general reader, it 
might be added, altogether too incurious to warrant so hazard- 
ous a process. The student more particularly interested will 
find abundant matter according to his taste in those more ser- 
ious and specialist reviews in which the English speaking 
Catholic world is at present so poor, but which may be found 
in sufficient number and always on a high plane of orthodox 
scholarship in France, Italy, and Germany. He may also con- 
sult with profit the articles bearing on our present theme in 
the fasciculi thus far published of the two great dictionaries of 
M. Vacant and Dom Cabrol. We do not say that a complete 
and perfectly satisfactory synthesis of the several findings and 
theories of so many independent scholars will be possible; 
what we do say, however, is this: that the general drift of 
this extraordinary material material, be it observed, as candid 
and as far-reaching in its array of facts as any hitherto gathered 
by the curious bias of Harnack, Dobschutz, or Wernle tends 
more and more to justify that confident reading of antiquity 
for which the theologians of the seventeenth century were so 
bitterly derided by their Jansenist opponents, who seemed to 
claim, in not a few instances, a larger actual achievement and a 



; 



1908.] THE SACRAMENTAL LIFE 233 

more stately prestige of what was then accepted as sound 
scholarship. The student of that desolate time in the history 
of the Sacramental life of Catholicism knows that the entire 
controversy did not turn upon the question of grace. The 
past was literally ransacked to find precedents, especially litur- 
gical precedents, in order to discredit the learning of the Society 
of Jesus, and so drive it from the field. The attempt, as we 
know, failed ; owing chiefly to the extraordinary breadth of eru- 
dition and the almost equally extraordinary courage and ori- 
ginality of view displayed throughout by the great Petavius. 
The order that had produced such a man could never be ac- 
cused of setting mere showiness above scholarship. Yet by the 
outer Anglican and Lutheran worlds, for fully a century and a 
half after the echoes of the unhappy conflict had died away, it 
was quietly assumed that the weight of learning had all along 
been on the Jansenist side, and that the Society's victory had 
been won by mere cleverness, by an adroit use of partizanship 
and authority. 

But the researches of the past twenty years have compelled 
candid men to reverse those hasty judgments. By one of those 
ironies which are so common in ecclesiastical affairs at all epochs, 
possibly as being God's perpetual response to His Son's Will to 
draw good out of evil, a slow comedy, similar to that which 
took place at the Reformation period, seems to be in progress 
to-day. Men turn too confidently from a usage in the living 
Church to some apparent counter evidence in antiquity. For 
a time they seem to have everything their own way. The 
plain man seldom ventures to call for proof ; for there is a 
pomp about special knowledge in this half-read world that is 
all but irresistible ; but truth gets its hearing in the long event. 
Call it special providence or "assistance," as you will. There 
is a certain mysteriousness about it, an evidence, as it were, of 
a superintending Personality, which makes it, for those who 
mark and reflect, not the least of those many tokens by which 
faith, is continually made aware of Christ's presence with His 
followers in the Way. 

If these things are so, surely it is no exaggeration to main- 
tain that the story of the Jansenist movement becomes but 
a parable in little of that larger and more ecumenic lesson 
which Penance and the Eucharist may be said to enforce when 
viewed in all their liturgical variations from our Lord's day down 
to our own. Each of them implies a definite obedience, a child- 



234 THE SACRAMENTAL LIFE [May, 

like attitude of the heart, which emphasizes in every age the 
contention, made so explicitly at Trent and re- stated so au- 
thentically in our own times, that Catholicism Roman Cathol- 
icism, in a word, for it is in that direction that the evidence 
in question points is, in a sense most native and peculiar to 
itself, the Way by which religious men must go up through Christ 
to the Father. By these same obediences has that Church taught 
all mankind to go even from the beginning. Encratism, Mon- 
tanism, Novatianism, Puritanism, masquerading under whatever 
disguises whether as North African regard for the finality of 
a Baptismal change of heart, or as Jansenistic concern for the 
integrity of historic worship she has turned mournfully away 
from each of them in turn and refused to make common cause 
with their narrowness ; for, like her Master, she would bear 
" the lost kid " upon her shoulders with the same divine pity 
that she bears the lost sheep, if that were only possible ! The 
sense of her plenary and unique possession of the power of the 
keys makes her merciful rather than hard, just as our Lord's 
consciousness of His divinity made Him merciful rather than 
hard towards sinners. While she has modified her discipline, 
sometimes making it long and rigorous and austere, she has 
never modified the spirit that inspired it, because that spirit 
has been identical with the fullness, the true pleroma of the 
Incarnation itself. It is this extraordinary note of her sacra- 
mental life which sharply differentiates her from every body 
of Christians that has ever stood apart from her in history, 
and gives her a distinction which is found on analysis to be 
as unique as her own Petrine claims. No sin is too revolting 
for her to turn to ; no soul so fallen or brutalized that she 
cannot stoop to it and humanize it by the voluntary Penance 
which brings it back to the Cross and divinizes it there by the 
Eucharistic banquet of her Lord and Keeper. The religious 
inquirer who has grasped the profound psychology of this con- 
soling truth will not boggle, we imagine, over such minor dif- 
ficulties as " Papal demands," or remain long an alien to Rome's 
essentially human, because Christ- given, "obediences." It has 
been said of the Jansenist controversy * that " in their doctrine 
of * sufficient grace ' the Jesuits had preached a view of the con- 
flict of good and evil in the soul which is honorable to God 
and encouraging to man, and which has Catholicity on its face. 
All to whom entrance into the Church, through its formal min- 

* Miscellaneous Studies: Essay on Pascal. By Walter Pater. Macmillan & Co. 1895. 



1908.] THE CENTENARY 235 

istries, lies open are truly called of God, while beyond it 
stretches the ocean of ' His uncovenanted mercies.' " It is a 
fine saying; but the writer adds: "That is a doctrine for the 
many, for those whose position in the religious life is medioc- 
rity "; the which is a very foolish saying; for mediocrity is 
a relative term ; whereas salvation is one of the most positive 
and absolute things the Christian mind knows. None the less, 
the remark has its appositeness to the present inquiry; for 
what the Society of Jesus is admitted by this non-Catholic 
writer to have achieved for religious human nature in the Jan- 
senist crisis Rome and Roman instinct has done for religious 
human nature from New Testament times. Her treatment of 
Penance and the Eucharist has Catholicity on its face! That 
only proves that she also is for the many ; which is proving 
much ; seeing that she may safely leave the mediocrity of our 
actual performance to the great Searcher of hearts ! 

Seton Hall, South Ora^e, N. J. 



THE CENTENARY. 

1808-1908. 

BY FRANCIS A. FOY. 

An hundred years ago, O Mother Church, 

Thou saw'st a new-born day arise from out 

The deeps of time ! A faint light streaks the east, 

Then flashes far and wide across the morn, 

Chasing the black mists from the brow of day. 

E'en thus thy gospel light first struggled through 

The gloom that hid thee from the hearts of men, 

Till darkness owned the spell and parted wide, 

Disclosing thee, sweet Empress ; then light and love 

Commingling made a perfect day. The span 

We celebrate, from that far-kindled dawn 

To where thou sittest now in noon supremacy. 




THE CATHOUC WOR:LD, as a rule, never publishes articles deal- 
ing with particular works or institutions. The reason for the rule 
is obvious. The following article is an exception, and is published 
at the request of many readers, not to call attention to the par- 
ticular work here described, but to set forth the ways and the means 
which, in a particular instance, have led to success ; that similar 
means and ways may lead to like success in other places. [EDI- 
TOR C. W.] 

FRESH AIR FOR CITY CHILDREN. 

BY WILLIAM J. KERRY, PH.D. 

(HE children of a generation are its chief contem- 
poraneous charge, as they are its future glory or 
shame. The institutions of the future depend on 
them ; the ideals that shall one day dominate 
society, will lodge in the minds of those who to- 
day are prattling children. Hence the wisdom of an age is shown 
by the wisdom displayed in the care of children a thoroughly 
natural as well as Christian test. 

Now neglect of children has been a prominent characteristic 
of our time. Revolutions have been fought out for the rights 
of men ; we see riots nowadays due to demand for women's 
rights ; but the rights of millions of children have been over- 
looked. Their right to air, sunlight, and play; to the gentle illu- 
sions with which nature surrounds their unfolding faculties ; their 
right to childhood, to education, to physical development, to 
safeguarded morality these have come only lately into organ- 
ized expression by the power of an awakened public opinion. 
Cities are built, and children have no playground but the street. 
Homes are built for children, but the company gets the best 
room and the children have only last choice. They have had 
the factory to work in, the street for play, the anonymous gang 
for companionship, dust and foul air to breathe, and unwhole- 
some food. 

However, a mighty reaction has set in, in associations to pro- 
mote playgrounds, factory laws, educational laws; in societies 
whose members go to the children and instruct them. Clubs are 
formed, night schools are opened ; thus a hundred forms of 






1908.] FRESH AIR FOR CITY CHILDREN 237 

work are under way, all of which are filled with hope of good 
results. 

The work of securing to the children of crowded city sec- 
tions some country life and experience has taken on such pro- 
portions and definiteness that it has become an institution. 
In many cities the results are striking. The thought and 
effort are old. New York saw it done in a tentative way in 
1849. Organized effort dates from 1874. The first Home was 
erected for this purpose in 1876 by a Brooklyn society at Coney 
Island. The work was begun in Switzerland in 1876, and in 
Germany in the same year. Whether under the form of a per- 
manent home, for visits of large numbers of children, for a long 
period, or for a week; or under the form of single-day excur- 
sions; or under the form of finding private families throughout 
the country which will welcome one or more poor city children 
as guests for a time, the work has taken on enormous propor- 
tions. Newspapers, charity organizations, religious associations 
have been extremely active in every feature of the development. 
Such are the definiteness, mass, and complexities of the prob- 
lems met and the aims kept in mind, that conferences are held, 
literature is created, and standards of method are coming into 
general adoption. 

In a number of cities Catholic charity workers, notably the 
St. Vincent de Paul Society, have begun work in earnest. 
While the extent and resources so far shown are short of what 
is needed and too little known, there are hopeful signs of prog- 
ress. Catholics should show results to be proud of in just 
such work, for they have equipment and a coherence of organ- 
ization that enable them to meet readily the peculiar problems 
of the work. No other work that can be undertaken so uni- 
fies the agents of Catholic charity in a given city ; no other so 
educates the average man to a sense of his ability and duty to 
give; few others can more widely enlist sympathy. 

The tendency among those interested seems to favor a per- 
manent property for fresh air work; a relatively long stay ap- 
proximating two weeks ; active management in charge of sis- 
ters, a resident chaplain, and some systematic influence on the 
religious as well as physical and mental life of the children. 
The balancing of these factors is a delicate work. The prob- 
lems of organization, location, administration, discipline, and 
finance have been worked out to very general satisfaction in the 



238 FRESH AIR FOR CITY CHILDREN [May, 

Summer Home for City Children, established near Baltimore by 
the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, of that city. It is hoped 
that a description of its work in its general features will inter- 
est all fresh air friends and stimulate rapid development. In 
that hope, THE CATHOLIC WORLD permits a deviation from 
its general practice, in publishing, instead of a general account 
of work and problems, this account of a particular way in 
which the work is done and the problems are met. The head- 
ings indicate the general questions and the paragraphs show 
the general features of the way in which these are worked out. 
SITE. The St. Vincent de Paul Summer Home for Children is 
situated four miles from Baltimore, one mile from the trolley 
line. A tract of fifty-two acres of land, owned by the Sulpician 
Fathers, was placed by them at the disposal of the Society for 
a period of ten years, without cost. About half of the land is 
under cultivation ; the other half is heavily wooded, varied by 
kill and valley, enriched by a small stream fed from springs. 
The farm is very high, overlooking the city and the bay. It 
is surrounded by beautiful summer homes. 

A splendidly constructed stone building, 127 feet by 52, two 
stories high, which was built by the Sulpicians, serves as the 
residence for the children. The dormitory contains 140 beds, 
with mattresses and springs. Adjoining it are quarters for 14 
sisters, also a wash-room which accommodates 28 children at 
one time. The dining-room, accommodating 160 at table, the 
kitchen with an enormous steel range, storerooms, the bath- 
room with 24. showers having hot and cold water, and two 
smaller dining-rooms, occupy the ground floor. Outside stairs 
and fire escapes give ample protection. The building is lighted 
by electricity, has telephones, and is connected with the city 
water and sewer system. Everything about the building is sub- 
stantial, permanent, and thorough. A large farmhouse furnishes 
quarters for the chaplain, the caretaker, and the chapel. 
MANAGEMENT. A Summer Home Committee of the Society of 
St. Vincent de Paul, whose chairman is actively in charge of 
the work, takes over the whole care of the project. He pur- 
chases all supplies, makes and executes all contracts, approves 
all bills, superintends all improvements. The operation of the 
Home is in the hands of sisters, of whom there are usually 
ten in residence. They are assisted by a housekeeper and such 
other help as is needed. The chairman spends several hours 



1908.] FRESH AIR FOR CITY CHILDREN 239 

every day at the Home, and works out, with the sisters, the 
policies which govern the children and the method through 
which to obtain the best results. The intermittent presence of 
this embodiment of gentle authority is of great value to the 
spirit of the Home. 

FINANCES. The funds required to operate the Home are raised 
by subscription, a large number of annual subscribers, including 
some non- Catholics, assuring a considerable stable income. Sub- 
scribers are arranged in classes fixed by amounts ; some giv- 
ing $2, others $5, others $10, $20, $50, $100 each year, as 
may be called for by the committee. Catholic societies give 
generously. Neighborhood children hold " fairs " to raise funds. 
Religious communities also contribute. Most of the vegetables 
needed are raised on the farm. As the services of the sisters 
and the members of the St. Vincent de Paul Society are given 
without compensation, practically all of the income of the Home 
is available for actual work among the children. In the sum- 
mer of 1907, it cost the Society $4.86 for twelve days' outing 
for each child, an average of about 40 cents per day. 
SELECTION OF The parish conference of the St. Vincent de Paul 
CHILDREN. Society is the only agent with which the Home 
deals. All children sent by a conference are accepted without 
question and provided for. About 140 children can be cared 
for at one time. Boys and girls are taken in alternate bands, 
ages ranging between five and twelve years. Each band re- 
mains twelve days, arriving on Saturday and departing on 
Thursday. The interval of two days between bands permits all 
needed renovations and preparation. Any society in the city 
which contributes to the Home may recommend children to the 
conferences. At a meeting of representatives of the confer- 
ences, a number of children is allotted to each parish, in such 
a way as to keep each band full and offer opportunity to all 
parishes to be represented during the course of the twelve 
weeks that the Home is open. 746 children were cared for in 
the summer of 1907. 

The representative of each conference goes to the homes of 
the poor in his parish, selects children to the number allotted, 
and gives instructions for preparation. On the appointed day 
all of the children assemble, meet their St. Vincent de Paul 
friend, who accompanies his little band over the trolley line to 
the Home. As his regular charity work usually makes him 



240 FRESH AIR FOR CITY CHILDREN [May, 

known personally to many of the children, a relation of trust 
and playful familiarity is quickly established. The representa- 
tive of the parish conference remains " next friend " of his 
band of children during the time of their stay. The Home 
aims not to deal with parents or relatives of the children. 
Parents communicate with the Home through the parish repre- 
sentative, as it is presumed that he understands local condi- 
tions thoroughly, and usually is acquainted with the homes 
from which the children come. 

In selecting children, the Society aims to find the most 
neglected and forlorn. It does not seek children from self- 
supporting families. The unfortunate little ones most in need 
are looked for. Children who do not go to school, or, neglected 
in moral and spiritual training at home, frequent schools where 
no religious instruction or specific moral training is given, are 
sought out, as well as those from the thickly congested dis- 
tricts of the city. 

Parents are not permitted to visit children at the Home. 
Experience has shown that the custom of visiting demoralizes 
discipline, unsettles the children, and hampers the administra- 
tion. Letters may be received or sent with entire freedom, the 
lonely boy who writes that he is going to die, being as free 
to send out his dismal prophecy as the happier lad is to write 
of his glorious times. 

ADMISSION. Each child must be dressed cleanly and must 
have had a bath before entering. It must have been exam- 
ined by a physician of the City Board of Health within twenty- 
four hours preceding admission. This is done as a precaution 
in justice to the body of children as a whole. No child may 
come from a home in which a contagious disease has appeared 
within six weeks, unless with the sanction of the Board of 
Health. Children bring no baggage of any kind, as they wear 
clothing provided by the Home during their stay. 

During Saturday afternoon every second week, the bands of 
children arrive. After registering, each child receives a tag 
with name and address, which is attached to its belongings as 
soon as it has put on clothes furnished by the Home. If par- 
ticular instructions accompany a child, they are noted at once 
and systematically followed. When all of that is done, the 
hundred and more children are turned loose to be happy. 






1908.] FRESH AIR FOR CITY CHILDREN 241 

LIFE AT THE The first problem met is lonesomeness. In every 
HOME. band of 120 or 140 children, some few are found 
who are lonely as soon as they are registered; other cases be- 
come acute the first evening; a few on the second day. But 
by the third day it has vanished. Some discretion usually en- 
ables those in charge to cheer up the youthful sufferers, and 
this, by resorting to ordinary means of diverting a child's 
attention. 

The playgrounds are ample. The merry-go-round, see- saws, 
sliding boards, sand piles, swings, baseball grounds, with an 
endless supply of balls and bats, flowers to pick, growing vege- 
tables to watch, wading in the shady stream, with every variety 
of tree and vine and rock, invite the eager souls of the city 
children, and their joy expands them into other beings, This 
supply of resources in amusement, furnished by the natural 
beauty of the place and the thoughtfulness of the Society of 
St. Vincent and its friends, is not permitted in any way to 
stifle the natural resources in the children themselves. Their 
traditions, games, songs, dances, are all drawn upon, their in- 
genuity is appealed to, to add to the diversity of life at the 
Home. Every instinct of activity in the children is welcomed 
and converted into an element of the life, in a way that makes 
them partners in the work. 

It was noticed on one occasion that many boys found it 
irksome to stand at table after meals while the long procession 
filed out. They, in their restlessness, began beating on the 
tables in time with the piano. The noise was not forbidden; 
the most skillful were organized into a sort of drum corps, and 
they kept perfect time, adding much to the scene, by using 
knives for drum sticks and a bench for the drums. This appeal 
to the nature of the children, and recognition of their tastes as 
far as possible, have won them uniformly and enlisted their good 
nature into co-operation for the success of the Home. The 
taste of the children for music is fostered by a musician, who 
is always ready to accompany their songs on the piano or to 
play for them. 

Those in charge of the children watch for every sign of tal- 
ent or game that the children show, and organize them into a 
" troupe," which gives an elaborate entertainment to the author- 
ities toward the end of the visit. Songs, dances, dialogues, 
drills, declamations, addresses are made, always most entertain- 
VOL. LXXXVII. 16 



242 FRESH AIR FOR CITY CHILDREN [May, 

ingly, and not infrequently with real credit. In earlier days 
an entertainment was provided for the children, but it did not 
engage their interest in the same way or offer such marked re- 
sults as the method now used. 

The last event each day, timely and refreshing, is the shower 
bath to which all are treated. Immediately the little army goes 
to the dormitory, where night prayers are said in common. 
Some patience and firmness are required to establish order and 
quiet at bed time. But usually, by the third night, peace is 
well established, and dozens of children, who ordinarily at 9 
or 10 o'clock are playing in the streets, are safe and snug in 
bed, asleep at half -past eight. 

The dining-room is 80 by 40. The children sit at tables 
that hold ten. Cleanliness, thoughtfulness, and order are insisted 
upon by the sisters who supervise each meal. The children 
form outdoors and march to and from the dining-room. At 
times the children of each parish march proudly under their 
parish banner. Wholesome food, such as the country affords, 
is given to the children, the vegetables being raised on the 
place. 

THE SPIRIT OF Gentleness, directness, and firmness govern the 
THE HOME. authorities in dealing with the children. There 
are few rules, and none are announced. A recognized routine, 
necessary for the purposes in mind, is established, while per- 
mitting much liberty to the children. There are no punish- 
ments, no evidences of force. A gentle, watchful pressure is 
brought to bear on the disorganized mass of children as soon 
as each band is welcomed, and within two days the discipline 
is very well understood and accepted. It is made known to 
the children that they are expected to be loyal; their sense of 
honor and manhood is relied upon ; and the response justifies 
the method. Since those in charge are persons of large ex- 
perience in dealing with children, it is not to be wondered at 
if they do not find any particularly hard problems to face. 
There is scarcely any watching, though some results from the 
nature of the situation. Last summer, out of over seven hun- 
dred children entertained, only two cases of truancy occurred, 
and both of them were on the last night of the band's visit. 

While the inspiration of the work is religious, and the mo- 
tives which support it are also, the humane features predomi- 
nate everywhere. The children attend Mass only on Sunday* 



1908.] FRESH AIR FOR CITY CHILDREN 243 

and at the evening Benediction once a week, they remain on 
the grass under the trees around the chapel to sing the even- 
ing hymn. 

THE AIMS OF Back of all the joy and play and tedious care 
THE HOME. o f these hundreds of children entertained each 
summer are large purposes and serious thought. It is recog- 
nized that these children are robbed of much that their nature 
craves and God would desire they should have. And hence, 
those who give money and time and thought to these children 
bring to concrete expression their Faith, their Hope, their Char- 
ity. Religion is shown to the children as a force that is gen- 
tle, thoughtful, self-sacrificing, and withal in sympathy with 
them, their games, and homes. Memories are set up in the 
young lives to which, in later days of moral turmoil and strait- 
ened loyalty, good impulses may anchor and save them. No 
doubt the children often return to squalor, to ill-regulated homes, 
to thoughtless routine, but they carry the memory of a glimpse 
into a world, clean, orderly, bright, regulated ; and many of 
them have learned their first prayer or have realized the coarse- 
ness of profanity. Children who, for four or five summers, have 
come to the Home, will have had at least one new opportunity, 
and surely some will profit eternally from it. 

The value of twelve days in the country to the health of 
the children is very great. Fresh air, wholesome food, intelli- 
gent care, are not lost. If those in the best of surroundings 
find a benefit in such a change, what is not the advantage to 
the neglected children of the streets ? Lungs that are accus- 
tomed to dust and poor ventilation, thrive when allowed plenty 
of sweet fresh air and the stimulation of happy surroundings. 
Watch is quietly kept of the children, in order that per- 
manent or temporary physical ailments may be found and may 
receive attention. Defective hearing or vision, neglected sores, 
incipient disorders, forms of nervousness or physical manner- 
isms, are watched for, and, when found, they receive attention 
at once. St. Agnes' Hospital is situated two miles from the 
Home. The sisters, doctors, and nurses place all of their re- 
sources at the service of the children. It is not an uncommon 
sight to see the children being brought by twos or fours, as the 
case may be, to have sores treated and wounds dressed. Note 
is made of all ailments of more enduring nature, and, after the 
children leave the Home, the St. Vincent de Paul Society pro- 



244 FRESH AIR FOR CITY CHILDREN [May, 

vides for their treatment at the City Hospital, which, too, places 
its resources at the disposition of the children. 

Thus the physical feature of this charity is searching and 
wide awake. It takes in future as well as present, and con- 
sciously aims to remove every handicap to the self-sufficient 
usefulness of the children. 

The social value of the Home is far from unimportant: 
here lessons of discipline, order, unselfishness, and self-control 
are learned under sympathetic circumstances. Thoughtfulness 
toward small children, friendly trust of those in authority, ex- 
act fulfilment of promises, are seen and lived out; the children 
are made to realize that loyalty and honor are expected of 
them, and, to their credit, the response is generous and direct. 
It is quite a triumph for government and order that an orchard 
in the midst of the playgrounds, clothed in all the tempting 
power of the apple, so far survived the visits of seven hundred 
children last summer as to have produced a good crop of apples 
in autumn. True enough, not a few incursions were made, but 
the self-control of the children was worthy of note, notwith- 
standing. Neatness in dress and appearance is insisted on, and 
such supplies of clothing as are necessary to that end are fur- 
nished without even a thought of economizing. A distinct dress 
is worn on Sundays and feast days, contributing in no small 
way to the joy of the children. 

There are many educational advantages for the children. 
They have opportunity for much observation and curious ques- 
tioning. They are taken in small groups among trees, vines, 
growing vegetables, and are instructed concerning their nature 
and uses. For the first time, many of them see a cow or grow- 
ing corn or potatoes. The instruction that is given is combined 
with free and easy observation, and without the formality that 
often tends to repel the young. 

During the early days of the visit of a band of children, 
those whose spiritual and moral training has been most neg- 
lected are gradually combined into small groups, and they re- 
ceive particular attention. Instruction is given in prayer, in 
rudiments of religion, and those who are capable are prepared 
for first confession. Older children may go to the sacraments 
if they wish it, but the matter is left entirely to their discretion. 
Instruction is given mainly by the sisters, out of doors and in- 
formally. 



i9o8.] FRESH AIR FOR CITY CHILDREN 245 

An interesting accessory feature of the work is found in 
the aid that can, at times, be furnished to the families of 
the children. If any information comes to those in charge 
concerning distress at home, the local conference of the St. 
Vincent de Paul Society is notified at once. When in this way 
the Society has established friendly personal relations with the 
family, the latter is benefitted greatly. 

Fortunately the value of such a work extends far beyond 
the children. Enjoying, as it does, the blessing of the Holy Fa- 
ther, the Cardinal, and of the clergy of Baltimore, the Home has 
been a focus for the Catholic forces of the city. It has become 
an object of pride and interest to parishes, societies, communi- 
ties. It has co-ordinated them and has awakened a conscious- 
ness of power and a sense of duty to the poor which prom- 
ise well for Catholic life. As the movement develops, and it 
surely will, wisdom will be accumulated and the scope of the 
work will widen, while methods will improve. In the hope of 
furthering the progress of this manner of caring for the chil- 
dren, such general features of the Baltimore work as might 
serve for guidance generally or for suggestion have been de- 
scribed. 

Many of the problems in the fresh air work in general are 
set aside in Catholic work on account of the personal relations 
existing between the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and the 
poor families from which the children come. Furthermore, a 
number of the children in each band are accustomed to the 
sisters in the schoolroom, and hence an air of friendliness is 
established. Finally, the experience of the sisters with children 
equips them with such power that practically no new problem 
is presented in the Home. The matchless resources for helpful 
work possessed by Catholics makes it incumbent on us to per- 
fect the work. Good will and knowledge are required to en- 
able the Church to keep her honorable place in the history of 
this charity ; splendid equipment and bountiful resources are 
already at command in every large city. 



flew Books. 

The translator of M. Vacandard* 

THE INQUISITION. has done a notable service by fur- 
nishing, in the English language, 

a much-needed counterpoise to Mr. Lea's History of the In- 
quisition. The misrepresentation of the Church in Mr. Lea's 
work consists not so much in the relation of facts as in put- 
ting the facts in a false perspective, and interpreting them from 
a wrong point of view. M. Vacandard is as frank as Mr. Lea 
himself in his account of the historical truth ; but he insists 
that the procedure of the Inquisition and the ecclesiastical legis- 
lation are to be judged with reference to the motives of those 
who were responsible for them, and the standards of the 
age to which they belong. Unlike Mr. Lea, he distinguishes 
between the legitimate use and the occasional abuse of a prin- 
ciple ; and, again, between the spirit of the Church and the 
aberrations from it on the part of individuals. Not indeed that 
he leaves any ground on which he may be accused of evading 
difficulties or disguising ugly realities. He is completely im- 
mune from what Cardinal Newman calls " that endemic perennial 
fidget which possesses certain historians about giving scandal." 
He prefers to incur the charge of not writing edifying history 
rather than commit the fault, tactical as well as moral, of ig- 
noring or distorting truth. There are very few Catholic apol- 
ogists, he writes, who feel inclined to boast of the annals of 
the Inquisition ; but it is worse than useless to endeavor to de- 
fend it by reminding its assailants that Protestants and ration- 
alists have also had their Inquisitions. 

M. Vacandard goes back to the centuries preceding the in- 
troduction of coercion, and shows the repugnance expressed for 
such methods in the age of the Fathers, and even during the 
Manichean persecution in the early Middle Ages; he proceeds 
to trace how the principle of coercion was gradually introduced, 
partly through secular influence, especially owing to the revival 
of Roman law, and partly because of the fierce opposition 
generated by the anti- social tenets of the Cathari and Albi- 

* The Inquisition. A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church. 
By E. Vacandard. Translated from the second edition by Bertrand L. Conway, C.S.P. 
New York : Longmans, Green & Co. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 247 

genses. For the introduction of torture he makes no defense, 
except to observe that, at first, ecclesiastics were forbidden to 
enter the torture chamber, under pain of incurring irregularity. 
The juridical principles of the legislation and the practical pro- 
cedure are exposed and discussed; and, where he believes it 
necessary, M. Vacandard takes to task for inaccuracies his com- 
patriot Mgr. Douais as readily as he does Mr. Lea. 

Having brought to a close the exposition of history, with 
a sincerity which must have sometimes cost him a struggle, M. 
Vacandard sums up the case for the Church with masterly 
ability, and argues eloquently that, when all is said, she has 
not obtained justice from hostile writers, especially from Mr. 
Lea. The Inquisition, established to judge heretics, is an in- 
stitution whose severity and cruelty are explained by the man- 
ners of the age. Such judicial forms as the secrecy of the 
trial, the prosecution carried on independently of the prisoner, 
the denial of advocate and defense, the use of torture, were, 
certainly, despotic and barbarous. The Church, in a measure, 
felt this, for she fell back on the secular arm to enforce these 
laws. The system which she adopted succeeded, at least to a 
measurable extent. To-day we have higher ideals of social jus- 
tice; in social questions the Church ordinarily progresses with 
the march of civilization. It is false to say that, while in the 
beginning she insisted strongly on the rights of conscience, she 
afterwards totally disregarded them " In fact she exercised con- 
straint only over her own stray children. But while she acted so 
cruelly towards them, she never ceased to respect the con- 
sciences of those outside her fold. She always interpreted the 
compelle intrare to imply, with regard to unbelievers, moral con- 
straint, and the means of gentleness and persuasion. If respect 
for human liberty is to-day dominant in the thinking world it 
is due chiefly to her." " And if," is the last word of M. Vacan- 
dard, " to-day she manifests to every one signs of her maternal 
kindness, and lays aside forever all physical constraint, she is 
not following the example of non-Catholics, but merely taking 
up again the interrupted tradition of her early Fathers." 

The translation is in idiomatic English which preserves the 
lucidity and strength of M. Vacandard's attractive style ; and 
the translator has not shirked the laborious duty of reproduc- 
ing fully and accurately the innumerable references and foot- 
notes of the original. 



248 NEW BOOKS [May, 

Once more Canon Sheehan gives 
PARERGA. us a welcome invitation * to share 

his company before the cosy fire- 
side, while the wintry storm is howling outside ; to walk abroad 
with him as the lark is singing aloft or the russet- clad maiden 
is shaking the leaves from the trees ; and, if we follow him, as 
who shall not, on this sentimental journey, we shall have made 
not alone a voyage autour de son chambre, but also wide ex- 
cursions into many lands which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. 
Imagination and feeling, literary criticism, moralizing on the 
mystery of things, keen but kindly observation of human na- 
ture, flow in an unstinted tide from this charming philosopher, 
as he flits from topic to topic with a sweep that embraces het- 
terogeneity itself. But though the subjects vary indefinitely, 
they are reflected in the same idealizing mirror of the writer's 
mind. And of that mind the most insistent categories are a 
contempt for modern materialistic standards; a Solomon- like 
preference Solomon's preference, by the way, seems to have 
been strictly theoretical for the house of mourning over the 
house of laughter ; a sense of the fact that the key to the 
world-riddle is kept by the spectre that holds the key to all 
the creeds ; finally, that the flying years bring with them dis- 
illusionment and resignation. The pervading spirit of the 
Canon's judgment of life is not optimistic. Why in the world 
should it be ? he would probably reply. Though in one place he 
designates as petty the philosophy of the passage, "To-morrow 
and to-morrow and to-morrow, creeps in this petty pace from 
day to day," etc., it is significant that the pessimistic speech 
of Scotland's fiend intrudes itself about half a dozen times upon 
our notice, as we accompany our entertaining and instructive 
guide through his reveries and reflections. 

In riper quality, and with more 

STUDIES IN ANCIENT RE- mellow sympathy, Mr. Lilly pre- 
LIGIONS. sents, or re-presents in his latest 

By W. S. Lilly. volume a good deal of the ma- 

terial which, nearly a quarter of 

a century ago, he published in his Ancient Religion and Modern 
Thought. Other portions of the present work have already ap- 

* Parerga. A Companion Volume to Under the Cedars and the Stars. By Canon Shee- 
laam, D.D. New York : Longmans, Green & Co. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 249 

peared in leading reviews.* Two articles, " The Sacred Books 
of the East," and " The Message of Buddhism to the Western 
World," evince a high regard for what is of truth in the secu- 
lar oriental religions. A still higher appreciation of Moham- 
medan asceticism marks "The Saints of Islam." In fact, a quo- 
tation which Mr. Lilly makes from Cardinal Newman might be 
taken to indicate the spirit in which Mr. Lilly discusses ethnic 
religions : " Revelation, properly speaking, is a universal, not a 
partial gift. It would seem that there is something true, and 
divinely revealed in every religion, all over the earth ; over- 
loaded as it may be, and at times even stifled by the impieties 
which the corrupt will and understanding of men have incor- 
porated with it." In an ingenious perhaps too ingenious to 
be quite convincing comparison between the doctrine of Bud- 
dha and the philosophy of Kant, Mr. Lilly finds between the 
teachings of these sages seven " very striking parallels," and 
some salient differences no less "striking and significant." 
Scarcely in conformity with the title of the volume, but none 
the less valuable for that, are two essays treating respectively 
of the influence of Spinoza's pantheism and Schopenhauer's 
pessimism on contemporary thought. The last essay in the 
collection, an attack on Professor Pfleiderer's view of Christian- 
ity and Christ, is, more than any of the others, in the old slash- 
ing and (with apologies to Dr. Barry) " peremptory " style 
which characterized Mr. Lilly's pen in the days when it did 
sturdy service against Spencer and positivism. 

If you would desire to know how 

IRISH RAMBLES. a trip through Ireland ought to be 

By Bulfin. made, in contradistinction to how 

it is too frequently made by vis- 
itors from this side of the water, read Mr. Bulfin's account of 
his rambles.f To be sure, those who would undertake to follow 
in his track we cannot say footsteps must possess a constitu- 
tion that laughs at a drenching, and muscles to push a bicycle 
up hill and down dale over the well-made Irish roads through 
every county from Cork to Derry. But even the decadents who 
are condemned to depend upon the railroad and the jaunting 
car will find a treasure of suggestions in Mr. Bulfin's pages. 

* Many Mansions, Being Studies in Ancient Religion and Modern Thought. By W. 
S.Lilly. New York: Benziger Brothers. 

\Rambles in Erinne . By William Bulfin. New York : Benziger Brothers. 



250 NEW BOOKS [May, 

A sojourner in a hundred cities and the South American pam- 
pas, without having lost his Irish patriotism and rollicking love 
of fight and fun, Mr. Bulfin saw Ireland "with larger, other 
eyes," in which, however, remained a keen sight for the pictur- 
esqueness of the land, and for the distinctive traits, good and 
not so good, of Irish character. He mingled with all sorts of 
people, took "pot luck" with country folk, and spoke out his 
mind, which has a decidedly anti-British bias, and a horror of 
" Shoneenism," whether in the jarvey's seat or the convent 
school, whenever occasion offered. A respectable knowledge of 
Irish history enables him to comment engagingly on the places 
that he passes; and his journalistic training is seen in the skill 
with which he makes the most of every incident or character 
that he encounters in his extensive tour. 

A bouquet of exquisite perfume for 

REGINA PGETARUM. our Lady in her month of May is 

this collection of poems, selected 

from a wide range among the English poets.* The compiler 
has gathered from Sir John Beaumont, Rowlands, Constable, 
of the sixteenth century, from Crashaw, Reeve, and Henry 
Vaughan, in the seventeenth; and the solitary gem of the 
eighteenth is Mrs. Hemans' sweet poem, " The Italian Girl's 
Hymn to the Virgin." The nineteenth century is represented 
worthily by well-known names, among them, Gerald Griffin, 
the two Rossettis, Coventry Patmore, Aubrey de Vere, Lionel 
Johnson, and D, F. McCarthy. Contemporary poetry, too, con- 
tributes about twenty-four pieces that deserve the honor of in- 
clusion in such distinguished company. The order of arrange- 
ment is that of the events of our Lady's life, beginning with 
the Annunciation. A few pieces are from foreign sources, one be- 
ing from a pen which few people would associate with the praise 
of the Blessed Virgin that of Henri Rochefort. Three from 
Francis Thompson afford some characteristic instances of deep 
pathos wedded to an airy, almost sprightly musical rhythm, 
and ingenious though not overwrought fancy in the thought. 
As an example, we might cite two verses from " The Passion 
of Mary " : 

" The soldier struck a triple stroke 
That smote thy Jesus on the tree; 
He broke the Heart of hearts, and broke 
The saint's and Mother's heart in thee. 

* Regina Pcetarum. By the Hon. Alison Stourton. New York: Benziger Brothers. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 251 

" Thy Son went up the Angels' ways, 
His passion ended ; but, ah, me ! 
Thou found'st the road of other days 
A longer way of Calvary." 

It may interest American readers to know that the lady 
who has compiled the present anthology, and another published 
some time ago, entitled, Our Lady's Book of Days, is a daughter 
of Lord Mowbray and Stourton, whose title dates back to the 
thirteenth century. 

Miss Donnelly's very numerous ad- 

VERSE. mirers are certain to welcome a new 

By Eleanor Donnelly. volume from her pen. The Secret 

of the Statue* draws from a wide 

variety of subject-matter patriotic, classical, meditative, legend- 
ary, and religious in which two latter fields the author may be 
said to reach her happiest and highest achievement. The " Ma- 
donna of the Rose," for instance, and " Per Dominum Nostrum 
Jesum Christum," are full of charm and tenderness; while the 
"Doom Crys," and nearly all of the varied narrative pieces, 
are admirably compressed and spirited. 

The selections in this present volume are by no means uni- 
form in poetic excellence; and verse upon such subjects as 
"malaria" or the " mosquito song " of unlovely memory, seems 
to us of very doubtful felicity. But Miss Donnelly may be 
counted upon to bring vivacity, a quick and graceful fancy, and 
a wholesome spirituality into all of her work. The poems now 
before us several of which have already appeared in the pages 
of THE CATHOLIC WORLD, the Irish Monthly, Donahoe's, and 
the Rosary Magazine prove her (as always) the possessor of 
humor, deep sentiment, and that delectable if dangerous giit ? 
facility. 

Another Roll Call of about three 

CONVERTS TO ROME. thousand names is a list of dis- 
tinguished converts to the Catholic 
faith in America.f As the compiler declares, the list is not 

* The Secret of the Statue. By Eleanor C. Donnelly. Boston : Richard G. Badger. 
t Distinguished Converts to Rome in America. By D. J. Scannell-O'Neill. St. Louis: 
B. Herder. 



252 NEW BOOKS [May, 

exhaustive, though it must have called forth a great deal of 
industrious inquiry for its compilation ; and, doubtless, its ap- 
pearance will prove a means for acquiring further information 
that will be available for another and enlarged edition. The 
list goes back about a century, and does not indicate whether 
the persons named are living or dead. On perusing the book, 
one is prompted to wonder what has been the standard em- 
ployed to discriminate between the distinguished and the un- 
distinguished. An interesting feature is a table of statistics 
prefixed to the list. Among the converts are : i Anglican 
bishop; 372 Protestant clergymen; 3 Jewish rabbis; I Founder 
of an Anglican religious order; 25 members of Anglican reli- 
gious orders ; 125 United States army officers; 45 United States 
senators and congressmen; 32 United States navy officers; 23 
C. S. A. army officers; 12 governors of states; and 21 members 
of the diplomatic service. Of the converts, 4 have become 
archbishops; 4, bishops; 202, priests; 260, nuns. The tale of 
gains to the Church is a consolation, and an encouragement 
for those who labor for the conversion of America. It is in 
itself a strong apologetic argument for the truth of Catholicism. 
Yet this is a matter where we must not, through losing sight 
of proportions, allow ourselves to indulge in undue self-com- 
placency. A not invidious critic in the Anglican Lamp ob- 
serves: "The wonder about this list is not that there have 
been so many distinguished converts in America to Rome, but 
that the list is so small. When we take into account that there 
is a missionary army of over ten thousand Catholic priests, 
and something like one hundred thousand religious, and a 
Catholic population of over twelve millions, most of whom are 
zealous to make converts to the mightiest, the largest, and the 
most illustrious Church in Christendom, the wonder, I repeat, 
is not that Mr. O'Neill, after years of industrious census-taking, 
has been able to print in a book the names of 3,000 converts 
to Rome, a large percentage of whom cannot, strictly speaking, 
be called 'distinguished,' but that there should not have been 
at least twenty or thirty times that many." 

Whatever may be the justice of this remark, one thing is 
certain, the achievement of the past is not, and will not be 
taken for an excuse to weary in well-doing. Incidentally, this 
critic proposes a very practical question, to which he gives an 
answer that is not quite so practical. " What," he asks, " should 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 253 

Rome do to convert the non-Catholic majority of the American 
people to the faith and obedience of the successors of St. Peter?" 
His answer is : " In our humble judgment, the translation of 
the Latin Missal into English, and the use of the vernacular at 
all popular services, would do more to win back the Anglo- 
Saxon race to its ancient attachment to the Holy See than 
any other one thing that Rome could do ? " It will be long 
yet before the event shall decide on the value of this opinion. 
Mr. O'Neill is to be thanked for having undertaken a task 
which must have brought to him, in the course of its execution, 
a plentiful crop of annoyances and disappointments, arising 
from the failure to respond on the part of many who might 
have afforded information. 

This title* inevitably recalls that of 

THE PRIEST'S STUDIES, the late Father Hogan's well-known, 

forceful work. The resemblance be- 
tween the titles may be taken as an index of the strong likeness 
which this one bears to the other in its general character. And 
that likeness is so pronounced that it might be interpreted as a 
proof of direct descent. There are, however, with the com- 
mon family features, sufficiently distinct individual characteris- 
tics between the two to render Dr. Scannell's manual a valuable 
sequel to Clerical Studies. Father Hogan wrote primarily for 
young men in training for the priesthood, and for young priests 
who, conscious of being imperfectly equipped for their work, 
should desire to make up for their deficiencies. Dr. Scannell 
addresses himself to the priests who are bearing the heat and 
burden of the day in the pastorate; who, he observes, will not 
and ought not to pursue their studies in the same spirit which 
rightly inspired their work in the seminary. He says: 

All our priestly studies should rest upon and grow out of 
what we learnt long ago. But the spirit in which we study 
should be different. As boys and as young men we rightly 
sat at the feet of our teachers. A critical temper was by no 
means encouraged. Now that we have become men we put 
away childish things. We must now stand on our own feet 
and use our own judgment. One is glad at a conference to 
find a speaker quoting largely from the sayings and writings 
of his old professor ; but it would be better still to find him 

* The Priest's Studies. By T. B. Scannell, D.D. New York : Longmans, Green & Co. 



254 NEW BOOKS [May, 

also thinking for himself. This is the proof that the priest 
is a real student. We should hold our teachers still in rever- 
ence, but always think for ourselves. 

This thought may be taken to express the scope of Dr. 
Scannell's work ; and, inasmuch as he has developed his instruc- 
tions and counsels along this line, the book will prove for priests 
a real stimulant and a helpful guide to steady, systematic, and 
profitable reading. It is a common case that a priest, conscious 
of his needs, and desirous of devoting his spare time to stu- 
dious work, can think of no other plan than to take down his 
old text-books and " review his theology." The result of this 
second ploughing is that he seldom goes as far down as he 
did in his seminary days; no new interest encourages him; 
he finds this recooking of old knowledge, to vary the metaphor, 
stale, flat, and, usually unprofitable ; so that the dismal occu- 
pation is soon relinquished, with no great gain to the well- 
meaning victim except a livelier appreciation of the Scriptural 
verdict that much study is an affliction of the spirit. 

Dr. Scannell outlines a broad, large, liberal scheme of read- 
ing, the fruit of which is not alone the acquisition of profes- 
sional knowledge, but also the culture of a gentleman. The 
programme embraces not only the strictly ecclesiastical subjects 
Scripture, Patrology, Theology, dogmatic, moral, and as- 
cetic, Liturgy, and Church History but also Art, Science, Lit- 
erature, and Secular History. In each of these departments 
he suggests, with critical comment, a number of the most profit- 
able works ; and, it may be said, that the bibliography shows 
its compiler to be conscious that the world is moving. To 
mention another merit of this work, it is written not from the 
view-point of the academic or seminary closet, but from that 
of the man who, besides being a thorough scholar, is personally 
acquainted with the conditions that surround the busy priest 
on the mission. A passage in proof of its practical character: 

We are often asked questions in our ordinary intercourse 
with our flocks. They consult us on difficult problems of 
faith and morals, and expect us to be able to give them a so- 
lution off-hand. Every priest must have had painful expe- 
rience of his failures in this respect. He is often tempted to 
hazard an opinion when he is but too conscious of his igno- 
rance. It is only the really learned man who can afford to say 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 255 

that he will look the matter up. Again in these days of fre- 
quent conversions we may often have to meet the queries of 
highly intelligent seekers after truth. It may be a wise 
plan, but it certainly is a humiliating one, to have to refer 
them to Georgetown or Farm Street. 

Many of the critical appreciations of authors recommended 
solicit citation ; but enough has been said to induce any one 
desirous of improving the golden sands to consult this excellent 
manual for himself. 

The historian of the Society of Je- 
CATHOLIC MARYLAND. sus in North America, Colonial 

and Federal,* issues the documents 

to illustrate the text, nominally Part I. of Vol. I. They form, 
in fact, a large volume in themselves, which, even more elo- 
quently than the first volume of the text, testifies to the la- 
borious, painstaking industry which Father Hughes has devot- 
ed to his great task. The documents are arranged in three 
sections. The first embraces those which correspond to the 
first volume of the text, and consequently covers all that re- 
gards the controversy between Cecilius, the second Lord Bal- 
timore, and the Jesuits. The second section consists of nearly 
one hundred documents of various descriptions referring to 
Jesuit property in Maryland and Pennsylvania from 1633-1838. 
It constitutes a " documentary excursus, narrative and critical, 
on Jesuit property and its uses." The third section is made 
up of papers bearing on the dispute carried on in the early 
part of the last century between Mgr. Marechal, third Arch- 
bishop of Baltimore, and the Jesuits regarding both property 
and jurisdiction. 

The washing of dirty linen in public is a process that can 
seldom be carried on with dignity, even by the most tactful of 
laundrymen and there is a good deal of drapery here that is 
far from immaculate. Father Hughes does not flinch from his 
task of publishing all the pieces, for the reason that, "if we 
omitted them now, others in course of time would produce 
them. We have put them in their place here." There will be, 
we believe, a general concurrence in his remark that "it may 

* The Histjry of the Society of Jesus in North America, Colonial and Federal. By T. 
Hughes, S.J. Documents Vol. I., Part I. Cleveland: Burrows Brothers Company ; New 
York : Longmans, Green & Co. 



256 NEW BOOKS [May, 

prove a source of satisfaction that so much of their contentious 
matter is decorously draped in the garb of foreign languages." 
Father Hughes leaves nothing undone to make sure that the 
washing shall not result in any added lustre to the character 
of Lord Baltimore, whose reputation he so fiercely assailed in 
the text. The founder of religious liberty in Maryland is held 
up to obloquy as an unscrupulous, self-seeking plotter ; a plun- 
derer of the Church; a "so-called Catholic landlord"; a liar 
and a robber. This is a hard saying; American Catholics will 
require Father Hughes' data to be thoroughly and impartially 
scrutinized before they will be ready to acquiesce in the con- 
clusions which he draws. 

Look on that picture and on this. One American Catholic, 
a Marylander and a priest, is already in the lists and touches 
Father Hughes' shield with the head of his lance. In his very 
interesting historical study just published,* Father Russell's 
special theme which scarcely figures at all in Father Hughes' 
portly volume is to claim for the founders of Maryland the 
honor of vindicating to Maryland "the peerless distinction of 
being, in modern times, the Land of Sanctuary," where the 
persecuted of every creed might find a peaceful home in which 
they could enjoy freedom of conscience. This achievement, so 
runs his pleading, was no haphazard result; but the guiding 
motive and resolutely pursued end of the Calverts in the found- 
ing and building up of the colony. " George Calvert and his 
son Cecilius were the first in modern times to design and es- 
tablish an abiding sanctuary wherein those persecuted for con- 
science' sake might find a home. . . . The documents we 
have prove beyond doubt that religious liberty prevailed in 
Maryland from the beginning; that this policy was adopted 
voluntarily by Lord Baltimore, gladly accepted by his Catholic 
colonists, and faithfully adhered to both by Proprietary and 
people." 

Father Russell has treated his subject with thoroughness 
and amplitude, from the foundation of the colony down to the 
time of the Revolution. He vigorously meets the charge 
for which Senator Lodge, who ought to have known better, 
has lately stood sponsor that no higher motive than self-inter- 

* Maryland: The Land of Sanctuary. A History of Religious Toleration in Maryland 
from the First Settlement until the American Revolution. By William T. Russell. Balti- 
more : Furst Company. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 257 

est prompted Baltimore to establish religious freedom ; and the 
principles of Baltimore he proves to have prevailed as long as 
the Catholic regime lasted. The conduct of those who over- 
threw it stands out in very black colors on Father Russell's 
masterly canvas. He draws a striking picture of the contrast 
between the moral conditions of the colony in the Catholic and 
in the subsequent periods. One of the few criticisms that sug- 
gest themselves is that the value of his book would have lost 
nothing if he had been less unrelenting on this point ; for any- 
thing that can by any ingenuity be twisted into evidence of a 
polemical basis necessarily detracts from the value of any his- 
torical study. There is, however, no ground for anybody to 
complain that Father Russell has not discharged his task in a 
spirit of fairness and courtesy ; and that task is fulfilled in a 
fashion which leaves nothing to be done by any one in the 
future. 

But we had almost forgotten the companion to Father 
Hughes' portrait of Cecilius Calvert. Though Father Russell 
takes every opportunity that offers and they are innumerable 
to commemorate the splendid work and character of the 
Maryland Jesuits, and repudiates, in their behalf, the old charge 
that they opposed Baltimore because he maintained toleration, 
our author will not at all admit that the members of the So- 
ciety were entirely in the right, and their adversary in the 
wrong. His contention is that the Jesuits looked for privileges 
such as the clergy enjoyed in old countries where Catholi- 
cism was established; that, with boundless devotion and self- 
sacrifice for the work of religion, they were, nevertheless, un- 
able to share or understand the far-seeing policy of Baltimore, 
who perceived that "the time was come when the religious 
and political conditions of the world demanded religious free- 
dom." As for Baltimore's character, we may quote the closing 
passage of the summary. After pointing out that Baltimore 
remained a Catholic when he had nothing to gain, in a worldly 
sense, and everything to lose by so doing; that when his enemies 
attacked him for fostering and patronizing Jesuits ; when those 
whom he protected were leagued with his enemies ; Father 
Russell writes : 

A man who under such conditions had the courage, the 
heroic courage, to defy all opposition and to stand before a 
VOL. LXXXVII.- 17 



258 NEW BOOKS [May, 

persecuting world a professed Catholic, needs no apologist. 
His Catholicity cannot be impugned. The invincible logic 
of such an unquestionable fact cannot be obscured, much less 
smothered, under any amount of musty documents, raked out 
of holes and corners, fragmentary, dove-tailed, and heaped up. 
Cecilius Calvert was a Catholic, a genuine Catholic, a self- 
sacrificing Catholic, explain the rest as we may. 

Father Russell is careful to give his authorities and sources 
at every step ; and has attached to his work a copious set of 
appendices. One who had no other grounds for his opinion 
than the work itself would infer that it was the product of a 
professional student rather than of a man actively engaged in 
the onerous labors of a large parish. 

Of the strange vicissitudes which 

DEFENSE OF THE SEVEN history registers, none is more sug 

SACRAMENTS. gestive of the phrase "the irony 

By Henry VIII., King of of fate," than that associated with 

England. the famous doctrinal treatise on the 

sacraments, written by, or ascribed 

to, the royal theologian, Henry VIII. * It contains a vigorous 
defense of the Real Presence and of the indissolubility of mar- 
riage; it was addressed, with profuse expression of filial obe- 
dience and loyalty, to the Pope as the Vicegerent of God on 
earth; and was submitted to his judgment. In return, Leo X., 
after expressing his high esteem for the author and his work, 
declares : 

Having found in this book most admirable doctrine, we 
thank God, and beg you to enlist like workers. We the true 
successor of St. Peter, presiding in this Holy See, from 
whence all dignities and titles have their source, have with 
our brethren maturely deliberated on these things ; and with 
one consent unanimously decreed to bestow on your Majesty 
this title, namely : " Defender of the Faith." 

When the present King of England, as successor of Henry, 
assumed that title among the others, he took the coronation 
oath, which denounces the doctrine of Transubstantiation as 
abominable idolatry. 

Several editions of the text and of English versions were 

* Assertio Septem Sacramentorum. By Henry VIII., King of England. Re-edited, with 
Introduction, by Rev. Louis O'Donovan, S.T.L. New York: Benziger Brothers. 






1908.] NEW BOOKS 259 

published in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ; but copies 
have become exceedingly scarce. Hence the editor of the pres- 
ent edition who has done his work in a thorough fashion is 
to be thanked for bringing into public notice a book that, in. 
dependent of its intrinsic theological merits, which though re- 
spectable, are not of the first order, has an intense historical in- 
terest. Its present controversial value lies less in its defense of 
the sacraments than in the indirect but powerful witness it bears 
to the historic subordination of the English Church to the Ro- 
man See. 

This edition contains the Latin text and the English trans- 
lation taken from an old edition, the date of which is not ex- 
actly known. To these the editor has added a brief synopsis 
of the " Assertio "; an historical and critical account of its ori- 
gin and results ; the oration of the king's agent, who presented 
it to Leo X. ; the correspondence which passed on the occasion 
of it between Henry and the Pope ; the Papal Bull conferring 
on Henry the title of Defender of the Faith; and a brief dis- 
cussion of the question whether that title was meant by its 
donor to be hereditary. The abundance of references and the 
full bibliography which the editor gives us indicate that the 
book is the fruit of intelligent and extensive study. 

A preceding number of THE CATH- 

CHRISTIANITY IN THE O Lic WORLD noticed the remark- 
FAR EAST. a ble study of M. Joly on the his- 

tory of Catholic Missions in In- 
dia, Indo-China, China, and Corea. The writer found that af- 
ter long efforts, extending through centuries of successive gen- 
erations of truly apostolic men, the net results have been very 
inadequate. The reason why the Church has never become 
thoroughly planted among these immense populations so ran 
his verdict is that a native hierarchy was never established, 
and Catholicism, in the eyes of the native races, never divested 
itself of the suspicion that it was primarily an instrument of 
European conquest. The Canon has completed his study with 
a volume on Japan.* There, too, like causes produced like ef- 
fects. Such is the inference with which he sums up a com- 
plete, methodical, fascinating history of Japanese missions, from 

* Le Christianisme et T Extreme Orient. II. Mission Catholique du Japan. Par Chanoine 
Ldon Joly. Paris : Lethielleux. 



260 NEW BOOKS [May, 

the arrival of the apostle, St. Francis Xavier, to the visit of 
Archbishop O'Connell. Japan was a fair field for apostolic zeal. 
Nowhere in the world did converts prove themselves more he- 
roically loyal. The Canon relates the wonderful fact regarding 
the natives who came from the interior to meet the Catholic 
priests, when, after two hundred years of exclusion, mission- 
aries were again allowed to enter the country in 1865. Fifteen 
thousand descendants of the people converted in the early part 
of the seventeenth century were found to have preserved the 
faith for which their fathers died. How they did it, without 
priesthood, without sacraments, subject to the constant sur- 
veillance of a hostile government, is a mystery of grace. That, 
under these circumstances, the faith was preserved by so many, 
M. Joly considers to be a peremptory proof that, had a native 
episcopate and clergy been established the seed sown by St. 
Francis Xavier and the later missionaries would long ago have 
grown into a flourishing, extensive, Japanese Catholicism. 

After a meritorious, laborious apostolate, visibly blessed by 
God, to which we offer once more the homage of our profound 
admiration, the missionaries died in attestation of the truth 
which they preached. This is beautiful. But the Church ot 
Japan died with them, because they had neglected before they 
died to hand on the torch of faith to valiant hands that were 
ready to receive it and this will be eternally deplorable. 

The same judgment is reached by another writer who knows 
his Japan, and surveys missionary Christianity from a stand- 
point other than that of M. Joly. The Anglican bishop of To- 
kio, in an essay which is not behind the work of Canon Joly 
in generous admiration for the zeal of our missionaries, ex- 
presses the view that Japan destroyed Catholicism within her 
borders because it wore the garb of a foreign institution, and 
therefore appeared to be a menace to national unity. 

When the foreign teachers were removed, and access to 
them closed, the descendants of the old Christians were de- 
pendent for all their knowledge on the ever-decreasing rem- 
nant of what had been orally taught from generation to gen- 
eration. Even the formulae such as that used in Baptism, 
being in a foreign language, became more and more mispro- 
nounced, and less and less understood, till probably to most 
it became nothing more than a charm of mystic value. 



i9o8.] NEW BOOKS 261 

Speaking of the present situation the same writer says: 

In most ways the present methods of the Roman mission are 
admirable ; for instance, their quietness, due in part, no 
doubt, to the unpopularity and suspicion due to their past 
history, and the foreign center of their Church ; their poverty, 
their discipline, their persistence and ubiquity, without enter- 
ing into controversy with other Christians. Or, again, their 
high-class boarding schools, in which parents feel their chil- 
dren to be morally safe ; their care and use of the poor, their 
training of thousands of orphans and destitute in institutions 
where they imbibe Christian faith with their daily food. 
Their literature also is far more thorough and popular, and 
deals more effectively and rapidly" with the religious and moral 
questions that the Japanese press is discussing than that of 
any other body. 

This excerpt is taken from a book * that is well worth study 
by those among ourselves happily, thanks to our recently ac- 
quired responsibilities in Porto Rico and the Philippines, a grow- 
ing class who are interested in the spread of Catholicism in 
the foreign missionary field. The book consists of a series of 
essays, by conspicuous Anglican missionaries, on the conditions 
which confront them in Japan, China, India, the South Pacific, 
and among the negro race. The editor contributes an intro- 
ductory paper in which he makes a psychological analysis of 
English character in contrast with that of the Oriental, and of 
the relation of the national character to the national Church. 
All the essays converge on that insoluble practical problem, 
How to make that Church universal which, to support its claim 
to existence, is driven to prove itself local and national. The 
good bishop in the process of demonstrating that the English 
race is constitutionally opposed to Roman Catholicism cannot 
permit himself to look very far back in the history of his coun- 
try. He says : " The Church of our race, for example, will 
never accept the materialization of fancy in the Latin Church, 
as in the dogmas about the intermediate state, or the Assump- 
tion of the Virgin." But do not Anglicans claim that the 
Church of England of to-day is the Church of the pre- Reforma- 
tion times ? And the Church of the pre-Reformation times, 

* Mankind and the Church. Being an attempt to estimate the contribution of Great Races 
to the fullness of the Church of God. By Seven Bishops. Edited with an Introduction by 
Right Rev. H. H. Montgomery, D.D. New York : Longmans, Green & Co, 



262 NEW BOOKS [May, 

when, we suppose, the Englishman was as genuine an English- 
man as is the Englishman of to-day, did accept "the dogma 
about the intermediate state " and the other dogmas of the 
Roman Church. 

Another volume of essays similar in scope to the above, 
Church and the Empire, * shows, at once, the earnest labor 
which representative men of the English Church are devoting 
to evolve some sort of bond between the home institution and 
those of the colonies; and the difficulties of the task, which 
throw into the shade those that beset the promoters of Im- 
perial federation. 

That strong novels of " high so- 

PRINCESS NADINE. ciety " as it is to-day can still be 
By Christian Reid. written without offensive unclean- 

ness or tedious psychologizing is 

proved by this story of Christian Reid's, f The heroine is the 
daughter of a Russian prince and granddaughter of a California 
miner who amassed an immense fortune. Princess Nadine, short- 
ly after the story opens, becomes engaged to a Serene High- 
ness, who is, under Russian auspices, a candidate for a petty 
throne in the Balkan States. Her grandmother is a type of the 
title-hunting American women of the plutocracy. A young 
cousin of Princess Nadine is involved in anarchistic schemes; 
and brings the Russian secret service into the plot. Nadine has 
another admirer, a Spanish-American dictator, who is the strong 
man of the story. The princess finds occasion to test whether 
her princely lover is disinterested ; and shows herself a sterling 
woman, while he proves counterfeit. Her character is the ar- 
tistic merit of the story. 

Although one cannot cease to pro- 

THE GREAT SECRET. test against the utter improbability 
By Oppenheim. of the general plot and many sit- 

uations of this story,| nevertheless 

curiosity is aroused from the first and carries us along to the 
finish, just to find what is the great secret on account of which 

* Church and Empire. A Series of Essays on the Responsibilities of Empire. Edited by 
Rev. John Ellison, M.A., and the Rev. G. H. S. Walpole, D.D. New York: Longmans, 
Green & Co. 

t Princess Nadine By Christian Reid. New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons 
\ The Great Secret. By E Phillip Oppenheim. Boston : Little, Brown & Co. 



i9o8.] NEW BOOKS 263 

an Englishman is pursued by the murderous emissaries of a 
Continental Government, among whom is a young American 
woman who, for the old, old reason, changes sides before the 
denouement. In what class is this novel to be placed ? Well, 
the high-class detective genre ; where none of the pursuers or 
pursued, however, display any of the Sherlock Holmes powers 
of inference and scientific analysis of facts. 

The Life of St. Jerome f by Fray 

LIFE OF ST. JEROME. Jose de Sigiienza, which has been 

translated into English by one of 

his compatriots, long enjoyed a high place in Spanish litera- 
ture for the purity of its style. The author was considered 
the most learned Spanish ecclesiastic of his day. No less a 
personage than Philip II. said of him, to a circle of his min- 
isters : " Why fatigue yourselves recounting what he is and 
what he knows ? Better state what Jose de Sigiienza does not 
know, and you will end the discussion sooner." The work, 
which fills nearly seven hundred pages, is cast in the stately, 
methodical form dear to the scholarship of those days when the 
writer loved to ransack the learning of the ancient world to 
enforce an argument with historical or mythological illustration. 
The writer has missed nothing that, in his days, was known of 
St. Jerome ; and, as he proceeds through the long life, which 
with eloquent apologies for so doing he divides into Seven 
Ages, he abounds on almost every point in digressions, which 
are full of spiritual wisdom, mingled, here and there, with 
quaint ideas, such as the sacredness of the number seven, the 
mysterious character of the grand climacteric 81, or 3x3x3x3 
(the age which Jerome attained), that have long lost their an- 
cient prestige. 

The first and second volumes of a 

PHILOSOPHY AND THE- projected complete course of Tho- 
OLOGY. mistic philosophy, by a Dutch Do- 

minican, possess the qualities proper 

to a good text-book. f It has order, lucidity of arrangement, 
clearness and simplicity of language; and the scale of treat- 

* The Life of St. Jerome, the Great Doctor of the Church, in Six Books. From the original 
Spanish of Fray Jose" de Sigiienza (1593). By Mariana Monteiro. St. Louis : B. Herder. 

\Philosophia Natutalis. Pars Prima: Cosmologia, I. Logica, II. Auctore R. P. E. 
Hugon, O.P. Paris: Lethielleux. 



264 NEW BOOKS [May, 

ment is a just medium between over-minute diffuseness and in- 
sufficient development. Thoroughly Thomistic in doctrine and 
rigorously scholastic in form, these two volumes, one on Logic 
and the other on Cosmology, wear a pleasing air of, to borrow 
a French phrase for which we have no exact equivalent, ac- 
tualite. Father Hugon aims at bringing traditional doctrine 
to bear upon the thought of the day. Students are intro- 
duced to names which figure in contemporary thought, and, if 
their professor supports the initiative of the author, they will 
acquire that very necessary, yet too often conspicuously lacking 
element of a proper course in philosophy a clear perception 
of the form in which the unbelief of to-day lays its strategic 
lines. 

The third volume, or rather the second part of it, of the 
Cursus Philosophise of Father Hickey,* the Irish Cistercian, 
embraces Ethics. The treatment is in the traditional method, 
and is fairly proportioned to the division of a three years' 
course of philosophy. The author pursues the commendable 
practice of giving copious citations, in footnotes, from English 
writers; but the circle in which he confines himself is not very 
extensive. Both Father Hugon and Father Hickey would have 
conferred a further favor on their prospective readers by add- 
ing a well-constructed index. 

In La Notion de la Verite^ which originally appeared as arti- 
cles in the Etudes, M. Tonquedec refutes the opinions of MM. 
Le Roy, Wilbois, and other advocates of the new philosophy 
regarding the nature of truth, philosophic and religious. 

Taking as his text those propositions in the recent Syllabus 
which refer to the divinity of our Lord, M. Lepin opposes to 
the conclusions of Abbe Loisy the true portrait of Christ in the 
Gospels. The discussion forms only a small, but a remarkably 
compendious volume,f which establishes the following conclu- 
sions : From the beginning, Jesus was conscious of being the 

* Summula Philosophies Scholastics. Vol. III. Ethica. J. S. Hickey, O.Cist. New 
York : Benziger Brothers. 

t La Notion de la Verite dans la Philosophic Nouvelle. Par J. de Tonque'dec. Paris; 
Beauchesne. 

\Christologie. Par M. Lepin. Paris: Beauchesne. 




1908.] NEW BOOKS 265 

Messias and He manifested His Messianic character throughout 
His ministry; he declared Himself to be the true Son of God, 
and God ; in His humanity He possessed unlimited and infallible 
knowledge; by His death He became the Redeemer of man- 
kind, as He had foretold He should do ; finally, after being 
buried, He arose corporeally from the grave. The entire Gospel 
evidence on all these points is succinctly stated. 



The subject-matter of the two publications just mentioned, 
are treated, with their surroundings, in the entire general ques- 
tion of Modernism by the Dominican Father Allo, professor in 
the University of Fribourg.* The work, he remarks, was com- 
posed before the appearance of the Encyclical, Pascendi ; but 
no change was required to bring it into conformity with the 
Papal rulings. Of the innumerable writers who have been busy 
about the question, and the controversies which surround it, 
Father Allo is perhaps the one who most clearly presents the 
main elements of these controversies, and defends the orthodox 
position without overstating it. 

In an introductory chapter he addresses himself to those 
Catholics who manifest a dread lest an inopportune diffusion of 
the indisputable results reached by orthodox critics may have 
injurious results. We must, he argues, convince ourselves that 
no truth is ever dangerous for those who understand it proper- 
ly ; and that men, de conscience, de science, et de foi, have the 
right to pursue their investigations boldly, provided they are 
guided by past decisions of authority and hold themselves 
ready to submit to such as may be made by the Church in 
the future. We must, he proceeds to show in his next chapter, 
be on our guard against the exclusivism which dreads lest his- 
torical and psychological methods, even if rightly pursued, may 
hurt our religious convictions. He criticises and combats in 
succession the position of MM. Le Roy, Blondel, Loisy, and 
Harnack, and distinguishes the true from the false theories of 
development. In conclusion, he essays to sketch " the pragmatic 
apologetic which we may, without tearing each other to pieces, 
and laying aside our speculative divergences, employ against un- 
believers, who, too often, take us to be adepts of different re- 
ligions having nothing in common but the badge of Catholics." 

*Foi et Systemes. Par E. B. Allo, O.P. Paris: Librairie Bloud et Cie. 



266 NEW BOOKS [May. 

A protest which grows more and more emphatic is be- 
ing voiced against the note of depravity so common in much 
of our popular fiction, and in many of our successful plays. 
Dr. Barry contributed to the October Bookman an article en- 
titled : "The Fleshly School of Fiction"; and another article 
is given in the current National, entitled : " The Coming Cen- 
sorship of Books of Fiction." No better example of the cry- 
ing need of a strenuous crusade against the indecent in liter- 
ature could be furnished than the latest play by D'Annunzio, 
entitled: " La Nave The Ship." The Avvenire d* Italia de- 
nounces the play in unmeasured terms, and maintains that the 
author has managed, " in an extraordinarily skillful manner, in 
impregnating the whole work with a powerful undertone, a de- 
structive, demoralising current of sensuality and unnerving, un- 
manning decadence, and the play is full of suggestion in its 
worst sense." D'Annunzio, it is said, spoke of the play as a 
Christian tragedy. Apropos of this, the London Academy adds : 
"Possibly D'Annunzio based this idea on the fact that his 
tragedy is rather blasphemously dedicated ' to God,' for the 
play has much of D'Annunzio, but remarkably little of Christ 
n it." " ' The Ship,' " continues the Academy, " is reported as 
being under weigh for other countries, and doubtless once ' up 
anchor ' she will visit our shores. We heartily wish she would 
remain where she is in her own port viz., in the Tiber, and 
take up her permanent anchorage, if exist she must, nearby her 
true sister- ship The Cloaca Massima" 



foreign jperiobtcals. 

The Tablet (29 Feb.): Another contribution in criticism of So- 
cialism is given to prove that this theory it not in ac- 
cord with the teachings of Christ or the early Christian 

Church. Literary Notes makes an appeal for greater 

support, lay and clerical, of our Catholic press. 
(7 March): The attempt at the secularization of Italian 
schools is said to have aroused the Catholics of Italy to 
some degree of activity in defense of their rights and in 

the improvement of their system. A defense of Abbe 

Loisy by Freidrich von Hugel. The Matin interview 
quoted in the Tablet is declared to have been repudiated 
by Abbe Loisy, but his letter of protest was not pub- 
lished by that paper. 

(14 March): Great praise is bestowed on the January 
number of the Dublin Review in the Literary Notes. 

Contains the text of the excommunication pronounced 

against Abbe Loisy. 

The Month (March) : In the second week of next September, 
a Eucharistic Congress will be held in London. During 
the past twenty-five years, no fewer than eighteen such 
conferences have been held in different Catholic centers. 
The object of the Eucharistic Congress is to draw men 
to a deeper and more solid love ot the Holy Eucharist. 

" Do we neglect the Catholic press ? " is the title of 

an article which depicts the Catholic attitude toward 
Catholic publications, as presented from a symposium 
by authoritative Catholic writers. French Catholics have 
neglected the press, and they are submerged beneath the 
tide of Secularism. The Catholics of Germany have main- 
tained themselves, to a very great extent as a religious 
factor, through the agency of the press. English Cath- 
olics neither read nor propagate Catholic publications to 
the extent which might reasonably be expected. Our 
schools do not inculcate a tendency for select and bene- 
ficial reading. The article entitled " Laicization of 

French Hospitals," presents a brief survey of the work 
accomplished by the different religious communities in 
the hospitals of France. The system at present in vogue 



268 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [May, 

is characterized by numberless abuses, originating, per- 
haps, in the three following causes : the inadequate sal- 
aries of the nurses; their wretched accommodations ; and 

their insufficient number. " What is Modernism ? 

This article furnishes information concerning the Papal 
Encyclical on Modernism. The Pope appoints a judicial 
commission of Cardinals who, in turn, appoint a consul- 
tative commission of the best experts in the land. The 
tenets of Modernism are presented in all their relative 
bearings on philosophical and historical studies. 

The National Review (April): "Episodes of the Month" deals 
with clandestine correspondence between the German 
Emperor and the British First Lord of the Admiralty. 

The first article, by H. W. Wilson, is a continuation 

of the same subject, and an appeal for an increased Brit- 
ish Navy. " The Coming Censorship of Fiction," by 

Basil Tozer, treats of the change for the worse that is 
coming over our modern novels, and the enormous financial 
success resulting from the circulation of the " fleshly" books 
of fiction, and the likelihood of the appointment of a pub- 
lic censor of fiction. Alfred Mosley writes on the evils 

of dishonest corporation finance. D. F. Lewis writes 

of the late French operations in Morocco, and expresses 
the hope that tranquillity and development will now, as 
a result of French rule, come to the country. 

The Crucible (25 March) : L. M. Leggatt advances " Fiction as 
a Power in Education." In support of this view the au- 
thor states the need of awakening imagination in minds 
in process of formation. The novel is, at least, a fair 
counterbalance to the unwholesome newspaper. " Hy- 
giene and Temperance," is a summary of the movement 
for ameliorating unsanitary conditions. Children should 

be instructed in hygienic laws. Margaret Fletcher 

comments on the " Woman Question." Two views are 
treated: one of "accepted Christian ethics"; the other 
of "those who wish to create a wholly new social order." 

The Expository Times (March) : The second volume of the 
Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels is noticed in this 
number. The reviewer calls attention especially to Dr. 
Sanday's article on St. Paul, which he thinks has very 
great importance in view of what appears to be an im- 



1908.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 269 

pending controversy concerning Paul's part in the spread- 
ing of the Christian religion. Mention is made of 

Dr. Drummond's Studies in Christian Doctrine, which is 
in reality a work on Systematic Theology. Consider- 
able space is given to Dr. Baljon's article " Contribu- 
tions from the History of Religions to the New Testa- 
ment," in the Bibliotheca Sacra for January. The ten- 
dency of Dr. Baljon's views may be judged from the 
following : " The influence of strange religions upon 
primitive Christianity is not very important. . . . 
Above all things else, let the full light be concentrated 
upon the person of Jesus Christ, Who is the creator or 
rather the center of the religion that names itself after 
Him. If history in general cannot be understood with- 
out the significance of those exalted personalities who 
gave the impulse to any great movement, and who can- 
not be interpreted as mere products of their times, how 
much more does this apply to the sacred history of the 
origin of Christianity, in view of the person of Christ." 
International Journal of Ethics (April) : Prof. J. S. Mackenzie 
believes that the solution ol the problem of moral in- 
struction is to be found in the more thorough training 
of our teachers, the more careful differentiation of their 
work, and the more systematic organization of our 

schools. "The Struggle for Existence in Relation to 

Morals and Religion," by Mabel Atkinson. George H. 

Mead pleads for " The Philosophical Basis of Ethics " : 
" It is interesting to compare the intellectual treatment 
which moral problems receive at the hands of the scienti- 
fic investigator and the pulpit. In the latter there is at 
present no apparatus for investigation. Its function is 
not the intellectual one of finding out what in the new 
situation is right, but in inspiring to a right conduct 
which is supposed to be so plain that he who runs may 
read. The result has been that in the great moral issues 
of recent industrial history such as child labor, wo- 
man's labor, protection of machinery, the pulpit has been 
necessarily silent. It has not the means nor the tech- 
nique for finding out what was the right thing to do. 
The science of hygiene threatens the universal issue of 
temperence, while we can look forward to the time when 



270 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [May, 

investigation may enable us to approach understanding- 
ly the prostitute and her trade, and change the social con- 
ditions which have made her possible instead of merely 

scourging an abstract sin." "Wars and Labor Wars," 

by Waldo L. Cook. " The Ethics of Nietzsche," by 

A. C. Pigon " Evolution and the Self-Realization 

Theory," by H. N. Wright. "The Ethics of State 

Interference in the Domestic Relations," by Ray Mad- 
ding McConnell. 

The Hibbert Journal (April) : G. Lowes Dickinson, writing of 
" Knowledge and Faith," maintains that " it is poets and 
musicians, not philosophers and theologians, who alone 
can give (for faith) an expression that is at once ade- 
quate and elastic." This view is supported by Prof. 
Frank Thilly in a contribution entitled "The World 
View of a Poet: Goethe's Philosophy." "The Dual- 
ism of St. Augustine," by Paul E. More. "British 

Exponents of Pragmatism," by Dr. E. B. M'Gilvary. 

Prof. A. O. Lovejoy, now of Columbia University, 

writes of the " Religious Transition and Ethical Awak- 
ening in America." Mgr. John S. Canon Vaughan 
emphasizes both the unity of the Catholic Church as an 
efficient organization for the promulgation of Christian 
doctrine, and the infallibility of the Pope in pronounc- 
ing ex cathedra Christ's teachings and divine truth. 

" The Permanence of Personality" is argued affirmatively 

by Sir Oliver Lodge. Mrs. H. F. Petersen, in writing 

of "An Agnostic's Consolation," says that "agnosticism 
possesses, in common with every faith, one sanction, most 
efficient of all the knowledge of cause and effect, and 
of the mundane consequences of our actions." 

The Irish Ecclesiastical Record (March): E. J. Cullen, C.M., dis- 
cussing the "Scriptures for the People," praises highly 
the work of the St. Jerome Society in spreading au- 
thentic copies of the Gospel among Italians, and men- 
tions the two books of M. 1'Abbe Lesetre, Les Clefs des 
Evangiles and U Histoire Sainte, as eminently adapted 

for popularizing Scriptural knowledge. Very Rev. T. 

P. Gilmartin examines the development of the Mass 
Canon, with particular attention to the Epiclesis, or sol- 
emn invocation of the Holy Ghost. As a help in the 



1908.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 271 

struggle against secularism, Rev. Thomas M'Geoy advo- 
cates the establishment of a branch of the C. Y. M. S. 
in every parish ; this will give the priest an opportunity 
of meeting the younger element of his congregation and 
gaining their help and sympathy. 

Le Correspondent (25 Feb.): Writing of the strained relations 
in Morocco, M. Dubois claims that at the bottom of all 
the trouble is Germany's passionate desire for commer- 
cial supremacy. Geoffroy de Grandmaison contributes 

a short history of Napoleon in Spain, from November, 

1808, to January, 1809. P. Giguello gives an account 

of the help rendered to the deep-sea fishermen, by a so- 
ciety formed for that purpose in France. Italian life 

and civilization during the Renaissance are treated of by 
Andre Chaumieux. The apathetic and mistaken atti- 
tude of the French administration and people toward 
their colonies is the theme upon which Francis Mury 
writes. 

(10 March): The life of Madame de Charmpisy, the 
" Philothea " of St. Francis de Sales' Introduction to a De- 
vout Life, is contributed by A. Bordeaux. An anony- 
mous correspondent contributes a study of the French 

colonial army its method of recruiting, etc. Henri 

Brecnond criticizes three recent works on de Lamennais. 

Etudes (5 March) : M. de Tonquedec offers a philosophical pa- 
per on the interpretation of order in the world. It is 
largely a discussion of M. Bergson's recent book, Creative 
Evolution, in which the writer argues for intelligent final- 
ity in the universe, as opposed to blind mechanism. 

M. Cros writes on the apparition at Lourdes in March, 

1858. M. Eymieu continues the paper on "Habit and 

Self-Discipline." 

(20 March) : In an article on " The Revelation of the 
Son of God," M. Jules Lebreton takes up the history of 
the doctrine of the Trinity in the Old and New Testa- 
ments. The pre Christian evidences are weighed, in their 
relation to the Messianic hope culminating in the person 

of Christ. M. Fillet examines the problem of peace 

among nations and the utility of the Conferences at the 

Hague. M. Lucien Roure contributes a paper on 

"Scholastics and Modernists. " In an article on "Re- 



272 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [May, 

ligious England " M. Joseph Boubee enumerates the per- 
sonnel of Catholic leadership in England. He then dis- 
cusses the prospects of legislation regarding the schools 
in England. 

Revue Pratique d* Apologetique (15 March): M. Guignebert is 
taken to task for his rationalistic attitude towards the 
Catholic religion in general and towards the Old Testa- 
ment in particular. According to his way of thinking, 
the three essential parts of the Catholic faith dogmas, 
sacraments, and submission to the discipline of the Church 
are difficult to accept. The inspiration, the Canon, and 
the history of the Old Testament, together with various 
texts and versions, he comments upon with severity. 

H. Ligeard concludes his series on the natural and 

supernatural as viewed by the scholastic theologians 
from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century. Vari- 
ous questions regarding the rights and powers of a bishop 
in regard to condemning a journal are answered. 

La Democratic Chretienne (8 March) : Mgr. du Varoux, Bishop 
of Agen, writes of the relations of Church and political 
parties, giving a few practical suggestions as to what 

should be the attitude of Catholics in this regard. A 

letter from Spain, by A. Castroviejo, treats of the pro- 
gress made by the " Christian Democracy " in various 

parts of that country. A paragraph commenting on 

the condemnation and suppression of the two journals, 
La Justice Sociale and La Vie Catholique, states that they 
were probably suppressed not because of their Demo- 
cratic Christianity, but rather from lack of it. 

Annales de Philosophic Chretienne (March) : V. Ermoni regards 
the " Forms of Religion and the Classification of Reli- 
gions." Christianity is unique among the religions to 
which the conscience of man has given expression, in that 
it satisfies absolutely and perfectly the aspirations and 
needs of man's soul. It is eternally fruitful, eternally sup- 
ple and vital ; Christianity shows a power of adaptability 
to all conditions of humanity, to all discoveries of science, 

to all the conquests of progress. " St. Ambrose and 

Allegorical Exegesis," by P. de Labriolle. "St. Epi- 

phanius: Religious Knowledge," by J. Martin. M. 

Lebreton offers some remarks in criticism of M. Laber- 



I908.J FOREIGN PERIODICALS 273 

thonniere's recent article "Dogma and Theology III., to 
which M. Laberthonniere answers with some warmth. 
He ventures that his position will be better understood 
when he has finished his articles on this question. 

Stimmen aus Maria Laach (14 March): H. Koch, S.J., in a 
paper " A New Middle Class," asks the question whether 
the growing class of salaried officials can replace the 
gradually decreasing class of independent traders and 
artisans. The class of salaried officials which forms the 
link between capitalists and common laborers should be 
strengthened by better legal rights and a more secure 

income. V. Cathrein, S.J., begins a treatise on "The 

Question of Superintendence of Schools in Prussia," ex- 
plains the different positions held, and whether or not 
this superintendence may be exercised by the clergy. 

Cl. Blume, S.J., in an article "Gregory the Great 

as a Composer of Hymns," takes issue with an ar- 
ticle in the Theologische Quartalschrift, which urges that 
there are no grounds for declaring Gregory a poet. The 
writer proves, from Dublin manuscripts and from Greg- 
ory's relation to Ireland, that the " Hymns f the Week" 

must have been composed by Gregory. K. Schlitz, 

S.J., considers, in a paper on " Pan-Americanism," the 
possibilities of a politically united America, and concludes 
that the economical relations of South America to Eu- 
rope and Japan will probably prevent the realization of 
Pan-American ideals. 

La Revue des Sciences Ecclesiastiques et La Science Catholique 
(Feb.): A life study of Pope Pius X., by M. 1'Abbe 

Lourdeau, begun in the January issue, is continued. 

Chan. Gombault studies mystic states from the point of 

view of psycho-physiology. The " Legal Form of 

Marriage," apropos of the recent decree "Ne Temere," 
by M. 1'Abbe N. Rousseau. 

La Civilta Cattolica (7 March) : " Public Education and Cate- 
chism " urges the study of Catechism in the Public 

Schools. "The Solemn Greek Liturgy in the Vatican" 

an account of the centenary of St. John Chrysostom 

in Rome. "The Twilight of Roberto Ardigo." The 

eightieth birthday of this " Prince of Italian Positivists," 
gives occasion for an account of his life and works. 
VOL. LXXXVII. 1 8 



274 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [May. 

(2 March): "The Veto in the Conclave "a review of 
Dr. Alexander Eisler's "Das Veto der Katholischen 

Staaten bei der Papstwahl." "Modernistic Theology 

and the Vatican Council " the acts and decrees of 
this council considered as bearing upon the theology 
of the Modernists. " The Theatre in Italy " a con- 
tinuation of a former article. 
La Scuola Cattolica (Feb.): "St. John Chrysostom," by Fer- 

dinando Pogliani. " F. S." examines some Modernist 

conceptions of biblical criticism as applied to the New 

Testament, and points out their error. The " New 

Canonical Discipline Regarding Matrimony," by Angelo 

Nasoni. " Research in the Cloister of Volterra near 

Gavirate," by Diego Sant' Ambrogio. -In a review of 

a recent book by J. Laminne, La Theorie de I* Evolution, 
which is a criticism of Spencer's First Principles, it is 
pointed out that while Spencer's agnosticism must be 
reprobated, there is much in his theory of evolution 
which is true. 



Current Events. 

The French army still remains in 
France. Morocco, in the occupation of 

Casablanca, and in more or less 

frequent conflict with the tribes. While carefully refraining 
from an advance into the interior, a slight change has been made 
in the method of carrying on the desultory warfare that has 
for so long been going on. Hitherto, after the necessary casti- 
gation had been inflicted on the restless tribes, the troops used 
to return to their base. This was taken as an indication of 
weakness, and in consequence it has been decided to occupy 
temporarily the positions captured, even when they are at some 
little distance from the seacoast. This decision has not, as 
might have been expected, excited invidious criticism, for con- 
fidence is generally felt in the good faith of the declared policy 
of the government not to undertake anything like a conquest, 
or even a protectorate, of Morocco. The French people, more- 
over, would not tolerate any such adventure. The Act of Alge- 
ciras, legitimate French interests, the determination not to be 
supplanted by any other Power these are the objects to the 
defense of which France, both government and people, has 
determined to limit her action. Within these limits, however, 
a firm resolution has been taken to act efficiently, and not to 
withdraw until they have been secured. 

The Socialists, of whom M. Jaures is the leader, have, in 
the Chamber, made a renewed attack upon the government; 
they were, however, defeated by a majority of 425 votes to 83. 
It would seem that M. Jaures must be numbered among those, 
to be found everywhere, who are the friends of every country 
except their own. M. Jaures charged the French soldiers with 
a ruthless massacre of women and children. This was altogether 
untrue ; so far is it from being the case that the French are 
carrying on warfare with undue severity, that the Moors are 
astonished at their humanity. M. Jaures' wish is that the ap- 
peasement of the country should be brought about by the crea- 
tion of schools and of beneficent institutions, and that they 
should in this way be won over little by little to peace and 
civilization. This, doubtless, is highly commendable in the ab- 
stract ; but, when people like the Moors have to be dealt with, 
harsher measures are necessary at first at all events. The 
Moors were the aggressors, and have carried on the war like 



276 CURRENT EVENTS [May, 

savages, in a way which is indescribable in these pages. The 
eyes of the wounded have been plucked out and living men 
have been thrown into the fire. M. Jaures is a harsher critic 
of his own countrymen than the most hostile foreigner. 

Very little progress is being made in France itself with the 
promised measures for social improvement. The scope of the 
Bill for pensions tor old men and women has been restricted on 
account of the large expense involved, nor has it yet been 
finally adopted. The Income Tax Bill has been the subject of 
protracted discussions, and is still in via. An Amnesty Bill, 
the sixth of its kind since 1900, has passed through the Chamber 
with only five votes recorded as opposed to its passage. Why 
the nation should be so anxious to pardon breakers of the law 
it is somewhat difficult to see. Surely the laws are not unjust, 
nor is it the innocent, it is to be hoped, who have been convicted. 
The persons benefited by the present Bill are those who were 
convicted of resistance to lawful authority in what is now called 
the rebellion, which took place last year on account of the low 
price of wine in the Midi. Efforts were made to include the 
anti-militarists, anti-patriots, and the insubordinate civil agents 
who insisted on joining trade unions as well as those who took 
part in resisting the Separation Act and deserters from the 
Army. These attempts, however, did not succeed. 

The conscience of the legislators has been roused and none 
too soon by the open sale of indecent literature which has 
gone on so long. A bill for the suppression of this abuse of 
liberty has passed both the House of Deputies and the Senate. 
The ministry of M. Clemenceau still remains in power; and, bad 
as it is, if it were to fall, it would very probably be supplanted 
by one more extreme. M. Combes is the most active aspirant 
to office, and is trying to organize an opposition for the purpose 
of supplanting the present holders. Too great zeal, on his part, 
however, has been the cause of a decisive set-back to his efforts, 
and, although the various groups which support the present Prime 
Minister are not very firmly united, there is no immediate pros- 
pect, so far as can be seen, of a change of government. 

Some time ago the present representatives of France in the 
Assembly came to the conclusion that their services to the coun- 
try were not adequately recompensed, and accordingly proceeded 
to raise their salaries, or indemnities as they are called, from 
eighteen hundred dollars a year to three thousand. They did 
this without consulting their constituents, and have had to un- 




1908.] CURRENT EVENTS 277 

dergo the mortification of being subjected to an emphatic con- 
demnation because of the too high value which they have placed 
upon themselves. At every subsequent election clear condemna- 
tion has been pronounced. Everything that touches the purse 
is keenly felt. This sensitiveness is shown by the fact that the 
failure of a financial adventurer, although it was not for what 
we should look upon as a very large amount, was the cause of 
debate in the Assembly of Deputies. Members of the Chamber 
were said to be involved in the dishonest practices of the de- 
faulter; even the course of justice, it was alleged, was being 
deflected to shield him. This, however, was indignantly denied 
by the Minister of Justice. 

The proposal of the government to transfer the body of M. 
Zola to the Pantheon shows what kind of men it delights to 
honor. Although no one has pictured in a worse light the life 
of the people of France, or more cruelly slandered them, and in 
so doing vilified humanity itself and exploited unhesitatingly 
the misfortunes of his own country, the Chamber of Deputies 
voted the sum necessary for the translation by a majority of 
356 votes. It was to the eloquence of M. Jaures that this was 
largely due. What called forth this eloquence was the love of 
justice and of truth which was shown by M. Zola, particularly, 
he said, "in his famous article 'J'accuse.' Moreover, he was an 
optimist and a worshipper (strange to say) of humanity." 

The time for presidents and princes to pay visits has re- 
turned. The German Emperor, on his way to Corfu, has met 
the King of Italy at Venice ; President Fallieres is to visit Lon- 
don in May and Stockholm in July, and then, it is reported, St. 
Petersburg. Nothing political, it is always said before they take 
place, is involved in these visits ; but afterwards it is equally 
invariably found that more or less important decisions have 
been made. The visit of the French President to London is 
on account of the Anglo-French Exhibition which is to be held 
there as a consequence and as a symbol of the entente cordiale. 

The result of the meeting of the 
Germany. German Emperor and the King of 

Italy has been to reassure the lat- 
ter that the proposed visit of the Emperor to Albania springs 
from the pure love of sport, and that it will not in any way 
interfere with the claim of Italy to be the heir of this part of 
the "Sick Man's" possessions. The Emperor's letters and vis- 



278 CURRENT EVENTS [May, 

its cause no little apprehension in the minds of those who are 
in charge of the public interests of Europe. Since the question 
of Dr. Hill's transfer to Berlin has been raised, the public men 
of this country have had a like experience. His letter to Lord 
Tweedmouth may not have done much harm, but it certainly 
has done no good. The best appreciation of this occurrence is 
found in the Times correspondence from Vienna, giving the 
opinion of that capital. Direct unofficial communications be- 
tween the head of a foreign State and any British minister 
so it is declared are incompatible with British constitutional 
principles and traditions. As constitutional government is a 
check upon the initiative of a monarch in regard to the affairs 
of his own State, so diplomacy is a kind of organized check 
upon the relations between the heads of States in international 
affairs. Both institutions are meant to serve as safeguards 
against arbitrary personal action. The Emperor William, whose 
temperament is characterized as mediaeval rather than modern, 
by sending this letter broke through the salutary restrictions 
of diplomacy. He ought to have written to King Edward, and 
even then there would have been a departure from strict con- 
stitutional lines of law and order ; for even Bismarck held that 
the monarch ought never to be seen without Ministerial raiment. 
The letter has not been published ; but the fact of its having 
been written and answered cannot fail to have results we fear 
not favorable to the good relations of the two countries. 

The proposed measure for expropriating Polish landowners 
having become law, the second of the reactionary bills of the 
government has been under discussion, but in this case, largely 
owing to the active opposition of the Radicals, who form an 
element in the bloc upon which Prince Biilow leans, an opposi- 
tion which was supported by the Catholic Centre, a compro- 
mise has been made which brings the bill into closer accord 
with liberal views. Among the provisions of the Associations' 
Bill, as introduced, was included a clause which rendered it 
unlawful for any language except German to be used at a pub- 
lic meeting unless permission had been obtained. This was 
too hard a restriction, not merely for the Poles and the other 
nationalities within the Empire, but also for the Radicals. The 
alteration which has been made, excepts from the obligation of 
using German, international congresses and election meetings, 
and also provides that in those districts in which the indigenous 
inhabitants are of non- German origin, and constitute more than 






1908.] CURRENT EVENTS 279 

60 per cent of the local population, the use of their mother- 
tongue is to be permitted at public meetings for the next 20 
years, if notice is given to the police. After 1928 only Ger- 
man is to be spoken and, as a Berlin paper says, from that 
date those who cannot or will not speak German are to hold 
their tongues. Even as altered the bill deals harshly with the 
Poles who work in the mines of Westphalia. They form 10 
per cent of the inhabitants of some districts, but 10 per cent 
is not 60 per cent, and they cannot use their own language at 
public meetings. 

The regulation of Wall Street is desired by many reformers 
in our country. Some years ago the Bourse in Germany was 
subjected to a rather severe law, and when made in Germany 
laws are enforced. The consequences have not been pleasing 
to dealers in stocks and bonds. The irritating restrictions im- 
posed by the law have made the Bourse chronically weak and 
apathetic, and have caused a general decline. The Liberals 
and the Radicals have induced the government to bring in a 
Bill to remove some of these restrictions ; but the Catholics and 
the Conservatives, not being convinced of any good accruing 
to the State from the fights between bulls and bears, have 
joined hands in opposition to the proposed concessions, and 
have altered the Bill so effectually as, the supporters of it say, 
to render it worse than the existing law. A compromise has 
been made, however, but the fate of the Bill is still uncertain. 

In a recent discussion upon the Colonies, a Catholic mem- 
ber ventured to say that colored people had souls. This pro- 
voked the legislators to roars of laughter, and not only the 
legislators but the members of the press in the reporters' gal- 
lery. It is only fair to state that it is a matter of controversy 
whether it was the thing said or the manner of the speaker 
which caused the laughter. However this may be, one of the 
colleagues of the speaker in the Centre, excited by the conduct 
of the reporters, had the temerity to style them pigs "those 
pigs are at their usual tricks." Thereupon warfare broke out 
between the Press and the Reichstag. The reporters struck and 
refused to report the speeches of the members, until their out- 
spoken critic should apologize. The speeches became short 
the members of the Reichstag anxious. Like the members of 
other legislative bodies, they were not satisfied to address the 
immediate audience; it was the country and the world at large 
that they wished to enlighten. So pressure was brought to 



280 CURRENT EVENTS [May, 

bear upon the user of the opprobrious epithet; he was com- 
pelled to apologize. The Press gained the victory over the 
Parliament. 

Little has been heard of the movement of the Social Demo- 
crats of Prussia to obtain an extension of the franchise since 
what may be called the abortive demonstration of last January. 
The government has not yielded. In fact in the Reichstag 
Prince Biilow took an opportunity to make an attack upon the 
universal suffrage under which its members are elected. It 
was not right, he said, to treat it as sacrosanct, as if it were 
above the Deity and the country, the monarchy and the family, 
and everything else which the Socialists attacked, He doubted 
whether any other system attached so little importance to 
mature opinion, intelligence, or political experience. Only the 
most doctrinaire Socialists still regarded universal and direct 
suffrage as a fetish and as an infallible dogma. For his own 
part, he was no worshipper of idols, and did not believe in 
political dogmas. The welfare of a country did not depend, 
either in whole or in part, upon the form of its Constitution 
or of its franchise. Mecklenburg had no popular suffrage at 
all, and was better governed than Haiti, which could boast of 
possessing universal suffrage. Prince Biilow has, of course, the 
right to defend the opinions he holds on universal suffrage ; 
but when the Chancellor of the Empire addresses to the Reich- 
stag a criticism of this kind the question arises whether or not 
something practical is to come from such an address. It is 
easy to think that an effort to alter the existing franchise may 
possibly be in view. It certainly seems impossible that two 
such opposed systems as the Prussian and the Imperial can long 
continue to exist side by side. One must come up, or the 
other go down. 

The long-looked-for financial proposals have at last been 
made public. They place upon the German people a large 
addition to an already heavy burden. In a time of peace it 
is found necessary to raise loans amounting to more than two 
hundred millions of dollars, the smaller part for the Empire, 
the larger part for Prussia. As in January a loan for some 
forty-five millions was raised for Prussia, a sum of more than 
two hundred and fifty millions has been added to the burden 
of public debt during the present year. The new loans are 
to pay 4 per cent and are issued at a fraction below par. The 
increase of the Navy, the expropriation of Poles, the exten- 






i9o8.] CURRENT EVENTS 281 

sion of State railways, are the causes of the expenditure which 
requires this great additional burden. 

How strange are the relations be- 

Austria-Hungary. tween Church and State in Aus- 

tria has been revealed by certain 

proceedings with reference to a Professor of Canon Law at the 
State University of Innsbruck in the Tyrol. This professor 
made speeches and published a pamphlet which are of a blas- 
phemous character. The Nuncio of the Holy See made repre- 
sentations to the Foreign Minister, without, however, making 
any definite request, in which he pointed out how incongruous 
it was for a professor of Canon Law to make attacks upon 
religious beliefs. Public opinion seemed to recognize this in- 
congruity, but no sooner was it known that the Nuncio had 
intervened than a loud outcry was made. The Professorial 
Senate of the University of Vienna declared its inflexible re- 
sistance to all efforts to remove the Innsbruck professor, de- 
claring that it was not necessary in order that Canon Law 
should be taught juridically that its teacher should believe in 
the Articles of Faith of any Church. The pupils of the pro- 
fessor seem to have been able to form a sounder judgment, 
for his colleagues have requested the pamphleteer to suspend 
his lectures, lest there should be disturbances. 

The Kaiser passed through Austria on his way to Corfu 
without stopping; but a special visit to Vienna has been paid 
by his Chancellor. In many quarters the Triple Alliance, for 
reasons which it would take too long to discuss, is looked upon 
as moribund; but the wish is entertained, especially by Ger- 
many, to infuse into it more life, and with this wish opinion 
generally connects the advent of the Chancellor. The usual 
official assurances were given that the Prince had no special 
political object. Official assurances, however, are not always 
believed. Accordingly, the papers take no notice of the denial, 
and are convinced that very serious political discussions took 
place, and, as subsequent events indicate, not only discussions 
but decisions. A few days after the departure of the Chan- 
cellor, the British proposal for the appointment of a Governor 
of Macedonia was rejected by Austria. Of this we shall speak 
later. 

The Universal Suffrage proposals for Hungary have been 
published in outline, but have not yet been introduced into the 



282 CURRENT EVENTS [May, 

Parliament. The treatment to be accorded to the non-Magyar 
races is so unfair that it is foreseen that those races will use 
every possible form of obstruction in order to defeat the plan 
of the government. To obviate this in advance the govern- 
ment, which owes its own existence to the success of obstruc- 
tion that lasted for two years, has brought in a revised form 
of standing orders for the suppression of obstruction. Unfor- 
tunately obstruction can be used to prevent those standing or 
ders being passed ; and, as a matter of fact, has already been 
used for six weeks and, for aught we know, may still be going 
on. The conflict with Croatia still continues, the new Ban, as 
the governor is called, is using violence, and is suffering vio- 
lence. The situation is, in fact, far from satisfactory. 

In the midst of so much that is 
Russia. discouraging some relief is to be 

found in the fact that the govern- 
ment has recognized, in one instance at least, -the right of the 
Duma to criticize and to reject proposals laid before it. The 
question was about the Navy, the details of which are im- 
material. The important point is that the government accepted 
the decision of the Duma and altered its proposals in submis- 
sion, perhaps, to its vote. This is a step on the road of con- 
stitutional progress, and is a recognition of the right of the 
Duma to be something more than the registry of ministerial 
decisions. But as all depends on the autocrat's will, the right 
of course is very precarious. 

In other respects the outlook is dark enough. Repression 
still holds sway, and very few days pass in which there are no 
outrages or executions. The prisons are full to overflowing. 
Thousands of men and women are being marched off every 
month to Siberia by administrative order, that is to say, with- 
out trial of any sort. The hardships which they suffer are be- 
yond belief. The fact that three cents per day is all that the 
government grants for food is an indication of the treatment 
meted out to them. 

The duel fought between General Fock and General Smirnoff, 
and the circumstances attending it, indicate how small has been 
the progress of Russia. There was no concealment; it took 
place in the riding-school of the Horse Guards ; not only were 
officers of the army present, but several ladies graced the com- 
bat by their presence. The two combatants took their positions 



1908.] CURRENT EVENTS 283 

at twenty paces distance from each other without saluting. 
Shots were to be exchanged until first blood was drawn. 

Another illustration of the Russian type of civilization is 
found in the rise of a new sect called "Joannity." Every one 
has heard of Father John, of Kronstadt, the holy priest whose 
blessing Russian Admirals went to seek before setting out to 
war. Many of the peasants have formed so high an idea of 
his sanctity, that they are teaching that he is the Messias, and 
great excitement has been caused by this preaching. It was, 
however, thought to be harmless until it was found that chil- 
dren were being kidnapped in order to be devoted to the ser- 
vice of Christ returned to earth. These children have been sub- 
jected to cruel treatment, made to rise at three in the morning, 
to sleep on the floor, to spend eight hours a day in devotion, 
bowing down to the earth hundreds of times, and fed with the 
worst kind of food. In process of time a woman was joined to 
the sect as an object of worship, this woman being said to be 
the mother of God. As is usual in such cases, grave irregular- 
ities became common, and then the police and the ecclesiastical 
authorities took measures to prevent the propaganda. 

The affairs of Macedonia are be- 

The Near East. coming prominent in the negotia- 

tions which are being carried on 

by European diplomats. Macedonia forms a vivid example of 
the importance of what is called the European Concert. It has 
become almost a charnel house. Ten thousand murders out of 
a population of about one million and a half, with innumerable 
outrages and unlimited devastation, Europe and the Turk look- 
ing on such is, without exaggeration, the scene presented by 
this wretched country during the past few years. Is it to go 
on forever? If left to the "Concert" we fear there is but 
little hope. The railways projected, if carried out, may open 
the country to intercourse and commerce; but they will not be 
made for several years, and the making of them depends upon 
the Sultan's motu proprio. The action of Austria in seeking 
permission to make a survey for a railway was thought by some 
to be equivalent to a dissolution of the co-operation hereto- 
fore existing between Austria and Russia. Great Britain then 
came forward with the proposal that a Governor of Macedonia 
should be appointed for a term of years ; that he should have 
a free hand for that term, and to be irremovable without the 



284 CURRENT EVENTS [May. 

consent of the Powers. The proposals included an extension of 
the judicial reforms which have been already attempted and a 
conversion of the Gendarmerie. On the other hand, the Powers 
were to guarantee the Sultan's right to rule over the country 
in its integrity. Soon after the publication of the British pro- 
posals Russia came forward with a scheme. This does not go 
so far as the British. It proposes to give to the existing Finan- 
cial Commission an extension of its powers so that it may effec- 
tively supervise the administration of Macedonia. Austria, it is 
said, hesitates to go as far as is proposed by Russia, and a fortiori 
she could not be expected to accept the more thorough scheme 
proposed by Sir Edward Grey. So it is no surprise to learn that 
she has definitely rejected the English proposals. Whether the 
latter will be pressed or not the near future will reveal. 

It is a great pity that just at this time England should lose 
one of her best-informed and most capable ambassadors. Dur- 
ing the past month Sir Nicholas R. O'Conor, British ambas- 
sador at Constantinople, died in that city. Sir Nicholas Rod- 
erick O'Conor was born in County Roscommon, Ireland, in 1843. 
He was educated at Stonyhurst, and entered diplomatic ser- 
vice at the age of twenty-three. During his career he repre- 
sented Great Britain at all the prominent embassies through- 
out the world. Sir Horace Rumbold gave him the friend- 
ly nickname of " Feargus " in allusion to the famous lead- 
er, Feargus O'Conor. The nickname stuck to Sir Nicholas 
through the whole course of his career. While acting Charge 
d' Affaires in Pekin, in 1883, he concluded an agreement re- 
specting Tibet, and negotiated the Anglo- Chinese treaty regard- 
ing Burma. From 1892 to 1895 he served as British Minister 
to the Emperor of China and the King of Corea. Lord Cur- 
son in his Problems of the Far East, referring to the reception 
accorded to Sir Nicholas at Pekin, says " that it sufficiently in- 
dicated the rejoicing of the British community in the Far East 
at the appointment of a man who really knew both the country 
to which he was accredited and the business which he would have 
to transact." In 1897 he was created a G. C. B. and received 
the Diamond Jubilee Medal. At his funeral in Constantinople 
popular sympathy manifested itself in a way rarely seen in that 
capital. The Catholic Cathedral was filled to its utmost capacity, 
and the funeral was attended by the entire diplomatic body. 






THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION 

FOR a period of eleven weeks the Catholic Summer-School will provide a 
varied programme of university extension studies at Cliff Haven, N. Y., 
on Lake Champlain. The report of the Committee on lectures, presented by 
the Rev. Thomas McMillan, C.S. P., contains the following announcements : 

First Week, June 2 g- July 3. Lectures on historical episodes conrectcd 
with the Tercentenary of Quebec: the appointment of the first Bishop of 
New York, and early founders of the Church in Philadelphia, by the Rev. 
John Talbot Smith, LL.D., President of the Catholic Summer-School. 

Second Week, July 6-10. Five Round Table Talks describing scenes of 
travel among the Bretons and elsewhere, by A. Helene H. Magrath, of New 
York. 

Evening Song Recitals by Mabelle Hanlyn McConnell, of Buffalo, N. Y. 

Third Week, July 13-17. Five morning lectures by the Rev. John Tal- 
bot Smith, LL.D. Subject: Studies in Modern Literature. 

Evening lectures on the Chief Errors of Modernism, by the Rev. Thom- 
as F. Burke, C.S. P., New York. 

Fourth Week, July 20-24. Five morning lectures by the Rev. Robert 
Schwickerath, S.J., Holy Cross College, Worcester, Mass. Subject: Edu- 
cation During the Renaissance Period. 

Evening lectures on Some Rulers of the Orient, by the Rev. "William 
L. Sullivan, C.S. P., Chicago. Gleanings from the Humorists, by William 
P. Oliver, Brooklyn, N. Y. 

Fifth Week, July 27-31. Five morning lectures by the Rev. John B. 
Peterson, St. John's Seminary, Boston. Subject : Liturgical Origins the 
Times, Places, and Material of Christian W r orship. 

Evening Song Recitals by Kathrine McGuckin Seigo, contralto, Phila- 
delphia. 

Sixth Week, August 3-7. Five morning lectures by the Rev. Francis P. 
Duffy, D.D., St. Joseph's Seminary, Dunwoodie, N. Y. Subject: Phases 
of Modern Materialism. 

Evening lectures (August 3-4) on John Boyle O'Reilly the Man 
and his Work, by Katharine E. Conway, of the Boston Pilot. The Irish 
Monks and their Services to Civilization, by the Rev. William M. Dwyer, 
S.T.B. (August 6-7), Syracuse, N. Y. 

Seventh Week, August 10-14. Five morning lectures by James J. 
Walsh, M.D., LL.D., Fordham University, New York. Subject: Some 
Evolution Presumptions. 

Evening lectures (August 10-11) on Catholic Progress in Gerrrany, by 
Charles G. Herbermann, LL.D., Editor-in-Chief of the Catholic Encyclo- 
pedia. Prosperity, Panics, and Hard Times (August 13-14), by Thomas F. 
Woodlock, New York. 

Eighth Week, August 17-21. Five morning lectures by Professor Alcee 
Fortier, Tulane University, New Orleans. Subject: The History and Liter- 
ature of the Creoles. 



286 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION [May, 

Evening lectures on the Forces and Factors in American Industrial and 
Commercial Life, by Professor James C. Monaghan, Chicago. 

Ninth Week, August 24-28. Five morning lectures by the Rev. Her. 
man J. Heuser, D.D., Editor of the American Ecclesiastical Review, Phila- 
delphia. Subject: The New Views and the Old Traditions About the Bible 
and its Contents. 

Evening lectures on the Friends of Lafayette, illustrating social condi- 
tions in France, 1789-1808 ; Views of a Recent Trip to Alaska, by Lida Rose 
McCabe, New York. 

Class talks for Sunday-School Teachers for one week (August 24-28), 
conducted by B. Ellen Burke, of the New York Training School for Cate- 
chists. 

Tenth Week, August 3 i-September 4. Five morning lectures by the Rev. 
Francis P. Siegfried, St. Charles' Seminary, Philadelphia. Subject: St. 
Thomas Aquinas versus Modernism. 

Evening Song Recitals (August 3i-September i) by Eva Mylott, con- 
tralto, New York. Melodies from Dixie (September 3-4) by Elizabeth Pat- 
tee- Wallach, Philadelphia. 

Eleventh Week, September /-//. Recitals with varied programmes and 
the musical drama of Hiawatha, by Professor Edward Abner Thompson, 
Brighton, Mass. 

Round Table Talks for Reading Circles, August 9-10, at 11:45 A - M -> 
by the Rev. John T. Driscoll, S.T.L., Albany, N. Y. 

Reading Circle Day, August II. Meeting of Trustees, August 12, and 
unveiling of bronze Tablet in memory of the late Warren E. Mosher. 

Round Table discussion of Catholic Educational Advancement, July 28, 
under the direction of the Rev. Thomas McMillan, C.S.P. 

Ample provision is made for recreation by the athletic exercises and the 
social events on Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday evenings. Children 
under twelve years of age will have a class of free hand gymnastics, combin- 
ing Swedish and Delsarte movements, taught by Elizabeth Crotty, instructor 
at Mt. de Chantal Academy, Wheeling, W. Va. 

Lessons in French by Madame Le Droit Thompson, Buffalo, N. Y. 

Instruction in music by Professor Camille Zeckwer, Director of the Ger- 
mantown Branch of the Philadelphia Musical Academy. 

* * * 

The following suggestive study course for the season 1907-8 was prepared 
by the Fenelon Reading Circle, Brooklyn, N. Y., under the general title of 
The Great Christian Epics : 

Dante's Hell. Dr. John Carlyle's Inferno in Prose ; Hell, edited with 
translation and notes by Butler ; Life of Dante M. O. Oliphant; Cay ley's 
translation with notes; Dante and His Early Biographies Moore ; The Ten 
Worlds of Dante. 

Dante's Purgatory. Leigh Hunt's Stories from Italian Poets; Dante's 
Lite and Times Balbo; Introduction to Study of Dante Botta; Spiritual 
Sense of Dante Harris; Napier's Florentine History; Study of Dante 
Blow. 

Dante's Paradise. Paradise of Dante C. M. Phillimore; Concordance 



BOOKS RECEIVED 287 

of the Divina Commedia Fay; Readings in Paradise of Dante Vernon; 
Comments on the Divina Commedia Ruskin; Dante and the Divine Comedy 
Wright ; Paradise, with tranlation and notes, by Butler. 

Poema del Cid. Poets and Poetry of Europe Longfellow; History of 
Spanish Literature Ticknor ; Cid, Ballads, etc., translation by J. Y. Gib- 
son; History of Spanish Literature Clarke; Spain De Amicis ; Curiosi- 
ties of Human Nature Lockhart; Cid, the Campeador Clarke; Spanish 
Literature Fitzmaurice Kelly; The Cid Corneille. 

Klopstock's Messiah. History of German Literature (translation) 
Conybeare ; Hours with German Classics Hedge; Studies in German 
Literature (Lecture 8) Taylor; Germany Stael-Holstein ; Loves of Poets 
(Klopstock and Meta) Jameson. 

Milton's Paradise Lost. Biography of Milton Anderson ; Life of 
Milton DeQuincey; Account of Life, etc., of Milton Keightley; Criti- 
cism of Milton's Paradise Lost Addison; Remarks on Character of Milton. 
Channing. 

Milton's Paradise Regained. Concordance to Works of Milton Brad- 
shaw ; Lives of Famous Poets Rossetti ; Life in Poetry Courthope; Essays 
in English Literature Scherer ; Handbook of Universal Literature Botta. 

Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered. Translations by Wiffen, Hooke, Fairfax, 
Hunt, Griffiths, etc. ; Tasso Alison in Essays; Lives of Italian Poets 
Stebbing; Life of Tasso Milman ; Stories from Italian Poets Hunt. 

M. C. M. 



BOOKS RECEIVED. 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, New York: 

Old Mr, Davenant's Money. By Frances Powell. Pp.328. Price $1.50. Passing Prot- 
estantism and Coming Catholicism. By Rev. Newman Smyth, D.D. Pp. 209. Price 
$i net. The Nun. By Rene Bazin. Price $1. 

DODD, MEAD & Co., New York : 

Lord of the World. By Robert Hugh Benson. Pp. xxv.~3S2. Price $1.50. 
E. P. BUTTON & Co., New York : 

The Life of Antonio Rosmini-Serbati. Translated from the Italian of the Rev. G. B. 
Pagani. Pp. xii.-49i. Price $3 net. 

LONGMANS, GREEN & Co., New York: 

Parerga. _A Companion yolume to Under the Cedars and the Stars. By Canon Sheehan, 
~ 



By 

The Dream of Gerontius. By Cardinal Newman. 'New Edition, with photogravure 

portrait and other illustrations. 

FUNK & WAGNALLS, New York : 

Humorous Hits and How to Hold an Audience. By G. Kleiser. Pp. xiii.-326. Price $i 
net. 



288 BOOKS RECEIVED [May, 1908.] 

BENZIGER BROTHERS, New York: 

Regina Pcetarum; our Lady's Anthology. By the Hon. Alison Stourton. Price $1.50. 
Common Sense Talks. By Lady Amabel Kerr. The Holy Gospel According to St. 
Mark. Introduction and Notes. By Rev. C. Burns, M.A. Pp. 145. Children of 
Light ; and Other Stories. By M. E. Francis. Tommie and His Mates. By David 
Bearne, S J. My Very Own ; and Other Tales. By S. M. Lyne. The Condemnation 
of Pope Honorius. By Dom John Chapman, O.S.B. Social Questions and the Duty of 
Catholics. By Charles S. Devon. A Par able of a Pilgrim. By Walter Hilton. Infal- 
libility and Tradition. By the Rev. R. H. Benson. And a number of other pamphlets 
of the Catholic Truth Society. The Mission Remembrance of the Redemptorist Fathers. 
By Rev. P. Geiermann, C.SS.R. Price 50 cents. For Frequent Communicants. Price 15 
cents. The Presence of God. By Brother Laurence. Spiritual Maxims and Gathered 
Thoughts. By Brother Laurence. The Beginnings of the Temporal Sovereignty of the 
Popes. By Mgr. Duchesne. Translated by Arnold Harris Mathew (Dejure Earl of 
Landaff). Price $2. The Catholic Church, the Renaissance, and Protestantism. By Alfred 
Baudrillart. Translated by Mrs. Philip Gibbs. Price $2. Althta ; or, the Children of 
Rosemont Plantation. By D. Ella Nirdlinger. Price 60 cents. The Test of Courage. 
By H. M. Ross. Price $1.25. Parents and Frequent Communion of Children. By F. M. 
Zulueta, SJ. Price 5 cents. Practical Preaching for Priests and People. By B. W. 
Kelly. Price $1.25. The Secret of the Green Vase. By Florence Cooke. Price $i. 

DUFFIELD & Co., New York: 

A Modern Prometheus. By Martha G. D. Bianchi. Pp. 413. Price $1.50. 

ISAAC PITMAN & SONS, New York : 

Style-Book of Business English. By H. W. Hammond. Designed for Use in Business 
Colleges, High Schools, and for Self-Instruction. Pp. vii.-i3O. Course in Isaac Pit- 
man Shorthand. Special Edition in Form of Lesson Sheets for Use of Instruction in 
Shorthand by Correspondence. Price $1.50. 

SOCIETY OF THE PROPAGATION OF THE FAITH, New York: 

A Catechism of Modernism. Founded on the Encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis of his 
Holiness Pope Pius X. Pp. 155. Paper. Price 20 cents. 

LITTLE, BROWN & Co., Boston, Mass.: 

The Weight of the Name. By Paul Bourget. Translated from the French by George 
Burnham Ives. Pp. 349. Price $1.50. 

B. HERDER, St. Louis, Mo. : 

We Preach Christ Crucified. Considerations and Meditations for Boys. By Herbert 
Lucas. S.J Pp. viii.-328. Price $i net. The Following of Christ. By Thomas a 
Kempis. Small pocket edition in various bindings, Qualities [of a Good Superior. 
Compiled chiefly from the Instruction of the Ven. Father Champagnat, Founder of the 
Little Brothers of Mary. By Rev. F. Girardey, C.SS.R. Price $1.25. 

H. H. PUBLISHING COMPANY, Aurora, 111. : 

The Angelus. A Poem. By Leo Gregory. Pp. 30. 
PAUL ELDER & Co., San Francisco : 

The Mother of California. By Arthur W. North. Illustrated. Pp. xi.-i6o.. 
WELLS, GARDNER, DARTON & Co., London: 

Origines Euchasistica. A Study of the Liturgy under the'Light of ^Recently Published 
Documents. By A E. Alston and Z. H. Turton. Pp. ix.-83. Price is. 

VICTOR LECOFFRE, Pans: 

Saint- Stverin , Apotre du Norique. Par P. Baudrillard. Price 2 fr. St. Benoit Labre. 
Par I. Mantenay. Price 2 Jr. 

PLON-NOURRIT ET CIE., Paris : 

La Provence Mystique au XVII. Siecle. Antoine Yvan et Madeline Martin. Par Henri 
Bremond. Pp. xvi.-394. Price 5 fr. 

BLOUD ET CIE., Paris, France: 

Saint Francois de Sales. Par Fortunat Strowski. Pp.364. Price 3 fr. 50. Discours de 
Marriage Par Abbe" Klein. Pp. 327. 

P. LETHELLIEUX, Paris : 

Cursus Scriptures Sacra. Atlas Biblicus. Edited by Martino Hagen, S.J. Paper. 



_: o 



THE 



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iCATHOLIC WORLD. 




VOL. LXXXVII. JUNE, 1908. No. 519. 

THE IMPENDING RETURN OF HALLEY'S COMET. 

BY GEORGE M. SEARLE, C.S.P. 

fHEN a great comet appears, like those of 1858, 
1 86 1, 1874, 1 88 1, or 1882, the first question asked 
probably is, whether it was expected. Or per- 
haps it will be taken for granted that it was ex- 
pected ; then the query will be : " When was its 
last appearance ? " Many seem to imagine that comets are, or 
ought to be, as definitely predicted as eclipses of the sun or 
moon. And if an astronomer says in reply, that great comets 
are practically always unexpected, then people jump to the con- 
clusion that there is something "erratic" about their move- 
ments ; that they are not subject to the law of gravitation which 
controls those of the planets. " Why/' it will be asked, " should 
they not be expected or predicted, if they are subject to that 
law?" 

The fact, however, is that they are as completely subject to 
it, and verify it as perfectly, as any other bodies which move 
around the sun. The curves which they describe are perfectly 
smooth and symmetrical, and as simple a matter of calculation 
as that of the earth itself; indeed usually they are more sim- 
ple. But the difference is that in most cases, they are practi- 
cally infinite in extent, and are considered so theoretically. 
The curve of a comet's orbit, as a rule, is what is called a 
parabola, while that of a planet is an ellipse ; but the ellipse 
and the parabola are simply different kinds of what is generally 
known as a conic section. 

It is worth while, and it is not at all difficult, to understand 
what is meant by a conic section. Every one who has any 

Copyright. 1908. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE 

IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK. 
VOL. LXXXVII. 19 



290 IMPENDING RETURN OF HALLEY'S COMET [June, 

knowledge at all of geometry (or even of sugar-loaves) knows 
what is meant by a cone ; it may be called a circular pyramid. 
If we cut a cone straight across, or, as we may say, horizontally, 
the section will, of course, be circular in form. If we cut it 
at an angle, the section will be oblong, evidently ; or oval, as 
we sometimes say. But " oval " is not exactly a correct term ; 
for "oval" means like an egg; and an egg, usually, is bigger 
at one end than the other. Some eggs, however, are about the 
same at both ends. Take an egg of this kind, and its shape 
will be, approximately, that of an ellipse. 

But now suppose that we cut our cone at such a slant that 
we never get across to the other side. This we can easily do 
by giving the cut the same slant that the side of the cone it- 
self has. Of course it will be said that we shall come out at 
the bottom of the cone. But there need not be any bottom to 
it. It can be supposed as carried down without any limit. 
Our section will now be infinite, or without any limit also ; and 
this is what is called a parabola. 

But we can increase the slant still more ; even cut the cone 
right up and down. If we do not cut right through the top 
or peak of it, we shall have another infinite curve, which is 
called a hyperbola. 

One can see a hyperbola quite easily without bothering to 
make and cut a cone. All that is needed is to have a gas 
light with a globe shade, near a wall ; turn the gas down low, 
and have the room, generally, dark; the cone of rays coming 
from the turned-down gas will be cut by the wall, and there 
the hyperbola will be, right on the wall. 

The parabola is the curve made by a stone or a ball thrown 
into the air, provided that the ball has no twist given to it, 
such as is given by a baseball pitcher. Even that will not in- 
terfere much with the curve. 

Now a body moving under the force of gravitation emanat- 
ing from the sun must necessarily move in one of these conic 
sections. This is easily enough shown, nowadays, to any one 
at all familiar with the differential calculus, to be an inevitable 
consequence of the fact, that this force of gravitation is, in its 
amount, inversely proportional to the square of the distance. 
And, vice-versa, if it is shown that a body does move about 
the sun in one of these curves, the sun occupying a special 
point inside the curve called the focus, it can be inferred that 



1908.] IMPENDING RETURN OF HALLEY'S COMET 291 

the force proceeding from the sun is actually inversely propor- 
tional to the square of the distance. 

This, as has just been said, can be shown easily enough, 
nowadays, by the calculus. But still it required an immense 
mathematical genius, like that of Sir Isaac Newton, to discover 
it in his day. Kepler had shown that the planets did move in 
ellipses, with the sun in the focus ; but at that time no one, ex- 
cept Sir Isaac, could from this deduce with certainty the law of 
gravitation. Nor did Sir Isaac himself obtain it by the calculus, 
though he was one of the inventors of that; at any rate, he 
did not get this result by the short and compendious form by 
which it can now be obtained. He was not familiar enough 
with his own invention to use it skillfully. His proof, though 
involving the fundamental ideas of the calculus, was a sort of 
clumsy demonstration by old-fashioned geometry. 

The planets, then, move in ellipses ; and these ellipses differ 
little from circles. Draw the earth's orbit on paper, as accu- 
rately as possible ; it will take careful measurement to show 
that it is not a circle, with the sun in its center. But if it 
should get a push sufficient to add about four-tenths to its 
present velocity, so that it would go twenty-five miles a second 
instead of eighteen, it would shoot off in a parabola; and though 
still strictly subject to the law of gravitation, it would never 
return. If still greater velocity were given to it, its curve would 
be hyperbolic. The difference would be that if only just enough 
push was given to turn the earth's orbit into a parabola, it 
would, theoretically, stop at an infinite distance; whereas, if 
enough were given to make its orbit hyperbolic, it would have 
some velocity remaining, even at infinity. The final state of 
things in this case would be movement (practically in a straight 
line) with considerable speed. 

As an actual fact, as we have said, comets seem, as a rule, 
to move in parabolas. Now do not ask, as some will always 
insist on doing in scientific matters, " How do you account for 
this ? " They seem to think that science is all finished, and 
that everything is accounted for. Various theories can be pro- 
posed on this particular subject ; perhaps some may occur to 
the reader, on the basis of what has just been explained. But 
to discuss such theories would lead us too far afield, and would 
also make the matter too technical for our present purpose. 
Let it suffice that the great majority of comets actually have 



292 IMPENDING RETURN OF HALLEY'S COMET [June, 

parabolic orbits; that hyperbolas are very rare; and that those 
which now move in ellipses seem to have been made to do so 
by the attraction of some planet near which they have passed ; 
their original path having been parabolic, like that of the rest. 

Some, then, have been drawn into elliptic orbits. Origin- 
ally visitors to our system from outside, they have by the at- 
traction of Jupiter or some other great planet, been induced 
to become permanent members of it. Such comets have a defi- 
nite time to complete their revolution round the sun ; in most 
of those which are known, this time is not long, say ten years 
or less. These of course are expected or predicted, and ob- 
served, if the conditions are favorable, by astronomers at every 
return. But almost all of these are small and faint, so that 
only persons with good telescopes can see them at all. From 
this, then, we see how useless is the question with regard to 
conspicuous comets, such as those mentioned in the beginning; 
namely, "Was it expected?" or, "When did it last appear ?" 

There is, however, one very notable exception to this gen- 
eral rule. There is one elliptic or "periodic" comet, as these 
returning ones are called, which is easily visible to the naked 
eye; and indeed it has usually been very conspicuous; some- 
times splendid and even terrifying. It is the one named in the 
title of this article, " Halley's " comet. 

Why is it known as "Halley's"? Did Halley discover it? 
Of course he did not discover it in the sense of being the first 
man to see it ; for it has probably been seen, we may say, by 
every one living at the time, at every return, since B. c. 1 1 ; 
it has certainly been conspicuous at many of them. 

Halley, then, did not discover the comet itself; but he did 
discover that it was periodic. To make such a discovery now- 
adays is no very glorious matter; any good computer can find 
that a comet is elliptic or periodic, if such be the case, and he 
has a good set of observations to work on. But in Halley's 
day (he was a contemporary of Sir Isaac Newton) of course 
the computation of orbits was quite a troublesome matter. It 
was, however, possible even then for a first-class mathematician 
to accomplish it with a fair degree of accuracy, though not 
with that which would be attainable at present. But the dis- 
cerning of a parabolic orbit from an elliptic one of long period, 
is even now rather a delicate piece of computation. 

Still this is not absolutely needed. If a comet, though ap- 



1908.] IMPENDING RETURN OF HALLEY*S COMET 293 

parently moving in a parabola, seems to have actually traveled 
in about the same path round the sun at regular and long in- 
tervals, it may well be supposed to be no accidental matter. 
We are fairly justified in believing that these successive appear- 
ances are not due to various bodies having the same orbit, but 
to one single body moving in a long elliptic one. 

This was really the argument on which Halley depended 
in predicting that this comet, which he saw in 1682, would re- 
turn in 1758. 

It is time now to say something about Edmund Halley him- 
self. This illustrious astronomer was born in 1656, fourteen 
years after Newton, and was, therefore, a young man when he 
made this remarkable prediction. But his fame by no means 
rests solely, or even principally, on this. He had independently 
discovered, even at this early age of twenty-six, that a force 
emanating from the sun, and inversely proportional to the 
square of the distance, would probably account for the move- 
ments of the planets, though he did not obtain a rigorous dem- 
onstration of this. Newton had obtained such a demonstration 
a few years earlier, but was deterred from publishing it by an 
apparent discordance of observation with this theory in the case 
of the moon, so that Halley was unaware of his researches. 
Halley, however, knew that Newton was occupied with the sub- 
ject and interested in it ; he, therefore, went to see Newton in 
1684, and finding what results he had obtained, and that he 
had found the apparent discordance just mentioned explained 
by recent and more accurate measurements of the dimensions 
of the earth, prevailed on him to publish this result, as well 
as his previous discoveries, in the immortal work Philosophies 
Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which accordingly appeared in 
1687, and which Halley prepared for the press at his own ex- 
pense; prefixing to it some hexameters ending with the line 

" Nee fas est propius mortali attingere divas" 

Perhaps there has been no more striking instance in the 
annals of science of the spirit of generosity and of simple 
search for truth which all scientific men ought to show, and 
indeed often do, than that shown in the action of these two 
great men. Newton, in the first place, instead of publishing 
his own discovery at once, and suspecting inaccuracy in the 
work of others, as most men of anything like his ability would 
have done, concluded that he must have made some mistake. 



294 IMPENDING RETURN OF HALLEY'S COMET [June, 

Halley, instead of rushing into print with an announcement of 
the truth of which he felt quite sure, sinks himself entirely as 
soon as he finds that Newton has anticipated him, and does all 
that he can to promote the glory of his rival. 

Newton was undoubtedly the greater genius ; still, if he had 
not lived, it seems quite probable that the accurate proof of 
gravitation would ultimately have been made by Halley, who 
lived to the good age of eighty-six; and, as we have seen, 
Newton's fame was largely dependent on Halley's generous 
co-operation. 

Beside Halley's work in this matter, that which he did in other 
astronomical lines would have been more than enough to make 
his fame enduring. He detected, at the age of seventeen, the 
change in the variation of the compass. He went to St. Helena 
at the age of twenty, and came back two years later, having 
observed with accuracy the positions of many of the southern 
stars. He executed a careful survey of the tides and coasts of 
the British Channel. He discovered the " long inequality " of 
Jupiter and Saturn, and the proper motion of the fixed stars. 
One of his greatest inventions was that of the idea and method 
of determining the sun's distance by the transits of Mercury 
or Venus. 

These matters are commonplace enough now; but it is pretty 
safe to say there are very few living astronomers who would 
have been able to accomplish such work theii. Halley had, it 
is true, one advantage in having plenty of money at his com- 
mand; but that advantage was not of such great importance, 
except in his being exempted by it from having to spend time 
and brain work to make his living. 

To come back now to the facts concerning the comet known 
by Halley's name. As has been stated, he ventured to predict 
its return in 1758. We see now, better than he did, that in 
its history there was good foundation for such a prediction. 
Its probable apparitions since B c, n have been as follows: 
A. D. 66, 141, 218, 295, 373, 451, 530, 608, 684, 760, 837, 912, 
989, 1066, 1145, 1222, 1301, 1378, 1456, 1531, 1607, 1682, 
1759, and 1835. Some of these, of course, are not very cer- 
tain, and we have to depend on the Chinese, more learned in 
early days than Europeans in these matters, for a good pro- 
portion of them. The average period between them will be 
found to be about 77 years. Halley took 76, as resulting from 
those with which he was acquainted. The comet, in the above 



1908.] IMPENDING RETURN OF H ALLEY'S COMET 295 

list, will be seen to have actually appeared in 1759; quite early 
however, in the year. Its return, of course, excited great in- 
terest, and furnished matter for much calculation, then and sub- 
sequently. It was due again, evidently, in 1835 or thereabout. 
As that time drew near (astronomy having then become a science 
of great precision) attempts were made to fix the exact day at 
which it would pass its perihelion, or nearest point to the sun. 
It may seem that all that would be required for this would be to 
take the interval from September 14, 1682, to March 12, 1759, 
wnich were the times of perihelion passage for those years re- 
spectively, and add the same interval to the last one ; this would 
bring us to the beginning of September, 1835. The time was 
computed, however, as early in November instead of September 
of that year. 

What was the reason of this ? Simply that the movement 
of a comet (or of a planet, for that matter) does not depend 
entirely on the action of the sun, but is influenced, as we have 
already noted, by the action of the planets, especially of Jupiter 
and Saturn. Sometimes, especially with Jupiter, this is suffi- 
cient to change the orbit very considerably ; indeed if a comet 
comes within fifteen million miles of Jupiter, or about one-sixth 
of our distance from the sun, Jupiter's attraction on it is 
stronger than that of the sun itself. If, however, the comet's 
orbit is so situated that it cannot come into anything like so 
close an approach to a great planet, the only effect will be that 
the orbit will be slightly modified, and the time of describing 
it slightly changed. All this is a matter of calculation, rather 
difficult, it is true, but by no means impossible. 

In 1835, then, Halley's comet passed perihelion on Novem- 
ber 4, about two days from the time predicted by the com- 
puters. It was not very conspicuous on this occasion, as it 
was, at the time of its greatest brilliancy, quite far from us, 
on the other side of the sun. 

Of course the next return could be at once foretold, roughly, 
as early in 1912. But it was found, on examining the subject 
more accurately, that this time the influence (or perturbation, 
as it is technically called) of Jupiter would be very consider- 
able, indeed enough to bring the comet here two years earlier 
than this. The investigation was made by the astronomer 
Pontecoulant nearly half a century ago. In his paper there 
seems, however, to be a confusion as to the date for perihelion, 
as he says in one place May 16, 1910, in another May 24. 



296 IMPENDING RETURN OF HALLEY'S COMET [June, 

This is probably a mere error of copying, but it seems impos- 
sible now to tell which date he really intended to give. But 
other able astronomers are now repeating the computation, and 
the date will before long be more accurately known. 

In any case, it is pretty clear that the coming apparition is 
going to be a very fine one; probably indeed splendid. The 
circumstances as to the relative position of the coniet to the 
earth, are much the same as in 1456, shortly after the capture 
of Constantinople by the Turks, when it seemed to terrified 
Europe a sign of greater calamities to come; or in 1066, when 
it was regarded as a portent of the conquest of England by 
the Normans. 

On this occasion the perihelion distance has also been some- 
what stretched by Jupiter, so that the comet's orbit, we may 
say, practically crosses that of the earth when it crosses its 
plane; nearly enough, at any rate, for us to be actually in the 
head or coma of the thing, if we happened to be there at the 
time. And if the comet should pass perihelion about April u, 
instead of in May, we would be there ; it would strike us about 
May 1 8, as it would take about 37 days to get from perihelion 
to that point. And even if it did not make any great shock 
of collision, it would certainly be pretty hot, from its recent 
approach to the sun ; and the relative velocity of the earth and 
comet would be about fifty miles a second. They would strike 
pretty nearly head on. 

The precise conditions of the coming appearance cannot be 
well determined till we know the perihelion time better. The 
new moon comes about June 7, which is about the time of the 
greatest splendor of the comet, as far as can now be ascer- 
tained ; but if that splendor should come later, the moon might 
somewhat interfere with it. An interesting event, however, in 
this connection, is a total eclipse of the moon occurring about 
midnight of May 23 in this part of the world ; but the dark- 
ness of the eclipse will probably be over before the comet rises 
above the eastern horizon. Still, it is possible that the tail 
may, during the eclipse, be partly visible. To those who will 
get up early, say at three o'clock, the whole thing may proba- 
bly be seen a week or so earlier, after the setting of the moon. 
In the earlier weeks of its appearance it will be seen in the 
morning sky ; in the later ones, in the evening. 

We know pretty well, even now, where to look for the comet 
with a telescope. Professor Wendell, of the Harvard Observa- 



i9o8.J IMPENDING RETURN OF HALLEY'S COMET 297 

tory, has computed its apparent place in the heavens for inter- 
vals of three months, beginning with October I, 1907. It is 
now on the other side of the sun from us, and can hardly be 
sighted, even by large telescopes, before the fall of this year; 
but it is quite possible that by that time it may be visible to 
telescopes like those at the Lick and the Yerkes observatories. 
By the fall of 1909, it ought to be easily enough found even 
by much smaller ones. It will then be no farther away than 
that of Donati in 1858 was at the time of its discovery; and 
that one the present writer saw with a little three-inch comet 
seeker two or three weeks later. 

By the actual observations made from that time forward, the 
precise course of the comet can be more accurately determined 
than by any long range prediction. It will again disappear 
behind the sun ; but when it reappears in May, it ought to be 
seen by the naked eye when it gets far enough in the sky 
from the sun. Its increase in brilliancy toward the end of May 
and in the early days of June ought to be very notable ; and 
the rapidity of its apparent movement from night to night will 
be very obvious. Altogether, even independent of its history, 
it ought to be a very interesting spectacle. 

But the great interest about it is historical. We shall then 
see the same object which has been a real terror on many of 
the occasions when it has previously appeared ; and also the 
one which furnishes the most conspicuous triumph of the great 
discoveries of Newton and Halley. It will have come back, 
obedient to the law discovered by them, from a distance of 
more than three thousand millions of miles, governed simply and 
solely by the attractive force of the sun and of the great planets, 
which have not lost their hold of it for a moment. It will have 
beauty in itself; but its great beauty will be that of complete 
obedience to law. The majestic curve in which it moves round 
the sun would be beautiful to us, if we could see it; but the 
intellectual beauty of the law ot the curve itself is greater than 
what simply appeals to the eye. We may, of course, be dis- 
appointed as to its actual splendor, though now much seems to 
be promised ; it may have lost some of its substance in its many 
apparitions ; its train may not be so grand as that of some which 
we have seen ; but even so, on account of its known past, and its 
illustration of astronomical laws, it will be the most interesting 
object that has been seen in the sky since its own last retun 

Rtfe* 

123 ti 




AN ARTIST'S PROOF. 

BY MRS. WILFRID WARD. 

PART II. 

SAT down by my fire to digest my bad temper 

and to wait for my next sitter, Mrs. Pierpoint ; 

and then I remembered that it was from Mrs. 

Pierpoint that I had first heard of Lady Burrell. 

Mrs. Pierpoint had been a neighbor in the coun- 
try to the Swinburne family. It might be worth while to make 
her talk about the professor. If I were to do any good with 
his picture I must manage to know something more about him. 
Mrs. Pierpoint, soft, fat, pink, showily dressed, and com- 
fortable, was soon firmly seated on my platform fully prepared 
for talk; she was " quite convinced," she had once told me, that 
"no artist could make a good portrait of a sitter who did not 
talk there must be some play of countenance to show the char- 
acter." Her own tongue certainly played enough and the little 
beady eyes twinkled, but the rest of the face was too solid for 
much movement. 

After a few moments of chatter, I managed to tell her that 
I was commissioned to paint a portrait of the late Professor 
Swinburne. She was full of interest in a moment. " Who had 
ordered me to paint it ? " " Miss Swinburne, the professor's 
niece." "Ah, indeed; quite so, it is what I should have ex- 
pected not Lord Swinburne of course. The professor was de- 
voted to that niece, his youngest brother's child, they were in- 
separable quite. The child went to all his most difficult lectures 
and was supposed to understand them; which was absurd, you 
know. I suppose he will leave her what he had, but it was 
very little. She will be no match for any one " 

I was anxious not to appear too inquisitive and could only 
trust that the lady would continue the subject. " It is curious," 
she went on after a few moments breathing space, "very curi- 
ous that you should be occupied with the portraits of Lady 
Burrell and the professor at the same time, a very strange co- 



1908.] AN ARTIST'S PROOF 299 

incidence indeed " She paused with an air of suppressing her 
own thoughts. 

"They were cousins," I said innocently, as if attaching no 
deeper meaning to her words. Mrs. Pierpoint gave a little 
chuckle. 

"That would not be much of a coincidence," she cried. " But 
surely, Mr. Hardman, you know that they were once engaged ! 
Dear me, it takes me back thirty years to think of it Oh, 
yes ; there was the announcement : ' A marriage has been ar- 
ranged and will shortly take place between the Honble. Edward 
Swinburne, second son of Lord Swinburne, and his cousin Miss 
Clare Swinburne, only child of Mr. J. Swinburne, of Colethorpe 
Hall.' We were neighbors of Swinburne Castle and we were 
much excited at the news. Two months later, when we were 
in London, we received our invitations to the wedding, which 
was to be solemnized a fortnight later ; but four days before the 
date fixed for the wedding we heard that it would not take 
place. How we talked and guessed and argued and quarreled 
as to what the reason could be ! We never clearly made out 
what had happened, though I must confess that we did our 
best; but all the gossip we could glean agreed in saying that 
it was the lady who broke off the engagement. Edward Swin- 
burne had left home when we were again in the country, and 
it was said that Lord Swinburne had forbidden him to return ; 
at any rate that he never went home again I know as a fact. 
His family always kept up their friendship with Clare, and it 
was even said that the eldest son, Henry Swinburne, proposed 
to her. If so she might have done much better than to marry 
old Lord Burrell, though I daresay a younger man might not 
have allowed her to frisk about as she has done." 

"And the professor," I inquired, "what became of him?" 

"He studied for some years in Germany and soon got a 
great name as a learned man I believe that he spent the greater 
part of twenty years abroad. Then his youngest brother, who 
was an unsuccessful barrister, was taken ill, and on his death- 
bed asked to see the professor. He came back from Germany 
on hearing this from his sister-in-law I believe his own fam- 
ily would not write and would not see him when he arrived. 
That Edward and the dying John made their peace was clear, 
for John made him joint guardian, with his wife, of his only 
daughter. After John's death Edward lived in London, near 



300 AN ARTIST'S PROOF [June,. 

his widow, who only survived her husband two years. Lord 
Swinburne, it was said, was very angry with John's will, and 
quarreled with the widow when he found her firm in her de- 
termination to keep on terms of warm friendship with the pro- 
fessor. Whether he or his eldest son have ever seen this child, 
Flora, I don't know." 

After this I did not gain much more from Mrs. Pierpoint; 
she had been quite unusually consecutive in telling her story, 
but now lapsed into a series of pointless anecdotes and remin- 
iscences of her youth which had been roused from some quiet 
corner in her brain by her recollections of the Swinburne family. 

After she had gone I went out for a a walk. I think I must 
have gone towards the city, but I have a much clearer recol- 
lection of my thoughts that day than of my surroundings. I 
know I jostled my way through a thick, hurrying crowd, be- 
tween dark houses and amidst many unpleasing smells and noises, 
probably among unpleasing sights, but I did not notice them. 
I had come out to think over Mrs. Pierpoint's story, and to 
fit into it Lady Burrell's words, and Miss Swinburne's looks. 
I may as well mention now that subsequent inquiry did prove 
the truth of Mrs. Pierpoint's gossip as far as it went. It may 
seem absurd, but I felt quite vehemently on the subject. The 
dead man's face had taken such a hold of me that I longed to 
take Miss Swinburne's view of her uncle. I understood now 
her extreme sensitiveness to Lady Burrell's intrusions what- 
ever she knew of the past, she must know that her uncle had 
lived and died under a cloud, outcast from his relations, of whom 
this lady was one. But what dark sin had ruined his life, had 
cut him off from love and home ? I might wish that the con- 
demnation had been unjust while I thought of Miss Swinburne; 
but was it likely that a young man should be cast off by his 
family, abandoned by his betrothed, without absolute proof of 
his guilt ? 

On the other hand, it is not impossible that the most dark 
or violent crime may be repented of, may be lived down, and 
may make the penitent even a gentler, tenderer friend, a hum- 
bler more religious man, than he would otherwise have been. 
This was a truism, but a truism that I had to remember in 
thinking of Miss Swinburne's almost filial grief. Yet in the 
portrait which pleased her there were no marks of a humbled, 
saddened spirit. Though not self-confident and self-asserting, 



1908.] AN ARTIST'S PROOF 301 

the face had in it more of the sweetness and light of one who 
had gone from " brightness to brightness " in quiet holiness. 
That was what was clearly stamped on the dead face; it did 
not give the impression of a man who had had much to repent 
of, it seemed rather to have the quiet strength of earnest and 
successful struggle. Yet from what I had unwittingly drawn 
out of the photograph there appeared to have been in his face, 
as a younger man, capacities of violence, strong passions, and 
vehemence of some sort, which might bear the most sinister in- 
terpretation, and which evidently agreed with Lady Burrell's 
own judgment of him, a judgment which had completely changed 
both their lives. 

I wondered, and wondered aimlessly, what crime he had 
committed, what defence he had made; whether he had asked 
for pardon later in life, or had remained wilfully in proud iso- 
lation from his family. None of them, I knew from the news- 
papers, had seen him buried, which surely they would have 
done if peace had been made at the end. Yet there had been 
one reconciliation with Flora's father years before. What had 
passed between the two brothers at that deathbed ? The pro- 
fessor must surely have cleared himself completely in the eyes 
of the dying man, or how could he have trusted his daughter 
to him ? But if he had a convincing proof of his innocence 
for John, why for John alone, and not for John until he be- 
longed more to another world than to this ? It then flashed 
into my mind that it was some one else's secret that he had 
told the dying, that in fact the proof of his innocence was the 
proof of another's guilt. I heaved a sigh of relief as this clue 
came before me, the wish I know was father to the thought, 
and the thought thus planted rapidly developed. The profes- 
sor had lived and died in disgrace rather than disclose another's 
guilt ; and who was that other ? My excited imagination pointed 
without the faintest justification to the eldest brother, his rival, 
according to Mrs. Pierpoint, in the affections of Lady Burrell. 
I had to remind myself that the point I had to think of was 
not somebody else's guilt, but my own belief in the professor's 
innocence. 

I did not, in consequence of my new idea, accept my ideal 
and dreamy drawing of the professor as having been the true 
one. It had never been satisfactory to me : the glorifying 
touch of death was too evident in it. The other portrait I 



302 AN ARTIST'S PROOF [June, 

had liked far better, there was more life even in the unpleas- 
ing expression I had elicited. I still inclined to this later pic- 
ture as having the more valuable materials in it, materials that 
must take a different interpretation. The violence must be 
calmed into quiet strength the strength of a self-restraint that 
had never failed. There must be hard lines in the face of a 
man whose life had been ruined by another's baseness. He 
had had no domestic happiness till his niece had been taken 
to his care. Could I convey any of that tenderness special 
and peculiar when called forth for the first time in the winter 
of later life ? 

This third sketch was not the work of a few hours, it was 
nearly a week before I was satisfied that I could make noth- 
ing better of it. I was intensely depressed, certain that I had 
failed ; I concluded that I had combined the defects of the 
first drawings without their good qualities ; I wrote to Miss 
Swinburne and asked her to come to my studio as soon as pos- 
sible, and added that I would contrive to see her alone at any 
hour that suited her. Her note in answer a good deal sur- 
prised me: "If it would be quite convenient to you, I should 
be glad if you could get Lady Burrell to meet me. Perhaps 
I might come to you for a few minutes before she arrives and 
form my own opinion before hearing hers. I should certainly 
like to see it first by myself." 

I did not write to Lady Burrell, but I suggested to Miss 
Swinburne to come to my rooms half an hour before I ex- 
pected the other lady for a sitting. It was on a Wednesday 
morning, a bright and lovely day. Miss Swinburne was punc- 
tual to the moment, The sadness had not faded from her eyes, 
but her color had come back; a beautiful and healthy color- 
ing it was. She looked grave and anxious, and almost im- 
mediately asked me when I expected Lady Burrell. I told her 
at twelve o'clock. " Then we have half an hour," was her re- 
ply. " Please show me the drawing." 

I put it on the easel with strange agitation, I think my 
hand trembled. She herself was much calmer than she had 
been during her last visit; she knew what to expect, and she 
knew also that her own emotions would be unobserved, or ob- 
served merely by one whose thoughts were of no consequence. 
She was silent for some moments, changing her point of view 
more than once. I looked by turns at her and at the drawing. 



1908.] AN ARTIST'S PROOF 303 

As I did so I became more confident I felt that I had wisely 
chosen an attitude of repose for the face : it indicated great 
strength at peace ; sweetness in eyes and mouth but no smile ; 
the capacity of sternness but no violence. 

" I think," said Miss Swinburne " that this is far better than 
I could have expected it is wonderful. May I compare it with 
the one I liked best last time ? Ah, yes, this is the best ; 
though the other is very beautiful, this is the most characteristic." 

She had thought of nothing but her uncle until this mo- 
ment, her eyes had filled with tears and she had gazed at it 
with a yearning reverence which I cannot describe; then she 
suddenly recollected, and turned to me with a smile though 
the tears were still flowing she was quite forgetful of herself. 

"Oh, Mr. Hardman, how can I thank you enough?" 

It was gently and quietly said, no excitement in her man- 
ner, but I never heard conventional politeness and real feeling 
more happily mingled. 

" I could, I think, suggest some slight improvements, if you 
would be willing to take them the chin seems to me to be 
almost too square, the thickness of a line taken off it would 
make it right, I should think." 

After that I made several slight alterations at her sugges- 
tion. We were thus busily occupied when we heard the bell 
ring. Miss Swinburne started nervously. 

" May I ask," she said hurriedly, " as this picture is for me, 
that you will on no account pay attention to Lady Burrell's 
criticisms ?" 

I bowed assent, and a moment later Lady Burrell appeared. 
She looked surprised, but I thought pleased, on seeing Miss 
Swinburne there. I moved to the other side of the room while 
they met, and I could hear Lady Burrell say, in an even lower 
key than usual : " My dear, I hope you are keeping well ; but 
you must have a great deal to do, much to look over, papers 
to sort, all that kind of painful work which I know well. I had 
to go through it after my dear husband's death." 

I thought the remark was not without its purpose; she must 
be curious to know, perhaps intensely anxious to know, what 
traces of his early life had been left behind him. There was 
an undercurrent of great eagerness, perceptible through her 
conventional expressions and artificial manner. Miss Swinburne 
was silent ; she looked as if speech were too great an effort. 



304 AN ARTIST'S PROOF [June, 

Lady Burrell turned from her and walked to the further 
side of the easel. A hard, resentful expression came into her 
face as she looked at the drawing. She was silent for what 
seemed to me a long time, then she spoke almost the same 
words as Miss Swinburne had used. 

" I think this is wonderful, even better than the one I liked 
before " ; then, turning to me with her little smile : " Really, Mr. 
Hardman, you are a magician ; but there is always something 
of magic in genius." 

Her compliments had an unfailing charm for me, her most 
open adulation had that momentary appearance of sincerity 
which is the perfection of flattery. 

" It would be interesting," said Lady Burrell," to compare 
this with the one I admired before thank you no, you are 
right 'that might be the look of a moment, this is the real 
face. It is wonderfully like him as I saw him last, at some 
evening party, I think." 

Whether it was in order to deceive .herself or others, it 
seemed characteristic of this lady to choose to speak lightly of 
the very things that must have been most painful to her; her 
most spiteful enemy could not have been more ingenious in 
speaking of what hurt her than she was herself. 

Miss Swinburne had asked to meet Lady Burrell, but she 
paid little heed to her comments on the drawing, she seemed 
to be more embarrassed and less quietly unfriendly than at 
their last meeting. I had withdrawn to the other end of the 
room, to leave them more free to discuss the drawing. I heard 
Miss Swinburne move, and then in low hurried tones she said : 
" Lady Burrell, I have found this packet among my uncle's 
papers, with a note to myself, telling me that I was to give you 
these letters and also this paper, but on the one condition 
that you will solemnly promise never to reveal its contents." 

" I swear it ! " exclaimed Lady Burrell aloud, quite forget- 
ful of my presence. 

" Take care," said Miss Swinburne in a low voice. " I 
would have chosen another opportunity ; but, as you know, 
there are reasons why I should not go to your house. Good- 
bye." 

I heard no answer from Lady Burrell and Miss Swinburne 
walked down the room to me. 

" If you would like to send that drawing to the Royal 






1908.] AN ARTIST'S PROOF 305 

Academy I have no objection; but I should like to have it at 
home till then." 

" I will send it directly it is quite finished,'* I answered. 

" Thank you ! " She spoke quietly and a little absently. I 
think she was watching Lady Burrell, who was standing by the 
window with her back to us, and a rustling sound of papers 
being opened reached us. I took Miss Swinburne downstairs 
and stayed a moment to see her drive away, a little sorry that 
it was so unlikely that we should ever be thrown together 
again. The fine, simple characters are not common in these 
complex later days in which we live, and I had recognized this 
one a little wistfully as she passed by my way. I turned, think- 
ing of this, to go back to Lady Burrell, and I had reached the 
first landing when that lady came hurriedly down the stairs, 
her veil was thick and I don't think she saw me in the dark 
of the narrow staircase until she touched me. Then she said 
something, I could not make out what, and in another moment 
she was fumbling with the handle of the front door. I hastened 
to her aid, she bowed slightly as I opened it and walked away 
with great rapidity. I watched her disappear and then went 
back a little ruffled to my studio. Had she forgotten her sitting 
and how inconvenient her conduct might be to me ? Then I 
remembered the papers Miss Swinburne had given her, evident- 
ly those papers had upset her not a little. 

I was pacing my studio, lost in curious thought, when I 
noticed a folded piece of yellow paper lying on the floor, as I 
stooped to pick it up I saw the large flowing signature, "soon 
to be your own Clare Swinburne." I am ashamed to own that 
I was tempted to read that letter, so much tempted that I 
thought it wisest to fasten it in an envelope and address it to 
Lady Burrell to go by the next post. The letters, then, of which 
Miss Swinburne had spoken must have been Lady Burrell's own 
letters to the professor during their engagement ; but what was 
the paper as to which she had sworn inviolable secrecy ? My 
interest in the subject revived, and I tried to estimate what 
new facts had been brought to bear upon the case in my own 
mind by the events of the morning. First Miss Swinburne had 
decided that the face expressing strength, power of self-restraint, 
some hardness and yet capacity for tenderness, was wonderful- 
ly true. This face had nothing in it characteristic of a penitent. 
Lady Burrell too, though she must have been inclined to find 

VOL. LXXXVII. 20 



306 AN ARTIST'S PROOF [June, 

signs perhaps of violence, and perhaps cruelty or deception in 
the face, had decided for the drawing which was without any 
trace of them rather than for the one in which they might be dis- 
covered. That two people who would naturally prefer the other 
drawings, one choosing the more ideal, the other the more re- 
pellent, should concur in thinking my picture the truest, was 
strong testimony to the truth of my idea ; but that was no ad- 
missible proof of his innocence, it only involved the complicated 
question of whether the mind's complexion can or cannot be 
read in the face. What I wanted longed to know (though I 
had told myself only an hour ago that it was nothing to me) 
was what the professor had written to Lady Burrell and what 
effect it had produced on that lady. I don't think I did any 
work for the two or three following hours, I was listless and 
preoccupied. About four o'clock I was trying to read a book 
of poems when Lady Burrell was announced. I started up, 
annoyed with my servant for having shown her straight into 
the studio. Her own picture was upon an easel and I did not 
wish her to see it ; but I am sure that she never saw it. She 
kept her veil down and tried also to keep up some shadow of 
her ordinary affectation, but it was useless. She seemed far more 
soft and gentle than I had yet seen her, but she was evidently 
in a state of great excitement her hand shook so that her 
umbrella dropped from it, and she seemed hardly able to pick 
it up. As I bent to do so she began to speak. 

" Mr. Hardman," she said, " could you let me have one of 
your drawings of Edward Swinburne, the one we looked at this 
morning belongs, I know, to his niece, but there is another 
which I should like to keep"; her voice shook as she finished 
the sentence. 

I put away her own picture and took out of my portfolio 
the drawing which she had liked best at first. I felt sorry 
that she wanted it, as I believed it to be a libel on the professor's 
expression. 

" That is the one you preferred," I said, " but I hardly like 1 " 

" That one," cried Lady Burrell, and her voice was full of 
pain, " oh, no ; not that one, there was another." 

It was then the idealized, beautiful, refined, almost ethereal 
portrait that Lady Burrell asked for the picture which she had 
told me that only Flora Swinburne's excited imagination could 
think a good likeness. 



1908.] AM AMTISTS PMOOF ---- 

"It is exactly Eke,* sh 



I felt that my idea had 




-Y:- 

of the 

I^_-; a ^ a _ j _i^^ -_ JJ- -l . M T 
nesnaxeo, SBC anacn. M. 

yon like to name for it"* 
from any one else, bnt I M 
gave it to her, bnt as I did so the i 

_ _ n_ _ _ M eg *** % ^. _ 9 A _ nn w 

strncft. me paininiiy. - :: -i:t MM .i:f 

" I tfctafc- this most be yonrs,"* I said, * mmXm her the 
M I had done it np to go to yon by post. I only 

it from me. A fittle cry of pain broke 
iw the signal nrc, bnt, tme to 

ing to Flora Swinbnme, I wffl send it to her." 

By this time the bttie smile had retnmed to her lips, 

C " i : r : _ . . y 



So moch for this lady's trvth of Ttiiita ! fivt the endevt 

?_::e s;e -A? 2.T.1V5 rffz :; zif i r2_2:-..v ri"fr: f^.rr 

B V tfcr !!** knew^ k^>r ^^ nrnct- kav^ ILTJ . w^ fl^nt fra^ 

the dare Swinburne who won and lUnrncd the affection el her 



3o8 AN ARTIST'S PROOF U une - 

cousin ! There is something intensely sad in a life-long es- 
trangement between two noble souls ; still as Clough, to whom 
such a pain was well known, tells us 

".Yet seldom surely shall there lack 
Knowledge they walk not back to back, 
But with an unity of track." 

Had this woman of the world for such her dress, manner, 
reputation, proclaimed her with her power of charming, her 
easy insincerity, her frivolous talk, but also with her deep 
undercurrent of passionate enduring feeling, kept to a " unity 
of track " with the lonely professor, whose life, as I had learnt, 
had been retired, religious, laborious, and, as I fancied, had 
been one long chivalrous, patient suffering under unjust sus- 
picion ? Had their spirits grown apart or together " as each 
to the other went unseen " ? Men and women of infinitely varied 
degrees of moral worth or worthlessness can love each other 
on earth, but how will it be when their spirits are laid bare to 
each other in another world ? We need not fear, for the par- 
doned sinner and the saint will meet together in the embraces 
of an eternal love. 

And why am I telling this old story which never amounted 
to a story to-day? Why? Because I have to-day received a 
letter from old Lord Swinburne, a nonogenarian at least, ask- 
ing me to paint a full size picture in oils of his son, Professor 
Swinburne, to hang among the family pictures. It is too late 
now, they should have asked me years ago. If they want to 
proclaim the innocence of the man they wronged, let them 
publish the whole story. I for one should extremely like to 
hear it. I did my best with the drawing. Do not let them 
come to me now for another artist's proof. 




WHEN ROMANCE MET RELIGION: 

A LITTLE STUDY OF THE MEDIAEVAL VIEWPOINT. 
BY KATHERINE BREGY. 

[HE term romance is of very variable significance 
nowadays and indeed it can never have been 
easy of precise definition. It is too vast a thing 
for human computation ; and so our tendency is 
to belittle, to dismember it, or else to take refuge 
in a vague and sentimental use of the word. The thing itself 
is, without doubt, vague and sentimental ; but our error is in 
attaching an unfavorable meaning to these terms. We speak 
with a certain contemptuous tolerance, a sense of fiction mis- 
taken for fact, of the " romance of youth." And of late it has 
become fashionable to talk about the " romance of science " ; 
most of us being respectful even if unconvinced when the stu- 
pendous achievements and possibilities of material science are 
in question. But there is still a suspicion of unreality and ex- 
aggeration about the word; and practical people are shy of 
mentioning the romance of labor, or the romance of religion, 
or the very essential romance of life. That is a thousand pities ; 
that is where practical, modern people are both disappointing 
and impractical ! Have we forgotten that romance is one of 
the most real and salutary facts in the universe that it is 
necessary just because it seems so unnecessary ? Romance is 
the glory of sunset and the glamor of purple mist : it is the 
wonder and tenderness of life : the essence of poetry : the seek- 
ing and finding of the ideal. And even the most practical of 
us cannot go very far without some sort of an ideal before or 
beside us ! 

Children infallibly love romance and move in a world of 
romantic creations ; and there was a time when men and women 
did the same. They were not jaded or world-weary, and their 
heritage was one of robust physique, robust imagination, and 
robust faith. The outer life and the inner life were alike ro- 
mantic to the mediaeval mind. Man was born into a world of 



310 WHEN ROMANCE MET RELIGION [June, 

conflict and mystery. On one side was the pride of life, the 
lust of the eyes and of the senses; vari-colored garments and 
shining armor, song and wine and love and war. On the other 
was a haunting vision of 

Death waiting in his shoe, 
Him quietly to foredo 

a consciousness of sin ; mighty penance ; a very real and poign- 
ant yearning for the crucified Saviour Knight or Ladye Mary, 
the Mother of might and gentleness. There was a terrible ro- 
mance in the mediaeval thought of hell, with its eleven grim 
and significant torments and its " loathly devil," to look upon 
whom man might well die of care ! And there was just as sen- 
sible a romance although some critics are less fain to recognize 
it in the vision of Paradisal joys. Bernard of Cluny's Jeru- 
salem the Golden its radiant walls re-echoing "the shout of 
them that triumph, the song of them that feast" before their 
risen Prince is a notable instance. But, of course, the most 
supreme testimony of all is found in the pages of Dante's 
Divina Commedia. No human mind has expressed the heights 
and depths of spiritual experience more transcendently, nor 
more romantically, than this mediaeval Florentine he whose 
visions have made real for all ages the glories of heaven and 
the uttermost depths of hell. But lest the testimony of this 
immortal poet and seer be considered unique, let us turn to 
humbler exemplars to the nameless bards of twelfth and thir- 
teenth century England ; where, in the welding of Norman and 
Anglo-Saxon elements, a new literature was coming to birth. 
We shall find upon every second page how blithely romance met 
religion how naturally, and withal how fruitfully. 

For in all this literature, there was as yet no conscious 
distinction between realist and romanticist; indeed, the realist 
was the romanticist. Nothing was so unromantic as to be just 
what it seemed ; and there was no fact, objective or historical, 
which the mediaeval mind could not elucidate or at least analo- 
gize. The rainbow's blue, clearly, was an emblem of water, 
the first destroyer; its red symbolized fire. The habits of beast 
and bird, the properties of stone and mineral, had all some re- 
lation to man and the Maker of man. And this vigorous poetic 
quality grotesque, sublime, whatsoever its accidental expression 



1908.] WHEN ROMANCE MET RELIGION 311 

was the fruit at once of simplicity and of mysticism. Sim- 
plicity the childlike wish to be vivid, to picture a thought 
strikingly and astonishingly; and mysticism that profound in- 
stinct of the mediaeval mind, that belief or intuition of the 
sacramental nature of human life ! 

And so we have this incidental romance of illustration and 
imagery. Unconscious, atmospheric as it was, it pervaded the 
entire literature of a period almost wholly religious in its written 
expression. Sermons, works of discipline or edification, were as 
picturesque as they were practical ; and in the midst of some 
tense homily, we come upon one of those haunting and ele- 
mental bits of poetry, the debate of the Soul and Body. But 
more and more directly, this union came to form the warp and 
woof of the literary texture. Of a surety, the rule worked 
both ways ; for while we find spiritual ideals constantly blend- 
ing with heroic in the secular epics, religious lyrics were be- 
coming as ardent and tender as love-songs. The mediaeval 
attitude toward life is wondrously revealed if we but remember 
this for always literature is in the nature of a revelation. 

Conventions and " types " there are, incontestably, in the old- 
est of surviving romances ; yet there has never been a more 
faithful mirror of contemporary ideals. The immortal Chanson 
de Roland, while of French origin, came to England with the 
Conqueror and thereafter proved itself not only the vigorous, 
esthetic delight of two nations, but pre-eminently their code 
and inspiration. It is a very na'i ve romance ; and it is almost 
as religious as it is warlike. When the invincible Roland sinks, 
spent at last, upon the green grass of Roncevaux, his thoughts 
the minstrel tells us are of " many things." They are of 
" Sweet France," of the lands he has conquered, of Charlemagne 
his lord, and the men of his race. But most poignantly of all 
they are of God. To Him Roland proffers his gauntlet in token 
of homage; and striking his breast, he begs forgiveness: 

Dieu ! c'est ma faute, pardon par ta puissance 
Pour mes peches, les grands et les petits, 
Que j'ai commis des 1'heure ou je suis ne. 

There seems nothing inharmonious in the appearance of Ga- 
briel and those other bright spirits who bear the count's soul 
away to paradise the scene is all so artless and so natural in 



312 WHEN ROMANCE MET RELIGION [June, 

its supernaturalism. " Ni 1'antiquite n'avait invente, ni la poesie 
Chretienne n'a su retrouver de pereils accents pour peindre une 
mort heroique et sainte," comments M. Petit de Julleville.* 

In the foregoing instance the romance was, of course, essen- 
tial, and the religious element merely (if very vitally) interpene- 
trated. But the order was often reversed. Then, as always, 
the priest was contemporaneous. He who would save the soul 
of knight or serf, of lady or anchoress, had need to remember 
the ubiquitous romance; and he had need to incorporate into 
his own work something of its winsome and exciting quality. 
So here is the ballad-like beginning of an early Assompcioun de 
Notre Dame : 

A merry tale tell I this day, 
Of Seinte Marye, that sweet may, 
All is the tale and high lesoun, 
And of her sweet assompcioun. 

And another pious versifier, with most engaging gentleness 
toward the weakness of the flesh, thus opens up his Passional : 

Hearken now this little tale that I to you will tell, 

As we do find it written down in the holy Gospel : 

It is not of Charlemagne, nor of his twelve peer, 

But of the Lord Christ's sufferings that He endured here. 

In the prolific field of legendary and apocryphal history, it 
is practically impossible to draw any hard and fast line between 
the romantic and religious elements. No sort of writing seems 
to have been more universally popular. The clergy approved 
because it was edifying, the people rejoiced because it was most 
indubitably interesting and so it flourished apace. Such was 
the exuberance of creative imagination, that ere long the very 
stones of the Temple, porch and column and roof and spire, 
were overgrown by this tangled if flowery vine of fancy. There 
was a whole series of legends concerning the Holy Rood, while 
those of the Holy Graal developed into a cycle; there were 
apocryphal versions of every conceivable event in religious or 
semi-religious history. Threads were tangled then which the 
wisest of moderns have not been able wholly to unweave; and 

* Histoire de la Litterature Ftan$aise. 



1908.] WHEN ROMANCE MET RELIGION 313 

incidentally, this vigorous creativeness in sacred fields has fur- 
nished material for several centuries of critical activity ! But 
this is mere cavilling. It gave us, also, the only supremely great 
architecture of Christian Europe ; it [provided atmosphere and 
inspiration for six immortal schools of painting ; and it bore 
witness to an age vitally interested in the things of the spirit, 
while as truly virile and poetic as any the world has known. 

The surviving English lives of three popular virgin saints 
all clustering about the year 1230 are excellently representa- 
tive of this school of writing. Church history, in any strict 
sense, they were not, and indeed were not understood to be. 
The Lives of St. Katherine, St. Juliana, and St. Margaret are 
nowise comparable, for instance, to Bonaventura's familiar life 
of St. Francis of Assisi, or to the still more ancient history of 
Anselm by Eadmer of Canterbury. Instead, they were the fore- 
runners of those immense cycles ever hovering on the border- 
land between romance and religion, beauty (or sometimes fan- 
tasy) and truth known later as the Legendaries. Their char- 
acteristics, of course, varied. There is a noble dignity in the 
tale of how " went the blessed maiden Katherine, crowned to 
Christ, from earthly pain, in the month of November, the 25th 
day ... in the day and at the time that her dearly be- 
loved Jesus, our Lord, gave up his life upon the cross for her 
and for us all." Perhaps because Katherine of Alexandria was 
so eminently an intellectual saint, her fabulous biography has 
contrived to appeal quite as much to the head as to the heart. 
But in the life of little St. Margaret, the English scribe has 
given free rein to fancy, and we recognize all the machinery 
of the romance. The mediaeval or, indeed, the modern reader 
must search far for a more zestful anecdote than the following. 
Margaret, imprisoned for her faith, has somewhat ill- advisedly 
besought God that she may see any invisible demons who may 
be lurking near: her foster-mother, peering through a peep- 
hole of the dungeon, beholds the result: 

There came out of a corner hastily toward her an unwight 
of Hell in a dragon's form, so grisly that it terrified them that 
saw it. That unseely-one glistened as if it were overgilt ; 
his locks and his long beard blazed all of gold, and his grisly 
teeth seemed of swart iron, and his two eyes more burning 
than stars or than gemstones, and broad as basins. In his 



3H WHEN ROMANCE MET RELIGION [June, 

y-horned head, on either side of his high hooked nose, thrust 
smothering smoke of most dreadful kind, and from his sput- 
tering mouth sparkled fire out ; and so long reached his 
tongue that he swung it all about his neck, and it seemed as 
though a sharp sword went out of his mouth, that glistened 
like gleaming death and live lightning. . . . He stretched 
him and started toward this meek maiden, and yawned with 
his wide jaws ungainly upon her, and began to croak and to 
crink out his neck, as he would foreswallow her altogether. 
If she was afeared oi that grisly grim one it was not much 
wonder. 

Margaret's hue blenches with terror, and she forgets that all 
this is but an answer to her prayer. So she smote smartly 
down her knees to the earth and lifted her hands on high 
toward Heaven, and with this prayer to Christ called: 

Invisible God, full of all good, whose wrath is so dread- 
ful that Hell's fiends and the heavens and all quick things 
quake before it ; against this aweful wight, that it harm me 
not, help me, my Lord. Thou wroughtest and wieldest all 
worldly things, they extol and praise Thee in Heaven, and all 
that dwell upon the earth, the fishes that in the floods float, 
etc., etc* 

It is like all of St. Margaret's ! a very long and compre- 
hensive prayer; but it touches more than once upon sublimity 
and high poetry. And it proves that the religious element of 
the story, if not quite the primary interest, was at least ear- 
nest and authentic. 

But this brings us to another side of the subject the more 
personal, lyrical side. There was never an age when mystical 
love had more completely mastered and enthralled the English 
heart, or when it found more passionate expression. There 
was never an age when poet and priest (those two seers of the 
race) were more universally one. Innumerable songsters, mod- 
ern as well as mediaeval, have found inspiration in the joys and 
sorrows of Mary the Virgin Mother ; so that we may almost 
say, merely to be a poet is to be sensible of that tender and 
mystical and essentially poetic attraction which radiates from 
the Blessed Among Women. . Our tainted nature's solitary 

* Life of St. Marherete. Early Eng. Text Society Publications. Vol. XIII. 



1908.] WHEN ROMANCE MET RELIGION 315 

boast, Mystical Rose, Mary of the seven-times wounded Heart, 
Star of the Sea, Mother of the Fair Delight so have Christian 
poets, both within and without the fold, saluted her. But in 
these anonymous English Marian poems of the twelfth and 
thirteenth centuries, we recognize a quite distinctive fragrance ; 
something of its cultured and exotic sweetness was, no doubt, 
distilled in the gardens of Provence, but none the less it is 
spontaneously racy and national. This " maiden mother mild " 
(it was always the mildness which appealed in those strife- full 
days), this bright Queen of men and of angels, was never far 
from the vision of monk or Christian knight. The mediaeval 
mind, moreover, was not in the least afraid of that very ugly 
word " mariolatry " and it confused the terms of divine and 
human love with most artless and engaging simplicity. So she 
was lauded in uncounted prayer-poems, but probably in none 
more characteristic than the 

Good Oreisun of Our Ladye. 

Christ's mild Mother, Seynte Marie, 
My life's true light, my lov'd Ladye, 
To thee I bow, my knees I bend; 
And my heart's blood to thee I send. 

Soul's light thou art, and heart's true bliss, 

My life, my hope, my shield I wis. 

Thee will I laud with all my might 

And sing thy lovesong by day and night, 

For my soul thou hast holpen in many wise, 

And led from Hell into Paradise. 

Thus vigorously opens up the poem, and figures of praise and 
love crowd fast upon each other. There is no woman like to 
this woman; high is her royal seat upon the Cherubim, before 
her beloved Son, within the Seraphim. Merrily the angels sing 
and carol before her, albeit no whit understanding the height 
of her bliss. Her children are as red as the rose and as white 
as the lily, her friends are as rich kings crowned with gem- 
stones; and with them evermore is day without night, song 
without sorrow, peace without strife. 



3i6 WHEN ROMANCE MET RELIGION [June, 

Behold, the Heaven is full of thy bliss, 
And the middle-earth of thy gentleness. 
Not one who calls thy help may miss, 
Such is thy grace and mildheartedness. 

The poet proceeds, very humbly, to declare his sins and his 
unworthiness of this Ladye's favor : none the less her love has 
brought him into slavery, and he forsakes now all those evil 
things which erstwhile were dear to him: 

Before thy feet will I lie and plead 

Till pardon I have of my misdeed. 

Thine is my life, my love is thine, 

All the blood of my heart is thine, 

And if I dare say't, thou, Ladye, art mine! 

It is not a brief poem (one hundred and sixty-eight verses), 
but the ardor and vigor of appeal never for one moment fal- 
ter. Mary's intercession is besought, to obtain God's forgive- 
ness at the hour of death ; she is called upon to wash and 
clothe the soul through her wide-spreading mercy. And the 
poem ends with a most ingenuous prayer that God Almighty 
may bring His monk into gladness and to the vision of this 
Ladye in her beatitude; and that all his friends may be the 
better for this English lay which he has sung them ! 

The Oreisun is very full of color and charm, of imagina- 
tion and warm human feeling. Representative alike in its 
beauties and its excesses, it mirrors faithfully that chivalrous 
and romantic devotion to the Mother of God which permeated 
mediaeval life. Ruskin saw in it a very font of virtues the 
exaltation of womanhood, of gentleness and purity, the glori- 
fication of the family ideal for prince and for peasant. Cardi- 
nal Newman has pointed out how, among all nations, it has 
served as the most potent protection for the supreme dogma 
of the Divinity of Mary's Son. But at the time there was 
something flowerlike in the unconsciousness with which the de- 
votion developed, spreading into inevitable luxuriance on all 
sides. It was not a cult; it was not, save in rare instances, 
a literary convention ; it was the mediaeval version of Gabriel's 
Ave, framed from the "lore of faithful hearts." 



1908.] WHEN ROMANCE MET RELIGION 317 

" We are alike meditating on the Incarnation, whether our 
direct theme be incarnate God or His Mother," wrote Aubrey 
de Vere of the deep and tender insight. And the Incarnation 
is one of the few fundamental Christian mysteries which does 
not force the contemplation of what the same critic has called 
" matter too aweful for poetry." By bringing the infinite and 
unutterable down to the compass of a Mother and her Child, 
it has subjugated the devotion and imagination of the ages. 
So there is really no better way to realize the emotional sin- 
cerity of these Marian poems than to study the contemporary 
prayers to our Lord. They are absolutely free from self- con- 
sciousness; they bear no trace of what we have grown to call 
English reticence ; the floodgates are down the passionate ardor 
of the human heart is poured out like spikenard at the feet of 
Jesus Christ and Him crucified ! The Wooing of our Lord an 
exceedingly interesting and well-sustained piece of alliterative 
prose is one of the most famous of these works. It is over- 
whelmingly romantic : 

Who may not love Thy lovely face ? What heart is so 
hard that may not melt at the remembrance of Thee ? Ah, 
who may not love the lovely Jesu ? For in Thee alone are all 
things gathered together that might ever make one man love- 
worthy to another ! 

For His beauty and His riches, His wisdom and might, His 
liberality and surpassing nobleness of birth, His graciousness 
and gentleness and kinship with all the children of men for 
all these the soul is urged to choose Jesus as true lover. Is 
not He that keen warrior who did rob hell-house and deliver 
its prisoners, and brought them out of the house of death into 
His own jewelled bower, the abode of everlasting bliss? The 
emotional warmth, the intimate sensibility and tenderness which 
throughout pervade the Wooing, have led some critics to believe 
it the work of a woman most probably a nun consumed by 
love of the Heavenly Bridegroom. It would be vastly inter- 
esting to accept this theory ; but internal evidence, as well as 
the almost unbroken custom of the age, militate against it. 
The work was designed primarily, not as a sentimental effusion 
but as a meditation upon the Passion ; possibly for the use of 
some consecrated Spouse of Christ. And the conclusion very 
forcibly suggests the authorship of a spiritual director: 



3i8 WHEN ROMANCE MET RELIGION [June, 

Pray for me, my dear Sister. This have I written because 
that such words often please the heart to think upon our 
Lord. And therefore when thou art in ease, speak to Jesu 
and say these words : and think as though He hung beside 
thee bloody on the rood ; and may He, through His grace, 
open thy heart to the love of Him, and to ruth of His pain.* 

Friar Thomas of Hales' Love Rune is by all odds one of 
the most artistic and exquisite of these devotional poems. It 
possesses real imaginative and lyric value ; but the length for- 
bids insertion in this present study, and no extract would be 
found satisfying. So as a final and thoroughly characteristic 
product of this union of romance and religion, let us consider 
the 

Oreisun of Our Louerde. 

Jesus, true God, God's Son ! Jesus, true God, true man 
and true Virgin's child ! Jesus, my holy love, my sure sweet- 
ness ! Jesus my heart, my joy, my soul's healing ! Jesus, 
sweet Jesus, my darling, my life, my light, my balm, my 
honey drop ! Thou art all I trust in, Jesus my weal, my win- 
someness, blithe bliss of my breast ! Jesus, teach me, Thou 
that art so soft and so sweet, and yet too so likesome and so 
lovely and so lovesome, that the angels ever behold Thee, 
and yet are never satisfied to look upon Thee. Jesus all fair, 
before whom the sun is but a shadow, even she that loseth 
her light and becometh ashamed of her darkness before Thy 
bright face ! Thou that givest her light and hast all that 
light, illumine my dark heart. . . . Ah ! Lord Jesus, 
Thy succour ! Why have I any delight in other things than 
in Thee ? Why love I anything but Thee alone ? O that I 
might behold how Thou stretchedst Thyself for me on the 
cross ! O that I might cast myself between those same arms, 
so very wide outspread ! He openeth them as doth the moth- 
er her arms to embrace her beloved child. Yea, of a truth ! 
And Thou, dear Lord, goest spiritually towards us, Thy dar. 
lings, with the same outspreading as the mother to her chil- 
dren. Bach is beloved ; each is dear ; each places himself in 
Thy arms ; each will be embraced. Ah ! Jesus ! Thy hu- 
mility and Thy great mercy ! O that I were in Thy arms, 
in Thy arms so outstretched and outspread on the cross ! 
And may any one ever hope to be embraced between Thy 

* Early Eng. Text Society Pub. Vol. XXIX.-XXXIV. 



1908.] WHEN ROMANCE MET RELIGION 319 

blissful arms in Heaven, unless He previously here hath cast 
himself between Thy piteous arms on the Cross? Nay, of a 
truth ; nay, let no man expect it. Through this low em- 
bracing we may come to the exalted one. . . O lyoving 
lyord ! he must follow Thy steps through soreness and sorrow 
to the abode of bliss and eternal joy. L,et no man think to 
ascend easily unto the stars ! * 

Thus the orison flows on with the rhythmic rise and fall, 
the half-inebriating and mystic sweetness of an ever-swinging 
censer. And it is not the rapturous colloquy of some exalted 
saint or mystagogue. It is the prayer, nowise unique, of a 
nameless churchman perhaps a busy bishop like the probable 
author of the Ancren Riwle, perhaps an obscure monk like 
Jocelin of Brakelond. The work does not seem to have been 
thought extraordinary by the scribe who handed it down to 
us; for the unfinished fragment of the Oreisun is tucked into 
the Lambeth MS. among a collection of homilies in a strange 
handwriting, and apparently, Mr. Morris thinks, to fill up the 
remaining folios ! 

Oh, yes; there is a vein of sentimentality through all these 
works. They are a little weak in the quality of artistic selec- 
tion; they sometimes offend our own fine sense of fitness; they 
are saturated with a curious sensibility which already tends to 
the fantastic, and threatens later to become morbid or meta- 
physical. But they teach us the meaning of Coventry Patmore's 
strange arraignment, that not one really good prayer has been 
written by Catholic or Protestant since the days of the " Refor- 
mation." And they teach us the measure of a perfectly vital, 
unconscious, and untrammeled faith. 

For how unerring the poetic insight, through all this quaint- 
ness and naivete how ardent and intimate the union with God ! 
No doubt we moderns have gained as well as lost by "grow- 
ing up," by becoming critical rather than creative, and correct 
rather than spontaneous; still we have lost something. What 
are we to think of the mystical culture of England at a time 
when popular devotion was so clothed and crowned ? And that 
was the England of pageant and miracle play ; the England 
which had known Thomas a Becket and was soon to know 
Chaucer; the England wherein romance met and kissed religion 

* Early Eng. Text Society Pub. Vol. XXIX.-XXXIV. 



320 WHEN ROMANCE MET RELIGION [June. 

before the revolt of Wycliff, before the scourge of the Rose 
Wars, or the sophistication of the Italian Renaissance. 

Mr. George Meredith, that very modern and professedly 
" scientific " student of human nature, once remarked that " If 
we let romance go, we exchange a sky for a ceiling." We 
shall never be able to let it go altogether, because it is as ele- 
mental as it is seemingly unreal ; but we can, and do, push recog- 
nition of it from one field to another. We can build our walls 
so close and our ceilings so low that one student's lamp shall 
pierce every inch of the darkness. But meanwhile the sky is 
above the ceiling, and our vision alone is restricted. If we wish 
our appreciation of religion to be vital, refreshing, inspirational, 
we shall do well to remember as the saints have remembered 
and as the Church in her liturgies does remember the high 
romance of it all. And if we would save that very human 
craving for romance from debasement and triviality, we must 
not divorce it utterly from spiritual ideals. The greatest motif 
in English literature (a Celtic motif as all the world knows) 
stands to-day as one immortal offspring of the union we have 
been considering. The mystic Quest of the Sangraal was the 
glorification and transfiguration of the romantic ideal. It be- 
queathed to us a wondrous and heart-subduing parable of life 
from the mediaeval viewpoint, and we ought to breathe a Deo 
gratias because it still abides in the consciousness of the race. 
Forgotten by many it may be, but not effete ; undeciphered 
but enduring; the symbol of truths and aspirations too sublime 
for human utterance ! 




ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN. 

AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY* 

BY FRANCIS AVELING, D.D. 

CHAPTER XXII. 

JOR some days after his interview with Brother Tho- 
mas of Aquin, Arnoul remained quietly in the 
guest-house of the Cistercians; for he had at 
once betaken himself thither and craved the hos- 
pitality of the order, as much to avoid his former 
companions as to be near Father Anselm and Roger. It was 
a case of taking refuge in the nearest port from the storm that 
he instinctively realized would break as soon as his new reso- 
lutions became known. 

Sir Guy's death had told. Where his life in the University 
had had all the effect of aging him without showing it, the 
sudden shock had thrown him back upon himself and developed 
the latent manhood that had been so rapidly growing to ma- 
turity. His youthful features reflected the intensity of the men- 
tal struggles through which he had passed; and, instead of a 
gay, careless boy, it was a sober and serious- eyed man who 
paced up and down the gardens by the Bievre in the company 
of his two countrymen. 

The story of Sir Guy's murder had been told again and 
again, with all the variety of remembered details that the re- 
telling of a story brings. He had the whole sad series of events 
before his mind as if he had been an eyewitness of the trag- 
edy ; and he brooded over it in a manner that was far from 
reassuring either to Father Anselm or to Roger. The former 
good man, having accomplished his sorrowful task of communi- 
cating the news, did his best to turn the lad's mind from think- 
ing over-much of his loss, and to this end he spoke incessantly 
of his own future. Above all, he insisted on the kindly inten- 
tions of the bishop. 

* Copyright in United States, Great Britain, and Ireland. The Missionary Society of St. 
Paul the Apostle in the State of New York. 
VOL. LXXXYII. 21 



322 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [June, 

" A canonry, Arnoul ! It is a thing to accept, without 
doubt ! " 

"The bishop is kindness itself/ 1 replied the lad, "but I shall 
not take his canonry." 

" And why not, Arnoul ? 'Tis a good beginning, and you 
would have a career before you ready mapped out. Why ! 
there's no telling what you might not reach if you set your 
mind to it ! It is the very thing Sir Guy would have wished 
for you." 

Arnoul's eyes swam. He remembered his brother's great 
dreams and hopes, unfolded to him during those last days at 
Woodleigh. The astrologer's head, too, seemed to nod up and 
down before his eyes and his metallic voice strike upon his 
ears : " Refuse nothing ! " 

Even the good bishop He could picture his jovial, kind 
face beaming with contentment at his own goodness in mak- 
ing such an offer. But, more than all, the words of Brother 
Thomas and the strong presence of Brother Thomas held him. 

" Nevertheless," he repeated, " I shall not take his canonry. 
It is like him to offer it to me; but I cannot accept it." 

"And what will you do then?" persisted Father Anselm. 
" What do you propose ? Surely you are not thinking of join- 
ing us ? How pleased Abbot Benet would be ! Is that what 
is in your mind ? " 

" No " ; replied Arnoul. " I am not thinking of the religious 
life. I do not think I am made for that. I shall just go on 
studying until until Father Abbot comes over in the spring; 
and then we shall see." 

Poor Father Anselm was nonplussed. He could not realize 
the refusal of so good an offer as that of the canonry, and he 
was altogether at a loss to understand what he took to be sheer 
uncertainty and indecision on Arnoul's part. 

Roger, on the other hand, did not try to understand. Per- 
haps in his stolid, faithful mind he knew better than Father 
Anselm what Sir Guy's murder meant to the lad. But he drew 
him out and talked with him of his humbler friends in Devon. 

" Budd is quite well," he said, in answer to Arnoul's ques- 
tions. " But the goodwife has got pains in her joints, and can't 
work as she could once." 

"And the brothers at Holne and Brent?" 

"They are well, too. Only some of those at Brent Moor 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 323 

have been moved. Brother Peter is at Buckfast now, and Broth- 
er Basil has gone back to one of the French houses." 

" Old Brother Peter at Buckfast ! " exclaimed Arnoul. " Why ! 
what will he do without his sheep ? " 

" He will make a good death," was the answer. Brother 
Peter is growing old, and can't do his work upon the moors 
any more. So he has gone down into the valley to make him- 
self ready for his call." 

From Buckfast they crossed easily to Woodleigh and Isobel. 
"Where was Isobel; and what was she doing now?" Arnoul 
asked with a sigh. 

" Isobel ? Why, Sir Sigar offered her a home at Moreleigh ; 
but she would hear nothing of it. Instead, she railed at Sir 
Sigar to his face. He took her curses meekly, and answered 
no word. She has gone away to Exeter, "'tis said; though I 
do not know, for she said nothing to me of where she was 
going." 

"Poor old Isobel," sighed Arnoul. "She is a good, faith- 
ful soul, and I can understand full well how she felt when Sir 
Sigar offered to help her." His face went pale as he spoke, 
and his mouth was hard and stern. 

"Still, I think she might have gone to Moreleigh," said 
Roger. " Had she gone it would have seemed a sign of for- 
giveness for Sir Sigar. Not that I forgive him ! " he put in 
angrily. 

They spoke of all save of the Lady Sibilla. Arnoul could 
not bring himself to mention her. He was too distressed, too 
nervous to trust her name upon his lips when speaking with 
Roger or Father Anselm. Only, he pictured her alone in the 
great hall at Moreleigh, suffering silently for her father, gather- 
ing up her woes within her patient heart, sorrowing, perhaps, 
for him. 

Curiously enough, too, Roger never spoke of her. She 
seemed not to be part of that awful drama in which she must 
have acted. In not one of their conversations was her name 
so much as mentioned. 

So they continued, speaking of home and of all the dear 
friends of far-off Devon every time they talked together, until 
Arnoul, having composed his spirit in the retreat of the Ber- 
nardins, and conquered the first overwhelming wave of utter 
melancholy, went back again to his own lodging. 



324 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [June, 

The first persons be met as he made his way across the 
University were Maitre Louis and the alchemist, Barthelemy. 

" Where have you been all this time?" asked the younger 
man, coming up to him. "What have you been doing with 
yourself? I have been hunting for you at your room and all 
over the place. They told me you had been called out of 
Julien's the night you left me at Maitre Barthelemy's house; 
and from that day to this no one has had a word from you." 

The alchemist stood there, looking at him gravely. Arnoul 
saw that his right hand was hidden in his breast. 

"There was news from home," he made answer; "and I have 
been staying at the guest-house of the Cistercians with those 
that brought it." 

" So ? I am glad, at any rate, that you are back again now 
from those sour-faced monks. But for this eternal dispute be- 
tween the friars and the University, there is nothing doing at 
all. Have you heard that Maitre William's book has been de- 
nounced by the king ? It is an infernal shame ! " 

"No; I have heard nothing. What book ?" asked Arnoul. 
" The famous one, I suppose ? " 

"Yes; The Perils of the Last Times. These hypocritical 
friars are bent upon destroying St. Amour if they can manage 
it! King Louis has sent the copy on to the Pope to be con- 
demned. The Dominicans have him under their thumb." 

"The king is quite able to take care of himself," said Ar- 
noul dryly, "even if he has, as every one knows, a great es- 
teem for the friars. He is tired of all this strife and wrangling 
in his capital, and he is setting to work the right way if he 
sends the whole quarrel on to Rome." 

" And that 's just what he is doing," Louis retorted angrily. 
" Why can't we be allowed to settle our own affairs for our- 
selves? Already some of the friars have been summoned to 
appear before the Papal Court. But the University is prepar- 
ing a counter-move. Maitre William and his friends are not 
idle ! The friars will laugh on the wrong side of their mouths 
when they learn what is afoot ! They are going to Rome too, 
with The Eternal Gospel in their hands. That will open the 
Pope's eyes a bit, I fancy ! What is more, they have found 
out who wrote the Introduction to that blasphemous work. 
Would you believe it? It was no less than Brother John of 
Parma himself. The late head of the Cordeliers ! And, as 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 325 

every one knows, the Introduction is as bad as the Gospel is, 
besides putting its depraved doctrines into a form that any one 
can understand. But come on with us to Julien's and have a 
crack there! I'll tell you all about it." 

"No, Maitre Louis; I'd rather not go to Julien's now," said 
Arnoul. 

"What's come over the fellow?" asked Louis in astonish- 
ment. " Not go to Julien's ? Why, my boy, you have practi- 
cally lived there for months past ! What's wrong with you ? 
Come on, don't be a fool ! We are going, and your Jeannette 
will be there waiting for you ! Come on, I say ! " And he 
clapped him on the shoulder. 

Maitre Barthelemy had as yet said nothing beyond his 
greeting. Now, however, he joined his persuasions to those of 
Maitre Louis. He had been scrutinizing the lad closely and 
had come to the conclusion that something was amiss what, 
not even his wonderful facility in judging expression could tell 
him. 

"Yes"; he urged, "come with us to Julien's! I also have 
somewhat to speak of. The horoscope, it seems, was wrong in 
one detail. It is now put right; and I would signify the dif- 
ference to you." 

" No " ; persisted Arnoul. " I am on my way to my lodg- 
ing. I cannot come to Julien's now." 

"Cannot!" cried Louis. "What new fad is this? You are 
free to come and go as you please ! Why won't you act like 
a decent fellow and come with us when we ask you to ? " 

" If you really want to know," Arnoul replied, " I do not 
intend going to Messire Julien's tavern any more. I have been 
wasting my time there these months past, as you remind me, 
and I don't propose doing it any more." 

"How now! What's all this?" cried both men. "The fel- 
low is bewitched ! " 

" You're not caught by those accursed Jacobins, are you ? " 
Louis asked suspiciously. "You're not setting yourself up as 
too good for the likes of us? Tell me, Arnoul! What is the 
matter with you ! " 

The alchemist's solemnity was prodigious. He nodded his 
great, egg-shaped head slowly like a machine, and looked un- 
utterably sorrowful. " It is the moon in conjunction with the 
Tetractys ! " he muttered to himself. 



326 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [June, 

"No, Louis; I do not set myself up at all, though I con- 
fess I have made a great error in thinking so hardly of the 
friars. They have not got me in their power, never fear or 
rather But you would never understand ; and I could not 
explain it to you. My only brother, Sir Guy, the priest of 
Woodleigh, is dead. That is the news they brought me." 

Maitre Louis composed his features to an appropriate meas- 
ure of sympathy. He muttered a few words of condolence, and 
then begged the lad again to accompany them. " Surely it can 
make no difference coming with us ! " 

Here Maitre Barthelemy interposed. "So; the tidings were 
evil ? I grieve with you " how Arnoul hated the oily commis- 
eration ! "but it cannot affect your course! 'Tis written in 
the heavens ! This brother, now this priest of Woodleigh, Sir 
Guy did he leave you any inheritance ? Was he blessed with 
the goods of this world ? " 

On Arnoul's answering that Guy left nothing, the man 
seemed to lose interest. 

"No"; the lad continued, "Guy left nothing at all. He 
had nothing to leave. And now he is dead and I am alone. 
It changes everything for me. Perhaps you can see why I 
can't go with you to Julien's." 

"No, we can't"; was the blunt reply of Maitre Louis. 

The alchemist pursed his lips together. "Young man," he 
said, " it is the lot of all men to die. What matters soon or 
late? Your brother has died to-day. 'Twill be your turn to- 
morrow. Therefore, enjoy yourself while you can. No death 
can matter to you but your own. Why, even I unless I can 
wrest the hidden secret from the heart of nature even I shall 
die ! But while I live, I live ! Come with us now and enjoy 
life while it lasts ! " 

It had been the lad's own argument. How he shuddered as 
it was thus baldly recalled to him ! 

"No"; he reiterated, holding out his hand. "I go to my 
lodging. Good-bye, Louis ! Good-bye, Maitre Barthelemy ! 
Perhaps you will find that you were mistaken in me, and that 
I am not worth your friendship ; but I am decided. I came 
to Paris to work, and if I have not worked yet, I am going 
to begin now." 

The alchemist bowed gravely, holding out his left hand; but 
Maitre Louis turned angrily on his heel. As they separated 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 327 

Arnoul heard his friend's voice calling him a conceited ass, a 
hypocritical Jacobin, and, worse than all, a coward. This was 
the beginning of his trial. He had brought it upon himself. 
He deserved it. Therefore he threw his shoulders back and 
gritted his teeth, resolved to face it. 

But there was more in store for him. No sooner had he 
reached the street in which he had his lodging, than he per- 
ceived a familiar figure in front of him. There was no going 
back. Perhaps it was as well that he should get it over at 
once. It was Jeannette ; and she had seen him. 

" Oh, Arnoul ! Arnoul ! " she cried. " Where have you 
been all this long time ? What did those men want with you ? 
Here have I been waiting for you to come back ever since you 
left me on that dreadful night. Had you forgotten your Jean- 
nette ? " 

The tears almost trembled in the girl's eyes, though there 
was but one contented smile of welcome for the lad's return. 

" I feared all sorts of terrible things for you. The city is 
so disturbed ! It is full of cut-throats ! I have been so fright- 
ened, Arnoul ! And no one knew where you had gone! " 

How hard it all was, thought the lad. Here was the girl, 
who seemed to have a real affection for him, waiting for him 
at his very door, and welcoming him back ! 

" I received news that my brother was dead," he v said simply. 

" Oh ! that's all ! " The girl drew her brows together care- 
lessly. " I'm sorry ! But you're back again now, so nothing 
matters much. We'll go over to Julien's ! Come ! " And she 
made to take him by the arm. 

Her heartless words made what he had to do less diffi- 
cult. 

" No ; I am not going to Julien's now or any more, Jean- 
nette," he said, drawing away from her. 

"What do you mean?" asked the girl blankly. 

" What I say. I'm not going to waste any more time drink- 
ing and dicing and making love at the tavern. God knows, 
I've wasted too much there already!" 

" Not going to waste time drinking and dicing and making 
love ? " she repeated slowly, with a pause between each word. 
" Have you joined the monks that you speak like that ? What 
has come to you, Arnoul?" 

" Nothing, except that my brother is dead and I see that I 



328 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [June, 

have not been living as I should Now I intend to apply 
myself to study, and to make up for lost time." 

The color came in the girl's cheeks and her eyes flashed 
ominously. " So you will desert Messire Julien and us ? " 

"Yes." 

" And cut me adrift ? " 

" I must be at my work, Jeannette." 

" You mean to do this ? " 

"Yes." 

"You accursed clerk ! " she hissed at him, realizing that he 
intended to do as he said. "You [sneaking hypocrite! You 
are setting yourself up as a saint, when every one knows what 
you really are ! How they will howl at you at Julien's the 
Boiteux and the rest ! But you're not going to desert us, are 
you? It's not some other girl, who's prettier than me?" she 
asked jealously. " Oh ! Englishman Arnoul ! You cannot 
mean what you are saying ! I have not understood you ! I 
am dreaming ! I shall awake ! Oh, yes ; I shall awake, to find 
you at my side once more!" 

" Jeannette ! I must be honest ! Can't you see that it may 
never be again as it was? I I am a clerk. And you Just 
God ! don't you see how difficult it is for me to say it ? " 

" But you are mine, Arnoul ! Mine from the very womb of 
eternity ! Of all the students in the University of all the 
burghers of the town I think but of you ! Cast me not off ! 
You are pledged to me ! Oh, sacredest of ties ! " 

He cut her short brutally, finally. " Girl," he said, 
" you rave ! I mean what I have said every word of it. 
Never shall I go again to the wine-house ! Never shall I 
Pah ! I have done with it ! I break I have broken with the 
life at Julien's with all those associates ! I " 

The girl was looking at him from under lowering brows, 
bitting her lips, her nails. Then, seeing the sternness and the 
careworn lines upon Arnoul's face, and realizing he was in 
deadly earnest, she began to revile him again. "A saint! A 
saint ! A pretty saint you will make ! Why ! I remember when 
you struck Maitre Jacques a clerk, too ! in a fit of rage. 
That's nice work for a saint, isn't it? Oh! you pig! You 
sneak ! Yes ; and how often have you been blind drunk, I 
should like to know, pig? And your fine red cloak and your 
swaggering airs ! Oh, no ; you may discard me and you may 



i9o8.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 329 

shun us all, but I'll make you smart for it, my fine fellow ! 
Oh, you disgusting pig ! You cowardly clerk ! You filthy 
saint ! " 

She was furious ; and Arnoul, white to the lips, knew that 
he deserved some, at least, of her railing. 

" Is it the damnable friars that have got at you and made 
you a saint ? Oh ! the friars with their baskets and their down- 
cast eyes, their drawling psalms and their pious speeches ! A 
fine saint they'll make of you ! We are going to light a fire 
for the friars ! I shall see you at the stake yet, saint ! The 
professors won't stand their sham humility any longer, and 
they're going to bring the shavelings to their deserts ! Oh, 
yes ; accursed pig of a saint ! " And she spat at him. 

He bent his head and listened to it all patiently, until she 
attacked the friars. Then "Peace, girl!" he said. "The re- 
ligious are not for such as you or I to abuse." 

But she continued, her voice ever growing louder, until a 
little crowd had collected in the narrow street and heads were 
poked out of the windows far above them. It was his hour of 
humiliation and must be borne." 

"What is the matter?" asked one ill-favored hag of an- 
other. 

"How should I know, save that the clerk yonder is the 
Englishman who lodges with old Mother Evelinne la Boucele?" 
the crone replied. " Let us cross over and ask Evelinne her- 
self. There she is at the door yonder. She is sure to know. 
It looks like some stupid row between the Englishman and a 
girl." 

Old Mother Evelinne did not know what the cause of the 
trouble was, but she was well aware of the fact that Jeannette 
had been hanging about the place for days past. So she let 
her tongue wag, and the three old women wove the threads of 
scandal to their hearts' content, while the girl screamed and 
swore and railed and cursed at the unfortunate Arnoul, standing 
pale and with bowed head in the middle of the gathering 
crowd. 

"Come now, Mistress! What's all this pother?" asked a 
burly fellow as he shouldered his way through the throng of 
people. " What's the clerk been doing to you, that you scream 
like this? Shut your mouth, girl! Don't you see it's a clerk 
and an Englishman you're railing at ? An Englishman and 



330 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [June, 

so am I ! Hola, there ! Maitre Arnoul of the English Nation ! 
'Tis I, Gerard the German ! Out of the way, you shrieking 
fiend ! Out of the way there ! Be silent ! Get you gone ! " 

The huge German turned his red face upon the crowd, 
swinging a cudgel above his head. "What are you gaping at, 
you moon-struck idiots?" he shouted. "Have you never seen 
a clerk of Paris before, or a frenzied woman ? Be off with you ! 
Disperse ! Clear the roadway ! Instanter ! Instantius / Instan- 
tissime ! Or I make my oaken stick crack upon your hollow 
pates ! " 

The effect of his words was marvelous. The crowd, for the 
most part composed of women, melted into space. Even Jean- 
nette had paused in her cursing, and was making off down the 
narrow street before the fierce German's threatening cudgel. 

" Aha ! that's right ! " he said with a laugh. " There they 
go, the rabble, and that shrill-voiced vixen with them. Come, 
comrade ! What's to do ? Have you been lightening the wench's 
purse ? No ? A little love affair, perhaps, gone awry ? No ? 
Then what the devil is it? She has fine eyes, your fair reviler! 
God's Blood ! I shall follow her myself and see where she is 
going ! No thanks, comrade ! We of the English Nation should 
always stand together when the need may be ! I have rid you 
of a shrieking termagant with glorious eyes. Perchance I can 
keep her in better fettle ! I go to see ! Farewell ! Another 
time, perhaps, you will render me a service ! " And he fol- 
lowed the retreating figure of Jeannette before it was lost sight 
of in the turning of the Tuileries. 

Arnoul, conscious of eyes looking down upon him from the 
windows, made his way towards his door; and, passing the 
three old hags who had taken refuge within it, he mounted the 
steps to his own chamber. He was humiliated beyond measure. 
Moreover, he was ashamed thoroughly ashamed of himself 
and the low part he had, perforce, had to play in the sordid 
quarrel. He cast himself down disconsolate upon his pallet. 
So, it was come to this, he thought. To be upbraided in the 
public street and cursed and spit upon ! It was all his own 
fault. He realized it. But, oh ! the ignominy of those bend- 
ing eyes, that common crowd ! And he had brought it all 
upon himself! "Oh, Guy! Guy!" he thought within himself. 
" What can I do without you ? " 

Then he lifted the reliquary from his bosom and prayed. In 



i9o8.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 331 

all his drifting he had kept Sibilla's gift, that splinter from the 
Holy Rood, upon his person. His prayer and his thoughts of 
Sibilla calmed him. Was he to find peace, now that he had 
broken with Louis and Maitre Barthelemy, now that Gerard 
the German had undertaken to deal with Jeannette ? His mind 
ran on, humiliated and stunned, despairing and hopeful by 
turns. 

Below, the three crones discussed the tumult. " He has 
cast her off without doubt," said Ameline la Grasse. " And 
she will have her revenge upon him for it. I saw it in her 
flashing eye." 

"No, that's not it"; retorted Maheut la Bocue. "I know 
the girl well by sight. She is Jeannette aux Blanches Mains. 
Every one knows her. She is a public nuisance. I remem- 
ber" 

"You are both wrong, I am quite sure," spoke the lodging- 
keeper. " Maitre Arnoul is not the man to take up with a 
girl and then cast her off. I know him better. Who better, 
since he lives with me ? Why, I charge him well for his lodg- 
ing and he pays regularly, never grumbles, mark you, nor 
threatens to call upon the Rector to lower my terms." The 
three hags nodded in chorus. They well knew what that meant, 
for the Rector of the University had the power of adjudicating 
as to the charges of the lodging-house keepers and arbitrarily 
lowering them if necessary. 

" Still," insisted Ameline, " one knows these English. They 
walk about as if they owned the whole earth. The girl seems 
to be a good and pious child. She is a Parisian no doubt of 
it. Why should these foreigners come here to ride roughshod 
over our citizens, I should like to know ? The English are the 
worst of the lot." 

" Nay, Mistress Ameline, I assure you you are wrong. The 
girl is well known. One only had to listen to her just now to 
know how pious she is. Ho ! ho ! she has set her cap at this 
Englishman ; and, failing to secure him, she heaps him with 
reproaches and curses. Ho ! that's a new piety, that is ! Don't 
tell me!" 

You are a fool, Maheut, though you are my crony ! I know 
better," retorted Ameline. " I know well what these English- 
men are. Have I not had lodgings let in the University for 
thirty years gone ? Take my advice, Mistress Evelinne, and 



332 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [June, 

get rid of the Englishman before you have further trouble ! 
I know what I am talking about ! Get rid of him, I say ! 
Pitch him out neck and crop ! " 

" But I know quite well that he is quiet and peaceable here. 
There has never been a fracas before. He never brings crowds 
of rowdy scholars home with him as some of them do. I know 
it to my cost! The girl what's her name Blanches Mains? 
She never came before till now." 

" Never mind, Mistress Evelinne ! You know better than I 
do, of course ! I who have had more scholars than both of 
you twice over ! Still waters run deep, Mistress Evelinne ! 
Depend upon it that your Englishman is not what you think ! 
You will have trouble with him one of these days, never fear ! 
Has he any money? Does he pay you well?" 

" I just told you that he pays regularly or, that is, he 
did. He owes me now for a few weeks." 

" What I told you ! You will whistle for the good sols 
Parisis ! " 

"No, no; he will pay right enough!" 

" Go and ask him, then. If he doesn't pay you, turn him 
out ! I know these Englishmen ! I know all scholars ! " The 
old hag chuckled and showed her yellow teeth vindictively, as 
though she had a spite against all the clerks in the University. 
"Don't tell me! I know them and how they live, from hand 
to mouth ! " 

" But I tell you he has always paid " 

" Go and ask for your money ! Just look at his clothes 
and his face ? I'll warrant he has sold all he had to dine with 
Blanches Mains ! " 

" Perhaps," suggested Maheut, " Ameline is right. She has 
experience not that you and I haven't experience too. But 
it's as well to be safe. You had better go and ask him for the 
money." 

The insistence of the two women impressed Evelinne more 
than their arguments. She began to waver; and when they 
had left, with a parting shot at clerks in general and Eng- 
lishmen in particular, she climbed up the stair to Arnoul's 
door. As it was shut, the old hag listened prudently for a 
time, wondering what the Englishman was doing. Evidently 
he was not moving about or speaking to himself; but she man- 
aged to catch now and then a sound as of a low groan. That 



ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 333 

was bad ! Things went wrong when one groaned ! Mistress 
Ameline was possibly right. She would see ! 

She thumped on the crazy door with her fist. It was not 
barred, and it sprang open as she touched it. There was Ar- 
noul sitting on his pallet with his head on his hands. He 
looked up suddenly. Could it be that Jeannette had come 
back again ? No ; it was only old Evelinne the lodging- keeper. 

" I am come, Maitre Englishman," she began, " for the small 
matter of money that is owing me." He put his hand to his 
empty purse ; and then remembering that he had come away 
without thinking of asking Father Anselm for the money the 
Abbot had sent him, told the woman of his plight. " You 
shall have it, Mistress," he said, " but not now. I have no 
money here to give you, but you shall be paid in full ere long." 

" No, Englishman, I must have my money now. You must 
pay me at once ! Here you've been away for days I know 
not where and you already owe me a good round sum." 

" But, Mistress, I tell you I have no money now. I can- 
not give you what I have not got." 

" Then you shall quit my house, you beggarly Englishman ! 
Here you have come swaggering about in fine clothes and 
dancing in and out; and now you refuse to pay a poor, hard- 
working woman her honest money." 

"But I have always paid you, Mistress," said Arnoul sadly. 
All his troubles seemed to crowd in upon him at once. "And 
you shall be paid, believe me. Only I cannot pay you now." 

" Can't pay me ? But you shall pay me ! " she screamed ; 
and then, catching sight oi the gleam of gold and stretching 
out her bony fingers towards the reliquary. " What's that ? " 
she cried. " That will do ! Give me that ! I will take that 
for your lodging ! " 

But Arnoul snatched the relic from her grasp, springing up 
from the pallet bed. He would have parted with life itself be- 
fore he relinquished his relic. 

The woman came nearer, the greed of gold shining in her 
withered eyes, and strove to take it from him. He resisted her 
gently enough, for he was afraid to put forth his great strength 
and hurl the old crone from him. She had her hand now up- 
on his breast where he had placed the golden box. The touch 
was sacrilege ; and he thrust her violently from him. Then she 
tried new tactics. Going to the window, she began to scream 



334 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [June, 

for help in a shrill, quavering shriek. " Murder ! murder ! 
help ! " she cried. 

The lad realized that in a few moments the place would be 
full of heaven knew what sort of people ; and without a fur- 
ther thought he left the room and tore down the stairs into 
the street. Evelinne was still shrieking from above. Good ! 
She had not heard him fly. The crowd was gathering fast 
enough ; but, since the shrieks still cut through the air, no one 
would dream of connecting them with him. He made off hur- 
riedly down the street, his hand clasped over his reliquary, 
making himself as inconspicuous as possible. 

When he reached the great street of St. Jacques he paused, 
standing irresolute, wondering what he should do. Where should 
he go ? What was his next move to be ? He felt desolate and 
lonely as he looked up and down the long, straight road. 
Though it was full of the hurrying forms of the scholars, he 
realized that he was one single unit out of touch with all the 
rest. He was an outcast, a man without a home, friendless and 
solitary. A revulsion of feeling swept over him, a great wave 
of disgust and loathing of himself. 

"Why, Maitre Arnoul, what are you doing here? It is an 
age since I have seen you ! " A familiar voice broke upon his 
ears. 

" Doing ? Nothing " ; he answered wearily, turning to find 
Maitre Giles at his elbow. 

" Where are you going, then ? And, good gracious ! what 
is the matter with you ? " asked Giles, looking in wonder at 
his white face. 

" I don't know," answered Arnoul blankly. " I have just 
been turned out of my room." 

" Turned out ? What do you mean ? Why have you been 
turned out ? " 

The clerk told his story simply and baldly, making no ex- 
cuses. He felt that he had to unburden himself to some one, 
even if it were Maitre Giles. When he had made an end Giles 
turned to him impulsively. For all his faults he was a kind- 
hearted fellow, and he saw the straits that Arnoul was in. 
Perhaps he thought there was a chance here of snatching a 
brand from the burning. " Come back again with me to St. 
Victor's," he said kindly. " They will welcome you there, I am 






1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 335 

But Arnoul hung back. It would be far more difficult to 
face the scholars he had left at St. Victor's than to break with 
the companions of his extern days. It would be coming back 
like a beaten hound, tail between legs. 

" Come ! " urged Maitre Giles. " We shall all be glad to 
have you back, you know. Of course you'll feel a little strange 
at first, but that'll be over in a day or so. Have you left any- 
thing at your lodging ? " 

And learning that Arnoul had come away leaving clothes 
and parchments behind him, he added good-naturedly: "That 
will be all right. You need not bother your head about them. 
I'll go and get them for you and bring them on to St. Vic- 
tor's. As for the money why, I'll lend it to you. I'll see 
that the harridan's paid. When I've finished with her she'll 
leave you in peace, I fancy ! But you come along with me to 
the abbey now ! Come back to St. Victor's." 

The little man passed his arm through Arnoul's, and led 
him away unresisting. 

Such kindness! thought the lad brokenly. How he had mis- 
judged everything and every one ! Here was Maitre Giles, whom 
he had disliked and despised as a man of no spirit, leading him 
back to the canons at the Abbey ! 

On the way he listened to vivid accounts of the mental un- 
rest that was the one topic of conversation in the University. 
With tact Giles avoided speaking of himself; and by the time 
they had reached the gate of St. Victor's, Arnoul began to feel 
more at ease and less fearful of the interview with the good 
canons. 

They passed together, arm-in-arm, into the monastery. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 



Although St. Victor's, strictly speaking, belonged neither to 
the seculars nor to the friars, but to the canons, it was inevit- 
able that the strife that was so rapidly coming to a climax 
should make itself almost as profoundly felt within the walls 
that bounded the Abbey as in the greater University without. 
Arnoul, it is true, had set himself to work diligently at his in- 
terrupted studies, and was careful to fill up the time unoccupied 
by classes with the compilation of his notes or reading of texts 



336 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [June, 

in the scriptorium. In thus occupying himself he found the 
best anodyne for his grief; and by degrees, as time wore its 
sharp edge away, he found himself taking up again the life of 
routine that he had lived before leaving the shelter of the mon- 
astery for the freer life of an extern student. Still he could not 
close his ears to the common topic of conversation. Canons and 
scholars alike were full of it. They had nothing else to talk 
about, and from morning until night they discussed the extra- 
ordinary state of tension that prevailed in the University. Al- 
though it was a body corporate, it was also in a remarkable 
degree composed of heterogeneous and discordant elements 
elements that threatened at any moment to come into such 
acute conflict that no possible modus vivendi could be devised 
to keep them together even in appearance. The canons were 
as alive to the actual state of things as any one else ; and the 
scholars living at St. Victor's were naturally much exercised as 
to the issue of a struggle that had been maturing for years and 
was now coming to a head under their very eyes. 

Of the twelve public chairs, three only were in the posses- 
sion of the secular party. From this point of view the situa- 
tion was an intolerable one. The University had grown up 
gradually from the original nucleus of the Carlovingian schools, 
shaping itself naturally around the cathedral. It was, therefore, 
quite right and proper that the Mother Church of Paris should 
be represented upon the official teaching staff. Three chairs 
were obviously due to the canons of Notre Dame. That was 
clearly a fair arrangement, since the schools had begun there. 
But these interloping friars had captured too much. It was a 
crying abuse that they should have so many professors ; and 
any means, fair or foul, were to be adopted in order to cure 
the evil and bring the preponderance of power once more into 
the hands of the secular clerks. 

On the other hand, there was the contention of the friars. 
The University was not a close corporation in the sense the 
seculars contended, but one in which merit came to the fore. 
Moreover, it was a papal University ; and the friars were it 
was well known held in the greatest esteem by Pope Alexander 
as well as by King Louis. Why should a man be forbidden to 
hold a chair because he professed poverty or was a member of 
a religious order ? Some of the most brilliant teachers that 
Paris had yet seen had been friars. Moreover, they were in 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 337 

possession of the chairs; and possession is nine points of the 
law. 

But there was a further reason accounting for the strife 
that no one seemed to notice. To the clash of principles and 
the jealousies of the individual doctors might be added the 
vague, premonitory stirrings of a society that was about to 
undergo a profound change. This war of factions in the Uni- 
versity of Paris in the thirteenth century was an expression, an 
indication, of a changing order of things. It was the struggle 
of .old institutions against new ones, and its furthest reaching 
effects were to be the foundations of a new social order in 
Europe. Where the intellect of the University led the whole 
civilized world would follow. 

Living in the thick of it all, and hearing opinions expressed 
on every hand, it was practically impossible for any one to 
view the situation calmly and impartially. Opinion ran too 
strong, ideas surged too high, to make for impartial judgment ; 
and Arnoul, who had cast in his lot with the seculars before, 
now sided quite as strongly against them. Things moved quick- 
ly in those days so quickly that before one had time to throw 
one's thoughts and impressions into any clear or definite form, 
the premises had shifted and the conclusion drawn from them 
was found to be worthless. 

Brother Thomas of St. Jacques, whom he now knew, had 
taken the place in his esteem that Maitre Louis had formerly 
secured for William of St. Amour ; and the scholars whose 
company he most frequented were as stout defenders of the 
friars as Louis and his little coterie were of the seculars. 

But his mind, notwithstanding that the air was full of it, 
was not altogether taken up with the dispute. He had obtained 
leave for Roger to come and live at St. Victor's, in return for 
work that he would do for the canons ; and never a day passed 
but the two were found talking together, their minds far away 
from Paris and its problems. On feast days they walked to- 
gether through the town, or out, through the gates, into the 
green fields, exploring. There was much of interest to be seen 
in this bustling hive of human life besides the townspeople and 
the scholars. There were other things than schools and pageants, 
brawls and religious ceremonies. There were the buildings that 
were springing up everywhere in wonderful profusion. There 

VOL. LXXXVII. 22 



3$8 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [June, 

was the great cathedral ; and, though building operations were 
yet actually in progress there, its nave was undoubtedly one of 
the finest structures in Europe. The choir was hidden in scaf- 
folding, for the masons were at work upon it, and the south 
porch had not yet been begun. But the fa9ade and towers stood 
up grandly, frowning down over all Paris, solemn and watchful. 
The placid stone saints gazed out from their niches in the 
archimg doorways; and the stone kings looked down gravely 
from their twenty- eight pedestals upon the city over which they 
had ruled. It was a front solemn and grandiose, flanked by its 
two great towers, one on either side; a nation, a history, a 
theology, carved in stone ; the life of a people caught up and 
crystallized for all time. No other age could have produced 
it, for it was above all things the expression of the age, satu- 
rated with mystical piety, heavy with national aspirations, som- 
berly religious, lightly speculative, intensely earnest, held and 
bound all together in the relentless logic of proportion and 
proper subordination, part to part. It was the ideal towards 
which the social restlessness strove ; an ideal dreamt of and 
pondered upon and then carved out of the real heart-throbbings 
of souls and set up for all ages to gaze upon as the embodi- 
ment of the religion and patriotism of a bygone day. And 
inside the building, when the two Englishmen went up the 
steps and passed under the central portal, in the effulgence 
of its vast spaces, they saw the monuments and statues that a 
pious, if misguided, art had raised. At the eastern end the 
altar, one mass of golden reliquaries and shrines, one glow of 
color and jewelled splendor, caught and held the eye. The 
tall waxen torches rose from a wealth of gleaming metal and 
flashing stones. Roger wondered awe-struck and admired open- 
mouthed. There were people in the church, too people mov- 
ing about and curiously examining the statues in the nave. 
Some workmen were setting a recumbent waxen effigy in its 
place. And there were people at their devotions, kneeling forms 
busy before one of the many shrines or the representation of 
a saint, people standing before the high altar, lost in medita- 
tion, people leaning against pillars and gazing about them. All 
the while a monotonous chant fell upon the ear. The canons 
were singing their office in the distance. 

There were other buildings, too, to see : abbeys and prior- 
ies, churches and palaces, besides the beauty of the country- 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 339 

side, when one left the walls of University or town behind and 
rambled far out into the fields and woods along the river. 

Thus Arnoul found time to guide Roger through town and 
city, visiting and explaining to the open-mouthed man of Dev- 
on all that there was to see in Paris. And Roger took it all 
in, in a stolid kind of way, sharpening his wits slowly and ad- 
ding by degrees to his native shrewdness the astute outlook 
that comes from living among men in large cities. But the 
two were never happier than when talking of home, speaking 
of the old and golden days, and making the loved ones live 
once more in their conversation. 

By this time Arnoul had received from Father Anselm the 
money that was to carry him on until Abbot Benet's next visit 
in the spring. It was not much ; but it had sufficed to pay all 
his debts, and leave him with a little in hand; enough, if he 
was careful, and after all there was no need for him to be ex- 
travagant, to last him well into the next year. 

But while he was thus doing his utmost to retrieve what he 
had lost in the matter of his studies and living over with Roger 
the happy days of his boyhood, events were crowding thick and 
fast upon each other's heels in the University. Brother Thomas, 
though Arnoul had visited him more than once since he had 
returned to St. Victor's, never alluded in any way to the state 
of things in the schools. He gave himself up entirely to the 
matter in hand, helping and advising the lad to the utmost of 
his power; and he had the satisfaction of seeing that his kind- 
ness and good advice were bearing fruit. 

Arnoul had settled down quietly to as studious and as 
peaceful a life as the distracted condition of things would per- 
mit. Only Brother Thomas had his fears though he never 
made them known to the boy that such an even tenor would 
not last. His resolutions were bound to be put to the test 
sooner or later. He would come across his old associates. He 
would find a loathing of a regular and ordered life grow up 
within him, an overwhelming desire to go back to his former 
way. So he encouraged Arnoul to come to him and gave him 
what help he could, preparing him and strengthening him for a 
future storm of temptation and difficulty that he foresaw would 
rage in the lad's soul. 

The spring had lengthened out into summer when the first 
crisis made itself felt. They were standing, a party of the 



340 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [June, 

scholars of St. Victor's, in the abbey gardens, discussing the 
latest turn of events, 

" So, they're going to move at last," said Maitre Giles, with 
the air of a man who has much knowledge in reserve and is 
quite ready to impart it to all and sundry. " So, they're going 
to move at last." 

"No; what's the latest?" 

"You know King Louis sent the Perils to Rome?" 

" Pah ! That's stale news ! Why, one knew that weeks ago ! " 

"And the Pope will examine it." 

" So it would be supposed," said the scholar superciliously. 
"Why do you think that the king sent it otherwise? Tell us 
something fresh ! " 

" Well, no one knows what the decision will be. The regu- 
lars are confident of a condemnation and the seculars just as 
sure of" 

" Oh, come ! We all know that. If you have no better 
things to tell us, we might as well " 

" Don't you be too sure ! You Sententiarii are always in 
such a hurry ! That is a vice of young men ! If you'll only 
listen, I'll tell you all about it," drawled the first speaker. 

"What is it then?" 

"Giles has found out something. He's a regular ferret!" 

" Boh ! I don't believe he knows any more than we do ! " 

" Give the man a chance to speak ! " 

"As I was saying," Maitre Giles resumed, leisurely address- 
ing the little crowd of scholars. " As I was about to explain, 
when you interrupted me, they are going to move at last." 

" And what have they been doing, I should like to know ? " 

" You said that before ! " 

" Who's going to move ? " 

" Will you keep silence ? I say they are going to move. 
Who ? Why, the friars of course, you booby ! Who else ? 
Haven't they been patient enough and for long enough, I should 
like to know ? Haven't they endured all that flesh and blood 
can stand for months past ? Well, they are going to fight now 
fight with a vengeance; and, if I mistake not, they are go- 
ing to win too." 

" Fight ? " 

"How can they win against the University?" 

"They won't win! Why, they've got the best logicians of 



i9o8.J ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 341 

the world against them. What can they hope to do against 
St. Amour?" 

" So ? They've got the logicians, have they ? What of 
Maitre Albert ? What do you say to Brother Thomas ? " 

"But the case is tried at Rome, isn't it? What's the good 
of the ponderous Albert or even young Aquinas, if they're not 
there ? " 

" You go too fast, my friend ! The book is to be examined 
at Anagni, not at Rome, in the first place. Our Holy Lord 
the Pope is at Anagni. And Master Albert is at Anagni too. 
Perhaps you didn't know that, eh ? So is Brother Bonaventure, 
the new Franciscan general. Is that news to you ? " 

" That's better ! " 

"Why didn't you say so at once?" 

" How can a man say everything in one breath ? " asked 
Maitre Giles. "Give me time and I shall tell you all." 

"Well tell us then. What's going to happen? What's the 
new move? Anything will be better than this perpetual bick- 
ering." 

Arnoul had pricked up his ears when he heard the name of 
Brother Thomas mentioned. He edged through the little knot 
of Sententiarii and Biblici closer to Maitre Giles. 

" You must understand," continued that worthy, " that when 
the libel was taken by the two doctors of the king to our most 
Holy Father the Pope Alexander, he caused it to be examined 
by his cardinals." 

" And they have condemned it ? " asked one of the Sen- 
tentiarii eagerly. 

" How could they have condemned it before they had ex- 
amined it ? " retorted Maitre Giles magisterially. " You young 
men are altogether too quick. You jump at conclusions. Now, 
you ought to be aware that the reading of such a book requires 
time. The cardinals I have heard that there is a commission 
of four appointed are even now reading it. But that is not 
my news. There's much more than that. You remember the 
council of bishops assembled here this spring?" 

" Of course we do ! " 

"How forget it?" The two provinces of Rheims and Sens 
fourteen bishops at least." 

"Weren't they a fine show, with all their attendants and 
trappings ? " 



342 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [June, 

" Never mind the show," continued Maitre Giles imperturb- 
ably. "You know what they did?" 

" Held a provincial council, of course. What else would 
they do?" 

"A great deal else. They tried to settle this dispute." 

"We know that!" 

" That's not new ! " 

" Get to the point, Maitre Giles ! " 

" I'm getting to the point, if you will only wait a bit ! You 
know that William stayed for the council, though he had just 
been named canon and ought by rights to have gone to take 
his stall at Beauvais ? You remember that he was ready to ac- 
cept its ruling and justify what he had preached and taught 
concerning the friars ? Well, it all came to nothing, because 
Brother Humbert, the General of the Preachers, refused to abide 
by its decisions and referred himself and his cause to the Pope. 
And then King Louis sent St. Amour's book to Rome by the 
hands of Maitre Pierre and Maitre Jean ? " 

"Yes, we know all that." 

" Well, here's something you don't know ; Brother Hum- 
bert made off as fast as he could for Anagni, where Pope Al- 
exander now is, to look after the matter himself. He has kept 
Master Albert there for a year now, nearly, because he foresaw 
the struggle that was coming. Brother Bonaventure is there, 
as General of the Cordeliers; and now it's the very latest 
news they have sent for Brother Thomas too. Don't you see ? 
There's bound to be a battle a big battle; and the strongest 
and ablest men of the two orders are being mustered on the bat- 
tle-field. What foresight ! What diplomacy ! If they had tried 
to fight it out here the contest would have lasted through an- 
other thirty years of squabbling and bickering. We're too hot 
here right in the middle of it all ! Now, don't you understand ? 
They've shifted it all to the Roman Court. They've taken it to 
the Pope, who is directly over the University, and they're go- 
ing to have a settlement once for all. You'll see, they'll come 
back with their chairs confirmed to them, stronger than ever. 
And the strongest weapon they have to fight with is that book 
of St. Amour's. Mark my words ! You'll see that I am right ! 
And you won't have to wait very long to see, either ! " 

Arnoul edged up quietly to the speaker. 

" Is Brother Thomas going to leave Paris ? " he asked, al- 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 343 

most in a whisper. It meant so much to him to know that 
the strong presence of the gentle friar was near at hand. 

"Oh! 'tis you, Arnoul. Yes; he is certainly going to set 
out for Anagni." 

" Does he go at once ? " the lad asked again, in a still lower 
tone of voice. 

" Why, what's the matter, Arnoul ? Of course he leaves at 
once within two days, I heard." 

" And I never knew," murmured the Englishman to him- 
self; but not so low that the sharp ears of Maitre Giles did not 
catch what he said. 

" And why should you be acquainted with the fact, I should 
like to know, Arnoul ? The news is not known in the Univer- 
sity yet. I had it from but what matters where I had it ? It 
is true enough, at all events. Don't look so down-hearted, 
lad ! What difference can it make to you ? Brother Thomas is 
a great man, but he is not the only one in the University 
nor the only friar, for the matter of that ! " 

" Oh ! I can't explain it all, Giles ! Brother Thomas has 
been so good to me. He told me to come and see him when- 
ever I wanted to." 

Maitre Giles pricked up his ears. Here was treasure trove. 
A familiar with one of the leading characters in the great 
drama that was about to be played at the Papal Court ! Arnoul 
was at once invested with a new importance in his eyes. He 
had not known of his intimacy with Brother Thomas of Aquin, 
for Arnoul, in this, had been reticent. His friendship with the 
professor of St. Jacques was almost too sacred to be spoken of. 

" Come," said Maitre Giles to the lad. " I have no more 
news. Let us walk up and down the cloister ! So you know 
Brother Thomas well, Arnoul ? " 

" Well ? No, Giles ; but he has been very good and kind 
to me in my trouble." 

" Why, how did he know anything about it ? " 

" I went to him," answered the lad simply, " when I heard 
of Guy's death. You yourself had told me so much about him 
in the old days that, when I was in trouble, I thought of him 
almost at once." 

" And did he speak to you of the state of the University ? " 

"No, Giles; he said nothing of himself or of the troubles 
in Paris. Only he listened to me and gave me help. It seemed 



344 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [June, 

as though he had only me to think of. He gave himself up so 
entirely to my poor affairs." 

"So you know nothing from him about this crisis?" 

"Nothing, Giles." 

" Still, you have formed an opinion of the man ? What do 
you think of him ? " 

" And what is my opinion worth, Giles ? You know him, 
too, or you could not have made such an impression upon me 
that, when I was in sore trouble, I went at once to him." 

" No ; I have never even spoken to Brother Thomas," said 
Maitre Giles grudgingly. " I have heard of him, of course," he 
added quickly; " and I have formed my opinion from what I have 
heard. But spoken to him, no that is, only once. I remember 
taking an objection to him after one of his classes to be solved." 

"And he explained it for you?" 

"Yes." 

" And spoke to you as if there was nothing in the whole 
world but you and your objection ? " 

" Yes." 

"That was like him. I went to him when Father Anselm 
brought me the news of Guy's death. I told him all all there 
was to tell of myself. And he saved me from myself. Giles, 
but for Brother Thomas, I don't know where I should be now." 

" No ; you don't say so," said Maitre Giles. " What a sly 
fellow you are, after all, to be in hand and glove, as it were, 
with so great a personage as Brother Thomas, and never say a 
word of it to any one, not even to me ! " 

"What was the use, Giles, of speaking of it? But your 
news upsets me dreadfully. It really does. I must go at once 
to St. Jacques and see him." 

" But he'll never see you now ! Just think how busy he 
must be if he is to set out to-morrow!" 

" Still, I shall go. And I think he won't leave Paris with- 
out seeing me. I hope not at any rate. Good-bye, Giles, I 
shall go at once." 

The great door of the friary had not ceased resounding to 
his knock when the old porter opened the grille. 

" So it's you here again," he muttered, unfastening the bolts. 
" One might have known you would be turning up like this as 
soon as the good news got abroad. You come to see Brother 
Thomas ? Well, he can't see you. He is busy." 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 345 

" Oh, Brother ! Do ask him if he can spare me just a 
moment." 

"It's no use," grumbled the porter, stumping off down the 
corridor. " Why, every one in Paris wants to see Brother 
Thomas to-day. How can he find time to see everybody, I 
should like to know ? No ; the Englishman will have to wait 
till he is back again." 

But he returned, none the less, in a few moments, to tell 
Arnoul that the brother would receive him, and at once. 

Thomas of Aquin was alone in his cell. There was no trace 
of disorder in the room, no sign of haste or flurry in its occu- 
pant. On the contrary, Brother Thomas was as calm and as 
tranquil as ever, his cell exactly the same as when Arnoul had 
last entered it. As a matter of fact, the great teacher had 
given his lessons as usual, as though nothing had happened, 
had interviewed his visitors, and was in the act of preparing 
his matter for the morrow's lecture, when Arnoul arrived. 

" Ah, my child ; so you have learnt that I am ordered to 
Italy?" 

"Yes, Brother; 'tis that that brings me here at this hour. 
I heard that you were to leave to-morrow, and came at once. 
What am I to do when you are gone, Brother, without your 
support and help ? " 

" Do ? Why, my child, what you have been doing these 
weeks past." And Brother Thomas smiled encouragingly. 

"Still, Brother, it will be hard. It has been hard; but it 
will be all the harder when you are gone. I have so learnt 
to count upon you." 

" There is some one else on whom you must count, now 
more than ever, my child, if you would be steadfast. What 
help I have been able to bring to you has been but little. 
We must all lean upon Him. When you are happy, my son, 
pray, and thank God for your happiness. When you are in 
trouble, pray again. And, above all, when the trial is sharp- 
est, pray pray fervently. It is by prayer alone that we con- 
quer." 

"But when you are gone, Brother " 

"God remains, my son. Put your trust in Him. He will 
not fail you." 

" And yourself, Brother ? " 

" I am ordered to appear before our Holy Lord the Pope. 



346 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [June. 

' Lo, Thy enemies, O Lord, and they that hate Thee, have 
lifted up their head. They have taken evil counsel against Thy 
people and consulted together against Thy saints.' " 

"To defend the religious, Brother?" 

" Yes, my son ; we are compassed about and pressed upon 
every side. Here, in the University, we are made the butt of 
coarse wit and bitter words. We are persecuted and set upon 
by the ungodly." 

"Ah, Brother! who does not know it? That accursed 
Canon William" 

" Peace, my son ! Do not curse that misguided man. Pray 
for him rather, that he may cease to persecute the children of 
God." 

"But he is accursed for his treatment of the religious, 
Brother ! " 

" Who are we to judge, my son ? " We are not all perfect. 
No, we are far from perfect. ' Love your enemies/ we are 
bidden." He rose to his full height, the very embodiment of 
tranquility of soul and peace of mind. What were these squab- 
bles, these underhand sowings of discord, these overt attacks 
upon all that he held most dear, to the mind of Thomas of 
Aquin ? He rose above them, superior to them, untroubled by 
them. It was the first, and indeed the only occasion upon 
which he ever spoke of them to Arnoul. 

" My son," he said tenderly, thinking once more of the lad 
and his troubles, " I leave to-morrow. Put all your trust in 
God, and when I return I shall find that all is well with you. 
But be on your guard ; and pray for me and the mission I 
have to do. May the Lord have you in His keeping, Arnoul ! 
In all your works and ways may He watch over you and 
protect you ! " 

He signed the lad's forehead with the cross, and Arnoul 
left him sadly, wondering why so great a strength and conso- 
lation should have been vouchsafed to him for a time only to 
be withdrawn while he still had so much need of it. 

(TO BE CONTINUED.) 




"WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?" 

BY WILLIAM J. KERBY, PH.D. 
I. 

CERTAIN lawyer asked Christ what must be done 
to possess eternal life. Our Lord asked his ques- 
tioner to quote the written law : " Thou shalt love 
the Lord thy God with thy whole heart . . 
and thy neighbor as thyself." Christ said : " This 
do and thou shalt live." But the lawyer asked: "Who is my 
neighbor?" In reply to which question Christ told the parable 
of the Good Samaritan. The wounded man needed mercy; the 
Samaritan saw him and showed mercy. This was neighborly 
relation in Christ's sense. " Go thou and do likewise." As 
these words fell from the lips of Christ, an abiding law was 
promulgated which should have force wherever the name of 
the Savior is honored throughout the earth. 

The practical Christian must know who is his neighbor; and 
the definition must be organized into his intellectual equipment, 
just as the corresponding impulse to mercy or charity must be 
developed in his character as part of the working force of 
normal Christian life. A Christian is not free to have or not 
to have neighbors. The definition of neighbor is strictly and 
literally a mortgage on the Christian's property, as it is a claim 
on his time and energy. 

That one must understand the place of neighbor in the 
whole process of spiritual life is beyond question. But much 
real confusion may be felt in attempting to find out who is 
one's neighbor and what is the neighborly service called for. 
Many circumstances of varying value are to be weighed over 
against one another; questions of prudence, comparison, and 
discrimination are constantly arising ; methods are challenged ; 
and the merit or demerit of recipients of charity is constantly 
a source of worry to the good neighbor. Changing social con- 
ditions modify standards, and thus the thoughtful Christian is 
puzzled. He turns in serious doubt and asks, as did the lawyer: 
Who is my neighbor?" 
When the lawyer asked, he said: "Who is my neighbor?" 



348 " WHO is MY NEIGHBOR f " [June, 

When Christ answered, He pointed out the man toward whom 
the Samaritan should be neighbor, emphasizing the outgoing and 
not the incoming relation. " Which of these three in thy opinion 
was neighbor to him that fell among robbers ? " The lawyer 
answered : " He that showed mercy to him." Christ then said : 
" Go thou and do in like manner." The lawyer was sent to be 
a neighbor, to show mercy. 

In order to fix our definition of neighbor, we must find 
those who need mercy ; we must understand the kind of mercy 
needed ; and intelligence must guide us in so serving that our 
mercy is in fact mercy. Where there are thousands and even 
tens of thousands who need mercy, and where there are hun- 
dreds and thousands to show mercy, system is necessary if re- 
sults are to be expected. We are confronted by a puzzling 
paradox in modern society : the nearer we come to each other 
locally in modern cities the more we seem to be estranged 
from one another in mind, emotion, and interest. Our neigh- 
bors are not our neighbors. An occupant of a flat in an apart- 
ment house which contained forty-two families once remarked: 
"I have lived here four years, and if I were leaving to-day, 
there is no one to whom I could say good-bye, except the ele- 
vator boy, so complete is the isolation in which we live." If, 
then, one's neighbor is not he who lives "next door," as the 
phrase is, where is he to be found ? What is he to do who, 
seeking to obey his Christ, desires to be a neighbor to those 
who need mercy ? The answer leads us to a review of social 
conditions and to the analysis of many features of social rela- 
tions, all of which should be understood, if we would meet the 
Christian obligation of mercy, intelligently from our standpoint 
and wisely from the standpoint of those whom we serve. 

Undoubtedly the reader thinks of the poor alone as those who 
need mercy. The sinful rich, the erring mighty, the ignorant 
and blundering high in station, may and do need service, but 
we are debarred from offering it. Poverty is looked upon as 
symbolizing all weakness. Associated with it are disease, poor 
judgment, credulity, disintegration of the home, wrongdoing. 
We chide the poor drunkard, but never feel called upon to 
advise the rich drunkard, although his case is far the worse. 
The poor wife cannot cook, and we complain ; the rich wife 
cannot cook, and we accept the fact as proper. The rich man 
spends evenings at the club, and the poor man at the saloon ; 






1908.] " WHO Is MY NEIGHBOR? " 349 

but it is only to the latter that we direct attention. By com- 
mon practice, then, we turn to the poor, the abject, the weak, 
as those who need mercy. This narrows the field, but still 
leaves it broad enough to test the Christian spirit of society. It 
is unfortunate that accidental differences of wealth, learning, 
culture, and power have so warped men's conceptions of social 
relations that this whole duty of charity is understood as re- 
lated to the poor alone, while in the nature of the case it ought 
to be a basic human relation deeper than any artificial dis- 
tinction among men. 

A general tendency is found in modern cities toward choice 
of the same neighborhood for residence by those in like cir- 
cumstances. The aim seems to be to live in the neighborhood 
rather than to have the neighbors. Neighborhood is nowadays 
accepted as a symbol of one's wealth, notable change in in- 
come usually causing a similar change in residence. Except- 
ing the lowest helpless class, which is the victim of necessity, 
and the highest satiated class, which is the victim of oppor- 
tunity, occupants of any givenneig hborhood look down with 
indifference and upward with hope. $500 incomes, those of 
$1,000, $2,000, $3,000, and $5,000 tend to locate in certain 
neighborhoods which are easily recognized. Obvious modifica- 
tions are, of course, to be recognized; but the tendency is 
undoubted. 

As a result of this trend, one's neighbor is largely like 
oneself. Those of approximately equal strength and weakness 
live near each other. In the very poor sections of a city, all 
have need of mercy and few in the neighborhood can show it; 
in the better sections, all might show abundant mercy, while 
few need it in material ways. The ordinary course of daily life 
does not lead the strong into the sections where the weak live ; 
hence one may, if one is not interested, pass years without 
seeming to meet an acute case of misery which demands relief. 
The Good Samaritan who aided the wounded man, " came near 
him" and "seeing him" was "moved to compassion," and 
"going up, took care of him." The social separation of classes, 
the resulting narrowness of sympathy and view of spiritual 
duty, are such that one can easily miss the whole thought and 
service of one's neighbor and not be reminded of it. When we 
live in classes, our social experience is mainly with those of our 
o,vn kind. Now only heterogeneous social experience is repre- 
sentative. Touch with one class is narrowing; touch with all 



350 " WHO Is MY NEIGHBOR?" [June, 

classes enables us to understand the spirit and the precepts of 
Christ. Those who have forgotten the corporal and spiritual 
works of mercy, might for experiment's sake if for none other, 
memorize them again and attempt to execute them in their 
neighborhood, if picturesque illustration of the observation 
made is needed. If the Samaritan had heard that some one 
had, somewhere on the road, been wounded, he might not have 
shown mercy. If he had not come near, he would not have 
been moved to compassion. If statistics had been brought, 
showing the numbers killed each year by robbers, possibly the 
cold equilibrium of his dull emotions would not have been dis- 
turbed by a single heart-throb of sympathy. 

It may be remarked that, although we live in classes, sepa- 
rated in association, sympathy, and interest, nevertheless informa- 
tion is spread so quickly that we may know, if we wish, quite 
as directly as though we lived next door, all that we need to 
know about misery and need. The fact is true, but its influ- 
ence is seriously modified. First, among the well-to-do the 
extent of actual ignorance of the life conditions of the very 
poor is almost incredible. It is astounding that in this day of 
congested cities, universal reading, penny papers and magazines, 
that the upper classes can be as ignorant as they are of the 
facts and processes of misery, of " adversity so lengthened out 
as to constitute the rule of life." Second, the amount of misery 
or the number ot cases actually needing attention or relief that 
one may find every day, if one open one's heart to the work, 
is such, that one might die of nervous prostration in a year if 
one spent emotion and gave time to every case. One is easily 
an extremist in matters of charity, giving either too much or 
too little of heart and time to the work. There is the milk- 
man, for instance, who delivers milk to us before daylight in 
winter ; or the salesgirl who waits on us in the great store, 
looking thin, dragged, weak; or the ten-year-old messenger 
boy who delivers a message at midnight; or the motorman on 
our street car. The care of each of these, and many more, 
might interest benevolent persons indefinitely and completely 
absorb them. Hence one drifts into the feeling that one may 
safely take only a speculative interest in the hundred instances 
of need of neighborly service brought to one in daily life; that 
one can save one's nerves only by not individualizing the needy 
and weak. Third, as a result of this attitude and of the enor- 
mous numbers of weak, helpless, blundering, unfortunate men, 



1908.] " WHO is MY NEIGHBOR?" 351 

women, and children in our cities, we drift into the habit of 
thinking of them as impersonal masses rather than as individuals 
with souls and feelings and hopes ; with sorrows and pains and 
griefs. Just as the leaf is lost to sight in the foliage of the 
forest, the individual is lost to sight in the mass of poverty 
and degradation of which he is part. One reads of slums, of 
the city poor, of tuberculosis among the poor, of infant mortal- 
ity in the tenements in summer; but the mind rests in the 
impression of masses, and no emotion big with determined sym- 
pathy and throbbing with impatient eagerness to bring relief is 
awakened. Yet in the presence of an individual case of misery, 
the average man will act quickly and generously such is the 
difference between the mass and the person. Dickens gives us, 
in Hard Times, this impressive description of the thought as it 
was worked out in the mind of his heroine : 

For the first time in her life, Louisa had come into one of 
the dwellings of the Coketown hands ; for the first time in her 
life, she was face to face with anything like individuality in 
connection with them. She knew of their existence by hun- 
dreds and by thousands. She knew what results in work a 
given number of them would produce in a given space of 
time. She knew them in crowds passing to and fro from their 
nests like ants or beetles. But she knew from her reading in- 
finitely more of the ways of toiling insects than ol these toiling 
men and women. 

Something to be worked so much and paid so much, and 
there ended ; something to be infallibly settled by laws of 
supply and demand ; something that blundered against those 
laws and floundered into difficulty ; something that was a 
little pinched when wheat was dear and overate itself when 
wheat was cheap ; something that increased at such a rate 
of percentage, and yielded such another percentage of time, 
and such another percentage of pauperism ; something whole- 
sale, of which vast fortunes were made ; something that oc- 
casionally rose like a sea and did some harm and waste 
(chiefly to itself) and fell again ; this she knew the Coketown 
hands to be. But she had scarcely thought more of sepa- 
rating them into units than of separating the sea itself into 
its component drops. 

But further. Not only do great impersonal masses of varied 
weakness and helpless misery leave us unmoved to aid, but they 
mislead us into an attitude of indiscriminate blame of them. 
When a strong man lives among strong men, it is easy for him 



352 " WHO is MY NEIGHBOR?" [June, 

to misunderstand the weak man who lives among weak men. 
The assumption is widely accepted that, as one captain of in- 
dustry expressed it, " Any man of fair intelligence, honesty, and 
integrity " can climb up. Or to put it as Mr. Edward Atkin- 
son once did : " It men are poor to-day in this land, it is either 
because they are incapable of the work which is waiting to be 
done, or are unwilling to accept the conditions of the work." 
One result of such impression, which might in fact be accepted 
as in a sense true, is a tendency toward indiscriminate blame 
of the poor, with no sense of responsibility for their condition. 
And this tone of condemnation stifles many an impulse to ser- 
vice. Dickens again expresses well the thought, referring to 
the walk of Gradgrind and Bounderby through Coketown. Af- 
ter the teetotal society 

showed how the workers would get drunk, the chemist and 
druggist showed that those who did not drink took opium, 
and the jail chaplain showed that they resorted to low haunts, 
then the two named could show that these same people were 
a bad lot altogether, gentlemen ; that, do what you would 
for them, they were never thankful, gentlemen ; that they 
were restless, gentlemen ; that they never knew what they 
wanted ; that they lived upon the best, and bought fresh but- 
ter, and insisted on Mocha coffee, and rejected all but prime 
parts of meat, and yet were eternally dissatisfied and unman- 
ageable. 

To set in its proper light this tone of condemnation, it seems 
apropos to quote Hawthorne's sympathetic lines written after 
inspecting the condition of the poor in London : 

I [never could find it in my heart, however, utterly to con- 
demn these sad revellers, and should certainly wait till I had 
some better consolation to offer before depriving them of their 
dram of gin, though death itself were in the glass ; for me- 
thought their poor souls needed such fiery stimulant to lift 
them a little way out ot the smothering squalor of both their 
outward and interior life, giving them glimpses and sugges- 
tions, even if bewildering ones, of a spiritual existence that 
limited their present misery. The temperance reformers un- 
questionably derive their commission from the Divine Benefi- 
cence, but have never been taken fully into its counsels. 

It will be seen then that the relation of the well-to-do to- 
ward the poor is far from simple. The weak, those needing 
mercy, are massed in sections of our cities through which 






1908.] " WHO Is MY NEIGHBOR?" 353 

usually the strong have no occasion to go. They impress the 
strong, who feel no responsibility toward them, as impersonal 
masses. When thought is given to them, many combine all of 
the weak into a blameworthy mass. When, however, we begin 
to individualize the weak, and to take an interest in those whom 
the course of day brings to our notice in some way, such as 
waiters, drivers, messenger boys, salesgirls, workingmen, the im- 
pulse that leads one to take an interest in any one, impels to- 
ward interest in all, with the result that many are inclined, in 
self-defense, to shut out all and confine their charity to money. 

But, moreover, there is among the weak who need mercy, 
particularly among the most deserving, a marked shrinking 
which leads them to be secretive to an almost exasperating 
degree. Not a little ingenuity must frequently be exercised 
in finding out the condition of such a family without giving 
offence. Together with this secretiveness, which by making 
neighborly service more difficult, gives excuse to those who neg- 
lect it, there is a habit of bad judgment found which often 
foils the best-intentioned friend of the poor. Their love of 
gaudy things, their joy at a bargain to be paid for by install- 
ments in which they get things that they do not need, their 
persevering and joyous stupidities, are a trial, and yet, who 
shall say how wrong they are ? Human nature is the same 
perverse, repellent, attractive, baffling thing in all social circles. 
The poor have their standards, tastes, comedies, tragedies, as 
we have. Possibly a grave error was made when we first 
thought or spoke of the poor as the poor. Human nature has 
hardly sanctioned the classification. Hawthorne saw correctly 
when he spoke of " the code of the cellar, the garret, the com- 
mon staircase, the doorstep, and the pavement, which perhaps 
has a deep foundation in natural fitness as the code of the 
drawing-room." 

When the Christian looks about in modern society, then, to 
find his neighbor, he is confronted by a very complex social 
situation. It requires wide knowledge of varied facts, deep 
spiritual sympathy and strong conviction of the reality of 
Christ's will, to find out definitely and with satisfying concrete- 
ness who is one's neighbor, and wherein consists the neighborly 
service that Christ asks. In the face of these and many other 
social facts and impressions the Christian race has not devel- 
oped as many strong who will show mercy, as it has weak who 
VOL. LXXXVII. 23 



354 " WHO is MY NEIGHBOR?" [June, 

have need of it. There are not enough " big brothers " to go 
around. We have a relatively small number of valiant work- 
ers who give time, energy, and sympathy to the work of re- 
lief. We have a larger number though at best far from a 
noble majority who will give money, if nothing more, to bring 
relief to the weak. 

Even the fragmentary charity that money is, is far from 
creditable to a robust Christian race. It is in too many in- 
stances a compromise between conscience and preference. But 
much money given in charity is not spontaneously given. The 
bargain idea has entered into it extensively. In the charity 
ball, money is raised for noble purposes; but there is an in- 
congruous combination effected when the gay and well-dressed 
and well-nourished must have pleasure out of the money that 
is destined to procure help for the suffering and the hopeless. 

The merchant who gives a percentage of his sales on a 
given day to charity, the organization that conducts a fair to 
raise money for good works, the publication of names of donors 
to charity funds all of these proceedings are sad revelations 
of the low level to which the motives of a Christian genera- 
tion have fallen. It is not much in keeping with the steward- 
ship notion of wealth ; not much in harmony with the thought, 
so aptly expressed at the World's Parliament of Religions, that 
" we do not own our wealth. We owe it.'* 

Of course one should not forget the colossal sums spent 
annually in the total in all forms of charity. But this large 
financial point of view is not to the present purpose. The 
standpoint of the individual Christian is kept in mind. We go 
back in spirit to the lawyer who asked Christ " Who is my 
neighbor?" and the question forces itself upon us insistently: 
" To whom should I be neighbor ? " In view of the amazing 
complexity of the problems of poverty, and of the manifold 
relations in which the individual is found, in presence of social 
processes which separate us from the weak as a class, massing 
them until everything that might individualize them or establish 
hope in their surroundings, is eliminated from their lives, the 
question of defining and locating neighbors not only does not 
cease to be important, but, on the contrary, becomes the more 
important because of these very circumstances. 

As far as one may venture to analyze values as they appear 
in the teaching of Christ, it seems that unity among men was 



i9o8.} " WHO Is MY NEIGHBOR?" 355 

nearest to His heart. Emphasis constantly rested on the things 
in which men are alike, while the things in which they are 
unlike were very frequently passed over. Christ prayed for 
unity with explicit words : He represented it as a real spiritual 
asset for His followers. He saw the varied human inclinations 
and impulses that threaten unity, deprecated them and taught 
the cultivation of such as tended to establish and protect the 
unity among men which was so near to Him. He sets forgive- 
ness over against resentment; humility over against pride; to 
love of power He opposes love of obscurity ; against selfishness 
He places service. Out of this basic thought of unity among 
men, based on the essentials in which they are alike, is de- 
rived the thought, the law of neighborly service. The strong 
love and serve the weak, because Christ desires it, and Christ 
asks it because of the deep spiritual unity and the bond of 
sympathy which exists between them. Hence the essential 
element in the neighborly bond between strong and weak among 
Christians is not that the former gives food and clothes to the 
latter, but it is rather that understanding, personal touch, hu- 
man association are found between them. It may be said that 
cripples and orphans and diseased have civilized the Christian 
world as they Christianized the pagan world. Their presence, 
once Christ gave to every one of them, down to the meanest, 
an infinite value, invited the development of the traits which 
most honor the race. And in a similar way one may say that 
the manner in which the diseased, the orphan, the awkward 
and helpless enter the individual's sympathy, indicates the man- 
ner and the degree of Christianization of his life. 

In the face of this view, mere money charity shrinks into 
diminished dignity, even when most freely given, if it alone is 
given. But given in response to urging, to begging, to the 
promise of an evening's enjoyment, given with prospect of having 
name and amount heralded to the town, money alone given in 
such a manner seems almost a mockery. 

The Christian Church can render no more valuable service 
to-day than to awaken a keen sense of social responsibility in 
the individual. It should furnish him with a definite and con- 
crete understanding of neighbor, expressed in modern homely 
terms, and finally make faithful service of neighbor one pledge 
of eternal life. In a future article some of the social relations 
on which such definition might be based will be discussed. 




YORK. 

BY ELLIS SCHREIBER. 

[HE legendary history of the city of York, famous 
for its magnificent Minster, quaint streets, great 
gateways of bold architecture, and as being the 
most ancient metropolitan see in England, be- 
gins with the statement of the historian Geoff- 
rey of Monmouth, who attributes its foundation to Ebrancus, 
a king in Britain. This king, or rather chieftain, is said to 
have reigned about the time that David ruled in Judea, and 
on returning victorious from an invasion of Gaul, to have 
built the city, calling it after his own name Caer-Ebranc, the 
City of Ebrancus. However that may be, it is certain that, 
prior to the coming of the Romans, the city known by that 
name was the chief town of the British in the north, and be- 
longed to a hardy race called Brigantes, who under Caractacus 
made the last important stand against the invaders. After the 
second campaign of Agricola in A. D. 79, when Caractacus was 
captured and the tribe completely conquered, Ebranc passed 
into the hands of the Romans ; by them it was called Eboracum 
and became the military capital and center of their power in 
Britain. 

The original Roman city was rectangular in form and of 
considerable dimensions. It is supposed to have been laid out 
in imitation of ancient Rome, on the east bank of the River 
Eure, now known as the Ouse. A temple to Bellona was 
erected there as well as a Prcetorium, where the emperors re- 
sided, for Eboracum was honored by the rulers of Rome. The 
first imperial visitor was Hadrian in 120; the Emperor Severus 
died in the city in 211. He had come over with his sons 
Caracalla and Geta, a large army, and the attendance of his 
whole court. His time was mainly spent in reducing the trou- 
blesome Britons to submission. During the residence of the 
court, Eboracum attained its highest splendor. The frequent 
visits of tributary kings and foreign ambassadors who came to 
pay their allegiance to Rome, besides other distinguished per- 






1908.] \ORK 357 

sonages, caused it to be unsurpassed among other cities of the 
world ; so much so that it came to be called Altera Roma. 
The imperial palace is supposed to have occupied the ground 
on part of which Christ Church now stands, that edifice being 
designated in ancient charters as ecclesia Sanctcs Trinitatis in 
curia Regis. 

Nearly a century after the death of Severus, on the division 
of the empire between Galerius and Constantius Chlorus, Britain 
fell to the share of the latter, who fixed his residence in York, 
where he died two years after his arrival. His son and suc- 
cessor, Constantine the Great, was immediately proclaimed 
Emperor by the army at York, where he was at the time of 
his father's death. This event is commemorated in one of the 
stained glass windows in the Guildhall. Constantine directly 
left for Gaul, and with his departure the history of York during 
the Roman occupation, which had lasted nearly four hundred 
years, ceases to be important, the troops being gradually with- 
drawn from the country. Archeologists have discovered many 
and manifold Roman remains in and about York at different 
times ; the " multangular tower," now much dilapidated, is in 
itself a notable evidence of their settlement there. 

The city of York was frequently assailed and suffered con- 
siderably during the successive struggles between the Britains, 
Saxons, and Danes. In 521 King Arthur kept Christmas in 
York ; this is said to have been the first celebration of that 
festival in England. He also rebuilt the churches of the early 
British Church, then in ruins, having been destroyed by the 
Saxons, who were enemies of Christianity. It was for their 
conversion that Pope Gregory sent St. Augustine to Britain. 
Early in the seventh century Eboracum underwent a change. 
By the Saxons it was called Euro vie, a name probably bor- 
rowed from its situation on the River Eure. When this ap- 
pellation was contracted to its present form is uncertain. 

Historians assent that about the year 180, when Christian- 
ity in England was quite in its infancy, King Lucius established 
the metropolitan see at York. This probably was annulled dur- 
ing the Roman occupation, but it is certain that after the con- 
version of Edwin, King of Northumbria, the city was in 624 
erected into an archiepiscopal see, of which Paulinus, the first 
missionary from Rome who preached the Gospel in Northum- 
bria, was made archbishop. In addition to this, Edwin con- 



358 YORK [June, 

stituted York the metropolis of his kingdom. Edwin had mar- 
ried Ethelburga, daughter of the King of Kent, who had been 
converted by Augustine, and Paulinus was her chaplain. From 
this time dates the foundation of the cathedral. We have it 
on Venerable Bede's authority that on the site of the wooden 
chapel in which Edwin was baptized by Paulinus, he erected a 
large and more noble basilica of stone, dedicated to St. Peter; 
but the work was suddenly interrupted in consequence of an 
attack of the Britons under Cadwallo in 633, when the king 
was slain. The building was allowed to decay until it was re- 
stored by Oswald, Edwin's successor ; it was continued on its 
original lines by Wilfrid, the third primate, and his successors 
until the Norman conquest. 

In the meantime York, under Archbishop Egbert (from 730 
to 766), became a most celebrated center of learning, and reached 
its height under Alcuin, the greatest scholar of his age, called 
the " Glory of York." To him was entrusted the care of the 
schools, which attained such fame that youths of noble birth 
from all parts of the country and of the continent came thither 
for instruction. Egbert also repaired, in 741, the ravages caused 
by fire to the cathedral, which is described by Alcuin as " a 
most magnificent basilica." York suffered severely under the 
rule of the Danes, who settled there and made it a seat of com- 
merce. It is said to have been thronged with Danish mer- 
chants about the year 990. 

In 1050 the Abbey of St. Mary was founded by Earl Sivard, 
of whom it is related that finding his last moments approaching, 
he called for his armor, shield, and battle-ax, and sitting erect 
on a couch with his spear in his hand, lamented his fate in not 
dying on the battle-field, and awaited the coming of death as 
became a warrior. 

In 1068 William the Conqueror captured York and built a 
castle there. The following year, however, the last great attempt 
to dispute his power was made by the Danes. To prevent the 
assailants from occupying the city the garrison fired the houses 
in the suburbs, and this fire, being fanned by a high wind, 
quickly became a devastating conflagration, in the midst of which 
the Danes entered and put to the sword the whole Norman 
garrison. In this fire both the cathedral and the famous library 
of Egbert were completely destroyed. In the following year 
William re- captured the city, and in revenge for the loss of his 



1908.] YORK 359 

army, burnt the city and depopulated all the country between 
York and Durham. The historian asserts that " there perished 
in York, on this occasion, about 100,000 human beings." 

The city gradually recovered in the two succeeding reigns. 
Archbishop Thomas, of Bayeux, rebuilt the cathedral, and the 
city continued to advance in prosperity in spite of many attacks 
from the Scots. In 1088 William II. laid the first stone of a 
large Benedictine monastery, which was dedicated to our Lady. 

During the reign of Stephen a terrible fire broke out, which 
destroyed the cathedral, the monastery, and several parish 
churches, with a great part of the city. In 1175 Henry II. 
held in York one of the councils which afterwards were called 
Parliament, and which were summoned to meet in that city until 
the time of Charles I. On this occasion Malcolm, King of Scot- 
land, paid homage to Henry in the cathedral, in token of 
which the Scot deposited upon the altar his spear, breastplate, 
and saddle. In the reign of Richard I. the fury of the popu- 
lace was excited against the Jews for having mixed with the 
crowd at the coronation ; they were terribly persecuted through- 
out the country in all the big towns, and York was by no 
means behind the rest, many being massacred there. In the 
meantime it is pleasing to note that certain portions of York- 
shire were reclaimed from their wild state, and the inhabi- 
tants instructed in the faith wherever the Cistercians and the 
other orders settled. The celebrated Cistercian Abbey of Foun- 
tains, near Ripon, was about this time founded by a band of 
monks from the monastery of York, whence the relaxation of 
discipline led them to depart as has been already stated. 

The subsequent history of York records no important event 
until the insurrection, known as the " Pilgrimage of Grace," 
took place. This was consequent on the dissolution of the 
monasteries, the demolition of ten churches, and the wholesale 
appropriation of ecclesiastical revenues and valuables by Henry 
VIII. This rising was soon suppressed, the leader being hanged 
upon Clifford's Tower in York. In Elizabeth's reign another in- 
surrection occurred to restore Catholicism in the north, under 
the leadership of the Earl of Northumberland. It ended in 
discomfiture. Northumberland was beheaded at York and his 
head placed on a pole over Micklegate Bar, where it was left 
for two years, as a warning to other insurgents. 

The Minster, rebuilt by Archbishop Thomas, and finished 



360 YORK [June, 

in noo, was, as we have seen, destroyed by an accidental fire 
in 1137. It remained in a desolate state until Archbishop 
Roger rebuilt the apsidal choir and crypt in the latter half of 
the next century. Subsequent archbishops added other por- 
tions to the structure, the last of which, the southwest tower, 
was erected by a layman, the treasurer of the Minster. On 
the 3d of February, 1472, the building being completed as it 
now stands, was re-consecrated, and that day was thenceforth 
observed as the feast of the dedication. 

The Minster did not suffer much during the Reformation. 
It was, however, partly destroyed by fire in the last century. 
In the night of the 2d of February, 1829, consternation was 
excited by the sight of flames issuing from the roof. This was 
the act ot a man, afterwards proved to be mad, who having 
concealed himself behind a monument after the evening service 
of the preceding day, set fire to the woodwork of the choir, 
and the whole of the beautiful tabernacle of carved oak, the 
stalls, the pulpit, the organ, the roof, were completely con- 
sumed, the east window being saved with difficulty. The build- 
ing was restored at the cost of ^"65,000. 

The two transepts, besides the crypt, are the oldest por- 
tions of the present structure. They belong to the best years 
of Early English. The south transept has a distinctive fea- 
ture in its magnificent rose window, while the north transept 
is adorned by a series of beautifully carved lancet windows, 
known as the Five Sisters, from a tradition that they were the 
gift of five sisters who themselves designed the colored glass, 
which is preserved as when first inserted, and is greatly ad- 
mired by able judges. 

In both the east and west aisles, and in the Lady Chapel, 
are some noble monuments, which happily have escaped the 
destroyer's hand ; these were erected to the memory of the most 
celebrated archbishops of the see. That of Archbishop De Grey 
(1255) is one of the earliest examples of canopied tombs in exist- 
ence. The effigy of the prelate rests beneath an elegant canopy 
supported by ten light and graceful columns with flowered capi- 
tals. Of all English chapter houses that of York claims to be 
unrivalled. The date of its erection is supposed to be about 
1320. In a niche above the portal is a figure of our Lady 
with the Divine Child, mutilated by the relentless hand of the 
iconoclast. Each bay of the building contains a lofty window 



of < 



1908.] YORK 361 

of great beauty, the glass of which is of the time of Edward 
II. Below the east window are forty-four canopied stone 
stalls; the sculpture of these is worthy of close study, the 
details are said to be unsurpassed by any other sculpture of 
the period either in England or on the Continent, a fact ex- 
pressed in the Latin couplet inscribed in Saxon characters near 
the entrance door: 

Ut Rosa, Flos Florum 

Sic est Domus ista Domorum. 

Which may be rendered thus: 

" As is the rose the flower of flowers 
So of houses is this of ours." 

The nave is, with two exceptions, the longest in England; 
it is also one hundred feet high. The vestry and record-room 
contain many valuable and interesting curiosities. Amongst 
these is the Horn of Ulphus, fashioned out of an elephant's 
tusk, curiously carved and polished, and ornamented with gold 
mounting. It is a relic of ancient art, and forms the title 
whereby the Chapter still hold several of their estates. Ul- 
phus was son-in-law to Canute, and lord of a considerable part 
of East Yorkshire. To prevent the two sons from quarreling 
over their inheritance, he vowed he would make them equal, 
and going to the altar of the cathedral, filled the horn with 
wine, and drank it off; he then dedicated all his lands to God 
and St. Peter, thus disinheriting all his family. The Mazer 
Bowl, or Indulgenced Cup of Archbishop Scrope, is also pre- 
served here. It is a bowl of dark wood, with a silver rim and 
three cherubs' heads serving as feet; round the rim is the fol- 
lowing inscription: 

Richarde arche-beschope Sctoope grant unto all those that 
drinkis of this cope XLti dayes to pardon. 

The reason why an indulgence was attached to this bowl is 
not recorded. Certainly few indulgences are so easily gained; 
if so it seems at present, how much more so in the days when 
the penances enjoined upon misdoers were far more severe, and 
indulgences had to be earned by good works. For the souls 
of those whose remains rest within this noble sanctuary con- 



362 YORK [June, 

siderable sums were bequeathed for Masses which are now di- 
verted to very different uses; for instance, Queen Philippa, the 
consort of Edward III., gave five marks and five nobles, no 
small sum at that period, for requiem Masses in perpetuity for 
the soul of her son, Prince William de Hatfield, who died at 
York and is interred in the Minster. The equivalent of this 
sum is still paid to the dean and chapel out of the rectory of 
Hatfield, and serves to maintain them in luxury. 

The Minster is in the form of a cross. Two towers with 
pinnacles flank its western front; in the center is a large tower 
with two fine perpendicular windows on each side; a beauti- 
fully perforated battlement runs round the top. The whole 
forms a splendid structure, of which York may well be proud. 

Another distinguishing feature of the town are the Bars, or 
Gateways, of which there are four principal ones, and two 
smaller, still in a state of excellent repair. The streets leading 
to them retain the name of Gate, from the Danish gata, a road. 
Micklegate Bar is the largest of these ; it consists of a massive 
square tower built over a circular arch, with embattled turrets 
at the angles, the two on the front being ornamented with stone 
figures in the attitude of hurling stones at an invading enemy. 
On the top of this gate the heads of traitors used to be ex- 
posed, especially during the Wars of the Roses. The head of 
the Duke of York, after his execution in 1460 was fixed there, 
surmounted by a paper crown, " that York might overlook the 
town of York," as was mockingly said. But when Edward IV. 
entered the city after the battle of Towton, and beheld the 
sight, he was filled with indignation, and ordered five noble 
prisoners to be beheaded, that their heads might replace that 
of the duke. 

Near the Multangular Tower, which formed one of the de- 
fences of Eboracum at the time of its occupation by the Ro- 
mans, are the remains of St. Leonard's Hospital, which was a 
secular institution for the relief of the sick and needy. It has 
been described as one of the most ancient noble foundations 
of the kind in Britain. Its origin is ascribed to King Athel- 
stane, who, on returning from a successful expedition against 
the Scots in the early part of the tenth century, saw in the 
cathedral of York some poor but pious persons who devoted 
themselves to works of charity; whereupon he gave them a 
piece of land on which to erect a hospital, besides the munifi- 



1 9o8.] YORK 363 

cent grant of twenty sheaves of good corn out of the produce 
of every hundred acres of land in the archbishopric of York. 
The building was under the nominal headship of the king 
until its suppression in the sixteenth century. 

Within the same grounds are also the ruins of St. Mary's 
Abbey, the Benedictine monastery above mentioned, which was 
the most important and wealthy seat of the order in the north 
of England. This house, as well as the Cistercian Abbey of 
Fountains, which from the humblest origin grew to be a large 
and flourishing community, shared the fate of other religious 
houses at the time of the Reformation. 

Yet the religious life was not destined to become extinct 
within the walls of York. Not long after the dissolution of one, 
another abbey of our Lady was to rise phoenix-like from its 
ashes. The Institute of Mary, inaugurated whilst the persecu- 
tion of Catholics still raged fiercely, was founded by Sir Thomas 
Gascoigne in 1677. A house and garden were purchased for its 
members on the spot where the present convent stands. This was 
the only religious house of women which remained in England 
during the dark days of persecution, a fact that gives to it no 
slight interest and endows it with prestige in the eyes of Catho- 
lics. It was the only place where, until almost the commence- 
ment of the last century, it was possible for the sisters and 
daughters of our forefathers to fulfil their vocation, and conse- 
crate themselves by vow to the special service of God, without 
at the same time exiling themselves from the land of their birth. 
It was, moreover, the only place in England where, at that sad 
epoch in English history, young girls could receive a solid Chris- 
tian education which inspired them with courage to cling stead- 
fastly to the faith then proscribed, and for the sake of that faith 
to endure contempt, persecution, and death. The convent at 
York became a center and headquarters for the Catholics of the 
north of England, and much that country owes to those trained 
within its walls, and also to those who trained them. No one 
could then enter a religious house, or pursue therein the call- 
ing of a teacher, without incurring the most serious personal 
peril, at the risk of life itselt. 

York has been most fortunate in the number of illustrious 
personages it has given both to the Church and to the State. 
One of the earliest eminent men who first saw the light within 
its walls was the Emperor Constantine the Great. Flaccus Al- 



364 YORK [June, 

banus, a pupil of the great ecclesiastical historian, Venerable 
Bede, was also one of her sons. But above and beyond all 
others of whom the ancient city may be proud, are the white- 
robed army of martyrs who won their palms within its time- 
honored precincts. 

The ancient faith was adhered to with greater fidelity in the 
northern counties than in any other part of England, and no- 
where was the new teaching opposed with more force and de- 
termination than in Yorkshire. Subsequently to the Pilgrimage 
of Grace, which cost the lives of many good nobles and staunch 
Catholics, Henry VIII., ostensibly for the better administration 
of justice in the northern counties, but really for the forcible 
suppression of the old religion, instituted a " Council of the 
North," composed of the bitterest enemies of Catholicism. This 
council, the acts of which are spoken of with horror by even 
Protestant historians, held its sittings in St. Mary's noble abbey, 
from which the monks had been ejected. The President, Lord 
Huntingdon, aided by Sandys, the " coarse and miserly " Arch- 
bishop of York (as Dr. Jessopp terms him), hunted out and 
persecuted the unhappy recusants with relentless fury, casting 
them into York prison, whence many were led out to the scaf- 
fold. Hugo Taylor, the first priest executed in York under the 
new and severer laws of Elizabeth's reign, headed the glorious 
list of martyrs, and not a few, both priests and laymen, fol- 
lowed in his train. Amongst these Mrs. Margaret Clitheroe, the 
" Pearl of York," deserves special mention. The charge brought 
against this woman, whom her biographer describes as young 
and good looking, intelligent and wise, an exemplary wife and 
mother, was that she had harbored a priest, the penalty for 
which at that time was death, and had refused to purchase her 
life by assisting once at the Protestant service, an act then con- 
sidered as tantamount to apostasy. 

The daughter of one of the York sheriffs, she was brought up 
as a Protestant, but was converted after her marriage. Although 
her husband was bitterly opposed to the Catholic faith, she 
contrived to have Mass said secretly in a house adjoining her 
own. Betrayed to the authorities by a Flemish boy whom she 
had taken into her household out of charity, she was thrown 
into prison, and condemned to one of the most cruel of deaths, 
that of having a sharp stone placed under her back whilst she 
lay prostrate on the ground, and heavy stones heaped upon her 



YORK 365 

chest, to no less than eight hundred pounds in weight.* This 
she endured with perfect fortitude, her last words being : " Jesus, 
Jesus, have mercy upon me ! " Her agony lasted a quarter of 
an hour, until her ribs breaking under the pressure, her soul 
was set free. Her body was cast into a muddy pond, whence 
it was withdrawn six weeks later by some pious Catholics and 
reverently interred. To their surprise no sign of decomposition 
was found on it. A hand of the Venerable Martyr is preserved 
in a rich reliquary in St. Mary's Convent, York. 

Her children followed in the footsteps of their heroic mother. 
Anna, the eldest daughter, although only twelve years old, was 
maltreated and actually imprisoned because she would not bear 
witness against her mother, and refused to listen to Protestant 
preachers. Later on, to evade the coercion exercised to com- 
pel her to apostatize, she fled from her father's house ; we hear 
of her as again imprisoned, a girl of eighteen, for " causes ec- 
clesiastical." She contrived to escape to Belgium, where she 
took refuge in an Ursuline convent. Two of her brothers, edu- 
cated at Douai, became priests ; the elder entered a religious 
order, the younger after his ordination returned to York, and 
there exercised his sacerdotal functions in secret until he was 
arrested, imprisoned, and ultimately banished from the country. 

Less than three months after Mrs. Clitheroe's execution, an- 
other victim of persecution suffered martyrdom in York, a priest 
of the name of Hugh Ingleby, who had studied and been or- 
dained in Rheims. He was a young man of great zeal and pru- 
dence, much beloved by the citizens amongst whom he labored. 
One day he was leaving the city, disguised as a peasant, ac- 
companied by a Catholic gentleman of good position who es- 
corted him beyond the gates, and before turning back stopped 
a few minutes talking with him. Neither of the two remem- 
bered that they could be seen from the windows of the archi- 
episcopal palace ; and in fact two of the archbishop's chaplains, 
looking idly out, had their suspicions aroused by observing that 
the gentleman at parting took off his hat repeatedly and bowed 
with a respect strangely out of keeping with his companion's 
beggarly attire. They instantly made inquiries, and discover- 
ing that Ingleby was a priest, caused him to be apprehended 

* This verdict was all the more barbarous, as Mrs. Clitheroe was soon to become a 
mother. Even the ancient Romans, notorious for their cruelty, abstained from putting to 
death any woman in that condition. 



366 YORK [June, 

and cast into prison. On double fetters being placed on his 
ankles, it is related, he smilingly said : " I am only too proud 
of these boots!" And when sentenced to death he exclaimed: 
" Credo videre bona Domini in terra viventium" and his coun- 
tenance beamed with such joy that when leading him back to 
prison the warder, an austere Puritan, could not restrain his tears. 

In the same year another priest, John Finglow, who also 
had been ordained at Rheims, and immediately after had re- 
turned to his native city to give spiritual aid to his oppressed 
fellow- Christians, won the martyr's palm at York. Four years 
after his return he was apprehended and thrust into a dark 
dungeon in the Ousebridge, Kidcote, as the prison by the bridge 
was termed. Father Morris in his Troubles of our Catholic 
Forefathers (III. 324) relates the following incident concerning 
his incarceration there : " In the cell above his the daughter of 
a high-born lady, Francesca Webster, was enduring the pen- 
alty imposed for hearing Mass. Having discovered who was 
beneath her, she succeeded in making a hole in the floor of 
her cell by means of which some light was let into his dark 
prison, and she could enjoy the consolation of conversing with 
him. She also let down a blanket to protect him from the 
cold. When charged with this act she acknowledged it boldly, 
even boastfully, and was consequently removed to the prison 
of York Castle, where her mother was confined. Both these 
noble women bore their sufferings with heroic fortitude, en- 
hanced as those sufferings were by the tidings of the father's 
apostasy. When God took her pious mother to Himself, Fran- 
cesca besought of God the grace to quit this evil world and 
enter His presence above. Her prayer was granted ; a month 
later she expired in the prison after a short illness, borne with 
exemplary patience." 

In October of the same year a gentleman of York, Robert 
Bickerdike, was arraigned before the magistrate, charged with 
refusing to attend the Anglican service, and having helped to 
maintain a priest. The latter charge was founded on the as- 
sertion of two young men that they had seen him drinking beer 
in the company of a priest, and concluded that he had paid 
the cost for both. This was considered sufficient cause for con- 
demning him to the gallows. He was not allowed to speak 
in his own defence, and accordingly his innocent blood was 
shed without the gates of York. 



1908.] YORK 367 

The following month witnessed the martyrdom of another 
priest, Alexander Crowe. He was arrested whilst baptizing an 
infant, and sentenced to be hung, and drawn and quartered, ac- 
cording to the barbarous custom, before life was extinct, for 
high treason. He suffered on St. Andrew's Day, and like that 
Apostle rejoiced to lay down his life for the faith. 

On the very next day a layman named Langley was led 
to the same gallows, charged with having harbored a priest. 
The accusation could not be proved, but his response that he 
regretted not having entertained the servants of God more fre- 
quently and in greater numbers, and thanked God for letting 
him die in so good a cause, exasperated the council to such an 
extent that they forthwith sentenced him to death. His daugh- 
ter showed herself worthy of such a father. On his arrest she 
and her husband fled from York but soon returned, in order to 
alleviate the sufferings of her imprisoned fellow-Christians by 
liberal alms, and to ask their prayers, as she was in delicate 
health. 

One day on leaving the prison she was arrested, and as she 
refused to attend the Protestant service she was cast into pris- 
on, where she contracted a fatal malady in consequence of the 
close confinement and vitiated air. " The day before her death," 
Father Grene relates, " she was heard to address her father, 
and beg him either to stay with her or take her away with 
him. One of the bystanders said : ' Here I am, what do you 
want ? ' She replied : ' I am not speaking to you, but to my 
dear father ; do you not see him standing beside you ? ' Doubt- 
less her father had come from above to fetch her ; shortly af- 
ter she breathed her last, edifying by her faith and piety all 
who were in the prison with her." 

From time to time other priests and laymen suffered for the 
faith in York. With this brief notice of the earliest among her 
martyrs we close our account of that ancient city. 




A SECOND CENTURY LIST OF THE BOOKS OF THE NEW 

TESTAMENT. 

BY LOUIS O'DONOVAN. 
I. INTRODUCTION. 

|HE Bible has been from the beginning, is now, 
and ever shall be, a book of loving study to the 
devout Christian. Therein he looks not for dif- 
ficulties, but for God's message to him personal- 
ly and individually. Therefrom he picks out not 
apparent defects, but golden words of divine wisdom that may 
perfect his faith and improve his morals. 

Every book, every page, he believes to be the inspired 
word of God, and where the Church has defined its meaning 
he accepts her interpretation as final and infallible. 

This same full faith in the Church's guidance prompts him 
to ask her accredited exponents for answers to his fair questions 
and honest difficulties. 

He knows, of course, that the Church does not stand on 
the New Testament; but, quite the contrary, that only years 
after the Church had been established by our Divine Lord, and 
enlightened by the Holy Ghost, was the first line of the New 
Testament written. 

He knows that even then the New Testament was written 
at different times and places by different men, some Apostles, 
some not; some books being historical in character, some doc- 
trinal, and at least one prophetical. 

Moreover, he knows that there were "many other things 
which Jesus did," which are not told of in the twenty-seven 
books of the New Testament. 

Now he asks, as he holds these twenty-seven books, how 
did there come to be gathered together into the present New 
Testament these and only these particular twenty-seven books ? 

Were there then, in the earliest days of the Church, a 
multitude of doubtfully canonical books among which Christians 



1908.] THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON 369 

did not know which were and which were not revealed, and 
inspired ? Or, was there from the beginning a clear, distinct 
list of the books held reliable, accepted, catholic, revealed and 
inspired, so that we might say that from even the beginning 
of Christianity there was virtually a Canon of Scripture? 

The answer to this question, involving the account of the 
gathering together of the books of the New Testament, and 
the critical test in choosing the same, is an interesting study. 
He knows, of course, that the Church has spoken the final, de- 
ciding word in forming the Canon of Scripture; but then, he 
asks, what led her to do so ? 

The answer to this question is found in what theologians 
call the history of the Canon of Scripture. It is a complex 
study, embracing many details. Should you urge the query, 
how the Church knew what books to accept as Canonical Scrip- 
ture, what to reject, the answer is: from her indefectible infal- 
libility, and remembering and pronouncing from her tradition; 
from the teachings of her ancient and holy bishops and apolo- 
gists and doctors; from such as Papias, Irenaeus, Eusebius, and 
Jerome, and from such documents as the subject of this paper, 
/. e. t the "Headless" or "Muratorian Fragment," or " Murator- 
ian Canon of Scripture," as it is variously called. It is called 
a Canon * of Scripture, because it enumerates by name twenty- 
one, and implies two more out of the twenty-seven books of 
the New Testament ; it is called " headless " because probably 
a score or more of words of the beginning of the document 
have been lost ; and it is called " Muratorian " because it was 
DISCOVERY discovered and first published by Louis Anthony 
Muratori, prefect of the Ambrosian Library in 
Milan, who has published so many valuable works. In his 
Antiquitates Italiccs medii cevi, published at Milan in 1740, in 
Volume III., page 849 and following, may be found the 
" Fragment." Since then it has been many times re-published. 
The editions here used in this translation are those found in 
the Patrologia Latina of Migne, Volume III., column 173 and 
following ; Tregelles' replica of the original, in his Canon Mura- 
torianus, Oxford, 1867 and London 1870; and Westcott in his 
Canon of the New Testament. 

*The word " Canon " from the Greek, means a reed or rod, has gotten the meaning of 
" rule " or " line," and finally " standard " or " norm." 

VOL LXXXVII . 24 



370 THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON [June, 

In its present condition the "Fragment" is not only 



CONDITION decapitated, but it is also mutilated at the end.* 
In the MS. Codex 101 of the Ambrosian Library, 
in which the " Fragment " covers nearly three pages, the page 
just before the beginning of the " Fragment " contains, accord- 
ing to Tregelles, an extract from Eucherius Lugdunensis. The 
next page, -io-a, " begins at the top without any vacant space 
whatsoever"! with the text of the "Fragment," and "the 
Canon extends over pages lo-a, lo-b, n-a, to within 8 lines 
of the bottom. A little more than half a line is left vacant at 
the end of the Canon,"! and then follows something from St. 
Ambrose. 

The " Fragment " is written wholly in square capitals, as 
may be seen in Tregelles' replica. Two lines of the text are 
in red, i. e. y " Third, the book of the Gospel according to Luke," 
and " Fourth, the Gospel of John, one of the disciples." 

In the body of the MS. not only do several words appear 
to have been lost, but it is thought that lacunae and great gaps 
occur. 

The text is often ungrammatical, and in half a dozen places 
an exact translation is scarcely possible. Nor do the various 
commentators always agree in their suggested readings. 

" In thirty lines there are thirty unquestionable clerical 
blunders, including one important omission, two other omissions 
which destroy the sense completely, one substitution equally 
destructive of the sense, and four changes which appear to 
be intentional and false alterations. . . ."|| 

Conflicting estimates of the integrity of the text are voiced 
by critics, for while Bleek in his Introduction to the New Testa- 
ment*^ characterizes the text as "corrupt and decayed," West- 
cott says that " On the other hand the text itself as it stands 
is substantially a good one." 

Muratori says that before he found the MS. at 

HISTORY, 

Milan it had been in the library at Bobio, in 
Northern Italy. Bobio was a veritable storehouse of valuable 
MSS., being a very old monastery established by St. Columba. 
And hence Westcott, speaking of the history of the MS., of 
which the " Fragment " is a part, says : " It may therefore 

* Westcott's Canon of the New Testament. 

\Ibid. \Ibid. $ Tregelles, Canon. Part II. 

|| Westcott, op. cit., pp. 494-5. IT Edinburgh, 1870, $242. 



1908.] THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON 371 

probably be of Irish origin or descent." At any rate, in 1740, 
Muratori thought the MS. close on to a thousand years old, 
and this for the reason that it was written in " square and 
moderately large letters." 

Schaff* says it is " a fragment of Roman origin, though 
translated from the Greek between A. D. 170 and 180." 

Westcott also says : " There can be little doubt that it is a 
version," and gives several reasons to confirm his belief ; namely, 
the many Grecisms that are used in the "Fragment"; the MS. 
of which the Canon is part, contains translations from Chrysos- 
tom; and "the order of the Gospels is not that of the African 
Church in which, according to the oldest authorities, Matthew 
and John stood first. And if the ' Fragment ' was not of 
African origin it follows almost certainly that it was not written 
in Latin. There is no evidence of Christian Latin Literature 
out of Africa till about the close of the second century. "f 

The Shepherd is referred to in the " Fragment " 
as having been written in the city of Rome 
by Hermas "very recently in our own times, while his brother 
Pius was Pope." And as there was only one Pope Pius before 
the fifteenth century, and as he died A. D. 157, this reasonably 
fixes the date of the "Fragment" in the second half of the 
second century. 

These statements having been made the next thing to in- 
quire is who wrote it. 

The author of the " Fragment," at least so Mura- 

AU 1 rlOK. 

ton and many other scholars think, was Caius, a 
priest in Rome, who flourished at the end of the second 
century. However, this opinion is not unanimous. Tregelles 
thought Caius was not the author, as his date was about A. D. 
196; whereas Pius was bishop of Rome from 127 to 142, or 
from 142 to 157. It has been attributed to Papias. But it is 
said Papias lived too early to have been its author. Hege- 
sippus was suggested by Bunsen. 

IMPORTANCE The " Fra g m ent " is " of very great importance 

AND CONTENTS, for the history of the Canon," says Schaff. | And 

yet it is only a partial record, as it mentions 

only the Gospels of St. Luke and St. John ; though, speaking 

of them as the " third " and " fourth," it is only fair to con- 

* History of the Christian Church. Vol. II., p. 518. Note i. Ed. New York, 1896. 
t Op. cit. P. 194. Note 2. \Op. cit. Vol. If., p. 776. 



372 THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON [June, 

elude that, had we the lost beginning of the " Fragment," we 
should therein find a record of St. Matthew's and St. Mark's 
Gospels, too. 

St. John's First Epistle is clearly alluded to. 

It refers to the Acts of the Apostles in one book by Luke ; 
to Paul's two Epistles to the Corinthians, to the Ephesians, 
Philippians, Colossians, Galatians, two to the Thessalonians, and 
Romans. Also to Philemon, Titus and two to Timothy. 

It stamps as heretical those epistles claiming to be from 
Paul to the Laodiceans and to the Alexandrians. 

The Epistle of Jude, and two of John,* however, it testi- 
fies to as Catholic. Also Wisdom ; " and the Apocalypses of 
John and Peter alone are received by us, though this latter 
some of us do not wish to be read in the Church." 

It fails to mention the Epistle to the Hebrews, that of St. 
James, both of St. Peter. Westcott thinks these omissions are 
due to chasms portions of the text of the Canon having been 
omitted, lost. 

So that the "Fragment" mentions by name twenty- one, 
and implies two more, of the twenty- seven books since put on 
the Canon by the Church. 

Moreover, it clearly draws the line between Catholic and 
heretical books. As Tregelles remarks: "It is the earliest defi- 
nite statement of the kind in existence." f 

It is interesting to note that there is no reference or allu- 
sion to a protevangelium. 

Not less important is it to see that the whole is pervaded 
by an evident tone of the authority of the Catholic Church. 

Even after these considerations, it is difficult to de- 
PURPOSE. 

cide what was the purpose of the author. West- 
cott thinks the "Fragment" is part of a general work. 

Tregelles \ says : " It is not a formal catologue of the New 
Testament books, but it rather appears to be an incidental ac- 
count given by the writer. . . . The writer seems to have 
had some object in view, some point that he wished to estab- 
lish, some error before him that he wished to controvert." 

In translating this "Fragment" the effort has 

been made to be reasonably literal, though its 

barbarisms and ungrammatical errors and Grecisms of style offer 

* Tregelles thinks these are John's Second and Third Epistles, 
t Op. cit. Part I., p. i. \ Ibid. 






THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON 373 

many difficulties to this effort. It would be rash to say whether 
these mistakes were made by the original author or by the 
copyist; the translator is tempted to solve the problem in a way 
that neither might be slighted, and say that there are enough to 
credit a few to each. Prefaced by the foregoing remarks, the 
following translation is offered : 

II. TRANSLATION OF THE "HEADLESS FRAGMENT." 

. . . With whom however he associated, and so stated. 
Third, the book of the Gospel according to Luke. Luke, the 
physician, wrote in his own name according to his own idea, 
after the Ascension of Christ, when Paul had taken him with 
himself as one zealous for the law. Though neither did he 
ever see the Lord in the flesh, and hence had to follow as best 
he could, and so he begins from the birth of John. [The au- 
thor] of the Fourth Gospel is John, one of the disciples. To 
the supplications of his fellow-disciples and bishops he replied : 
"Fast with me for three days from to-day, and whatever shall 
have been revealed to any one, let us narrate to one another.'* 
That same night it was revealed to Andrew, one of the Apos- 
tles, that John should write down all in his own name, the 
others all agreeing.* And so even though different things are 
taught in the various books of the Gospels, yet the faith of 
the believers differs in nothing, since in each one all things are 
stated in a spirit of harmony and agreement about His Nativ- 
ity, Passion, Resurrection, His conversation with His discioles, 
and His two-fold Advent, the first in lowliness of appearance, 
(which has taken placet); the second majestic in kingly po- 
tency, which is to come.| What wonder therefore if John pub- 
lish so positively each incident even in his Epistles, saying of 
himself:^ "What we have seen with our eyes, and heard with 
our ears, and our hands have touched, these things we have 
written " ? For he thus declares himself not only a seer, but 
a hearer, and even a writer of all the wonders of the Lord in 
order. Moreover, the Acts of all the Apostles have been writ- 
ten in one book. Luke has gathered (these things ||) together 
admirably for Theophilus^f for they all happened in his pres- 

* A chasm in the text probably exists here. 

t Here there is a lacuna in the text, and this is surmised to be the sense. 

\ Likely another chasm here. I. John i. i. || Not in text. If Acts i. I. 



374 THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON [June, 

ence ; and as also elsewhere, * he clearly tells of the suffering 
of Peter, as well as f the setting out of Paul 'starting frcm 
the city \ to Spaing 

The Epistles of Paul themselves state, to those wishing to 
know what they are, from what place, or for what purpose they 
were sent, first of all forbidding heresy to the Corinthians, next 
circumcision to the Galatians, but to the Romans he wrote more 
at length on the fulfilment of the Scriptures, and intimating that 
their very foundation is Christ. And on each of these we should 
comment, since the blessed Apostle Paul himself, following the 
order of John his predecessor, wrote by name to the seven 
churches in this order, first to the Corinthians, second to the 
Ephesians, third to the Philippians, fourth to the Colossians, 
fifth to the Galatians, sixth to the Thessalonians, seventh to the 
Romans. However he wrote twice to the Corinthians and Thes- 
salonians, but for their correction. Still the one Church is known 
to be scattered throughout the whole world. For John also in 
the Apocalypse, although writing || to the seven Churches, nev- 
ertheless speaks to all. 

One, moreover, is dedicated to Philemon and one to Titus 
and two to Timothy out of affection and love, in honor, how- 
ever, of the Catholic Church, for the sake of the discipline of 
the Church. There is furthermore a report of one to the Lao- 
diceans, and ano.ther to the Alexandrians ^[ claiming the name 
of Paul according to the heresy of Marcion ; and many others 
which cannot be received in the Catholic Church. For it is 
not proper to mix gall with honey. 

The Epistle of Jude indeed, and the two ascribed to John, 
are held in the Catholic Church. 

* John xxi. 18, 19. t Rom. xv. 24, 28. \ Rome. 

Chasm. || Apocalypse, chapters i. and ii. 

^[Muratori says of this Epistle to the Alexandrians: " I do not know if any other has 
mentioned it. Nor have I been able to find any mention of it in the ancients. Therefore, 
either it has evidently perished, or perhaps it was mentioned by the ancients under another 
title, for it is certain that often many titles were given to one and the same apocryphal book." 
... Of the Epistle to the Laodiceans, Philastrius (8gth Heresy) says: "But others 
(speaking of the Epistle to the Hebrews) say it is Luke the Evangelist's ; also the Epistle 
written to the Laodiceans. And because certain things have been added in it not agreeing 
well (with the truth ?) therefore it is not read in the Church, although it is read by certain ones, 
but it is not read in the Church to the people, but only his (Paul's) thirteen Epistles, and some- 
times that to the Hebrews." ... In the Abbot /Elfric's Treatise on the Old and New 
Testament, which was composed in the time of JEdgor, King of England, we read that when 
this same JElfric had enumerated each and all of the books of the New Testament on the 
Canon of Scriptures, he added to these only Paul's Epistle to the Laodiceans." Comment 
of Routh in Migne. [Translation mine.] 



1908.] THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON 375 

And Wisdom, written by friends of Solomon, in his honor. 
Moreover, we receive the Apocalypse of John and Peter only, 
but some of us do not wish this latter to be read in the Church. 

But recently Hermas wrote The Shepherd in our own times 
in the city of Rome, while his brother the bishop Pius was 
sitting in the chair of the city of Rome.f And therefore it 
should indeed be read, but it cannot be read publicly in the 
Church to the people, nor (placed f) among the Prophets, com- 
plete in number, nor among the Apostles, to the end of time. 
But we receive nothing at all of Arsinous or Valentinus or 
Miltiades, for they even wrote a new book of Psalms for Mar- 
cion along with Basilides (the Asiatic founder of the Cata- 
phrygians).^ 

* A lacuna is apparent here. 

t This date of the composition of this book The Shepherd pretty surely fixes the date of 
the writing of this " Fragment " in the second half of the second century. (See above.) 

\ Not in text. 

$ The translation of this last clause is a desperate guess, as the text is " hopelessly cor- 
rupt," says Westcott. 




PINK LEMONADE, A BEAR, AND A PRODIGAL. 

BY JEANIE DRAKE. 

[ROM the hillside farmhouse the deep-toned bellow 
of the dinner-horn came reverberating down the 
valley. It was a thing of usance, so the sur- 
prising strength of the tiny, withered old woman 
who sounded it awoke no sentiment in the work- 
ers below, other than one of punctual expectancy. The crackle 
of sorghum cane-heads falling beneath keen knives in this field, 
the rattle of fodder-stripping in that, ceased intermittently, as 
one here, or another there, stopped and drew a moist shirt- 
sleeve across a moister forehead. The farmer himself, patri- 
archal of aspect, straightened his great height, towering silently 
above them all, until the crisp October breeze rustling the dry 
husks was the only sound. Then, as his glance lifted to a faded 
homespun skirt disappearing from the porch above, a twinkle 
lightened the blue eyes, glass-clear yet, after eighty years. 

"You-uns," he said, in his deep, even tones, " hed best not 
let Maw hear ye go on thet-a-way over thet thar show. She'll 
allow ye're plumb crazy." 

Then he led the way up the slope with the long, slow stride 
of the mountaineer, covering much ground, yet equally unhur- 
ried whether toward a wedding, a funeral, or merely dinner. 

The little, active old woman who had prepared the meal, 
served it also, giving to each the generous proportion of corn 
bread, cabbage, and squirrel-stew which long acquaintance with 
the tonic effects of open-air labor had taught her to be neces- 
sary. It was not until she sat down to a preliminary draught 
of buttermilk that any one spoke. 

Then one of the hired men, taking up the idea last received 
and lying fallow in a brain accustomed to postponement, said 
in stolid protest : " Ef Mis' Todson could git to go down to the 
post office an' see them thar bills with two-foot letters of the 
' Biggest Aggravation in the World ' ; an' the blue an' green 
an' red an* yallow pictures of all the animiles thet went into 



1908.] PINK LEMONADE, A BEAR, AND A PRODIGAL 377 

the Ark with Noe, an' a lot more rampaceous ones thet no 
Ark could a held why, she'd jes' want to go herself!" 

A hoarse murmur went round the board in adhesion : "Thet's 
so she would." "She jes' would, by gum!" "She shore 
would supposin' she had eyes in her head ! " 

The humorous twinkle shone again in the farmer's lock 
across at his wife. "Ye hear thet, Mandy ? " 

Her small, keen features kept their composed shrewdness 
unmoved : " I'm a-hearin' a heap o' things every day I thinks 
mighty little of. For all my old eyes is e'enamost as good 
as Jim Pyot's, I kain't afford to go trottin' down to no post 
office to git 'em dazzled an' blinded an' ginully overcome. It's 
only men folk .hez time for sech fool gapin* an* starin'. Ez 
for me, I'm seventy gimme the sop, Jim an' I ain't been to 
no circus in my life, an' I ain't allowin' to go now. When'll 
you-uns git them molasses ready for bilin' ? " It was a sobered 
party of men who changed their topic at her bidding. 

It came up, however, in the cane- field and the village store, 
and even returning from preaching, wherever singly or con- 
jointly they were fascinated by gaily-colored posters announc- 
ing the marvels presented by Windem and Threepaws' " Mam- 
moth Aggregation, Menagerie, Hippodrome, and Circus, Great- 
est in the World." This was at every turn in the road where 
surface of fence, rock, or tree invited disfigurement. Surely no 
actual human woman could be as beautiful as the sylph who, 
perched on one toe, hovered over twenty flying white steeds ! 
The pictured athlete playing marbles with cannon-balls could 
have left Samson his hair and overcome him at a canter. "What 
awesome dragons and fearsome beasts were these, winding their 
purple and crimson coils and curves and manes and scales, and 
spouting fire ! Lion tamers and tight-rope dancers ; Indian 
snake-charmers and African cannibals ; polka-dotted pigs play- 
ing chess and Bengal tigers riding bicycles, flared from each 
board in kaleidoscopic glory before gloating rustic eyes. 

" Shucks ! I don't believe thet thar kin be true ! " might 
venture some lank agnostic. 

To be frowned down with: " 'Tis, then; I seen it myself 
onct over to Beanville." 

The tidings went abroad from village to mountain-top, frcm 
post office to log-cabin nestling in far away coves; and this 
family group and that made preparation for the ten, twenty, 



378 PINK LEMONADE, A BEAR, AND A PRODIGAL [June, 

thirty, or even forty- mile drive needed to see the show; or, 
lacking means for that, the street procession, at least. 

Saturday, in the sorghum patch, with the last of the syrup 
bubbling and thickening in the evaporator, its sweet odor and 
the blue smoke of glowing logs floating far in the frosty air, 
old Washington Todson fell into line. He heard abstractedly 
such fragments as : " Thirty camels ! " Or, " A hittamuspot- 
tamus big ez Sam's barn ! " Or, " Yes, sirree ; kin eat glass 
an* swaller snakes same's ye chew terbacker ! " 

And broke in: "How're ye boys goin' to this yere Aggra- 
vation ? " 

"Jim Pyot's wagon. Before sun-up, Monday." 

" Guess I'll go with ye. Ain't been to a show sence before 
the War. Maw'd think it plumb foolish; but she needn't to 
'spicion it 'tell after. She'll allow I'm a-goin' half-way with 
ye up to the cattle range." A grin passed about, but it was a 
grin of sympathy, 

By lamp-light on Monday morning Mrs. Todson was stirring, 
and quickly and quietly preparing breakfast pone and coffee, 
and watching her husband's departure. " Keep thet comforter 
round yer neck, Paw. Thar's a heavy frost. Don't let him 
forgit his dinner-pail, boys, when he leaves ye at the cross- 
roads." She took her own breakfast, cleared up, and went out 
to the spring for more water in the cold and solemn day-break 
silence. Various wagons creaked past in the semi- darkness of 
the road below ; and now and again a shrill, childish voice came 
up to her in unwonted holiday note. She sighed and wrinkled 
her patient brow as she began, amid crow and twitter of awaken- 
ing bird-life, to sweep her porch. 

Then there rattled and grumbled up to her door a wagon 
drawn by a big" mule and having chairs placed inside, and she 
made out in the dimness the miller, his wife, and their three 
rosy boys. 

" We're a-goin' to the show," said the wife. " We want ye 
to go with us. We got a extry ticket along o' having' so many 
bills pasted on the mill." 

" Me ! Me ! " cried Mandy Todson. Then the great, im- 
memorial reaches of mountain to front and rear smote her with 
a sense of solitariness, new and strangely depressing. " Paw'll 
be away all day." she faltered. " I ain't never allowed to do 
sech a thing " 



1908.] PINK LEMONADE, A BEAR, AND A PRODIGAL 379 

" 'Twon't cost ye a cent," urged the miller, " I been a-hear- 
in' ye ain't never seen a show." 

"Wait for me, then." She was gone but a few moments 
and returned in clean calico, carrying a bag of apples. " The 
sweet kind," she explained, as she settled into her chair and 
the mule jogged on. " The boys'll like 'em." She sighed again, 
unconsciously, when the chubby youngsters gave shy thanks. 

The miller, after a look toward his wife, essayed with the 
instinctive tact of these folk, to drive away his guest's painful 
thought of another son absent and silent these many years. 
" Thet thar Mounseer Alcidy " it was Alcide on the bills 
"ye think he kin reelly fly?" 

"Tain't accordin' to natur'" cautiously "but I ain't a- 
sayin' he kain't. Puts yer head a-whirlin' like a mill-wheel 
all them meracles Jim Pyot's been a-tellin'." 

" We'll soon see," said the miller ; which reflection heartened 
all to such visible enjoyment as the self-contained mountaineer 
permits himself. They jolted over stony stretch, or strained 
uphill, or splashed through ford in the wake of a motley string 
of rusty wagons, reinforced in number at each crossroad; and, 
finally, at the town's approach, by similar processions from the 
country-side everywhere. Stolidity itself was not proof against 
such posters as these on the Court House walls ; such sounds as 
joyous braying of brass bands ; such sights as an elephant drink- 
ing from the creek like any common farm-horse a kangaroo 
stretching his neck unconcernedly above a humble plank fence ! 
One of the miller's boys fell out of the wagon and was rescued 
from under the feet of a camel of the desert. The lion in a 
gilded chariot roared and a leopard answered. The children 
were dazed and mute with joy; the parents loutishly self-con- 
scious ; but the quiet little old woman with them was noticea- 
ble anywhere, so erect her small figure, so keenly comprehen- 
sive her observation of wonders undreamed of, so carefully hid- 
den under decent reserve her amazement and excitement. 

" Seems like a sin to be here 'thout Paw," she said to the 
miller's wife; then she turned to watch some restless jaguars, 
and near the cage there stood her husband, and in dumb sur- 
prise they gazed each at the other. 

" Please my gracious Lordie's earth ! " ejaculated Jim Pyot, 
who was a church member ; and again a grin passed around his 
company, this time one appreciative of a situation. 



380 PINK LEMONADE, A BEAR, AND A PRODIGAL [June, 

Washington Todson was the first to regain the readiness 
which had distinguished him as a soldier long ago. " Let's 
hurry in," said he to his wife. 

The miller pushed a ticket into his hand. "We kain't git 
seats together. You take keer o' Mis' Todson." 

So the old couple climbed the wooden tiers by themselves, 
and found a place in the heterogeneous crowd that filled the 
great tent from canvas to canvas. 

" I'd a-brung ye ef I'd a-thought ye'd a-come," muttered 
Paw presently. 

Most likely she imagined that he had only yielded to temp- 
tation at the crossroads, for she answered, simply : " I'm pow- 
erful glad to find ye. I was worryin' for ye. I ain't never 
been to sech a place before." 

The clamorous blare of herald trumpets drew her notice, 
and in shimmer of tinsel and waving of silken banners and 
prancing of long- tailed horses came trooping in a brilliant pro- 
cession. More than half-a-century of years slipped from her 
spirit and she straightway entered the children's Country of 
Delight, as unsophisticated as one of them. Her small, work- 
hardened hand touched his, massive and bony, and he was in- 
cluded in her enjoyment. These wondrous, glittering knights 
and ladies, and dazzling fairies, and graceful steeds which had 
never seen a plough, emerged for her thrilling from some shin- 
ing world afar, from which she had ignorantly dwelt. She was 
a good rider herself, going often even now on bareback horse 
across the lonely mountain ranges, to salt the cattle. But to fly 
over twelve or more racing coursers, leap through hoops and 
over scarves and perch again infallibly that was riding to make 
one gasp ! The elegant gentleman in tall silk hat, cracking his 
whip, she considered to be rather hard on the grotesquely - 
painted clowns, though these she privately pronounced : " plumb 
fools," and only through sympathy smiled when her husband 
twinkled and chuckled over their jokes. 

"Shucks! they ain't a-goin' to git hurt," he reassured her, 
when she shut her eyes at some trapeze performance, and again 
as the lion-tamer handled his uncertain pets. But equestrians, 
acrobats, trained animals, orchestral music, made such pano- 
ramic joy as furnished retiring place for her spirit in all the 
years that remained. 

"No, we don't want no chewin' gum"; Paw would say to 



1908.] PINK LEMONADE, A BEAR, AND A PRODIGAL 381 

the peddler during intermission, " but send thet thar feller with 
the lemonade," or " peanuts," as it might be. For this was an 
occasion for doing things royally, and Maw recognized it too. 

" Ef we ain't got no teeth, others hez," she remarked plac- 
idly, sipping her rosy drink, " git some gum for the miller's 
boys." 

Pleasures being like poppies spread, cannot in their nature 
endure forever; and there must be an end to even a "Mam- 
moth Aggregation," though it be "the Greatest in the World." 
With dismissing clash and bang and roar and clang of cymbal, 
drum, bassoon, and triangle, the giant tent gave forth its thou- 
sands, jostling, chattering, dispersing. Escaping dismember- 
ment from the crowd, deafening from animal howl and hiss, 
allurement from side-shows, the mountain couple found them- 
selves rumpled and blinking in the outer air. 

" * Biggest Giant on Earth,' " she read wistfully on a sign. 

"I ain't got a cent left," he answered regretfully. 

Then there was sudden wild shouting and stampeding, and 
in terrorized rush the crowd drove them with it. Screams here 
and there reached them : " Look out ! He's loose ! The bear 
the bear ! " 

"Well," said old Washington Todson calmly, "what they 
skeered of ef he is ? Ain't we seen him dancin' to the man's 
fiddle?" 

" It's a wild one, you woodenhead ! " cried a flying drum- 
mer in a plaid suit. 

" I'd like to hit thet feller," said Paw quietly, but his care- 
ful gaze overlooking the intervening throng sought the center 
of disturbance. 

There where the great grizzly had actually escaped by reach- 
ing and lifting the iron bars of his cage, he was now hurling 
himself through the canvas into a crowd of farmers' families 
flying for their lives to shelter. Through the grounds he came, 
growling savagely and rushing at various scattering groups. 
Almost in his path was a gentleman, president of a hunting 
and social club, known to the neighborhood as " The Bear 
Killers." 

Two of the showmen and three keepers in pursuit yelled 
wildly to this gentleman : " Stop him ! Stop him ! " 

" 7 haven't lost any bear," he answered without pause, and 
took instant refuge in a tall wind- mill tower. 



382 PINK LEMONADE, A BEAR, AND A PRODIGAL [June, 

Hither and thither went the furious animal chasing the peo- 
ple into buildings and up on trees and fences. It was very 
probable that at any moment the ludicrous would change into 
tragedy. Accident had brought his farm helpers in their flight 
near Washington Todson, and Jim Pyot had picked up a rifle 
somewhere. 

"Whar ye runnin' to with that gun," asked Paw sternly, 
" when ye'd ought to be a-aimin' it ? " and plucked it from 
him. The bear, just then surveying his field of conquest, turned 
and singling out the old farmer's tall figure, bore down upon 
him in an appallingly rapid shuffle. Todson took deliberate 
aim and the immense, fierce brute reared himself up to give 
battle. 

"Lord God!" breathed Jim Pyot, " ef the ole man misses 
his fust shot ! " 

Then from somewhere in the grove of canvas 'tents sped, on 
a trained pony, an athletic figure, a big cow-puncher from Ok- 
lahoma, and pulled up short, and hissed long and sibilantly, 
in close imitation of a snake at bay. The bear, cowed at the 
sound, dropped again on all-fours and began to run. Immedi- 
ately the cow-boy's lariat whirled and fell over the animal's 
head, and the wise little pony circled him again and again un- 
til he was bound helplessly captive. The big cow-puncher 
leaped to the ground, threw the bridle to a groom, pushed 
through the crowding people, and strode up to Washington 
Todson and Mandy, his wife, standing beside him, very pale 
but perfectly quiet. 

"You mought a-killed him, Paw," he said, "for I know 
yer aim. But, ye see, he was kinder valuable to the show, 
heven' cost them fifteen thousand or, so they says " 

A twinkle akin to his own crossed the sun-burned face into 
which the father looked with startled intentness. Then it was 
replaced by something like the quiver of a moustached lip, as 
its owner lifted the spare little woman from the ground and 
held her tight. " I ain't fitten' for ye to wipe yer shoes on, 
Maw," he whispered, "but I come back after all this time to 
let ye do it if you're a mind." Still holding her to him, he 
clasped his father's hand. "That thrashin' ye giv' me for play- 
in' cards an' swearin' behind the barn made me quit ye, sir . 
but it's stayed with me, keepin' me out o' meaner scrapes^ 
maybe. Anyhow, I've come back an' jes in time, I guess, for 



1 908.] PINK LEMONADE, A BEAR, AND A PRODIGAL 383 

a grizzly's a mighty ugly cuss to tackle. But, look a-here, 
Maw's as white as chalk ! " 

He was off for a jug of pink lemonade into which, behind 
the tent, he surreptitiously emptied the contents of a small 
flask. " They need it," he muttered, " after the bar and me ! " 
Then he put her into a surrey with horse comparatively swift. 
''Don't talk to me about no miller's wagon. I'm drivin' now, 
an* I ain't used to mules lately. Ef ye say another word, I'll 
buy the rig, 'stid o* hirin' it. Don't you worry about expense, 
I've done well out on the plains and got money invested. But 
I just had to come back layin' awake nights a-dreamin' o* 
Glassy Creek tumblin' down the mounting, an' the chestnuts a- 
droppin' crack ! crack ! An' Maw on the porch soundin' the 
dinner-horn " ; and he kissed his mother's cheek in the sight 
of the people. 

So it happened that the equipage in which sat Maw, shame- 
faced and profoundly happy, led, this time, the train of promis- 
cuous vehicles carrying back to their mountain solitudes the 
weaned, well- contented rustic folk. With them went memory of 
such wonders as would recreate them after many a long, laborious 
day. And at the tail-end of the procession, Jim Pyot, tooting 
on a tin horn by way of celebration, stopped long enough to 
remark thoughtfully : " We've shore hed a mighty interestin' 
time, what with the Aggravation, the animiles, the bar breakin' 
loose, and Jeff Todson comin' home again to his Paw an* 
specially to his Maw." 




THE CELIBACY OF THE PRIESTHOOD. 

BY ABBE FELIX KLEIN. 

DO not believe that celibacy is essential for Prot- 
estant clergymen. The idea which their church 
represents to them is not that which the Catholic 
Church represents to us, nor are their functions 
the same. The minister does not offer the sacri- 
fice of the Mass; he does not hear confessions. In his sermon 
he preaches the lesson of the Gospel, but interpreted in his 
own name and not with the authority of an apostolic church. 
Ministers seem to us like laymen laymen preoccupied with re- 
ligious matters, learned and eager to assist their brothers in 
approaching the Lord, but laymen still, men who continue to 
be concerned very legitimately with the business and in- 
terests of this world, with the ordinary distractions and anxie- 
ties of family life. It is for this they are often commended, 
and because of this comparisons are frequently drawn to our 
disadvantage. And surely, in speaking thus, I do not desire 
in any way to minimize their role. I esteem the many among 
them whom I know too highly, to hold against them an un- 
generous opinion. But their role, honorable though it be, is 
not the role of the Catholic priest, or at best it represents it 
but in part, and not the part most important and far-reaching. 
In a higher degree and in a sense more exact, the priest 
wishes to be he believes he is at once the instrument of God 
and the instrument of man. Our ideal far short of which, I 
admit, we priests fall only too often our ideal is that which 
St. Paul explains in terms capable both of rebuking pride and 
of exalting courage; in the first Epistle to the Corinthians he 
says : " Let a man so account of us as of the ministers of 
Christ, and the dispensers of the mysteries of God." And in 
the second Epistle he says again; "For Christ therefore we 
are ambassadors, God as it were exhorting by us." In an ideal 
sense, the priest does not belong to himself, he is the "man of 
God," as St. Paul calls Timothy, and he is the man for his 
brethren. He could refuse this honor, but having accepted it, 



1908.] THE CELIBACY OF THE PRIESTHOOD 385 

he cannot renounce its obligations. " For whereas I was free 
as to all," says St. Paul to the Corinthians, " I made myself 
the servant of all, that I might gain the more. ... To 
the weak I became weak, that I might gain the weak. I be- 
came all things to all men, that I might save all. . . . But 
I most gladly will spend and be spent myself for your souls; 
although loving you more, I be loved less." 

It is plain that a devotion so absolute is hard to reconcile 
with the duties of a husband, of a father of a family; it is 
plain that if priests are to fulfil the duties of their calling they 
must have large freedom, complete detachment from temporal 
blessings; to them are specially applicable the words of St. 
Paul addressed to laymen : " But if thou take a wife, thou hast 
not sinned. And if a virgin marry, she hath not sinned ; 
nevertheless, such shall have tribulation of the flesh. . . . 
He that is without a wife, is solicitous for the things that be- 
long to the Lord, how he may please God. But he that is 
with a wife, is solicitous for the things of the world, how he 
may please his wife ; and he is divided." 

Thus, then, the priest has been consecrated to glorify God, 
consecrated to save man. He will be so much the better fitted 
to fill this two-fold mission the more detached he is from every 
earthly bond, especially from the obligations that are laid upon 
the husband and the father of a family. Such is the teaching of 
St. Paul ; such is the teaching of Catholicism. Within its terms 
it is not easily attacked. It does not say that celibacy is abso- 
lutely essential to priests, but it affirms that celibacy is much 
more consistent with their calling and their duties. 

It is unnecessary here to treat in detail the subject of the 
discipline of the Church on this point. The important features 
are well known. Neither Christ nor the Apostles imposed celi- 
bacy as a condition for the priesthood. But if, on the one hand, 
the New Testament proclaims the sanctity of marriage and pro- 
tects its indissolubility by the most severe laws; on the other 
hand, it is plain that our Lord and St. Paul extol virginity as 
the more perfect state. Either as a result of this preference 
clearly expressed, or because they believed it more suitable, the 
most celebrated doctors of the Church in the first three centu- 
ries all lived as celibates. At this time only one doctor of the 
Church was married, and (possibly for this reason) he was the 
most severe of all, the priest Tertullian ; but his marriage took 
VOL. LXXXVII. 25 



386 THE CELIBACY OF THE PRIESTHOOD [June, 

place before his ordination as priest. At a very early period it 
was understood that marriage was not permitted after ordina- 
tion, and the greater number of those who had been married 
were separated from their wives. The first Councils which form- 
ally forbade the marriage of priests were the Council of Elvira 
(305) in the West, and the Councils of Ancyrus and Neo-Cesarea 
(314) in the East. 

The discipline was not the same (it is still different) in the 
two divisions of the Christian Church. 

In the East, after various changes, two hundred bishops as- 
sembled at Constantinople in the famous Council in Trullo, in 
691, authorized the ordination of married men without exacting 
separation from their wives. This is the rule which exists in 
the Orient among the Uniat Catholics. This rule will be found 
in some Sicilian villages, where the Greek rite is used. The 
same is true of the Ruthenes of Gallacia, the Melchite Greeks, 
the Maronites of Mount Lebanon, and the United Armenians. 
Celibacy is imposed upon monks, but the secular clergy, with 
the exception of the bishops, may marry before receiving the 
major orders ; once a priest, however, he may no longer marry, 
even should his wife die; so, it is said, the Oriental priests 
take great care of their wives, knowing that they cannot be 
replaced. The clergy of these countries are, in the opinion of 
many, inferior or certainly not superior to those of other coun- 
tries. 

In the West celibacy has been the rule since the fourth cen- 
tury. At the height of the Middle Ages efforts repeatedly 
made by Popes and by Councils make it evident that the rule 
was laid down, but that it was not always enforced. In the 
ninth and the tenth centuries disregard for the law of celibacy 
was at its worst. In the eleventh century Gregory VII. tri- 
umphed over the laxness of the times, and enforced a clerical 
morality in stricter accord with the text of the law. Since that 
time the practice has known some lapses, especially in the fif- 
teenth and .the sixteenth centuries; but the law is no longer 
disputed, and since the Council of Trent not only has it been 
maintained in theory, but it has been observed in practice; ex- 
ceptions are few and are certainly fewer to-day than at any 
other time in the Church's history. 

This law of clerical celibacy will continue to be maintained 
and observed. Everything warrants this conclusion, whether we 



1908.] THE CELIBACY OF THE PRIESTHOOD 387 

consider the attitude of the authorities of the Church, and the 
sentiment of the faithful, or whether we consider the question 
in itself. 

The Church, of course, will remain mistress of her discipline, 
and, what she has not refused to the clergy of the Orient, she 
may possibly, taking into account climate or race, grant to the 
clergy of other countries of South America, for example, or 
of South Africa, or of the Far East, if the clergy of the black 
or the yellow race demand it. 

The Church may always modify, according to the varying 
needs of times and places, all that which she has herself estab- 
lished and the law of clerical celibacy was her own decree 
things different and apart from those she has received from 
Christ. But nothing inclines one to believe or to desire that 
she will ever abandon the practice of clerical celibacy. 

Experience proves that wherever celibacy exists, and where 
it is generally practiced, it also increases the influence and 
prestige of the priest. And it is most significant that in Chris- 
tian societies, like the so-called Orthodox Church in Russia, for 
example, which admit both a [married and an unmarried clergy, 
the latter far surpass the former in the confidence and esteem 
of the people. 

Finally, reason is in harmony with experience. From the 
material point of view it is plain that the unmarried priest is 
much less dependent on economic necessities, holds himself in 
greater readiness for duties or emergencies, is, in a word, more 
adjustable than the clergyman charged with a family, concerned 
for the health of his wife, the career of his sons, the marriage 
of his daughters. " Happy will those be," wrote Perreyve at 
twenty years of age, " who are not burdened with the things 
of this world, when need of activity and freedom arises."* 

If there is a celibacy which is selfish and narrow, there is 
another which is generously altruistic and is capable of raising 
those who are worthy of it to the summit of moral grandeur. 

The family is admirable; but he works in its best interests, 
who establishes by his precepts and the example of his life, 
the principles of abnegation, of fidelity, of chastity, without 
which the family would be fatally corrupted. The transmission 
of physical life is unquestionably a great office; it is typical of 
the Creator's power. But to transmit or to restore the life of 

* Gratry, Henry Perteyve, p. 38. 



388 THE CELIBACY OF THE PRIESTHOOD [June, 

the spirit is a higher office, and they need not envy the joys 
of paternity who have awakened souls to the love of the true 
and beautiful, who have extinguished hatred in a heart, or 
who have restored confidence to the despairing. 

And, if it is true that there is nothing sweeter, nothing 
more powerful than love, it is also true that the union of soul 
to soul is superior to the union of the senses, and that, to use 
the expression of Daniel Cortes, it would be the ideal to be 
united, as are the palm-trees not by the roots but by the 
crowning tops non radice sed vertice. 

The priest worthy of his vocation has no need of our com- 
miseration because the joys of domestic life are denied to him. 
If his life brings him hours of struggle, hours of suffering, he 
accepts them courageously, knowing full well that nothing 
great is accomplished in this world without sacrifice. But the 
priest has his own joys that must not be despised, his joys of 
the spirit and of the heart. These joys make him the opposite 
of the sad, depressing creature, cold, chilling the atmosphere 
about him, that he is often represented to be beneath the aus- 
terity of his black gown. 

If he does not himself raise a family, he keeps the home 
which he received from God, and he often remains more faith- 
ful to it than those who find in marriage other attachments. 
Is it not a real picture, at least in France, that of the country 
parsonage, or the modest town apartment, where the young 
priest lives with his parents in an intimacy in which, by a rare 
and touching union, veneration is blended with tenderness ? 
But he does not know, it will be said, the deep joys, the tender 
anxieties of having children of his own, to rear them, guide 
them, follow them, to feel their love, to live life anew in them. 
I admit that this is one of his sacrifices. But still there is 
pride and happiness for the priest of the parish in seeing 
the children whom he has baptized grow up around him, to 
whom he has taught the Catechism, whom he has prepared 
for Communion, whom he has sustained in perseverance, con- 
soled in bereavement, blessed on their marriage-day ; and of 
these a number, great in proportion to his merits, will preserve 
for him a filial attachment. And as for the priest in the pro- 
fessor's chair, there is no love in the world which he would 
prefer to that of his pupils when they are at once his friends, 
his disciples, his sons. 



1908.] THE CELIBACY OF THE PRIESTHOOD 389 

Some will say that friendship for the priest is not possible. 
On the contrary, in certain respects it becomes more natural for 
him than for other men, since he stands apart from that ex- 
clusiveness which conjugal love carries with it. Friendship for 
his brothers in the priesthood, for people of the world who 
share his ideas or his work, for certain families which owe him 
their happiness these are among the many legitimate ways 
which open up large before him, without mentioning the ordi- 
nary friendships by which, as Montaigne says, " one is loved by 
his friends because he is himself, and loves his friends because 
they are themselves.'* 

But love for persons does not drain all the powers of the 
heart of man, and perhaps the strongest and most noble love 
is that which attaches itself, over and above individuals, to 
causes which interest all of mankind. Pasteur, who put all 
his great, simple heart into loving his family, also put it com- 
pletely into scientific researches from which he hoped to al- 
leviate human misery. The lady of their fancy did not im- 
pose upon knights-errant exploits more remote and more peril- 
ous than the magnetic attraction of the Pole imposes upon 
the Andres, the Nordenskiolds, the Amundsens. How many 
artists suffer with longing for the realization of their ideal ! 
How many citizens for the liberty of their country ! How 
many humanitarians for the emancipation and progress of the 
race! 

The cause which has drawn a young man to the priesthood, 
and which becomes more and more dear to him as he grows in 
grace, is above all, the most sublime, the most alluring. If 
many of our contemporaries, some of whom regard the life of 
the Catholic priest with pity, some with horror, could enter 
one of our large seminaries and could hear there the many ex- 
pressions of sincere love for the people, for science, for prog- 
ress, these cavilers might not embrace the religious convic- 
tions of this pure young manhood, but they could not resist lov- 
ing it. 

I have heard the confident expressions of these young semi- 
narists and these young priests ; in my day I took part in them : 
all harked back to these words of Christ : " I have come that 
they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly." 
And no word of our Lord had more power to arouse our en- 
thusiasm than this : " I am come to cast fire on the earth ; and 



390 THE CELIBACY OF THE PRIESTHOOD [June, 

what will I but that it be kindled." We dreamed indeed of 
kindling this fire, of making the world glow with more warmth, 
more light; and our hearts were aflame with this burning ex- 
hortation of Pere Gratry : 

I^ook out upon these squares, these streets, see in this the 
image of the great mass of human beings which cover the 
earth. listen to the mighty murmur. Well, beneath this 
mass, this very day fire lurks and writhes. The fire of Hea- 
ven, the fire of eternal life is placed there, and it carries away 
souls one by one. Will it ever break forth ? Will it envelope 
with its flame the entire world ? Happy those who hope for 
it. And happier those who bring it about, whose soul is a 
flame, who, coursing through the crowd, light anew the ex- 
tinguished torches and multiply the fires of humankind ! 
Dullness, doubt, and darkness would soon be banished from 
the face of the earth if the number of fiery souls were to in- 
crease ! That wealth regenerate be a source of supply and 
not an abyss of destruction ; that debasing sensuality be 
transformed by the passion for good, and especially by great 
love ; that peace and not war be the honor and glory of peo- 
ples ; in a single word, that a Christian nation do its duty, 
and I see the flame burst forth and the force of the fire fill the 
world and uplift it ! * 

In order to complete the picture of great loves which con- 
sume the heart of the priest and make him the antithesis of 
the selfish and the unhappy, I should speak of the love which 
cannot exist without them, which sustains all others because 
they can only exist in it; I should speak of the love of God, 
the God who has transformed Himself into Christ to get pos- 
session of our hearts. I should speak of the love of the priest 
for Jesus Christ, of his zeal in making Him known, in making 
Him loved, of his joy in following Him in the Gospel, of being 
united with Him in Communion, of feeling Him live in his 
heart, and of feeling alive in Him. But I will hold myself in 
bounds by quoting the impassioned hymn of one of the first 
priests, one of the greatest : 

" Who then will separate us from the love of Christ? " wrote 
St. Paul to the Romans. " Shall tribulation ? or distress ? or 
famine? or nakedness? or danger? or persecution? or the sword ? 
. . . But in all these things we overcome because of Him 

* Gratry, De la Connaissance de I ' Ame, Epilogue, versus finem. 



1908.] THE INDEFATIGABLE CHRIST 391 

that hath loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, 
nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor might, 
nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to 
separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our 
Lord." 

God and Christ; the great causes which work for the hap- 
piness of mankind, their friends, their spiritual sons, their earthly 
family. If it be true that the heart of the priest may quench 
its thirst at all these sources of love, I have no fear that it will 
dry and wither in the lonely selfishness to which Michelet and 
many others see it condemned. It is not indeed to the conse- 
crated priest that is applicable the mighty word of St. John : 
" He that loveth not, abideth in death." 



THE INDEFATIGABLE CHRIST. 

[INSCRIBED TO ONE WHO HAS GONE OUT FROM US.] 
BY CORNELIUS CLIFFORD. 

Go where thou wilt, His Heart shalt find thee out; 

Be thou in quest of wealth, or power, or fame. 

Above life's tumult shall He call thy name; 

His care shall compass thee with grief about; 

And thou shalt know Him in thine hours of doubt, 

When faith shall pierce thy darkness like a flame. 

O dull of sense to Time's imperious claim, 

His love shall prove thy rainfall after drought! 

For He shall come in many a blinding shower 

To dye thy sick leaves to a healthier hue, 

Till the scant years oi youth's once ample dower 

Requicken with late fruitage rare to view; 

Yea, He must shape thee by thine own heart's power, 

And fashion all this ruined life anew. 

Seton Hall, South Orange, N. J. 



IRew Boohs. 

Many causes have contributed re- 

THE LAW OF CHRISTIAN cently to fix the attention, not 
MARRIAGE. alone of ourselves, but also of non- 

Catholics, on the marriage laws of 

the Church. Among these causes are an awakening of the 
public conscience to the evils of divorce; the efforts made by 
Episcopalians to establish more rigid legislation or practice 
among themselves; a change in the law of New York State 
regarding the granting of marriage licenses ; a cause celebre laid 
before the Holy See. Finally, and most important of all, the 
Holy See has by the Encyclical Ne Temere introduced some 
momentous changes in the discipline of the Church, which re- 
quire to be thoroughly understood by the clergy and laity of 
this country. The moment is propitious for the publication of 
a thoroughly accurate, magisterial, clear exposition of the new 
legislation and the changes which it introduces. 

A volume which solicits the honor of supplying the need 
is The Law of Christian Marriage* from the pen of Father 
Devine, C.P. It contains about three hundred and fifty pages 
and is a popular presentation of the subject of matrimony as 
treated in the ordinary seminary text-book. The bare theolog- 
ical doctrine is enriched with a copious interfusion of pious reflec- 
tions and exhortations. It will, no doubt, be appreciated by a 
certain class of seminarians who are ready to welcome as a 
friend in need an author who serves up to them in the ver- 
nacular, and in compendious form, the knowledge which, other- 
wise, they would be obliged to draw laboriously from their 
Latin authors. The layman who has a turn for theological 
investigation will also find the book a fund of information and 
edification. It does not, however, treat exhaustively the cru- 
cial points such, for instance, as the Pauline privilege which 
give birth, in practice and in controversy, to perplexities that 
frequently send us to our authorities. Father Devine's com- 
mentary of the Ne Temere is long but rather desultory, and 
does not deal sufficiently with many of the points which de- 
mand elucidation. 

A more systematic and fuller study of the recent legisla- 

* The Law of Christian Marriage According to the Teaching and Discipline of the Catholic 
Church. By Rev. Arthur Devine, C.P. New York : Benziger Brothers. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 393 

tion is to be found in a pamphlet reproducing the interesting 
and useful article published in The American Ecclesiastical Re- 
view, by the Rev. Father McNicholas, O.P.* The main features 
of the Pope's decree are correctly and sufficiently explained. To 
a few particular statements, however, we feel obliged to place 
interrogation points. For instance, on page 19 we read: "If 
a priest is to sign the engagement contract, ordinarily it should 
be the pastor of the prospective bride; but the signature of 
the pastor of either party will make a valid contract." This 
seems to imply that the signature of a pastor who is not the 
pastor of either party will not suffice. Yet the decree, S. Congr. 
Cone., March 28, 1908, declares that any pastor can sign validly 
in his own parish. Again, it is stated (p. 5) that the decree 
admits diversity of legislation regarding clandestine mixed mar- 
riages and the matrimonial unions of heretics among themselves. 
The thought may be correct ; but the expression of it is hardly 
compatible with Art. XI. (iii.) : " Non- Catholics, whether bap- 
tized or unbaptized, who contract among themselves are no- 
where bound to observe the Catholic form of betrothal or 
marriage." Finally (p. 22) regarding the status of the priest 
or bishop who performs the marriage, Father McNicholas states : 
" The ordinary or parish priest must not be suspended or ex- 
communicated by name." The Papal document reads that the 
priest or the ordinary must not be excommunicated or sus- 
pended by name, by a public decree (nisi publico decreto nomi- 
natim fuerit excommunicati vel ab officio suspensi). A person 
may be excommunicated or suspended nominatim yet not pub- 
licly. There are a few other spots on which a professional 
canonist might quarrel with the language; but they are of 
no great consequence. 

The fact is that the new law has given rise to a swarm of 
difficulties ; and only a highly trained expert canonist can walk 
with sureness amid the many stumbling-blocks that crop out 
through the text of Ne Temere, which from its conciseness in 
many places demands the utmost care in its exposition. Con- 
sidering the grave interests that hang upon the possession by 
the clergy of a perfect acquaintance with every detail of the 
subject it is a matter of general congratulation that an explana- 

* The New Marriage Legislation. By John T. McNicholas, O.P., S.T.L. American 
Ecclesiastical Review, Philadelphia : The Dolphin Press. 



394 NEW BOOKS [June, 

tion of the new law appears from an expert canonist, who, be- 
sides his academic status, enjoys the authority of his position 
as Consultor of the Commission for the codification of Canon 
Law. 

A book of about one hundred and thirty pages, by Dr. 
Creagh,* presents a methodical and complete explanation of 
the late decree. In an interesting introduction the author sets 
forth the relation of the present law to former practice a re- 
lationship trom which considerable light is to be obtained for 
the interpretation of some of the present provisions. From 
the common law of England and of the United States he draws 
instances of similar developments. This feature of Dr. Creagh's 
work will, no doubt, be of considerable interest to non-Catho- 
lics, and enable them to perceive that the genius of law pre- 
sides over the Church's legislation. The new law, he shows, 
is not a mere addition to the general code, but a unification of 
it. To make this clear he gives a historical sketch of the 
formulation of the Ne Temere, the reasons which prompted it, 
and the legal evolution from which it sprung. Then the con- 
tents of the document are discussed under the following heads : 
Engagements; Marriage valid licit; Registration; Persons Af- 
fected by the Law. 

The work achieves the purpose expressed in the brief pref- 
ace. It is a short but comprehensive and clear commentary on 
the Papal document. Everywhere the author shows himself to 
be on his own ground in dealing with the many delicate ques- 
tions of this difficult subject. He evinces a constant preoccu- 
pation to forestall every problem that may arise in practice. 
Consequently, both clergy and laity will find the pamphlet am- 
ply sufficient to furnish them with all requisite instruction. A 
feature that the clergy will especially welcome is the frequent 
citation of synods and councils held in the United States; and 
the many references to diocesan statutes. The latest decisions, 
too, of the Congregation of the Council are recorded ; and there 
are also many rectifications of incorrect interpretations that have 
already got into print. Finally, Dr. Creagh appends a full se- 
lect bibliography which will be invaluable to those who wish 
to make a further study of the subject. 

* A Commentary on the Decree " Ne Temere." By the Very Rev. John T. Creagh, 
J.U.D., LL.B., S.T.L., Professor of Canon Law and Associate Professor of Jurisprudence. 
Baltimore: Furst Company. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 395 

Three new volumes of the series 
LIVES OF THE SAINTS. Les Saints* appear, which, like 

all of that collection, are at once 

books of edification and valuable historical studies. The life of 
St. Peter Damian, by Dom Reginald Biron, is an attractive por- 
trait of the saint and the great ecclesiastical statesman, against 
a background faithfully representing the troubled times in which 
he lived. The Martyrs of Gorcum reads like a page from Irish 
history during the Cromwellian and Williamite persecutions. 
It tells the story of nineteen priests and friars who were cap- 
tured by the reckless and brutal captain of Dutch Lutherans, 
and lieutenant of William of Orange, Count William de la 
Marck, and by his orders, with circumstances of great cruelty, 
hanged in a barn belonging to a ruined abbey in 1557, during 
the wars of the Dutch against Spain. 

The scantiness of the data hitherto available for the life of 
the second St. Melania resulted in leaving her story to be 
treated somewhat as an episode in that of her grandmother and 
namesake. The studious tastes of Cardinal Rampolla, favored 
by some happy circumstances, have brought to light material 
to furnish a complete biography of this great Roman patrician 
lady who had hitherto been rather overshadowed, thanks to the 
letters of St. Jerome, by Marcella, Paula, Eustochia, and Fabiola. 
When nuncio at Madrid, Cardinal Rampolla discovered, in the 
library of the Escurial, a manuscript biography of St. Melania, 
which dated from the year 954. In 1905 the Cardinal pub- 
lished in Italian his Life of St. Melania, based on the manu- 
script supplemented by the previously known data. Following 
that work, and setting the story of the saint in a brilliant 
sketch of the Roman world at the beginning of the fifth cen- 
tury, M. Goyau has produced a biography which may be prof- 
itably read both as a work of spirituality and as a contribu- 
tion to ecclesiastical history. 

While one school of writers, who have been conspicuous 
leaders in the Gaelic revival, have devoted their efforts chiefly 
to a resuscitation of the heroes and ideals of Celtic paganism, 
an Irish priest has been happily inspired to turn to the ac- 
count of religion the newly- created interest of the Irish people 

* St. Pierre Damien. Par Dom Reginald Biron, O.S.B. Les Martyrs dc Gorcum. Par 
Hubert Meuffels, C.M. Sainte Mllanie. Par Georges Goyau. Paris : Victor Lecoffre. 



39$ NEW BOOKS [June, 

in their early history, by giving them a popular, yet reliable, 
life of Ireland's great patroness, St. Brigid, the Mary of the 
Gael.* The biographer has kept close to the best authorities 
and tells the story of St. Brigid in a way to interest as well as 
edify. But why did he not take for the subject of his illustra- 
tions ancient Irish ruins or the places associated with St. Brigid's 
memory, instead of some modern convents which, to whatever 
else they witness, reflect but little distinction on the ideals that 
prevail to-day in monastic architecture? 

A new edition of the English version of Mgr. Bougaud's 
splendid life of St. Vincent de Paul has just been issued. f In the 
judgment of French critics of both kinds, literary and spiritual, 
Mgr. Bougaud's work was judged to be a model biography ; 
and it had the good fortune to find a competent translator. 

Another work which in its English dress has become one 
of our spiritual classics is The Fathers of the Desert t \ by the 
Countess Hahn-Hahn, to which Father Dalgairns prefixed a 
lengthy introduction that, as an essay on the spiritual life of 
the first six centuries, merits the distinction of being an inde- 
pendent book instead of a complementary addition to another. 
That the publishers have brought out a new issue of the work 
is a sign that its excellence is appreciated. 

Leaving the muse of history, under 

LORD OF THE WORLD, whose inspiration he produced his 
By Benson. trilogy of the English Reforma- 

tion, Father Benson assumes the 

apocalyptic role to unveil, by the help of his imagination, the 
events and conditions that are to mark the close of the world's 
drama. Reclaims that his book is a terribly sensational one. 
He certainly does project the lines of his principles to a very 
sensational point ; and if one had any reason to be convinced 
that he is not assuming without warrant the mantle of the seer, 
the book might well cause depression and dismay. The postu- 

* St. Brigid, Patroness of Ireland. By Rev. J. A. Knowles, O.S.A. Dublin : Browne & 
Nolan. 

t History of St. Vincent de Paul, Founder of the Congregation of the Mission and of the 
Sisters of Charity. By Mgr. Bougaud, Bishop of Laval. Translated by Rev. J. Brady. 
C.M. New York: Longmans, Green & Co. 

\ The Fathers of the Desert. Translated from the German of the Countess Hahn-Hahn. 
By Emily F. Bowden. New York : Benziger Brothers. 

Lord of the World. By Robert Hugh Benson. New York : Dodd, Mead & Co. 



I 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 397 

late from which Father Benson starts is that there remains no 
hope that the Church will reconquer the world. On the con- 
trary, the principles antagonistic to her will rapidly extend their 
influence over the world, till Catholicism, the last surviving re- 
ligion, shall have shrunk to a mere helpless handful of believers 
in the city of Rome ; whence it will finally be driven to bring 
its course to an end on the same ground where it first rose 
into being. 

Father Benson's story might be described as the apotheosis 
of humanitarianism. Man's mad worship of scientific progress, 
his boundless conquests in discovery and invention, have led 
him on and on from height to height in material civilization, 
until time and space seem almost annihilated. We are in a 
world of underground dwellings, of artificial light that obliterates 
the line between night and day. The supernatural, the belief 
in a life beyond, is utterly ejected; a life of service here to 
humanity and, in the end, euthanasia, is the destiny and ambi- 
tion of man. This condition of things is largely due to the 
baneful influence of Freemasonry which has obtained world-wide 
domination. Out of this federation emerges a powerful person- 
age, gifted with a personality which wins all hearts. He makes 
his debut as a promoter of universal brotherhood, a federator 
of the world, the prince of peace. This mysterious individual 
flits from country to country with a celerity which astonishes 
even a generation accustomed to travel in volors at the rate of 
three hundred miles an hour. At length, from the headquarters 
of this personage in London, the decree goes forth that the 
Pope and the College of Cardinals must be destroyed, and with 
them the last vestiges of the Catholic Church. From Rome, 
where, by the way, the last and discrowned descendants of 
Europe's royal houses are passing an empty, protesting exist- 
ence, the Pope and Cardinals escape to take refuge in the little 
city of Nazareth. Here the Church makes her last heroic stand 
against the world and the devil. Amid the blare of trumpets, 
the crash of thunder, and the tremendous physical portents that 
shall issue in the Dies ircz t dies ilia, the Church passes from 
earth to heaven, this world disappears and the glory thereof. 

Father Benson's imagination revels in the development of 
circumstantial detail, as he pictures the ideas and material sur- 
roundings of this future generation, which he seems to place not 
very far from the present day ; and in the boldness with which 




398 NEW BOOKS [June, 

he conjectures the trend of invention he leaves Jules Verne in 
the shade. 

The most interesting question that the book raises in one's 
mind is : Does Father Benson really entertain this gloomy view 
on the outcome of the present conflict between faith and un- 
belief ? And, if so, does he represent any widespread opinion? 
Some ancient exegeses which have declined in favor seem to 
guide him in his casting of the Church's horoscope ; and he 
seems to have overlooked the text that there shall be one fold 
and one Shepherd. If any reader should become infected with 
Father Benson's pessimism, we recommend as a tonic Dr. Barry's 
article in the Dublin Review for April, where the conviction is 
expressed that the Church Universal possesses the divine vital- 
ity which will enable it to adjust itself to the approaching con- 
ditions, and we "need not despair of its leavening with true 
life the democracy that is looking for guidance, that will not 
always groan beneath monopolies, nor dream of Socialist Uto- 
pias bounded by the grave." 

In a little tract of about a hun- 

SOCIAL QUESTIONS AND dred small pages * the late Profes- 
THE DUTY OF CATHOLICS. sor Devas has given a useful ex- 
position of the problem from 

which Socialism draws its vitality ; and indicates the reasons 
why the solution that is proposed by Socialism is dangerous 
and impracticable. But, he points out, Socialism can only be 
met by taking the task out of its hands, and bringing about 
social reform on Christian principles. As a basis for his sug- 
gestions, he summarizes the teachings of Leo XIII. on the sub- 
ject. He insists strongly that the task cannot be evaded ; it 
is folly to plead that every step towards reform is a step to- 
wards Socialism : " The days of mere patronage, or paternalism 
men's homes and fortunes, work and wages dependent on the 
good-will of others those days are over, and the days of dem- 
ocratic equality are at hand." 

Though we dissent profoundly from 

NIETZSCHE. the appreciation of Nietzsche ex- 

By Mencken. pressed in this volume,! we have 

to thank the author for his keen 

* Social Questions and the Duty of Catholics. Catholic Truth Society. New York: Ben- 
ziger Brothers. 

t The Philosophy of Friedrick Nietzsche. By Henry L. Mencken. Boston : Luce & Co. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 399 

analysis and clear statement of the ideas and principles that 
characterize the philosophy of the Superman. This philosophy, 
he observes, has attained a wide diffusion ; and it may be traced 
in writings of a multitude of men whom the public would hard- 
ly associate in any way with Nietzsche. Mr. Bernard Shaw? 
Yes. And Henrik Ibsen ? Probably. But Theodore Roose- 
velt ! Undoubtedly, says Mr. Mencken. It is impossible, he 
claims, that Roosevelt should have formulated his philosophy 
of the strenuous life, without a multitude of thoughts borrowed, 
consciously or unconsciously, from the German philosopher; 
" in all things fundamental the Rooseveltian philosophy and the 
Nietzschean philosophy are identical." In support of his state- 
ment Mr. Mencken presents copious extracts from The Stren- 
uous Life which, certainly, sound very like the tenor of " Thus 
spake Zarathustra." Commenting on some of the passages 
quoted, the writer says: 

There is no denial of the law of natural selection in this 
thunderous sermon of the American Dionysian there is no 
meek acceptance of the Christian doctrine that self-effacement 
is noble. " The nation that has trained itself to a career of 
unwarlike and isolated ease is bound, in the end, to go down 
before other nations which have not lost the manly and adven- 
turous qualities." There is no acceptance of the doctrine 
that all men are equal before the L,ord. On the contrary, 
4 'many of our people are utterly unfit for self-government." 
There is no glorifying of death and degeneration, " the hang- 
man's metaphysic." " Weakness is the greatest of crimes." 
There is no worship of the fetich of peace and brotherly love. 
"The over- civilized man, who has lost the great fighting, 
masterful virtues "is to him abomination. "Thank God 
for the iron in the blood of our fathers ! ' ' Could there be 
a more direct and earnest statement of the Dionysian creed ? 
Could there be a more obvious paraphrasing of Der Antichrist f 

The author adds : 

Mr. Roosevelt has a pew in a Christian church, but his 
whole attitude of mind is essentially and violently unchristian. 
If you don't believe it, compare The Strenuous Life and the 
Sermon on the Mount. Is it possible to imagine two docu- 
ments which say " Nay " to each other more riotously, vehe- 
mently, and unmistakably ? 



400 NEW BOOKS [June, 

This is a formidable charge. No man is absolutely consis- 
tent; and notwithstanding his predilection for some " Diony- 
sian " ideals, Mr. Roosevelt retains some Christian principles 
which are the contradictories of the Nietzschean doctrine. 

That doctrine is summed up concisely by Mr. Mencken. 
Its fundamental principles are : The only inherent impulse in 
man, as in all living beings, is the will to live, and to con- 
quer all that makes life difficult. All schemes of morality are 
nothing more than efforts to codify expedients found useful by 
the race in the course of its struggle for existence. All these 
codes are essentially man-made ; they must change with chang- 
ing conditions ; and any code which retains its permanence and 
authority after the conditions which gave rise to it have changed 
hinders the progress of mankind. Religions, which have for 
their main object the protection of such codes, are inimical to 
the well-being of man. Especially is this true of Christianity 
with its ideals of humility, self-sacrifice, and brotherhood. The 
future of the race depends on the resuscitation of the old Greek 
ideal not the pale, reflective ideal expressed in Apollo, but 
the full-blooded Dionysian, living only to satisfy to the full all 
the instincts of boisterous, self-centered life. 

It is only too true that, with the spread of infidelity and 
irreligion these ideas are gaining ground. They are to be 
found in the novels and the problem plays most talked about 
and read. It has been repeatedly urged against Spencerians, 
Agnostics, and Positivists, who claim that the Christian moral 
code and ideals can be transferred to and maintained on a 
purely scientific basis, that Christian morality is an essential 
growth from the religion from which it sprang and must per- 
ish if dissevered from its root. This opinion is rapidly passing 
from the realm of theory to become the statement of a fact. 
The cause of the evil indicates the only efficient antidote. 

In a series of moral instructions, or 

THE WORLD IN WHICH " Lessons," on the errors and false 
WE LIVE. principles that pervade the world 

By Meyer. to-day, Father Meyer addresses 

himself to Catholics * for the pur- 
pose of setting them on their guard against falling under the 
influences of the false principles and ideals which the spread of 

* The World in Which We Live. By R. J. Meyer, SJ. St. Louis : B. Herder. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 401 

unbelief is rapidly propagating. The general scope of the in- 
structions is to draw sharply the antagonism between the spirit 
of Christ and the spirit of the world in which we live the 
spirit of unbelief, rationalism, materialism, the worship of wealth 
and pleasure; in short, the banishment of the supernatural out 
of life. 

Father Meyer speaks forcibly; and enters into practical de- 
tail. His picture of present evils cannot be gainsaid ; though, 
perhaps, here and there, he weakens his position by overstate- 
ment. In many places a captious reader might say that the 
picture represents a society where the principles of French athe- 
ism are dominant, rather than the world in which Americans 
live. 

The Young Malefactor * is a rather 

THE YOUNG MALEFACTOR, remarkable thesis dealing with the 
By Travis. criminal in the embryo. An in- 

troduction is contributed by Judge 
Lindsey, of the Denver Juvenile Court. 

Mr. Travis considers the juvenile delinquent as the result of 
three principal causes : environment, heredity, and will ; and sug- 
gests as a preventative method the improvement of the home. 
He divides " homes " into three classes : the incompetent, the 
borderlanders' (those on the borderland between dependence 
and delinquency), and the vicious homes. The condition of the 
first two classes of homes he believes can be bettered by state 
interference ; for the children of vicious parents, however, he 
believes the substitution of "foster homes" is the only cure. 

Mr. Travis, to a certain extent, refutes the contention of 
the Italian school of criminologists. He finds, with regard to 
first court offenders, not over two per cent abnormal and not 
one per cent criminal by nature, and asserts only " two per 
cent are atavistic, in the sense implied by the Italian School." 

State corrective institutions, the author says, are effective in 
only fifty per cent of cases; and this, he believes, is not a suf- 
ficiently high average. Such institutions, even for mild offend- 
ers, brand and "institutionalize" the delinquent, and interfere 
to a certain extent with religious training. To improve the 
home is the important thing; and for this work private charita- 
ble organizations are more effective than state interference. 

* The Young Malefactor. A Study in Juvenile Delinquency. By Thomas Travis, Ph.D. 
New York : Thomas Crowell & Co. 

VOL, LXXXVII 26 



402 NEW BOOKS [June, 

However, charitable organizations are subject to something 
of the same difficulties as state institutions, though political 
corruption is not a factor in the former. Mr. Travis, there- 
fore, points to the system now largely in use in Australia; the 
" placing-out " method. The delinquent is first sent to state 
institutions, for a short period, trained, educated, and finally 
placed within a "foster- home." Such children are under state 
supervision. The same method is extant in many of our states 
with results far exceeding any yet tried. 

Mr. Travis' book is a most able work and, considering the 
importance of the subject, it fills a much needed want in litera- 
ture. Catholics, who have been identified with charitable work 
in the New York Juvenile Court within the last five or six 
years, will find it a great benefit in the furtherance of their 
work. 

The third volume of Father Hic- 

THE LIFE OF CHRIST. key's fine translation completes 

the English version of Mgr. Le 

Camus' Life of Christ* It is unnecessary to say that the same 
qualities which distinguish the preceding portions of this work 
are present in the final part. Learned, without allowing his 
piety to be overlaid by mere scholarship, this great Christian 
scholar combines respectful fidelity to the Gospel narrative with 
deep religious feeling, and knows how to amplify his text for 
the purpose of edification without disfiguring the sacred history 
by making it a ground on which to embroider flowers of the 
imagination. 

The eloquent Jesuit, Father Leroy, who has already issued 
twelve sets of conferences on the life and times of our Lord, 
delivered by him in the churches of his Society in Paris and 
Brussels, during the years 1894 1896, now publishes those of 
the year 1907.! The style is eloquent; the treatment simple 
yet forcible ; the purpose, a blending of the dogmatic, the 
moral, and the apologetic. 

Under the title The Infancy of Jesus Christ \ P. Durand, S.J., 

* The Life of Christ, By Mgr. E. Le Camus. Translated by William Hickey, Priest of 
the diocese of Springfield. Vol. III. New York : Cathedral Library Association. 

t Jesus Christ sa Vie et son Temps 7907. Par Hippolyte Leroy, S. J. Paris : G. Beau- 
chesne et Cie. 

\LEnfance de Jesus-Chtist d'apres les Evangiles Canoniques. Par P. A. Durand, S.J. 
Paris : G. Beauchesne et Cie. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 403 

defends the historicity of the dogma of the Virgin birth of our 
Lord, by a critical examination of the Gospels, from which he 
draws an ample refutation of the objections raised against this 
doctrine by Schmiedel, Harnack, and other leaders of the Ger- 
man radical school and their followers. Father Durand obviates 
the common charge urged against Catholic critics that they do 
not face the difficulties, but either ignore or diminish them till 
they offer no resistance. He sets forth the rationalistic argu- 
ments in their full force; and, sure of his ground and the in- 
vincible strength of the Catholic position, is not afraid to ad- 
mit that on certain points the theories held in traditional exe- 
gesis fail to reconcile some of the discrepancies that exist be- 
tween the several Gospels. For example, he admits the failure 
of the accepted theories offered to reconcile the divergences be- 
tween the account of our Lord's genealogy in Luke and that 
in Matthew ; but he shows that this divergence rather confirms 
than impugns the essential data which these accounts embody. 
As a complementary subject to the main theme he adds a dis- 
sertation on " The Brothers of the Lord"; in this he furnishes 
critical proof in confirmation of the negative rule of interpreta- 
tation which dogmatic teaching furnishes on this subject. 

In Paul Bourget's latest novel, 

THE WEIGHT OF THE V Emigre, which appears in En- 

NAME. gii s h as The Weight of the Name* 

we get a vivid impression of the 

manner in which the politico-religious conflict in France affects 
the surviving representatives of the ancient aristocracy. Ostra- 
cized from public life, every career except the army is closed 
to them. They are mere cyphers in the political life of the 
country which they once dominated. The regime of republican- 
ism represents to them disloyalty to historic France and a 
menace to the moral bases of society. They themselves are, in 
fact, as completely banished from the national life as were the 
emigres of the Revolution, only that instead of a foreign country 
their place of exile is the fatherland. Their life is wasted in 
maintaining in their chateaux or their Parisian residences the 
shadow of their former princely splendor; while the younger 
members, harassed and humiliated in the army till they are 

* The Weight */ the Name. By Paul Bourget. Translated from the French by George 
Burnham Ives. Boston : Little Brown & Co. 



404 NEW BOOKS [June, 

finally driven out, have no outlet for their ambition but the 
jockey club. The main figure in Bourget's story is an old noble- 
man who is an incarnation of the principle of the honor of the 
nobleman. The ruling motive of his life is to support the 
prestige of his ancestral house as a protest against the degra- 
dation and demoralization of present-day degeneracy. He is a 
grand seigneur of the seventeenth century and a Bayard in 
one. Proud of his only son, between whom and himself there 
exists a deep attachment, he regrets that Landri insists on re- 
maining in the army, because the young man believes in it he 
can still serve France. The father peremptorily refuses to con- 
sent to the marriage of Landri with a lady who has won his 
affections, for she belongs to the bourgeoisie. Meanwhile, 
financial difficulties are threatening the ruin of his estate. 
Landri's army career comes to an end, when he is ordered to 
co-operate with the civil officers in breaking into a church for 
the purpose of taking an inventory as had been ordered by 
the law. Then, when the father is proudest of his son, a ter- 
rible secret transpires which stabs both to the heart and sepa- 
rates them forever. Not quite forever; for the last scene, 
which is pathetic, brings them together ance more. Though the 
elements of the story are few, and there is nothing violent in 
the action, M. Bourget's superb art and psychology construct 
an intensely interesting story in which there are two or three 
powerful situations. 

The same excellences and defects 

DICTIONARY OF CHRIST that characterized the first volume 
AND THE GOSPELS. o f this work run through the sec- 
ond volume,* which completes the 

Dictionary. The wealth of material it contains is astonishing, 
and we cannot but admire the mind that conceived its plan. 
Much of it, we must admit, duplicates articles contained in the 
same editor's Dictionary of the Bible ; but we do not regret 
two treatments of the same subject, when both authors are 
competent scholars, as we find here to be generally the case, 
even though both may be credited to the same school of criti- 
cism. 

The large number of writers who concurred to produce this 

* Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels. Vol. II. Edited by James Hastings. New York : 
Charles Scribner's Sons. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 405 

work, and the wide extent of territory from which they are 
drawn, is very significant; almost every Protestant denomination 
of importance is represented among the authors, and every part 
of the United Kingdom and the New World, from Ontario and 
New Jersey to Kentucky, Texas, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Mani- 
toba, contributes scholars of ability, mostly from the ranks of 
seminary professors. The Orient, even Palestine itself, sends 
its modest quota. We are in the presence of a world-wide 
movement in the non-Catholic world that is augmenting stead- 
ily in volume and in force, and has become more conscious of 
the direction it is taking. The streams of thought and knowl- 
edge take their rise now in every quarter of the globe and 
spread their waters over its entire face ; and it is carried into 
general thought through countless conduits. Happily the Church 
rightfully claims all knowledge for its own, as soon as it be- 
comes real knowledge, and knows how to extract the good out 
of the confused mixture of non-Catholic thought. It behooves 
our leaders, therefore, to know our contemporaries, and to dis- 
criminate in their work what is solid, true, helpful, and promis- 
ing from all that is unfounded, false, hurtful, and misleading. 
In many quarters our intellectual leaders are pursuing this 
quiet task of discrimination; few works will claim as much of 
their attention as this Dictionary which, as soon as printed, 
takes rank in every Protestant seminary in the world as an 
authority on Christian thought and knowledge. 

It is gratifying, therefore, on examining this vast body of 
teaching, to find that its writers, in the main, cling to views 
of New Testament literary criticism which may be classed as 
conservative. In historical criticism, though admitting numerous 
historical shortcomings and defects in the evangelical records, 
they strongly maintain the general trustworthiness of the New 
Testament, and the truly supernatural character of our Lord's 
miracles. In Christology, the ordinary Protestant theologian 
would, we fear, count them as orthodox; they do, indeed, con- 
fess the divinity of Christ; but they seem to have little reali- 
zation of its meaning, and in speaking of the relations between 
the divinity and humanity, they reproduce many of the ancient 
heresies. Besides, safe men seem to be chosen for the more 
delicate articles, and more radical scholars give expression to 
their views on apparently less crucial questions. The Chris- 
tology of the work is a striking exhibition of the haziness that 



406 NEW BOOKS [June, 

clings to all modern Protestant theology that is not radical. 
In matters of ecclesiastical polity there is a strong general trend 
away from the position of the Anglican and Catholic Churches; 
in sacramental theology the same holds true there is not even 
an article on Sacraments ! Likewise in their views of asceticism, 
of marriage, virginity, etc., the authors manifest sentiments 
widely differing from those of the Church. There is, in fact, 
throughout the work, the very pronounced tone of the dissent- 
ing sects; and though it is dedicated to Dr. Sanday and Dr. 
Swete, it contains very much that differs profoundly from the 
spirit and the views of those eminent Anglican divines. 

It would be invidious to single out any particular articles 
for special animadversion or commendation. One takes a num- 
ber of notes as one reads a work of this kind for the purpose 
of reviewing. Then when they are to be thrown together they 
expand to unforeseen dimensions. Let it suffice to reproduce 
in their crudeness the annotations we have made on a few of 
these articles. 

Unity. Makes straight for Catholic conclusions for a long 
distance, then changes to justify schism in a much weaker line 
of argument. Peter. Confined chiefly to life and character; 
no frank facing of the Catholic claim. Personality. Excellent 
philosophical discussion of the idea. Originality. Useful apol- 
ogetically. Demonstrates Christ's teaching to be original ; view 
of His Personality too merely human. Christ in the Middle 
Ages. Lays stress on the abnormal, and neglects to consider 
the great body of the faithful omits Bernard while mentioning 
many obscure heretics. Trial of Jesus. Very useful for preach- 
ers. Writer includes in his bibliography Maher's The Tragedy 
of Calvary! He cannot possibly have ever read the thing. 
Luke ; Mark ; Matth. Very painstaking work ; critical position 
roundly conservative. Universalism. Admits that there is no 
ground in the teaching of our Lord for the doctrine of univer- 
sal salvation ; yet the writer seems to lean towards that belief. 
Transfiguration. Interesting and skillful historical treatment. 

In conclusion it may be said that there are many fine arti- 
cles on moral topics, such, for instance, as Self- Restraint and 
Meekness. Many of the articles on our Lord are full of sug- 
gestion for the preacher; and in the appendix we have a brief 
but masterly treatise on Patristic testimony to Christ. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 407 

There is this to be said for The 

THE REAPING. Reaping* virtue does triumph in 

By Mary I. Taylor. the end, even if a suspicion of 

wire-pulling precedes the event. 

The author, in her story of ultra-rapid life in official Washing- 
ton, has brought together an interesting and well- contrasted 
group of people. It would seem regrettable that she saw fit to 
dispatch Margaret (a character, by the way, which rather sug- 
gests the fascinating and tragically irresponsible Lady Kitty of 
7he Marriage of William Ashe) just at the moment when her 
moral awakening had opened up new psychological possibilities. 
It is not a pleasant story there are so few " pleasant " stories 
nowadays ! and it is not particularly convincing in its treat- 
ment of social problems ; but it is undeniably readable, and 
the dialogue is excellent. One notes in passing that the tact- 
ful hostess (even in Washington !) scarcely invites a notorious 
divorcee to dine with princes of the Church. 

When we remember that there is 

SONGS AND SONNETS. scarcely anything more difficult to 

By McDonald. write than a good song unless it 

be a good sonnet the delicacy 

of Mr. McDonald's chosen task f is obvious. Of course it is 
possible to accept these possibilities with very little seriousness, 
and still to write agreeable verse. Many of the selections here 
brought together have appeared in newspapers and periodicals 
over the pen-name of Lawrence Sarsfield. They sing the praise 
of God, of country, of the Celt, of childhood, and most con- 
stantly of all ! the love of one true woman ; so that, if they 
may not be reckoned high poetry, they are at least vowed to 
the service of high ideals. There are a number of typographical 
errors in the little volume, and the elimination of such words 
as "limnered," "choosed," "drawed," etc., would, in our judg- 
ment, raise the standard of the work, and so translate more 
justly the manifest sincerity of its author's sentiment. 

* The Reaping. By Mary Imlay Taylor. Boston : Little, Brown & Co. 

t Songs and Sonnets. By Lawrence McDonald. Pittsburgh : J. R. Weldon & Co. 



Iperiobicals. 



The Tablet (21 March): Announces that the proposed visit of 
the American fleet to Australia has aroused attention in 
that country to its insufficient naval protection. 
Fr. Angus writes on " Likes and Dislikes," especially 
with regard to modern church music. - The Roman 
Correspondent gives a summary of the new regulations 
governing Italian seminaries. 

(28 March) : Rev. T. Phillips gives the usual arguments 
in favor of the " Holy House " and its translation to 
Loreto. - Many letters are published which severely 
criticise the new Children's Encyclopedia. 
(4 April) : Rev. T. Phillips concludes his answer to Canon 
Chevalier on the "Holy House." The English critic is 
not surprised that Chevalier's book appeared without an 
imprimatur, and seems to believe that the Holy Father 
had this very book in mind when writing the recent 
Encyclical. - The Roman Correspondent states that the 
attitude of the Italian press is in favor of the reported 
engagement between the Duke of the Abruzzi and Miss 
Elkins. 

(n April) : " Newman and the Mere Probability of Reve- 
lation " occupies a place in the Tablet's letters. This 
old controversy is somewhat brightened by a new one 
concerning certain historical inaccuracies in the Children's 
Encyclopedia. - Fr. Thurston presents a critical essay 
on the question of " Hot Cross Buns," giving the origin 
and history of this Good Friday custom. 

The Month (April): Rev. T, Slater, under the title, "New 
Marriage Law," gives an exposition of the provisions of 
the new law, indicating the chief features and the points 
of divergence from the laws hitherto in force. New laws 
have become necessary, owing to complications arising 
from private and secret betrothals, which have frequently 
brought about disastrous results. - " A Dose of Calm " 
points out some characteristic features of modern life. 
The most prevalent is the spirit of restlessness so mani- 
fest in present sensationalism, the mania for freakishness 
and fads found in all classes of modern society. Shortly 
before the final dissolution of the Roman State her society 
bore the same characteristics. The calm advocated is 



1908.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 409 

that obtained by a balance of faculties, a measured activ- 
ity. The article by Alice Dease, entitled " In a Con- 
gested District," gives a graphical description of life as 
seen in Eastern Ireland. The people are unique in dress 
and colloquialisms. Their implicit confidence in God is 

most manifest in all their works. " Evolution for 

School-Children " contains a summary of objections to 
the placing of Mr. Hird's " Picture- Book of Evolution'* 
in the hands -of school- children. 

The Expository Times (April) : This number begins with some 
notes on Professor Charle's new English edition of The 
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. The reviewer calls 
attention to what the author has to say on the biblical 
doctrine of a man's forgiveness of his neighbor. Men- 
tion is made of Rev. T. H. Weir's article on the 53d 
chapter of Isaias, which appeared in the Westminster Re- 
view of March, 1908. Mr. Weir holds that the Servant 
of Jehovah was an individual and not simply the Israel- 
ite nation. Several pages are devoted to a summary 

of Professor Swete's article on Modernism written for the 
Guardian of January 29. Professor Swete, we are told, 
believes that Pope Pius X would describe a Modernist as a 
man " who finds his religion in Christian experience in- 
stead of basing it upon the authority of the Church and 
the Bible ; who separates the Christ of history from the 
Christ of theology, and who applies the method of evo- 
lution to Christian doctrine." 

The National Review (May) : British politics, with reference to 
the recent changes in Parliament, are discussed at length 
in " Episodes of the Month." " Admiralty and Em- 
pire," by St. Barbara, is a candid statement of facts show- 
ing the neglect of those in authority to provide for the 
financial necessities of the British Navy. The writer 
maintains that the labors of the whole preceding gene- 
ration in building up the navy have been wasted and 

destroyed during the past three or four years. In 

"To-Day and To-Morrow " Viscount Esher writes of the 

necessity of efficiently armed forces for the Empire. 

"The Times, 1785-1908," is reviewed by Hugh Chisholm. 

" His Majesty's Ministers and the Doctrines of Henry 

George," by A. Griffith Boscawen. "Paris Fashions" 

are discussed by Violet Cecil. " American Affairs," 



410 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [June, 

by A. Maurice Low. In " Fiction Clean and Un- 
clean " Dr. William Barry writes : " There is a going for- 
ward, to use a French expression, in this hurrying Eng- 
lish world, a 'crisis of ideas.' Slow it may be and 
unconscious, but it is real. And as it moves to its con- 
summation, the moral standard is changing. Reverence 
gives place to curiosity ; experimenting with evil finds 
an excuse in the name of science ; law has lost its sanc- 
tion ; and who so reckless when the curb is taken off 
as the woman with some power of speech or writing. 
. . . Revolution is, therefore, abroad, with imagina- 
tive literature as its herald, proclaiming the rule of in- 
stinct or appetite which need fear no penalties." 

The Church Quarterly Review (April) : In dealing with the 
Education Bill of 1908, Mr. McKenna's measure is 
denounced as strikingly unfair; special stress is laid 
upon the contracting-out policy, and the injustice which 

it would inflict upon the Catholic population. The 

article on "John Wesley and the Psychology of Re- 
vivals points out the part which hypnotism and sug- 
gestion may play in influencing the minds of an audience. 

The discussion on the place of the Athanasian Creed 

in the services of the Church of England is interesting 
because of the fact that the subject is to be brought up 
at the approaching Lambeth Conference. The writer's 
opinion is that the Creed is unsuitable for public wor- 
ship. In the " Brethren of the Lord," the relationship 

of the Brethren is dealt with most exhaustively. The 
conclusion arrived at, founded upon that formulated by 
S. Jerome, is that the Brethren were our Lord's cousins 

on His Mother's side. " Adonis, Baal, and Astarte." 

Here we have a most complex subject dealt with, as to 
what these deities really meant to the Phoenicians. The 
bulk of evidence points to the belief that not only were 
they regarded as vegetation deities, but also worshipped 

as marine or celestial gods. In an article on " The 

Church in the United States " presumably the Episcopal 
Church the writer is optimistic in his views ; still he 
sees dangers ahead in the increasing power of the laity, 
who hold the purse strings, and practically control the 
affairs of the church 

The Dublin Review (April) : " Rome and Democracy," by Canon 



1908.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 411 

William Barry, D.D. " Catholicism, for more than a thou- 
sand years by law established, moves in the world at 
large, left now to its own resources and those spiritual. 
It is a system of ideas, a moral influence, a society with- 
in itself. It has ceased for the time to be a State in 
the old political sense, and has lost its secular arm. Yet, 
as the civil State forfeits or gives up the jurisdiction it 
once exercised over opinion and freedom grows, the 
Church Universal must win fresh influence, deeper than 
laws and Parliaments could secure to it. By simple great- 
ness of ideas, realized in its teaching and institutions, 
leading on to the Master Himself, what is there that it 
cannot achieve ? It subdued Greek philosophy to its 
divine purpose. Why should we despair of its leavening 
with true life the democracy that is looking for guid- 
ance, that will not always groan beneath monopolies, nor 
dream of Socialist Utopias bounded by the grave ? The 
free conscience will never rest until it has found its rule 
and sanction in Him who bestowed on it the liberty to 

follow right, through death, into Eternity." The first 

of a series of articles on Catholic Social Work in Ger- 
many " Ketteler the Precursor/ 1 evidently written by 
the Editor. " The Worldly Wisdom of Thomas a Kern- 
pis," by Percy Fitzgerald. " Personal Memories of 

James C. Mangan," by the late Sir Charles Gavan Duffy. 

"The Orthodox Eastern Churches," by W. S. Lilly. 

" St. Dominic and St. Francis, A Parallel." "Mr. 

Balfour on Decadence," by the Editor. 

The Irish Ecclesiasticl Record (April) : A new edition of the 
rather old book Supernatural Religion calls forth a short 
critique from the pen of Rev. Malachy Eaton. He as- 
serts that the object of the book is to undermine the 
basis of Christianity ; and refutes the contention that the 
proof from miracles, taking miracle in its strict sense, is 
the only one which can be offered, for establishing the 

supernatural character of the Christian religion. Dr. 

Coffey, of Maynooth, presents a paper on, " Subject and 

Object in Knowledge and Consciousness." Dr. O'Neill, 

of Carlow College, discusses Catholic Apologetics under 
Leo XIII. and Pius X. The advance of the modern 
world in science and history and philosophy is rapidly 
sketched, and the difficulties it offers to apologists made 



412 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [June, 

evident. Yet " historical criticism is neither wicked nor 
mysterious : its aim is trustworthy information about the 
past, recovery of the words that were really spoken, and 
of the events that actually took place. It alone rescues 
us from that historical pyrrhonism which rejects adequate 
testimony to inconvenient facts, and from that historical 
obscurantism which admits indiscriminately all convenient 
facts." In a future paper will be answered the question : 
Can the new difficulties against the ancient faith be met 
by loyal attachment to the method and principles of St. 
Thomas ? 

The Irish Monthly (May) : Father Bearne, S.J., in his article on 
" The Artistic Temperament," maintains in contradiction 
to other prevailing notions that "genius always means 
the possession of energy, power, and perception, the 
very qualities that go to make up the highest and sanest 

type of man." " On Killenarden Hill" is contributed 

by Nora Tynan O'Mahony. The second installment 

of " Letters of Some Interest " is published in this num- 
ber. " A Suburban Garden," by Emily Hickey, is an 

acceptable spring sketch. An appreciation of Walter 

Bagehot, whom the writer declares to be "one of the 
most influential men of the nineteenth century " is re- 
printed from the Catholic Magazine of South Africa. 

Le Correspondant (25 March) : Opens with an article by M. 
Lamy, consisting of a collection of unedited memoirs 

of the Duchess of Dino. M. de St. Victor, writing on 

the naval programme of Germany, outlines the plans and 
purposes of the Kaiser's policy. Francois Ricard dis- 
cusses the possibilities of discovering the poles. He also 
reviews some of the plans of present-day polar explor- 
ers, pointing out their defects. The Christian Work- 

ingmen's Union of Belgium and its Secretary, P. Rut- 
ten, O. P., Sociologist, offer occasion for an article by 
Henri de Boissieu. This society was organized by Fr. 
Rutten to fight the spread of Socialism. This it has ef- 
fectively done. Since 1906 its membership has increased 
by the thousands. To this Union, although Catholic to 
the core, any man, be he Jew or Gentile, may belong, 
just so long as he is a respecter of the social order, re- 
ligion, the right of private property, and the integrity 
of the family. 



1908.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 413 

(10 April): A collection of unedited notes of Napoleon 
I. are published ; they are mostly of a business nature, 

dealing with the tariff, etc. Although but one in four 

in the population, the Catholics of Holland exercise a re- 
markable influence in the direction of public matters. 
Under the leadership of Mgr. Schaepman they have joined 
forces with the anti-revolutionary Protestant party, and 
the union is known as "The Christian Coalition." Paul 
Verschave writes on the work effected by this union, 
and the part played by Catholics in the government of 

Holland for the past ten years. Bruley des Varennes 

publishes six letters of Abbe Perreyve written in 1864, 
when he was about to join the Oratorians. They are 

addressed to a Protestant lady in Paris. H. Odelin 

contributes a number of personal reminiscences of Cardi- 
nal Richard. Abbe Klein writes of his recent visit to 

America. He discusses the immigration problem and the 
question of education. Lengthy notices are given to the 
Catholic Summer- School, to Chautauqua, and to the 
Paulists. 

Etudes (5 April) : M. Chanoine Caillard gives a sketch of the 
Venerable Marie-Madeleine Postel, soon to be beatified. 

' M. Stephane Harent begins a long examination of 

the teaching of the Modernists regarding experience as 
the register of revelation, and faith as understood by 
these writers. He criticizes the Modernist from the stand- 
point of psychology. M. Droulet contributes a paper 

on the " Beginnings of Christianity in Armenia." 

(20 April) : M. Georges Longhaye writes an historical 

sketch of Mgr. Freppel and Count Albert de Mun. 

M. Harent continues his article on " Experience and 
Faith," defending the proposition that revelation is a 
group of affirmations guaranteed by the authority of a 

divine witness. M. Riondel writes concerning schools 

in Eastern countries and the work of M. Aulard. 

Annales de Philosophic Chretienne (April) : E. Jordan continues 
his discussion of the responsibility of the Church in the 
repression of heresy in the Middle Age, showing that 
there was a disposition on the part of churchmen to see 
in Christ the precursor or even the author of the criminal 
code of the Inquisition. St. Thomas and the inquisitors 
of his time regarded it as clearly the duty of the Church 



4H FOREIGN PERIODICALS [June, 

to destroy the heretic, that the faith of others might not 
be endangered, and that the death punishment might 

serve as a warning to those of rebellious mind. " St. 

Epiphanius : Religious Knowledge," by J. Martin, is con- 
tinued. " Platonism in France During the Eighteenth 

Century," by Ch. Huit. " Law and Science," by Pierre 

Hans. G. Tyrrell writes requesting that his name be 

withdrawn from the list of collaborators of the review, 
lest its presence there give occasion of complaint to 
"zealots" of the kind recently rebuked by Cardinal 
Ferrari. 

Revue Benedictine (April) : D. D. de Bruyne has found in a 
well-known manuscript, the Codex Burchardi, preserved 
at the University of Wurzburg, some new fragments of 
the Acts of Peter, of Paul, of John, of Andrew, and of 
the Apocalypse of Elias, which he publishes herewith. 

A Merovingian lectionary, with fragments of the 

Occidental Text of the Acts, is edited in this issue by 

D. G. Morin. D. L. Gougaud, " An .Inventory of 

Irish Monastic Rules." D. U. Berliere, "James of 

Vitry ; his Relations with the Abbeys of Aywieres and 

of Doorezeele." D. R. Ancel, "The Disgrace and 

Trial of the Carafa in the Light of Some Unedited 
Documents." 

Stimmen aus Maria Laach (27 April): A. Baumgartner, S.J., 
has an obituary notice on the late P. Rudolph Comely, 
S.J., who was one of the founders of this magazine, and 

a great Scripture scholar. 1. Bessmer, S.J., explaining 

the 27-38 propositions of the decree " Lamentabili Sane," 

refutes Loisy's doctrine on the Person of Christ. H. 

Pesch, S.J., begins a paper on "The Social Classes," 
giving an account of the leading theories of sociological 

science. H. Kemp, S.J., in his article "Methods of 

Chemical Investigation," shows what chances there are 

of reaching objective truth by experience alone. V. 

Cathrein, S.J., explains the position of the Church as to 
the supervision of schools, and maintains her right to 
exercise this supervision. 

Revue Pratique d* Apologetique (i April): Continuing his study 
on the development of Christian dogma, L. de Grand- 
maison, comments upon the theories of the nineteenth 



i 



1908.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 415 

century. After briefly stating the views of the liberal 
Protestants, he dwells at length on the Catholic theorists, 

chiefly Newman. E. Mangenot takes objection to M. 

Guignebert's interpretation of the New Testament writ- 
ings. E. Terrasse answers the Kantianists' charge of 

egoism in religion. 

(15 April): L. de Grandmaison concludes his series of 
articles on the development of dogma. This last in- 
stallment is an exposition of the theories which have 
been in vogue since Newman's time. With a mention 
of the scholastic theory, the author passes on to the 
modern non-scholastics, Loisy, Tyrrell, and Blondell, the 

last of whom he considers a model for scholars. In 

M. Guignebert's views on the authenticity, the inerrancy, 
and the agreement and disagreement of the Books of 
the New Testament, E. Mangenot finds matter for ad- 
verse criticism. Georges Bertrin examines an apoc- 
ryphal document on Lourdes. 

Revue Thomiste (March-April) : Apropos of the secularization 
of the French schools and charitable institutions, Rev. 
Edouard Hugon, O. P., discusses the question as to whether 
those bound by religious vows should remain under their 
vows and go into exile, or give them up for the teach- 
ing and other works in which they have been engaged. 
He lays down the principles underlying the matter, and 
draws the conclusion that the religious vow must not be 

given up for these works. Dom Olivieri, O.S.B., sets 

forth his interpretation of John viii. 25. "Some Re- 
flexions on Modernism " consists of two reviews : one of 
the articles lately published by Rev. P. Leclair, SJ. 
dealing with the first condemnations of Modernism ; the 
other of an article by M. Bertrin on the causes of Mod- 
ernism. 

La Cimlta Cattolica (4 April): "Moral Character and Cate- 
chism " is a second article upon the study of Catechism, 
and shows what a beneficial part its study can have in 

the development of character. "The Eloquence of 

Chrysostom," a critical article upon the saint's power as 
an orator, discussing the general excellence of his elo- 
quence, its qualities, and the apostolic zeal indicated 
by it. 



4i 6 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [June. 

(18 April): "The Pope, Father of All," an exhortation 
to Catholics to increase their devotion to the Pope and 
to recognize more his spiritual Fatherhood. " Theo- 
logical Modernism," the system proposed by Modernists 
to conciliate faith and science is examined and its con- 
tradictions pointed out. 

La Scuola Cattolica (March) : The editor of the Revista di Cut- 
tura, Signer Murri, has announced that the review will 
not be published after April. The editor sees in this 
step the only practical way of avoiding direct conflict 
with the Church while still holding to his own views 
about religion in Italy. La Scuola Cattolica is not in 
sympathy with Signer Murri. It tells him that if he 
desires sincerely to work for religion "he could not do 
better than to seek pardon at the feet of the Pope, and 
to promise him complete obedience." 

Revista Internazionale (March) : " Philosophical Premises and 
Contemporary Sociology." G. Toniolo examines the 
principles of present-day thought and traditional Chris- 
tian doctrines, in determining which are to the greater 
advantage of Sociology. He shows that the modern 
principles are infected with Neo-Kantian " Subjectivism," 
and questions whether the followers of the later philos- 
ophy suspect the destructive effect it may have upon 

Sociology. " The Functions of the State in Social 

Development," by D. Munerati. "The Problem of 

Italian Immigration," P. Pisani. 

Theologisch-Praktische Quartalschrift (April) : P. Albert M. 
Weiss, O.P., writes on " The Christian Basis " on which 
Modern Protestantism pretends to rest, and shows on 
what basis it really does rest. Dr. Vinzenz Hartl con- 
tinues his treatise on "The Truth of Bible History," and 
shows the relation of Scripture towards natural knowl- 
edge and towards supernatural reality. V. Eykmans, 

S.J., concludes his article on " Retreats for Working- 
men." Dr. Josef Blasius Becker answers the question 

whether there is obligation to believe, and refutes those 
who say that to force doctrines upon a man is a crime 
against his personal dignity. 



Current Events. 

The Chambers have adjourned leav- 
France. ing the ministry of M. Clemenceau 

still in office. No fewer than seven- 
ty more or less serious attempts to turn it out have been made 
during the past session, but without success. Its most deter- 
mined opponent M. Jaures, the leader of the Socialists finds 
fault with the small progress that has been made in social reforms. 
And not without reason, for although much has been promised 
very little so far has been realized. M. Clemenceau has made it 
clear that he is no demagogue, that he is willing to resist unjust 
demands even when made by the working people ; in fact, M. 
Jaures declares that he is a tyrant. But greater efforts might, we 
think, have been made to carry out the programme. The visit 
paid to England by the French Premier, to be present at the 
funeral of the late English Premier, was a testimony to the 
reality of the entente cordiale and has tended to add to its 
strength. A still further confirmation has been afforded by the 
visit of the President of the Republic. But the entente is not 
without its opponents. It is said that there are still persons in 
France who cannot forget or forgive Waterloo. 

The practical suppression of the Church in France is hav- 
ing results in the moral order in many ways to which we have 
already referred in these notes. The latest instance affects the 
Army, or those who provide for its material wants. The gar- 
rison towns of the eastern departments have had to suffer from 
the greed of army-contractors, who have for some time been 
supplying the soldiers with unsound meat obtained from the 
pens of diseased cattle in Paris. High officials, including a 
general, have been accused of connivance in this procedure for 
the sake of gain. 

The objection to Dr. Hill's ap- 
Germany. pointment as the Ambassador of 

this country to Germany scarcely 

deserves mention, were it not that it indicates that even the 
Empire which is the typical representative in the world of art, 
of learning and science, of military discipline and a well or- 
dered life, has fallen under the spell of the money power, and 
that its head does not think that any one who is not a million- 
aire can be a fit representative at its court. This inference, 
however, may be somewhat hasty : it may be that the Kaiser's 
VOL. LXXXVII. 27 



418 CURRENT EVENTS [June, 

thought was that none but a millionaire could be a representa- 
tive of this country. He did not know that we are as willing to 
show honor to our scholars as to the possessors of wealth. 
This is the lesson which the present administration wished to 
teach by insisting on the appointment which it had made. 
America's prestige does not depend upon the number of din- 
ners which its ambassador can give. 

The Reichstag adjourned leaving Prince Billow still in power, 
and with the credit of having passed the Laws for the expro- 
priation of the Poles, and for the regulation of the meetings of 
Associations. These laws are of a decidedly reactionary char- 
acter, and were opposed by the Catholic Centre. The marvel 
was how the Prince could band together in support of such 
measures parties so opposed to each other as are the Conserv- 
atives and the Radicals. It forms another instance, however, 
that it is not principle but expediency which rules in politics. 
It is worthy of note that a select few of the Radicals have 
found it impossible to approve such a departure from the hith- 
erto accepted aims of the party, and have seceded to form if 
not a more numerous at least a more faithful band. 

Two agreements have been made which tend still further to 
confirm the widely-entertained hopes for the preservation of 
peace. Last year, it will be remembered, Great Britain and 
Spain made declarations by which it was manifested to the 
world at large that neither of the two powers would do any- 
thing to alter the status quo in the Mediterranean Sea and in 
a certain part of the Atlantic. Similar agreements have now 
been made by Germany, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark that the 
status quo in the Baltic shall be maintained, and by Germany, 
Great Britain, France, Denmark, Sweden, and Holland in which 
the same declaration is made with reference to the North Sea. 
By a third diplomatic instrument the treaty of 1855, by which 
Sweden pledged herself to France and Great Britain not to make 
any session of territory to Russia, has been abrogated. On the 
other hand the Convention of 1856, by which Russia bound her- 
self not to fortify the Aland Islands, has not been abrogated and 
remains in full force, although Russia, it is said, has been making 
efforts to have it annulled. 

The fact that Macedonia is now 

The Near East. the subject of international discus- 

sion will be looked upon as form- 
ing a ground of hope for better things by those whose temper- 



1908.] CURRENT EVENTS 419 

ament is sanguine. The British proposals for the appointment 
of a governor irremovable for a term of years, and for an ad- 
dition to the gendarmerie, together with the readjustment of 
the financial arrangements, were judged to be too drastic by 
Austria and by Russia, the Powers who have hitherto been the 
chief promoters of such reforms as have been attempted. Rus- 
sia, however, did not content itself with a mere negation, but 
put forward a plan of its own. These proposals have been 
more successful in receiving the adhesion of the Powers who 
interest themselves in the matter, and even Great Britain has 
not been insistent on the acceptance of its own proposals in 
their integrity, but is trying, by an amalgamation of the two, to 
strengthen the plan of Russia. Russia's former coadjutor, Austria, 
is, it is thought, the most unwilling to support any measure likely 
to bring about any real amelioration of the situation. Many 
authorities in Austria openly teach that the only duty of the 
modern state is the healthy selfish policy of material interest. 

The chief difference between the British and the Russian 
plan is the substitution of the European Financial Commission 
for the independent governor proposed by Great Britain. Such 
a Commission would be much weaker ; its members might dis- 
agree ; some of them at least would be subject to outside in- 
fluences, especially from Constantinople, and the pace would be 
regulated by the most reactionary of its members. The other 
Russian proposals are, however, a step in advance of the Miirz- 
steg programme, and in default of something better it is to be 
hoped that they may, in some form or other, be adopted. The 
call for intervention is, indeed, urgent. Greek bands, Rumanian 
bands, Servian bands, Vlach bands, Albanian bands, are on the 
point of entering upon their wonted campaign of murder and 
outrage and mutual extermination, under the gleeful eyes of the 
lord of the land, the Turk. The only exception is that the 
Bulgarians, in the hope of the projected reforms being realized, 
have this year resolved to act merely on the defensive, and to 
dissolve their bands except those necessary for this purpose. 
This hope is grounded upon the entry on the field of Sir 
Edward Grey and the expectation that he will not yield to 
opposition. The Russian proposals find little favor in the eyes 
of the Bulgarians ; in fact there are those who say that they 
indicate the abandonment by Russia of its position as protector 
of the Slavonic element in the Balkans. On the other hand, 
meetings have been held throughout Bulgaria to testify to Eng- 



420 CURRENT EVENTS [June, 

land the gratitude felt by the Bulgarians, and to urge upon Sir 
Edward Grey the importance of persistence in their advocacy. 
The real truth, of course, is that so long as Turkey remains 
in possession in the Balkans, with any power at all, there is 
no hope of any permanent settlement, of any tolerable life for 
its peoples. But every one of the Powers, even Great Britain, 
makes the preservation of the integrity of Turkey a condition 
of any reform. Any attempt to interfere with it would bring 
on a war, not because Turkey is loved, but because each 
Christian Power more or less hates the others. So nothing more 
can be looked for than some palliative of the existing evils, 
until men arise who are less the slaves of selfish interests than 
is the present generation. Among those palliatives railways may 
be reckoned, removing isolation by bringing about intercourse, 
and therefore the recently made projects afford ground for 
some little hope. But it depends upon the Sultan to decide; 
he can forbid them, should it so please him. Recent events 
have brought to pass one thing at least the Concert of Europe 
has taken the place of Austro-Russian co-operation under the 
Mtirzsteg programme. 

Italy, which has from time to time 
Italy. been under the domination of des- 

potic princes, is now suffering 

scarcely less from the tyrannical methods of those at the other 
end of the scale. The labor unions are so powerful that they 
control even the ministry, and secure for themselves impunity 
for the most flagrant violations of law and order. A riot re- 
cently took place in Rome in which the police were attacked 
by lawless hooligans. The troops had to be called out and had 
to fire in self-defence. Thereupon the Chamber of Labor or- 
dered a general strike, and for two days there was a complete 
suspension of work and business throughout the city. Instead 
of resenting this injustice the citizens meekly submitted. Even 
the Syndic, the chief municipal authority, showed by several 
public acts that his sympathies were with the disturbers of law. 
If this were an isolated instance, it might not be worthy of at- 
tention, but a similar course was adopted by the Ministry in 
dealing with the rioters at Milan last year. The maintainers of 
order were arrested for having done their duty. And since the 
riots, and doubtless encouraged by the action of the authorities 
on that occasion, another brutal outrage has taken place. Two 
students of the Scotch College were assaulted with knives in 



1908.] CURRENT EVENTS 421 

the neighborhood of Rome by ruffians from the city. It is true 
they have been arrested, but it remains to be seen whether 
adequate punishment will be inflicted. 

The evil has still further developed. The number of stab- 
bing cases in Rome has so much increased that the Prefect has 
ordered some of the least respectable wine- shops to be closed, 
and has given the police power to search the men found in the 
haunts of bad characters whom they may suspect of carrying 
knives or other prohibited weapons. The latter seems to be a 
very arbitrary proceeding, but one evil begets another the evil 
of license brings as a consequence the evil of arbitrary control. 
Italy has adopted towards Turkey an efficacious method in 
support of its demands, which if the Powers would adopt for 
the sake of Macedonia would speedily bring to an end the 
evils under which that region groans. To the demands of Italy 
that it should be granted the right to open post offices in cer- 
tain towns in Turkey, the latter refused compliance. Within 
twenty hours of the time the orders were issued, the Italian fleet 
was mobilized, and in a few hours later the demands were con- 
ceded. Turkey yields to nothing but force; but it yields to 
that. 

The Belgian Parliament has long 
Belgium. been occupied with the question 

whether, and upon what terms, the 

Congo Free State is to be annexed. The Socialists oppose an- 
nexation altogether; and the King requires so large a compen- 
sation that it is doubtful whether the friends of annexation will 
agree with his terms. As he has already been driven by the 
force of public opinion to moderate his demands, it may well 
be that he will see his way to still further concessions. He 
cannot help recognizing that the days of his rule are over, for 
Great Britain has committed itself to effective action in the 
event of no satisfactory arrangement being made, and it is un- 
derstood that this action will be supported by the United 
States. The whole affair forms a strange spectacle thousands 
of half-naked savages in the center of Africa toiling for the 
art-galleries and for the embellishment of the seaside resorts 
of Belgian citizens. 

The elections have taken place in 
Portugal. Portugal and have resulted in the 

return of a large majority, pledged 
in the first place to support the monarchy and in the next to 



422 CURRENT EVENTS [June, 

the maintenance in power of the present coalition Ministry. 
Uncertainty existed as to whether a sufficient number of Re- 
publicans would be returned to endanger existing institutions. 
Their chieftain had publicly declared the murder of the King 
to have been an act of war, and the general cheerfulness with 
which that event was regarded by the masses of the people gave 
the Conservative elements good reason to expect the worse. 
All these fears were groundless. The Monarchical parties se- 
cured an overwhelming victory. As usual on the Continent 
free political thought has led to the multiplication of parties, 
and so there will be no fewer than seven in the new Cortes; 
namely: Regenerados, 62; Progressists, 59; Independents, 17; 
Nationalists, 2 ; Republicans, 5 ; Franquistas, 3 ; Dissident Pro- 
gressists, 7; Total, 155. The first two are the old established 
parties who have been governing, or misgoverning Portugal 
for years, holding office by mutual arrangement in rotation, 
and therefore called Rotavistas, and dividing the spoils among 
themselves to the detriment of the people. It was in order to 
destroy this system that Senhor Franco's dictatorship was es- 
tablished ; but such is the force of evil custom that it seemed 
itself to be on the point of entering upon the same course. 
A short time will show whether recent events have taught the 
Regenerados and the Progressists the expediency as well as the 
wisdom of adopting an honest policy. However this may be, 
the elections have shown the weakness of the Republicans. 
Whatever opinions may be held as to the superiority of this 
form of government, it cannot but be recognized that it is 
against the best interests of any country to be divided on such 
a fundamental question. The advocates of a Republic do not, 
however, accept their defeat as decisive. They will continue 
the struggle, but not by way of a revolution or any methods 
of violence. 

The elections did not take place in perfect quiet. There 
were a few riots and tumultuous assemblies a few men were 
shot, a great many put into prison. The press, however, has 
greatly exaggerated the significance of these disturbances. Ob- 
servers on the spot declare that they only indicate superficial 
excitement, the bulk of the country is bent on peace and op- 
posed to all violent methods. The new Cortes have opened 
with good hopes of a peaceful future. 






1908,] CURRENT EVENTS 423 



THE CENTENARY CELEBRATION OF THE ARCHDIOCESE 

OF NEW YORK. 

1808-1908. 

In the bright, triumphant, Alleluia season of Easter, the 
festivities of New York's Catholic Centennial came to make us 
rejoice and be glad ; be glad as never before, as indeed we may 
never be again, at least for a hundred years. From Sunday 
morning, April 26, the day of the general Communion of the 
faithful in all the parishes, to Saturday evening, May 2 (" im 
wunder-schonen Monat Mai"), there was a week of rejoicing; 
the skies were fair, the city en fete, and the hearts of the peo- 
ple were glad. If to describe in detail the external beauty and 
splendor of the week's celebrations be difficult, 'twere impossi- 
ble to express their interior effect upon the soul of every man, 
woman, and child fortunate enough to witness the superb series 
of pageants and ceremonies ; for here we would enter the un- 
seen world of spiritual emotions and realities, to be passed on 
from generation to generation, wherein the most vital effects of 
New York's Centennial will live, not only for a hundred years 
but till the consummation of time. 

The event was pre-eminently an historic one, both in itself 
and in the manner of its observance. Certainly never before 
in the Church of this country, seldom elsewhere, at any time 
or place, has there been a public celebration more ostensibly 
Catholic and beautifully joyful in tone; none better calculated to 
make the public see how catholic the Catholic Church is, how 
universal. Universality unum versus alia one in many, order 
in variety, was the dominating note. Every type of American, 
of English, Irish, German, Italian, French, Bohemian, Polish, 
Hungarian forbears, together with their colored brethren, re- 
presenting every grade of society, every phase of professional 
and commercial activity, judges, lawyers, physicians, musicians, 
artists, artisans, and laborers, rich and poor, learned and unlet- 
tered, wise and simple, all carrying American flags, formed on 
Saturday afternoon into a street parade, necessarily limited to 
forty thousand, which was three hours in passing from Wash- 
ington Square to St. Patrick's Cathedral. There they saluted 



424 CURRENT EVENTS [June, 

his Eminence, Cardinal Logue, the welcome and special guest 
of honor, his Eminence Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop Falconio, 
Papal Apostolic Delegate, his Grace, Archbishop Farley, to- 
gether with their ecclesiastical court, composed of archbishops, 
bishops, monsignori, prelates, and priests from every part of the 
United States. 

Such was the demonstration of faith and loyalty, of union 
and liberty such liberty as only obedience to the truth, as 
taught by the proper authority, can give which made an ever 
memorable finale to the Centenary week of ecclesiastical, civic, 
and social functions. Before that same Cathedral, where they 
passed in review, these same men had, on the Tuesday pre- 
vious, assisted at the Solemn Pontifical Mass, the Mass with 
one Cardinal Prince as celebrant and another as preacher, a 
stupendous function of liturgical magnificence, in which the 
eye and ear, the heart and head, the whole man, sense and 
spirit, were appealed to, edified, and educated by that uniform, 
sacramental, splendid worship of the Universal Church founded 
by Him who made all things and saw that all He made was 
good. 

There was indeed reason to rejoice and be glad, thus to 
have one's youth renewed, one's love of God and man and 
country quickened and vivified ; to be glad to be living, to be 
a Christian, a Catholic, an American citizen ; glad to belong 
to the Archdiocese of New York in this year of grace 1908, 
"Non fecit taliter omni nationi" for He hath not done in like 
manner to every nation. 

After the sermon of Cardinal Gibbons, a sermon which was 
a masterpiece of historical narrative eloquently and devotionally 
applied to religion and country, and after the Mass-, it was most 
fitting that his Grace, Archbishop Farley, should ascend the 
pulpit, as he did, and reading two congratulatory letters, one 
from the Pope, the other from the President of the United 
States, return thanks for all the favors received : 

Thanks first and most of all to Almighty God, thanks to the 
Vicar of Christ upon earth, that God may preserve him from 
his enemies, thanks to Cardinal Logue, the celebrant of the 
Mass, to Cardinal Gibbons, to the Apostolic Delegate, and all 
the archbishops and bishops who have come so far to honor 
our celebration. 



1908.] CURRENT EVENTS 

What a celebration it was, what an assembly for Ne 
City ! His Eminence, Cardinal Logue, Archbishop of Armagh 
and Primate of All Ireland, and the one hundred and fourteenth 
successor of St. Patrick himself, celebrating the Holy Sacrifice 
in the presence of another Prince of the Church, Cardinal Gib- 
bons, Archbishop of Baltimore, the oldest see in this newest 
land, besides an Apostolic Delegate representing the Sovereign 
Pontiff, ten archbishops, forty bishops, eight hundred prelates 
and priests from all the dioceses of the United States, as well 
as from the Dominion of Canada and the sister republics of 
Mexico and Cuba, together with over six thousand five hun- 
dred of the laity. 

It was most fitting, too, among the felicitations at the ban- 
quet of the clergy, following the Mass, that the Rt. Rev. Mon- 
signor Mooney, P.A., V.G., on behalf of the priests of New 
York, should address the following words to Archbishop Farley. 

Amid the strains of jubilation and the accents of acclaim 
with which the centenary of our diocese has been hailed, it 
were surely but consonant with a due observance of the his- 
toric event, to include the personal note that vitalizes and 
dominates its occurrence. That note, Archbishop, is to be 
found in yourself; its tone and coloring as you stand and 
have stood related to this see of New York. 

On Wednesday wa's offered the Mass of the children, with 
the Rt. Rev. Bishop Burke, of Albany, as celebrant. Seven 
thousand children, representing about one- tenth of the parochial 
school enrollment, were gathered from the four quarters of the 
archdiocese. They filled every available space outside the sanc- 
tuary itself. A bright, smiling, sunlit sea of boys and girls. 
And they sang the Mass in the Gregorian Plain Song of So- 
lesmes; they sang it too with a unison and freshness and 
volume of tone that was as the voice of spring incarnate. 

One understood, indeed, with special intelligence the meaning 
of Christ's words: "For of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." 
Too much praise can hardly be bestowed upon Father Young, 
Father Kean, with their several assistants, in the masterly work 
of training these little ones for so glorious an outburst of litur- 
gical song, one which the ear of man hitherto probably has not 
heard in any part of the wide world. 



426 CURRENT EVENTS [June, 

On Wednesday evening followed the laity's demonstration 
at Carnegie Hall, which, with its capacity of three thousand, 
was packed from pit to dome with representative Catholics who 
listened with enthusiastic appreciation to notable speeches by 
notable speakers. The Hon. Morgan J. O'Brien, John J. De- 
laney, Dr. James J. Walsh, Paul Fuller, and W. Bourke Cock- 
ran, besides Archbishop Farley and Cardinal Logue. 

At the banquet of the clergy Cardinal Logue had said : 

I believe that the future of the Church lies in America. 
Rome, of course, will continue to be the center, for the Pope 
will have his see there, but the energy and the strength and 
the zeal will be in a large measure in this great country. We 
have in America the proof that the Catholic Church is the 
Church of all times and all places, and that it is not a Church 
that can survive and increase only under a monarchical form 
of government. In Ireland we are at times apt to complain of 
our form of government, but I have never yet heard of a 
Catholic complaining of the government in America. 

In the same train of thought at Carnegie Hall he said : 

I believe that when we get cold in the old countries of Eu- 
rope, and some of them are very cold already, and when the 
faith begins to grow dim there, it will only be necessary for a 
number of people to come over to America, as I have come, in 
order to get their spirit revived and' to have their faith re- 
newed. 

These are historic words coming at an historic occasion from 
the Primate of All Ireland, himself an historic figure, not only 
because of his exalted ecclesiastical office and dignity, but be- 
cause as a man he is of international distinction as one who, 
with simplicity and humility of life, combines erudition with 
practical knowledge and great prudence in matters religious 
and political. 

Not the least gratifying part of the Centenary was the cor- 
dial and intelligent appreciation of the entire celebration on the 
part of non-Catholics, as the following quotation from the New 
York Evening Post, certainly a representative non-Catholic pa- 
per, will attest: 



i9o8.] CURRENT EVENTS 427 



THE DIOCESAN CENTENARY. 

. The event is one to appeal strongly even to those 
not of the Catholic faith. What the Catholic churches and 
prelates and priests and laymen have been and done in this 
city, during the past hundred years, may well invite earnest 
consideration. For a great part of this work there can be 
nothing but praise. Some of its indirect results are almost as 
striking as the direct achievement. Note, for example, how 
much the steady ongoing of Catholic activity has done to ex- 
tinguish, or at least silence, ancient prejudices. 

Remembering the old and bitter anti-Catholic feeling, it 
marks a great transformation that to-day it would be true to 
say that the Protestant churches would look upon the extinc- 
tion or withdrawal of the Catholic churches as a great calam- 
ity. This does not imply that religious or even theological 
conviction has broken down; but that tolerance has broad- 
ened and that eyes have been opened to see the facts. 

We are certain that Protestant denominations would be sim- 
ply aghast and appalled if they were asked to take over the 
work of the Catholic Church in New York. They could not 
begin to do it. Even if they had the physical resources the 
men and money and buildings they would have neither the 
mental nor moral ability. For long years now, the Catholic 
Church in this great port has been receiving and controlling 
and assimilating one influx of foreign peoples after another. 
It has held them for religion, and it has held them for citi- 
zenship. 

No one can soberly reflect upon this vast labor of education 
and restraint without becoming convinced that it has been 
an indispensable force in our public life. The Protestant 
churches have been and are now more than ever unfitted, 
whether by temperament or methods, to attack so gigantic a 
problem. They lack the authority the compelling force of 
supernatural fears, if one insists. Nothing but a venerable 
and universal institution, always the same, . . . could 
have taken her incoming children the raw material of Amer- 
icansand done for them what the Catholic Church in this 
city has done during the memorable century now rolled past. 

Even those who cannot pretend to speak of Catholic dogma 
with entire sympathy, must confess that some of its moral re- 
sults have been admirable and useful. The firm stand of the 
Church in the matter of marriage and divorce, for example, 
seems more and more a blessing as the laxness of law and of 



428 CURRENT EVENTS [June, 

custom, in that respect, goes on increasing. Other churches 
have been forced, if only out ot shame at the welter of marital 
relations into which American society seems sometimes to be 
falling, to imitate and approximate the rigid standards of 
Catholics. We would not maintain that the Catholic position 
is an unmixed good ; it has its incidental evils ; but the testi- 
mony which it has borne to the ideal of the Christian family is 
something which cannot be overlooked when those who are 
not sons of the Church are reckoning up their debt to 
her. . . . 

All in all, this Catholic celebration is one in which the 
whole city may take an interest, and a certain pride. If of 
nothing else, we may be proud that a great deal of the for- 
mer narrowness has passed away. Thinking broadly of the 
church as a school in public righteousness, we may be grate- 
ful for every steady and powerful teacher of goodness, like the 
Catholic Church. The old misunderstandings and enmities 
are happily gone. 

And again from the New York Tribune: 

THE CATHOLIC CENTENARY. 

No American who was fortunate enough to find a place in 
St. Patrick's Cathedral yesterday morning can have brought 
away the old, outworn opinions about Catholicism and the 
Catholics to which he could hardly have failed to revert in 
memory as he gazed upon the scene. Stripped of its outward 
splendors, the spectacle at the Solemn Pontifical High Mass, 
marking the climax of the centenary celebration, presented a 
vivid picture of the intelligence, numerical strength, and vast 
influence of Catholicism in the United States. 

So far as material prosperity counts, the archdiocese has 
ample reason to rejoice on this, the one hundredth anniver- 
sary of its foundation. From old St. Peter's in Barclay 
Street, built in 1786, or twenty-two years before the arrival 
of a bishop, the Catholic Church in New York City has 
grown to a community of three hundred and eighteen 
churches and one hundred and eighty-six chapels, frequented 
by nearly one and one-quarter million worshippers, and 
representing, with its affiliated charitable institutions and 
schools, an ecclesiastical investment of scores of millions. 
But its chief warrant lor justifiable pride is found in the char- 
acter of the men and women who owe it allegiance. There 



1908.] CURRENT EVENTS 429 

can be little doubt that American Catholics, and notably 
those of this archdiocese, are, as a whole, the most enlight- 
ened and the most progressive body of all that look to Rome 
for spiritual guidance. The fact has wide import, affording, 
as it does, clear proof that the vital strength of Catholicism 
lies deep below the more or less accidental forms of organiza- 
tion and ceremony. For this reason the present imposing 
celebration will join with happy reminiscences the brightest 
hopes for later days. 

Highly gratifying as these editorials are, it may be well 
for us to bear in mind the closing words of Mr. Paul Fuller's 
speech at Carnegie Hall, himself a New Englander, of Puritan 
stock and a convert to the Church : 

Self-glorification is a perilous pastime ; it is not expedient, 
St. Paul tells us. And while we rejoice at the acclaim and 
generous recognition of our non-Catholic brethren, let us of 
the laity remember that the continuance of the good work is 
in our keeping, and that only in the measure that each one 
of us is more watchful of the beam in his own eye than of the 
mote in his non-Catholic neighbor's only in the measure 
that each one does honor to the highest teachings of the 
Church to which in God's providence we are privileged to be- 
long shall we contribute to the maintenance of His King- 
dom in the hearts and souls of men. 

B. STUART CHAMBERS. 



THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION 

ABBE FELIX KLEIN, of the Catholic Institute of Paris, has been for 
many years a close observer of American affairs. After his first visit to 
our shores he wrote America, the Land of the Strenuous Zz/<?(McClurg & Co., 
Chicago), which was honored by the French Academy, and generally ap- 
proved as a generous and impartial statement of facts. His trip in the year 
1907 will furnish material for a new volume. From his recent article in Le 
Co-rrespondant (April 10) is taken the following condensed narrative of his 
journey to Cliff Haven: 

I will not recount here my visit to New York, with its heat, at the begin- 
ning of July. It was described in my first trip ; besides we shall return there. 
For the next four days I renewed acquaintances, and made arrangements for 
my departure for Chautauqua, where I had been invited to lecture. 

Chautauqua (do not confess that you are ignorant of this name so famil- 
iar to Americans) is a country place on the shore of a lake, noted ior cool- 
ness, which consoled me; for I had to speak there and to speak in English. 
Eager to start, at noon on Friday I purchased a ticket so as to be able to leave 
on Monday. On Friday evening, however, Father McMillan, came into my 
room, asked me what my plans were, and substituted his own. He wanted me to 
see the Catholic Summer-School before going to Chautauqua, and as a conse- 
quence I prepared to leave on Saturday for Cliff Haven, on the northern end 
of Lake Champlain, near the Canadian border. On Monday we could start 
south and visit the Paulist summer house on Lake George; I could then go 
to Buffalo on Wednesday and arrive at Chautauqua Thursday evening in 
time to speak on Friday. I could leave the same evening and reach Chicago 
on Saturday and lecture at the University there on Sunday. Such a pro- 
gramme would be a very good entry upon four months of American life. To 
the great distress of my seminarist, I agreed to all this bustle ; and thus 
added eight hundred kilometers to my original trip. Father McMillan found 
it all very easy and did not even congratulate me. Had I offered any resist- 
ance I would have lost my time. 

It was still day when we arrived at Cliff Haven, in the fading light of one 
of those clear evenings, when lake and woods send forth coolness and per- 
fume. How refreshing, in contrast to sweltering New York, as we drove 
away to the Catholic Summer-School of America, that is to say, a group of 
elegant and simple cottages, tents, family boarding houses, conference halls, 
and the chapel which, for two or more months of summer brings together in 
relaxation, study, and prayer, many thousands of Catholics from throughout 
the States, chiefly from the East, and even at times from foreign countries. 

This ideal village dominates the west bank of Lake Champlain; on the 
other shore are the green hills of Vermont, whilst in the rear are the blue 
Adirondacks. The houses are situated on either side of long graveled 
avenues; boards of white wood, placed about on the neatly trimmed grass, 
serve as signs to the various dwellings. The cottages are so trim that one 
would believe them all newly painted. The rain and mud do not disturb the 
well-regulated grounds and the approach of dust is cut off by the lake, the 
meadows, and the woods. 

The interior of the cottages and the appearance of the people are as neat 



THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION 431 

as the surroundings, as I am able to testify from the visits I made during my 
stay; everywhere, in the manner of dress and in the furnishings of the 
rooms, there is the same simplicity, the same sober elegance, and it may be 
said that no social difference is recognized. It appears to me that the moral 
atmosphere is equally pure and transparent. Everything is done under the 
eyes of all. Nothing is secret. Everyone attends Mass on Sunday morning 
and prays with recollection, while many receive Communion. A modest 
gaiety is evident on the faces of all, a sign of simple and upright life. There 
is no fear of robbery ; so much so that the church and sacristy, without pro- 
tection, remain open all the time, even during the night. Evidently the peo- 
ple here are a class of elite who think only of honest rest, instruction, and 
moral advancement, yet who work to attain such progress without even think- 
ing of it, which is not the worst way. 

I did not attend any of the lecture-courses, because, having arrived on 
Saturday evening, I was obliged to leave on Monday morning. Meanwhile 
I easily gathered enough information to convince me that it is a mere joke to 
say that in this " Summer-School" there is a great deal of summer and very 
little of school. 

On Sunday after Mass we mad a visit to the College camp, where boys 
aged thirteen and over live together under tents as soldiers, and lead the 
open-air life, giving themselves up to athletic games of every kind. The 
regimen is simple, the installation primitive; but the hygiene is safeguarded. 
The canvas of the tent is waterproof, and a wooden floor is laid on the 
ground; boardwalks, for rainy days, here connect the tents as elsewhere 
the cottages. The camp stands in a thick wood on a cliff overlooking the 
lake (whence the name Cliff Haven). The youngsters seemed to be in good 
condition and happy. They introduced me to collegians who live too far 
away to go home during the vacations, notably South Americans, and even 
two young Filipinos whom the United States Government is having educated 
at its own expense to aid later on in assimilating its distant conquest. 

Camping out is very much developed in America, and not alone for 
young people. Families, groups of friends, go to pass a few weeks of the 
warm season in the woods or mountains, thus taking up again the primitive 
life of their Indian predecessors. There seems to be nothing more agreeable 
or more invigorating. But it is for the boys especially that this sport is con- 
sidered at once the supreme pleasure and an excellent means of development; 
in it they learn simple tastes and acquire physical vigor, two advantages 
equally precious in an overheated civilization, which exaggerates the appe- 
tites and diminishes our forces. 

The Catholic Summer-School does not lack grounds for its sports, ten- 
nis, bowling, running, golf, swimming, rowing. The woods, the mountains, 
a lake one hundred miles in length and, in some places, fourteen miles wide, 
open out before its happy guests, and it possesses in its own right five hun- 
dred acres of land. Apropos of this, the French people will think, with such 
a property and all its buildings, it must pay a heavy tax. Not a dollar, not 
a cent! Is it not a work of education; and in virtue of this, does it not 
serve a public good? The whole is exempt by the New York law fostering 
"university extension," and the cottages are dormitories for the students. 
But the public authorities do not stop with exempting this Catholic work 



432 BOOKS RECEIVED [June, 1908.] 

from taxes ; they not only assist religious development, but are so infatuated 
as to encourage it with their visible support. Among its visitors the 
Summer-School has inscribed the names of President McKinley, several 
senators and members of Congress, Vice-President Fairbanks, and Theodore 
Roosevelt when he was Governor of the State of New York. The same 
policy favors, moreover, all similar works, as for example the Institution 
called Chautauqua, whither we were about to go, without it being necessary, 
I think, to tell about the journey. M. C. M. 



BOOKS RECEIVED. 

LONGMANS, GREEN & Co., New York: 

Spiritual Verses as Aids to Mental Prayer. By Rev. J. B. Johnson, M.A. Pp. vi.-8o. A 
Torn Scrap Book. Talks and Tales illustrative of the " Our Father." By Genevieve 
Irons. With Preface by Rev. R. Hugh Benson. The Training of a Priest. An Essay 
on Clerical Education. With a Reply to the Critics. By Rev. John Talbot Smith, 
LL.D. The Dream of Gerontius. By John Henry, Cardinal Newman. New Edition 
with Photogravure Portrait and Other Illustrations. Price 90 cents. 
BENZIGER BROTHERS, New York : 

Old Truths not Modernist Errors. Exposure of Modernism and Vindication of its Con- 
demnation by the Pope. By Rev. Fr. Norbert Jones, C.R.L. Rosette: A Tale of 
Dublin and Paris. By Mrs. William O'Brien. Price $1.25. Fraternal Charity. By 
Rev. Father Valuy, S.J. Authorized translation. A Child Countess. By Sophie Maude. 
With Foreword by Robert Hugh Benson. Price 75 cents. Dear Friends. A Sequel to 
Althea. By D. E. Nirdlinger. The Ministry of Daily Communion. A consideration 
for Priests. By F. M. de Zulueta, S.J. Price 60 cents. Lois. By Emily Hickey. 
Price $1.10. The Acts of the Apostles (Catholic Scripture Manual). Books I. and II. 
With Introduction and Annotations. By Madame Cecilia. Price $1.25. 
FUNK & WAGNALLS, New York : 

The Next Step in Evolution. By Isaac K. Funk, LL.D. Pp. vi.-io7. Price 50 cents. 
The Psychology of Inspiration. An Attempt to Distinguish Religious from Scientific 
Truth and to Harmonize Christianity with Modern Thought. By George Raymond 
Lansing. Price $1.40 net. 
CHRISTIAN PRESS ASSOCIATION, New York: 

Christian Science Before the Bar of Reason. By the Rev. L. A. Lambert, LL.D. , Edited 

by the Rev. A. S. Quinlan. Pp. 212. Price $i net. 
THOMAS Y. CROWELL & Co., New York: 

The Young Malefactor. A Study in Juvenile Delinquency. By Thomas Travis, Ph.D. 

Pp. xxviii.-243. Price $1.50. 
CATHEDRAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, New York: 

All About Salads. By Lady Polly. Price 75 cents. 
FATHERS OF THE BLESSED SACRAMENT, New York : 

The Real Presence. Extracts from the Writings and Sermons of the Very Rev. P. 
Eymard. Pp. xiv.-4Oi. Price, cloth, 75 cents ; leather, $1.25. 
J. McVEY, Philadelphia, Pa. : 
The Doctrine of Modernism and Its Refutation. By J. Godrycz, D.D. Pp. 132. Price 75 

cents net. 
SMALL, MAYNARD & Co., Boston, Mass. : 

Edgar Allan Poe. By John Macy. Pp. xv.-H2. Price 75 cents. 
B. HERDER, St. Louis, Mo. : 

Constance Sherwood. An Autobiography of the Sixteenth Century. By Lady Georgiana 
Fullerton. Price 40 cents. What is Life ? A Study of Vitalism and Neo- Vitalism. By 
Bertram C. A. Windle, President of Queen's College, Cork. Price $i. 60. The Bec- 
koning of the Wand. Sketches of a Lesser- Known Ireland. By Alice Dease. Price $i. 
The Spouse of Christ and Daily Communion. By F. M. de Zulueta, S.J. Pp.62. Price 30 
cents. The Spectrum of Truth. By A. B. Sharpe and F. Aveling. Pp. 93 Price 30 
cents. The Life of Madame Flore, Second Superior- Genera I of the "Ladies of Mary." 
Translated and abridged by Frances Jackson. Price $i. For My Name's Sake. Trans- 
lated from theFrench of Champol's Stzur Alexandrine, by L. M. Leggatt. Price $1.10. 
THE ANGELUS PUBLISHING COMPANY, Detroit, Mich.: 

The Queen's Daughter. By. Joseph F. Wynne. Pp. 186. 
THOMAS BAKER, London : 

The Dark Night of the Soul. By St. John of the Cross. Translated by D. Louis. 
BLOUD ET CIE, Paris: 

Les Deux Aspects de V Immanence et le Problcme Religieux. Par Ed. Thamiry. Pp. 

xxxviii.-3o8. 
EMILY NOURRY, Paris: 

Le Pragmatisme. Par Marcel Herbert. Pp. 105. Price i fr. 25. 
G. BEAUCHESNE ET CIE, Paris : 

Les Croyances Religieuses et les Sciences de. la.Nature. Par J. Guibert. Price 3 frs. Un 
Chretien Journal d'un Neo Converti. Par Lucien^pure. Pp. vi.-82. 



- 






THE 

CATHOLIC WORLD. 

VOL. LXXXVII. JULY, 1908. No. 520. 

RELIGIOUS TEACHING IN ITALIAN SCHOOLS. 

A SUMMARY OF THE RECENT ITALIAN PARLIAMENTARY 
DEBATES ON THE QUESTION. 

BY R. E. 
I. 

|N presenting these papers to American readers, 
we wish to disarm, as far as possible, adverse 
criticism, by stating that we do not pretend to 
give them an original article so much as one 
"taken from the original" or, rather, we aim at 
giving a view of the manners and modes in which, in Italy, 
the recent battle about religious teaching in the Government 
primary or elementary schools has been fought. The best plan 
for attaining this end is to let the American public read for 
itself the utterances of some of the chief Italian Parliamentary 
speakers (as far, at least, as a somewhat free and necessarily 
curtailed translation will allow), who spoke " for " or " against " 
religious instruction in the schools. We think, too, these utter- 
ances, and sometimes the method of delivering them, will in 
themselves prove to be rather a revelation, an " opening wide 
of the windows of the soul " of many an Italian to many an 
American mind. 

It is no easy task to winnow the Parliamentary grain from 
the dense clouds of chaff energetically thrashed out by up- 

Copyright. 1908. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE 

IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK. 
VOL. LXXXVII 28 




434 RELIGIOUS TEACHING IN ITALIAN SCHOOLS [July, 

wards of thirty-seven speakers in the Italian senate. But we 
personally have emerged from that dust storm of many days 
duration, with the following fairly clear impressions : 

Fit st. We are struck with the political rather than the reli- 
gious sense attached to the debate and attributed as its leading 
motive by leading speakers on both sides. 

Second. With the apparent impossibility on the part of most 
of the speakers to avoid personalities some even amounting 
to excessive abuse of their adversaries (these we shall refrain 
from quoting) combined with a great difficulty to keep to the 
argument under discussion. 

Third. The tendency to quote the practices of the schools 
of other countries, and the allusions (not always quite correct) 
made to them. 

Fourth. The apparent synonymy of the phrases : " Reli- 
gious Instruction"; " The Catechism "; and " Dogmatic Teach- 
ing " ; and the desire of many speakers of all parties to do 
away with this " Dogmatic Teaching" only. No other form of 
religious instruction being apparently contemplated or taken into 
account in Italy. 

The question of the desirability or non-desirability of reli- 
gious teaching in the Government schools becomes, at least from 
a Catholic point of view, an international one. Catholicism 
recognizes no fixed barriers of nationalities. A law that affects 
the religious status of one country affects indirectly (if not 
directly) all, and such a law cannot be ignored by other coun- 
tries, not only from the religious but from the material, prac- 
tical point of view, on account of its far-reaching consequences 
in the present, and still more, in the immediate future. In 
these days of every conceivable form of international com- 
munication, physical and mental, no one country can afford to 
stand by, idly looking on, while in some neighboring country 
the vital question of laws affecting the morals of future gener- 
ations is being weighed in the balance. America must, of all 
existing nations, be most alive to this. America, over whom 
towers the huge and dominating figure of the Colossus of Im- 
migration. America, through whose hands pass annually more 
than a million of the wandering sons and daughters of nearly 
every other country in the world. To America surely it must 
be, sooner or later, of an immeasurable importance, whether that 
ceaseless emigrant stream pouring itself out of Italy into her 



i9o8.] RELIGIOUS TEACHING IN ITALIAN SCHOOLS 435 

states shall be fed from the classes of men and women brought 
up on some recognized form of moral instruction, or shall con- 
sist entirely of those (considered by some Italian deputies, as 
will be seen presently, more desirable) who have been reared 
and educated in Government schools, in which all mention of 
any form of religious belief, definite or indefinite, has been 
excluded. Although obviously Italy must make her laws for the 
Italians, and equally obviously all Italians do not become emi- 
grants, nevertheless so vast a number do pass the greater portion 
of their lives in the United States or other countries,* that it be- 
comes a matter of sufficiently practical importance to warrant 
countries outside of Italy taking a profound interest in the 
Italian religious question. 

In studying this question, even cursorily, too great insistence 
cannot be laid on the fact that Italy must not, cannot be judged 
from the same standpoint as any other country. For her the 
religious question is too burning and personal a one not to 
enter as a factor into her everyday life, and into almost every 
political action she takes, in a manner quite unbelievable and 
almost inconceivable to any one who has not lived for at least 
some years in Italy. For example, as things now stand, there 
can be no possibility in Italy of any discussion of important 
legislative matters between Church and State authorities. So 
that what might be elsewhere an ordinary and advantageous 
mode of procedure to both parties, is here absolutely precluded. 
Again : The fierce individual hatred of religion, which a strong 
anarchistical and anti-clerical party works unceasingly to instill 
into the minds of the Italian lower classes a hatred confessed 
to openly in Parliament, and for the promulgation of which a 
certain foul class of illustrated paper like the Asino is issued 
is, comparatively speaking, peculiar to Italy. f In fact, to invert 
the homely saying, " What is sauce for the goose is not sauce for 

* For full statistics as to emigrant numbers in Europe alone, v. Annual report of the 
" Opera di Assistenza degli Operari Italiani in Europa e nel Levanti," founded by Bishop 
Bonomelli, of Cremona, with headquarters at Turin. Villari gives the number of Italians in 
Switzerland alone as 120,000. 

t To illustrate this deplorable feeling mentioned above, we quote from one of the Italian papers 
the following account of a socialist open-air meeting in Rome. After several had spoken in a 
similar sense " it was the turn of the anarchist Deputy Ceccarelli, whose address was interrupted 
by deafening/jfA*', whistlings, hisses, directed towards some priests who were passing through the 
street. This noise having come to an end, the speaker concluded, saying it was high time the 
people ceased to genuflect in the churches and confessionals, or permitted their wives and chil- 
dren to do so. ... The people should take for their one guiding principle : Ne Dio ne 
Padrone Neither God nor Master ! " 



436 RELIGIOUS TEACHING IN ITALIAN SCHOOLS [July, 

the gander ! " and to say, as often is said by irresponsible per- 
sons, " such and such a system works admirably in America or 
England ; why not in Italy ? " is, to put it plainly, if not polite- 
ly, absolute nonsense. Most foreigners do not stay abroad long 
enough to get a real grasp of the situation between Church 
and State, or to see how it affects even the minutest concerns 
of Italian everyday life. Only a few months ago, in Lucca, the 
purely municipal question as to whether or not a gateway 
should be made and train lines introduced through the ancient 
city walls, developed into a fierce party struggle between cleri- 
cals and non- clericals ! Vote against demolition of the old walls 
"Clerical!" Vote for the new gateway " Anti-clerical !" 
We of other countries may smile at such pettinesses, but smil- 
ing will not alter the fact that they do exist in profusion in 
Italy. 

A foreigner, after residing in Italy for a few years, will become 
aware of the fundamental difference between his native countiy 
and that of his adoption ; and he will also gradually realize 
that whereas he may stigmatize as "out-of-date" and "child- 
ish " many things Italian, the Italian in return, with centuries 
of a glorious past behind him, looks upon many modern things 
as purely obnoxious. At least a thoroughgoing Italian will so 
view matters; the one who does not, is probably of that class 
of modern scourges a would-be-up-to date-in-everything per- 
son whose mind has become possessed with the new-fangled 
ideas scattered carelessly abroad by the tourist traveler; and, 
being neither prepared nor competent to deal with them, he 
becomes unreasonably dissatisfied with what he finds in his own 
country, and ready to think everything foreign as superior. 
But the real Italian is still suspicious with regard to foreign 
assertions, holding them to be exaggerations or untrue, and 
deserving therefore of the newly- coined Italian epithet uw 
Americanata an Americanism! So wherever we turn we are 
brought up short by the absolute dissimilarity between Italy 
and America; and it is utterly futile for Americans to imagine 
that they will overcome Italian customs and ways of thought 
by considering themselves evangelists and so conducting them- 
selves when for a few months at most they visit the country 
which for many centuries taught the world its alphabet. 

Before we give our summary of the most important speeches 
of last February on this school question, it will be well to out- 



1908.] RELIGIOUS TEACHING IN ITALIAN SCHOOLS 437 

line the laws relating to religious instruction constantly referred 
to by the deputies : 

First. The so-called Casati law, introduced by Casati in 
1859, which made it obligatory for the Communes, the Muni- 
cipal Councils, to give religious instruction in the elementary 
schools. 

Second. In 1877 the Coppino law, which was introduced by 
Benedetto Cairoli. This, though altering the Casati law in sev- 
eral respects (excluding, e. g., religious subjects from examina- 
tions), did not venture to suppress religious instruction, but 
made it obligatory on the Communes whenever a majority of 
the fathers of families asked it for their children. 

This law has been in force up to the present, though it is 
a notorious fact that attempts have been made to undermine 
religious teaching in the public schools, by the nomination of 
men of the most anti-religious views to the post of religious in- 
structor; this was especially true under the Nasi Ministry. 

The Government Bill, and the opposition one proposed in 
February, 1908, are as follows: 

That of the Government: "The Communes shall provide for 
the religious instruction of those scholars whose parents shall have 
asked for it, on the days and at the hours fixed by the Provincial 
School Council ; to be given by the class teachers, who are con- 
sidered qualified for the office, and who will undertake to give 
it ; or by other individuals whose qualifications for the post are 
recognized by the same council. When, however, the majority of 
the councillors belonging to the Commune do not order religious 
instruction, then it may be given (the fathers of families who 
have asked for it being responsible) by any person who holds 
the certificate of elementary master, and who is approved by the 
Provincial School Council. In this case the local school buildings 
shall be set aside for such teaching, on such days and hours as 
shall be decided on by the Provincial School Council." 

The Opposition bill which Bissolati proposed endeavored to 
ensure the lay character of the elementary schools by prohibit- 
ing the giving therein of religious instruction under any form 
whatsoever. 

On February 18 Bissolati spoke in defence of his bill, and, 
as most of the speakers who followed him allowed, nothing could 
well have exceeded his frankness and outspokenness. The reason 
given by him for proposing his bill was, that the original pro- 



438 RELIGIOUS TEACHING IN ITALIAN SCHOOLS [July, 

posals made by Rava on behalf of Government had been so al- 
tered, by what he called the " Bertolini code," that he was un- 
able to assent to it. The amendment made by the Deputy Ber- 
tolini was that instead of leaving to the Communes the choice 
of giving or withholding religious instruction, the Communes 
should be obliged to act according to the votes and expressed 
wishes of the majority of fathers of families. 

"The State," argued Bissolati, "cannot have any right to 
lend itself to the diffusion of any religious belief, even if held 
by the majority of citizens," for the reason that the State does 
not govern for the majority only, but for the entire nation ; 
therefore, the pretended rights of the Catholics, as constituting a 
religious majority, are not to be regarded. A Democratic State 
may rightfully teach in State schools only facts known to be 
true and certain not abstract matters, such as the catechism. 
" The Democratic State which teaches dogma contradicts itself, 
inasmuch as its supreme duty is not to preoccupy artificially 
the minds and consciences of the youthful generation." The 
ex-Minister Sonnino remarked that such a theory would prohibit 
teaching children in Government schools not to steal, not to 
kill, etc. Bissolati proceeded: "The eternal struggle between 
dogma and criticism,* between revelation and science, manifests 
itself in every aspect of life, and hence also in the school. 
And it is useless to desire to reconcile dogma and reason by 
interpreting and teaching religion in a rational manner, unless 
religion be considered a mere historical and human phenomenon 
a method certainly not desired by the advocates of religious 
teaching. Individual morality is something quite independent 
of any profession of faith." 

"I am convinced," he concluded, " that I have not worked 
in vain, if by thus agitating the question of religious teaching in 
the schools I have succeeded at least in re-arousing the drowsy 
Italian political conscience, directing it towards that ideal of 
civil and moral liberty, without which the New Italy would 
stand out in history as an ironical absurdity." 

Bissolati's speech was loudly applauded by the Extreme Left, 
the party of which he is a leader, and the enthusiastic socialist, 

* Bissolati here referred at some length to the recent Modernist condemnation by Pope 
Pius X., and between him and Santini, the ultra-clerical deputy, many facetious amenities 
were interchanged, mostly personal and absolutely removed from the subject. Santini, it 
may be remarked, is the " enfant terrible " of the clerical party. 



1908.] RELIGIOUS TEACHING IN ITALIAN SCHOOLS 439 

Turati, leaving his seat, embraced his colleague with much en- 
thusiasm. 

The Deputy Cameroni followed. His speech was considered 
one of the best throughout the debate and was listened to most 
attentively by a full house. His bold, frank attack on Free- 
masonry,* of which Bissolati is a member, and the patriotic and 
religious tone of his speech, told exceedingly, so much so that 
many of the succeeding speakers seemed to have confined their 
remarks to personal attacks against him and his statements. 

Cameroni's great point was, that no such " neutrality as re- 
gards dogmatic teaching in the schools," as professed by Bis- 
solati and his faction, is really aimed at by them, but rather 
an absolute subversion of religious instruction, and a power- 
ful anti-religious and Freemasonic propaganda. As proof of 
this, he quoted from the minutes of the speeches and utter- 
ances of the Communal Council of Verona, at the meeting held 
recently in that city, when religious teaching was abolished in 
the schools there. The Tax Assessor had in rather vague 
terms enunciated the customary theory as to the desired neu- 
trality of lay instruction in the schools, declaring that the tact 
of individual masters would enable them to satisfy the exigencies 
of the inquiring infant mind confronted by the problems of life, 
etc., etc. He was followed by an extremely outspoken socialist, 
who also alluded to the idea of neutrality in school teaching, but 
termed it a " metaphysical conception with a touch of romanti- 
cism about it, handed down by Minghetti, Sella, and Bonghi,f and 
other excellent persons who knew how to reconcile their own 
anti- clericalism with the interests of the citizen- classes, and with 
a faith in the supernatural" ; and he proceeded to point out 
the impossibility of State and Commune being neutral in such 
a matter, and actually declared: "It is said: 'In the lay- 
schools we teach no principles we employ only the experi- 
mental method.' But is not this method surely a special con- 
quest for the anti-religious spirit, by the use of which one ad- 
vances to the heart of dogma? When we put into the hands 
of children a scientific- experimental form adapted to their ten- 



* American readers should bear in mind the difference between Continental Freemasonry 
and Freemasonry as it is known at home, a difference so great as to have caused Eng- 
lish Masonic societies, at any rate, to^ declare themselves as severed from the Continental 
ones. 

t Very famous Italian statesmen, and names, moreover, which stir the Italian heart. 



440 RELIGIOUS TEACHING IN ITALIAN SCHOOLS [July, 

der minds, we accustom them to analyze things more and 
more, and thus in a veiled form make an effective anti-religious 
propaganda in the school, a propaganda which I consider ought 
to be made." 

" Is this," asked Cameroni, " is this what the honorable 
Deputy Bissolati and his friends call the May neutrality of the 
schools ' ? Is this, ' the lay neutrality ' proclaimed by Sella, 
Minghetti, and Bonghi ? " As an instance of the vacillation 
on the part of the Minister Rava, he notes that in 1906 Rava 
stated that the Commune was bound to give religious instruc- 
tion to the scholars when it was asked for by their parents. 
Who would then have supposed that the minister would so 
quickly alter his convictions, and would leave it, as he now 
practically did, to the Communes to settle whether they would 
allow religious instruction or not? The Communal Council of 
Cremona, for example, has refused the use of the schools for 
religious teaching to the parents who asked for it. The advo- 
cates of the theory of a lay state incompetent to judge of re- 
ligious matters, proceeded upon a false conception of what the 
state is. They represented it as an abstract entity, outside and 
above the life of the citizen, of whose material and intellectual 
interests it must of necessity take notice and provide for, but 
whose purely moral interests it might ignore. "What did it 
signify if the great majority of citizens were, and preferred to 
be, religious ? The state must (according to these advocates) 
ignore all the aspirations of citizens desirous of a living religion 
it must live in so jealous an isolation as even to forget what 
was, according to a certain article of the Statute, the religion 
of the Italian people and it must forget that the moral edu- 
cation of its citizens was a problem, at least as interesting to 
the state as the problem of the improvement in the breeding 
of horses ; or, the battle to be fought against the phylloxera ! " 

Cameroni continued: "Can the Government ignore the fact, 
that the majority of fathers of families are desirous of having 
ensured to their children a religious education which will 
strengthen the sense of their obligations and duties as citizens? 
Let the Government recollect how, as statistics prove, 
youthful crime is steadily increasing, how many reformatories 
are being erected and old ones enlarged, and how hatred and 
rebellion against authority is on the increase among different 
classes (especially the lowest), on account of the absolute dis- 



1908.] RELIGIOUS TEACHING IN ITALIAN SCHOOLS 441 

credit into which every principle of authority and law has 
fallen, and because of the deplorable anarchist propaganda 
which is being so largely diffused among the people. Though 
it cannot be said that moral education on a religious basis pre- 
vents all social disorder, yet it is certain that a firm belief in 
an invariable moral law and in a Judge Who sees all things, 
and Whose judgment may fall at any moment upon the culprit, 
can act as a far more effective deterrent than the idea of 'so- 
cial rights and duty to society,' which are only too often valued 
according to each individual's conception of his own rights 
and interests. 

" Statistics show that the will of the people is for religious 
education in the elementary schools. In Rome nearly 90 per 
cent of fathers of families have asked it for their children. 
In Verona, at the very moment when the Communal Council 
was abolishing it, it was demanded for 5,940 out of 6,000 
scholars. And the Deputy Bissolati himself knows well that 
out of his own electorate more than 5,000 electors have risen in 
protest against his bill. Bissolati has openly stated in the press 
that 'if the majority of Italians are really and truly Catholic, 
and really believe that morals are dependent on religion then 
it must be admitted that the Third Italy has arisen, and exists 
in opposition to the will of the majority, because the new Italy 
is asserting itself against the spirit and institution of Catholicism.' 
This is the Freemasonic announcement oi Bissolati. There was 
in Italy a party to whom the fall of the temporal power and 
1 United Italy ' represented nothing but a first step towards 
an attack upon the Church who read into the radiant dream 
of our great national re- awakening nothing but the end of re- 
ligion in Italy. This party still exists, but it is not the peo- 
ple. Nor can it arrogate to itself the pretension to represent 
the people, while it offends the people in their dearest sentiments 
and firmest traditions, while it stirs up everywhere religious 
strife, and retards that real progress, that moral and material 
elevation, so desired by all honest patriots. No ; the powerful, 
sane, and strong people of Italy rebel against the servitude of 
party spirit, and demand of its national representatives a full 
recognition of one of the first principles of liberty the edu- 
cation of their children in the faith of their fathers in order 
that they may become honest, upright citizens, ready to serve 
their country." 



442 RELIGIOUS TEACHING IN ITALIAN SCHOOLS [July. 

Signer Fradaletto, who spoke in the debate on February 
29, was moderate and fair and made many good points some 
very telling ones against the form of the catechism as imparted 
at present in several schools. He insisted that the catechism 
is employed at times for clerical-political purposes, as, for in- 
stance, when reference is made to the Ecumenical Council which, 
in 1870, was forced to suspend its labors, the wish is expressed 
that " when the storm shall have passed by, the Pope will be 
able to resume his labors." He thinks that the catechism, as 
taught in the elementary schools, should be revised. The Gov- 
ernment measure he rejects, for its indecision and for the fact 
" that it would make the schools and the school question a per- 
manent seat of contention and rivalry, and turn Gcd into the 
eternal subject of an administrative referendum ! " And, very 
wisely, he draws attention to the practical difficulty of consti- 
tuting effective committees of the fathers of families when the 
Communes refuse religious instruction to their children. He con- 
cludes by expressing his belief that "the Chamber will, by its 
vote, safeguard the interests of the schools, which ought to pre- 
vail above all other preconceptions." 




WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS. 

BY H. E. P. 

III. 

JEHU DAY, KNIFE-GRINDER. 

GREAT triangle of grass, and the houses round 
about it at a respectful distance. The green was 
the center of the village, and the great trees, a 
couple or more, made the shade and the lounge 
for all the lads of the place on Sunday after- 
noons, or on summer evenings. The highroad skirted one side 
of the green, and near the middle the blacksmith's shop opened 
out two wide doors, which were hooked back on windy days. 

It is in the early years of the last century. The cheery- faced 
old woman who gives me the story was at that time a little 
maid of ten, and she played about in the dust which stood 
deep in her father's forge. The said dust brings other memo- 
ries to the old lady's mind, and it is difficult to keep her to 
the point as she chatters on, telling of those simple days. It 
was from this dust that the child would pick out the old horse- 
shoe nails which were thrown into it when the village cart horses 
came for repairs. The child would patiently add to the little 
heap she had made in a corner by the great bellows, and when 
enough of the curly bits of metal had been collected, her father 
put them into a bag, against the day when the man with the 
spotted pony came to buy them. 

I guide this preface carefully as I listen, and try to bring it 
round to the story I want, but the preface must go on a bit, for 
I have not yet heard how the nails were sold, and the play 
that went on when the man came round. So I listen patiently, 
you must when an old woman talks, if you want to get to 
the point. The man who bought the nails was a " reg'ler cheat," 
she explains, and her father knew it. He would put the nails 
into the scale he brought with him, hanging it from a beam in 
the forge, and shout at the blacksmith at the top of his voice: 



444 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [July, 

" two pound and arf." The blacksmith went on with his strik- 
ing, just as if he had never heard. " Blest if he ain't gwoin' 
down agen," the man would exclaim. " Two pound and three- 
quarters, Mister, as near as mab-be." Still no sign from the 
blacksmith, who keeps on steadily at his work as if no one was 
in the shop. " Danged if he ain't moving agen," the man shouted 
the third time. The hammering ceased at once, and the black- 
smith looked sternly from the man to the child. "Beggin' your 
pardon, Mister, but you be a hard 'un to deal with will yer say 
three pound and ha' done wi' it?" "Three pounds it is," says 
the blacksmith slowly, "you may have 'em at that." The money 
is paid over and nails and man drive away. The child would 
linger near the anvil, and when the piece of work was done, 
over which her father was engaged, he would say with the faint- 
est smile on his great stern face: "Some of this be thine, 
Anna," and give her a bright fourpenny bit, and a kiss on the 
top of her head. 

The old lady is breathless with her story, and I have hopes 
that after this long preface, she will start on the one I want. 
But no, not for a minute yet. "You see, Father," she says, 
and the memory of the scene makes her laugh heartily, " this 
was the game every time the man came round, and they hardly 
altered a word of it; only sometimes, when it came to the swear- 
ing place, he'd use worse words than he did others." 

" He made a lot of money out of them nails," she contin- 
ued, just when I thought she had talked herself out, and had 
finished the preface. " He sold 'em to make gun barrels of, 
because they was so tough and hard, and I mind as I picked 
'em up out of the dust, I thought I was helping to fight the 
Frenchmen everybody was so much afraid of them people, when 
I was a little maid." 

" How old were you when you found the old knife-grinder, 
you told me about once ? " I ask in a careless kind of way, 
to see if at last I can start the old lady going. Yes, she takes 
it, and is off, and this is the story for which I have waited 
patiently : 

It is an October night and the wind is cold. Most of the 
leaves are off the old trees on the green, and the moonlight can 
shine through them down to the great white stones beneath. It 
shows Anna the old stocks as she takes a short cut across the 
grass, passing close by them, on her way to Tucker's Grave. 



I908.J WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS 445 

The stocks consist of two massive stone posts with a rough 
groove on their inner sides. They are set about five feet apart, 
and a heavy board is fixed by its ends, in the aforesaid groove. 
A second board slides up and down, fixed at its ends like its 
lower companion. Where the edges meet, a half-circle is cut 
from each so that a hole is left, large enough to embrace a man's 
leg at the ankle. Half-way between the two great posts, and 
set back a short distance, is a solid block of stone, which does 
duty for a seat. 

The little grocer's shop is beside Tucker's Grave Inn, and 
Anna has bought what she wants. It is not a part of the road 
where children care to loiter, for the place gets its gruesome 
name from a certain suicide who had been buried there. These 
burials were the strong rough way by which our forefathers 
sought to stay men from laying violent hands upon themselves. 
The unhallowed grave at the crossroads, opened at dead of night, 
the absence of coffin and shroud, and the last ignominy when a 
stake was driven through the dead man's body to pin him safely 
to the spot, formed so revolting a picture, that men may well 
have paused before they attempted self-destruction. And the 
recollection or report of these dread funerals, with the crowd 
upon the highway, and the feeble lights, and some ghastly 
corpse cast under the hedge until the hole was dug, made the 
place at the crossroads a terror to succeeding generations. 

Tommy Tucker, the suicide who had been buried here, was 
supposed to haunt the road on moonlit nights, and trembling 
children would run as they came to his cross, lest he should 
belay them. 

A deep groan, and a voice from the ditch, made little 
Anna's heart stand nearly still. " Be that some one ? Oh, for 
God's sake, help I." 

The child's first impulse was to run as fast as she could, for 
surely this was Tommy Tucker out for a midnight raid. 

"Help I, oh, help I, for God's sake, help I ; I be nearly 
done." 

Was it some of her father's spirit that rose in the child's 
soul, and made her feel so firm ? Anyway, Anna stood, and 
called from the middle of the road, towards the black part of 
the ditch where the voice came from. "And who be you, sir?" 
Only groans, deep and long-drawn, came in answer to the ques- 
tion. " Be you dying, please ? " Anna thought she ought to 



446 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [July, 

be very polite in case it might be the awful Tommy "be you 
dying, please; or ha* ye got summat the matter with ye?" 

The little voice trembled and the last words hardly sounded, 
so great was her fright. " Whose be the little maid ? " said 
the voice; and then came some more of the terrible groans. 

" I be Anna Selway ; and who be you, please sir ? " the child 
answered, getting more used to the dismal sounds, the dark- 
ness, and the black thing in the ditch. 

"I be poor old Jehu Day," said the voice, "and they've a 
had I in the stocks most o' the day, and I be that perished, 
I can't go no furder." 

Anna came over to the ditch at once. She knew Jehu Day 
who didn't in those parts ? and she had seen him in the 
stocks herself. When the crime was worse than usual, the cul- 
prit was not allowed the luxury ot sitting on the great square 
stone, but was laid on the ground on the other side of the 
stocks, and his legs put into the vice, where they were safely 
padlocked by the parish beadle. 

Jehu Day was the local knife-grinder. He pushed his ma- 
chine from village to village, and set the men's razors, and 
sharpened the women's scissors, and put an edge upon the 
household cutlery. The plough-boy too, when he could afford 
the luxury, which cost a half-penny, had his knife ground, for 
the old man did it better with his machine than the owner 
could with a burr.* And Jehu Day played the fiddle as well. 
When it was too dark or too cold to grind knives, Jehu would 
take his fiddle to the village inn, and, in return for sundry 
drinks, scrape out a tune to which the company would dance. 

But these varied employments seemed to make him always 
thirsty. The grinding did he said the dust from the wheel 
got down his throat and made him dry and the fiddle did. 
The reasons why it produced this effect were as varied as the 
company in which he found himself. Indeed it was his inge- 
nuity in finding the reasons that procured him so many drinks. 
But the drinks told upon Jehu they had been telling upon 
him for years and on the day that Anna found him in the 
ditch, he had paid one of the heaviest penalties he had yet 
paid, by having six hours in the stocks. 

For an old man of seventy, on a cold October afternoon, 
the stocks had been an uneasy bed. On being let out of them, 

* Burr, a stone for sharpening scythes, etc. 



1908.] WEST- COUNTRY IDYLLS 447 

late in the evening, he had a difficulty to keep on his legs at 
all, and had staggered off down the road, till at last, overcome 
by the cold, his stiffness, his old age, and want of food, he had 
fallen where the child had found him. 

" I thought thou was Tommy Tucker, Mr. Jehu," she said 
as she came up close to the old man, "and I were main scared." 

" I b'ain't Tommy, me little maid ; I be poor old Jehu. 
Try to help I up, there's a good maid." 

Anna felt about in the dark, and at last got hold of the 
arm that was waving in the air. " Now do thou pull I that 
way, and I'll try to get on me knees, first," said the old man, 
and Anna pulled in the required direction. 

The black thing in the ditch slowly turned over, and with 
many groans got on to its knees on the edge of the road. 
"If thou 'ult stand theere, me lass, and let I put me hands on 
thy shoulders, I'll be on me old legs again." 

" And where be gwoin', Mr. Jehu, now thou b'est up ? " 
asked the child, for the old man was clinging to her and threat- 
ening to fall again into the ditch, this time taking Anna with 
him. 

" I wants shelter for the night, for I can't walk home till 
marn, I be that perished ; mab'be some 'un 'ull take I in." 

Very slowly, and leanii>g on the child until she felt nearly 
crushed down by him, the two made their way back to the 
village. 

" I'll speak to father about ye, Mr. Jehu, do thou bide here 
in the loo [warmth], whilst I go in home." 

Setting the old man in the angle of the wall formed by 
the projection of the blacksmith's forge, she timidly looked 
round as she went into the cottage. Yes, her father was there 
alone, in his usual chair by the fire. Putting her basket on 
the table, she went straight up to him, and joining her hands 
on his great knee, somewhat as if she were saying her prayers, 
she asked, all in one breath : ' Please, Daddy, Mr. Jehu Day's 
tumbled into the ditch, 'cause he was perished by the stocks, 
and he's mortal bad ; and can't he sleep in the forge to- 
night ?" 

For what seemed a very long time to Anna the blacksmith 
sat quite still. Then he knocked the ashes out of his pipe on 
the top bar. This was a hopeful sign, for it meant he was 
going to get up. "And where be Jehu, Anna?" 



448 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [July, 

" He be in the corner by the shop ; I put 'un in the loo. 
You will let 'un in, Daddy, won't ye? for he be mortal rough 
'tis true as true," she pleaded, trying to keep back the tears, 
for she knew these would be fatal to success. 

The blacksmith slowly rolled down his sleeves, buttoned 
them, took down his coat, and went out. Anna hesitated to 
follow. If the request were not granted, and her father judged 
she had made a mistake in bringing the old man there, he 
would not blame her that he had never done in his life no; 
he would not say a word. He would just look at her, and 
then sit down and light his pipe again, and go on reading his 
paper; but there would be no word. That was what Anna 
dreaded. She loved this strangely stern father with all her 
heart she thought he was the cleverest man in the village, 
and that there wasn't another child who had such a wonderful 
father as she had, but she was terribly afraid of him. So she 
stayed in the cottage and waited with a beating heart to see 
what would happen. 

The door opened a few minutes later, and the blacksmith 
put in his head. " Open t'other doors," he said, and was gone 
again. Anna ran across the yard and through into the forge, 
and took down the great bar from its double doors, and pushed 
them open. Her father and the knife-grinder were there waiting. 

"Fetch a light, Anna," he said, as he led the old man 
slowly forward. Her mother had just come in, and the child 
explained the situation as well as she could, and the two went 
back to the forge with the light. There, nearby the great 
bellows, in a corner that was warm and sheltered from the 
draught, they made up a bed for Jehu. It was only sacks and 
hay, and more hay and sacks for a pillow, but the old knife- 
grinder could find no words to thank them for all this untold 
comfort. When he was safely settled down, they left him to 
himself. 

An hour later Anna tried to feed her patient with some 
bread and milk. " I can't take it, me little maid, I be all afire 
inside me gie I summat cold oh, summat cold ! " he said, 
and he shuddered from head to foot, and Anna could hear his 
teeth chatter. 

"Will I get thee some water, Mr. Jehu?" she asked, "I'd 
soon get it." 

"Nay, nay; I never drunk water in me life," he said with 



1908.] WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS 449 

some energy; "and," he added, hesitating and lowering his 
voice, " I be gwoin' to die, little maid, I be gwoin' to die ; and 
I won't start on no water now." 

Anna couldn't think of anything else cold, except water, so 
she was silent and contented herself with pushing the hay pil- 
low into a better shape. 

Presently the sick man began again : " Me little maid, there's 
one thing I do want badly, if yer 'uld do it for I." 

" I'd do anything father 'uld let me, Mr. Jehu ; and p'r'aps 
he'd let I do it for thee, as you'm so bad." 

"You see," he began, and the gasps and the shortness of his 
breath made it difficult to follow him, " when the barny [row] 
was a night afore last at the inn, I left me fiddle there, and I 
do want 'un. He and me bin friends ever zin I wur a boy, and 
I do want to see 'un afore I do die 'uld yer get 'un for I ? " 

" I 'uld, Mr. Jehu, and gladly ; but father 'uld never let I. 
He 'uldn't let I go to the inn, if I wanted ever so." 

" Do ye try, there's a good maid. I do want 'un, I do want 
'un badly," the o.ld man said ; and something in his voice 
pleaded so, that Anna felt she was bound to do as he asked. 

"I'll ask father," she said, "but he won't let I go." 

The same clasped hands are on her father's knee, the same 
quiet little voice, the eyes look straight into the fire beyond, 
and the whole request is blurted out in one breathless sentence. 

" Bide here, Anna," is the only reply, but the blacksmith 
goes out and in five minutes is back again, with the knife- 
grinder's fiddle, which he hands to Anna without a word. 

One little arm is round his neck, and she says in her sweet 
tender voice: "You'll make Jehu so glad, Daddy." 

She is kneeling beside Jehu with the fiddle. " God bless 
thee for a good maid," says the old man, as he takes the bow, 
and then reaches for the fiddle. " I'll sleep to-night if he be 
down by I here," and then he continued : " When 1 were in 
that there ditch, I did think upon 'un, and I never thou't I'd 
see 'un again." 

She put the fiddle down by his side and left him. 

" May I go to 'un early ? " the child asked, as she went to 
bed, " I mean afore Daddy opens the forge ? " 

It was agreed that some gruel should be put in the oven 
over night, and that Anna should take it to the sick man early 
in the morning. 

VOL. LXXXYII, 29 



450 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [July, 

Long before it was light she was awake, and soon after six 
she went downstairs to the kitchen. Taking a rush-light and 
the gruel she made her way across the yard into the forge. 

" Be you better 'smarning, Mr. Jehu ? " she asks eagerly, 
" be you better or worser ? " 

" I be rough, very rough, I be worser, I think, and I be 
one martal pine [mortal pain] arl over." 

" Oh, I be sorry, I hoped you had a' slep' and woke bet- 
ter," and she knelt beside the old man. Anna smoothed out 
his pillow and pushed the hay under it again, and pulled the 
sack closer round him. 

" I do want thee to play just a little on he," he said, put- 
ing his hand on the fiddle at his side. " I jest wants to hear 
his voice oncet again I be sure I be gwoin' to die oh, Gcd ! 
how I do burn ! " 

" But I can't play 'un, and don't know how you does it," 
the child said; " 'tain't easy to make 'un sound right, I've 
heard volk say." 

*' Now, jest ye take 'un, there's a good maid, and hold 'un 
up, and drar the bow, and I'll hear 'un jest try." 

It was the same pleading voice that asked for the old fiddle 
before, and Anna's heart was moved. She knelt up straight 
and put the fiddle on her arm, as she could remember seeing 
Jehu do, when he leant against the old trees on the green, 
near those fatal stocks, and played on the hot summer evenings 
while the youths and the maidens and the children danced. 
With timid hand she drew the bow across the strings. The 
thing gave a wail that finished in a shriek, and then as she 
pushed the bow back again, the noise was repeated shriller and 
still more discordant. 

"I told thee I couldn't play 'un," she said, "and I be real 
sorry I can't ; but he do make awful noises." 

" It be his own voice, it be he," the old man exclaimed ; 
"gie us another, little maid, gie us another," he added excitedly. 

The light from the solitary rush candle, that was standing 
on the top of the great bellows, fell upon the scene. The child's 
light hair, her fair face and white pinafore, stood out against 
the black, rough walls of the forge. Before her lay the old 
knife-grinder with his gray locks tumbled about on the sack 
which served for a pillow. His trembling hands were clutching 
at the sack which covered him, as he tried to draw it closer 



1908.] WEST- COUNTRY IDYLLS 451 

round to keep out the cold of the chilly morning. " Gie us 
one more," he asked again, " drar jest gently, so he come out 
sarft." 

Anna tried again tried the effects of gentleness on the old 
violin but the result was appalling. 

" I can't play 'un, Mr. Jehu, indeed I can't play 'un," the 
child said ; and great tears came into her eyes. " He do only 
screech, and I'd play 'un if I knowed how 'cause you wants it 
so bad." 

" I must hear 'un, I must hear 'un," the old man muttered 
to himself, " I must hear 'un again. Gie I the fiddle," he 
said with a kind of desperation in his voice, and he placed it 
in the old position and took the bow. " Now do thou hold I 
up put thee arm round me. Eh ! oh, steady ! O God ! how 
I aches now ! " 

In a moment the bow flew across the strings and a wild 
tumult of sound came. The old man shut his eyes and the 
pain faded from his face. The tunes leaped from the riddle and 
filled the murky forge and chased away sorrow and time. The 
stocks were a dream. The inn was no more. He was a boy 
again and life was young, and the music laughed and danced. 
The follies of his later years passed by, with their vices and 
their waste, and the sadness of the music showed the sadness 
of his thoughts. But in a moment these were swept aside, and 
he broke out into a rollicking dance. Just when it was at its 
height and the bow flew its fastest, with a wild dash across all 
the strings at once, Jehu fell forward on his face, and Anna 
heard him murmur faintly : " O God ! have mercy on I ! " 

Her father was standing behind her. " Go into the kitchen, 
child, and tell your mother to come here," he said; and this 
was the last Anna ever saw of old Jehu Day, the knife-grinder. 




ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA." 

BY VIDA D. SCUDDER. 

! O gift of modern scholarship should be more wel- 
come to the faithful than careful studies of those 
holy men and women who are the glory of the 
Church Militant, and whose intercession avails 
for us in paradise. The eager, intellectual life of 
our day, with its revival of historical studies, has sadly neg- 
lected the saints. The labors of the Bollandists are inaccessi- 
ble to the general public ; the Golden Legend, that rich the- 
saurus of ancient story, appeals only to the mediaevalist ; and 
current hagiology, extended though it be, too often gives us a 
mere monotonous record of miracles, visions, and graces, and 
misses the human character while exalting the supernatural gilts. 
And this is surely a pity. For the value of the saints to us 
is largely their intense humanity. No mere recipients they of 
visions, no mere performers of miracles, but struggling, aspir- 
ing people who loved greatly and who were usually in close 
relation, whether mystical or outward, with the concrete life of 
their time. Intimate relation with historic fact is a glory and 
strength of the Church Catholic, as contrasted with the char- 
acteristic tendency of Protestantism to lean on theological ab- 
stractions. But the Church does not make the most of her heri- 
tage unless she keeps shining before the world the great examples 
of those who have fought the good fight and are venerated on 
the altars of Christendom. It is not enough to record their 
names or to mention their graces; we need full, clear knowledge 
of their diverse natures, of the conditions in which they moved, 
the temptations that they overcame, the work that they achieved. 
Nearly all historical work preceding the last fifty years 
not to speak of that of an earlier period profits by being done 
over in the light of modern methods. Why then will not some 
enterprising publisher give us a whole series of Lives of the 
Saints ? We have series diverse and sundry, often excellently 

* St. Catherine of Siena. A Study in the Religion, Literature, and History of the Four- 
teenth Century in Italy. By Edmund G. Gardner, M. A. London : J. M. Dent and Co. ; 
New York : E. P. Dutton. 1908. 



1908.] ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA 453 

done: Lives of Eminent Women; of English Men of Letters; 
of American Statesmen. But the saints are too often wait- 
ing their interpreters writers who shall present us not simply 
with names to conjure with, but with men to honor. Holiness 
does not divide a man from his fellows; it is, on the contrary, 
wonderfully open to a sympathetic understanding. Only, where 
we feel faintly, the saints felt strongly; where we experience 
spiritual things dream-fashion, as beings half-evolved from the 
clod, they catch the open vision of heavenly mysteries. What 
new intelligence would be given to our invocations did we know 
more of the personality of those to whom and through whom 
we appeal ! And how our feeble optimism would be reinforced ! 
Nothing, surely, can so redeem " that record of crimes and blun- 
ders which men call history " as the study of the saints. For 
here we contemplate the victors, who if they stumbled did not 
fall, or if they fell rose again and pressed forward, and pre- 
vailed. Their lives were sometimes high uplifted before the 
world, sometimes hidden in secret places. It does not matter. 
The Church has discovered them ; she has exalted them ; and 
now it behooves her children to keep them living before the eyes 
of men. No other study has such evidential value. For the 
Church must approve herself to outsiders, less by asserting her 
claims of what avail to assert claims to people who deny the 
premises ? than by manifesting her life. And it is these who 
show it in its glorious possibilities. The roll call of the saints 
is the paean of the ages; their witness is the refutation of athe- 
ism, of heresy, and of despair. He who restores to the public 
a more intimate knowledge of one whom the Church has stamped 
with her seal, is in the truest sense a Defensor Fidci. 

Mr. Edmund Gardner, by his recent Life of St. Catherine of 
Siena, fully earns the noble title and the gratitude of all lov- 
ers of that great character. There have been other good biogra- 
phies of St. Catherine, notably that by Cardinal Capecelatro, 
which deals chiefly with her public activities, and that by Mother 
Augusta Drane, which lays more stress on her mystical and 
supernatural experiences. But both these books are a little old- 
fashioned in tone, especially since the opening of the Vatican 
archives has given a new impetus to scholarship and furnished 
rich abundance of new material. The twentieth century is capa- 
ble both of interpreting St. Catherine with a keener psycho- 
logical insight than ever before, and of presenting the facts of 



454 ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA [July, 

her life with a new accuracy. Mr. Gardner is perhaps stronger 
as an historian than as an interpreter. He has given indefati- 
gable pains to the study of sources, and has reaped his reward 
in the power to establish for the first time a clear and satis- 
factory chronology, and to rectify many errors in detail. He 
has translated afresh from the manuscripts a number of Cathe- 
rine's most important letters, and has enabled us, by the num- 
ber of corrections and additions thereby afforded, to measure 
the imperative need of a new critical text. Reverence treas- 
ures every word written by this extraordinary woman, whose 
genius equalled her holiness; but contemporary scribes and early 
printed editions are sadly inexact, either transcribing carelessly 
or omitting as unworthy of attention passages of homely per- 
sonal detail, often more precious to us now than formal exhorta- 
tions. "The manuscripts," as Mr. Gardner says, "are full of 
unpublished matter which has previously been unaccountably 
neglected, having apparently escaped the attention of all her 
biographers and editors : matter which throws light on every 
aspect of the saint's genius." He gives us, as an example, six 
entirely new letters, and two, previously printed in incorrect form, 
to show what the labor of establishing a correct text would in- 
volve. All the new letters are valuable : and one, written to 
the ungrateful Republic of Florence, after the saint had nar- 
rowly escaped martyrdom at its hands, is among the most dra- 
matic and significant that she ever composed. 

Above all, Mr. Gardner's account of the intricate history of 
those troubled times is of high value. "While devoting my 
attention mainly to Catherine's own work," he writes in his 
preface, " I have endeavored at the same time to make my book 
a picture of certain aspects, religious and political, of the four- 
teenth century in Italy the epoch that immediately followed 
the times of Dante, the stormy period in the history of the 
Church of which Petrarca and Boccaccio witnessed the begin- 
ning." He has fully succeeded; the student who wishes to see 
in clear light the events connected with the return of the Holy 
See from Avignon, the rebellion of the Tuscan cities against 
the Papacy, and the early stages of the Great Schism, will turn 
first to his pages. Long and full though the volume is, it con- 
tains no idle word. Chapters concerning the childhood and 
private life of the saint alternate at first with others dedicated 
to the story of the times; in the sixth chapter we are told how 



1908.] ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA 455 

Catherine came forth from the cell to the world ; the seventh 
gives a vivid picture of the society into which she came ; 
and from this point the story of her spiritual experiences is 
blended with the record of her sweet ministries to individual 
needs and of the public affairs in which she played a part. 
When we have watched to the end that tragedy of her life 
which was triumph, and have reverently followed her passage 
from this world, we return and dwell for an admirable chapter 
on her literary work, after which we are allowed one more il- 
luminating glimpse of the later history of her spiritual children 
and of the public characters with whom she was connected. 

Mr. Gardner's workmanship throughout is firm and masterly. 
The great story moves on with rapidity, yet with an amplitude 
that gives the sense of leisure. One can hardly speak too highly 
of the devout yet candid tone in which the subject is treated. 
Too often Lives of the Saints either move in an atmosphere of 
unreality and of perfervid devotion, or else tend to apologize 
for all that is mysterious and to attenuate all that cannot be 
understood. Mr. Gardner avoids both errors. Catherine's pos- 
session of a suprasensible revelation is clearly postulated, and 
there is no attempt to minimize the marvels among which she 
moved; but this recognition of the supernatural elements in the 
story is, as it should be, united with entire scholarly frankness, 
and with fine realism in the treatment of the external history 
of the times. In achieving this union, Mr. Gardner doubtless 
owes much to his own Catholic faith and sound critical instinct 
something also to the spirit of the times. For the most rigid 
scholarship, psychological and historical, is beginning to out- 
grow the shallow scepticism of the nineteenth century, and to 
perceive that not only are the forces which control the visible 
movement of affairs generated in the Unseen, but also that un- 
usual manifestations of those forces confront the student of his- 
tory again and again. It is this change in critical temper which 
is rendering possible that finer and freer presentation of the 
Lives of Saints for which we were just pleading; and Mr. 
Gardner is one of the first modern biographers of holiness to 
profit by it. He records the wonders that accompanied Cather- 
ine's earthly course with as grave yet discriminating a simplicity 
as that with which he treats diplomatic intrigues. His is a tone 
and method to inspire confidence in every dispassionate mind. 

Any one indeed, considering the life and personality of this 



456 ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA [July, 

daughter of Jacomo Benincasa, the dyer, must find himself in 
the presence of unaccountable mystery. Catherine herself is a 
miracle: one of those blessed miracles, prophetic of the nor- 
mal order in the holy society foreseen of faith. One contem- 
plates her moving like a swift and steady light through the 
lurid shadows of one of the darkest periods in Christian history : 

" Within a cavern of Man's trackless spirit 
Is throned an Image, so intensely fair, 

That the adventurous thoughts that wander near it 
Worship and as they kneel tremble and wear 

The splendor of its presence, and the light 
Penetrates their dreamlike frame, 

Till they become charged with the strength of flame." 

The image throned in the sanctuary of Catherine's being, 
was the figure of her Crucified Lord : and in very truth her 
spirit, kneeling before Him, became charged with "the strength 
of flame," to aspire, to warm, and to illume. 

How sweet is the record of her homely childhood, lived in 
the house clinging to the side of that steep street in Siena, 
filled then as now with the pungent smell of the tanning ! Her 
essential charm is evidenced by the eagerness of the neighbors 
to borrow her in turn from her mother Italian housewives are 
none too desirous, usually, of another child under foot. We 
get from the account of her youth an unusual impression of 
joyousness and power. She was a tall, strapping girl, of unusual 
physical strength, according to her mother's account, and full, 
as she remained to the end, of fascination for all who came 
near. But her religious vocation, strong in childhood, deepened 
till, while still in her early teens, she withdrew from the world, 
entered, in her own home shared by twenty-five brothers and 
sisters into a three years' retreat, and, to use Mr. Gardner's 
words, " became one of those saints, horrible and repulsive to 
the eyes of many in an age which worships material gain and 
physical comfort, who have offered themselves as a sacrifice to 
Eternal Justice for the sins of the world." 

What shall we say concerning Catherine's austerities ? The 
simple chronicle as given in this book, is sufficient comment. 
In the school of self-inflicted suffering, often one must grant 
so extreme as to weaken instead of strengthening the natural 
powers needed for God's service, Catherine did gain strength 



ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA 457 

to endure the anguish laid upon her by the private and public 
evils of the times, and in this school of expiation her natural 
and instinctive joyousness was transfigured into the joy that 
no man taketh from us : " ' Lord,' she prayed, ' give me all the 
pains and all the infirmities that there are in the world, to bear 
in my body; I am fain to offer Thee my body in sacrifice, and 
to bear all for the world's sins, that Thou mayest spare it and 
change its life to another.' And when she had said these words 
she was abstracted from her senses and rapt in ecstasy. But 
when she returned to herself, she was white as snow, and 
began to laugh loudly and to say : ' Love, Love ! I have con- 
quered Thee with Thyself. For Thou dost wish to be besought 
for what Thou canst do of Thine own accord.' " * 

Of her mystical life one hesitates to write. Her sound good 
sense and perfect mental balance in regard to it are evident 
enough. She was always extremely practical, on her guard 
against delusion for her friends or herself, and impatient of over- 
emphasis on marvels as signs of the divine favor. Moreover 
she was not in the ordinary sense an imaginative woman at 
least if one may judge from her writings, which, while abound- 
ing in homely metaphor, are yet notable rather for qualities of 
heart and intellect than for those of the imagination. Gardner 
declares even in the moment when his keen analysis is detect- 
ing in the records " things incapable of literal acceptance," that 
"Catherine, like Teresa, with her unwavering fortitude and 
calm resolution, her firm will which was to impose itself upon 
the rulers and powers of this world, her practical sense and an- 
gelic wisdom, was poles apart from an hysterical subject." Her 
insight in regard to her experiences is evinced in a wonderful 
passage where she tells us how Christ gave her the means of 
discriminating between the visions that come from above and 
those from below. All these considerations increase our confi- 
dence and our respect : nor do we ever find in Catherine's life 
empty marvels devoid of spiritual value. All that occurred to 
her made for the solution of doubts and the reinforcement of 
faith and hope. But it is clear that with all her frankness con- 
cerning her supernatural life and she was always touchingly 
ready to share God's favors with all she loved, especially with 
her confessor she was trying to express through the medium 
of words, imperfect instruments at best, visions that were them- 
selves only symbols vouchsafed to sense of experiences in eter- 

Pi5. 



458 ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA [July, 

nity, transcending mortal limits. It is open to surmise that 
modern psychological study might often penetrate to the real- 
ity within the symbol, and translate into terms comprehensible 
to the modern mind, the figures in which the "deep truth" that 
is ever "imigeless" presented itself to this mediaeval woman. 

At all events, we constantly notice in these experiences the 
reflex of her individuality and of her characteristic preoccupa- 
tions. A large number reveal her passionate allegiance to that 
Church for which she was to be privileged to give her life "in 
a new way." Her first vision showed her our Lord in priestly 
vestments St. Dominic by His side ; one of the last recorded 
was the Ship of the Church, descending swiftly on her frail 
shoulders and crushing her to the ground. Catherine was no 
spiritual egotist. Into her most solemn moments of communion 
with her God she carried her brooding love for others. Her 
spiritual espousals, in which she realized the awful depths of 
union with the Divine, her stigmatization, which occurred not 
in some far mountain cleft, but in the city of Pisa, where she 
was laboring for a Crusade and besieged by needy souls, are 
interwoven with her passionate pity for her brethren and her 
longing that the Bride of Christ should be without spot or taint. 

The time came when she was summoned to more active ser- 
vice, when her " existence of expiation," which far from ceas- 
ing was to increase in intensity until the end, was to blend 
with the public duties of a great stateswoman. Mr. Gardner 
gives an admirable description of Catherine in the summer of 
1370, at the point when her active career began: 

"Catherine was now twenty- four years old: a wonderfully 
endowed woman. Gifts had been given her to fulfil the im- 
passioned ' hunger and thirst after righteousness,' a divination 
of spirits, and an intuition so swift and infallible that men 
deemed it miraculous, the magic of a personality so winning 
that neither man nor woman could hold out against it, a sim- 
ple, untaught wisdom that confounded the arts and subtleties 
of the world ; and with these a speech so golden, so full of a 
mystical eloquence, that her words, whether written or spoken, 
made all hearts burn within them. In ecstatic contemplation 
she passes into regions beyond sense and above reason, voyag- 
ing alone in unexplored and untrodden regions of the spirit, 
but when the sounds of the earth again break in upon her 
trance, a homely common sense and simple humor are hers no 



igoS.] ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA 459 

less than the knowledge acquired in these communings with an 
unseen world." * This is the woman shown us in the pre- 
cious contemporary portrait by her disciple, Andrea Vanni 
a figure stern and emaciated, but distinguished by a lovely- 
grace and radiance, and expressing in pose and countenance 
tenderness united with strength. 

Mystical death and return to life formed the prelude, with 
Catherine, to that public career which remains a wonder of the 
ages. It would be hard to exaggerate the horror to a sensi- 
tive and devout woman of the scene into which she emerged. 
Italy was indeed, as Mr. Gardner quotes, a "hostelry of sor- 
row," ravaged by civil strife, deserted of the Vicar of Christ, 
and, as no Catholic historian denies, oppressed by the Papal 
legates till an indignant patriotism, confounding the accidental 
with the essential, turned against the Church and denied Papal 
authority. Diseases abounded within the Body of Christ. Cathe- 
rine's own Dominican Order had, as she writes, " run altogether 
too wild," and gave scant support to sanctity ; the sister order 
of Francis had passed but lately through that memorable 
struggle with Pope John XXII. which led to the repudiation 
of the most sacred principles of the founder. Catherine's com- 
merce had hitherto been chiefly with the Church in paradise ; 
her commerce with the Church on earth must indeed have 
been a miserable contrast. That apparent conflict between 
liberty and religion, between patriotism and faith, which has 
racked many a noble spirit, can clearly be read between the 
passionate lines of her letters. 

Not that she was alone, in loyalty or in holiness. God has 
never left Himself without witnesses, and sanctity was never 
more triumphantly manifest in the Church than in these times 
of her seeming degradation. Mr. Gardner gives us delightful 
pictures of some of Catherine's predecessors, notably of that 
royal woman, Bridget of Sweden, and of Catherine's own towns- 
man, the Blessed Colombini with his followers. The richly 
colored life of mediaeval Italy, with its lovely landscape, its 
clashing arms, its violent factions, makes an effective back- 
ground for the picturesque and touching story of the labors of 
these blessed ones. It is good to realize how much more 
vivid and vital are their figures than those of the sinners and 
worldings of the day. But of them all, Catherine was reserved 

*P. 81. 



460 ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA [July. 

for the greatest deeds and the deepest sorrows. We can look 
back calmly to-day on the picture of the times ; we can give 
thanks that, in spite of the evil in the Church then and .later, 
she has continued to be the nursing mother of saints. No 
other testimony to her divine nature is more impressive than 
the perpetual reassertion within her of a supernatural life, at 
the most unpromising moment. The lowering darkness around 
her seems to invade the very citadel of her being; it passes 
like a cloud, and her glory shines forth impregnable. 

But who shall measure the anguish of those who live in her 
darker hours ? Catherine's terrible Trattato delle Lagrime, quoted 
by Mr. Gardner, is evidence of her uncompromising indignation, 
her clear and wretched vision. Modern ears cannot endure 
the arraignment of the ecclesiastical life of her day proffered 
by St. Catherine. It is in its way a splendid evidence of the 
fearless candor of the Church which has canonized her. 

Her sharpest trial was reserved for the end of her life. She 
was at last successful in two of her chief external aims. Greg- 
ory XI., largely through her powerful influence, had put an 
end to the Babylonian Captivity in Avignon ; his successor 
Urban had at last sealed a just peace with the rebellious Flor- 
entines. And now the cruel and unforeseen development of 
the Great Schism nullified these results, tore Christendom 
asunder, and made of Catherine's later years a protracted mar- 
tyrdom. She never faltered. The triumph of an unfailing loy- 
alty is the most precious gift bequeathed by her to these 
modern days. Through the rebellion of the Italian cities, she 
had steadily upheld the position that no wrong on the part of 
the ministers of Christ could justify repudiation of His Mystical 
Body ; now, in time of sharper stress, she fought most valiantly, 
placing all the rich resources of heart and mind at the service 
of him whom she judged the legal Pope, Urban VI. But the 
struggle cost her her life, and during her last two years on 
earth, she achieved her greatest work, as one must feel, in the 
mystical existence of expiation. He who would follow it, and 
who would know the rare and solemn privilege of penetrating 
deep into the consciousness of a saint during her supreme agony, 
can find the marvelous record in Mr. Gardner's book. Here 
indeed is the full story of Catherine's activities from the begin- 
ning, narrated with sympathy and reverence only equalled by 
historical acumen and literary skill. 




ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 

AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY* 
BY FRANCIS AVELING, D.D. 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

[OT foot upon the departure of Brother Thomas for 
Anagni followed the secular doctors. The appeal 
was taken to Rome. Well, to Rome should they 
go too, not only to defend themselves against the 
arrogance of these interloping friars, but to fasten 
upon them the heretical doctrines contained in the Eternal Gos- 
pel as well. 

The whole University, not to speak of the town of Paris, 
was in an uproar. Seldom, if ever, in the history of the schools, 
had a time of such intense excitement been known. No one 
living, at any rate, was able to remember anything approaching 
it. It was war to the death now war between the secular party, 
the party that stood fast to its old traditions and its laxity of 
teaching, and the religious, the upstart element of discord, that 
brought in new and strange changes of order while professing 
the most unbending rigidity in matters of doctrine. 

It was, had they but realized the eternal nature of the strug- 
gle, Plato pitted against Aristotle, Abelard against Bernard, the 
spirit of license, tricked out in the habiliments of orthodoxy 
and reason, against the incarnation of orthodoxy, clad in the 
flaunting cloak of rationalism and novelty. But few, if indeed 
any, realized to the full the bearings of the contest, or the 
great sequence of practical effects that were inextricably mixed 
up with its issue. 

The friars were on their mettle. They had not only the 
prestige of their orders to defend. The entire principle of the 
religious life was involved in the attack that was made upon 
them. On the other hand, the privileges of the corporate body 

* Copyright in United States, Great Britain, and Ireland. The Missionary Society of St. 
Paul the Apostle in the State of New York. 



462 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [July, 

of the University were threatened. So the seculars urged, and, 
from their point of view, with some reason. 

On August the fifth William of St. Amour descended from 
the pulpit from which he had been addressing a large and ex- 
cited crowd of University officials and scholars. The day was 
a broiling hot one; and the preacher, heated still further by the 
efforts of his oratorical vehemence, mopped the beads of per- 
spiration from his brow. His thin, sallow face was flushed, two 
bright patches burning red upon his cheeks; and his great eyes 
glowed like live coals. Earnest as he appeared, the cruel lines 
that drooped about his lips and the haughty contraction of his 
brows gave him more the air of an egoist than of an ascetic, 
and there was a suggestion of shiftiness that made itself felt, 
rather than showed in his features. 

His audience was still applauding him a grateful sound in 
the great doctor's ears as he left the building and made his 
way through a short, closed passage to a chamber attached to 
the church. Evidently he had some business afoot, for, though 
he left the door ajar, he at once unfastened a small, wooden 
chest, and began arranging a series of parchments that he took 
from it. There were several of these parchments covered with 
heavy writing and sealed with leaden bulls. Also there were 
two books the one a thick volume unwrapped, the other care- 
fully tied up in a sheepskin wrapping. This latter he untied and 
laid with the parchments upon the table. He gazed upon it 
long, a sneering smile upon his features, his eyes contracting in 
an ugly fashion. Then he continued his task of taking out and 
arranging the parchments. While he was thus occupied, paus- 
ing from time to time to scrutinize one of the writings more 
closely, or to listen for an instant to the hum of voices that 
he knew were speaking of him and of his discourse, steps came 
to the door and three men entered. He went on with his 
work, acknowledging their salutations and speaking with them 
over his shoulder. 

"That was a fine discourse, Maitre William," said Maitre 
Christian, Canon of Beauvais. The two others were the Maitres 
Odo of Douai and Nicholas of Bar. " A fine discourse, truly, 
and one that will secure the whole University for us, I am 
sure." 

Maitre William smiled inwardly, but said with a great show 
of humility : " Too weak, too weak, Maitre Christian, for the 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 463 

work ! Besides, we have the University already on our side. 
'Tis these cursed friars with their tricks before the Pope that 
we have to fear now." 

"Ah ! " said Odo slowly, in his heavy, solemn voice. "You 
say truly ! That is to fear ! Still, we are a powerful corpora- 
tion, even for Pope Alexander to upset. What says the letter, 
Maitre William ? " 

" Our instructions ? Here they are," answered St. Amour, 
selecting an unsealed parchment from the pile before him. "They 
are informal. Read for yourself ! You see that a collection has 
been made through the University for the expenses of our mis- 
sion, that we are to strive to the utmost to win back our pro- 
fessional chairs from the friars, to oust them from any official 
standing or position in the schools, and, finally, to obey the 
Pope in so far as God and justice permit us. That leaves a 
fairly large margin, you perceive, for individual methods, and 
putting pressure on the judges." 

" Urn ! Yes, that is it. The paper mentions the other two 
deputies also. Where are they? They ought to be here by 
now." 

" Belin and Gecteville ? They meet us when we set out," 
replied St. Amour. " At least, so it was arranged. They may 
turn up here of course. They know we planned this meeting. 
But there's no real need why they should come." 

"We shall have a difficult task, I fear, when we reach 
Anagni," began Nicholas of Bar. " Think of all the opponents 
we shall have. And they say that King Louis will support the 
friars through thick and thin. He has made the strongest rep- 
resentations to the Pope. And Alexander is quite prepared to 
stand by them if he can see his way to doing so." 

" That for the king ! " retorted William, wheeling round upon 
the speaker and snapping his fingers. " He is a weak puppet, 
letting his kingdom slip from his hands in such a fashion. 
Why has he spent all this time crusading ? He had better have 
managed his affairs at home. And, if he does side with these 
gorged beggars, what is that to us ? Can't we make out as 
good a case before the Pope as they ? We shall win, never 
fear! It only wants courage and skill, a little fencing with the 
cardinals, a countercharge well pushed home. Besides we " 
here the speaker drew himself up with conscious pride "we 
are the University. Do you imagine Alexander will treat the 



464 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [July, 

University of Paris haughtily, or dare to settle so grave a ques- 
tion in the teeth of our rights and just demands?" 

" Nay, I know not " ; replied the timid Nicholas. " I know 
not, in truth, how we shall fare. But I have heard that an 
astrologer has predicted evil for our work ; and, indeed, I feel 
dubious myself as to its issue since the friars began to flock to 
the court of the Pope." 

"Out upon you!" snapped the sceptical St. Amour. "Do 
you give faith to such fools' jargon ? If you are fearful of what 
those black visaged hucksters prate, stay you behind and shrive 
you to a friar for a fool ! " 

" Nay, Maitre William, I meant no harm. But the odds are 
heavy." 

"In our favor," was St. Amour's comment. "The Univer- 
sity against these intruding upstarts ! Why, if the worst came 
to the worst, we could migrate again and leave Paris empty, in 
spite of Papal bulls and Royal decrees ! " 

"That were a thankless task," said Odo. 

" Yes, but a masterful one ; 'twould bring this snivelling 
King and the friar-bitten Pope to reason." 

"Softly, softly, Maitre William! Those are not the words 
to use in so delicate a cause as ours," urged Christian. "We 
must be discreet and cautious humble, I should say, if need 
be that we may gain our cause. For, no matter how, gain it 
we must ! " 

" Hearken to the clamor without ! " 

"That is the crowd acclaiming Maitre William's doctrines." 

" How they shout and scream ! I would that the Holy Fa- 
ther could hear his children of the University ! No doubt of 
the decision then ! " 

"Pah!" said St. Amour with a sneer. "The scholars are 
weather-cocks, trimming their position to any breath of wind." 

"Go out to them, Maitre William," urged Odo. "Show 
yourself to them." 

"And what is the use?" asked St. Amour. "Have they 
not just seen me in the chair?" 

"Nevertheless it would be well. Tell them, if you can get 
a hearing for the acclamations, what the purpose of your mis- 
sion is." 

Whether St. Amour approved or not of making public the 
sinuous diplomacy that lay hidden in his wily and shifty mind, 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 465 

the thought of receiving the homage of the crowd worked upon 
his vanity, and he fell in with the proposal, stipulating that the 
others should accompany him. He made safe the parchments 
and the two books, buttoning them all together in a strong 
leather wallet that hung underneath his outer cloak. Then, fol- 
lowed by the others, he made his way out into the little square 
that gave upon the church. It was densely packed with scholars 
of all conditions, with here and there an individual whose dress 
betokened that he had ceased to belong to the rank and file of 
the schools, and held position in the body regnant. 

At the sight of St. Amour and his three companions a shout 
went up, swelling and spreading from mouth to mouth, as those 
further away learnt the cause of the shouting, until the whole 
crowd was shrieking itself hoarse, with every accompanying sign 
of excited enthusiasm. 

The news went round that St. Amour was not alone that 
the whole deputation to the Pope was present that they were 
going to make speeches ; and an improvised platform was hur- 
riedly put together with planks and a couple of empty barrels 
rolled from a neighboring wine shop. St. Amour was pushed 
up, pale now, with brows drawn together in the sinister frown 
that he wore when in deep thought. Did he realize, this ex- 
traordinary, twisted genius, as he stood gazing upon the up- 
turned faces before him, to what extent he was responsible for 
the unloosed passions of these men ? 

Faces ! A sea of faces ! There were faces turned towards 
him in which every gradation of passion was written, from heavy 
brute sensualism and cunning to polished sneer and refined in- 
tellectual hatred and license. They looked upwards, young men 
and old, men of all nations and climes, of all habits and man- 
ners of life, towards that pale, rough-hewed visage, towards 
those restless eyes that held them fixed in their hypnotic power. 
This was the man, the leader, who, in this one point at least, 
held them all together, diverse as they were in every other 
way. 

He was the incarnation of the proud old secularism of Paris, 
the bitter and eternal opponent of the new influences that had 
begun to make themselves so strongly felt. Did he realize, as 
he looked down upon them, moistening his dry lips with his 
tongue as he prepared to address them, to what point his egoism, 
his libertine spirit, his fierce principles had led them ? Did he 
VOL. LXXXVII. 30 



466 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN LJuly, 

understand how his bitter gibes had found their way into their 
hearts, his heated polemic stirred their minds, his inflammatory 
sermons and lectures goaded them into an opposition to the 
religious and their mortified lives ? 

No ; he had justified himself and his course of action long 
before. These were his sectaries. He and they were the Uni- 
versity. He lifted his hand to command silence, and the mob 
straightway resolved itself into an orderly class of rapt listeners. 

" Scholars of Paris," he began, in a loud and incisive, though 
somewhat high-pitched voice. " You have chosen us to fight 
your cause before the high tribunal of the Pope you, members 
of the University and upholders of the immemorial rights and 
privileges of this august body. You have entrusted your cause 
to our pleading. All the events that have led up to this point 
you know and appreciate how these mock-religious have en- 
tered in among us like wolves, wearing a garb of humility, yet 
puffed up with a satanic pride, professing a poverty contrary 
to Apostolic teaching and amassing money by extortion from 
rich and poor alike, instead of living by the labors of their 
hands, holding no cure of souls, yet intruding themselves into 
the jurisdiction of the bishops and of the parochial clergy ; yea, 
and sitting as judges in the tribunal of penance. What do 
they say, these false and upstart friars ? That poverty is an 
evangelic counsel ? And so it is, albeit they filch not their 
support from others, but labor, like St. Paul, with their own 
hands. That they have received power from the Pope to hear 
confessions without cure of souls ? How can that be ? Was 
it not to the Apostles and their successors in the pastoral of- 
fice that the power of binding and loosing was given ? These 
men are priests indeed, but they have no portion of the flock 
of Christ to rule ! " 

So he continued, adding sophism to sophism, tricking out 
his charges against the friars, with which all his hearers were 
not thoroughly familiar, in strong, nervous, telling words, car- 
rying his audience with him. 

" And now they have wormed their way into the schools of 
Paris, and distract the peace with their novelties. They have 
stolen the professorial chairs from those who had a right to 
them, and set themselves up, in their pride and ungodliness, 
against the University. They interfere with our privileges and 
break down our proscriptive customs. They carry their squab- 



I9C8.J ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 467 

bles to the courts of princes, enlist the favor of the King, poi- 
son the ear of the Pope 

"We set out, your chosen representatives, seeking for jus- 
tice. You have bidden us do all we can. We shall do that 
and more. Maitre John of Gecteville, Englishman, the Rec- 
tor, Maitre John Belin, Frenchman, are your deputies. They 
will see that your case is properly pleaded. As for me" and 
he looked down with a proud humility " I shall defend my libel 
and make it good. Moreover, I shall see that these friars are 
implicated, entangled, compromised, with the heresies of their 
John of Parma, their Leonard, and their Gerard of San Donnino." 

These were the friars who, by preaching the wild doctrines 
of Abbot Joachim, had certainly given a handle to the oppo- 
nents of the Franciscans. 

A wild burst of cheering rent the air, as St. Amour fin- 
ished his harangue. One after another of his colleagues pledged 
himself to similar, though possibly less strongly-worded senti- 
ments, to the enthusiastic plaudits of the scholars ; and the 
four doctors having withdrawn to prepare for their immediate 
departure, the crowd began to break up and disperse, talking 
loudly and excitedly of the certain and assured success of the 
University mission to Rome. 

Arnoul who, with Roger, had been attracted by the noise 
of shouting and cheering when St. Amour first appeared, had 
listened to the whole tirade against his friends, the friars. He 
moved off with the rest when the crowd broke up, his whole 
being in revolt against the insinuations and slanders of St. 
Amour. They were too specious, too cleverly put forward for 
him to see where they were wrong, but wrong they must cer- 
tainly be, he thought. 

"Well, Master Arnoul, what do you think of that ?" asked 
Roger, breaking in upon his silence. 

"Think?" he exclaimed. "Why, that that man would per- 
jure his soul to do the religious an injury. Of all the clever 
scoundrels! Oh, the conceit, the pride, the hatred! And that 
was the man I purposed taking as my leader! Those were the 
principles I had adopted ! Faugh ! I am sick of it all ! Sick 
and tired of everything, Roger ! The world is full of lies and 
hatred and murder." 

" Don't say that, lad. Don't lose your grip of things. But 
did you see the man's eyes as he spoke?" 



468 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [July, 

4 'Why, no, Roger. What of his eyes?" 

"Do you remember, lad, the otters down by Avon mouth? 
He has the eyes of an otter. Sleek and smooth is the otter, 
with its great, open eyes. But there are deceit and cruelty in 
them. They are crafty and shifty eyes. Yes, lad " Roger 
summed up St. Amour in his homely way "he is an otter and 
the friars are the fish. He will get at them if he can and take 
them out on the bank to eat their heads off and let them rot. 
I don't trust him. I have no learning like you, but I know 
enough to read a knave from his face." 

" You are right, Roger. He is crafty and slippery. But 
wait ! Brother Thomas is pitted against him now, and the Lord 
Pope will give the friars a fair hearing.' 1 

" I don't love the friars myself," Roger pursued meditatively; 
" but I like men of that kidney less. He will stop at nothing. 
Let us trust you are right, lad, and that they will win their 
cause." 

So the deputation from the University set out in haste and 
made its way hurriedly to the Papal Court, to which arena the 
battle had been shifted. And Paris settled down in a fashion 
to its work once more, to its petty scheming and plotting, 
anxious, restless, anticipant ; a seething, bubbling cauldron of 
elemental life and passion, kept from boiling over altogether by 
the fact that, for the moment, the fuel of its main interests 
had been moved from it. 

The secular doctors had gone with their dispute to Anagni. 

CHAPTER XXV. 

" Look, Master Arnoul, look ! There, by the rood, is the 
Lady Sibilla ! See, she has turned ! She is coming this way ! 
Who would have believed it ? Who would have thought it ? 
In Paris ! By the saints ! " 

" What, Roger ? What is it you are saying ? The Lady 
Sibilla ? You dream ! " 

" Nay, Master, I am not dreaming. Look over there, by 
the head of the bridge. On my life ! It is the Lady Sibilla 
Vipont, of Moreleigh ! See ! Don't you see her beside the 
dame with the scarlet hood ? " 

At the man's words Arnoul turned suddenly as white as a 
sheet. His eyes had been fixed idly upon a party of people 



wei 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 469 

a grand dame of the period and her retinue slowly riding 
past. He had been wondering who rode in such state, for the 
trappings of the horses and the rich dresses of the riders were 
evidences of their high rank. The young man was too much 
occupied in staring at the silken housings and gilt accoutre- 
ments, trying to discover the blazons of the house, to have 
perceived the faces of the riders; and Roger's words came to 
him as a stunning blow. He started forwards towards the spot 
where, close by the Pont au Change, the riders had paused to 
view the varied scene. An elderly lady she of the scarlet 
hood was pointing out the shops of the jewelers on the bridge 
to the two young girls beside her. Two men servants rode 
behind the women. Evidently none of them were inhabitants 
of Paris. .They were occupied in looking about them with ani- 
mation and interest, as only strangers would. And their faces 
were fresh and rosy, not sallow like most of the faces to be 
seen in the city. 

It was, true enough, Sibilla whom Roger had seen Sibilla 
in all the radiance of her grace and beauty. She turned sud- 
denly ; and, catching sight of Arnoul, opened her eyes in 
wonder. Then, with a little start and blush, she withdrew her 
gaze as suddenly, and began to speak earnestly to her com- 
panion. The ladies rode slowly forward in the stream of people 
crossing and recrossing the bridge. They were making, ap- 
parently, for the city. Arnoul, following at a short distance, 
noticed that Sibilla lingered a little behind the others, and 
seemed vastly interested in the trinkets of the goldsmiths tempt- 
ingly spread out before her eyes. He noticed, too, that from 
time to time she cast a quick glance behind her. The others 
were a little distance away now, looking at a wonderful display 
of the jeweller's art in a shop further on. He edged up quietly 
beside her. 

"Lady Sibilla! Lady Sibilla!" he called to her softly. 
"Have you forgotten me Arnoul, Arnoul the Englishman?" 
In his excitement he forgot that he was not speaking to one 
of the students. 

"Forgotten you? No, Arnoul de Valletort; I have not 
forgotten." She spoke in a low voice, almost in a whisper, 
reining in her steed and keeping her eyes averted from his 
face. " But I must not speak with you here and now," she 
went on. "The countess, with whom I journey I am in her 



470 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [July, 

care Though we have been in Paris these five days, I had 
never thought had never dreamed of meeting you. Indeed," 
her voice trembled, " I had not even hoped to see you. How 
were you to know? Where was I to find you?" She spoke 
hurriedly, nervously. 

" Countess? Not speak with me? All those days here?" 
gasped Arnoul. "But I must have word with you! Countess 
or no countess, you must speak with me ! Can you not see 
how necessary ? " 

He spoke rapidly and with suppressed emotion, so that the 
girl looked down at his upturned face wonderingly. There she 
saw the change that his University life and the terrible grief 
he had so lately suffered had written. He was the same 
only older and more resolute looking. Handsomer, too, she 
thought, and more manly, with the down upon his upper lip. 
But his manner, so strange and so insistent, she could not 
understand though she did not try to resist it. 

"We are in Paris to see the sights," she said. "We are 
going now to Notre Dame. I cannot speak to you here. 
Follow us to the church and I shall slip away, if I can man- 
age it, for a moment from the others and speak to you there. 
But cautiously, I beseech you ! I would not have my com- 
panions know of it. Believe me, there are reasons grave 
reasons " 

The girl left him hurriedly, turning her horse with her heel 
as though she were a man and wore spurs ; and, dexterously 
guiding the animal through the throng that threatened to sep- 
arate her altogether from her companions, rejoined the others. 
Arnoul followed them to the cathedral, in front of which they 
dismounted, leaving their horses in the care of the two men. 

Once inside, an easy opportunity was found for their meet- 
ing. The dim light of the church, the many piers and chapels, 
the corners and angles of the building, gave cover and secrecy. 
The three ladies walked about, looking at the many things of 
interest in the great church, Arnoul shadowing them at a dis- 
tance. At last Sibilla managed to remain alone in one of the 
side chapels, while the other two went on, not noticing her 
absence. Arnoul was at her side in an instant and speaking 
in low, hurried tones. 

"Why are you here?" was the first question that he uttered. 
He could not understand how she could be in Paris sight- 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 471 

seeing and enjoying herself with her father a murderer his 
brother's murderer and even then an exile suing for pardon 
at the Court of Rome. It was too callous, too heartless! 

" Why am I here ? What a question to ask ? I am come 
with my lady, because she asked me to come; and because 
my father wished me to voyage abroad for a season." 

The girl was unfeignedly astonished at the lad's words, 
and still more perplexed by the extraordinary agitation of his 
manner. 

"But but, Sir Sigar ! How could he have allowed you 
to come?" Arnoul stammered. "How is it possible?" 

"What do you mean? I do not I cannot understand." 
The girl spoke blankly, looking him full in the eyes with won- 
dering gaze. 

"My God! is it possible?" thought the boy. And then, 
suddenly : " How long is it since you left England ? " 

Sibilla was fairly puzzled. " We have been journeying now 
for months past. We have come through Normandy, and stayed 
at many towns on the way. It was in the early spring that 
we sailed from Devon." 

"Then you do not know ?" 

"Know what?" 

"Oh, heaven! how can I tell her?" gasped the boy. 

"What what is it that so distresses you? I cannot read 
the meaning of your words." 

" Your father Your father" 

"What do you say? My father? What is amiss with my 
father?" The girl grew pale and agitated in her turn. 

"My brother Oh, how can I say it? My brother 
Guy is dead. And your father your father " 

The Lady Sibilla blanched and trembled, leaning against a 
pillar for support. What was coming? She was like to faint. 

"Your father is not in Devon now. He is gone to Rome." 

" To Rome ? And why ? " Her words came frightened and 
trembling. 

" For relief from censure. He has He has slain" 

" Oh, God of Heaven ! what are you saying ? " the girl half 
shrieked. What do you mean? What what has he done?" 

It was pitiful, terrible to say it; nevertheless, having thus 
referred to the tragedy, thinking that she knew of it, he was 
obliged to tell her all. Now he was able to understand her 



472 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [July, 

presence in Paris and her demeanor. She had set out before 
the murder. She knew nothing of it. 

He recounted all that had happened at Moreleigh his broth- 
er's death, her father's remorse and pilgrimage in search of ab- 
solution, his own agony. And as he recounted the sad tale, 
while she stood there white and open- eyed and trembling, the 
old fires of his first love for her burst into flame again. Terri- 
ble as his tale was for him to tell, awful as it was for her to 
hear, as he told it he found his heart going out to her as it 
had never gone out to any one in his life before. Through 
the sad words, the broken, ragged sentences, in which he spoke 
of her father's awful deed, the burden of his great love breathed. 
Sibilla was no longer a far-off ideal an ideal set up in the 
sanctuary of his own heart and soul to be worshipped as a thing 
high above him but a living, breathing creature to be loved, 
a creature standing before him, stricken with a grief that was 
his own, dumb with a suffering that lent words to his faltering 
tongue, quivering with a new-born agony that set pulses of 
pity and love throbbing in his heart. He stood in her pres- 
ence, whispering of her father's crime, but all the time he was 
drinking in her beauty and losing himself in it. What was his 
folly, and worse than folly, in stooping for but one instant to 
the baseness of his wild, unbridled course ! He had never loved 
before no, never ! This was love true love at last ! What- 
ever else had been was madness ! He lost himself in the im- 
petuosity of his passion. Speaking of her father, he pleaded 
for himself. His words came fast, burning, a torrent of fire, a 
desert blast of hot, passionate entreaty. He spoke of all the 
things that stood between him and the winning of her. He was 
carried away in the excess of his worship. His poverty, his state, 
the murder, the months of wasted energy he spared himself, 
and her, in nothing. It was a strange speech, the overwhelm- 
ing outpouring of a pent-up soul. But it was an earnest one. 

And she, the awful tidings so unexpectedly brought to her 
burning into her brain, knowing not whither to turn for com- 
fort or consolation, turned to him. They were companions in 
grief, they would become companions in consolation. Her dreams 
of her hero-knight made her look to him for strength, even 
now when it was his hand that was wounding her. She lifted 
her eyes to his and the love-light the faith and trust of ut- 
ter love shone for a moment through the distress and agony 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 473 

of her pain. She tried to speak; but her parched lips refused 
their office. She put out her hand, as though to stay herself, 
and then shrank back against the pillar, trembling. 

But Arnoul had seen and read the faithful message of her 
soul and the vehemence of his love broke out afresh. 

Sibilla listened, agitated and affrighted by the very violence 
of his pleading. She remembered as one in a dream, it all 
passed before her the scene with her father at Moreleigh when 
she had dared to confess her love. She saw him now bowed 
down with repentance and broken with remorse craving par- 
don and absolution as a penitent at Rome. She loved Arnoul 
the more that she now saw him in the flesh, who had been 
ever in her secret thoughts. The heart springs of her sympa- 
thy vibrated to his voice in its sad retelling of her father's aw- 
ful deed, and she yearned towards him for the love that he of- 
fered, longing, craving, yet, in spite of herself, resisting. For 
she was a Vipont. Love as she might, she could not forget 
that. Her father's scathing words had told. She was torn be- 
tween conflicting passions her love for Arnoul dragging her to 
throw herself into his outstretched arms and the stubborn pride 
of race that threw her back upon herself in lonely coldness and 
disdain. What she had just learnt, too, had made it the harder 
for her to unbend. Her father was a murderer. He had killed 
Sir Guy, Arnoul's only brother. How could she stoop and to 
one whom her own father had so grievously, so cruelly wronged 
and declare the love that so tortured her own heart ? She leant 
against the pillar, dry- eyed, speechless, hopeless. The words 
were frozen on her lips; her heart wrung and bleeding. How 
she loved this Valletort ! And yet and yet she could not 
she might not show her love. And her father her own father ! 
God ! how terrible it was. 

Arnoul's burning words struck upon her ear. His eyes seemed 
to penetrate her very soul. She began to waver. 

In his passion his ecstasy the lad seized her hand and 
clasped it to his heart. She yielded. Her love proved stronger 
than her pride, stronger than the sudden revulsion and disdain, 
stronger even than her newly learnt anguish. Yet there was a 
struggle. It could not thus be all abandonment. 

"My father," she sighed; and her words came in the faint- 
est of whispers. " My father ; he would never Oh, Blessed 
Virgin ! he would he would " 



474 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [July, 

But Arnoul had lost himself. What recked he of fathers ? 
Who should stand between him and the being that he claimed 
by right of perfect love ? Even the thought of poor Guy was 
powerless to stay him now. He clasped her hand the closer in 
his own and pressed nearer, ever nearer, to her. His ardent 
words burnt into her very soul. His warm breath came and 
went upon her cheek. He felt the quick beating of her heart 
upon his breast. His lips met hers 

"As there is a God in heaven," he protested. "As I hope 
for salvation, nothing shall ever break my faith or daunt my 
love ! I shall strive ! I shall live but for thee ! " 

She heard him and sighed again. An eternity was com- 
pressed into an instant of time. Then she tore herself away 
from his embrace. 

"What have I done?" she cried. "What have I done?" 

" Done," he made answer. " You have opened paradise to 
a tortured soul. You have given hope to one who was in de- 
spair. Now now will you say me nay if I seek your countess ?" 

" For the love of heaven, begone ! She comes ! See ! Al- 
ready they have discovered ! They have missed me and are 
returning ! Fly ! I may not ! Oh ! I may not ! " 

" Sibilla, as you love me as my love for you is all in all 
I beseech you do not leave me thus. Why, why, in heaven's 
name ? " 

" I may not stay! I pray you ! Oh! I pray you, let me go ! " 

" But where ? When do you depart ? I shall see you again 
You will not you cannot leave me thus ! " 

" To-morrow ! To-morrow we depart from Paris. I shall 
go," she continued bitterly, " to my aunt to Exeter. There 
is yet the convent if the castle lacks its lord ! Where else is 
there for me now to harbor ? And But soft, for the love 
of heaven ! Here is the " 

" Sibilla ! Lady Sibilla ! " came a querulous voice from be- 
yond the chapel. " Where are you ? Where can you have 
hid yourself ? We are seeking for you ! " 

She tore herself from him. There was one embrace she 
yielding to his passionate ardor and he found himself standing 
in the chapel alone. She had gone whither he knew not. 

But he had seen her. He had heard her voice. He had 
spoken with her. It was enough to set his pulses throbbing 
and his brain reeling ! His lips had met those of the Lady Si- 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 475 

billa Sibilla, his own beloved Sibilla ! She had heard his words 
of love ! She had hearkened and sighed ! He walked on air, 
on clouds, on nothingness ! 

And Thomas Brother Thomas it flashed across his mind 
had counselled him aright. Sibilla would be his. He had 
only to wait only to win her. Nothing could ever come be- 
tween them now. He had spoken with her. She had heark- 
ened to him. The touch of her hand the unresisting caress 
of her lips What more was there to hope ? What bliss 
could there be greater? 

He found himself, in a maze and whirl of thought, outside 
the cathedral, walking with Roger, as in a dream. 

" It was, as I said, the Lady Sibilla, was it not ? " the good 
man was asking him. 

"It was indeed the Lady Sibilla Vipont, of Moreleigh," he 
found himself repeating mechanically. 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

Massive and somber, in the beams of the setting sun, the 
town of Anagni rose upon its mountain top. The sharp inden- 
tations and jutting curves of the mountains that soared away 
from it rank upon rank, caught the last glow of the yellow 
light, burying it in the folds of purple shadow. A little band 
of travelers was passing slowly up the slope of the hill that 
fell away from the principal gate of the town. Behind them, 
across the fertile valley still rich in the harvest hues of late 
summer, stood out in low profile upon their mountain tops, 
Segni in its gray girdle of pelasgic walls, Carpineto straggling 
on its hillside. Far away to the left of the valley Alatri rose, 
a brown and purple shadow upon a dark blue hill. 

Above the yellow corn and the green vines of the valley, 
above the gnarled olive stems and the luxuriant chestnut groves 
upon the slopes, the towns stood upon their hills, looking silent- 
ly upon each other across the intervening spaces, proud, feudal, 
distrustful, the isolated stronghold of a spirit and a system that 
had reached its apogee. 

Our band of wayfarers was composed of friars friars spent 
and worn with journeying. They had made their way without 
pause or lengthy rest from Paris to Anagni, where Alexander 
held his Papal Court. And the handful of weary brethren, 



476 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [July, 

slowly toiling up the long hill that led to the gate of the town, 
though it could hardly be supposed that they were aware of 
the greatness of the issue, was the first wave of that vast force, 
that unstemmable tide, that would ultimately crush feudalism 
out of the world and leave it ready for the new system of civ- 
ilized Europe. 

" It is late, my brother," said one of the friars to another 
as they urged their mounts towards the goal. " Late ; and ere 
we reach the sheltering walls of our convent night will have 
fallen. I am weary of this hasty journeying, Brother. There 
is no comfort in a voyage such as this." 

His companion turned slowly towards him. His large eyes 
gleamed strangely in the dying light. "Weary, Brother?" he 
said. " Our pilgrimage is not yet done. Three score years and 
ten, and if by chance But we draw nigh to the gate. Be sure, 
Brother, our brethren will be awaiting us, and the General " 

"A fool's errand!" grumbled the first speaker. " Of a 
certainty a fool's errand ! Is not our Lord the Pope in our 
favor ? Is not Master Albert, our brother, here ? What need 
to drag you from your work in the University, through all 
these perils, weariness by sea and land, hardships and discom- 
forts, as the Apostle says, to come here to Italy?" 

"Peace, my brother! 'Tis his Holiness who commands!" 

"Yes, I know; his Holiness! Are there not enough in 
his court to tell him the truth ? Yet he must drag you from 
your school into this foreign land. I know! Oh, yes; I know. 
The best the order has to defend it ! An angel from heaven, 
forsooth ! So Brother Thomas must needs come post haste from 
Paris with a defence for practising the Gospel counsels ! Brother 
Thomas, no less, the pride and glory of all our order ! And to 
defend us against these God-accursed seculars " 

" Peace, Brother ! " The words fell solemnly from the slow 
lips of Brother Thomas. "Who am I that I should come to 
the succor of our order aye, and of all the friars in their 
hour of need ? Who am I ? Tinkling brass a shaken reed ! 
* Except the Lord build the House ' 'Unless the Lord keep 
the City ' Nay, Brother; spare these words and be at your 
prayers ! The danger that menaces us is no vain sophism of 
St. Amour's. ' The kings of the earth stand up and their rulers 
take counsel together ' Our Lord the Pope has given to us 
friars, humble and lowly though we be, the power to absolve 



i9o8.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 477 

and to preach throughout the world. Of a surety these priv- 
ileges trench deep upon the rights of a body corporate. Yet, 
were it not for us and for our humble work for souls, I mistrust 
me that the work of God would be accomplished upon earth." 

"The seculars are accursed hirelings," put in the brother 
roughly. "They are wolves in sheep's clothing, taking tithes 
of mint and cummin, defrauding the widow and the orphan. 
Upon my soul and the faith of ! " 

"Nay, Brother; speak not thus, I pray you! There are 
abuses doubtless but it is not for us to set them right. It is 
for us to labor for the salvation of the souls of men ; to prac- 
tise those same Gospel precepts. We ask no more than to 
follow in the path of Him whose name is in our hearts and on 
our lips ; to work for Him ; to labor for Him ; if need be, 
to die for Him no more. Yea, my brother; these words, this 
antipathy to the seculars, is not seemly in the heart of a true 
religious ; for the seculars are the servants of God no less than 
we. We are no more than poor brethren, seeking to live un- 
molested and to do our work in peace. All will yet be well. 
But, see ! Yonder is the gate ; and we are at our journey's 
end ere yet the sun is gone from the sky ! " 

While the travelers were ascending the hill and drawing 
nearer to the town, a solitary man was waiting seated in a 
huge and somber room of the great, frowning palace near the 
cathedral. He was a man past middle age. The scanty light 
that struggled through the narrow windows pierced in the 
thickness of almost cyclopean walls just showed the ascetic 
features, the dark, curling hair and beard cut after the manner 
of the ecclesiastic, the large and intelligent eyes, the broad, 
high forehead. His expression was a singularly kind one, 
though traces of stubbornness as well as of conscious power 
were also to be found in it. The delicate arch of the nostril, 
the thin and somewhat closely pressed lips that showed beneath 
the drooping moustache, betrayed the enthusiast and the mystic. 
He was seated in a rich chair, carved and gilt and upholstered in 
crimson silk. Before him stood a table, also carved and gilt, sup- 
porting two candlesticks bearing waxen tapers that had just been 
lighted. Between the candles was a crucifix, and before it lay 
writing materials pens, inkhorn, sand together with a large and 
richly illuminated volume, upon the opened page of which the 
ecclesiastic's hand was lying. But he was not reading. The large 




478 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [July, 

and dreamy eyes were turned towards the white figure of the 
tortured Christ hanging upon the cross. 

The rest of the furniture of the immense room was as scanty 
as the struggling light itself, though what there was of it was 
rich in the extreme. Here and there some object stood out 
from the general gloom, in patches of crimson or gold, or 
glistening white or colored marbles. At each end was a door- 
way leading into an adjoining apartment and closed with heavy 
folds of tapestry. The room was the audience chamber of the 
palace of Anagni; the ecclesiastic, Alexander, fourth of that 
name, Bishop of Rome. 

The Pope sat, gazing at the crucifix. There he had been 
sitting ever since the consistory, the third that had been held 
that week. And indeed there was enough to occupy his thought. 
The political outlook was a dreary one. His offer of the throne 
of Sicily to Edmund had been accepted. His legates had for 
months been waging war in the young King's name. But 
King Henry found it difficult nay, impossible to furnish the 
means necessary to pay the Papal armies that fought for his 
son's new possessions. England was groaning under his fruit- 
less efforts to obtain money. And at length Manfred, with his 
Saracen troops, had conquered both Naples and Sicily. 

The Pope's own University, too, that turbulent School of 
Paris, was giving trouble again. Bull after bull, brief after brief, 
had he sent into France to quell the disorder, notwithstanding 
which it grew and fermented, threatening to end in a final dis- 
ruption of the place of learning. It seemed to be slipping from 
the grasp of the Papal hands altogether, so unruly and so pre- 
cipitate were the turbulent minds that strove to shape its course. 
And even the friars whom he had done his best to support in 
the troubles and persecution they endured, had seemed to give 
way before the great moral pressure of the secular body. They 
had actually written supplicating him to withdraw the bulls that 
he had addressed in their favor. They had attempted a com- 
promise with the University authorities, without his supreme 
sanction. And now dogmatic controversy had become mixed up 
with the conflicting policies and King Louis had brought the 
whole crisis to a head by sending St. Amour's book directly to 
the fount of all earthly authority. His cardinals were occupied 
with its statements. They had spoken of it at the consistory. 
And deputations were on their way to examine and refute, to 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 479 

drag out the weary controversy in the very presence of the 
Holy Father. 

There were other matters, too, lesser troubles and cases 
coming daily before him from the whole world for settlement. 
The curia was burdened with the cares of civilization. And 
the sinews of war ! Where was the money to be got ? Agents 
in England, agents in France, agents and legates everywhere, 
gathering, scraping, screwing, in his name. Much of the money 
stuck in its passage through their hands. Besides, the nations 
had been bled so long that there was little to be had. Per- 
haps there was a touch of avarice in the character of Alexan- 
der IV. ; but money must be had for the curia, and it was the 
business of the agents and legates to obtain it. How could he 
know the intolerable strain that perpetual taxation put upon 
the people, taxed as they were by kings as well as by popes. 
That money was refused, often enough, he knew refused by 
bishops and wealthy abbots, who certainly ought to bear their 
part in the burdens of church administration as well as the 
wealthy laymen, and set them a good example to boot. There 
was little money, at any rate, in the Papal treasury ; and the 
vast machinery of the Roman Court that existed for the good 
and well-being of the Church at large, must be oiled in order 
to proceed as it should with the business of the peoples. 

Amid his many cares the Pope found time to draw some 
spiritual comfort and consolation from his religion. That is why, 
perhaps, he was now gazing upon the crucifix; for it was not 
politics, and money- getting legates, and squabbles at home or 
abroad that occupied all his attention. Nevertheless, he came 
back from his meditation with a sigh, confronted once more 
with the practical business of his office He closed the vellum 
volume before him, rose slowly to his feet, and crossed the 
length of the great room. For a moment he stood at the 
doorway, and then, lifting the heavy curtains, passed on into 
the antechamber. Two clerks ecclesiastics of some grade and 
dignity, for they wore the purple garb of prelates were busily 
engaged in writing at two small tables in the apartment. The 
Pope stood, a ghost-like figure in white, beyond the circles of 
light that radiated from their candles. Neither of the scribes 
had noticed his approach, but they both looked up quickly and 
rose to their feet as they heard his low and musical voice. 
"Are the drafts of the briefs made out, Hugo?" he asked. 



rose tc 
".A 



480 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [July, 

" We wish to read them ourself as soon as they are completed, 
and before they are written out fair." 

"They are not yet complete, your Holiness," the cleric ad- 
dressed as Hugo made answer. " I am still at work upon them. I 
shall bring them to your Holiness at once when they are done." 

The other cleric bent again to his task of copying. He was 
engaged upon a brief confirming and extending the privileges 
of the University of Salamanca. An elderly man, this, with his 
back bent by much writing, gray wisps of hair standing out 
behind his ears. The mellow candlelight, reflected up from the 
vellum lying before him, softened somewhat tbe hard lines of 
his face, not so much, though, that it ceased to be crabbed, and 
even cruel, with a shifting, crafty look about the downcast eyes. 

Hugo, on the contrary, was a young man, straight as a die 
and of a pleasant, though grave, countenance ; one of those in- 
dividuals who take life seriously enough, and for what it is 
worth, yet somehow always seem to find it easy to look upon 
the bright side of things and to make an estimate accordingly. 
Both, for all the difference in their appearance and character, 
were devoted servants, half -officials, half-secretaries, of the Pope, 
each serving to the utmost of his power in his own way. 

" 'Tis well," replied the Pope. "And the arrangements have 
been made for the solemn condemnation of the infamous libel 
against the mendicants?" 

" Yes, your Holiness ; the cardinals have sent in a copy of 
their report upon it, and all is ready for the judgment." 

" Good," said the Pope, emphasizing his words with little 
nods of his head. "Good, Hugo. We shall make an example 
now, once and for all, of these detractors and calumniators. 
Our University of Paris is distracted and distressed as it has 
not been since the time of Abelard. Our brethren, who look 
to us for succor, are set upon and driven from the schools. 
Nor shall they cry to us in vain. By St. Claire, whose sanc- 
tity we were privileged to honor, by the stigmata of St. Fran- 
cis, by our own faith, we shall right them. Has my Lord the 
Cardinal departed ? " 

" Which cardinal, your Holiness ? " 

"St. Caro." 

"Yes, your Holiness; he went straight from the consistory 
to his convent." 

"And is Brother Thomas of Aquin yet arrived?" 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 481 

"There is no word, your Holiness; though he should have 
been here before now." 

" You have acquainted Brother Humbert that we wish him 
to defend the orders and especially the poverty of the orders 
before us ?" 

"Yes, your Holiness." 

"Good!" 

The Pope turned as if about to depart. His white form 
looked ghostly in the flickering light of the tapers. Hugo made 
as though to address him, paused in hesitation, and then, with 
a deprecatory cough, said: "Your Holiness!" 

"Yes, Hugo?" queried the Pope, turning again. 

" The Cardinal Penitentiary has left a referendum in the 
murder case." 

"Murder! What murder ?" asked Pope Alexander, starting 
back. 

"The murder of the English priest, de Valletort, your Holi- 
ness. He the Penitentiary has given as a penance the building 
of a church and the endowing of a perpetual Mass. But it seems 
that the murderer he is one Vipont, an Englishman and noble 
is not satisfied. He craves an audience with your Holiness. 
He is very penitent an old man and quite broken " 

" We cannot see him," the Pope broke in upon his secre- 
tary. "You did not say you could arrange an audience, Hugo? 
You did not tell him we would see him ? " And then, without 
waiting to hear Hugo's low " No, your Holiness; I told him it was 
impossible," he went on querulously : " We are torn hither and 
thither by affairs of state. We have heresies thrust upon us, 
heresies hatched in our own schools of Paris. Our armies that 
wage war for the English are starving for want of English gold 
gold that was promised and that has never come. We have 
the cares of all the churches pressing heavy upon us the cares 
of all the churches. Truly we are the servant of the servants 
of God. Aye; a slave, a very servant of slaves! And yet 
and yet we are the Father of Christendom, torn though it is 
by these endless wars. We are the father of souls entrusted 
to our keeping, that look to us for consolation and for strength. 
Hugo! Hugo! 'Tis far better to be the Cardinal of St. Eusta- 
chio a cardinal- deacon, Hugo, one of the least better to be 
a simple Canon of Segni, or a boy, free from care, in the lit- 
tle town of Jenne, than to be weighed to the earth with the 

VOL. LXXXVII. 31 



482 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [July, 

tiara of the Popes and the weight of the keys of Peter. We 
are a father, Hugo, a father to whom the children have a right 
to come most of all, the child that comes back from his wrong- 
doing. We will see this Vipont, Hugo ! Bid him come to us 
as to a father. And, Hugo, pray pray for Orlando of the 
Counts of Segni, that his strength fail not in all his perplexi- 
ties ; for Alexander is the Vicar of the Lord, and bears the 
cares, the responsibilities of all the world upon his shoulders." 

The Pope was deeply moved. His voice trembled as he 
spoke at the thought of the awful meaning of his high office. 
Then once again he turned to go. 

"There is nothing else?" he asked, steadying his voice. 

At the moment, and before Hugo had time to answer, there 
was a clanking of armor in the room beyond that in which they 
stood. A curtain moved at the far end, showing the lines of 
troops that stood without, guarding the approaches to the Papal 
apartments. A small, thick-set figure entered, and the curtain 
fell again, to the accompaniment of a second clanking of steel. 

The newcomer was clad in white, with a mantle and hood 
of black almost entirely covering his habit. A small cap of 
vivid scarlet covered his thin, white hairs. At first he did not 
see the Pope in the sparse light of the room. Then, as his eyes 
became accustomed to the darkness, he hastened forward and, 
bending low, kissed the outstretched hand. 

" Holy Father ! " he puffed, for he had come in great haste. 

" My Lord Cardinal ? " queried the Pope kindly. 

" Your Holiness ! Brother Thomas of Aquin is come and is 
even now at the convent of the friars." 

The Pope smiled a rare, sweet smile and took the cardi- 
nal by the arm. 

" Come, he said, still smiling. " Hugo, you will set apart 
an hour for us to see this Vipont. Come, my Lord Cardinal ! " 

And they passed through the tapestried door to the audi- 
ence chamber. 

Hugo seated himself again at the table, and drew the parch- 
ments towards him. He smiled, too, as he jotted down Vi- 
pont's name. 

Then there was silence, save for the scratching of the quills 
as the two secretaries worked on in the flickering candlelight. 



I908.J ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 483 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

The hot mid- day sun of early autumn beat down upon the 
valley. The vines, the blue-gray olives, the golden corn, stood 
out in patches of bright color in the heat haze that shimmered 
upwards towards the cloudless sky. On their hills the lonely 
towns sat trembling, swaying, shifting, in the glare. As the eye 
rested upon their solid fortifications and soaring buildings, they 
seemed to dissolve and form again like fairy cities built of the 
air spirals and the sunbeams. 

But within the palace of Anagni all was cool and restful. 
The fierce heat could not pierce the thickness of its great walls; 
and though to an observer on a distant hill-top it would have 
looked as unreal and as fairylike as the rest of the strange 
panorama, as it reflected the heat waves from its baked stone 
front in dancing shimmer, the hand laid upon these same stone 
walls within would have felt nothing but a grateful coolness. 
The garish light, too, that entered through the narrow windows, 
was subdued and diffused in the great room where Hugo and 
his companion worked. 

This morning they were not alone in the apartment. A 
considerable number of people, both ecclesiastic and lay, were 
waiting for audience with the Holy Father. From time to time 
the curtain moved, and some one left the audience chamber. 
Then Hugo, glancing at the lists he held in his hand, went 
quietly to one or other of the groups, whereupon the heavy 
curtain was raised again and a new audience began. There was 
a continual clank of armor to be heard, for without soldiers 
were slowly pacing to and fro, and in the room itselt gorgeous- 
ly accoutered officers stood on guard near the further door. In 
the corner nearest to the entrance one melancholy looking man 
stood apart from the others. He was clad in a dress of dark 
and somber hue, unrelieved by ornament of any kind. He was 
a tall man with a firmly knit, well-proportioned figure, but his 
head was so bowed and his arms fell away so loosely from his 
shoulders that he appeared, if anything, under, rather than over, 
the average height. His hair was iron-gray, bleaching to white 
about the temples; and his eyes, when he looked up, as he did 
quickly from time to time, were apparently the only living 
features in his face. They burned like coals under the cavern- 
ous brows, showing strangely in the drawn, white face. But 
for those fierce eyes and the sudden movements of his bowed 



484 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [July, 

head, it might have been a corpse that awaited an audience 
with the Holy Father. 

A stir at the entrance. The curtain moved to admit a 
party of religious, the brown habit of the Friars Minor with 
its pointed hood, side by side with the white tunic and black 
cloak of the Dominican. Hugo came forward quickly to re- 
ceive them, and they stood together, speaking in low tones, 
waiting for the swing of the curtain to show that the Pope was 
once more disengaged. But as it moved there was another stir 
at the further door. The hangings were twitched sharply back 
and two guards entered, standing at the salute, one at each 
side, as a cardinal passed between them. He made direct for 
Hugo and his group of religious, crossing the room with firm 
and business-like steps. The secretary bowed to kiss his ring 
as the cardinal asked hurriedly: "Am I late, Hugo ? I trust 
the friars have not yet had audience with the Holy Father ? " 
" They have just come, your Eminence. These are they." 
The secretary moved aside as he spoke, so that the cardinal 
stood facing the brothers. 

" His Holiness bade me admit you to his presence at once," 
continued Hugo. "Even now he awaits you." 

" So ! " said the cardinal. " Let us advance, my brethren. 
A sad occasion, a sad cause, that brings us together at the 
feet of the Pope ; but courage, brothers. The commission has 
already condemned your accusers, and the Holy Father will 
ratify what we have done." 

They passed through into the presence. The Pope was 
seated by the table bearing the crucifix. Several prelates and 
an officer of his guard stood not far from his person, and 
armed soldiers were posted at either door. The Holy Father's 
head was resting wearily upon his hand ; but, as he caught 
sight of the friars and the cardinal, he sat erect and alert to 
welcome them. There was no trace of weariness or preoccupa- 
tion in his gesture as he received their homage, naming each 
the Cardinal Hugh of St. Caro, Brother Humbert, General of the 
Dominican Order, and Bonaventure, General of the Franciscans 
* with kind words of paternal welcome. Brother Thomas hung 
back behind the others in an attitude of supreme reverence and 
humility, but Alexander, catching sight of him, beckoned to 
him to come forward. 

" And you, my brother," he began, with a kindly smile, as 
Brother Thomas fell upon his knees at his feet; "you are 






1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 485 

Brother Thomas of Aquin. It needs not that my Lord Cardinal 
should make you known to us. Rise, my brother, rise ! Yes ; 
he is not likely to allow us to forget. He never tires of tell- 
ing us of your renunciation, and of how you escaped the wiles 
of those warlike brothers of yours. He was himself present 
when you defended your vocation before our holy predecessor, 
Innocent. He has recounted to us the scene when, in the pres- 
ence of the countess, your mother, you gained the Holy Father 
to your cause. Was it not he who urged your call to Paris ; 
he, too, who whispered in our ear the counsel that has led us 
to summon you to our court in this crisis of your order ? 
Yes, my son; we know you well by good report. It is our 
will that you, my brother, should publicly defend your manner 
of life before us in the Cathedral Church of this town. You 
know the issue? You have perused the libel of St. Amour?" 

"Your Holiness!" It was Brother Humbert who spoke for 
the young Dominican. " Your Holiness ! Three days ago I 
placed a transcript of the work in the hands of Brother Thomas. 
He has his reply ready by now." 

"And had you not seen it before?" asked the Pope, turn- 
ing directly to Aquinas. " Had you not read the book in Paris ? 
Did you not know the substance of these attacks against your 
order ? Have you not heard this turbulent, this crafty St. Amour 
or his associates in the schools ? " 

"No, Holy Father"; came the answer in the clear, slow 
voice of Brother Thomas. " Only in a general way have I 
taken any part, and then no active part, in this matter." 

The Pope made a gesture of impatience. " Impossible ! " 
he exclaimed. " Surely you cannot have been deaf to the cal- 
umnies that have been spread abroad ? Surely your cloister 
echoed with the accusations of the seculars ? " 

" Holy Father," replied Brother Thomas in the same slow 
voice, "it was not for me to listen to the calumnies, or to take 
action against the accusations. I had my schools, my work, 
my rule " 

" But your blood must have boiled when you saw all you 
held most dear held up to ridicule ! It would not be human 
to take no interest in the fate, the destiny of your brethren. 
Surely you have read the libel ? " 

"Yes, Holy Father"; the brother answered with submis- 
sion. " Three days ago my Brother Humbert " and he bowed 
his head in reverence as he spoke of his superior "gave the 



486 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [July, 

libel into my hands. I have read it. I have mastered its con- 
tents. I have an answer, with God's help, to the charges." 

" And not before ? " queried the Pope, more surprised than 
ever. " Impossible ! Our commission has had the volume un- 
der consideration these three months; and only now has come 
to a conclusion as to its contents. You have had it only three 
days in your possession and profess to have found an answer 
to the accusations." 

The cardinal was smiling discreetly. He knew what he was 
about when he suggested that Brother Thomas should be sent for* 

"Your Holiness," he interrupted, with a little gesture of self- 
congratulation, " Brother Thomas is a friar. It behooves him to 
do what work his superiors assign to him. He has kept aloof 
from these wordy battles, these endless disputes, because he was 
engaged in the work of teaching, and because they are of no 
profit to the soul. He looked, doubtless trusted, to his su- 
periors, as he was only a simple friar, to defend the order 
under their care from all assaults. Now that your Holiness has 
called him from his cell and from his class- room, you will not 
find him dumb. He will force these calumnies back upon those 
who utter them. He will twist and break their arguments. He 
will utterly confute them." 

" Yes " ; mused the Pontiff, half to himself. " Yes ; we have 
called him to the defence of the religious. We have heard of 
his keen mind, his ready logic. But dare we risk so weighty 
a matter? He is yet young. Scarce can he, in these three 
days, have perused the libel. Better, my Lord Cardinal, far 
better postpone the public dispute until our Brother Thomas 
has had time to order and arrange his answer." 

" There is no need, your Holiness," the cardinal explained. 
"He is ready, is he not, my Brother Humbert?" 

The general made a gesture of assent. " If the dispute is 
to be held," he said, " 'twere best held at once. I will answer 
for Brother Thomas of Aquin." 

During this conversation its subject, Brother Thomas, stood 
with downcast eyes before the Pope. There was no false mod- 
esty, no proud humility, in his attitude. He had answered the 
Pope truthfully, and had heard the doubts of his Holiness and 
the warm praise of the cardinal with equal indifference. He 
was, so he felt, an instrument in the hand of destiny. Praise 
could not alter the even temper of his calm mind, any more 
than calumny could shake his confidence in the designs of 



i9o8.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 487 

providence with regard to the religious life. Utterly lacking 
in self- consciousness, he stood there, a humble friar, ready to 
speak if he were bidden to speak, to keep silence if his de- 
fence was not required. 

Pope Alexander looked at him keenly from time to time, as he 
and the cardinal spoke together. He perceived for himself that 
there was no mock humility in the attitude of Brother Thomas, 
and gradually became conscious of that extraordinary output of 
strength that seemed to radiate from his person. This, more 
than persuasion or argument, had its influence in deciding him. 

" Good, my Lord Cardinal ! Be it as you say. Two days 
from now, in the Cathedral Church, our Brother Thomas shall 
defend his order and its rule. We shall give orders that the 
whole curia be present, and, after his defence, we will that the 
findings of our commission be read, and sentence pronounced 
in due form." 

After a few moments spent in further conversation, the car- 
dinal gave the signal to withdraw ; and they knelt for the Papal 
benediction. Then the guards opened the heavy door, and drew 
back the tapestries, as they passed out from the audience chamber. 

Hugo was leading the bent and somber figure from the 
antechamber towards the portal through which they had just 
passed. He was whispering directions to the newcomer as to 
how to approach the Pope. At the doorway he gave the 
stranger's name to the guard, who called it out in stentorian 
tones as he passed through : " The Knight of Moreleigh, Sir 
Sigar Vipont, of England, Most Holy Father ! " 

Brother Thomas turned slowly all his actions and words 
were characterized by a grave deliberation and raised his eyes. 
He just caught sight of the bowed head crowned with its gray 
locks, the sad colored habit, the broken gait of the knight. 
The guards and chaplains had advanced and were standing 
close behind the Pope. His white cassock and the scarlet cloak 
falling over it stood out sharply in the glint of the gold back 
and arms of the chair in which he was seated. Vipont raised 
his head and strode forward towards the presence ; but, half 
way across the room, he fell upon his knees and clasped his 
hands together before his breast. The Pope grasped the arms 
of his chair and half raised himself to his feet. Then the curtain 
fell again and the heavy door silently swung back into its place. 

(TO BE CONTINUED.) 




QUEBEC AND ITS EARLY HISTORY. 

BY ANNA T. SADLIER. 

JHE tercentenary of Quebec, to be celebrated this 
month, opens up a whole chapter of historical as- 
sociation, that from a picturesque, dramatic, and re- 
ligious standpoint, can scarcely be surpassed. It 
offers a diversified picture, of prelate and mission- 
ary, viceroy and intendant, soldier colonist and commercial 
trader, coureur dss bois and Indian warrior. 

In the three hundred years of its existence, Quebec exhib- 
its no marvels of progress, and from the limitations of its posi- 
tion no phenomenal growth. It has rather remained as a monu- 
mental city, pathetic in its fidelity to the traditions of the past, 
and, as it were, attesting the glories of a bygone time. For 
it must never be forgotten, that those missionaries, those colo- 
nists, those explorers, of which the first Governor of Quebec 
was the forerunner, as he was the type, rescued that new earth 
from the forest primeval, and from a barbarous heathendom. 
Situated in the heart of a solitude, encompassed by savage foes, 
enduring the utmost rigors of a severe climate, suffering from 
frequent famine, provided at best with the barest necessaries of 
life, they laid the foundations of present wealth and present 
prosperity. 

It is scarcely possible to imagine that handful of men upon 
a hillside, forming the first settlement, to which were afterwards 
added the sister settlements of Three Rivers and Montreal. 
That colony has been compared by a chronicler to the Early 
Church "without, persecution, fire, war, tortures, and massacres, 
every imaginable horror, and within, calm, serenity, prayer, the 
enthusiasm of self-devotion, the luxuriant vegetation of virtue." 
Setting forth from that primitive settlement, missionaries and 
explorers examined the vast territory of what is now the Do- 
minion of Canada, jotting down the information thus gained upon 
maps and charts, to serve as guides for those who came after. 
The seventeenth century in France was one of prodigious 
activity in the moral and religious domain. New orders sprang 
into being, old ones were re- organized, as if in preparation for 



1908.] QUEBEC AND ITS EARLY HISTORY 489 

that tremendous struggle of the succeeding age, which was to 
convulse alike the world of thought and the world of action, 
and to shake Christendom to its foundation. Instances of public 
and private virtue were multiplied, and the calendar of the Church 
was enriched with innumerable saints. The crusading instinct of 
the later Middle Ages was rife, both in those who followed the 
profession of arms, and in those who " went down to the sea in 
ships." It is certain that in that period of her history, the great- 
est and most glorious, France appeared in the vanguard of ex- 
ploration as well as of missionary endeavor. 

It has been justly observed that "the esteem wherein she 
was held by savage nations and the preference which they ac- 
corded to her, must be attributed to the fervor of her faith." 
As Bancroft says : " It was neither commercial enterprise, nor 
commercial ambition, that carried the power of France into the 
heart of the continent; the motive was religion. . . . The 
only policy which inspired the French conquests was congenial 
to a Church which cherishes every member of the human race, 
without regard to lineage or skin." * 

This impelling motive is clearly expressed in the charters 
and other documents, given to the hardy mariners and adven- 
turers who crossed the seas in quest of unknown lands. For 
example, it was explicitly stated in the royal commission be- 
stowed upon Jacques Cartier, that his undertaking was to be 
for "the augmentation of the Sacred Name of God." 

A memorable occasion was, therefore, that Feast of Pente- 
cost, 1535, when Cartier and his hundred chosen followers oc- 
cupied the nave of the ancient cathedral of St. Malo, during 
the celebration of high Mass. At the moment of Communion 
they advanced, as one man, to receive the Bread of Life, which 
should sustain them upon their hazardous journey. And when 
Mass was finished, the venerable bishop lifted his anointed 
hands and invoked a blessing upon the expedition. 

Cartier, having discovered the river, which is now one of 
the main arteries of the Dominion, sailed up its broad bosom, 
and was met by a deputation of savages, who came forth from 
a hamlet perched upon a rocky height, that was afterwards called 
Quebec. 

Some seventy years after Cartier had there planted the cross, 
another mariner, from Brouage in Saintonges, made a landing upon 

* History of the United States. Vol. III., p. 118. 



490 QUEBEC AND ITS EARLY HISTORY [July, 

a narrow strip of land, beneath the overhanging cliffs of his 
future city. Samuel de Champlain, who had already attained 
distinction as a sea-farer, had made a previous voyage to that 
region, and with his patron, Font-Grave, had sailed up as far 
as the Sault St. Louis. Thence he brought back to France a 
chart of those countries, and such a description as inflamed the 
imagination of the reigning king, Henry of Navarre. Empow- 
ered by that monarch, and after having been involved in an un- 
successful attempt at colonization in Acadia, Champlain landed 
upon the spot with which his name was to be thenceforth as- 
sociated. On the third of July, 1608, he stood upon the shore, 
looking upwards to that bold promontory, where he was to be- 
gin the foundation of an empire, and outwards over that vast 
expanse of water, which his predecessor had discovered and 
christened the St. Lawrence. 

A few cabins were built, the ground was cleared with vigor 
and energy, and presently there sprang into being a commodi- 
ous habitation, a fort, a chapel, and the chateau of St. Louis, that 
in the course of years became the theatre of innumerable events. 

Champlain assumed the office of governor, which he was to 
retain, with but slight intermission, for nearly three decades, and 
spared nothing that could contribute to the moral, religious, and 
material well-being of the infant state. Twenty times he crossed 
the ocean in its interests, when the transit was tedious and 
perilous, and he was at all times indifferent to his personal com- 
fort, sleeping, when occasion offered, upon the snow, and sub- 
sisting upon the coarsest food. 

He made extensive explorations, in his vast domain, becom- 
ing thus the forerunner, as he was the best type, of a legion of 
explorers. Besides that important sheet of water which bears 
his name, he discovered lakes Ontario and Nipissing, sailed up 
the Ottawa River, almost to its source, and penetrated north- 
wards, as far as the Isle des Allumettes. He visited the Algon- 
quins, in their country, and sojourned a whole winter in the 
land of the Hurons, on the southern shore of the Georgian Bay. 
While there, his first conflict with the Iroquois occurred. He 
fought in defence of the allied tribes, and was severely wounded. 
Thenceforth he was almost continually harrassed by those fero^ 
cious warriors of the Seven Nations ; obtaining over them, 
however, on the shores of Lake Champlain, a decisive victory, 
which kept them in check long afterwards. 



1908.] QUEBEC AND ITS EARLY HISTORY 491 

As governor, Champlain was invested with the fullest powers, 
legislative, executive, and judicial, and he made the noblest use 
of his plenary authority. He preserved the most exact disci- 
pline in the fort and in the city, so that it was compared to a 
well-regulated seminary. "After the example of their leader, 
the behavior of all was most edifying, every one approaching 
regularly the Sacraments of the Church. During meals a his- 
torical work or the life of some saint was read, night prayers 
were said in common, with examination of conscience." 

The Governor had to contend against civilized, as well as 
savage, foes. One Jean Duval, and a few other malcontents, 
planned to assassinate Champlain and compass the destruction 
of the colony. Duval was executed and the rest of the crimi- 
nals banished from Quebec. 

The English had likewise begun to contest French supremacy 
upon the soil of the New World, and the little settlement on 
the St. Lawrence did not escape attention. Three Huguenot 
brothers, the Kertks, in command of a British fleet, appeared 
before the infant city, and demanded its surrender. The gar- 
rison, depleted by war and famine, was at its lowest ebb. 
Longing eyes were being turned towards the expected vessel 
with supplies from France, in command of Emeric de Caen. 
Nevertheless, Champlain made answer that " if the enemy wished 
to see him, they must come nearer." Impressed by this bold 
and resolute attitude, Kertk burned the ships he had taken, and 
sailed away. Some months later he reappeared, better informed 
as to the condition of the garrison, which was then most desper- 
ate, and Champlain was forced to capitulate. 

When he was a prisoner on board Kertk's vessel, the long 
expected ship of Emeric de Caen was sighted, and Kertk in- 
formed the captive that he must, under pain of death, advise his 
compatriots to surrender. Champlain characteristically replied, 
that he was not in command of that vessel, and that if he were, 
he would advise those on board of her to do their duty. 

A few months later Champlain was reinstated in the com- 
mand of Quebec, which, by the treaty of St. Germain-en- Lay, 
was restored to France. 

During the years that followed, he strove to establish the 
commercial interests of the country upon a secure basis. To 
that end he obtained the assistance of the great Richelieu, who 
founded the company of the " Hundred Associates," which some 
regard as the prototype of the East India Company, and others 



492 QUEBEC AND ITS EARLY HISTORY [July, 

of those famous organizations, that have played so important a 
part in the commercial destinies of the world. Anticipating the 
policy of Talon, the first and greatest of the Intendants, Cham- 
plain strove to systematize the piscatorial industries of the coun- 
try, especially the seal fisheries, to develop its natural products, 
and to establish trade with various foreign ports. He also en- 
couraged, by every possible means, emigration from the mother 
country. 

The matter which he had most at heart, however, was the 
evangelization of the aborigines, and this he promoted from the 
very inception of his foundation, until that Christmas-tide, 1635, 
when he was called to give an account of his stewardship. His 
immortal words, " the salvation of one soul is of more value 
than the conquest of an empire," were the key-note of his 
character, and he held it to be the bounden duty of kings and 
rulers to labor for that result. 

On one of his earliest voyages to France, he brought back 
three Recollet Fathers, and one lay brother, so that Mass was 
offered for the first time in that region, June 25, 1615, on the 
bold headland of Quebec, by the Franciscan, Father Dolbeau. 

"Everything was done," says Father Leclerq, "to render that 
act as solemn as the simplicity of the little pioneer band per- 
mitted. Being prepared by confession, they received the Savior 
in Eucharistic Communion. The Te Deum was sounded to the 
accompaniment of such little artillery as they possessed, amid 
acclamations of joy resounding through all that solitude, so that 
it was changed to a paradise; the while they invoked the King 
of Heaven, and called to their assistance the tutelary angels of 
that province." 

In 1616 another of that devoted band, Father Le Caron, clad 
in the brown habit of St. Francis, penetrated to a distance of 
more than three hundred leagues above Quebec, and offered up 
the adorable mysteries in the heart of new solitudes. That 
journey of the undaunted friar opens up a whole cycle of mis- 
sionary endeavor. The debt which the country thenceforth 
owes to that noble army of apostles and martyrs, Franciscans 
and Jesuits, is thus expressed, by a writer upon New France : 

" Since Champlain the missionaries were the most useful 
and the most active in colonization. We owed to them our most 
important discoveries, the most fortunate expeditions, the most 
advantageous treaties of peace." * 

* Moreau. Critique on Garneau's History of Canada. 



1908.] QUEBEC AND ITS EARLY HISTORY 493 

"Peaceful, benign, and beneficent," says Parkman, "were 
the arms of her conquest. France sought to subjugate, not by 
the sabre, but by the cross; she aspired not to crush, to de- 
stroy the nations which she invaded, but to convert."* 

"The Catholic priest," writes another American, "went be- 
fore the soldier and the trader, from lake to lake, from river to 
river, the Jesuits pressed on, untiringly, and with a power which 
no other Christians have ever displayed, won the savages to 
their faith." f 

When Champlain crossed the ocean after the English occu- 
pation, he brought with him the Fathers of the Society of 
Jesus, who became thenceforth the untiring messengers of the 
Gospel to the various tribes. They were entrusted with the 
five missions in the Huron country, on the shores of Lake 
Simcoe, memorable forevermore as the scene of the martyr- 
dom of Fathers Brebeuf and Lalemant, " whose fate," says 
a non Catholic historian,! "is equally creditable to Canada, to 
Christianity, to manhood." The intensity of the fervor of these 
martyrs, the generosity of their self-devotion, their prolonged 
and excruciating suffering, have seldom been surpassed. Lale- 
mant, delicate of frame, sensitive, and shrinking, endured for 
seventeen hours every torment that the fiendish ingenuity of 
savage ferocity could devise. Brebeuf, of splendid physique, 
a very Hercules in strength and courage, known to the Indians 
as Echon, who had vowed to endure without a murmur the 
extremity of tortures for the conversion of the red men, died 
after five hours from the very ferocity with which his execu- 
tioners strove to try his mettle, and to extract from him a 
single complaint. 

Martyrdom was, in fact, the coveted prize which those mis- 
sionaries to Canada had in view when crossing the wide waste 
"of dissociable ocean." And their sacrifices bore abundant 
fruit. 

Champlain had been dead seven years when, in pursuance 
of the work he had so much at heart, the angelic Father 
Jogues began his fearful apostolate to the Iroquois. His is 
one of the dramatic and inspiring stories of history. For months 
he abode in the cantonments of the Mohawk Valley, a victim 
to almost incessant and brutal ill-treatment by his captors. 

* Pioneets of New France. Introduction, viii. 
t Washington Irving, Knickerbocker, 1838. 
t Sir James le Moine, Maple Leaves, p. 23. 




494 QUEBEC AND ITS EARLY HISTORY [July, 

After the martyrdom of his companion, Rene Goupil, he re- 
mained in complete isolation, his only relief being to steal into 
the forest and pray or meditate before a crucifix, which he had 
carved on the bark of a tree. He finally escaped through the 
good offices of the Dutch, and, convinced that for the time his 
ministry was useless, he returned to France, broken in health, 
with mutilated hands his fingers having been bitten off saluted 
everywhere as " the martyr of Jesus Christ." The Sovereign 
Pontiff, hearing that he was canonically deprived of saying 
Mass, sent him the necessary dispensation, declaring that it 
was not fitting that one who had shed his blood for Christ, 
should be debarred from offering Christ's Sacred Blood upon 
the altar. Father Jogues, shortly afterwards, returned to the Iro- 
quois, in the two- fold capacity of missionary and negotiator. 
He was successful in establishing a treaty of peace for the 
whites, but his own prophetic words, " I go and I do not re- 
turn," were speedily verified, and he was killed by the hatchets 
of the barbarians. 

While the consecrated apostles of Christ were thus watering 
with their blood the soil of Canada, other forces were likewise 
at work for the extension of Christ's kingdom. On the 4th of 
May, 1639, Marie de 1'Incarnation, and two other Ursuline re- 
ligious, set out from Dieppe, together with three Hospitallers 
of St. Augustine.* They were on their way to take charge of 
the hospital at Quebec, founded by the Duchesse d'Aiguillon. 
On the same vessel sailed three Jesuits, Chaumonot, Poncet, and 
Vimont. 

The Ursulines and the Hospitallers of St. Augustine have 
had a long and intimate connection with the chief events, his- 
torical and religious, of the infant colony, the one caring for 
the sick and wounded, and the other providing for the educa- 
tion of Indian neophytes and the children of the white settlers. 
Each hafi continued its providential mission to the present day, 
growing and expanding with the life of the city. With each 
has been associated many women of exalted holiness, of in- 
trepid heroism, of self-devotion the most absolute, who have 
reflected enduring glory upon the name of Quebec. Suffice it to 
mention Marie de 1'Incarnation, "the Teresa of the new world," 
her co foundress, the royally generous and saintly Duchesse 
de la Peltrie, who in the cloistral seclusion of the Ursulines 

* The same community that has lately been expelled from their Hotel Dieu by the French 
government, now furnishing to the world a travesty upon liberty. 



QUEBEC AND ITS EARLY HISTORY 495 

played so important a part in the pioneer existence of the 
city, or such heroines of sanctity as the celebrated Mother St. 
Augustine, who, at a somewhat later period, cast luster upon 
the annals of the Hotel Dieu. 

To these foundations was presently added that of Sillery, a 
few miles outside the gates, named from its founder, a Knight 
of Jerusalem and afterwards a priest. He established a colony, 
under the direction of the Jesuits, for the Christianized Hurons, 
who were afterwards removed to Lorette. While other colonies 
were busy developing their material resources and money- making 
appliances, Quebec was raising up institutes of learning, of re- 
ligion, and of charity. 

In 1658, a vicariate apostolic was established, under the 
celebrated Francois Montmorency de Laval, who some seven 
years later became the first bishop of Quebec. The illustrious 
Laval is described as "a second St. Thomas," in his qualities 
of mind and heart the abounding charity, the entire detach- 
ment and poverty of spirit, as well as in the vigor and energy 
which those difficult times required. Amongst his many ser- 
vices to the city of his adoption was the foundation, in 1663, 
of the Seminary of Quebec, which not only supplied numberless 
distinguished members to the Canadian priesthood, but contri- 
buted many names to science and letters. It became the hearth- 
stone at which, nearly two centuries after, was enkindled the 
torch of learning, enabling Quebec to give the first intellectual 
impetus to Canada. 

Daring the period under consideration, the government of 
the ancient capital was a theocracy, and one of her most gifted 
sons * remarks, that there has been but an imperfect understand- 
ing, even ufpon the part of some of her own historians, of "this 
historic fact, so important, even from a political point of view, 
affording such abundant scope for the interest and diversity of 
the narrative, for descriptions, original and picturesque, and for 
the most dramatic incidents." 

This much is evident, that supernatural motives animated 
men and women at every page of those annals. Explorers, col- 
onists, priest and laymen, noble and peasant, were inspired by 
that enthusiasm for the cause of God, which led them to count 
as nothing their own personal toils and sufferings. As time 
went on, there was necessarily a diminution of this primal fer- 

*Abbd Casgrain. 



496 QUEBEC AND ITS EARLY HISTORY [July, 

vor, which never entirely disappeared, however, as long as the 
lillies of France waved upon the summit of Cape Diamond. 

It is a chivalrous, a romantic, a fascinating story, that of 
early Quebec, containing abundant materials for a new Iliad, 
with adventurous happenings by land and sea, with daily in- 
stances of unusual heroism and noble endurance, the prowess 
of knights, the courage of delicate women, the daring exploits 
of soldier and trapper, and " of that long train of French gen- 
tlemen and peasants, always ready to exchange the sword for 
the plough," who laid aside, at times, the comforts and the 
habits of civilized life for the Indian bivouac, and made the 
solitudes ring with their songs and their laughter. 

In 1665 the civil polity of Canada was constructed, chiefly 
by Talon, the Canadian Colbert, who placed the legislative, ex- 
ecutive, and the judicial affairs upon a new basis. He estab- 
lished trade with various foreign ports, so that many years pre- 
vious to the British conquest the merchants of Quebec had their 
ships upon the ocean. He regulated the fur and the lumber 
trade, no less than the fisheries. He sent experts to examine 
the mineral resources of the country, with the result that iron 
was discovered in more than one locality, and copper in an- 
other. He promoted emigration which, since the days of Cham- 
plain, had flowed intermittently towards the first colony. A 
great impetus was given in this direction, by the arrival of the 
Carignan regiment, the officers of which received grants of land 
on condition that they should settle in the country. The seign- 
euries, which reproduced in Canada the feudal system existing 
in France, had, in those unsettled times at least, this advantage, 
that they served as centers of protection to the scattered pop- 
ulation. 

The viceroys who stand out with marked individuality were, 
in the main men of high character and of profound religious 
faith. Montmagny, D'Qilleboust, Denonville, De Tracy, were 
among the more conspicuous. Frontenac, the doughty warrior, 
the successful fighter against the Iroquois as well as against his 
civilized foes, was inspired by that litigious and quarrelsome 
spirit that seems to be a peculiar trait of the Norman character. 
A hot, choleric, and unreasonable man, with an overweening 
sense of power engendered by his isolated position, and influ- 
enced somewhat by the love of gain, he overstepped the bounds 
of civil power and strove to encroach upon the ecclesiastical. 



1908.] QUEBEC AND ITS EARLY HISTORY 497 

In the disputes which occurred between him and others, with 
Laval and the Jesuits, the position of the Governors was wholly 
indefensible, for it concerned that chief bone of contention, the 
sale of liquor to the savages. Nevertheless the Government's 
claim was defended by many urgent remonstrances to the home 
government, as it has also been defended since by some his- 
torians. That disastrous traffic, as Father Lalemant declares, 
often undid in one month the labors and sufferings of ten or 
twenty years, and Marie de 1'Incarnation gives an appalling 
picture of its effects. Little wonder, then, that it was prohib- 
ited under the severest ecclesiastical penalties. 

Though the fair canvas of early Quebec is disfigured, espe- 
cially towards the close of the old regime, by the jealousies, 
the quarrels, and the petty bickerings, inseparable from the 
limitations of its position, it is, nevertheless, a past of which 
Canada has every reason to be proud. And for Catholics it 
has the additional interest of being, for a considerable period, 
" the only apostle of the true faith on the North American 
continent." 

The city is, in itself, a very compendium of history. Here 
in the Lower Town, is the Church of Our Lady of Victory, 
built to celebrate the deliverance of the town from the fleet of 
Sir Hovenden Walker. Upon the ramparts yonder Frontenac 
launched his bold defiance against Admiral Phipps. There Bigot, 
the bad Intendant, set up his castle, gorgeous for those days, 
and kept his unholy revels. And here the Golden Dog, rudely 
carved over a door, recalled a grim vendetta. The cathedral 
brings to mind many a historic scene, wherein potentates, civil 
and military, Indian chiefs, courtiers fresh from Versailles, and 
explorers newly arrived from discovering the site of a future 
city, or inland sea, or mighty river, assisted at the celebration of 
the church festivals. The quaint seminary is overshadowed now 
by magnificent Laval, the Provincial University. The Jesuit 
residence of other days is now a barracks. The spot is shown 
where the gallant American, Montgomery, fell when he made 
his daring and nearly scccessful attempt to take the fortress 
town. Montgomery is honored for his valor as well as for his 
moderation and humanity towards his foes. 

The citadel now occupies the rocky cliff, where once stood 
the fort and the chateau St. Louis, and stretching outwards 
towards the valley of the St. Charles and the Cote Ste. Ge- 

VOL. LXXXVII. 32 



498 QUEBEC AND ITS EARLY HISTORY [July, 

nivieve, are the famous Plains of Abraham, where the battle was 
fought that had the most important bearing on both the met- 
ropolitan and national history. Wolfe, the British general, was 
called upon to take a city hitherto thought impregnable, and 
to measure swords with a veteran commander who had but 
lately won a series of brilliant victories at Oswego, Fort Wil- 
liam Henry, and Carillon. 

By a fatal error a small goat path, leading to the plateau, 
had been left unguarded; its secret was made known to the 
British by a prisoner. Wolfe, who had been baffled at every 
turn by the skill and ingenuity of Montcalm, took immediate 
advantage of the discovery, and thus was enabled to mass his 
troops above upon the Plains of Abraham. 

Montcalm, on the other hand, was at the head of a force, 
numerically and in point of efficiency, inferior to that of his 
opponent. He had expressed in private letters and in public 
despatches, his fears for the outcome of the campaign. See- 
ing the enemy thus unexpectedly before him, he gave imme- 
diate battle, without waiting for reinforcements, either from the 
garrison of the city or from the camp at Beauport. The con- 
test was a desperate one, fought with the utmost valor upon 
both sides. Wolfe was mortally wounded in the moment of 
victory, while leading a bayonet charge into the very heart of 
the enemy's lines. He was carried to a spot still known as 
" Wolfe's Cove," where he expired, rejoicing that the enemy 
were in flight. Montcalm, riding his black horse, with sword arm 
upraised to rally his disorganized troops, was wounded three 
times, the last mortally, and was led from the field, a dying man. 
He made what arrangements he could for his army, received 
the last Sacraments with edifying fervor, and passed away ex- 
pressing his satisfaction that he should not live to witness the 
defeat of his cause. 

In that battle victor and vanquished appear to have won 
equal honor, and the memory of the rival commanders is cherished 
with a like affection. On the wall of the Anglican Cathedral 
i ; s an epitaph to Wolfe, while a mural tablet in the Ursuline 
chapel reads: 

" Honneur a Montcalm, 
Le Destin en lui derobant la victoire, 
L'a recompense par une mort glorieuse" 



1908.] QUEBEC AND ITS EARLY HISTORY 499 

In a public square overlooking the river is a monument, up- 
on one side of which is a tribute to General Wolfe and on the 
other a eulogy of the Marquis de Montcalm. 

On the heights of Ste. Foye the Chevalier de Levis struck 
the last blow for France, and defeated the British General 
Murray under dramatic circumstances. By a forced night march, 
through a morass and a thickly wooded country, during a tre- 
mendous storm, the French came in sight of the enemy. The 
position was hotly contested, but Murray was compelled to re- 
treat upon the city, burning his ammunition and other stores 
in the church of Ste. Foye. Once more conqueror and con- 
quered are honored by a common monument overlooking the 
tranquil tributary stream and the valley of the St. Charles. 

It has been proposed by the Governor-General of Canada 
that these two historic battle-grounds, which have lent a para- 
mount interest to the ancient capital, should, on the occasion of 
the tricentennial celebrations at Quebec, be converted into na- 
tional parks, in order to ensure their preservation ; and that on 
those "epoch-making" spots of ground, hallowed by the he^ 
roic blood shed there, shall also arise a colossal statue of the 
Angel of Peace. 

The idea is a most fitting one, and we trust it will be put 
into execution. That figure of Peace, rising calm and majes- 
tic on the rocky heights of the Gibraltar of America, would be 
emblematic of the best ideals of this young empire of the West. 
Where the blood of heroes flowed, and the strenuous toil of 
numberless men transformed barbarism to civilization, the an- 
gelic presence would teach the lesson that of all others is the 
synonym of national prosperity. 

This project of Earl Grey has received the warm and cor- 
dial endorsement of his Excellency, the Papal^Delegate, and of 
the Canadian clergy in general. It has been approved by rep- 
resentative men of every shade of politics ; grants have been 
given by the two parliaments, federal and provincial, and pub- 
lic subscriptions, headed by King Edward,~have been inaugu- 
rated in all the various cities. 

Over the great celebration now about to be held will pre- 
side the shades of the illustrious dead, the spirits of Samuel de 
Champlain and of those other grand old pioneers, who have 
left, as a heritage to the nation they founded, the example of 
an heroic, a noble, and, above all, a Christian^manhood. 




THE WOLF OF SERAGHTOGA. 

BY W. C. GAYNOR. 
I. 

was early winter, and Peel's lodge was the es- 
sence of comfort. The old French box-stove 
cooker and heater in one warmed up every nook 
and corner of the well-built camp. Outside the 
snow swirled and beat with intermittent, ghost- 
like touches on the window, but inside all was calm and cozy. 
We were far from the ordinary haunts of men, and the great 
woods encompassed us with their compelling secrecy. The echoes 
of the storm sounded dull in the distance, and died out in a 
fluttering slobber. 

"This is the season for the loup-garou" Peol remarked with 
obvious intent to interest me; "in the olden times the man- 
wolf went abroad on his hunting when the frost first crusted 
the marshes." 

I had heard of the loup-garou> or were-wolf, of the early French 
days, and I knew that the superstition was not yet dead among 
the Etchemin. More than once I had tempted Peol to discuss 
this weird subject as we lay in summer camp on Baskahegan, 
but he put me off with the assurance that such stories had best 
be kept for the winter fireside. In summer the spirits were 
awake, and might take offence; in winter they were sealed up 
in ice and snow, and could not hear. My old chief, it was 
quite evident, had not yet renounced his paganism. 

From the careless unconcern with which he now introduced 
the subject, I at once gladly inferred that the time had come 
for him to tell the tale without risk from the spirits of the 
wild. This, then, is the story shorn of his peculiar verbiage 
which he related to me when the night darkled through the 
storm, and the cracks and crannies of the old box- stove made 
the shadows dance on the walls of our camp. While the tale 
itself is based on a superstition which our better knowledge 
makes incredible, the comparative nearness to his own day en- 
abled Peol to give a more vivid and detailed account of the 



1908.] THE WOLF OF SERAGHTOGA 501 

strange experiences of the Etchemin with the mysterious per- 
sonage of the story than was possible with the earlier tradi- 
tions of his tribe. 

"Where he came from originally," Peol began with custom- 
ary abruptness, " I cannot say. My old people did not know 
themselves, except that he was French and a nobleman, as they 
called it, and that our warriors picked him up when they were 
returning from a foray against the English. They had been out 
in one of the many raids of the border war, when bloodshed 
was rife on the frontiers and the French were our allies and 
employers. 

"A party of our warriors had separated from the main body 
after a successful attack and had gone on a side- expedition of 
their own. Suddenly, as they lay at night near the English 
fort at the mineral springs of Seraghtoga, he appeared to them. 
Somebody had thrown a brand at a prowling wolf, and he 
stepped into the firelight. His long black robe and French 
speech disarmed suspicion. He would not talk much, but he 
knew the trails, and he led them where scalps were to be had; 
and so they judged him to have been a prisoner among the 
English. But he took no part in the fight ; and when our men 
returned with prisoners he pleaded for mercy towards the wo- 
men. He spoke in English to them, but haltingly as if he did 
not know his way readily, and our warriors still knew he was 
French. The men among the prisoners repulsed him with Eng- 
lish oaths, and the women shuddered and recoiled when he drew 
near. 

"One young woman-prisoner there was, however, who did 
not fear him like the others, but appeared to know him and to 
trust him. Perhaps this was because of the baby girl she car- 
ried in her arms, or perhaps he had been a prisoner in her 
house. She was a delicate woman, and our tribesmen foresaw 
she would not stand the long journey to the Saint Croix. As 
they retreated quickly through the rough tangle of the wilder- 
ness to their canoes, the toilsome journey was too much for 
her. Some were for killing her at once, herself and her child, 
but for the first time he showed his commanding temper, and 
snarlingly told them that she was his prisoner, that they must 
not injure her. Then, at his command, they made her com- 
fortable in a small hut which they built for her; and he and 
my grandfather tarried with her to nurse and bury her. It was 



502 THE WOLF OF SERAGHTOGA [July* 

through this ancestor of mine that I came to know so much 
about the matter. 

"You must not think," Peol hastened to digress, "that an 
Indian warrior of those days would tarry an hour beside a dy- 
ing prisoner, even though she was a woman of rank. My grand- 
father's duty for he was leader of the party was to act as 
escort to the stranger and bring him safely in ; our French 
allies would have been angry if we had deserted him." 

Having made this plain, Peol continued : " When the white 
lady found that she was dying, she called him to her, while 
Nadaga, my forbear, looked on ; and with her feeble hands she 
lifted her babe and gave her to him with broken talk and many 
tears. And the long, narrow face of the stranger was convulsed 
with some new emotion, and his dark eyes softened and lost 
their hunted look; and he shook himself as if awakening from 
a dream, standing before the dying woman like a warrior who 
had recovered from defeat. Taking the babe from her he kissed 
it, and then set it back in her arms. What he promised her, 
Nadaga could not tell, for the language was strange to him; 
but he wrote down in his praying-book what she told him be- 
tween breaths, and when she gave him her ring he kissed it 
and put it in his book. Then she crossed her arms above her 
baby and was dead; and Nadaga, who was a young warrior, 
thought the ways of the white people weak and foolish. 

"They buried her as best they could, and the stranger 
prayed over her grave and marked it with a stone. Then he 
carried the motherless baby in his arms as a woman would, 
and sometimes on his back, wrapped in his gown. When they 
rejoined their party one of the women-prisoners gladly took 
charge of the child, knowing full well that her own safety was 
assured thereby ; but he was ever constant in his watchfulness 
and care. 

" For the rest of the journey he was in some respects a 
changed man ; he was no longer so somber and dismal of coun- 
tenance and Nadaga found him more sociable and companion- 
able. At intervals, however, darkness seemed to cloud his spirit, 
and he snapped and snarled in his anger. But the sight of the 
little child, Dorothy for that was the name her mother left 
her always dissipated his blackest moods. He ordered like 
some one who was accustomed to be obeyed, and our warriors 
came to fear him. They claimed to hear him speak with the 



i9o8.] THE WOLF OF SERAGHTOGA 503 

spirits of the air; but that was when he read from his praying- 
book. Others believed him to be an oki or manitou, sent to 
injure them, whom it was best to placate with presents. The 
mystery was around him, and it grew with the days. 

" Once when they were outlying in the neighborhood of an 
English post, and silence was strictly enjoined, the cry of one 
of the prisoners in the night nearly betrayed them. He awoke 
to find the snout of a wolf at his throat. Then when the stranger 
was missed, and Nadaga was at his wits' ends to know what 
had become of him, an alarm among the English soldiery was 
heard, and he returned distressed and breathing heavily. In 
consequence they were obliged to take hastily to their canoes 
and skirt the shore where the shadows were deepest. For two 
days thereafter he insisted on carrying the baby in his arms. 
But still, every now and then, in the silence of the night, the 
howl of a wolf would be heard, and our men believed it to be 
the howl of the same wolf which they had heard at Ser- 
aghtoga. 

II. 

" How long he lived amongst us in our home encampment, 
with the child and her nurse, before the word spread among 
our chiefs to protect and care for him, as he was very dear to 
the heart of the great French Father, I cannot say. Presents 
began to flow in from Quebec for him, household furnishings 
and comforts of kinds never known before to our people; fish- 
ing vessels ran up the river twice a year and landed flour and 
provisions for him; and French artisans were sent who built 
him a suitable house. Our people then knew that he was a 
nobleman in his own country, and that the Governor of Quebec 
was responsible for him. 

" To the aoutmoins, or sorcerers, of our tribe he was an es- 
pecial enemy. When the sorcerer entered his little triangular 
hut, to work his magic and commune with his oki or spirit on 
some subject of importance to the warriors, just at the moment 
when the hut would begin to shake, he would pounce down on 
the ceremony like a hawk upon a kitchen fowl, and snatch the 
covering from over the excited sorcerer, laying bare the whole 
interior of the hut. Then, because he himself was so worked 
up, he would go into a sort of fit, would gnash his teeth and 
snarl and work his limbs, until the very sorcerers would run 



504 THE WOLF OF SERAGHTOGA [July, 

away in terror, crying out : ' Him big devil.' ' And Peol laughed 
while he relit his pipe. 

"All this while, however," Peol resumed, "the howl of the 
wolf was heard encircling the encampment in the winter even- 
ings, women were chased by some outlandish animal, and on 
the outskirts of the village a child or two was strangled. 
Watches were set ; but of the brute itself not a glimpse could 
be had. One of the sorcerers, it is true, was attacked in the 
woods at night and left for dead, but his story was confused 
and unintelligible. He was attacked by a great manitou, he 
said, of whom it was not befitting to speak ; and the confidence 
of the people in that aoutmoin's powers was henceforth un- 
diminished. When the watchmen followed closely on the heels 
of an alarm, they were sure to come upon the stranger; some- 
times he was writhing on the snow in a fit; at others he 
walked through their lines as if he did not see them. They 
would have killed him, despite their French allies, but some- 
how they feared him when he drew near; for no man amongst 
them could withstand the look of his face in anger. Thus he 
lived amongst them an .object of resentment and terror; and 
only Nadaga and his wife dare frequent his house. 

" Gradually, however, as the years drew on the cry of the 
wolf died out from the hearing of the people; and ^walked 
more openly among them, and distributed trinkets to the chil- 
dren. Dorothy, the orphan girl, was growing now to need 
playmates so Nadaga, who knew everything, said and she 
was coaxing him to let her play with the little Indian girls. 
When her nurse, the stout woman who would not desert her, 
led her to Nadaga's lodge, all the people wondered at the 
fairness of her face and the beauty of her dress ; and Nadaga's 
wife took her among the children. Dorothy then gave them a 
feast, and they ate things they had never tasted before. In a 
little while the strangeness wore off, and they took her into 
their hearts, and she learned to speak their tongue. But she 
was not allowed to play too much among them; she had les- 
sons to learn out of books, and he tried to teach her the 
mother-tongue to which she was born ; she always said it was 
easier to learn Etchemin. 

" It was puzzling to everybody that she had no fear of him. 
Often when she tired of study and the reading of books, she 
drew him by the hand through the village, and made him sit 



i9o8.] THE WOLF OF SERAGHTOGA 505 

and wait while she talked with her friends. Our Etchemin 
children, at such times, held back through fear of his face, but 
Dorothy invited them around him and sat on his knee to show 
her love for him. His face wore a puzzled look, half snarl, 
half smile, as if he were just half his natural self, and that half 
needed the other to make him kind and loving. So Nadaga 
used to say and Nadaga once saw him his real self. 

" But at times even her love was unequal to the task of dis- 
pelling his melancholy. As she grew older, she could foresee 
those spells of brooding, and she redoubled her efforts to avert 
them. In the end she would find herself defeated, for he would 
shut himself up in his own rooms and forbid her to disturb 
him. Nadaga who was very knowing made long detours on 
the forest trails at such times, and each time brought the stran- 
ger in spent and wounded. Then, in the quiet of the night, 
when Dorothy was asleep, Nadaga and the stout nurse would 
convey the wounded man to his own rooms. Thus in their 
kindness they kept the terrible secret from the little girl. But 
when in her anxiety about him she caressed and nursed him 
and soothed him, now in French, now in Etchemin, until his 
face relaxed and groaning in spirit he turned away in pure 
shame from her, Nadaga's grip would tighten on his tomahawk, 
for he loved her as his own daughter. 

"The death wail always followed him on his return from 
these fitful journeys. Now it came from the sparse French set- 
tlements on our river; again from the Ouigoodi and the Male- 
cites ; another time from some outpost village of the Micmacs. 
The howl of the wolf had been heard amongst them, and chil- 
dren had met with queer deaths, and men had felt the wet 
breath of a lone gray wolf on their faces in their broken slum- 
bers. For the sake of the young girl we kept our secret and 
loyally made believe that this man-slayer had long since left 
us. But his trail always ran in our direction, and they knew 
that he denned somewhere in our territory ; and, like us, they 
called him 'the Wolf of Seraghtoga.' But in the midst of their 
outcry that we were harboring an evil manitou, la picotte or 
small-pox visited them, and they had an evil spirit of their 
own. 

"He had been again absent, and Nadaga had found him two 
days out, wounded and his clothes in ribbons, for the angry 
Malecites had followed him like so many hornets, until he was 



5o6 THE WOLF OF SERAGHTOGA [July, 

forced to hide in the body of a tree. He was delirious for 
days, and snapped even at Dorothy's hand when she tried to 
soothe him. The stout nurse shook her head and whispered 
to Nadaga that he had done his last hunting. We waited for 
the usual outcry from our allies, but in its stead came the fear- 
ful tidings that la picotte was ravaging and destroying them. 
And the outlook was bad for the Etchemins. 

" Our sorcerers and medicine-men at once set to work to 
drum and stamp and make medicine, in order to chase away 
the spirit of the pest ; and they felt all the freer in their in- 
cantations because he was on his back in bed. To make mat- 
ters worse, when things were at this tension, one of our women 
saw in the night the dreaded female manitou, in shape like a 
flame of fire, flying through the woods with her cloak of human 
hair from the heads of her victims, streaming behind her. This 
vision gave new urgency to their fears, and the sorcerers cried 
out that only a human victim could appease the flaming demon 
of the plague. All this while he was lying nigh unto death, 
with Dorothy nursing him. 

" Now it happened that a party of our warriors, who had 
been over at Louisbourg helping the French, had returned bring- 
ing with them a single prisoner, an English sailor. Here was 
a victim ready to hand, and the sorcerers determined to burn 
him as a sacrifice to avert the pest. They began at once to 
beat their drums and sing their medicine-songs. All day and 
all night this din lasted, and Dorothy was distressed, because 
the noise was like a battle-call to her patient. When evening 
came the sailor was led forth and tied to a stake, while the 
sorcerers and young men danced round him with torches of 
blazing pine knots in their hands, and offered him to the man- 
itou of the flaming robe. When the uproar was at its highest, 
and they were about to apply fire to the victim, a sudden si- 
lence fell upon them ; he stood within the circle of torches, 
and the look on his face was like the glare of a wildcat's eyes. 
He was thin and spent with sickness, and in the ruddy blaze 
of the pine knots he appeared like a spirit from the other 
world; but his gaze never faltered as it swept slowly and sav- 
agely around the startled circle of sorcerers. 

"'Fools!' he said, 'and children of fools! What avails a 
man's life, if you yourselves bring in the plague? Hunt ye to 
the east' and his voice was shrill and clear like the voice of 






1908.] THE WOLF OF SERAGHTOGA 507 

the north wind * hunt ye to the west, but cross not the river, 
and the spirit of the pest will not harm you.' 

"Then, turning to the sailor, he asked him whence he came. 

" ' From Admiral Warren's flagship ' 

" ' Say that name again ! ' he interrupted, and the wondering 
sorcerers thought a fit was coming upon him. ' Peter Warren ? ' 
he asked, slowly so that the sailor could understand him. 

"'Yes; Admiral Peter Warren/ the other answered; and 
he would have saluted, but his hands were tied ; ' him that took 
Louisbourg. Ask that Indian over there with the battered face/ 
he added, grimly nodding in the direction of our chief sorcerer. 
' He will tell you how they got me.' 

" But he was not attending to the sailor's words. The glare 
had gone out of his eyes, and he stumbled as he turned to face 
the torches; but his face had the look of steadfast purpose. 

" ' In the name of the great Onontio ' and his voice was 
but a whisper ' I claim this man.' And then in louder tones, 
so that all might hear: ' Nadaga will make due recompense.' 

"He loosened the prisoner's bonds, but his strength was 
failing him and he leaned on the white man's shoulder. And 
thus, between Nadaga and the man whose life he saved, he 
moved slowly through the village to his home. The sorcerers 
muttered threats against him, but none of them durst stop his 
path. Nadaga hastened to distribute presents of raisins and 
dried fish. Nor did the plague touch a single Etchemin of 
the Saint Croix. 

III. 

" A day or two passed, and it was mooted round that he 
was going to send messengers into the English territory under 
a flag of truce. He would send the sailor back to his ship 
with a message to the Governor of Louisbourg. And then as 
if he called and it came, a great French warship hove in sight, 
her guns looking out through her sides, and anchored in our 
river. The captain came ashore with two boatloads of soldiers, 
and our chiefs met him. His mission was with the stranger, 
and thither they led him, and the soldiers closed up behind 
them when they entered the house. Dorothy was there with 
the sick man in a large room, and the French officer knelt on 
one knee before him and kissed his hand. A glow of red 
blood suffused his face as he returned the officer's salute. Then 



5o8 THE WOLF OF SERAGHTOGA [July, 

it become known that the great ship had been sent to carry 
him home to France. 

" But he would not consent to go not until the frigate had 
first taken him to Louisbourg. He had a mission there, and 
his own honor and the honor of France was staked on his ful- 
filling it. He spoke quietly, as if it were a settled matter, and 
all the while he held the girl's hand, and could not be moved 
from his purpose. The French captain demurred, and begged 
him not to do such a rash thing. As it was, his ship had 
barely escaped the cruisers of the enemy; how could he risk 
losing her by entering the hostile port of Louisbourg ? What 
would the king say ? It might cost him his commission. 

" At this, Nadaga used to tell, the old look, which sickness 
had almost obliterated, came back to the drawn face, and the 
officer drew back in distress. What he said through his teeth 
Nadaga could never tell, but it was a command which the 
French captain could not disobey ; for, as it turned out, he 
was an admiral by right of birth in the French navy. Thence- 
forth the French captain took his orders from him. 

" Out of the abundance of stores which were intended for 
Louisbourg the warship landed a great quantity, besides arms 
of all kinds, which he ordered to be distributed among the peo- 
ple. Every family received its share, and Nadaga, who was oc- 
cupied with this distribution, saw that the sorcerers and others 
who still cherished grudges against him received a double por- 
tion. Dorothy danced with the joy of giving ; and our women 
and girls made a feast in her honor, and admitted her into our 
tribe as a real daughter of the Etchemin. Four totems they 
tattooed on her breast, each in its own color; but the totem 
of the Porcupine was first. 

"When all was ready he embarked with the girl and her 
nurse ; and Nadaga and a number of our chiefs went with him. 
The gunports of the ship were closed, and hoods were set over 
the guns ; a great white flag, the Royal Standard of France, 
was unfurled an honor which never had been given to that 
ship before and officers and men went down on their knees as 
it rose heavily in the air above them. Then much that they 
could not hitherto understand was made known to the chiefs, 
and for the first time they knew that he was of the royal house 
of France. 

" Of that trip in the warship Nadaga never tired of telling : 



1908.] THE WOLF OP SERAGHTOGA 509 

The great sails on the tall masts, which were trees once on the 
Ouigoodi ; the wide decks on which men could lie at ease ; 
the houses and lodges where the officers and sailors dwelt; but, 
above all, the rows of polished arms and guns all these riv- 
etted his interest. In the midst oi these wonders he sat, chief 
and captain he whom Nadaga had so often carried on his back, 
torn and bleeding, through the wilderness. Dorothy had him 
now pillowed up in a chair on the deck, and the chiefs sat 
around him at their ease. While he slept she was free to lis- 
ten to the ancient tales and traditions which our chiefs thought 
she should know, for was she not now an Etchemin girl ? 

" At other times, however, he was occupied with his own 
affairs, for he knew that death had laid its hand upon him, and 
he was anxious to provide for the maid. The chaplain of the 
ship did his writing, and read the document to him in the pres- 
ence of the chiefs and officers. By it he made Dorothy, the 
English girl, heir to his estates and castles in France, without 
condition ; and then he signed the paper in the presence of all. 
After him the French captain and chaplain signed it, and our 
chiefs made their totems at the bottom also as witnesses. And 
he made them promise on the cross that if ever the word came 
to them that this daughter of their tribe needed help they 
would succor her at the utmost peril. 

"'She saved me from greater sins, 1 he assured them; and 
they one and all understood. 

" In broad daylight, with the royal standard still flying aft 
and an English flag at the fore-peak, the frigate ran past the 
broken island batteries and dropped anchor in the harbor of 
Louisbourg. It was a bold thing to do in time of war, with 
the gunners on shore standing by their guns, but he would have 
it so. Then the captain, all ablaze with gold, and our chiefs 
in their feathers and war-paint, went ashore, taking the English 
sailor with them. When they landed they marched under es- 
cort to the council chamber, where they met the English Gov- 
ernor. He received them a little stiffly, with inquiry in his 
face. Around him were his officers and captains, and by his 
side stood the gaunt figure of the Merchant of Piscatiqua. 
These two men had taken the town from the French, the one 
from the sea, the other by land. They now ruled it together 
as Governors. 

"The English sailor saluted his Admiral with punctilious 



510 THE WOLF OF SERAGHTOGA [July, 

ceremony, and told his story amid deep silence; the French 
captain then presented a letter which bore the seal of France. 
All eyes watched the English Admiral intently while he read 
it ; Nadaga saw the grimness leave his face, and his hands 
clutch quickly, and a look of some one whom Nadaga knew 
pass over him. And then Nadaga realized the truth. 

"'Which is Nadaga, the chief? 1 the Admiral asked in a 
husky voice. Nadaga stepping forward, as he was instructed, 
opened his right hand and held it out. There in his palm lay 
a ring ; but only the Admiral and he knew that it had once 
been on the wedding finger of the prisoner who died on the 
Mohawk. The Admiral picked it up and examined it for a 
moment, his eyes filling with unshed tears ; then, stepping down, 
he placed his hands on Nadaga's shoulders; and these two 
warriors, my ancestor in his war-paint and the great Admiral 
in his golden epaulets, looked into each other's eyes. What 
they each saw pleased them both, but Nadaga saw tears. 

" With a murmured word of apology, Admiral Warren handed 
the letter to his colleague ; the latter on reading it at once 
gave orders to the land batteries to salute the royal flag of 
France with many guns. The French captain returned to his 
ship with our chiefs to prepare for the coming of the English 
Admiral. He kept Nadaga with him on shore, however, wish- 
ing, no doubt, to show him greater honor. 

"When the Admiral went on board the French ship it was 
with much ceremony and a retinue of officers, but Nadaga walked 
by his side. The French guns boomed a salute, and the great 
white standard dipped in his honor. 

" On the after deck, propped in a chair, he sat, and his 
face wore a peaceful and expectant look. Behind him stood 
the chiefs in a semi- circle, and Dorothy waited by his chair 
with wonderment in her eyes. The English Admiral bent over 
him and kissed his hand, and then spoke to him in slow and 
formal words ; but Nadaga saw that the great sailor's gaze 
rested oftenest on the young girl ; and when a whisper of in- 
telligence moved our chiefs to speech among themselves, he 
knew that they had made the discovery which had come to 
him in the council-chamber. The dying man took her hand 
and placed it in her father's; and for the first time she knew 
that she was the daughter of an English Admiral. Then her 
father took her in his arms and kissed her, and there were 



1908.] THE WOLF OF SERAGHTOGA 511 

tears on his face. Our chiefs looked on in wonder, but the 
Frenchmen wept openly, and the English captains gazed out to 
sea as if they saw a strange sail. 

" It was only a question of hours with the sick man now, 
and Dorothy would not leave him. He still had strength left 
to tell her the story of her lineage; he would have told her 
more, but Nadaga, stroking the old man's hair, said he had 
told her all. 

" He died with her hand in his, with Nadaga and the chiefs 
standing silently by his bed, and the chaplain praying over 
him; while the French officers chanted his passing requiem. 
And the great flag of his race dropped lower and fluttered 
heavily in sorrow. 

" His face was peaceful and calm in death, with no hint 
upon it of the fierce passions which once ruffled it. And our 
chiefs began to think that, perhaps after all, they had done him 
injustice in their minds. The English Admiral gave him a 
solemn funeral; bells were tolled, guns were fired, and flags 
drooped while his body was borne by French and English of- 
ficers to a grave in the old French cemetery. The royal stand- 
ard of France covered him, and English soldiers with guns re- 
versed lined the way. Dorothy, as chief mourner, followed the 
bier, and behind her came her father and Nadaga, and then 
our chiefs and the French officers; while the merchant-gover- 
nor of Louisbourg and his soldiers followed in deep silence. 

"Thus was he laid away in peace, who in his tempestuous 
life knew but little peace, but was beset by a demon until the 
love of a young girl weaned him from his wolfish ways, and 
made him a man again with a man's true heart. And thus the 
Wolf of Seraghtoga passed from the Saint Croix, and with him 
the nightly terror of mothers and the fears of little children." 

Peol had done. The shadows still flickered on the wall, and 
the heavy silence of the forest was without, for the storm had 
died in the distance ; and we, living men, felt the peace which 
nature ever brings, whether in death as it came gently to him 
or in the slumber which now awaited us. 




THE PRINCIPLE OF THE PAPAL PROTECTION. 

BY H. P. RUSSELL. 

JIME was when the rulers of the earth in Christian 
lands realized that behind the veil of the visible 
universe there dwells an invisible, self-dependent, 
almighty Being, its Creator, Sustainer, and Sov- 
ereign ruler. They acknowledged that it is by 
Him, and not of themselves, that " kings reign, and law- 
givers decree just things," that "He takes away kingdoms 
and establishes them " when, where, and as He wills, and that 
as rational and dependent agents they were accountable to Him 
for their conduct. 

Hence their reference in the discharge of the affairs of State, 
and even in the most ordinary of worldly matters, to the sanc- 
tions of religion, their respect for its censures, their applica- 
tion for its blessings ; their recognition of the truth that if they 
were " God's ministers for good," as representing His authority 
in things temporal, much more had He appointed His ministers 
in things spiritual, under an ecclesiastical authority, to repre- 
sent His sovereignty in the domain of religion. And though, 
as frequently happened, each in turn might from time to time 
encroach upon the province of the other the civil authority 
upon the spiritual, the ecclesiastical upon the temporal still 
it was recognized in theory always, and for the most part 
in practice, that each was divinely ordained to rule in its 
own sphere. Nor did this necessitate a divided allegiance, 
since, whether as subjects of the State, or as subject to the 
Church, all were subject to the divine authority. The rulers 
themselves were subjects also ecclesiastical rulers to the civil 
authority in things temporal; civil rulers to the ecclesiastical 
authority in things spiritual. The Pope's sovereignty, as repre- 
senting Christ's headship of the visible Church, was every- 
where acknowledged. It was at the same time recognized that, 
to govern the world-wide kingdom of the Catholic Church, he 
needed in addition to his spiritual sovereignty the independ- 
ence of a temporal monarch. He was a king, not a subject, in 
his temporal dominions. 



1 908. ] THE PRINCIPLE OF THE PAPAL PROTECTION 5 1 3 

But since the rise of Protestantism, the essence of which is 
the refusal of the individual to render an account to a superior 
in things spiritual, the rulers of the earth, besides revolting 
against the divine authority as administered by the Catholic 
Church, have, as by a necessary consequence, set it at nought 
in the administration of things temporal also. As though this 
were not enough, they have determined on subjecting the divine 
to human authority by the endeavor to take captive each por- 
tion of the Church in turn, to isolate her in one country after 
another from the rest of Christendom and from that extra- 
national center of authority from which she is governed and 
held in the visible unity of that kingdom on earth of Him 
whose authority is everywhere and always and for all men, in- 
dependently of nationality, one and the same. 

Hence the substitution of Nationalism for Catholicism in 
religion the endeavor to set up National churches in place of 
the Catholic wherever the civil power has seen an opportunity. 
Hence the erastianism that invariably has accompanied suc- 
cess in the attempt, with the inevitable result that religion in 
every such case has been dragged down to the nation's level 
and shaped in its temporal rather than in its spiritual interests. 

Results such as these have long been evident enough in the 
Greek and Russian churches. From the point of view that im- 
mediately concerns the subject of this article, like results have 
prevailed in England, to so great an extent that the very idea 
of a visible Church Catholic, divinely endowed with an author- 
ity everywhere independent of the civil power in the domain 
of religion, has almost, if not entirely, been lost sight of by 
the nation's press, not excepting the High- Church press. The 
Englishman's sense of fair play, when discussing the affairs 
of the Catholic Church, as, for instance, in relation to the Church 
in France, fails him as by some constitutional defect resulting 
from the erastianism in which his nation's church has been sunk 
ever since the reformation. 

That the English secular press should be thus blind to the 
true nature of the constitution of the Catholic Church is not so 
greatly to be wondered at when we reflect upon its frankly 
Protestant character. But that the High-Church press, which 
professes belief in a visible Church Catholic as of divine insti- 
tution that the High-Church press, which so loudly has de- 
claimed against State interference in matters affecting ecclesi- 
VOL. LXXXVII. 33 



514 THE PRINCIPLE OF THE PAPAL PROTECTION [July, 

astical government and administration, should now presume to 
censure the French Episcopate for refusing, at the bidding of 
an atheistic government, to renounce Catholic jurisdiction in 
that one form in which alone it is to be found, whether in 
France or elsewhere, would be matter of surprise indeed if 
we did not know that High-Churchmen, while desiring such 
jurisdiction, desire it not in the form in which it exists, but 
in a form in which it does not in fact exist. For " if all that 
can be found of it is what can be discerned at Constantinople 
or Canterbury, I say it has disappeared," observes Cardinal 
Newman. Only under the Pope is a Catholic ecclesiastical juris- 
diction really to be found. This surely is indisputable. Before 
High- Churchmen presume, therefore, to advise the French 
bishops to renounce the authority of the Pope, they should 
make real their theory and provide the alternative. 

For the Church in France to refuse allegiance to the Pope ; 
to proclaim its national independence ; to yield, in short, to 
the threats of penalties and plunder of ecclesiastical property 
that have been made by the Government; would mean for 
France a national schism with consequences such as characterize 
the Greek and Russian churches. Nowhere in Christendom 
including under the term the Roman, Oriental, and Anglican 
communions is any real approach to an alternative to be found 
between Catholic jurisdiction under the Pope on the one hand, 
and erastian bondage under the State on the other. The for- 
mer unites Catholics of all nations in one visible kingdom. 
Under the regime of nationalism in religion no two churches, 
however friendly their relations, can be found possessed of a 
common administrative authority. Such is the simple fact, ap- 
parent to every one, save, as it would seem, to the High-Church- 
man ; and no one who is able to appreciate, even while he may 
not approve, the principle by which the French bishops have 
been guided, will blame them for refusing to sever themselves 
from Catholic jurisdiction in that one form in which it is to 
be found upon earth. 

" There is no power but from God, and those that are are 
ordained of God. Therefore he that resisteth the power resisteth 
the ordinance of God." If in matters temporal we are bound to 
obey the civil power under the form of government by which 
its authority is manifested to us, much more will we expect 
to find a visible authority by which the Almighty reveals His 



1908.] THE PRINCIPLE OF THE PAPAL PROTECTION 515 

will and manifests His government in relation to the higher in- 
terests of our eternal life begun here on earth. And as in the 
former relation we do not dream of suspending the duty of 
obedience until we have found a form of government to our 
liking, so in the latter it surely can be nothing short of rebel- 
lion to refuse obedience to the jurisdiction of the Catholic 
Church in that one only form in which it is to be found, on 
the plea that it ought to exist in some other form. Private 
judgment, when opposed to the legitimate exercise of authority, 
is equally insufferable in the one case as in the other. If re- 
bellion brings trouble upon those who resist the civil power in 
the exercise of its lawful prerogative, so also has it resulted in 
the defeat and divisions, and in the anomalies and loss of ec- 
clesiastical protection under which the Oriental and Anglican 
communions have labored ever since their several separations 
from Catholic jurisdiction. 

" Divide et impera " is the principle upon which the arch- 
enemy of souls has ever directed his attacks upon Christ's visi- 
ble kingdom on earth. As of old in the East, subsequently in 
England, and recently in France, his chief effort has been to 
isolate the Church in each country from the rest of Christen- 
dom. He would bring each portion of Christ's visible kingdom 
under bondage to Caesar, to be allowed self-government, if al- 
lowed it at all, only in so far as loss to religion is thereby 
subserved. He would change the constitution of the Church 
and destroy her note of Catholicity as manifested in her unity 
in universality of jurisdiction, organization, and government, by 
confining her everywhere within national bounds. As by Cae- 
sarism he even compassed the death of our Lord, so by the 
same means does he seek to destroy His kingdom. 

And, to this end, not merely has he striven by the device 
of nationalism to separate first one portion, then another of her 
fold from her Catholic jurisdiction, but in every such endeavor 
his attack has been principally directed against the person and 
prerogative of him in whom, as being Christ's Vicar and repre- 
sentative, that jurisdiction culminates. We read in the Apoca- 
lypse that his " name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek 
Apollyon, in Latin Exterminans," that is, the destroyer. He 
would destroy the visible kingdom of Christ so that he himself 
may reign in Christ's stead by means of the kingdoms of the 
world; he would dethrone the " King of kings "so that in His 



5 1 6 THE PRINCIPLE OF THE PAPAL PROTECTION [July, 

stead he may become "the Prince of the kings of the earth," 
Therefore it is that he strives not only to subject the Church in 
each country to the civil power, but to subject Christ's Vicar 
to a temporal sovereign. 

It would avail but little, if at all, to hold an argument with 
those who, while professing Christianity, do not believe that 
Christ has established His kingdom on earth by means of a 
visible Church, one and the same the world over, not merely 
in faith, morals, institutions, worship, but likewise and before 
all in that which appertains to its very essence as a kingdom, 
namely its jurisdiction a jurisdiction, because Catholic, necessa- 
rily independent of national frontiers, and, because belonging to 
a kingdom which though in, is not of this world, independent of 
the civil power in the domain of religion. With those who, in the 
words of the Saturday Review, " consciously or unconsciously 
hold that it is the primary duty of the Church to make its 
peace with the world," , it scarcely would avail to argue. "This 
erastian and unchristian spirit is the bane of religion alike in 
England and France, for in both countries it makes Caesar supreme 
over the Faith. Its form and methods, of course, vary according 
to national characteristics. English erastianism allows the State 
to legislate on matters pertaining to the Sacraments, and endows 
lay tribunals with the power of the keys. French erastianism, at 
once more logical and more brutal, leaves dogmatic details alone, 
but makes the will of an atheistic Caesar supreme in the internal 
administration of the Church." They who would deny to the 
Catholic Church a jurisdiction of her own have no conception 
of the Gospel as being " a substantive message from above, 
guarded and preserved in a visible polity " by means of a di- 
vinely constituted authority which everywhere alike infallibly de- 
livers and preserves it. Such persons, on the contrary, conceive 
of the Gospel of Christ as being a " mere philosophy thrown 
upon the world at large," a " mere quality of mind and thought," 
a record of words and events relating to the life and teaching of 
Christ, about which they are at liberty to form their own opinions. 

In short, to essay an argument about the constitution and 
government of the Catholic Church with the erastian, or with 
one so devoid of the Christian spirit as to approve the action 
of men such as Combes, Clemenceau, and Briand, would be 
futile. But one fain would hope that amongst those who profess 
belief in a visible Church Catholic as of divine institution, who 



1908.] THE PRINCIPLE OF THE PAPAL PROTECTION 517 

at present are influenced by the High-Church press, and in con- 
sequence are prejudiced against the action of the Pope and the 
French episcopate one fain would hope that amongst such per- 
sons there are some who are open to the conviction that the 
visible Church as at present constituted, not alone in France, 
but in every country under the sun, together with her jurisdic-, 
tion as administered at this hour in France is, and cannot be 
other than the manifestation of the reign, and of the will and 
intention of Him Who, when He established His visible king- 
dom on earth, saw the future from the beginning, and has ever 
since ordered its development and maintained its government. 
And one is the more encouraged to hope this by reason of the 
object-lesson provided by the noble conduct of the Church in 
France in her determination to maintain unimpaired this princi- 
ple of ecclesiastical government. The united and heroic struggle 
of the Catholics of France for the preservation in their country of 
that ecclesiastical jurisdiction which unites them with Catholics 
all over the world in one ecclesiastical polity, should surely pre- 
vail to convince some of our Anglican friends that, if they wish 
to be numbered with the Catholics of France and of the world in 
one and the same visible Church, they should submit themselves 
to that one only jurisdiction which unites Christians in one 
visible kingdom. 

With the Anglican, then, who lays claim to the title of 
Catholic, with such a one it may be of profit to argue as follows : 

Divine revelation, whether as relating to matters of faith, or 
to the duty of obedience, is everywhere for all men, and always, 
one and the same; God our Savior will have all men to be saved 
and to come to the knowledge of the truth, and embrace it, 
independently of nationality and the sanction of the civil power. 

It follows, therefore, that the visible Church by which He 
teaches and governs us is in every country one and the same, 
not merely in faith and morals, institutions and usages, but more 
especially in that upon which these depend for their integrity 
and permanence, namely, jurisdiction and government. 

His Church is not a mere family that may be divided and 
subdivided, after the manner of human families, into independ- 
ent branches. Her visible unity subsists in more than a common 
agreement about doctrine and discipline, friendly relations and 
intercommunion ; it has reference to the fact that she is an or- 
ganized body, a polity or kingdom, and is therefore no mere 



518 THE PRINCIPLE OF THE PAPAL PROTECTION [July, 

union of policy such as may subsist between any number of 
sovereign states, but is a unity of polity the unity of a king- 
dom everywhere administered, as every kingdom necessarily 
must be, from one sovereign center. 

" The God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never 
be destroyed . . . and it shall break in pieces and shall 
consume all those kingdoms (of the earth which went before 
it), and itself shall stand forever." Such was the prophecy, and 
in accordance with it was the announcement to Mary concern- 
ing the reign of her Divine Son, " of His kingdom there shall 
be no end " ; and added to these was the promise of our Lord 
Himself that the gates of hell should not prevail against His 
Church, what time He nominated St. Peter His Vicar and said 
to him with reference to her government : " I will give to thee 
the keys of the kingdom." 

But if, as our Lord has Himself declared, "a kingdom di- 
vided against itself cannot stand," whereas His kingdom is to 
"stand forever," it surely is obvious that the gates of hell can 
no more prevail against the jurisdiction of the Catholic Church, 
by which her kingdom is held in visible unity, than against her 
dogmas and worship. Nations and populations may renounce 
allegiance to the authority by which she is governed, or may 
be separated from her administration, as was the case in the 
East, and later in England, but, so far from dividing, they do 
but fall, as out of Catholic intercommunion, so also out of 
Catholic jurisdiction. For " where," asks Cardinal Newman, 
" are the instances in proof that a church can cast off Catholic 
intercommunion without falling under the power of the State ? 
. . . Then only can you resist the world, when you belong 
to a communion 9 which exists under many governments, not 
one." The Divine Head of the Church has "lodged the security 
of His truth in the very fact of its Catholicity. The Church 
triumphs over the world's jurisdiction everywhere, because, 
though she is everywhere, for that very reason she is in the 
fullness of her jurisdiction nowhere." Behind the local episco- 
pate, and beyond the national frontier, there is a power that 
protects the Church in every country from the disintegrating 
forces of nationalism, and preserves her everywhere in Catho- 
lic unity. But if the local episcopate declares itself independent 
of the authority which thus holds the Church in its country in 
visible union with the Church throughout the world, it can but 



1908.] THE PRINCIPLE OF THE PAPAL PROTECTION 519 

prevail to reduce the Church in that country to the condition 
of a national communion severed from Catholic jurisdiction and 
destitute of the power to unite with other communions which 
in like manner are separated one from another as well as from 
Catholic Christendom. 

The visible Church is, then, the kingdom of Christ, in and 
not of this world, with everywhere a jurisdiction of her own, 
one and indivisible, and independent, in its own sphere, of sec- 
ular governments. The center from which she is governed is 
extra-national and sovereign. Every kingdom necessarily pos- 
sesses a sovereign ruler or head over the whole of its territory. 
In like manner does the visible Church possess a visible head 
whose jurisdiction extends in equal measure into every portion 
of her world-wide domain. And since she is of divine estab- 
lishment, therefore is her jurisdiction also of divine appoint- 
ment; her Divine Founder has Himself appointed her visible 
head to reign as His Vicar and representative over each por- 
tion of His visible kingdom. The Pope is no mere primus 
inter pares among rulers, by reason of ecclesiastical arrangement 
and the consent of her bishops ; he is not a mere subject to 
be placed by them in a more or less exalted position ; he is 
their sovereign lord by the divine appointment. Even as the 
Church herself, together with her jurisdiction, is of divine foun- 
dation, so likewise, and of necessity as being inseparable from 
her jurisdiction, is the Papacy of divine, not human, institution. 

It surely is inconceivable that our Lord can have established 
His visible kingdom on earth without Himself providing for its 
government. Equally inconceivable it is that His kingdom can 
be still upon earth if, as the Anglican theory implies, it has 
been deprived of its jurisdiction, two-thirds of its numbers 
spread through the world being dominated according to that 
theory by a false form of government, and the remainder en- 
slaved by the civil power and confined within national bound- 
aries. Impossible too it is to conceive of a kingdom, especially 
of a world-wide kingdom, as being possessed of no sovereign 
power, no center of unity. " A political body cannot exist with- 
out government, and the larger is the body the more concen- 
trated must the government be. If the whole of Christendom 
is to form one kingdom, one head is essential. ... As the 
Church grew into form, so did the power of the Pope develop ; 
and wherever the Pope has been renounced, decay and division 



520 THE PRINCIPLE OF THE PAPAL PROTECTION [July, 

have been the consequence. We know of no way of preserv- 
ing the Sacramentum Unitatis, but a center of unity."* Apart 
from the Pope nothing wider than nationalism in relation to 
ecclesiastical administration is in fact to be found; under him 
alone does Catholic jurisdiction in fact as well as in theory exist. 

Such is the simple state of the case, however Anglicans 
may theorize and cast about for some other form of Catholic 
jurisdiction that in their view should take the place of that 
which for so many centuries has been in sole possession. The 
civil power understands the matter well, better, apparently, 
than High-Churchmen do. When, therefore, it seeks as it 
sought in England three and a half centuries ago, and recently 
has sought in France to bring the Church into bondage under 
the State, its first endeavor always is to separate the Catholics 
under its temporal jurisdiction from the ecclesiastical jurisdic- 
tion by which they are held in visible unity of religion with 
the Catholics of other nations. The ecclesiastical center of 
authority from which its Catholic subjects are governed being 
extra-national as, of course, it must be if such subjects are 
members of a world-wide Church is declared to be "foreign," 
and the Pope, who governs from that center, is accordingly 
dubbed a " foreigner." 

The French bishops certainly are not ambitious to emulate 
the examples of those whose renunciation of the Pope's author- 
ity has resulted in the divisions which necessitate the present- 
day efforts of some Anglicans after " reunion " with Orientals 
and "Old Catholics," as also with the world-wide communion 
of Rome whose jurisdiction they nevertheless meanwhile con- 
demn ! They have not, they never for a moment have enter- 
tained, any intention to change the constitution of the Church 
in France as an integral portion of Christ's visible kingdom on 
earth, and to make of her a National Church, independent 
of the rest of Christendom, dependent on the State. Not 
for all the world, not to save the ecclesiastical possessions 
of which they have so sacrilegiously been robbed, not to save 
themselves and their clergy from starvation, will they consent 
to dissociate themselves from the Pope in his determination to 
save the Church in their country from the endeavor of an 
atheistic government to separate her from that extra-national 
center of authority by which she is held in Catholic unity and 

* Development of Christian Doctrine. IV., iii., 8. 



1 908 . ] THE PRINCIPLE OF THE PA PAL PRO TECTION 5 2 1 

preserved from the late that invariably has accompanied sep- 
aration from Catholic jurisdiction. 

For the Papacy is indisputably the one power that has 
proved strong enough to resist the world and to hold Catholic 
Christendom in unity of religion and ecclesiastical organiza- 
tion. Under the Pope alone is to be found that world-wide 
ecclesiastical body politic which we identify with Christ's visible 
kingdom in and not of this world. Of this Church alone can 
it be said that " she fights the battle of unity against nation- 
ality, and she wins. Look through her history, and you can- 
not deny but she is the one great principle of unity and con- 
cord which the world has seen." 

It surely, therefore, should not be difficult for those who 
profess belief in a visible Church Catholic, as of divine insti- 
tution, to understand the principle of the Papal protection, 
whether in France at this moment, or in the many instances 
recorded in history of the resistance of the Popes to the en- 
croachments of the civil power upon the domain of religion in 
other countries also. " Again and again would the civil power, 
humanly speaking, have taken captive and corrupted each por- 
tion of Christendom in turn, but for its union with the rest, and 
the noble championship of the Supreme Pontiff. Our ears ring 
with the oft- told tale, how the temporal sovereign persecuted, 
or attempted, or gained, the local episcopate, and how the many 
or the few faithful fell back on Rome. ... In all these 
instances, it is a struggle between the Holy See and some 
local, perhaps distant Government, the liberty and orthodoxy 
of its faithful people being the matter in dispute ; and while 
the temporal power is on the spot, and eager, and cogent, and 
persuasive, and dangerous, the strength of the assailed party 
lies in its fidelity to the rest of Christendom and to the Holy 
See." Pope Pius X. has but fought in France the battle that 
his predecessors have fought in one country and another against 
a world ever jealous of the manifestation of Christ's reign upon 
the earth. His protection of the constitution of the Church in 
any country is based upon the principle that as Christ's Vicar 
and representative in the visible headship of the Church on 
earth, he is responsible to his Lord for the protection every- 
where of the jurisdiction by which this Church is made manifest 
in all the world as the Kingdom of Christ, one and indivisible, 
universal, and independent of the kingdoms of the world. 




THE FRENCH RED CROSS NURSES. 

BY A. M. F. COLE. 

5OMEWHERE between Paris and Lourdes, stand- 
ing beside the White Train, Madame and I 

compared some motives and methods of nursing 
the sick. 

" When we have sickness in our families," said 
Madame, " we employ the Sisters. They are experienced and 
kind, and always a comfort in the house. But your hospital 
nurses are everywhere. Several of my friends have employed 
them." 

"Yes?" I inquired. 

Madame colored and smiled protestingly : " Well," she said, 
"those who are tender-hearted and serious are treasures in- 
deed. Those who are hardened and frivolous can make much 
suffering and much mischief [in a house. And one is never 
sure which sort will come." 

" There's the crux of the question," I answered. " Efficiency 
can be bought. Devotion and honor cannot. How can volun- 
tary service be disciplined, tested, sifted ? How can honor and 
unselfishness be certified ? " I continued, telling her of our army 
nursing service, of how its members are recruited from the 
ranks of ordinary hospital nurses, and are paid by the Gov- 
ernment. 

In answer Madame told me of the army nurses of France 
les Dames de la Croix- Rouge. 

After the Convention of Geneva, a fund was raised for a 
Societe Franfaise de Secours aux Blesses Militaires. In France 
hospital nursing is done by nuns, or by women who are paid 
to come by the day or the night. These women are generally 
not trained ; often they are married. The surveillantes who 
superintend the work of these infirmieres, may or may not have 
passed an examination and taken a certificate; they may live 
in the hospital, or in their own homes. Under these conditions 
it is obvious that the hospitals of France cannot be training 
schools for army nurses. Some of the religious communities, 



1908.] THE FRENCH RED CROSS NURSES 523 

notably the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, in their splendidly 
conducted hospital of St. Joseph, might train and send out 
capable and efficient army nurses. But the object of the fund 
was to establish a united and national institution, not to further 
the work of separate religious communities. In England, where 
thousands of nurses are graduated annually from recognized 
training schools, material for the army nurse is always at hand. 
Imagine a country without such material, and without the means 
for training it, and you will realize the difficulty that confronted 
France. 

For a long time nothing definite was organized. The un- 
dertaking required exceptional qualities of ability and devotion. 
At length two persons, a man and a woman, founded the so- 
ciety of the Dames Infirmieres pour le temps de guerre. Those 
women are now the recognized army nurses of the Society of 
the French Red Cross. In number and in efficiency, they are 
already equal to any emergency, and the founder and foundress 
are still at work as the heads of their organization. 

The nurses are women who give their services, and pay for 
their training. The fee required is small, but many of the pu- 
pils subscribe also to the Red Cross funds. They must submit 
to severe training and discipline, and to searching examina- 
tions. This training and discipline are provided in "Dispen- 
sary-Schools " where out-patients are attended, operations per- 
formed (a few operation cases are kept as in-patients), and in- 
structions are given by lectures and other methods of teaching. 
Each course of instruction lasts four months. During one such 
course every pupil must attend, regularly and punctually, each 
week, two lectures given by the directrice ; one lesson in ban- 
daging and the use of surgical instruments; and twice in the 
out-patient department, where she will practice what she has 
already learnt theoretically. The first examination takes place 
after this course, and the pupil who passes, both in theory and 
in practice, gains the diplome simple. By the permission of the 
superintendent she will then attend a second course of four 
months, during which she perfects her own knowledge and also 
instructs new pupils. 

All who hold the diplome simple must attend hospitals or 
dispensaries for a certain time during each year. They are al- 
ways under the control of the society in all that concerns their 
efficiency for the work they have undertaken; and in time of 



524 THE FRENCH RED CROSS NURSES [July, 

war, or in the event of any catastrophe, they will be called on 
to nurse the wounded. 

To gain the diplome supe'rieure, pupils who have already 
passed the first examination must attend special courses of in- 
structions, at hospitals or dispensaries, during four months of 
two years. At the dispensaries they are employed in the nurs- 
ing of in-patients; the preparation and after- care of operation 
cases; and the handling of difficult and important dressings. 
After two years of such training they must pass a severe and 
thorough examination ; not only on their knowledge and skill, 
but on their personal fitness to undertake the charge of a field 
hospital. Those who gain the diplome superieure must attend 
dispensaries or hospitals each year of their membership, under 
the direction of the society. 

A central committee governs the whole society. Delegates 
from that committee are appointed to inspect the dispensary- 
schools, and to see that the highest standards of exactness and 
efficiency are maintained. The central committee superintends 
the examinations, conducted by three examiners, one professor 
of medicine, one of surgery, and one of hygiene. It also de- 
cides where a dispensary-school may be established, and how 
many pupils may be properly taught in each. 

The staff of each dispensary is: (i) A superintendent who 
has absolute authority, subject to the central committee; (2) 
Assistant nurses certificated pupils who have attended two 
courses of four months' instruction, and are always on duty at 
the dispensary, and at the service of the superintendent. If 
the number of these permanent assistants is not sufficient for 
the work, temporary assistants are chosen from amongst the 
certificated women ; (3) Monitors, who are subject to the assist- 
ants, and mainly engaged in teaching new pupils. Apparently 
the whole organization is modelled on the army. The central 
committee is the War Office. Doctors and surgeons are gen- 
erals. The superintendent is colonel. Assistants are officers. 
Monitors are non-commissioned officers. Pupils are private 
soldiers. 

Notes are taken of regular and punctual attendance ; of dil- 
igence, seriousness, exact observance of the rules, and the num- 
ber of dressings done by each pupil at each attendance. These 
notes are laid before the examiners, and have great weight for 
or against the granting of a certificate. Silence is rigorously 



1 90 8.] THE FRENCH RED CROSS NURSES 525 

enforced during instructions and work ; but after every instruc- 
tion the members of the staff are at the service of the pupils, 
to answer questions and give explanations. The nurses are for- 
bidden to talk to outsiders of operations, dressings, or anything 
that concerns their patients. The superintendent has the right 
to assemble monitors and pupils when she thinks fit, and to 
decide on which days each shall attend the different exercises. 

Such, in outline, is the method of teaching and training the 
French Red Cross nurses. 

The system of instruction seems complete, practical, and fit- 
ting. The nurses, besides the advantage of gentle birth, must 
have for motive, patriotism, philanthropy, or religion. They 
gain nothing; and mere desire for novelty would seldom sur- 
vive such toil and discipline. In some respects this training 
seemed better fitted than a long hospital service for military 
nursing. Experience and wide knowledge are gained by three 
years of study and work in a general hospital ; and that is the 
proper education for a nurse, who will go out 'to general prac- 
tice. But war nurses are required to grapple with many un- 
expected emergencies. Much drilling and the habit of routine 
tend to weaken initiative and spontaneity. We have seen that, 
occasionally, volunteers who have learnt to shoot, ride, and 
obey orders, can do better work than men who have been 
drilled into absolute dependence on routine and command. In 
the foreseen plan of campaign the latter are the main factors of 
success ; in the unforeseen, they may, at times, lack self-reliance 
and audacity. Many times during my journey I considered this 
question, but came to no conclusion. Back of my questioning 
was a suspicion of something amateur a notion of enthusiastic 
women, skillful and devoted, but lacking the order and co- 
operation of the hospital-drilled nurses. 

Two years later I stood in the chapel of Notre Dame de 
Consolation in Paris. No mere monument to the dead is that 
pathetic chapel built on the site of the Charity Bazaar. With- 
in is every inducement to pray for those who perished in the 
fire. Great tablets record the names of the victims. I stood 
in recollection before an inscription that recorded the death of 
a mother and her two daughters. What association did that 
name recall ? 

" How did they bear it the friends ? " I asked the Sister 
who accompanied me. 



526 THE FRENCH RED CROSS NURSES [July, 

" As good Catholics and our old French families do bear 
sorrow," the nun answered with a brave smile. "That gentle- 
man who lost his wife and two daughters devotes his life to 

the work of the Red Cross. He and Madame have founded 

a splendid military nursing work." 

" Ah ! " I said, " now I remember." And I told how I had 
heard of that work, and its two founders, on the way to Lourdes. 
The Sister immediately offered to get permission to take me to 
the main dispensary- school. 

"There," she said, "you will see exactly what is done. 

And you will see Madame , the foundress. She is the 

superintendent of that dispensary. 

The permission came promptly, in the form of a most cor- 
dial invitation to come when we would. 

So we set out, three in number, and a very representative 

little party. Mother C , a superioress fresh from Ireland; 

Sister E , a Parisian; and myself, an Englishwoman. It 

happened that we were all well informed on the theory and 
practice of nursing in our several countries, and critical of 
every detail of nursing work. 

As we neared the dispensary, Sister E exclaimed: 
"There it is!" and indicated a one-storied building, enclosed 
by a wall, and surmounted by a stone cross. Simplicity and 
fitness gave it an air of distinction. It reminded me of a newly 
established little Convent of Poor Clares that I visited not long 
ago at Carlow. The conductor stopped the omnibus, got down 
first, helped each one of us to alight, and with a benevolent 
smile wished us good-bye. We walked a few steps down the 
poor street till we reached a door in the wall. Over it was 
a red cross, and this inscription : 

" Dispensaire-Ecole des Dames Infirmieres pour le temps de 
guerre" 

We passed through the gate, crossed a little court, entered 
the dispensary by the main entrance, and found ourselves in 
the patients' waiting-room. Rows of iron chairs were ranged 
across one end of the room. At the opposite end several wo- 
men sat at a table, rolling bandages and cleaning surgical in- 
struments. They wore white aprons, neatly made, and perfectly 
fitting as the print gowns of hospital nurses. The sleeves were 
rolled up to the elbow, and marked with the red cross. The 
bib of the large uniform aprons, and the center of the white 



1908.] THE FRENCH RED CROSS NURSES 527 

linen caps, folded in front and hanging like a short veil be- 
hind, were also marked with the red cross. They worked quick- 
ly and kept silence. High on the wall at one end of the room 
was the crucifix, and over it a scroll bearing this inscription : 

" Come unto Me, all you that labor, and are burdened, and 
I will refresh you." 

We followed an attendant through the door at one end of 
the room, into a little office, furnished with writing-desk, chairs, 
and cupboards. Severely bare, and scrupulously orderly as a 
business man's sanctum, there was yet a nicety of detail that 
proclaimed the woman-tenant. 

How shall I describe the superintendent ? In every word 
and act she was simplicity, fitness, correctness. She met us with 
a true smile of welcome, and we knew that her exquisite courtesy 
came not alone from good breeding, but from her heart as well. 
Quiet of manner, and direct of speech, as a nun, she had also 
the absolute savoir faire of a woman of the world. She was 
fittingly garbed in black; her voice was pleasant and distinct; 
her French was as simple and distinguished as her manner and 
appearance. 

We had come in the morning, and all the interesting work 
was in the afternoon. Could we come back and see it ? Be- 
sides the attendance on out-patients, there would be the doc- 
tor's " consultation " which was also a lesson to the women 
and a minor operation. 

We looked eagerly at Mother C . She answered promptly 

that we could and would come back. 

For a while we sat and talked together: Madame giving 

us all possible information; we asking questions and making 
comments. Then we went to see what we should not see in 
the afternoon. The sterilizing apparatus and the operating thea- 
ter were absolutely up to date in every detail. Two tiny wards, 
each with two beds, for " hospitalized " operation cases, were 
model sick-rooms. Strikingly clean, without lodging in corner 
or crack for microbes, they were also daintily pretty; with white, 
washable curtains, white wood screens, and fine, spotless bed 
linen. 

At a little before two we were back again. A crowd of 

patients were waiting. Madame came, just to welcome us ; 

then she gave us into the charge of an assistant nurse, who led 



528 THE FRENCH RED CROSS NURSES [July, 

us through a door at one end of the room into the salle des 
pansements. 

On both sides of the long room iron chairs were ranged 
against the wall. Before each chair stood an iron leg- rest, and 
under each leg-rest a small zinc bath. Opposite the door was 
a sink, and taps, from which came sterilized water, turned on 
by a pedal. On a table close by, stood three basins containing 
different solutions. On a long table in the middle of the room 
were all manner of dressings in different jars and solutions. 
Everything there was ready and in perfect order. 

On one side sat a row of men, on the other, a row of wo- 
men. Patients whose wounds were dressed passed out, and as 
each passed, a woman, stationed at the door, called another 
man or woman to come in. As every patient had his number 
on a card, and went in according to that number, there was no 
confusion or hurry. Cases unsuitable for dressing in public 
were attended behind the screen. 

Washing their hands and arms, for the regulation five min- 
utes, at the taps; dipping their hands, successively, into the 
three basins; kneeling or standing beside the patients; moving 
quickly and quietly to and from the table of dressings, the zinc 
receptacle, the basket of bandages, was a number of women 
pupils. Overseeing them, teaching them, and taking care that 
all their work was done rightly, was an equal number of 
monitors, distinguished by a badge on the arm. Giving out 
dressings, overlooking everything, called on for any special 
need, were the assistants. All wore trim, spotless white uni- 
forms, marked with the red cross. Most of the pupils were 
young many not much over the necessary twenty-one years. 
Serious, attentive, silent, except when charity or necessity re- 
quired a few brief words, those women were, indeed, most 
" sweet and serviceable." Courtesy to each other and to their 
patients; grace of manner and movement; soft, clear voices; 
a certain, quite involuntary, grande-dame air that could not 
be hidden under uniform or service ; all this was perceptible 
through the intent diligence, the swift working, the brisk cheer- 
fulness, in that busy salle des pansements. 

From a professional point of view there seemed to be no 
flaw. Sterilization, surgical cleanliness, scrupulous care in every 
detail, were always evident. The pupils were conscientious 



1908.] THE FRENCH RED CROSS NURSES 529 

workers, eager learners, asking and obeying their monitors at 
each fresh step. We stood for some time watching several 
pupils dressing wounds. What they knew, they did very 
thoroughly. When they came to the end of what they knew 
they looked at their monitor, and she watched, telling or show- 
ing the right way. Sometimes some complication, or develop- 
ment of wound or sore, was referred to an assistant nurse. 
No patient was left to a pupil alone. Yet each pupil was re- 
sponsible for her patient, in the sense of doing all she knew 
thoroughly, and attempting nothing experimentally. The moni- 
tors showed the same thoroughness, and a great discretion in 
overlooking and teaching. They watched vigilantly, and their 
teaching was clear, helpful, and ready. The patients had a 
contented, trustful manner, and when pain was inflicted they 
evidently tried to be quiet and brave, in gratitude to the gentle 
skill of the women. Thoroughness, kindness, efficiency, perfect 
co-operation these were our main impressions of that striking 
scene. 

When the order was given to attend the consultation, some 
of the staff remained in the salle des pansements to continue 
with the dressings. The patients are, no doubt, aware that 
these dispensaries, where they receive free treatment, are also 
schools for army nurses; and patriotism adds to their appreci- 
ation, as it inspires a desire for efficiency in pupils and teach- 
ers. 

High on the wall, at one end of the room, is proclaimed 
the motive that actuates these women. There hangs the cru- 
cifix, and over it, on a scroll, these words: 

" Whatsoever ye do unto one of the least of these My 
brethren, ye do it unto Me.'* 

These women came very near to the ideal each one typi- 
fied the three powers of the army nurse, gentleness, ability, 
efficiency, as devoted as the nuns, and, like them, doing all their 
work "as unto Him." To our diverse and expert criticism the 
manner of their training seemed perfectly adapted to its end. 
From an epitome of the examinations we saw that all ordinary 
treatment, application, and attention likely to be required by 
any patient, must be practically learnt by every pupil. And 
every surveillante would be trained in the care of " hospitalized " 
patients. Yet a feeling of perfect content drove away my little 
VOL. LXXXVII. 34 



530 THE FRENCH RED CROSS NURSES [July. 

regret when I heard that a hospital was in course of construc- 
tion, where pupils would be trained for a certain time in the 
routine work of a hospital ; in day and night care of the sick 
and the dying. With that little finishing touch, I think these 
French women of the Society of the Red Cross will achieve 
the ideal of military nursing. 

"What consolation," Sister E exclaimed, "to know 

that our wounded soldiers were so nursed ; so comforted even 
in dying." 

And Mother C , who is a devoted lover of the poor, 

added : " What a blessing to the poor these dispensaries are 
now." 

"The women of the Red Cross are the very flower of the 
nursing profession," I said with enthusiasm. " What a splendid 
work to have thought out and brought to such perfection." 

Madame knelt on the floor, searching at the bottom 

of a cupboard for some papers. She looked round at us, with 
her good smile, and answered simply : 

"We are all instruments in the hands of the good God. 
He uses us for His work." 




A CORNER OF THE AUSTRIAN TYROL. 

BY E. C. VANSITTART. 

JWITZERLAND is over-run by tourists and its prices 
have risen. Those who wish to escape the crowds 
and noise of the " world's playground," and de- 
sire quiet and " pastures new "during their sum- 
mer holidays, should turn their thoughts to the 
Austrian Tyrol, where many beautiful spots, absolutely unknown 
to the ordinary traveler, offer all these advantages. 

One of these is Lavarone, situated in that part of the Tyrol 
known as the Trentino. There are various routes to Lavarone. 
From England one may travel to Innsbruck, then by the main 
line to Verona, halting at Trent, the junction of the beau- 
tiful Valsugana railway which, through narrow valleys and 
by the shore of the Lake of Caldonazzo, lands one at the coun- 
try station of the same name. Thence the traveler must either 
walk or drive. We chose the latter course, and began our two 
and one-half hours' ascent by skirting the village of Caldonazzo, 
which is a mile from the railway station, and lies in a richly 
cultivated valley, where maize, vines, rice, tomatoes, trailing 
yellow pumpkins, and sarrazin grow beside mulberry and fig 
trees, with chestnut-groves and green meadows. After passing 
through the village, the carriage road crosses the stony white 
bed of the river Centa, nearly two hundred feet wide, and in 
summer absolutely dry ; shortly after the road begins to ascend* 
and continues to do so to the very end, growing steeper as it 
mounts. Cultivation ceases, and the scene grows wilder; on 
the left rise towering, precipitous rocks ; on the right, hundreds 
of feet below, the bare stony course of the Centa offers a fine 
contrast to the village of the same name, which nestles in green 
chestnut-woods on the opposite side of the valley. As we mount 
higher, the scene increases in savage grandeur, reminding us of 
some of Gustave Dore's weird paintings : the bare, rocky heights 
stand out in serrated peaks against the sky; enormous boulders 
lie as though flung into space by giant hands; over our heads 
hang beetling crags threatening to fall at any moment and crush 



532 A CORNER OF THE AUSTRIAN TYROL [July, 

us; indeed, it requires a steady head to look down into the 
abyss yawning one thousand feet below. In two places there 
are tunnels through which the road passes, and wondrous views 
are revealed to us as we emerge again into the brilliant sun- 
shine. At an acute angle, where the Valle Corretta, a narrow 
ravine, joins the valley of the Centa, stands the Osteria delta 
Stanga, where toll is levied; from October 24 to February 14 
the sun never reaches this spot, and a scene of greater deso- 
lation cannot well be imagined. From here onwards the road 
mounts by a series of abrupt and steep zig-zags ; fir now 
begins to clothe the barren slopes; till within half an hour of 
the Parrochia the first fraction of Lavarone, the plateau is 
reached, and the road thence winds on a level between woods 
and green fields, the jagged peaks of the range of the Brenta 
capped with eternal snow bounding the horizon to the west, 
while the nearer mass of Centa and Filadonna dominates the 
foreground. 

The name of Lavarone embraces twenty- two scattered ham- 
lets, known as contrade, often composed of only half a dozen 
houses, and distant a mile or more from one another. The in- 
habitants of all of them together number only two thousand 
souls. Each contrada has its own name, such as : Chiesa, Gi- 
onghi, Lago, Cappella, etc. The most important is Chiesa, or, 
as it is familiarly termed, la Parrochia. Most of the inhabi- 
tants take their surnames from the contrada they belong to, or 
vice versa. Originally of Latin origin, they were later joined 
by Germans, who came here in order to utilize for the smelt- 
ing of metals the dense forests which clothed the country-side. 
Now, while under Austrian rule, the people are Italian, both 
in speech and appearance, though, for the most part, their 
language is an unintelligible patois. Lavarone stands four thou- 
sand feet above sea-level, on a wide triangular plateau, bounded 
by the three valleys of Centa, Astico, and Pendemonte. Be- 
hind, to the north, rise bare, rocky hills ; in front are stretches 
of undulating country, interspersed with woods of fir, pine, and 
beech ; and beyond these ranges of mountains. Owing to the 
rocky soil, and the dearth of inhabitants, there is scarcely 
any cultivation beyond an occasional scanty patch of potatoes 
or cabbages. The scarce produce of the country gives a living 
for only two months ; hence, for the remaining ten months of 
the year, most of the men migrate to various parts of Europe, 



i9o8,] A CORNER OF THE AUSTRIAN TYROL 533 

and even to America, where they find employment as either 
masons or navvies. The men are excellent masons, and the 
houses in the otherwise squalid, dirty hamlets are all well built 
of stone, with carved stone lintels to doors and windows, and 
outside staircases, giving an appearance of a prosperity not in 
harmony with their surroundings. The field work is done en- 
tirely by women; wood-cutting supplies labor to such of the 
men as do not leave the country, the great logs being used 
chiefly for ship-building at Trieste. This, with cattle and dairy 
produce, form the chief source of revenue. The inhabitants of 
Lavarone look poor, and so unaccustomed are they to seeing 
strangers, that their manner is unfriendly and repellant. 

One peculiarity we noticed was that cord or rope does not 
exist in the whole region; in its place, plaited leather thongs 
of varying thickness are used. 

The walks are endless ; one may wander for miles and miles, 
without let or hindrance, across the green uplands or through 
the woods. There are neither hedges nor fences, and the low 
stone walls, which form a strange feature of the district, offer 
no serious obstacle. In the woods grow the deep crimson, 
sweet-scented cyclamen, patches of heather, clumps of great 
low- growing silvery thistles, masses of barberry weighted, when 
we saw them, with a rich harvest of scarlet berries. Round 
the stumps of felled trees have sprung up exquisite little gar- 
dens of moss and lichen, green or silvery white, with coral- 
tipped bilberry sprays. Singularly beautiful are these woods, 
and strangely silent, with an absolute absence of animal life ; 
neither squirrels nor rabbits exist, and but few birds. 

Rarely does one meet another human being, unless it be a 
little cow-herd, in charge of the cows feeding on the slopes; 
perhaps in a clearing one may come upon a group of women 
with red or yellow handkerchiefs bound round their heads, 
their bare feet shod with wooden clogs kept in place by a 
broad leather band across the instep. They are guiding a cart 
full of fir branches drawn by patient oxen or cows. When one 
steps out of the woods, into the open to the south, he sud- 
denly realizes almost with a start, on what a great height 
Lavarone rests, for the grassy slopes drop suddenly and sheer, 
down hundreds of feet, ending in other terraces, which again 
drop out of sight far below, while across the chasm, on the 
opposite side, rise equally abruptly the fir-clad heights, with 



534 ^ CORNER OF THE AUSTRIAN TYROL [July, 

deep shadows cast between the ridges, their jagged outlines 
standing out sharply against the sky. 

On early autumn mornings, when the fields are pink with 
colchichums, the valleys are oft-times filled with a great rolling 
sea of mist, producing exquisite effects in the forest, where the 
trees stand out like phantoms; and the sun, rising, calls up 
fairy effects of coloring, the mist becomes glorified whiteness, 
luminous bands stretch across the mountains, under seemingly 
inky clouds, finally clearing away into veils of vanishing haze. 

Throughout the plateau there is a great want of water; no 
streams and few springs exist; in dry summer weather the re- 
sult is most serious. In some of the hamlets, one year, the 
women had to go far to get a drop of water, and might be 
seen toiling wearily along under the weight of their Venetian 
copper pails suspended from either end of a long, wooden bar 
resting on one shoulder. The pools in the woods, where the 
cattle are wont to drink, and for the filling of which channels are 
cut in the turf, dry up, and the cows have to be driven long dis- 
tances to water, generally to the lake that lies in a wooded 
hollow below the Parrochia. This lake of Lavarone abounds in 
fish, which swarm among the trees which cumber its bottom. 
So thickly is the bottom of the lake covered by the roots and 
trunks of fir, and so thickly are they intertwined, that fish- 
ing with nets is impossible. There is no marsh land round 
Lavarone; only once in our rambles did we come upon a 
lovely stretch of waving, golden-colored sedge in a green hol- 
low. 

As is the case throughout the Tyrol, the people here 
are very devout. They have kept a simple, childlike faith. 
At the sound of the daily 11 o'clock church bell, the solitary 
woodcutters in the depths of the forest lay down their tools, 
uncover their heads, and crossing themselves devoutly, repeat 
the angelus. One Sunday afternoon, at the end of Vespers, 
we watched the Viaticum carried up from Cappella to a sick 
woman at Magre, accompanied by the whole congregation, the 
men with bared heads, preceded the priest who carried the 
Host, with an acolyte beside him, and a scarlet-robed beadle 
holding a white, gold-fringed umbrella high over his head. 
The women brought up the rear. On another evening, after 
dark, a sound of chanting drew us to the window, to see a 
procession of women wending their way to a neighboring 



1908.] A CORNER OF THE AUSTRIAN TYROL 535 

shrine, barefoot, carrying lighted candles, walking two by two, 
and repeating a litany as they went. 

But we witnessed the prettiest sight of all on August 15, 
the feast of our Lady, when, at intervals, from dawn to even- 
ing, mortalettes were fired, while flags were flying, and bells 
were ringing all over the country-side. In the afternoon the 
great procession of the year took place ; starting from the church 
at Cappella, it wound along the highroad, and returned to the 
church by a loop-line. Several hundred persons took part in 
this most picturesque procession : first came the boys, then the 
youths, finally the adult males, bareheaded, carrying crosses and 
banners, followed by beadles in scarlet robes, and choir boys 
in red and white; then a long file of little girls, dressed in 
white with pink scarfs, carrying pink flags bearing sacred sym- 
bols, and older girls with flowers. Next came the Sacred Host 
borne by a priest; behind him a statue of the Virgin, crowned 
with roses, was borne on the shoulders of six men wearing a 
quaint, old-world blue costume, with strange blue caps ; follow- 
ing them was a long file of young girls, also clothed in white, 
but with long blue veils hanging from their heads, and lilies in 
their hands. In the rear walked the women dressed in black, 
with black lace veils on their heads, and lighted tapers in their 
hands. All sang as they marched in the brilliant sunshine; all 
were absorbed in devotion ; and no one raised his eyes from 
the ground. The bells rang out; the mortars boomed; and 
the whole made a wonderful picture in the beautiful setting of 
woods and mountains. 



IRew Boohs. 



The most obvious feature of Dr. 

NEW TESTAMENT CANON. Gregory's new book,* to those ac- 
customed to the usual treatment of 

its theme, is the human element ever pleasantly intruding itself. 
For, in a work of this sort we look for an orderly array of 
facts and solid reasoning on the basis of facts. This is the es- 
sential ; as a rule we get nothing more ; and are wont to pic- 
ture the author of a prosy book on the canon, text, and man- 
uscript of the Bible as a scholar whose human nature had all 
but dried up. But Dr. Gregory, a most erudite, textual critic, 
editor of Tischendorf's great work on the New Testament text 
and manuscripts, is a man as well as a scholar ; and, as he jogs 
along, he has his little joke and pleasant remark ; and his scientific 
work is rather the better for it. He has an eye for the essential 
points of his subject and the gift of clear arrangement and rapid 
narration; so he succeeds in giving us a rather readable book 
on a tedious but very important branch of sacred science. 

Still, unless a man be constituted like Father Hecker, who 
betook himself to the Scotch metaphysicians for light reading, 
the mere pleasure of it will hardly lead him to peruse a rather 
bulky volume which deals with the history of the canon from 
Apostolic times down to the Council of Trent ; with the ma- 
terials of ancient books, the method of book-making, the means 
of spreading books abroad in the early ages ; with an account 
of the principal uncial manuscripts of the Greek New Testa- 
ment and of the more important minuscule or small letter man- 
uscripts ; with Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, Latin, and other trans- 
lations of the Greek Testament, and some of their chief manu- 
scripts ; with the testimony concerning the condition of the text 
which is rendered by ancient church books and the writings of 
the Fathers; with the history of the printed Bible and of the 
untiring efforts of great scholars since Cardinal Ximenes to re- 
cover the very letter of the inspired Word ; with the variations 
that the text has undergone and the interpolations it has har- 
bored. All these topics Dr. Gregory handles with a sure and 
easy erudition, in a manner very interesting to those whom the 
subject itself interests. He does not ordinarily enter into the de- 

* Canon and Text of the New Testament, By Caspar Rene Gregory. New York : Charles 
Scribner's Sons. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 537 

tails of his theme, however, and writes rather for the educated 
and serious public than for professional scholars, giving us, in 
fact, a type of work somewhat less technical than the other 
volumes of the series to which it belongs, the International 
Theological Library. 

Most of the statements of fact which the book contains are 
as undisputed as the demonstrations of Euclid, and may be found 
in the best treatises, Catholic and Protestant, which deal with 
the subject ; but facts usually take the hue of the mind through 
which they pass, and are often marshaled to drive us to the 
conclusions which the author intends us to reach. And so we 
have much to find fault with in the history of the canon which 
Dr. Gregory gives us ; the facts he puts forth appear very dif- 
ferent to a Catholic with his faith in the authority of the 
Church to regulate the Canon. To a logical Protestant, indeed, 
the canon has lost its meaning, since every critic exercises his 
own judgment as to the apostolicity and authority of the vari- 
ous New Testament writings. We are pleased to see, however, 
that this able scholar is far from being radical in his views; 
and though he knows how to spare his friends (e.g., Tischen- 
dorf) and expatiate, in a rather narrow spirit, on supposed de- 
fects in the Church's teaching and in churchmen, the main 
trend of his work is to uphold Christian tradition and the value 
of the sacred text. 

In the selection of M. Baudrillart's 
RENAISSANCE MOVEMENT, study on the great movement of 

the Renaissance and the Reforma- 
tion,* the editors of the " International Catholic Library " once 
more give proof of excellent judgment. M. Baudrillart's repu- 
tation as a trained historian may be estimated from the fact 
that he has twice obtained from the French Academy the highest 
honor in its gift for historical scholarship. This volume con- 
sists of a series of lectures delivered under the auspices of the 
Institut Catholique of Paris. The Renaissance and the Refor- 
mation are treated as two phases of the same movement which, 
in modified form, continues to-day a movement away from au- 
thority and towards individualism. The work is avowedly apolo- 
getic in 'aim; but, however much one may challenge some of M. 
Baudrillart's interpretations, no opponent can quarrel with his 

* The Catholic Church, the Renaissance, and Protestantism. By Alfred Baudrillart. Au- 
thorized Translation by Mrs. Philip Gibbs. New York : Benziger Brothers. 



538 NEW BOOKS [July, 

impartiality in his presentation of facts. " I have never," he 
can say with truth, " had a liking for evasion, nor for what it 
is agreed to call pious deceptions. The Catholic Church needs 
only the truth> and is strong enough to bear the whole truth.' 1 
In the first lecture is traced the rise of the Renaissance, and 
its anti-Christian influence in Italy. The sweep of the move- 
ment is followed into France, England, and Germany, in which 
latter countries it merges into the fiercer current of the Refor- 
mation. The question is raised : Why and to what extent did 
the Papacy favor the Renaissance ? In analyzing this problem, 
M. Baudrillart distinguishes two periods ; the first, when the 
danger was latent; the second, when it had become patent. 
Then, he shows, the Popes acted. But this reaction failed, and 
they were again led away. Yet the Papacy did not forget its 
doctrinal authority. 

The various Protestant theories on the causes of the Refor- 
mation are brushed aside. At the beginning of the sixteenth 
century, germs of revolution, whose origin the writer indicates, 
were quickening in German soil. One man, Luther, an incar- 
nation of the national character, embodied all the Revolution- 
ary elements, and gave volcanic expression to them. In him, 
as in the German people, there existed a mysticism which tends 
to run to individualism in religion. This tendency was pro- 
voked to action by the character of the men who represented 
organized spiritual authority. Luther, it is true, was proud 
and sensual; but these were his weakness, not his strength. 
The unbridling of passions, though it sometimes helped, was not 
the cause of the popularity of Protestantism in Germany. All 
the original forces of the Reformation failed to establish it, 
and it owes its final success to the support it received from 
kings and nobles for their own personal ends; this is, roughly, 
M. Baudrillart's judgment on the course of the movement in 
Germany, England, Sweden, and Denmark. 

The most original chapter in the book is the one which 
deals with France. As the author says, when Northern Europe 
was lost, when even Spain and Italy were uncertain, the destinies 
of the Church depended on France. " Had that great and noble 
kingdom placed its intellectual genius, its political power, its 
military forces at the disposal of the Reformation, it had un- 
doubtedly been the end of Catholicism in Europe." To any 
one reflecting on the present situation these words suggest a 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 539 

far-reaching train of thought. Protestantism, as M. Baudrillart 
shows, fought a stubborn battle for France; its forces were 
thoroughly organized and ably led by men who were ready to 
trample on the duties of patriotism when it suited their pur- 
pose. On the other hand, previous to the Reformation, France 
had constantly shown itself impatient under the claims of Rome ; 
during the religious struggle many of the great personages on 
the Catholic side were mere time-servers ; even the majority of 
the bishops recognized Henry IV., while he was yet a Protestant. 
France remained Catholic because such was the will of the na- 
tion. "Whereas the masses of the people everywhere else in 
Europe let themselves be conquered, and, through indifference, 
stratagem, or force, accepted the Reformation from the rapacious 
and brutal hands of their rulers, the mass of the French people 
allowed themselves to be neither seduced nor coerced. They 
defended their faith against all its enemies by every means in 
their power and even imposed it upon their king; this is one 
of the most glorious pages in a history that is full of generous 
traits." 

Two subsequent lectures are devoted to following up the 
intellectual, doctrinal, and political consequences of Protestant- 
ism and to a refutation of the frequently urged claim that Prot- 
estantism has been more favorable than Catholicism to the 
political and social progress that has been made in modern 
times. 

Of less general interest than the 

SOVEREIGNTY OF THE work just noticed is Mgr.Duchesne's 

POPES. study of the first development of 

By Duchesne. the temporal power of the Papacy, 

in the eighth century.* The slow, 

amorphous beginnings of the temporal power, gradually taking 
form amid conflicts political and military, among exarchs, Lom- 
bard kings, turbulent Roman magnates, is a complex tissue. Mgr. 
Duchesne follows every movement of time's shuttle, from the 
period of King Liutprand till the little duchy of Rome had be- 
come the recognized patrimony of the Holy See. He follows its 
growth onward, from the institution of the empire, through the 
dreary times of the house of Theophylact and the subsequent 

* The International Catholic Library. The Beginnings of the Temporal Sovereignty of the 
Popes. By Mgr. Duchesne, D.D. Translated by Arnold Harris Mathew. New York : Ben- 
ziger Brothers. 



540 NEW BOOKS [July, 

age, till the Papacy finally shook itself clear of German domina- 
tion in the papal elections, and, to the relative diminution of the 
original principality's importance, the Popes, from the time of 
Hildebrand, began to exercise a real control over the entire west- 
ern world. The treatment is necessarily brief ; but attention is 
always directed to the importance of pivotal events ; and there 
are frequent instances of the writer's power to lay open in a 
few swift sentences the heart of some event, the real charac- 
ter of which is not on the surface, and around which histori- 
ans flounder a good deal. An instance of this is the writer's 
appreciation of the relation established between the Popes and 
the German monarchs by the coronation of Charlemagne. The 
object of that action he defines as follows: 

There was at first no definite arrangement, no written agree- 
ment. The empire was restored without any decided plans 
having been made. But the false donation of Constantine, 
which occurred at least twenty-five years earlier, expresses 
clearly the conception of the new imperial regime which the 
Romans (and, in particular, the Roman clergy) adopted more 
and more definitely as time went on. What they desired was 
a^benevolent and gracious protective sovereign who would 
leave Rome to the Pope and take up his own abode as far 
away as possible. The faithful successor of Constantine might 
set up his throne at Aix-la-Chapelle, or anywhere else, pro- 
vided it was at a safe distance from Rome, and that he did not 
interfere with the heir of St. Sylvester. At the same time he 
would be expected to come to the help of the Romans in the 
event of any special difficulty. The donation of Constantine 
had already offered in 800 (for the few who accepted it at 
that time) an excellent judicial foundation for the Pope's 
intervention. 

The author adopts the opinion that the donation " was manu- 
factured at Rome, probably at the Lateran, about the year 744. 

The next blow intended by French 

THE EDUCATIONAL CRISIS radicalism against the Church is a 
IN FRANCE. i aw to give the government and its 

universities a monopoly of higher 

education. The passing of a law to this effect will, at a stroke, 
suppress every Catholic college and all the Catholic institutes 
in France. The battle fought with partial success by Montalem- 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 541 

bert and Dupanloup is to be fought over again with, it is to 
be feared, the odds against justice greatly increased. Against 
the iniquity of this false Liberalism M. Gabriel Sortais argues 
with vigorous logic in his work on the crisis.* He shows that 
the policy is a violation of elementary justice, and is in flat 
contradiction to the principles of democracy and the vaunted 
liberalism of its promoters. M. Sortais is aggressive, and, though 
he never oversteps the bounds of courtesy, turns upon his op- 
ponents a battery of fine irony to which they lay themselves 
.open by the glaring opposition between the grand sentiments 
which they speak, and the cynical, truculent indifference to fair 
play which they display in their measures. M. Sortais does 
not seem to expect that expostulation or argument will have 
much effect towards stopping the wheels of the radical Jugger- 
naut, which in France is crushing the rights of conscience. But 
he expresses the conviction and every friend of liberty must 
hope that his trust will be fulfilled that the Catholics of France 
will not tamely acquiesce in the ruin of their religion. 

Catholics, let it be clearly understood, will not submit with- 
out resistance to this intolerable slavery. Till now they have 
merited the reproach of allowing themselves to be shorn like 
peaceful sheep ; but let others beware of provoking them to 
exasperation. The re-establishment of educational monoply 
will be the signal for a religious war. The Catholic army is 
more numerous and better equipped than under the govern- 
ment of July. To-day no more than at that time are Chris- 
tians willing to submit their children to " a conscription of 
souls." Under the growing pressure of public feeling the 
episcopate in a body will put itself at the head of the move- 
ment of rejection, and our adversaries will again, as under the 
rule of I^ouis Philippe, denounce the "insurrection of the 
bishops." 

The fine energy of these words is somewhat deadened by 
the subsequent remark that the war will be carried on only by 
legal procedure. Yet even this assurance is encouraging. The 
world is beginning to regard with wonder rather -than with ad- 
miration the boundless patience with which French Catholics, 
lay and clerical, are submitting to all these successive attacks 
on their religion and their civil rights. 

* La Crise du Libtralisme et la Liberti d'Enseignement. Par G. Sortais. Paris : P. Lethiel- 
leux. 



542 NEW BOOKS [July, 

The distress of the Church in 
CHRISTIAN CLASSICS. France, however sadly it must 

cripple her in the restriction of 

the magnificent service she has always given to the Church 
universal, in the missionary field as well as by her political 
and financial support, does not diminish the energy and activ- 
ity of French scholars who continue to maintain the national 
pre-eminence in the intellectual world. Through their efforts, 
the treasures of the great leaders of Christian thought are be- 
coming more widely known. The texts are prepared with scienti- 
fic accuracy, and the significance and position of the works and 
their authors in the history of Catholicism are amply and learned- 
ly elucidated. To the list of texts which have already appeared 
under the editorship of MM. Hemmer and Paul Lejay, which 
have been noticed already in these pages, we have now to 
add an edition of the funeral orations of St. Gregory of Nazi- 
anzen * on his brother Cesarius and on Basil of Cesarea; also 
the text of Tertullian's De Prcescriptione H<zreticorum.\ The 
texts are accompanied by a French version and copious critical 
notes. That interesting page of French mediaeval history, the 
Life of Guibert de Nogent y \ which in its own way is as unique 
a human and historical document as the Chronicles of Brake- 
lond, is published, with an introduction which is an instructive 
commentary on the times of Guibert, by M. Georges Bourgin, 
who holds a high position among the archivists of France. He 
whets the expectations of the reader by remarking that Guibert 
may be considered in some sort as the ancestor of the memor- 
ialists. 

In the "Pensee Chretienne " series St. Francis de Sales ^ is 
written by F. Strowski, professor at the University of Bordeaux, 
whose other work on the historic role of St. Francis in France 
during the seventeenth century received the highest commenda- 
tion. The present volume is a study of the writings of St. 
Francis, for the purpose of bringing out the characteristics of 
the saint's ideas and method. 

* Grlgoire de Nazianze. Discours Funebres, etc. Par Fernand Boulenger. Paris : 
Alphonse Picard et Fils. 

tTertullian, De Prascriptione Hcereticorum, etc. Par Pierre de Labriolle. Paris: 
Alphonse Picard et Fils. 

\ Guibert deNogent, Histoire de sa Vie. Par G. Bourgin. Paris: Alphonse Picard et Fils. 

St. Francois de Sales. Par F. Strowski. Paris : Librairie Bloud et Cie. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 543 

M. Cavallera's work on St. Athanasius* treats, from a 
similar point of view, the writings of St. Athanasius on the 
dogmas of the Trinity and the Incarnation. He discusses, too, 
the exegesis, the pastoral theology, and ascetical doctrine of 
St. Athanasius; and seeks to emphasize whatever information 
concerning doctrinal development may be drawn from this 
study. 

The witty editor of this useful 

THE CATHOLIC WHO'S WHO. reference book,f whose hand may 

be detected in some clever and 

tactful characterizations throughout its pages, has termed it the 
" ' Roll Call ' of Catholics throughout the British Empire, with 
here and there a welcome guest chosen from among their best 
friends in other lands." Every Catholic of note, on account 
of either birth, office, or achievement, is included in this list of 
over four hundred pages ; and if he or she has done or said 
or suffered anything that can be considered a claim to dis- 
tinction, it is recorded in the biographical notice attached to 
the name a mention in dispatches, the winning of the diamond 
sculls, critical knowledge in old-point lace receive honorable 
mention, just as well as high ecclesiastical or political position, 
or descent from the Fitzalans and the Howards. If anything 
worth quoting has been said by or about anybody, it is sure 
to be mentioned. A few Americans, mostly ecclesiastical dig- 
nitaries, are included ; some artists and literary celebrities too, 
as Agnes Repplier, Ada Rehan, and Maurice Francis Egan. 
The following notice is typical of the tact which enables the 
editor, without offence either to truth or the susceptibilities 
engaged, to pass across slippery ground: 

Of Dr. Barry, after a recital of his literary works, is said: 
" To be various yet expert in all that he undertakes is Dr. 
Barry's achievement a rare one in the history of literature; 
this faculty, and the light robe in which he is able to cloak 
profound learning, constitute him the most brilliant Quarterly 
reviewer and Dublin reviewer of his generation." 

Mr. C. J. Bonaparte, " the first Catholic layman in the 
United States," is said to be, " unlike some members of his il- 
lustrious family, a Republican first and last." 

* St. Athanasius. Par F. Cavallera. Paris : Librairie Bloud et Cie. 
\The Catholic Who's Who and Year Book. Edited by Sir F. Burnand. New York: 
Benziger^Brothers. 



544 NEW BOOKS [July, 

In the notice of Mrs. Wilfrid Ward it is said of her three 
novels that : " they will remain as milestones on the road over 
which the present generation makes, almost unawares, its great 
transition." 

" Father Bernard Vaughan, though a Jesuit, has always 
been very much Father Bernard Vaughan, and, indeed, rejoices 
in the preservation of his ego. He says: I have been through 
what the Americans call the Jesuit Gospel mill, and though the 
process is supposed to crush out all the notes of individuality 
in the wretch so foolish as to submit himself to its grinding 
wheels, I flatter myself that I managed to get through with 
every bit as much of my own character left as I care to call 
my own. I have met Jesuits of many nationalities, but never 
yet came across the type set iorth in works of fiction; nor do 
I think that, human nature being what it is, that type any- 
where exists in fact." 

Samples enough have been offered to indicate that this full 
and complete volume is quite unique among directories. 

Is socialism essentially bound up 

SOCIALISM. with any philosophy of life, and, 

consequently, with any definite at- 
titude towards religious truth? Or, is it an economic theory, 
which may be adjusted to any religious faith, and especially to 
the Gospel of Christ ? The latter view, in triumph over the 
theories of the original German doctrinaire systems of Marx, 
Bebel, Engels, and their English followers, is spreading with 
the growth of the economic movement in the English-speaking 
world. Some time ago Bishop Spalding, of Peoria, said: "A 
socialist may be a theist or an atheist, a spiritualist or a ma- 
terialist. ... A large number of socialists, it is true, are 
atheists and materialists, but the earnest desire to discern some 
means whereby they may be relieved from their poverty and 
misery and the resulting vice and crime, is in intimate harmony 
with the gentle and loving spirit of Him who passed no sor- 
row by." In his study of socialism * Father Ming quotes this 
passage in order to set forth more clearly his own thesis, which 
is in direct contradiction to the view of Bishop Spalding. 

The purpose of his interesting book is to demonstrate that 

* The Characteristics and the Religion of Modern Socialism. By the Rev. John J. Ming, 
S.J. New York: Benziger Brothers. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 545 

the socialistic movement is incurably materialistic, evolutionary, 
and atheistic. The work is divided into two parts. In the first, 
the author, avoiding entirely any discussion of the economic 
problem, proceeds to set forth the idea of socialism as it is 
found in the anti-Christian doctrines of the German leaders. 
He describes it as a revolutionary and international movement, 
powerfully organized for the purpose of arraying the proletariat, 
the wide world over, to wage a universal war against the rights 
of property and the entire present social and civil system. He 
next treats the scientific aspect of socialism, in order to show 
that the principles and doctrines of the most learned leaders 
must be considered, if we would form a correct estimate of the 
bearing of socialism on religion. 

With this starting point established, Father Ming addresses 
himself to the main issue. The entire doctrine of Marx and 
Engels, he shows, is permeated with the evolutionary ideas of 
Hegel and the materialism of Feuerbach. Later writers have 
mitigated this materialism by the introduction of some neo- 
Kantian and idealistic principles; but all socialist literature is 
impregnated with a thoroughly materialistic conception of his- 
tory. As to the main point, Father Ming represents socialism 
as resolutely and avowedly hostile to all religion, and especially 
to the dogmas of Christianity. If it were to triumph, the pass- 
ing of religion would necessarily follow. A page in which he 
describes the socialistic expectation is a replica of the ideas 
which Father Benson recently gave us in the Lord of the World. 

In the co-operative commonwealth, were it once to be es- 
tablished, even the remnants of Christianity must of necessity 
disappear. The rule of the possessing classes, capitalistic 
production, exploitation of the workers which alone are ulti- 
mately the condition and cause of its existence, will then have 
ceased to exist. Hence the Christian, like any other religion, 
must die of atropy. Atheism will in the future society reach 
its climax. 

One pauses here, for a moment, to ask by what course of 
inference the cessation of the exploitation of the toilers in the 
interest of the capitalistic classes would prove the subversion 
of Christianity. But let us continue the picture: 

Materialistic monism will be the prevailing scientific sys- 
tem. It will be accepted by all who lay any claim to ad- 
VOL. LXXXVII. 35 



546 NEW BOOKS [July, 

vanced mental culture, taught in all the institutions of learn- 
ing and education, and even in primary schools, it will exer- 
cise supreme influence and dominate all departments of human 
life. Who will then profess belief in Christian dogmas, uni- 
versally decried as absurd and superstitious ? And how could 
the new society allow the profession of a belief directly con- 
tradictory to all the fundamental tenets on which it is built 
and on which its very existence is dependent ? Consequently, 
also, the Church will be exterminated. There will be no be- 
lievers left. And if even after the revolution some were yet 
to retain the old faith, she could not possibly survive the new 
environment. She would have to retire into comparative pri- 
vacy, as in the time of Nero and Diocletian. Her ministers 
would have to work like any other members of the community 
in the fields or factories. She could build no temples or 
houses of worship, because owning neither ground nor build- 
ing material, nor hands, nor means for their construction. 

There would be no Christian teaching, no seminaries, no 
books, no religious literature. The Church would soon be a 
corpse. 

Father Ming has drawn up a powerful arraignment, amply 
sustained with testimony, against atheistic socialism; and it 'will 
serve the purpose of warning Catholics against it. This form 
of combating the movement, as far as it is an economic one, 
may, however, really contribute to help it on its course. As 
Father Ming records, many American socialists insist most em- 
phatically that they are concerned with purely economic ques- 
tions; that socialism, as such, no more involves materialism or 
agnosticism, than does membership in the Republican or the 
Democratic party. The bad odor of German socialism of the 
Marx and Bebel type has hitherto proved the greatest obstacle 
to the progress of the movement in America. To all the ef- 
forts made by its opponents to make irreligion an essential 
principle of socialism, the American leaders reply by redoubled 
endeavors to convince the toiling masses and their friends that 
the fortunes or doctrines of socialism are not wedded to the 
irreligious principles of Marx and his followers. And these 
men are sincere enough to convince Bishop Spalding, and 
many other thinkers and doers who have no sympathy with 
materialism. Whether these views or the deductions of Father 
Ming are right time will tell. Meanwhile, it is acknowledged 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 547 

by all that the iniquities of the present industrial conditions, 
where, on one side, enormous fortunes squandered in senseless 
display and profligacy, and on the other, millions working 
under circumstances that deprive them of the possibility of 
bringing up a family in a decent manner, are the hot-house 
of socialism. Religion and the Church can fight socialism in no 
way so effectual as by fighting against the gigantic wrongs and 
immoral conditions produced by present abuses. And Catholic 
ethics provides the principle, which, when applied all round, 
and in all its bearings, contains the solution ; man has, by the 
natural law, the right to the fruits of his labor. 

For the first time in the history of 

MANUAL OF MORAL theology, the English- speaking peo- 
THEOLOGY. pj e are presented with a complete 

moral theology in their own lan- 
guage. Rev. Thomas Slater, S.J., of St. Beuno's College, has 
undertaken the novel and difficult task, and has succeeded ad- 
mirably.* The work is not a translation, but is original through- 
out. The English is strong and fluent and idiomatic; the treat- 
ment is as full as need be in a text-book; the printing and editing 
are faultlessly done. Consequently, no English-speaking priest 
can wisely neglect to secure this book. 

But we wish that the work may attract the attention of the 
laity. Any Catholic, or non-Catholic, who cares to be well-in- 
formed on the moral law of God and of the Church, will find 
Father Slater's treatment of these subjects concise, clear-cut, un- 
technical, and undoubtedly interesting. For the benefit of such 
readers as these, who are perhaps until now uninitiated, we may 
say that this, the first. volume of moral theology, discusses in 
order these subjects: Human Acts; Conscience; Law; Sin; 
Faith, Hope, and Charity ; The Commandments of God and of 
the Church; Contracts; and The Duties Attached to Particular 
States and Conditions of Life. The subjects are treated again 
we speak for the information of those who are unacquainted with 
the scope of moral theology not as in an enlarged catechism, 
but as scientifically and as accurately as a treatise in law or in 
medicine, and yet in a manner intelligible to the man of ordi- 
nary education. 

* A Manual of Moral Theology, for English- Speaking Countries. By Rev. Thomas Slater, 
S.J. With notes on American Legislation. By Rev. Michael Martin, S.J. Vol. I. New 
York : Benziger Brothers. 



548 NEW BOOKS [July, 

Non- Catholics, in whose ears " The Moral Theology of Rome " 
is a bad sound, who have known only the attacks of the Jansenists 
and the misunderstandings of modern Protestant controversial- 
ists, ought, in fairness, to read this volume, after paying special 
attention to the author's preface, which explains what moral 
theology is, and what it is not. 

The additional notes on American legislation in as far as it 
touches the subject-matter of moral theology, by Rev. Michael 
Martin, will be a boon to American priests. 

Even in a country where mighty 

THE CATHOLIC SCHOOL growths and immense enterprises 
SYSTEM. are the rule rather than the ex- 

ception, the development of the 

Catholic parochial school system, if estimated merely from the 
viewpoint of magnitude, deserves study and challenges admira- 
tion. But the wonder about this organization is not so much 
its extent as the flexibility and coherence which it exhibits, 
although it embraces, as its historian * points out, three separ- 
ate and widely separated elements of authority the bishop, the 
parish priest, and the nun. Dr. Burns has gathered, at the 
expense of much laborious search, a considerable quantity of 
data regarding the origins and early developments of the 
parochial school system ; and the material acquired has been 
arranged into a very attractive and instructive historical study. 
This volume, which he intends to follow up with another, cover- 
ing the later period up to the present time, takes up the story 
as it opens in New Mexico, Texas, Florida, and California under 
the auspices of the Spanish missionaries. The material avail- 
able for this early period is rather meager, and, except for the 
demands of scientific completeness, might be neglected alto- 
gether. The real origins of the institution appear in Maryland 
and the Eastern Colonies, where the Jesuits, true to their princi- 
ples, made the instruction of the young a paramount object of 
missionary zeal. At the time of the Revolution Dr. Burns 
sums up the results of the previous history the Catholic schools 
existing in the English colonies at the time of the Revolution 
were, to some extent, thrown into the form of a system. They 
were all under the control of the Jesuit Order. In the case of 

* The Catholic Schotl System in the United States. Its Principles, Origin, and Establish- 
ment. By Rev. J. A. Burns, C.S.C., Ph.D. New York: Benziger Brothers. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 549 

religious instruction, if not of all the subjects taught, their 
work was based upon an ideal common to all institutions in 
charge of that great teaching body. They were looked upon 
as but the .base of an educational edifice which was to be made 
to include in time, facilities for the complete education of 
Catholic youth under Catholic auspices. 

With the expansion of national life, and the almost total 
disappearance of religious persecution after the Revolution, and 
the coming of a large number of French emigres, lay and cleri- 
cal, men and women, the mustard seed soon takes the shape of 
a vigorous young tree, the growth of which Dr. Burns finds 
recorded with more amplitude in the history and correspondence 
of the various teaching orders of sisters, and in the activities 
of the hierarchy, in the archdiocese of Baltimore, the dioceses 
of Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Bardstown, Vincennes, and 
several others. He closes the present volume with the great 
controversy in which Bishop Hughes was engaged an episode 
which marks the opening of the new era in which the parochial 
school has to contend with the state-supported public school. 

This useful history is enhanced by an introduction, in 
which Dr. Burns sums up the philosophy of Catholic education 
as it is exemplified in the genesis and development of our paro- 
chial educational system. The school, he points out, is a part 
of the religious organization : 

The relation between Church and school has been, in fact, 
so close that it is impossible to disassociate the history oi the 
one from that of the other. The parish school has been, from 
the very beginning, an agency of the Church. It is really a 
part of the Church's wider organization, and both in princi- 
ples and in practical working it belongs to the Church's 
system. 

Briefly, but very clearly, Dr. Burns expounds the principles 
which underlie the Catholic claim that religious instruction can- 
not, without ruinous consequences, be eliminated from the ele- 
mentary school ; and he aptly illustrates how religious and secu- 
lar knowledge are to be imparted simultaneously to the child. 

While he pays unstinted tribute to the success and compar- 
ative perfection of the present system a success which is mar- 
velous when the difficulties that were encountered are remem- 
bered Dr. Burns has a more practical purpose than to play the 
part of a mere eulogist. He writes: 



550 NEW BOOKS [July, 

It is evident in fact that on the religious side, the parish 
school of to-day is very far from having reached the term of 
its complete development. It is still in a partly embryonic 
condition. The adjustment oi means to end and principles 
has to become much closer and to proceed much farther be- 
fore anything approaching a satisfactory condition as regards 
religious training can be said to be attained. In point of re- 
ligious teaching, the development of our schools is, on the 
whole, far behind their development in respect to secular 
studies. 

This Dr. Burns calls a strange fact. The cure for it he does 
not point out, though he trusts that the lack of development 
in this particular is only temporary. He says : 

The need of greater unification, or at least simplification, 
of the school curriculum is now widely recognized, and the 
fuller realization of this need, together with the growing 
movement for more effective religious instruction in the 
school, will doubtless lead our educators and teachers, in 
time, to give to the teaching of religion the place of supreme 
importance it deserves. 

Dr. Burns will, we trust, have something practical to sug- 
gest regarding this matter in his next volume, which will be 
eagerly awaited. 

Though juridical records, generally 

THE SUPREME COURT AND speaking, do not fall within the 
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. sp h e re of the book-reviewer, yet 

a recent decision of the Supreme 

Court is of such Catholic interest that we need make no apol- 
ogy for placing it under the notice of our readers. Some time 
ago the Bishop of Porto Rico brought suit against the muni- 
cipality of Ponce for the possession of two Catholic churches 
which the municipality claimed as its own property. The Su- 
preme Court of Porto Rico decided in favor of the Bishop, 
whereupon the municipality appealed to the Supreme Court of 
the United States.* The point of interest in the case is that 

* Supreme Court of the United States No. 143. October Term, 1907. The Municipality of 
Ponce, Appellant, vs. The Roman Catholic Church in Porto Rico. Appeal from the Supreme 
Court of Porto Rico (June i, 1908). 



1908.] blEW BOOKS 551 

the appellant contended that " the Roman Catholic Church of 
Porto Rico has not the legal capacity to sue, for the reason 
that it is not a judicial person, nor a legal entity, and is with- 
out legal incorporation. If it is a corporation or association, 
we submit to the Court that it is necessary for the Roman 
Catholic Church to specifically allege its incorporation, where 
incorporated, and by virtue of what authority or law it was 
incorporated, and if a foreign corporation, show that it has 
filed its articles of incorporation or association in the proper 
office of the Government, in accordance with the laws of Porto 
Rico." 

Premising that the code in force in Porto Rico at the time 
of the Treaty of Paris was adopted by the American Govern- 
ment, and thenceforward was no longer merely foreign land, the 
Decision proceeds to review the corporate status of the Church 
under Spanish law and under international law. The Court 
agreed that " the Roman Catholic Church has been recognized 
as possessing a legal personality and capacity to take and ac- 
quire property since the time of the Emperor Constantine." 
A quotation from Milman's History of Latin Christianity is 
brought forward to show that the Christian Church began to 
enjoy this privilege during the time of the Empire; and that 
the barbarian codes, as they came into being, recognized the 
right of the Church to acquire property, as well as the inalien- 
ability of such property when acquired. The historic continu- 
ity of this juristic conception is next shown to have been main- 
tained by the Partidas, the fundamental code of ancient Spain, 
" where the Church has been established since the days of the 
Visigoths." In like manner the rights of the Church are traced 
through the bulls of Julius II. and Alexander XI. granting the 
tithes of the Indies to the Spanish crown ; afterwards through 
the disturbances of 1820, and down to the Concordat of 1859. 

At the date of the American military occupation, the Cath- 
olic Church, continues the Decision, was the only Church in 
the island : " Neither the State nor the municipalities, directly 
or indirectly, disputed or questioned the legitimate ownership 
and possession by the Church of the property occupied by her, 
including temples, parochial houses, seminaries, and ecclesiasti- 
cal buildings of every description." 

This was the status at the moment of annexation, and by 
reason of the treaty, as well as under the rules of international 



552 NEW BOOKS [July, 

law, prevailing among civilized nations, declares the Court, this 
property is inviolable. 

The Decision proceeds to affirm that the corporate existence 
of the Roman Catholic Church, as well as the position occu- 
pied by the Papacy, have always been recognized by the Gov- 
ernment of the United States : " The Holy See still occupies 
a recognized position in international law of which the courts 
must take judicial notice." In support of this statement the 
Court quotes from Moore's Digest of International Law, Vol. I., as 
follows: "The Pope, though deprived of the territorial dominion 
which he formerly enjoyed, holds as sovereign pontiff and head of 
the Roman Catholic Church an exceptional position. Though, 
in default of territory, he is not a temporal sovereign, he is, 
in many respects, treated as such. He has the right of active 
and passive legation, and his envoys of the first class, his 
apostolic nuncios, are specially privileged." 

The proposition, therefore, so runs the Decision, that the 
Church had no corporate or jural personality seems to be com- 
pletely answered by an examination of the law and history of 
the Roman Empire, of Spain, and of Porto Rico, down to the 
time of the cession, and by the recognition accorded to it as 
an ecclesiastical body by the treaty of Paris and by the law 
of nations. The court refers to a recent " interesting and satis- 
factory opinion " delivered by the Supreme Court of the Philip- 
pines : " The suggestion made there as here, that the Church 
was not a legal person entitled to maintain its property rights 
in the courts, the Supreme Court answered by saying that it 
did not require serious consideration when ' made with refer- 
ence to an institution which antedates by almost a thousand 
years any other personality in Europe/" In the concluding 
summary the Court says that the juristic personality of the 
Church has been accorded recognition by all systems of Eu- 
ropean law from the fourth century of the Christian era. The 
judgment of the Court, which was delivered by Chief Justice 
Fuller, affirms the decree of the Court of Porto Rico. 

In the light of this calm, reasonable resume of the teach- 
ings of history, international law, and justice, what a sorry 
figure the French Government cuts as it stupidly pretends to 
ignore the age-long universal fact of the corporate existence of 
the Catholic Church ! 



NEW BOOKS 553 

The sub-title of this useful hand- 

HISTORY OF ECONOMICS, book,* designates its character and 
By Rev. J. A. Dewe, A. M. merit more correctly, we believe, 

than does its title. It is scarcely 

adequate as a history of economics; there is too much vague- 
ness in the facts collected ; their significance and correlation 
are not brought out with the fullness required by even an in- 
troductory scientific study of economics. On the other hand, 
as a companion to his ordinary histories, the work will serve 
to direct the young student's attention to this element, which 
receives scarcely any recognition from the majority of general 
histories. 

The lapse of half a century, which 
ROSMINI. has brought with it astonishing 

changes in the Rome where the 

interests of heaven and the interests of earth, secular and ec- 
clesiastical politics meet and interlace in bewildering complex- 
ity, makes possible the task of writing a veracious and sincere 
life of the founder of the Institute of Charity. Yet even now, 
when the echoes of old far-off unhappy days and battles long 
ago have almost died away, the task is one that called for 
no common measure of tact, prudence, and evangelical courage. 
All these qualities, as well as high literary talent, are evinced 
in the Life of Rosmini, written by one of his devoted sons.f 
Father Pagani tells the story of the man whom posterity will 
rank among the half-dozen greatest minds of the Church in 
the nineteenth century, in a highly fascinating manner. The 
man Rosmini, with his wonderful gifts of grace and mind, is 
admirably portrayed ; and the events of his life, both those of 
a public and those of a more personal or domestic character 
are related in that happy measure which is the mean between 
dry baldness and prolixity of detail. Though the spiritual side 
of Rosmini's character is described as occasion offers in the 
course of the narrative, this feature of the work is chiefly re- 
served for a closing chapter. Thus the interminable interrup- 

* History of Economics ; or, Economics as a Factor in the Making of History. By Rev. J. A. 
Dewe, A.M. New York: Benziger Brothers. 

t The Life of Antonio Rosmini- Serbati. Translated from the Italian of (he Rev. G. B. 
Pagani, Provincial of the Institute of Charity in Italy. New York : E. P. Dutton & Co. 



554 NEW BOOKS [July, 

tions to the flow of the story which are so frequent in biogra- 
phies of this sort, have no place here. 

The persecutions which, in the name of orthodoxy, persons 
with powerful interests behind them waged with unrelenting 
piety against Rosmini, Father Pagani relates without mincing 
matters, though he keeps to his promise of treating the authors 
of the persecution "with all possible consideration." The 
breadth of his charity, however, is taxed to the utmost to em- 
brace within its borders Cardinal Antonelli. He enters into 
considerable detail concerning the events of the Pope's flight 
to Gaeta, and the motives which dictated it. Antonelli's calcu- 
lation was that if the Pope should abandon the Roman States, 
anarchy would succeed, and, in a short time, the Holy Father 
would be brought back to Rome by a foreign army. On the 
contrary, Rosmini counselled the Pope to remain somewhere 
within the Papal States to continue the government of affairs. 
His opponents took wonderful measures to destroy his influence 
with Pius IX., and to prevent him having access to the Pon- 
tiff. Though Rosmini had, much against his will, been ordered 
to prepare for the Cardinalate, and his Order had already in- 
curred great expense in preparation for his elevation, he was 
now told that the promised dignity would not be conferred on 
him a disgrace which he accepted with his customary humility 
and cheerful confidence in the will of God. " It was," says his 
biographer, "a fortunate disgrace for one who had resigned 
himself to the purple only through obedience ; fortunate also 
for us, for to it we owe several of his noblest philosophical 
works. But it was a real misfortune for the Sacred College; 
which it deprived of a man who would have been one of its 
ornaments ; an irreparable loss was it to Pius IX., thus to part 
with the man, perhaps the only one of his times, whose sound 
judgment might have saved the Pontifical throne from the ruin 
into which Antonelli's policy hurled it." 

After reading his account of the manner in which Rosmini , 
was treated, one can hardly reprehend the good Rosminian very 
severely for the following reflection : " What must have been 
Antonelli's thoughts when he saw the overthrow of the Pon- 
tifical throne in spite of his vain efforts to restore it, and re- 
called the prophetic utterance of the wise Roveretan (Ros- 
mini), whom he had repaid with persecution ? What must have 



i9o8.] NEW BOOKS 555 

been the reflection of the good Pope, when, among the pilgrims 
bringing their offerings to the Prisoner of the Vatican, Ros- 
mini's sons appeared, bearing the silver church plate prepared 
for their father when it was thought he would be elevated to 
the Cardinalate ? And what were the feelings of Pio Nono 
when, later on, he saw Antonelli carried to the grave, mourned 
by none, his memory disgraced, and his estate disputed in the 
courts of justice ? " Truly, history is a great teacher. This 
closing reflection is one which may very naturally arise in the 
mind of the reader when he will come to the end of this ex- 
ceedingly interesting and edifying book. 

Few Catholics, lay, clerical, or religious, can make a retreat 
without the guidance of some retreat- manual. Consequently 
the use of some such volume as this,* from the pen of Father 
Buckler, the well-known writer on ascetical topics, will be very 
welcome. Those who are acquainted with Father Buckler's 
works need not be told that he is always interesting. In this 
one, it seems to us, he has produced a volume that will be- 
come a favorite even with those who have thought that only 
Bishop Hedley could write a really helpful guide for retreats. 

*A Spiritual Retreat. By Father H. Reginald Buckler, O.P. New York: Benziger 
Brothers. 



jforeion periodicals. 



The Tablet (25 April) : A correspondent writes on ecclesiasti- 
cal conditions in Russia. He notes particularly the prev- 
alence of superstition in faith and practice. Literary 

Notes comments on the impartiality of our modern his- 
torical writers. Mr. Harold Begbie closes the contro- 
versy occasioned by his article in the Children's Ency- 
clopedia. 

(2 May): A commendatory review is given to the Eng- 
lish translation of Vacandard's V Inquisition. The Ro- 
man Correspondent tells of a cowardly attack made by 
certain Italian ruffians upon three students of the Scotch 

College in Rome. Newman's probability of revelation 

and ecclesiastical nomenclature continue to interest many 
correspondents. 

(9 May) : Schell is referred to as a " Leader of Mod- 
ernism " a movement which the book- reviewer de- 
scribes as " the abuse of the methods of contempora- 
neous research, but not the use of those methods which 
may improve without 'improving away' the old scho- 
lasticism." Commenting on the popularity of recent 

Catholic works in fiction, a contributor to this number 
urges that our literary men and women should stir them- 
selves to greater activity, for their writings are said to 
have a deeper effect on the public mind than all the 
dignified pastorals of bishops and papal allocutions. 
(16 May): Pays great tribute to the Government for its 
decision regarding the Irish University. The efforts of 
Mr. Haldane and Mr. Birrell are especially commended. 

The situation of the Church in France is said to be 

most encouraging. Literary Notes contains an appeal 

for greater sympathy toward the Gaelic movement. 

It is reported from Rome that Dom Murri has com- 
plied with the injunctions laid upon him by the Holy 
See, and is about to be permitted again to celebrate 

Mass. Fr. Thurston replies to a criticism of Fr. 

Tescher's concerning the historicity of the Rosary. The 
so-called "Will" of Anthony Sers (which refers to a 
confraternity of the Rosary founded by St. Dominic him- 



1908.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 557 

self at Palencia) is shown to have been a mere fabrica- 
tion. 
(27 May): Contains an apology for Church conditions 

in Portugal. Fr. Tescher replies to Fr. Thurston by 

re-affirming the historicity of the Sers "Will." Ken- 

-elm Vaughan defends the attitude of the Church toward 
the Vernacular Bible, 

1 'he Month (May): The popular idea that between the Catho- 
lic Church and science there exists a deadly enmity is 
disproved in an article entitled " Some Debts which Sci- 
ence Owes to Catholics." Many notable names in the 
scientific world are mentioned Catholics honored for 
their scientific labors as well as for devotion to their 

religion. The writer of the article " Wanted : a 

Readable Bible" asks the pertinent question: Has not 
the time come for us English-speaking Catholics to re- 
vise our translation of the Bible and to reform our man- 
ner of printing it? He looks forward with hope to the 
labors of Abbot Gasquet and his colleagues, and sees no 
reason why, with the increase of critical materials at 
hand, we should not have a Vulgate text reproducing 

as closely as possible the original of St. Jerome. 

" Some Scientific Inexactitudes " draws attention to 
numerous misquotations which are rife in the scientific 
world. It makes special mention of the loose way of 
talking which attributes to Bacon the invention of the 
system known as inductive reasoning, a method of rea- 
soning which has been practised ever .since the begin- 
ning of the world by every human being. C. C. 

Martindale in " School Missions " sets out at some length 
the work of various Protestant missions, and quotes St. 
Augustine's words: What they can do, why cannot I?" 
as an incentive to Catholics to be up and doing in the 
social field. Among other articles are: "The Edu- 
cational Situation Reviewed, "in which the policy of the 

Government is heavily scored. Also "The Name of the 

Rosary," in which the writer, Father Thurston, S.J., does 
not seem to have much to say in favor of the Domini- 
can authorship of this devotion. 

Expository Times (June) : Prof. Kennedy continues his study on 
Isaias' "Servant of the Lord." He argues that Jewish 



558 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [July, 

theology of the first century was not accustomed to in- 
terpret Messianically the servant passages. Loisy's re- 
cent works are sharply criticized by Dr. Moffatt.- 

" Saintly Miracles, a Study in Comparative Hagiology," 
is an attempt to minimize the supernatural element in 
the lives of the saints. 

The Irish Educational Review (May) : The Bishop of Limerick, 
discussing the University Bill, says that it is disappoint- 
ing and offensive to the religious sense of Catholics. 
There is no protection for the religion of the student; 
professors are to be appointed without religious tests, so 
that a man of no religion may be appointed to teach 
any subject, e.g., philosophy or history. The Irish bish- 
ops should be ex-officio members of the governing body 

of a university set up for Irish Catholics. Professor 

Stockley strives to dispel the fears of those who are not 
in sympathy with the Gaelic movement, on the ground 
that it will be the means of weakening commercial and 
political relations with England. He cites the fact that 
the Mother Country has friendly feelings towards the 
Welsh and French Canadians who do not even speak 

English. That the private secondary school is more 

efficient and more acceptable to the people than those 
regulated by the State, is shown in an article entitled 
" Lessons From Other Lands," by contrasting the re- 
sults and feelings in countries where both systems are 
in vogue. It is urged that Ireland retain her present 
secondary. education system. 

The Irish Monthly (June) : Many pages of this number are de- 
voted to an appreciation of the poetical work of Mary 

Stanislaus McCarthy, O.S.D. The views of the late 

Dr. Molloy on the Irish University Question, as expressed 

in a paper published in 1906, are here reprinted. In 

a paper entitled "An Amiable Grumble," the Editor in- 
sists on the propriety of giving due acknowledgment to 
authors when quotations of any importance are made. 

Le Correspondant (23 April) : In an article entitled " If War 
Were Declared To-morrow," the writer, while not wish- 
ing to be pessimistic, points out the general lack of 
preparation which he claims rests altogether with Parlia- 
ment. "Social Conditions in Holland," gives us varied 



1908.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 559 

pictures of different localities; on the whole, the people 

are law-abiding and industrious. The first installment 

of the life of Bourdelot brings us into the presence of 
many of the notable characters of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, especially those connected with the house of Conde. 

"The Failure of Divorce" presents some startling 

statistics. The department of the Seine leads in the num- 
ber of divorces. As the writer says, marriage easily en- 
tered into is easily annulled. The expulsion of the 

sisters from the hospitals is discussed by Ambrois Rendu, 
former President of Public Assistance. For many rea- 
sons he regrets the step. " Edison, Inventor," shows 

us the wizard at work, not resting by night or day, 
until he has brought that upon which he is engaged to 
a satisfactory conclusion. 

(10 May) : The Catholic Church of France during the first 
separation from the State is dealt with from its several 
points of view. The writer claims that the separation was 
a consequence, not a principle of the Revolution, and 
that those who brought the Revolution about were not, ex- 
cept in rare instances, atheists. Edouard Blanc, writing 

on the Russian crisis, maintains that the existing unfavor- 
able conditions are in no way to be attributed to the Czar, 
and that, as a matter of fact, the Russian sovereigns, since 
Alexander II., have always marched at the head of pro- 
gress. In " America of To-morrow," Abbe Klein finds 

himself in Chicago, a city of vivid contrasts, where he 
sees virtue and vice, riches and poverty, rub shoulders. 
He is much impressed with the " Universite du Petrole " 
where he has the honor of being a special preacher. 
(25 May): "Two Years in a Farnese Palace "deals with 
the situation between France and Italy in 1886, when 
the former assumed the protectorate of Tunis and the 
latter united with Austria and Germany in what was 

known as the Triple Alliance. In English India the 

grave problems at stake are pointed out. England has 
not conquered India, the writer maintains, and he quotes 
Lord Curzon to prove that her hold on that great mass 
of humanity is altogether due to her system of civil 
government, of which he claims that the whole world 
cannot produce so marvelous an example. Writing on 



56o FOREIGN PERIODICALS [July, 

"Catholic Teaching and the School Books," M. de la 
Guilloniere shows that the school books of France are 
being edited in a spirit of rationalism. He warns Catho- 
lics not to sit down supinely if they would save the 

youth of France. And a question of serious import to 

France is dealt with in the article on population. Ac- 
cording to statistics the deaths in 1907 exceeded the 
births by 20,000. The writer claims that the question is 
moral, economic, and political. Over 1,300,000 families, 

the reports state, have no children. The continuation 

of the life of Bourdelot deals with his work as physician, 
teacher, man of letters. In the former capacity the 
writer mentions that he was one of the first to recog- 
nize the value of quinine in medical practice. 

Jitudes (5 May) : Xavier Moisant describes Modernism in terms 
of chemistry ; before the recent Encyclical Modernism 
was vaporous, almost invisible ; in the Encyclical it comes 
before us as a precipitate. This document of the Vati- 
can authorities is said to have cleared completely the 
Catholic atmosphere. The attempt to define Modernism 
baffles the writer ; he defines Pelagianism, Rationalism, 
and other isms, but words fail him when he comes to 

Modernism. The approaching canonization of Ven. 

Eudes lends interest to an article on him from the pen 
of Jean Bainvel. Special reference is made to this holy 
man's devotion toward the Blessed Virgin. 
(20 May) : Auguste Hamon contributes an article on the 

beatification of Venerable Mother Barat. Writing on 

Modernism, Xavier Moisant maintains that philosophically 
it is a form of nominalism, while theologically it is Protest- 
ant. Is Amraphel, king of Sennaar, who was put to 

rout by Abraham, in reality King Hammurabi ? Al- 
bert Condamin examines the arguments for and against 
the identification of the two. Adhemar d'Ales con- 
tributes a pen picture of Albert de Lapparent, the sci- 
entist, whose recent death is the source of much sorrow 
to the Church in France. 

La Democratie Chretienne (8 May) : An article by G. Vanneuf- 
ville treats of the work of the Semaines Sociales de 
France. The writer deals briefly with the origin of these 
gatherings, and sets forth the essentially Christian char- 



1908.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 561 

acter of this movement for social betterment, its uncom- 
promising Catholicity, and its opposition to liberalism. 
He treats of its attitude towards the problems of the 
present hour and the solutions it proposes for them, 
and concludes with a few remarks on the prospects 

which the " Christian Democracy " has before it. 

Among " Works and Social Documents " is contained 
an account of reforms inaugurated by the diocesan com- 
mittee of St. Sulpice for improving the lodgings of the 
workingmen, the aged, the poor, etc. It is the desire 
of the committee to agitate and to work for the removal 
of many abuses which now exist. 

La Revue Apologetique (16 April): "The Divinity of Jesus 
Christ and the Synoptics," by G. Lahouse, S.J., a 
consideration of the love and the faith demanded by 
Christ. Only God alone could require such confidence 

and self-sacrifice as are demanded in the Gospels. 

" How the Philosophy of Seneca and of St. Paul Re- 

garded Slavery," by L. Antheunis. " Some Results of 

Unbelief," by Pierre Suau. 

La Science Catholique (April): In an article, "The Compensa- 
tion of Evil by Good," M. 1'Abbe L. Grimal discusses 
the reparation of evil made by the Redemption. The 
theory, he contends, that sin against God is an offense, 
in some manner, infinite, and that no creature can make 
infinite expiation, and as a necessity an infinite person 
is required for the proper atonement, results in pessim- 
ism. Also, if this doctrine were held, all the prayers 
and sacrifices of the saints, and all our own good deeds, 
could not compensate for any mortal offense. M. 
TAbbe Camille Daux, in " St. Augustine and Devotion 
to Mary in Africa," points out the faithfulness of the 
Africans to the Blessed Virgin. He also shows how this 
devotion may be traced to the efforts of St. Augustine. 

Annales de Philosophie Chretienne (May): P. Deehem contributes 
an historical review of the question of the relation of 
the physical theory to the metaphysical. He notes the 
opinions on this topic, of the ancient Greeks, the Sem- 
itic scientists, of the Scholastics, and of the astronomers 
of the Renaissance period.- Pagan temples and Chris- 
tian cathedrals are compared by Ange de Lassus. Archi- 
VOL. LXXXVII. 36 



562 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [July. 

tecture, he maintains, is the expression of the religious 
consciousness of a people. In the Gothic piles of mediae- 
val Christianity we have lasting monuments to high Chris- 
tian ideals and religious enthusiasm. 

La Civilta Cattolica (2 May): "The Program of the Theoso- 
phic Society " an examination of the claims of Theoso- 
phy shows that they are not valid. The claim to free- 
dom from sectarianism is worthless, for some of the 
founders of Theosophy embraced Freemasonry and sought 
to revive the doctrines of the Illuminated Theosophists 
of London. These latter were propagandists of Sweden- 
borg's religion. Theosophy, likewise, claims to have no 
dogmas, yet Mrs. Besant, President of the Society, often 
speaks of greater and minor mysteries, and the mysteries 
are certainly dogmas. A third claim of Theosophy 
tolerance for all religions is unwarranted, for among its 
leaders there is a strong dislike for every theological re- 
ligion. Other articles are: "Adam Smith and Senti- 
mental Ethics"; a chapter in the "Study of the Moral 
Problem." "The Testimony of Saint Irenaeus Con- 
cerning the Roman Church and the Authority of the 
Roman Pontiff." 

La Scuola Cattolica (April): Prof. Gemelli discusses "The 

Hygienic Problem in Churches." Signor Orsenigo, 

writing of " Buddhism and Christianity," sketches the rise 
of Neo-Buddhism or Theosophy, and explains the es- 
sential characteristics of Buddhism, its different species, 

its diffusion, and its doctrines. Signor Ricci has a 

second article upon Jehovah and Christ. 

Rivista Internazionale (April) : " The Farm Contract in Ger- 
manv " a question of much social importance now in 
Italy, is that concerning farms and farm contracts. 
Mathias Mayer writes of how the question is being treated 

in Germany. Other articles of interest are " Maritime 

Protection and the Merchant Marine," by A. Boggiano. 

And "The Problem of Italian Emigration," by P. 

Pisani. 



Current Events. 

A short time ago some anxiety was 
France. felt in France on account of the 

agitation which was being carried 

on against the army by M. Herve and M. Jaures and those 
who followed and supported them. So outrageous was the char- 
acter of this agitation, that legal proceedings had to be taken 
against the anti-Militarists, and in consequence an end seems to 
have been put to their propaganda, at least in the form in which 
it was being conducted. The attack on property which is be- 
ing made by the party called " Unified Socialists," of which 
M. Jaures is the leader, still goes on. This party advocates the 
public ownership of land and the means of production and dis- 
tribution. Its strength was put to the test a few weeks ago in 
the elections which took place for municipal offices, and it suf- 
fered so severe a defeat that Collective Socialism has become, 
so those declare who are competent to judge, a danger too re- 
mote to be seriously reckoned with. M. Jaures is one of the 
most eloquent of orators, but the French have learned to pre- 
fer good judgment to fine words. In fact, they are no longer 
giving even a hearing to the Socialist leader. 

A succession of murders and of outrages, together with the 
publication in the newspapers of disgusting and degrading ac- 
counts of these crimes, is calling the attention of the thought- 
ful to the way in which the law has been administered, and 
forcing to the front the inquiry whether more severe methods 
are not necessary. So-called humanitarianism has long been in 
vogue, and the extreme punishment is never inflicted. It has 
become bad form to advocate it. Doctors are accused of falsi- 
fying their evidence for the purpose of securing the release of 
prisoners. 

The visit of the President to England has been, of course, 
the most prominent matter for discussion and comment during 
the past month. It is considered as yet one more proof of the 
hold which the entente cordiale has taken upon the people of 
both countries. Nothing could have been better than the re- 
ception which the President received in England, nor anything 
more satisfactory than the effect which this reception produced 
in France. The question has been raised by some of the pa- 
pers whether the time has not come for the making of a formal 



564 CURRENT EVENTS [July, 

treaty of alliance between Great Britain and France. The small- 
ness of the British Army, and consequently its uselessness in 
the event of a war with Germany, has made some of the French 
writers hesitate, while in England the idea of a formal alliance 
finds little favor. The general opinion seems to be that the 
entente is so strong that it stands in no need of formally writ- 
ten stipulations, that what is written in the heart does not 
require documentary confirmation. 

Morocco still remains an unsolved problem, and the only 
question which causes anxiety is the power of Abdul Aziz. The 
power of the hitherto reigning Sultan seems to have departed and 
to have been supplanted by that of his brother Mulai Hafid. To 
Abdul Aziz France has given consistent support, while Ger- 
many, it can scarcely be doubted, has given encouragement to the 
one who seems likely to prove victorious. The temptation to 
pass the allotted bounds is strong for both parties. Will it be 
resisted ? France has given renewed assurances that she will 
not advance ; that, on the contrary, she will retire when her 
work is done. Some of the German papers are trying to ex- 
cite distrust of the sincerity of these declarations. 

Both our own country and Germany 

Germany. are in want of a financial genius; 

America for the discovery of a 

satisfactory currency system, Germany to find means of meet- 
ing current expenses. Mention has already been made of the 
large loans which the Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia have 
found it necessary to issue. The fact that a loan raised by the 
London County Council was covered forty times over, while 
the German and Prussian loans barely escaped failure, make 
clear how difficult the financial situation is. The new Secre- 
tary of the Imperial Treasury has since made the announce- 
ment to the Budget Committee that the loan requirements of 
the Empire during the next five years would amount to no less 
than two hundred and fifty millions of dollars, and this for nor- 
mal purposes alone, putting out of consideration unforeseen con- 
tingencies. Reduction of expenditure was the only remedy, but 
the Navy League is calling for more war- ships, and the com- 
mercial marine for an increase of subsidies, while the Centre 
and the National Liberals demand the gradual amortization of 
the Imperial Debt. The recently introduced taxes have proved 



1908.] CURRENT EVENTS 565 

a failure. The Federal States refuse the desirable modifications 
of the present system, and deficits have become a regular fea- 
ture of the Budget. It is no wonder that the late Secretary 
of the Treasury resigned and that his successor is at his wits' 
end. 

The question of Morocco has of late come somewhat promi- 
nently to the front. The Press has been full of insinuations 
that France is not loyal to the policy which she avowedly pur- 
sues, that she purposes an annexation of the country, or at 
least a protectorate. It would seem that, to use Lord Salis- 
bury's expression, the French government has, in supporting 
Abdul Aziz, been putting its money on the wrong horse. The 
rival Sultan, Mulai Hafid, by the latest accounts, has secured 
his hold upon almost the whole of the country, and Abdul 
Aziz is practically without power. It is one of the ironies of 
politics that the French Republic should have been the sup- 
porter of the legitimate monarch, and have refused to have 
anything at all to do with the envoys of his rebellious brother; 
while, as there is good reason to believe, the representative of 
the legitimist principle has been giving, if not support, at least 
countenance to the rebel. At all events Mulai Hafid's emissaries 
have received in Berlin a guasi-ofiiciad recognition. They have 
discovered that between themselves and the Germans there is a 
blood relationship, through the Vandals who conquered the 
north of Africa, and this claim seems to have been admitted 
by a society called the German Morocco Committee, over which 
Count Joachim Pfeil presides. At all events this Society pro- 
posed to call a public meeting in Berlin at which the emissar- 
ies might convey to the German public the friendly sentiments 
of the Moroccan people. To give a still wider opportunity for 
the German people to get into touch with these " kinsmen, 1 ' 
meetings were to be held in several German towns. There is 
no doubt that there are in Germany a number of people, how 
many is not known, who are trying to renew the conflict with 
France, and are taking this means of so doing. It is hard to 
tell what likelihood there is of success, but as the German Press 
is, to a large extent, " inspired," the fact that it is offering so 
many provocations is to be noted. 

The arrest of Prince Philip Eulenburg has reopened the 
discussion of the alleged evil-doings in the highest circles. It 
will be remembered that it was largely due to the evidence 



566 CURRENT EVENTS [July, 

given by the Prince that Herr Harden was convicted of libel. 
Herr Harden appealed, and on the trial of the appeal the evidence 
against the Prince was so strong as to necessitate his arrest on 
the charge of perjury. Bail was offered to the amount of more 
than a hundred thousand dollars, but was refused. 

One state included in the German Empire, and one only 
has, up to the present, remained under absolute rule; not, in- 
deed, with satisfaction and in content, but because all the ef- 
forts which for some time have been made to secure a con- 
stitution, have met with obstinate resistance on the part of the 
Grand Duke. At last, however, the step forward is about to 
be taken and Mecklenburg-Schwerin is to receive what it has 
so long sought. As is almost always the case, the conditions 
under which the constitution has been granted mar the gracious- 
ness of the gift, and render it less acceptable ; but it will be a 
step to better things. 

The Kaiser has manifested his appreciation of the Chan- 
cellor and of his labors during the recent session of the Reich- 
stag by a telegram sent to the Prince in which he expresses 
his satisfaction with its work. His Majesty makes himself, 
therefore, responsible for the expropriation of the lands of his 
Polish subjects, an expropriation which has met with the almost 
unanimous condemnation of the rest of the civilized world. 

The visit of the President of the French Republic to Eng- 
land, the subsequent visit of King Edward to the Tsar, as well 
as the approaching visit of the President to the Tsar, have, of 
course, been much commented upon by the German Press, and 
have given the German statesmen a great deal to consider. 
Opinions, of course, differ as to the true significance of those 
events and the probable result. That there is any set purpose 
to isolate Germany or to confine the Empire within a circle of 
opposed alliances seems very doubtful. The desire for peace is 
supreme and dominant in the mind both of the President and 
the King and in that of their peoples. If it is reciprocated by 
the majority of the German people, there is nothing to fear. 
That this may be the case there is some reason for thinking. 
The influence of the clergy may not be supreme in Germany, 
but it has not altogether vanished. The visit of the German 
pastors to London indicates upon which side this influence will 
be used; the reception with which they met there shows how 
strong is the feeling for peace in England. Had it not been 



1908.] CURRENT EVENTS 567 

so, Catholic and Protestant would not have joined hands to 
welcome the visitors the Archbishop of Westminster and the 
Archbishop of Canterbury would not have appeared on the 
same platform. 

The murder of Count Potocki, the 
Austria-Hungary. Governor of Galicia, which took 

place more than two months ago, 

is remarkable as the first instance of the use of this method 
of political warfare in the dominions of the Emperor Francis 
Joseph. Grave troubles he has had of every sort. The legis- 
lative halls of Austria and of Hungary have been the scene of 
tumults in which the law-makers have smashed their desks, 
and in fact the furniture in general, and have for years delib- 
erately obstructed the work they were summoned to do. Per- 
haps open discussion and the power of manifesting the dis- 
content which they felt, have acted as a safety valve and thus 
prevented the dastardly crimes which have been common else- 
where. It has been left to a Ruthene student to be the first 
to stain the political annals of the Empire. The Ruthenes, 
of whom there are in Galicia some three millions, consider 
themselves oppressed by the Poles. The Poles are the dominant 
race, and while they have treated the Ruthenes better than 
their compatriots in Russia are treated, of late they have been 
somewhat unfair, at least so the Ruthenes think, in the recent 
allotment of seats for the Reichsrath. Count Potocki was 
looked upon as the author of this partiality and as guilty of 
certain other oppressive acts. These motives led to the com- 
mission of the cowardly crime, and so great is the demoraliza- 
tion of public opinion among the Ruthenes that the student's 
mother boasts that she prompted the deed; not a few voices are 
raised to explain it, and very little detestation of the crime is 
expressed. The assassin himself glories in the deed as a means 
of rehabilitating his family by a patriotic deed on account of 
the disgrace into which it had fallen through the misdeeds of 
his brother. The Poles of course have been roused to indigna- 
tion and to a determination to maintain rather than to change 
their methods. 

The Hungarians have been distressed by the evil doings of 
a member of the Coalition Cabinet now in power its Minister 
of Justice. He has been forced to resign, because he is charged 



568 CURRENT EVENTS [July, 

with having got wealthy by corrupt means of a particularly igno- 
minious kind. To vindicate himself he brought an action for 
libel against his accusers. That he did this was due more to the 
force of public opinion than to his own spontaneous desire. 
The trial is said to have been conducted in a very strange 
manner, and it resulted in a still stranger verdict. 

The Emperor's Diamond Jubilee has been the occasion of 
several celebrations in his honor. On account of his advanced 
age, and also of his somewhat impaired health, it was under- 
stood to be the wish of his Majesty that nothing should be 
done calling for exertion on his part. This did not quite fall 
in with the desires of the German Emperor. He wished to 
testify his own esteem and that of his fellow- potentates by a 
public demonstration. The Emperor of Austria could not, of 
course, refuse such an honor, and accordingly, the Prince Re- 
gent of Bavaria, the Kings of Saxony and of Wurtemburg, the 
Grand Dukes of Baden, of Saxe-Weimar, of Oldenburg, and of 
Mecklenburg- Schwerin, the Duke of Anhalt, the Princes of 
Lippe and of Schaumburg-Lippe, together with the Burgomas- 
ter of Hamburg, who also represented Liibeck and Bremen, 
with the Emperor at their head, presented themselves before 
the Hapsburg monarch at Schonbrunn. The Kaiser's speech was 
somewhat grandiloquent, and we hope he meant all he said. It 
would be interesting to learn what the Emperor of Austria really 
thought as he stood before the grandson of the Prussian King who 
had expelled him from Germany and heard such expressions of 
admiration. He said, however, that he should ever look upon 
it as one of the dearest memories of his life, and added that 
the visit was a solemn manifestation of the monarchical princi- 
ple to which Germany owed her power and greatness, in which 
principle lay, too, all the strength of Austria- Hungary. It was 
from the love of his peoples, his Majesty went on to say, that 
he had ever drawn new confidence for the discharge of the 
heavy duties incumbent upon him. 

If the expression of an opinion may be allowed, it seems 
more probable that such strength as the Dual Monarch pos- 
sesses is derived from the affection in which his person is held, 
rather than from attachment to the principles of monarchy, 
and to his willingness, as was shown by the active support 
that he gave to the universal suffrage Law which has re- 
cently been made, to entrust a large share in the government 



1908.] CURRENT EVENTS 569 

of the country to the people. He has shown himself generous 
and trustful, and his people seem likely to respond to his 
generosity and trust. 

The affection felt for the Emperor was manifested in a very 
touching manner by a festival of school children which was 
held in honor of the Jubilee. In this some 82,000 school chil- 
dren took part. A pantomime was enacted in which were sym- 
bolized the Emperor's goodness of heart and strict fulfilment 
of duty, and the national anthem was sung in unison by the 
82,000. The Emperor did not sit on a throne aloft and re- 
mote, but went in and out among the children ; to the Burgo- 
master of Vienna, who accompanied him, he said: "To me 
children are what is most beautiful and dearest. I love them 
more the older I grow." He has repeatedly expressed his 
wish that the Jubilee year should be chiefly marked by the 
foundation of charitable institutions, and especially by those 
destined to promote the welfare of poor children. 

The Jubilee celebration included a reception of quite a dif- 
ferent character. This was of 600 of the superior officers of 
the army and navy, who came to express the devotion of the 
land and sea forces. To them his Majesty declared that the 
services they represented were the rock whereon reposed the 
security of his throne and of his peoples. But this was said 
in view of possible foreign enemies, not with reference to his 
own subjects. A ruler who relies on force is already virtually 
overthrown. 

The Cabinets of Baron von Beck in Austria and of Dr. 
Wekerle in Hungary still remain in power, but the existence 
of the former is precarious. In fact the Premier and the War 
Minister resigned office on account of the failure to secure the 
increase of the pay of the officers which had been promised 
to them. The opposition of the Hungarians rendered a modifi- 
cation necessary. The conflict between the two seems per- 
ennial. The resignations were not accepted by the Emperor. 
Other storms, however, are appearing on the horizon. Czechs 
and Germans are getting tired of a somewhat prolonged period 
of quietude, while that remarkable phenomenon so common in 
absolutely governed States the tumultuous interference of 
school-boys in politics has made its appearance in the conflicts 
which have taken place between the Catholic and anti- Catholic 
students of several universities. The objects fought for by those 



570 CURRENT EVENTS [July, 

students are vastly different, but the methods pursued seem 
equally bad. 

Another step, although too small 

The Near East. a step, has been taken towards the 

extinction of the Turkish dominion 

over Christians. Some years ago Crete was in a measure re- 
leased from the Sultan's control, placed under the administra- 
tion of a Commissioner, and the protection of four of the great 
Powers, each of which maintained detachments of troops in the 
island. The first Commissioner was a Prince of the Royal 
House of Greece; but his somewhat autocratic ways caused 
opposition and discontent. He was succeeded by a distinguished 
member of the Greek Parliament, M. Zaimis. His administra- 
tion has proved so successful that the conditions which the 
Powers laid down for the removal of the troops from the island 
have been fulfilled, and within a year they will all depart. 
This will leave the island to the Cretans, who are all eager to 
be annexed to Greece. That this union will ultimately be 
brought about is looked upon as certain. The thing to be feared 
is that in their anxiety to bring an end to even the nominal 
rule of the Sultan, precipitate and ill-advised steps may be taken, 
which may alienate the support upon which their cause depends. 

It may seem incredible, but there is one part within the Sul- 
tan's domains which has for some seventy-five years enjoyed a 
large measure of prosperity. This is the island of Samos, to which 
autonomy was given in 1832. This prosperity is due not only 
to this autonomy, but also to the fact that the inhabitants are 
of one religion and of one race. But everything is precarious 
that depends upon an autocrat. At the present time disturb- 
ances are taking place on the island, which have been the pre- 
text for sending troops, and fear exists lest its self-government 
may be interfered with. But, like Crete, it is under the pro- 
tection of the Powers, and it is to be hoped that they will se- 
cure the liberties of the Samians. 

Macedonia still remains the scene of bloodshed and outrage, 
but even for this region, so long in desolation, hopes of allevi- 
ation may be entertained. The visit of the King of England 
to the Tsar has been the occasion of an agreement having been 
made as to the action of the Powers in that region. The 
British proposals mentioned last month have not, indeed, been 



1908.] CURRENT EVENTS 571 

adopted in their entirety, but a combination with the proposals 
of Russia has been made. The outcome is not quite so dras- 
tic, but let us hope, if we can, that it will bear fruit. As not 
only France and Italy, but also Germany and Austria have 
accepted the proposals, the Sultan is not likely to offer a de- 
termined resistance, -and if he were so to do, it would not be 
of much avail. 

As time passes the hope grows 
Russia. stronger that the era of a species 

of constitutional government has 

definitely arrived. The Duma is becoming stronger and its 
strength is being more and more fully recognized. One of the 
Ministers who had exclaimed " Thank God we have not a Par- 
liament," met with so strong a condemnation from all parties 
that he had to explain away his words and to give to them an 
innocuous meaning. The apprehensions that had been for some 
time entertained that an attempt was again to be made to take 
away the constitution of Finland seem to be unfounded. M. 
Stolypin has, in fact, declared that no such intention exists. 

The district surrounding Parma has 
Italy. been the scene of an agricultural 

strike in which the landlords have 

had to contend with their laborers organized by the Socialists. 
The Socialist leaders are sheltered by the Chamber of Labor; 
the Chamber of Labor behind the strikers; the strikers be- 
hind their wives and daughters; and those, when fighting takes 
place, push their children in front. The question at issue is 
not as to wages but as to the right of the laborer to the land. 
The laborers are well paid for agricultural laborers in Europe 
and have been driven to strike against their will. To the sur- 
prise of many, and contrary to what has generally taken place 
of late, the government has supported the constituted order, 
and it seems likely that the laborers will have to undergo 
great sufferings. 

In Belgium Catholics have been in 
Belgium. power for twenty- four years with- 

out a break; the elections which 
have recently taken place have resulted in a small loss, their for- 



572 CURRENT EVENTS [July. 

mer majority in the Chamber having been reduced from twelve 
to eight. Both the Senate and the Chamber are renewed peri- 
odically, one- half or thereabouts of the members of each house 
retiring. The most striking feature of the election has been the 
success of the Socialists, who have won five seats. The new 
Chamber will consist of eighty- seven Catholics, forty-two Lib- 
erals, one Christian Democrat, and thirty- six Socialists. The 
first question which the new Parliament will have to settle is 
the annexation of the Congo. 

The King of Sweden, who has just 
Portugal. succeeded his father, has declined 

to be solemnly crowned, looking 

upon such a ceremony as not in accordance with the spirit of 
the age. The coronation of the Kings of Portugal was abol- 
ished a long time ago, and in its place was substituted the cere- 
mony of Acclamation. This takes place in the Chamber of 
Deputies in the presence of both Houses and all the dignitaries 
of the realm. It is not altogether destitute of religious sanc- 
tion, for the King takes the oath to observe the Constitution 
on a Missal on which is placed a Crucifix. This ceremony the 
youthful Senhor Dom Manuel II., has gone through and has 
been acclaimed with the greatest possible enthusiasm as the 
most high, puissant, and faithful King of Portugal. He has made 
an excellent impression upon his people by his courageous 
bearing. After the acclamation he made a speech in which a 
long list of proposed legislative measures was given ; but that 
which gave the greatest satisfaction was the solemn assurance 
which he gave that his government was determined to return to 
constitutionalism again and never to deviate from its paths. It is 
proposed, however, to make some changes in the Constitution. 



THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION 

T)ATRONS of the Catholic Encyclopedia may rest assured that they have 
J[ made a good investment, though some of their brethren in the faith, 
tainted with the blight of worldliness, may have expressed their misgivings 
in a salient way. A most cordial endorsement of this American enterprise 
has been published in the Irish Theological Quarterly from the pen of the 
Rev. Walter McDonald, D.D., a veteran professor at Maynooth. It is in 
part as follows : 

The Catholic Encyclopedia is a splendid work ; a credit and a joy to 
all English-speaking Catholics. I congratulate the editors and publishers 
heartily, and wish them a sale as extensive as they deserve. I recommend 
priests and laity, who take an intelligent interest in their religion 
its doctrines, past history, and present condition, the great men by whom it 
was made what it is to procure this work. If they have influence with public 
libraries, they will serve the Catholic cause by seeing that it is purchased 
for the use of non-Catholics, as also for those of our brethren who cannot 
afford to procure it for themselves. 

* * * 

Do Catholics want a Catholic paper? asks the Newark Monitor, and 
answering itself says : Sometimes we doubt it. And it is not without reason 
we doubt it. We look around us and we see the welcome accorded the secu- 
lar press; we cannot help but notice how eagerly Catholic people purchase 
the daily papers. We glance through these papers, and, alas ! we find many 
of them but a tissue of scandals, sensations, gross exaggerations, false prin- 
ciples. Some of them are so unclean that they are not fit reading for any 
Christian eyes ; some of them are deliberately designed to carry their foul 
message into the hearts and homes of the people. Most of them are not 
proper reading to put into the hands of children. And yet our Catholic 
people eagerly buy them, read them, carry them to their homes, hand them 
to their little ones, spread their contagion, inoculate their friends and asso- 
ciates with their virus. 

But when it comes to subscribing for a Catholic paper, how slow these 
erstwhile eager hands are to pay the price. It is for the most part dry read- 
ing ; it has none of the exaggerated flavor of the scandal or the crime ; it 
does not flatter with silly praise, or pander to self-love, or foolishly dismiss 
all responsibility and open the door to ease, to pleasure, to wilfulness, to 
sin. It tells of things that are sweet and pure, it teaches the beauty of self- 
repression; it speaks of holy doctrines with becoming gravity. It dares to 
tell the truth ; it protests against the wild opinions and false principles that 
men eagerly drink in, because they excuse or palliate human wickedness. 

But under present conditions in our country, is it not a simple duty for a 
Catholic to take into his home a Catholic paper? A Catholic paper is a 



574 THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION- [July, 

whiff of the pure air of heaven. It brings with it life and health. What bet- 
ter missionary labor may any Catholic do than to spread Catholic papers ? 
They are the most practical antidote to the poison of the daily press. The 
danger to Catholic faith and morals is not from sectarian pulpits. That day 
is past. The biggest pulpit of our time is the press; the danger is from the 
press. Every Catholic that buys a secular paper erects a pulpit of error in 
his home ; for the papers are not satisfied with giving us the news and corre- 
sponding comment; but they insist on giving us our theology and our creed. 
They take our conscience into their keeping. Time and eternity belong to 
them. Every issue is a creed. And the creed changes with every edition. 
Who can doubt the absolute necessity of the Catholic press? What home is 
secure without a Catholic paper? We must meet pulpit with pulpit. We 
must meet paper with paper. We must sow truth without ceasing, for the 
missions of error are countless. 

* * 

Four years ago, through the generosity of the Knights of Columbus, a 
Chair of American History and Institutions was established in the Catholic 
University of America, and Charles Hallan McCarthy, of Philadelphia, was 
summoned to fill it. 

In the May number of The Catholic University Bulletin, Professor Mc- 
Carthy tells of the progress of this department. It was slow at the outset. 
At present twenty-seven men, earnest and intelligent, are engaged in serious 
work, and several of them give promise of great strength in their specialty. 

The most notable of these is Matthew J. Walsh, who was a student of 
Holy Cross College. American History was his major and Sociology and the 
Principles of Education his minor branches. He won his degree of Ph.D. 
after a brilliant examination in June, 1907. During the six months follow- 
ing, he made courses not offered by the Catholic University, at Columbia 
and Johns Hopkins. Dr. Walsh was ordained to the priesthood in January, 
1908, and is now instructor in history and economics at the University of 
Notre Dame, Indiana. 

The Knights of Columbus expected as a result of their foundation mon- 
ographs and books on phases of American History of especial interest to 
Catholics. Dr. Walsh has completed a work on The Political Status of 
Catholics in Colonial Maryland, which will soon appear. Several other stu- 
dents of this department have written excellent magazine articles on like 
topics. 

The department is beginning another division of its work in promoting 
the equipment in American History of teachers in Catholic schools of every 
grade. It prefers, of course, to have such teachers in attendance at the lec- 
tures, this being the most advantageous method of instruction; but it is pre- 
pared to direct the readings of teachers at a distance in four separate studies. 
The courses in American constitutional history are being attended by a num- 
ber of men who are establishing themselves as lawyers. 

Another valuable service being rendered by this department is in revi- 
sion or suggestion on popular books submitted by non-Catholic publishers. 

The new department began with a meager equipment. This has grad- 
ually been increased by the unsolicited gifts of friends of distinguished pa- 



1908.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION 575 

triotism and knowledge of American History and institutions. The Knights 
of Columbus have every reason to be gratified by the progress of the depart- 
ment ; and to expect that it will be heard from to constantly increasing ad- 
vantage as the years go by. 

* * 

Genuine learning is much appreciated at Rome by Pope Pius X. and his 
advisers. The Abbe Gasquet has won many deserved tributes of praise for 
critical scholarship in the field of history, and has been placed in charge of 
the new edition of the Latin Vulgate. The letter written by the Holy Father 
to Mgr. . Le Camus on the occasion of his work upon The Apostles admir- 
ably appreciates the method followed. The following passage from the Papal 
letter is very significant : 

You deserve a special praise for your constant care, in explaining Holy 
Writ, to adhere to that method, which, through respect for the truth and the 
honor of the Catholic doctrine, should absolutely be adhered to under the 
guidance of the Church. For as we must condemn the temerity of those who, 
having more regard for novelty than for the teaching authority of the Church, 
do not hesitate to adopt a method of criticism altogether too free, so we 
should not approve the attitude of those who in no way dare to depart from 
the usual exegesis of Scripture even when, faith not being at stake, the real 
advancement of learning requires such departure. You follow a wise middle 
course, and by your example show that there is nothing to be feared for the 
Sacred Books from the true progress of the art of criticism nay, that a 
beneficial light may be derived from it, provided its use be coupled with a 
wise and prudent discernment. Letter of Pius X., dated January //, 1906. 

The impression made by the letter may be gathered from the following 
extract from L' Univers : 

The importance of the Pontifical document can escape no one. It out- 
lines clearly the correct mean to be taken between the dangerous extrava- 
gances of hypercritical exegesis and the regrettable stubbornness of an exege- 
sis anchored in old positions which it is no longer possible to defend. The 
highest authority in the Church does not hesitate to propose Mgr. Le Camus 
as one of the models to be followed in the wisely progressive movement of 
Catholic exegesis, a movement which can be a cause of fear only te souls that 
are timid because not sufficiently aware of the situation. Pius X. expresses 
the desire to see true exegesis go forward and make use of [all that the most 
modern Scripture science has to offer for the defence of the Sacred Books, 
even though it be necessary to sacrifice as no longer tenable a good number 
of apologetic positions of the past. The document will naturally cause a pro- 
found sensation. M. C. M. 






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THE 

CATHOLIC WORLD. 

VOL. LXXXVII. AUGUST, 1908. No. 521. 

ELIZABETHAN CATHOLICS AND THEIR ALLEGIANCE: 

SOME SKIRMISHING THOUGHTS. 

BY LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY. 

I. 

\T is fairly certain that an honest body of people 
were never in a worse pickle than the English 
Catholics nearing the middle of Elizabeth's reign. 
Everything was against them. As we know, for 
nearly a half-century the island kingdom had been 
driven and lured by her rulers (not going gladly of her own 
accord, as some other countries did), first into schism, and then 
into heresy. The Holy See necessarily and naturally took note 
of the lapse and proceeded to punish it. Pope Paul III. ex- 
communicated and deposed Henry VIII. ; St. Pius V. excom- 
municated and deposed Elizabeth. Surely no one will contest 
that both these royal personages richly predeserved the dread- 
ful spiritual penalty of excommunication ? Deposition, whereby 
a prince is branded as unworthy to claim longer his princely 
right to the people's obedience, was a temporal penalty, another 
matter altogether. Now, both depositions fell flat : no attention 
was paid to them, from the first, by even the most devoted 
Catholics ! The truth is, that the time for regulation of just 
this sort, which had been so useful and providential through 
the Middle Ages, had passed. To use a very homely figure, 

Copyright. 1908. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE 

IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK. 
VOL LXXXVII 37 




578 ELIZABETHAN CATHOLICS [Aug., 

one might say that the childhood of Europe had gone by, 
and that her father could not see it was so, but kept on out 
of sheer accustomed fatherhood, issuing orders touching affairs 
which she was now perfectly competent to manage for herself. 

As with individuals, so with states: when feelings are aroused 
and unsubdued, philosophical conduct is out of the question. 
The English crown was not only headstrong and angry, but in 
a wicked, unfilial mood, and the Papacy, though extraordinarily 
patient, was exacting obedience of a kind never meant to be 
paid again. Almighty God, who has secured the Church from 
error in her universal dealings with souls, may leave churchmen 
to their own devices and errors in any particular dealing with one 
person, or one nation. The great Elizabeth had sizable short- 
comings, and so had her strong, tricky counselors, besides being 
a great deal harder and narrower than she; but to Catholic Eng- 
lishmen she 'was still their Queen, and her counselors were still 
the Government. She was not reigning as her father's lineal third 
heir, which she was not, but on the authority of Parliament, 
which had taken pains to confirm King Henry's will, and to 
set the remote, though legitimate, heirs aside. The Pope, to 
whom Christian morality seemed much more important than Eng 
lish law, saw fit to declare her accursed, and to tell her sub- 
jects that they were released from their duties towards her. 
He did so only because he believed she was still a Catholic, 
and that, therefore, her correction was, so to speak, his proper 
business. She had declared herself such before she became 
Queen, though her sincerity was suspected; and her Coronation 
Oath was the ancient Catholic one, in which she swore to de- 
fend the ancient faith. Moreover, she first declared war on 
the Holy Father: a point to remember. Pope Paul IV. was 
quite willing to acknowledge her parliamentary right to reign, 
despite the taint on her birth, now that Katharine of Aragon's 
sad daughter was dead, had Elizabeth only favored him with 
an official notification of her accession. She deliberately refrained 
from this common, age-long courtesy. The Queen was the pio- 
neer of defiance, not the Pope the pioneer of interference. The 
breach with Rome was finally accomplished by one all-signifi- 
cant betise. 

One Pope deposed Elizabeth with no least intention of in- 
troducing anarchy and murder into the English commonwealth ; 
and another Pope made a further move towards finding an ac- 






1908.] AND THEIR ALLEGIANCE 579 

ceptable hand to grasp the scepter when it fell : he recommended 
King Philip the Second of Spain to the support of those in 
England who were true to the old religion. Now Philip was 
not so "foreign" as he might be; for had he not been crowned 
in England? had he not reigned five years as King, not as 
Prince Consort only when he married Elizabeth's elder half-sis- 
ter, Queen Mary Tudor? But he was a disagreeable sort of 
champion to the vast majority of English Catholics; he had 
no claim of blood relationship to their ancient royal line; and 
(what really counts more than codes or cannon in such enter- 
prises) he had neither the character nor the personal charm 
which would win over those who were in doubt which way to 
turn. Philip, in short, was not a fit. 

The Queen's Privy Council was frantic with rage at what 
seemed to them intolerable meddling, and the most painful dif- 
ferences of opinion arose at once among the Catholics them- 
selves, who were all equally eager to see the faith restored in 
its unity. One party, much the larger but not the louder, 
thought that a moral arousing was all that was needed to bring 
a coerced people back to what they still loved in their hearts ; 
and to further such a moral arousing they were willing to lay 
down their lives. The other party (though they would not 
have expressed it quite thus) wished to leave nothing to the 
workings of Providence; they would manage all the details 
themselves, and make sure with their own eyes of all the re- 
sults. Therefore, these desired another ruler in their hopeless 
Queen's stead, who, though of alien race and rearing, would at 
least safeguard the liberty of their consciences and the welfare 
of their religion. To posterity such designs are plainly "wicked." 
(We may, however, observe in passing that the very same move, 
with an exactly parallel motive, was made when Dutch William, 
and the far more astonishing Hanoverian George after him, were 
set by Protestant accord upon a throne not theirs : and nobody 
now sees the least wickedness in that !) 

The Elizabethan " Papists " who would win, as one of them 
claimed, "by prayers and tears," and their brethren of the 
household who believed in pikes, were both well-meaning, un- 
selfish, and even, in differing measure, heroic. A point never, 
perhaps, sufficiently brought out is that the " spaniolates," as 
Sir Philip Sidney delightfully and censoriously calls them, were 
not Englishmen in England, but Englishmen in exile for their 



58o ELIZABETHAN CATHOLICS [Aug., 

religion, or, to use the phrase of the time, " over seas for their 
conscience." Morton, Sander, Allen, Bristow, Parsons, all of them 
good men, and two of them great men, were out of their ra- 
cial focus, owing to long residence abroad. Their point of view 
became much too abstract, cosmopolitan, poetical, for the par- 
ticular circumstance of one stormy isle. The better critics were 
the population on the spot. They differed from their superiors, 
and their difference carried the day. Communication was ex- 
ceedingly difficult ; a despatch from Rome to London, and back 
again, took at least three months in transit. Besides, there was 
then, as there is now, enormous divergence on every issue, be- 
tween the few of the race who did the hard thinking, and the 
many who did, not contrary hard thinking, but no thinking at 
all ! who liked things best as they are, rather than as they 
ought to be ; who regulated every compromise by standing quite 
still, or by ceding three- eighths of an inch; who set the prece- 
dent (to the astonishment of the hot and thorough going Lat- 
ins !) of Protestanism not so very Protestant, and revolutions 
not so very revolutionary. Willy-nilly, they had Queen Eliza- 
beth; and being English, they kept her. The would-be agita- 
tors, far away, had every excuse for their mistaken theorizing; 
but they made unspeakable trouble for the conservative body 
at home. They were themselves goaded into action by the 
original tyranny of the State, and they awoke reprisals from the 
State which were far worse than anything which went before. 

II. 

What we call patriotism was not known, in old times, in the 
sense in which we use it. It had never been in Greece or Rome 
so large and definite an ideal as it became beside the throne 
of Anne Boleyn's daughter. Families held together in the be- 
ginning, as they had to do, to live : then clans or tribes held 
together; then men and women of one country, with a broad- 
ening sympathy and policy, held together; if the tendency should 
work itself out, some day all civilized states will hold together, 
in Tennyson's famous dream of " the federation of the world." 
The ages of chivalry, when power was in few hands, kept " na- 
tionalism " from the birth; the ages of commerce were to beget 
it and foster it. 

History is always showing us how unfit any great idea is 
to be let loose in a community, unless it takes up the right re- 



i9o8.] AND THEIR ALLEGIANCE 581 

lationship to the arch-Idea, which is the law of God. Other- 
wise, even though good in itself, it works nothing but havoc. 
The Reformation turned Merry England into John Bull. That 
swollen person started up strongly, with an original inspiration 
to put art, awe, religion, and all lovely things to flight. An 
inherited fever of self-importance fell upon Queen Elizabeth, 
and was fed by the most extraordinary flattery and shameless 
servility of her subjects, all through her life. A fever of self- 
importance also fell upon her people. This was in the designs 
of Providence, and harmed nobody. It was part of the growth 
of nationalism ; and the Catholics, like the rest, shared it. 
But what marked them off from the rest was this : that they 
were sane and not drunken enthusiasts about it ; that they knew 
it was not ordained to send everything else in both worlds to 
the rightabout ; and above all, that it should not constrain the 
Christian Church, which is a cosmopolitan thing, and cannot 
be taught to pray Pater meus instead of Pater noster. 

The Elizabethan Catholics always claimed that they and they 
alone knew what real loyalty meant : a loyalty held in place 
not by the things under it, such as interest, force, custom, or 
caution, but by the things over it, such as the God-given prin- 
ciples of obedience to authority and love of order. And they 
were right ; it is not too much to say that their presence helped 
enormously to temper and fix the Englishness of modern Eng- 
land, and make it intelligent and impassioned. They are the 
only body of people who ever suffered or died by thousands 
to make the meaning of civic allegiance perfectly plain; and 
they did not fail in their strange and sad task. 

The officials in charge of the executions were fond of ask- 
ing our martyrs, clerical and lay, to pray for the Queen ; then, 
when they one and all heartily had done so, came the sly dig : 
" Which Queen ? " as if they must necessarily have made a 
mental reservation in favor of Mary Stuart. To this replies of 
infinite patience were made. Edmund Campion named " Eliz- 
abeth, your Queen and my Queen " ; Edmund Genings called 
her "my dear anointed Princess"; Ralph Sherwin said: "My 
Lord God make [Elizabeth Queen] His servant in this life, 
and after this life co-heir with Jesus Christ ! " They objected 
that he meant to make her a Papist. " God forbid otherwise ! " 
he answered. The old chronicle adds that he was " somewhat 
smiling." A merry gallant saint's heart was in Ralph Sherwin. 



582 ELIZABETHAN CATHOLICS [Aug., 

One is continually driven to observe that the Catholics had all 
the humor, and all the sincerity. 

Not genuine religious zeal of any kind, but rank and sim- 
ple "jingoism," the spirit of the maturing nation, drove faith- 
tul Englishmen to their death ; or rather, let us blame the 
mistaken idea of the demands of that spirit, aided and abetted 
by the sour fanatics who took their theological leaven from 
Geneva. Yet a patriotism which began with such crimes, never 
suffered a jot because of them, so far as Catholic co-operation 
was concerned. It was the popular feeling of all classes which 
in the end barred Mary Queen of Scots, the illustrious prisoner 
who was " the second person in the realm," and whose acces- 
sion would have meant the dominant influence of France. And 
next to the great winds which were serviceable at need, it barred 
Philip from putting the northern islands under the proud yoke 
of Spain. Some fifty years after a Spanish invasion was first 
rumored and feared, came the great Armada, blessed and in- 
dulgenced like a Crusade of old. Where were all the cruelly 
treated Catholics, cleric and lay, lords and commons, supposed 
to be much more than ready to welcome their deliverer ? They 
were rushing to the defence of sovereign and country, with 
tongue, influence, purse, and sword ! just as they had done of 
old, just as they were to do again. A certain bold spirit, "the 
Pope's captain, Sir Ralph Shelley," had blurted out beforehand 
that he " would rather drink poison with Themistocles than see 
the ruin of my country." But on the whole there was little 
talk; it was all deed. One crucial event proved that the cor- 
rective Papal Bulls, the careful international diplomacies, and 
all, were a dead letter, so perfectly had it come to be under- 
stood that to live her life thenceforth at all, England, for bet- 
ter or worse, must cleave to Elizabeth. 

III. 

Almost the cruellest thing about the trials of our martyrs 
throughout the long reign, was the putting of catch questions 
connected with that unforgotten Bull which John Felton had 
nailed up in London in the May of 1570. The examiner would 
inquire, sometimes while the victim was on the rack, what would 
be the latter's opinion or course of action if a Papal force 
should land in England to free the suffering Church ? Father 
Pollen has written, in regard to this, that the foul play lay, 



i9o8.] AND THEIR ALLEGIANCE 583 

not in putting such a question, but in putting it with a mur- 
derous intent: in "compelling your controversial adversary as 
it were to give an answer satisfactory to yourself, and in kill- 
ing him if he should fail." The only reply the examiner would 
accept, would be, of course, one completely hostile : such an 
unconditioned statement as: "I would fight against any Pope 
to the death." It is to be noted that such replies as Blessed 
Luke Kirby's on the scaffold, desiring that God might protect 
the Queen against the Pope, if the Pope acted wrongly, had no 
effect in saving his life, nor did he intend any concession. 
" There was no escape," adds Father Pollen, " from offending 
the prejudices both of the Queen and the Puritan mob. It was 
no use to say that you would fight against the Pope when he 
was the unjust aggressor, for the Puritans considered him as An- 
tichrist," one who could be nothing but unjust, and must be, 
in any case, put down. " And Elizabeth held that neither the 
Church nor conscience had any rights that cculd be justly de- 
fended against her." 

There is a canon not always obeyed, but worthy to be writ- 
ten in letters of gold, which discourages mention of the short- 
comings of a work of art before those who are unable to appre- 
ciate its beauties. Now the martyrs put us in mind of it. 
They could not possibly criticise or contemn any real or imag- 
inary deed of the existing Pope before such an audience as the 
one they were facing, which hated and defied the primacy of 
Peter. Or, to recur to our first figure, children inconvenienced, 
or threatened with inconvenience by their father, to whom they 
are bound by natural affection and reverence, would be vile 
children if they called their father a beast, let us say, in the 
company of his greatest enemies: much more so if there were 
really no inconvenience, but only a suggestion proffered that 
he might sometime create one. That "bloody question," as 
it was called, and its answer, resolved themselves into nothing 
less than a test of family feeling. Were there a chance for 
any statement to be heard out, and calmly considered, it might 
have been different. But it is common sense to be sparing of 
words when no multiplication of them will make you better un- 
derstood. The hour was too hot a one for explanations. Either 
you called your father a beast, and inclined his enemies to let 
you off (complimenting you on your brains), or else you re- 
fused to blaspheme him, even though convinced he was not act- 



584 ELIZABETHAN CATHOLICS [Aug., 

ing wisely on one point, and ran risk of speedy destruction. 
Words had to be weighed well, because they slid out of their 
context: that is, their meaning was denied any connection with 
what they tried to express, but hinged only on what was fill- 
ing the minds of the hostile hearers of them. The martyrs 
met this monstrous quibble about taking sides in case of an in- 
vasion in the spirit of truth, and with the most manly assertion 
of personal liberty. Three of their neutral- sounding recorded 
answers will serve: "I should hope to do what is right." 
"When it cometh, it will be time enough to act." "As God 
shall put us in mind, so shall I do." It was on a point of 
honor, in the highest sense, that they lost their lives. 

With what ache of spirit must the Catholics have nursed 
their incredible, their superhuman loyalty to Queen and coun- 
try ! How often they must have thought, half wistfully, of 
those early Christians, whose torments were not greater than 
theirs, and whose arraignment for the very same cause was so 
much simpler ! To worship or not to worship Caesar what a 
definite business it is when put that way ! what plain sailing ! 
For the Elizabethan persecution, in warp and woof, was of the 
immemorial pagan brand. Men, to be "honest," must bow 
down to the material and concrete authority alone, and have 
no ideal more supernatural than good citizenship. Christ's 
Vicar was not wanted, as Christ Himself had not been wanted. 
There was no developed counter- religion with counter-claims: 
few will now maintain that there was anything in what began 
to be called the " received religion," the " true religion," or 
the " Queen's religion," save excision and negation of Papistry. 
It was simply the case of State enraged against Church, as in 
the year 33 A. D.; and nominally beating it. "If thou let this 
man go," as the Jews said to Pilate, "thou art not Caesar's 
friend: for whosoever maketh himself a King, speaketh against 
Caesar." One can never sufficiently admire the clear-headedness 
of all our Catholic forbears in that ruthless and astute century. 
They stuck to the point, when the point was abominably mud- 
dled by those who sought their lives, and never lost sight of 
the main issues. They stand out in the Three Kingdoms as 
scholars might, against the background of a half- educated rab- 
ble, giving the same exact definition again and again, only to 
see some new irrelevancy slur it and snow it under. One in- 
stance just referred to, with its sequel, will serve as well as 



AND THEIR ALLEGIANCE 585 

twenty. It is an account condensed from the old-fashioned but 
sober and trusty pages of Challoner, themselves founded on 
original documents. Blessed Luke Kirby, he tells us, was taken 
from the hurdle in company with Blessed William Filby. 

Mr. Filby being beheaded, as the manner is, the execu- 
tioner lifting up his head between his hands and crying " God 
save the Queen ! " Mr. Kirby said "Amen." And he being 
asked what Queen (mark the insulting inference repeated ! ) 
he answered, " Queen Elizabeth," to whom he prayed God 
to send a long and prosperous reign, and to preserve her from 
her enemies. Mr. Charke the minister bade him say "from 
the Pope's curse and power." Mr. Kirby replied: u If the 
Pope levy war against her or curse her unjustly, God preserve 
her from him also ! " Being examined, he said that the ex- 
communication of Pius V. was a matter of fact wherein the 
Pope might err : " the which I do leave to himself to answer 
for." . . . "Notwithstanding, I do acknowledge to my 
Queen as much duty and authority as ever I did to Queen 
Mary, or as any subject in France, Spain, or Italy doth ac- 
knowledge to his King or prince." Here Richard Topcliffe, 
a master figure in the persecution, broke in with an amazing 
remark : ' ' Tut ! if they all be traitors, will you be traitor 
too ? " To which Mr. Kirby answered : "What ! be they all 
traitors ? God forbid ! For if they all be traitors, then all 
our ancestors have been traitors likewise! " Then Martin 
the Sheriff reminded him " that the Queen would take him to 
her mercy, so he would confess his duty towards her and for- 
sake that man of Rome." . . . Who answered that to deny 
the Pope's authority was denying a point of the Faith, which 
he would not do for saving his life. Then was it tendered 
him that if he would but confess his fault and ask the Queen 
forgiveness, she would yet be merciful to him. He answered 
. . . he could not confess that whereof he was innocent, 
neither ask forgiveness where no offence was committed 
against her Majesty. 

(This charge was one of the most imaginary of historical 
bogeys, the " conspiracy " of Rheims and Rome, invented first 
by Walsingham against Campion.) An eye-witness writes : 

Immediately after the cart was drawn away from Mr. 
Kirby, Mr. Richardson and Mr. Cottam, priests and gradu- 
ates, were brought together to look upon him while he was 



586 ELIZABETHAN CATHOLICS [Aug., 

hanging . . . and the head being cut oft, they held it 
up, saying : " God save the Queen ! " and [Mr. Richardson] 
being demanded what he said, [answered]: "I say Amen: 
I pray God save her." And farther he said : "I am come 
hither to die for treason : and I protest before God I am not 
guilty of any treason more than all Catholic Bishops that 
ever were in this land since the conversion thereof to our 
time : were they alive, they might as well be executed for 
treason as I am now." Putting the rope about his neck, 
the Sheriff said : " Now, Richardson, if thou wilt confess thy 
fault and renounce the Pope, . . . thou shalt be car- 
ried back again." Mr. Richardson answered: "I thank 
her Majesty for her mercy ; but I must not confess an un- 
truth, nor renounce my Faith." Then [Mr. Cottam] was 
turned backwards to look upon Mr. Richardson, who was 
then in quartering: which he did, saying: " I,ord Jesus! 
have mercy upon them ! " and " O L,ord ! give me grace to 
endure unto the end." . . . And then the head of Mr. 
Richardson was held up, by the executioner, who said, as 
the custom is: "God save the Queen!" To which Mr. 
Cottam said: "I beseech God to save her and bless her: 
and with all my heart I wish her prosperity, as my liege and 
sovereign and chief governess." They willed him to say: 
"and Supreme Head in matters ecclesiastical." To whom 
he answered : " If I would have put in those words, I had 
been discharged almost two years since." Then the Sheriff 
said: "You are a traitor if you deny that." Mr Cottam 
said : " No, that is a matter of faith. . . . My conscience 
giveth me a clear testimony that I never offended her." 
Adding, that he wished her as much good as to his own soul, 
and for all the gold under the cope of heaven, he would not 
wish that any one hair of her head should perish to do her 
harm . . . and desiring God of His mercy, that He 
would turn His wrath from this people, and call them to re- 
pentance. And . . . the cart was driven away. 

Such was the witnessing of four friends of God and of one 
another, on the thirtieth day of May, 1582. It is the best 
possible illustration of the feeling of every Catholic in the 
land except a very few poor addle-headed and unimportant ex- 
tremists. Sweeter behavior than that of these seminary priests 
done to death in their prime on that spring morning, was never 
seen oa a scaffold : for bravery and steadfastness, for a certain 



1908.] AND THEIR ALLEGIANCE 587 

deliberate courtesy in the teeth of horrible circumstance, a 
courtesy which is perfectly epic, almost too beautiful to be 
true, they hold the palm against the heroes of the Tyrol and 
the Vendee, against Lucas and Lisle at Colchester, or the Ja- 
cobite lords of the '45. Yet what non Catholic schoolboy has 
ever heard of them? 

Observe how these men, like all their fellows, and as a 
matter of course, harked back at the bar and on the scaffold 
to their long spiritual ancestry. Hear Campion, the splendid 
spokesman, on a November afternoon in Westminster Hall, the 
moment after the prejudged verdict of Guilty had been given. 

The only thing that we have now to say is, that if our reli- 
gion do make us traitors, we are worthy to be condemned ! 
but otherwise we are, and have been, as true subjects as ever 
the Queen had. In condemning us you condemn all your 
own ancestors, all the ancient priests, Bishops, and Kings, all 
that was once the glory of England, the island of saints, and 
the most devoted child of the See of Peter. For what have 
we taught (however you may qualify it with the odious name 
of treason), that they did not uniformly teach ? To be con- 
demned with these old lights, not of England only, but of the 
world, by their degenerate descendants, is both gladness and 
glory to us. God lives. Posterity will live. Their judg- 
ment is not so liable to corruption as that of those who are 
now going to sentence us to death. 

The train of thought here is entirely typical of the Eliza- 
bethan Catholics, whereas the whole attitude of their perse- 
cutors was that of men mad with fury that an Englishman 
should dare connect himself either with the world at large, 
or with his country's own abjured yesterday. Small affection 
for " continuity " do we find in old days, except among the 
11 Romans." (" How do you mean, a ' Roman ' ? " said the martyr 
Franciscan, Arthur Bell, in 1643: "I am an Englishman! There 
is but one Catholic Church : of that I am a member.") Only 
the hunted Papists then claimed a chartered descent from the 
Middle Ages, to which no other body so much as dreamed of 
setting up a rival claim. 



588 ELIZABETHAN CATHOLICS [Aug, 

IV. 

The first statutes against the saying or hearing of Mass are 
dated 1559, the second of Elizabeth. Everything hinged on 
that : to quote the most famous phrase in all Mr. Birrell's far- 
seeing witty pages, " it was the Mass that mattered." Yet one 
cannot fail to be struck by the fact that all through the reign, 
in the arrests, arraignments, mock- trials, and executions, and 
even in the apostacies and reprieves, we hear comparatively 
little of the Mass, as compared with the Pope. The latter 
loomed large in the eyes of the materialistic statesmen and the 
time-serving Puritan clergy who were constraining the people. 
Hatred, like love, is a born personifier. It was easier to attack 
by name the concrete figurehead of the Church Militant, than 
to argue over its one great mystical function. Yet every stu- 
dent knows that the true storm- center was the Mass: that the 
word, as noun or adjective, stood as the target for all the con- 
tumely of all the reformers. Cecil, Bacon, and Walsirgham 
felt that it must be thoroughly gagged and smothered. It was 
the key of the whole situation. Until belief in the sacrificial 
idea and devotion to it were killed, or permanently alienated, 
nothing could be done towards the remodelling of the realm. 
The shortest cut to the desired object was to drive the realm 
to forswear the Mass-nurturing Petrine succession to which, for 
a thousand years, England had been uniquely loyal. The only 
way effectually to prevent Mass, was to cut off the priesthood 
at the hierarchic fountain head. Nothing can be clearer than 
that the doctrine and honor of the Blessed Eucharist and the 
protective jurisdiction of the Holy See must indeed have been 
well linked together in the minds of those who first struck at 
one through the other. No more ordinations of Englishmen 
according to the ancient rite, meant no more " blasphemous 
fables and dangerous deceits.*' To find so much as a stole or 
paten in a man's possession was enough whereby to impeach 
him as a " Mass priest," therefore a traitor. Nevertheless, 
what would he have dinned into him, night and day, until he 
happily went "to where beyond these voices there is peace"? 
Was it the Mass ? Not at all : it was the Pope, " that man 
of Rome." 

Mr. Simpson, Campion's learned and brilliant biographer, a 
Catholic who had anything but a Papalistic bias, says: 



1908.] AND THEIR ALLEGIANCE 589 

In the midst of the blind passions of the moment it ap- 
peared necessary to force men to renounce the Mass, in order 
to demonstrate to the Pope how little authority he had over 
the succession of the English crown ; and the establishment 
of heresy by civil violence seemed the natural answer to the 
attempt to control the civil succession to the crown by eccle- 
siastical power. 

Mr. Simpson's point of view is that the meddling, of the 
Roman Curia forced the formation of the Penal Laws. This is 
to day a quite untenable position, whether we regard recently 
published documentary evidence, or study the Queen's own com- 
plex character. From her very coronation day, she showed an 
antipathy to the Mass which her royal father, in his will, had 
most solemnly charged upon his heirs to have offered for his 
soul's repose "forever." Under her personal warrant, and pro- 
gressively by the statutes, it became " treason " to say Mass, 
however privately (save only in the ambassadorial chapels in 
London, where it had to be winked at) ; " treason " also to as- 
sist at it; "treason" to harbor or befriend a priest ; "treason" 
to go abroad to study or be ordained; and "treason" to re- 
turn to one's fatherland to exercise priestly functions; and for 
these various " treasons " generations, chiefly of the gentle class, 
suffered either quick death on the gallows, or slow death in the 
dungeon ! For very shame's sake, as the " Mass- priests," with 
their lay sympathizers, men and women, came by pairs and by 
scores before the magistrates, to be fined, imprisoned, racked, 
and murdered, political offences were trumped up against them. 
But State Papers are in print nowadays ; we have only to glance 
at them to get at the truth of history. " If you are a priest," 
said Walsingham himself in 1589, near the end of his harsh 
life, to the martyr George Nichols of Oxford, " you are of a 
certainty a traitor." " Your reconciling was by a Romish prit-st, 
and therefore treason," said Justice Gandy, a kind man, to Mr. 
John Rigby, a Lancashire gentleman hanged in 1600. "In your 
Catholicism ail treason is contained ! " was shouted at Campion, 
twenty years earlier. Nothing could be more satisfactory than 
this continuous plain-speaking. So much of it has at all times 
stared a reader in the face, that the failure of historians to 
take account of it in the past becomes one of the curiosities 
of literature: or of logic! 



590 ELIZABETHAN CATHOLICS [Aug., 

V. 

Certain queries must often have darted into the minds of 
impartial persons with no odium theologicum : 

Where were the "Catholic-minded" Anglicans? Is not 
freedom from State interference their own ideal ? Do they 
not believe in the Holy Sacrifice of the Altar? Were they 
not then, as they are now, in practically the same doctrinal 
boat ? Was it not for principles dear to others beside them- 
selves that the English ' ' Romans " were swung in felons' hal- 
ters, or cast to rot in noisome holes ? Then why did not the 
High-Church party give trouble too, and either protect the 
allied spirits from harm, or perish with them for the same 
cause ? 

Such queries are natural, and not blameworthy. The only 
fault to find with them is that they have not a leg to stand 
upon: no premise, in fact. The High- Church party neither 
helped us nor harmed us, because there was no High- Church 
party ! That is the Catholic tradition, and that is the historical 
fact. 

One may hold as much, and yet be very far from regard- 
ing the great modern Oxford Movement as an up-bubbling of 
something new and underived. High Anglicanism, in a re- 
stricted sense, has been all along in touch with the pre-Re- 
formation remnant in England : in sub-conscious emotional touch, 
as it were, though never in intellectual touch. Has the theory 
ever been broached that its followers are really " overlooked " 
Catholics, Catholics in a state of orphanage, Catholics who are 
moral somnambulists ? It is wronging all the laws of spiritual 
ethnology to lump them, as some among us are still prone to 
do, with Protestants pure and simple. May they not have had 
a far more pathetic origin ? For how few welcomed of their 
own accord that great religious upheaval, long ago ? How many 
(as becomes more and more evident as researches go forward) 
only ceded to terrible pressure, and with chattering teeth ? 
Submitting to the Tudor changes in anything but a hearty way, 
how inevitably must these have taken in and along with them 
their disintegrating faith, like hillside soil carried by a stream ? 
And that sentiment or sediment has meant a great deal, every 






1908.] AND THEIR ALLEGIANCE 591 

now and then, to the history of the country. It lay wholly 
submerged in the days of Elizabeth, as in the days of Anne; 
yet in between, a hidden volcanic action had lifted it high in 
the days of the first Charles; and after a long, dreary subsid- 
ence it rose again, and began to form wonderful islands and 
archipelagoes, before the accession of Victoria. 

As the typical Roman Catholic in England comes from the 
Elizabethan who held out, paid the fines, lost all, and saw his 
sons cut off from education, property, profession, and public 
service ; as the typical Evangelical comes from the Elizabethan 
who eagerly hugged every foreign heresy, and throve on the 
fat of the land without one scrupulous afterthought ; so the 
typical High-Churchman is a soul-descendant of that Elizabeth- 
an, the forgotten third brother, who conformed, heartsick, to 
the Oath of Supremacy and the Act of Uniformity. The Eng- 
lish Church Union is full at this moment of " veray parfit gen- 
til " Catholics, who lack nothing, so to speak, but the every- 
thing which their lost occidentation is, before God and man. 
Mr. Kensit would be rapturously recognized at sight by Arch- 
bishop Grindal, the whole Privy Council of 1570-80, and all 
other paladins of the " received Religion." As for Lord Hali- 
fax, he would be, if not precisely recognized, yet looked at very 
hard indeed by some lean lay Papist squinting from his slit of 
window in the Marshalsea or the Fleet, or by some aging prel- 
ate of the steadfast superseded hierarchy, pacing out his sad 
life under the trees of the stranger. There is in the Three 
Kingdoms to-day (excluding Nonconformists), a triple ecclesi- 
astical succession, to those who have eyes to see. There is the 
mind that never has changed ; the mind which changed once, 
and has stayed changed; and the mind which has never yet 
quite known what happened to it. It has spent its lifetime 
hunting, as it were, for the baptismal certificate which shall 
prove it the stepmother Church's one true offspring. Its faith, 
centuries ago, was vicariously renounced for it, yet not so much 
renounced as drugged and put to sleep. From it the true Mother 
was driven by brute force. When " a robbed people," as Car- 
dinal Manning called his countrymen, stirs now, and cries, and 
would be comforted, a strange woman, whom statesmen lead 
to the cradle-side, claims it and calls it hers. Each awakening 
High Anglican consciousness is the child of the Church Uni- 
versal founded by Christ and built on Peter till He comes 



592 ELIZABETHAN CATHOLICS [Aug., 

again : not always does it find out that great fact, and by grace 
break away from the arms of a Church by Law Established ! 

But enough of metaphor and allegory. A critical study of 
the Catholic post* Reformation martyrs for a hundred odd years, 
from Storey and Mayne to Stafford and Plunket, is better than 
a folio of controversy to make certain confused issues plain. 
Our dear friends in the other camp might do well to ponder 
that master argument which the " English martyrs " are. To 
understand what they stood for, and why they died, is to un- 
derstand a great deal of spiritual heraldry and genealogy. Our 
own attitude is a proud " non-juring " one. We may regret, 
but cannot disclaim, that to us High Anglicanism is at best a 
holy human instinct, not a divine magisterium : a homesickness, 
in short, but not even the shadow of a church. Devoted men 
bred in it are to day pleading for Christian Unity, and for rec- 
ognition of the full spiritual rights of the Apostolic See; their 
action is in itself the late beginnings of a perfect answer to 
many a prayer at Tyburn Tree. "Their reward is with them, 
and their work is before them." 

VI. 

That for nearly eighty years, despite their unique record, 
the best clergy in the Church of England, and in the Episcopal 
Church of America, have been decried as unfaithful to their 
religious trust, and have yet to fight out that not unexpected 
indictment as best they can, reminds us, by a contrary appli- 
cation, of what we have had to undergo ourselves ; for not only 
in one country or age have Catholics been accused of being 
unfaithful to the State. Posterity, however, has a way of clear 
ing them by unanimous verdict, clearing them completely and 
triumphantly. The national instance we have been considering 
is only one of many, though an extraordinarily interesting one. 
Had there been any practical psychology in the England of the 
later sixteenth century, the behavior of the Catholics, even in 
the first general crisis of 1588, must have been foreseen all 
along. As it turned out, that splendid, orderly, and reasoned 
display of allegiance was wasted, so far as appreciation of it was 
concerned : and the hangings and quarterings went merrily on 
after the Armada, even as they went on, with hardly dwindled 
ferocity and to the King's disgust, after the Restoration. The 
Protestant mind under Elizabeth was incapable of<, a judicial 



i9o8.] AND THEIR ALLEGIANCE 593 

forecast; it studied nothing, gave no leeway, and above all, 
never listened. To say a thing loud and long, and to say it 
over and over, was to establish it as proven. This lovely char- 
acteristic of accusing, and then of incessantly re- accusing, by 
way of convicting, may be seen to finest advantage in the trial 
of the Jesuit Proto-martyr already often mentioned, the Blessed 
Edmund Campion. A more abominable " trial " was never 
known : as Hallam, Gairdner, and Canon Dixon have said in 
somewhat more judicial language. By a wildest swoop of the 
contemporary imagination, that politics- hating Oxford scholar, 
that exclusively spiritual soldier of Christ, was charged with 
"treason," charged with it as an afterthought, when he had 
already been caught, imprisoned, and racked. Of course not a 
scrap of verification could stick to such a burlesque charge, 
pushed forward at every angle, as it was, for several months. 
Yet at the final moment, when he was on the scaffold, a school- 
master, a sudden coryphaeus, stepped forth to read a proclama- 
tion before the too sympathetic crowd, that " these men " (that 
is, Campion himself, plus that boyish, straightforward person, 
Blessed Ralph Sherwin, and the angel of innocence and con- 
stancy, Blessed Alexander Briant) " do perish not for religion, 
but for treason." It is all immensely farcical over three cen- 
turies afterwards! and highly instructive. Yet think of what 
Campion's recent official disclaimer had been, borne out by his 
whole conduct and temper from first to last, as well as by every 
exterior circumstance. 

I acknowledged her Highness not only as my Queen, but as 
my most lawful governess. ... I acknowledged her 
Majesty both facto etjure. . . . I confessed an obedience 
due to the Crown as to my temporal head and primate. This 
I said then : so I say now. If then I failed in aught, I am 
now ready to supply it. What would you more ? I will will- 
ingly pay to her Majesty what is hers, yet I must pay to God 
what is His. 

A man like this was the very man for the Council to keep 
alive, if necessary, by artificial respiration. With such a sense 
of balance, of proportion, of interrelationship, he would have 
proved, even in the most secluded life which he could have cho- 
sen, a very cornerstone and pillar of the shaken State : a guar- 
VOL. LXXXVII. 38 



594 ELIZABETHAN CATHOLICS [Aug. 

antee in himself of all that Christian citizenship craves as its 
ideal. Well, there were thousands of men and women like this, 
and they were swept pell-mell into the royal dust- heap. Their 
crime was, at bottom, that they understood too well the full 
philosophy of their loyalty, and dared to hold it not only as a 
conviction, but as a passion. 

It can surprise no serious student of human nature that a 
feeble percentage of the religious body to which they belonged 
sank into criminal conspiracies. Of true Catholics who had been 
told, for years on years, that they were outlawed and vile, some 
here and there rose to the occasion at last: they became out- 
lawed and vile. Agonizing under the Penal Laws, men turned 
desperate, and jabbed in the dark at the forces which were 
breaking their brains and hearts. A feeble percentage they 
were at any time : but the real wonder is that every Recusant 
in the land did not follow their unhappy, though inconspicu- 
ous example! Babington, Throckmorton, and Guy Fawkes too 
who is not sorry for them and for such as they ? Who with 
any sort of comprehension of those bullying, hypocritical, hell- 
black years of the later English Reformation would not extend 
to them all the hand-clasp of forgiveness, and (what is surely 
more to them !) the wink of perfect human understanding ? 




WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS. 

BY H. E. P. 

IV. 
THE OLD MANOR HOUSE. 

[HE posts at the entrance gate and the steps up to 
them are the smartest things about the manor 
house now. It has stood since the Doomsday 
survey and so perhaps it is time it was worn 
out, and there was probably a house there be- 
fore. Like many of the old houses hereabouts, the native 
growing rock has been welded into the foundations, and runs 
high up in one place, nearly to the base of a window. The 
windows, like the house, have fallen on evil times. The old 
frames are of cut stone of the delightful Somerset pattern, so 
common, even in houses of much less pretension than this one. 
Square and solid, with simple moldings which suggest strength, 
the stone mullions hold glass perhaps nearly as old as them- 
selves. The glass is tied together with the usual lead lattice, 
and over one window hangs a pink monthly-rose, which is rarely 
out of bloom, pass when you will. The old place is made in- 
to a pair of cottages now, for nobody wanted to live there, 
and the successful proprietor of the village shop bought it 
cheap, and cut it up to hold a couple of his customers. The 
roof is made of slabs of gray stone, a local stone which ages 
ago deft hands split into a substitute for slates. The rough 
surface of the stone makes a foothold for a velvet moss which 
spreads nearly across the gray roof ; and yellow stonecrop, 
stunted for want of a fuller nourishment, gilds the edges'ot the 
slabs where they project above the green. An ash sapling has 
rooted itself higher up, and leans for support against one of 
the old chimneys. The top of the chimney is made into a 
crown much as you build a well with playing-cards, by set- 
ting some of the roofing slabs on edge and the light peeps 
through at every corner. Just where the roots of the sapling 



596 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [Aug., 

have forced the roof-slabs apart, a pair of starlings are going 
in and out; and even from the road I can hear the squealing 
of the family inside when the great fat grubs are carried in. 

Down on the ground, that which was evidently once the 
lawn, has given place to a trim cabbage plantation, and the 
cabbages have ousted the flowers until they only hold to a 
strip on one side. Winter-ivy, as compact as a pincushion, 
sea-thrift dotted about among the stone edging, and holding 
up its pink flowers as gaily as if it were really at the sea- 
side, a red and white daisy here and there these and a big 
hydrangea, are all that are left of what was once as sunny and 
scented a garden as ever clustered round a sun-dial. "Flowers 
won't feed children," one of the tenants tells me, when I re- 
mark on their fewness, and the "green-stuff will last we all the 
winter." 

I wander on past the old manor house, and as I leave it 
behind I wonder why all the light has gone out of it, and 
why, now that it is bowed down in its old age, it is treated 
with such contempt by a class of people its thick walls were 
never meant to harbor. 

I cannot believe in the libel. Yet the villagers stick to it 
and the fact remains that no one would ever take the house, 
or if they took it, would stay there long. I can fancy the old 
place groaning to itself now that it has fallen so low in its last 
days. It remembers a time in the fourth Edward's reign, when 
its tenant lord of the manor and a man who evidently felt the 
weight of all that lordship meant petitioned the king for the 
right to erect a gallows at his own front door. He probably 
set up the fatal post between the two elms opposite; but whom 
he could have found to hang, or why he should want to hang 
any one, when there were so few in these parts, it puzzles the 
old house to think. 

And then, too, the house has a neighbor a neighbor that 
has lived beside it for years and years, and with whom it has 
always been the best of friends. They are separated only by 
a low stone wall, and a great yew tree half hides and half 
frames this next door friend. Centuries upon centuries has the 
parish church stood but a stone's throw from the manor house, 
and the manor has heard and seen all that has passed in and 
about it during these long ages. 

It looked on when the Norman Conqueror's followers laid 



i9o8.] WEST- COUNTRY IDYLLS 597 

the foundation stone, and sheltered and fed on that happy day 
all who took part in that great affair. 

It saw the building's birth. It watched it grow up stone by 
stone; saw the roof put on with similar gray slabs to its own; 
heard the hallowing, for the sound of the prayers could reach, 
so short is the distance. Then the bells from the tower rang 
out, one of which had a prayer to our Lady in letters on its 
lip, and one a prayer to St. Andrew, the patron of the diocese ; 
and as the old manor heard them ring for the first time, it re- 
sponded to the sound with a glad vibration. And so age by 
age, as they lived side by side, the sweet murmur of the Mass 
stole across the low wall, and at these times the old house 
seemed to wait almost impatiently for the bell which made it 
tremble. 

And then one June morning there was a crowd in the road, 
and it spread from the church gate, till the end of it reached 
the front of the old house. And it heard the bell stop but 
that day not a soul in the crowd moved to go through the 
gate or down the little path towards the church door. There 
were angry words in that crowd, and as well as the old place 
could understand, there was a new service to begin that day, 
and the holy murmur of the Mass was never to come across 
the low wall any more. The bell that made it vibrate and 
tremble, when the priest held high above his head the Lord of 
all things, was never to ring again it heard the people in the 
road say so. The old manor house felt very desolate. They 
had known each other so long a thousand years and more 
and now, and now 

On the end of the manor house which looks out over the 
churchyard, are three windows. They are all closed stoned 
up with square gray stones and mortar. Was it that, when 
the change came, it was too much for the old place, and it 
closed its eyes, as it were, rather than see its friend any more, 
after it had fallen so low ? 

After all the great days through which the manor house 
had lived, it was a shame to take away its character in its de- 
fenceless old age. It had never done any one any harm and 
it had been the glory of the village for ages, and yet they did 
it. It was no strangers who first said the place was haunted, 
for it was the people of the village, and they thought perhaps 
that they had some grounds for their opinion. 



598 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [Aug., 

The last occupant of the manor house had died somewhat 
too suddenly for the taste of the neighborhood. There is a 
great deal of gossip to be got out of a death " how he do 
look," whether the "carpse" is laid out according to correct 
rules, whether such and such a one will come for the funeral, 
how much the coffin is to cost, and what quantity of black stuff 
they mean to buy, and so forth. But if a person dies suddenly, 
there is no time for these pleasant speculations, and the neigh- 
bors feel they have been done out of their rights. When, ad- 
ded to this, the person who dies is almost a stranger, as was 
the tenant in question, there is an idea abroad that the whole 
business is thoroughly shabby. But the haunting of the old 
house did not rest altogether on the sudden death of the stran- 
ger it had a deeper foundation than that. 

After the death I have just mentioned, the owner of the 
manor house, who lived miles away from here, employed an old 
woman, whose cottage was just opposite, to take charge of the 
key and to open the windows daily. It was a Sunday morn- 
ing and all the folk were at church, or in bed. Mrs. Court, 
the lady in charge, was superintending the Sunday dinner, and 
somewhat anticipating what she would have to drink at the 
meal, for she found a difficulty in holding out without tempo- 
rary support. 

Suddenly she heard sounds coming from the manor house 
across the way, which filled her with alarm. Further recourse 
was had to anticipation, and then as many of the neighbors as 
lived within her immediate circle were quickly summoned by her 
cries. Mrs. Court, supported by a neighbor on each side, stood 
in the road. Every time the strange noise began again she 
screamed faintly, and threw her apron over her head, protest- 
ing " that as all the doors was locked, and she held the very 
kay in her hand, it must be ghost es as was doing it." The 
other ladies, one and all agreed the evidence was overwhelm- 
ing haunted the house was, and haunted the poor old house 
has ever been until this day. 

Where the banks reach high above your head, and are furry 
with harts-tongue ferns from the roadway to the roots of the 
hedge up aloft, a lane ends abruptly in a gate. My wander- 
ing has brought me this far, and I lean upon the gate, partly 
because I am not sure I want to go any further, partly be- 
cause it won't open easily, and I am too lazy to climb over 



1908.] 



WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS 



599 



it. Away in the field beyond is a man pulling up the posts 
that were round the hay-maw, as they call a hay- stack in these 
parts, and man, cart, and posts all come in my direction to go 
through the gate. 

" Marning, Father," is the greeting, which I return in the 
same tone^ and as near as I can get to the original vowel, but 
it is not easy. 

"You be arlways a-taking we arf," he says laughing; and 
adds: " I've been a- getting the post es from the maw, they be 
no good there no longer, as he be garn." There is the curi- 
ous rising inflection on the last word, so characteristic of the 
west country, and it suggests that the true native sings rather 
than talks. 

" I've had my head full of the old manor house, Will, as 
I've been coming down here, and it's strange I should meet 
you. The other day I asked your Tom to tell me about the 
ghost, but he wouldn't, and told me to ask you, as you knew 
the story better." 

The man leant back against the shaft of his cart and filled 
his pipe. I sat on the gate. 

" It was a Sunday marning, you see, Father, and me and 
Tom had been to early Mass. After breakfast I says to Tom : 
' Let's go down to Lucombe and see for a rabbit.' Tom's on for 
it, and we picks up two more chaps, such nothers as we, and 
arf we goes. * How be gwoin' to get the rabbits, when we gets 
there ? ' says Charlie Dark, ' we ain't got no furts ' [ferrets], 
' Let's wire 'um,' says Tom. You see, Father, we was only 
youngsters and didn't know much about it ; and so long as we 
had a lark, we didn't care much what come, neither. ' We 
ain't got no wires,' says I ; and then Tom, he looks up and 
says: 'I know for a plenty of wire, but it wants gettin',' and 
with that he tells us his little game. Well, Father, we goes 
round to the back of the old manor house you mind [remem- 
ber] there's walls all round and you can't be seed from no- 
where and there's a little window, a tinny 'un, close down on 
the ground, that lights the cellar. We opened him as easy as 
mabbe, and then we crumps ourselves up small, and gets through 
into the cellar. We goes upstairs and it was dark, fur bein* 
Sunday, the old 'oman as kep' the kay hadn't opened the shut- 
ters. Tom he struck a match and says: 'There be the rabbet 
wires, chaps, up there,' pointin' to the bell wires that runned 



600 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [Aug., 

close up by the ceilin'; 'but I told you they'd take some get- 
tin'.' 

"It was no good at arl, and we seed we couldn't reach they 
nohow. Then he says: 'Let's go upstairs and see if they be 
up there too, mabbe they be more handy.' 

" In a little room a top of the house, was just what we 
wanted, and the wires only wanted pullin' down. Tom he goes 
to the end of the wire, and he out wi' his knife, and begins 
cuttin' and pullin'. It takes a goodish time, for he hasn't got 
the right tool. Presently Tom say to I : ' Go, Bill, and look 
out of that there stair winder, and see no one's about, mabbe 
Mrs. Court 'ull come to ondo the shutters, and it won't do for 
we to be catched at this game.' So I goes down, and I hadn't 
a been there two minutes, afore I sees Granny Court puttin* 
her head out of her door and hollerin' as if the chimbley was 
a-fire. Nex' door neighbor looks out, then they up above, and 
in five minits there was half-a dozen of 'um a-standing in the 
road and a-lookin' up at the winders. Granny Court, she were 
sort of held up by a couple of 'um, and every onct and then 
she chucks up her arms and hollers; and when she do, all the 
rest does, you never heard such a charm [noise] in your life. 
Soon as I sees them a-lookin f up, I slips back to the chaps to 
tell 'um what's happenin'. Tom was ondoing the last staple, 
and wouldn't come away till he had got the lot, but us three 
gets down as quick as we can. Soon as ever we opens the 
door at the bottom of the stairs you mind, Father, there was 
a door there afore they was made cottages we hears a bell 
in the kitchen ringin' like mad. ' It be Tom pullin' the wire,' 
says Charlie, and sure enough it were. Every time he pulls 
the wire, arf goes the bell, and arl they women outside sets up 
a screech together. I wur up dree [three] steps to call him 
down, when I hears him a-comin'. 

" We was down in that cellar, and out of the little winder 
and over the wall into the churchyard, without waitin' much, I 
can tell you. Then we slips over into Farmer John's paddock, 
and comes round into the road, and sort of walks up slow like, 
to the women in the road, wi' our hands in our pockets (and 
the wires in Tom's), just as if we didn't know nothin' about 
anythin'. 

" Tom asks 'um what it's all about. Granny Court shows 
him the door kay and says nothin' I think her feelin's was 



1908.] WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS 601 

too much. Some of the others says as how the ghost es are 
ringin' the bells, and they've been seen movin' about inside, 
and the house locked up arl the time. Tom, he looks up and 
asks Granny Court if she won't go in and look for the ghost es, 
but she says summat about not openin' shutters o' Sundays. 
Then Tom, he says he's not afraid of any ghost es as ever 
walked, and if she'll give he the kay, he'll go and look for 
they. With that he gets the kay and he and me goes together 
and opens the door, and in we goes. 'Thou get to the cellar, 
Bill,' he says, ' and do up the winder, so they shan't know he's 
been opened, and I'll put it a bit straighter up above.' 

" So we does both jobs and then we goes to the kitchen. 
The old blind-roller was in the earner. 'Bill,' says Tom, 'get 
ready to run and look scared ' ; and wi' that, he up and hits 
arl the bells at onct with that there blind roller, and chucks 
'um back again, and we both runs out of the house as if the 
' old gentleman ' was after we. Tom tells 'um as how we went 
arl over the place into every room and never saw no ghost es, 
but just as we passed the kitchen door, which stood wide open, 
we saw arl the bells ring together and nobody in the house to 
pull 'um, so it must be ghost es. 

" I tell you we kep' that story gwoin' till we found we was 
safe, and it never got out, not till after we was grow'd up. 
The rabbets down to Lucombe had their Sunday to theirselves, 
after arl, for church was out, and it was nigh dinner time afore 
them ghost es was laid. Now you know it arl, Father, and so 
good-marnin'." 

The sun is streaming down on the gray stones of the old 
manor house as I pass it coming back. Poor old place ! And 
so it was only a boyish prank that took away your character 
nothing worse than that. I think to myself, a little sadly 
perhaps, as I gaze at the mossy walls, that its life at the end, 
is like lives so often are, when they have outlived their day 
and usefulness, and no one wants them any longer. The un- 
pitying humiliations of old age are upon it a few more years, 
and it will be but a memory, a tale. 




ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN, 

AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY* 
BY FRANCIS AVELING, D.D. 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

?S the weeks passed, with their tale of shortening 
days, the University of Paris settled down to a 
state of comparative tranquility and peacefulness. 
The friars had gone. The doctors had followed 
on their tracks. The decretists were at their 
daily work of legal jargon, the sententiarii busy in disputation, 
the biblici wrestling with the tangles of interpretation and com- 
ment. But for a few of the more violent partisans in the 
schools a knot gathered here and there at a street corner, a 
handful warming to their grievances over the wine in some tav- 
ern the University had been transformed into an uneventful 
and even stagnant place of learning, where the student was too 
busy with his books to give thought to the vital issues that 
were being fought out elsewhere. 

Below the surface, of course, there were the latent fires and 
volcanic forces, the prejudices and- passions of a divided com- 
munity. But for the moment, in the schools at any rate, there 
was a truce. The highest authority in the world had been in- 
voked as the arbiter of their dispute; and sinking the bitter- 
ness of party and faction, the University pursued with an un- 
wonted calm and strenuousness the even tenor of a studious 
life. 

Not so Arnoul de Valletort. He had plunged himself into 
the old routine with an ardor that was not altogether due to 
his love of study. But he found it easier to make promises 
than to keep them, and far less difficult to drift with the stream 
of forming habits than to swim against it. The scriptorium of 
St. Victor's saw him busy with his book and pen while the 

* Copyright in United States, Great Britain, and Ireland. The Missionary Society of St. 
Paul the Apostle in the State of New York. 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 603 

dawn was yet gray in the leaden sky. He was among the last 
to lay aside his delicate and rather cramped scroll when, the 
signal was given for the nightly repose. But work in itself 
was not enough. The very keenness with which he had set 
himself at his tasks soon nauseated him ; and the demons of 
imagination and of memory were not slothful. While the em- 
bers that smoldered beneath the placid surface of University 
life were held in check by the very uncertainty of the appeals 
made to Rome, the fires in Arnoul's breast glowed with a fierce 
vigor that work alone was powerless to subdue, and burst into 
sudden eruptions that appalled him by their very violence. 
So he had recourse, as was natural in an age of unquestioning 
mysticism, to prayer ; and day after day saw him prostrate be- 
fore the altar of St. James, battling, in his dogged and stub- 
born way, with himself. It was St. James', rather than a church 
richer in name and in holy relics, for was not the presence of 
Thomas of Aquin, his counselor and preserver, associated with 
the sacred place in which his reconciliation was completed ? 
Sometimes, indeed, it was to the great cathedral that he turned 
his steps, where, in the vast spaces of the noble pile, the ca- 
dences of the canons' monotonous chant soothed his troubled 
spirit into a sort of lethargy that brought him peace. 

But there were times when his whole being seemed to give 
way under the stress of his temptations. At such times the 
ponderous tomes of the Lombard were but fuel to the consum- 
ing fire. His companions of St. Victor's were an unendurable 
scourge, Roger was as impossible as he was stupid and unsym- 
pathetic, and he himself was a straw the vain sport of winds 
that tossed him hither and thither, powerless even to direct his 
headlong course. Then he hastened, casting aside whatever oc- 
cupation he was at, to the sanctuary, trusting, in an age of 
miracles, to a miracle, throwing himself sublimely upon the su- 
preme power of prayer. 

By such a course he tended to cut himself off, in a sense, 
from his fellow-students. He became introspective and singu- 
lar, living much with his sorrow and his thoughts of Sibilla. 
But for an incident that scarred his soul to the quick, he would 
quite possibly have ended in becoming the prey to a kind of 
spiritual desolation that is not far removed from religious mel- 
ancholy. 

It came about in this wise. 



604 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Aug., 

The soul of Maitre Barthelemy was possessed of but one idea 
to discover the elixir of life, to hit upon the philosopher's 
stone, or, at least, to find some means, philosophical or other- 
wise, of making money. And because of this absorbing pre- 
occupation the astrologist compounded his elements and la- 
bored at the bellows with an ardor worthy of a better cause. 
Since his return to Paris he had worked continuously at his ex- 
periments in the ruinous stone hut standing lonely in the fields 
back of the Chateau de Vauvert. But success evaded all his 
efforts, and no trace of the yellow metal that he coveted was 
to be discovered in the bottom of his crucibles. He cast about, 
therefore, in his mind for some other plan of filling his empty 
purse, and hit upon Arnoul. Not that the English student 
had any means of his own that Barthelemy could get possession 
of. He was as poor as the poorest of the clerks who carried 
holy water from door to door through the city for a livelihood. 
But since Arnoul had dropped out of the little set that used 
to foregather at Messire Julien's wine house, a scheme had been 
maturing in the alchemist's astute brain. Briefly it was this: 

Arnoul's brother had come to a violent death at the hand 
of the Lord of Moreleigh a man reputed of immense wealth. 
Maitre Barthelemy had means of finding out things when it 
suited him. This same Vipont, Lord of Moreleigh, had gone 
on a pilgrimage of penitence to the Pope. What more easy, 
what more natural, than that in his repentance he should pay 
a handsome sum of blood money to the surviving brother ? 
He would doubtless pass through Paris on his way back from 
Rome ; and if his conscience did not prompt him to make 
amends to Arnoul for his unspeakable crime, why, there were 
other ways in which he might be forced to do so. Every one 
knew the character of the mercenary cut-throats who could be 
found without much trouble in or near Paris. In any case 
Arnoul himself must be secured without delay, and gradually 
initiated into the details of the scheme upon which the alchem- 
ist's fertile brain was busied. 

And what was the bait that was to lure the clerk back to 
the net so artfully prepared? Nothing less than the girl Jean- 
nette. Once married to her, as Barthelemy intended he should 
be, the astrologer would have a hold upon him. 

Maitre Louis, who had proved an apt pupil of the alchem- 
ist, was party to the plan that he had hatched ; and, having 






ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 605 

thrown in his lot with so questionable a mentor, and by this 
time being himself in abject straits for money, he was quite 
ready to assist him in any villainous undertaking that prom- 
ised a fair reward. 

It was he who brought the girl Jeannette to the laboratory. 
The sun was still high in the heavens as they passed the Cha- 
teau de Vauvert, but Jeannette could not repress a shudder as 
she looked upon its ominous and frowning towers. She thought 
of the weird and ghostly rumors of the place that had set all 
Paris a-shivering in superstitious fear. Nor did the cautious 
and stealthy way in which Barthelemy received them set her 
mind altogether at rest. Her terror was increased at the sight 
of the interior of his dwelling, and the strange collection it 
contained. 

The alchemist poured out three glasses of his " liquor of 
gold," expatiating upon its merits. Before long her eyes were 
flashing, her cheeks burning, and a delicious sense of careless 
bravado stole over her. This was better than Julien's sour wine. 
Master and pupil were talking platitudes ; but thoughts flashed 
through her brain in quick succession brilliant, phantasmagoric, 
luminous. She knew that she was there for a purpose. Why 
had Barthelemy wanted her ? Why had Louis brought her 
there ? Her voice broke in upon their even talk. 

" Maitre ! What do you want with me ? You don't bring 
me out from Paris to give me drink Holy Saints, what drink, 
too ! and have me listen to your jawing ? " Her words were 
rough, her voice raised and somewhat coarse; but, to look at 
her, she was no longer Blanches Mains of the tavern, but a 
creature divine, a goddess in form and feature and, what is 
more, a wonderfully beautiful woman. Neither Louis nor Maitre 
Barthelemy could suppress their admiration. 

"No, my dear," answered the latter. "Louis did not bring 
you here to listen to tales of the last vintage. Take another 
drop of the divine cordial, my girl. We shall tell you, to be 
sure. We shall tell you." 

His great head was sawing up and down before her, the 
tufts of hair straggling out of the hood half thrown back upon 
his shoulders ; but there was a look of real affection in his face, 
such as the casual observer would not often find in the linea- 
ments of Maitre Barthelemy. 

The girl raised her glass and quaffed deep of the fiery liquid. 



606 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Aug., 

" And now, Jeannette, it is for your interest that you are 
here," said Barthelemy, noting the flush and heightened breath- 
ing of the girl. She was ready to see that part of his scheme 
which he would have to entrust to her in its rosiest light now. 

" We grieve for you," he continued. 

" Grieve ! " she interrupted, laughing aloud. " And why, 
pray ? " 

"Why ?" replied Barthelemy, not relishing the careless laugh. 
"Why? Because the Englishman, your lover, has deserted 
you/' 

" It's high time for you to find that out ! " She began to 
laugh louder than before. " Englishman Englishmen ! A rot- 
ten fig for all the Englishmen in the University, say I ! What 
do I want with your Englishman ? Ho ! I have a German 
now a great, strapping, handsome fellow with curly yellow 
hair and blue eyes. He can drink more than any man in Paris. 
He can fight, too. You should see him fight ! Then there's 
the Spaniard. He's a dandy ! Wears the most expensive furs 
to his sleeves and has pointed red shoes turned up, too. But 
then, he spends most of his money on dress," she added as an 
afterthought; "so he's not much use. Besides, there's a knight 
" She began counting her admirers on her fingers. " You 
don't know all my friends." 

"No"; Barthelemy acquiesced gravely. "That is true, very 
true. You are so beautiful, my dear. But this Englishman 
this Arnoul he is literally dying of his great love for you. 
Have you no kind word for him ? " 

" Kind words, indeed ! " snapped Blanches Mains, her eyes 
flashing. " Fine kind words I had from him when he cast me 
off and turned friar. Fine, brave words from a sneaking, cant- 
ing fellow ! " 

"But he was distrait. He was bewitched by the tricksters 
at St, James. He did not mean what he said. And, after all, 
Jeannette, you love him still." 

"What if I do?" the girl said sullenly, defiantly. 

" This," answered Barthelemy. " I shall brew a potion that 
will restore him to his right mind, and give him power to throw 
off this monkish enchantment. You love him. He loves you 
or will again as soon as he is in his right mind. Therefore, 
you shall marry him and " 

" Saints and devils ! What would my big German say ? " 






i9o8.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 607 

"It will be all right as far as the German is concerned," 
Louis put in spitefully. " I know him for a blustering fellow 
who is in love with every pretty wench in Paris, both sides of 
the Seine, by turns. One, more or less, will make little differ- 
ence to him." 

" Observe, my dear child " the alchemist spoke in his oili- 
est and most persuasive voice, though there was a thrill in it 
that struck with unusual earnestness "this is in every sense 
desirable. This spell that the friars have cast over the English- 
man and his fruitless love for you are eating out his heart. 
You, too, despite your German and your knights, you are yet 
in love with him ; and we, your truest friends, shall count it 
our highest joy to see your two young hearts united." 

The girl sat bolt upright upon the bench, and for an in- 
stant the color ebbed from her face as the strong emotions 
gripped her heart. Then, like a flash, she grew suspicious. 

"Why do you tell me this?" she asked in a shaking voice. 
"What interest have you in Maitre Arnoul or in me? God's 
saints ! If you are deceiving me, I shall tear your eyes from 
your heads with my own hands ! " 

" A nice reward for doing you a service/' muttered Louis. 

" You will not believe me ? " purred Barthelemy, though 
now an unmistakable note of sadness sounded in his voice. 
"Listen! I shall tell you all. In the first place, the brother 
of this Englishman is dead." 

" Alas ! that is the cause of all my trouble," sighed Jean- 
nette in a gentler voice. 

" Do not interrupt me, I beseech you ! The story is a 
common one. The telling it to you is difficult indeed. This 
brother was murdered by one Vipont, a man who owns half 
the county of Devon, in England. He is now repentant; and, 
to make atonement, purposes giving all, or the great part of 
his riches to this same Arnoul. When you marry him, you 
will be the richest woman in Paris. And you shall marry him. 
I shall undo this witchcraft of the friars, and bring him to 
your side with vows of love. Yes; you shall marry him. And 
I shall be the means of bringing the marriage about." 

"What reason have you or Louis" and she cast a search- 
ing look at the clerk's frowning face " for wishing me to be 
either rich or happy ? I am nothing to you but a chance ac- 
quaintance." 



608 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Aug., 

" Nothing ? " exclaimed Barthelemy, strangely agitated. 
" Nothing ? On the contrary, you are everything. Have you 
forgotten Jacqueline la Mere Dieu ? " 

" My foster-mother? No; I remember her well," answered 
the girl, crossing herself as the dead woman's name was men- 
tioned. 

" Did she ever speak to you of your parents ? " 

" No ; that is, not much. She told me of my mother how 
good she was and how beautiful. But she was not of Paris. 
She died soon after I was born. Of my father nothing. But, 
stay ! I remember her saying how he had to fly from the king- 
dom on account of the doctrines he held. He was a great 
scholar, a heretic, they said a follower of Amaury." 

" He was not a heretic," Barthelemy said solemnly ; "though 
he did profess the doctrines of the great Amaury. Child, I 
am your father ! Nay ; do not start. It was I who left a sum 
of gold with Jacqueline that she should bring you up. Poor 
as I was, and hunted from the University as one accursed, I 
could do that. I found means to provide for my child. Then 
I traveled southwards and afar, gathering the knowledge and 
learning the mysteries of all peoples and nations. The hot 
suns of Egypt have beaten upon my head. I have shivered 
in the snowy passes of Spanish mountains. My feet the shift- 
ing sands of the great desert have blistered. I have gone 
hungry and thirsty and footsore in my eternal search and quest 
of knowledge. Yet, from time to time, a trusty messenger 
brought to old Jacqueline a payment for your upbringing. For 
you, my unknown child, for you ! " 

"You are my father?" Jeannette faltered. 

"I am indeed your father, child. Come to my arms ! The 
love of kith and kin is stronger than the love of gold. Let 
these accursed and outlawed arms fold thee at last to thy un- 
happy father's breast ! " 

The man rose, transfigured, stretching out his hands to the 
dazed girl. She shuddered. 

" If you are indeed my father But how am I to know 
that what you tell me is the truth ? " 

"Oh, child, child! Does your heart not teach you to dis- 
cern it ? Is there no subtle argument from soul to soul, no 
thrill responsive in your very body ? " 

He steadied himself with an affected calmness ; and then, 



I9C8.J ARNOUA THE ENGLISHMAN 609 

modulating his voice to TKS ordinary purr once more, he went 
on : " But, enough ! Have you here your talisman your 
charm ? " 

" What talisman, what charm ? " the girl asked, at the same 
time instinctively thrustiug her hand into the bosom of her 
dress and drawing out a silver disc that hung concealed there, 
suspended from her neck by a light chain of the same metal. 

"Yes; that is it, my daughter! Behold! upon that plate 
of metal is engraved the holy name of God. Around it circle 
the twelve mystic houses of the stars. But the Name lacketh 
its first letter and the house of your birth is untenanted. See!" 
He lifted a similar silver disc, pierced with small circular open- 
ings, before her eyes. " Place this upon the other. Turn the 
plate till the Hebrew characters read fair and straight. The 
Name of God is completed, the house of your nativity receives 
you." 

He paused, standing with outstretched arms, and trembling 
like an aspen, as she did his bidding. 

" On the day of your birth I cast your horoscope before 
I fled Paris. I engraved it upon those two plates of silver, 
giving one to Jacqueline la Mere Dieu, carrying the other all 
these long years safely hidden in my breast. I am indeed 
your father ! Behold the proof of it ! " 

"Yes, Jeannette"; said Louis to the wondering girl, "Maitre 
Bartelemy is your father. There is no doubt of it." 

"And you you knew this?" The girl turned to him ques- 
tioningly. "You knew it and never told me of it? And you, 
father if you indeed be my father why have you not spoken 
before ? Why have you treated me as a stranger would ? Surely 
you knew me when you came to Paris months ago?" 

"My child," replied Barthelemy, "I knew you yes; and 
my heart yearned towards you. But my liberty my very life 
was at stake. Let me plead this, at least, if I have wronged 
you ! There are those in Paris who remember me of old by a 
name a famous name, a name that all Paris rang with once 
but who would without pity drive me forth again, or give my 
aging limbs to the torture yea, my body to the flame did 
they but recognize me. Had it been known, even to one or 
two," he continued sadly, " that a father had appeared claim- 
ing Jeannette as his daughter, the ferrets of the University would 
have found it out, and I " He made a gesture eloquent of 
VOL. LXXXVII 39 



6io ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Aug., 

what might have happened had he fallen into their power. " As 
it is," he continued, " I am only one more wanderer drifted 
into this cess- pool of human lives, a newcomer hungry for the 
broken crumbs of learning. None of my old enemies would 
recognize in these changed features him whom they branded 
'heretic' and 'wizard.' This brow" he passed his handover 
the huge expanse of shining baldness "was once crowned with 
raven locks. These arms were strong and shapely when I fled 
from the accursed theologians who hounded me from the schools. 
Now, my back is bent with weariness and with age, my face is 
scored and lined like a palimpsest. I tremble with the palsy; my 
very speech is tainted with the sound of foreign lands. Do I 
but remain Maitre Barthelemy, the outcast, the unknown, the 
inquirer of nature's secrets, I am safe. No one, friend o.r foe, 
will recognize in this broken form the young and brilliant schol- 
ar who, nigh twenty years ago, began his enforced wanderings." 

The girl was impressed by the pathos of his voice and words. 
The silver talismans confirmed his story. Under the coarser 
surface of her nature there was a something fine and noble that 
was responsive to the evident touch of truth and earnestness in 
the alchemist's broken words. She began to waver. 

"But if all you say is true, why do you tell me now?" 

" Ah ! a natural question ! Because now I can trust to your 
secrecy. Because I wish you to marry this Englishman, for 
whom I have conceived a great affection. You will breathe no 
word of what I have told you to a soul. I place my whole 
trust in you. The good Maitre Louis will be equally discreet. 
I shall contrive to bring you two fond hearts together; and at 
last you s*hall have the rightful position that wealth alone can 
give. Have I, by my philosophy, that these self-appointed cen- 
sors understand not and condemn, injured the position of my 
daughter? Mine will be the philosophy that rights the wrong 
and gives to my daughter the station she deserves. Fill up and 
drink. I am your father, girl ! Come to my arms at last in a 
filial embrace ! " 

They drank, all three, of the potent liquor that the alchem- 
ist poured out. His face had become absolutely diabolical as 
he uttered the last words of his explanation. But Jeannette did 
not notice it. Neither did she catch the malignant smile that 
twisted the lips of Maitre Louis. She had heard the story. 
She had seen the two talismans. Her heart still burnt with her 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 611 

consuming love for Arnoul the Englishman. She tossed off the 
dregs of the fiery liquor, raised herself to her feet, and with 
one word " Father ! " threw her arms about the shoulders of 
Barthelemy and kissed him upon the lips. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

It was next the alchemist's task to get hold of Arnoul. 
Knowing his habits, he looked for him at St. James'. But, as 
there was no one in the friars' church save a few women, he 
went on, slinking through the Rue St. Jacques as though fear- 
ful of being seen, crossing the Petit Pont, and finally reaching 
the cathedral in Paris itself Paris the Ship, riding motionless, 
a mass of heavy stonework and light, filigree carving, on the 
placid bosom of its own tranquil Seine. 

When he reached Notre Dame he made himself, if any- 
thing, even less conspicuous, by sinking his hooded head be- 
tween his shoulders and bunching his ungainly body together. 
For reasons of his own, with which the reader is already ac- 
quainted, he had no wish to draw upon himself the attention 
of any of the canons who might be about. Even during the 
time since he had returned to Paris it was not unlikely that 
some fame of his researches on the forbidden borderland had 
gone abroad. It was impossible to lie wholly hidden in such a 
place. Yet, to be discovered now meant scrutiny, and scrutiny 
it was possible might not stop at the doings of Bartheltmy 
the clerk. He had visions as he stole up the steps leading to 
the West Door, unpleasant visions of possible ordeals; for all 
the inquirers into the hidden secrets of nature were not looked 
upon with the best grace by the orthodox. There were al- 
chemists and alchemists and Maitre Barthelemy knew it. It is 
possible that the scheme upon which he was engaged weighed 
upon his conscience, if he had any rags or shreds of such a 
possession left ; something that prompted him to avoid the pub- 
lic gaze and seek the shady rather than the warmer side of the 
narrow streets through which he had passed. Perhaps it was 
the keenness of the autumn wind that made him pull his cloak 
about his chin, and draw the hood lower down over his brow 
as he mounted the steps of Notre Dame; but there was a fur- 
tive look in his eyes as he pushed through the carved portal 
and entered the dim and shadowy nave of the cathedral. There 



612 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Aug., 

he ensconced himself beside a pier, and began to look eagerly 
about the sacred building. Apparently he soon discovered the 
person for whom he was looking; for, wrapping the folds of 
his black cloak still closer, he leant back in the shadow and 
waited. 

Arnoul was kneeling far up the nave, in the wan, cold light 
of the church, wrestling and striving with his own heart, torn 
asunder by the fierce play of contrary desires. What good was 
it, he thought, as he knelt before the high altar of the sanctu- 
ary, to strive against that sweeping current that had borne him 
upon its bosom ? It surged and raged about him still impetu- 
ous, torrential. Why strive and agonize ? Even as he prayed, 
visions of his wild life spun themselves within his brain, allur- 
ing, enticing. His lips formed the words of supplication me- 
chanically. His eyes were fixed upon the glittering altar. 

But there was no answer to his prayer, no blinding flash of 
illumination, no inrush of spiritual joy overwhelming mind and 
heart in one great ocean of peace and understanding. On the 
contrary, there was nought but dryness and desolation. The 
carved stonework of the altar stood out rigid and uncompro- 
mising under its burden of garish ornament its shrines, its tap- 
ers, its hanging Christ. And between it and him, as his lips 
moved on in a prayer in which his heart had ceased to join, a 
vague, impalpable veil seemed to be drawn, a curtain thin as 
the mist wraiths that rise from the marshes of the Seine on 
a summer's morning, cutting him off even from the outward 
symbols of hope and of faith. 

And as the mist veil danced before his eyes it took shape 
and color. He was no longer in the church but in the well- 
known wine house of Messire Julien. There was Jeannette smiling 
and beckoning to him, the heavy- browed Aales leaning forward 
in her seat as she used to do ; Maitre Louis, too, and Jacques, 
raising the wine cups to their lips. The reek of the tavern rose 
in his nostrils. His ears seemed to hear the click of the fall- 
ing dice, and a voice spoke in his heart: "Why have you left 
them all for the vain phantasms of a religion you can never 
feel? These things alone are real. Life is too short that you 
should fling it away for dry studies and unfruitful hopes. Up 
and live ! Cast away the thought of duty that lies like a pall 
over your true happiness ! Think not of Sibilla ! She is not 
for such as you ! " 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 613 

His lips moved on in prayer ; but the crowding thoughts 
surged through his heart and burnt like fire in his brain. 

At length, with an effort, he pulled himself together. The 
phantoms, the mist, vanished. An extraordinary feeling of the 
intensest spiritual joy seemed to take possession of his being. 
His mind was filled with such peace and happiness as he had 
not known for days. His very body seemed to have lost its 
corporeal nature; and, joined to throngs of blessed spirits, to 
be rapt upwards into a region of warmth and light. On his 
part, he had been conscious of one mighty effort to throw off 
the temptation that assailed him. The rest came, as it were, 
in great waves and surges from without, lifting him, soul and 
body, into a community of nature with spirits not of this cloy- 
ing earth. He was no longer the careworn student of the 
Paris schools, bound down to earth by the five strands of his 
senses, and battling with the evil demon of self-love. He was 
a freeman of the company of the elect, purged by a wondrous 
influx of sweetness, uplifted on the wings of the strongest of 
God's ministering angels. He saw the altar glinting in a slant ray 
of pale October sunlight, and he bowed his head upon his hands. 
His heart was moving with his lips now. He had conquered. 

He rose to his feet, made a deep reverence to the altar, 
and, confident in his new found strength and peace, turned to 
leave the church. Maitre Barthelemy let him pass the spot 
where he stood in shadow, and then followed him steadily to 
the porch. The lad turned on his heel as he caught the foot- 
fall behind him. The alchemist approached quickly, uncover- 
ing his face. 

" Well met, Maitre Arnoul ! " he began, saluting the Eng- 
lishman with a low bow. " I was at my devotions in the 
church yonder when I saw you coming out, and took the 
liberty of following you. And why ? The reason ? You have 
never come no, not all these long months to hear the re- 
mainder of your horoscope. I understand, my friend. Ah, 
yes ; I understand. The grievous loss you have sustained the 
great revulsion ! But all these months, my most esteemed 
Maitre Arnoul, have worn the sharp edge from your grief. Is 
it not so ? I could understand none better, for I have a 
heart" and he laid his left hand with emotion upon his bosom 
" I can sympathize. I can enter into the very sanctuary of 
your sorrow." 



6 14 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Aug., 

Arnoul answered the long-winded salutation abruptly. He 
had had a hard battle in the church, and did not trust himself 
sufficiently to unbend and be civil to the man. 

" Nay, speak not thus ! Stay, my best of friends ! Surely 
you will not thus pass me by! I have discovered" and here 
he lowered his voice to a purring whisper and laid hold of 
Arnoul's sleeve " I have discovered a new symbol in your na- 
tivity. You are born to wealth and honor such as you have 
never dreamed." 

" Let me go-, Maitre Barthelemy ! " cried the lad, striving 
to unfasten the alchemist's grasp. " I am overwrought ! I am 
unwell! Let me go in peace to St. Victor's!" 

"But, no"; persisted Barthelemy, nodding his great head 
slowly. " But, no, my most excellent, my most cherished 
friend ; not to St. Victor's ! Come rather with me, for I am 
skilled in leechdoms and shall cure your disorder. Think ! A 
new symbol ! The most auspicious of all the signs in the 
starry heaven ! Think, beloved friend, of the high destiny in 
store for you ! And with my aid " 

" Unhand me, Maitre Barthelemy ! " said Arnoul through 
his teeth, at the same time jerking his sleeve away from the 
talon-like grip of the alchemist. " I will not go with you, and I 
will not believe your prophecies. I return to St. Victor's 
whence I came. I " 

" Nay, my good friend ; I would not force you against your 
will. No, I shall not force you. Indeed I would not thus ob- 
trude my presence upon you at all, did I not know " 

There the man stopped short, knowing well that his un- 
finished sentence would whet Arnoul's curiosity." 

"Know what?" he asked sharply. 

"That you cannot stuggle against your fate. What is writ- 
ten is written drawn in letters of blood, in characters of flame- 
Come, lad ! Come back to your true friends. The maid Jean- 
nette is waiting for you with open arms. Your comrade Louis 
yearns towards you still, spite of your throwing him over for 
your new friends. I " and both hands of Maitre Barthelemy 
shot out towards him " I shall welcome you. I shall teach 
you, as I alone can, how to fulfil that mysterious, high destiny 
that is in store for you. Come, oh, best of friends ! Come 
back once more to those who have your truest welfare, your 
highest interests, at heart." 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 615 

At the mention of Jeannette's name Arnoul started back, 
pale and trembling. 

Was the victory he had just gained over the phantoms to 
be turned into defeat ? The alchemist stirred the deep and 
turbid waters of his soul afresh. His purring voice sounded in 
his ears. His outstretched hands were ready to welcome him 
and drag him back to his former life. Ugh ! What was that ? 
He started, horrified. That right hand scored and scarred, 
shrivelled up and eaten away until nought but the semblance 
of a human member remained ! Had Maitre Barthelemy under- 
gone the torment of ordeal by fire ? It looked like it. Just 
such hands had the unhappy ones who had borne the heated 
iron bar in their smoking flesh. Just so the open wounds 
healed and the skin shrank back upon the shortened sinews. 
Just so the livid and the purple weals stood out, stretched 
tight over the knotted bones. 

Arnoul shuddered, looking from the withered member to the 
man's face. And Barthelemy, seeing the look of startled horror 
in the lad's eyes, drew his hand back hurriedly and thrust it 
into his bosom. 

"'Tis nothing," he explained. "A falling alembic. A retort 
heated white hot on the glowing coals and containing precious 
metal. But, dearest friend, make up your mind to come back with 
me. We shall all welcome you. All these months of desertion 
shall be forgotten. You will live once more! You will enjoy the 
pulsing life of freedom, the joyous life of unrestrained nature! " 

" I cannot, Maitre Barthelemy." The boy was wondering, 
now, what motive prompted the alchemist to entreat him so to 
return to his old life. " I cannot. I have given my word to 
Brother Thomas of St. Jacques " 

" Brother Thomas ! " The alchemist mouthed the name with 
a fine scorn. " What has the Dominican to do with it? Why, 
they are fine people, the preachers, to undertake the direction 
of others when they cannot even keep their own affairs in the 
University right! Nay, my friend; surely you have not given 
your confidence to Thomas?" 

"But I have, indeed, Maitre Barthelemy," said Arnoul 
wearily. Whatever purpose the alchemist had in urging him 
to return to his former haunts and friends, he did not serve it 
by attacking the friars. But mistaking the clerk's tone for a 
sign of weakening, he pursued the subject. 



616 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Aug, 

" They fight on a losing side, these friars, Maitre Arnoul. 
Believe me, they will lose. The forces that are ranged against 
them are too strong for them to win. All the talent, all the 
brains, all the traditions of this ancient seat of learning are 
against them. And their cause is a bad one, at best. They 
violate prescriptive rights and flaunt the privileges they have 
obtained from Rome in the faces of those whom they wrong by 
using them. Think not, because I am not seen now in the 
schools that I do not know the temper of the University ! The 
undercurrents, the scheming, and the plotting I am well ac- 
quainted with them all. Your destiny is far too noble, your 
star gleams far too bright for you to take sides with the reg- 
ulars. Ere long they will be driven forth from Paris. St. 
Amour will not leave a stone unturned until he has driven 
them from the University." 

"Yet he will never succeed." Arnoul took up the cudgels 
in behalf of the religious. His voice was emphatic and de- 
cided enough now. " He will never drive them forth. The 
king is strong in their favor. The Pope is sure to support 
them. And who is St. Amour against the king or the whole 
University, for the matter of that, if the Lord Pope approves 
of them ? They are harmless and holy men. My patience 
strains to snapping when I see these pompous doctors lift them 
up as laughing stocks. And why, forsooth ? Because they are 
religious, because their lives show up what is false and evil in 
the others." 

The ghost of a smile flitted across the face of the alchemist. 
" Religion," he said with an upward inflection in his voice and 
an almost imperceptible raising of his eyebrows ; " Religion has 
nothing to do with it. It is a question of politics, pure and 
simple a matter affecting the internal welfare of the Univer- 
sity, nothing else." 

"But it is religion, I tell you," insisted Arnoul. "Re- 
ligion more than anything else ! It is because the friars lead 
good lives and teach orthodox doctrines that they are so per- 
secuted. Why ! St. Amour has been suspect of heresy for 
years ; and the lives of some of the seculars are too well known 



" Ah ! the friars have been teaching you full well. You 
prove an apt pupil, Maitre Arnoul. I warrant me, it is your 
Brother Thomas who has been raking up all he can find, and 



i9o8.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 617 

inventing where he finds nothing, against the opponents of his 
order and pouring it all into your willing ears. Now, if I 
should speak, I could whisper you some of those same holy 
friars. Did you ever hear of one John of Parma?" 

" Brother Thomas has told me nothing of the seculars. 
None of the friars has ever influenced me against them. Do 
you think I am a fool, Maitre Barthelemy, not to see for my- 
self ? Am I blind, or deaf, or half-witted, to have been all 
this time in the University and to have discovered nothing ? 
No ; do not interrupt me ! The religious have my respect and 
my admiration. I would sooner trust Brother Thomas than all 
the doctors of the schools. And, what is more, I will trust him." 

Perceiving that no success was to be gained in this direc- 
tion, Maitre Barthelemy suddenly changed his tactics. 

" Yes, yes, I understand, my dear Maitre Arnoul ! Per- 
chance it is as you say. It may be that it is a question touch- 
ing on religion, after all. The friars may well be holy men, 
and this Thomas, for aught I know, a saint. Still, they are 
likely to lose their cause. The pressure is very great and they 
have acute and crafty minds to fight against. But you your- 
self, dear friend, why tie yourself to them ? Why pass by on 
one side all that is bright and joyous in life ? You are young. 
You are able. You have a magnificent career before you. 
Come and enjoy life while you may ! " 

" No, no, no " ; reiterated Arnoul. " I have told you that 
I will not that I have promised." 

" Come ! It is worth thinking over ! By the way, Maitre 
Arnoul, I do not wish to seem to pry into your affairs. I trust 
I am not indiscreet but you will pardon an old and true 
friend the liberty he takes ! but Ben Israel, the Jew you are 
indebted to him ? A small amount ? An insignificant matter ?" 
Arnoul was silent. 

"Of course," continued the alchemist, "I am loath to in- 
trude upon private matters. But it so happens that I might be 
of some slight service to you in this. Indeed, if I can but 
persuade you to come back to your friends, I could put you 
in the way of making a sum of money a very considerable 
sum of money a fortune, in short and that without over- 
much trouble." 

So, there was a reason for the conversation ! It had come 
out at last ! 



618 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Aug., 

"And how do you propose that I should make a fortune?" 
Arnoul asked incredulously. 

" In the simplest manner possible," Barthelemy replied mys- 
teriously. " You have but to ask for it. See ! Now I have 
told you ! Come back with me to Messire Julien's, where we 
can be safe from interruption, and I shall unfold my plan." 

"No; tell me here if you wish to tell meat all," answered 
Arnoul resolutely. 

" Impossible, my very dear friend ; quite impossible ! We 
might be overheard." 

And is it, then, a crime that you would have me do ? " 

" By no means ! A crime ! You are pleased to jest, Maitre 
Arnoul ! " 

" What then, that there should be such fear of eavesdroppers? 
I will not go with you. Say what you have to say here, or 
not at all." 

''Unreasonable!" muttered the alchemist. "Unreasonable 
and stubborn ! If I throw my dice ill now, I lose the throw : 
for I risk all. 

" Since I cannot persuade you to come," he added aloud, 
" I must needs speak here, as my sole thought is for your own 
welfare. But remember, dear friend, that we all want you back 
again. Maitre Louis and Jeannette above all Jeannette. She 
is disconsolate, that poor child ! " Barthelemy raised his eyes 
to the roof of the porch to express his pity for her forlorn 
condition. " She has wept till she has no more tears to weep. 
Really, it was cruel beyond nature to desert her as you did." 

"To the point, man !" the other interrupted him. "To the 
point and let me go ! I do not wish to hear of Louis or Julien 
or or the girl. If you have anything to say, say it and be 
gone ! " 

" Softly, softly, dear friend ! " fawned the alchemist, shrink- 
ing to the wall and drawing his cloak the closer as one of the 
canons passed them. " I would not anger you, but you must 
have a heart of stone, and not of flesh and blood, to think of 
that unhappy girl unmoved. If you could only see her ! If 
you could hear her sighs ! She is wearing herself to death, 
pining for you. Ah ! Maitre Arnoul ! bethink you what love is 
in these young creatures ! For me, my blood runs cold. I have 
no thought but for my art, my science, the search for the hidden 
secrets of nature. But you are young and full of life. The 






1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 619 

hot blood pulses in your veins. Think of Jeannette, sighing ! 
Think of the cruel way in which you " 

" In God's name, Maitre Barthelemy ! what is the girl to 
you, that you should speak thus? You try me past endurance! 
Here you beguile me into speaking with you. You promise to 
tell me how I can honestly come by a fortune, and you pour 
into my ears that which I would not hear. Did Jeannette send 
you to me ? Are you her messenger ? What is she to you 
that you should plead for her?" 

"Ah! the fortune! A noble patrimony! But you would 
not expect otherwise there are conditions." 

" Conditions ! I can well believe it ! Make speed, man, 
and say what you have to say ! I am unwell ! My head reels ! " 

" And I a leech, dear friend. Come quickly to my humble 
abode and I shall heal you. Or, as a makeshift, until it has 
somewhat passed, a cup of wine and a moment's rest ! Come ! " 

He passed his hand through the clerk's arm. 

" No, I shall not come " ; Arnoul burst out angrily. " What 
do you mean by handling me like this ? Why do you seek to 
persuade me ? Of what advantage can I be to you ? " he con- 
tinued bitterly. " There is a reason for your fawning and your 
cant." 

The alchemist raised his eyes again and sighed. It pained 
him beyond words that his devotion should be apprised at so 
low an estimate. He said as much ; and ended his protest with 
another reference to Blanches Mains. That, he was certain, 
was the lever which, if properly applied, would move the 
Englishman. "Besides, there is the maid the unhappy maid. 
I should be less than human did I not feel for her and seek to 
end this estrangement." 

"Leave the maid alone, Maitre Barthelemy. Why do you 
so force her name on my unwilling ears ? What has she to do 
with the fortune that you hold out to me as a bait ? Can you 
not see that I mean what I have said that I am determined ? " 

The alchemist looked at the clerk keenly. Were there signs 
of wavering in him despite his protests? He fancied he could 
discover such in the troubled eyes, the pale and agitated coun- 
tenance of the young man. 

"I shall tell you all," he whispered. "The condition is 
that you marry the girl Jeannette. It is by her help alone 
that you shall attain your destiny and gather untold riches 



620 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Aug., 

Once she is your wife, I promise you that what I say will 
come to pass. I, Barthelemy, promise it ! And for my part 
for I also am necessary one gold piece in every ten that 
you receive shall be mine." 

More canons passed them. The Office was over. One, an 
old man, with piercing eyes under shaggy brows, and thin, 
close lips, looked steadfastly at the pair, went on, turned and 
looked again fixedly at the alchemist. Barthelemy was too 
much preoccupied in his talk to see the look, but he caught 
the backward glance, and muttering an imprecation, hurriedly 
drew up his hood. 

Curiously that little movement, in itself so insignificant, 
seen by the canon and by the clerk, had far-reaching conse- 
quences. They are the small, the almost imperceptible things 
that play the most important part in shaping human lives. 
This was enough to nerve Arnoul. A wave of disgust and 
loathing swept over him. He hated Barthelemy, hated Louis, 
hated Jeannette. For a moment the concrete temptation that 
the alchemist had put before him, the specious and confident 
promises, the thinly disguised appeal to his senses, had un- 
manned him. Now he stood cool and disdainful. 

"Farewell," he said in a tone that was final, and, turning 
walked quietly after the retreating forms of the canons. 

The alchemist ground his teeth. He dared not follow. He 
had thrown his cast and lost. 

CHAPTER XXX. 

The morning sun had broken cold and fair over the hill- 
crest of Anagni in streamers and pennons of gray and crimson. 
The wind was sharp and keen as it swept down through the 
valley from the north, so keen that the early risers who flocked 
to the open space before the grim and fortress -like front of 
the cathedral drew their cloaks about their ears and thrust 
their chilled fingers well into the openings of their hanging 
sleeves. There were a good many people gathered in the 
space over which the cathedral frowned in sightless and for- 
bidding austerity, even before the heavy, iron-studded doors 
were thrown open to the public. And as the drifts of gray 
cloud gave way before the golden sun, more and more people 
thronged into the square. 

Some unusual event was evidently the cause of so much 






1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 621 

movement and excitement. The Roman Court had been long 
enough among them to familiarize them with its presence and 
ceremonies, so that a Papal Mass, or a Consistory held behind 
closed doors would hardly suffice to explain such a gathering. 
And a gathering it indeed was a crowd representative of 
every class of inhabitant that the city and neighborhood of 
Anagni could boast. Peasants, vinedressers, oilpressers, hus- 
bandmen, had come in from the valley as soon as the gates of 
the town were opened. There were merchants, rubbing the 
sleep out of their eyes as they attempted to keep pace with 
their hurrying wives. There were lawyers and notaries, some 
comfortably snuggling into the rich fur trimmings of their 
capuces, others threadbare and out at elbows, casting envious 
glances at their more prosperous brothers. There were knights 
in plenty, crested arid plumed, but all on foot, for the most 
part belonging to no religious brotherhood, though a few 
Templars or Hospitallers mingled with the crowd. Common 
soldiers swaggered in and out; and beggars, improving a golden 
opportunity, displayed their manifold deformities, blowing upon 
their chilled fingers and whining for alms alternately. 

Women there were too, in goodly numbers, from the grande 
dame of the period, in camlet, silks, and costly miniver, to the 
humble maid of all work in her rough homespun of undyed 
wool. 

Nor was it the inhabitants of Anagni alone who swelled the 
crowd before the cathedral. The residence of the Curia had 
brought a great influx of foreigners to the town ; and there 
were many to be seen in the crowd gathered that morning who, 
while they had no official position in the Roman Court, had 
quite as little connection with the townspeople. These, for the 
most part, were litigants who had taken their cases to one or 
other of the Roman tribunals for the decision of the Holy 
See, penitents come before the penitentiary for release from 
censures, or absolution from reserved cases, pilgrims to the Holy 
Land or to the shrines at Rome, and that curious class of 
nondescripts whose business in life seems to be an assiduous fol- 
lowing of courts from place to place for reasons not obvious. 
A considerable sprinkling of clerics of inferior rank could be 
distinguished by the somberness of their garb amidst the gayer 
colors affected by the lay people. All were talking volubly, 
laughing, and gesticulating. As soon as the doors were opened 



622 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Aug., 

they rushed pell-mell past the guards into the cathedral and 
took their places in that portion of the nave set apart for the 
general public. 

Across the upper part of the church, and before the prin- 
cipal altar, a wooden barrier, covered with cloth hangings, had 
been raised. Within the space thus enclosed a temporary Papal 
Chapel had been arranged, with rows of benches on each side 
for the cardinals and prelates, and a throne draped in silken 
hangings and with fringes of gold, for the Pope himself. On 
the opposite side to this throne, and a little lower down the 
church, about half way between the high altar and the wooden 
barrier, was erected a species of pulpit or reading desk. It 
stood well out towards the center of the nave, in front of the 
bench of the cardinal deacons; and it was draped, like the 
throne, in white. Wooden steps gave access to it, for it stood 
almost level with the chair under the canopy of the throne 
and formed the most prominent point in the arrangement of 
the chapel. Over against this pulpit, on the side where the car- 
dinal bishops sat, was a long table with stools for the notaries. 
It was furnished with writing materials, pens, sand, parchment, 
wax, and tapers; and several books, or packets of closely writ- 
ten vellum sheets, lay before the place of each of the notaries. 

While the crowd was taking in the details of the chapel 
the lights upon the altar, the vacant throne, the rows of scarlet 
benches, the ambo, the notaries' seats, the barrier it went on 
talking and gesticulating much as it had done in the square 
outside the cathedral. The few soldiers on guard, some at the 
doors, some at the gateway of the barrier, were phlegmatic and 
stolid, making no effort to keep the people quiet, standing rigid 
at their posts, their hands on their drawn swords, content that 
they did their duty in seeing that no one loitered in the door- 
way or attempted to force the barrier and enter the temporary 
presbytery. 

With a great clanging of brazen metal the bells commenced 
to peal, and a comparative silence fell upon the waiting throng. 
A double line of soldiers the Papal body-guard made its way 
into the church, unceremoniously forcing the crowd to right 
and left, and leaving a lane clear from portal to sanctuary as 
they fell into place in two solid lines facing each other. There 
they stood, shoulder to shoulder, cutting the mass of people 
into two compact oblongs. 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 623 

The bells jangled on in noisy clamor. Finally, in a great 
discordant burst, all ringing and clashing together, they ceased 
to swing. 

Then a procession, formed of all sorts and ranks of eccle- 
siastics, filed slowly into the cathedral. From somewhere be- 
hind the altar, hidden away in the shadowy recesses of the apse, 
came the sound of singing. It was the chorus of the Papal 
choir, the shrill trebles of boyish voices mingling in unison with 
and dominating the rythmical pneumes of the basses as they 
sang, in the gorgeous simplicity of the traditional chant, their 
salutation to the Supreme Pontiff. 

The procession swung forward slowly, majestically friars 
and monks, priests and prelates. The line stretched now from 
the doorway to the wooden barrier. The mendicants were al- 
ready moving to their places in the enclosed space. 

As yet the cardinals had not entered the church. Mean- 
while the melody throbbed pulsing on, rising aud falling in 
stately cadences and rhythms, now plaintive, subdued, lament- 
ing, soft as the fall of summer rains upon lush meadows, now 
soaring, jubilant, triumphant, star clusters of song born in ce- 
lestial spaces, the angels of the rolling spheres, the guardians 
of the hurtling planets, lifting their full-throated burden of 
praise as they guide the orbs along their appointed paths. 

There is nothing vulgar or common in the ancient music of 
the Church a music apart from all other in its staid solemnity. 
It is nature the raindrops or the angels; the soughing of the 
breeze through cypress plumes that stand solemn guard around 
the sleeping dead; the moaning of the ocean waves; the sil- 
very plash of water slipping from ledge to ledge of rock ; the 
thunder of the ground swell under towering crags. 

The chattering crowd was hushed; for the notes wove a 
spell about its heart. Something reminiscent, something pro- 
phetic, stirred in the cadences a vague, shadowy presentiment 
of beings not of this world, of unseen presences hovering close- 
ly near, of broken bonds and mingling spirits. The Pope was 
coming. This was his music. The thrill passed from heart to 
heart, silencing laughter upon the lips, stifling words that trem- 
bled on the tongue. Even those to whom such scenes were 
familiar, with all their attendant circumstance of sight and sound, 
waited nervous, silent, expectant. 

In a far corner stood Vipont, the murderer, clad in his som- 



624 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Aug., 

her, travel-stained garments, more pinched and corpse- like than 
ever. His eyes still burned beneath his cavernous brows with 
unquenched fire. The habitual twitching of his lips was in- 
creased by the nervous tension of the moment 

But for the chanting and the steady tramp of the procession 
there was no sound in the huge building. Here and there, 
perhaps, a sharp, dry cough no more. 

The cardinals, clothed in their rich dresses of blue and scar- 
let, were passing through the barrier, two by two. 

The throbbing silence for the singing and the swinging 
tread were silenced now to the waiting multitude gathered it- 
self up in a perceptible shudder. It was the utter tension of 
excitement and expectancy. And then from every throat a shout 
went up, an acclamation triumphant and inspiring. The Pope, 
clad in his pontifical vestments and blessing the people right 
and left, passed slowly up the aisle between the two rows of 
his soldiers. The chant swelled loud and louder from the dark 
apse, rising above the indescribable plaudits of the throng. 
Suddenly, the glint and flash of steel brought the procession to 
an end, as the body-guard of his Holiness drew up in compact 
ranks at the entrance in the barrier. 

The Pope, after kneeling for a moment before the altar, as- 
cended the steps of the throne. The cardinals, bishops, and 
prelates took their seats in order upon the benches. The no 
taries busied themselves with their writing materials, carefully 
arranging their parchments and examining the points of their 
pens. The religious stood, drawn together by orders, monks 
and friars apart, in their places. The crowd was hushed and 
silenced. The singing ceased. The plenary consistory was sit- 
ting. 

After a prayer, chanted at some length, one of the nota- 
ries stood up in his place and read a document to the effect 
that the most Holy Lord, the Lord Alexander the Fourth, 
Bishop of Rome and Vicegerent of Christ upon earth, to the 
glory of God and for the welfare of innumerable souls intrusted 
to his care, proposed to examine by his cardinals here the 
notary read out their names and the patent of their commis- 
sion a libel, writing, document, or book, written by Maitre 
William of St. Amour, Doctor of the University of Paris, Canon 
of Beauvais, and a teacher in the University, entitled The Perils 
of the Last Times, the said libel having been delated to the 



i9o8.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 625 

Holy See as suspect, erroneous, dangerous, heretical, by the 
most Christian King, Louis IX. of France. 

This was mere formality. The people grew impatient as 
the notary proceeded, in level tones, through the document. 
At last there came a pause ; and then, silent and expectant 
again, they craned their necks to see what was going to hap- 
pen. Even Vipont raised his eyes and stood erect, his great 
height lifting him clear of the sea of heads. The cardinals, 
some alert and anxious looking, others with a studied mask of 
indifference that effectually concealed their thoughts, seemed 
all turned towards the little white and brown band of friars. 
Hugh of St. Caro smiled, inscrutable and confident. The Bishop 
of Tusculum fidgeted with a docket of papers that he held in 
his hand. Even the Pope turned himself in his throne towards 
the ambo in the nave, his head slightly inclined under the ti- 
ara, his brown beard resting on the white of the pallium. 

The notary, in the same level and passionless tone, called 
out a name : " Brother Thomas of the Order of Preachers ! " 

There was a movement among the friars. They drew back 
right and left as the tall form of Brother Thomas, graceful in 
its severe contrast of white and black for he wore the black 
mantle of the preachers over his woolen tunic advanced. A 
profound obeisance to the Pope, a low inclination to the as- 
sembled Princes of the Church, and the brother slowly as- 
cended the steps of the ambo. There he stood, erect of body, 
yet with head somewhat bowed. He laid the roll of parch- 
ment that he carried upon the cushions before him, and rested 
both hands upon the edge of the pulpit. His slow eyes swept 
over the assembled crowd, rested a moment upon the many- 
hued line of the cardinals, the white figure of the Pontiff, sit- 
ting now, his head resting upon his hand, the little flock of 
mendicants anxious and prayerful, for whom he had come to 
plead. Then, tracing the sign of the cross upon his breast, he 
lifted his eyes towards heaven and, in his low and singularly 
sweet voice, every syllable of which was heard in all the church, 
so distinct was his enunciation, recited the words of the psalm. 

" For lo, Thy enemies have made a noise : and they that 
hate Thee have lifted up the head. They have taken a mali- 
cious counsel against Thy people, and have consulted against 
Thy saints. They have said : Come and let us destroy them, 
VOL. LXXXVII. 40 



626 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Aug., 

so that they be not a nation: and let the name of Israel be 
remembered no more." 

A thrill went through the church. It was not so much the 
words spoken as the marvelous tone and bearing of the speaker. 
This was not their quarrel. The dispute between the seculars 
and the mendicants had little to do with the good citizens of 
Anagni. They had come to hear the celebrated Brother Tho- 
mas of Cologne and Paris, not to enter into the merits or de- 
merits of the friars; and the effects of this long- standing strife, 
that had been fomented and brought to a head in the Univer- 
sity of Paris, were of small consequence to them compared to 
the hearing of the brilliant oratorical display that they expected. 

The friar hid his hands beneath his scapular. His face was 
tranquil, serene, confident, shining with a sort of glory as he 
began his defence of the religious life. With his extraordinary 
mastery of Holy Writ, his deep grasp of the teaching of the 
Fathers, the calm method of his philosophy, he outlined his 
discourse, expounding, quoting, explaining. Point after point 
urged against the religious by their opponents he blunted. 
Objection after objection he thrust aside. Calumny on calumny 
he exposed in its true colors. 

The Pope sat intent, rigid as a statue carved in stone, his 
head upon his hand, held in the spell of the friar's voice, in 
the thraldom of his reasoning. The eyes of the cardinals were 
riveted upon the pale, earnest face crowned with its aureole of 
curling hair, their ears drinking in each word as it fell from 
the mobile lips. A whisper would have been a thunderclap, 
so intense was the silence in the great church. 

Was it not their quarrel ? It was their quarrel the per- 
sonal affair of every soul in the cathedral. As the calm, slow 
voice went on, drawing out the principles of the Gospel coun- 
sels, attacking, defending, building impregnable strongholds, 
tearing down flimsy barricades of sophistry, the inherent Chris- 
tianity of every heart stirred in response. It was their quar- 
rel, their affair, none more so. Behind the placid, radiant 
brows of Brothor Thomas, beneath the coarse texture of the 
friar's habit, there was a brain, a heart; and every brain and 
every heart took fire in its contact. Brows were furrowed and 
hands clenched as the accusations of the seculars were repeated. 
Each man was now fiercely, resentfully conscious that it was 
his own affair. But the meek voice, in which there was no 






1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 627 

trace of fierceness or resentment, still fell upon their ears, 
With resistless, relentless logic, like the flow of a mighty river, 
it swept on, carrying all before it. Not a point was missed. 
There was no flaw in the defence, no answer wanting to the 
accusation. 

It was a doctor who spoke, a master in Israel, to whom the 
books of revelation and of nature lay open-leaved. It was a 
saint, whose words so telling and so true rang in their ears, 
impersonal and unimpassioned. 

When he had made an end, there was a great burst of ap- 
plause, which not even the august presence of the Pontiff suf- 
ficed to stifle. Brother Thomas -quietly and slowly came down 
from the ambo and, making his low obeisance to the Pope, was 
lost once more amid the now jubilant friars. 

When silence had with difficulty been restored, the princi- 
pal notary stood up again in his place at the table, and began 
to read a second document, handed to him by Eudes of Tus- 
culum. It was the judgment of the commission of cardinals, 
appointed to examine the libel. While this document was be- 
ing read in the monotonous drawl of the notary, the people 
in the nave were restless. But silence fell yet again as two of 
the soldiers bore a brazier of burning coals into the center of the 
open space before the altar. What was going to happen ? The 
notarial voice ran on : 

"And since the work, delated to us, which has been exam- 
ined and sifted by our commission, is found to contain perverse 
sentiments, propositions false, scandalous, erroneous, capable of 
causing great scandals, most dangerous to souls, keeping the 
faithful from giving alms to religious and from becoming reli- 
gious themselves, impious, abominable, teaching a false doctrine, 
corrupt, execrable . . . interdiction to whosoever keeps, ap- 
proves, defends it in what manner soever, under pain of incur- 
ring excommunication and being held by all the world as a 
rebel to the Church of Rome." 

The three notaries stood side by side, at their table, their 
black robes showing strangely against the whites and scarlets and 
blues of the other ecclesiastics. He who had been reading lifted 
a vellum volume from among the books and papers before him, 
and, preceded by the other two, walked between the rows of 
dignitaries to the Pope, bearing it in his hands. The three knelt 
at the foot of the throne, as their spokesman cried out, in his 



628 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Aug. 

level, unemotional voice: "Most Holy Father: the Libel of 
William of St. Amour, sometime Doctor of the University of 
Paris, Canon of Beauvais, but by your Holiness' Bull of June 
17 last deprived of benefice and dignities!" 

Pope Alexander rose to his feet, and, turning towards the 
cardinals, addressed them. 

"Most eminent Lords and Brethren: Ye have heard the 
words of our Brother Thomas concerning the religious life and 
the arguments that have been urged against the friars, both the 
Preachers and the Minors. You have listened to their report 
of our commission upon the infamous libel of St. Amour. Nor 
have our own words been wanting. Our notaries have drawn 
up a Bull which has but now been read in your presence. It 
is our will that the writing of William of St. Amour be pres- 
ently given to the flames in token of the utter reprobation of 
the blasphemous doctrines therein contained, and that our judg- 
ment be signed and sealed in this Consistory for a perpetual 
memorial of the same." 

He took his seat again, leaning forward as before, his head 
on his hand, as the notaries withdrew with the condemned book. 

The tapers were lit at the long table and the spluttering 
wax fell in gouts upon the strips of parchment attached to the 
Bull as the seals were impressed. The judgment was complete. 

A master of ceremonies signed to the notaries, and together 
they moved towards the brazier. The two soldiers who had 
brought it in were laboring with a bellows at the glowing coals. 
The people in the nave swayed forward, on tiptoe, to see. 
The friars edged themselves out beyond the screen of the ambo. 
Even the cardinals turned their heads and shifted in their 
seats. Over all, the Pope looked on, grave, severe, judicial. 

The proto-notary for a moment held the book aloft in the 
sight of all the people ; then, with a brief Latin formula, plunged 
it into the heart of the fire. The leaves crackled, twisted, writhed, 
like living things in pain. A tongue of flame shot up from 
the brazier. And the book, that had sowed dissentions in the 
University, that had menaced the work and the very existence 
of the two religious orders, that had been the cause of anxi- 
ety to bishops and kings, that had disturbed the peace, even, 
of the Roman Court, was reduced to ashes. 

TO BE CONTINUED. 




DUBLIN A CENTURY AGO. 

BY H. A. HINKSON. 

THINK there are few things more fascinating to 
the lover of his native city than an old and ob- 
solete guidebook to its advantages and charms, 
for the writer of a guidebook is rarely, if ever, 
a cynic, and writes with a whole-hearted admira- 
tion of his subject. And I confess that when I read such books, 
I wish that I were back in those days of romantic discomfort, 
when one had to be content with traveling eight miles an hour 
by coach, along indifferent roads, his pulses quickened and his 
imagination stimulated by the not unlikely prospect of an en- 
counter with " gentlemen of the road " who took one's purse 
or one's life with equal grace and courtesy. 

Some days ago I bought for a few pence The Picture of 
Dublin for 1811. It was pulished in Dublin anonymously at 
the price of "Six shillings British." On the back of the title- 
page is written in the small, neat, but rather characteristic, script 
of the time: "John McVeigh's Book, Presented to him by his 
much-esteemed and valued friend, William Copart, Esq., on his 
departure from this country for Madeira. Dublin, March, 1829." 
On the back sheet of an old map in the volume is written in 
the same handwriting: " r The Original of this Map is in the 
possession of the Celebrated John McVeigh*, of Dublin, who with 
his accustomed kindness and liberality has allowed a few copies 
to be taken." 

Mr. McVeigh was either a wag or a person who appreci- 
ated his own condescension. More probably he was both, but 
one is struck by the simple yet effective manner in which he 
has commended himself to posterity and handed down his name 
as an abiding possession to those who were to come after him. 
While the author of The Picture of Dublin is unknown and un- 
remembered, Mr. McVeigh has achieved at least a measure of 
immortality. 

But perhaps this is as it ought to be, since Mr. McVeigh, 
to judge by his marginal notes, was a good Irishman and a 
Catholic, while the anonymous author seems to have belonged 



630 DUBLIN A CENTURY AGO [Aug., 

to the " Garrison," though he is not wanting in a certain local 
patriotism. 

The opening words of The Picture of Dublin are sad enough 
to one reading them now : " Dublin, the metropolis of Ireland, 
is the second city in his Britannic Majesty's dominions." It is 
many years since Dublin has fallen from that proud position in 
regard to population, wealth, and industrial enterprise. 

The author's account of the history of Dublin before his own 
time is slight and not altogether accurate. He refers to the 
ejectment of the fellows and scholars of Trinity College, by the 
soldiers of James II., but he evidently did not know that the valu- 
able library and manuscripts had been preserved by a secular 
priest, Dr. Michael Moore, whom James had placed over the col- 
lege, assisted by Father Teigue MacCarthy, the King's chaplain 
{The History of the University of Dublin > by Dr. Stubbs). 

However The Picture of Dublin is interesting as a contem- 
porary record, not as an historical retrospect. As is generally 
known the Houses of Parliament were, after the Act of Union, 
sold to the Bank of Ireland, and according to our author "not 
only the British Empire but Europe could not boast of a Sena- 
torial hall so spacious and stately." Every part of the interior 
of the building was altered out of recognition, except the Cham- 
ber of the House of Lords, which remains to this day as it was 
during the last sitting of the Irish Peers, and supplies a Board 
Room to the Directors of the Bank. "The bare view of it," 
remarks our author quaintly, " cannot but cause some reflec- 
tion to an Irishman ! " 

Of Trinity College he has little of interest to say, though 
he was undoubtedly struck by the colossal skeleton of Magrath, 
upon which I remember gazing with awe in my own college 
days. " Magrath is said to have been an orphan, who when a 
child fell into the hands of the famous Bishop Berkeley, who ap- 
pears to have been so inquisitive in his physical researches as 
he was whimsical in his metaphysical speculations. The bishop 
had a strange fancy to know whether it was in the power of 
art to increase the human stature, and this unfortunate orphan 
appeared to him a fit subject for trial. He made the experi- 
ment according to his preconceived theory, and the consequence 
was, the boy became seven feet high in his sixteenth year." 

This statement is delightfully naive and we are not informed 
by what process such remarkable results were obtained. 



1908.] DUBLIN A CENTURY AGO 631 

Our author is enthusiastic in his praises of the Custom 
House, where the duties on exports and imports were received, 
"not only for the magnitude of its business but for the beauty 
of its architecture." Externally the building, which in the 
writer's time was, " in point of beauty and convenience, equal if 
not superior to any building of the kind in Europe," has not 
suffered any appreciable change, but within it is different. 
There are now, alas ! no Customs and " the magnitude of its 
business" consists of the departmental work of the Local Gov- 
ernment Board ; and the mansions of the two chief commis- 
sioners of the revenue and of their secretaries are now occu- 
pied by civil service clerks. The famous architect, James Gan- 
don, designed the building, which cost a quarter of a million 
pounds sterling. 

Our author is very enthusiastic about the Irish Post Office 
system, which he describes as " one of the most perfect regu- 
lations of finance existing under any government, and the 
most important spot on the face of the globe. It not only 
supplies the government with a great revenue, but it receives 
information from the poles and distributes information to the 
antipodes." If it did all this it would certainly merit the praise 
bestowed on it. There were two Postmasters- General in those 
days Lord O'Neil and the Earl of Rosse where one is suf- 
ficient now, and it is interesting to remember that under Mr. 
Gladstone's Home Rule Bill the only source of revenue appro- 
priated to the Irish Parliament was the post and telegraph 
system which was then and is, I believe, still carried on at a 
large annual loss to the Imperial Exchequer. 

Letters were conveyed by mail coaches, well-horsed and 
provided with a double guard, armed to the teeth, to protect 
them from highwaymen and footpads. Their average rate of 
progress was eight miles an hour. 

Eight packets, all bearing non-Irish names, plied between 
Dublin and Holyhead. The mails for England left Dublin 
every evening except Sunday ; the English mails were due in 
Dublin every day except Wednesday. The postal rates in Ire- 
land varied from ^d. to %d. From Dublin to London cost \s. 
id. and from Dublin to any part of North America $s. $d. 

The markets, we are told, were well supplied with flesh, 
fowl, and fish, " the latter in higher perfection than in any 
other capital in Europe," but although the city had been con- 



632 DUBLIN A CENTURY AGO [Aug., 

siderably enlarged, the number of nobility who were resident 
had decreased since the Union. " It was supposed by many," 
adds the writer, "that one of the effects of the Union would 
be a reduction of rents and fines, yet both have been very 
much raised, and are still increasing." 

It must be remembered that in those days every office of 
power or importance was held by a Protestant. The Lord 
Mayor was Chief Magistrate of the City, and like the Lord 
Mayor of London he sat with the recorder and the aldermen 
to try capital offences and misdemeanors committed within the 
city boundaries. 

In addition to seven hundred watchmen, who were on duty 
at night, there were one hundred policemen there are over 
one thousand now who wore a blue uniform and hangers by 
their sides. The writer, while claiming for Dublin a superior- 
ity over other cities in the matter of crimes, takes occasion to 
warn travelers coming to Dublin that they should " carefully 
avoid the approach to town after dark, by coming in before, 
as they may be in danger of being robbed by footpads or hav- 
ing their luggage cut from behind the carriage. If a person is 
in any way assaulted or attacked by thieves or others, whilst 
walking the streets at night, he should instantly call the watch 
who will immediately repair to his assistance." In asking 
questions, or inquiring the way, one is advised always to apply 
at a shop. 

Our author apparently had not a very high opinion of the 
legal profession, since he cautions persons who go to the Four 
Courts in term time carefully to avoid taking anything valuable 
in their pockets, as they are in danger of having them picked. 

The Dublin jarvey in 1811 does not appear to have differed 
from his successor of to-day. 

" He is very apt to impose on strangers, by demanding 
much over his fare. He will also frequently refuse to proceed 
without an agreement, notwithstanding the penalties he is ex- 
posed to by law." The writer evidently believes that the witty 
entertainment of the jarvey should be included in his six- 
penny fare. 

The stranger to Dublin is warned against " mock auctions, 
in which a variety of frauds are practised on the unwary. They 
are generally in alleys, where a few puffers, who have some 
articles to dispose of, attend to bid when strangers enter." 



i9o8.] DUBLIN A CENTURY AGO 633 

The overcrowding of certain parts of the city in those days 
was almost as great a problem as it is in our own time. " For 
although the streets are generally wider than in other large 
cities, and the opulent possess the most extensive concerns, yet 
a considerable part of the city is so much crowded, that in 
many houses every room is occupied by a separate family, and 
it is not uncommon in some to find three families in the same 
apartment." 

In 1644 the population of Dublin was 8,159; in 1681, 40,- 
ooo; in 1753, 128,570; and in 1798, 182,370, including the 
garrison of about 7,000, or a soldier to about every 26 inhabi- 
tants, exclusive of police and watchmen. Six years later, not- 
withstanding all the advantages to trade and employment prom- 
ised by the Act of Union, the population had decreased by 
4,192. 

A sum of 10,000 was levied annually for the support of 
a Foundling Hospital "to receive and maintain exposed and 
deserted children, to prevent the murder of poor miserable in- 
fants at their birth, or their being exposed in the streets." A 
cradle was set in front of the hospital and in this the poor lit- 
tle victim of the world's unkindness was set, while it waited 
for the hospitality of the stranger. " To the Dublin Foundling 
Hospital are brought children from all parts of the country, 
nor is it unusual to send children from England, where they 
are received without difficulty." 

In 1760 Lady Arabella Denny placed a clock in the nursery 
with the following inscription: 

" For the benefit of infants protected by this Hospital Lady 
Arabella Denny presents this clock, to mark that as children 
who are fed by the spoon, must have but a small quantity of 
food at a time, it must be offered frequently. For which pur- 
pose this clock strikes every twenty minutes, at which notice, 
all the infants that are not asleep must be discreetly fed." 

Good, kind Lady Arabella, doubtless long ere this you have 
been repaid a thousandfold for that clock by the prayers of 
those poor infants who have, through your care, been " discreet- 
ly fed." 

Unfortunately, however, this otherwise excellent charity, like 
everything else in Ireland at the time, was of a sectarian char- 
acter. The children were sent to nurses in the country for six 
years, being brought to Dublin each year, when the salaries 



634 DUBLIN A CENTURY AGO [Aug., 

were paid. " Afterwards they are instructed in reading and 
writing and the principles of the Protestant religion, and at a 
proper age apprenticed." 

The number of these little parentless waifs was, in 1811, 
5,000, but a marginal note by Mr. McVeigh informs us that in 
his time the hospital had ceased to exist. 

Another institution, even less popular amongst those for 
whom it was intended, was The House of Industry, "established 
for the reception of the poor, who are received without any 
recommendation" There were also forty-six cells provided for 
lunatics. " The beggars of Dublin," says our author, "in gene- 
ral have a strong aversion to this house ; many of them, how- 
ever, are compelled by force to enter, as occasionally a covered 
cart goes about the city, with a number of men, who take up 
such as they meet in the street begging." 

One is not greatly surprised at the feeling of the beggars 
towards this "charity." At the present day, the poor Irish 
would almost prefer starvation to entering the Union Work- 
house, and it is significant that the phrase " taken up " for 
"arrested" is almost universal in Ireland a reminiscence, of 
course, of the forced hospitality of The House of Industry. 
Whether the beggars had also to undergo forced instruction in 
"the principles of the Protestant religion" is not stated. 

A Protestant foundation, which now no longer exists, was 
the Charter School, near Clontarf, where one hundred and 
twenty boys were lodged, clothed, and educated in the Protest- 
ant religion. The Charter School Society gave a portion of $ 
to each person whom they educated, of either sex, upon his or 
her marrying a Protestant, with the previous approbation of 
the Committee and after serving their apprenticeship. They 
were required also to make their claim within seven years af- 
ter the expiration of their apprenticeship and six months after 
marriage ! 

It is interesting to note, as a change in the spirit of the 
time, that at present one of the largest and most successful 
educational establishments in Ireland is at Clontarf, to wit, the 
O'Brien Institute, over which Brother Swan of the Christian 
Brothers, one of the most humane and sympathetic teachers 
whom Ireland has ever produced, now presides. Last autumn, 
when I visited the O'Brien Institute, Brother Swan took me 
out into the playing fields to see a football match between his 



i9o8.j DUBLIN A CENTURY AGO 635 

own Catholic boys and the Protestant Young Men's Christian 
Association. The Committee of the long defunct Charter School 
could not, even in their most depressed moments, have antici- 
pated such a happening. 

Yet another educational foundation, still existing, was the 
Royal Hospital, or Blue Coat School, established in 1670 chiefly 
by contributions from the inhabitants of Dublin. Charles II. 
gave it a charter and the ground of Oxmantown Green the 
site of an old Norse settlement where the present building 
stands. It is interesting to recall that the " Merrie Monarch " 
ordered the bishops to amend the extravagance of their lives 
and to devote the sums thus saved towards the maintenance of 
the royal foundation. But the bishops seem to have dis- 
obeyed the king's mandate, for I can find no evidence that 
they subscribed anything, though the Bishop of Meath may 
have done so, as he had the right of appointing ten scholars. 
The children of reduced freemen of the city were to be ad- 
mitted on payment of a fee of five pounds. They were main- 
tained, clothed, and educated, and when qualified apprenticed 
to Protestant masters. The education was not of a very ad- 
vanced character, consisting of reading, writing, and arithmetic, 
but there was also a mathematical school in the hospital, sup- 
ported by the Corporation of Merchants, for the instruction of 
boys in navigation. We are told that "The boys of this hos- 
pital have generally proved sober, honest, and diligent appren- 
tices, and many of them have become respectable citizens." 
The boys still wear a semi-military dress a tunic with belt and 
brass buttons and a round cap with streamers. In earlier days 
their collars and cuffs were of orange, like the boys of Christ's 
Hospital, London, but as the orange excited the hostility of 
the Catholic town boys, it was discontinued. The King's Hos- 
pital is a fine building, somewhat marred by the imperfect 
steeple. 

The Irish prisons still leave much to be desired, but they 
must be a paradise compared with the prisons a century ago. 
The notorious Newgate prison was probably the worst. After 
passing the entrance of this " mansion of misery," as our au- 
thor calls it, one reached an iron gate which led to the press 
yard, where the prisoners had their irons put on and off. From 
this yard a passage led to apartments for those who became 
informers, and close by was a large room for those under sen- 






636 DUBLIN A CENTURY AGO [Aug., 

tence of transportation. Another door led to the felons' squares, 
where were the cells, twelve on each floor, with a staircase on 
each side. The cells for those under sentence of death were 
underground, dark and oozing with filthy slime. The gaoler, 
we are told, had, however, apartments to accommodate his 
" wealthy tenants," but those who were not wealthy were 
crowded together in a cell, both untried and convicted, with- 
out distinction. Blackmail, called garnish money, was levied 
on the newcomer by his fellow-prisoners, and evil indeed was 
the lot of him who was unable to satisfy their demands. 

The keepers were no better, and were often accused of de- 
taining in their possession the heads and bodies of such as were 
executed for high treason, till they were putrid, "in order to 
enhance the sums first demanded from their relatives for them." 
Moreover, " it was rumored through the prison that the head 
of Robert Emmet sold for 45 IDS. od. \ " 

There were three other city prisons the Sheriffs' Prison, 
the City Marshalsea, and the Four Courts Marshalsea, all of 
which were appropriated to the use of debtors, " of whom there 
was, in general, a considerable number." 

These prisons, as well as Newgate, have long ceased to ex- 
ist. Kilmainham Gaol, so famous in our own time for the im- 
prisonment of Mr. Parnell and other Irish patriots, still remains 
and is no doubt, in the words of our author, as " well adapted 
for the purposes intended " as it was a century ago, but death 
sentences are no longer carried out in front, but inside the 
walls of the gaol. 

The author of The Picture of Dublin regretted that the ad- 
vantages of the Union were not very conspicuous in 1811. 
On the contrary, he found that the peers and gentry were for- 
saking their splendid residences on the north side of the city, 
which were becoming fast overcrowded tenement houses. If 
he were alive to-day, he would see that ruin almost complete. 
The only thoroughfare which appears not to have changed ap- 
preciably is Sackville Street, now O'Connell Street, with the 
famous rotunda at the north end and Nelson's Pillar in the 
middle of what is perhaps the widest thoroughfare in Europe. 
Looking at the old contemporary print and the modern pho- 
tograph, one sees little difference beyond what the electric 
cars have made. 

The Mansion House remains the same to all intents and 



1908.] DUBLIN A CENTURY AGO 637 

purposes as when it was occupied exclusively by full-blooded 
Tories. Amongst the portraits are those of Charles II., Wil- 
liam III., who presented the Lord Mayor of the day with a 
gold chain, which the latter's successors have since worn, each 
occupant of the chair having added a link, and the Right Hon. 
John Foster, last Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. 
Foster had opposed the Union with England as bitterly as he 
had opposed the privileges of the Constitution to the Catholics, 
and with the same success. 

I find from a note by our anonymous author that "in con- 
sequence of Mr. Foster's bringing forward, in the last Session of 
Parliament, the fifty per cent additional on windows, the hand- 
bill tax, etc. the Common Council, at their quarter assembly, 
in July, 1810, voted for Mr. Foster's portrait to be taken down 
at the Mansion House ! " 

Shades of Grattan and of Flood, the portrait of the " In- 
corruptible John " removed ignominiously from the chamber 
where so often he had been an honored guest. Sic transit gloria. 

Lord Mayor's Day was a century ago celebrated with much 
pomp on the 3Oth of September, on which day his lordship 
entered upon his official duties. According to our author 
" the procession on this occasion is worthy of the observation 
of strangers, when the Lord Mayor proceeds from the Mansion 
House to the Castle, in his state coach, with a band of music, 
attended by the aldermen and sheriffs, in their state carriages, 
and a train of carriages that make a long procession. His 
Lordship, on this occasion, is also attended by a foot com- 
pany of battle-axe guards, in ancient dress, that made a very 
curious appearance." 

At the present day the ceremony, which takes place on New 
Year's Day, is less picturesque, the glittering helmets and trap- 
pings of the Fire Brigade said to be the best in Europe now 
forming the most brilliant part of the show, since, some twenty 
years ago, the lining of the streets with troops and the gay 
cavalry escort were dispensed with. Neither do the Lord 
Mayor and his aldermen and sheriffs go any longer to drink 
copious draughts of claret in the wine cellars of the castle, as 
they were wont in the old days. 

Although, according to our author, " the removal of the 
parliament from the metropolis has proved very injurious to 
the trade of the city," Dublin a century ago must have pre- 



638 DUBLIN A CENTURY AGO [Aug. 

sented a very animated appearance. There was a great number 
of mail and stage coaches plying through the city, in addition 
to jaunting by English writers generally spelt jolting cars 
and jingles, a curious kind of two-wheeled coach opening be- 
hind. The jingle is no longer to be found in Dublin, but it is 
still the most common vehicle in Cork, to which I believe it is 
indigenous. 

Besides these conveyances there were fly-boats on the canals, 
the delights of traveling by which have been immortalized by 
Lever. These fly- boats were not unlike in appearance the 
house boats which in summer-time line the banks of the Thames. 
They were drawn by horses and traveled about four miles an 
hour, from Dublin to the Shannon and to Athy and back. 
The rules to be observed by passengers were somewhat quaint. 
No servants in livery were allowed in the first- class cabin and 
dogs were to be paid for as passengers. No spirits, "plain or 
mixed," were to be sold on board, and wine only in pints, one 
to each passenger who dines on board. The party with whom 
Charley O'Malley traveled must have broken the latter regula- 
tion. No wine was allowed in the second cabin. 

The writer quaintly tells us that the Jews had no synagogue 
in Ireland, though they had a burying-ground near Ballybough- 
bridge in Dublin. A note by Mr. McVeigh corrects this state- 
ment, and informs us that the Jews established a synagogue in 
1833 in Dublin. A century ago there were published in Dublin 
thirteen newspapers and magazines. Of them only one, Ike 
Freeman's Journal, now exists. There were eight private bank- 
ing houses, including that of the Right Hon. David Latouche 
and that of John Claudius Beresford, notorious for his savage 
treatment of the defected rebels. 

Amongst places of common resort outside Dublin are men- 
tioned Dunleary, now called Kingstown, in honor of George the 
Fourth's visit, and Donnybrook where the famous Fair was held 
on the 26th of August in each year. The Fair Green is now 
covered with respectable red-brick houses, amongst which doubt- 
less the spirits of the departed rollickers creep, like the ghosts 
in Homer, sadly gibbering. 

One takes leave of this fascinating book with a feeling of 
tender regret for the old days, which, bad as they were in 
many respects, had still the charm of romance and daring ad- 
venture. 




A BUSH HAPPENING. 

BY M. F. QUINLAN. 

We buried old Bob where the bloodwoods wave 
At the foot of the Eaglehawk ; 
We fashioned a Cross on the old man's grave, 
For fear that his ghost might walk. . . ." 

jT was about five o'clock on a summer's evening. 
All day long the sun's rays had poured down out 
of a fierce blue sky, threatening to set alight the 
sunburnt plains. Not a cloud anywhere. Both 
bird and beast sat agape; and the silver myalls 
hung down their leaves, as if they too had had about enough. 
The thermometer was still up to some perilous figure, when 
suddenly the sound of wheels broke upon the silence, and the 
mail coach lumbered up the narrow track. 

The Waitonga homestead was not on the line of route, 
therefore something must have happened to account for such 
a detour. 

On the shady side of the veranda sat a sunburnt looking 
figure, who in the intervals of absorbing a brandy and soda 
was blowing rings of smoke into the air. His trained ear had 
caught the sound, but being a typical bushman he exhibited no 
surprise. Presently the coach turned the curve and finally came 
within speaking range. Without removing his pipe from be- 
tween his teeth, the man on the long chair lazily accosted the 
driver. 

" Hullo ! Anything wrong ? " 

" Sunstroke lady passenger," was the laconic reply. 
In an instant Dick Harrington was out of his chair, and in 
less time than it takes to tell he had given orders about the 
luggage, opened the coach door, assisted one lady to alight, 
and had carried another indoors and laid her on the sofa 
in the sitting-room. Then he sought out Sarah, the old black 
gin, and told her to prepare the big double room for the two 
ladies. That done, he sent over to the kitchen to order tea, 
and finally he made his way back to the sitting-room. 



640 A BUSH HAPPENING [Aug., 

So far he had no idea who his guests might be. To judge 
by appearances they were sisters. Both were young ; one of 
them married. Dick wondered who they could be. As there 
are not too many inhabitants out back, he proceeded to pass 
in review all those homesteads that lay within a two-hundred- 
mile radius. The result of his cogitations was that he was able 
to place his visitors as the wife and sister-in-law of Edward 
Stokes, owner of Ingalara a big sheep-station a hundred miles 
to the northwest of Waitonga. He remembered hearing of 
Stokes' marriage about a year ago. Miss Evans was a Sydney 
girl and a reputed heiress. There were only the two sisters, 
their father being Nathaniel Evans, the great wool king. Ev- 
ery one in the back country knew Nathaniel Evans by name, 
and there wasn't a station hand but knew to the fraction what 
his income was. Out back the men's hut is strong on statistics, 
and they flatter themselves on the accuracy of their informa- 
tion. For nowhere is the Government Blue Book in which 
each man's takings are duly entered studied more assidu- 
ously. 

But even while Dick Harrington was busy sizing up his 
guests, he lost no time in administering what restoratives were 
possible. Of course there was no ice to be had. Ice doesn't 
grow out back. Indeed it was hard enough to get water at 
Waitonga, the drinking supply being carefully nursed in water 
bags, which were hung up in the shade, where the hot, burn- 
ing wind played upon them. Coolness being therefore impos- 
sible, the next best thing was fresh air. So Dick pulled up the 
Venetian blinds and opened wide the French windows which 
led on to the veranda. Then, turning to the patient, he placed 
another cushion beneath her head and proceeded to manipulate 
bandages. 

" Sal volatile, or lead lotion, is what we want," he said in 
a business-like tone. "But this masculine establishment has its 
limitations. Cold water bandages must do." 

"Do you think it will be serious?" asked his companion 
anxiously. 

" Not a bit," was the answer. "She'll come round all right." 

"You see, my sister has never been up country before; 
and we shouldn't have traveled in such heat." 

"To-day was a bit of a scorcher," admitted Dick ; "and with 
the glass up to 120 degrees in the shade, a few sunstrokes are 



1908.] A BUSH HAPPENING 641 

inevitable. But there's no need to be anxious about your sis- 
ter," he added. " All she needs is rest and quiet." 

With that he led the way into the dining-room, where tea 
was already waiting. 

" Now that we've time for social amenities," said Dick, 
" perhaps I ought to say that I have the pleasure of knowing 
who you are. It, therefore, remains for me to add that my 
name is Harrington : Dick Harrington at your service ! " 

Mrs. Stokes laughed. "Yes, I know your name very well"; 
she admitted, " but I never thought I was to make your ac- 
quaintance in this fashion." 

"The stars," said Dick, "have been unusually propitious. 
And now perhaps you'll pour out tea; since no man can." 

"But what does the man do when he's alone?" asked Mrs. 
Stokes. 

"He reflects," said Dick, "on the wisdom of the Book 
wherein it is written that it is not good for man to be alone." 

"Oh! I'm glad at least that you are not a woman-hater. 
Because you'll have to keep us for a week anyhow ! There's 
no coach before then." 

" But why hurry away ? " said Dick. " Miss Evans ought not 
to travel while this hot spell lasts. It wouldn't be wise to risk 
a repetition of to-day's mishap." 

But Mrs. Stokes was firm. They must push on as soon as 
possible. Therefore he must hold himself prepared to drive 
them in to Dingalong on the following Tuesday. 

" How far is it from here ? " she asked. 

"Not far," said Dick; " twenty miles or thereabouts." 

"That's capital," answered Mrs. Stokes. 

"Oh, yes"; said Dick, "it's all right while this weather 
lasts, but it's the devil and all when it rains there's no get- 
ting along in a buggy. The track is generally under water and 
the wheels get bogged." 

"Very well," laughed Mrs. Stokes, "if it rains we'll swim! 
Now I must go and unpack." 

So saying, she left him to his reflections. These, to judge 
by his expression of countenance, were not unpleasant. Indeed, 
he was just thinking that there were worse places in the world 
than the little homestead that lay at the back of beyond. Then 
he wondered how Miss Evans was Yes; he liked the look 
of Miss Evans. And what a feather weight she was to carry ! 
VOL. LXXXVIL 41 



642 A BUSH HAPPENING [Aug., 

Pretty hair, too ; it felt so soft and silky when he had raised 
her head No, he'd see she didn't travel too soon. 

That evening Mrs. Stokes and he dined tete-a-tete, and after 
dinner Dick arranged the long chairs outside the sitting-room 
windows, where they conversed in low tones for an hour or 
two. The heat was still intense. So much so that sleep seemed 
out of the question. But as Miss Evans had now regained 
consciousness Mrs. Stokes decided on withdrawing for the night. 

Dick smoked on, however, with a contented mind while he 
watched the heavens blaze and the Southern Cross slowly dip 
towards the horizon. 

Breakfast at Waitonga was an early meal at least for Dick, 
who usually had his at 5 A. M. Mrs. Stokes was to order hers 
whenever she was ready for it. But Mrs. Stokes now appeared 
at the open window. 

" How can you cope with five chops this weather ? " she 
asked. 

" Why," answered Dick, " chops are only a foundation. At 
Waitonga the regime is: chops, devilled kidneys, an egg or 
two But you must need your breakfast," he added hastily, 
as he placed a chair for her, and begged her to begin with 
something adequate. Then, as he urged, she might top off 
with fruit. 

"And how is the invalid?" he asked. 

" The invalid," said Mrs. Stokes, " is better. She has slept 
fairly well and she wishes you to know that she is a credit to 
your cold water bandages. She'll get up later and will hope 
to see you this evening." 

"Good," said Dick, as he rose to go. "You'll give what 
orders you please, and make yourself quite at home. There 
are a certain number of books and reviews scattered about the 
house, besides the box of books from the lending library." 

Then he made his way down to the stock-yard to catch 
his horse, and five minutes later horse and rider were seen 
heading off towards the sky line. 

Miss Evans had more or less recovered by that evening. 
Indeed, she wanted to insist that she was well enough to go 
in to dinner. But Dick was firm. " Sunstrokes were his af- 
fair," he said. " Consequently she must obey orders." He 
liked being in charge of Miss Evans. And she ? Well, 
Bessie Evans seemed to accept the position without any demur. 



1908.] A BUSH HAPPENING 643 

The next day Dick suggested that the two ladies would 
take their books and sit out of doors in the shade. "That is, 
if you can find any shade. And be sure," he added vaguely, 
" you cover up your heads." 

"Cover up our heads?" reiterated Mrs. Stokes. "What do 
you mean ?" 

"He evidently means us to adopt the native style of dress 
and wear blankets," said Bessie. " But," she added, turning tQ 
Dick, " even the gins don't wear them over their heads I " 

" Another thing," said Dick, ignoring Bessie's remark, " don't 
take any of those foolish sunshades. They're no good for this 
weather. Let Polly give you two green -lined umbrellas." And 
with this parting injunction, he left them. 

When he returned at 11:30 the ladies had not returned. 
So he lit his pipe and took possession of a shady corner of the 
veranda. Whew w ! what heat ! Riding along through the 
scrub was like cantering through fire. He examined the backs 
of his hands. He had been careful to keep them in his trousers 
pockets as he rode : the horse always knows his way home. 
But in spite of his precautions the skin showed signs of being 
scorched. Besides that, there is such a thing as the Barcoo rot, 
and Dick's hands were not free from it. 

" I wonder when they'll be back," he said aloud as he 
studied his watch. "It's almost lunch time now." 

Then he remembered an order that he ought to have given 
cook, whereupon he raised his voice : 

" Here ! Pollie ! Nancy ! any one ! " 

In answer to his summons a little black gin appeared, who 
immediately departed on her errand to fetch the cook ; dart- 
ing across the glaring patch of sunlight with quick, silent feet. 
She did not return at once, and when she did she shook her 
head. 

" Cook no come," she said briefly. 

"Tell him to come at once, or be d d," said Dick. 

Nancy grinned acquiescence, and smilingly disappeared. She 
liked this big feller boss. He didn't talk much, but he always 
meant what he said. So she knocked at the inner door of the 
kitchen and waited. But cook wouldn't answer, so she ran back 
again to her master. 

" Cook asleep, Boss. Him no speak." 

At this point Dick slowly withdrew a pair of legs from the 



644 A BUSH HAPPENING [Aug., 

long chair and leisurely made his way over to the servants' 
quarters. 

The kitchen door stood ajar and the hot sun was streaming 
in, while opposite the entrance a huge fire roared in the open 
camp oven. The air felt as if it had been spooned up off the 
flames. The kitchen, however, was empty. The cook was evi- 
dently in his room having a time off. 

"Poor devil," said Dick. "Can't wonder if he does slack 
it a bit." 

But as it was now lunch time, it was time he woke up, so 
Dick banged at the bed- room door with the full force of his 
fist. 

"Cook! Cook!" The summons sounded definite enough; 
but out back a man sleeps deep, and is not disturbed at 
trifles. Therefore Dick opened the door and went in. 

It was a hot, stuffy little room. The blinds were drawn 
down, with the idea of discouraging the flies, who, undeterred 
by the semi- darkness, claimed the room as their own. They 
seemed, in fact, to be abnormally active that morning. There 
was a drowsy, continuous buz z z z all the time, which 
sound was accentuated and broken into by an occasional buzz ! 
buzz ! short and sharp as a bulky fly knocked itself bodily 
against the wooden ceiling. 

Coming out of the blinding glare it was difficult at first to 
discern anything in the little room. But as he became accus- 
tomed to the shaded light, Dick could just see the sleeping 
figure of the cook. He had taken up an easy position on the 
edge of the bed evidently he was too sleepy to trouble about 
lying down and had fallen asleep as he sat. 

The attitude somewhat appeased Dick. Had he been flat 
on his back, the siesta would have been premeditated. But 
sitting there with his elbow resting on the table close beside 
his bad, and his head on his hand, the position argued a mere 
impromptu. At the same time, he had no business to be asleep 
before lunch. So Dick strode across the room, seized him by 
the back of the neck, and shook him. 

"Here! wake up, you! " Then he stopped. For the 
cook had fallen forward, his head butting Dick somewhere 
about the waist line. 

" Halloo ! " said Dick thoughtfully. " So that's your game, 
is it?" And without further remark he sauntered back to the 



1908.] A BUSH HAPPENING 645 

veranda, just in time to see Mrs. Stokes and Bessie making 
their way towards the house. 

" We've had a glorious morning," called Bessie, " and I've 
fallen in love with your creek." 

"You mustn't do that," said Dick. " It's not proper." 

"Why not?" said Bessie. 

" Because it shows a want of principle," was the reply. 

" And who is the best judge of principle, you or I ? " 

" Well," said Dick, " I'll put it to you. In this bare, lonely 
country there are not enough women to go round. And if one 
of these goes falling in love with promiscuous creeks It fol- 
lows that she's not playing the game." 

"Now, don't argue," said Bessie. "It's too hot, and and 
my sister is hungry." 

"Yes, indeed"; said Mrs. Stokes, "ready to eat you out 
of house and home." 

" Oh ! that reminds me," said Dick casually, " what would 
you like for lunch ? " 

" Why, bless the man ! it's lunch time now," ejaculated Mrs. 
Stokes. 

"Yes, I know"; said Dick. "But what would you like?" 

" We'd like anything you'd give us," said Bessie. 

"Well," replied Dick, "the point is, what can you cook ?" 

" I wish you wouldn't tease," said Bessie. " For I'm hungry, 
too." 

" Same here," asserted Dick, and he sat down again in 
the easy chair. " But the question is this : Can we manage 
with cold meat and no potatoes ? Because that is all we're likely 
to get." 

" If you weren't always spinning yarns," said Bessie, "we 
might sometimes believe you." And swinging her dainty sun- 
hat she sauntered off to her room. 

" Hang it all," said Dick, " I never tell the truth, but it 
isn't placed on the wrong side of the ledger." 

" The moral of which is," answered Mrs. Stokes, " that you 
should speak the truth oftener." 

" Well, it's quite true about lunch anyhow," said Dick. 
"The cook's on strike." 

"What fun! Does he want more wages or less work?" 

" He didn't say. He merely dispensed himself for to- 
day." 



646 A BUSH HAPPENING [Aug., 

"Bessie!" called Mrs. Stokes. "Do come. The cook's on 
strike, and we're to get our own lunch ! " 

"I don't believe it," answered Bessie. " It's only another of 
Mr. Harrington's tales. I can't imagine how he was brought 
up ! " And Bessie's eyes took on a taunting expression that was 
distinctly provocative. "Now, Sir! tell the truth; the whole 
truth; and nothing but the truth!" 

"All right," said Dick resignedly. "The cook's dead." 

"Dead!" It was Bessie's voice, and the word came like a 
half cry. She had gone ashy white. Her breath came and went, 
and Dick noticed that she looked very small and frightened, as 
she sat there with parted lips. " Dead ! " she whispered. 

"Yes"; said Dick, "dead as mutton." 

For a few minutes no one spoke, and it seemed as if, among 
the group on the veranda a silent presence had obtruded itself, 
shutting out the sunlight with its gray wings outstretched. 

" How awful ! " said Mrs. Stokes presently. " What was the 
cause ? " 

" Heat apoplexy," was the answer. " He was a great, hulk- 
ing brute, with a neck like a bull." 

"When did you hear?" asked Bessie. 

" I didn't hear," replied Dick. " I found him. He was sit- 
ting on the side of his bed. I thought he was asleep ; but when 
I shook him he fell over dead." 

" What did you do ? " And even while Bessie framed the 
question, her eyes were filled with horror. 

" I heaved him back," was the stolid reply. 

Dick was apparently surprised at so rudimentary a ques- 
tion. Like most of those who live out back he had no imagina- 
tion. His vision was bounded by facts. He was untroubled by 
alternatives. Whatever the difficulty, he only saw the one way 
out. 

"After all, every man must die," said Dick philosophically. 
" It might have been I or you. It wasn't; and I'm jolly glad. 
As for this poor devil, he probably wasn't having much of a 
time. Being cook isn't much of a catch this weather." 

" I suppose the funeral will be soon ? " said Mrs. Stokes 
presently. 

"Yes"; said Dick, "fairly soon." 

The mid- day siesta was not a success, so Dick suggested 
that the two ladies would camp out for tea. Accordingly they 



1908.] A BUSH HAPPENING 647 

all set out, Dick armed with a " billy " and a tea-basket, while 
Mrs. Stokes and Bessie grappled with umbrellas and sofa cush- 
ions. There was a shady nook Dick knew of not far away where 
the yellow mimosa hung down to the water's edge, and here 
they elected to pitch their tent. Of course the creek was not 
what it was. For instead of the swift rushing stream that once 
swirled between the steep banks, and at times overflowed, flood- 
ing the surrounding plains and changing the face of the coun- 
try, here it was a poor little shrunken rivulet, creeping along 
between wide margins of sun-baked clay. The clay was all 
cracked, and it cried aloud for the life giving showers. But 
no rain came to moisten the parched lips of the dying creek. 
Meanwhile it afforded a happy hunting ground for the great 
bull frogs, whose incessant croaking made the hot air throb 
again. 

From time to time Bessie would look up from her book to 
see a clumsy iguana stretch his head out of his hole by the 
clump of tiger ferns. Then, blinking his beady eyes in the 
sunlight he would shoot out his forked tongue as if he were a 
serpent getting ready to strike. But he never did anything 
more than pretend, because an iguana is one of nature's fools, 
being deficient in any concentrated sense of purpose. Bessie 
had no patience with such a creature. Therefore, the next time 
his head appeared, she threw a saucer at him. 
" Bessie ! What are you doing ? " 
" I'm merely protesting at a negation," was the reply. 
" But why protest with Mr. Harrington's china ? " 
" Because I had nothing of my own to throw." 
"If you're so destructive, he may not ask us again to stay." 
" I didn't know that he had asked us this time," said Bes- 
sie, and she relapsed into her book. 

Meanwhile Dick Harrington had more serious details to con- 
sider. Dead men are soon buried out back, and within the 
next hour or two he must have things fixed up. At the other 
side of the homestead, further off from the creek, stood a sandy 
ridge. It was here that the grave must be dug. But first of 
all there was the death certificate to be considered. This should 
be signed by a doctor, or, failing him, by a magistrate. But 
the magistrate was no longer in the district; and the nearest 
doctor lived ninety miles away. A coffin ? No time to make a 
coffin. The man must be buried that night. Then as regards 



648 A BUSH HAPPENING [Aug., 

the grave. Who was to dig it ? None of the station hands 
were available ; and black boys will dig no graves. To them a 
white man is a god so long as he has life in him. But no 
sooner does the white man die, than the natives flee from him 
in superstitious fear. "White feller tumble down, up jump 
devil-devil." 

Therefore, Dick could look for no assistance from any of 
the blacks. Then he remembered that one of the native camp 
had brought in word the night before that two travelers were 
camped at the water hole. 

In the back blocks every man who has no visible means of 
support is known as a traveler ; for to the democratic mind 
there is something indelicate in calling things by their right 
names. Therefore it matters not in the far Northwest whether 
a man is " on the wallaby" an out-of-work, a tramp, a good- 
for-nothing; the back country looks beyond these details and 
dignifies the passing unit by the generic title of traveler. So 
Dick ordered a black boy to ride down to the water hole and 
to tell the travelers that a white man was dead and would they 
come and dig a hole ? 

An hour later the messenger returned. "The travelers were 
having a spell to-day, they might take the track to-morrow," 
was the gist of their reply. 

At this intelligence Dick swore in that lurid undertone which 
is natural to the Northwest, and sent back word that if they 

didn't come now, they could go to ; and that the pay was 

ten shillings each, exclusive of drinks. 

The terms being deemed satisfactory, the two travelers strolled 
up before sundown. They were unkempt looking ruffians, shock- 
headed and out at elbow, and each humped his bluey with 
cheerful indolence. 

They must see the dead man, they said, in order to make 
a hole to fit. So they looked at the dead man with critical 
eyes and took rough measurements; after which they liquored 
up and started in on the job. 

It was hot work, with the sun beating down on the heads 
of the gravediggers. And Dick Harrington had to stand over 
them to insure the task being done. But when they had got 
down about five feet, first one man and then the other threw 
down his spade and struck for higher pay. 

" This was no work for a white man," they protested. 



1908.] A BUSH HAPPENING 649 

"They'd been got at, and they'd be blowed if they'd do any 
more." 

But Dick Harrington stood his ground. They had agreed 
to the arrangement, and he'd see them dead before he'd alter 
it. They could please themselves whether they settled with 
him or went on with the job. 

At the beginning of this interchange of remarks, the trav- 
elers showed signs of fight; but seeing an ugly light in the 
boss' eye they decided to climb down. This they did in a 
double sense. 

"'ow deep, Guvnor?" came the query from below. 

" Nine feet," said Dick, and he filled up each man with a 
long whisky. 

The grave was to be finished at 8:30, when the funeral was 
to take place. But before that Dick had to fill in the necessary 
papers, whereupon he found himself confronted with unlooked- 
for difficulties. 

What was the man's name ? Where did he come from ? 
Had he any relatives ? To all of which questions Dick could 
furnish no reply. In the men's hut he was known as "Tubby." 
To the sub-manager he was " Cook," and no more. Dick had 
searched his pockets, but he had no letters. And subsequently 
he had rummaged in his trunk, but there were neither papers 
nor clue to establish the man's identity. Therefore Dick did 
the best he could. He set down a vague declaration which 
was afterwards forwarded to a distant Justice of the Peace, to 
the effect that he thereby testified to the sudden death of the 
station cook, surname unknown, commonly called " Tubby." 
Approximate age, 55. Cause of death, apoplexy. Died, igth 
of December, 1907. Buried same date. 

These preliminaries accomplished, Dick gave his attention 
to the preparations for a cold supper, and when all was ready, 
he strolled down to the creek. 

"Why didn't you come in time for tea ? " asked Mrs. Stokes. 

"Been asleep," said Dick, and he blinked his eyes to give 
color to the assertion. 

"Oh!" said Bessie. " Then you haven't been chasing after 
cattle? Though why those unfortunate cattle require so much 
rounding up, is in itself a mystery. However, let that pass. 
Do look at the cross we've made to lay on the cook's grave." 

Dick looked and was touched in spite of himself. It was 



650 A BUSH HAPPENING [Aug., 

so like a woman, he thought, this sentimentality of putting 
flowers on the grave of an unknown man. As if they would 
benefit anybody, still less the poor devil who would lie beneath 
them. But it was a tender thought; and the frail cross, fash- 
ioned in the wet fern and the sweet-smelling wattle, was the 
only sacred emblem the grave would ever know. And Dick 
liked to think that the sign of redemption should have been 
twined by a woman's hand; and it seemed natural, too, that 
Bessie should have done this thing. 

"Queer things, women," he said to himself. " Hearts as soft 
as putty ; but as for driving them give me a dozen brumbies." 

"I suppose he'll be buried to morrow," said Bessie tenta- 
tively ; " or is it the next day ? " 

" About then," said Dick. And they all went back to the 
homestead. 

Supper over, Dick excused himself on the plea of having 
business letters to write. 

" But I ought to have worked them off by ten o'clock," 
he said, " and if you're not in a hurry to go to bed, we might 
have some reading. Do you like Paterson ? " 

" I don't know him," said Bessie. 

"Don't know him?" ejaculated Dick. " Don't know Pater- 
son, and you an Australian girl ? " 

" Well," said Bessie in self-defence, " I was brought up in 
England, so how could I know him ? " 

" That's no excuse," was Dick's reply. " He's read in Eng- 
land; for even the slow-going English public has sense enough 
to appreciate his stuff. Why," said Dick, warming up to his 
subject, "until you know Paterson and Lawson " 

" I don't know Lawson either," interrupted Bessie defiantly. 
" So now you may spurn me as an intellectual outcast." 

" Of course, I wouldn't expect you to be enthusiastic about 
Lawson," said Dick in a more conciliatory tone. " The two 
men represent the two opposite poles of thought. One is an 
idealist; the other a realist. Lawson says true things grue- 
some things and Lawson sticks. You can't get away from his 
facts. When he describes anything, he makes you see it with 
his eyes. What he shows you is not easily forgotten. But 
with Paterson well, he deals with the poetic side of things. 
We must certainly have some of Paterson to-night." 

So saying, Dick groped for his pipe in a succession of pock- 



1908.] A BUSH HAPPENING 651 

ets, and whistling a cheerful ditty he made his way across to 
the servants' quarters. On the sand-ridge beyond the two trav- 
elers were still at work. 

" I do wish," said Bessie presently, " that Dick Harrington 
were not quite so severe. How could I be expected to know 
these wretched poets he thinks so much of ? " Then, after a 
pause and in a more spirited tone : " After all, perhaps, these 
two are the only ones Dick Harrington knows ! " 

" I shouldn't wonder," agreed Mrs. Stokes. " He's a protec- 
tionist to the back- bone; and to praise local talent is only an- 
other way of supporting home industries." 

But Bessie's attention had wandered. She was following out 
her own train of thought. 

" I know I shall hate Paterson," she said resentfully ; " be- 
sides which, I hate being read to. ' Perish the poets,' say I ! " 

But notwithstanding her denunciation, Bessie got up and 
scanned the bookshelves, as if in search of a particular book. 
Then, as her fingers rested on a well-worn volume, she opened 
it at random and proceeded to curl herself up in an easy chair. 

Having read for a space, she laid down her book and re- 
marked that if Dick Harrington had been less emphatic, she 
might have agreed with his verdict. " As it is Listen, 
Mary! It's quite different from what you'd expect." 

" How do you know what I expect ? " asked Mary. 

" Oh, I don't mean that," was the answer. " I only mean 
that, in a curious sort of way, he seems to have caught the 
spirit of the back country the silence, the stillness, the pene- 
trating melancholy. Listen to this scrap. It just makes you 
feel as if you were lying out in the open under a clump of 
myalls, with only a stretch of scrub between you and the sky 
line. And curving through the air wheel a flock of wild swans : 
a black streak against the blue. Listen ! 

" * The daylight is dying 
Away in the west; 
The wild birds are flying 
In silence to rest; 
In leafage and frondage, 
Where shadows are deep, 
They pass to its bondage 
The kingdom of sleep. 



652 A BUSH HAPPENING [Aug., 

And watched in their sleeping 
By stars in the height 
They rest in your keeping 
Oh, wonderful night.' 

"Then," said Bessie, "he goes on to describe the glamor 
that hangs over the silent places in spite of the heat and the 
dust ; yes, and the flies and the snakes. He just takes no no- 
tice of these facts. He carries you beyond and translates the 
real hidden meaning of things. Of course he's only voicing 
what every bushman must feel ; but the bushman is not ana- 
lytical, so I suppose we ought to suffer the poets, if only for 
such lines as these : 

" ' When night doth her glories 
Of starshine unfold, 
'Tis then that the stories 
Of Bush-land are told. 
Unnumbered I hold them 
In memories bright, 
But who could unfold them 
Or read them aright ? 
Beyond all denials 
The stars in their glories 
The breeze in the myalls 
Are part of these stories. 
The waving of grasses 
The song of the river 
That sings as it passes 
For ever and ever, 
The hobble- chains rattle 
The calling of birds 
The lowing of cattle 
Must blend with the words. . . ." 

Bessie's eyes had taken on a new light as she read page 
after page. Every now and again she looked up at the clock. 
It still wanted a full half-hour to ten o'clock. 

And while the two women sat reading in the shaded light 
of the sitting-room, a silent little procession might have been 



1908.] A BUSH HAPPENING 653 

seen wending its way under shadow of the night from the ser- 
vants' quarters to the sand-ridge beyond. 

Some of the station hands had come up from the men's hut, 
a mile away; and on the shoulders of these six white men was 
carried a rough bier. To be accurate, it was the stable door 
which had been taken off its hinges in view of the solemnity of 
the occasion. On this door lay the dead man, rolled round in 
a colored blanket. Out back, when a man dies, he is frequently 
buried in his clothes. He goes down to his grave as he is. 
It saves trouble. And to obviate the difficulty of a coffin, the 
blanket which has covered him the night before is now wrapped 
round him for his last sleep. 

This custom is found more convenient by the man's friends; 
but it necessitates additional labor on the part of the grave- 
diggers. The hole must be made deeper, if the dead is to 
sleep undisturbed. For, though superstition is rife among the 
majority of the black fellows, there are always individual na- 
tives who are ready to dig up the corpse for the sake of his 
clothes. Nine feet, however, is considered a safe depth. Even 
when the raiment is more desirable than that of the dead cook. 

That the news of the burial had reached the native camp 
further out was evident by the silent groups of bush gayloos who 
had come in to watch the ceremony. A semi-circle of camp-fires 
had been built within a hundred yards of the grave, and be- 
side these fires sat the blacks, with their gins and their pic- 
caninnies. Not a word was spoken ; all were absorbed in the 
chief business of the evening. 

The two travelers were leaning on their spades, cursing the 
heat and the dead man, when the procession reached the grave- 
side. At a sign from Dick the bier was taken from the men's 
shoulders, and the six white men closed round three sides of 
the door. 

This done, Dick gave the order to lower, whereupon the 
door was tilted up, and the body fell into the hole with a dull 
thud. 

At this, a whispered protest ran through the native groups. 
The blacks rose to their feet and pointed to the yawning 
grave: "Blanket budgeree ! Clothes budgeree!" And a smoth- 
ered groan expressed the native disapproval of the ways of the 
white man. 

" Fill in, boys," said Dick ; and again the gravediggers 



654 A BUSH HAPPENING [Aug. 

bent to their task. Within half an hour the grave was filled 
in ; not heaped up ; only stamped level. For such was the 
contract. 

The white men had now gone home ; Dick to the home- 
stead ; the others to the hut. The blacks alone remained. 
And while the camp-fires flared in the darkness, the native 
groups sat around and watched the spot where the dead man 
slept. " Would he emerge from his hiding-place ? " they won- 
dered. "Would he cast off his covering of sand and work harm 
among them ? Surely the white man was great, and who could 
stand against him ? " 

So they kept guard throughout the night above the lonely 
grave on the ridge, while the homestead was wrapped in 
slumber. 

Without a prayer or a word of hope had the dead man 
been laid to rest. Soon his place of burial would be but a 
forgotten patch of scrub; since 

"There's never a stone by the sleeper's head, 

There's never a fence beside ; 

And the wandering stock on the grave may tread 
Unnoticed and undenied. . . ." 

In the lonely stretches of the back-country it is the living 
alone that count ; for is it not written : " the living are few 
but the dead are many " ? 




THE PRIEST IN RECENT FICTION. 

BY CORNELIUS CLIFFORD. 

'RT," it is written, "has many infamies"; but the 
most unspeakable of them, the true infanda that 
lock the lips of the wise to silence or despair, 
are not necessarily the most shocking. If morals 
have too often taken hurt through art's pervers- 
ity, they have nearly as often re-asserted themselves ; and the 
essential decency of human nature has saved both art itself and 
the profounder issues of life by refusing to acquiesce content- 
edly in a lie. The same thing, unfortunately, cannot be said 
when religious beliefs are in question ; for the average man is 
seldom as shrewd in these matters as he is single-hearted and 
good. A distorted symbol of faith will hold his allegiance, or 
be accepted, at least, as conjecturally true, where a correspond- 
ing symbol of conduct would scarcely fail to excite incredulity 
or scorn. So much easier is it to do right than to think right, 
so much easier to love God, as a great Italian humanist has 
reminded us, than, by reflecting upon Him, to define Him with 
satisfaction to the inquisitive self. A like limitation would 
seem to prevail, also, when one has to deal with alien creeds. 
Omne ignotum pro mahfico might be said, with slight variation 
of the Tacitean formula, to be the law of our generalization in 
judging of other men's faiths: we readily believe evil of what 
we have never taken the pains to understand. Bigotry and 
prejudice may not, indeed, be mutually convertible terms; but 
they are closely related ; for, if the former can be met by con- 
tact and the knowledge that humanizes, the latter must surely 
die when it has been answered by patient and charitable criti- 
cism ; and been blown upon, let us add, by the Spirit of God. 
It is not so many months since the present writer called at- 
tention in these pages to a notable instance of this graceless 
bias of the sectarian mind. Speaking of the Catholic concep- 
tion of the Christian priesthood, as contrasted with that ridic- 
ulous portrayal of it which survives as part of the Protestant 
tradition of our day, he endeavored to show by reference to 
such historical data as might be supposed to be within reach 



656 THE PRIEST IN RECENT FICTION [Aug., 

of the ordinary inquirer, how a perverse but ingenious carica- 
ture, roughly sketched at first in mere wantonness, and without 
any after-thought of disloyalty to the idea that gave meaning 
to the thing in itself, came at last, by an unhappy concourse 
of events, to be accepted in all seriousness by the Protestant 
imagination as the only true account of one of the most vital- 
ly representative institutions of our ancient faith. The article 
was a modest attempt to do for religious dissidents what is 
often done with advantage for the dissidents of secular life. 
It was essentially an eirenicon ; an effort to meet a prejudice 
by indicating the unworthy and somewhat irrelevant circum- 
stances that had contributed to its growth. In the present pa- 
per it is hoped that the argument may be carried a step fur- 
ther. The reader's attention will be directed to the not unin- 
teresting and, in some respects, most remarkable psychological 
data to be found in the mental attitude of both parties to the 
misunderstanding, caricaturist and caricatured alike. In the 
case of the caricaturist, at least, it may be admitted at the out- 
set that the data in question have undergone a notable change 
since the spacious and over-reckless times in which they first 
betrayed themselves. 

Many things have contributed to bring such a result about. 
The rhythmic tendency to reaction a psychological trait to be 
taken into account when dealing with races no less than with 
individuals increased human intercourse, the spread of knowl- 
edge, the growth of ideas, democracy, general education, and 
the wider feeling for liberty which has resulted from the en- 
forcement of the principle of political toleration throughout 
English-speaking lands these things have so profoundly af- 
fected the present generation, even in religious matters, that 
mere bigotry has become a kind of anachronism in consequence, 
and an educated man will resent few charges more keenly than 
that of being a zealot in his creed. One need not stop to chal- 
lenge in detail the evidence for this statement. The facts are 
there, and the altered outlook, in a sense, is there also; ex- 
plain them as we will. Priests are no longer proscribed or 
hunted; they live in the open; they come and go; they plan 
and build and sit in committee; they speak out their thoughts, 
or write them, according to their bent; they are accepted as 
good citizens, in fine; and as a class they are sincerely held in 
honor, some of them in very great honor, even in communi- 



1908.] THE PRIEST IN RECENT FICTION 657 

ties where the feeling of the Catholic for his religion is secretly 
despised as mere superstition, and where the level of spiritual 
intelligence is not very high. What is more noteworthy still, 
priests perform their mystical functions with a certain publicity 
and blaze of circumstance; they confess and anoint the sick in 
the hospitals and offer like evangelical service to the victims of 
the modern street ; they institute processions with banners and 
religious emblems; they offer Mass on battleships or in military 
camps ; they have been invited to preach before Protestant uni- 
versities, and they have even been known to open legislative 
assemblies in America with prayer. 

All this is quite true ; and yet it may be asked : Is the 
priesthood, as such, coming to be better understood under- 
stood, we mean, on its essentially mystical side, the only side 
which inspires the Catholic with [concern for its good name ? 
Is it safer to-day from misconception, more immune from the 
cruelty of caricature, than it was, say, a brief generation ago ? 
One might easily recur for answer to the strange prejudices 
that swarm to the surface whenever the calm of religious waters 
is troubled by educational storms, as they are at this moment 
in England, as they might be at any time in America, were 
priests here a less forbearing class than over-much misunder- 
standing has taught them to be in a spiritually obtuse, but sub- 
stantially well-intentioned, population like our own. Having no 
wish, however, to decide a plain matter by an array of conten- 
tious instances, we prefer to direct the detached observer to those 
quieter paths oi imaginative prose literature where the thoughts 
of the great non-Catholic heart are all unconsciously revealed. 

Within the past five years that large and uncritical portion 
of the reading world which derives its religion, like its science, 
from the too-pellucid wells of brave romance, has had its thirst 
quenched by a dozen different stories, the greater number of 
them works of more than every- day merit, in which the Catho- 
lic idea of the priesthood has been travestied in a series of 
situations that can be justified neither on the score of good 
art, nor of accurate knowledge, nor since this also is an ad- 
mitted ground for the making of many books of decent and 
soft going commercialism. These books were loudly heralded 
at the time of their publication, and appeared to enjoy a well- 
deserved vogue. They were praised in reviews more or less 
conventionally superlative, as is the manner of those hapless 
VOL. LXXXVII. 42 



658 THE PRIEST IN RECENT FICTION [Aug., 

and not always omniscient scribes who must do these things or 
starve ; and in one or two instances that we could name, they 
were gravely commended horrescimus referentes by certain 
weekly Catholic periodicals, from which one had a right to ex- 
pect a more considered verdict. No fewer than five of these 
" disedifying tales " have issued from the press within the past 
eighteen months; and if we select these last for especial notice, 
in lieu of their predecessors, it is not because of any greater 
literary excellence they reveal, but rather because of a certain 
na'ive obliquity of vision wherever a priest holds the stage that 
ought to be interesting to Catholics as tending to explain so 
much of the perverted artistry and false psychology from which 
they and the articles of their creed are still condemned to suf- 
fer in an essentially truth-loving time. 

The particular books in question are Mr. Robert Hichens* 
Garden of Allah; Mr. George Moore's Lake; Mr. Temple 
Thurston's Apple of Eden ; Mr. H. A. Hinkson's Father Alphon- 
sus ; and Madame Dickinson Bianchi's Modern Prometheus. The 
chronological order of their publication which we have given, 
would seem inversely to indicate also the relative order of their 
merit; for Madame Bianchi's tale is artistically too crude a 
creation to be spoken of in the same breath with the other 
books, and calls for notice in the present connection chiefly be- 
cause of the significant light it sheds upon some of those 
masked survivals that one often meets with in other directions 
of the Puritan New England soul. 

As the scope of the present paper is neither literary nor 
directive, but expository for the most part, and, if critical at 
all, only in a psychological way, we shall not stop to summar- 
ize these stories by giving an outline of their plots. Readers 
of THE CATHOLIC WORLD are probably familiar with them; 
and it will be enough to remark, therefore, that all five are 
love tales in which a priest enters as protagonist. Not one of 
them could be described as romantic, either in the technical or 
in the popular sense of that word; but Mr. Moore, with his 
neo-Celtic craze for the symbolic aspect of things, and Mr. 
Hichens, with his feeling for desert color and environment, the 
appropriate frame-work, it would appear, for the sad picture 
he gives us of a Trappist soul at odds with fate, have come 
perilously near to that most difficult yet always questionable 
achievement in art, the sustained parable with its inevitable 
moral all but pointed at the close. There is, of course, a plaus- 



i9o8.] THE PRIEST IN RECENT FICTION 

ible attempt at actuality, if not at realism, and with the ex- 
ception of Madame Bianchi, whose essays in that direction are 
of the dear old-fashioned and righteously blundering sort, the 
authors show an acquaintance with the outer mechanism of 
Catholicism which is creditable alike to their honesty and to 
their instinct for literary art. This is no more than one has a. 
right to look for from writers of their peculiar experience of 
life; and in the case of Mr. Moore even the least discerning 
reader will recognize that his knowledge is too intimate, too 
assured, too vital, in a word, ever to have been acquired by 
any less infallible channel than heredity and early training. 
We think it worth while to insist upon these facts, because 
their due consideration will lend point to the admission that 
there is no evidence whatever in any of these tales, not even 
in The Modern Prometheus, of the accusing or denunciatory spirit. 
The Catholic susceptibility that would take offence on that score 
would be acute indeed. A delicate, yet compellingly human 
problem is approached in that impersonal yet compellingly hu- 
man way, which is supposed to make for success in art. The 
success is not apparent, and the esthetic result is challengeable 
to a marked degree. 

Is it the art that is at fault ? Or the deeper something, the 
psychology, let us say, which robust art ever instinctively obeys ? 
Or is it, perhaps, the more mysterious something that is lack- 
ing, the sense of religion, namely, which the healthiest art 
must live by and glorify, or fail utterly to realize its dreams ? 
There is not an educated Catholic, however feeble his grasp of 
the essential meaning of his faith might be, who would not 
answer that a genuine clue would inevitably be found in that 
last suggestion, and possibly in all three, since all three are so 
vitally related. The fact is, that not one of these authors has 
really apprehended the mystical secret of Catholicism, even on 
its most abstract and notional side (the side, that is, on which a 
detached scholar might be expected, on purely natural grounds, 
to come closest to it) ; and this is as true of Mr. Moore with 
his implied claim of esoteric knowledge, as it is of Madame 
Bianchi with her " Summerfield " outlook and her somewhat 
banal rhapsodies over Franciscan renunciation and early Um- 
brian art. We do not wish to imply that Catholicism may not be 
sympathetically expressed in thought formulas and art- symbols 
without being first accepted as an obedience of faith. Radiant 
spirits here and there have accomplished the thing before now ; 



66o THE PRIEST IN RECENT FICTION [Aug., 

though the achievement has never been so complete, we imagine, 
as to deceive the children of the household itself. What we do 
contend is that a very much larger measure of knowledge is 
needed, perhaps we should say a very much larger gift of insight, 
than any that our authors seem capable of acquiring in the 
several frames of mind that went to the making of these books; 
and the proof of it is to be found in their clumsy treatment of 
that most elusive of problems, whether one views it from the 
standpoint of the historian, the psychologist, the artist, or the 
theological ascetic the celibacy, namely, of the Catholic 
clergy. Save in The Modern Prometheus the theme in each in- 
stance centers, curiously enough, in the self torment of a priest 
who discovers, or thinks he discovers under the stress of passion 
and environment, that life and ecclesiasticism and the never too- 
impossible "she "have conspired to turn him into a spiritually 
ill-fitting peg in a correspondingly irksome and ill-fitting hole. 

In no case can any of the tales be described as pleasant. 
Mr. Hichens and Mr. Hinkson, however, have given us the 
least offensive, Mr. Moore and Mr. Thurston the most cynical 
and perhaps least fortifying presentment of what must always 
be eschewed as an artistically contentious matter. Mr. Moore's 
treatment of the problem is larger; and it might even be said 
to go deeper than that of the others ; but it is not on that ac- 
count less irritating or even less futile. He sets before us the 
spectacle of a priest in slow but inevitable revolt against the 
celibate obligations of his state. The idea is not new; though 
the setting is full of interest. One feels, however, as the story 
develops, that one has been introduced into a world of almost 
transparent symbols. As in the old moralities, as in so much 
of the revived Irish folk lore of the neo-Celtic movement with 
which Mr. Moore has endeavored to identify himself, the char- 
acters have too much breadth; they are not personalities, but 
types; and what is worse, we soon realize that they are in- 
tended to be types. The voice of the moralist, a very un- 
lovely and inverted moralist, cries through each plausible mask. 
This priest, we are all but told, is every priest. Is it any 
wonder that the psychologist in us, or the man-of-the-world 
if we keep so convenient a daemon for Socratic self-illumina- 
tion at such junctures should be up in arms ? 

Allegemeinheit may, as the great Winckelmann has told us, be 
more than a counsel of perfection in art; but it may lead, too, 
to morally unesthetic results ! Healthy human nature is not 



I9o8.] 



THE PRIEST IN RECENT FICTION 



661 



sex-haunted, save for certain not wholly inevitable but perfectly 
commonplace crises in its growth; and it is mere pruriency to 
select these moments for perpetuation at the hands of art. If 
they must be depicted, it ought to be in contra position, so to 
say. They may serve as the foils of more abiding things. 
They may give emphasis to the soul which they were made to 
minister to, but surely not to over-rule. Nympholepsy is under 
an eternal taboo ; and tricking it out in a cassock will not add 
appreciably to its charm. But this is not the sum of Mr. 
Moore's offence in this matter. For good or for ill the Catho- 
lic Church seems to have put withes upon his soul. Her feel- 
ing for chastity is his veiled obsession; but he cannot bring 
himself to see the mystery with her eyes. His celibate in re- 
volt, therefore, is but the artistic embodiment of a wider and 
more consistent disavowal, to which, as one perceives, the poign 
ancy of circumstance and character has only too obviously 
pricked him on. The priest's repudiation of his vows is in- 
tended logically to be viewed as a break with the all-pervading 
supernaturalism of his earlier life ; though it is somewhat dis- 
ingenuously represented as nearly blighting the sheathed viril- 
ity of the man before the ultimate self is fully awake. How 
that ultimate self is arrived at is no concern of ours now. The 
incident of the final denudation and plunge into the waters of 
the lake is, of course, very brazen, very mocking, and very 
Mooresque ; but whatever we may think of it from the crafts- 
man's point of view, it serves to throw into relief the author's 
fundamentally grotesque conception of the celibate ideal as an 
institution of the sacerdotal life. Stripped of all adventitious 
mystery, that ideal has become for Mr. Moore, as for so many 
other essentially secular minds in our day, a mere burden or 
servitude imposed upon healthy human nature by a relentless 
and highly developed instinct of ecclesiasticism which turns 
men into machines and sex into hourly material for casuistry. 
It is, therefore, neither a grace nor a virtue, much less a heroism ; 
but a uniform or habit of soul, to be doffed at last at the sum- 
mons of opportunity like the discarded clerical garments in our 
story, which are left so baffHngly, and yet for a sign to be in- 
terpreted, as they lie there upon the hither bank. 

Of Mr. Thurston's book, The Apple of Eden, there is little 
to remark. It is a good study, rather than a good story; and 
though inferior in literary merit to Mr. Moore's, it challenges 
comparison with The Lake, in that it deals with a kindred 



662 THE PRIEST IN RECENT FICTION [Aug., 

theme and reveals a familiarity with certain aspects of the men- 
tal and religious environment of the Irish priest not usual in 
those who have been educated outside of an Irish seminary. 
It must be said, however, that here the likeness ends ; for not 
only is the atmosphere of both stories perceptibly different, 
but the progress of the priest's passion is sketched it can hardly 
be said to be drawn with a relentlessness and a sense of act- 
uality entirely worthy of a more wholesome theme. On grounds 
of mere taste, too, and quite apart from the larger problem 
created by the choice of subject, it might be contended that 
the element of sex is unduly thrust forward. Indeed one can 
almost detect a note of truculence, scientific truculence, from 
the very beginning, as of one who is unpleasantly conscious 
of being possessed of all the facts of a case, and who is deter- 
mined to make his evidence tell. That is not a good mood for 
a maker of plain tales ; and it is precisely this defect, we think, 
this lack of sympathy, as we must call it, with the profounder 
religious question involved in the plot, that leaves upon the read- 
er's mind a general suggestion of delicately malign portraiture, 
which amounts in substance to the thing that we call caricature. 
Mr. Hichens and Mr. Hinkson have so little in common, 
whether as literary artists or interested spectators of Catholicism, 
that it may seem like forcing a remote matter to couple their 
names in an argument like the present. The Garden of Allah, 
at any rate, is too extraordinary a piece of writing, considered 
as mere prose, to be thrown into the same scale with so mod- 
est an essay in story-telling as Father Alphonsus. Its pervading 
air of mysticism, its haunting undernote of sin, its sustained 
premonition of spiritual disaster, to say nothing of its extraordi- 
nary power of word-painting, and the use to which its versatile 
author puts that rare and perilous gift in order to make fea- 
tureless places live and desert landscapes throb with religious 
emotion, almost preclude the idea of comparison with the less 
pretentious, but not necessarily less serious, work. Yet, because 
both books deal with the same sad business of a priest's fall, 
and deal with it reverently, if ineffectually, we think it will make 
our meaning clearer if we discuss them together and not apart. 
We are not sure that an author's personal and private experi- 
ence of life should be expected to furnish more legitimate ma- 
terial for a final judgment of his work than his personal and 
private creed should do. There are circumstances, no doubt, in 
which knowledge of this intimate sort will greatly help one in 



1908.] THE PRIEST IN RECENT FICTION 663 

the business of interpretation; but where is one to draw the 
line ? Not convention only, but psychology as well, erects a 
barrier here which the curious will not seek too anxiously to 
over -pass. The finished work, as every artist knows, is seldom 
an adequate transcript of the mental cartoon it was intended to 
body forth. Ideas, like words, are wilful and not perfectly 
manageable things ; they have a significance and objectivity of 
their own which is often latent, even to the most wizaid un- 
derstanding that conceives them. 

We have no means of identifying the immediate sources frcm 
which Mr. Hichens drew the materials for his unusual story ; 
but his treatment of the situation throughout is plainly intended 
to be reverent, even where it is not intimate and sure. To lay 
bare with any hope of full esthetic satisfaction to a Catholic 
reader the mystery of a Trappist's mind would be an achieve- 
ment even for a genius in hagiography. To follow that mind 
understandingly along a path of deliberate and very self-willed 
revolt against the twice coercive sanctities of its priestly and 
religious vows would need the insight of a Shakespeare and the 
mystical candor of a St. Teresa fused into one. That a writer 
of Mr. Hichens' gifts should have attempted it and come pain- 
fully short of even artistic plausibility in the net result, may 
be no disgrace, indeed; but surely it conveys a warning. Ard 
precisely the same stricture must be made in the case of Mr. 
Hinkson's quieter, but no less disturbing, apologue. Here we 
have two writers of strikingly diverse antecedents and native 
equipment, differing as completely in temperament and artis- 
tic predilection, as they probably do in actual religious experi- 
ence of life, girding themselves for the same delicate task and 
conveying practically the same identical impression of futility 
in the end. What does it mean ? the educated Catholic is 
compelled to ask. What can it mean, but this : that some mat- 
ters are beyond the interpretative function of art, and should be 
left austerely alone ? Sacerdotal celibacy is one of these things ; 
and every Catholic knows instinctively the reason why. It is the 
eternal problem of balance between reticence and choice ; the 
two poles about which the artist's heaven inevitably revolves. 

We once heard a witty person declare that the idea of a 
priest in love would be as ridiculously unmanageable, even in 
a great story-teller's hands, as the notion of an infant Jupiter 
down with the measles. Not every reader, we suppose, will be 
prepared to accept so flippant a pronouncement. It is much too 



664 THE PRIEST IN RECENT FICTION [Aug., 

sweeping, for one thing; because there is no telling beforehand 
what genius will do, even with the least inspiring of situations; 
and it confuses, moreover, the drift of two distinct emotions 
which play a various function in the economy of art. Love, 
after all, is something more than a pathological incident, and 
will fit into no convenient category of infantine complaints. No 
doubt it has its element of comedy, not to say of comicality ; 
but it will not be laughed out of life or art so long as it re- 
mains the one most serious experience, short of marriage, which 
is supposed to safeguard it, or death, which is supposed to trans- 
form it, that the individual spirit can show. It is precisely be- 
cause it is so serious a thing, so universal in its power for good 
or ill, that poets and writers of romance will turn from time to 
time to the celibate soul to study its more elementary effects 
there, as scientists are said to study the more mysterious aspects 
of light in the dark. But, while that will explain the curious 
propensity that leads so many of us, writers and readers alike, 
into forbidden fields, it will not account for the failure which 
awaits all those who make the sacrilegious attempt. One must 
try to get behind the Catholic idea of celibacy to understand 
that; and who short of a saint is equal to so tremendous a task ? 
It hardly seems fair, we admit, especially when one is pro- 
fessing to outline the metaphysic of an intricate problem, which 
is partly literary and something more, to inject an element 
of religious mysticism into it at the start ; but unless we 
are prepared for so apparently arbitrary a proceeding in the 
present instance, we might as well give up the quest. For 
celibacy may be approached from a dozen different scientific 
standpoints without yielding up the heart of its mystery or 
affording the vaguest clue to anybody but a Catholic who con- 
fesses that he cannot put his deepest feelings about it into 
words. One may write a history of it and make a fine farrago 
of scandal, as has been done, in our times, without so much as 
creating a qualm in the consciences of those who are jealous 
of its good name as an institution of the Church; one may dis- 
cuss its pathology, and succeed only in diverting the morbid 
or the prurient; or one may approach it from its psycholog- 
ical side, if it have one for our own suspicion is that age 
cannot wither, nor custom stale the infinite variety of char- 
acter content to pace beneath its yoke, which is tantamount to 
saying, surely, that it has no psychology worth studying apart 
from human nature in the gross but, if one will, one may ap- 






1908.] THE PRIEST IN RECENT FICTION 665 

proach it from this essentially latter day, yet very conjectural, 
side; and when the book is written, and a grave university 
scholar has noticed it here and there, whole troops and batal- 
lions of celibates will read it and poke fun at one another out 
of its pages, while they laugh delightedly over its solemn per- 
versions of innocent and commonplace fact; or one may take 
it up on its politico-ecclesiastical side and descant appositely, 
and with reference to current tendencies, upon the machine- 
like efficiency and noiseless despatch with which it has equipped 
the smooth running wheels of Roman Christianity ; or one may 
raise the question of its ethical significance under the changed 
values of modern society and talk speciously of the hurt it does 
to industrial interests, or to civic enthusiasm, or to the State at 
large ; one may discuss it under any or all of these phases in 
turn; but unless the religious or traditional sense of it is kept 
bravely in mind, the argument will go to pieces and leave the 
Catholic who listens to it full of deep resentment, as invari- 
ably happens when the man of faith stoops to battle with the 
man of trumpery facts, who trusts only to logic and walks by 
sight. Indeed, it is this religious sense of celibacy, which we 
have also called the traditional or Catholic sense, which con- 
stitutes the whole of our argument against the books, be 
they histories, or poems, or scientific studies, or novels, or 
anything else you will, that attempt to reduce a mystical and 
high matter to an affair of categories or symbols, and that make 
such a mess generally of a doctrine of which it was said so 
inscrutably in the beginning of Catholic things, and with such 
a touch, almost, of divine disdain at the world's probable 
reading of it, qui potest capcre, capiat ! These men have never 
taken it; they have not understood. Renunciation, uhich is 
not the least of the notes by which the Incarnation first won 
a hearing in the hearts of the elect, has come, through the 
slow, but inevitable, growth of Catholic consciousness, brooding 
for over a thousand years on the matter, to be a badge and a 
note also of the priesthood by which that Mystery of Mys- 
teries is renewed hourly, one might say, to the world. Even if 
we did not have the two or three austere sayings that sum up 
our Lord's mind on the point with such a show of finality, the 
unmistakable drift of the New Testament writings, and the 
whole of that sub-apostolic literature, which surely may be 
taken as a mirror of the Church's earliest impressions of evan- 
gelical ideals, would more than justify the celibate discipline 



666 THE PRIEST IN RECENT FICTION [Aug., 

which clothes even the least spiritual of our priests with certain 
Gospel lineaments and a suggestion of other-worldliness that 
mere flesh and blood find difficult to understand. 

Such in temper, at least, is the habitual attitude of the Catho- 
lic towards an institution which existed as an instinct long be- 
fore it took definite shape for him as an ecclesiastical idea. 
Linked as it is with his ineradicable prejudices in favor of chas- 
tity, it has become a kind of Shckinah to the Holy of Holies 
in his eyes, and the mere thought of touching it, or of hold- 
ing it up as subject to possible defilement through the sins of 
a weak or renegade will, fills him with angry dismay. Art, he 
feels, has but a restricted franchise, at the very utmost, over 
such a subject. What murder and other primary offences against 
nature or life were to the Greek, what adultery has ever been 
to the Christian, that is a breach of celibacy ever likely to 
be to the Catholic that knows. It may, though we are not 
sure, be viewed with horror from afar; it may be spoken of 
with detestation and under the breath, as it were ; it must never 
be dragged out coldly or crudely before the spectators' eyes, or 
be clothed with false sentiment, or be wrapped up in symbols 
that blind one to its essential difformity from the types that 
spell progress because they lead up to the returning Christ and 
the ultimate triumph of His law. To insist upon considerations 
like these is not to be narrow-minded, but great-hearted; be- 
cause it points the way to those larger liberties that can be 
enjoyed only through the restraints of sane ethics and equally 
sane art. 

And what we have said of priestly celibacy applies with slight 
modification to the thing known as ecclesiasticism and its treat- 
ment at the hands of the non- Catholic maker of tales. It is 
the old-fashioned Protestant who is still the worst offender on 
this score ; though the spread of cheap knowledge and the wider 
opportunities for intercourse, which even the poorest enjoy in 
these da/s, render his lapses somewhat less flagrant than they 
were formerly wont to be. The elaborate regard for obedience, 
the Latin sense for discipline, as it is called, which makes up 
so much of the actual life of the Roman Church, is naturally 
an alien and forbidding thing to races that have been taught to 
look upon the unlimited right f private initiative as one of 
the most precious heirlooms of their Protestant faith. Yet one 
needs to be reminded that in actual practice the yoke sits very 
lightly and the discipline scarcely irks, not because the Catho- 



1908.] THE PRIEST IN RECENT FICTION 667 

lie type of character is of a pliable or servile cast, but because 
these obediences of intellect and will are rightly apprehended as 
part of the more general loyalty which faith enjoins towards 
Christ. Catholics undoubtedly do love their Church, and may 
even be charged with a certain zeal of the Gospel which must 
look to the outsider like covert proselytism ; but so far are they 
from resorting to secret or unworthy means to compass their 
ends in this matter, that they might be accused of a certain 
antecedent brutality in the recklessness with which they too 
frequently offer strong meat to those who might much better 
be nurtured on more innocent food. It is often insinuated, and 
we think with some apparent show of truth, that hereditary 
Catholics have been at times unsympathetic in their general 
behavior towards converts. Some English Catholics certainly 
were in the old Tractarian days ; and we have never heard that 
their descendants have shown a tendency to mend on this score. 
The Irish peasant and middle classes, one of the most intelli- 
gently robust types of adherent that Rome has ever known, 
whether in their own land or abroad, are said to be equally 
apathetic towards the religious stranger in their gates. They 
will argue, and argue very brilliantly sometimes; but some of 
them betray little of the convert-making bent; and their atti- 
tude towards many an honest inquirer is at times vitiated by 
a fondness for humorous paradox and a disposition to smooth 
away all difficulties by a persistent reference to the catechism 
or a suggested visit to the priest. The American Catholic is, 
indeed, both more condescending and more scientific in these 
matters; but we doubt if even he, in all instances, can be 
called a great hunter of souls. 

The Jesuit and the Italian upper clergy, however, are popu- 
larly supposed to be our great confusion in this scandalous 
business; and in Madame Bianchi's book we have a fresh par- 
able showing us how the whole thing is managed in the case 
of an argumentative American girl who falls a victim for a few 
breathless weeks to the wiles of an equally argumentative Father 
Benardino.* The details of this curious anachronism of a story 

* Madame Bianchi's qualifications for the task of interpreting Catholic feeling and belief 
to her American readers may be inferred from the following unexplained anomalies of her 
story. The indescribable Jesuit, who is a chance guest in an Italian wayside inn, remember, 
is armed with what appear to be unusual " faculties " in the ordinary dispensation of the sac- 
raments. He occupies a confessional in the church of another order, and exercises, moreover, 
a mysterious supervision over the conduct of an indiscreet Franciscan novice who, in his turn, 



668 THE PRIEST IN RECENT FICTION [Aug 

are unimportant to our present purpose; and we shall confine 
our attention entirely to Father Benardino, who is depicted in 
many pleasant terms which practically amount to this: that he is 
handsome, worldly-wise, austere, and fanatical to a grotesquely 
un- Jesuitical degree. And yet the author describes him for us 
as a Jesuit; and "what a Jesuit is," she adds, " only a Jesuit 
knows." Father Benardino, we fear, is very much of a lay figure. 
His deficiency in a becoming sense of humor to mention but one 
of the gravest of his shortcomings is so abnormal that we venture 
to say, were he a character in real life, he could scarcely have 
survived the tests of the noviceship for a single week. As a 
priest, he could never have existed, in fact. His solemnity and 
his absorbing devotion to the purely temporal interests of the 
Church would have proved his undoing during the fifteen days of 
the "first experiment." He is valuable to the Catholic critic, 
however, because he embodies so much of the distorted knowledge 
and perverted ingenuity which Protestants still bring to bear 
upon the perfectly simple, because perfectly evangelical, idea of 
a disciplined Church. That idea, is, of course, one of the palm- 
ary notes of Catholicism; and it is sincerely reverenced, it is 
lived up to and realized, by millions who would shudder at the 
notion of such a far- branching system of "Jesuitism" and in- 
trigue as the letters between Father Benardino and his unseen 
superiors, described for us in the story, would lead us to believe. 
As in the case of our celibate discipline, it is not a true im- 
pression that is conveyed to us, in spite of the author's evident 
intention to be local and individual in color, remorselessly ob- 
jective, and chivalrously fair ; it is a travesty of the worst possible 
kind ; because it is so plausible, so Protestant, and so naturally 
ignorant of a supernatural fact the yoke of Christ upon the 
not unintelligent and very human millions who are at once the 
glory and the mystery of the present-day Christian faith. 

Seton Hall, South Orange, N, J. 

admits with engaging candor to the heroine, that he is pledged to the religious life against his 
will. But the most ridiculous blunder of the tale will be found, perhaps, in the argument used 
by Father Benardino to urge his New England Congregationalist victim (whom he offers to 
confess and communicate, by the way, on what seem grossly insufficient grounds, and with not 
the slightest suggestion of the need of previous baptism, conditional or absolute) to enter a 
community of the Poor Clares. Her decision, he tells her again and again, will decide the 
fate of her dead husband s soul ! A more perverted misapprehension of the Catholic doctrine 
of Purgatory and the kindred notion of vicarious merit, so familiar to the least instructed 
Catholic mind, could scarcely be found in all Protestant literature. 










A FRENCH HOME-MISSIONARY. 

BY THE COUNTESS DE COURSON. 

UCH has been said and written on the evils of 
modern Paris ; not indeed that the French cap- 
ital has the monopoly of vice, whatever its faults 
may be, but because its frivolous and corrupt as- 
pects are obtrusively thrust upon the notice of 
the passing stranger. The average American, German, or Eng- 
lish tourist does not, as a rule, wander much beyond the pre- 
cincts of the Rue de la Paix, the boulevards, and the Champs 
Elysees, save perhaps for a rapid visit to the museums and 
churches that happen to be situated in more remote regions. 
Still less can he or she be expected to find either the time or 
the opportunity to penetrate into the "strenuous" life, made up 
of stern duties and splendid acts of self-devotion that lie be- 
neath the glittering surface. 

On different occasions THE CATHOLIC WORLD has drawn 
the attention of its readers to certain unknown features of Paris, 
whose obscure heroisms would astonish the world did they 
stand revealed to its gaze, heroisms to which the anti-clerical 
persecution that is now rampant in France gives, in many cases, 
a touch of martyrdom. The lives of the men and women who 
are bravely fighting the powers of evil inch by inch, are, in 
general, lives that are hidden from public view; a parish priest 
in an outlying "faubourg," a young apprentice stranded in a 
free-thinking " atelier," Sisters of Charity, who, in spite of the 
general exodus of religious orders, have been left at their post ; 
in some cases, men and women of the world, whose real life 
lies rather in the over crowded slums than in their own luxu- 
rious homes, these are the workers who, silently but surely, are 
preventing the utter unchristianizing of France. It is they who, 
by dint of steady, unremitting efforts, keep alive the light of 
faith and hope in the souls of their countrymen, and whose 
brave spirit dispels the shadows of discouragement and doubt 
in the hearts of believers. Among these unknown heroines is 
an old woman whose frail existence now hangs on a thread, 
and whose influence was exercised over a class of people whom 



670 A FRENCH HOME-MISSIONARY [Aug., 

she was the first to evangelize. Others have since followed her 
example and brought their efforts to bear on behalf of the 
cause she so earnestly cherished, but to Mile. Bonnefois be- 
longs the honor of having opened a field hitherto unexplored 
in the kingdom of charity. 

American visitors to Paris may at some time have been 
tempted to stroll through the Foire de Neuilly, the best known 
of the open-air fairs that are held almost all the year round 
in the outlying quarters of Paris. Menilmontant, Montmartre, 
Clichy, La Vilette, each have their turn, but the Neuilly Fair 
is in the spring, when the chestnut trees are in full bloom and 
the adjoining Bois de Boulogne is a dream of freshness and beau- 
ty. It is also the epoch when the Paris social season is at 
its height, and for these reasons the Neuilly Fair has the privi- 
lege of attracting wealthy visitors, whereas the other open-air 
fairs of Paris are purely popular gatherings where, well to the 
front, are the organ-grinders, acrobats, wooden horses, wax fig- 
ures, theaters, fortune tellers, fat boys, bearded women, wrestleis, 
and wild animals sights and sounds of doubtful refinement 
and sometimes of questionable morality. 

In the midst of these promiscuous assemblies the steady 
perseverance of a woman, poor, old, and obscure, has planted 
a permanent center of Christian education, and from at least 
one of the vans radiates a purifying and elevating influence, 
the beneficial effects of which it is difficult to estimate aright. 

In God's good time the seeds that are sent broadcast by 
the apostle's feeble hand are bound to bring forth rich fruit 
among the wandering population that forms the standing ele- 
ment of these local fairs. 

Mile. Jeanne Marie Bonnefois, the foundress of what is called 
I'CEuvre des Forains* belonged by her birth to the world of 
strjlling players and traders whom she has worked so hard to 
bring nearer to God. Her father, a native of the depart- 
ment of the Rhone, was the proud possessor of a little theater 
which he made with his own hands and valued accordingly. 
He was, says his daughter, an honest man, with a violent tem- 
per, and as iar as religious convictions were concerned, " he 
had none to spare." His wife, on the contrary, was a gentle 
and devout woman, who brought up her two children as best 

* Fotain, a French word for which we have no English equivalent ; it means those who 
earn their livelihood by going about from one fair to another : strolling players, actors, etc. 



1908.] A FRENCH HOME-MISSIONARY 671 

she could among her difficult surroundings. She taught her 
little girl to read an old copy of the Lives of the Saints, a 
family treasure that still figures in Mile. Bonnefois' van among 
her most precious relics. 

Jeanne Marie was born in 1830, and from her babyhood was 
closely identified with her father's interests and pursuits. The 
little theater was ever on the move, going from one provincial 
town to another, and, almost as soon as she could speak, Jeanne 
Marie played an important part in the family business. Dressed 
as an eighteenth century officer, the child marched up and down 
the streets of the towns and villages where the van stopped ; 
beating a drum, almost as big as herself, she attracted the at- 
tention of the citizens, and when they were gathered round the 
tiny figure in its old world garb, she explained what the even- 
ing performance was to be. Indeed, when still a baby, she was 
promoted to the responsible task of pointing out, to an admir- 
ing crowd the automatic groups constructed by M. Bonntfois' 
clever fingers and telling the history of each. The figures were 
of a miscellaneous description : royal and imperial personages, 
clowns and mountebanks, Voltaire and Rousseau fraternized 
happily with other figures representing our Lord and our Lady, 
the Magi, the shepherds, and the Pope. 

The life of perpetual traveling led by the family made it 
impossible for Madame Bonnefois to send her little girl to a 
regular catechism and, during many years, the poor woman's 
desire that the child should make her First Communion was 
doomed to disappointment. Over and over again she sought 
the parish priest of the town where she happened to be stop- 
ping and made her request ; the answer was everywhere the 
same: Jeanne Marie must conform to the hard and fast rule 
that requires some months of regular attendance at catechism 
from all children who aspire to make their First Communion. 
M. Bonnefois refused to part from his little girl, who was a 
valuable helper in his theatrical work ; it was therefore impos- 
sible for her mother to think of putting her at a convent school, 
and as the family seldom remained for more than a fortnight 
in the same place a course of regular teaching extending over 
several months was not to be thought of. 

However, Providence took pity on the good will of mother 
and child and, in 1848, when she had reached the age of eigh- 
teen, Jeanne Marie made her First Communion at Liege, in the 



672 A FRENCH HOME-MISSIONARY [Aug., 

Chapel of the Redemptorist Fathers. Even now, after more 
than half a century, the old woman speaks with tender happi- 
ness ot that memorable day. To a Parisian writer, M. Maurice 
Talmeyr, whose picturesque account of the foundress of Vcol* 
Foraine has lately delighted the readers of a Catholic periodi- 
cal, Le Correspondent, she said : " Yes, indeed, it is true that 
the day of the First Communion is the happiest of days ! " 

Even before she received the crowning grace of her girl- 
hood, Mile. Bonnefois, in her simple way, was an apostle. 
When her duties at the show were over, she would visit the 
nearest church and, on these occasions, her little friends and 
comrades belonging to other strolling companies generally ac- 
companied her. On the way, she repeated to them the won- 
derful stories that she read in her mother's well-worn Lives of 
the Saints ; and so great was her childish gift of eloquence 
that even the fathers and mothers of her young playmates would 
join the group of listeners. They hung on her words when, in 
vivid and picturesque language, she explained to them the 
meaning of the sacred pictures and painted glass that filled the 
churches, where they obediently followed her lead. Her home 
experiences and training helped her to rivet their attention, 
and the childish powers of persuasion that drew the idle citi- 
zens and villagers to her father's booth did an apostle's work 
when they opened to the rough and untrained souls that sur- 
rounded her vistas of the world beyond. 

In 1855 Mile. Bonnefois' desire to help her comrades more 
effectually assumed a definite shape; she realized that her at- 
tempts to Christianize them needed the support of more com- 
petent workers, and she has lately told how it occurred to her 
to appeal to the Jesuit Fathers on behalf of the forains, whose 
spiritual poverty appealed so pathetically to her affectionate heart. 

She was then staying at Amiens, where the annual fair is 
an important matter. Mile. Bonnefois, summoning up her cour- 
age, went to see the rector of the large Jesuit College of la 
Providence and explained to him how, close at hand, was a 
colony of wandering people, whose mode of life made it almost 
impossible for them to follow the precepts of their religion. 
She pleaded that they might be given a chance, and urged how 
her own experience had taught her that they were careless, ig- 
norant, and rough, rather than vicious, and, above all, keenly 
sensitive to marks of kindly interest. 



1908.] A FRENCH HOME-MISSIONARY 673 

The Jesuit Superior, Father Guidee, was a wise and holy 
man, sufficiently large-minded to enter into the spirit that 
prompted his visitor's appeal. When she requested him to allow 
two religious to visit the booths in a friendly way, merely to 
make acquaintance with their inhabitants, he willingly assented, 
and the Fathers whom he selected filled their task to perfec- 
tion. Simply and cordially they went through the fair, stop- 
ping at all the booths, climbing into the vans, making friends 
with young and old. Without appearing intrusive, they man- 
aged to find out whether the middle-aged people were prop- 
erly married, whether their children had been baptized and 
made their First Communion, suggesting that nothing was easier 
than to put matters straight, if needs be. Not only were these 
visits a matter of pride and rejoicing among the strolling play- 
ers, but parents and children became eager to fall in with the 
Fathers' suggestions. A regular course of catechism was or- 
ganized ; it took place in the evenings, after the day's work 
was over, in one of the parlors of the college, and on a cer- 
tain memorable 24th of June over sixty persons, belonging to 
the company, received Holy Communion in the chapel of la 
Providence* 

Since then, similar scenes have been, and are still, witnessed 
in many towns of France. U CEuvre des Forains, as it is called, 
started by Jeanne Marie Bonnefois, has been organized on a 
firm foundation. Its ramifications extend to all large cities, 
where the wandering population that attend the local fairs is 
welcomed by members of the association, who visit the booths 
and provide, as far as lies in their power, for the material and 
moral necessities of their inhabitants. 

As a rule, these charitable workers, whose experiences we 
have had occasion to gather from their own lips, are quite 
ready to endorse Mile. Bonnefois' estimate of the people among 
whom her long life has been spent, and for whose welfare she 
has so strenuously labored. " The ' real ' forains" she main- 
tains, " have a Christian heart"; by these she means those who, 
like herself, have been born and bred in the profession, who 
have their family and professional traditions, and who, far from 
being ashamed of their career, take a certain honest pride in 
it. She speaks with less indulgence of the Forains de Paris, 
who take up the life as an occasional means of earning money 
VOL. LXXXVII. 43 



674 A FRENCH HOME-MISSIONARY [Aug., 

at a pinch and have no traditions to fall back upon, and with 
characteristic dislike of the mysterious Romanic he Is or gypsies, 
whose language, customs, and religion stamp them as belong- 
ing to another race. 

But the spiritual assistance that Mile. Bonnefois was able to 
procure her comrades did not completely satisfy her wish to 
help them to become honest Christian men and women. She 
realized, with her good sense and practical mind, that no per- 
manent result could be expected unless the younger genera- 
ation was taken in hand. She resolved, therefore, to establish 
a school, where the children of the caravan should be taught 
their duties to God and to man. None knew better than she 
did that, in consequence of their perpetual changes of scene 
and surroundings, it was well-nigh impossible for these little 
ones to attend a regular school ; their school must form part 
of the caravan itself ; it must move, like its scholars, from one 
fair to another, and be organized on lines sufficiently adaptable 
to meet the requirements of the wandering population whom it 
is to serve. 

After the war of 1870, her mother being dead and her 
father paralyzed, Mile. Bonnefois was left alone to work her little 
theater. Her father's state of health prevented him henceforth 
from leaving Paris, and the journeyings, through France and 
Belgium had to be given up. About the same time the auto- 
matic figures were replaced by a panorama, more suitable to 
modern tastes, and Jeanne Marie, whose sphere of action was 
now confined to the immediate neighborhood of Paris, began 
to ask herself what more she could do to evangelize her com- 
rades. " I was continually thinking of them," she states, " and 
wondering what I could do to give them the happiness of 
possessing a little religion." 

The opportunity soon presented itself. Business matters 
went well with Mile. Bonnefois, and in a short time she realized 
a considerable sum of money. With this she bought a new bar- 
rack for her panorama. Her former little theater thus became 
useless, and the idea flashed across her mind that the unused 
wooden shed might be turned into a school. Like the panorama, 
it was a portable building, therefore easy to take to pieces and 
to move from one fair to another in the train of the caravan. 
There the little waifs and strays, who grew up like savages, might 
receive some regular training. As their wandering life excluded 



1908.] A FRENCH HOME-MISSIONARY 675 

them from other schools, it was necessary that their teachers 
should follow them. 

Mile. Bonnefois, having matured her plans, applied for the 
necessary permission to open a school, and l*Ecole Foraine is 
now a recognized institution. The work has prospered, although 
in official circles it meets with cold recognition and the small 
allowance that the Government once awarded the foundress has 
since been withdrawn. The old woman endures these and other 
petty vexations with a characteristic blending of Christian sub- 
mission and philosophical equanimity : " I am quite undisturbed 
and fear nothing," she says. " Help has always come to me 
when and where I least expected it." 

Our readers will easily understand that l*cole Foraine is 
established on quite a different system from that of ordinary 
schools. There are two teachers, both of whom have passed the 
necessary examinations. These are paid one hundred francs a 
month. About one hundred and fifty children, boys and girls, 
are inscribed on the list of pupils, but all these are not regular 
attendants. There are no holidays at fixed times, as in ordinary 
schools, but the days spent in going from one fair to another, 
in packing and unpacking the moveable schoolhouse, are days 
lost for teaching purposes and count as holidays. 

The pupils are expected to attend twice a day, from nine to 
eleven and from one to four; children of all creeds and nation- 
alities, boys and girls alike, are admitted, and, according to the 
law that holds good in all French schools, no religious instruc- 
tion is given during school hours. A large crucifix hangs in 
the place of honor: "Christ is always there. He presides," 
says Mile. Bonnefois, " we teach our children to love God, to 
behave well, to respect their parents, and to love their country." 
Twice a week, after school hours, the children who wish to do 
so are taught their catechism by women belonging to l y CEuvre des, 
Cate'ckismes, a wide-spreading association of women and young 
girls, whose mission it is to counteract the evil influence of the 
free-thinking Government schools. These voluntary apostles, 
who belong to the upper classes of society, are valuable auxil- 
iaries of the over- worked parish priests; living for the most 
part in the center of Paris, they work in the outlying suburbs 
and distant " faubourgs "; our personal experience tells us that 
they obtain an extraordinary influence over their unruly charges, 
whose affectionate devotion to their dames often presents an 



676 A FRENCH HOME-MISSIONARY [Aug., 

amusing contrast with their uncivilized ways and terrible igno- 
rance of religious matters. 

The aspect of Mile. Bonnefois' school is peculiar : it is a 
long, low room, somewhat like a railway carriage. The boys 
are on one side, the girls on the other ; sometimes a negro boy 
or a sallow, dark-haired Oriental sits next to a flaxen-haired 
Norman or Belgian. As a rule, these children have strongly 
marked characters; they are less diciplined than the ordinary 
run of scholars of the same age, but they have more initiative 
and originality. A proof that their school-life, incomplete as 
it is, appeals to them, lies in the fact that, of their own accord, 
they have organized an association, the object of which is to 
keep up the bonds of good fellowship resulting from their at- 
tendance at rcole Foraine. 

The rules of the association were drawn up by the children 
themselves. They are the work of minds inexperienced and un- 
formed, but they prove two things: first that Mile. Bonnefois 
has succeeded in developing her pupils' sense of right and 
wrong ; secondly, that their attendance at her school has taught 
them the value of mutual help and sympathy. With a pathetic 
realization of the peculiar circumstances that shut them out 
from the advantages enjoyed by other children, they acknowl- 
edge that their wandering and unsettled lives make the links 
of fellowship, created by the association, doubly valuable. 

The members of this confraternity cannot be under ten years 
of age; they bind themselves to avoid evil comrades and coarse 
language, to help one another as best they can, to give good 
example at school, and to keep the secretary of the association 
informed of their whereabouts. 

During the more important Paris fairs, those, for instance, 
that take place at Neuilly, Les Invalides, and the Place du Tronc> 
it often happens that all the members of the association meet 
together. They improve the opportunity by organizing fetes 
among themselves, and, as befits children who have grown up 
among the footlights, and in whose veins runs the blood of 
generations of strolling players, these primitive entertainments 
are chiefly theatrical. Thursday afternoon, the classic French 
half- holiday, is always devoted to writing to absent members 
of the confraternity. 

Members are sometimes excluded from the association, but 
this severe measure is never resorted to unless the culprit has 



1908.] A FRENCH HOME-MISSIONARY 677 

been duly admonished, at least once. Laziness, rudeness, un- 
discipline, untruthfulness, and graver faults lead to expulsion. 

The association has a small fund ; the members give what 
they please, and it is expressly understood that their contribu- 
tions are to come from whatever superfluous pennies they pos- 
sess, never from what may be necessary to themselves or to 
their families. Once a year, during the big fair that takes place 
in the early spring at the Barriere du Trone, the sum collected 
during the past twelve months is brought forward and the young 
associates decide how it is to be expended. Sometimes it goes 
to buy the outfit of a member, who is to make his or her First 
Communion, or else it is spent on medicines for a sick associ- 
ate. Occasionally, during the year, a small contribution may 
be given to one in great want, but (this proves how scanty are 
the resources of the associates) the sum thus expended must 
never exceed fifty centimes. 

It is clear that, compared with works built on a firmer and 
wider basis, Mile. Bonnefois' Ecole Foraine and the association 
that we have just described, appear destined to exercise but 
an incomplete and intermittent influence. But we must re- 
member that the peculiar circumstances in which her work lies, 
preclude the possibility of any hard and fast rules. She had to 
deal with a wayward, floating population, with children born 
and bred on the highways and byways, unaccustomed to rigid 
discipline and who would rebel against any attempt to enforce 
it. Her mission was to plant in untrained souls the elemen- 
tary notions of right and wrong ; to train, with a light and lov- 
ing hand, untutored minds in the knowledge and worship of 
God ; to make these little boys and girls, " children of na- 
ture," into Christian men and women, with a sense of their 
duties and responsibilities. 

This work she has accomplished with a steady perseverance 
and a humble self-devotion that are truly admirable. Her ef- 
forts have met with recognition, even on earth. One of Mile, 
Bonnefois' treasured possessions is a photograph of the late Pope, 
Leo XIII., with this inscription: "A Mile. Bonnefois," and a 
special blessing ; it hangs in the van that is her home, by the 
side of a crucifix, a French flag, a few sacred pictures and 
statues, and the faded portraits of her father and mother. 

The common Father of Christendom's approbation of Jeanne 



678 A FRENCH HOME-MISSIONARY [Aug. 

Marie's work touched her more deeply than the public honors 
bestowed upon her some years ago by her own countrymen. 

Oar readers are probably aware that every year the French 
Academy bestows a certain number of rewards on men and wo- 
men who have distinguished themselves by deeds of charity and 
self sacrifice. The founder of this custom, to whose generosity 
the necessary funds are owing, was M. de Montyon, who died 
in the last century. In 1897 the prix Montyon was bestowed 
on our heroine, whose strenuous work on behalf of the forains 
was publicly acknowledged. 

The homage paid to her person and the praise lavished on 
her work did not, however, disturb her simple humility. This 
woman, whose aged eyes have seen so much of the seamy side 
of life, is very much of a philosopher. Public approbation and 
admiration seem to please her, inasmuch as they help to for- 
ward the mission to which she has devoted her long life, a mis- 
sion that is as near her heart now as it was in the far-off 
days of her enthusiastic youth. 

The heroine, whose name in 1897 became, during a few days, 
a household word throughout France, is now a frail old woman, 
whose strength is failing fast. Yet her sympathy for her sur- 
roundings is as warm as ever, and the roulotte or gipsy van, 
whence her elevating influence radiates on the miscellaneous 
company around her, is still a familiar sight in the Paris fairs. 
M. Maurice Talmeyr tells us that the name of Mile. Bonnefois 
acts like magic upon the rough people with whom her lot is 
cast. To them this obscure woman, now bent with age and 
illness/ has been a bearer of good tidings, a messenger of hope. 
Only when the secrets of hearts lie revealed before God's white 
throne, will the full measure of her good works be estimated 
rightly. We can but form imperfect judgments of things that 
we imperfectly see ; in a case like this, mathematical calcula- 
tions as to the results obtained are worse than useless and the 
seeds of good sent broadcast by a devoted hand, directed, in 
turn, by a devout and humble mind, may carry far beyond 
the limits that to our poor minds seem possible. 



Bew Boohs. 



" Xlie Catholic \Vorlcl " in July, 1908* purchased " Donolioe's 
Magazine," of Boston, and became the owners of its subscrip- 
tion list. Witu its July issue Douohoe's Magazine " ceased 
publication. " The Catholic World will be sent to the former 
subscribers to " Donohoe's, " and communications on the matter 
should toe addressed to "The Catholic World," 3*e\v York City. 

Like his other recent novels, M. 

THE NUN. Rene Bazin's story Ulsolee* a 

By Rene Bazin. translation of which has appeared 

in English under the title of The 

Nun, is strongly Catholic in tendency. The measure of M. Ba- 
zin's power is recorded in the attention and high commendation 
which his work has received even from non-Catholic critics and 
the literary organs of the party whose nefarious injustice against 
the religious teaching orders is here drawn in pitiless lines to 
invoke condemnation. 

M. Bazin is a realist; for realism does not necessarily deal 
only with the repulsively salacious which flows through the 
cloaca maxima of Zola's works. He writes as if he were a cold 
spectator who made it his object to relate, in the simplest of 
language and with scientific fidelity to detail, events passing 
before his eyes. And he succeeds so well that we forget we 
are reading, and we actually see the drama pass us. Like every 
French writer who is able to get a hearing from his coun- 
trymen, M. Bazin is a master of the technique of his art, the 
skillful handling and contrasting of lights and shades, the 
judgment which knows how not to say too much, the use of 
ellipses which flatter the reader and add to the life of the 
narration. 

The story opens in the garden of the little convent of Sainte- 
Hildegarde, where five sisters are enjoying their evening rest 
and recreation after the labors of an oppressive day, spent by 
most of them in the class-rooms with the children from the 
working families of a poor quarter of the city of Lyons. The 
peace, the mutual love, the innocent joys, and the crosses of 
their daily life; the quality of the parents and children; and 
the individual characters of the five sisters each a variety of 

* L'Isolee. Par Rene" Bazin. Paris: Callman-Levy. The Nun. New York: Charles 
Scribner's Sons. 



680 NEW BOOKS [Aug., 

the one type of unworldliness and self-sacrifice are all made 
known to us before the recreation closes. It closes, not in 
peace, but in profound trouble, with the arrival of the news 
that, consistently with the government's plan to secure the lib- 
erty and equality of all Frenchmen, the school is to be closed 
and the sisters are to be turned out, helpless, into a world 
where they know not where to look for a home. The last dis- 
tribution of prizes and the silent departure of the sisters im- 
mediately afterwards is a moving scene. M. Bazin dips his 
pen in sarcasm as he describes the respectable abbe to whom, 
as to their official protector, the poor sisters betake themselves 
in their distress; but he takes care to balance, by another 
priest with a heart of gold, the bad impression made by this 
" tonsured layman," whose first and last concern is to keep 
out of trouble with the government, and who loves the role of 
the straggler that plays the flute in the rear of the army, ex- 
cept when he is stealthily shooting upon his fellow-soldier*. 

The narrative is here interrupted to tell the story of Sister 
Paschale's vocation Paschale, the youngest, the merriest, the 
most affectionate, and the best loved of all the group. The 
chapter on the "Vocation" is a beautiful idyll, which by con- 
trast brings out the dark colors of the subsequent terrible cli- 
max, where Paschale, injured in the house of her friends, and 
more sinned against than sinning, is reduced to drinking to its 
dregs the cup of sin and sorrow. The deepest note struck, or 
rather suggested by M. Bazin for the French artist never 
falls into obvious dissertation is the mystery which is impli- 
cated in the petition " Lead us not into temptation." Pas- 
chale, the darling of her old father, whose heartstrings are 
broken as, proud and grateful of the honor that God has done 
him, he leads her to the convent gate; Paschale, who leaves 
the world because she is afraid she would not be good enough 
in it ; Paschale is driven out of her safe and loved religious 
retreat, to become, through her unsuspicious innocence, the 
victim of a fiend whom every man that reads the story would 
willingly tear to pieces ! This denouement may somewhat shock 
English readers, less accustomed than continental ones to find 
Catholic writers looking human nature and the problem of life 
in the face. But the delicacy of M. Bazin's hand affords no 
grounds for reproach on this point. And as we accompany 
the four sisters, gathered together from the various parts of 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 68 1 

France, where each has been treading, isolated, the dolor- 
ous way, now following to the grave the body of the mur- 
dered Paschale, their darling, M. Bazin makes us hear, though 
he never alludes to it, the Savior's promise that there is more 
joy in heaven for one who has done penance than for ninety- 
nine just people. 

The title of this handsomely bound 

CASTLES AND CHATEAUX and illustrated volume * scarcely 
OF OLD NAVARRE. does justice to its contents. Be- 

sides a description of the princi- 
pal castles and chateaux of Southern France, and an account 
of the historic associations of each, it contains a wealth of ob- 
servation, recorded in a pleasing, matter-of-fact strain, on the 
scenery and inhabitants of the various provinces of Southern 
France. Though the author seems to have viewed the great- 
er part of this country from the seat of an automobile, yet 
he lost no opportunity of making acquaintance with the peo- 
ple through whose homes be passed. And he appears to have 
exercised both sympathy and tact in a measure beyond that of 
the ordinary American tourist, who too frequently is entirely 
without this open sesame to the good will of the strangers 
with whom he foregathers. 

As a general introduction, Mr. Miltoun devotes two chap- 
ters to an account of feudal France and to the geography and 
populations of the Pyrenees. Then he takes us with him through 
old Navarre and the Basque Provinces, whose people, neither 
French nor Italian, he describes charmingly. The valley of 
the Aude, Beam, the couserans, several quaint and singular 
old towns, such as Lescar, are successively visited, till at length 
the most southern point of the journey is reached at the fate- 
ful Bidassoa, where France and Spain, represented by their re- 
spective custom house officials, confront each other as of old ; 
for, notwithstanding the great Bourbon's remark, the Pyrenees 
still exist, and are likely to endure, politically as well as phy- 
sically, for some years yet. 

The lover of architecture and the romanticist will, perhaps, 
be scarcely satisfied with Mr. Miltoun's guidance ; for his his- 
torical data is somewhat bald, and his descriptions of fortalice 

* Castles and Chateaux of Old Navarre and the Basque Provinces, including also Foix, Rovs- 
sil/on, and Beam. By Francis Miltoun. With many Illustrations from Paintings, made on the 
spot, by Blanche McManus. Boston : L. C. Page & Co. 



682 NEW BOOKS [Aug., 

and donjon are by no means technical nor even detailed. 
But, on the other hand, those who wish to hear of what is, 
rather than of what was, will find Mr. Miltoun a very enter- 
taining companion, unless his descriptions should fill them with 
a too acute longing to enjoy personally the delightful tour 
which he has vicariously made for them. 

Mr. Miltoun has a paragraph or two on Lourdes of a quite 
colorless character. Like so many other visitors who arrive 
there with preconceived opinions he did not take the trouble 
of investigating for himself. 

A closer acquaintance, owing to 

MEXICO AND HER PEOPLE the increase of travel, with the 
OF TO-DAY. people of Mexico is rapidly dis- 

pelling the supercilious air which 

even well-informed Americans, not long ago, displayed towards 
our Southern neighbors. We are beginning to admit that vir- 
tue and culture, or even happiness, are not exclusively the 
birthright of the "Anglo-Saxon," or the cosmopolitan con- 
glomeration which some people delight to call by that desig- 
nation. 

In a very instructive and entertaining book recently pub- 
lished on Mexico and her people* the writer says: 

The Mexican has learned the secret of daily contentment. 
This is true generally of even the Creole class, as well as of 
the Peon. The fact that some seven thousand families prac- 
tically own the entire landed estate of the country does not 
inspire envy in the bosoms of the other millions. It is a ques- 
tion whether the Anglo-Saxon or the Teuton can give these 
people more than mere mechanical contrivances. Home does 
not necessarily consist in an open fire, drawn curtains, and 
frequent visits of curious neighbors. Here homes are found 
where privacy is respected, family affection is strong, and 
there is respect for elders, love for parents, and kindly rela- 
tions between masters and servants. 

Mr. Winter may truly say " that such a country is not bar- 
barous and uncivilized." It certainly has not, however, acquired 
the characteristic which in some estimates of life is taken to 

* Mexico and Her People of To-Day, An account of the Customs, Characteristics, Amuse- 
ments, History, and Advancement of the Mexicans, and the Development and Resources of 
their Country. By Nevin O. Winter. Illustrated. Boston : L. C. Page & Co. 



i9o8.] NEW BOOKS 683 

be synonymous with civilization, that is, the worship of Mam- 
mon and materialism. He continues: 

There may be many odd and nonsensical customs, but a 
reason may be generally found for them. When studying the 
natives it is enough to know that they " are an unselfish, pa- 
tient, and tender-hearted people ; a people maintaining in 
their everyday life an etiquette phenomenal in a down-trodden 
race ; offering instantly to the stranger and wayfarer on the 
very threshold of their adobe huts a hospitality so generous, 
accompanied by a courtesy so exquisite, that one stops at the 
next doorway to re-enjoy the luxury." 

Mr. Winter, a quick-witted observer, writes much that will 
counteract the false views concerning the Mexicans, which ig- 
norance or prejudice has generated among many of our own 
countrymen. He relates facts as he saw them, and does not, 
as some of his predecessors have done, treat his readers to the 
product of the imagination, where observation has been impos- 
sible. Regarding the higher classes he writes: 

The home life is jealously shielded from curious eyes. In 
no place in the world is the social circle more closely guarded 
than among the higher classes in the City of Mexico. The 
thick walls, the barred, prison-like windows, and the massive, 
well-guarded doors prevent intrusion, and, perhaps, serve to 
foster this inclination to lead exclusive lives. Cultured 
Americans, unless in the official set, who have lived there for 
years have found it impossible to break into these exclusive 
circles ; whether this action is due to jealousy, diffidence, a 
feeling of superiority, or aversion to aliens, the fact remains 
that they are very loth to admit Americans into the privacy 
of their homes. 

So Mr. Winter does not speak much of the life of society ; 
but in compensation, he gives us many varied, vivid pictures 
of public life, of the manners, habits, and occupations of the 
lower classes, Mexicans proper, peons, and Indians ; and, on the 
whole, his pictures are very favorable presentations of the 
people. But when treating of religion Mr. Winter, we regret 
to say, shows at times a gross ignorance of the teachings of 
the Catholic Church an ignorance which vastly decreases the 
value of his work. He is guilty of unwarranted generaliza- 
tions, and is oftentimes led astray in his inferences by a failure 



6S4 NEW BOOKS [Aug., 

to discriminate between what is essential or constitutional, and 
what is merely local distortion or abuse or extraneous agglom- 
eration in Mexican Catholicism. 

The neglect into which Lower Cali- 

THE MOTHER OF CALI- fornia has fallen, and the general 
FORNIA. ignorance that prevails concerning 

the contemporary history of that 

peninsula, are in striking contrast with the place which that land 
occupied, not only in the early days of Spanish exploration and 
settlement, but even down to the period when, on the separa- 
tion of the two Californias, the hitherto less known and less 
important region entered upon a career of growth and expan- 
sion which resulted in throwing the other into complete eclipse. 
The development of the Panama Canal may result in restoring 
the neglected and unfortunate Lower California to something 
of its old importance. A book just published* by a "visitor 
from the Golden Gate," whose imagination has been fired, and 
whose sympathies have been aroused, by a visit to " poor 
Lower California," as President Diaz has called the country, is 
of a character to enlist interest in this region. It contains a 
fairly full sketch of the history of the country, from the days 
of the Conquistadors to the present. On the whole, it is a 
tale of disappointed hopes, ruthless aggression on the part of 
the strong, and stolid endurance on the part of the weak. 
Only for one 'period did the country enjoy anything like peace 
and prosperity. That was the era of the Jesuit Padres, which 
began in 1697, about a hundred and fifty years after the voy- 
age of Cortez, and ended in 1768, when the last members of 
the society, sixteen in number, despoiled of everything but 
their cassocks, their breviaries, and one book of theology and 
one of science for each man, were hurried on board a royal 
packet and, with tears in their eyes, turned away from the be- 
loved shores of California. The writer, Mr. North, enthusi- 
astically describes the wonderful work done by the Padres; 
and quotes the eloquent tribute paid to them by a well-known 
pen : " Remote as was the land and small the nation, there are 
few chapters in the history of the world on which the mind 
can turn with so sincere an admiration." The story of the 
darker days that followed immediately, and the still more 

The Mother of California. By Arthur North. Illustrated. San Francisco : Paul Elder 
& Co. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 685 

troubled ones of the Mexican establishment, together with the 
events which marked the first intervention of the United States, 
and the subsequent disgraceful episode of Walker and his fili- 
busters, are graphically related by Mr. North, who does not 
permit his patriotism to prevent him from calling a spade a 
spade. Like everybody else, he admits that the filibusters were 
great fighters. But he says : 

All in all, Uncle Sam has reason to be ashamed of his deal- 
ings with L,ower California in 1848 and 1853-4. If he wanted 
the country he should have held it, after assuring the Cali- 
fornians that he would, and spilling good blood in its con- 
quest in 1848 ; and if he did not desire the Peninsula, he 
should have prevented Walker from recruiting in and sailing 
from San Francisco. 

Mr. North, after analyzing the physical conditions and pro- 
spective resources of the country, advocates the acquisition of 
it from Mexico by purchase, for he believes it necessary to 
the United States, if this country is to attain a full measure 
of success in the Pacific. 

The Catechism on Modernism, writ- 

MODERNISM. ten in French, by an Oblate Fa- 

ther, is the most successful 

whether we judge by the quality of the work or by the dif- 
fusion attained of the many essays in expounding in popular 
form, for the benefit of the uninitiated, the scope and purpose 
of the Eacyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis against Modernism. 
An excellent English translation of this little work was issued, 
some months ago, by the Professors of Dunwoodie Seminary. 
Now Father Fitzpatrick, of the same congregation as the author, 
publishes another of unexceptionable accuracy.* 

The highest commendation from the highest source has been 
accorded to Father Lemius' original, as well as to the present 
translation. In a letter to the author, Cardinal Merry del Val 
writes : " His Holiness rejoices at the talented and fruitful labor 
you have accomplished, and, commending you also on the 
further ground of keeping close to the very letter of the Ency- 
clical, he expresses the hope that the result of your most op- 

* Catechism on Modernism According to the Encyclical*' Pascendi Dominici Gregis " of His 
Holiness, Pius X. From the French of Father J. B. Lemius by Father John Fitzpatrick, 
O M.I. New York : Benziger Brothers. 



686 NEW BOOKS [Aug., 

portune study will be widely diffused." In fact, no expositor 
or commentator could adhere more closely to his text than does 
Father Lemius. He simply reproduces, in the exact order of 
the original, the ideas, statements, and arguments of the Ency- 
clical. His proper work has been to break up the test current 
of thought into its components, and to present them, in the 
form of answers to questions which he formulates. The ad- 
vantage of this method is considerable for those who are not 
accustomed to " chew and digest " as they read. In many places 
the language of the Encyclical is extremely terse, and the 
thought condensed ; so that readers, especially those who are 
not accustomed to habits of close study, may easily, in almost 
every page of the Encyclical, lightly skim over important pas- 
sages without grasping their significance. With the help of 
this remarkably clear guide-book any intelligent boy might 
easily qualify to pass a brilliant examination on the text of 
the Encyclical. 

From the archdiocese of Philadelphia there appears another 
little book with the same aim as the one just noticed, but ap- 
proaching its task from a slightly different angle.* It does not 
stick closely to the papal text, nor does it cover the entire 
contents. On the other hand, the points which it does treat of 
are handled in a fuller fashion. The author, first taking up 
Agnosticism as denounced in the Encyclical, traces its roots to 
the epistemological theory of Kant. Whether he has made this 
subject any clearer than it is in the Encyclical itself we shall 
riot undertake to decide. It does seem to us, however, with 
some experience as to the difficulty that the student in philoso- 
phy finds in his first attempt to understand Kant, that the 
author's explanation of the Kantian doctrine of phenomenon 
will be of very little service to the lay mind. The predominat- 
ing subjectivity which Kant assigns to phenomenon the ele- 
ment of his system which powerfully contributes to ultimate 
scepticism is not adequately exposed. In fact, the writer 
speaks as if phenomena were something objective for Kant ; 
and, again, in the statement of his own views he employs the 
word with a looseness which amounts to inaccuracy. For ex- 
ample, we read : " By nature we understand the sum of phe- 

* The Doctrine of Modernism and Us Refutation. By J. Godrycz, D.D., Ph.D., Utr.Jur.D, 
Philadelphia : J. J. McVey. 



I9o8.] NEW BOOKS 687 

nomena which appeal to our senses. Phenomena show them- 
selves to us as a harmonious totality which we call nature." 

This use of the term is neither Kantian nor Thomistic, but 
an indefensible confusion of both. The best chapter of the 
book is that on " The Church and Dogma " where the theory 
of making the public the judge of doctrine is shown to be ut- 
terly destructive of all settled doctrinal and disciplinary bases. 
Here the author looks at the problem from the practical stand- 
point. When treating of the question of the relations of Church 
and State, the writer is somewhat evasive in his exposition of 
pontifical doctrine. The drift of his refutation of the Modern- 
istic doctrine that Church and State ought to be separated is 
that, in Europe, separation of Church and State would mean 
the spoliation and oppression of the Church, as is witnessed in 
France to-day ; therefore separation is wrong. But Pius X., 
like his predecessors, takes, on this matter, much higher ground 
than that of mere local and temporary expediency. Both the 
natural arid the divine law, he has more than once declared, 
demand, as the ideal condition, that the State should, as a 
political being, profess a religion ; that the religion professed 
by the State should be the true religion; that, consequently, 
the union of Church and State is the normal condition that 
ought to exist; and that separation is only to be tolerated 
where this condition is impracticable. 

In conclusion, Dr. Godrycz ventures on prediction. The 
rise of Modernism, he says, indicates the spread of irreligion, 
which is destined to increase. An era of unprecedented per- 
secution for the Church is opening in Europe. 

In the future social development, after the equilibrium of 
capital and labor shall have been established, a terrific colli- 
sion between the intelligent, refined artisan and the brutal- 
ized, coarse proletarian will shake the foundation of society. 
Then the enemies of the Church will be undeceived ; they 
will see to what monstrous depths of degradation a man with- 
out religion and ethical ideals will sink. At last the erno- 
bling influence of religion upon man's nature will be under- 
stood, and the Church will be recognized as the greatest 
benefactor of human society. 

Whether this be inspiration or merely aspiration, we must 
thank the Doctor for emitting a hopeful note that cheerfully 



688 NEW BOOKS [Aug., 

contrasts with the pessimism of Father Benson. At the same 
time one cannot but recall the saying attributed to George 
Eliot: "Prophecy is the most gratuitous form of blunder." 

Strictly speaking, the wonderfully 
SERMONS. vivid and stimulating little book 

Jesus, by the Abbe Sertillanges, is 

not a volume of sermons, yet it is so direct and forcible in style, 
and so rich in matter, that the priest in search of sermons on 
our Lord will find it at least as useful as most of the volumes 
of prepared discourses that are supplied in such profusion just 
now. The book, which has just been translated into English 
and an excellent translation it is* was written by the ac- 
complished author on his return from a prolonged visit to Pal- 
estine. In treating the life and personality of our Divine Lord, 
he endeavors, if one may say so, to introduce as much local 
color as possible into his treatment; to reconstruct the scenes 
and conditions in which Christ lived and wrought and suffered. 
This he does with no mere desire for the dramatic or the pic- 
turesque, but in order to bring out in all its strength the nar- 
rative of the Gospels. In his descriptions, the abbe is, in the 
favorable sense of the word, realistic ; the doctrine is deep and 
glowing with an earnest piety which however, is not wont, as 
French piety sometimes does, when it seeks expression by the 
pen, to err by redundant emotionalism. 

A volume of sermons f for the Sundays after Pentecost by 
Father Devine, C.P., is deserving of commendation. The dis- 
courses are short, pithy, and well arranged. To each one is 
prefaced a brief synopsis which will prove an aid to the mem- 
ory. 

The title Cords of Adam,\ which Father Gerrard has selected 
for his volume of essays and sermons, is an appropriate ex- 
pression of an underlying thought which imparts a certain unity 
to what at first sight might be regarded as a heterogeneous 
collection of papers. The love of God for men, the Divine 
Goodness, whether manifested in the moral order, the Annun- 

* Christ Among Men ; or, Characteristics of Jesus as Seen in the Gospel. Translated by L. 
M. Ward fiom the French of Abbe" Sertillanges. New York : Benziger Brothers. 

\PentecostPreaching. Twenty-five Instructive Sermons on the Gospels for the Sundays 
after Pentecost. By the Rev. Arthur Devine, Passionist. New York : Benziger Brothers. 
Cords of Adam. By Rev. Thomas J. Gerrard. New York : Benziger Brothers. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 689 

elation, the Sorrows of Mary, or the Penitence of the Chief of 
the Apostles, is the general theme which from many points, and 
with great fertility of thought, Father Gerrard treats in a mas- 
terly manner. 

Though the tone of the work is devotional throughout, and 
it is directly addressed to those within, Father Gerrard's main 
purpose is apologetic. Hence his line of thought is frequently 
philosophic ; his defense of doctrine and practice consists in 
showing their reasonableness and their conformity with the needs 
and aspirations of human life. This characteristic is typically 
present in one of the finest numbers of the book, "The Eu- 
charist a Human Satisfaction." 

Though not even the most uncharitable zeal could find any 
pretense of accusing Father Gerrard of liberalism, he shows no 
inclination to bow down to the ipse dixit of some ancient exegete 
or theologian who has not the authority of the Church behind 
him. For instance, under the title, "Quoting Scripture," where 
he discourses upon the relative numbers of the saved and the 
lost he says : " ' The fewness of those who are saved/ says a 
Lapide, 'is evident from the irrefragable judgment of Christ: 
For many are called but few chosen? May God save us from 
all such uncharitable thoughts." And Father Gerrard proceeds 
to show that the severe opinion is incompatible with many other 
passages of Scripture, as well as derogatory to the mystery of 
the Incarnation. 

Father Gerrard's papers are of the kind that is most needed 
to-day scholarly in form, sound in matter, and directed to meet 
the mentality of the age. It is to be hoped that this volume 
will meet with such appreciation as will persuade the author 
to put into permanent form a collection of his more philo- 
sophical papers which already have done good service in vari- 
ous perodicals. 

The extent of the change in Eu- 

THE MINISTRY OF DAILY charistic discipline which has been 

COMMUNION. introduced by Pius X. is strikingly 

set forth in the commentary of 

Father de Zulueta, SJ.,* on the pronouncement of the Holy 
See regarding frequent Communion. Father de Zulueta's pur- 
pose is not merely academic. He writes to urge strongly upon 

* The Ministry of Daily Csmmunion. A consideration for priests. By F. M. de Zulueta, 
SJ. New York : Benziger Brothers. 

VOL. LXXXVII. 44 



690 NEW BOOKS [Aug., 

the clergy the duty of introducing the practice of frequent, and 
of daily Communion among the laity, in accordance with the 
strongly-expressed counsel of the Holy Father. 

As an introduction to the subject Father de Zulueta gives 
a rapid historical summary of the two conflicting opinions which 
have, both under the sanction of great names, prevailed in the 
Church. " Under the first opinion it (The Holy Eucharist) be- 
came primarily an object of honor and reverence, a privilege, 
or ' reward of virtue ' to be extended to souls in proportion as 
these had remedied their defects already." "From this false 
view arose, logically, that arbitrary graduated scale of perfect 
dispositions, to be seen even in standard text books of our own 
day, with its allotment of so many communions a week to cor- 
respond with such and such a degree of virtue a page of the- 
ology which Pius X. has deleted." Among the more illustri- 
ous teachers of this now discarded opinion were St. Thomas 
Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, Blessed John de Avila, St. Francis 
de Sales, and St. Alphonsus Liguori. These teachers, Father 
de Zulueta points out, all accepted the opinion that daily com- 
munion was in itself desirable that is to say, considering the 
matter from the point of view of the Sacrament's salutary ef- 
fects. " But none of them appear fully to have realized what 
it is now our privilege to know from the teaching of Pius X. 
that daily Communion is desirable for all without exception, 
whatever their state and condition, temporal or spiritual, if only 
they are in the state of grace and approach the Holy Table 
with a right intention." 

The second opinion, which always had its advocates, and 
has now received supreme approbation, is thus stated: "No 
higher preparation is essentially needed for daily reception of 
the Eucharist than is required for a single reception say at 
Easter ; and those holier conditions of soul, beyond the mere 
state of grace and a right intention, are not so much a prepa- 
ration for the Sacrament as its fruit and effect, one Commun- 
ion thus qualifying us for deriving yet greater profit from the 
next one." 

The Holy See having issued its instructions, it remains for 
the clergy to consider what means are to be taken in order to 
give effect to the Decrees. Father de Zulueta examines what 
is incumbent on the priest, in this respect, under his three-fold 
relation to the faithful, as parochial priest, confessor, and 



NEW BOOKS 691 

preacher ; and he replies to various difficulties that occur to 
the minds of those priests and they are by no means few in 
number who have but little enthusiasm for the new dis- 
cipline. For instance, it is said that the general practice of 
daily Communion by the laity would increase enormously the 
work of the confessional. Not necessarily, says Father de 
Zulueta and he quotes Canon Antoni, whose writings on daily 
Communion have received papal approbation. The Canon holds 
that priests ought to train souls so that they should communi- 
cate every day without fear and with joy during weeks and, 
if it should be necessary even during months, without going 
to confession, when they are not clear as to having sinned 
mortally since their last confession. On the subject of ex- 
hortation Father de Zulueta has some counsel, which deserves 
to be pondered. For, clearly, it is a task that will call for 
prudence to introduce to the present generation of Catholics 
the idea that they may go to Communion day after day with- 
out going to confession, for weeks, though they may be con- 
scious of venial sin. Indeed, as Father de Zulueta says, the 
priest who will qualify himself to exhort effectively on this 
subject must, in many cases, readjust his own principles: "He 
may need, in many cases, first of all, to unlearn a page of his 
moral theology that on which he has hitherto been instructed 
concerning frequent and daily Communion ; for the late Decrees 
have virtually deleted that page, and replaced it by a new one. 
There is at present hardly one if there be as yet even one 
standard text-book of moral theology which does not in some 
degree conflict with the newly authorized doctrine on the sub- 
ject." 

Judging from the care and thoroughness with which he treats 
the point, Father de Zulueta believes that the strongest diffi- 
culty that will be pleaded by the reluctant is that daily Com- 
munion, as the normal practice, among the laity, will tend to 
diminish reverence for the Blessed Sacrament. His answer to 
this is very strong, as, indeed, is his entire apologia for the 
Decrees. Priests who have any misgivings as to the probable 
results of the change of discipline cannot afford to neglect 
Father de Zulueta's valuable little book, which closes with a re- 
minder that " Prudence is the virtue of him who commands, 
not of him who obeys " ; and that, when all is said, the Church 
assumes the responsibility of this change in discipline. 



692 NEW BOOKS [Aug., 

The zeal of the greater number of 

THE ST. NICHOLAS SERIES, writers who have undertaken to pro- 
vide reading for our children has 

too often overreached itself. The providing of Catholic literature 
they have considered synonymous with furnishing books of piety 
under a very thin guise of fiction. But these good people forgot 
that there is a great deal of human nature in children, and that 
these little men and women do not like to be preached at all 
the time, any more than do their elders. They resent being 
tricked into a sermon under the guise of entertainment ; and so 
all but the very elect among them soon tire of the " goody- 
goody " books that are so plentifully provided for them. And 
they are not to be blamed severely for their perversity. Be- 
sides, in most instances this kind of literature has a very slight 
pedagogical value, for it is not calculated to awaken a taste for 
good, solid reading. Reflections of this kind, we presume, have 
prompted the inauguration, under the editorship of the distin- 
guished scholar, Don Bede Camm, of the St. Nicholas Series, 
which promises to provide for our youngsters a library of quite 
a different value. This series consists chiefly of histories con- 
cerning personages noted in the annals of the Church, and of 
legendary characters whose stories offer an occasion of awaken- 
ing an interest in history and literature. The style, without 
descending to the level of the nursery, is adapted to the prospec- 
tive reader; and the Catholic spirit, though ubiquitous, is not 
ostentatiously on parade all the time. The writers aim, too, at 
instructing ; but, knowing their business, aim first at interest- 
ing in order to instruct. A very good specimen of the series 
is the latest number,* containing the stories of St. Christopher, 
St. Wenceslaus, Alexamenos, and St. John Gaulbert. The story 
of Christopher is frankly set down as a legend ; and that of 
Alexamenos as pure fiction; while those of St. John Gaulbert 
and St. Wenceslaus are drawn, for the most part, from history. 

The gem of the series, thus far, is the Life of Joan of Arc, 
by C. M. Anthony.f The tragedy of the Maid is related with 
a simplicity that suits it to the youngest; while the accuracy 
and power of condensation shown in the narrative challenges 

* St. Christopher, Breaker of Men. And Other Stories. By Rev. Cyril Martindale, SJ. 
New York : Benziger Brothers. 

t Jeanne d 'Arc, the Maid of France. By C. M. Anthony. New York : Benziger Brothers. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 693 

the admiration of the historical student. The infamy of Rouen 
is set forth without extenuation, and in such a way as to teach 
eloquently the invaluable lesson that the Catholic Church is not 
to be held responsible for many acts committed in her name 
by unworthy officials who abuse the authority entrusted to them. 

Books of this type are well adapted to impart the germs 
of that priceless boon which, unfortunately, is sadly lacking 
among the great majority of American Catholics, a taste for 
sound reading. 

A generous amount of plot and 

AN ANGLO-AUSTRALIAN counterplot have gone into the mak- 
STORY. i n g of Naomi's Transgression.* The 

story opens with an ingenious situ- 
ation. Naomi Barclay, a beautiful Australian Quakeress, has 
been made heiress to her father's millions on condition that she 
marry, before the expiration of one year, an unknown English 
cousin; should she refuse, the entire fortune adverts to him; 
should he refuse, it returns in toto to herself. To bring about 
this latter consummation, an attractive and resourceful compan- 
ion offers to impersonate the real Naomi in England and thence- 
forth many foreseen and unforeseen complications arise. Not the 
least surprising of these is the heroine's final transformation into 
a Catholic Sister of Charity. It is a diverting story; albeit 
none too carefully written, nor too exactingly to be read. 

The solidarity of purpose that ex- 

FREEMASONRY. ists between French and Italian 

freemasonry is the special theme 

of a little brochure recently published by a Frenchman who has 
devoted much time to a study of the policy of the lodges as 
it has written itself large in French and Italian history for the 
last forty years.f The immediate object of the writer is to con- 
vince his fellow- Catholics that the action of the Pope in refus- 
ing to permit the associations cultuelles provided for in the Bri- 
and law of separation was profoundly wise. For the scheme 
was a deep-laid plan, of masonic origin, to ruin the Catholic 

* Naomi's Transgression. By Darley Dale. London : Frederick Warne & Co. 
\ Le Plande la Francma^onnerie en Italie et en France, d' apres nombreux temoinages ; ott, 
LaClefderHlstoiredepuis4oans. Par Leon Dehon. Paris: Lethielleux. 



694 NEW BOOKS [Aug., 

Church, by substituting for it in France a national one which, 
in the course of time, could, without much trouble, be com- 
pletely suppressed. In proof of his thesis, M. Dehon sketches 
the course of revolutionary and liberal ideas in Italy, from the 
time of Minghetti up to the project associated with the name 
of Cardona in 1885. Here, he argues, in Italy we see free- 
masonry at work endeavoring strenuously to establish, with 
the avowed purpose of destroying Catholicism, a national Ital- 
ian Church. It failed because in Italy Catholics saw clearly 
the ultimate purpose of the movement and fought it vigorously. 
In France, he proceeds to show, the Briand law was a pro- 
ceeding of similar purport and like origin. By refusing to ap- 
prove of the measures contained in it " Pius X. has saved our 
moral unity and our divine hierarchy, which far outweigh all 
material goods." The booklet contains an interesting but rather 
meager outline of a momentous and far-extending question. 

It would be scarcely reasonable to 

IS THE POPE INDEPEND- expect that anybody, at this time 
ENT? of day, could display any origi- 

nality in setting forth the facts or 

the rights and wrongs involved in the establishment and per- 
petuation of the situation that exists between the Pope and the 
Kingdom of Italy, since the suppression of the temporal power. 
Mgr. Prior has, however, the merit of going over familiar ground 
without becoming tedious,* as he sets forth the story of events 
which led to the present arrangement. In the last two chap- 
ters, in which he treats of the moral power of the Pope and 
of the actual situation, he will be followed with a fresher in- 
terest by those to whom the old, sad story is long familiar. 

Taking up the objection so frequently made to any plea for 
the restoration of the temporal power, that the authority and 
prestige of the Popes have been greater and more splendid since 
they ceased to be temporal rulers, Mgr. Prior replies that the 
Church has thriven, by the grace of God, not through the loss 
of her temporality, but in spite of that loss. 

By the sacrifice of his individual liberty, and his refusal to 
jeopardize the interests of the Church by submission to the 

* Is the Pope Independent? or, Outlines of the Roman Question. By Right Rev. Mgr. 
Prior, D.D. Palazzo Taverna, Rome: Published by 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 695 

Italian government, the Pope has preserved her honor untar- 
nished, his dignity intact, and the Church free from servitude. 
He is, indeed, a prisoner, but not a slave, as the I^aw of Guar- 
antees would make him. And that he is free from real or ap- 
parent slavery is clear to the world, from the very fact that 
he lives in a state of protest against the Power at his door. 

But, continues the writer, a very different state of affairs 
might easily arise if the state of things contemplated by the 
Italian Law of Guarantees were in being. Then foreign gov- 
ernments might suspect the power of the Church to be play- 
ing into the hands of the Italian Kingdom a suspicion that 
would be fraught with danger to the interests of religion. 
Besides, continues Mgr. Prior, a weak Pope might appear who 
would betray his office by unworthy subserviency to the King- 
dom of Italy. 

Picture the situation created by the acceptance on the part 
of the Pope of the political expedient of the I/aw of Guaran- 
tees offered to him by the Italian government. There would 
necessarily ensue not merely an interchange of courtesies, 
but a certain intermingling of the two courts. The Pope's 
own counsellors would be seen in the halls of the Quirinal, 
and in the houses of ministers and supporters of a possibly 
unscrupulous government ; they would be surrounded by an 
atmosphere of Italian nationalism ; their love of their native 
land, their concern for its welfare, and, perhaps, the motive 
of self-interest, would dispose them insensibly to accept the 
official Italian view of grave matters of ecclesiastical policy. 
To the direct pressure of the Italian government on the Pope 
would be added the urgent advice of his own counsellors im- 
bued with the ideas of Italian officialdom, and matters in 
which the Pontiff dared not act on his own unaided judg- 
ment would be settled with a view to the interests of Italy 
and not those of the Universal Church. 

This line of argument approaches unpleasantly near to 
sounding like an echo of the charges brought against the tem- 
poral power itself by some hostile historians who claim that 
the local and personal interests of the temporal sovereign and 
his magnates were too often consulted by weak or selfish Popes 
to the injury of the Church Universal. 

In his concluding chapter Mgr. Prior describes the draw- 



696 NEW BOOKS [Aug., 

backs of the actual situation, its essentially provisional char- 
acter ; and points out how easily it may, at any moment, become 
intolerable, or be imperilled by international complications. 
What is the conclusion arrived at by the writer ? 

The times are, seemingly, not yet ripe for a satisfactory so- 
lution of the Roman Question. But while we hope and pray 
that the Vicar of Christ may be soon restored to a position of 
independence for the good of the Universal Church, we may 
not anticipate his judgment with regard to any concrete 
scheme. It is for him alone to decide in this grave and deli- 
cate matter, and the only right attitude for loyal Catholics is 
to obey his instructions and support his claims. 

Our readers will remember that, a 

FOREIGN MISSIONS. few months ago, two volumes deal- 
ing with the history of missionary 

endeavor in the Far East were noticed in these pages. The 
purpose of the writer, Canon Joly, a Canon of the Cathedral 
of Notre Dame in Paris, was to assert that the comparative 
failure of all the noble apostolic zeal poured into the field of 
Japan, Indo-China, and Burmah, for about seven hundred years, 
has been due to the fact that the missionaries and their superi- 
ors did not, in their methods, take pattern from the Apostles 
themselves; they studiously refused to establish a native hie- 
rarchy among the heathens whom they converted. The result 
was, according to the Canon, that the Church remained, in the 
eyes of the governments, a foreign, European, anti-national in- 
stitution, always in league with exploiting Europeans, and as 
such was always swept away sooner or later. Thus the faith 
which in three centuries converted the entire Roman world has 
to show as the result of seven centuries of missionary labor ? 
and the blood of numberless martyrs, in the Eastern world, 
only four millions of Christians out of a total of eight hundred 
millions. 

These charges stirred up a vigorous reply. In the Jesuit 
organ, Etudes, Father Brou led off with a severe assault on 
M. Joly, whom he roundly charged with meddling in affairs 
which he had no competence to treat. Many other writers en- 
tered the list; and from among the missionaries appeared a 
host of letters which, according to the Canon, were inspired 



fhrni 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 697 

by a general order from Europe. Now M. Joly replies in a 
small book * which chronicles the course of the controversy, 
including " a conspiracy of silence " that, he says, was inau- 
gurated in order to insure that his original work should fall still- 
born from the printing-press. He sticks to his guns and, with 
enforced arguments, still insists that the missionary bodies de- 
liberately refused to create native hierarchies when they could, 
and ought to, have done so. He promises, too, that he will 
continue to agitate the question till it attracts the attention 
which it merits. 

.._, ..>,*** iuc J^iuciai siue, ueieated Mr. 

Churchill. By the death of Fran9ois Coppee, France 

is said to be the poorer. Though by no means to be 

numbered amongst the giants of his generation, still his 

poetry made a compelling appeal to the hearts of his 

countrymen. 

(6 June) : Under " Topics of the Day " the animus of 

the Orange party to the affiliation of Maynooth with the 

proposed Irish University is pointed out. Under 

" Things Wanting and Wanted " many valuable hints 
are given, notably that in preaching or instructing one 
should never use Greek or Latin words when English 

equivalents are at hand. Four columns are devoted 

to an account of the recent conversion of a number of 
Episcopalians at Philadelphia and a discussion as to the 
outcome of the Open Pulpit Canon. 

(13 June): Disaffection in India; shrinkage of trade; 
increase and extravagance in national expenditure are 

matters dealt with in current topics of the week. The 

action of the Catholic Federation in opposing govern- 
ment candidates at recent by-elections is condemned at 

the annual Convention of the United Irish League. 

The Question. " Was Milt-on a Catholic ?" is further 



Cardinal Newman's Literary Executors have republished, 
through Messrs. Longmans, 7 he Church of 'the Fathers and Univer- 
sity Teaching. The first-named volume forms Vol. II. of the 
Historical Sketches, and in it the Cardinal shows how Catho- 
lic ideas remain unchanged amid all the varieties of Catholic 

* Tribulations d'un Vieux Chanoine. Par Chanoine Ldon Joly. Paris : Lethielleux. 
t Priest and Parson ; or, Let us be One. By Rev. James H. Fogarty. New York : Chris- 
tian Press Association. 



698 NEW BOOKS [Aug. 

practice. Three great events in the drama which unfolded itself 
in the fourth century are brought before us. The first is the 
history of the Roman Empire becoming Christian ; the second, 
that of the indefectible Church of God apparently succumbing 
to Arianism; the third, that of countless hosts of barbarians 
pouring in upon both Empire and Christendom together. The 
labors and trials of Basil and Gregory ; Antony in keen conflict 
with the world, the flesh, and the devil; Augustine and his 
' tempestuous life ending in conversion; Demetrius withdrawing 
from the allurements of the world, consecrating his wealth to 

cate matter, and the only right attitude for loyal Catholics is 
to obey his instructions and support his claims. 

Our readers will remember that, a 

FOREIGN MISSIONS. few months ago, two volumes deal- 
ing with the history of missionary 

endeavor in the Far East were noticed in these pages. The 
purpose of the writer, Canon Joly, a Canon of the Cathedral 
of Notre Dame in Paris, was to assert that the comparative 
failure of all the noble apostolic zeal poured into the field of 
Japan, Indo-China, and Burmah, for about seven hundred years, 
has been due to the fact that the missionaries and their superi- 
ors did not, in their methods, take pattern from the Apostles 
themselves; they studiously refused to establish a native hie- 
rarchy among the heathens whom they converted. The result 
was, according to the Canon, that the Church remained, in the 
eyes of the governments, a foreign, European, anti-national in- 
stitution, always in league with exploiting Europeans, and as 
such was always swept away sooner or later. Thus the faith 
which in three centuries converted the entire Roman world has 
to show as the result of seven centuries of missionary labor f 
^ the blood of numberless mit.f~.-o ; 4.u~ -K~^<*~- 






^foreign periodicals. 



The Tablet (30 May) : Interest still centers round the Educa- 
tion Bill and the intentions of the government. The long 
and short of it all is that the Catholics of England 
are going to safeguard their schools whatever happens 
with others, if possible, and if not, without them. What 
Catholics can do by united action is shown in the Man- 
chester election, where the votes of five hundred Catho- 
lics, transferred from the Liberal side, defeated Mr. 

Churchill. By the death of Fran9ois Coppee, France 

is said to be the poorer. Though by no means to be 

numbered amongst the giants of his generation, still his 

poetry made a compelling appeal to the hearts of his 

countrymen. 

(6 June) : Under " Topics of the Day " the animus of 

the Orange party to the affiliation of Maynooth with the 

proposed Irish University is pointed out. Under 

" Things Wanting and Wanted " many valuable hints 
are given, notably that in preaching or instructing one 
should never use Greek or Latin words when English 

equivalents are at hand. Four columns are devoted 

to an account of the recent conversion of a number of 
Episcopalians at Philadelphia and a discussion as to the 
outcome of the Open Pulpit Canon. 

(13 June): Disaffection in India; shrinkage of trade; 
increase and extravagance in national expenditure are 

matters dealt with in current topics of the week. The 

action of the Catholic Federation in opposing govern- 
ment candidates at recent by-elections is condemned at 

the annual Convention of the United Irish League. 

The question, " Was Milton a Catholic ? " is further consid- 
ered by Mgr. Barnes. He seems to think that the evi- 
dence points to the probability of his conversion. A 

forecast is given as to the intentions of the government 
in regard to the Education Bill. In view of the approach- 
ing close of the session, the writer regards the position 
as one of much doubt and uncertainty. 
(20 June) : Old Age Pension Bill passed the second read- 
ing by a majority of 388. Mr. Andrew Lang draws 



700 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Aug., 

attention to Shakespeare's appreciative mention of Joan 
of Arc in his play of Henry VI. The Irish Univer- 
sities Bill calls forth some hostile criticism. Cardinal 
Logue protests against the exclusion of the clergy from 
all share in the administration of the University. 

The Month (June): Opens with an article by Father Sydney 
Smith, S.J., on the subject of " Indulgences." It is ex- 
planatory rather than polemical, and is the first portion 
of a paper read before the Guild of St. Thomas of Can- 
terbury. It refutes the prevalent Protestant idea that an 
indulgence 'is a permission given, in consideration of a 

money payment, to commit sin. In the next article 

Father Gerard examines the painful story of Giordano 
Bruno, and gives his reasons for believing that much of 
the philosopher's fame is due to the lurid fires of the 

Inquisition. In the second installment of "Wanted: 

a Readable Bible," the author urges the need of a more 
rational method of arranging the text in accordance with 

the sense. Father Thurston concludes his article on 

"The Name of the Rosary," claiming that the name 
Rosary, as giving the conception of a garland, was 
adopted from the German form Rosencranz not earlier 
than the fifteenth century, although the use of the string 
of beads upon which prayers were said dates from a 
much earlier period. 

The International (June) : Under " Economics " we have a se- 
ries of articles on " The Coming of Socialism," by the 
editor, Dr. Rodolphe Broda. " The Coming of Protec- 
tion in England." "The Economic Future of Germany." 
"The Crisis in the United States," etc., etc. In the first 
the writer marks the progressive change in our time from 
individual labor to collective labor, and from individual 
ownership to collective ownership. There are, he says, 
but two alternatives: to allow monopoly to remain in 
private hands, or to place it under public control. Can 
there be a question as to the better course ? And so the 

future lies with Socialism. Under " Politics," the 

article " Democracy in Japan " shows the great awakening 
of the people to their responsibilities and privileges, and 
their determination to resist the government's proposed 
gigantic naval programme. Eduard Bernstein, in "The 



FOREIGN PERIODICALS 701 

Labor Movement and Culture," shows how this movement 
has had an uplifting and humanizing effect. It may, he 
says, bring about political and economic revolutions; but 
it will never depress the level of human culture. 

The Crucible (June) : Rev. W. D. Strappini, S.J., " Some 

Notes on Modernism." A. M. Langdale, " A Plea 

for a Broader Treatment of Music in our Schools." 

Margaret Pollen, " On Systematic Reading." Rev. 

Charles Plater, S.J., "Retreats for the People." 

Susan Cunnington, " The Teaching of Mathematics in 
Secondary Schools." Xaveria, " Glimpses of an Aus- 
tralian Convent School." 

The Expository Times (July) : In " Notes of Recent Exposition " 
the editor remarks that the text " Behold, He cometh 
with the clouds," etc., has very seldom been taken as the 
text of a sermon. Mention is also made that C. Fox 
Burney, of Oxford, at one time a Higher Critic, has 
come to the conclusion that the Decalogue is due to the 
authorship of Moses. Evidence is brought to show that 
Jahweh was not originally a proper name. Other arti- 
cles are: "The Self-Consciousness of Jesus." "The Ar- 
gument From Experience." " Modern Positive Theo- 
logy " deals with the rise of a new Theological School 
in Germany, which claims to be at once modern and 
positive. Apparently it is receiving scant courtesy in the 
land of its birth. 

National Review (July): Current Events discusses the new en- 
tente between Great Britain, France, and Russia ; King 
Edward's visit to the Czar and the discussion it occa- 
sioned in Parliament ; the Pan- Anglican Congress ; and 

other miscellaneous questions. Lord Newton claims 

that the country should not take seriously Mr. Haldane 

in his army reform scheme. Andre Mevil discusses 

the beginnings, under M. Delcasse, of the entente between 

France and Great Britain. The Free Churches and 

their "last deterioration" are treated by the Rev. S. 
Skelhorn. The writer claims that disintegration and de- 
cay have marked the dissenting churches for their own. 

Lord Desborough writes on " The Olympic Games 

Then and Now." Charles Whibley maintains that if 

a national theater were built to mark the tercentenary 



702 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Aug., 

of Shakespeare's death and a Shakespearean play pre- 
sented therein, an audience would be lacking. Bisque, 

writing on Mr. Gould, says that he is not a phenomenal 

tennis player. R. L. Gales maintains that the solution 

of the drink question lies in better moral and intellectual 
training, and improving the whole social condition of 

the people. " Feminism in France and England," by 

the Hon. Mrs. Edward Stuart Wortley, is a plea for 

woman's suffrage. A laudatory review of Mr. Oliver's 

Alexander Hamilton is contributed by Bernard Holland, 
C.B. 

The Irish Ecclesiastical Record (June) : The opening article, " A 
Dinner Party With Socrates," transports us to ancient 
Greece, and we listen to a dialogue between the Master 
and his disciples on some of the philosophical questions of 
the day. Agnosticism ; proof of the existence of God ; 
reality of truth and being ; purposive action of intelligent 
will; the impossibility of an infinite series, are discussed 

and settled. The third installment of the structure of 

the Roman Canon deals with the various changes which 
have taken place and the light which various liturgists 
have thrown upon the matter. 

Le Correspondant (10 June): In the opening article Emile Ol- 
livier sketches the political condition which obtained af- 
ter the plebiscite, and points out the struggles of the 
various parties in their attempt to secure the mastery. 

"Two Years in the Farnese Palace" is brought to 

a conclusion, and we are given an insight into the diplo- 
matic relations existing between France and Italy, strained 
at times almost to the point of breaking. An appre- 
ciative article on Fran9ois Coppee shows him to us as 

the poet of the French people, redolent of the soil. 

"English India" is another concluded article, and the 
writer sounds a note of warning, that heed should be 
taken ere it be too late, else Great Britain may find India 

arrayed against her in the day of her necessity. " The 

Salons of 1908," deals with the paintings and sculptures 
on exhibition. "The French Action" forms the sub- 
ject-matter of three articles showing it from the view- 
point of different writers. 
(25 June) : Emile Ollivier contributes an article on the " In- 



FOREIGN PERIODICALS 703 

ternal Political Conditions after the Plebiscite." "The 

Religious Ideas of Leibnitz " reveals the philosopher as 
a man of earnest conviction in his religious belief. God 
is the key-stone of his philosophical system, God ex- 
plains all, and without Him nothing is explained. He 
knew nothing of a philosophy independent of or sepa- 
rated from religion. " I commenced," he said, " with 
philosophy; but I ended with theology." "The Mas- 
ters of the Pacific Ocean," furnishes a detailed account 
of the colonies of the great powers in that ocean. In- 
ternational rivalry is far from being ended. The open- 
ing of the Panama Canal must complicate matters, intro- 
ducing a new agent in the person of the United States, 
and the question eventually must be: What great power 

is to reign supreme ? In " The First International 

Congress Against The Duel," M. Pierre Lea Rohu tells 
us that the trend of this Congress held at Budapest voiced 
the good sense of humanity in raising a protest against 
a custom which is an outrage on justice and truth. 
Etudes (5 June) : " Modernism in Germany " deals with the errors 
and doctrine of Hermann Schell, professor in Wurzbourg 
University. The writer claims that the great mistake 
made by Schell was to push to extremes principles of 

apologetic which in themselves were excellent. Paul 

Dudon, in his article "Lamennais and the Jesuits," ex- 
plains the action of the Society of Jesus in regard to the 
condemnation of Lamennais, claiming it to be untrue 
that the Jesuits' aim was to crush him by methods fair 

or foul. In " Art and Archaeology " we are given a 

bird's-eye view of Catholic art in architecture, from its 
simplest form in the Catacombs of Rome to the magnifi- 
cent Gothic creations of the Middle Ages. "The 

Sources of Roman Martyrology " speaks approvingly of 
the work of Dom Quenten on this subject, and shows 
how mistakes have arisen. Quoting Benedict XIV. he 
says : " One cannot prove that the insertion in Roman 
Martyrology is equivalent to a canonization." 
(20 June): "The Cause of Peace and the Two Confer- 
ences at the Hague," by A. Pillet. The result of these 
conferences, the writer says, has been a multiplication 
of treaties of arbitration among the various powers ; but 



704 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Aug., 

so far as securing a basis for permanent peace is con- 
cerned, the conferences have been worthless. " Mod- 
ernism in Germany " deals with an article by A. Ehr- 
hard entitled: "The New Situation in Catholic Theol- 
ogy," in which the writer complains that the tone of the 
Encyclical was not paternal and that if the measures there- 
in suggested be put in force, Catholic science, as such, 
has seen her best days. " St. Ignatius and Daily Com- 
munion." The writer points out that not only was the 
saint zealous for the restoration of frequent Communion, 
but that his last work was the gathering of the material 
for a book on the subject which was published after his 

death, in 1557. Other articles are: "Methods for the 

Study of the Pentateuch." " Two Systems of Theos- 

ophy." " Ten Years of Missionary Work in Madagas- 
car." 

La Revue Apologetique (16 May): Opens with an article on 
" Some Fragments of P. Theodore de Regnon, author 
of The Life of Banez, Molina, and other works. These 
fragments treat of our union with Jesus Christ, and kin- 
dred subjects. In each case the writer's object was to 
study the motherhood of Mary, for she is inseparable 

from her Son. G. Lahouse, S.J., brings his article 

on " The Divinity of Jesus Christ and the Synoptics " 
to a close, showing that it is not only St. John and St. 
Paul who give to Jesus the name and attributes of God, 
but the synoptics also, who with no less clearness have 
professed the same faith in the fundamental dogma of 
Christianity. In the review of " Blanc de Saint-Bon- 
net and Liberalism," the writer gives an interesting ac- 
count of the attitude of the subject of his article towards 
the liberalism of the day. Needless to say it was hos- 
tile. He regarded it as an insurrection against author- 
ity, while religious liberalism was to him the worst of 
plagues. " Bibliography Reviews " includes eight lec- 
tures by R. W. Sanday, in which he takes the tradi- 
tional position that St. John is the author of the Fourth 
Gospel, as opposed, on the one hand, to that of Har- 
nack and Briggs, who attribute to St. John certain pas- 
sages and the rest to a redactor of later date; and, on 
the other, to that of Wernle, Loisy, and others, who 



1908.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 705 

absolutely deny its apostolic authorship and historic 
character. 

Annales de Philosophic Chretienne (JuneJ : "Religious Experience 
and Contemporary Protestantism," by S. Sabatier, has 
special reference to the philosophy of W. James as 
translated by Frank Abauzit. Catholicism, the writer 
says, has always professed a theory of religion founded 
upon an intimate harmony between feeling, intuition, 
speculation, and practice. Protestantism, on the other 
hand, has divorced these elements and has by turns 
found the essence of religion in reason, logic, intuition, 
interior illumination, and feeling. These various points 
the writer discusses in turn, following the order set 
forth by W. James. It has been said that The Life of 
Christ, by Renan, has been read at the foot of the 
altar by pious and simple women, who found in the 
book much mystical edification; such, too, the writer 
says, may be the fate of Religious Experience. It is 
conceived in a noble spirit, but the higher the author 
carries you into the region of the ideal, the greater is 

the danger of a fall into the depths of agnosticism. 

"The Nobility of the Thomistic Doctrine of Divine 
Concurrence," according to the writer, B. Desbuts, lies 
in the fact that this doctrine explains the origin of our 
idea of the infinite. It simply affirms that between God 
and ourselves there exists a parallelism of functions. 
Two important consequences result from the nature of 
this idea of the infinite. The first is that we are able to 
establish the objective reality of our idea of the infinite. 
For, in order to prove the existence of God, it is not 
enough to think or to reason, one must act; therefore 
the will is causa efficients, partially at least. The second 
consequence of this doctrine is that it shows us that 
any conception of the infinite we may gain through the 
intellect without the influence of the will is nothing but 
a pure illusion. The second installment of "An Es- 
say on the Physical Theory from Plato to Galileo" deals 
with the philosophy of the Arabs and Jews and carries 
us up to the Scholastic doctrine of the Middle Ages. 

How did man come to create his gods to invent 

VOL. LXXXVII. 45 



;o6 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Aug., 

these fables ? is the question asked by the writer of 
"The Origin of Myths." It is necessary, he says, to 
distinguish two great systems; one stands condemned; 
it is that which sees in the gods of the ancients, kings 
or great personages deified ; the other is that which 
recognizes in the gods the great forces of nature. Be- 
tween these two systems, one false, the other often true, 
are others, less general but still applicable to a number 
of cases. It is with these that the writer deals in a 
most interesting article. 

Revue du Monde Catholique (15 May): "Pascal: Philosophy of 
the Morrow," by P. At. Philosophy is, the writer 
says, a completed science. It is not capable of appre- 
ciable progress either by the discovery of new truths or 

by the construction of new errors. "The Episcopate 

and Priesthood : Past and Present," a consideration of 
the two offices their relation and the errors held regarding 

them. "Notre- Dame de Chartres " continued. 

(i June): "Modernism," by Ch. Beaurredon. The mod- 
ernist Christology treated ; in contrast is presented the 
" True Christology," life, death, and resurrection of Je- 
sus. " The Episcopate and Priesthood," Abbe Peries. 

The doctrine as held by Catholics. In the initial years 
of Christianity there was, at least, an embryonic episco- 
pate. 
(15 June): "The Philosopy of the Morrow," by P. At 

(completed). A further consideration of M. Fonse- 

grive and his principles in "The New Philosophy." 
The Church's belief in, and the Popes' approbation of, 
scholastic philosophy is treated at length. " Modern- 
ism," by Ch. Beaurredon (continued). The divinity of 
Christ treated. His position towards the sinner an indi- 
cation of His divine nature ; His own words, verifying 

His divine Sonship, are ample proof. " The Pretended 

Marriage of Bossuet " a seventh and last letter upon 
the question. No definite conclusions can be maintained. 
The evidence at hand is insufficient to speak dogmati- 
cally either in favor of or in opposition to the subject. 

Revue Pratique d* Apologetique (i June): The three leading arti- 
cles are continuations from preceding numbers : J. V. 






1908.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 707 

Bainvel, dealing with Father Garden's work on Apolo- 
getics. Georges Michelet, with the relations between 

the philosophies of Comte, Goyau, Wundt, and a new 

French theory of religion. J. Touzard, with M. Guig- 

nebert's articles on the Old Testament. The latter is 
taken to task for failing to state his opponent's views 
properly and for attributing to the Church dogmatic as- 
sertions she has never made. 

(15 June): Leonce de Grandmaison gives us the third 
installment of his articles on the development of Chris- 
tian Doctrine. J. Lebreton writes interestingly about 

the early religious difficulties of Loisy and about late 
developments in the conflict between the Church and 
Modernism. 

La Democratic Chretienne (June) : E. V. writes about an asso- 
ciation formed by priests of the archdiocese of Florence 
for mutual help along material lines in case of illness or 
infirmity. L'Abbe E. G., "The Sixth Catholic Con- 
gress of Austria." L'Abbe Bordron, "Freemasonry, 

Socialism, and Catholicity " ; a public lecture delivered 
at Hellemes. When it was ended, the president of the 
meeting vainly offered the floor to the Socialists who 

were present. B. Sienne, "The Italian Episcopate and 

the Strike at Parma " ; a letter addressed by the Cardinal 
of Ferrara, the Archbishops of Modena, Bologna, and 
Ravenna, and fourteen other bishops, to the people of 
Parma. The letter approves of Labor Unions and other 
similar organizations which work in obedience to the 
laws of God, for the betterment of conditions among the 
working classes. 

Revue Thomiste (May-June): " Creative Evolution " is an analy- 
sis of M. Bergson's book bearing this name. The writer, 
Fr. Pegues, O.P., claims that the philosophy there set 
forth is a complete overthrowing of the traditional con- 
cept of knowledge. " Common Sense and Dogmatic 

Formulas" deals with the nominalistic theory of M. Le 
Roy, which the writer says is not new and may be 

traced back to Heraclitus. "The Scientific Way in 

the Study of the Religious Problem," is an investigation 
into the experimental method in view of certain recent 



;o8 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Aug., 

works, among them being William James' Religious Ex- 
perience. In the article " The Russian Church " the 

writer expresses the hope that the new forces which are 
at work in her may eventuate in unity and peace be- 
tween East and West. 

Stimmen aus Maria Laach (29 May) : P. Heinrich Pesch, S.J., 
in an article " Culture, Progress, Reform," gives a sur- 
vey of the ideals and tendencies of the present day and 
shows how the intellectual and cultural acquisitions are 
looked upon as leading humanity to its highest perfec- 
tion, while religious and moral ideals are widely neglected. 
But through these only can the human race attain to 
true perfection and happiness. That nation which will 
follow these ideals is going to rank first among the na- 
tions of the earth. P. Jos. Knabenbauer writes on 

" Jesus and the Expectation of the End of the World," 
and shows that the statement of most of the Protestant 
critics that Jesus believed the end of the world to be at 
hand, is not a true interpretation of the words of Christ. 

P. Julius Bessmer, S.J., treats of the propositions of 

the decree Lamentabili Sane, refuting Loisy's doctrine of 
the Holy Sacraments. P. Heinrich Pesch, S.J., con- 
cludes his paper on " Social Classification." He says 
that the social arrangement according to property must 
be overcome by an arrangement according to the econo- 
mic and social function, which corresponds to the organic 

character of society. P. Jos. Braun, S.J., gives a 

short history and description of " The Roman Chapel 
Sancta Sanctorum and its Treasures." Recent discoveries 
made there, he says, have contributed much to the 
knowledge of mediaeval arts. 

Espana y America (i June): Father A. Blanco, "Weights and 
Measures " ; an historical sketch of the earliest systems. 

Father S. Rodriguez, "The Importance of Forests 

for Agriculture " ; how Spain was stripped of her forests. 

F. Pedrosa, "The Scientific Press of Spain." 

Father J. M. Lopez, " Galicia During the War of Inde- 
pendence." 

(15 June): Father J. Hospital, continuing his letters from 
the Far East, tells of the beliefs and history of the 



1908.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 709 

"Pasters," a Chinese sect which claims to date from the 
seventh century. Father M. Rodriguez, "The Cen- 
tenary of South American Independence." F. Robles, 

"Philosophy of the Verb"; the potential mood. 

Father A. Gago, "The Philosophical Ideas of Sully 
Prudhomme." 
Rdzon y Fe (June): Miguel Mostaza, "The Pontifical Seminary 

of Comillas and the Holy See." Zacarias Garcia, 

"The Administration of Baptism at the Hour of Death 

According to the Council of Elvira, A. D. 303." Saj., 

"A Great Artist: Senor Jesus de Monasterio." N. 

Noguer, " Private Enterprise and the Problem of Cheap 
Dwellings." E. Portillo, "The United States of Colum- 
bia in 1907." Julio Furgus, "Roman Remains in the 

Neighborhood of Cadiz." 



Current Events. 

The President's visit to England, 
France. and the hearty welcome which he 

received from all classes high and 

low, has tended further to consolidate the entente, and to show 
that it is not merely an arrangement of politicians, but an ex- 
pression of the mind of the two peoples. Frenchmen, as a 
whole, seem to be as well united on the matter as Englishmen. 
As there is no serious doubt that the entente has for its main 
object the maintenance of peace, men of good-will will every- 
where rejoice. The Franco-British Exhibition has also had a 
good influence for the same end, and perhaps the Olympic 
games, which have just taken place, may be ranked in the 
same category. M. Fallieres has three more visits to pay, to 
the sovereigns of Norway and Sweden and to the Tsar, this last 
cannot fail to have an influence on the future course of events 
and to contribute to the new grouping of the Powers which 
is taking place. Some apprehension as to the purpose of the 
visit of the President to England was manifested by the Ger- 
man Press, but in the end it, with the rest of the world, 
manifested its conviction that there was no reasonable ground 
for alarm, that there was no purpose of " hemming Germany 
in." No formal alliance between France and Great Britain has 
been concluded; at least there is no ground for thinking that 
such an alliance has been made. 

The Income Tax Bill is making its way towards becoming 
a Law, but very slowly and with great difficulty. Holders of 
the French debt, who are very numerous, the debt still being 
large, are not so patriotic as to wish to share in bearing the 
burdens of the State, and sought to be released from paying 
income tax on Rente ; M. Clemenceau's ministry, however, re- 
fused to exempt them from this payment, and the Chamber 
supported it in its refusal. In consequence, the Rente fell 
considerably. The Senate has still to vote upon the question. 
The unwillingness to pay taxes, even by those who vaunt their 
patriotism, is a somewhat curious phenomenon, nor is it con- 
fined to France. The only exception of which we have heard 
is that of the Irish gentleman who, some few years ago, left 



1908.] CURRENT EVENTS 711 

his fortune to the British government as a contribution for the 
paying off of the National Debt. 

It is greatly to be lamented that good causes should so 
often be thwarted by foolish defenders. The removal of the 
remains of Zola to the Pantheon cannot have met with the 
approval of Frenchmen most capable of forming a sound judg- 
ment, but nothing can equal the folly of the attack upon 
Dreyfus made on that occasion. 

The ministry of M. Clemenceau still remains in office, although 
on the question of the further nationalization of the railways 
it had a narrow escape from defeat, the majority in favor of 
the government's plan having been apparently only 3. A mis- 
take, however, had been made in counting the votes, so that 
the real majority turned out to be over 20. The Ministry is 
still unwavering in its efforts to secularize the education of the 
people. In cases where teachers have manifested a distinct 
anti-religious spirit, it has been possible hitherto for the parents 
to bring them into the courts of law and to have certain penal- 
ties inflicted. This has served as a wholesome deterrent upon 
malignant unbelievers. The Ministry proposes now, by the Bill 
which they have introduced, to substitute the State for the in- 
dividual teacher and thus to exempt him in the first instance, 
at all events, from punishment. 



Elections have taken place in Prus- 
Germany. s ia for the Diet, and for the first 

time in its history Social Demo- 
crats have been returned. Their exclusion has been due to the 
remarkable franchise arrangements which have rendered it pos- 
sible hitherto for 314,000 Socialist voters to have no representa- 
tive at all, while 324,000 Conservative voters returned no less 
than 143 members. Many efforts have been made to rectify this 
injustice, but without success. A redistribution of seats, how- 
ever, has recently taken place, and this has enabled the Socialists 
to secure the return of 7 members of their party, one of whom 
however, is at present confined in a fortress for a political of- 
fence. The seven members will not be able to exert much in- 
fluence by their votes, the total number of Deputies being 
433 ; but discussions which would otherwise not have taken 



712 CURRENT EVENTS [Aug., 

place, will enable them to make their voice heard. As the re- 
sult of the election the various parties in the new Diet stand as 
follows, the numbers in brackets representing their strength in 
the last Diet: Conservative Right, 152 [144]; Free Conserva- 
tives, 60 [64] ; National Liberals, 64 [76] ; Radical Left, 28 
[34]; Moderate Radicals, 8 [9]; Catholic Centre, 105 [96]; 
Poles, 15 [15]; Social Democrats, 7 [o] ; Unattached, 2 [5] ; 
Danes, 2 [2]. 

To the student of politics Germany does not, at the present 
time, offer a very edifying spectacle. Numerous parties exist, 
and it is to be presumed that each has for its raison d'etre 
some principle to be defended supposed to be of importance 
for the well-being of the country. But now all efforts are being 
devoted to the suppression of principle for the attainment of 
power. Hostility to the Catholic Centre is the only bond of 
union. The bloc system of co-operation between opposite fac- 
tions, which existed so long in France, has been transferred to 
Germany. Prince Billow's power rests upon no loftier a foun- 
dation. 

A further step in the development of Germany's influence 
throughout the world has been taken through the concession 
just given by Turkey enabling the railway to Baghdad to be 
extended further. It was some time ago made for a long dis- 
tance through Asia Minor, but did not make progress for vari- 
ous reasons. The main obstacle has now been removed, and 
it will not be long before the Euphrates witnesses the railway 
locomotive. Medina very soon, and Mecca in a couple of years, 
will be subjected to the same civilizing influence; and if Eng- 
land and Russia can come to terms and secure the Amir of 
Afghanistan's consent, it will not be long before it will be 
possible to travel by rail from Calais to Calcutta. 

The Navy League has held its annual meeting this year at 
Danzig. It has resulted in the definite supersession of General 
Keim, who had rendered himself so obnoxious to the Catholic 
members of the League. His place has been taken by a more 
moderate man, with the hope that the dissensions which threat- 
ened the existence of the League may be healed. Catholic 
members of the League are still hesitating, however, before 
committing themselves to energetic action, and are waiting to 
see whether the change of officers will result in a change of 



igo8.] CURRENT EVENTS 713 

attitude with respect to Catholic interests. The Catholics of 
Germany have always been models of the right way to act in 
defense of the rights of Catholic citizens. 

" Now it looks quite as if there were an intention of pen- 
ning us in and bringing us to bay. We shall be able to stand 
it. The German has never fought better than when he had to 
defend himself on all sides. Let them come on ! We are 
ready!" The Emperor William is reported to have addressed 
these words to his officers at the camp of Doberitz shortly af- 
ter the meeting of King Edward and the Tsar. That he did 
so is, however, denied; but the belief in the authenticity of 
the report was so widespread that grave apprehensions were 
entertained of the possibility of the outbreak of war. The 
Bourse, that most sensitive but not always sensible barometer, 
felt the effect in a notable depression of stocks. The sincer- 
ity of the desire for peace of the two monarchs as well as 
of their ally and friend, the French Republic, seems soon to 
have been realized and to have removed the apprehension which 
was felt. 

The precocity of university stu- 

Austria-Hungary. dents in European countries, man- 

ifested by their premature inter- 
ference in political questions which they cannot by any possi- 
bility understand, is a fact which it is hard to explain. Uni- 
versities at Vienna, Prague, Gratz, Innsbruck, Czernowitz, be- 
sides various technical high schools, all went upon a strike to 
manifest their high approval of the Professor who wished at 
once to teach Canon Law and to inculcate irreligion. The 
firmness of the government brought the strike to an end after 
a few weeks ; the Professor, too, has disappeared into the ob- 
scurity from which it is a pity he ever emerged. 

The Diamond Jubilee of the Emperor is calling forth from 
his subjects repeated manifestations of their good will and af- 
fection. He is one of the few monarchs who has learned to 
place confidence in his people and to recognize spontaneously 
their ability to share in the government of themselves and he 
has the reward of his sound judgment and of his abnegation of 
self. One of the most remarkable of the demonstrations which 
have taken place is described in the following way by an eye- 



714 CURRENT EVENTS [Aug., 

witness: "Some 12,000 of his subjects of all races and tongues, 
in costumes of all the historical periods his house has known, 
passed before him, shouting their loyal greetings. The Germans 
of Bohemia, Upper and Lower Austria, Salzburg, Styria, Carin- 
thia, Silesia, and the Tyrol, with their deep cries of ' Hoch ! ' 
the Serbo-Croats from Dalmatia, and the Slovenes from Car- 
niola with their long drawn-out ' Zivio ! ' the Czechs and Slo- 
vaks from Moravia, the Ruthenes and Rumanes from Eastern 
Galicia, and the Bukovina; the dashing Polish peasants, with 
their 'Vivat!' the Magyars with their sharp 'Eljen!' the Ital- 
ians of the Trentino with their ringing 'Evviva!'" all passed 
before him, standing to welcome them, wishing for him yet many 
a long year of a life which has proved such a blessing for them. 
Of the nineteen costumed groups, representing various histori- 
cal epochs of Austrian history, which formed part of the pro- 
cession, the opening group was perhaps the most remarkable, 
for it represented Rudolph of Hapsburg with his train of Ger- 
man knights, and was largely composed of the living descend- 
ants of families whose nobility dates at least from the thir- 
teenth century. It is hard for us to realize the feelings such 
a sight must have caused. 

The difficulty with Persia on ac- 
Russia. count of certain frontier incidents 

has been settled, but great self- 
restraint will have to be exercised to withhold interference in the 
internal affairs on account of the events which are now taking 
place there. The troops whom the Shah is using for the breaking 
up of the National Assembly are called Cossacks and their 
commander is a Russian officer. Some represent this as a de 
facto interference, but this is an exaggeration. It is, of course, 
presumptuous to say what would have been ; but to assert that 
a conflict between England and Russia would have taken place 
had it not been for the recent Agreement would not be very 
rash. Another good result of this Agreement has been the de- 
mand made upon Turkey by the two Powers that she should 
withdraw her troops from the Persian territory which they have 
so long unjustly occupied. To this demand Turkey has felt it 
necessary to yield. 

The union of the numerous Slav nationalities which are now 



1908.] CURRENT EVENTS 715 

found in Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Turkey has 
been promoted in times not far distant by a distinct organi- 
zation which caused no little disquietude to the ruling powers, 
and in fact led to the last war between Russia and Turkey. 
For various reasons the idea has been in abeyance for some 
time, but has been recently revived. A meeting of delegates 
has lately been held at St. Petersburg, which was honored by 
Imperial, Ministerial, and municipal patronage, and in which 
representatives of Czechs, Slavonians, Ruthenians, Poles, Slo- 
vaks, and other branches took part. Every warlike purpose is 
disclaimed in this new revival of the old movement. Its leader 
says: "The mission of the new Panslavism implies nothing 
militant against other nations. We merely seek the moral and 
spiritual union of the Slav races." Politics too are renounced, 
and the hegemony of Russia forms no part of the plan. The 
Poles, therefore, it is said, have given it their unreserved adhe- 
sion. This is taken as a new departure in the history of Slav- 
dom. But when a Polish speaker declared it to be the intention 
of his countrymen to bury the hatchet, to make frankly and 
unreservedly common cause with Russia, when he affirmed that 
the interests of Poland lay in working for the strength and 
greatness of Russia, we may be pardoned if we doubt whether he 
represents a large number of Poles. In fact, the subsequent 
visit of delegates to Warsaw makes it clear that many Poles do 
not favor co-operation. Resistance to Pan- Germanism is an 
avowed object, and may explain the adhesion of the Poles; it 
makes one fear, however, that the peaceful objects of the union 
may be jeopardized, for although Slavs may not be militant, 
the same cannot be said of Germans. For fostering union use 
is to be made of the now common method expositions. One 
is to be held at Prague this year, another at Moscow three years 
hence. 

Temperance advocates of the most extreme type cannot help 
becoming well-wishers of the Duma in view of one of its re- 
cent measures. The sale of liquor in Russia is under the con- 
trol of the government, and every bottle of vodka is adorned 
with the Imperial eagle. The Duma wishes to substitute a 
skull and cross-bones, together with some wholesome admoni- 
tions about the bad effects of over-indulgence. 

The Duma's refusal to grant the number of ships asked for by 



;i6 CURRENT EVENTS [Aug., 

the government has not met with the approbation of the Upper 
House the Council of State. It will be interesting as an in- 
dication of the strength of constitutional ideas in Russia to see 
which will prevail. That the Duma possesses some little power, 
nay, even that this power seems to be growing and likely to 
become permanent, is believed by many who are fitted to form 
a reliable opinion ; but how limited this power is can be seen 
from the fact that any governor is still able to send into exile, 
without trial, any one whom he imagines to be dangerous to the 
State. Since the amnesty of November 2, 1905, no fewer than 
78,000 exiles have in this way been sent to Siberia ; in the 
year 1907 30,000 were sent eastward; and many thousands are 
still going every month. These exiles are not revolutionaries, 
but educated men of moderate views, banished without a trial 
to unspeakable horrors. It is scarcely to be wondered at that 
Mr. O'Grady, in the English Parliament, and M. Vaillant, in the 
French, should deprecate too close an association with a mon- 
arch under whose rule such awful oppression still exists. But 
politics makes strange bed- fellows. It may be hoped that the 
less violent course adopted by the French and English govern- 
ments may lead to good results, even for the Russian people. 



Massacres, if not of daily occur- 
The Near East. rence, happen at least every week. 

Greek bands have, until lately, been 

most prominent in inflicting this penalty for the unwillingness 
of the other races to be converted ; but Servian bands are now 
more active than before in the work of extermination. It is 
hard to see any other outcome, unless an agreement can be 
reached by the Powers to exercise pressure of some kind upon 
Turkey. The action of the Servian bands has caused a great 
deal of irritation in Bulgaria ; for the latter country had re- 
solved no longer to tolerate the bands of her own subjects 
which had been acting in Macedonia. The resentment of Bul- 
garia was so keen that an outbreak of hostilities was appre- 
hended. This is not .very likely, but there is reason to fear 
that the joint proposals of England and Russia for a new con- 
trol of the country may be delayed. That an agreement has 
been reached is generally believed, but so far its terms are not 



1908.] CURRENT EVENTS 717 

known. So many have been the disappointments hitherto met 
with, and it would be a mere pretense to express great hope- 
fulness about the future. 

The situation in Morocco has not 
Morocco. materially changed. Mulai Hafid 

seems to have succeeded in acquir- 
ing the rule over the interior of the country, not of the sea- 
ports, for these are under'the control of the French. He has 
entered Fez, and has destroyed the evidences of civilization of 
which Abdul Aziz was the importer. These evidences consisted 
in a houseful of broken motor-cars, damaged bicycles, a large 
quantity of photographic materials, pianos, harmoniums, and 
hand-organs, miles of wall papers, and other like objects too 
numerous to mention. These articles had been accumulated by 
Abdul Aziz. They were not of the least use to him, while he 
left his subjects to die of hunger under his windows. He still 
poses as the defender of progress, and has issued an appeal to 
the Powers making that claim, whereas his brother has pro- 
claimed a holy war and has called upon the Moors to rid the 
country of Christians. 



THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION 

r PHE Saturday review of books in the New York Times gives the informa- 
1 tion, over the signature A. F. S., that one of M. Bazin's daughters be- 
longs to a religious sisterhood. It may be taken for granted, therefore, that 
his novel, Ulsolee (translated by Mrs. Meynell, and published in America by 
the Scribners, under the title, The Nun} was based upon the most reliable 
sort of knowledge, and was written from the heart. M. Bazin's preoccupa- 
tion with religion is not a literary pose. His religious novels, L'Isolee and 
Le Ble qui Leve (which are being read to the Paris sewing girls while they 
work), are not mere tours de force. It is impossible to be in the company of 
M. Bazin for any length of time and not be impressed by the fervor and sin- 
cerity of his piety and by his confidence in the religious soundness of the 
French ;people. He believes that the success of Le Ble qui Leve (nearly 
100,000 copies in a few months) is due very largely to a reawakening of the 
religious spirit in France. In a talk I had with him the other day he related 
the following incident in confirmation of this belief: "Last year in the course 
of a lecture I gave at the religious retreat in Belgium described in Le Ble qui 
Leve I invited my auditors, who seemed to have but a poor opinion of my 
country, to attend the Congress of the Jeunesse Catholique de France, to be 
held at Angers in March, 1908. Four young men accepted the invitation. 
They found assembled at Angers 8,000 young men (delegates from 1,800 
groups), principally peasants and laborers. They saw 4,000 of these partake 
of Holy Communion in the Cathedral at eight o'clock of a Sunday morning. 
They listened to lectures upon the social and religious development of the 
working classes. They were astounded by what they saw and heard, and 
they carried word back to Belgium that Christian France still possesses 
many active and valiant soldiers, and that those who despair of her do not 
know her. It is this earnest, devout France I aspire to reveal to herself and 

to the world." 

* * 

If demand at the Ann Street book stalls and similar down-town depots 
of quick literature be accepted as evidence, the literary taste of the American 
boy of to-day differs in no degree from that of the boy of twenty-five and 
thirty years ago. This is to say that, with certain exterior modifications, the 
dime novel sells as briskly to-day as it ever did, and that as regards style and 
general motive no change at all is to be observed. 

In fact, publishers hardly see the necessity of having new thrillers writ- 
ten, the old ones going down from generation to generation. 

* * * 

The Troy Record has the following on Life Sketches of Father Walworth, 
by Ellen H. Walworth : 

Father Walworth was a man much before the public eye half a century 
ago. At one time he was the priest at St. Peter's Church in this city. Af- 
terwards he went to St. Mary's, in Albany, where he was greatly beloved. 



1 90 8.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION 

He was a man of wonderful ability, and socially he was one of the most pop- 
ular men in this section of the state. His conversion from Protestantism to 
Catholicism was well known by a former generation. He was, indeed, the 
American Newman. The Oxford movement made little progress on this 
side of the water, and what effect it did have went no further than to awaken a 
sacerdotal spirit in the hearts of a few clergymen of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church. Father Walworth was the son of a chancellor of this state, and he 
was the one great example of the movement in this country who followed the 
arguments of Newman to their logical conclusion. This book, written by 
his niece, gives a little of the broad-minded Christianity of the man, drawn 
from the experiences of his most intimate companion and from his corre- 
spondence. 

* * * 

The following appreciation of a book which, in spite of its defects from 
a Catholic point of view, has awakened much discussion, was presented at a 
meeting of the D'Youville Reading Circle, at Ottawa: 

The Great Refusal, by Maxwell Gray, is decidedly a novel of modern 
times and a book with a reason for its existence. It is a powerful book too, 
though not breathlessly clever nor sparkling with wit and epigram like many 
other products ot present-day pens. It is strong and sane rather than excit- 
ing, and leaves the reader, at the close, with deep and serious impressions. 

We are all familiar with the story of the rich young man in the Bible 
who, having done all that was necessary to attain salvation, hesitated and 
turned away in sorrow from the Divine invitation to seek the highest perfec- 
tion a perfection that meant a complete surrender of all material goods. 
Many believe that he returned, repenting of his hesitation, and the story has 
given Maxwell Gray her idea for this novel of the twentieth century. Her 
hero does, indeed, return and, having made the all-important sacrifice, goes 
bravely on and never once looks back. Adrian Bassett, son and heir to the 
stately Bassett Towers, with all the doubtfully gotten wealth contained there- 
in, has, for a father, a perfect type of the bloated millionaire of to-day, who 
measures happiness by the length of his bank account and loses sight of life's 
truly best things in an unrelenting search after whatever has money in it 
Adrian is a strong, sweet character, who realizes that he is his brother's 
keeper in the holiest sense, and possesses a delicacy of conscience and a fine- 
ness of sentiment utterly beyond his sordid parent's comprehension. His 
one mistake, happily rectified before it was too late, consisted in loving the 
wrong woman, and it was this woman who, in truth, made the great refusal 
she realized it bitterly when she declined a place beside the man of high 
ideals to wed herself to materialistic greatness. The reader rejoices when 
Adrian finds, at last, his level in the strengthening love of Blanche 
Ingram, so loyal, so tender, and helpful through all the dark days. 

The book is a good portrait of society's opposite elements, and de- 
scribes, in language that cannot fail to reach our sympathies, the condition 
of the unhappy East side, with its swarming, submerged tenth, for whom it 
seems so hopeless to work, almost as hopeless it seemed to Adrian, in his 
first days of trial, as trying to hold back the everlasting sea. One can readi- 
ly understand the heartbroken cry of Adrian, uttered in the deliruim that fol- 



720 BOOKS RECEIVED [Aug., 1908.] 

lowed those first days in the slums "after 2,000 years !" After twenty 
centuries of Christianity so much remains to be done among the darkened 
minds to whom God means just " Him who sends blokes to 'ell ! " No won- 
der Adrian felt like despair till Blanche Ingram's brave spirit taught him 
courage and cheerfulness always cheerfulness. 

The West K^d element is no less faithfully drawn, with its vices and fol- 
lies and unworthy ambitions, its unceasing hunt for excitements that mean 
but vexation of spirit and emptiness of heart, and the picture calls forth 
pitying contempt for the deluded mortals who play so mean a part in life's 
great drama. M. C. M. 



BOOKS RECEIVED. 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, New York: 
Redemption. By Rend Bazin. Pp. 296. 
FUNK & WAGNALLS, New York: 

The New Schaff- H erzog Encyclopedia f Religious Knowledge. Samuel Macauley Jack- 
son, D.D., LL.D.,. Editor-in-chief. Complete in twelve volumes. Price $60; per 
volume, cloth, $5. 
THE GLOBE Music COMPANY, 1155 Broadway, New York : 

Centennial Celebration Chimes. By Adin Rupp. Pp. 8. Price 38 cents. 
FR. PUSTET & Co., New York: 

Sydney Carringtons Contumacy. By X. Lawson. Pp. 350. Price $1.25. 
C. O. FARWELL, P. O. 80x1526, New York: 

An Essay on the Distribution of Livelihood. By Rossington Stanton. Pp. 125. Price 

$1.50- 
CATHEDRAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, New York: 

Priestly Vocation and Tonsure. By L. Bacuez, S.S. Pp. xiv.-3i4. 
SMALL, MAYNARD & Co., Boston, Mass.: 

Fates A Fiddler. By George Pinkham. Pp. 417. Price $1.50. 
THE RIVERSIDE PRESS, Cambridge, Mass: 

Souvenir in Honor of the Triple Anniversary of the Rev. John O'Brien, East Cambridge, 

Mass., 1908. Pp. iii.-i33. Paper. Price 50 cents. 
H. L. KILNER & Co., Philadelphia : 

Spiritual Flowerets. By Father L. Palladino, S.J. Pp. 240. 
B. HERDER, St. Louis, Mo. : 

A Study in American Freemasonry. By Arthur Preuss. Pp. xii.-433- Price $1.50 net. 
The True Rationalism. By the Rev. M. Power, S.J. Pp. 68. Paper. Price 10 cents. 
H. D. HEMINWAY, Hartford, Conn. : 

Hints and Helps for Young Gardeners. By H. D. Hemenway. Pp. 59. Price 35 cents. 
ELKIN MATHEWS, London, England: 

Spirit and Dust. Poems. By Rosa Mulholland. Pp. 94. Price ss. 6d. 
GEORGE BELL & SONS, London, England: 

The Old English Bible : and Other Essays. By Francis Aidan Gasquet, D.D. Pp. 329. 

Price 3-r. 6d. 
AUSTRALIAN CATHOLIC TRUTH SOCIETY, Melbourne, Australia : 

Spiritism. By Father S. M. Hogan, O.P. The Adorable Sacrifice of the Altar. By Rev. 
M. Watson, S.J. Third French Republic and the Church. By Rev. P. Delany, D.D. 
Discovery of Australia, by De Quiros, 1906. By Cardinal Moran. Father Burke, O.P. 
By Father S. M. Hogan. Wattle Branches: A Story for Boys. By Rosario. Pam- 
phlets. Price one penny. 
BLOUD ET CIE, Paris, France : 

Saint Ambroise. Par P. de Labriolle. Pp. 328. Price ^fr. 50. 
P. LETHELLIEUX, Paris, France : 

Manuel de Philosophic. Par Gaston Sortais. Pp. xxx.~984. Price gfr. 
GABRIEL BEAUCHESNE ET CIE, Paris, France : 

Psychologie de I'Incroyant. Par Xavier Moisant. Pp. 339. Price 3 fr. 50. Vie de la 
Bienheureuse Marguerite Marie. Par Auguste Hamon. Pp. xii.-52o Price 4 fr. 
PLON-NOURRIT ET CIE, Paris, France: 

Mon Mart. By Jules Pravieux. Pp. 308. Price ^fr. 50. 



THE 



CATHOLIC WORLD, 



VOL. LXXXVII. 



SEPTEMBER, 1908. 



No. 522. 







SCIENCE-OR SUPERSTITION? 

BY THOMAS F. WOODLOCK. 

RITING in the Atlantic Monthly of November, 
1907, Henry S. Pritchett had the following to 
say regarding the " effect of modern scientific 
research on the religious faith and the philos- 
ophy of life of the civilized world": 



The chief effect, however, of the advance of science during 
these fifty years upon religious belief and the philosophy of 
life has come not so much from the acceptance of the theory 
of evolution or the conservation of energy or other scientific 
deductions, but rather from the development of what is com- 
monly called the c< scientific spirit." To-day a thousand men 
are working in the investigations of science where ten were 
working fifty years ago. These men form a far larger pro- 
portion of the whole community of intelligent men than they 
did a half century ago and their influence upon the thought 
of the race is greatly increased. They have been trained in a 
generation taught to question all processes, to hold fast only 
to those things that will bear proof, and to seek for the truth 
as the one thing worth having. It is this attitude of mind 
which makes the scientific spirit, and it is the widespread dis- 
semination of this spirit which has affected the attitude of 
the great mass of civilized men toward formal theology and 
toward a general philosophy of life. The ability to believe, 
and even the disposition to believe, is one of the oldest ac- 



Copyright. 1908. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE 

IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK. 
VOL. LXXXVII. 46 



722 SCIENCE OR SUPERSTITION [Sept., 

quirements of the human mind. On the other hand, the 
capacity for estimating evidence in cases of physical causa- 
tion has been a recent acquisition. The last fifty years has 
added enormously to the power of the race in this capacity 
and in the consequent demand on the part of all men for 
trustworthy evidence, not only in the case of physical phe- 
nomena, but in all other matters. This spirit is to-day the 
dominant note of the twentieth century. It is a serious spirit 
and a reverent one, but it demands to know, and it will be 
satisfied with no answer which does not squarely face the 
facts. This intellectual gain is the most noteworthy fruit- 
age of the last fifty years of science and of scientific free- 
dom. 

The general effect of the whole evolutionary development 
of the last fifty years upon the philosophy of life of civilized 
man has been a hopeful one. The old theology pointed man 
to a race history in which he was represented as having fallen 
from a high estate to a low one. The philosophy of evolution 
encourages him to believe that, notwithstanding the limita- 
tions which come from a brute ancestry, his course has been 
upward and he looks forward to-day hopefully and confidently 
to a like development in the future. 

Dr. Pritchett is the head of the Carnegie Foundation for 
the Advancement of Teaching, having served as President of 
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1900 to 1906, 
and is described by the Atlantic Monthly as "an American 
scientist of great distinction " a characterization which is, 
doubtless, entirely correct, even in a strict use of the words. 
Is his picture of the progress of human thought in the last 
fifty years correct ? 

When this article came under the eye of the present writer 
he bethought himself of two pieces of evidence rather directly 
bearing on the case. One was a book Der Kampf um das 
Entwicklungs Problem in Berlin* and the other a collection 
of newspaper clippings. And it occurred to him that possibly 
these things might offer matter for a little meditation that 
would not be entirely unfruitful hence the present article. 

First as to the book: In 1906 an invitation was extended 
to Father Erich Wasmann, S.J., to deliver a course of three 
public lectures on the evolutionary hypothesis in Berlin, the 

* By Erich Wasmann, S.J. Herdersche Verlagshandlung. Freiburg im Breisgau, 1907. 



1908.] SCIENCE OR SUPERSTITION 723 

lectures to be followed by a public disputation on a fourth 
evening. This invitation grew out of the fact that Father Was- 
mann had in that year published the third and enlarged edition 
of his book Die Moderne Biologic und die Entwicklungs Theorie* 
in which he very roughly handled Professor Ernst Haeckel, 
and after vainly trying to induce the author to enter on a di- 
rect controversy with Haeckel, the impresario managed to ar- 
range with him for the lectures aforesaid, which were held 
on February 13, 14, and 17, 1907, the public disputation being 
held on February 18. The programme was arranged by a com- 
mittee of six leading German scientists, including the president 
of the Deutschen Entomologischen Gesellschaft, the Kustos 
am Museum fur Naturkunde, two professors of the Landwirth- 
schaftlichen Hochschule, the president of the Oberlandeskulten- 
gerichts, and the secretary of the Akademie der Wissenschaften 
a sufficiently representative body of German scientific thought. 
Tickets for these lectures were placed on public sale in the 
ordinary way, and eight days before the first lecture every 
seat for the course was sold out. 

The first lecture dealt with the questions : What is the doc- 
trine of evolution regarded as a scientific hypothesis and theory ? 
Is it founded on fact and if so to what extent ? Does it con- 
tradict the Christian cosmogony or not ? 

The second lecture concerned itself with the questions : Is 
the claim of monists true that the scientific theory of evolu- 
tion can be reconciled only with monism and not with theism ? 
Which of the two rival cosmogonies commends itself to the 
scientist who also can think as a philosopher ? What about 
the popular identification of Darwinism with evolution is it 
scientific and what follows therefrom ? 

In the third lecture Wasmann asked : Where does man stand 
in the problem of evolution ? Must we consider this question 
from a purely zoologic standpoint or must we take a higher 
point of view ? What are the zoologic and palaeontologic proofs 
for the animal origin of man ? 

It was intended that the public discussion should concern 
itself entirely with the scientific aspects of the matter. Such 
was the announcement of the president, Professor Waldeyer, in 
opening the session. Eleven persons spoke all opposed to 
Father Wasmann and Father Wasmann closed the discussion. 

* Herdersche Verlagshandlung. Frieburg im Breisgau, 1906. 



724 SCIENCE OR SUPERSTITION [Sept., 

In the first lecture Father Wasmann made it clear that as 
a scientist he rather favored the theory of a polyphyletic evo- 
lution which, as a philosopher, he found to be entirely in har- 
mony with the Christian cosmogony. " Personally," he said, 
" I am entirely convinced that the evolutionary doctrine, re- 
garded as a scientific hypothesis and theory, contains not the 
slightest contradiction of the Christian cosmogony, no matter 
how often the contrary be asserted." In the second lecture he 
showed that, while the evolutionary theory as a purely scien- 
tific theory directly affirmed neither Christian nor monist cos- 
mogony, man as a reasoning being was compelled to argue 
from it to a theistic point of view. He also showed that to 
regard Darwinism and "evolution" as synonymous was en- 
tirely unscientific. In the third lecture he demonstrated, first, 
that it was unscientific to consider the question of man's origin 
purely from a zoologic point of view ; and, second, that even 
if the question be approached from a purely zoologic and pa- 
laeontologic standpoint the evidence of his purely animal origin 
was quite insufficient. Among other things, he recalled ;Pro- 
fessor Branco's famous utterance at the fifth International Zoo- 
logical Congress at Berlin, in 1901, in closing a notable lecture 
on fossil man: "The fact is that we know of no ancestor for 
man." And Wasmann closed his third lecture with the words: 
" And so I am fully convinced that between Christian faith 
and science no real quarrel can arise." 

For the benefit of the reader who may not be specially in- 
terested in matters biologic, it should here be stated that Father 
Wasmann has attained to world-wide fame, and to the front 
rank of present-day biologists, by reason of his studies of ants 
and their "hosts." His book Die Moderne Biologie is admitted 
to be a classic of its kind, and its writer's standing as a 
scientist may not be disputed. 

The limitations of space will not permit the present writer 
to do more than select a few of the exhibits which bear upon 
the central thought of Dr. Pritchett's remarks quoted at the 
outset of this article. This central thought is the effect of 
scientific discovery upon men's views of religion and their phi- 
losophy of life, most particularly so far as regards the evolu- 
tionary theory; in other words, men's philosophic deductions 
from scientifically ascertained facts. And first it should be 
noted that Father Wasmann makes it quite clear that he as a 



1908.] SCIENCE OR SUPERSTITION 725 

scientist accepts in large measure the moderate theory of a 
(probably) polyphyletic evolution, and as a Catholic finds it in 
accord with his religion. He denies the monistic doctrine of 
matter, because it is unphilosophic and unscientific ; he denies 
the animal origin of man as to his soul, because it is unphilo- 
sophic and unscientific ; and he refuses as a scientist to admit 
the bodily origin of man by descent from the ape, because it 
is entirely unproven. 

Now the first and principal of his opponents in the public 
disputation was Professor Plate (of the Landwirthschaftlichen 
Hochschule), who delivered himself, early in his address, of the 
following syllogism : 

As to the existence of matter we scientists say: " Here is 
matter ; nothing can come of nothing ; therefore matter is 
eternal." 

A little later he said : 

These are absolute facts which cannot be denied, and on 
the strength of these facts we allow ourselves the hypothesis 
that at some time or other in the past a living thing arose 
from inorganic matter. 

Also, further : 

Natural laws are the only things that we (scientists) can 
establish. As to what lies behind them, one thinks one way, 
another another ; and even we monists are not unanimous on 
the point. Personally, I always take the position that where 
one finds laws of nature it is entirely logical to say " behind 
the laws there lies a I/aw-giver." But we can say nothing 
definite as to the L,aw-giver without falling into unrestrained 
speculation ; this is where faith begins, and many of us have 
nothing to do with taith. 

To which Wasmann points out that the scientist as such can 
erect no syllogism at all as to matter ; he can but admit that 
he does not know of its beginning. And the " philosopher " 
cannot argue that it is necessarily eternal, for only an infinite, 
perfect being which matter is not can be self-existent. Also 
that the question of life arising from non-living matter is not 
whether it arose in previously existing inorganic matter, but 
whether it did so of itself by "spontaneous generation" or abio- 
genesis. And inasmuch as all the known facts of science show 



726 SCIENCE OR SUPERSTITION [Sept., 

that the law of omne vivum e vivo has, for all that men so far 
know to the contrary, admitted of no exception, the scientist 
must reject the hypothesis favored by Plate as a scientist, nor 
can he adopt it as a philosopher without committing the post 
hoc propter hoc fallacy in his logic. As to Professor Plate's ad- 
mission of a Law-giver, Wasmann points out that this utterly 
shatters the central theory of monism, which identifies the Law- 
giver with the Law, and is surely a remarkable admission for 
a prominent monist to make. Further be it noted that to argue 
from law to a lawgiver is not in any sense a matter of faith, 
but a plain matter of reason, faith not being dominant in the 
domain of natural knowledge, or the metaphysics connected 
therewith. 

This will suffice to demonstrate the philosophic absurdities 
in which the man chosen as the chief exponent of anti-theistic 
science on this occasion involved himself as a scientist. There 
were others in the course of his address, but we must move 
on to Prosessor Dahl, the third disputant. He made this point 
against Father Wasmann: 

Father Wasmann has stated that the assumption of an eter- 
nal existence for matter is contrary to scientific thinking. I 
fancy there is here a confusion of terms. Father Wasmann 
should have said "impossible of scientific imagining." We 
can think a good many things that we cannot imagine. . . . 
And just as we cannot imagine the infinity of space and the 
eternity of matter, neither can we imagine the arising of mat- 
ter out of nothing, so we progress no further along this road. 

Professor Dahl's distinction is good in itself, and is one not 
very commonly made by mankind, but, as Wasmann reminded 
him, it had nothing to do with the case, for reasons apparent 
from the answer to Plate given above. Apparently it was hard 
to drive into these gentlemen's heads the philosophic concept 
of a necessary being of infinite perfections an ens a se as the 
origin of all finite and limited things. And in the case of the 
ninth disputant, Dr. Plotz, it looks as if the attempt failed. For 
this good man gravely propounded the following remarkable 
argument on the subject of a Creator. 

If one once admits such a thing, then one must logically, 
of course, say : If the Creator is an Organism (sic) so far 



1908.] SCIENCE OR SUPERSTITION 727 

superior to the universe that the universe can obtain its cre- 
ation from Him, then one must assume another creator for 
Him. So could one demand yet another creator for this cre- 
ation, and so on to an infinite series. 

Confronted with this, Wasmann can but throw up his hands 
and invite people to note that this argument is made in the 
very center of German culture, in the course of a scientific dis- 
cussion before two thousand thinking people ! " Das gibt zu 
denken ! " he says and it ought ! Moreover, lest it be thought 
that Dr. Plotz was at all singular in his views on this matter, 
Father Wasmann quotes an article from the Vossische Zeituwg, 
written by Dr. Salinger, lamenting that so little philosophy en- 
tered into the lectures and the discussion thereupon. In this 
article Dr. Salinger told of a six-year-old child walking with 
her mother in the fields and asking her mother who made this 
and that, the clouds, the flowers, the beasts, and so on; the 
mother always answering : " The good God made them." Fi- 
nally the child asked: "And who made the good God?" On 
which Dr. Salinger says : " It seems to us that the little child 
showed more brains in this question than did Father Wasmann 
and his learned opponents." Which, as Wasmann observes, 
does Dr. Plotz cruel injustice, as he had used the same argu- 
ment exactly as the six-year-old girl did ! 

Dr. Thesing was the last of the eleven disputants against 
Wasmann. Speaking on the subject of the creation of matter 
by God, he said : 

Father Wasmann has stated that matter could not have ex- 
isted of itself from all eternity, and he postulated for it an act 
of divine creation. Consequently God created matter, and 
God is eternal. Then comes the question : What is this 
God ? Is He a point, a cipher, or what is He ? We can only 
say that if we try to bring the idea of God into relation with 
something, we must think of Him as a mentally imaginable 
God. 

The confusion of thought need only be noted. But Was- 
mann, in connection with it, quotes from a letter received by 
him on the subject which is too good to omit, and here follows : 

It is simply impossible to imagine a Personal Creator as the 
first Being. The question naturally arises, Whence comes all 



728 SCIENCE OR SUPERSTITION [Sept., 

at once this highly developed Being. It must consist, as 
such, of an organic mass composed of cells. But according 
to Virchow's maxim which you, Professor, agree with 
omnis cellula e cellula it must have developed from an orig- 
inal cell. The postulate that the first being was a simple 
body, such as a cell, is much more likely to be true than is 
your postulate of a highly organized Creator in the beginning. 

" And this," says Wasmann, " was once the thinking race ! " 
In his address closing the disputation he made a remark which, 
considering the occasion, the audience, and the speakers, may 
be considered a somewhat scathing comment. He said : 

I have noticed during the speeches of my honored oppo- 
nents this evening, that I have been entirely misunderstood 
on very many points ; this might have been avoided, perhaps, 
by a more thorough philosophic training on their part. By 
philosophic training I particularly mean that rigorous, logic- 
al training which is particularly inculcated in our system, 
and which is frequently lacking elsewhere. 

And a little further on he said : 

As regards the existence of matter, and the idea of crea- 
tion, much was said by Professor Plate and others, which 
clearly showed that they did not understand the philosophic 
statements made in my second lecture. 

One who wishes to realize to the full the extraordinary phil- 
osophical and logical shortcomings of these disputants should 
read the whole report of the discussion as given by Wasmann. 
Two things will inevitably strike him as a result of this read- 
ing one the mass of scientific uncertainties that still surround 
the entire doctrine of evolution and the almost wholly unsup- 
ported condition of the theory as commonly understood, and 
the other the curious combination of anti-religious bias with ig- 
norance of metaphysics on the side of the so-called scientific 
disputants who attacked Wasmann. Yet a third will, moreover, 
suggest itself, which is fully as significant as the other two, and 
that is the entire readiness of Father Wasmann to accept as a 
Catholic what his science has taught him and it is only fair 
to say that as a scientist he demonstrated himself to be the 
equal, at least, of any of his opponents, while immeasurably 
their superior as a philosopher. 



1908.] SCIENCE OR SUPERSTITION 729 

Turn we now to our newspaper clippings. Last summer one 
of the afternoon newspapers in New York contrived to start a 
controversy in its correspondence columns on the matter of 
religion in general, and for some months the caption " Church 
and Unbeliever " headed its columns of " Letters to the Edi- 
tor " almost every day. Of course there is nothing per se re- 
markable in a newspaper correspondence of this kind. Many 
years ago the Sun discovered that such things were good jour- 
nalism, and it may be said that for at least ten years there 
has been a more or less continuous discussion of these matters 
in its columns. The late F. P. Church one of the Sun's ac- 
complished editorial writers for many years was a perfect 
adept in the art of stirring up the arguments. Sometimes it 
would be done by an article in the " candid- friend " vein, lament- 
ing the general decay of religious faith in the world at large, 
resulting from the onward march of science ; sometimes by a 
sorrowfully destructive comment on the effects of the Higher 
Criticism on Protestant Christianity ; sometimes by an article 
on religious teaching in the schools ; and sometimes by an elab- 
orately impartial discussion as to whether or not ministers could 
avoid hypocrisy. A running fire of little encyclicals and allo- 
cutions by Professor Goldwin Smith on Hildebrand, St. Bar- 
tholomew, Giordano Bruno, the Index, the Inquisition, the Cu- 
ria, St. Januarius, the Albigenses, the Immaculate Conception, 
Lourdes, Obscurantism, Alva, the Dragonnades, " Jesuitism with 
its political intrigues and its dark plottings," etc., printed on 
the editorial page, with the honor of " double leads," also helped 
very much at times to keep things moving. But the Sun is 
more or less sui generis. The newspaper from which the clip- 
pings already referred to were taken, is an altogether different 
thing. It may accurately be described as a plain, respectable, 
one-cent, " family " newspaper, aiming at nothing strikingly in- 
tellectual, absolutely "safe and sane," and decorously dull; in 
every sense of the word, an honest bourgeois sheet which the 
Sun, at all events, never was. For while, in a sense, the re- 
cent utterances of Mr. Goldwin Smith seem to prove him a 
worthy and distinguished citizen of the intellectual bourgeoisie 
in these matters, the Sun and its readers are more or less ec- 
lectic and one can prove no general propositions from either. 
Now the best way to describe the character of the clippings 
extracted from the paper referred to is to produce specimens, 



730 SCIENCE OR SUPERSTITION [Sept., 

and accordingly some are here offered it being premised that 
selection is made so as fairly to exhibit the general average 
character of the contributions without wearying the reader too 
much. 

Religion, so tar as we can trace it, has served two purposes 
first to keep the populace ignorant in order to subjugate 
them ; and, second, to furnish a livelihood to those chiefly 
concerned in it. 

Christ was a wonderiul man and a great reformer, but when 
it comes to crediting Him with performing miracles which 
are absolutely unnatural (sic) it is time for thinking people 
to use common judgment and not believe blindly. 

Probably the best reason why ministers and preachers do 
not care to enter into debate with unbelievers is because 
they are afraid to lose their positions and to hear the truth. 

Science is slowly unfolding a more excellent way ot dis- 
cerning truth, and if the Church shall ever win the world to 
God, it will only be as it allies itself with science and marches 
onward along the broadening pathway of comprehensible 
truth. 

My historical reading has pointed out to me that education 
flourishes despite the Church. The tortures of Bruno and 
Galileo, the ostracism of Thomas Paine and the ridicule of 
Charles Darwin and Ernst Haeckel, are a few signs of how 
the Church has educated. ... I behold before me to- 
day a populace that is getting wiser and more intelligent, in- 
tellectual and irreligious. 

Darwin shows us, through processes of logical illustrations, 
how man was not created by a God, as explained in the Bible, 
but has evoluted (sic) from a lower species. 



There is more than an abundance of this sort of thing in the 
possession of the present writer, but enough has been shown. 
Let us view it in the light of Dr. Pritchett's words printed at 
the outset of this paper, and in connection with the exhibits of 
modern German science and philosophy furnished by the report 
of the Wasmann lectures and the discussion thereupon. Can 
we regard either of these batches of evidence as favoring the 
view taken by Dr. Pritchett? Can we regard them as the off- 
spring of the scientific spirit of which he speaks so reverently ? 



SCIENCE OR SUPERSTITION 731 

Can we form a mental picture of mankind generally scientist 
and bourgeois regretfully abandoning the fair and benign forms 
of religious belief one by one at the stern command of reason, 
influenced by deep and conscientious studies in science pursued 
with patient care and rigid accuracy, step by step, nothing old 
being let go until the last cords were severed, nothing new 
being embraced until the last doubts were resolved can we? 

Or must we not rather admit that the process has been quite 
otherwise, that religious beliefs have been jettisoned en masse 
and the grossest forms of material superstition eagerly embraced 
in their stead, not merely by people who by their training, by 
their mental equipment, by their habits of life, are utterly in- 
capable of apprehending the nature of the problems of which 
they chatter, but also by people who, speaking in the name 
of "science," have neglected to learn the very alphabet of the 
mother of all sciences ; and are thus doubly at fault, for they 
should have known better. 

It is easy to ridicule the letters from which the foregoing 
extracts have been made, on the ground that they display an 
enormous amount of ignorance on matters scientific, philosophic, 
and religious indeed, the ignorance displayed is of that hope- 
less type which is unaware of its own massiveness ! But this 
is to overlook the tragedy in them. They are all apparently 
written by people who have barely tasted the Pierian spring, 
but who are entirely self-complacent in the thought that they 
are mentally free and enlightened, the intellectual salt of the 
modern earth. Can we truly say that it is the dissemination 
of a " scientific spirit "which has dictated their attitude toward 
"formal theology and toward a general philosophy of life"? 

The spectacle of leading German " scientific " professors pub- 
licly rebuked by a German Jesuit, in the course of a scientific 
discussion, for their lack of philosophic knowledge in the inter- 
pretation of scientific facts, is something that is well worthy of 
Dr. Pritchett's attention and the attention of all those who are 
seeking to understand and account for the spirit of the age. 
If men like Professor Plate, Professor Dahl, Dr. Piotz, Dr. Thes- 
ing, and Dr. Salinger reason thus from their science to say 
nothing of Haeckel (whom Wasmann convicts of preaching one 
doctrine to scientists and another to the public see Der Kampf 
urn das Entwicklungs Problem, 1907, pp. 141 and 142) is it their 
"scientific spirit "that makes them opponents of "formal the- 



732 SCIENCE OR SUPERSTITION [Sept., 

ology" and dictates their "philosophy of life"; or is it their 
bad philosophic methods? 

And as for the people who wrote the letters above quoted 
from where did they get their science? Some weeks ago the 
Evening Post said editorially : 

Columbia University must be careful. In spite of her radi- 
cal action on football and simplified spelling, she is in danger 
of being branded as reactionary if her professors persist in 
their absurd refusal to keep up with the march of popular 
science. A little while ago the professor of astronomy de- 
clared that he believed neither in the superior intelligence of 
the inhabitants of Mars, as attested by their celebrated ca- 
nals, nor in the inhabitants of Mars on their own account, 
nor even in the canals on their account. He flippantly 
summed up our knowledge of the Martian canals as consist- 
ing in the observation of certain dark lines on the planet by 
certain people. Now comes the head of Columbia's depart- 
ment of biology who, not without due reflection, states that 
"the simple fact to-day is, that we are absolutely without 
evidence of any kind of the origin of any living thing save 
from any other living thing." What, in that case, is to be- 
come of the famous unfertilized egg of the sea-urchin which 
has shown such marvelous powers of reproduction, if not in 
salt water, at least in the despatches of the Associated Press ? 
What, above all, is to become of the Yellow Sunday Supple- 
ment, where only last week we remember seeing a sort of 
cross between a Magian sage and the late John Alexander 
Dowie shaking wierd new life-forms out of a little vial ? 

Recently a New York newspaper printed a letter from " a 
young attorney," asking whether " a majority of the best minds, 
at the present time, believe in the theory of evolution. The 
meaning of the word evolution is here restricted to the devel- 
opment of physical man from a lower zoological class into his 
present position." And in its answer to this (editorially) said : 

Certainty with regard to prevailing opinion in such a mat- 
ter is impossible. But if our correspondent asks for the best 
of our knowledge and belief, but one answer can be given. 
The hypothesis of evolution is generally accepted by the best 
minds of the time ; and we use the term " best minds " as the 
athlete employs the phrase ' ' the best man ' ' as signifying 



1908.] SCIENCE OR SUPERSTITION 733 

power, capability, and training. . . . Our correspondent 
has not asked about the connection of the Darwinian theory 
with religion, or the belief in God and the hereafter. He is 
wise. These things transcend physical science. But we 
rather like the saying of Beecher about evolution that " reli- 
gion can trail its ivy on that trellis as well as on any other." 

No doubt this saying of Beecher's is quite true with regard 
to religion as he understood it, and as Dr. Pritchett seems to 
understand it when he says, as he does elsewhere in the course 
of the article from which our text is taken : " True religion is 
a life, not a belief " ; but, as Lincoln truly observed, " calling 
a sheep's tail a leg don't make it a leg " ; and meanwhile it 
may be noted that the Mail considers the evolution of " phy- 
sical man " from a lower order to be generally accepted as true 
by the "best minds" of to-day. If a distinction be meant 
between man's body and man's soul, so much the better for 
the Mail and its correspondent ; but what chance is there of 
one per cent of the Mail's readers making or noting the dis- 
tinction ? Those who want to know how the question stands 
to-day as to the known facts of man and his origin body 
and spirit will find the eleventh chapter of Wasmann's Die 
Moderne Biologie (1906) highly instructive on the point even 
if it tends to shake one's belief in the Mail's statement as to 
the " best minds " to-day. Meanwhile, we may note that the 
Evening Post, in reviewing Verdon L. Kellogg's book, Darwin- 
ism To-day, quotes the author with respect to the " unknown 
factors" in evolution thus: 

lyet us begin our motto with Ignoramus, but never follow it 
with Ignorabimus. We are ignorant ; terribly, immensely ig- 
norant. And our work is to learn, to question life by new 
methods, from new angles, on closer terms, under more pre- 
cise conditions of control; this is the requirement and the 
opportunity of the biologist of to-day. 

Ignorant with Haeckel's Riddle of the Universe in every 
public library ? Ignorant with alleged ministers of the Gospel, 
such as John L. Scudder, of Newark, proudly telling the 
Woman's Press Club that "the Zoological Garden has been 
substituted for the Garden of Eden as the home of our an- 
cestors " (see report in New York Times, Sunday, January 



734 SCIENCE OR SUPERSTITION [Sept. 

26), and that " the doctrine of evolution is playing the mis- 
chief with the theology of our forefathers?" Ignorant with 
practically everybody able to read these things? Perish the 
thought ! For the " Rev." Mr. Scudder also says in the ad- 
dress quoted " Free thought has come to stay." The shackles 
of the dark ages have been broken. In any large city nowa- 
days one meets those who can with easy contempt work off 
the allusion to the needle's point and the angels as ,the sole 
topic of debate in the Middle Ages. In suburbs where "culture" 
prevails, one can readily collect (among the reading circles) more 
or less elaborate sneers at the " logic chopping schoolmen " and 
their " syllogistic methods"; and in certain university towns 
there is reason to believe that the chimera bombilans in vacua 
could be started with a little patient beating of the covers. As 
for "dogma" in religion, the very word has become, as it were, 
a hissing and a reproach ! To ask a man to "define" something 
nowadays usually means a wrangle. Thought is truly free 
free from all restraint, including law. Is it any wonder that 
it is disorderly ? This is the " scientific spirit " ; this is the 
" dominant note of the twentieth century." This is the " intel- 
lectual gain " which Dr. Pritchett welcomes as the most note- 
worthy fruitage of the last fifty years of "science and scientific 
freedom." 

To the present writer it rather seems as if it is not so much 
a matter of a new "science" as it is of a new " superstition "; 
and that modern "civilized men" (as Dr. Pritchett calls them) 
would be none the worse for a little less knowledge of things 
that are not so, and a little more knowledge of the use of reason 
also a little more intellectual humility. They could not then 
perhaps be as to a large number contentedly wallowing in 
a morass of ignorance, all the while under the impression that 
they are standing on the mountain tops irradiated by the noon- 
day sun of all truth, for the first time in the world's history. 




WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS. 

BY H. E. P. 

V. 

CLOVELLY.* 

[T was washing day when I reached Clovelly. I came 
to this conclusion because of the great number of 
sheets, as well as minor clothes, hung out to dry. 
The geography of the place is such, that nothing 
stands in the way of anything, so every article 
that had been to the wash hung out alone with a perfect in- 
dividuality. Perhaps this helped to exaggerate the quantity of 
the drying stuff. 

One gets at Clovelly by a road, up to a certain point for 
the rest he does not. I had pushed my bicycle up hills, hotly 
and patiently, and had held on to it tenaciously and savagely 
going down them. I had ridden it in the course of sixteen 
miles infrequently and fearfully. Now I was at the end. 

"You had better leave it here, sir. You can't take it down 
no further." The suggestion smacked of self- interest and the 
information was unnecessary. Any further ! I should think 
not. A path made of pebbles set on edge, and about four feet 
in width, went down at the angle of a toboggan slide, to the 
houses below. It is such a slant, that it is just as much as one 
could do to stand on it, and at times one makes clutches at 
the fuchsia hedge which runs along the side. After a while 
the path turns at a right angle, becomes still more steep, and 
forms the " High Street " of the fantastic village of Clovelly. 

Fantastic is perhaps not the right word. I feel more in- 
clined to write " mad," for were it not for the artistic merits 
of the place, its geography is so eccentric as to suggest in- 
sanity somewhere. 

* Clovelly is one of the " show " places in the west of England. It is situated on the 
Devonshire coast, about sixteen miles from Barnstaple. 



736 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [Sept., 

Clovelly is really only a crack in the face of a sheer cliff, 
that is washed at its foot by the sea, which forms part of Barn- 
staple Bay. The crack spreads out a little at its mouth and 
makes a tiny harbor. To shelter the fishing boats and to help 
steamboats to disgorge at low tides, a wall, which is half pier, 
half breakwater, starts from the shore and ends quickly when 
it has made a feeble curve. The crevice narrows at once from 
the beach and runs to land and upland. There seems scarce- 
ly foothold for the two rows of houses and the toboggan path 
which separates them. I am sure if a couple of persons joined 
hands anywhere in this quaint High Street, they could, with 
their other hands, buy picture post-cards in the shops at either 
side. Well, that is if the shops were opposite one another 
only nothing in Clovelly is opposite or straight and, also, if 
the said persons could keep on their feet, for the pitch of the 
street is terrific. Every yard and a half the little pebble stones 
are stopped off with a row of large ones, which stick up three 
or four inches above the level. Hence the street is really 
only a stairway made of " petrified kidneys" which, as it follows 
the crevice in the rocks, bends this way and that. 

No two houses stand on the same level, and I doubt if any 
two keep the frontage line. There are tall houses with mod- 
ern gables added, and short houses with thatched roofs and lit- 
tle windows that haven't opened once ever since they were set 
in, perhaps a hundred years ago. There are houses with steps 
up to them, and some with steps down. Some overhang the 
street. Some stand back a couple of feet and plant gay flowers 
in the space they have gained. Red roofs, gray roofs, black 
roofs, thatched roofs, roofs scarlet to the chimney tops with 
Virginia creeper; and chimneys that emit pearly blue smoke 
through trees of luxuriant fuchsias in full bloom. House fronts 
of gleaming whitewash, or else washed green or pink, and all 
smothered in flowers and creepers which the late autumn hasn't 
touched. Here is a cottage with golden nasturtium reaching 
to the upper windows and shining like pennies new from the 
mint. A bower of sweet-scented verbena makes a porch to an- 
other, and a third has a grapevine that has embraced it, win- 
dows and all. I saw an artist making a water- color picture of 
the street; but, gay as were his colors, he gave only a feeble idea 
of its blaze of splendor. Unnatural and un English whether 
you looked up the crooked lane and had the green and gold 



1908.] WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS 737 

cliff as a background, or down it and had the gray sea in the 
distance as a foil. 

There is nothing commonplace or obvious about Clovelly. 
You can no more say what the next cottage is going to be 
like, because you have just seen this one, than you can tell for 
certain that you won't slip down on the treacherous cobble 
stones and thus never reach the next cottage at all. 

An abundant lack of symmetry is the place's ruling char- 
acteristic. A house will face down to the sea and have an end 
on to the High Street, and perhaps the next one will face three- 
quarters of the way round, looking up to the cliff. Yet they 
don't block one another in the least, for every house just stands 
on tiptoe and peeps over the one below it. Clinging to the 
sides of the cliff, as the limpets below cling to the old harbor 
wall, are little houses scattered about in the trees. How you 
reach them, whether from above or below, I could not make 
up my mind, but they are shot about here and there, with the 
same disregard to any position or order, as are the houses in 
the street. White with square black windows, they suggest dice, 
and look as if they might have been jerked out of a dice box 
for a joke. 

A railing on the harbor wall ends the High Street at the 
bottom. A group of variously clad boatmen hung on the rail 
and all of them wanted to take me out in a boat for eighteen 
pence. They came at me in the same fashion as the flies, for 
I was nearly the only visitor in the place that day ; and the 
flies were hungry, and the boats were idle. 

I shook the boatmen off by saying that eighteen pence was 
too much; that I could make myself sick with the right stuff 
for three half pence. The grinding of the pebbles on the beach 
stopped my hearing the discussion as to what I meant. 

Close beside me, and perched upon the top of the low har- 
bor wall, was a young artist, who had evidently heard my re- 
mark and who was laughing at it. I had not noticed him be- 
fore, for he was half hidden by a buttress. The position he 
had chosen looked perilous. Straight below was the beach, 
with its sea lapping almost up to the wall, while the said but- 
tress made a somewhat uncertain support for his back. The 
artist looked about twenty or so, and he might have made a 
picture himself, as he sat there. His light curly hair was 
against the great stone block that held the stanchion for the 
VOL. LXXXVII. 47 



738 WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS [Sept., 

railings behind, and the woolen jersey he wore, which fitted 
as closely as did his rough gray knickerbockers, showed his 
well-shaped body to perfection. On his knees which were 
drawn up, rested the drawing-board which served him for an 
easel. 

" Are you not afraid you will roll off into the sea ? " I 
asked, by way of beginning a conversation, for there was 
something about the youth which attracted me. 

" I've sat here every day this week, and I've got some 
practice now in hanging on," he answered laughing. "The 
worst of it is, it's a very hard seat and rather cold." 

" You had better " At that moment my eye fell upon the 
water- color sketch on his board, and I stopped in amazement. 
There was nothing much in the picture, but its truthfulness 
was so striking that I looked from the reality to the paper 
looked and looked again. A boat bottom-upwards on the 
beach, an old gray-haired man leaning over it, applying a coat 
of black, and one of the golden rocks behind this was all. 
The artist evidently enjoyed my surprise. 

"Are you doing this for amusement or is it a necessity?" 
I asked, as gently as I could put the question. I felt I was 
safe in venturing the remark, for his clothes were shabby and 
it was ages since his shoes were new. 

" I am afraid I am obliged to make pictures just at pres- 
ent"; and he laughed with such a merry laugh that the obli- 
gation hardly seemed to weigh very heavily. "The tourists 
come to see what I am doing, and then we talk; and after a 
bit, if they've any money, why they buy something. You'd 
be amused at the remarks they make ! ' Chawles, it's jist like 
them post- cards we saw hup there'; or, 'I don't like them 
colors, they be so smudgy.' " 

He was painting away fast, all the time he was talking. 
" Studies from life are the most fatal things. Once get a child to 
stand somewhere in a picture, and all the children in the place 
come round and worry to have a look in, too. Last week, an 
excursion steamer brought a very rough lot. One woman with 
a small child made me a magnificent offer. ' Do thou paint 
our Jane, there's a nice gentleman, and I'll give thee a tan- 
ner.' This is the kind of thing one has to put up with," he 
said in his cheery way. " I wish I could paint what I like, 
instead of what these wretched tourists want, but it wouldn't 



1908.] WEST-COUNTRY IDYLLS 739 

pay." The overflowing happiness of the youth, his charming 
simplicity, and the extraordinary skill he seemed to possess, 
absorbed me. 

Suddenly his tone changed. "Who's that?" he said in a 
quiet voice. Ten or twelve yards away, along the low wall, 
stood a man gazing out to sea. " Where on earth did the old 
buffer come from did he pass us ? " 

"He might easily have done so," I replied, "for we were 
talking so busily we shouldn't have noticed him. 

" Looks like an old Jew pedlar ; did you ever see such a 
hat ; look at his coat ! " 

The same gay laugh, but quiet and subdued, for fear the 
newcomer might hear. The figure turned a little, and was in 
full profile. "What a glorious face," the youth exclaimed; 
" I'll have him in two shakes, if he'll only keep still." 

Taking the sketchbook, at which I was then looking, he 
turned to a blank page, and in a moment there on the paper 
stood this long, lank man hat, coat, the curious stoop, and 
the head and face which were so wonderfully striking. But the 
pencil, while it gave the true portrait, had delicately exag- 
gerated it the vein of humor in the artist had produced a 
caricature. I was shaking with laughter at the absurdity of the 
picture, and was on the point of asking if I might have it, 
when suddenly the old gentleman wheeled round and strode up 
to us. 

" I hope I stood quite still," he said in a voice that was 
almost fierce. 

" Stood still ? " 

"Yes, stood still. You were sketching me. I've been 
sketched before. It's only when those " the noise on the 
beach, I think, drowned the next word " cameras are on me 
that I won't stand still ; let me see what you've made of me, 
young man." 

" I really it was only scribble ; and I'm not a " 

I don't know what else he would have said, but the wild- 
looking, gruff man came a step nearer and saw the water- color 
resting on the lad's knee. He snatched at the little drawing 
board, and held it out at arm's length. He looked first at the 
picture, then at the old boat away on the beach, and then 
straight into the artist's face with a sharp, piercing stare. 
" Have you just done this, boy ? " he asked in the same 



740 WEST- COUNTRY IDYLLS [Sept., 

rough and abrupt manner. " Do you often do these ? You're 
a fool to waste your time." 

The poor lad blushed crimson to his curls. " I do as many 
as I can sell, I'm sorry to say, for, for " 

" For what ? " 

"For I don't like selling them, sir; indeed I don't." 

" The last words were said as if he were excusing himself, 
and there was the ring of real pain in his voice. 

" Then why do you sell them ? " 

"I'm obliged to to live." 

" Fool ! " 

I wonder to myself why the lad does not put that in- 
criminating sketchbook out of sight, now that he has the op- 
portunity, instead of letting it lie there in his lap. I feel 
sure the cruel old ruffian will pounce upon it in a minute 
and see his own portrait. Then I hope he will, and wish the 
portrait had been made ten times worse than it is ! 

"What can you get for that thing?" he asks, pointing at 
the sketch contemptuously. 

" Five shillings, or perhaps fifteen if I'm lucky, but I have 
to take it home and finish it. My class of customers wouldn't 
understand it as it is." 

At this there seems to me the faintest trace of a smile on 
the stranger's face, but perhaps it is my fancy. "Do you do 
any other style than that ? " 

" I like those gray rocks over there, sir, and the gray sea 
at that bend. I made a picture of it the day before yesterday. 
There was ever so slight a mist on the sea, and I think I 
caught it." The artist's face was alive with enthusiasm as he 
spoke quickly and seemed to forget the grim old monster in 
front of him. 

"What have you done with it; where is it; I want to see 
it ; have you got it there ? " he said, pointing to the sketch- 
book. 

"No, sir; I was sitting here yesterday finishing it off I 
wanted a gray sky, too, and there was a good one yesterday 
and a party of tourists came " 
" And you sold it ? " 

Not exactly. One of them took it up and showed it to 
his I mean to the person who was with him, and said : ' Looks 
like soup, don't it, Sarah?' and as he threw it down again, 



1 908. ] WEST- Co UNTR Y ID YLLS 74 1 

I suppose I was not quick enough but it's somewhere out 
there now," he said sadly, pointing to the sea. 

There was the same queer gleam in the old man's face 
again. 

"He paid you?" 

" No ; he only said : * Sorry/ and then, turning to the lot 
he was with, remarked something about it being 'a real water- 
color, now ! ' 

" I want to see my portrait it's here ? " he asked, taking 
up the fatal sketchbook. His finger was between the leaves, 
when he said abruptly, in a more human tone than he had yet 
spoken in: "But perhaps this is hardly fair!" 

"You may look at it if you like, sir if you'll forgive me." 

It was said with that bright smile and that simple freedom 
which had struck me so much at first, and I wondered what 
its effect would be on this strange old person. For a single 
moment he looked fierce and terrific, then the rugged face 
wrinkled into as near a smile as I suppose it could manage, 
and he merely said : " Boy, I told you you were a fool, a " 
and again the scrunching on the beach seemed to block out a 

word " a fool. Tear that page out ; now put your name 

down in the corner there," and as he took the sketch from 
the youth, he quietly dropped a sovereign into his hand. 
"I'm going to have that picture, too, only don't finish it tour- 
ist style I hate tourists, they always have cameras do it your 
own way. You can do one of the gray rocks ' like soup,' as 
they called it and you can send them both here." He gave 
the artist a card and then strode away at a great pace with 
out another word. 

The youth never moved. He stared blankly at the card, 

and then handed it to me : Sir , R.A. one of our greatest 

Royal Academicians. My friend swung his legs off the wall, 
and leant against it, wringing his hands. 

" I might have known he knew something about painting, 
I might have known it by the way he looked at my poor lit- 
tle picture; what shall I do; oh, do tell me what I ought to 
do ? " he said, appealing to me. But in a moment he saw the 
full absurdity of the situation and broke into his happy laugh. 
I left him trying to push his color box and brushes into 
his breeches pocket, for he said he was too excited to paint an- 
other stroke that day. 



742 WEST- COUNTRY IDYLLS [Sept. 

Slowly I began to climb backwards, up the ridiculous High 
Street, turning now and again to look at this strange English 
village from different points of view. English ? I believe any 
one who had never heard of Clovelly would if set down sud- 
denly in its midst, among its colors and its angles and its 
slopes, with the blue sea below and the golden cliff behind 
wager a large sum that he stood in an Italian fishing village. 

Up, up, up, I am nearly at the top, one last look at Clo- 
velly. How do they ever get coffins out of such a place ? is 
a thought that comes to my mind ; and another more terri- 
ble fire ! Huddled together, shouldering one another, crowded 
one on top of the other, a fire at the lower end, a stiff breeze 
from the sea, and the houses of Clovelly would be an artist's 
memory nothing more. Nothing could save them, and this 
little old-world place would be blotted out in a few hours. 

What chain of thought brought anything so horrible to my 
mind ? Perhaps the red sparks flying out of the chimney of a 
cottage down there on the left, and falling freely on the thatch 
of the dwelling just below. I am at the top. A motor-car 
has this moment landed a party. The petrol stinks. Clovelly 
High Street and a motor seem to have centuries between them. 




"WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR?" 

BY WILLIAM J. KERBY, PH.D. 
II. 

|F a concrete definition of neighbor should be found 
in the intellectual equipment of every mature 
Christian, and if the impulse to service of him as 
circumstances invite, belongs to the integrity of 
Christian character, it would seem that the Chris- 
tian teacher ought to take care that the definitions be made, 
that the impulse be trained, and that right methods be em- 
ployed. The poor do not exist in order that the rich may ex- 
ercise certain virtues of generous condescension, though the con- 
trary is asserted in a recent economic treatise. The essential 
consideration is that men have right understanding of one an- 
other and of their relations; that accidental differences among 
them, such as those of power, wealth, culture, race, be not al- 
lowed to separate men in imagination to a point where broth- 
erly love perishes. It seems, at times, that we look upon the 
poor as a separate race or class. Deeds, bonds, and mortgages 
appear to act like inherent human traits by which we classify 
men. Lord Lytton describes some of his characters as "very 
good to the poor, whom they looked upon as a different order 
of creation and treated with that sort of benevolence which 
humane people bestow on dumb animals." It is true that the 
process of life has huddled the weak in masses and has con- 
gregated the strong into every form of alliance, but it is the 
mission of Christianity to correct many of the consequences of 
this division by showing the essential unity among men and by 
exalting the privilege and the claim of charity as its basis. 

In answering the lawyer's question, " Who is my neigh- 
bor ? " we must recognize the social facts before us and un- 
derstand the orderly process by which human sympathy and 
interest affect intercourse. It is useless to expect natural and 
easy relations of companionship among the cultured and the 
uncultured, among the learned and the ignorant, among the 



744 " WHO Is MY NEIGHBOR ? " [Sept., 

refined and the vulgar. Such relations would be wholesome to 
neither, nor would they be welcome. Nature works along lines 
in which sympathy flows easily, and sympathy acts only among 
those who are like-minded. Every grade of culture has its own 
spirit of fellowship, its own code, understanding, and secrets. 
Hence it is that the imagination has a supreme role in the 
neighborly relations of men. As social processes unite men in 
imagination, they supply the basis of concord, service, and 
trust. As social processes separate men in imagination, they 
divide them into non-communicating groups which readily mis- 
understand one another, as readily neglect one another, and as 
reluctantly serve one another. The most significant social an- 
tagonisms which split society to-day, and threaten our institu- 
tions, are, in last analysis, due to imagination and not to reason. 
Reason may talk of social solidarity, and economic or socio- 
logical analysis may show us how intimately all men are united; 
the catechism may appeal to intellect, and tell us that mankind 
of every description is our neighbor. But only they have en- 
trance to our hearts to whom imagination gives the passport; 
only they are neighbors whom imagination accepts and embraces. 
The work of reconstructing human brotherhood must be directed 
toward the imagination. We know much and imagine little of 
it. Not more knowledge but more imagining, more realizing, 
is the sociological need of the time. This may be seen more 
clearly if we pass in review some of the bonds of imagination 
in which heretofore men have been united bonds which held 
sympathy and fostered understanding in spite of differences 
which might have sundered them. Within these social groups, 
neighbor was defined automatically. The strong within them 
were one in imagination with the weak ; the more favored felt 
union with the less favored much more acutely than they felt 
separation. A study of these social unities will throw light 
on the disintegration under which society now suffers. 



The first of the social bonds to which reference is made is 
that of the family. In it, common blood is the basis of union ; 
common interest, long-enduring interdependence of members, 
sustained association, constitute the basis of domestic affection, 
and the high sanction of every revered authority is the final 






i9o8.] " WHO Is MY NEIGHBOR ? " 745 

source of its strength. Within the group, the knitting together 
of lives, of imagination, of sympathy, goes on unceasingly, un- 
til the good home has such hold on life and such command 
over the ideals and aspirations of the good child, that the latter 
sees in his home the final sacredness of human association, the 
most appealing grace that comes into his life. And outside the 
home group, all of this is seen and approved; public opinion 
sanctions it, laws enforce it, churches preach it. Strong and 
weak are one. By the action of a beautiful law of sympathy, 
strong are ranged around weak in the quiet and happy service 
of enduring love. And this is done not by reasoning, but by 
instinct; not by argument, but by imagination. Reasoning sanc- 
tions and approves it all, but it neither creates the bond nor 
protects it. Attraction within the family group and the mem- 
ory of happy experience; pressure from outside the group and 
quick enforcement of its claims, have made the family bond 
powerful throughout history. When neglect of duty toward those 
of one's blood invites sure odium, when careless fulfilment of 
it meets quick censure, when faithful and loving compliance is 
expected as the first proof and the final glory of manhood, 
then the family is the great source of moral and spiritual 
power in society. 

The family circle varies in historical epochs. It may ex- 
tend backwards to remotest living ancestor, and it may go be- 
yond to the memory of those departed. It may project itself 
into the future, so that children yet unborn modify the liberty 
and shape the aspirations of the living. It may extend to col- 
lateral lines many degrees, including all of a name or of a 
blood. Ancestor worship, the patriarchal family, entailment, in- 
heritance laws, primogeniture, suggest at once the varied charac- 
ter that the family has taken on. The wider the family circle, 
the deeper its hold on the imagination, the stronger the sense 
of pride in one's name or of responsibility to it, the larger, 
presumably, is the number of strong and weak, united in imagin- 
ation, sympathy, and understanding. In such a circle, then, the 
weak invite neighborly service from the strong and these gladly 
give it. Orphans are jealously kept within the family ; the aged 
and delicate are lovingly cared for; the wayward are patiently 
sought out; the young receive means of education. Whatever 
the forms of weakness found in the family group, the strength 
allied to them is placed at their service. They that can show 



746 " WHO Is MY NEIGHBOR?" [Sept., 

mercy are neighbors to them that have need of it. It is indeed 
true that charity begins at home. 

In our day the effective, recognized family circle has been 
reduced to its lowest limits, and its stability, even in its most 
narrowed form, has been seriously affected. The result is that 
large numbers of weak and helpless, who really have strong 
relatives able to care for them, are thrown out into the indis- 
criminate mass of uncharted poor. 

To a great extent, the family consists only of parents and 
children. Collateral lines are largely excluded. In the large 
city, the family tends to lose its social self-consciousness; it is 
merged into the mass and scarcely recognized, as, in itself, an 
integral thing. It moves from city to city, and in the city 
from neighborhood to neighborhood. Hence it fails very often 
to be organized into a neighborhood with clearly recognized 
standing. 

Not only that. The average city family tends to break up 
early. Children of one home are found in half a dozen cities. 
They become wage earners and assert independence at an early 
age. Association and attachment tend to cease. Brothers and 
sisters, parents and children, will be found among whom corre- 
spondence and visiting have totally ceased. Uncles and nieces 
indifferent to one another's existence ; first cousins who do not 
dream of being interested in one another, are found every day. 
If we add to these slow social processes, all cases of estrange- 
ment and quarreling among relatives, all cases of desertion of 
family by fathers, and of divorce, and finally all cases of worth- 
less or careless parents from whom dependent children must be 
taken we meet a picture of the decay of family unity which 
is literally appalling. 

It would be difficult to state in numbers, the extent to 
which all of this disintegration goes on. But that is not now 
necessary, since an impression and not an argument is aimed 
at. As regards the bearing of the condition on charity, this 
may be said: The process is probably more marked in those 
social circles in which the largest number of weak and helpless 
appear. Each one of a number of experienced charity workers, 
whom it was possible to consult concerning the problem, con- 
firmed the thought that underlies this whole exposition. Every 
day there are found among the helpless, young and old, blame- 
less and guilty, those who have near relatives who might give 



1908.] " WHO Is MY NEIGHBOR?" 747 

aid but refuse to do so. The poor-house offers shelter to help- 
less parents who have children in a position to care for them. 
The orphan asylum harbors children whose near relatives might 
easily give them a home. Wretched hovels give shelter to 
mothers and children in actual want, while near relatives hold 
high and careless revel in stately houses. 

A moment's reflection reveals many-sided meaning in this 
condition. It argues striking decay in the family as a strong 
and sacred social unity. It shows a low sense of Christian 
duty in the strong who neglect the weak of their own name 
and blood, and creates the presumption that, as those are un- 
willing to be neighbors to their own kin who are in want, 
they will be neighbors to no one at all, and will ignore Christ's 
law. It is the source of injustice to the poor who have none 
of their own to care for them, since it adds new drains on 
the resources of charity, and taxes with added burdens the 
energies of those who work among the poor for the sake of 
humanity and God. This condition shows too that public opin- 
ion seems more or less indifferent to the family bond. Men 
are taken for what they as individuals are. The strong man 
who has power, recognition, wealth, is visited by no disgrace 
and punished by no shame if he is indifferent to the claim 
of dependent relatives. They are in distant cities, or in differ- 
ent social circles, and are removed from view. They have 
nothing in common with him. He, not his family, is dealt 
with socially. The world is too busy and too careless to think 
out such problems unless forced to do so. 

When a man of means dies intestate, anxious relatives, out to 
remote degrees, make legal claim to a relationship which might in- 
sure a share in the property of the deceased. But when the hand 
of affliction or want lays low the timid and shrinking mother 
or orphans, we do not always see the strong among their re- 
latives rush to aid and claim the privilege of giving the relief 
which would honor wealth and adorn a Christian heart. 

A question of minor yet considerable importance should be 
mentioned. Historically servants have been held t be, in some 
way, members of a family. The practice of many loyal virtues, 
the intimacy of association and trust, the attachment that re- 
sults from such relations, incorporate, in a manner, the servant 
into the family. But modern conditions have caused revo- 
lution. Servants are changed so frequently, relations are so 



748 " WHO is MY NEIGHBOR ?" [Sept., 

formal and unsympathetic, that no real human attachment is 
formed. Whereas in other times and conditions, the old age 
or illness and incapacity of servants were occasions when the 
family showed real attachment and provided lovingly for them, 
rarely is such the case now, and the helpless servant, man 
or woman, too often to-day finds asylum in some home for the 
anonymous poor. 

The appeal of family name and blood is, then, no longer as 
powerful over imagination as it once was. Even where it re- 
mains strong, it does not serve to develop the sense of charity. 
Strong and weak are classified, separated in society. Families 
are usually built up within those class lines, and hence, we find 
the mass of poor and weak, with no family alliances which can 
offer dignified and loving relief. 

n. 

Another bond which, throughout history, has played its role 
in the making and unmaking of institutions, is that of the so- 
cial class. Common culture, identical interests, political or so- 
cial power and privileges may serve as the basis. In any case, 
if the imagination is seized if the members feel and realize 
their nearness to one another the social bond is developed 
and an instinct leads strong to admit claims of weak. Caste 
and aristocracy show the power to which this class conscious- 
ness may develop. Recent civilization has destroyed privileged 
social classes; society has attempted to get down to the basis 
of the individual. Yet nature is a class builder, and she is ever 
busy. In present-day conditions, when any considerable num- 
ber are affected by similar circumstances, devoted to the same 
pursuits, and more or less regularly associated, a beginning of 
what we may call class consciousness appears. We find this 
development among laborers giving rise to associations for mu- 
tual benefit and constituting an important part of our social, 
constitution. In this way provision is made for large numbers 
of persons. But the very efficiency of this class sense in these 
circles serves to emphasize its absence in other very large 
groups of helpless poor, who in the vicissitudes of life find 
themselves unallied except to others as miserable as themselves. 
Down among the very poor, among orphans to whom none 
claim relationship, among the aged poor, the sick, the forlorn, 



1908.] " WHO Is MY NEIGHBOR f " 749 

one finds what it means to belong nowhere, to fit nowhere, to 
be allied by no tie of social consciousness to the vast social 
world of which they are part. A man is indeed lonely when 
no family and no social class will own him. 

It is interesting to note how the so-called weaker economic 
classes understand this matter of class consciousness. The real 
immediate aim of the labor movement and of socialism, each in 
a different way, is to awaken class consciousness among labor- 
ers; to fire imagination with the sense of common injury, to 
arouse ambitions toward the supremacy of laborers as a class, 
and to establish a brotherhood among the exploited which will 
equalize opportunity, make man his brother's keeper, and eman- 
cipate the weak. These millions, brought into one condition 
of economic dependence in the organization of industry, driven 
into a common attitude toward government, law, employers, 
find their experience of life identical. They understand one 
another, imagine one another, realize one another. The su- 
preme aim of the leadership is to extend that consciousness, 
control it, and secure, through its power, emancipation. 

A strong sense of class consciousness leads many among 
the well-to-do to be neighbors to the less fortunate in the 
class; but, on the whole, this does not prevent many millions 
from going down to dependence with no neighborly hand out- 
stretched to save them. 

in. 

Another social bond which has united men closely, and 
brought their sympathies into a common current, is that of re- 
ligion. Fellowship in faith, like understanding of the mysteries 
of life and death, worship at a common altar, have always tended 
to draw men together in understanding. Christianity, as repre- 
senting the positive teaching of Christ, has always insisted on 
the duty of service, has created institutions and organizations 
to serve the weak, and has carried on effective propaganda in 
their interests. Even to-day, in the time of broader tone, non- 
sectarian co-operation, and the marked emergence of the civic 
or humane point of view in social service, it is still true that 
the bond of religion is a noticeable factor. The strong in one 
church are led to be neighbors toward the weak ; and the or- 
ganized workers of any faith seek out mainly those of their 



750 " WHO Is MY NEIGHBOR f " [Sept., 

own persuasion, more possibly out of a sense of responsibility 
toward them than out of any other. On the other hand, if 
we go down among the weak poor, or up among the strong 
rich, we find abundant evidence that even this bond of faith is 
somewhat weakened. If we compare the amount of sponta- 
neous and generous charity, shown in any religion toward its 
own very poor, with the mass of poverty to be found, we dis- 
cover how far from complete is the unselfish victory of Christ's 
spirit over selfishness. The volume of money administered by 
any church is scarcely an index of its genuine Christian spirit, 
because of the means employed to raise money and of the varied 
motives that prompt those who give it. On the whole, religion 
tends to be less and less a factor in governing the associations 
and sympathies of men. The causes of separation in imagina- 
tion which are at work in society, separate those of one creed 
as widely as any others. Hence not always, even in religion, 
do we find that those who can show mercy are willingly neigh- 
bors to those who have need of it. 



IV. 

Another social bond, which is in circumstances strong, is 
that of neighborhood or locality. When nearness means com- 
panionship, and marked social distinctions do not intervene, 
friendly service is always readily extended. In the village, in 
the country, the poor are known personally and seen by the 
well-to-do. The spirit of service is strong, the problems of re- 
lief are simple. But, in the main, the modern problems of 
charity are city problems; and in the city locality has no 
meaning at all to the Christian. Hence the social bond result- 
ing from residence in a neighborhood has practically no mean- 
ing. With strong and weak massed in different sections of the 
city, no neighborhood offers the heterogeneous contact which 
makes service necessary. Exception might be made concerning 
the poor themselves. For their readiness to aid one another, 
to take into their own scant quarters the poorer family that 
has been evicted; their quick dividing of all that they have, 
to go to the relief of those who have less, are proverbial. 



WHO Is MY NEIGHBOR?" 751 



Another bond which unites strong and weak, in fact if not 
in imagination, is that resting on industrial relationship between 
employer and employed ; consumer and producer. 

Since the union between employer and employed is close, 
at least in the economic sense, it might naturally be supposed 
that they would be one in sympathy and understanding, and 
that consequently neighborly relations would exist among them. 
In the Middle Ages, the employer felt moral and spiritual re- 
sponsibility toward those who worked for him. We find in 
fact, however, that the relation of employer and employed not 
only does not serve as the basis of Christian neighborly union, 
but in fact serves as a basis of organized antagonism much of 
the time, and of established indifference. 

The economic bond is intimate. Skill, loyalty, industry in 
laborers are necessary, as are the foresight, management, capi- 
tal of the employer. But production of every kind is now 
carried on in such a massive way, and the industrial organiza- 
tion is such, that there are hundreds and thousands of em- 
ployees to one employer. No personal contact ensues; imme- 
diate direction is placed in the hands of hired superintendents. 
The employer is one of a competing group, compelled to as- 
sume the risks of business. He is driven to careful calculation 
and to such concentration that his larger sympathies have little 
chance for action. He might in a hundred ways be neighbor 
to his employees. He might act and work against premature 
employment of children and the work of mothers ; he might 
take good care of the sanitary arrangements in his factory. 
He could reduce risks to life and health to a minimum ; and 
might encourage every law which was aimed at these humane 
ends. Some do this. But it is not a conspicuous habit of 
employers. The force of development has been such that not 
even a rudimentary sense of this responsibility is found in many 
employers. 

This indifference of the strong employer toward the rela- 
tively weak laborer is transformed into dislike, distrust, and 
antagonism, when laborers organize into unions for self-protec- 
tion. They constitute an economic class, a social class, and 
their political consciousness is slowly awakening. Thus to-day 
organized employers face organized employees in a relation of 



752 " WHO Is MY NEIGHBOR?" [Sept., 

organized war. Misunderstanding, suspicion, dislike, are found 
very widely. The employer fights to maintain his industrial 
authority and to reduce his responsibility to the economic order 
alone. Laborers fight to acquire authority and widen the re- 
sponsibility of the employer. 

As far as neighborly service is concerned, it is, of course, 
to be noted that the majority of laborers are not objects of 
charity. But there are the superannuated, the delicate who 
have outlived vigor and destroyed health while working for 
employers ; there are widows made so by accident, orphans 
bereaved, cripples maimed in the course of occupation. Em- 
ployers, on the whole, have not felt any moral and spiritual 
responsibility toward such, though processes are at work which 
promise much progress. The demand for employers liability 
laws, old age pensions, service pensions, industrial insurance, 
toward which employers contribute, are institutions which show 
an awakening. It may be said, however, that the industrial 
relation of employer and employed, intimate, and even vital as 
it is, has failed to develop a Christian neighborly relation among 
them, and the modern employer finds no answer to the lawyer's 
question, " Who is my neighbor ? " in his relation to those 
who work for him and out of whose labors his own property 
is accumulated. 

Another economic bond, equally definite and equally use- 
less for purposes of defining neighbor, is that of consumer and 
producer. The consumer is technically supreme in industry. 
Producers must obey him, for if he refuses to buy, the pro- 
ducer must cease to produce. If no one will buy tan shoes, 
or red neckties, or ride on excursion boats, we shall have none 
of these. There are sweatshops, because consumers are willing 
to be careless in what they purchase and to be ignorant of the 
conditions in which commodities are produced. Children work 
in factories at an early age, because it pays the employer, and 
no one who buys the product of child labor cares whether or 
not children are employed. 

Whenever consumers wish to assume their supreme author- 
ity, they may do so. And when they do so, they will revo- 
lutionize industry. When they feel that they have power, and 
that in Christ's Name they ought to use it, they will become 
neighbors to those who have need of mercy. On the whole, 
consumers feel no responsibility to producers for what they 



1908.] " WHO Is MY NEIGHBOR f " 753 

buy. Even those whose social conscience is acute, and who 
do noble work among the poor, usually fail to see that as con- 
sumers they have opportunity for neighborly service. 

Clear as is the theory, its practical realization is extremely 
difficult. The history of a suit of clothes, or of a straw hat, 
or of a bottle of wine, would be as difficult to write as the bi- 
ography of a president. To hunt out the raw material, its cul- 
tivation, its manufacture and transportation ; to find the jobber 
and the drummer through whose hands a commodity passed; 
to learn how the employees in every stage were treated; and 
then to assume responsibility all along this line as Christian 
neighbor to the laborers involved, is, of course, simply impos- 
sible. A beginning of an awakening is to be seen, however. 
The labor unions have devised the union label, and many so- 
cieties of consumers exist which have created the Consumers 
League label with the hope of meeting some of these difficul- 
ties in a small way. 

VI. 

Reference has been made to the family, the social class, re- 
ligion, neighborhood, and industrial organization, as sources of 
unity among men. In such groups, it would be presumed that 
members become one in imagination ; that they are more real 
to one another, are apt to understand and trust one another 
more than others. If the strong fail in neighborly service toward 
the weak, it is usually because the former do not imagine the 
latter, do not feel at one with them. In cases of close alliance, 
this bond is felt and neighborly service is readily performed. 
The social groups referred to have lost much of their power. 
If they do not, in fact, furnish men with a concrete definition 
of neighbor, by what process are we going to perform the ser- 
vice, so exalted by Christ and so pathetically called for by the 
widespread misery, helplessness, and doubt seen in modern life ? 
Speculative views are of no avail. The catechism has not sent 
us far ahead when it has told us that mankind of every de- 
scription is our neighbor. Not until imagination is reached; 
not until some of the men and women and children who are 
pinched by want, harassed by sickness, baffled by doubt, con- 
fused by weakness, are singled out and in some way identified, 
individualized to us, do we reach a true understanding of ser- 
VOL. LXXXVII. 48 



754 " WHO Is MY NEIGHBOR f " [Sept. 

vice as Christ asks it. He depended on no generalization in 
speaking to the lawyer. The wounded man was before the eyes 
of the priest and of the levite as well as before the good Sa- 
maritan. He who needed mercy needed a neighbor; he who 
showed mercy was a neighbor. 

The circumstances of life have removed the poor and help- 
less from the pathway of the strong. Never before were men 
held together in such complex organization ; never before did 
so many enter the life of each ; never before did the many 
mean so much to the individual or did one mean so much to 
so many. And yet this has failed to socialize men's imagina- 
tions. In heart and hope, in aims and views, men are sepa- 
rated as much as ever. It is natural then that we hear so 
much about humanity, the rights of man, and such generaliza- 
tions. But this does not usually convert itself, in the imagi- 
nations of men, into the source of concrete sympathy and lov- 
ing service. From a large standpoint, it is not to be denied 
that the whole volume of social service is enormous and the 
amount of money spent in charity is colossal. But it is from 
the standpoint of the individual that these observations are made. 
Charles Reade says in one of his stories that a misanthrope is 
a man who hates humanity but loves his wife and children ; 
while a philanthropist is one who loves humanity and is mean 
to his wife and children. And he adds in the passage in ques- 
tion that he prefers to read the philanthropist's book while he 
would rather fall into the hands of the misanthrope. The dif- 
ference, then, is largely in the imagination, which, in the case 
of the philanthropist, is too much dominated by the generali- 
zation called humanity. The problem of charity as of Chris- 
tianity is to win not reason but imagination to the work; to 
reunite, in effective relations of some kind, strong and weak. 
Lecky says, in his History of European Morals, that all unchar- 
itable judgments are due to lack of imagination ; that none 
would be uttered if men could but imagine those whom they 
condemn. The case is similar with social service. Unite men 
in imagination and sympathy, the service is assured. Separate 
them in imagination, the service is forgotten. Further discus- 
sion of the problem will be undertaken in a subsequent article. 




ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 

AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.* 
BY FRANCIS AVELING, D.D. 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

'ND so," spoke Vipont, " knowing who I am and 
what I am, you will allow me to come ? You 
will let a murderer be one of your company, 
tread the same road, embark in the same ship, 
journey with you back to Paris ? " 

Thomas of Aquin stopped and looked his companion full in 
the eyes. They were pacing together the cloister of the Do- 
minican house at Anagni. 

" My brother," he answered gently, " why should I say you 
nay? Is there not joy in heaven over the repentant sinner? 
And shall there not be joy upon earth? Did the Master re- 
fuse converse with those whom He came to save? Besides, 
has not His earthly Vicar already loosed the fetters of your 
sin?" 

" True, true," muttered the knight. " Yet I am a murderer 
and an outcast. The blood of God's priest stains my hands. 
And even if the guilt be forgiven, the fact remains. Accursed 
being that I am, what penance shall I do to work a life's 
atonement ? " 

"The penitentiary what penance did he enjoin?" asked 
the friar, anxious to draw him from too morbid a contempla- 
tion of his sin ; for the man's remorse was pitiful to see. 

" I am to build a church at home in Devon and found there 
perpetual Masses in expiation of my crime. Alas! my crime, 
my crime, that yet cries to heaven for vengeance ! Will it ever 
be atoned ? Unhappy man that I am ! The anguish gnaws my 
soul ! I have no tears left in my eyes to deepen the furrows 
on my cheeks ! I am " 

* Copyright in United States, Great Britain, and Ireland. The Missionary Society of St. 
Paul the Apostle in the State of New York. 



756 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Sept., 

" Peace ! " broke in the friar. " That which is loosed on 
earth is loosed also in heaven. You will accomplish this pen- 
ance. You will build a stately church and endow a priest to 
celebrate the mysteries there. That is your part. For the rest, 
your sin is forgiven you. Dwell not upon it ! " 

"I cannot but dwell upon it. It is too awful, too hideous; 
and the burden of my guilt is more than I can bear." 

The unhappy man stood and rocked backwards and forwards 
in the vehemence of his grief. 

"What shall I do? A lifetime spent in penitential exer- 
cise is not too much. The scourge and the castigation of the 
flesh, fasting and silence, penance and prayer. You, my brother, 
I heard your discourse on the religious life at the cathedral 
even you friars, on whose souls the talons of sin are not set 
fast, live penitent and mortified. I, who am torn and scored 
with evil, I" 

" You mistake," the friar interrupted gently. "You mistake. 
We are all prone to evil. No man is exempt. Even among 
the friars there are those whose lives belie their calling. We 
are not all though we may try to be saints. Already there 
is the clash of the contemplative and the active life in the or- 
ders. Already there are relaxations creeping in. There are 
those who do not keep their holy rule." 

" And you say this ? " said Vipont, looking up with a gleam 
of hope in his sunken eyes. "You say this who defended the 
religious life before Pope and cardinals? You, whose profes- 
sion is one so high, so holy, give hope to such as I ? " 

" There is no soul created by God for whom there is not 
hope," answered Brother Thomas solemnly. 

" And even such as I might become a religious ? " 

" Undoubtedly." 

" My brother, what a load you lift from my heart ! Even 
I could embrace the religious life?" 

" But certainly, if no natural ties stand between you and 
the vows." 

"If?" 

" You have a daughter ? " 

"Yes"; Vipont replied wonderingly. "I have a daughter. 
But what of her? How know you that I have a daughter? 
She can enter her aunt's convent. She can become a nun. 
There is no difficulty on that score." 



ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 757 

"You would force her into religion against her will with 
no manifest vocation ? " 

"Force her ? No; I should not force her into a convent 
against her wish. But she will go. She will wish it. If only 
for her father's sake, she will do it." 

" You are certain ? How can you know ? Has she shown 
signs of vocation ? Is her heart set upon serving God in the 
life of the cloister?" 

" Truly, brother, these are questions beside the point. She 
will become a nun if 1 but speak a word to her. She is an 
obedient daughter. And her portion will secure for her some 
post of honor in her convent. She will succeed her aunt, per- 
haps, as Mother Abbess. She will " 

"Sir," Brother Thomas interrupted the knight's reasoning, 
" I have no desire to recall your mind to that remorse that 
preys upon it. If I speak of the murder of the priest, Guy de 
Valletort, I speak without passion and without censure. Who 
am I that I should blame whom God's Vicar has absolved ? 
But bethink you ! Is it not more awful to place a soul in 
jeopardy than to slay a man? Is it not a greater crime to 
force even though it be through obedience and by paternal 
love your daughter into a high and holy state to which she 
is not called, than to send the soul of the priest, de Valletort, 
before his Maker ? Understand me ! If your daughter is called 
by God to serve Him in religion, rejoice indeed, and give Him 
thanks. Put from you the thought of honor, and give her to 
serve Him in the lowest place. But, if she be not called, 
beware how you tamper with the designs of the Almighty ! 
Better for you and for her " 

"But, my brother, how can you speak thus if you believe 
what you said before the Consistory ? How can you place a 
bar between souls and the religious life?" 

Vipont flared up, almost as of old, impetuous and master- 
ful. The Dominican replied gently: 

" I place no barrier. 'Tis the barrier of nature that a 
supernatural hand must remove. If your daughter be called, 
thank God, and prosper her going. If she be not called, thank 
God again, and force her not. But to the point: has she the 
signs of vocation ?" 

"Nay"; replied the knight, bending his eyes upon the 
flagged paving of the cloister. " She is obedient and dutiful ; 



758 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Sept., 

but, on this one point, she is she is A child's fancy, my 
brother; the passing fancy of a maid. She thinks she is in love. 
On this one point she has crossed us. She is unmaidenly and 
froward. She has confessed her love alas ! alas ! that I should 
say it ! for the brother of Sir Guy de Valletort. A poor 
clerk, forsooth ! A beggarly clerk ; though, I confess it, of 
good lineage. But a man of no estate or position. And, my 
God ! my God ! 'tis his own brother for whom I am to do my 
penance ! " 

The friar started as he heard the broken confession of 
Sibilla's love for Arnoul. He laid his hand upon the knight's 
sleeve, as, speaking with a singular tenderness, he said : 

"Sir, let me tell you a story. There was once a young 
man a boy whose desire it was to enter the religious state. 
Every obstacle was placed in his way. His brothers took him 
prisoner, and held him close to prevent him. He escaped. 
His mother wept. He made his heart stone. The Holy Father 
himself argued with him. He pleaded. Threats and tempta- 
tions, imprisonment and bribes, his mother's tears, the Pope's 
intervention yet he is now a friar. The ways of God are 
wonderful and past comprehension. If there is a vocation, it 
will be manifest. If there is none, leave the issue to God." 

The friar spoke with intense feeling. It was the first the 
only time that he had ever spoken of his own entrance into 
religion. Yet it was his own tale he told so briefly and so 
baldly. His words gripped the knight. He straightened his 
bowed form. 

"And what would you have me do?" he" cried. "Would 
you have me publish my Sibilla's unmaidenly love to the world ? 
Who is this Valletort ? An upstart, a clerk, a beggar ! He 
would listen and spurn her the daughter of a murderer. My 
sword rusts with his brother's blood. Nay ; I am accursed and 
lost, but I still have my pride. This Arnoul de Valletort I 
shall give him the half of my possessions. But I shall not 
no, never shall I publish my daughter's madness. Brother ! 
Brother ! Have you no pity for me ? Are the hearts of the 
friars adamant ? Cannot you understand a father's pride ? " 

"I understaud," said Brother Thomas quietly. "Yes, I 
understand ; but God's ways are not our ways. What if this 
youth should love your daughter and sue honorably for her 
hand ? " 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 759 

" But he is naught but a poor clerk." 

"Yet, I have heard, of noble blood." 

" He is a beggar." 

"We are all beggars in the sight of God." 

" An ecclesiastic." 

"Not yet in sacred orders." 

"And he hates the name of Vipont." 

"Your daughter?" 

"Sibilla is a fool, distraught, bewitched. That she should 
bestow her heart unasked and on a beggarly clerk. Besides, 
it is clearly impossible." 

The knight's head sunk forward again and his voice changed : 
" Between them flows an ocean of blood. You forget, my 
brother, that I am a murderer." 

" I forget nothing," replied the friar. "And what is more, 
I know the young man of whom you speak. He is a youth 
both upright and honorable. If your daughter loves him, he 
loves her no less, with an affection true and deep. You ask 
my counsel. Let them love, and leave the issue to God." 

" But, brother, it cannot be. I stand between them and 
the spirit of Sir Guy. How could Arnoul de Valletort marry 
the daughter of his brother's murderer ? " 

" It would heal a feud," answered Brother Thomas. 
" 'Twould be better than to force your daughter into a nunnery. 
Leave the matter to providence. It will come right in the end." 

The knight bowed his head and covered his eyes with his 
hand. A light wind stirred his gray hair and the threadbare 
cloak that he wore. He was altogether pitiful so different 
from the old Knight of Moreleigh. Even the momentary flashes 
of the old pride that made him forget his misery when talking 
to Brother Thomas of Sibilla and Arnoul were the last flicker- 
ings of a pride that was spent. His sunken eyes expressed, in 
those rare moments when they were raised, none of the fierce 
and haughty spirit that once characterized him. He was an 
aged and a broken man, with no hope or wish to do more than 
take refuge in some austere house of penance in atonement 
for his crime. If there was one interest left to him in life, it 
was his daughter Sibilla. Around her person he centered all 
the ancient glories of his house. He was an outcast; but the 
Viponts were not dead. In her the pride that he had lost 
should live again. She should be mistress of Moreleigh. She 



760 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Sept., 

should rule as Mother Abbess in the great Benedictine house 
at Exeter. The love that she had confessed to him was a 
wayward fancy, a hideous mistake. She should conquer it, 
and rise above so low a passion to the true greatness of her 
position. If he were to disappear in some obscure cloister, she 
at least would shine worthy of the Viponts' name and station. 

The unhappy knight had learned but half his lesson. He 
looked upon his crime morbidly but as an isolated factor in 
his own life, not as affecting others. That it could have con- 
sequences, other than the definite separation of Sibilla and Ar- 
noul, he did not seem to realize. He was not selfish, perhaps, 
in the ordinary sense; yet, in this one point, he thought of 
himself alone. 

The Dominican watched him sympathetically. He seemed 
to understand the struggle that was going on in his heart. He 
read the man better than Vipont knew himself; and he knew 
that his appeal to providence would have the effect of calming 
his distracted passions. 

" Will you be ready by two days from now ? " he asked. 
" We travel at daybreak to the sea, and thence by boat to 
France." 

" So soon ! " exclaimed the knight, forgetting grief and 
daughter in his surprise. " I had thought your business here 
not settled. The doctors, it is said, are still instant at the 
court for a reversal of the judgment on the condemned book." 

" Ah ! " said Brother Thomas slowly. " But I have nought 
to do with that. My work here is done, and I return to my 
post at Paris, leaving the whole question to those to whom it 
belongs to settle it. Christian of Beauvais and Odo of Douai 
and Nicholas of Bar have submitted. Only St. Amour stands 
aloof. Please God, his heart, too, will be touched ! " 

" But have the three really submitted ? I understood that 
they were trying to have the Bull revoked, and the condemna- 
tion of the Perils removed." 

" They will not succeed," Brother Thomas answered softly. 
" The future of the mendicant orders is in God's keeping, and 
in that of His Vicar, Alexander." 

" But they have approached Brother Humbert, the General." 

" With no success. What hope could they have had in that 
quarter ? " 

" And they have made suit to the cardinals who judged the 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 761 

book. They have besought Brother Bonaventure to listen to 
them." 

" Vainly/' replied the Dominican. 

" They have produced the instrument drawn up last July 
between the religious and the University." 

"Without effect," said Brother Thomas. The subject was 
evidently distasteful to him. " These things I know. They 
have sued and pleaded and argued in vain. The three I tell 
you of have given way. They have sworn to obey the Su- 
preme Pontiff in all things. The Bull Quasi Lignum they have 
promised to observe to the letter. They are ready to receive 
the friars mendicant into the fellowship of the University and 
never to transfer the schools from Paris. Moreover, when they 
return, they will publicly retract the false and wrongful preach- 
ing that they have made against the friars and their rule, and 
publish in every quarter the condemnation of The Perils of the 
Last Times." 

Thomas of Aquin spoke like a child speaking by rote. The 
humiliation of the University emissaries was for him no cause 
for congratulation. Their scheming and plotting, even their 
outspoken denunciation and defamation of the friars, left him 
unmoved. He was tranquil and calm, because he was above it 
all. Gossip, too, and the tattle that circulated so freely, he 
detested; and so he recounted for Vipont's benefit, and to 
draw him from his sad and remorseful contemplation of him- 
self, just what had taken place, no more. And this he told as 
simply as the matter stood, without color or animation. 

The knight raised his head abruptly, with a trace of his 
old intolerance. He had heard the measured terms of Brother 
Thomas' discourse in the cathedral with wonder. Now, he was 
amazed ; for he had looked for some expression of rancor in 
a private conversation upon the subject, even if it had been 
sedulously kept out of the public address. But, no ; the friar 
was unmoved and impassable. He only opened his eyes in a 
kind of mild surprise as Vipont pursued the subject. 

"Aye! They have given in, the caitiff cowards slinking 
back from their master the Pope like beaten hounds that they 
are ! Leaving their leader to fight his cause alone ! They eat 
their words, these great doctors ! They promise everything and 
swear all oaths. But St. Amour " 

" Enough of this unhappy dispute, Sir Englishman ! Let 



762 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Sept., 

us rather rejoice that the Lord hath touched the hearts and 
opened the eyes of three, at least, of the seculars. And let 
us pray for the fourth, that he may find peace and a good 
conscience. Enough ! Enough ! " 

"But let me speak! It eases me to speak. I feel a cer- 
tain fellowship with the order in pouring out my spleen and 
hatred upon its enemies." 

" And yet, my friend," Brother Thomas replied sadly, " if 
you were of the order, such a word would show how little you 
were of its spirit. Alas, that it should be so ! For there are 
such among us." 

" Then, not being of you, shall I hate as proxy for you all. 
This son of Satan, St. Amour, this proud and puffed up doctor, 
this persecutor of the elect whom may God curse " 

" Silence ! " broke in the friar, his voice trembling with 
emotion. "Curse not the man, but his errors! Bless him, and 
pray for his misguided soul. You do not know his heart, nor 
can you read his conscience." 

"Yet he presumes to defend his teaching and to argue that 
it is true," said Vipont, half abashed at the brother's rebuke. 

"Have you heard his words?" 

"No; but 'tis said" 

"'Tis said. 'Tis said "for Brother Thomas the voice was 
almost petulant " Listen, I shall tell you all. I do not de- 
fend St. Amour. Indeed, I think, I fear, he cannot be defended. 
But neither do I curse. I reprobate and anathematize his er- 
rors; but the man I would win him to the truth. Hearken! 
Thus the matter stands. A copy of his libel was delivered into 
his own hands. Glancing at its contents, he took up his de- 
fence. 

" ' The book,' he said, * has not always had this form. It 
has been written and rewritten, with the greatest care, at least 
five times. I have corrected it and made additions. I have 
cut out and altered and given a more precise sense to all here- 
in advanced. I believe this copy that you show to me is one 
of the third compilation that I made. I am not certain, but I 
think it is the third. Perhaps some defect, some fault, some 
error, has slid into it. The copyist may have altered my orig- 
inal sense. If the Pope has found cause to condemn it, it must 
be for an error of this nature; for I am assured that he does 
not wish to impair or touch in any point the witness of the 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 763 

Holy Scriptures that I have gathered together. If the case be 
thus, far from contradicting his judgment, I adhere to it with 
all obedience. But, if he had seen the fifth, or even the fourth 
compilation of these witnesses, he would have found nothing in 
it to offend any Christian soul. He could have discovered noth- 
ing worthy of censure, nothing to condemn. Rather would he 
have praised me for my labors and approved of the doctrine 
that I teach ! ' " 

" That was his line of argument?" asked Vipont brusquely. 

"So he defended himself," replied the friar. 

" Wounded pride, cowardly shuffling, despicable lying ! If 
his doctrine was judged false, how could he prove it true? 
Let him bring all the texts of the Gospels together, and it avails 
him nothing. It is the interpretation that counts." 

The brother made a gesture of assent; and Vipont con- 
tinued. " Such men are a danger to the world. They twist 
the truth itself to suit their errors. What is to be done to him ? 
Will he be adjudged heretic ? And the punishment what pun- 
ishment will he have ? " 

" He will be deprived indeed, he is already deprived and 
banished from the kingdom of France. God send that he be 
brought to the truth in his banishment ! He will go, doubtless, 
to his estates at St. Amour, in Burgundy." 

" And live there honored and unpunished ! " 

" His doctrine is condemned, his chair taken from him, his 
voice silenced what more could his worst enemy desire ? But, 
sir, neither of us has a right to judge him. I have spoken with 
some heat and at more length than I ought. Forgive me, and 
let us both pray for this poor, misguided man. You will be 
ready to depart with us ? " he asked, abruptly changing the 
subject. 

" Yes, my brother, I shall be ready." 

" And you will leave the whole matter of which we spoke 
to the providence of God ? " 

A shade crossed the knight's face and he sank into his 
brooding melancholy once more. 

" You will let God dispose of your daughter's future ? " 

" Yes, my brother." Vipont's voice came low and trembling. 

" And you will put aside your late uncharitable thoughts of 
the young man, Arnoul de Valletort ? " 

"I have no uncharitable feelings, brother. Indeed, I crave 




764 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Sept., 

his forgiveness for the great wrong I have done him. I shall 
do my best to make him some amends." 

"Of that we shall speak again. It is a long journey to 
Paris. And forgive me for that word 'uncharitable." 1 

" There is nothing to forgive, brother, I bear the youth no 
grudge. Still, it is hard to think of him as beloved by Sibilla, 
the last of the Viponts of Moreleigh. When I think of it my 
wrath returns. I burn with shame and hatred. It is your par- 
don I must crave, brother, not you, mine." 

" We shall pray for one another, all of us, that divine char- 
ity and peace may come down from on high and take posses- 
sion of our souls." 

Brother Thomas stood transfigured, as it were, in the sanc- 
tity of his thought. 

A. slant October ray fell upon his forehead and kissed his 
eyes, that gazed, seemingly, out and through the world of vis- 
ible things to the realities beyond. Vipont looked up at him 
involuntarily ; and, caught in the strange influence of this won- 
derful personality, he fell upon his knees. 

"Your blessing, my brother, and may we in very deed be 
knit together in the bond of love and peace ! " 

The young brother laid his outstretched hands upon the old 
man's bowed head. 

The liquid syllables of the ancient tongue flowed richly from 
his lips. " Benedicat tibi Dominus, et custodiat te. Ostendat 
Dominus faciem suam tibi et misereatur tui. Convertat Domi- 
nus vultum suum ad te y et det tibi pacem. Amen. God be with 
you; and two days from this, we journey to Paris together." 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

On the morning of November the nineteenth a bitterly cold 
morning, by the way, for the heavy gray clouds that the north- 
east wind sent scurrying, low and ragged, across the sky, effec- 
tually prevented any warmth penetrating into the narrow streets 
of the city Arnoul set out from St. Victor's and made his 
way towards the Petit Pont. He walked rapidly, muffling him- 
self in his cloak, stamping his feet upon the stone cobbles of 
the pavement to warm himself. He was, thus early, on his 
way to the Cathedral of Notre Dame. 




i9o8.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 765 

Few persons were abroad. Those whose business forced 
them to be out of bed at such an inclement hour hastened 
along as he, wrapped to eyes and ears in capuce or cloak, look- 
ing neither to right nor left, intent upon the affairs that con- 
demned them to so early and so cold an outing. 

Arnoul passed into the University by the Porte St. Victor, 
crossed the Bievre, near the house of the Cistercians, and made 
at once for the Rue St. Jacques. Turning to the left, he has- 
tened towards the bridge leading to the Island of the City ; 
and, crossing it, he turned again, this time to the right, to- 
wards the Hotel Dieu. As he traversed the open space before 
the Cathedral Church he was aware of a little procession leav- 
ing it. It could hardly be called a procession, so small was 
it; for at most it was composed of six or seven persons has- 
tening like himself, though in a contrary direction, through 
the bitter, gray morning. He would not have noticed it at all 
had he not caught sight of the somber robes of the arch- 
bishop's official. That he should be walking with one of the 
cathedral priests at such an hour and this latter clad in sim- 
ple surplice and black stole arrested his attention. They were 
doubtless on their way to the execution of some poor crimi- 
nal. Such scenes were frequent enough at times, heaven knows 
the black-stoled priest and the bishop's official, or the king's 
official, as the case might be. These meant a burning or a 
hanging something worse, possibly. 

The melancholy procession turned out of the square to- 
wards the right as he entered it, evidently making for the Grand 
Chatelet, and disappeared in the street that leads past the 
Priory of St. Eloy. Arnoul made his way into the cathedral 
and, kneeling in the nave not far from the door, waited for 
the Capitular Mass. He had not been long occupied in his 
devotions before he felt a touch upon his shoulder. Some one 
had followed him into the church. It was Roger, his face 
beaming with good news, his breath coming quick from run- 
ning. 

"Yes?" queried Arnoul, as he turned to see the honest 
eyes looking into his. 

" Dear lad ! " the man panted. " Who, think you, is arrived 
in Paris? I have run all the way from St. Victor's with the 
news, and " ruefully " without leave or license of the sub- 
prior, too, to be the first to tell you." 



766 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Sept., 

" Who ? " asked Arnoul vaguely. " Surely not the abbot ? 
It is too early for him to be voyaging to Citeaux. Who is 
it, Roger?" 

"Ah! That's the news!*' the man exclaimed. "Whom, 
think you, but your Brother Thomas, of whom you are always 
speaking ? " The boy's face lit up with pleasure as Roger 
went on. " And who, think you, is with him has come from 
Italy in his company ? You will never guess, I warrant you ! " 
"Who, then, Roger? Who, indeed? Good things never 
come singly. Is it Brother Bonaventure of the Cordeliers ? " 

"No, lad; guess again." 

" St. Amour in chains, with his libel dangling about his 
neck ? " 

" No ; neither a friar nor a doctor ; but you will never 
guess ! no less than Sigar Vipont himself, on his way from 
Rome to Moreleigh ! " 

"Ah !" A shiver shook the lad's frame. He rose unstead- 
ily to his feet. 

"How do you know this?" he asked. 

" I saw them both with these two eyes of mine," the man 
made answer. " I knew you were looking for the home-coming 
of your friar, and I made friends with the guards at the gates. 
He came by the Porte Papale. As soon as Pierre le Louche 
told me, I made what haste I could to follow them; and I 
saw both knight and friar before they reached the convent of 
St. Jacques. Then I came on here, running all the way, to tell 
you." 

"Thank you, Roger," said the young man earnestly. "You 
are a true, good friend to me; and, God knows, I need friends 
now, if ever I did. With Vipont here in Paris, and Barthelemy 
plotting to ensnare us both " 

" Barthelemy ! " exclaimed Roger, turning pale under his 
tan. " Barthelemy, the alchemist, the astrologer ? " 

"Yes"; Arnoul answered, wondering at the man's de- 
meanor. "What of him?" 

" And have you not heard ? Did I not tell you ? I had 
thought every soul in University, town, and city knew by this 
time ! Barthelemy the sorcerer my God ! he was a friend of 
y 0urs ? he is to be burnt within an hour at the stake in the 
Place de Greve." 

"Burnt!" cried the lad, horrified at the thought. "Burnt! 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 767 

What has he done ? Bad as he is Oh, blessed saints ! To 
be burnt alive ! " 

He started back in dismay, forgetful of the place and time. 
In the far distance the choir of canons was singing the in terra 
pax hominibus bones voluntatis of the Gloria. 

" Burnt ! Just heaven ! What has he done that he should 
be tied to the stake ? " 

" Done," answered Roger drily. " What has he not done ? 
From all one can hear this morning and the whole place 
rings with it he is guilty of every imaginable offence. He is 
a wizard and a sorcerer who holds communion with the devil. 
At least that's what every one is saying. He is a poisoner, 
too, and a friend of Michael Scot. He's been in hiding for the 
last twenty years at the court of the Emperor Frederick. In 
hiding for he was condemned twenty years ago for the crime 
of heresy. But come out into the square, lad, and I shall tell 
you what I know, and if you listen you shall hear all, for 
everybody is talking." 

They left the cathedral and found themselves at once in a 
sort of backwater of the stream of people pouring across the 
island on their way from the University to the town. The 
square, almost deserted when Arnoul had passed through it an 
hour before, was alive now with hurrying forms. Arnoul plied 
the man with questions. His brain began to recover from the 
sudden shock caused by the two facts so unexpectedly thrust 
into it. He strove to piece together a coherent story from the 
scraps of information that Roger could give. 

"When was Maitre Barthelemy taken?" he asked. 

"A week agone, at least," said Roger. 

"And where?" 

"In his dwelling behind the haunted chateau. 'Tis there 
he sold himself to the devil, they say." 

" Was any one taken with him ? " The question came sharp 
and anxious. 

"No one that I have heard of"; replied Roger. "At least 
that is there was some mention of a clerk being appre- 
hended ; but after the trial he was set at liberty." 

"Great saints, how awful! How terrible!" exclaimed the 
lad. And then : " What was the accusation ? Where was he 
tried? Who sentenced him ? How know you he is condemned ?" 
The words came with a rush from the quivering lips. 



768 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Sept., 

" One question at a time, dear master," protested Roger. 
" God wot, I am not the official, to know everything. That he 
is condemned is clear; for, if you hasten, you will see him 
burnt. Therefore, he must have been condemned. And for 
what ? And by whom ? By whom but by the two officials, 
severally and jointly. The proof, they say, was positive, his 
identity, his evil- doing, his witchcraft. He bore marks of the 
trial by fire. His right hand was burnt to a cinder. Maitre 
Jehan, canon of the cathedral, recognized him and swore, with 
others, to his person. He was accused of heresy, of sorcery. 
Some say that he is not human, but a vampire, and will not 
burn." 

" And Vipont ? " asked Arnoul suddenly. 

They were being whirled along in the thick of the crowd 
now, over the Pont au Change and through the Chatelet to- 
wards the Greve. Had they wished to go back it would have 
been impossible, for a great concourse of townspeople filled the 
Chatelet Square, and surged forward to the entrance of the 
street that led to the Greve. All the narrow streets were pouring 
forth their streams of people, the two bridges providing scant 
passage for those who were coming from University and city, 
clerks and students, ecclesiastics and civilians, with women 
everywhere. Paris had not had such an interesting burning to 
look forward to for many a long day. 

"Vipont," ejaculated Roger, striving to keep his place by 
Arnoul's side ; " you would not know him, he is so changed. 
But you will assuredly see him yourself. He is certain to rest 
awhile here after his long voyage. Saints ! what a press ! Make 
towards the left, over there, where the Greve is freer." 

They stood at the outskirts of the throng in the Place de 
Greve. A dull sort of humming rose from the crowd. It was 
good-humored and expectant, discussing the taking and trial 
of the sorcerer. In the center of the place, but nearer the 
river than the houses of the town, a low platform or scaffold 
of rough, unhewn wood was raised. It consisted merely of 
lengths of timber lately cut, and stood on low supports driven 
into the ground. In the center one stake protruded from the 
unsightly mass, rising to a height of some five or six feet above 
the platform. A layer of faggots was heaped about its base, 
while a pile of dry wood was stacked upon the ground close 
by. The gray clouds were still racing across the sky. 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 769 

Suddenly a trumpet sounded from the Chatelet, and the peo- 
ple shivered. 

The crowd opened right and left as with a brisk step a de- 
tachment of the king's guard crossed the square and stationed 
itself around the place of execution. It was followed closely 
by the two officials, one of whom Arnoul had seen in the morn- 
ing, several notaries, and the black-stoled priest. 

In the tense silence that followed the blare of the trumpet 
his low voice could be heard monotoning the psalms of the 
office of the dead. Then, pinioned by soldiers, came the black 
form of the magician, Barthelemy. He walked with a slouch- 
ing gait, his great head sawing up and down, and a frightened 
look in his shifty eyes. His lower lip hung loosely and he 
mumbled incoherently to himself as he walked. 

Whatever official formality was necessary had apparently al- 
ready taken place, for he was led straight to the stake and 
hurriedly chained to it. He had been handed over to the 
king's justice. 

Every eye was fixed upon him as he stood, or rather, leaned, 
hanging forward over the chain that encircled his waist. His 
head was yet free, and the executioner was fumbling with the 
iron collar that was to fix his neck to the stake. The priest 
stood close by him, upon the pile itself, whispering into his 
ear. Suddenly he raised his head and held himself erect, his 
face twisted, his eyes glaring, and poured out a stream of blas- 
phemies so terrible that even the crowd shrank in horror. The 
priest made a gesture of despair, and strove to speak to him. 
The executioner, seizing his opportunity, slipped the chain about 
his throat and, passing it behind the stake, fixed it there. He 
drew the two ends of a thin rawhide cord, that seemed twisted 
in and out of the links at the back together and tied them in 
a loose running knot. Then he made a sign to the priest to 
descend. The soldiers drew up close. The condemned man 
raved and cursed, growing purple in the face with his impo- 
tent fury. The chains prevented him from falling forward, but 
every now and then his head slipped down sideways as far as 
the iron links permitted, and he mowed and gibbered vacantly. 
Then he would pull his head up again with a jerk and, the 
light of madness in his eyes, scream out his blasphemy and 
cursing once more. 

VOL. LXXXVII 49 



770 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Sept., 

The executioner crawled beneath the low scaffold, and in a 
moment the curling blue smoke showed that the pile was lighted. 
His assistants heaped the dry wood upon the faggots up to 
the malefactor's knees. He blasphemed on unheeding. 

A piercing shriek rent the air, and a girl struggled forward 
from the crowd. 

"Father!" she cried, "Father!" And she strove to break 
through the ring of soldiers. 

Barthelemy turned his head and cursed her, as she fell faint- 
ing to the earth. 

A tongue of flame ran up through the crackling faggots and 
licked his feet. A wreath of pungent smoke was driven across 
the packed throng. It wrapped him round like a winding sheet, 
and trailed off, torn by the wind, above his head. The flames 
were rising to his knees. Yet he blasphemed. 

Then the executioner jumped up suddenly behind him upon 
the scaffold. Seizing the ends of the cord that he had been 
so careful to tie, he drew them tight with a quick jerk and 
fixed them to the stake. This was mercy the mercy of the 
fire. Barthelemy's eyes started from his head. His blasphemies 
were silenced forever. His lips went black. For an instant 
his hands worked spasmodically and then were still. The lick- 
ing tongue of fire mounted to his breast. Thick curling masses 
of smoke wrapped him round. But he was already dead. The 
fire wreaked its vengeance upon a corpse. The gusts of wind 
wafted the sickening odor of charred flesh towards the crowd. 

Arnoul turned, sickened, from the hideous spectacle. He 
had covered his face with his hands long before, but, wedged 
in by the crowd, had not been able to leave the spot. Now 
he staggered and would have fallen had not Roger supported 
him and half dragged, half pushed him away. How they man- 
aged to win clear of the throng Roger never knew, but by dint 
of dogged pushing and elbowing at last they were free. They 
did not look back to see the people pressing forward to get a 
closer sight of the execution, but they heard the hoarse clamor 
that heralded the end ; and, even where they stood, the reek 
of the burning came to them. 

So, having fought their way out, sick and faint, and in utter 
silence, they regained the deserted University. 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 771 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

In the afternoon a messenger came to the abbey from the 
Convent of St. Jacques. Brother Thomas of Aquin desired to 
see Maitre Arnoul, if possible, at once. 

Of course it was possible, and he returned with the mes- 
senger, his mind yet reeling with the events of the morning, 
apprehensive of a meeting with Vipont. 

It was as he expected. Both Brother Thomas and Sir Sigar 
awaited him. But there was not, at the first, at any rate, the 
abrupt awkwardness that might have been looked for in the 
meeting of the three men. The personality of the friar, the 
friend and confidant of both the others, robbed the situation 
of most of its difficulty and embarrassment. He came forward 
with a kindly smile upon his usually impassive face, and grasped 
the young man's hand in his. 

" So ! " he exclaimed, and his voice was richer and more 
magnetic than ever. " So ! we are back in Paris once more. 
We have come safely, by God's grace, through perils of sea 
and land, and have reached home again at last. And how has 
it fared with you, Maitre Arnoul, in the meantime ? Nay, tell 
me not, lad ; for I already know. I can see that you have 
kept your promises and" he nodded his head slowly two or 
three times " I can see that you have won safe through the 
straits to which you have been put in keeping them." 

His searching eyes seemed to read the boy's very soul and 
to discover there the story of his struggles and temptations. 

" See ! " Brother Thomas continued. "We have had a com- 
panion on our voyage one you know, or knew, in your Devon 
home. Arnoul, are you ready to forgive him as you yourself 
would be forgiven ? " 

The young man bent his eyes to the ground and a dull 
flush crept slowly over his face. He thought of his brother 
lying far away in Woodleigh churchyard. He thought of Sibilla 
alone in her cell at Exeter. It was a hard, sharp struggle, 
brought thus face to face with the murderer, and asked to 
forgive him freely, but it was a short one. Still keeping his 
eyes averted, he answered in a scarcely audible voice: "My 
brother, as far as in me lies, I forgive all my enemies as I 
would" 



772 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Sept., 

The friar uttered a sigh of relief. This was the one point 
that he had not quite been able to foresee when he brought 
the two men together and committed the issue to God. Vi- 
pont sprang forward, interrupting him. 

" De Valletort, I have most grievously wronged you. I 
have wronged you above measure and beyond repair. Can you 
have you forgiven even me ? " 

Arnoul faltered. Raising his face for an instant, he caught 
the burning gaze of Sir Sigar fixed upon him, the almost 
troubled eyes of Brother Thomas watching him. He looked 
away again. 

"As far as I can forgive, I have forgiven," he said, the 
color ebbing, leaving him deathly pale. 

The knight stretched out his hand, but, catching sight of 
the revulsion stamped upon the lad's features, dropped it again 
with a sigh. 

Brother Thomas intervened. "Arnoul, if you say that you 
forgive, you must forgive freely and wholly." 

Again the dull flush crept into the lad's cheek. 

"You must forgive as God forgives without reserve." 

His breath seemed to catch in his throat, a sensation of op- 
pression to come about his heart. The brother's voice, the 
brother's personality, was making itself felt. 

"You must not grudge charity in your forgiveness, nor 
stifle it with self-love." 

Something like a tear glistened for a moment on the lad's 
cheek. Slowly he raised his eyes and held out a trembling 
hand to Vipont. Brother Thomas had conquered the first 
citadel. 

But there was another to storm and subdue, and to this 
Arnoul must lay siege for himself. 

Vipont's demeanor had changed on the instant. He seemed 
to throw off the weight of years in the relief of the reconcilia- 
tion. What the Papal absolution from censure had not done, 
what the certain fulfilment of his penance could not do for him, 
the touch of de Valletort's hand had accomplished. He was 
suddenly younger and less bent. The very lines seemed softened 
upon his brow, and around the hollows of his eyes. He almost 
smiled, though he could hardly speak for his emotion. At 
length he regained command over himself and thanked de Val- 
letort brokenly and humbly for his forgiveness. And as he 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 773 

spoke his tones grew vibrant and strong as of yore. He be- 
came the old Sir Sigar at his best, polished and courteous, 
without a trace of the violent intolerance that had been the 
cause of all his misfortunes. 

Before him stood Arnoul, grown, since he had last looked 
upon him, into manhood. What a strong, fine fellow he was, 
to be sure ! The knight ran over his points, as one would run 
over the good points of a horse, summing him up the swell of 
the muscles in the neck that spoke of healthy strength, the 
clear, bronzed complexion, the frank gray eyes, the set and 
poise of the head. The lad was tall almost as tall as Sigar 
himself and developed in proportion. 

What a girth of chest he had, this clerk of Paris ! And 
the pity of it was that he was a clerk, with an ambition bounded, 
probably, by a canon's stall, an aim no higher than a church 
lawyer's task. 

His heart warmed to this brother of the man whom he had 
slain; and, as he thanked him, he pondered how he could best 
offer him some substantial token of his repentance without of- 
fending the lad's pride of feeling. 

At last it came, brusquely enough, it seemed to the poor 
knight, who tripped and stumbled in his words as he made it. 
And yet there was a certain delicacy in his offer of one of 
the richest manors of Moreleigh. The proffered gift, with all 
the rents, revenues, and manorial rights it implied, was cer- 
tainly no mean one ; and, what is more, the fields and forests 
and moorland tracts that it included had anciently belonged to 
the house of Valletort. Arnoul knew the manor well. Sir 
Guy had pointed it out to him many times as part of the 
ancient heritage that should have been his. 

But he would not hear of accepting it at the hands of 
Vipont. Gently as he might, but firmly, he refused the knight's 
offer. It was blood- money! How could he take it? 

Sir Sigar hesitated ; but he was not silenced. Thinking 
that other fields and forests might prove a greater temptation 
to the clerk, he made offer, one after another, of parcels of 
his vast lordship. But Arnoul steadily refused any gift soever, 
and at last poor Sir Sigar, perplexed and distressed, broke out : 

" Is there nothing I can give to you, de Valletort, to prove 
the sincerity of my sorrow ? Have I no possession worthy of 
you that I can offer ? Or will you stop short in your forgive- 



774 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Sept., 

ness, and spoil all by not letting me make such poor repara- 
tion as I can ?" 

Thus addressed, Arnoul looked Sir Sigar full in the face, 
and spoke. 

" Sir, I have no desire for your pasture lands or forests, 
though I recognize the kindness that prompts your noble offers. 
I could accept no rich gifts, even did I need them, at your 
hand in recompense for my brother. You have nothing with 
which to atone for his death. I have forgiven you, Sir Sigar. 
Thank Brother Thomas there that I have been able to do so. 
But one thing will I ask of you, neither gold, nor lands, nor 
lordship. Sir, I love your daughter, Sibilla. Give her me to 
wife/' 

The Lord of Moreleigh started back, the smile gone from 
his lips. It was his turn to raise the old barrier of his pride 
against the newly-made reconciliation. The fierce opposition 
stilled by Brother Thomas at Anagni, when the possibility 
seemed so far off, surged anew in his heart now that de Valle- 
tort actually sued for Sibilla's hand. 

"It may not be," he said sharply. "It cannot be." 

But Arnoul, once he had burst through the gates of reserve 
went on. 

" Sir, believe me, I love your daughter truly. I know I 
have nothing to offer but an ancient name, but I can carve a 
fortune for her with my own arms Give me but time and I 
shall prove myself no unworthy suitor. Or, if you cannot be- 
troth her to me, give me at least leave to win her for my- 
self" 

"You are a clerk," said Vipont bitterly. "Take the manor 
I offer you and go your way while I go mine. I cannot give 
my only daughter to you. You ask too much. Anything else 
to the half of what I possess but not this." 

"Sir, I ask nothing but leave to win your daughter's heart." 

"You cannot ask it, being what you are." 

"Yet I ask, and ask again." 

"You are a clerk and not a knight." 

" A clerk, truly, but I can win my spurs." 

"And how?" 

" I shall become squire to some good knight and do battle 
for my honor that I may prove myself worthy of the Lady 
Sibilla." 






1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 775 

" But your vows ! " 

De Valletort laughed aloud. " I have taken none. I am 
as free to go from the University as you to leave Paris. Give 
me but one word of hope, and I shall prove it to you." 

" Lad," said Vipont, his heart going out to the boy and 
his old traditions of knighthood glowing in his breast, "I be- 
lieve you. But where will you find a knight to take you as 
his squire ? " 

" I know not," Arnoul replied. " But surely in this land of 
France there are knights and lords in plenty. I shall find one, 
never fear, if you do but give me hope." 

"Is it possible?" Vipont muttered to himself. He turned 
to the friar standing silently by. " Brother," he said, so low 
that de Valletort could not hear him. " Brother, think you, 
might I become his knight ? I like this boy. His spirit goes 
straight to my heart. I shall commission an architect to be- 
gin my church, and ere it is finished in the building, he will 
have won his spurs. If he can do this, and prove his valor, 
he shall have my Sibilla. Then will the church be built, the 
penance done, my girl provided for, and I can go at last into 
a peaceful refuge where I may atone for my crime." 

The old knight began valiantly enough, but his speech 
ended with a ring of sadness. It seemed impossible to him 
that Brother Thomas would approve his so suddenly matured 
scheme. But the friar was a mystery. For a few moments he 
bent his head in thought. Then he said slowly: "There is no 
reason why you should not do this thing. The lad will, with- 
out doubt, prove himself worthy. He has no vocation. Let 
him win the maid. But, bethink you, can you take the field ? 
Where will you lead him? What cause will you espouse?" 

" Those are simple questions to answer," the knight made 
reply. " I am not so old but I have strength enough to teach 
him the courtesies of chivalry. He will find his lord and win 
his spurs here in France. He has a stout heart and daring. 
Mark how he spoke ! And he will always fight on the side of 
the right. Come, brother, already I love the boy, whose life 
I have so far spoiled. Give me the word and I shall teach 
him how to win Sibilla. Afterwards I shall persevere in my 
intention and seek some cell where I may purge my sin by 
penance, and die at last in peace." 




776 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Sept., 

Then he turned to Arnoul again, asking : " How old are 
you, de Valletort?" 

" Twenty," answered Arnoul, wondering. 

"You have never been a page?" 

"No; you know I was brought up at Buckfast with the 
monks." 

" A pity ! A thousand pities ! You should have been a 
page when you were eight; at fifteen or sixteen squire to a 
knight. You would have learned all chivalry by this time. 
Still, it might be done/' he muttered to himself. " Such things 
have been done before. It shall not fail for lack of trying." 

" You can ride ? " he questioned aloud. 

Arnoul laughed, a frank, ringing laugh. 

"Ride? I should think so. What lad from the moorlands 
of Brent or Holne but can ride?" 

"And you are strong. Your clerkly life has not turned 
your muscle into fat. And well-knit, too. Yes, it might be 
done ; it might be done. Listen to me, de Valletort. You 
have lost full twelve years of training for the accolade ; though, 
even with the monks, you doubtless learnt something. They 
have taught you gentleness and reverence, at least, in the 
cloister, such as befits a good knight no less than a true re- 
ligious. What you have not learned you can learn apace now. 
What say you to becoming my squire for a year ? I shall 
teach you all the knightly lore that I know. A murrain upon 
the king that he has stopped the tourneys! But you shall 
ride with me and learn. There are no near wars afoot where 
we could serve ; besides this old carcass would be in but sorry 
plight in warfare now. But, war or no war, I shall train you ; 
and when the time comes, if you are an apt pupil, I myself 
shall stand sponsor for you at your knightly consecration. 
Then when you stand a knight proved and dubbed you have 
my leave to lay siege to my daughter's heart." 

" Sir," said Arnoul, thoroughly mystified by the knight's 
sudden change of front for his eyes now sparkled with eager- 
ness and excitement, and he seemed as anxious to remove all 
obstacles to the suit by getting the boy knighted as a moment 
before he had violently opposed it " Sir, what you propose 
justifies any fair means of attaining it. I love Sibilla and will 
shrink at nothing to win her. I would be your squire without 



i9o8.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 777 

a second thought I would bear your arms with joy but you 
you are old, too old to take the field again. Your age for- 
bids it. I shall find some good knight, be sure, who will take 
me as his squire and " 

But Vipont interrupted him. " There is no necessity to take 
the field, de Valletort," he said. "Indeed you are right. I 
could not, if I would. But I can instruct you in knightly bear- 
ing and in all the practices of chivalry. And thus, tutored by 
me, and sponsored by me, you will come in the ordinary course 
to your consecration. No; it is not necessary to protest. I 
am an old man and a knight whose days of deeds are passed ; 
but who better than her father, failing others of your own 
blood, could fit you for knighthood and my daughter ? " 

The words rang like clarions in the young man's brain. 
Should he accept this offer, at least, with all its attendant train 
of favors, or refuse? He looked towards the friar. Perhaps 
he would help him to decide. But Brother Thomas was dream- 
ing, seemingly, or wrapped in contemplation. His expression 
was placid and spiritual. If he had heard what the knight 
was saying to the young man, he had apparently paid no at- 
tention to it. 

"You mean," said Arnoul to Sir Sigar, "that you will teach 
me all that befits a knight to know, so that I may come to 
that estate without deeds of prowess ? " 

"Yes, that is it " ; Vipont made reply. " But it is an hon- 
orable service. Now that the Crusades hang slack, and joust- 
ing is not as it was, there is scarce another way. Come, de 
Valletort, do you accept my offer ? " 

"Where, then, should we ride?" 

"Time enough to think of that. Here to begin with. Later, 
perchance, to Burgundy or even back to Devon. It may be 
that I shall have to overlook the building of the church." And 
the old knight sighed. 

" You promise me that, when once I stand before you as a 
knight, you will listen to my suit?" 

"You make no suit to me, de Valletort, that I should 
hearken." 

"You will give consent to my making suit to" the name 
came softly from his lips " SibiIJa ? " 

"You have my consent." 



778 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Sept., 

"'Tis well ! Sir, I accept your offer. For a year I am your 
man. I will be obedient and attentive to your instruction. 
Brother, Brother Thomas!" he cried. "You who have coun- 
seled me and heartened me, have you heard ? I am Sir Sigar's 
squire ! He takes me as his squire to train me for knight- 
hood. Do you approve ? Do you bless this resolve ? Or am 
I wrong faithless to Guy ? " 

" Oh Blessed Mary ! " groaned Vipont. " And am I wrong ? 
It might have been Nunant. Old Nunant would have taken 
him. Is it wrong for me, an accursed man and his brother's 
slayer, to stand sponsor for him before the king?" 

The Dominican turned towards the young man, the pupils 
of his eyes contracting as though focussed to an unusual ob- 
ject. 

" I approve," he said briefly. " And I bless. You have 
forgiven all, Arnoul ? " 

"I have forgiven all." 

"And you, Sir Knight, you accept the lad as suitor for 
your daughter's hand ? " 

"Provided he be dubbed a knight, I accept him." 

" 'Tis well, indeed," said the friar, " Remember, Master 
Squire, the meaning of the office that you seek. There are 
true knights and false, just as there are true clerks and false, 
good religious and bad. In this world light and shadows inter- 
mingle. As it is the office of the friar to be poor and humble, 
a man given to prayer and penance, austere, zealous, and, 
above all, obedient, so it is that of the true knight to be a 
Christian worthy of the arms he bears. His to be valiant in 
his service, faithful to his lord, a succorer of the poor and the 
oppressed, defender of the wronged, upholder of virtue, and, 
above all, true to his God, his king, and his own knighthood. 

"And you, Sir Knight," he added, turning to Vipont, "me- 
thinks you have a call to other and to higher service. This 
work is permitted you for a season. Look to it that you do 
not lose, but rather gain, in teaching this young man his knightly 
craft. Close not the ears of your heart to the voice that speaks 
to you. Let not the din and clamor of the world drown its 
whisper. Be faithful faithful both. And may God have you 
in His keeping! " 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 779 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

The new squire had much to learn. All that he would have 
come to know as a page, waiting upon his lord and lady in 
their baronial hall gentleness, faithfulness, obedience Vipont 
drilled into him from morning until night. The Lord of More- 
leigh was never tired of recounting tales of his own boyhood ; 
and his early Cistercian training had already formed Arnoul on 
lines that made it easy to practise all that Sir Sigar taught him. 
All save for one thing; and that his love for Sibilla supplied. 

The older man was evidently living in the past, and took 
an almost childish pleasure in teaching the novice whom he had 
adopted. But he never alluded, not by so much as a single 
word, to his daughter. He spoke of the high ideal, the chival- 
rous devotion, that a true knight ought to have for his lady. 
But his speech was of a lady that was not of flesh and blood. 
And the young man, sharp-witted and quick to understand, 
throned his heart's image in the niche that Vipont decked with 
high and noble sentiments, and silenced the word that was ever 
on his tongue. 

He was taught to tilt with a blunted lance at a target, a 
shield swinging from a fixed post first on foot, as he ran past 
it, then mounted upon the charger that had been provided for 
him. It was dull work, especially at first ; but the interest 
grew as he learned to rush full gallop at the swaying blazon 
and, with one straight thrust breaking its leathern supports, bear 
it away from the post and hurl it to the ground. 

Proficient in lance play, he was initiated into the mysteries 
of the sword. Sir Sigar, feeling himself too old to teach him, 
engaged a master skilled in the use of long glaive and stab- 
bing sword. But he was ever present at the young man's les- 
sons, applauding and shouting out encouragement as he thrust 
and parried and hewed at the opposing blade of his master. 
Lance and cross hilt and pointed sword and faussar one by one 
he mastered them all. His quick eye and youthful strength helped 
him, and before long he knew as much as his tutor could teach. 

Clad in a suit of closely woven hemp, to which steel rings 
were sewed in overlapping rows, so that the surface turned the 
sharpest sword, protected at elbow and knee and shoulder with 
polayns, vambraces, and shoulder plates, and wearing a low steel 



780 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Sept., 

helmet over the conical mailed hood that protected forehead 
and chin, he parried the thrusts and blows that the quick sword 
of Master Alain rained upon him. A great pad of quilted cot- 
ton protected the lower part of his hauberk; and, even in the 
practice, he wore the steel alcato beneath the helmet. Alto- 
gether he was weighted with the unaccustomed burden of full 
armor. But, little by little, he became used to the heavy mail, 
and more and more dexterous in his fence. The stiffness of 
the hauberk and the vambraces impeded him somewhat, until 
he learned to strike wide from the shoulder, guarding his body 
the while with the circular buckler that hung on his left arm. 

In the horse exercise he was more at home from the first. 
One had but to sit straight and hold the lance well aimed, and 
ride hard ; and Arnoul, mailed coat and chausses and all, sat 
his beast as though he were one piece with it. Old Vipont 
shouted approval: and Roger, who was nearly always present 
at these warlike exercises, grinned and chuckled as, with a sound 
of tearing leather, the wooden shields came tumbling to the 
ground, and de Valletort reined his horse upon its haunches 
not a spear's length from the post. He made a fine picture, 
too, sitting on his sleek and glossy mount, whose silken hous- 
ings were dispensed with in lance practice. Lithe and grace- 
ful, notwithstanding the thickness of the mail, every steel ring 
on hauberk and hood and chausses glittering like silver in the 
sun, the long, straight shaft of the blunted lance poised easily 
with its pennon fluttering, and beneath the helmet and above 
the collarium, where the square opening of the hood was, ruddy 
cheeks and bright eyes looking out he made a fine picture, 
indeed, for Sir Sigar and Roger and Master Alain to look on. 

And thus they waited in Paris through the winter, until the 
soft, green buds of springtide began to break on tree and hedge- 
row, Vipont giving advice and applause, and Master Alain the 
practice, while honest Roger looked on and chuckled as he saw 
his own Master Arnoul develop into so great and so doughty 
a warrior. 

And when the spring had fairly come, and the birds began 
to build their nests in the leafy branches, Sir Sigar bade his 
squire and Roger prepare to ride abroad. They were to take 
road to the sea, and cross over into England once more ; for 
the knight was anxious about the building of his church, and 
wished to see its walls rising with his own eyes. 



1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 781 

There were three thoughts now that occupied him Sibilla, 
the fulfilment of his penance, and Arnoul. He was quite ready 
to betroth the two when Moreleigh Church was built, and be- 
fore he found his rest in the abbey cloister. But first de Val- 
letort must be dubbed knight, and that, he thought, would be 
as easy of accomplishment in England as in France. Baldwin 
de Redvers would surely give him the accolade, or even Henry 
himself, if he could be got at. 

Before they left Paris and France, to ride through Normandy 
to the sea, they were to have audience with that greatest of 
all monarchs, King Louis IX. 

Arnoul had seen Brother Thomas from time to time during 
the winter. Twice he had spoken with him. He was to meet 
him for the last time in the king's palace. It was only a few 
days before their departure that he and Vipont rode from their 
hostelry near the temple to the city. Leaving their steeds with 
the pages in the great courtyard, they were admitted to the 
throne chamber of the king. He was seated, not upon the throne 
under its dais, but upon a low settle or couch covered with 
cushions and brocades. His dress was of the finest and richest 
materials, but plain in the extreme and unrelieved by any or- 
nament. A short cloak of black figured silk hung back from 
his shoulders, while his sleeveless vest and undervest of dark 
grayish-brown were guiltless of either gold or jewels. His long, 
flowing hair fell to the shoulders from under a little cap. 

The king was not alone. The major-domo of the palace, a 
group of lords and king's knights, a pair of court chaplains, 
were in the room, and seated near the king himself was the 
prior of St. Jacques with another friar, whose head was bent 
so low that his face was invisible. 

Louis received them kindly and spoke to them of England 
and the king. 

"Not so long," he said," since our brother of England was 
with us, and his queen, our sister. You have not forgotten, I 
warrant me ! " this with a side look at Arnoul. 

"Our good students of Paris," he continued, "had a gay 
time while that same brother of England lodged at the temple." 

Arnoul colored under the king's gaze. How did Louis know 
that he had been a student, he wondered. The king meanwhile 
toyed with a little metal cross that he held in his hand. 

And now he is back in his kingdom. He is a good king 



, 



782 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Sept., 

a good king," he murmured. "But his barons Who knows? 
Who knows ? " 

Suddenly the friar raised his head and brought his closed 
hand down with a bang on the low table before him. Arnoul 
recognized the face. It was that of Brother Thomas. King 
Louis started slightly, and the prior looked dismayed. 

"I have it! I have it! came the rich, full tones of the 
brother's voice, half dreamily, half triumphantly. "This argu- 
ment is conclusive against the Manicheans ! " 

The prior pulled at his habit. " My Brother Thomas ! 
Brother Thomas ! Remember where you are ! " he whispered. 
"The king! The palace! 

But Louis only smiled as the friar, recalled to himself by 
the voice of his superior, began an apology for his distraction, 
and the king, calling one of the chaplains to his side, bade him 
then and there commit the argument to writing, lest it should 
be lost. 

"The words of our Brother Thomas," he said, "are words 
of gold too precious to lose, too weighty to carry in the 
memory. Write them down, write them fair and clear, Maitre 
Robert, as though you copied a page of Holy Writ itself." 

And while the scribe made ready his materials and took 
down the words of the argument from the lips of Brother 
Thomas, the king turned again to Arnoul. "So! You are the 
young squire who aspires for the honor of knighthood ! 'Tis 
a noble calling and one of which princes and even kings are 
proud. To fight for justice's sake, to deliver the blessed sepul- 
chre from painim hands You have thought of this ? " 

"Yes, sire"; de Valletort answered modestly. "But there 
is no fighting in the Holy Land." 

"True! true!" King Louis sighed. "The Lord of Hosts 
has not blessed our arms. We bore too many sins with us to 
the conquest of the infidel. But we shall make the attempt, 
please God, again, when our forced truce is over." Then he 
added abruptly: "You are a strong fellow, Master Squire. 
You will make a strong knight. See that you be a worthy 
one. Do you seek knighthood of us?" 

But Vipont interposed. "No, sire; he has been squire but 
a few months, and there is more for him to learn ere he can 
lay claim to his knightly spurs. We ride for England in a day 
or so. Perchance King Henry may raise him to knight's estate." 






1908.] ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN 783 

By this time the king's amanuensis had taken down the 
reasoning of the friar, and Louis turned towards him. 

"Well, my Brother Thomas, what think you of our young 
squire your young squire, perhaps I ought to say ? Here is 
a sturdy recruit lost to the Friars Preachers ! Bethink you, is 
it better to be a friar or a knight?" 

" It is as God wills, sire. There are some He wishes to be 
knights of the Lady Poverty, others knights of the sword ; for 
there are many gifts. This youth has no vocation to a friar's 
life ; but, if God so wills, he will make a good knight. What- 
e'er or where'er he be, he can serve God truly." 

" I am a knight," the king exclaimed, " and I am a friar ! 
A knight to fight the battles of the Cross, but a friar in my 
love for the two orders ! Could I tear myself in twain, and 
give one-half to my brothers the Preachers, the other to my 
brothers the Minors, I would be content." 

Brother Thomas smiled. "Sire, you are a knight indeed, 
and you are a friar indeed, if love for Christ can make you 
both. And you are a king as well. But knight or friar or 
king, 'tis all one, so long as you serve God and fear Him." 

King Louis rose from the settle and pushed his long hair 
back from his brow. "You say truly, my brother. It is the 
spirit that quickeneth ; and, by the spirit, verily I am both 
knight and friar. Your blessing, my brothers ! " And the king 
inclined his head as Brother Thomas knelt humbly beside him, 
giving place to the prior, his superior, who traced the sign 
of the cross above them both. It was the sign that their au- 
dience was over. Together knight and squire left the chamber 
with the two Dominicans. 

But before they mounted and rode away, Arnoul had a 
word with the brother alone. 

" You have heard/' he asked, " that we depart shortly for 
England ? " 

" I heard it ; and may peace ride with you ! " 

" It may be, brother, that I never return to France." 

"That is as God wills." 

"And never see you again." 

" On earth possibly. God grant that we may meet in 
heaven ! " 

" I can never thank you enough, brother, for all that you 
have done for me." 



784 ARNOUL THE ENGLISHMAN [Sept. 

" No thanks, my son, are due to the servant. Thank the 
Master for His loving kindness. You do not praise the chisel 
that cuts the stone, but the hand that points it." 

" Still I would thank you for your goodness. I have never 
thanked you, and you have done so much for me. But tor you, 
brother, and your helping hand where should I be now?" 

"Thank me then, my child, by loving God. Be a good 
Christian in a world of evil, a true knight where there are 
many false." 

"That, with God's help, will I. But, my brother, before 
I go The king asked you for your blessing, but the prior 
blessed. You will not refuse to bless me and my new life ? A 
blessing that will go with me in all my undertakings. A bless- 
ing that will strengthen me in every trial the blessing of the 
hand that raised me when I was in the mire " 

De Valletort fell upon his knees and caught the friar's hand 
in his, raising it reverently to his lips. Vipont's voice called 
to him from the courtyard. Brother Thomas drew his hand 
away and laid it gently upon the lad's head. With eyes up- 
raised to heaven he called down the blessings of the Almighty 
upon the young squire's every undertaking. The accents of 
his musical voice struck on the lad's ears and the words sank 
deep into his heart : " Benedicat te omnipotcns Deus, Pater, et 
Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus." 

De Valletort rose to his feet. Vipont was calling him again. 
With a hasty gesture of farewell, his eyes met those of Brother 
Thomas and read nought but peace in their depths. He hur- 
ried out across the courtyard to the knight. 

The Dominican rejoined the prior who was walking slowly 
on; and, as Arnoul sprang into the saddle, he looked back to 
see the two religious. The younger friar's gaze was bent up- 
on the earth, and with his hand he was telling the beads of 
the rosary that hung at his side. 

That was the last Arnoul saw of Brother Thomas of Aquin, 
as he rode northward with the Lord of Moreleigh towards the 
fortress of the Templars. 

Two days later he left Paris. 

(TO BE CONCLUDED.) 




THE MORAL IDEAS OF IBSEN. 

BY CHARLES BAUSSAN. 

|HE fame of Ibsen has not grown. Contrary to 
what happened in the case of great dramatists 
like Corneille, Shakespeare, or Schiller, whose 
renown was consecrated by death, it seems that 
a part of the Norwegian's celebrity was interred 
with his bones. 

Perhaps the revolutionary acclamation, which exalted him 
to the skies, had no longer the same motives to sing after his 
death. Henrik Ibsen was a marvelous destroyer ; but he was 
a worker who wrought for his own hand ; and his contempt 
of democracy, a contempt which he did not dissemble, did not 
serve to win for this aristocratic anarchist the sympathy of his 
occasional allies. 

We must be just towards all, towards even our adversaries : 
if Ibsen's admirers have been somewhat precipitate in awarding 
him the title of genius, it would, on the other hand, be unjust 
to deny his genuine talent and the profound and persistent in- 
terest of his work. 

Certainly the characters of his theater are not beings of 
flesh and blood, they are rather moral ideas who walk about, 
talk, discuss ; who even push the language of their theories 
beyond the limits of plausibility and the boundaries of human 
nature. But the dramas which unfold amid the realistic sur- 
roundings of these middle-class or peasant homes, are the daily 
social problems of modern life. 

We feel a natural attraction towards this more or less ex- 
act reproduction of the combats that take place in our own 
souls; the royal tragedies of the antique theater would move 
us less, because in them we recognize ourselves less easily. 
And, withal, these immortal tragedies are not so aloof from us 
as we commonly think; they are not who would believe it? 
so far removed from Ibsen's theater. 

Just as in the classic drama two personages dominate the 
entire scene, man and destiny, so, under all the various masks 
VOL, LXXXVII. 50 



786 THE MORAL IDEAS OF IBSEN [Sept., 

which are assigned to them, only two personages, likewise, ap- 
pear in all Ibsen's plays, the individual and society. For Ibsen, 
the individual is truth, liberty, progress towards the ideal ; 
society is lying, slavery, the full bloom of all the vices, and a 
fall into all the depths. It is the struggle between these two 
forces, between these two principles, which is the warp and 
woof of Ibsen's work, as it is, also, the entire base of his mor- 
ality. He himself has declared : 

It is because I was very strongly impressed by the contra- 
diction which we have introduced between human nature and 
societies founded by men, that I have written what I have 
written. It was my vocation. 

The moral system of Ibsen is an absolute autonomy, with 
no exterior restraint. If we believe him, every principle of 
authority is criminal, because it strikes at individual liberty. 
As he admits no truth except that which one can demonstrate 
for oneself, so, likewise, duty is what appears such to each 
one, and this duty is strictly limited to the individual. 

Duty, then, is to follow one's nature, one's vocation, to 
cultivate self-hood. And this we must will strenuously in spite 
of everything, or, rather, to the exclusion of every other pre- 
occupation ; nothing exists except duty to self. Beyond this 
everything that passes by the name of duty, duties to others, 
duties to one's family, is but convention and falsehood. 

Within us daily arises the conflict between our duties towards 
ourselves and those others which society presents as such, but 
which, in truth, are only counterfeits. We must choose, and 
we ought to choose the real, the only duties, those towards 
ourselves. 

The theories of Ibsen might apply to a man living alone on 
a desert island, on which he had fallen from the moon. He 
might then be at liberty to cultivate his " self." Yet, even 
then, he would owe duties to God. 

At any rate, man is in society. He has a father, a mother, 
neighbors, fellow-countrymen. He receives something from 
them; he owes them something also; here, then, we are face 
to face with duties towards others. Besides, if he has individ- 
ual rights, individual duties, his neighbors are in a similar posi- 
tion towards him. He cultivates his "self"; they cultivate 
theirs; will he cultivate his "self" in his neighbor's field? 



1908.] THE MORAL IDEAS OF IBSEN 787 

Certainly not; yet every day these two beings come face to 
face, and cross each other. They must not, however, obstruct 
each other. Here, again, we are in presence of duties towards 
others. 

The truth is that our duties towards ourselves cannot be, in 
life, isolated from our duties towards others; both kinds touch, 
interlace, and both come in contact with our duties towards 
God. All three kinds constitute a unity, just as the human per- 
son is a unity. The distinction between the duties we owe to 
others and those we owe to ourselves is legitimate, logical, and 
philosophical; but to consider only the latter in the practice of 
life is an absurdity. On this absurdity, precisely, Ibsen founds 
his entire moral thesis. 

This individualism which has its philosophic roots deep in 
the theories of Kant and Kjerkegaard is the moral truth which 
Ibsen opposes perpetually to all the falsehoods of society, the 
family, the state, and religion. The family is the social group 
which may least reasonably be assailed as a mere convention ; 
in family life, naturally, arise the greatest number of problems. 
Have we here the reason why Ibsen's most frequent assaults 
are directed against the family ? 

In his eyes, the family is a slavery, regulated by conven- 
tions, by the parents, and by law, while love, no longer enjoy- 
ing liberty, ceases to exist. Love can exist only between two 
beings who, possessing like individualities, are able to aid each 
other to attain the same individualist end. 

Husband or wife, children, are but so many obstacles be- 
tween the individual and his vocation; hence he has the right 
to quit them in order to follow his own road. Thus does Ib- 
sen preach, unceasingly, the emancipation of woman, whom he 
considers a victim of marriage. This emancipation he holds to 
be an essential condition to the regeneration of humanity. 

In " A Doll's House," Nora, feeling herself enlightened on 
the purpose of life, prepares, after eight years of happy mar- 
riage, to leave her husband and her three children in order to 
pursue her education alone. The following dialogue takes place.: 

Helmer : So, you are going to betray your most sacred du- 
ties? 

Nora : What do you mean by my most sacred duties ? 

Helmer: Is it necessary to tell you? Are they not your 
duties to your husband and your children ? 



788 THE MORAL IDEAS OF IBSEN [Sept., 

Nora : I have other duties quite as sacred. 
Helmer : You have not ; what are they ? 
Nora ; My duties towards myself. 
Helmet : Before all else, you are a wife and mother. 
Nora: I no longer believe that. I believe that, before 
all else, I am a human being. 

Filial love, if we are to believe Ibsen, is no less a mistake 
than conjugal or maternal love. Hear Oswald speak to his 
mother in the " Ghosts " : 

Oswald: My father ! my father! I never knew him. I re- 
member nothing about him, except that one day he made me 
vomit. 

Madame Alving : Horrible ! To think of it ! Does not a 
child owe his father love in spite of everything ? 

Oswald : Even if this father has no title to his child's love ? 
Even if the child has not known his father ? And you, who 
are so enlightened on every other point, do you still really en- 
tertain this ancient prejudice ? 

Madame Alving : It is nothing more, then, than an ancient 
prejudice ? 

Oswald : No more, be assured. It is one of these current 
ideas which the world accepts without challenge. 

Madame Alving (startled) : Ghosts ! 

Oswald : Yes ; you may call them so. 

The typical hero of Ibsen, then, has no moral ties to any- 
body ; he has neither relatives nor friends. Ibsen wrote once to 
Brandes: 

Friends are a costly luxury. When you devote all your 
capital to your vocation, there is none left wherewith to 
treat yourself to friends. 

His hero, like himself, economizes every sentiment. He 
walks solitary through life, from a sense of duty, towards the 
goal which he himself has created and imposed on himself. 
Without a companion, he is equally without a guide. No one 
has indicated to him the goal, and no one shows the way. 
His vocation has nothing in common with the vocation of the 
Christian. The voice which calls him, to which he hearkens, 
is not the voice of God, but his own ; it is the uncontrolled 
suggestion of his own individual conscience. The truth, though 
he, perhaps, never suspects it, is that the natural bent and 



1908.] THE MORAL IDEAS OF IBSEN 789 

modernism of the Norwegian dramatist revert to the easy the- 
ories of the antique " Sequere Naturam" His system is organ- 
ized moral anarchy. 

Peer Gynt and Brand follow their respective paths ; the one 
passing from debauch to debauch, the other losing himself in 
the clouds. 

Ibsen constructs an apologia of the will, of individual effort. 
"One must will; will the impossible; will unto death." But 
the will needs direction ; and Ibsen offers no direction. We 
must will yes ; but will what we ought to will, not will what 
we wish, Hedda Gabler wills, to be sure; but can we admire 
her as she points her pistol at Loevborg, in order that he may 
die " beautifully " ; or when, enciente, she takes her own life 
with a jest upon her lips a fearful symbol, in her revolt and 
perversity, of the end of the family and the end of the race ? 

Like the family, the state, in Ibsen's eyes, is the enemy of 
the individual, his liberty, and his efforts. Ibsen even believes 
that the enslavement of the individual grows with civilization, 
notwithstanding the pretended liberal forms of modern govern- 
ments, and the falsehoods of democratic institutions. 

For this reason, in his plays, personages in power, sur- 
rounded by the consideration of their fellow-citizens, even those 
who live according to the ordinary standards, have always some 
hidden blemish, some criminal or shameful past, in contrast 
with their fictitious respectability. On the contrary, those who 
refuse to bow before social conventions are characters of un- 
alloyed honor, heroism, and charity. This easy method, which 
recalls the theories of J. J. Rousseau, is manifest in "The Pil- 
lars of Society." 

The consul, Bervick, the foremost citizen of the town, has 
built up all his fortune on deceit, having thrown upon another 
the responsibility of faults of which he himself had been guilty ; 
he does not hesitate, in order to secure some petty gain, to 
send hundreds of men to death in an unseaworthy ship. The 
virtuous characters are Tcennesen, the man who was thought 
to be the culprit, who expatriated himself, and Lona Hessel, 
who sings in dance halls, and has written a book of scandals. 

These last-mentioned characters, the rebels, are right, in 
Ibsen's plays, while the folk who stand for order are wrong. 
The latter, the rulers, the pastors, are always depicted as vul- 
gar hypocrites, cloaking their infamous acts and purposes with 



790 THE MORAL IDEAS OF IBSEN [Sept., 

fine maxims; or, as ridiculous ninnies whom circumstance holds 
up to ridicule every day. 

Bervick : Examine the inner life of the most esteemed men ; 
you will discover in every one of them some dark spot which 
must be concealed. 

Lona Hessel : And these are the pillars of society. 

Bervick : There are none better. 

Lona Hessel : Then what matters it whether such a society 
be kept standing or not. 

Death, Ibsen predicts, awaits the social structure and every- 
thing else that exists to-day. He writes to Brandes : 

Greater things than the state will fall. All forms of reli- 
gion will fall ; neither moral ideas nor ideals of art are eter- 
nal. How many principles must we hold as definitive? 
Who can guarantee to us that, in the planet Jupiter, 2 and 2 
do not make 5 ? 

And to introduce that blessed society where 2 and 2 will 
make 5, a society which will stand without aid, without the 
shadow of any authority, and with liberty and truth as its only 
pillars, Ibsen declares war against the society to which we be- 
long. He wrote to a revolutionary orator : 

You say that I have become a conservative. I am what I 
was all my life. I decline to play if the purpose is merely to 
displace the pawns. Overturn the board, and I am your 
man. 

This new society which Ibsen would form in so aggressive 
a fashion is hard to define. Ibsen despises the crowd. He says 
in one of his poems : 

The noise of the crowd frightens me. I do not wish to 
have my coat bespattered by the mud of the streets ; I desire 
to await the future in stainless festive garments. 

He is hostile to universal suffrage; he will not admit that 
all citizens are equal, since they differ enormously in intelligence 
and moral worth. He is equally hostile to parliamentary as- 
semblies, because each individual feels his share of responsibil- 
ity less keenly in the anonymity of collective responsibilities, 
and individual energy is annihilated by each one shifting on 



1908.] THE MORAL IDEAS OF IBSEN 791 

the other the duty of action. Ibsen's scheme is a revolution- 
ary aristocracy. In the society that he dreams of power would 
be exercised by a minority of energetic, resolute men who would 
rule the masses and control instinct by intelligence and will. 

We have heard Ibsen prophesy the fall of every form of 
religion. According to him, the Church, like the State, is a 
tyranny; it imposes a discipline, it enslaves the intellect, it 
suppresses individual activity. The religion of Ibsen is one 
which the individual creates for himself. In " A Doll's House," 
this conversation takes place between Helmer and Nora: 

Helmer: Have you not an infallible guide in moral ques- 
tions ? Have you not religion ? 

Nora : Alas ! I do not quite know what religion is. 

Helmer : You do not know what it is ? 

Nora : On that subject I know what Pastor Hansen told 
ine when preparing me for confirmation. Religion is this, 
and religion is that. When I am alone and emancipated I 
shall look into this question along with the others. I shall 
see if the pastor spoke the truth ; or, at least, if what he told 
me is true with regard to me. 

Religion, with Ibsen, then, is a relative, subjective truth, 
an individualist religion, without any universal element; and it 
is equally lacking in immutability, for it is constantly in course 
of transformation. The Christian religion, he holds, is but one 
phase of this transformation ; just as the Christian doctrine of 
sacrifice succeeded to the pagan doctrine of enjoyment, a third 
phase will follow which will reconcile the two former religions. 
It is the new wine sung of by the mystic Maximos in " Em- 
peror and Galilean." Alas! The new wine which Ibsen and 
his friends pour out for the world is neither new nor pure. It 
intoxicates; but it does not quench thirst. Ibsen says else- 
where: 

You know only two paths, the one which leads to the 
school, and the other to the church; but the third, which 
stretches towards Kleusis and beyond, is there, and you do 
not see it. 

This road towards the clouds is taken by the priest of Ib- 
sen's religion, Brand, who sets himself against all the other 
priests, while they accuse him of erecting a barrier between 
doctrine and life, between faith and practice, and cry out to 



792 THE MORAL IDEAS OP IBSEN [Sept., 

him: "Your church is too small.'* His pitiless logic knows 
nothing of compromise. He makes not the slightest allowance 
for human weakness ; and concedes nothing to the legitimate 
demands of the heart. 

The wife of Brand, Agnes, has lost her only child. One 
day, as she looks over the clothes that remain to her as pre- 
cious relics of her dead darling, a gypsy woman, carrying an 
almost naked child, asks for the good warm garments. Agnes 
hesitates; must she sacrifice the only treasures of her heart; 
which recall her child so that he plays and smiles to her once 
more? 

Brand : One must not become attached to idols. Give this 
woman everything. (Agnes obeys.) 

Have you given cheerfully ? (he asks her, after the gypsy 
has gone.) 

No. 

Then your sacrifice was in vain. 

(He is aboutjto go ; Agnes recalls him) : Brand ! 

Well? 

I have lied. I/isten ; the wound is a deep one. I have 
been weak. Vou thought that I had given everything ; but 
I retained something : this little cap which he wore at the 
last moment, which was wet with his tears, and soaked with 
his death-sweat. Oh ! I am sure you would not grudge me 
that. 

Go where idols reign ! (He is about to leave.) 

Wait a moment. 

What do you wish ? 

You know well. (She reaches him the cap.) 

(Brand approaches, and, before accepting it, asks) : Will- 
ingly and without regret ? 

With a joyful heart. 

Good ! Give it also for the poor child. 

No wonder that in ascending towards the inaccessible sum- 
mits, where he is to find his church, greater than all other 
churches, Brand loses his way in the clouds and is precipi- 
tated into empty space by one of those avalanches which be- 
set the proud ! 

The poison of Ibsen's theories sometimes contained a bitter 
drop: it has not done as much evil as one might believe. 
The masses have refused to drink it. This moral anarchism 



1908.] THE MORAL IDEAS OF IBSEN 793 

which trampled on all the most natural sentiments was repug- 
nant to good sense. The characters lacked vitality. One felt 
that they were not real, or else belonged to a special human- 
ity, so pronouncedly special that a physician has been able to 
classify them all scientifically in the various categories of the 
degenerate. Who could believe that any reasonable woman 
could act as Nora, who, after eight years of married life, takes 
her departure, while her children are asleep nearby, for no other 
purpose than to develop her "self"? Mothers are not made 
like this, and they never will be. 

Outside a little coterie, Ibsen attracted no followers. He 
felt this himself, and drew the conclusion that his doctrines 
were too high for the crowd. Society seemed incurable to him. 
The old house, " Romersholm " could no longer be restored. 
Towards the end of his life, even he himself had doubts about 
his own doctrines ; and essayed to demonstrate the beneficent 
necessity for illusion, that wild duck which lives enclosed in 
our little human world ? Has he not painted his own portrait 
in Solness the Builder feverishly asking himself whether it is 
better to listen to the suggestions of youth, or to the teachings 
of tradition; whether there does not exist an abler architect 
than he : the mother, " Who did not, like him, build houses 
and towers, but souls of children, strong, noble, beautiful, which 
may grow into souls of upright, high-minded men " ? 

Society is represented by Oswald in the " Ghosts " a so- 
ciety diseased through the fault of its fathers. Madame Al- 
ving, the mother, is modern science, rationalistic philosophy. 
The world is athirst for light. " Mother," cries Oswald, " give 
me the sun." The sun ! Atheistic science, like Madame Al- 
ving, has nothing to give but poison. 

The sun is still where God has placed it in the heavens. 
Light comes not from the north, nor from the south, nor from 
ourselves. It comes from on high; it comes from God. "The 
Word is the true light which enlighteneth every man that 
cometh into this world." He is there; the Sun of justice and 
of truth. There is no other; and the faint glimmerings, which 
some would tell us are the rays of a new sun, are but the last 
flickerings of a dying conflagration. 




WHEN THE WHIPPOORWILL SANG AMONG THE 
ABENAKI. 

BY W. C. GAYNOR. 

'GAIN we sat by the camp-fire, Peol and I, and 
looked out upon the placid waters of Baskahegan. 
Beyond us, limitless in the distance like the 
ocean, they shimmered in the moonlight. Far 
away, indeed, the black and purple shores rounded 
till they met, but the hazy murk of night was on them, and 
the lake was still endless. 

That day I had picked up a specimen of the ancient hand- 
icraft of the Etchemins, and Peol was now examining it. Here, 
then, was a text eloquent with the possibilities of story and 
tradition. The great rampike at whose foot Nantloola, of vir- 
gin memory, had met her death still nodded in the moonlight; 
across the waters Abedegasset, with its mournful associations, 
was now a blaze of purple and silver from peak to curving 
base. Malpooga of the Strong Shoulders, himself, was buried 
there, and somehow my unspoken wish that night was to hear 
more of him. That he had taken part in the great battle be- 
tween the Indians of the north and the Abenaki of Chenas- 
x:ot and Cape Cod, I knew ; but I felt there was more to be 
told of this really great chief than was contained in the ob- 
scure allusion of the ancient chronicler. By the same fire with 
me now sat his lineal descendant, tribal depositary of tribal 
history, himself energized by the very memories he was cho- 
sen to perpetuate. Why should I not have the story ? 

Happily Peol met my unspoken wish half way. The stone 
age of his tribe was the beginning of history to him, and here 
was a message from that era. I give his story in my own 
words, with but a touch here and there of his quaint symbol- 
ism. Whither his tale would lead, he gave me no hint at the 
outset ; and if I have given it a title it is not because romance 
offset sober history to him. His mind dwelt upon the fight; 
mine detected the glimmer of human affections in the din and 
turmoil of battle. 

" Not long after the French had spent the winter on one 



1908.] WHEN THE WHIPPOORWILL SANG 795 

of our islands," he began, " my family, with a part of the 
tribe, was on the St. Croix itself, not so very far from here 
as the crow flies. The spring had come, and they were loth 
to move, because the salmon and sea-trout were plentiful, and 
hunting had been good." Peol was ever a little tedious at the 
outset of a story. He liked to give reasons for things. 

" One day the word came that Micmac war-canoes were on 
the river, not coming up but, to the general surprise, coming 
down. The Micmacs were ever friends of ours, and allies in 
time of war, but we usually met them in council on one of the 
islands beyond the mouth of the St. Croix, They were the 
sworn foes of the Abenaki of the Pentegoet, or Penobscot, and 
helped us when a fight was on with those tribes. Closer neigh- 
bors they had in our blood- kin, the Melicites of theOuigoodi; 
but because we were further away, and were not afraid to 
spear porpoises in the open sea, this great salt-water tribe 
thought more of us and called us twin brothers. Moreover, we 
lay between them and their enemies at Chenacost, or Saco, like 
the fence around a bear trap. The Abenaki disliked the open 
sea, and could not reach their Micmac enemies except through 
our territory. So we were bound by treaty with these men from 
the salt water, and we now welcomed their messengers." Peol 
had a way of identifying himself with his tribe at all periods. 

"The war-canoes contained a Micmac chief, Penoniac, his 
family, and some tribesmen. Penoniac was a favorite of the 
ancient sagamore of the Micmacs, Membertou ; and that old 
warrior had sent him up the Ouigoodi, or St. John, to sound 
the Melicites and discover how many men they would be will- 
ing to contribute for a sudden descent on the common enemy 
of the south. Penoniac had followed the great trail across the 
country from the Ouigoodi, and it had brought him to us. 
When he had consulted with our chiefs, he was to continue 
his journey into the Abenaki country to spy upon them, and 
then return. To disarm suspicion he took his family with him, 
at least one wife and daughter. The Micmacs of those days 
were Mormons, you know " ; Peol interjected with a laugh, 
" one old chief, Cacagous, had eight wives. 

" Then followed a great tabagie or feast for the visitors, at 
which all our chiefs assembled, and already the war-song was 
sounding, for the Etchemin of the St. Croix were always ready 
for a fight with the Abenaki, and our young men welcomed 
the idea of a great battle. 



796 WHEN THE WHIPPOORWILL SANG [Sept., 

" From the first, Guescha of the Panther Hunt, as they now 
called her, took to the young Micmac maiden who accompanied 
her father. Perhaps it was because they were both proud and 
of quick temper that Guescha liked the stranger. Madewes 
Porcupine her friends called her, and Malpooga liked the 
name. The visitors were lodged in the guest-house, and Mal- 
pooga hunted and fished for their entertainment, while Guescha 
companioned Madewes. 

" In the sports that followed Malpooga distinguished him- 
self and so did Guescha in the dance and in the canoe; but 
the feat which Madewes performed has lived ever after in our 
history. For Etchemin girl or woman, skilled as she was in 
handling our light canoe, never attempted before or dared do 
after what that Souriquois girl did in pure bravado, and be- 
cause the honor of her tribe was at stake. 

" Some distance below this winter encampment of our people 
the river fell to lower levels, and in its fall, as it tumbled over 
rocks and hidden ledges, it made a chain of rapids with here 
and there a heavy fall. The same falls are there yet, but my 
old folk say that the river is not so angry now, does not toss 
and moan, as it did when Madewes went through alone in her 
canoe. Many an Indian was drowned in those rapids since first 
my people came to the river ; so that mothers and old women 
used to frighten the young people with the story of the awful 
demon of the falls. Not until a young man was fit to go on 
the warpath was he allowed to take a canoe through that angry 
water; and if he failed or refused the test, he was not worthy 
to be a warrior. As for the women, they were never allowed 
to pass through even under guidance, much less attempt to go 
down alone. 

"Now that war was coming it was decided to give our 
young men the test of running the rapids as a feature of the 
sports in honor of our visitors. One by one they loitered in 
their canoes awaiting the young women's race, while the banks 
were lined with spectators; and in the distance, scattered along 
the river where danger lurked the worst among the rapids, men 
were posted to rescue those who might meet with accident. 
Penoniac and the great chiefs of our tribe watched the trial 
from an eminence near the falls. 

" The maidens' race in canoes was straightaway without a 
turn, and was to end at a point where the current had not yet 
felt the draw of the falls. Down the young women came, with 









i9o8.] WHEN THE WHIPPOORWILL SANG 797 

Madewes and Guescha in the lead, while behind them in a 
string floated the canoes of the young men. Gradually the 
leaders drew away from the others, while the old men on the 
banks could not tell which would win. Guescha was the older 
of the two and looked the stronger, but Madewes had a quicker 
knack with the paddle. Now they have reached the finish but 
still the two keep on, bow and bow, and no man can tell 
which wins. A roar from the shore warns them to desist, but 
neither heeds it. Their canoes begin already to feel the suction 
of the rapids ahead, and Guescha misses a stroke. The law of 
the falls is on her. Madewes plies her paddle with double en- 
ergy, and as the bow of her canoe darts past her competitor's 
she rises to her feet, and in a voice that stings every Etchemin 
within hearing cries out: ' Sons and daughters of the Etchemin, 
follow me if you dare ! ' Then deliberately she picks up a pole 
from the bottom of her bark and heeds no longer who follows. 
" Guescha' s temper was at the boiling point by this time, 
and she cried out: 'Lead, Souriquois, I follow/ But a heavy 
hand grasped her paddle, and Malpooga bade her turn. Turn 
she would not, but threw herself into his canoe, leaving her 
own to drift where it would. ' Follow her or I'll swim/ she 
cried : and he knew she would not be withstood. 

" On the shore all was excitement. Penoniac, seeing his 
daughter enter the seething waters, ordered his men to follow 
and threw himself with them into his own great canoe. Then 
was seen such a sight as the demon of the falls never witnessed 
before : a young girl leading a long line of warriors, headed by 
this mighty bark of her father's, through the rush and roar of 
the rapids, while a whole tribe ran along the banks breathless 
with the novelty and danger of the sight. 

" Onward she dashed, standing in the very center of her 
canoe, now throwing her weight towards the bow when she 
wished to make sure of her stroke, now towards the stern as 
she turned her light bark quickly in the very face of danger. 
Once she was lost to view altogether as she slid down a very 
hill of water, and a sigh went up from the running multitude 
on the bank. But the next wave showed her on its crest still 
poised erect and confident. Then she did the unexpected thing. 
Taking advantage of a lull in the anger of the flood, she cut 
across to the right shore, where the water creamed and thick- 
ened above the whirlpools. Her tribesmen shouted a warning 
cry, but her father saw her plan, and quieted them. 



798 WHEN THE WHIPPOORWILL SANG [Sept., 

" ' Madewes has been through the falls of the Ouigoodi,' he 
said. 'Beyond lies safety.' And sure enough so it was. One 
deft push with her pole at the right moment, and her canoe was 
floating in peaceful waters. In this stream of quiet eddies she 
calmly paddled onward, skirting the shore, while her father's 
deep canoe, with its crew of skillful polesmen, was buffeted from 
side to side in the snarl of breakers in midstream." 

"But, Peol," I interrupted, "where was Guescha all this 
time ?" I liked the girl, and I would fain have her in the front. 

" Malpooga, with Guescha in the bow, was following the 
course which long experience had taught their fathers," Peol 
replied. " But their work was easier, two in a boat, and they 
ran faster than Madewes in the end. Guescha did not fail to 
tell her .so as they waited for her at the foot of the rapids ; but 
Malpooga sat and stared at the Souriquois girl, his dripping 
paddle on his knee. And then he landed and drained his 
canoe. 

"'Twas thus the first and last Etchemin woman went through 
those falls in those early days, but a Micmac girl led the way. 
And ever afterward our men, when going through the rapids, 
followed Madewes' trail ; it was easier ; and, besides, it was 
lucky because a maiden had opened it. 

" Penoniac, the Micmac, having received full assurance of 
help from our chiefs in case of a foray into the country of the 
Abenaki, departed in due time on his dangerous errand. Seve- 
ral of our young warriors accompanied him down the river, and 
some wanted to go with him; but whether it was because of 
the risk or because they would like to be near Madewes, I 
cannot say. Guescha was cross because Malpooga held aloof 
at the parting, and did not volunteer to go with Penoniac 
among the Abenaki. She did not know, however, that her 
brother had quarreled with the Micmac girl, and that Madewes 
had told him a Souriquois girl would not demean herself by 
marrying an Etchemin. Still she had taught him the cry of 
the whippoorwill, which is the lovers' trysting signal among the 
Micmacs ; and when her father's canoe was in midstream, and 
he was making his farewell, the cry of a whippoorwill arose 
from his bark as Malpooga, relenting, came in sight on the 
bank. He answered, and then Penoniac knew that his daughter 
was leaving her heart behind her on the St. Croix. And he 
was troubled, for no daughter of his tribe had yet married an 
outsider." 



1908.] WHEN THE WHIPPOORWILL SANG 799 

Here Peol interrupted his story to prepare a second pipeful 
of tobacco and dried alder leaves, his favorite mixture. 

" I have read," I said, " of Penoniac's fate in the ancient 
chronicles of Acadia, how he was captured by his enemies the 
Armouchiquois or Abenaki, and burned at the stake in their 
stronghold at Chenascot; but details were not given. Did 
Madewes escape ? " 

" No, she did not " ; he resumed. " She might have escaped 
but she would rather stay with her father. Her mother was 
killed in the ambush when her father was taken and one or two 
of her tribesmen ; but the others fought their way back to 
their canoes, and carried the tidings home to Membertou. 

" Then the word went forth in the three tribes to dig up 
the hatchet and put on war paint. Our chiefs and warriors 
were delighted at the prospect of war, for they had many an 
outrage to avenge on the Abenaki ; and now that their most 
powerful ally, the Souriquois tribe, was with them, they had 
no fears for the outcome. For the Micmacs were valiant war- 
riors, and had fought the Excommiqui, those ' eaters of men/ 
in their rocky caverns and icy fastnesses. 

" Our blood-brothers, the Melicites, came by the great Me- 
doctic trail, the same that Penoniac followed, and joined forces 
with us on the St. Croix. The Micmacs, four hundred strong, 

treasted the waves of Fundy Bay in their great sea-canoes, 
nd met the conjoined forces of their allies on the coast. The 
otilla of canoes was marshaled into divisions, each tribe under 
;s own leaders, and the whole commanded by the giant Mem- 
ertou in the leading canoe. Never before or since in the his- 
ory of those tribes did such a war party set forth. Men 
ounted themselves fortunate in having lived to witness that 
sight and be of it. Malpooga used to tell his grandsons in his 
old age on this very ground that the sea in the morning sun 
was red and golden with the reflection of the canoes. The 
Souriquois took the outside where the seas were heavier, but 
we had the line of danger closer to shore. 

"Thus they skirted the shores of Norembega, camping on 
the islands at night, and concealing their camp-fires as they 
came nearer the enemy. Then when they reached the mouth 
of the Pentegoet they slipped in under cover of night and landed 
where the forest crept down to the shore. Here they hid their 
canoes, and a war council was held. Malpooga, as the son of 






8oo WHEN THE WHIPPOORWILL SANG [Sept., 

a sagamore, was permitted to sit in the outer ring of chiefs and 
listen to the wisdom of his elders. When the call for volun- 
teers to act as scouts was made and the bundle of little sticks 
was thrown in the air, he picked one up and joined the advance 
party who were to do the scouting. The rest of the band be- 
gan the erection of a temporary fort. No general movement 
was to be made until the scouts reported. They were to locate 
the position of the enemy, penetrate their camp if possible, and 
learn their numbers. They should search too for Madewes 
and convey to her some signal of their presence. 

" ' She's a scouting party herself,' old Membertou said, with 
a grin, ' if she's alive and free to look around her.' 

" The darkness of midnight lay upon the sleeping Abenaki 
when Malpooga and his fellows crept softly among the lodges. 
Even the dogs were still. Slowly they circled, keeping in touch 
with one another, and ready for any alarm. They had reached 
the great circular council-lodge, near which the dark outline 
of a smaller lodge showed the customary home of the head 
chief. Here, Malpooga thought, if anywhere, Madewes might 
be found. Quick and sharp came the cry of a whippoorwill 
from the ground, and then silence with the darkness upon it. 
The scouts still moved, but he waited ; again he gave the cry ; 
and then almost at his ear came the reply, low and short, as 
if the bird were in flight. 

" ' I am here, O son of the Etchemin,' a low voice whis- 
pered to him. ' Speak quick, for I shall be missed.' 

" Malpooga would have her fly with him back to safety 
among the warriors of her tribe, but she would not. ' Release 
Sonta the Micmac, who lies bound in yonder house,' she said. 
' He stood by my father in the fight, and they burn him to- 
morrow.' 

" Malpooga knew that Sonta was one of the oldest war- 
riors of Penoniac's escort. Then she told him the number of 
the enemy, and that Barsheba, their war chief, was about to 
lead them on a foray against the Etchemin. Old Sonta had 
been reserved as a victim for the occasion, and at moonrise 
next evening would be sacrificed at the stake. As for herself 
she was free within certain bounds, and because the Abenaki 
held her tribe in great respect as warriors, they would likely 
marry her to some one of their young men. All this she told 
Malpooga and his fellows in the midnight darkness while her 



i9o8.] WHEN THE WHIPPOORWILL SANG 801 

enemies slept. Then she left them, and the word was given 
to rescue Sonta, but he was guarded by two sleeping warriors, 
and their orders were strict to avoid all risk of alarm. 

" All day the allied tribes lay inactive, and the waving for- 
est gave no sign of their presence. Back and forth to the 
shore the women of the enemy labored in their daily toil, and 
chiefs and warriors lounged in the encampment, or whetted 
their knives and hatchets. Yet the circle of waiting enemies 
closed inexorably around them, and only Madewes and Sonta 
had foreknowledge of impending fate. 

" ' When the moon touches the top of the trees/ Madewes 
had insisted, ' then the song of the whippoorwill must again 
be heard.' And the scouts had given her their word. 

"The dusk of evening rode slowly over woods and clear- 
ing, and the lines of watching warriors closed in and followed 
it. Wriggling like serpents they won their way close to the 
encampment. On all sides but one, where the hill sloped down 
to the shore, they filled the underwood with their numbers. 

"Then life and movement began among the Abenaki. In 
the middle of the open space before the council-house a post 
was driven, and Sonta, erect and unquailing, was tied to it. 
Not by the quiver of a muscle or a single curious glance did 
he betray his knowledge of what the copse and woods con- 
tained. Madewes stood near him, defiant and scornful; but 
ever and anon she looked for the moon. 

" Then Barsheba, the chief, at a bound was in the circle 
of clear space, and was chanting the story of his deeds. Wav- 
ing his hatchet above his head, he threatened Sonta with in- 
stant death ; but the Micmac, drawing himself to his great 
height, looked down upon him and called him ' rat.' A yell 
of anger went through the assembled multitude at this insult 
to their chief; but Barsheba, affecting self-control, stayed his 
hand. 

"'Let the Souriquois talk,' he said. 'Let him sing his 
death song.' 

" ' What said my father,' Madewes broke in, as if to inter- 
rupt a tragedy, 'when he was dying on this ground? "When 
the whippoorwill sings among the Abenaki, let Barsheba chant 
his death song." Sing your own death song, then, rat of an 
Abenaki ! ' The moon was riding the tree-tops. 

" Maddened by the cutting irony of her words, and super- 
VOL. LXXXYII. 51 



802 WHEN THE WHIPPOORWILL SANG [Sept. 

stitious withal, Barsheba turned on her with a yell of anger to 
brain her with his axe, when the low, quick cry of the whip- 
poorwill rose almost from beneath his feet, and the next mo- 
ment a strange warrior rose from out the ground and buried 
a long iron knife in his bosom. At the same instant the war 
cry of the Micmacs and Etchemin rang out, and the ground 
threw up its hosts of warriors. 

" The battle was on. Malpooga wrenched his knife from the 
body of the dying Barsheba and, amid the onrush, cut the 
bonds of Sonta. Membertou, the bearded sagamore of the Mic- 
macs, surrounded by a body of picked warriors, armed all with 
the iron axes of the French, cut his way to the front, with a 
quick order to Madewes to keep in the center of his warriors. 
Then man to man the fight ran through the night, for the Ab- 
enaki were already armed, as is the custom in a war dance. 
And every now and then Madewes gave the whippoorwill's cry, 
and Malpooga answered. Slowly but surely the allies closed in 
upon their enemies, and forced them down towards the sea. 
Then suddenly a band of Micmac warriors, sent round by ordtr 
of their astute chief, attacked the enemy on the other flank. 
Thus completely surrounded, the Abenaki, seeing that the fight 
was lost, burst through our lines and fled into the forest. 

" And thus the battle was won. And old Sonta rubbed his 
shins where the withes had chafed them, and Madewes prayed 
for mercy for the women and children who had not died in the 
fight; and the great Membertou called her his daughter and 
granted them mercy. Then he 'ordered that the young chief 
who had killed Barsheba be brought to him if still unscathed. 
And Malpooga, breathing hard from his chase of the enemy, 
stood before the great bearded Micmac as he towered head and 
shoulders above the tallest of his men, 

"'You taught this son of the Etchemin/ he asked in the 
moonlight of the girl, * you taught him the lovesong of our 
tribe? And to that love song he rescued you?' She bowed 
her head. ' Then, first wife to leave the lodges of your people 
for an outsider, you go with your husband who has won yoiV 

"And thus the whippoorwill's song won Malpooga a wife 
in the encampment of the Abenaki." 

Peol laid the stone gouge reverently away, and I knew 
where the Micmac strain first entered the blood of my old Et- 
chemin chief. 




THE SAINTS AND ANIMALS. 

BY KATHARINE TYNAN. 

T is unfortunately a regrettable fact that in the 
distinctly Catholic countries of Europe there is a 
great amount of cruelty to animals, an almost 
universal absence of public conscience where 
animals are concerned. This fact was brought 
prominently to the English mind when an English princess 
became Queen of Spain, and people asked each other how she 
would act with regard to the bullfights. As a matter of fact, 
unthinking people have blamed a religion for what is a matter 
of race. The Latin races have little natural sympathy with and 
understanding of animals. It is the slower Northern races, with 
their greater thinking capacity and less impulsiveness, that are 
the natural lovers of animals. Does any one suppose, for ex- 
ample, that if Naples became Protestant to-morrow it would 
become animal-loving, or that London if it became Catholic 
to-morrow would begin to torture its horses ? 

As a matter of fact, the Catholic Church, speaking eloquently 
through her saints, has been in all the centuries the protectress 
and lover of animals. She is misrepresented for millions who 
do not know her by a misunderstood axiom of theologians 
that " animals have no rights " ; an axiom which, if propounded 
to the professional theologian, would be explained to one's 
entire satisfaction. Some one had put into Cardinal Manning's 
mouth the same proposition in different terms, /. e. t "that, in- 
asmuch as animals are not moral persons, we owe them no 
duties, and that therefore the infliction of pain is contrary to 
no obligation," This Manning denounced as a hideous and 
absurd doctrine, going on to say : " It is perfectly true that 
obligations and duties are between moral persons, and there- 
fore the lower animals are not susceptible of those moral obli- 
gations which we owe to one another ; but we owe a sevenfold 
obligation to the Creator of those animals. Our obligation and 
moral duty is to Him who made them ; and if we wish to know 
the limit and broad outline of our obligation, I say at once it 



804 . THE SAINTS AND ANIMALS [Sept., 

is His nature and His perfections and among those perfections 
one is most profoundly that of eternal mercy." 

The theological axiom, it will be pointed out, covers the 
legitimate usage of animals ; for if the animals had rights as 
against man, man would have no right to turn the animal to 
his uses either as a servant or as food. But it was never in- 
tended to cover cruelty to animals. 

After all, one wonders how much the treatment accorded to 
animals is a matter of education. It is not so long ago since 
bull-baiting and cockfighting were the delight of the multitude 
in England. Close by where I write the very names of places 
bear witness to the prevalence of the former diversion, as the 
English -settled towns in Ireland may be known by their bull- 
rings. A hundred years ago it was the fashion for English 
fine ladies and gentlemen to attend the hangings at Newgate, 
and after breakfasting with the Governor, a breakfast at which 
brandy was much in demand, to witness " the cutting down." 
And a favorite diversion with the dandies a little earlier was 
to visit Bedlam and stir up the lunatics with red-hot pokers. 
So amazing has been the growth of English humanitarianism 
since those days of darkness that it is not extravagant to hope 
that another century, perhaps, may see the Spaniards, for ex- 
ample, as distant from the bullfights, as the English gentry of 
to-day from the misdeeds of their forefathers. 

A very distinguished Irishwoman, now dead, said to me 
many years ago that the old Irish saints were always preach- 
ing by their example the love of animals, and that fact proved 
to her mind that the preaching was no less needed in their 
day than in ours. But I am inclined to believe that the Irish 
saints, like the saints of other countries, loved animals just be- 
cause they were the elect souls of the world. In those days 
gentleness betook itself to hermitages and cloisters, leaving 
the rough and the violent to carry on the world. In their 
hermitages these simple and saintly souls made companions of 
the animals, and came to love them, simplicity leaning to sim- 
plicity. Indeed one imagines that in our own days there may 
be many such instances in monastic life of friendship between 
men and animals as are recorded in the Acta Sanctorum. One 
who knows anything of monasteries will know how the clois- 
tered monk keeps a heart like a child. 

Except in the Acta Sanctorum one hears little of gentleness 



1908.] THE SAINTS AND ANIMALS 805 

to animals in those dark times, splendid in distance, which we 
call the Middle Ages. In those days, while denying the moral 
nature to animals, men occasionally tried an animal for its life 
for acting according to its natural impulses. It was also in those 
dark days that Pope Pius V., afterwards canonized, issued his 
bull against the Spanish bullfights. 

" Pius, Bishop, servant of the servants of God, . . . con- 
cerning the safety of the flock of our Lord, entrusted to our 
care. According as we are constrained by what is due to our 
pastoral office, anxiously pondering over the matter, we are de- 
sirous of keeping all the faithful of the same flock, not only 
from imminent danger to the body, but also from everlasting 
destruction to the soul. . . . Even now, in many states and 
in divers places, very many men do not cease to assemble with 
bulls and other beasts, both in public and private exhibi- 
tions, for the purpose of displaying their own strength and 
daring; hence men meet with death, broken limbs, and danger 
to their souls. We, therefore, regarding these exhibitions, where 
bulls and other beasts are baited in the circus or forum, as 
being contrary to Christian duty and charity, and desiring that 
these bloody and disreputable exhibitions of devils rather than 
of men should be abolished, and that we should take measures 
for the saving of souls, as far as we can, under God's help, to 
all and individual Christian Princes who are honoured with any 
rank, whether ecclesiastical, civil, or even Imperial, Royal, or 
any other, by whatever name they are called, as well as to all 
people and states (desiring that these injunctions should be 
established by our decree forever under the threat of excom- 
munication and anathema, on incurring the penalty), prohibit 
and forbid to allow in their provinces, states, lands, or towns 
and other places, exhibitions of this kind where there is bait- 
ing of bulls and other beasts. We forbid soldiers and all other 
persons, whether on foot or on horseback, to dare to con- 
tend with bulls or other beasts in the aforementioned exhibi- 
tions. And if any one of them meets with his death there, he 
shall be deprived of Christian burial. We likewise forbid the 
Clergy, whether regular or secular, who hold office in the 
Church, or who are in Holy Orders, to be present at such ex- 
hibitions under the penalty of excommunication. And all debts, 
obligations, and bets by whatever persons contracted, whether 
from universities or colleges, with reference to bull-baitings of 



8o6 THE SAINTS AND ANIMALS [Sept., 

this kind, even supposing they themselves wrongly imagine them 
to be held in honour of the Saints, or of any ecclesiastical 
anniversaries or festivals, which ought to be celebrated and hon- 
oured with godly praise, spiritual joy, and words of piety, all 
such, whether contracted in the past, present, or future, we al- 
together prohibit and annul, and we decree and declare in per- 
petuity that they are to be held void and of no effect. We 
issue our command to all Princes, Officers, Barons, and those 
who hold rank in the Holy Roman Church, under penalty of 
deprivation of the rank which they hold from the Roman Church, 
itself; but all other Christian Princes and Lords of land, to whom 
our commands have been given, we exhort in the Lord, and 
order, in virtue of our sacred right to obedience, that out of 
reverence and honour for the Divine Name, they most carefully 
honour and cause the foregoing to be observed in their domin- 
ions and lands, seeing that they will receive the richest reward 
from God Himself for such good works. And to our Venera- 
ble Brethren throughout the world, Patriarchs, Primates, Arch- 
bishops, Bishops, and other local officers, in virtue of our sacred 
right to obedience, under the solemn thought of the judgment 
of God, and the threat of eternal curse, we command that they 
cause our present letter to be published, as far as possible, in 
their own states and dioceses. 

" Given in Rome at St. Peter's in the Year of Our Lord, 
1567, the Kalends of November, in the second year of our Pontifi- 
cate." 

To be sure the Spanish bullfights go on in our day despite 
this Papal bull; but at least Rome has spoken in the matter, 
and none of the shame and sin can be laid at her door. 

The lives of the saints contain the most delicious innocen- 
cies of the friendship and affection between them and the ani- 
mals. Every one knows St. Francis of Assisi and his little 
brothers and sisters. Not so many know St. Jerome and his 
lion, St. Anthony the hermit and his hog, St. Benedict and his 
raven, St. Macarius and his hyena, St. Kieran and his badger, 
St. Rose of Lima and her gnats. Indeed the Acta Sanctorum 
contain records of friendship between the saints and the most 
unlikely creatures, even to snakes and vipers. 

In the Irish hagiology we find our father, St. Patrick, carry- 
ing a fawn in his breast after he had saved the little creature 
and its mother from death. 



i9o8,] THE SAINTS AND ANIMALS 807 

While St. Kevin prayed in his cell that looks upon the 
dark waters of Glendalough, he stretched his hand through the 
window-space, and a blackbird immediately laid an egg in his 
hand and sat upon it. The saint forbore to disturb the sitting 
mother till the little bird was hatched, keeping his hand so 
stretched forth till that was accomplished. 

Another Irish saint, St. Kieran of Upper Ossory, worked 
his first miracle as a child when he saw a hawk swoop on and 
carry off a little bird. St. Kieran at this time did not know 
the true God, being the child of pagans, but he was moved to 
cry out to Him, and the hawk came back and laid the dead 
bird at his feet. Then Kieran said: "Arise and be made 
whole " ; and so it was done, and the bird lived and gave praise 
to God. 

The life of St. Kieran, in the Gaelic, says with delicious 
naivete : 

" When first Ciaran came to that place (i. e. t the wood where 
he built his monastery) he sat down in the shade of a tree. 
A fierce wild hog sprang up at the other side of the tree and 
as it eyed Ciaran it fled, but returned again as a gentle ser- 
vant to Ciaran. That hog was the first disciple and first monk 
Ciaran had in that place. It used to go to the wood to cut 
rods for thatch, and bring them between its teeth to assist (the 
building of) the cell. At the time, then, there was no one at 
all along with Ciaran, for he came alone from his disciples to 
that hermitage. There came after that to Ciaran irrational 
brutes from every part of the wilds in which they were located, 
such as the fox, the badger, the wolf, and the doe, and they 
were submissive to Ciaraa ; and they humbled themselves to 
his teaching as monks, and used do all he bade them. 

" On a day that the fox came, which was very ravenous, 
crafty, and malicious, to Ciaran's brogues, he stole them, and, 
shunning the community, went direct to his own den, and 
therein coveted to eat the brogues. When this was manifested 
to Ciaran he despatched another monk of his family, to wit, 
the badger, to head the fox and bring him to the same spot. 
The badger came to the fox's den and found him eating the 
shoes (or brogues), for he had eaten the ears and thongs off ; 
and the badger coerced him to come with him to the monas- 
tery. They came about eventide to Ciaran, and the brogues 
with them. Ciaran said to the fox : ' O brother, why hast thou 



8o8 THE SAINTS AND ANIMALS [Sept., 

done that thievery which was not becoming a monk to do? 
And you had no occasion to do that; for we have water that 
is non-noxious in common, and food in like manner, and if thy 
nature constrained that thou shouldst prefer to use flesh, God 
would make it of the bark of the trees round thee.' Then the 
fox asked Ciaran for remission of his sins, and to lay upon him 
the obligations of the Penance Sentence ; and it was so done, 
and the fox did not eat food without leave from Ciaran, and 
thenceforward he was righteous like the others." 

Here is a story of a less well-known Irish saint, St. Gob- 
net the little patroness of Ballyvourney, after whom so many 
County Cork girls are called, and which is Englished " Abby." 
She was the daughter of a sea-king, who was a shrine robber. 
She had no sisters, and used to keep to the ship with her fa- 
ther and his men. Once she was ashore in a wood and God 
sent his angel to her to tell her to fly from her father and give 
her life to Him. She was willing to do that, but she knew no 
place of security. The angel came again, and told her to go 
on and give no rest to her soles until she would find nine white 
deer asleep. She went on and she came to a place and found 
three. She fondled them a while and went on to Kilgobnet, 
where she found six. Here she stayed a long time until they 
were all good friends. Then she left her heart with them and 
went on to Ballyvourney. There, as God willed it, she found 
the nine, and she made her dwelling with them, and they be- 
came her sisters, and she died in their midst and is there buried. 

We read of St. Bridget that the ducks from the lake came 
at her voice and flew into her arms, and that the saint gently 
caressed them against her breast. And again when she was a 
child, and in much terror of a very fierce stepmother, she was 
left to tend a dish of meat that was cooking for her father and 
his friends. But a dog which had just become the mother of 
puppies came and begged to be fed ; and Bridget's heart was 
so compassionate that she could not refrain from feeding the 
dog with the meat her stepmother had given her in charge, 
although she anticipated nothing but a savage punishment. 
But when the time came to set the dish on the table, lo ! and 
behold, the meat had increased instead of diminishing, and 
was of a most excellent flavor. So did God reward her char- 
ity to the hungry dog. 

Here is a delightful story of St. Adamnan, Bishop of lona : 



1908.] THE SAINTS AND ANIMALS 809 

" A Brother, by name Molua, grandson of Brennus, came 
to the Saint while he was writing, and said to him : ' Please 
bless this weapon in my hand.' So he raised his holy hand a 
little and blessed it, making the sign of the cross with his pen, 
his face meanwhile being turned towards the book upon which 
he was writing. As the aforesaid Brother was on the point of 
departing with the weapon which had been blessed, the Saint 
inquired : ' What kind of a weapon have I blessed for the 
Brother ? ' Diarmid, his faithful servant, replied : ' A dagger 
for cutting the throats of oxen and bulls.' But the Saint said 
in response: 'I trust in my God that the weapon which I 
blessed will injure neither man nor beast.' And the Saint's 
words proved true that very hour. For after the same Brother 
had left the monastery enclosure and wanted to kill an ox, he 
made the attempt with three strong blows and a vigorous thrust, 
but could not pierce its skin. And when the monks became 
acquainted with it, they melted the metal of the same dagger 
by the heat of the fire and anointed with it all the iron wea- 
pons of the monastery ; and they were thereafter unable to in- 
flict a wound on any flesh, in consequence of the abiding power 
of the Saint's blessing." 

I need not refer here to the better known stories, such as 
the story of St. Columba and the gull and the same saint and 
the horse. But an extract from Giraldus Cambrensis shows how 
a nineteenth century thought for animals in England was an- 
ticipated by the Ulstermen of his day. 

" In a remote district of Ulster are certain hills, on which 
cranes and other birds build their nests freely during the pro- 
per season. The inhabitants of that place allow not only men 
but even cattle and birds to be quiet and undisturbed, out of 
reverence for the holy Beanus, whose Church makes the spot 
famous. That renowned Saint, in a wonderful and strange man- 
ner, used to take' care not only of birds but of their eggs. 

" In the south of Momonia, between the hill of Brendan 
and the open sea which washes the coast of Spain and Ireland, 
is a large district which is shut in on one side by a river full 
of fish, and on the other by a small stream. And, out of rev- 
erence for the holy Brendan and other Saints of that locality, 
this affords a wonderful place of refuge, not only for men and 
cattle, but also for wild beasts, whether these are strangers or 
those which inhabit the district. Consequently stags, wild boars, 



8io THE SAINTS AND ANIMALS [Sept., 

hares, and other wild beasts, when they perceive that they can 
by no means escape from the dogs pursuing them, make their 
way as quickly as they can from remote parts to that spot. 
And when they have crossed the stream, they are at once safe 
from all danger; for the dogs in hunting are there brought to 
a standstill and unable to follow any further." 

So much for the Irish saints. But their brethren of other 
lands were not behind them ; and it may be said that there was 
no creature exempt from their pity and protection. Blessed Mar- 
tin of Perres is called the rats' saint. The rats had gnawed 
the sacred vestments and the sacristan was about to destroy 
them with poison ; but Martin forbade it. He called for a large 
basket, and then summoning the rats, that came hurry-scurry 
from every part, he commanded them to enter the basket, and 
they did so. Then he carried them into the garden and set 
them free, promising them that if they refrained from nibbling 
the convent property he would take care that they were well 
fed. And this was a pact which was well kept by both parties. 

As the legend represents our Lord during the Forty Days 
fast in the desert surrounded by the wild beasts, that lay close 
to His seamless robe and adored Him with their loving eyes, 
so the anchorites and hermits who went out into the desert with 
Him seem, like Him, to have made lovers of the wild beasts. 
There are endless stories of the delightful companionship be- 
tween the anchorites and lions, bears, buffaloes, panthers, and 
all the other great beasts of the forest. The wild beasts served 
the holy men and loved them ; and in the day when the 
hunter came to the forest they were protected in the cell of 
the anchorite. 

The Abbot Karilef while digging in his garden hung his 
monk's frock on an oak, and going to put it on at the end of 
the day he found that a little wren had made her nest in it 
and laid an egg there. So touched was he by the tender ap- 
peal of it that he praised God for it all night. The like hap- 
pened to St. Malo's cloak, and he left it unworn till the bird 
had hatched out her eggs in it and the young birds were ready 
to fly. The raven ate every day out of St. Benedict's hand ; 
and it was a raven who fed St. Paul in the desert. 

Listen to this delicious story of St. Isidore: 

"When he (Isidore) went into the field to his work, he not 
only distributed to the poor some of the wheat which he had 



1908.] THE SAINTS AND ANIMALS 811 

taken with him to sow, but also gave some handfuls to the birds, 
saying : ' Take, birds of God that which God gives, He gives 
for all.' The wheat-seed was diminished by this; but, miracu- 
lously, when he arrived at the farm, not a grain was wanting, 
and his baskets were as full as when he left home. The holy 
man recognized the miracle; he was confused, but not alarmed; 
he was silent and thankful, and with renewed confidence, when 
he again began to sow his seed, he said : ' In the name of God, 
this is for God, this is for us, and this is for the birds, and 
this is for the ants.' The labourers surrounding him heard this, 
and questioned as to why he said, 'And this is for the ants.' 
On this the Saint, thinking about the late miracle, answered 
simply : ' It is ; for God gives to all.' " 

As I read these stories I recall an Irish convent garden and 
a group of nuns at recreation, and I see, as I have seen many 
a time, small birds in a flight perched on the nuns' heads and 
shoulders and their outstretched hands, and swooping daintily 
to peck a crumb from a nun's tongue. 

Some of the most innocently charming of these stories gather 
round St. Joseph of Cupertino. 

" A linnet, to which he said often : ' Praise God ! ' praised 
Him with its song at a signal from the Saint, and ceased im- 
mediately when told to do so. In setting a goldfinch free: 
' Go,' he said to it, ' enjoy that which God has given you. I 
desire nothing more of you than that you should return when 
I call you, that we may praise together your God and mine.' 

"Obedient to his word, the little bird flew into the neigh- 
bouring orchard, and when recalled by St. Joseph, he at once 
returned to sing with him the greatness of the Creator. 

" A kite, which had killed a goldfinch of which he was very 
fond, because it repeated what he had taught it: 'Jesu Maiia. 
Brother Joseph, say the office,' turned at once at his voice, saw 
him, and hearing itself reproved by him thus : * Oh, scoundrel, 
you have killed my goldfinch, and you deserve that I should 
kill you ! ' it seemed sorry for its crime, and went on to the 
top of the cage, and remained there, till St. Joseph, slapping it 
with his hand, said: 'Go; I pardon you.' 

" A ram, bitten by mad dogs, became mad, and was shut 
up in a little orchard that it might not hurt any one. The ser- 
vant of the Lord by chance entered into the enclosure, and 
when cautioned to be on his guard against the creature, he 



812 THE SAINTS AND ANIMALS [Sept., 

smiled, and said he had confidence in God. Then he turned 
to the ram, and touching it, said : ' Mad as thou art, what art 
thou doing here ? Return to the flock.' He then let it go free, 
and it at once became sane and submissive to the shepherd." 

As might have been expected St. Joseph of Cupertino was 
a spiritual son of St. Francis. Once he sent a little lamb as a 
present to the Poor Clares at Cupertino, whose adventures are 
told as follows : 

" It seemed almost to follow exactly the observances of the 
monastery. It was always the first at all the functions, very 
sparing in its eating, quiet in the choir, and solely anxious to 
arouse with blows and shakings those who were drowsy, or to 
tear off with its feet and teeth any vain apparel which it saw. 
After the death of the lamb, the Saint said he would send the 
same holy virgins a little bird, that it might serve as an incite- 
ment to them to praise God ; and thus it came to pass, during 
the time of divine service, a solitary bird flew in through the 
window of the choir, and began to sing gently there. 

"The miracle did not end there, because, one day, seeing 
two novices in dispute, the bird came between them, doing all 
it could with outstretched wings and with its little claws to keep 
them apart and to calm them. But being ill-used by one of 
them, and driven away, it went off, and, notwithstanding its 
fixed habits of five years' standing, it did not return. The sis- 
ters, being very sorry for this, asked St. Joseph about it. He 
said : ' It is well ; you have hurt it and driven it away ? It will 
not return to you.' Then, touched by their prayers, he prom- 
ised to send it back; and at the first sound of the choir the 
bird returned not only to sing at the window, but to become 
still more at home in the monastery. Their astonishment in- 
creased still more when the nuns having, for their amusement, 
tied a little bell to its leg, it did not appear on Holy Thurs- 
day and Good Friday. So they again had recourse to St. 
Joseph, who said : ' I sent it to you to sing, and not to ring a 
bell. It has not come, because it has been these two days 
watching the Sepulchre. But I will send it back to you.' And, 
in fact, the little creature returned, and remained with them a 
long time." 

Also he preserved the timid hares from the hunters. 

"Two hares in the vicinity of the Convent of the Grotto 
obeyed the voice of the Saint, who said to them: 'Do not 



i9o8.] THE SAINTS AND ANIMALS 813 

leave the vicinity of the Church of the Madonna, because there 
are many hunters who come very near it.' They did well to 
obey him, because one of them, pursued by the huntsmen, fled 
into the church, and thence into the convent, and when it 
found St. Joseph, it jumped into his arms, and he said to it: 
'Did I not tell you that you should not go far from the church, 
or that you would lose your skin ?' And he saved it from its 
pursuers, who laid claim to it. Its companion was equally for- 
tunate, for being pursued by hounds, it took refuge under 
Brother Joseph's tunic. Soon after, the Marquis of Cupertino, 
who was the principal huntsman, happened to ask Brother Jo- 
seph if he had seen the hare. ' Here it is ! ' he replied. ' Do 
not give yourself more trouble about it.' Then, ' Go ! ' he said 
to the animal, ' save yourself in these bushes ; and you, do 
not move. 1 The hare obeyed him. The hounds stood station- 
ary, and the Marquis and his companions remained overwhelmed 
with astonishment at the miracle." 

St. Theonas the anchorite only left his cell at night, and 
then to give water of his fountain to the wild beasts of the 
desert, wherefore, " his cell was always surrounded by stout 
buffaloes, light-footed goats, and bounding wild asses, which 
seemed to form a guard of honor for the servant of God." 

St. Colette was one of the daughters of St. Francis. She 
had a pet lark : 

" Once a beautiful little lark was brought to her called a 
lark (alouette), some say, because of the praise it sings to God, 
and also because it lives without stores, according to the pov- 
erty of the saints. She took such a great pleasure in it, and 
saw it so gladly, that when she took a meal the little lark took 
it with her ; and ate and drank it with her, as if she were a 
bird like itself. Very often many pure and beautiful birds came 
near her oratory, and approached so close to her that she 
could take hold of them as they sang their sweet songs. They 
took their little meals more familiarly and peacefully with her 
than they would hStve done among birds of their own kind in 
the forest, and that because she resembled them in purity. 

" Once a lovely little lamb was brought to her as an offer- 
ing of piety, and she accepted it alike for its purity, and be- 
cause it was an emblem of the Lamb without stain or sin. 
Many a time her spirit was consoled and comforted by it, so 
much the more, because every time it was present at the ele- 



8 14 THE SAINTS AND ANIMALS [Sept., 

vation of the Host it, without being told, went on its knees, and 
thus adored its Blessed Creator." 

The great St. Bernard rescued hares from the hunters and 
little birds from birds of prey by making the Sign of the 
Cross over them in air. 

St. Antony the hermit had his grave dug by two lions; and 
everywhere through the Acta Sanctorum we find the wild beasts 
and the saints friends and at peace. St. Macarius the hermit 
had his friend the hyena. 

" While Macarius was one day sitting in his cell and ad- 
dressing God, a hyaena caught up her cub, which was blind, and 
brought it to him. She knocked at the door of his cell with 
her head and entered while he was sitting there and laid her 
cub at his feet. Whereupon St. Macarius took up the cub, spat 
on its eyes and prayed to God; and immediately its sight was 
restored. Its mother then suckled it and carried it off. On the 
following day she brought Macarius the skin of a large sheep; 
but, when the Saint saw the skin, he addressed the hyaena as 
follows: ' How did you obtain this, if not by devouring some- 
body's sheep ? and I refuse to accept the proceeds of wrong- 
doing as a present from you.' But the hyaena bent her head 
to the ground, and, kneeling before the feet of the Saint, laid 
the skin before him. But he said to her: 'I tell you I will 
not accept it, unless you swear you will never again injure the 
poor by eating their sheep.' The hyaena at this again inclined 
her head, as if in assent to the command of St. Macarius. Then 
he took the skin from the hyaena. But the blessed servant of 
God, Melania, told me she received that skin from Macarius, 
which used to be called ' The Hyaena's Gift.' " 

There is no end to these tender and touching and delight- 
ful stories. A very store -house of them is 7 he Church and 
Kindness to Animals, translated from the French of M. le Mar- 
quis de Rambures. St. Francis of Paula had a pet fish, An- 
tonella, which he restored to life even after some one had cooked 
it. The Venerable Joseph of Anchieta had a pair of panthers 
for " his companions," and caressed snakes and vipers as well 
as protecting them from the cruelty of men. St. Rose of Lima's 
garden cell was alive with gnats who stung Rose's unwelcome 
visitors, but spared the saint. At dawn she used to wake them: 
" Come now, my friends; it is time to praise God." Upon which 
the gnats broke out in the most wonderful chorus of praise. 



i9o8.J THE SAINTS AND ANIMALS. 815 

One story of St. Rose is so nai've that I must quote it and 
it shall be my last quotation: 

"Mary of Oliva had in her chicken-yard a wonderfully 
beautiful young cock. On its back and wings were brightly 
interwoven variegated colours and a pleasing motley of striped 
feathers. Its neck was ringed with a purple collar, and its 
body, with the graceful arch of its tail feathers, seemed to end 
in the colours of the rainbow. In short, this handsome beast 
was a delight to the whole household, and all rejoiced that it 
was being brought up and kept by the lady of the house in 
hopes of rearing some descendants which would take after it. 
The young one grew, but it was so slothful in its fat body 
that it continually sat on the ground, and was hardly ever 
seen to rise on its feet, and was never heard to crow. The 
lady of the house was displeased with it, because she thought 
it was hopeless to expect any offspring from such a sire ; so 
she made up her mind, as she sat at table with her husband 
and sons, to kill this unprofitable cockerel the same evening, 
and to serve it up next day for dinner. 

"The young Rose, as she stood there, pitied the bird, and 
in her unaffected innocence, turned to it like a child and said : 
'Crow, my chick, crow, or you will die.' The girl had hardly 
spoken these words when, before the eyes of all, the fowl sud- 
denly rose to its feet and vigorously flapped its wings and 
crowed melodiously and merrily. It next proceeded to walk, 
with high and proud steps, about the whole yard, and crowed 
readily several times, with extended breast, when Rose bade it. 
Those who were present laughed at the sentence of death hav- 
ing been suddenly recalled, and the fowl flapped its wings and 
crowed repeatedly in company with them as they clapped their 
hands, and strutted about as if magnificently clad. And, with 
extended neck, the noisy bird started afresh the laughter of the 
inmates as they applauded. From that time it often by day 
filled the neighbourhood with its tuneful note. The household 
counted the number of times, and found it crowed occasionally 
fifteen times in the short space of a quarter of an hour. More- 
over, the lady of the house was not disappointed of her hopes, 
for shortly afterwards this bird became the sire of seme very 
handsome chickens." 

To be sure a good many of these stories have been over- 
laid with myth and legend, but the spirit remains, and one can- 



8i6 THE SAINTS AND ANIMALS [Sept. 

not doubt that the friendship of the saints for animals was a 
true thing. One is often amused at the old monkish chronicler 
who transcribes these naivetes: "Even to the brute beasts our 
Father showed kindness," is a phrase which frequently occurs 
and suggests that the narrative was not colored by the tran- 
scriber's predilection for animals. In a time of much cruelty 
and wrong, when the public heart and conscience had not yet 
been stirred for these poor dependants of ours, the saints alone 
stand out as the lovers and protectors of the creatures, and in 
them, not elsewhere, must we look for the very spirit of the 
Church. One remembers Tennyson's " Becket," a very noble 
conception in poetry, and the incident of the poor man who 
brings him his dog its paws cut off by the king's verderers. 
"Poor beast, poor beast!" says Becket. "Who hurts a dog 
would hurt a child. They are too bloody." 

In the days when men were " too bloody " the saints, the 
exemplars of men, showed an even exaggerated tenderness for 
animals, and hence the whole lovely literature of myth and 
legend. 

One cannot conclude better than with Cardinal Newman's 
prayer to St. Philip Neri who loved animals so much that he 
could not restrain himself at seeing them unkindly treated. 

" Philip, my glorious advocate, teach me to look at all I 
see around me after thy pattern as the creatures of God. Let 
me never forget that the same God who made me made the 
whole world and all men and animals that live in it. Gain me 
the grace to love all God's works for God's sake ; and all men 
for the sake of my Lord and Saviour who redeemed them on 
the Cross." 




THE TREE OF HELP. 

BY CLAUDE M. GIRARDEAU. 

|IANA MARGRAVE leaned back in the Chinese 
chair before her American writing-table, looking 
irresolutely at the blank paper under her hand, 
then rose and pushed aside the panel which ob- 
scured the view of the garden. She gazed ab- 
sently upon the bit of landscape which had decided her choice 
of residence when she came to Kobe some two months before. 
The one thousandth view of it was as entrancing as the first : 
pale green velvet grass-slopes sweeping beguilingly to a little 
river, over which trembled and billowed in the suave breeze 
splendid sakura-trees like rosy clouds, so extravagant and aerial 
their wealth of bloom. Along the softly curved banks of the 
stream whispered the water plants blue and white iris; and at 
one point the courteous and pliant wands of reeds and rushes 
bowed to permit the royal progress of a fleet of Imperial Pe- 
kins that floated downstream like snowy flowers. 

The maisonette, half foreign, half Japanese, that stood in the 
middle of this enchanting garden, seemed rather small for its 
present occupant. In looking at Miss Margrave one expected 
to behold near her the towering structures of New York, not 
the pagoda-roofs of Kobe. She realized this, and regretted her 
five feet eight inches of stature, her pale yellow hair, and her 
gray eyes; for she had an odd fancy that with fewer inches, 
different and darker coloring, and vision more oblique, she would 
be able to see clearly much that would be forever obscure to 
the round gaze of the West. 

Several years before, her interest in Japan had been height- 
ened by the arrival in New York of a number of young Japa- 
nese, daughters of nobles, sent by the Imperial government to 
obtain a knowledge of things barbarian, that is, American. 

Meeting some of these noble maidens at college, Miss Mar- 
grave fell captive to them and devoted her leisure to making 
their acquaintance. During the years of their exile she was 
constantly in the company of one or the other of them, al- 
VOL. LXXXVII. 52 



8i8 THE TREE OF HELP [Sept., 

though her favorite was the youngest, a demure creature called 
Springtime, the Lady Haru-Ko. 

There was one subject they did not discuss religion. 

Miss Margrave would have been at a loss to define, or de- 
scribe, her own religious belief, and therefore never attempted 
it even to herself. She had the same code of honor that the 
men of her family had. They were Kentuckians, fine, clean fel- 
lows, who rode straight, never lied, never betrayed a confidence, 
and revered the memory of their distinguished forefathers. 

By intuition Miss Margrave discovered that the Lady Haru- 
Ko had the same code. As unlike externally as it was possi- 
ble for women to be, they were extremely sympathetic. In a 
short while Haru-Ko spoke English well, and Miss Margrave 
had mastered colloquial Japanese. However, the latter finally 
went to Japan without letting any of her native friends know 
of her arrival. She wished to test her knowledge of the spoken 
language and to obtain her first impressions of the country un- 
hampered by the excessively mechanical etiquette of aristocratic 
society, or the stupid prejudices and personal preferences of 
long resident foreigners. As for the missioners of all religions, 
she held them in supreme contempt. 

This particular morning in April, about two months after 
her arrival, she found herself on the point of yielding to an 
inclination to announce her presence in Japan to the Lady 
Haru-Ko. She had delayed doing this because her acquaint- 
ance in Kobe, strictly limited to the natives, had given her a 
curious feeling about them and her former friend. The language 
she had learned to understand, but the people themselves 
would she ever understand them ? They seemed like reflections 
in a mirror. She would never be able to see behind their 
masks. They were as mysterious to her as the other side of 
the moon. Hence her odd wish for the oblique vision of the 
East. Nothing, apparently, would ever make the East intelli- 
gible to the West there was no exact meeting-place. The 
touch of Nature that makes the whole world kin, was epigram- 
matic only of the white world ; the same touch left the brown, 
yellow, red, and black races unmoved. 

After an inward debate and an outward shrug, Diana went 
back to her writing-table, picked up a camel's hair brush, and 
began carefully to trace in India ink the first ideogram of a 
letter to the Lady Haru-Ko, daughter of Baron Tsukumichi, 



1908.] THE TREE OF HELP 819 

of the ancient nobility. The note written, she drew a delicate 
scarf of violet crepe over her fair head, opened a parasol of 
varnished paper mounted on gilded bamboo, and followed the 
capricious path through the garden to the entrance gate. 

The old mom-ban in the miniature lodge promised to keep 
a sharp lookout for the postman, and hardly had Miss Mar- 
grave disappeared in the shrubbery, when a toylike individual 
in spick and span uniform made a grave appearance, took the 
letter leaving others and passed on at a mechanical trot as 
if wound up for that especial performance. 

A week later Miss Margrave bit her lip and gave up all 
idea of receiving a reply from the Lady Haru-Ko. 

" My instinct told me not to write," she said to herself. 
But her instinct had done nothing of the kind. 

During the week of expectation the writer had employed 
herself upon the construction of an ode, in the Japanese style 
of course, carefully modeled upon Yakamochi's New Year's 
Greeting to the Empress. It was as if a Japanese girl had un- 
dertaken a sonnet after the manner of Spenser. 

She had successfully accomplished the first line there were 
to be five lines in all and was breathlessly struggling with the 
second, when a knock upon the woodwork of the partition in- 
terrupted her. To her impatient " Come in," the fusuma was 
pushed aside and there entered a chubby one in red and yel- 
low cotton, who fell on all fours and polished her forehead on 
the mat. 

"Well, O Tissa (Lettuce), what is it?" 

"To inquire your honorable desires concerning the honor- 
ably insignificant dinner ? " 

11 Oh ! " the poetess gazed helplessly at the ends of O-Tis- 
sa's gay sash, which were sticking up stiffly as if protest- 
ing against the kimono's abject abasement. " Anything you 
please, O-Tissa ; I will be satisfied." 

The humble Lettuce crawled out backward, softly closing 
the panel, which opened again in a few moments to admit 
" the honorable wash." 

After this interruption Miss Margrave rose in wrath, gath- 
ered up her writing materials a much punished pencil and a 
pad and secreted herself in the garden on a rustic bench un- 
der the splendid cherry-trees. 

The ode celebrated the Return of Spring (Haru) and re- 



820 THE TREE OF HELP [Sept., 

ferred obliquely, like a Japanese eye, to the return of one of 
the heroes of Port Arthur, General Sasaki. 

Now Sasaki means Tree of Help, and these things happened 
in 1895 when Port Arthur, the impregnable, fell into Japanese 
hands in ten hours only fortress and town and ships. Gen- 
eral Sasaki was soon to return from Formosa after a winter's 
campaign, and ardently Miss Margrave desired to meet him. 

In the meantime she must compose the ode, and then if 
some Japanese critic should pronounce it worthy she might 
publish it. 

While lost in desperate composition, for every single word 
in the five lines was of fabulous significance, a timid voice sa- 
luted her preoccupied ear. She presently woke to the fact that 
some one was calling her by name Diana. She glanced around 
her in astonishment. Near at hand stood a forlorn figure, a 
childlike creature, in a soiled and torn common cotton kimono 
that was short enough to betray naked ankles and bare feet 
strapped upon rough geta. A dingy dark- blue cotton cloth 
over the head obscured the face but the voice 

" Can it be that you have forgotten me, Diana ? " 

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Miss Margrave. "Why, but 
a week ago I mailed a letter to you. Did you not get it ? 
What am I saying ? Heavens above ! Why are you looking 
like this? My poor Haru-Ko, something terrible has happened 
I know it. Tell me what has happened " 

She sprang to her feet, scattering poetic leaves all over the 
grass, enveloped the small, shrinking figure in an impulsive 
embrace, tore off the soiled blue scarf, replacing it with the 
silk one from her own shoulders exclaiming, protesting, every 
drop of her southern blood aflame. 

" Hide me ! " sharply aspirated the sorry little apparition, 
then fainted and hung on Diana's arm as if dead. 

Miss Margrave gathered into her strong arms the limp fig- 
ure and carried it easily into the house. 

Secure in her bedroom, with wooden walls proof against 
hole-punching by sharp finger-points, she bolted the solid doors 
and ran for some cold water. The inanimate Haru-Ko lay flat 
on the floor like a crushed moth. Diana splashed the pale, 
dirt-streaked face with the iced water, then inserted a spoon 
between the flaccid lips, and, as the American whisky trickled 
down her throat, the Japanese girl coughed violently, strangled, 



1908.] THE TREE OF HELP 821 

struggled to a sitting position, and was clapped smartly on the 
back. 

Then around her shivering wretchedness was folded an am- 
ple quilt of wadded silk, she was picked up and placed gently 
on a foreign bed. She remembered faintly how comfortable 
those American mattresses and pillows were ; her tired feet 
spread themselves gratefully upon the recognized rubber bag 
of hot water; she smiled dimly, snuggled down too weary to 
think any more, and fell into a profound sleep. 

She slept all day. Occasionally her friend would slip softly 
into the room, put a tentative hand upon the hotwater bag, 
and take an anxious peep at the small face above the flowered 
quilt, so dark and pathetic on the white pillowslip. Diana 
smiled through tears when she observed its streaky condition 
and the dirt on the miniature hands tucked under the cheek. 
Then she would tiptoe away, consumed with wonder and cur- 
iosity. 

Toward evening the Lady Haru-Ko awoke, examined her 
surroundings with no motion except of the eyelids. When 
Diana came in she accomplished a very faint smile. 

" Now, my dear," said the American briskly in English, 
sitting on the edge of the bed, " you have had a fine sleep 
and must eat something. Dinner is ready to be served." 

"No, please"; murmured Haru-Ko, "I would first take an 
honorable bath. I cannot eat in your honorable house while I 
am so dirty." 

"You shall have a bath at once"; replied Diana. " I will 
lend you some clothes. But dear me they will swallow you 
up." 

The Lady Haru-Ko smiled again, because her friend was 
laughing. 

" It will make no difference at all," she said in her soft 
voice. "Just so that the honorable garments are clean. Never 
in my life was I like this before. I am sick with it. I am 
ashamed." 

She staggered as she attempted to stand. "You must let 
me help you," said Diana, slipping a firm arm around her. 
" My darling Springtime, we will just pretend that I am your 
maid." 

"No, my dear and lovely friend"; corrected the little peer- 
ess, leaning against her, stroking her arm timidly. " Ah, if I 



822 THE TREE OF HELP [Sept., 

could be brave and big and strong like you." Tears slipped 
down her face. But they both laughed aloud, after the bath, 
over the muslin and lace and blue- ribboned garment into which 
the tiny Haru-Ko melted out of sight. 

" Just imagine yourself in America," said Diana, propping 
her up in a big chair with pillows. " Forget Japan and think 
of dinner. I shall be gone but a minute." 

When she returned the Lady Haru-Ko sat up with gleam- 
ing eyes : " It is true," she said decidedly, " that I am almost 
starved to death." 

" If you do not eat every single thing I shall punish you 
severely," Diana replied gaily; "I shall have to leave you for 
awhile, as some people have come to call. I will be as unin- 
teresting as possible so they will soon run away. You must 
not be afraid, for I will lock the door." Some expression in 
the wan, sallow face made her stoop suddenly and impress an 
ardent kiss upon it. " I know it isn't Japanese, and therefore 
not at all nice, but I love you and you will excuse me." 

She then ran out leaving the little peeress to literally de- 
vour the American dinner, using both fork and fingers in her 
eagerness to appease her dreadful hunger. She felt empty to 
the very soles of her feet. When the aching void was filled 
and the fingers washed, the Lady Haru-Ko fell again upon the 
bed, buried her face in the pillows, and wept bitterly. A sound 
of merry conversation and Diana's joyous laughter seeped in 
through keyholes and crevices. 

About eleven o'clock, when the lingering visitors had been 
almost pushed out by the scandalized mom-ban, Diana let her- 
self softly into her room. 

" Haru Ko," she exclaimed reproachfully to the eyes on the 
pillow, " you have been awake all this time. I am sorry we 
were so noisy, but Mr. Kato kept asking Japanese conundrums 
with English answers. I was beginning to think I would have 
to tell them a ghost story and send them home when they 
decided to say good-night Would you like to have me sleep 
with you, my dear ? " 

" Oh, if you only would," Haru-Ko replied impulsively, 
wringing her hands. " I am what is called nervous, I believe 
I cannot seem to sleep when the honorable dark comes you 
are so kind I will tell you everything." 

Diana sat beside her and held her in a warm, capable em- 



1908.] THE TREE OF HELP 823 

brace. "Talk as much as you like," she said, " I'm not sleepy 
either." 

Haru-Ko whispered at her ear: "Last autumn I was mar- 
ried to the illustrious General Sasaki " 

" General Sasaki ? the splendid hero of Port Arthur ? How 
magnificent ! I was composing a poem in his honor when you 
spoke to me in the garden." 

" Ah ! " breathed the General's wife. " Listen : No sooner 
were we married than he was obliged to accompany the Im- 
perial army to Corea. I wanted to go with him ; but it was 
not permitted. I am twenty years of age quite old " 

" Old ? " exclaimed Miss Margrave, who was twenty-three, 
" oh, yes in Japan." 

"But the illustrious General is sixty years of age," mur- 
mured Haru-Ko, a sob catching her in the throat. She nestled 
closer to the American, whose heart began to beat like a met- 
ronome. The mournful voice continued : 

" Eight long years had I been exiled from my country. I 
knew nothing about Japan and its customs. I had become an 
American. You know how many honorable young gentlemen 
wished to marry me in America. I was sorry to refuse your 
honorable brother " 

" He will never forget you," murmured Diana. 

"Ah! but he must. I expected to be the wife of my cou- 
sin, the Marquis Matsudaira Tokimasa he is young, handsome 
very handsome and distinguished, like the Splendid Genji of 
romance and, as the Americans would say, we loved each 
other." 

Diana began to cry bitterly, choking in her handkerchief, 
for this was very pitiful. But Haru-Ko's voice sounded more 
clearly at her ear: 

"You must not think that I objected to being the wife of 
General Sasaki. It was the desire of the Emperor himself and 
the ardent wish of my family. I was perfectly willing to sac- 
rifice myself and my insignificant feelings for the honor and ad- 
vancement of my family, and to cast luster on the shades of my 
departed ancestors. Any Japanese woman would do as much. 
My cousin, also, was honorably willing to sacrifice himself." 

" Did he marry some one else ? " 

" No." 

" Then what is the trouble ? " inquired Diana in amazement, 



824 THE TREE OF HELP [Sept., 

drying her eyes, since she was not to weep over the death of 
love. 

" This that the illustrious General's mother, my august 
mother-in-law, hates me. I have to live with her. It is the 
custom. She either desired another wife for her honorable son, 
or she did not wish him to marry again. She is very eged, 
fully seventy-nine, and inconceivably wicked " Haru-Ko now 
began to cry and sob and tremble violently. 

" My darling, what on earth has this aged, inconceivably 
wicked old woman done ? Do not cry so. No wicked old 
woman in the world is worth such tears." 

*' I must first tell you about the illustrious General,'* sobbed 
Haru-Ko. " I knew that he was illustrious, and I also knew 
that he had been married before, but that his wife had changed 
her world many years ago." A violent shudder communicated 
its terror to the bosom of the listener, so that she tightened 
the protecting clasp of her arms. " His children are all mar- 
ried a long time, so that there was no one at his house but 
my honorable mother-in-law, Madame Azai, and myself. One 
day the woman who attended me told me about the General's 
first wife. She was a beautiful woman of distinguished birth, 
and she had had many admirers. When the General was with 
the Imperial troops during the Civil War of 1869, she was gos- 
sipped about in his absence, until her name became a byword. 
She, knowing this, would listen to no advice, receive no ex- 
postulation. At last the Imperial army was victorious, the war 
was at an end, General Sasaki was returning home just as he 
is doing now." Haru-Ko clung to her friend, and they stared 
at each other in the dim light of the paper andon. " His beau- 
tiful wife put on her most magnificent ceremonial robes and 
met him at the threshold of their house the house in which I 
have been living. She performed the salutations according to 
the ancient etiquette. Then she arose and they entered the 
house She was never seen or heard of afterward." 

A moment of tense silence ; then the American uttered a 
subdued exclamation of horror and disgust. " My poor Haru- 
Ko. Did that hideous tale of cruelty frighten you into running 
away ? " 

" No, no " ; cried Haru-Ko, " not the tale itself. But I 
know now that the unfortunate woman was not guilty. She 
thought, of course, her husband would understand. She thought 






1908.] THE TREE OF HELP 825 

that if she put on her splendid robes and met him as an obedi- 
ent wife should do, he would know that she was slandered as 
I am ! Yes, as I am. You will find it almost impossible to 
believe me, but dreadful reports have been spread abroad about 
me. Messages have been sent in my name to my honorable 
cousin, the Marquis Matsudaira, as coming from me. He would 
accordingly appear at different times unexpected by me. 
How can I ever make you understand ? I begged him to re- 
main away even if one came saying I was dead. But his absence 
made no difference. Nothing made any difference. I soon real- 
ized that innocence and inexperience have no defense against 
hatred. My honorable mother-in-law is determined to destroy 
me, or to make me destroy myself. I am slandered just as 
the first wife was slandered. My friends have deserted me. I 
do not know what was told them, but one an elderly woman 
went so far as to ask me if I knew the story of the General's 
first wife. I was utterly bewildered I became desperate. My 
honorable cousin, in his efforts to exonerate me, only succeeded 
in making matters worse, since he has stubbornly refused to 
marry, being now the head of his house. My august mother-in- 
law informed me that she had written to the General concern- 
ing the irremediable disgrace of his name, and that fee was on 
his way from Formosa. She then led me to an apartment 
and pointed significantly to two ancient and illustrious swords 
upon a table. They were as bright as silver, having been new- 
ly cleansed and sharpened. I became insane at sight of them, 
because standing near them I beheld a figure in blood-stained, 
ceremonial robes. I fled from the room and from the house, 
for to have killed myself then would have been to acknowledge 
myself guilty. That very morning your letter had been given 
me. I determined to go to you at once. I was afraid to re- 
turn to the house for anything and went out upon the high- 
way. I had no money, and did not know how to get any, so 
I joined a band of pilgrims who were coming to Kobe, and 
wandered with them. I was frightened almost out of my senses 
and forgot everything of common-sense I had learned in 
America. But now I am here Kwannon, goddess of mercy, 
has compassionated me." 

"You are here, you are safe," exclaimed Miss Margrave, 
whose very soul was aching. " And you shall not leave me 
until every inch of Japan is as safe for you as this house is. 



826 THE TREE OF HELP [Sept., 

But now you must try to sleep again, or you will be very ill. 
To-morrow we will talk things over together and I will have 
some plan." 

They both opened their eyes at dawn and Haru-Ko drew a 
long, quivering breath like a grieved child. 

" What am I to do ? " she said mechanically, sitting up, 
pressing her hands to her head. " I had better commit honor- 
able suicide. Indeed, it is the proper thing for me to do. 
The General spoke to me in dreams " 

"The General? The devil!" wrathfully exclaimed Miss 
Margrave, "or your honorable mother-in-law, which, by token, 
is the same thing. Do not let such a barbarous idea get lodg- 
ment for one single moment in your poor little head. Promise 
me, Haru-Ko, that you will do nothing until I see the illus- 
trious General Sasaki, for I mean to come face to face with 
him the minute he sets foot on Japanese soil." 

" And he will inquire most politely from whom had you 
the facts of the case," answered poor Haru Ko, "and when 
you speak of me he will not say anything no; but he will 
listen no more. Not if you stood before him for all eternity." 
Her soft voice was tragic. 

" He shall hear what I have to say," Diana declared, "and 
if he refuses to listen to justice and reason why you and I 
will go away to America." 

" No, no "; mourned the small Haru-Ko. " If the illustrious 
General believes evil of me I must and will die." 

" Not in my house," said Diana hysterically, half laughing, 
half crying. " I will not bury you in my garden " 

"There is nothing else to do," replied Haru-Ko somberly, 
" for I cannot live in disgrace," 

A knock at the door prevented further discussion. The 
knock was followed by a vigorous turning of the handle. 
Diana ran to hold the door on a tiny crack and peep through 
at O-Tissa. 

" Well, Lettuce-leaf ? " 

" Madame, the honorable morning paper." 

On the first page was a headline in large letters announcing 
that General Sasaki was at the point of death in one of the 
Kobe military hospitals. He had been seriously wounded in 
Formosa, and became so desperately ill on the voyage home 
that the transport destined for Yokohama put in at Kobe to 






1908.] THE TREE OF HELP 827 

obtain skilled surgical attendance for him. He was not ex- 
pected to live. 

Diana read this aloud breathlessly, then dragged Haru Ko 
from bed. 

"You must dress immediately. We will go at once to the 
hospital. Thank heaven we have the start of your mother-in- 
law." 

She flung open the door, called the astonished maid, or- 
dered a kuruma and an immediate breakfast. Then clothed 
the Lady Haru-Ko in the only available Japanese garments 
some splendid ceremonial robes bought at the theater and 
covered them with a loose, black silk cloak. 

She insisted upon Haru Ko's eating some of the hastily 
prepared breakfast while she scrambled into her own clothes. 
Then she put Haru-Ko into the kuruma, sprang in beside 
her, reached out automatically for reins and whip then fell 
back with an emphatic "Hurry! Hurry!" to the kuruma-ya, 
who by this time was quite used to the eccentricities of his 
barbarian employer, and who started off on a run. 

In half an hour after reading the paper they were at the hos- 
pital ; and a little later were interviewing one of the surgeons: 

" This lady is General Sasaki's wife," said Miss Margrave. 
The surgeon's face was inscrutable ; he bowed profoundly. 
"Naturally she wishes to see her husband. Is he living?" 
She held her breath. 

"He is living," said the surgeon, "you are in time," and 
led the way to the room. 

As they entered Miss Margrave looked in astonishment at 
the man at the bedside then at the General himself. Sasaki, 
in appearance already a corpse, was lying at full length upon 
the cot, his body stiff with bandages. His yellow, bloodless 
hands, those powerful hands with knotted joints, were folded 
over something upon his chest. His lips and eyes seemed in- 
exorably closed, but at the slight creak of the opening door 
his narrow lids slid upward like porcelain shutters, and his 
soul looked forth. 

Its clear, comprehending ray fell upon the face of his wife 
Springtime, with her slender April face gleaming with tears, 
a black cloak slipping from her shoulders that supported the 
weight of ceremonial robes heavy with embroidery. 

"O-Haru!" murmured the General, and stretched a hand 



328 THE TREE OF HELP [Sept. 

toward her. At this gesture, and the look that leaped into his 
rigid face, the tall American would have turned away, but he 
bade her remain where she was. Haru-Ko glided to the cot 
and bowed herself at its side. The General placed a hand on 
her head and the ice of it sank through her brain to her heart. 
She shuddered violently. 

"Forgive me, my honorable husband." 

"For what, my Springtime?" he asked gently. 

She lifted her head bravely, took his icy hand between her 
trembling palms, and eyed him piteously : 

" I ran away from your honorable house ? " 

" Why ? " 

" Because I did not know what else to do. . . . I went 
to stay with my honorable friend who is here with me." 

" You did wrong," replied the General calmly, " a soldier 
and a soldier's wife must not desert a post." 

" I am ready to die," she said firmly. " I have come to 
tell you so." 

A dark shadow masked the dying face. " God forbid," said 
the General, " I command you to live. To live and be happy. 
I must die" 

He- slowly lifted the hand on his breast and Haru-Ko's eyes 
followed it to his lips with a petrifaction of astonishment. With 
it he grasped a crucifix. 

" I die," he reiterated, " but I die a Christian." 

He closed his eyes and was again motionless. No one stirred 
in the room, though to Miss Margrave's imaginative vision the 
priest at the bedside a member of that terribly proscribed 
band, held up to infamous obloquy on the public notice-boards 
at every turning wore an expression of exalted triumph, as he 
in turn gazed upon the dying man. 

All began to fear that Sasaki was dead, when he spoke 
again, slowly: "I have written to my honorable mother. I 
wrote also to you, Haru-Ko. Had you remained at home you 
would have been justified sooner. I understand I forgive 
Sayonara, my Springtime." 

Then he turned his rigid face toward the other side of the bed, 
and as if addressing a viewless attendant with eyes of judgment, 
said loudly : " I have expiated God be merciful to me, a sin- 
ner forgive" made the Sign of the Cross, and so changed 
his world. 






flew Boohs. 

Persons unfamiliar with philosophy 
SCIENCE AND RELIGION, who wish to understand the En- 

cyclical against Modernism will de- 
rive much help from an unpretentious little book, the joint 
work of two scholars who have already contributed greatly to 
the diffusion of a popular knowledge of Catholic philosophy. 
The philosophic errors of agnosticism and immanentism are de- 
nounced by Pius X. as the root of modernistic extravagance; 
and the antidote for the evil the Pope declares to be the scho- 
lastic philosophy. Hence some knowledge of the bearing of 
the rival systems upon each other would seem to be indispen- 
sable to any intelligent comprehension of the Pascendi Domi- 
nici Gregis, although many eloquent eulogists and commenta- 
tors of that document seem to have overlooked the fact. In 
The Spectrum of Truth * a comparison between the scholastic 
system and its modern antagonists is made with regard to the 
great fundamental principles and problems of metaphysical 
speculation. The comparison is carried out in a spirit of so- 
briety and moderation. The writers, while insisting on the pre- 
eminent value of scholasticism, as "in principle and, so far as 
it goes, the safest guide to truth," recognize that there is to 
be found also some value in other systems ; and they take care, 
where the occasion offers, " to harmonize rather than to accen- 
tuate differences." The basic questions of ontology, cosmology, 
psychology, natural theology, and moral philosophy are taken 
up in succession and treated as lucidly as is possible within the 
brief limits of what is not much longer than an ordinary lec- 
ture. A good deal of attention is paid to Kant, whose doc- 
trine of the relativity of knowledge is explained in a manner 
which even those uninitiated in philosophy may grasp. Prag- 
matism, too, is characterized neatly, while immanence and im- 
manentism, materialism in its Haeckelian disguise of monism, 
have their weak spots laid bare. Only one drawback can we 
find to set down against the merits of this admirable little 
book ; it is that in it hardly enough recognition is given to 
ethical truth. The scant space and rather perfunctory treat- 
ment awarded to moral philosophy is, indeed, in proportion to 

* The Spectrum of Truth. By A. B. Sharpe, M.A., and F. Aveling, D.D. St. Louis : 
B. Herder. 



830 NEW BOOKS [Sept., 

the place it occupies in the traditional scale; but, in the world 
of to-day, as compared with that of, we might almost say, yes- 
terday, the relative importance of metaphysics and ethics, as 
far as the defense of religious truth is concerned, has altered 
enormously. 

The apostolic benediction conferred, some time ago, upon 
Dr. Walsh, has, like that of the patriarch, conferred fecundi- 
ty on its recipient. Two large volumes following closely on 
the heels ot the one devoted to celebrating the glories of the 
thirteenth century are further proof of the Doctor's encyclo- 
pedic stores of information, of the rapidity with which he works, 
and of his zeal in the apologetic campaign which he has made 
his special province. That campaign may be described as the 
refutation, by concrete fact, of the baseless allegation, that sci- 
ence and religious faith are incompatible. This claim Dr. Walsh 
overthrows by the very effective method of drawing out a good- 
ly array of names of men who have been, at once, fiim be- 
lievers in religion and illustrious leaders or promoters of sci- 
entific progress. His latest work, The Popes and Science* is 
engaged, chiefly, in recounting the attitude of the popes to- 
wards medicine, surgery, and chemistry ; and it may be con- 
sidered an answer to the charges made against the papacy in 
this respect, by Dr. White in his Warfare of Science and The- 
ology, especially in the chapter "From Miracles to Medicine." 
The point on which Dr. Walsh scores most decisively over his 
adversary is on the Bull of Boniface VIII., which has been in- 
terpreted as an absolute prohibition of scientific dissection of 
the human body. The text of the Bull is reproduced ; and it 
patently declares that the Pope's object was, not to interfere 
with surgical investigation, but to put a stop to the barbarous 
practice then in vogue of boiling and cutting up bodies, in 
order that the remains of persons who had died in foreign lands 
might, in compliance with their dying wishes, be interred in 
their own country. Other papal prohibitions, which opponents 
of the Church have cited as instances of her opposition to the 
science of chemistry, the Doctor shows to have been aimed at 
the practice of magic, sorcery, and other frauds. Another 
charge which the Doctor triumphantly refutes is that the Church 

* The Popes and Science. The History of the Papal Relations to Science during the Mid- 
dle Ages and down to our own time. By James J. Walsh, M.D., Ph.D. New York : Ford- 
ham University Press. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 831 

neglected the care of the insane in the Middle Ages. The evi- 
dence which he adduces amply supports the Doctor's conclu- 
sion : 

An examination of the methods for the care of the insane in 
the Middle Ages brings out clearly the fact that the modern 
generation may learn from these old Catholic humanitarians, 
whose hearts and whose charity served so well to make up 
for any deficiencies of intellect or of science the moderns 
would presume them to have labored under. 

It will not, we trust, be taken as an indication of a desire 
to find fault with the Doctor's meritorious work, in this as in 
his other volumes of cognate character, but rather as indicat- 
ing a desire to see what is good become still better, if we in- 
dicate a tendency which sometimes weakens the Doctor's case. 
It is that he is occasionally tempted to push the claims of his 
clients beyond bounds. We all remember how Mivart delivered 
himself into the hands of his enemy by citing an irrelevant pas- 
sage of Suarez to prove that the latter had anticipated the doc- 
trine of evolution. Now the Doctor is sometimes tempted to 
make similar mistakes. From the present volume we may cite 
an instance which is a close parallel to that of Mivart. In his 
chapter on " Churchmen and Science," the Doctor claims that 
St. Thomas taught the principle of the conservation of energy: 

When St. Thomas used the aphorism, " Nothing at all will 
ever be reduced to nothingness," there was another significa- 
tion that he attached to the words quite as clearly as that 
by which they expressed the indestructibility of matter. For 
him nihil or nothing meant neither matter nor form, that is, 
neither material substance nor the energy which is contained 
in it. He meant, then, that no energy would ever be de- 
stroyed as well as no matter would ever be annihilated. 

We shall pass over the inaccuracy involved here in making 
the English word, matter, equivalent to the scholastic term, 
materia prima, which stands for a very different concept from 
that represented by our word. Is it true, however, that St. 
Thomas taught that the form is not destroyed ? Quite the re- 
verse. His doctrine, and the approved scholastic doctrine, is 
that in every substantial change, the forma, which is the source 
of all the activities, or energy, perishes. The full significance 
of this theory is most brought out in its application to the 
principle of life in the lower animals. In them the vital prin- 



832 NEW BOOKS [Sept., 

ciple, the source of all the vital energy, utterly perishes per 
accidens on the death of the animal; consequently, according 
to scholastic philosophy, this vital energy is not conserved, but, 
on the contrary, perishes with the principle to which it belongs. 
St. Thomas and his fellows have ample titles to glory as intel- 
lectual giants nobody has demonstrated this more brilliantly 
than Dr. Walsh without claiming for them the credit of hav- 
ing forestalled modern scientific theories which, by the way, 
may yet be relegated to the scrap-heap of rejected hypotheses. 

Another volume from the Doctor's pen is Makers of Mod- 
ern Medicine* consisting of a number of articles published in 
various magazines, which some of the Doctor's friends judged 
worthy of preservation in more permanent form. These papers 
are short biographies of men eminent for their contributions to 
the advance of medical science. The book, consequently, ap- 
peals more to the medical student and others interested in med- 
ical science, than to the general reader. Nevertheless, the bi- 
ographies have also a general interest, inasmuch as the author 
depicts the man as well as the scientist, and, true to his role, 
emphasizes the fact that each of them was a believer in God, 
though they were not all Catholics. 

When Dr. Walsh will have closed his series of popular 
apologetics, we trust that he will turn his talents to a still more 
fruitful employ, by producing a work of scientific form, replete 
with the necessary references to sources and authorities, me- 
thodical in arrangement, and on the academic plane rather than 
on that of the popular lecture platform. Only a book of this 
type can combat that of scholars like White and such a work 
the Doctor can write, if he is willing to devote to it the nec- 
essary time and labor. 

The priests, eighteen in number, 

PIONEER PRIESTS OF whose apostolic labors are record- 

NORTH AMERICA. ed, in a pleasing, lively vein by 

By Fr. Campbell. Father Campbell, SJ.,f were all 

members of his order, who labored 

among the Indians of the great Iroquois nation. The reason 
of his selection, the author tells us, is that, although nearly all 

* Makers of Modern Medicine. By James J. Walsh, M.D., Ph.D. New York : Fordham 
University Press. 

t Pioneer Priests of North America 1642-1710. By Rev. T. J. Campbell, S. J. New 
York : Fordham University Press. 






i9o8.] NEW BOOKS 833 

of these missionaries were great and remarkable men, conspicu- 
ous for holiness as well as through the part they played in 
the political events of the colonies, yet most of them are un- 
known. The history, for it may be considered a history, of 
the period covered by the lives of these men who, roughly 
speaking, followed one another in chronological succession, be- 
gins with Father Jogues, and ends with the departure to Canada 
of Julien Gamier, the last missionary to the Senecas. In pro- 
ducing this volume Father Campbell has, at once, furnished in 
lasting popular iorm, a splendid story of heroic apostolic zeal, 
and a valuable contribution to American ecclesiastical history. 

The latest commentary on the De- 
MARRIAGE LAWS. cree, Ne Tenter e, to appear in book 

form is that of Dr. Cronin,* of the 

English College in Rome. It opens with an interesting his- 
torical account of the new legislation which owes its inception 
to a petition addressed by Cardinal Kopp, of Breslau, begging 
that certain dispensations granted to the Archbishop of Paris, 
regarding the laws relating to domicile and quasi-domicile, might 
be extended to Breslau. The deliberations of the Roman au- 
thorities over this request led to the decision that the time had 
arrived for a modification of existing discipline. The recent 
decree was not formulated in haste. Dr. Cronin tells us that 

Kvery clause, every section, every phrase, every word has 
been microscopically examined. The search-light of expert 
knowledge had so illuminated the whole decree, and each of 
its parts, that no delect could escape detection. ... A 
great part of the time, labor, and thought of the most learned 
cardinals and of the finest canonists of the Church, during 
nearly two years and a half, has been devoted to this work, 
and the Sovereign Pontiff has given his approval to the re- 
sult, " ex certa scientia et matura deliberatione." 

Notwithstanding this exceeding care, the divergences to be 
found in the interpretation of certain points of the law by va- 
rious commentators testify that the proverbial difficulty of form- 
ulating legislative language so precisely that no mistake can be 
made about its import has not been completely overcome. As 

y The New Matrimonial Legislation. A Commentary on the Decree of the Sacred Con- 
gregation of the Council Ne Temere. By Charles J. Cronin, D.D., Vice-Rector of the Eng- 
lish College, Rome. New York : Benziger Brothers. 

VOL. LXXXVII. 53 



834 NEW BOOKS [Sept., 

an instance, one may mention the important question as to 
whether a private promise of marriage, made between two par- 
ties, and, because private, of no value in foro externo, will, nev- 
ertheless, impose an obligation of justice on the conscience of 
each party. On this serious question conflicting opinions exist. 

The author's solution is that, under the operation of the new 
decree, no obligation in conscience can arise from such a prom- 
ise ! For the arguments offered to sustain this view we must 
refer our readers to the text. Suffice it here to say that Dr. 
Cronin holds that by the present legislation the Pope has with- 
drawn the contract of sponsalia from the domain of the natural 
law, which itself is left untouched. "The contract, because it 
is invalid, is not fit matter for the operation of the natural law." 

On one provision of the new legislation Dr. Cronin very 
rightly dwells at considerable length. The discipline just abro- 
gated so strongly insisted that in the law regulating matrimony, 
the word " parochus " meant the parish priest, or pastor, of 
one of the contracting parties, that many, including some who 
have undertaken to publish their views, have taken for granted 
that in the Ne Temere the same interpretation holds good. Ob- 
viously the entire body of complicated regulations of domicile 
and quasi-domicile hangs upon the supposition that the " pa- 
rochus" must be the "parochus" of one or other of the con- 
tracting parties. The new decree wipes out at one stroke, Dr. 
Cronin insists, all the existing jurisprudence involved in this 
troublesome tangle. The effect of Ne Temere, teaches Dr. Cro- 
nin, is that any " parochus," or pastor, or priest who is properly 
qualified to represent the pastor, can validly marry two pro- 
perly qualified Catholics in his own parish, irrespective of 
whether they are or are not residents of his parish. "Whether 
the persons to be married are his subjects or not, his presence 
at the marriage, either in person, or by his delegate, is not 
only sufficient (provided no diriment impediment exists) but 
even necessary for its validity." 

Having expounded the sweeping effect of the Ne Temere 
regarding domicile, Dr. Cronin proceeds to discuss another 
question which he treats very ably, though its practical impor- 
tance is slight. Is the new decree a departure, on this par- 
ticular point, from the discipline of Trent ? 

According to the canonical jurisprudence that has grown up 
since the Council of Trent, Christian marriage, in those local- 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 835 

ities where the decree lametsi was in force, has been valid only 
when contracted in presence of the pastor or ordinary (or their 
delegate) of one of the contracting parties. This discipline, con- 
tends Dr. Cronin, in a protracted disquisition, grew up through 
erroneous views and opinions of canonists and theologians re- 
garding the Tridentine decrees. The lametsi, he argues, with 
an imposing parade of reasons and authority, intended that any 
"parochus" or his delegate, should possess, within the limits of 
his parish, the authority to validate by his presence the mar- 
riage, not alone of his own subject but of any persons, pro- 
vided these, in every other respect, were qualified to contract 
Christian marriage. Hence, the Doctor maintains, the new de- 
cree, in brushing aside the recent discipline on this head, does 
not really introduce an innovation, but merely returns to and 
establishes the discipline intended by Trent. The authorities on 
the side to which the Doctor adheres are chiefly, Father Pius 
de Langogne and Mgr. Sili, two of the Consultors of the Con- 
gregation of the Council. The contradictory view, that the dis- 
cipline just abrogated was intended by the Council, has in its 
favor Professor Lombardi, the third Consultor, and Father Wernz, 
Superior- General of the Jesuits. Dr. Cronin's volume is a wel- 
come contribution to the Ne Temere discussion, though, obvi- 
ously, it cannot be accepted as the last word on the disputed 
points. 

A conclusion that might be taken 
PRAGMATISM. as the common factor of the host 

of criticisms that have appeared on 

Professor James' exposition of Pragmatism is that the exposi- 
tion is far from clear ; it is particularly vague and hazy on the 
pivotal point, whether in that system utility constitutes truth or 
is merely an index of it ; and the associates of the Professor 
in other lands, Papini, Schiller, and Bergson, have not spoken 
much more clearly than the Harvard professor. The elusive and 
wavering outline of pragmatism has proved a protection to it; for 
most of its assailants have been so uncertain as to the where- 
abouts of the doctrine which they attacked that their fire has 
been delivered at random and with no decisive effect. The 
most successful attempt to compel pragmatism to declare itself 
with precision, is that of M. Hebert* With French incisiveness 

* Le Pragmatisme . Etude sur ses diverses formes Anglo-Ame'ricames, Franchises, et Itali- 
ennes et de sa valeur religieuse. Par Marcel Hubert. Paris : Nourry. 



836 NEW BOOKS [Sept., 

he cuts through the perplexing envelope of vague, and some- 
times incompatible, statements, till he reaches a point where he 
can say just precisely what the pragmatist principles mean if 
they mean anything at all. Then he proceeds to show that the 
theory is the deduction of truth to the baldest subjectivism. 
Coming from one seldom in agreement with Catholic thought, 
M. Hebert's vigorous assertion of the scholastic doctrine on the 
objectivity of truth and of the worthlessness of religious pisg- 
matism is strong, impartial testimony in favor of the Catholic 
position. The last paragraph of M. Hebert's summary expresses 
a truth which he has brought out forcibly in this keen dis- 
sertation : " It is indispensable, when one employs the word 
pragmatism, to explain with precision in what sense and within 
what limits it is employed. Henceforth it is an equivocal 
term." 

It sometimes happens that two un- 

AMONG THE POETS. related volumes, falling simulta- 
neously into the reviewer's hand, 

provide a very suggestive if arbitrary study in contrasts. Lady 
Gilbert's newest poems* and Quivira^ a collection from the 
hand of a scarcely-known American, furnish such material. 
There could be little excuse for coupling books so radically 
dissimilar, were they not admirable examples of temperament 
in poetry and of the part played by racial tendencies in build- 
ing this mystery of temperament. It is more than twenty years 
since Rosa Mulholland's early verses charmed Ruskin and won 
recognition from the literary world ; her craftsmanship and her 
Celtic affinities are long ago established. Mr. Conrard, on the 
other hand, is all to be discovered. In subject-matter he stands 
somewhat as a pioneer ; for, while his verses touch upon many 
themes, his most distinctive work finds its inspiration in the 
Far West. There is a real and elemental poetry in desert 
and canon ; in ruined Spanish missions with their mute witness 
to the " subtile skill of sainted hands " ; in deserted cliff- 
dwelling and drought- parched fields; in the brown Navajo's 
life and love; in coyote and stampeding cattle, and stream and 
"mother pine." It is not merely a novel field, it is a fascin- 
ating and colorful one ; and Harrison Conrard has treated it 
with understanding and ability. 

* Spirit and Dust. By Rosa Mulholland (Lady Gilbert). London: Elkin Mathews. 
t Quivira. By Harrison Conrard. Boston : Richard G. Badger. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 837 

But the difference between our two poets is far more fun- 
damental than this matter of local inspiration. Mr. Conrard's 
besetting sin is one of heaviness; and if Rosa Mulholland has 
one surpassing excellence it is delicacy and lightness of touch. 
There is an almost unreal fragility in her work at moments 
which suggests lovely trifling ; and then we come upon a pas- 
sage of such poignancy and pathos that the quick tear sprirgs 
in response. It is a very feminine poetry, no doubt, but style 
it never lacks. Mr. Conrard does more particularly in the 
quiet and meditative poems; yet his seriousness now and again 
touches upon the sublime. The force, the grandeur of Nature, 
are ever present to him the mighty hewing and carving by 
which chaotic matter grew into a votive offering to Almighty 
God. But our Celtic artist is musing on the tremulous beauty 
of Nature, personifying her moods with a graceful and Grecian 
felicity ; there is the sweet and virginal figure of spring, the 
motherhood of autumn and in the first stars of eventide, lo, 
a suggestion of Mother Mary's eyes ! Lady Gilbert does not 
mourn (as does Mr. Conrard) the " foul infection of the time," 
the degeneracy of art, or the blight of materialism ; because, 
like all true Celts, she is sweetly oblivious of these unlovely 
things. 

Toward religion and toward love our poets are equally di- 
verse. In one we meet the worship of the will the intensity 
without the rapture of Catholicity ; in the other, the worship 
of emotion and imagination a sweet, idyllic music circling about 
" Mary and her angels." It is, perhaps, in the final poems of 
love and loss that Lady Gilbert's volume reaches its greatest 
power ; in the brief memories of " many a sweet word," spo- 
ken and unspoken, in those seven lily years which have left 
only their seed; and in the long waiting, hopeful- eyed, for 
God's call in the morning light ! 

It is not only artistic finish and grace that have kept Rosa 
Mulholland's work fresh and welcome in the presence of much 
greater poetry, it is her delicate intuition of beauty and of 
mystery the "magic" of her Celtic temperament. It is early 
to talk about the endurance of Mr. Conrard's poems. The 
best of those in the present volume (which might have profited 
by judicious pruning ! ) have much reality and intensity. He is 
no dabbler in verse ; and should deftness and lightness of touch 
be added to his natural vigor, we are likely to hear more of him. 



838 NEW BOOKS [Sept., 

REDEMPTION While the title affixed to the Eng- 

By Rene Bazin ^ translation of M. Rene Bazin's 

De Toute Son Ame* is flat and in- 
expressive, yet the translator, or whoever is responsible for it, 
would probably reduce any grumbling critic to silence by sim- 
ply asking: "Can you suggest a better one?" 

There is, perhaps, some exaggeration in the report which 
circulated a few months ago, that all the factory hands and 
shop girls were devouring M. Bazin's story, while at the same 
time it was receiving the highest praise from the literary world. 
Certain it is, however, that the novel has met with phenom- 
enal success. Even in English, after much of its exquisite 
aroma has, notwithstanding the high quality of the translator's 
work, been, necessarily, lost, it is a fascinating story. Sim- 
ple in construction, commonplace in incident, it is a superb 
delineation of the glory of consecration and sacrifice exempli- 
fied in the life of a young girl of the people. Here she is : 

She was one of the slender, lithe young working girls 
whom one meets hurrying along every morning at eight 
o'clock two or three at a time, making their way to the work- 
rooms of some dressmaker or milliner. They look dressed in 
any scrap of clothing, for they are young what becomes of 
the old women of that class ? But this scrap has been delight- 
fully made up, for they have the fingers oi artistes and twenty 
models to copy from. They lend a charm to the street which 
it misses when they pass away. Among them are girls who 
cough and laugh. They are of the people occasionally by 
their gestures, and always by their pricked fingers, by the 
feverish excitement and strenuousness of their life ; but not 
by their trade, nor by the dreams awakened in them by their 
contact with a world with which they grow familiar in spirit. 
Poor girls ! whose tastes are refined, and whose imaginations 
are quickened by the fashion they serve ; who, in order to be- 
come good workwomen, must have a taste for luxury, and 
are thereby rendered less capable of resisting its temptation ; 
for whom men lie in wait as they leave their workrooms, and 
look upon as an easy prey on account of their poverty and 
enforced liberty ; who hear everything, who see the evil 
among the lower classes and divine that of the upper ; who 

* Redemption. (De Toute Son Ame.) By Rend Bazin. Translated by Dr. S. A. Rapop- 
port. New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. 



i9o8.] NEW BOOKS 839 

return at night to face afresh the poverty of their condition ; 
and who, whether they will or no, are continually comparing 
the world they clothe with the world to which they belong. 
The trial is hard, almost too hard, for they are young, deli- 
cate, afiectionate, and more sensitive than others to the ca- 
resses of soft words. Those who resist soon acquire a dig- 
nity of their own, and put on an air of studied indifference 
which is a protection to them, as is also their quick manner 
of walking. Henriette Madiot was one of these. She had 
been the object of considerable homage, and had grown mis- 
trustful of it. 

M. Bazin introduces us to all the secrets of the milliner's 
workshop, where Henriette plays the part of good angel to all, 
especially to Marie Schwartz, who is by no means as indiffer- 
ent to homage as is Henriette. Henriette's home circle consists 
of a brother and an old uncle a veteran soldier, a humble 
brother of our own Uncle Toby. The former is a grumbling, 
talking braggart, with a grudge against the world, especially 
against the capitalist and the employer. He sneers at his sis- 
ter Is she his sister? but is not ashamed to draw perpetually 
on her earnings. As the story develops, a concealed connec- 
tion between the Madiot family and that of Lemarie, the em- 
ployer of Henriette's brother and uncle, is disclosed, which is 
the only element of plot in the piece. Henriette is devotedly 
beloved by a young fisherman of the Loire. A crisis in her 
growth in renunciation is reached when, hopeless and forlorn, 
he bids farewell to home and steers his little sloop towards the 
ocean. But before this point has been reached, Henriette has 
become the indispensable providence to all sorts of suffering 
and abandoned people. So when she goes to the priest for 
consolation, after she has sent her lover away, the priest tells 
her that now she is the better prepared for her mission, and 
he gives utterance to M. Bazin's didactic message: 

There is no need to go searching for a remedy for the evils 
of the times. The remedy already exists it is the gift of 
oneself to those who have fallen so low that even hope fails 
them. Open wide your heart. Love them whatever their 
sins; forgive them however ignorant they may be. There is 
less kinship among the poor than formerly. With the fac- 
tory, the long distances, the tavern, and the drunkenness that 



840 NEW BOOKS [Sept., 

follows, there are many among the men who hardly know 
their children, and many children who have both father and 
mother and yet are orphans. Mademoiselle Henriette, it is 
for you to become a mother to these little ones. Bring joy, 
bring union into this immense separated family. Do not 
speak to them of duty before they have known consolation. 
Hold out your arms to them, that they may know what 
comfort is. God never reviles. His reproaches spring from 
pity. He forgave the sins of the spirit ; and, remember ! 
more often still, He forgave those of the heart and the flesh ; 
the Magdalen, the Samaritan woman, the woman taken in 
adultery, and many others, I feel sure, of whom we have no 
record. You will tremble with joy at the happiness which is 
for others only. You will know the sweetness of commiserat- 
ing tears. 

Henriette's love finds one of its conquests in Marie Schwartz, 
who had become the victim of Henriette's brother. One of the 
most vivid scenes of the story is that of the court-martial where 
the brother, who when on trial for having struck his officer, a 
son of Lemarie, displays, on his sister's account, a courageous 
reticence that, to some extent, redeems his former viciousness. 
Suffering and sorrow throw their pall over the entire drama. 
But the gloom is lightened by a light from beyond. And many 
readers of The Nun will be pleased to learn that nowhere is 
the note of tragedy carried to the extreme intensity that it is 
in the case of Sister Paschale. 



A FRENCH STORY The French mariagc de convenance* 
ON MARRIAGE * n which tne two people most in- 

terested have very little to say in 

he selection of parties, which is conducted by their relatives, 
does not meet with the approbation of Americans. No Amer- 
ican could express more pronounced aversion to it than did 
Mademoiselle Germaine-Etiennette- Frar)oise Mar^eau, when 
her father informed her that he and her aunt had selected a 
very desirable young gentleman as a husband for her. No, she 
knew what love and affection are, for had she not read loads 
of romances? and she knew that marriage without love is but 
a vile form of slavery. She consented to attend the dinner 

* Mon Afari. Par Jules Pravieux. Paris : Libiairie rion-Nourret et Cie. 



1908.] NEW BOOKS 841 

where she was to be submitted to the inspection of her pro- 
spective mother in-law and husband. Affection for her father 
was just strong enough to induce her to avoid smashing all the 
proprieties with her witty tongue, directed against her future 
mother-in-law and the whole exhibition. Yet she accepted M. 
Langlois, whom she describes as a fine looking fellow, who 
treated her with irreproachable politeness without the slightest 
affectation of tenderness or interest, and who evidently thought 
a great deal more of the good things on the table than of the 
attractive young lady by his side. In due time they were mar- 
eied and then the young Madame Langlois starts upon the ar- 
duous task of inspiring a little sentiment into the glacial breast 
of her husband. Besides the obstacles she meets with in his 
phlegmatic character, she finds another equally formidable in 
her mother-in-law. Her husband is still a "mama's darling." 
His mother dotes upon him, regulates his every movement, and 
cannot conceive anything more absurd and impudent than that 
the girl whom she accepted as his wife should presume to claim 
any share with her in his affections. 

Madame Germaine relates with amusing vivacity the course 
of her warfare, and as we follow her we enjoy many ludicrous 
situations and witty conversations, and meet several distinctively 
French characters. But what about the mariage de conveyance ? 
how does it turn out ? Well, it turns out very unfavorably for 
the defenders of the romantic. Germaine elicits a very strorg 
love from her husband, who proves himself to be a first-rate 
fellow; she has had occasion to compare some love marriages 
with her own, and the conclusion she has drawn is not in 
harmony with the views of life inculcated by the romances ; 
finally, she triumphs signally over her mother-in-law, who is 
compelled to be content with second place. The materials of 
the story are almost trivial, but they are put together with art 
and that delicacy of touch which one finds so seldom in English 
writers. The increase in the number of talented French writers 
who do not allow their pages to be soiled by eroticism or in- 
decency is one encouraging sign amid the encircling glocm of 
French social and moral conditions. 



842 NEW BOOKS [Sept. 

This is a collection * of stories of 
A MISSIONARY'S NOTE- conversions from infidelity or the 

paths of sin, and other signal vis- 
By Rev. R. W. Alexander, itations of grace, which have been 

drawn from the personal experi- 
ence of priests engaged in parochial or missionary work in some 
of our own cities and towns. They are, the author assures us, 
not fiction but fact. Many of them illustrate the truth that it is 
not the priest alone, but the good Catholic layman or woman, 
boy or girl, who may be the instrument chosen by God to con- 
vey His mercy to the erring. Although the writer may not 
have intended to point the moral, the stories, as a whole, teach 
the lesson that conversion comes through an appeal to the af- 
fections and emotions more frequently than by dialectic meth- 
ods. The narrator has the story-teller's gift in a high degree, 
along with an exceptionally good style. The command which 
he has of the delicately sentimental and pathetic leads one to 
question, notwithstanding the pseudonym under which he mocj- 
estly veils his identity, whether the masculine pronoun is really 
the proper one to employ in this reference. 

From the seven large volumes of 
LOUIS VEUILLOT. the general correspondence of Louis 

Veuillot, a friend has selected a 

quantity of those which more particularly exhibit the great 
spirit of faith and piety that characterized one who, though 
he was not without fault, and sometimes served not wisely but 
too well the cause which he championed, deserves to rank among 
the greatest Catholic laymen of the nineteenth century. The 
letters of the present collection f are, for the greater part, in- 
timately personal, written to members of his domestic circle, 
or to very close friends. True revelations of character, as fa- 
miliar and unstudied correspondence of this kind always is, 
these letters are a convincing picture of the writer's lofty Chris- 
tian soul. 

* A Missionary's Notebook. By Rev. Richard W. Alexander. Philadelphia : Catholic 
Standard and Times Publishing Company. 

\L'Ame d'un Grand Chretien Esprit de Foi de Louis Veuillot, d'apres sa Correspondance. 
Par G. Cerceau. Paris : Lethellieux. 



jforeign jperiobicals. 

The Tablet (27 June): Deals with the latest schism in Eng- 
land. Its originator is an unfaithful Catholic priest named 
Mathew, who was recently consecrated, strange to say, 
not by the Archbishop of Canterbury, but by the Jan- 

senist Bishop of Utrecht. The Resolutions of the 

Manchester Conference on the Education question seem 
to offer some solution of a difficult problem and establish 
a platform on which men holding different views may stand. 
(4 July) : A clash has occurred between the Established 
Church and the State under the Deceased Wife's Sister 
Act. The State claiming that as the Church of England 
is by law established she is bound to obey the secular 

law. The Pope has been pleased to appoint Cardinal 

Vannutelli as his representative to preside at the ap- 
proaching Eucharistic Congress. 

(n July): At the American banquet in London Mr. 
Henniker-Heaton startled his hearers by informing them 
of his plans for penny-a-word telegrams throughout the 

civilized world. The full text of the Pontifical decree, 

by virtue of which the United Kingdom and the United 

States cease to be " missionary countries," shows that 

no drastic changes are likely to be affected by the new 

legislation. 

(18 July): Speaks of the recent " Pan- Anglican Congress" 

as a notable meeting. It carefully abstained from any 

attempt to defend or define the Faith, occupying itself 

chiefly with philanthropic measures. " The English 

Martyrs," gives an account of those who suffered for 

the Faith in the sixteenth century. The game of 

bluff in regard to the Education Bill still continues. 
Its future is at least doubtful. English churchmen seem 
ready to adopt a "strategic movement to the rear" and 
accept a compromise. Catholics, on the other hand, must, 
on principle, stand outside any such settlement. 

The Month (July) : " Catholics and Athleticism in Italy," shows 
the prominent place which athletics occupy in the Catho- 
lic education of Italian boys. An International Concorso 
is to be held this coming September, in honor of the 

Holy Father's Jubilee. "A Rationalized Joan of Arc," 

by Fr. Thurston, S.J., is a criticism of an article by 



844 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Sept., 

Anatole France on Joan of Arc. "A Study in Bigotry," 
by Fr. Keating, S.J., reveals the animus still entertained 
by many Protestants towards the Catholic Church. 

The National Review (August) : In his article " A Bolt from 
the Blue," Lieut. Colonel Pollock speculates as to Eng- 
land's readiness to resist a possible invasion by Ger- 
many. "Austria's Next Movement in the Balkans," 

by " An Inquirer," states that it is Austria's aim and 
object to secure economic preponderance in Macedonia. 
An appreciation of Lord Charles Beresford's ser- 
vice to the British Navy is given by H. W. Wilson. 

A plea for maintaining the purity of the English 

language and the lucidity of the English style is made 

by " Academius." "The Burden of the Family," by 

Reginald A. Bray, L.C.C., discusses the urgent prob- 
lem of the State in relation to the families of the work- 
ing classes. "Fair Play for Japan," by W. T. R. 

Preston, is a candid review of the general conditions and 
outlook of Japan. 

The Hibbert Journal (July) : Professor Wm. James, of Harvard, 
writes on " Pluralism and Religion," He speaks of the 
realm of thought and mental experience that may lie be- 
yond " our natural experiences." " Civilization in Dan- 
ger," is from the pen of Rene Gerard. He points out 
that the process of social levelling may have for its re- 
sult a state of universal mediocrity. In " Science and 

the Purpose of Life," Dr. Nansen, of Norway, states that 
science gives no answer to the question. It belongs to 

the realm of faith. " The Right to Constrain Men for 

Their Own Good," by Prof. Flinders Petrie, reviews the 
methods and extent of personal restraint. In " Reli- 
gion and Our Schools," Prof. Dewey, of Columbia, has 
a word to say that may well command the attention of 

thinking Americans. " Enlightened Action the True 

Basis of Morality," by Prof. Lloyd, of Michigan, makes 
plain the real ground on which conduct should be based. 

"The Problem of Immortality," by Rudolph Eucken, 

is a continuation of a discussion on this subject opened 
by Sir Oliver Lodge in the last two issues of the Hib- 
bert. President Starr Jordan, of Stanford University, 

writes on " The Religion of the Sensible American," which 
he says tends in the direction ticketed by philosophers 



1908.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 845 

as pragmatism. "The Church of Scotland and its For- 
mula," deals with a legal doctrinal document which the 
Presbyterian clergy are obliged to sign and which has re- 
cently been altered by the general assembly. "The 

Burden of Language in Religion, and Authority as the 
Means of Release," shows that as authority of tradition 
is necessary to man in language so authority is neces- 
sary in religion that man may put himself into relation 
with what is called God and worshipped. 

The International (July) : In " The Federation of Mankind," 
Dr. Broda points out several influences which are at 
work assimilating and harmonizing national civilizations 

with one another. " American Canal Schemes," gives 

an account of the various plans suggested for improving 
these water-ways. " The Government of London," re- 
veals a curious state of affairs, giving a picture of the 
chaotic condition of the greatest city in the world, for 
lack of a properly organized system. " Religious Val- 
ues in the Doctrine of Evolution," distinguishes an in- 
tellectual, an ethical, and an esthetic side to our religious 
cravings, and shows how the doctrine of evolution regu- 
lates these, enabling us to give to each of them its true 
and lasting value. 

International Journal of Ethics (July) : " The Treatment of Hom- 
icidal Criminals," protests against the punishment-for- 

crime theory. "Mr. Bernard Shaw as a Social Critic." 

It may be admitted, says the writer of this article, that 
Mr. Shaw is a somewhat questionable subject. Before 
all else he is a Socialst, and when we come to under- 
stand him we find that he is not at all a pessimist, but 
rather an audacious optimist. "A Note on the Eng- 
lish Character," by George Unwin, comments upon the 
commonly accepted verdict of the foreigner, that the 
central feature of the English character is hypocrisy. 

"Is America Morally Decadent?" is answered by 

the verdict not proven. 

The Church Quarterly Review (July) : opens with " The Lam- 
beth Conference and the Union of the Churches," in which 

stress is laid upon the value of the Establishment. 

" Socialism and an Alternative." Why, the writer asks, 
has Socialism become so strong ? Because it has estab- 
lished itself upon a philosophical basis. To defeat it we 



846 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Sept., 

must begin to think and to work. Ethical Individualism 
is pointed out as the true alternative. " Simon Lang- 
ham, Abbot of Westminster," is spoken of as one of the 
great churchmen of the fourteenth century, a princely 
benefactor and a good servant of two good popes. 

The Expository Times (Aug.): "Notes of Recent Exposition," 
deals with the fifty-third chapter of Isaias. ''The Re- 
sults of the Higher Criticism of the Old Testament" 
are set before us. On the one hand, a Dr. Astley says 
there is nothing to do but accept them; while on the 
other, the Dean of Canterbury insists on the external 
authority of the Old Testament, because it was an au- 
thority to Christ. " Recent Oriental Archaeology," by 

Professor Sayce. A review of the material which has 
been brought to light by the expedition of the Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania, with special reference to the 
boundary stones of Babylonia. 

The Dublin Review (July) : Francis Thompson's posthumous 
essay on Shelley is a true critical appreciation of the 
poet. In setting forth his virtues his errors are not 
passed over in silence. " We see clearly," the writer 
says, "that he (Shelley) committed grave sins, and one 
cruel crime; but we remember also that he was an atheist 
from his boyhood ; and we decline to judge so unhappy 
a being by the rules which we should apply to a Cath- 
olic." Among other articles is a comprehensive re- 
view of " Recent Works on the New Testament," from 

the pen of Dom Chapman, O.S.B. Mr. Lilly furnishes 

us with an admirable synopsis of "The Coming Eucha- 

ristic Congress." Christian Science is discussed at 

some length by Father Hugh Benson. Mr. Ward's 

own article on "Three Notable Editors: Delane, Hut- 
ton, Knowles," forms an interesting chapter in the his- 
tory of modern journalism. 

Le Correspondant (10 July): "France in Canada," recalls the 
tercentenary of the founding of Quebec, pointing out the 
filial affection still existing between the France of the Old 

World and the New. " The Reformation Movement 

in Catholicism before Luther," shows how the reforming 
spirit was at work in the Church during the fifteenth 

century. In "The Argentine" we are given much 

information about that little-known Republic. It is 



1908.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 847 

bound to prove of much interest in international poli- 
tics, by reason of the ambition of its inhabitants. 
(25 July) : " The Drama of The Alsatian Struggle in 
the Seventeenth Century," by Leon Lefebure, gives a 
vivid picture of a people's struggle to preserve their au- 
tonomy. " The Question of the Baltic," is one of poli- 
tics, traced back through the various struggles of Euro- 
pean countries for supremacy. " The Diary of Lamar- 

tine's Journey," an itinerary of his trip through Italy, 
including his description of the places visited, with his 

reflections thereon, by Rene Doumie. Other articles 

are : "A Visit of the French Fleet to Cronstadt in 1824." 

" Ruskin and Young Girls," shows his influence on 

them, and how during his life he found among them his 
most ardent disciples. 

tudes (5 July): "The i6th of July at Lourdes in 1858," takes 
us back to the year 1654, and shows that before that 

date there were a church and college at Lourdes. 

"Ten Years in Madagascar," is brought to a close. It 
shows the disinterested work of the Jesuits and how it 
helped in the maintenance of French influence and pres- 
tige on the island. " The Sanctity of Joan of Arc." 

In view of the beatification of the Maid of Orleans this 
article reproduces a document, written in 1628 by a cer- 
tain doctor of the University of Paris, being a disserta- 
tion on the mission, apparitions, and revelations of the 
Maid. " The Suppression of the Jesuits," is a con- 
tinued article, tracing the history of the order from its 
foundation, in 1540, up to the time of its suppression, in 
I773> by Clement XIV. 

(20 July): "A Conversion in England in 1850," is the 
life story of a young woman in quest of the true Church. 

The obligation resting upon Catholics of taking their 

part in public affairs for the defence of their faith is in- 
sisted on by Maurice de la Taille in " The Action of 

Catholics in Public Life." " Albert de Lapparent, 

His Life and His Work." The death of this eminent 

physicist and geologist is deplored. Other articles 

are: "The Suppression of the Jesuits," brought to a 
close in this number. " The Work of St. Luke," re- 
views Prof. Harnack's book, Luke the Physician. 

Annales de Philosophie Chretienne (July) : Ch. Dunan writes of 



848 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Sept., 

Felix Ravaisson, whose death is of recent date. He de- 
scribes him as a metaphysician, an esthete, and a learned 

man of the first order. " The Physical Theory from 

Plato to Galileo " is continued. Opens with the school 
of Averroes, which condemned Ptolemy's two hypotheses 
as not being in accordance with the laws of physics. 

" Platonism in France in the Eighteenth Century." 

Begins with a comparison of Plato and Voltaire, the 
one for whom speculation in great things had a passion- 
ate interest, the other caring nothing for high philoso- 
phy, yet writing of Plato as the divine Plato. " Re- 
ligious Experience in Contemporaneous Protestantism," 
by P. Sabatier, deals with the Protestant conception of 
personal certitude of salvation. 

La Democratic Chretienne (July) : What constitutes Christian 
Democracy is answered in a conversational article be- 
tween a priest, a doctor, and a student. Under the 

heading " Social Movement," reference is made to an 
International Congress of Christian Labor Unions, to 
be held in Zurich during August. Mention is also 
made of the success of the Catholic party at the recent 
elections in the great industrial centers of Prussia, like- 
wise in Belgium, largely due to the fact that the 
Catholic party has taken an interest in all that tends to 
the welfare of the working people. 

Revue Pratique <T Apologetique (15 July): "The Secular Court 
a Judge and not a Butcher," a reply by the Bishop of 
Beauvais to a correspondent who claims that in the In- 
quisition the Church pronounced sentence and the secu- 
lar court merely put it into execution. This the bishop 
denies, and cites several Bulls to prove his position. 
The secular court was not obliged to condemn a heretic 

to the penalty of fire. "The Experimental Method 

before Bacon." It is often claimed that Bacon was the 
father of inductive reasoning; this the writer, Clodius 

Piat, denies. Eugene Tisserant, in " A Jewish Colony 

in Egypt," tells that at the time of the Persian domina- 
tion there was a settlement of Jews in Elephantine, an 
island of the Nile. 

La Revue Apologetique (June) : " The Collectivist's Ideas in 
France." Collectivism, says the writer, J. Fontaine, is 
nothing else than the monopoly of all social wealth and 



1908.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 849 

its concentration in the hands of those who govern. 

That it is growing in France is beyond question. 

" Rational Intelligence and Sensible Knowledge of In- 
telligence and Instinct." Instances are given by the 
writer, C. de Kirwan, of the high development of instinct 
in some animals, notably dogs. This proves that the 
beast is not a machine, but it does not prove that it is 
possessed of the faculty of intelligence, which is re- 
served alone for man. " Luther and the Sacrament 

of Marriage." As a monk Luther believed in the sac- 
ramental character of marriage, afterwards he declared 
it was but a means to satisfy the untamed flesh. In 
this respect he was a pagan, a disciple of those Mani- 
cheans who, under pretence of returning to primitive 
purity, violated the laws of common decency. 

Revue du Monde Catholique (i July): "French Canadian Cau- 
series," is a conversational discourse on the disabilities 
of the French in Canada, an inferior race, as the Eng- 
lish Protestants amiably call them. " Modernism," is 

the first part of an article dealing with the divinity of 
our Lord, as it finds expression in the Gospels. 
(15 July): "Studies on the Revolution," is a continued 
article dealing with the Restoration period. "Archi- 
tectural Work in the Catacombs," is an illustrated arti- 
cle describing what the early Christians accomplished 

in the structure of tombs. M. J. D'Orlige, in "Science 

or Romance," continues his objections to Darwinism, 
which has, he says, in many of its teachings, gone 

much further than Darwin himself. The second part 

of " Modernism " deals with its erroneous treatment of 
the sacraments, which it has emptied of all meaning, 
leaving nothing but a shadow without the substance. 

Revue Benedictine (July) : " Ancient Topography of Mount 
Cassino." D. G. Morin tells of the finding of the ruins 
of an ancient basilica, in the Tower, dedicated to S. 

Martin. "The Eclogae of the Mass by Amalaire." 

E. Flicoteaux claims that the Eclogae did not come 
from the hands of Amalaire as we have them to-day, 
but that they are a compilation made after his death, 
composed of extracts from the Expositio Misses, written 

about 814 "Inventory of the Irish Monastic Rules." 

VOL. LXXXVII 54 



850 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Sept., 

Some of the Irish saints, for example St. Kevin, drew 
up no rule for observance by their monks. One rule 
drawn up for nuns in the eighth century savors largely 
of that of St. Benedict, and approaches even more 

nearly to that of St. Columba. " Three Unpublished 

Treatises in Connection with the Flagellants in 1349.*' 
These the writer, D. U. Berliere, enumerates. The first, he 
says, accounts for the rapid extension of the movement at 
the time of the terrible black death. The second, given 
by the provost of Ypres, while not approving, does not 
condemn, but merely permits their practices; whilst the 
third treatise, which is anonymous, is directed against them. 

La Papaute et les Peuples (April-May) : " Is the Papacy an Ob- 
stacle to the Reunion of Christendom ? " is answered in 
the negative by Archbishop Ireland. "The One- 
ness of Catholic Dogma " is shown in the variety of 
Rites in the Vatican on the anniversary of St. John 
Chrysostom, when ecclesiastics of the several Eastern 
churches assisted at a solemn ceremony in which the 
Pope himself took an active part. " The Fiftieth An- 
niversary of the Apparition of Lourdes," contrasts the 
condition of things when the investigating committee 
was appointed in 1858 with the splendid commemoration 
of February last, when the Archbishop of Bordeaux, acting 
as the Pope's legate, went in solemn procession to the 
Grotto amid the acclamations of the assembled thousands. 

Stimmen aus Maria-Laach (i July): Cl. Blume, S.J., takes ad- 
vantage of the publication of the new Vatican Gradual 
to give a survey of the most important marking stones 

in the history of hymnody. A. Breitung, S.J., in an 

article on the "Theory of Evolution and Monism," 
directs attention to the prevailing misconceptions about 
the meaning of " evolution," and compares the solid re- 
sults of science on that question, as given by Wasmann, 
S.J., with the pretentious hypotheses maintained by Dr. 

Plate. K. Schlitz, S.J., has an essay on "The Panama 

Canal," based on President Roosevelt's speech to Con- 
gress on December 17, 1906. 

La Scuola Cattolica (June): "The Point of Parting with The 
Higher Criticism." This comes, Dr. Cannella says, 
when agnostic speculations are offered us in exchange 
for the truths handed down by tradition. " Reasons 



1908.] FOREIGN PERIODICALS 851 

for the Prohibition of Certain Foods to the Hebrews." 
The writer, Edoardo Love, quotes the prohibitions of 
the Old Testament against the using of the flesh of cer- 
tain animals as food, because they were unclean in their 
habits, also because of their connection with nature wor- 
ship in Egypt. "Biblical Criticism," deals with the af- 
firmation that Baptism is valid if conferred in the name 

of Christ. This number brings to a close the article 

by Can. B. Ricci, entitled "Jove, Javeh, Christ." That 
Christianity is not merely a system of morals, but rests 
upon the claim to Divinity insisted upon by our Lord, 
is clearly brought out. 

Rivista Internasionale (June): "The Procurator General of the 
Synod of the Russian Church," by P. A. Palmieri, shows 
how that church has passed through a period not unlike tbe 

captivity of Babylon, at the hands of Peter the Great. 

" The Religious Question at the First National Congress of 
Italian Women," by Vincenzo Bianchi-Cagliesi, tells of the 
prominent place assigned this subject and of the value of re- 
ligion as affecting the purity, safety, and freedom of woman. 

La Civilta Cattolica (4 July): "The Liberty of Instruction," 
traces the history of education in various countries and 
the efforts on the part of the State to monopolize the 

duty. " M. Loisy's Criticism of the Gospels," touches 

on his denial of the Divinity of Christ and his radical 

views on the Gospels. " The Testimony of St. Irenaeus 

Concerning the Roman Church and the Authority of the 

Roman Pontiff," is continued. As is also the article 

"On the Progress of Morals." 

(18 July): Opens with "Pope Pius X.'s Apostolic Con- 
stitution of the Roman Curia." " New Study in the 

Matter of Pope Liberius," by Fedele Savio, S.J., in which 
he defends the character and actions of the Pope, by a 
study not only of the four letters which pass current 
under the name of Liberius, but also by the witness of 
St. Athanasius, St. Jerome, and Sozomen. 

Razon y Fe (July): L. Murillo sets himself a two- fold task in 
his article on "Modernism and the Pentateuch"; the 
vindication of the Pope's charge that Modernism is the 
offspring of Agnosticism, and the refutation of arguments 
advanced by learned biblical scholars, Catholic and Prot- 
estant alike, to prove the manifold authorship of the 



852 FOREIGN PERIODICALS [Sept. 

Pentateuch. Other articles are : " The Transcendental 

Value of Ideas," by Ugarte de Ercilla. " Freedom 

in the Schools," by R. Ruiz Amada. " The Royal 

Patronage in the Eighteenth Century," by E. Portillo. 
"Labor Legislation in 1906," by E. Noguer. 

Espana y America (i July): In answer to Loisy's theory con- 
cerning our ability to prove the Resurrection an histori- 
cal fact, Father Coco dwells at length on St. Thomas' 
five reasons why Christ should rise from the dead; and 
likewise develops the argument from the prophecies of 

the Old and the assertions of the New Testament. 

Other articles are: "Technical Studies," by E. C. de 
Latours. " The Centenary of South American Inde- 
pendence," by Father M. Rodriguez. " Fernandez 

Shaw's Mountain Poetry," by Father Negrete. 

Tkeologisch-Praktische Quartalschrift (III.) : P. Albert M. Weiss, 
O.Pr., "The Christian Basis," exposes the endeavors 
made by certain Catholic reformers, as Fogazzaro and 
Gioberti, towards a common basis with enemies of the 

Church. Dr. Jos. Bl. Becker shows that the liberty of 

personal conviction is not opposed to the duty of be- 
lief in revealed dogmas. Jos. Franz, S.J., writes on 

" Real and Apparent Death." He considers the asser- 
tions of Ferreres, who, from successful cases of reanima- 
tion after several hours of apparent death, concludes 
that the soul does not leave the body for some hours 
after the seeming moment of death. He then considers 
the consequences arising from these conclusions for priests 
administering to the dying. 

Biblische Zeitschrift (III.): Joseph Denk refutes Burkitt's the- 
sis that the Itala of St. Augustine is identical with the 

Vulgate as against all text-criticism. P. J. Hontheim, 

S.J., discusses the three new papyri found in Elephan- 
tine by Dr. Rubensohn. There existed as early as 530 
B. c. in Elephantine, the southern city of Egypt, a Jewish 

temple with an altar of sacrifice. Dr. A. Schulte argues 

from a critical comparison of the texts of the book of Tobias 
in the Alexandrine and the Vatican Codex that the text 

of this latter is the more correct. Dr. Hugo Koch 

examines the amplified end of the Gospel of St. Mark, 
as contained in a manuscript recently found. 



Current Events. 



The ever-recurring question of the 
France. depopulation of France has been 

again brought to the front by the 

proceedings of a Commission which has been appointed by the 
Senate to suggest remedies. About the fact there is no ques- 
tion, still less about its serious import. The inevitable war 
with Germany, if inevitable it is, will have to be fought with 
continually increasing odds against France. At present there 
are more than three Germans for every two Frenchmen; but 
the population is diminishing. Last year there were 19,920 
more deaths than births. During the nineteenth century the 
phenomenon of more deaths than births occurred ten times ; 
and when the births exceed the deaths, the excess is small. 
No wonder the prospect of depopulation is causing anxiety to 
all well-wishers of their country. 

The Commission has not yet come to the end of its labors, 
but, as a remedy, one proposal has met with unanimous ac- 
ceptance. Citizens without children are to have a special tax 
imposed upon them, while the taxes to be paid by fathers of 
families are to be lowered in proportion to the number of 
children, giving thereby an indirect premium to the heads of 
large families. This proposal is so far only academic, as it has 
to be accepted by both branches of the Legislature. It is 
time for Frenchmen to wake up, for all the nations by whom 
they are surrounded are rapidly increasing. This increase in 
Italy was, for the period 1901 to 1905, at the rate of 106 for 
every 10,000; in Holland, 155; in Austria, 113; in England, 
121 ; while in Germany it was 149. 

In another way the country is being put upon its trial. 
Crimes of the most brutal and loathsome character are becom- 
ing more and more frequent. This is due in part to so-called 
humanitarian sentiment, which has prevented, for years past, the 
infliction of adequate punishment upon offenders, so that they 
now calculate upon impunity. Another cause of the evil, how- 
ever, is the publicity given by the newspapers to the details of 
crimes, thus spreading the poison far and wide. And it is said 



854 CURRENT EVENTS [Sept., 

that for this it is not merely the editors and writers in the 
papers who are responsible, but even that the magistrates and 
police have contributed to the extension of the evil by facili- 
tating the collection of the most repulsive details. Public 
opinion, however, which has made its voice heard independ- 
ently of the press and even of the government, is forcing on 
a reaction. The Bill which the government had introduced to 
abolish capital punishment it has been forced to withdraw. 
Juries all over France are calling upon the authorities strictly 
to enforce the law as it stands. 

A curious result of the recent action which has been taken 
against the Church is found in an exhibition which has been 
recently held near Saumur of the work which the priests of 
the district have been doing to secure independent means of 
living. They have entered into an association called L? Alli- 
ance des Pretres-Ouvriers. The work which they have been 
doing ranges from painting, sculptures, and wood-carvings, to 
the making of different kinds of preserves, a patent bee- hive, 
and a hatching apparatus. St. Paul made tents, and there 
was at least one Spanish bishop of the sixteenth century who 
required of his clergy that they should be skilled artisans in 
case of an emergency. These French clergy, therefore, are 
not acting without precedent. 

France has not been spared the agitation of women for the 
suffrage with which England has been afflicted. It has not, 
however, taken so obnoxious a form as it has in England, nor, 
so far as can be judged, is it so serious. And yet in one sense 
it is more so, for the women who wish to get votes have been 
holding a Congress in which such subjects as divorce, rights of 
property, the status of women before the law, were discussed 
for three days. A resolution was passed that unmarried and 
childless women should be obliged by law to serve for a year 
in the army in the auxiliary services. This seems to involve a 
recognition, for the first time, so far as we are aware, of the 
willingness not merely to claim the privileges, but also to bear 
the burdens of men. 

The extension of the income tax is still being supported by 
the ministry, but is calling forth opposition greater than ever 
in the country. M. Poincare, who we believe is one of the 
greatest of living mathematicians, is also, strange to say, an 



i9o8.] CURRENT EVENTS 855 

active politician, and has recently been Minister of Finance. 
He has stirred up the storekeepers of France, of whom there 
are nearly two millions, to oppose the proposed income tax, 
by making them believe that the levying of the tax will in- 
volve the production of their books and papers to the tax 
gatherers, in order that their " normal productivity " might be 
judged, and their commercial difficulties revealed. This they 
did not like; and the opposition has proved strong enough to 
force the government to modify its proposals. 

The French Assembly adjourned without having passed into 
law many of the measures of social reform which have been 
so long promised. In fact, the only Bill of any importance 
passed is that for purchase of almost the last railway privately 
owned. This all but completes that nationalization of railways, 
which is looked upon by some as a Socialist measure. The 
Income Tax Bill is still under discussion. The Old Age Pen- 
sions Bill still awaits the assent of the Senate. This action, or 
want of action, is taken as an indication that the tendency ex- 
ists among the Republicans to repudiate all association with 
the Collectivists, and that that kind of Socialism is losing 
ground in all the constituencies. 



The recess of Parliament is being 
Germany. devoted by the Chancellor and the 

Minister of Finance to the diffi- 
cult problem which lies before them of providing that increase 
of taxes which has been made necessary by the frequently re- 
curring deficits. Perhaps a still more painful subject is the trial 
which has been taking place of Prince Eulenberg for perjury. 
The Prince is the possessor of one of the oldest names in the 
country and of numerous orders and distinctions, has held the 
rank of ambassador, and was for a long time the intimate friend 
and counsellor of the Kaiser. The trial had to be held in a 
hospital, on account of the severe illness of the accused, and 
in the end it had to be abandoned on account of his being un- 
able to plead. This was against his vehement protest that he 
was an innocent man, who wished at any cost to prove his in- 
nocence. We have every wish to believe that he was not guilty, 
but the defence which has been set up rather militates against 



856 CURRENT EVENTS [Sept., 

this issue. The chief witnesses against him have been Bavarians, 
and the Prince has suggested that the Bavarian Court is urging 
on the prosecution on account of his having been the life-long 
champion, both while he was at Munich as Prussian minister 
and elsewhere, of the idea of a Protestant Empire, and that he 
is the victim of a Catholic and Particularist intrigue. The sug- 
gestion is too absurd to be entertained, and has been scouted 
by even the Protestant Press of Germany. 

An attempt has been made by journals of the Pan-Germans 
to excite distrust of the good faith of France, and to lead to 
the belief that a violation was contemplated of the assurances 
which she has given that the occupation of Morocco would 
not be permanent. Some little success attended this effort at 
first, but confidence, at least in more judicious minds, was re- 
stored. A leading Professor of History has descended from his 
chair to the public platform for the purpose of exciting distrust 
in the minds of his countrymen. The designs of France and 
England he declares to be the prevention of the legitimate ex- 
pansion Of the German Empire. The destinies of Germany, he 
declared, were involved in the Macedonian and Moroccan ques- 
tions. The next few years will be extremely critical for Ger- 
many. " We do not want to take anything from anybody, but 
may the devil take anybody who would take anything from 
us." Sentiments of this kind, well-informed authorities affirm, 
meet with widespread applause and approbation. That this 
should be the case justifies the apprehensions which are widely 
felt that Germany cannot be looked upon with confidence as a 
friend of the maintenance of peace. 



After a long and severe struggle, 
Italy. the strike in the district of Parma 

has come to an end. The men 

have been defeated. They are much to be pitied, for the strug- 
gle was forced upon them by the Socialist organization, which 
used them as tools for the attainment of ends of its own. 
The importation of free labor, and the unwonted firmness of 
the government, led to the defeat of the strikers. 

The archbishops and bishops of the district in which the 
strike took place have issued a collective letter upon the dis- 



1908.] CURRENT EVENTS 857 

pute, in which they state that while the very nature of their 
office obliges them to stand outside the purely economic con- 
flicts which arise between different classes of the community, 
yet Christian charity and considerations of morality forced 
them anxiously to concern themselves with the results of such 
conflicts. The Church, they declare, deprecates immoderate 
greed, but fully recognizes the right of all classes to pursue 
material prosperity. Men ought to be free to organize them- 
selves and their forces to take part in the conflicts of interest 
which must perhaps arise between different classes of the com- 
munity, but care must be taken not to encourage conflicts or 
organizations the object of which is to stir up social hatred, 
to excite one class against another. 

Advocates of the nationalization of railways will do well to 
study how the system works in the countries in which it has 
been already adopted. Italy is one of those countries ; and so 
far cannot but serve as a warning. The state inherited many 
evils which were the results of bad private management in the 
past, but by this time an end ought to have been put to those 
evils. One of them was the huge distribution of free passes. 
Great and little officers of state, senators, deputies, and others 
almost without number, have had the privilege of free travel, 
and have grossly abused it. They valued this privilege so high- 
ly, that no government hitherto has ventured to deal with the 
matter. The present government, however, has had more cour- 
age, and has brought in a Bill not to abolish the custom, but to 
place restrictions upon it, putting a limit upon the number of 
tickets to be given. 



The Third Duma has not, like its 
Russia. predecessors, been killed ; it has 

lived through one session, and has 

been peacefully prorogued to meet again in October. The 
large number of 591 Bills have been submitted to it by the 
government, upon 143 of which it has reported, and has passed 
137. It has exercised control over finance by cutting down the 
estimates by some millions and by authorizing a loan. The 
general feeling among all parties is that the Duma's position 
is well assured. One of the Bills introduced into the Duma 



858 CURRENT EVENTS [Sept., 

was for the abolition of capital punishment. A Bill with the 
same object was, as has been said, introduced into the French 
Assembly. 

The difference between the spirit in which an autocratic 
and a democratic government are carried on, is well seen 
from the following facts. In France no capital sentence has 
been carried out for many years. The results, indeed, have 
not been in every respect satisfactory ; but have they been 
more satisfactory in Russia? In the last-named country, from 
1842 to 1904, the executions averaged 15. From August, 1906, 
to February, 1907, there were 950 executions, while the total 
for 1906 was 1,642. In 1907, 748 persons were executed. 
The sentences for the current year are on a similar scale. One 
evening paper recently announced no fewer than 1 1 death sen- 
tences or executions in one day. Although it may not be desir- 
able in France that the capital penalty should be altogether abol- 
ished, its effect in Russia does not seem to have been entirely 
beneficent. 

The death of Count Ignatieff, just as a new Pan- Slav move- 
ment is being inaugurated, removes from the scene almost the last 
of the statesmen who have taken a leading part in European pol- 
itics, especially by his activity in support of the former move- 
ment of the Slavs. He was a type of a series of diplomatists 
who were not so scrupulous as the present are supposed to be, 
and was indirectly the cause of Russia's recent reverses, for it 
was he who, by means which cannot be praised, secured for 
Russia those possessions in the Far East which led to the con- 
flict with Japan. One point in his favor, however, is that he 
advocated, in 1882, the convocation of a " Zemsky Sobor," or 
National Assembly of the Old Russian type. Neither Alexander 
III. nor M. Pobiedonostzeff would listen to Count IgnatiefTs 
advice; if they had, much trouble might have been saved; 
and a Duma might have been called which would have pre- 
vented this recent revolutionary outbreak. 

A fatal duel, which has recently been fought in St. Peters- 
burg between two members of the Russian aristocracy, shows 
how little it is permeated by the principles of Christian civil- 
ization. But the representatives of the people have little more 
reason to boast, for two members of the Duma were on the 
point of fighting, although this was averted by the police. 



i9o8.j CURRENT EVENTS 859 

The Press condemned this method of settling Parliamentary 
difficulties. Duelling, it would seem, is lawful in Russia, for it 
is only within the last few weeks that a Bill has been intro- 
duced prohibiting it. 

Loans are again the order of the day. An external one of 
one hundred millions has been issued in France, an internal 
one of the same amount is on the point of being issued, and a 
third loan is expected in the autumn. Bad as these loans are 
in some respects, yet the fact that they can be issued shows 
that confidence has been restored in the stability of the coun- 
try's institutions. 

The question of Morocco threat- 
Morocco, ened at one time to become acute 

on account of the occupation by 

General d'Amade of the port of Asemmur. Some German 
journals treated this as exceeding the limits which France 
had placed upon herself, and within which she had pledged 
herself to the Powers to keep. The French government seems 
itself to have been frightened, for it hastily telegraphed to the 
General for an explanation. This explanation has proved quite 
satisfactory, and the confidence in the good faith of the min- 
istry remains unshaken both at home and abroad. The ma- 
noeuvres of the rival sultans still continue, and for all that 
can be seen, seem likely to do so indefinitely. 



The saying that it is the unex- 
The Near East. pected that always happens seems 

to be verified by the proclamation 

of the grant of a Constitution by the Sultan and by the gen- 
eral amnesty which has followed it. It was not, however, alto- 
gether a surprise to those who were behind the scenes. For 
some time past it has been known that a revolutionary propa- 
ganda and organization has been conducted in Turkey. -In 
December last a secret assembly was held in Paris of those 
who wished to take positive steps to bring to an end the 
tryanny of Abdul Hamid. Representatives of various bodies, 
one of whom was a nephew of the Sultan, and of various na- 
tionalities, Swiss, Arab, Albanian, Bulgarian, took part in the 



86o CURRENT EVENTS [Sept., 

proceedings. Resolutions were passed in favor of the ultimate 
establishment of a parliamentary system and for the deposition 
of the Sultan ; and numerous methods for securing those ends 
were adopted. One of these was the winning over of the 
army to co-operation with their plans; and in this, strange to 
say, they succeeded. The army is in general the mainstay of 
the tyrant. But in this case it was the soldiers, both officers 
and privates, who led the way to the attainment of the meas- 
ure of liberty that has so far been granted. Resnia ought 
to be a name dear to the hearts of future generations of 
Turks, if, that is, present hopes are realized. For it was at 
Resnia that the movement began. The soldiers with their offi- 
cers refused any longer to be instruments of oppression, and 
fled to the hills "in order to combat the atrocities of an abso- 
lutist regime and to open a nationalist Assembly as a means 
of putting an end to the fratricidal murders hitherto occurring 
in their beloved fatherland." The movement spread quickly 
from one part of the army to another. The Sultan lost confi- 
dence in the only arm upon which he could lean. The grant 
of the Constitution is the result. 

The changes which have taken place, or which are to take 
place, at the center are so great as to alter the whole aspect 
of the Macedonian question. Progress, however, to a certain 
extent had been made in the taking of measures to put an end 
to a reign of terror which had become chronic. The whole of 
the joint proposals, indeed, of Russia and Great Britain, have 
not been published. Those of Russia being reserved until the 
autumn. But general acceptance seems to have been given to 
England's plan for the formation of a mobile force to co-oper- 
ate with the gendarmerie in coercing the bands of rival na- 
tionalities which of late have worked so much mischief. This 
force is, it is proposed, to be under the command of a Turkish 
officer; and every precaution is to be taken to safeguard that 
root of all evil the Sultan's sovereignty. But if his own sub- 
jects have limited this, there is, at last, reason for hope. 

The period during which constitu- 

The Middle East. tional government has existed in 

Persia has proved very brief. The 

Shah has scattered to the winds, with the strong arm of the 






i9o8.] CURRENT EVENTS 861 

soldiery, the elected of the people. Every form of barbarity 
was practised in doing this. A new election, it is promised, will 
take place in three months, but how is it possible to believe in 
the word, already violated three times, of an irresponsible auto- 
crat ? That he had some excuse for his action cannot be de- 
nied. The Parliament did not know its own province, and 
usurped the rights of the executives. It was ineffective in both 
spheres; and there is reason to think that it was falling into 
the hands of an aspirant to the place occupied by the Shah. 
It is also said that some of the chief of the reformers were 
not free from corruption. One of the worst effects of every 
despotism is that it demoralizes all who are subjected to its 
malignant influence, and renders them unfit to govern them- 
selves. It thrives on its very vices. With the exception of 
the town of Tabriz the whole of Persia seems to have sub- 
mitted, and the Shah seems definitely to have thrown off the 
yoke of the constitution. Reactionary officials have been ap- 
pointed all over Persia. But in Persia, as everywhere else, pub- 
lic opinion must rule. The faults of the recent Parliament have 
made the people for the present acquiesce in its downfall, but 
have also rendered it impossible for an unmitigated despotism 
to be permanently established. 



THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION. 

THE American Library Association held a recent gathering at Minnetonka, 
Minn., this being the thirtieth annual meeting of that progressive body. 
The discussions were led by men and women who have made a life work of 
library keeping, library building, and education in general, as exemplified in 
library work, which grows broader and more comprehensive every year. To 
secure the full realization of this aim its activities include state library com- 
missions, library schools, and training classes, library advertising, rooms for 
children and for the blind, co-operation with teachers, inter-library loans, 
library architecture, and various other like interests pertaining to the devel- 
opment of the work. 

Affiliated with the association in its active life are the League of Library 
Commissions, the National Association of State libraries, and the American 
Association of Law Libraries. Two other associations that may become 
affiliated with it soon are the Bibliographical Society of America and the 
American Association of medical libraries. Membership is open to library 
workers and to others interested in the work, the latest roster of members 
showing a little over 2,000, of whom twenty-three are not connected directly 
with libraries in any way. Permanent headquarters for the association were 
established in Boston in September, 1906. 

Public libraries have become one of the most important factors in the 
general educational movement of the country. Professor William P. Trent, 
of Columbia, recently stated that four things support the nation the 
church, the court of law, the school, and the library. In the thirty-two years 
of its existence the American Library Association has done much to raise the 
educational standard of the nation. The association was one of the many 
progressive movements that found its beginning in the Philadelphia Centen- 
nial in 1876. It came as a result of a three days' conference of librarians. 
It stated its purpose to be the promotion of library interests, the interchange 
of experience and opinion, the obtaining of best results with the least ex- 
penditure of money and labor, and the advancement ot the profession of 
librarian. Since the centennial the association has, with the exception of 
two years, held annual meetings in various cities. 

The earliest libraries were those connected with educational institutions, 
Harvard establishing the first in 1678. Charleston had a public library in 
1700. It was not long after the opening of this one that a public library be- 
gan its existence in North Carolina. The North Carolina General Assembly, 
sitting in biennial session at the home of Captain Richard Saunders, at Little 
River, in the winter of 1715-16, passed an act for securing the public library 
belonging to St. Thomas' parish in Pamlico. The first Harvard library was 
not especially rich in books, the number in the Pamlico library or the Char- 
leston one is unknown. These were the small beginnings, but from such and 
from the private libraries of early Americans has grown up the comprehen- 
sive free library of to-day. 

There are now about 7,000 public, society, and school libraries of 1,000 



1908.] THE COLUMBIAN READING UNION 863 

volumes and over. These have more than 55,000,000 volumes. This allows 
a library to about 12,000 people, even when the village and traveling libra- 
ries are not included, and every group of eighteen people may have, free, 
eleven books to read as they please. In the North Atlantic states there are 
126 books to every 100 persons, and the proportion varies with the popula- 
tion, the wealth of the standard of literacy in each state. In the District of 
Columbia there are 925 books to every 100 persons; in Massachusetts 250 ; 
in California 137; and in Florida and West Virginia only 15. The number 
of libraries show as great a diversity of figures, the states being led by New 
York, which has nearly 1,000 libraries, one-seventh of all in the United 
States, and about 10,000,000 volumes, more than one-fifth of all the library 
books. Massachusetts ranks next with approximately 650 libraries, and 
8,000,000 volumes. 

The aim of the libraries is to reach and uplift all people. One-third of 
the books issued are for children, so there arises the need of placing before 
them the right material, seeing that the reading may supplement the school 
work, that it may be elevating to home life, that picture books capable of 
awakening an interest in art are given, that fairy tales keep alive the dream 
world, and that nature books and hero tales are plentiful. The modern li- 
brary that has not its children's room is rare. 

* * 

Professor Thomas R. Lounsbury, Emeritus Professor of English at Yale, 
has just made into a book all his various essays under the title : The Stand- 
ard of Usage in English. 

He affirms that there is no such thing as a language becoming corrupt. 
And to his encouraging book on the subject of our mother tongue in gene- 
ral, Professor Lounsbury added, to a reporter, who went up to New Haven, 
a number of encouraging remarks for the benefit of Americans in particular. 
Our terrible slang in which so many see an insidious foe to good English 
is treated with good-natured, tolerance by Professor Lounsbury. He has a 
profound belief in the wisdom of the English language. What it needs it 
will take; what it does not, it will discard. To-day's American slang may 
be to-morrow's King's English. The truth underlying such a statement has 
been shown over and over again in the history of the language. Dean Swift, 
convinced that English was about to succumb to the attacks of the slang of 
his day, once wrote a vehement letter, urging that something be done at 
once against the new words, just as if they were mad dogs or undesirable im- 
migrants. With a few unimportant exceptions, all the words against which 
the great Dean inveighed so mightily have, since his time, won honorable 
positions in the language. His principal abomination was the word mob. 
Did you ever know that that innocent word, in its day, was the lowest, vilest 
kind of slang? Probably not. Such is the forward march of language. 

People do not realize what a safeguard a language has in a solid body of 
literature. Language may be said to revolve around its literature. It never 
travels far away from it. Those who grow alarmed about its future seem to 
have an idea that language, if left to itself, will show a tendency to depart 
from its literature in a straight line. But it doesn't. 

No more curious chapter in the history of our tongue could be furnished 



864 BOOKS RECEIVED [Sept., 1908.] 

than one giving a complete account of the words in common use to which on 
their first appearance exception has been taken, ranging all the way from 
mere disapproval to severest condemnation. There can be no question as to 
the fact that during its history the language has absorbed very many locu- 
tions and constructions which, according to the purists of the past, were 
destined to prove its bane. There is not, however, any evidence that its 
health has suffered the slightest in consequence. This condition of things 
naturally suggests the suspicion that there may be some flaw in the, reason- 
ing which leads man to look with ceaseless anxiety upon the future of the 
tongue. It awakens the hope that, after all, English may escape the ruin to 
which it is logically doomed, in the opinion of particular persons, if they 
fail to have their own way as to what it should accept or reject. The hope 
may be converted into certainty if it can be shown that all the alarm about 
the language is based upon utter misconception of what the real agencies are 
which impair the efficiency and purity of speech. 

Persons given up to slang, remarked Professor Lounsbury solemnly, 
eventually lose all sense of language. Used occasionally, it becomes very 
expressive ; used constantly, it is a mark of intellectual flabbiness. 

M. C. M. 



BOOKS RECEIVED. 

BENZIGER BROTHERS, New York : 

The New Matrimonial Legislation. A Commentary on the Decree Ne Temere. By 
Charles J. Cronin, D.D. Price $1.90. The Dark Night of the Soul. By St. John of 
the Cross. Translated by Davis Lewis, with Corrections and Introductory Essay by 
B. Zimmerman, O.C.D. Pp. 187. Price $1.50. 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York : 

Marotz. By John Ayscough. Pp. 415. Price $1.50. 

FUNK & WAGNALLS, New York : 

How to Get a Position and How to Keep It. By S. Roland Hall. Pp. 140. Price 50 cents. 

FRANCISCAN FATHERS, Paterson, N. J. : 

St. Anthony's Almanac for 1909. Pp. 100. Price 25 cents. 

R. E. LEE COMPANY, Boston : 

The Power Supreme. By Francis C. Nichols. Illustrated. Pp. 347. 

B. HERDER, St. Louis, Mo. : 

Bibliotheca Ascetica Mystica. Meditations; Vol.11. By De Ponte, S.J. Price 95 cents 
net. 

SOCIETY OF THE DIVINE WORD, Techny, 111.: 

St. Michael's Almanac for 1909. Pp. 125. Price 25 cents. 

ART & BOOK COMPANY, Westminster, Eng.: 

A Conversion and a Vocatian. Sister Mary of the Sacred Heart Sophia Ryder. Pp. 226. 
Price 2s. 

M. H. GILL & SONS. Dublin : 

A Short Defence of Religion. By Rev. J. Ballerini. Translated from the Italian by Rev. 
W. McLaughlin. Pp. 184. Price $i. 

GABRIEL BEAUCHESNE ET CIE, Paris, France : 

LeBesoin etle Devoir Religieux. Par Maurice Serol. Pp. 213. Price 2 fr. 7. 



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